Thread by @befaithful10

Calvin on the Law,
Sermon on Deut. 28:2-8

“It is a thing to be marveled at, that men cannot be persuaded that they will prosper if they do righteously. This, however, proceeds from unbelief, because they do not acknowledge that their lives are in the power and direction of God.”

“Yet He does chastise them...if a man were always in prosperity, he would forget himself, so God acts to cure such diseases.”

- Calvin on the Law,
Sermon on Deut. 28:2-8

In this sermon, Calvin holds to blessing and cursing with the caveat that God uses hardship as discipline. God teaches us to “ensure hardship as discipline, God is treating us as sons.” (Heb. 12:7)

This mixture of blessing and discipline is illustrated in Deuteronomy 8 where God warns of the trial of prosperity from His blessings. When a people are overtaken by God’s blessing there is temptation to relax their devotion and faithfulness.

At a high level, this is an important part of the story of the western church’s entry into the modern era. Never have greater material blessings been given by God to an entire civilization; clearly we we have been “the head and not the tail” (Deut. 28:13)

Yet in the midst of God’s blessing we have mixed and blended with “Canaanite” ideas of the enlightenment about how the world works in terms of God’s blessing and cursing. In our new vision of God, He has grown smaller, more distant, less sovereign, less kingly and lordly.

Now, instead of bearing to the world the non-negotiable writ of King Jesus as did men like Charlemagne and Alfred, we have given our public powers to the Philistines to disciple the children of our land and make blasphemous laws.

Increasingly, we seek permission to speak. We interpret Romans 13:1-4 as slaves of men rather than as sons of almighty God.

Thus, we increasingly serve the Philistines. Yes, indeed, God is “treating us as sons”.

As in Deuteronomy 8, our prosperity since 1650 has beguiled us. “Surely we can all just get along.” We can have a “neutral, contractual” state that doesn’t owe and declare fealty to God. “Isn’t that fair to the Canaanites? Locke, Rousseau and Jefferson are so reasonable.”

If those men seem reasonable to us in their social theory of God’s relationship to mankind, it is because we have lost our sense of smell. We should have smelled a rat. Instead, we smelled chicken soup.

Now, our vision of God and His lordship over all men is diminished. No more blessings or curses. “Nothing will happen whether good or bad” (Zeph. 1:12). This is the theology of no less a person than Meredith Kline of Westminster Theological Seminary.

Such teaching rumbles in, provokes a bit (not too much) and then settles into an uneasy, ongoing agnosticism about God’s governance of mankind among several generations of seminary students.

This is largely where we are today in terms of Christian vision for society. We have no answers. The Christian view of history in the west is deistic. The world is wound up. No blessings or curses. Just a log of saving souls for a future age.

In this view, history has no meaning in itself and the church has no answers for society. All of God’s decrees that He will prove His word and His holiness in the earth are forgotten. Such theology relieves us of responsibility so we don’t protest too much.

Surely, if the church had responsibility to actually disciple the nations — to actually prove the power of God’s word in the course of history — someone credible in a suit and tie with letters after his name would be making a bigger deal about it.

Greg Bahnsen did and Reformed Theological Seminary “let him go” for it. Since then, our reformed seminaries have been guarding the gates against any signs of God’s law with its blessings and curses applying to all men *in history*.

Amazingly, in our deism, we’ve even lost our view of progress in the church. Scripture teaches that Jesus is building His church and the gates of hell won’t withstand it. He is building it to “maturity” and “the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4), yet we hear little about it. Why?

Because the dominant view of life and meaning in the western church today is “anti-historical”. So much so that even the clear teaching of the New Testament about progress in the church largely abandoned.

It’s no wonder we can’t contemplate the coming of His kingdom if we can’t even contemplate Christ building His church maturity and fullness.

Thus, we see “unintended consequences” of our deistic abandonment of God’s covenant dealings with all men. We though to just “make the public square fair” as the enlightenment taught us.

But the Christian view of God and the world is holistic. We can’t abandon one or two parts and hold onto the others. Our view of God and His purpose in creation has threads to every area of of life. If we become unfaithfully deistic in one area of life the unravelling begins.

As our doctrine of progress in the church weakens and erodes, what of our doctrine of progress, purpose and meaning in other areas as well? Surely, we can hold onto those! Not so. Our view of God and His purposes is holistic.

God’s purpose in my life, marriage, family – in each area of life, God’s historical purposes derive from God’s larger purpose in history. Thus, if we are deistically unfaithful in one area it spreads like cancer. We lose vision and throw off restraint (Prov. 29:18)

This, I would say, is the root of much ill in the church today and hence in society as well. If the church is not at her post what chance has the world?

What to do? I believe we need to revisit – from the ground up using scripture – our understanding of:

1)God’s stated purposes in history; and,
2)God’s covenant dealings with all men in history.

Our answer to those questions is our footing for everything else we do. And they are not settled questions. We have a bad habit of viewing Christian thought from the Reformation as definitive. I am glad the reformers didn’t think that way or there would have been no reformation.