Fear Is (not) the Heart of Love

 
{A portion of what follows originally appeared in my introduction to Perspectives on the Sabbath, B&H Academic, 2011.}

If someone had it incessantly banged into his head, when it came to the practice of Christianity, that “fear is the heart of love,” then we might empathize with him if he “never went back.”¹ But it would still be a shame, never going back because of such a blatantly false proposition, at least as it relates to being a follower of Jesus. Quite to the contrary, “perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). But how does love do this?

C. FitzSimons Allison argues that the answer is worship—“the means whereby we are opened to the love of God. . . . Worship is an immediate and present means of God’s love, making us new creatures and giving us the ever more abundant life now.”² This comes as no surprise since worship of the one true God by humans fulfills the express purpose of our creation. “To say that God made us in his image is to say that God made us for himself, and that he made us to worship him.”³

Christian worship can, on one hand, be the most altruistic, God-centered moment in the church’s common life, or, on the other hand, it can be the most viciously narcissistic. Indeed, “sometimes our worship is more a hiding from God than allowing God to find us.”⁴ Bishop Allison goes on to argue that the parable of the talents offers a good depiction of our propensity to hide from God, even in the midst of attempting to worship him. In Matthew 25:24–25, the third servant, in response to his master, fearfully pleads, “Master, I know you. You’re a difficult man, reaping where you haven’t sown and gathering where you haven’t scattered seed. So I was afraid and went off and hid your talent in the ground. Look, you have what is yours." Consequently, he meets his doom (vv. 26–30).

While the other two servants didn’t live in such fear, which enabled them to take the talents and invest them, the third servant disbelieved in the presence of love in his master. In a sense it didn’t matter what kind of person the master actually was; what mattered was what kind of person the third servant thought his master to be. And this paralyzed him. What the servant believed about him was wrong, and this affected his relationship with and service to him. So it is in Christ’s church. How we relate to God in worship is inextricably bound to what we believe about him. Is he a loveless taskmaster, a “difficult” deity?

What can keep us, as humans, from so paralyzing a thought? To be found in Christ, for the perfect love of God is shown to us in him. “For God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness, but one of power, love, and sound judgment. . . . [and] has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began” (2 Tim 1:7,9). This holy calling, which begins now and extends into the eschaton, has a transformative goal for the called—to share in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4), to be as fully unified with God as creatures can be (see Eph 1:3–14). A purely theocentric existence—when God is all in all (1 Cor 15:28)—remains the destiny of those in Christ Jesus, indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, as Letham notes:

Every single aspect of salvation is seen “in Christ” or “in him" . . . . Our proper place is to share God’s glory; by sin we fell short and failed to participate in his glory, but in and through Christ we are restored to the glory of God as our ultimate destiny. Glory is what belongs distinctively and peculiarly to God. We are called to partake of what God is.⁵

Such union is the goal for all those who ingest God’s Word (Matt 4:4), feed on Christ in the Supper (John 6:47–51), and have been baptized into his death and resurrection (Rom 6:3–6)—in short, for those who have been given faith by grace (Eph 2:8). And this brings us back around to worship—arguably the most human thing we can do—the very act in this time between the times that develops and disciplines our union with Christ in God by his Spirit. Through the practice of praise, supplication, confession, and thanksgiving (in a word, prayer), hearing the Word, and receiving the sacraments, the final and full redemption and transformation of the church is anticipated as she gathers together in continued repentance, obedience to God’s commands, and participation in a common life, caring for the needy in her midst.⁶

But one day the reconciled, yet fallen, worship of the Christic community will no longer carry the burden of Luther’s simul iustus et peccator; the way of the cross will fade (even if its marks remain), and streets of pure gold will descend from the heavens. Wendell Berry depicts this thought poetically:

There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.⁷

Indeed, all our work through worship (leitourgia) on the way to becoming sharers in the divine nature will cease. The road ends in the most holy place—the court of the Almighty. In the meantime we’re left to choose which of the three servants we will be. We Christians serve God directly in worship,⁸ and thus it behooves us to avoid the pride—the narcissism—to which it is always open; in brief, to engage wisely the question about which of its elements remain in perpetuity and which of them have become obsolete in order to honor the triune Lord. It won’t do to claim ignorance or hide behind tradition when seeking to resolve this question. If worship truly is “an immediate and present means of God’s love,” then may we be zealous to keep open to its sanctifying power, which necessarily means taking seriously questions about which elements, if any, God desires his people to enact in worship and, in that enactment, gather together as the called-out assembly, the body of which Christ is the head.

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1 From the song “I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie on their album, Plans (Atlantic, 2005).^↩
2 C. F. Allison, Fear, Love & Worship (Regent College, 1962), 17, 19.^↩
3 E. P. Clowney, The Church (InterVarsity, 1995), 118.^↩
4 Allison, 14.^↩
5 R. Letham, Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy, A Reformed Perspective (Christian Focus, 2007), 255, 257.^↩
6 Ibid., 261–63. See also A. P. Ross, Recalling the Hope of Glory: Biblical Worship from the Garden to the New Creation (Kregel, 2006), 503–12, for a good list of “several principles that surface again and again and therefore seem . . . to be absolutely essential for developing the worship of God” (503). Noticeably absent from this list, however, is any reference to which particular day, if any, God’s people ought to gather.^↩
7 W. Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997 (Counterpoint, 1998), 216.^↩
8 See Clowney, 117.^↩

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That Won’t Do, Pig. That Won’t Do.

When was the last time you went to a private social club? If you think that kind of thing is for the elite members of our society alone, guess again. The Yellow Pages are filled with lists of social clubs in which anyone in the neighborhood can become a member. They meet mainly on Sunday mornings—but don’t be foolish enough to wait for an invitation.

Unfortunately, like most other clubs, this one is designed to keep certain people in and other people out. You will find in it a decidedly internalized and individualized faith, complete with its own set of man-made regulations. You will find in it a group of folks who act as if they are enjoying life to the fullest, no matter where they are or what they are doing. And what do they do? They do exactly what they wish to do. In this Sunday club, then, it comes as no surprise that God Is One Who Exists for Me.

But in reality, this private social club has been called out of the world of clubs, not to be just another club—albeit a little cleaner (if not a lot less fun)—but to be the anti-club, the place where the mantra above is flipped: I Am He/She Who Exists for God. Apart from this, we would have no purpose, being left anchorless in a torrid sea, unable to know our worth as creatures among other creatures wrought and redeemed by a holy God. (I’m paraphrasing R. Clapp here, A Peculiar People, p. 42; see also Eph 4:14).

And this reminds me of what the apostle Paul wrote long ago. One word, among a few others, that sums up Ephesians 4 is this: friendship. I know that sounds trite to modern ears, but that might have more to do with how trite our friendships are in this shallow, isolated age (friendship in the classical period in which the apostle lived could be summed up as "the sharing of two selves," and, once cultivated in childhood, went on to form the basis of politics and the family of economic activity). St. Paul often exhorts the church in Ephesus to simply act like a community of friends. Chapter 4 of his letter is littered with such exhortations: support each other in love and preserve unity (vv. 2–3); use your gifts to knit the body together and strengthen it (vv. 12, 16); “speak truth to one another” (v. 25); don’t sin in your anger against a friend (vv. 26, 29, 31); and work an honest job in order to share with those in need (vv. 28, 32).

In short, practice friendship. For a church without friendship, just like a "beautiful woman who lacks discretion," who turns aside from her dignity, is like “a gold ring in a pig’s snout” (Prov. 11:22).¹

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1 I'm assuming, perhaps not unlike the trajectory laid out for us by the church fathers, that the primary interpretation of "women" when found in Jewish wisdom literature in this new covenant age often can refer allegorically to the church, original intent notwithstanding.^↩

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A Sacred Place

A long time ago, as Genesis 1 recounts, God began naming, separating, and assigning functions and roles to his creation. In other words, he spoke purpose for his creation into existence (often when God speaks, reality changes). The garden that resulted—Eden, by name—was pervaded with the presence of God, not in the general sense of omnipresence but in a special, intimate way—a perpetual, ongoing presence. The garden was the temple of God Almighty.

Fast forward a good amount of time (but not too much, say, between 2,500 years and 2.2 million years), and we come to the building of God’s dwelling place among his people, Israel (see Exod 25:10–40:33). Clearly, the look and materials employed throughout are meant to symbolize the original creation described in Genesis 1, and thus further represent, to use what has become the old cliché, “heaven on earth.”

Just as the Creator didn’t seek council with his creatures when preparing the garden, so too did he initiate and dictate to Israel the building of his new dwelling place, the tabernacle (Exod 25:9). In fact, we see that God doesn't leave it to his people to define the parameters of worship they will offer him.

The same holds true today—God provides the grand playground in which we’ve been called to play. Yet he has also graciously provided a fence for our protection. We (the church) are not to invent alternative ways to worship the living God—ways that are outside the fence and thus leave behind the essentials God has instituted; nevertheless, we are free to express our God-given creativity when worshiping him in each passing age.

In our time and place, riddled as it is with hyper-individualism and the temptation to live as if God doesn’t exist, we need now more than ever to recapture the biblically defined idea of sacred place, not as a building so much as that which presupposes and points to a personal God. “For where two or three come together in my name,” Jesus said, “I am there with them” (Matt 18:20). Not one, but two or three. And then the Christ comes. What this assumes is that our growth as persons (that is, our development into more fully image-bearing humans) happens only in relation to others—first with God in Christ by the power of his Spirit, and second with the temple of the Most High, his people. Only through this do we have a ready-made resistance against “the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age” (Eph 6:12).

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A Question I Heard Often . . .

. . . back when I used to hang around churches.

WHAT IF you're scheduled to work on Sunday? And the question this implies: Is the old Sabbath still in effect today for Christians?

My answer usually goes something like this: I don't think so (read this to find a good reason). But you are indeed to reserve and guard the time for the gathering of the assembly, which, in God's wisdom and since God raised Jesus from the dead on the first day of the week, happens to be Sunday (and it's no small fact that the church eventually confirmed this day too). The day itself isn't sacred. The time and space set aside for the gathering of the elect is.

This is why Christ's disciples "need corporate worship to keep them strong" (as commonly expressed). God decided it would be through these means so to do. If a Christian is asked to work on Sunday, she does so. But she may want to make it clear that she'd prefer not to work during the time the church gathers (the principle still applies even if her Christ-community gathered at some other time during the week). We work when we're scheduled to work (with all due respect to Eric Liddell [but, damn, that's inspiring]). And you let your bosses know that you'd prefer not to work Sunday mornings, since that's when your community gathers (I assume for the sake argument). Going in right after the services let out is of course a perfectly viable option.

As an aside, the ancients (Israel included) reckoned the close of the day at sundown, not at 11:59 p.m. So, technically, if you are sabbatarian, you couldn't work from sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday.

Being scheduled to work on the Lord's Day is not a test from God to prove your sabbatarian mettle. But it could be a test from him to prove your standing up for what he has commanded you to do—not forsaking the assembly. And this "not forsaking" isn't a checklist thing, that is, going to church every Sunday. It's a way-of-life thing. To forsake the assembly is to consistently forgo—when you are able—gathering with God's elect for the purpose of re-coventanting together in the name of our triune Lord.

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Yet More Perspectives on the Sabbath

Scott Oakland of ReformedCast called me on Monday for a live podcast revolving around the book Perspectives on the Sabbath.

The time flew by, but I do think this was one of my more articulate presentations. I could be totally wrong on that score (I know one thing, participating in radio/podcast interviews are quick lessons in humility—the boring, monotone sound of my own voice; the fumbling diction; incorrect facts; sticking my foot in my mouth, etc.). Why not listen for yourself?

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Dominical (& Ecclesiastical) View of the Sabbath

ON PAGE NINE of Perspectives on the Sabbath, I outlined the four views ensconced in the book. As a final note, I wrote that "Roman Catholics, traditional Anglicans, and the Orthodox, while maintaining a much stronger magisterial and thus 'dominical' view of this matter, exegetically fall somewhere in between Arand [the Lutheran] and Pipa [the puritan sabbatarian]."

Truth be told, I had wanted the Lutheran position position to fill this gap, but, as it turned out, Arand ended up being a little too close to Blomberg. Had I known, I would've also invited an Anglo-Catholic, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox thinker to contribute (while retaining Arand's important discussion in the mix as a mediating position between the aforementioned group and Blomberg).

When writing the above, I footnoted two sources: the Cathechism of the Catholic Church, III.ii, 1.3 (also para. 1166); and These Truths We Hold—The Holy Orthodox Church: Her Life and Teachings ("Orthodox Dogma and Doctrine: The Ten Commandments, no. 4").

All this to say that I came across Taylor Marshall's brief synopsis of Aquinas on the Lord's Day. I had not read this bit from Thomas in quite some time and thus forgot about it as I was preparing the manuscript for Perspectives on the Sabbath. It doesn't contradict any of the above, of course, just further elucidates the so-called "dominical" view and its quasi-sabbatarian leanings (in even asking the question, "May Catholics Work on Sunday?"), even though it does posit a significant (redemptive-historical) break between old covenant sabbath observance and new covenant worship.

AS AN ASIDE, it is commonly asserted that Calvin and other early reformers held to this "dominical" view. At least as far as Calvin is concerned (and Luther, with a slightly different twist), I think this holds true. Put differently, I think Gaffin is essentially right in his thesis that Calvin represents a via media. While Gaffin downplays the disparity between the reformer and Westminster on this point, he nonetheless acknowledges it. This is another reason why I wrote in the introduction to the book that the view "exegetically falls somewhere in between Arand and Pipa."

As an aside to this aside, Gaffin also argues that Calvin saw Rome as perpetuating a strict continuation of the old covenant sabbath. I forget what the literature concludes on this subject, but I do recall some of it highlighting the increasing sabbatarianism of the medieval church (e.g., Bauckham argues that starting in the sixth century pockets of legislative activity supporting Sunday sabbatarianism began appearing, until finally it became assumed practice by the late Middle Ages [From Sabbath to Lord's Day, 302–304]).

What I'm sure about is that there was increasing canonical enforcement of Sunday worship (and thus "servitude to another man," in Aquinas' words, was forbidden on the Lord's Day); what I don't think holds up, however, is the notion that it was "any day is as good as another" when it comes to the gathering of God's people before that, in the early church and in apostolic times. Gaffin's use of Rome as a foil is, I think, overstated. And, besides, criticizing High Middle Ages sabbatarianism is a bit ironic for a Westminsterian, don't you think?

Final aside: the "dominical" view is also necessarily an "ecclesiastical" view, because everybody that holds to some form of the dominical view, to varying degrees, grounds Lord's Day practice both in scripture (e.g., Jesus' resurrection on the first day of the week—as opposed the idea that the old covenant sabbath carries over into the new covenant) and church tradition (some of which is actually inscripturated).

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Christ the Center

I FAILED TO POINT THIS OUT when it hit the podcast shelf back in August, so here's the link to Christ the Center's interview with me, Camden Bucey, and Jeff Waddington discussing Perspectives on the Sabbath.

As one commenter noted, "Doesn’t sound like you cleaned up the audio very much," to which Mr. Bucy replied, "You should hear the original recording." The moment provided some challenges, technology such as it is. But it was thoroughly enjoyable, and I hope you may find it the same.

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Review of Perspectives on the Sabbath

Andy Naselli provides a brief review of Perspectives on the Sabbath, wherein he highlights some of the elements that make the book "an excellent example of how different views use different hermeneutical approaches and theological methods." Check it out.

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Perspectives on the Sabbath Interview

Today (Tuesday, 5 April 2011) at 1 p.m. on Knowing the Truth, I'm being interviewed about the book I've edited, Perspectives on the Sabbath (you can see a generous portion of it through the "Look Inside" feature at Amazon).

Update: Listen to or download the entire interview.

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