We need to be reminded again and again that our works are useless when it comes to impressing God. This was something that I was reminded of again at New Word Alive when Terry Virgo preached on grace, as well as in my preparation for a sermon I preached a few days before entitled Work, Rest, and Play. It has been a while since then, so I thought it would be a good time to remind me of this point once more. I don't know about you, but I need reminding regularly of the dangers of legalism. This quote from B. B. Warfield speaks to that very well:

“There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ's sake, or we cannot be accepted at all. This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing, nor does the nature of our relation to him or to God through him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be. It is always on His blood and righteousness alone that we can rest.”

— B. B. Warfield, Works 7:113

Carson closed the conference with his final talk on 1 John. I was home by this time, but I was able to listen to it over the weekend. You can do the same by ordering CDs from the New Word Alive website. I will share some short notes of it here.

Because of his love for us, we should love others. If people can't see God, they can see his love operating in us as we love one another.

In the previous talk, Don spoke of three tests—the truth test, the love test, and the obedience test. But, in fact, the three are connected—you can't have one without the other.

If you are born of God, it's because you recognize who Jesus is. If you recognize your sibling, you will love them, and you will want to do what Jesus says if you love him. In the New Testament, faith is not merely a subjective opinion or a synonym for religion. Biblical faith is a belief in the truth. We also trust and abandon ourselves to the risen Christ. We have to pass all three tests, not focus on one or two of them.

Transformed Christian living plays a role in Christian assurance—the “we know” words of 1 John.

We should be careful about how we lead people to assurance. The medieval Catholics said it was pride to think you were sure. Luther claimed that if you didn't have assurance it meant that you did not really have faith adequately—so if you strengthen your faith it will become assurance. Calvin did say that the Spirit would bear witness. Also, in 1 John we see some grounds. Calvin did say that the cross is by far the strongest place we should go for assurance. The obedience test will never be sufficiently fulfilled in us as we will always feel we have failed and/or will trust in our own works. There is the confirming work of the Spirit. Genuine Christianity perseveres, and the change attests the reality. If there is no change, you should question the reality of your faith. There is matchless assurance for all Christians whose eyes are fixed on the cross and who show some evidence of change.

What do you long for and are most passionate about? Whose approval do you most seek? What gives you greatest joy? What would you most complain about losing? Carson urged us to keep away from idols, and to devote ourselves to God and following him.

No. 7 on the list of most-read posts on this blog appeared on November 26, 2005, and endeavored to explain that curious phenomenon—a charismatic Calvinist or "reformed charismatic." There was a time when we were considered an oddity and people doubted our existence. Now, at least in England, reformed charismatics are on the ascendancy and many Christians are intrigued by us.

With the resurgence of interest in things reformed and charismatic, I thought I'd post a bit on what I feel is a "reformed charismatic." Simply put, reformed charismatics are those people who are trying to foster a convergence by taking the best that is available from both charismatics and reformed people. If, like me, you are convinced of the following points, you might be a reformed charismatic:

• Mark Dever and Rick Warren both have useful things to say to the Church.
  
  
• C. J. Mahaney is an acceptable person to preach from a pulpit normally filled by John MacArthur.
  
  
• You like reading blogs by Tim Challies and Phil Johnson, but also by the pneuma bloggers.
  
  
• You like the Alpha Course, and enjoy reading Spurgeon and Piper.
  
  
• You just don't see why there is such anger between certain charismatics and some of their reformed brothers. At the same time you still believe that there really is a truth to discover.
  
  
• You are in a reformed church, but secretly long for more of an experience of God. You are in a charismatic church, but secretly enjoy listening to preaching and reading books that teach substantial theology.

In a sense reformed charismatics are occupying the center ground. Like "new Labor," they advocate a third way. It is really possible, they say, to pursue a solid biblical knowledge and sound doctrine while experiencing the presence and the power of God in a real way today. The Word and the Spirit are not in conflict, but rather work together to cause us to know God.

The charismatics believe in a God who is alive and acts today. We believe in a God who wants a personal relationship with his followers, who hears prayers, who reveals himself, who pours out his love into our hearts, and who never changes and is the same God of the Bible today. We believe that receiving the Holy Spirit is a conscious real experience. We believe that this experience of the Spirit is one of the major ways that God gives us assurance that we are saved.

The reformed believe in the solas of the reformation, and in the classical evangelical position on the gospel. We believe that man is so dead in his sin and facing the wrath of God that he requires a work that entirely originates in God to deal with it.

Read more . . . What is a Reformed Charismatic?

I have now come to the end of my series responding to John Piper's new book, The Future of Justification. Here is a list of the previous posts:

1. John Piper, N. T. Wright, and Gracious Discernment
   
   
2. John Piper Challenges N. T. Wright on Justification
   
   
3. Piper Explains the Classic View of Justification Versus N. T. Wright's View
   
   
4. Piper and Wright: Does Justification by Faith Save Us?
   
   
5. John Piper: Is N. T. Wright Preaching Another Gospel?
   
   
6. Legalism Versus Grace in First Century Judaism
   
   
7. Hard and Soft Legalism
   
   
8. Legalism, Racism, and the First Century Jew
   
   
9. 2 Corinthians 5 and Romans 5—Two Critical Passages on Justification
   
   
10. The Christian and the Law
    
    
11. Piper Gets Passionate with the ETS on Justification
    
    
12. Tom Wright's Response to John Piper
    
    
13. Does Piper Neglect the Resurrection?

I would like to conclude by sharing a great summary quote from Dr. Piper which is a fitting climax to what, at least to me, has been an interesting journey through an important book. I hope many of you will go out and buy this book, but remember, buy Pierced for Our Transgressions first! This book will stretch you, but to be stretched is sometimes a good idea!

So, what is the crux of the doctrine of justification, according to Piper?

“Our only hope for living the radical demands of the Christian life is that God is totally for us now and forever. Therefore, God has not ordained that living the Christian life should be the basis of our hope that God is for us. That basis is the death and righteousness of Christ, counted as ours through faith alone. On the cross Christ endured for us all the punishment required of us because of our sin. And in order that God, as our Father, might be completely for us and not against us forever, Christ has performed for us in his perfect obedience to God all that God required of us.

This punishment and this obedience are completed and past. They can never change. Our union with Christ and the enjoyment of these benefits is secure forever. Through faith alone, God establishes our union with Christ. This union will never fail, because in Christ, God is for us as an omnipotent Father who sustains our faith, and works all things together for our everlasting good. The one and only instrument through which God preserves our union with Christ is faith in Christ—the purely receiving act of the soul.” (p. 184)

Book photo courtesy of Tony S. Reinke, The Shepherd's Scrapbook. Used by permission.

There are few places where one can go to study church history more rewarding than Dr. John Piper's biographical talks. He has a way of opening up the life of a great hero of the faith and showing us what we can learn from them. I'm finding myself in John Owen's Communion with the Triune God quite consistently at the moment, and am now over half-way through the book. I am finding it to be sweet to the soul and, thanks to Justin & Company, relatively easy going on the eyes!

I thought I would have a look at what the modern John has to say about his namesake. Piper begins his biography by emphasizing just how prominent an influence Owen has had in the centuries since his death. He even quotes approvingly those who elevate John Owen above Piper's other theological hero, Jonathan Edwards! Certainly his list of modern greats who express their debt to Owen is impressive.

But what I want to draw your attention to this Friday is the section which speaks about the experiential nature of an event that happened to John Owen years after he had become intellectually convinced of Calvinism. The event below is often described as Owen's conversion, although Piper, in introdcucing it, expresses some doubt about that. When confronted with events as experiential as those described below, we are faced with a dilemma. Many Christians today never experience this kind of personalized assurance of salvation. For many of those who have come before us, until they knew something of the love of God shed abroad in their own hearts, they could not confidently claim to be Christians.

Thus, one of two conclusions become possible. First, we might infer from reading about previous heroes of the faith that all salvation MUST be accompanied by an experience. Thus, we would have to conclude that many alive today in our churches have never truly been saved. Second, we could infer that while it is possible to become a Christian without any great emotional fireworks being set off, there is a distinct experience of God's Spirit that is available and brings assurance.

Ironically, a doctrine of a distinct experience of God could, in fact, be necessary precisely to allow for the fact that believers differ in the extent of their awareness of the presence and love of God. Far from creating "second class" Christians, it could be that this doctrine is necessary to ensure that people whose conversion expereince is not as dramatic as those outlined below can still be classed as Christians.

Can anyone read these accounts and be satisfied with an inferior experience of God? Or, like me, does reading them make you yearn for more of God? If the latter, let me encourage you to pray that God will reveal himself personally to you in the way he has to so many others before you. Then, read the Bible, sit under sermons, and continue to trust in God irrespective of what you feel while earnestly seeking the God who loved you so much that he came and died for you.

Let's see how John Piper describes the conversion of John Owen, which he writes about in a section detailing five events that shaped Owen's life:

The first is his conversion—or his assurance of salvation and deepening of his personal communion with God. It is remarkable that it happened in a way almost identical to Charles Spurgeon's conversion two centuries later. On January 6, 1850 Spurgeon was driven by a snow storm into a Primitive Methodist Chapel where a layman stood in for the pastor and took the text from Isaiah 45:22, "Look to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth." Spurgeon looked and was saved.

Owen was a convinced Calvinist with large doctrinal knowledge, but he lacked the sense of the reality of his own salvation. That sense of personal reality in all that he wrote was going to make all the difference in the world for Owen in the years to come. So what happened one Sunday in 1642 is very important.

When Owen was 26 years old he went with his cousin to hear the famous Presbyterian, Edmund Calamy, at St. Mary's Church Aldermanbury. But it turned out Calamy could not preach and a country preacher took his place. Owen's cousin wanted to leave. But something held Owen to his seat. The simple preacher took as his text Matthew 8:26, "Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?" It was God's appointed word and appointed time for Owen's awakening. His doubts and fears and worries as to whether he was truly born anew by the Holy Spirit were gone. He felt himself liberated and adopted as a Son of God. When you read the penetrating practical works of Owen on the work of the Spirit and the nature of true communion with God it is hard to doubt the reality of what God did on this Sunday in 1642.

Later in this biographical article Piper quotes Packer to further elaborate on this vital issue of communion with God:

Packer says that the Puritans differ from evangelicals today because with them ". . . communion with God was a great thing; to evangelicals today it is a comparatively small thing. The Puritans were concerned about communion with God in a way that we are not. The measure of our unconcern is the little that we say about it. When Christians meet, they talk to each other about their Christian work and Christian interests, their Christian acquaintances, the state of the churches, and the problems of theology—but rarely of their daily experience of God."

But God was seeing to it that Owen and the suffering Puritans of his day lived closer to God and sought after communion with God more earnestly than we. Writing a letter during an illness in 1674 he said to a friend, "Christ is our best friend, and ere long will be our only friend. I pray God with all my heart that I may be weary of everything else but converse and communion with Him." God was using illness and all the other pressures of Owen's life to drive him into communion with God and not away from it.

But Owen was also very intentional about his communion with God. He said, "Friendship is most maintained and kept up by visits; and these, the more free and less occasioned by urgent business . . ." In other words, in the midst of all his academic and political and ecclesiastical labors he made many visits to his Friend, Jesus Christ.

And when he went he did not just go with petitions for things or even for deliverance in his many hardships. He went to see his glorious friend and to contemplate his greatness. The last book he wrote—he was finishing it as he died—is called Meditations on the Glory of Christ. That says a great deal about the focus and outcome of Owen's life. In it he said:

"The revelation . . . of Christ . . . deserves the severest of our thoughts, the best of our meditations and our utmost diligence in them . . . What better preparation can there be for [our future enjoyment of the glory of Christ] than in a constant previous contemplation of that glory in the revelation that is made in the Gospel?"

Lest we be in any doubt about how personally challenging John Piper finds the life of Owen, he states:

"Owen was authentic in commending in public only what he had experienced in private.

One great hindrance to holiness in the ministry of the word is that we are prone to preach and write without pressing into the things we say and making them real to our own souls. Over the years words begin to come easy, and we find we can speak of mysteries without standing in awe; we can speak of purity without feeling pure; we can speak of zeal without spiritual passion; we can speak of God's holiness without trembling; we can speak of sin without sorrow; we can speak of heaven without eagerness. And the result is a terrible hardening of the spiritual life."

Piper goes on to quote Owen as follows:

"A man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul. And he that doth not feed on and thrive in the digestion of the food which he provides for others will scarce make it savoury unto them; yea, he knows not but the food he hath provided may be poison, unless he have really tasted of it himself. If the word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us."