Definite Atonement Is at the Heart of the Gospel

Definite atonement (also called particular redemption or unlimited atonement) is one of those perennial sticking points among evangelicals. Whenever Evangelicals who are inclined toward the doctrines of grace go through the perfunctory feeling-out process, they’ll often head toward the 4- or 5-point Calvinist identifier. This isn’t really an issue among those who subscribe to the historic Reformed confessions. Nor does it dominate much theological conversation. However, it’s a common point of discussion among evangelicals.

Yet, in my experience, the conversation often ends with a bit of cajoling and an implicit agreement to disagree. I’ve been a part of many of these conversations, still I question whether these passing exchanges have done justice to the matter. Definite atonement is not a secondary issue; it is essential to the gospel. For whom did Christ die? Moreover, what is the precise nature of the atonement?

Is it the case that Christ’s death merely made salvation possible? Or did Christ’s death actually purchase redemption? Was there a fundamental exchange on the cross or merely an opening of the door unto the forgiveness of sins? These fundamental questions must be answered rigorously in light of the whole counsel of God. So the next time you come to an impasse with a 4-point (or 5-point) Calvinist, consider that these views run much deeper than your taste in sports, musical styles, or even political parties. They extend to the essence of Christianity.

If you’d like to go deeper in your understanding of definite atonement, I highly recommend the book From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective (Crossway) edited by David Gibson and Jonathan Gibson. We recently interviewed them along with Carl Trueman on Christ the Center episode 307. David Gibson recently had an exchange with Andrew Wilson on the subject. Read up on it. You should also look at John Murray’s important book Redemption Accomplished and Applied, wherein he skillfully treats the definite work of Christ to its ongoing application by the Holy Spirit.

A Catechism on the Heart

Sometimes people ask authors, “Which of your books is your favorite?” The first time the question is asked, the response is likely to be “I am not sure; I have never really thought about it.” But forced to think about it, my own standard response has become, “I am not sure what my favorite book is; but my favorite title is A Heart for God.” I am rarely asked, “Why?” but (in case you ask) the title simply expresses what I want to be: a Christian with a heart for God.

Perhaps that is in part a reflection of the fact that we sit on the shoulders of the giants of the past. Think of John Calvin’s seal and motto: a heart held out in the palm of a hand and the words “I offer my heart to you, Lord, readily and sincerely.” Or consider Charles Wesley’s hymn: 

O for a heart to praise my God!
A heart from sin set free.

Some hymnbooks don’t include Wesley’s hymn, presumably in part because it is read as an expression of his doctrine of perfect love and entire sanctification. (He thought it possible to have his longing fulfilled in this world.) But the sentiment itself is surely biblical.

But behind the giants of church history stands the testimony of Scripture. The first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart (Deut. 6:5). That is why, in replacing Saul as king, God “sought out a man after his own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14), for “the Lord looks on the heart” (16:7). It is a truism to say that, in terms of our response to the gospel, the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. But truism or not, it is true.

What this looks like, how it is developed, in what ways it can be threatened, and how it expresses itself will be explored little by little in this new column. But at this stage, perhaps it will help us if we map out some preliminary matters in the form of a catechism on the heart:

Q.1. What is the heart?

A. The heart is the central core and drive of my life intellectually (it involves my mind), affectionately (it shapes my soul), and totally (it provides the energy for my living).

Q.2. Is my heart healthy?

A. No. By nature I have a diseased heart. From birth, my heart is deformed and antagonistic to God. The intentions of its thoughts are evil continually.

Q.3. Can my diseased heart be healed?

A. Yes. God, in His grace, can give me a new heart to love Him and to desire to serve Him.

Q.4. How does God do this?

A. God does this through the work of the Lord Jesus for me and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in me. He illumines my mind through the truth of the gospel, frees my enslaved will from its bondage to sin, cleanses my affections by His grace, and motivates me inwardly to live for Him by rewriting His law into my heart so that I begin to love what He loves. The Bible calls this being “born from above.”

Q.5. Does this mean I will never sin again?

A. No. I will continue to struggle with sin until I am glorified. God has given me a new heart, but for the moment He wants me to keep living in a fallen world. So day by day I face the pressures to sin that come from the world, the flesh, and the Devil. But God’s Word promises that over all these enemies I can be “more than a conqueror through him who loved us.”

Q.6. What four things does God counsel me to do so that my heart may be kept for Him?

A. First, I must guard my heart as if everything depended on it. This means that I should keep my heart like a sanctuary for the presence of the Lord Jesus and allow nothing and no one else to enter.

Second, I must keep my heart healthy by proper diet, growing strong on a regular diet of God’s Word — reading it for myself, meditating on its truth, but especially being fed on it in the preaching of the Word. I also will remember that my heart has eyes as well as ears. The Spirit shows me baptism as a sign that I bear God’s triune name, while the Lord’s Supper stimulates heart love for the Lord Jesus.

Third, I must take regular spiritual exercise, since my heart will be strengthened by worship when my whole being is given over to God in expressions of love for and trust in Him.

Fourth, I must give myself to prayer in which my heart holds on to the promises of God, rests in His will, and asks for His sustaining grace — and do this not only on my own but with others so that we may encourage one another to maintain a heart for God.

This — and much else — requires development, elaboration, and exposition. But it can be summed up in a single biblical sentence. Listen to your Father’s appeal: “My son, give Me your heart.”

This article was originally published in Tabletalk Magazine.

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The Idols of a Mother’s Heart

When you are upset because you can’t do something you’ve wanted to do, it might be because that thing has become an idol in your heart.

I said these words one afternoon in response to one of my kids who was frustrated because I had taken away his highly valued time on the computer. We then talked about how idols are not always easy to recognize and that our emotional responses can sometimes be an indicator of what’s going on in our heart.

John Piper says that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” We were made to love and worship God. When he isn’t the longing of our heart and the source of our satisfaction, we seek to fill our bellies somewhere else. Instead of filling the God-shaped hole in our heart with enjoyment of him, we fill it with love for things, experiences, desires, and responses from others.

We often think of an idol as a manmade object that a person bows down and worships. An idol is really anything that we love more than God. It consumes our thinking and energies. It’s something that is so central to our life that if we didn’t have it, we would be devastated.

There are unique idols to motherhood. If you are a mother, you may recognize many or all of these:

Affirmation: This idol can include being affirmed by friends and family, and even by strangers, that our children are “so well behaved” or “so talented.” Pride then bubbles up in our heart. And when we don’t get those kinds of responses, or even receive the opposite, we are discouraged and frustrated. We also can seek affirmation through our children; their love for us can become an idol.

Children: Our children in and of themselves can become idols. It can start with even the desire to have children. It can become an all-consuming longing, becoming more important in our life than God. Once we have children, they can become idols when we live for them and always try to make them happy. We can seek to find our fulfillment in and through them. When they don’t respond to us as we expect or fail us in some way, we are devastated.

Success: We want our children to be successful because it is a reflection on us. We may press them endlessly to excel. We may have in our mind an image of what our “perfect family” looks like, and until we have it, we feel like a failure. If our children have limitations in some way, this may shatter our dreams as well.

Control: Being in control of all the details of life is a big idol for many moms. We sanitize little hands, keep them away from other kids with runny noses, and try to plan ahead for any unexpected event. We spend our days trying to orchestrate every detail of our life and our children’s life. But because nothing is actually in our control, we become anxious, worried, and agitated when things don’t go as planned.

These are not the only idols a mother can have. In fact, the options for idol-making are endless. As John Calvin so memorably said, our hearts are idol-making factories. The question is not whether our hearts are manufacturing idols, but which ones.

I’ve worked with my children on identifying idols by having them cut out words and images of things that a person could love more than God. They glued those images into a heart shape on a drawing of a person I had done. We’ve done this activity a few times because it is helpful for them to see how much we fill our hearts with things other than God. One time, my son drew a frown on his person’s face and said, “He is sad. All these things he loves haven’t made him happy.”

As moms, finding our own idols can take some effort. Like weeds, they may have twisted themselves around our heart, burrowing down deep into the recesses and crevices. They may have become such a part of our heart that they we have trouble recognizing them.

We have to pray that God would reveal the idols in our heart and help us to see and recognize them. Sometimes it helps to be aware of our emotional responses to the circumstances in our life. How do we react when our children let us down? How do we respond when we don’t receive the affirmation from others that we desire? When God brings an idol to our attention, we have to humbly acknowledge our sin, repent, and turn away from them.

Turning away from our idols doesn’t mean only turning away; we then have to turn toward something else. And that something else is the great Someone: Jesus. As Tim Keller writes in Counterfeit Gods,

Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol. That is what will replace your counterfeit gods. If you uproot the idol and fail to “plant” the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back. (172)

We can’t simply try harder to avoid idols. We can’t just resolve to resist them. We have to focus our hearts on Jesus’s person and work. He must be the source of our satisfaction. We aim to desire him above all else. We want to dwell, meditate, and saturate our hearts with the truth of God’s love and grace for us through the shed blood of Christ on our behalf. The more we rest and trust in the gospel, the more our love for Christ grows until it overflows, drowning and washing away the idols in our heart.

Has motherhood revealed idols in your heart? How can love for Christ uproot those idols?

A Prayer for the Worried Mom’s Heart

Do you ever worry?

I think we can all admit that we do. In fact, we probably worry more than we realize. As a mother, I find myself worrying about my children, about their health, their learning, and whether I can just make it to bedtime each day.

I also find myself worried about paying bills, about my husband’s travel for work, and about that message from my doctor needing to discuss test results with me. My to-do lists keep me awake at night because I fear I’ll forget to do something important. Questions like “what if?” and “should I have?” swirl around my mind, holding me hostage and keeping me chained to my worries and fears.

Worry is a kind of “acceptable sin.” By that I mean worry is one of those sins that everyone does so we don’t often address it. Like gossip, worry is something we all know we aren’t supposed to do, but we often gloss over it and call it something else — something like stress. Especially for women, worry can be expected and in some situations to not worry would seem strange.

But deep down, we want to be freed from the chronic feeling of doom and the expectation of something bad lurking just around the corner. We know that the Bible tells us not to worry, but “what if?” thoughts seem like such a part of us that we don’t know how to stop.

What can we do?

Like oil and water, trust and worry do not mix. To expel worry from our heart, we need to grow deeper roots of trust in God. Time and again in the Psalms, when the writer’s heart was heavy, he turned to look back at all that God had done for him. As the psalmist looked back at God’s faithfulness and his sovereign care for him, he was able to trust God even in the midst of troubling circumstances.

When we look back in our own lives at God’s faithfulness to us, it gives us confidence and hope in his future faithfulness. We look back to our own story of salvation. We see that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, that this is the demonstration of God’s love for us. When worries threaten to seize our heart, we need to remember and dwell on the truth of the gospel. Remembering the cross propels us in faith for what lies ahead.

And as we remember, we need to turn to God in prayer. Hebrews says that because of Jesus, we can come to the throne of grace with confidence, to receive the help we need (Hebrews 4:16). Paul was referring to chronic worry when he wrote in Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” We are to give our worries to God in prayer, trusting him with all our burdens and cares. As a result, we will receive in return the peace we long for, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).

You might even pray something like this. . . .

My Papa in Heaven,

I come to you with a heart heavy and full of so many worries and cares. I want to just curl up on your lap and find some peace from the chaos in my life. My worries fill my mind night and day. My stomach is in knots and I can hardly breathe. I feel like I am drained dry; the joy has been sucked right out of me.

But you said to come to you with all my burdens. You said that you will carry them. You tell us you are a rock, a shield, a fortress. I need a rock right now. I need a fortress to run into right now. I need you.

There are so many decisions to make. What if I make the wrong one? So many bad things loom on the horizon, what if I’m not prepared? Help me to focus my heart on you and not on the giants around me. I know that all these worries are keeping me from trusting you. Like Peter, instead of looking toward your face, I am looking around at the waves encircling me.

Forgive me for doubting and not living a life of trust. I believe, but please help my unbelief! I know that when I worry, I am believing a lie that says that I can control what happens in my life. Forgive me for trying to control something I never really had control of. Help me to trust in your word and not the lies.

You sent your Son to carry my greatest burden at the cross. I know that you can handle all that troubles me today. There is nothing too great for you, the earth is your footstool and the wind and rain come and go at your command. Free me of this worry today. Help me to trust the same grace that saved me at the cross to save me from all that weighs me down.

I know that you have a perfect plan for my life. Help me to walk by faith and not by sight. I want to trust in your plan and your love for me. I want to face the unknown future confident that you have it under control. Grant me the grace I need.

Thank you for Jesus and that because of him I can come to you in confidence. You accept me as I am, worries and all. I give them all to you now, in Jesus’s name, Amen.

The Heart of Discipleship

Discipleship is about values. This could not be clearer in the Gospels. Jesus' call is for a double action: leave and follow. "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men," he first said to Peter and Andrew in Matthew 4:19. And "Immediately they left their nets and followed him." Then to James and John. And "Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him." Whether nets or family, the call to follow Jesus is the call to walk away from something else. It is the call to this, not that. Here, not there.

The disciples knew this. They knew they were forsaking one thing for another. And they knew pleasure was at the root. That's why Peter asked what he did in Matthew 19:27. To be sure, he was still putting the pieces together, but he tipped his hand here. He was waiting for the pay off. Jesus had just taught on riches, which I imagine seemed out of the ballpark to Peter. Riches? Psssssst! (He had even walked away from his meager livelihood.) Ayhem, Jesus? Great lesson on riches, and about that, we, you know, we, uh, we left everything. So when do we get to cash the check?

Maybe more astonishing than Peter asking the question is that Jesus answers him.

Forsake the lesser pursuit in order to gain the greater pleasure. That's why a man sells everything to buy a field (Matthew 13:44) or why the merchant considers all his goods mere commerce compared to one pearl (Matthew 13:45). There is something better out there and discipleship is the great calling to lay hold of it.

The human is a deep creature: "not just a body, but a soul. Not just a soul, but a soul with a passion and a desire. Not just a desire for being liked or for playing softball or collecting shells." And Jesus says, "Follow me." His call harmonizes with our inherent depth. Look, here's the treasure. It's me. Then we are awakened, muddy hands and all, wallowing in the slums this whole time but now testifying of a "desire for something infinitely great and beautiful and valuable and satisfying — the name and the glory of God" (Boasting Only in the Cross). So we leave and we follow. Goodbye broken cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13), hello my exceeding joy (Psalm 43:4).

We follow Jesus into a new world, not as pedagogy, but as fellowship. We come not as pupils, but as rebellious creatures made alive for the first time — rebellious creatures now reconciled to God by the death of his Son. Discipleship — following Jesus — is to live before God's face, to dwell in his presence, to be satisfied in all that he is. We follow as creatures of grace, entering into the fellowship of the triune God in whose presence there is fullness of joy, at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

 

A Gospel Without Propitiation at Its Heart

J.I. Packer, from “The Heart of the Gospel” in Knowing God (also in In My Place Condemned He Stood, p. 32):

Has the word propitiation any place in your Christianity?

In the faith of the New Testament it is central.

The love of God [1 John 4:8-10], the taking of human form by the Son [Heb. 2:17], the meaning of the cross [Rom. 3:21-26], Christ’s heavenly intercession [1 John 2:1-2], the way of salvation—all are to be explained in terms of it, as the passages quoted show, and any explanation from which the thought of propitiation is missing will be incomplete, and indeed actually misleading, by New Testament standards.

In saying this, we swim against the stream of much modern teaching and condemn at a stroke the views of a great number of distinguished church leaders today, but we cannot help that. Paul wrote, “Even if we or an angel from heaven”—let alone a minister, a bishop, college lecturer, university professor, or noted author—”should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” (“accursed” KJV and RSV; “outcast” NEB; “damned” Phillips—Gal. 1:8). And a gospel without propitiation at is heart is another gospel than that which Paul preached.

The implications of this must not be evaded.

Packer approvingly quotes John Murray’s explanation of propitiation:

The doctrine of propitiation is precisely this: that God loved the objects of His wrath (the world) so much that He gave His own Son to the end that He by His blood should make provision for the removal of His wrath. It was Christ’s so to deal with the wrath that the loved would no longer be the objects of wrath, and love would achieve its aim of making the children of wrath the children of God’s good pleasure.

—John Murray, The Atonement (Philadelphia: P&R, 1962), p.

 

My Heart is in Heaven — Charles Spurgeon

Charles Spurgeon,

When a Christian man constantly acts like a worldly man, can it be possible that he is acting rightly? When the two actions are precisely the same, and you discern no difference, is there not grave cause to suspect that there is no difference? By the fruit must you know the tree. And if two trees bear precisely the same fruit, is there not cause to suspect that they are the same sort of trees?

Dear Friends, may you and I…not try to match ourselves with sinners as to the joys of this present life. If they say, “Here are my treasures,” let us tell them about the “city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” and say, “Our treasure is above.” Let us imitate the noble Roman lady, who, when her friend showed her all her trinkets, waited till her two fair boys came home from school, and then pointed to them, and said, “These are my jewels.”

Do you, when you hear the worldling vaunting his happiness, drop in a gentle word, and say, “I, too, have my earthly comforts, for which I am grateful. But my best delights are not here, they spring neither from corn, nor wine, nor oil, nor could spices, and gold, and music render them to me. My heart is in Heaven. My heart is not here. I have set my soul upon things above. Jesus is my joy, and His love is my delight. You tell me of what you love, permit me to tell you of what I love. I have listened patiently to you, now listen to one of the songs of Zion. I have walked with you over your estate, now let me take you over mine. You have told me of all the good things which you enjoy, do lend me a few minutes of your attention while I tell you of still better things which make up my portion.” (emphasis added)

(excerpted from: Hezekiah and the Ambassadors—or, Vainglory Rebuked, Sermon No. 704, delivered by C.H. Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, August 5, 1866)

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