I’m beginning a new series of blog posts! I have been so inspired by Duane Litfin’s chapel sermon series in Wheaton College’s chapel that I must share the love!
He started his series of sermons on Acts 1 on August 29, 2007. I’m celebrating the anniversary of that beginning by beginning a new series of my own.
The main point of his first sermon in the series on Acts 1 was to lay some foundation for the sermons that would follow. On his way to answering the question “Why is the Bible so important?” he makes two major points. The first is that there is a profound watershed separating the Gospels from the Epistles. Life is totally different on this side and we on this side are living in a “new age”. The second main point is that it is “very dangerous” (and he stresses this several times) to make any kind of separation between the Gospels and the Epistles.
Why is the Bible so important?
He begins with these questions: “Why do we put the scriptures on such a pedestal? Why do we say it is inerrant? Why do we say it has absolute authority?” He give three possible answers.
- Empirical evidence: the Bible has never failed up to now
- Church tradition: the fathers of the church have set things up this way and we trust the Holy Spirit was guiding them
- Commitment to the person of Jesus
The first one he rejects outright without explaining why. Perhaps because once we start to give some standing to empirical evidence, then we will be playing by the rules of the secularists. Once we start playing by their rules, they can start applying the scientific method: making observations and measuring things. Then they might be able to twist the data in such a way as to make people think that there might be some statement in the Bible that is not upheld by empirical evidence. This seems impossible to me but Litfin can see deeper into the evil minds of the secularists than I can.
The second possible reason, he says, might have some validity.
It is the third one that gives Litfin his personal reason for believing that the Bible has complete authority over everything.
Through the rest of the sermon, he leads us to understand the connection between commitment to the person of Jesus and the absolute authority of “the entire Bible”. He does this by helping us understand who Jesus is and what “the entire Bible” consists of.
He begins by drawing a beautiful metaphor for the period of time between Jesus’ resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. He calls this period of time a “watershed”. He spends some time talking about what a watershed is. He gives the example of the Rocky Mountains where on one side the rain flows to the Atlantic and on the other side, the rain flows to the Pacific. He says that it is extremely important to know which side of the watershed you are on. He says that we after that watershed are living in a “new age”.
The Wisdom of the Aged
Then he asks, “which side is better?” Here he is not talking about the Atlantic or the Pacific but the time when Jesus was here on earth or now when he is “absent”. He asks, “on which side would you prefer to live?”
He answers the question in two ways. First, with some insight into the wisdom that he has accumulated with age. He says that if you had asked him that question not long ago, he would have said that he would have preferred to be on the other side: “to be able to walk alongside him and listen to him and learn from him…” But now, he says, he has changed his mind. And here is why:
To be honest, the older I’ve gotten and— I think it comes down to—the better I know myself, the less sure I am that I would have enjoyed standing right there in the presence of Jesus.
I delight in the fact that he knows every nook and cranny of my heart today. I delight in the fact that he knows every motive, in fact I find that very liberating. Instead of trying to close him off and hide from him—you know like Adam and Eve trying to hide from God—I mean how stupid is that?
But we do that, you know, we have things in our lives that we try to hide from God and we think that somehow maybe the Lord doesn’t know this. You know, I’m doing this and I know that none of you know about it so I’m going to do it. He knows! And we live as if somehow we’re hiding from Him in the bushes. We’re not! I delight in the fact that that is not the case, that, in fact, nothing is hidden from Him. No motive, no heart, nothing about me.
And I find that very liberating because it means if there’s anybody that I can be totally transparent because he already knows it anyway, it’s Him. And I find that tremendously liberating on this side of the watershed.
The further I’ve gone, the more difficult I think it might have been to walk alongside that person in the flesh who is looking right through me. Another human being who knows my heart better than I know it. And I’m not so sure that would be that easy to be around to be honest. I think I’ve changed my mind: this side, I think, is my preference.
But of course, there’s a much larger reason and that is that Jesus himself said that it is better that he should go.
There were quite a few strangely long pauses while he was talking about there being things in our lives that we try to hide from him, things that his audience doesn’t know about but God does. He almost seemed in a meditative state as the wise are prone to enter. I’m not sure what was going on in that deep and wise head of his.
But this little revelation tells a lot about Duane Litfin and his psychological maturity. Here is a man who knows himself very well and is comfortable with himself. Here is a man who finds it very liberating to know that the “absent” person of Jesus Christ—whom he will never have to see face-to-face due the Litfin’s being born on this side of the watershed—knows his every thought and motive.
Of course, those of us who know Litfin know that he is about to help us all out by explaining that the pre-resurrection Jesus is not the Jesus we need to be concerned about. Read on.
What is the Bible? Parts of the Epistles
The next question he brings up is, “In what way is it better on this side of the watershed?” Two reasons:
- “The Holy Spirit will be able to come if He leaves.” Litfin will deal with this reason in his October sermon so let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Suffice to say, for now, that it really is much better to have an undetectable spirit telling us the Truth through Litfin than to have the real person of Jesus going around talking about things that don’t matter on this side of the watershed.
- “You and I are left with the apostolic witness because of the coming of the Holy Spirit.” This is the reason he will focus on for the rest of this sermon.
“The apostles are Christs’ appointed witness to us,” Litfin says, and
this book is called The Acts of the Apostles, well, we call it that but I really think a more accurate title for it would be: The Acts of the Lord Jesus, the risen, ascended, exalted Christ through his Holy Spirit in and through the Apostles to His Church. It is the Acts of Christ that we see working themselves out through the Holy Spirit, the one he sends, through the Apostles… that Jesus might through them speak to His church…. The witness of the apostles is the authoritative voice of Christ himself to his church and that is what we find recorded in the New Testament.
That is, at least, in the Epistles. In the Gospels, Jesus was not yet risen and ascended so these words don’t apply to the Gospels any more than the Gospels apply to us on this side of the watershed. Litfin goes on:
When we listen to that scripture we are listening to the authoritative voice of the Lord Jesus Himself come through the Holy Spirit sent into the world to come upon these apostles and to guide them, direct them, into recording the Truth directly from the Lord Jesus Himself. When we listen to the scriptures, Old and New Testament, we are listening to the risen Christ.
He makes clear later that by “scripture” he means just the Epistles, but first,
An aside on theological liberalism
After establishing the existence of this “profound watershed” between the Gospels and the Epistles, Litfin makes a little aside to point out a mistake that the liberals make in their approach to the Bible.
That is one of the reasons it is so very dangerous—you hear this sometimes—to distinguish between the Epistles and the Gospels. That’s a classic move of theological liberalism. Theological liberalism did that for a very long time in the 19th century into the 20th century separating out saying, “Well, the Old Testament, you know, is very shaky, the New Testament, well, the Epistles and so on, well, secondary. It was written by somebody else. But the Gospels are about Jesus! That’s what we focus on!” What’s driving that ultimately, theological liberalism, is a certain dismissal of theological issues that are—have become unattractive and want to be jettisoned….
He then exposes the theological liberals for what they are. They want to play up an ethical system and play down the theological truths behind the ethic.
But if all you have is an ethic, you have a cut flower. The flower looks good for a while but it doesn’t last. Theological liberalism has very little staying power and it has demonstrated that throughout history for that very reason: it’s a cut flower. You have an ethic but you have no root ball… What gives sustenance to the ethic is theological truth…
In every generation from Abraham through the pre-resurrection Jesus to today, these folks have proved that there is no staying power to their message.
Some detractors accuse Litfin of focusing on the “root ball” and throwing out the flower. I’ll be posting a review of his October 29, 2007 sermon soon and in that, you will see, he silences those critics.
He elaborates this analogy to explain that without truth behind it, an ethic has no staying power.
It is very dangerous, then, to take the Epistles and the Gospels and separate them out and say, “well, the Epistles, I don’t know about that but the Gospels! This ethic! Jesus’ teachings!” What a mistake that is. Why? Because the Epistles are the risen Christ through the Holy Spirit through the apostles giving us his words of theological truth.
Don’t draw a line between the Gospels and the Epistles somehow. This is Christ speaking to us through the apostolic witness.
The most liberal of the liberal, whose point of view will naturally be the most absurd, just look at the Bible as literature and make the worst separations of all. They separate the Bible from the absolute Truth by reading it without assuming that it is the Word of God.
Slightly less liberal are those that believe some of the Bible. These make the separation Litfin talks about. They say, “Jesus seems to be the key character—maybe even God. Let’s give extra weight to what he said and did.” Such nonsense!
There is a worse work of separation here than what appears. They are further separating the Epistles from the fact that the post-resurrection Christ wrote them. Worse than that, they separate the Epistles from the fact that it is only the post-resurrection Christ that matters since the watershed. By failing to completely separate the Gospels from the Epistles in terms of relevance to us today, they are separating the Bible from the True Truth. They are the worst.
They also draw lines based on “empirical evidence in the manuscripts” and “logic” to say things like, “maybe Jesus didn’t actually say or do that bit because it is not in the early manuscripts.” The nerve of them! To draw lines based on logic and evidence instead of being led by the Spirit as Litfin is.
By the way, for those of you who worry about citations, it is true that Litfin never gives a citation for the fact that it is the post-resurrection Christ who is writing the Epistles so here is a citation for you: Duane Litfin, Wheaton College Chapel Sermon, August 29, 2007. If that’s not authoritative enough for you, then you obviously didn’t go to Wheaton.
Don’t draw a line—define a watershed
Litfin goes on to tell a wonderful story about a time when he preached out of Titus about the qualifications of elders in the church. After his message, a woman complained that,
“We didn’t hear Jesus.” What I wanted to say to her was, “well, apparently you weren’t listening.” Because [Paul writing to] Titus is the inspired apostle, the spirit of God, speaking from Christ himself, through the apostle, to us, about what Christ wants his church to be and how he wants us to operate. Do not draw the line between the Epistles and the Gospels.
This is the fourth time Litfin has commanded us not to draw a line between the Epistles and the Gospels. Now it sounds like he is saying that it is very dangerous to separate the Epistles and the Gospels. If he is saying this, then we need to make a distinction between a separation and a watershed. There is a profound difference between a separation and a watershed. Let’s not dwell on that.
What Litfin is saying, listen carefully, is that it is very dangerous to separate them and then emphasize the Gospels over the Epistles. It is perfectly fine to spend hours and book chapters talking about the watershed between the two as long as the conclusion is the correct one: the Gospels don’t matter on this side of the watershed.
But what of this Titus bit? The post-resurrection Christ is speaking through Paul. However, I know that Litfin would back down on his claim that the post-resurrection Christ is speaking to us through the apostles about how he wants his church to work if we were to go through all of Paul’s writings. At least he would demur a bit and say that some of it, such as women needing either to go bald or wear veils, was specific to Paul’s culture. Turns out there are little watersheds all through the Epistles, too.
And James? Well, James was the brother of the pre-resurrection Christ. James was too close to the no-longer-significant Christ. James never really understood life on this side of the watershed. Probably James has a little watershed surrounding him, too.
Conclusion
Finally, Litfin comes back to the importance of the Bible.
Why should we give this kind of weight to this book? Because Old Testament and New, it is all God’s word for us. Especially in the New Testament where what we have is this profound watershed event of the coming of the Spirit that would empower these thirteen individuals, these apostles, to teach and speak and ultimately some of them to write in such a way that when we hear them speak, this apostolic witness, we are listening to the voice of Christ himself to his church. It is because of our commitment to the person of Jesus Christ that we trust this word.
Finally, the promised connection between commitment to the person of Jesus Christ and the absolute authority of scripture is explained. Let me summarize:
- By “the person of Jesus Christ” he means the post-resurrection Jesus who wrote the parts of the Epistles that he quotes
- By “scripture” he means “Especially the New Testament” and especially after “this profound watershed event of the coming of the Spirit” and, honestly, just the parts of the Epistles that we like plus some footnotes from other parts of the Bible
- And the connection between them is this: the Holy Spirit has revealed to Litfin that the post-resurrection Jesus wrote the Epistles and that is why anyone who is committed to the post-resurrection Christ will give absolute authority to the parts of the Epistles that Litfin likes.
There is one thing here that I actually don’t understand. When he says “these thirteen individuals” he is referring to a point he had made earlier about the uniqueness of the original twelve minus Judas plus Paul and Matthias. Somehow Jude, James and the authors of the other Epistles don’t fit in this equation. Strange but probably insignificant. I’m sure he isn’t putting a watershed around Jude or Hebrews or anything.
My conclusions are these: when you see liberals drawing lines in the Bible and emphasizing something on one side of that line, call the line a watershed and emphasize the parts on the other side of that line. Do not look on their side of the line unless you go into “doesn’t apply to me” mode.
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