Reggie Weems

Speaking of apologetics…watch a master apologist, Tim Keller, speaking at Google’s executive offices.

You already know that apologetics is not an ‘apology’ for Christianity in the modern sense but a reasonable explanation for and defense of the cardinal truths of Christianity.  Sunday morning, I mentioned that one portion of the message was intended to present an apologetic for Christianity.  Although I am committed to presuppositional apologetics as the scriptural and best methodology for defending the faith (what’s better, more reasonable or more powerful than the Bible?), in that moment, I offered an evidentialist apologetic for the deity of Christ.  I must confess that, around the house, I have been known to use a shoe, a butterknife, etc., to hammer a nail.  As such, I must also confess to using every possible method of apologetics as I see the need determine.  Oh, let’s not squabble; let’s just rejoice that nails are getting hammered. 

 
But, “Why ‘apologize’ at all?” 

 
First, we are commanded to do so.  1 Peter 3:15 says, “but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.” Positively spoken, any believer in love with the glory of God delights in sharing that glory and helping others to see the beauty of Christ.  Negatively said, no believer in love with the glory of God can rest while that glory is not being displayed to all the world.  So let point one be that we are commanded to do so and the glory of Christ requires it!!!  After all, that same epistle states that we are saved so “that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (I Peter 2:9).  If you read this blog, you read the last blog, so let’s not even get started on the glory of Christ, who, according to Paul, “be honor and glory forever and ever” (I Timothy 1:17). 

Second, apologetics helps Christians understand and appreciate the faith “once delivered to the saints.”  There is a body of knowledge that undergirds Christianity and without which, Christianity is not Christianity.  Learning apologetics requires that Christians not only know the faith but be able to share the faith.  And until you can share it, you don’t fully understand it,  much less know why a Christian worldview is important to absolutely everything in life. So, in reality, learning to defend the faith helps Christians define their own faith. 

 
Third, apologetics is an attempt to populate heaven with an unnumbered points of light that all point to Jesus Christ and to keep people out of hell.  Passionless Christianity is not principled Christianity.  As we “adorn ourselves with doctrine” (Titus 2:10) we live out the principles of Christianity before a lost, blind and perishing world.  The passion of Christ on the cross motivates us to present Christ and persuade men.  Salvation is not found in Buddhism, Islam, relativism, self but only in Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12).   Thus we must defend the exclusivity of Jesus Christ for His glory and mankind’s good.  Only in Christ will people escape the judgment that is yet to come.

There’s much more to say on this topic.  Too much to write today and too long to read in one day.  But…let us all be convinced that to live as a martureo is to live apologetically.  Perhaps, if we are not having to explain and defend the faith it is because our lives sorely lack any witness to the reality of Jesus Christ. 

 
More tomorrow…

This Sunday at Heritage, I’ll make at least thee important statements about the gospel in a message entitled, “What You Should Know About the Gospel.”  First, “Where Jesus Christ is in your life, determines what your Christian life is.  If the ‘hub’ of your life is off-center, your Christianity will be unbalanced.”  Second, “It is more important that you know what the Bible says about Jesus than what the Bible says to you, because everything God wants to say to you, He says through the person and character of Christ. Determine what the Bible says to you by knowing what the Bible says about Jesus.  If you get Him right, you’ll better understand everything else the Bible says.  If you get Him wrong, nothing else will make the sense God intends it to make.” Want proof?  Read Luke 24:13-27.  Thirdly, “When the disciples missed what the Old(er) Testament said about Jesus, they missed Jesus.  Nothing could be worse.  Jesus is the gospel and without Him, there is no good news.  If you make the gospel about you, you can’t save you and you won’t be saved.  It is in your best interests to make your best interest in Jesus Christ.”       

In Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology, the Baylor University professor states that, “correct doctrinal beliefs are essential to the relationship between the believer and God” (2nd ed., p. 30). Nowhere is this more true than the believer’s understanding of Christ’s place in history, Scripture, the world, the chuch and the believer’s life.  Christ’s place in a Christian’s thinking will determine literally everything about that Christian’s everything. 

Erickson goes on to say that “the theology….developed in [his] work is the magnificence of God” (p. 82).  Magnificence is another one of those understated, underdeveloped concepts in Christianity, much like “amazing” in amazing grace.  Nonetheless, we must find words to demonstrate realities that are, in reality, far beyond definition.  So it is with Christ as the absolute center of everything.  Of course, no one does a better literary job of this than Jonathan Edwards in his “The End for Which God Created the World,” which should be in your must-read ‘bucket list.’  Edwards is so far above the norm on this that I won’t even attempt to establish a beachhead on his work in this short essay.  Nonetheless, it’s only fitting that, before dawn, on this, another good Friday of the week after Easter, we ruminate together on why Jesus Christ must be the absolute center of everything.  (By the way, since Jesus Christ is alive, every Friday is a good Friday and since He is Lord and Savior, we will undoubtedly see the same number of people - Heritage achieved another new attendance record last Sunday - present to acknowledge His Lordship as we did last Sunday, for, since Jesus is alive, every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday)

Perhaps for no greater reason, Jesus Christ must be the absolute center of everything because God has made Him so in the Scripture.  From its very beginning, the Old(er) Testament looks forward to Him.  The New(er) Testament, throughout, celebrates Him.  The unity of the Bible necessitates that Christian readers understand that the Scripture’s integrity (here the word ‘integrity’ refers to its original meaning of wholeness) rests in the Lord Jesus’ Emmaus road claim that the whole Bible is about Him (Luke 24:25-27 & 44-45).  In John 5:39-47, He informs the Jews that from Moses on, the Scriptures, repeatedly testify of one thing, Him.  The Old(er) Testament declares Him to be the ultimate fulfilment of all its prophecies and promises. 

Jesus is, to use Graham Goldsworthy’s word, the ”eschaton” on Whom everything centers, Who brings about everything and Who is the individual, personal consumation of absolutely everything.  Everything God has planned or is planning centers on Christ.  Everything God ever has done, does, or will do is to glorify Christ.  “From creation to the new creation,” (again borrowing from Goldsworthy) everything is not simply about Christ but, truly, Christ is everything. 

In Romans 8, Paul declares that Christ is not only the center of redemption but creation itself; the answer not only to man’s sin but to creation’s suffering.  He is the Savior of souls, of the cosmos, of literally everything.  As such, even in apologetics, He is ultimately the the Answer not simply to every question but to the question.  In Romans 5:12-21, Paul asserts that Christ is the last Adam, the Omega, come to restore through the final Word, what has been ruined through the first Adam’s transgression.  As the absolute center of everything, Christ has the final Word on everything.  He defines reality.  He determines the destinies of individuals, of nations, of planets, of everything. 

Hebrews 1:1-4 declares that Jesus Christ served as the blue-print, was the Creator and is the Sustainer of all things. He not only penned the plan, controls the plan and knows the plan, He is the plan…the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).  It is simply not possible to be more of the absolute center of everything than that! 

Oh, how easy to get caught up into the third heaven and write on and on about Jesus Christ forever, but I have to finish.  The breaking dawn (did you hear the noise this morning?) reminds me that Debbie will be in the Manor soon and she will be looking for Power Point from me.     

In Ephesians 1:10 and Colossians 1:15-20, God predicts that He has (in eternity) and will (in time) sum up all things through the incarnation, life, death, burial, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ.  The historical fact of what we celebrated last Sunday expresses God’s ideal of what He has always intended…intends for eternity.  Are you ready for this?  Jesus Christ is “the reassembling of reality representatively in His own person” (Goldsworthy).  What?  That’s right, you read it correctly.  By the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ has become the locus of everything, everywhere, forever (Phil 2).  To put it plainly, Jesus Christ is reality’s gravity without which, nothing could ever have, does or will ever exist.  By His resurrected life, Jesus Christ does not simply define reality but demonstrates that He is reality itself. 

Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  (There’s one more thing) 

By His resurrection, every believing person is forever united to Him, Who is the absolute center of everything.  His existence secures your existence.  His being secures your being.  His life secures your life.  No wonder Paul exclaimed, “We bring you the good news that what God promises…this has been fulfilled…by raising Jesus” (Acts 13:32-33) and “All the promises of God find their Yes in Him” (2 Corinthians 1:20).  Everything we could hope for or dream about has come to pass for us in Christ.  As Graham writes, “The whole of the end has come for us in Christ.  The whole of the end is coming in the world and in us through the gospel. The whole of the end will come with us as the great counsummative event when Jesus returns…” (How is it that has Graham Goldsworthy has stolen all my best lines?  Who is giving him my material before I write it?) 

It is not simply in Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology that the theme of “the magnificence of God” should be the central theme.  The place of Jesus Christ in every person’s life determines the place of every person in eternity.  (Take that, Goldsworthy!!!)   He must be the absolute center of everything.  He is the absolute center of everything.  He will be the absolute center of everything.     

Okay, Ernie, hang the chandelier, it’s swing time!  (See how much you miss if you don’t attend Heritage.) 

Allow me two geese (get it…a wild goose chase?).  I promise we’ll catch them and cook them.  First, I spent four hours today at the Firehouse, sitting with friends as we discussed ways Heritage could better reach the nations with the gospel.  Except for spending time with my wife and children, how better could the day before Resurrection Sunday have been spent, except talking about how to make the gospel meaningful to those who have yet to hear it? 

Secondly, it has been a difficult weekend living between the tension of the cross and the tomb.  Dr. Russel Moore calls Saturday, “the time between the times.”  On one hand, we are sorrowful yet on the other hand we rejoice.  After all, crucifixion day was the day of which the Psalmist wrote when he exclaimed, “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!”  Rejoice? Yes, rejoice.  If ever there was a cause to “give thanks in everything” the cross is it. 

(Now let’s catch the geese)  So as we sat around the table and exchanged stories about God’s amazing grace in our own lives and how we could most effectively share that grace with others, I could not help but think about the Philippian church in Acts16 that my community group has been studying for several weeks now.  To the best of anyone’s knowledge, by the time Paul wrote his letter to that beloved congregation, it had not grown much larger than two households - Lydia’s and the jailer’s (since he’s unnamed, I call him PJ.  Do you know why?)  Epaphraditis had joined, so had Syntyche and Euodias.  Clement was also a member.  But ten years after its founding the congregation remained so small that it could probably still meet in Lydia’s home where Paul had roomed as a guest evangelist. What was Easter Sunday like for that small, persecuted, struggling, divided congregation to whom the apostle had written a letter with just one, much-needed theme, joy? And the table conversation also reminded me of six eastern European countries, visited by our discovery team last year, where the mosque’s spire and the Orthodox steeple towered over each town’s landscape creating a dark shadow of sorrow and death. 

Tomorrow morning millions of American Christians (?) will join together for a celebration of Christ’s resurrection, many of them for only one of two times they frequent the local gathering of Christ’s body, every year.  The greeters will greet.  The ushers will ush.  The choir will sing.  The preacher will preach.  And millions of American Christians will judge the resurrection of Jesus Christ by someone else’s passion for or interpretation of the resurrection.  The kinder the greeters, the better.  The less the usher tarrys, the better.  The more exquisite the choir, the better.  The shorter the preacher preaches, the better. 

Tomorrow morning, millions will judge the resurrection’s promise and power, not on Who Christ is to them indivdually, and what He has done for them personally, but on the performance offered by a corporate church of people they hardly know but will be quick to criticize if everything is not up to some subjective standard, created by a world with whom no Christian should be impressed or depressed. 

(Okay, now let’s cook those geese).  I suppose my point is that, for (here’s the word again) ‘millions’ of Christians, Easter Sunday morning will have more to do with a corporate performance than a personal experience and the objective truth of Christ’s ramifications and its eternal consequences on a world destined for God’s judgement (Acts 17).  And if it itn’t good enough, (and judging by their attendance last week, next week or next month, it won’t be), those same people will evidence that they are not satsifed with Christ alone.

Sadly, this same kind of ‘judge the God by the ‘whoopee’ of the experience is also true of Christians who are present each week.  For the 21st century American church, bigger is better and anything short of razzle, dazzle is just insufficient to create a passion for the God Who died, almost alone, encircled by just a small group of timid, fearful friends. But historically speaking, the church of Jesus Christ celebrated, was excited about and left from Resurrection Sunday gathering inflamed over, the gospel of Jesus, even though the crowds were small, perhaps even just a household or two (Philippi).  And since you and I have heard the gospel message almost 2000 years later, it is evidently more than sufficient, individually and to the corporate church, to be satisfied with Christ alone.  Evidently, until our generation, the church has been satisfied with Christ enough to remain faithful to His story and share it with others.  Imagine for a moment, excitement, passion, thrill, satisfaction - with no lighting, stage, choir, power point, drama, greeters, parking attendants and all the other accoutrements, without which, it just isn’t church for today’s Christian. 

Even the Bible tells us that confession is good for the soul. So go ahead and reflect.  You may as well be honest.  If tomorrow morning, you drive by the mega-church with all its Easter week advertising and you know that even if God doesn’t show up, the glitz and glamor will; and when you get to your church and it’s just you, your family and a few other saints, will you be satsifed with Christ?  And perhaps if you attend one of those churches blessed (if its right to call it blessed) to to do warfare with Hollywood and Madison Avenue, would you be willing so steal away, alone, sometime later in the afternoon; read the crucifixion and resurrection story, look into the sky and whisper to God, “Lord, I am satisfied with you.”  

For friends, it is a crime of the greatest magnitude not to be satisified with Christ alone!                 

Heritage recently participated in a debate at East Tennessee State University in which the proposition was asked, “Can presuppositional apologetics defend Christianity?”  The discussion was well attended by Heritage members, RUF members, the atheist and philosophy clubs at ETSU and others.  Bob Wright, author and apologist, affirmed the proposition while Paul Tudico, a professor at ETSU, assumed the negative position. 

For the listening pleasure of those who were not able to attend and as a reminder for those who did attend, you can access the debate here.   

I just finished listening to Tim Keller’s first MP3 on Exclusivity.  (Have you gotten any further, Eric?)  If you’re interested in going deeper into his arguments for Christianity, you can read his new book, “The Reason for God.”  His criticism of the “absolute vantage point” argument against Christianity, actually Henry (Lesslie) Newbigin’s missiological argument against paganism, is simply brilliant but so simple that it’s often overlooked.
 

By the way, if you don’t want to come to Heritage and hear me preach on Easter, listen to his sermon on Exclusivity because I’ll be using the same text and his introductory arguments for Christianity’s exclusivity (but from the book).     

    
 I appreciate Newbigin’s perspective and it’s absolutely magnificent - in the same line as someone arguing against absolute truths with an absolute claim.  In other words, if the speaker is serious and sincere, then the statement, “There are no absolute truths” only proves there must be absolute truths.  It cannot, by virtue of its own claim, be an absolute truth or make an absolute claim about absolute truths, which only means, there must be absolute truths.  When you understand that, it shows that the statement (1) not only  undermines itself but then (2) also reflects a worldview for absolute truths.  The argument doesn’t simply argue against itself but it wins the day for the other side.  So it is with the blind men and the elephant.    
  Keller claims, “religion is a set of answers to the big questions” and not an institution.  By deinstitutionalizing religion he makes every person religious (that’s a good argument but actually that’s the weakest part of his discussion (my humble perspective) because you have to gain agreement before you can move on to the next point but its weakness is understandable since it’s not the point of his message and thus, underdeveloped).  If you agree with that point, however, then you also have to confess with Keller that, “everybody’s got a set of exclusive beliefs” and the real question is “which set” best gets us where we want to go?  That’s a loaded question and he must be depending on sanity to respond.   
  One of the most interesting creatures in Narnia is the Marshwiggle.   In the ‘Silver Chair’, the Green Witch challenges the Narnians: “Put away these childish tricks. I have work for you in the real world. There is no Narnia, no overworld, no sky, no sun, no Aslan.”  Remarkably, because it’s so out of character for him, Marshwiggle responds, “I ‘m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can, even if there isn’t any Narnia.”  Don’t you love the two consecutive prepositions?  [Ginger Cox told me they were prepositions so if you disagree, you can e-mail her and tell her what they really are, at ginger@hbcjc.org.  Go ahead, e-mail her.  It’s her first day ministering at Heritage and she needs a reality check)  Nonetheless, only Lewis could write like that!
  Keller is right.  Because of grace, the exclusivity of Christianity necessarily leads to the most inclusive worldview on the planet, even in a world that the Scripture claims is fallen, evil and anti-Christ.  Because our world is inhabited by men and not Narnians, the Christian world/belief system is only a reflection of the real Narnia.  Yet through grace, we commit ourselves “to live as like a Narnian as I [we] can.”  (I know…you can’t believe I can work The Chronicles into everything!?)    
 The world asks how we can live as Christians without the definitive proof demanded of us.  Yet arguments against Christianity always turn in on themselves and collapse under the weight of their own reasoning (or lack thereof).  It’s true that Christ has not yet come Presently, Aslan does not reign on earth.  It would certainly be much more simple to prove his existence if he did.  Still, there is every reason for hope and hope that can be explained (1 Peter 3:15).    He is not, surely will be, but not yet.  What the world will be it is not yet but surely will be.  Until then, Christianity commits itself to “live as like a Narnian,” as exclusively as is possible.  It’s the only hope of the world.