reconcile
08Dec09
how do you reconcile this…
matthew 5.9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
2 corinthians 5.20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.
with this?
I personally don’t attempt to reconcile the two, because it’s not really possible or necessary. I believe Edwards did more harm than good with his sermon and, if my sources are accurate, would leave his hearers clinging to their chairs in fear or compel them to go home and hang themselves.
This sermon is far from peacemaking if you ask me, and I find it shameful that it’s such a benchmark for Protestant Christianity. Condemnation should never be the focus of a Christian’s life, and I feel we should always focus on speaking life and love into people rather than scaring them into a belief in Jesus.
Just my two cents
Yes, we should speak life and love into people’s lives… whether they are believers, or un-believers. the Truth of the Life of Christ will impact those lives that are luke-warm, cold, or hot. And the Truth of the Love of Christ will penetrate the apathy of the believer and the rockiness of heart of the unbeliever. Therefore, these evident Truths are often hard to deal with and can make us uncomfortable… that is LOVE when we care enough to be willing to be presented with the ”hard” things… and be willing to present others with the ”hard” sayings of Christ. When Jacob wrestled with God, it was all night thing… (and probably wasn’t great fun for Jacob) but he received a great blessing due to his determination to have himself painstakingly buffeted from his flesh. TRUE LOVE is spreading the Person of Truth… the Person of Jesus the Christ.
all i can say is i never read this sermon my whole life til now…& then i read it in one sitting, & 2 things really struck me:
1) it’s really all scripture, & he’s quoting all the verses everybody skips over
2) when i finished, eternity seemed way more tangible to me than everything around me
He was tring to reconcile people to God by pointing out their need for him and the what the results would be of not “making peace” with God. We might not all agree with his methods, but I believe his intentions were correct.
… ahh the peacemaker
I was so pleased to see Glen’s comment explaining why he cited Edwards’ sermon. I DO think the Bible’s emphasis on God’s love and his desire to make peace with sinners is ‘reconcilable’ with the Bible’s emphasis on judgment and damnation as well as forgiveness and salvation – in Eternity! More than reconcilable, the two are surely twin-truths. What’s all this ‘peacemaking’ about if we’re not already rebelliously at WAR with God in need of his love to pay the price of his justice on our behalf to rescue us? His anger is holy and good in a divinely pure way we can’t even imagine since our anger is so tainted with selfishness and pride (i.e. sin). God is always Love (1 John 4:8, 16), even in his holy anger. He is angry at wickedness and injustice because he is a God of love who truly cares for his creation and is eternally committed to defeat and forever remove evil from its midst. (The evil came of course because he, being omniscient, omnisophical, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, deemed it a price worth paying for the good of the existence of truly freewill creatures he created, whom he would also redeem if they were willing to receive his salvation.)
I don’t know if Edwards’ approach is the best or not. There is no doubt something worthwhile we can learn from it. Regardless, it is surely very loving and peacemaking to, AS JESUS AND HIS APOSTLES DID (in the context of proclaiming a good creation made and upheld by a good Creator who made us in his image for joyful relationship with himself), warn of judgment to come and offer the wonderful, gracious peace and forgiveness of God that he paid such a dear price to hold out to sinners in patience and mercy.
Cheers for the discussion! -DOJP
This was my first time reading this message too. Thanks for posting it, otherwise I would have only ever known the title!
As far as I can see, the message doesn’t condemn anyone. He quotes God’s word rightly, saying that an unbeliever is condemned already (John 3:18). He knocks down all of man’s self-righteousness, especially in the IX section, then presents Jesus as the only way out of Hell (X). On page 416 he makes it clear that even those who are moral or religious must be born again. Since He presents Christ as the only way of salvation, it is a message of salvation, not condemnation.
Yes, God loves us and gave His life for us, but what if we reject both of these things through our unbelief? Can we ignore the justice and judgment of a holy God? No, God’s promises are always dependent on our faith, which produces obedience. Not believing results in the same judgment as the Israelites in the desert. (Rom 11:19-21)
This is the truth, and we must tell people the whole truth, otherwise we are not really showing love. People need to know of the coming judgment and our need for a Savior before they will truly accept the good news of salvation. The love of God is the fact that He sent His Son to save us from the condemnation to Hell. Jesus certainly didn’t pull any punches when it came to talking about hell. Jude said it like this, “And of some have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.” (Jude 22-23)
This message used God’s word to tear down every rationalization that man makes to ignore his need for salvation, then it offered the opportunity to be saved. The intention seems to be that NOW is most definitely the time to come to the Lord for salvation because the only assurance we can have is in Christ Jesus.
In theory I can see how the sermon is completely biblical, but when I imagine a parent saying these things to their child the sermon feels really mean.
“Little susie, you deserve the firey pit. Mommy is as dreadfully provoked at you as she is at her other children burning over there in the fireplace. Now if you don’t start behaving, Mommy’s going to hew you down with an ax.”
Preachers have a parental role. This one feels pretty scary to me.
very agreed. but could this be the fear of the Lord?
I don’t believe the fear of the Lord is fearing that He’ll burn some of His creation alive forever. Knowing that He will punish/correct his sons and daughters as a loving parent is what I believe this fear refers to, not fear of torture.
It’s a reverent respect, in my opinion, not what Jon Edwards presents.
I love the Abba-Father relationship we have with God that you’re both referring to, and the correction that’s found there is exactly how you’re describing it. But please take 10 minutes and do a quick word-study (click down the list of all of 44 NT scripture examples) of the Greek word for fear (‘phobos’). It’s very different from respect (‘entrepo’).
The reality is that the fear of the Lord (or even “terror of the Lord” as 2 Corinthians 5 translates it) that we allow ourselves to live in – will actually intensify the life and love of God that we experience personally, and then are allowed to extend to others. It’s not about a gospel of scaring people into salvation; it’s about embracing the reality of who God really is, and the reality of what God sees – and reaching people out of that.
We presume way too much. When David sinned, he begged God not to take his Holy Spirit from him. Most of Scripture was written in a time where fear was expressed by getting on your face in the dirt and begging for mercy. We live in a time where we don’t have to literally bow to anyone or beg for anything. So we project soft gentle images of benevolent authority figures (who want our approval) onto our understanding of God.
If you’re an ambassador for Ward Cleaver or Grandpa or Santa Claus, you behave very differently than an ambassador for someone who just conquered the entire civilized earth. Your message is different. Your urgency is different. Your authority is different. I wonder if the issue is that we don’t understand who our King really is?
This is an amazing snapshot of Jesus in action – on the very same night that he previously prayed his Abba Father upper room prayers of John 14-16 – showing us clearly how a profound holy fear of God goes hand in hand with a deep intimate trusting Father-son relationship:
Hebrews 5.7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared.
There are so many kinds of fear though. If you don’t fear a tornado properly, you’ll end up not surviving. So if someone wites a sermon stating the facts about what could go wrong in not properly fearing God, that would be good, because God isn’t a wet noodle. He sometimes is that tornado, ripping through our lives. He made this fearsome, messy planet, and then put us here to love while surviving. So I agree that the Santa image of God is a useless one, because it allows for total laziness when there’s a lot of work to be done. But I still don’t feel that this guy’s sermon is accurate. It seems threatening, and bullying.
But is this sermon true? Has it inspired someone to try harder at work, or visit their mother? If it has then I would say the preacher is tapping into one facet of God. I feel like if I read it too much I’d get nervous and twitchy.
you’re really onto something there with the different types of fear (although we do well to let Scripture tell us what a word really means). obviously, perfect love drives out all fear – and we are to enter boldly before the throne of grace.
i guess the point isn’t whether jonathan edwards is the archetype of sermon-makers. i really know very little about him. i’m just seriously inspired to take God for all that he is. messages like this one make me feel like moses standing at the foot of mt. sinai seeing/feeling the fire & the wild storm…just wanting to dive in. i personally love the image of walking over a very thin fragile floor above eternity – i love the feeling of eternity. it makes me know deep inside that to live IS Christ, and to die is gain. for me it’s not about being threatened into staying saved or even working harder, it’s about deeper more intimate relationship with the living God.
i want so badly to interact with Father in spirit and truth. i don’t want to in any way limit how much he wants to reveal of himself to me. i don’t want any verse in the Bible to seem foreign or strange or too harsh to me. i beg God to let me see things just as he sees them – and i know he’s given me his Word as a lamp to my feet & a light to my path. i know he’s given me his Spirit to lead me & guide me into all truth.
this may just be a personal development for me, but i feel like for the first time in my life i’m totally consciously running after the fear of the Lord >>
Thanks for the clarification of “phobos.” I wasn’t saying that we should merely respect God, just that terror of ultimate punishment shouldn’t be the main motivation for serving Him. I tried that for years, and it made me completely miserable. Obviously, an all-powerful God is to be feared, merciful or not, and I personally strive to do this and avoid taking Him lightly. Someone as amazing and awe-inspiring as God is should bring fear to anyone.
A little off topic but not really: How is 1 John 4:18 reconciled with this idea of fearing God? How can we love and fear God simultaneously in this context?
that’s actually about as on-target as you can be. fear is connected to torment, and God’s perfect love drives that completely out. that’s how we have confidence in the face of judgment, because as He is – so we also are in this world.
so mike, what you’re saying is totally on. there is no point walking around as someone that God has rescued, yet still personally overcome with fear of the judgment of hell. his love overwhelms that! what a holy fear of God’s judgments gives us is a very clear line between where God has us now and where we were before we were rescued – and an intense desire to never see that line blurred or risk falling back into what we were rescued from.
it also gives us a totally clear perspective of what our function in the kingdom of God is. no wonder Jesus came to seek and save that which was lost. the reality of knowing what awaits people outside of the love of God should really drive us. read 2 corinthians 5 again (the whole chapter) in light of this, it’s powerful >>
Great post and subsequent discourse. I find both positions reconcilable, and not just in the they-MUST-somehow-be-reconcilable-whether-I-get-it-or-not-cuz-it’s-God’s-doing, etc. (not that I don’t have some of that thinking in me, tho, on this/other issues — seems rational in that it’s-unknowable/”mysterious ways” manner).
I think searching within and without how one feels about this so healthy — certainly puts ye on a learning curve of, shall we say, Biblical resourcin’ …
I find Edwards’ lead-in Deut.-citing gives me the key over-arching and clarifying info, in compact form as Scripture so often tends to do — to-wit:
Their foot shall slide in due time. Deuteronomy 32:35
It’s a succinct — and comforting — confirmation of cosmic (and karmic [sure, that'll work]) justice: the sinners/evil-doers will get theirs. And “due time” — love that. Needn’t wonder, much less worry — “due time” is being kept in Divine Time and we can’t presume to know That Timeline.
Also love the verb: “slide” implies something that can happen to someone gradually, over a long “time,” from a lack of vigilance/consciousness/edification and, here, an overall inactivity in doing the Right Things. But it also registers as a poor choice, a lamentable course of action — put yourself on the wrong non-righteous path, and bro, sooner or later you’ll be slippin’ …
Finally, speaking to the reconcilability of notions discussed above, the holding of both concepts as non-contradictory: the quote also allows for the image of the pro-active King meting out His (and the Ultimate) Justice, w/ God effecting the “slide” of the sinning “foot” by making that wicked path a dangerous, slippery place — the evil-doers didn’t just bring it upon themselves (tho they did). Ample warning — hey, this path is slippery … I even think it works w/ an image of, uh, a Proportionally Extreme Divine Pro-activity: walk that path in an especially wicked way and you just(ly) might have a whole muddy mountain-side slide down all over ya — and you shall slide, foot-first or not, in a most unpleasant, demonstrably conclusive manner all the way to Hell …
Interesting thread–a little surprised that Jonathan Edwards is not better known. Edwards is widely acclaimed as one of the major instruments in the American Great Awakening in the 18th century and as a man of God. No less, he is renowned as an all-time intellectual heavyweight: “Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is widely acknowledged to be America’s most important and original philosophical theologian.” See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/edwards/. Not saying he is infallible, but I imagine he swims deeper waters than most.
Also, Glen, we have never met, but have been meaning to drop the following note for awhile: My family is very encouraged and built up by what God is doing in and through you, such as what you’re describing in post #13. And I do not think that your desire to share God’s understanding of all things is a personal development. I think this is the testimony of Psalm 1:1-2, Luke 11:28 (and numerous other passages) coming to pass: “Blessed is the man who… delights in the instruction of the Lord,” and “Blessed… are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” I am finding this testimony to be true–the true good in the world, the true reward, the thing all people should envy and desire, is to hear His voice, to delight in hearing Him, and to hold to what He says. So I don’t think this is personal; I think it is one of the things He’s always been up to. And we’ve been feeling the very same things, too; it’s like we’re finally waking up. Or, perhaps more accurately, it feels like we may be done rubbing our eyes, having woken up a long time ago (we became Christians in the mid-1990s).
We’re grateful that you’ve chosen to put this testimony into music: your music–particularly 1960, but many other works–has really been playing a part in fanning all this stuff into flames. If possible, you should play or visit Columbus, Ohio.
I like where this is going. I have to confess that I of late have not focused on the factt that no one knows the day or the hour when the day of the Lord comes. I’d probably be the person left standing in the field when the other is taken. I’d probably be a goat left behind when the sheep are corralled. But I feel like my lack of love and lack of fear go together. i believe that once I learn to keep watch again, I will probably be loving the Lord more than ever.
And I also think that a visit to the eastern half of the US would be greatly appreciated.