Call it Covenant, that the Lord has made solemn promises to us. His character is on the line, he glories in what he commits to do for us. But wait a minute, those kind promises still have an ‘if’’ in them, if we do what he tells us. That’s the way life is, isn’t it? Over here is our only hope, the Lord and his promises. Over there is our ‘if’ part. How can they fit together?

The Martin Luther answer was, keep your focus on God’s forgiveness, his justification. However you mess up your life, turn to Jesus and you will be forgiven, again. What a relief, but how is that true? If that’s the heart of our lives, what’s going to keep us from being casual about our obedience? Like, yes I did it again and God forgave me again, ho hum. The Roman Catholic response makes some sense:

If any one saith, that a man, who is born again and justified, is bound of faith to believe that he is assuredly in the number of the predestinate; let him be anathema. If any one saith, that he will for certain, of an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance unto the end, unless he have learned this by special revelation; let him be anathema. (Council of Trent, Canons XV and XVI).

Reformed theology is more full-grown than the Lutheran kind. The Lord has shown us that our salvation includes both our forgiveness and justification, but also our growth and sanctification. Jesus is our Savior and also our Lord. That growth in obedience and love to Jesus Christ is what the Holy Spirit does in and for us, but it’s also what we’re called to do. It’s glorious—but it’s hard. See how that looks in the Westminster Confession, chapter 18:

3. This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties before he be partaker of it: yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation, in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto. And therefore it is the duty of everyone to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure, that thereby his heart may be enlarged in peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, in love and thankfulness to God, and in strength and cheerfulness in the duties of obedience, the proper fruits of this assurance; so far is it from inclining men to looseness.

4. True believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted; as, by negligence in preserving of it, by falling into some special sin which woundeth the conscience and grieveth the Spirit; by some sudden or vehement temptation, by God's withdrawing the light of his countenance, and suffering even such as fear him to walk in darkness and to have no light: yet are they never utterly destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart, and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may, in due time, be revived; and by the which, in the meantime, they are supported from utter despair.

We hear you, Catholics, we’re sure anything that ‘inclines us to looseness’ just has to be wrong. Assurance isn’t automatic but something we work on. That’s just right—but what about that ending? Does that sound like the right conclusion, that no matter how it goes in our lives, at least we’ll be ‘supported from utter despair’? I’m not happy with that one. If I’d been there when it was written, I think I’d have picked up the part from a little earlier, yet are they never utterly destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, and made that my ending. What do you think? Is the bottom-line in your life, no utter despair or is it never destitute of the love of Christ? 

In our theology world we say ‘already’ and ‘not yet.’ Christ is risen, already! but why doesn’t he hurry up and rescue us right now? We already have ‘all we need for life and godliness’ but is what God is asking us to do right now likely to make any difference?  I once said this to my colleague Dan McCartney, "Why don’t we say, already/not yet/still already?" This was his profound answer, "Shouldn’t we say already/not yet/still already/nevertheless not yet?"

That resembles assurance, doesn’t it? That the Lord will again keep his promise to forgive me as I confess my sin? That in his grace he once again will look at the righteousness of Jesus Christ and not at what I didn’t do? 

What should we hear from our preachers? Sometimes it sounds as if they’re not wrestling with what’s going on in our lives, that they’re satisfied giving us more biblical truth and not seeing our need for putting that truth to work in our lives, as they overflow with temptation and doubt and self-sufficiency. We can get all that from counselors and good books anyway, right? But it should be there in sermons too. We need to hear  about Jesus Christ and what he’s done for us (Ed Clowney) and also about how to live when that terrible thing happens (Jay Adams).  O Lord, keep me from cynicism—but are there really some sermons like that around? Is that just classroom talk after all?

Then there’s the other thing a sermon does, it models for us in our own Bible study just how we should do it ourselves, and how we can do it. Living in the real world for a half hour a week isn’t enough, we need to do that all the time, day in day out. Otherwise the gospel gets far off and unimportant and boring and lame.

Let me tell you about my own life. I am a conflict-avoider, I love peace and quiet. In my teaching church history job it was way too easy for me to talk about that conflict back then in a very cynical way—what did we expect from those guys anyway? Don’t they always mess up that way? Don’t we know the gospel is just a lot of talk? Those people who talk about the mythical sky-monster, we see their point, don’t we?

So how can I begin to take seriously both my own calling and also the love of Jesus?  I have been gifted with insight into what’s behind ‘issues’ in the church of Christ, I think that’s true enough. Right now I know of serious disagreement about how to understand the Old Testament, should we do that partly through understanding the old culture it was written in, or does that threaten the way the New Testament understands it? I have tried to speak to that conflict, with the hope to bring us all to unity on this very important question, just how we are to understand so much of the Bible.  I believe I have done that with all my gifts and in deep trust in the Lord—but no one is listening!

Do I still have that calling? Is my desire to help God’s people understand each other reasonable? Should I give my energy and heart to a ‘lost cause’ or is that foolish unbelief? Is there more in my conflict-avoiding life than I have known about and that I need to fight against?

Does Jesus understand? Is he still my mediator before the Father in this too? That’s the ‘already’ part that I need to meditate on. He did cry out, didn’t he, "How long must I put up with this unbelieving generation?" In Gethsemane he did say, three times, "Let this cup pass." He knows all about doing his Father’s will when it seems hopeless and foolish. He understands me and where I am. He is risen, he has sent the Holy Spirit and he is my mediator. At the very least I know he knows and will hear me as I pray for his wisdom. There’s the enormous Jesus part in this turning-point in my life, and I don’t want to minimize it in any way. Lord Jesus, protect me from Satan the source of my cynicism!

Then there’s the how part. God gives all I need for life and godliness—but wait a minute, it’s he gives us all we need! That was the first thing I learned in Greek class, that most of those you’s in the Bible are plural, as in Alabama ‘all y’all’.  Nobody by himself has all the gifts of the Holy Spirit but together we do! It’s getting clearer, this is God’s way, that what hurts his church is his church’s business. 

That seems obvious and elementary, and I know I’m slow to take so long to get it.  But it’s just what I need to know and use and pray through right now. It’s Jesus at my side, knowing so well the hard place in my heart and praying along with me against it, telling off the arch-liar Satan for me and along with me. Plus God’s Word is so clear on what his church looks like, not a much of casual observers but God’s own people who are called by him to strive together.

So it’s clear and beautiful where the Lord has placed me—I’m to recognize my own inability but also that Jesus understands that and gives me his church in my time of encroaching cynicism.  So that’s where I am, asking the church’s help, where I’m by myself not accomplishing a thing. As I do that, I rejoice again and again in Jesus and also in his Word. That’s a good story, isn’t it? So will the church accomplish what I can’t? That’s another story, and in a godly way ‘not my problem.’ All we together need for life and godliness, that’s the bottom line today, mine and ours.