Bibliotheca Sacra 143 (April 1986) 99-108.
Copyright © 1986 by
Thinking like a Christian
Part 2:
The Means of
Grace,
the Hope of Glory
D. Bruce Lockerbie
While on his knees this writer often joins with
others in pray-
ing the General
Thanksgiving:
Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we Thine unworthy servants do
give Thee most humble and
hearty thanks for all Thy goodness and
loving-kindness to us and to all men.
We bless Thee for our creation,
preservation, and all the blessings
of this life; but above all, for Thine
inestimable love in the redemption
of the world by our Lord Jesus
Christ, for the means of grace, and for the hope
of glory.
The
prayer continues:
And, we beseech Thee, give us that due sense of
all Thy mercies, that
our hearts maybe unfeignedly thankful; and that we show forth Thy
praise, not only with our
lips, but in our lives, by giving up our selves
to Thy service, and by
walking before Thee in holiness and right-
eousness all our days; through
Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom
with Thee and the Holy
Ghost, be all honor and glory, world with-
out end. Amen.1
What
are "the means of grace"? What is "the hope of glory"?
Marks of the Imago
Dei
The mark of the human being's distinction from
other crea-
tures is the imago dei, that likeness of God with which man was
stamped. What does it mean to have been created
in the image of
God? Surely it means that man bears certain
resemblances to his
Father;
he shares certain attributes with Him—characteristics
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that make man unique among all other elements of
nature. Chief
among these characteristics must be the eternal soul;
next,
however, is the human intellect or mind. Unlike
all other of God's
creatures, who act on instinct alone, human beings
may act or
react on account of reason. As beings made in the
image of God,
man possesses those divine attributes of will,
intellect, and expres-
sion. Just as the Triune
Godhead willed the world into being, spoke
the cosmos into existence, and lighted the universe
with the light
of love, so too man is granted the powers of
volition, expression,
and illumination. Man can think and speak, reason
and act, love
and express. When God the Creator breathed into man
the breath
of life, when man became a living being, God gave
these channels of
access, these means of grace, to tie him to Himself.
This grace was at work in the experience of Adam
and Eve.
Adam
found that life in
from being paradise. Happily for man today, Adam
discovered no
lasting satisfaction in communing with the
animals; so God
provided the woman to be his partner, his companion,
the only
other creature suitable to share the glory and honor
of being made
in the image of God. But the same capacity for
reason also yielded
the corruption of insinuation, contradiction,
prevarication, deceit,
betrayal, and alienation from the very One in
whose image the man
and woman had been made.
Satan's rebellion was transmitted to the woman
and the man
by twisting the truth, by equivocating with God's
decree, by playing
intellectual games with the command
for obedience. Satan still
specializes in that particular ploy, saying one
thing and leaving the
impression that its meaning is plain, while a
deeper, more complex
meaning remains unsaid. So Banquo
warns Macbeth in Shake-
speare's play,
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence.2
From the temptation and Fall
in
God
expects Christians, who share His attribute of reason—cor-
rupted by sin but redeemed by
grace—to use that faculty in remain-
ing obedient. They are to
ward off the tempter's wiles by knowing
God's
commands, by recognizing Satan's distortions, and then by
acting like thinking Christians in obedience.
But for many Christians, especially some who
claim fidelity to
the Scriptures, the notion of an obligation to be a
thinking Chris-
The Means of Grace, the
Hope of Glory 101
tian seems almost
scandalous. These are earnest believers who,
like an army in battle, have retreated from one of the
major theaters
of war. They have evacuated the field, leaving the
enemy free to
overrun that territory. Many Christians have
capitulated to the
enemy when it comes to that field of battle called
the mind. Perhaps
because they underrate the importance of the
mind and overrate
the importance of the heart, these believers have
no stomach for
the fight. They would rather regroup and face Satan
on some other
battleground. But believers cannot
retreat; they must recapture
the mind given them by God. They must begin
thinking with the
mind of Christ, thinking like a Christian.
One of the great thinking Christians of this
generation is
Charles
Habib Malik, statesman and
scholar. Among his many
books are The Tuo Tasks
and A Christian Critique of the Univer-
sity, both essential reading
for anyone willing to accept the chal-
lenge to think like a
Christian, particularly anyone called to the
vocation of Christian education. Malik is eminently quotable, as
illustrated by these representative examples:
"We are not only
endowed with a soul and a will to be saved but
also with a reason to
be sharpened and satisfied."3 "The
problem is not only to win souls
but to save minds."4 "The greatest danger besetting
American
evangelical Christianity is the danger of
anti-intellectualism."5
The Danger of
Anti-intellectualism
"Anti-intellectualism" is a dirty word—or
should be—in the
mouth of every Christian. Yet, if Malik
is right—and he may be—
then anti-intellectualism is an opponent of God's
redeeming grace
Which
Christians, especially those in Christian education, must
combat. The American historian Richard Hofstadter
defines anti-
intellectualism as "a resentment
and suspicion of the life of the
mind and of those who are considered to represent
it."6 Taking
Hofstadter's
terms, one could say that seminary professors and
teachers of the liberal arts and sciences in
Christian colleges are
among the most ready and apparent victims of American
evan-
gelical anti-intellectualism.
Their work calls for inquiry into the
nature of things, whether searching for the most
authentic text of a
canonical passage or seeking out the biblical
answer to a problem
of ethics never anticipated by the prophets or
apostles. After all,
What
did Amos know about in vitro fertilization? What did Paul of
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Which, of course, for the anti-intellectual is
the very point!
Whatever
extends beyond the scope of Amos, Isaiah, the psalmists,
Paul,
as well as the recorded teachings of Jesus Himself, must be
considered off limits to Christians today. The
father of this writer
was once pastor of the oldest Baptist church in
western
State. In the summer of 1956, he showed this writer
minutes from
a meeting of an evangelical church in
Included
in the minutes was a resolution adopted by the con-
gregation opposing that new
invention, the telephone. The state-
ment read to the effect that
if God had intended for His creatures to
converse other than face-to-face, He would have
so ordained it in
His holy Word. One may laugh at such
primitive literalism, but if he
does, his memory is short, for today some Christians
are just as
opposed to technology, whether in communications,
information
systems, biomedical programs, or space
exploration.
Their problem is the fear that, somehow, in some
scientist's
laboratory somewhere, a discovery will be made or
alleged that
undermines faith. These are pragmatic believers
whose faith is
enhanced by material evidence but might equally
be destroyed by
contrary evidence. This explains their ongoing
interest in tracking
down the ruins of Noah's ark or the fascination in
proving that the
shroud of grin does indeed bear stains of human blood
dating to
A.D.
29. Their patron saint—if they would acknowledge her as
such—is
grimage to the
called relics. What does a person do when the
emperor's mother
asks to be shown a piece of the true cross? He finds
it and shows
her! He does not tell her any thinking woman's
reasons why her
request is both unnecessary and absurd.
Evangelical anti-intellectualism is misplaced
devotion, often
construed as orthodoxy-blind dogma. Its theology
can be com-
pressed to the slogan of a favorite bumper
sticker: "God said it. I
believe it. That settles it." The problem
with such certitude lies in
the initial statement. God said many things, some
of which He later
retracted; much of what God said appears to have
been inten-
tionally ambiguous, even
mystifying. How else can a person
explain the anomaly of divided interpretations
of the same passage
of Scripture, especially those apocalyptic and
eschatological pas-
sages? Clearly, what God said about the structure of
the church
appears to have been confusing to many
Christians over the last
2,000
years.
The Means of Grace, the
Hope of Glory 103
Evangelical anti-intellectualism is also
misplaced allegiance to
ideas presumed to be immutable truths. As is well
known, history
includes lamentable instances of the church's
having taken a posi-
tion on some issue, whether
scientific or ethical, and defending
that position as if it represented the last bastion
of God's truth. Not
infrequently, opponents of the
church's position were put to death.
How
many centuries of racist teaching about "the sons of Ham"
perpetuated damnable error in the name of truth? How
many
generations of earnest Christians have assumed that
some sort of
divine illumination rests on the King James Version of
the Bible, to
the exclusion of other equally human endeavors at
assembling an
English text? And how many of those
loyal believers have held to a
chronology that dates Creation from 4004 B.C., as
Bishop James
Ussher decided in the early 17th century? What were
such readers
to make of geological and paleontological
findings that suggest a
much older planet and an existence in this universe
of far greater
duration? Instead of irrational dogmatics as proof of orthodox
faith, God asks much more. He requires that man learn
wisdom
and knowledge; He demands that people practice
understanding.
To put it bluntly, evangelical
anti-intellectualism is an uninten-
tional but nonetheless
egregious insult to an omniscient God. It
tells God what is and what is not His truth; it
limits Him from
holding in store more truth than man has yet
perceived. It pre-
sumes that man's finite
intellect has comprehended in full the
whole of God's revealed truth. It fails to
acknowledge what
enlightened believers from the Apostle Paul on have
always known,
that truth is universal, even when it is not
immediately recognized
as such. To the Corinthians, Paul wrote, "The
foolishness of God is
wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is
stronger
than man's strength" (1 Cor.
Lord's
Day before the Mayflower sailed to the
English
Pilgrims' pastor, John Robinson, too ill to make the voyage
himself, comforted his people with these words
of encouragement:
"I
am very confident that the Lord hath more truth and light yet to
break forth out of His holy Word."7
Set Free by Truth
Here, then, is what Frank E. Gaebelein
meant when he
asserted that "for Christian education … to
adopt as its unifying
principle Christ and the Bible means nothing short
of the recogni-
tion that all truth is
God's truth."8 This statement should become a
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April-June 1986
corollary to the most liberating declaration ever
uttered: "If you
abide in My word," said Jesus, "you are
truly disciples of Mine; and
you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set
you free" (John
from denominational supposition; free from received
opinions and
traditional ignorance; free from shackles
restraining redeemed
intellectual curiosity and redeemed
imagination; free from cant
and shibboleth and prescribed terms of speech. Free
to begin
thinking like a Christian! Free to enter wholly
into all those good
things that the loving heavenly Father welcomes
believers to enjoy.
Free
to become conscious, thankful recipients of God's bounteous
grace, wherever one finds it and however it may be mediated
to
him: as courtesy from a stranger, hospitality from
mere acquain-
tances, civility from a
bureaucrat, sportsmanship from a golfing
partner, compassion from an emergency-room
nurse, diligence
from an auto assembly-line worker, not to mention all
the other
elements of God's common grace poured out through
the blessings
of friendship, the immeasurable wealth of love, as
well as the
restraining power of God that holds back evil's
worst assaults.
Yet some would, seem to take a more narrow view
of God's
grace, restricting it to the Cross and the Empty
Tomb, the church
and the Word, special grace unto salvation. Of
course this is not to
slight God's provision for man's redemption; but does
not thinking
like a Christian require believers to discover even
more of God's
unstinting grace? Is not Creation itself and man's
participation in
it an evidence of grace? Is not the Incarnation,
with its eternal
ratifying of human existence, another evidence of
grace? And with
these evidences, may one not find in the human
attributes of mind,
body, soul, and emotions their parallel in the
experiences of the
incarnate Lord? What about food and drink? Or
love, family shel-
ter, work, recreation,
companionship, self-discipline, achievement,
and even disappointment? Are not all these elements
of life part of
what James calls "every good thing bestowed and
every perfect gift
...
from above" (James
as Paul told Timothy, from God, "who richly
supplies us with all
things to enjoy"(1 Tim.
thing created by God is good, and nothing is to be
rejected if it is
received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by
means of the Word of
God and prayer" (1 Tim. 4:4-5).
But from time to time, Christians have forgotten
the grace that
sets them apart from the religions of the world. Too
often Chris-
tians have erected religious
categories, particularly in the arts and
The Means of Grace, the
Hope of Glory 105
entertainment, drawing lines between
"sacred" and "nonsacred"
music, art, edifices, and events. When Christians
fall into this
trap—constructing mazes to prevent themselves from
free access
to all God's good things—a puzzling consequence
often seems to
result. The work Christians perform and call
"sacred" seldom
matches the quality of work they would identify
as "nonsacred. " By
contrast, when Christians simply do their work—all
of it—dutifully
and unself-consciously,
ascribing to God any honor it might receive
(as did J. S. Bach for example), then all that work becomes
"sacred, "
or better, "sanctified." So, Bach's
is as sanctified as is his Cantata No. 140,
"Sleepers, Wake." So too,
Rembrandt's
"Self-Portrait" is no less honoring to God than is his
biblical masterwork "The Return of the
Prodigal Son."
For those who are committed to thinking like a
Christian,
there can be no such division into categories called
"sacred" and
"secular, " "religious" or
"profane." Surely there will be encounters
with men and women to whom nothing is sacred, who
inhabit only
the realm of the secular; persons who acknowledge
no super-
natural dimension, whose every act is a
profanation of the spirit.
But
for the Christian wishing to think and act like a Christian, any
arbitrary dichotomy is not only meaningless but
also false. Further-
more for Christians to cut themselves off from God's
gifts of grace
and then elevate such dismembering to a virtue
affronts the very
One
who is the Source of all good gifts.
The Fetters
of Legalism
Such a view of God's invitation for believers to
enjoy all things
troubles anyone still encumbered by the fetters
of legalism. Almost
every time this writer speaks in these terms, someone
in the
audience asks, "Where's the line between
liberty and license? How
do you keep from going too far?" The
question, while earnest,
reveals the depth to which a legalistic attitude
has penetrated, the
degree to which the demands of "separation"
have usurped the
command for "integration."
Throughout his childhood and adolescence, this
writer heard
a great deal about "separation. "
Perhaps the favorite verse in many
churches was "Therefore, come out from their
midst and be sepa-
rate, says the Lord" (2 Cor.
verse meant. People were trained to know who was
enrolled in the
Lamb's
book of life by whether a woman wore lipstick or a man
played cards or their church had a Wednesday night
prayer meet-
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ing. Christians were
instructed to shun such persons whose
behavior did not line up with their dogma, not
only for fear of
defiling themselves but also to avoid appearing
to condone their
behavior. Some were taught to regard several
degrees of separation
as necessary to their own doctrinal purity.
A closer reading and study of God's Word now
indicate that
"separation" as proclaimed and practiced by Christians
committed
to that stance is neither biblical nor Christlike. It distorts the
message of holy living by grace and resorts to
legalism. Like the
Judaizers who overran the First Church of Galatia,
such separa-
tionists have instituted their
own taxonomy of extrabiblical stan-
dards. As if to compensate
for the presumably insufficient work of
Jesus
Christ in achieving man's redemption, believers are urged to
add works of their own: circumcision in the form of
a checklist of
disallowed entertainments and cultural taboos. In
Galatians 5:12
the Apostle Paul, having refuted the argument that
would compel
compliance with a purely cultural means of
identity, used language
so dramatic and blunt as to leave no doubt: “As for those agitators
[who require circumcision] I wish they would go the whole way
and
emasculate themselves!” (niv).
Furthermore legalistic separation is the exact
opposite of
Christlike
behavior.
Of all the accusations brought against Jesus of
the most beautiful tribute to His mercy and grace:
"This man
receives sinners and eats with them" (Luke
15:2). The Lord Jesus
was a partygoer; indeed, He was accused by some of
being a glutton
and a drunkard. He certainly frequented the wrong
places and met
the wrong people—embezzlers, prostitutes, social
outcasts of all
sorts. And yet interestingly He neither condoned a
sinner's sin-
fulness nor left the sinner to
continue in his notorious ways. One
woman known as a sinner came to Jesus, carrying an
item possi-
bly purchased with the
earnings from her sinful life—the alabaster
jar of perfume, not unlike that by which she made
herself more
appealing to her clients.9 But as she
knelt before Jesus in recogni-
tion of His lordship, she
wept tears of sorrow Then she poured out
the very stuff that made her sin easier. She poured
out her sinful
posturing, her seductive glance, her alluring
voice-she poured
out the contents of that alabaster jar, and she
never refilled it for
those purposes again.
This emphasis should not be mistaken for
antinomianism.
This
emphasis is not suggesting that Christians can be oblivious
to sin. This writer is, for example, willing to
campaign against
The Means of Grace, the
Hope of Glory 107
corrupt and anarchistic rock music videos and
urge Christians to
rid themselves of this poison the way they would purge
their homes
of dioxin or any other lethal contaminant
threatening their lives.
This
music of death is in disharmony with God's gift of life. Its
danger cannot be exaggerated; indeed some teenage
suicide can be
attributed to this nihilistic noise. Sin exists,
sin defiles, sin
destroys, but even so, God's grace is greater
than all sin.
Instead of asceticism and deprivation, instead
of isolationism
and withdrawal from the world, thinking Christians
need to reas-
sert their calling to live
in "sanctified worldliness," that is, to live
fully and freely as children of God in appreciation
of the world He
has given them to care for, living responsibly as
citizens of God's
kingdom. For to lead the
20th
century into fuller understanding of its redemptive mission
in the world, people need the example of thinking
Christians living
in sanctified worldliness—Christians who know and
appreciate
nature, who know and love the arts, who know and enjoy
recrea-
tion and entertainment;
Christians who know and can explain the
complexities of scientific
discovery, who know and practice sound
business principles, who know and comprehend the
relationship
between history and current events, domestic
tranquility and
social order. In short, Christians are needed who know
and delight
in sharing what they know with others—thinking
Christians in
the best sense of the phrase.
The hymnwriter John
Keble expresses beautifully the
simplicity of "the means of grace."
If on our daily course our mind
Be set to hallow all we find,
New treasures still of countless price
God will provide for sacrifice.
The trivial round, the common task
Will furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves-a road
To bring us daily nearer God.10
If, then, these simple qualities of life make up
"the means of
grace," what is "the hope of glory"?
Is it not the eternal anticipation
that all these good and perfect gifts suggest? For
whatever its joy,
each gift is temporal. Today's sumptuous meal will not
supply all
one's future need for nutrition and delectable taste.
It must be
followed by tomorrow's nourishment. But in that
meal, that means
of grace, lies a hint of that time and place when
man shall never
hunger or thirst again. Thus regarded, each meal, each
day's
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Bibliotheca Sacral -
April-June 1986
delight, is a sacrament, an outward and visible
reminder of that
inward and invisible grace called the gift of eternal
life. This is "the
hope of glory," not a sanctimonious and
other-worldly disregard for
the present sphere but a joyous celebration of the
here-and-now as
a foretaste of the everlasting There-and-Then.
For it is in the performing of each day's tasks that believers
discover the mystery that makes the smallest
details of their lives a
means of grace. Surely God is in those details—the
same God who
is Himself the hope of eternal glory, eternity in
His presence.
Editor's
Note
This is the second in a series of four articles
delivered by the author as the W
H.
Griffith Thomas Lectures at
Notes
1
The Book of Common Prayer (
Seabury Press, 1979), pp. 58-59.
2 William Shakespeare, Macbeth,
1.3.126-29 (
Press,
1961), p. 10.
3 The
Two Tasks (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1980), p. 25.
4
Ibid., p. 32.
5 Ibid.,
p. 33.
6 Richard Hofstadter, Anti-intellectualism in
American Life (
Knopf,
1963), p. 7.
7
Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 15th ed., s.v. "Robinson,
John," VIII:618.
8 Frank
E. Gaebelein, The
Pattern of God's Truth: Problems of Integration in
Christian
Education
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 20.
9
J. M. Derrett,
Law in the
New Testament (
1970),
pp. 267-68.
10
"New Every Morning Is the
Love," The Hymnal (
Corporation, 1961).
This
material is cited with gracious permission from:
Dr.
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