Great and Transcendent Enough

Tim Keller in The Reason for God on why evil and suffering isn’t really evidence against God.

If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can’t know.

Think about that one. I’d say this also has pastoral implications for believers who are experiencing hard providences.

Theological Term of the Week

adoption
An act of God whereby he makes believers members of his family and gives them all the privileges of children of God.

• From scripture:
  

  In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:5-6 ESV)
  

  For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ…. (Romans 8:14-17 ESV)
  

• From The Savoy Declaration, Chapter 12:

  Of Adoption:
  
  All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth in and for his only Son Jesus Christ to make partakers of the grace of adoption, by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God, have his name put upon them, receive the Spirit of adoption; have access to the throne of grace with boldness, are enabled to cry, Abba Father; are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by him as by a father; yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting salvation.

• From Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray, Part 2, Chapter 6:

  Could anything disclose the marvel of adoption or certify the security of its tenure and privelege more effectively than the fact that the Father himself, on account of whom are all things and through whom are all things, who made the captain of salvation perfect through sufferings, becomes by deed of grace the Father of the many sons whom he will bring to glory? And that is the reason why the captain of salvation himself is not ashamed to call them brethren and exult with joy unspeakable, “Behold I and the children whom God hath given to me” (Heb. 2:13).
  

• From Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem:

  [One] privilege of adoption into God’s family, though we do not recognize it as a privilege, is the fact that God disciplines us as his children. “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are punished by him. For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Heb. 12:5-6, quoting Prov. 3:11-12). The author of Hebrews explains, “God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? … he disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness” Heb. 12:7, 10). Just as earthly children grow in obedience and righteousness when they are disciplined properly by their earthly fathers, so we grow in righteousness and holiness when we are disciplined by our heavenly Father.

Learn more:

1. Tim Challies: The Essential: Adoption
2. Bob Burridge: Adoption
3. James Montgomery Boice: Adoption
4. Herman Ridderbos: Section 35. The Adoption of Sons (scroll down)
5. Rev. Angus Stewart: Adoption: A Biblical and Theological Exposition of a Neglected Doctrine
6. R. W. Glenn: Adoption (mp3)
7. Joel Beeke: Our Greatest Privilege (mp3)

Related terms:

• conversion
• glorification
• justification
• new birth
• reconciliation
• regeneration
• sanctification

Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it.

I’m also interested in any suggestions you have for tweaking my definitions or for additional (or better) articles or sermons/lectures for linking. I’ll give you credit and a link back to your blog if I use your suggestion.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms organized in alphabetical order or by topic.

Redemption Accomplished and Applied: Regeneration

I’m participating in Tim Challies’ Reading the Classics Together program. The book is Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray, and this week’s reading is the third chapter of Part 2: The Order of Application. And yes, I’m late this week, but I’ve been busy. (Here is Tim’s summary of this chapter.)

In the order of salvation, Murray puts regeneration right after the effective call and faith and repentance. This is the order that typically affirmed by those who are reformed or Calvinistic, with the non-reformed affirming an order that puts faith and repentance before regeneration. The teaching that regeneration precedes and is the cause of faith seems to be  a sticking point and is sometimes found offensive by those who have a non-reformed view of salvation. If I had a dollar for every thread on Christian discussion boards with the title, “Does regeneration precede faith?,” I could buy a junky used car to clutter my driveway.

Here’s the problem for those who teach that faith precedes regeneration: “[H]ow can a person whose heart is depraved and whose mind is enmity against God [as the scriptures teach] embrace him who is the supreme manifestation of the glory of God?” It seems that some sort of heart and mind change is necessary in order for a sinner to respond in faith to the  call of the gospel. This change, says Murray, “is nothing less than a new creation by him who calls the things that be not as though they were…. This, in a word, is regeneration.”

Murray teaches about regeneration using, for the most part, the writings of John. The results (or fruits) of regeneration are

• seeing and entering the kingdom of God (John 3)
• doing righteousness (1 John 2:29)
• not doing sin; incapacity to sin (1 John 3:9)
• loving (1 John 4:7)
• believing that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 5:1)
• overcoming the world (1 John 5:4)
• not sinning; protection from the touch of the evil one (1 John 5:18)

Notice that even faith that Jesus is the Christ is a fruit of regeneration. Regeneration is the cause of faith  in Christ and faith in Christ is “the first evidence of regeneration.”

That regeneration precedes faith might give the impression that it is possible for someone to be regenerate and still an unbeliever. Not so:

We must not think of regeneration as something which can be abstracted for the saving exercises which are it’s effects. … If it is true that no one enters the kingdom of God except by regeneration (John 3:3-5), it is also just as true that everyone who is born again has entered into the kingdom of God.

Regeneration is nothing short of being made into a new creature. This chapter concludes:

It is a stupendous change because it is God’s recreative act. A cheap and tawdry evangelism has tended to rob the gospel which it proclaims of that invincible power which is the glory of the gospel of sovereign grace. May the church come to think and live again in terms of the gospel which is the power of God unto salvation.

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Glossary for Part 2, Chapter 1

• exigencies: demands
• beggarly: impoverished; paltry
• attenuated: weakened in force or effect