Borrowed Light

Your Bible is More Inexhaustible Than You Are

November 25, 2019Mike Leake

“Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled! This you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment.” –Isaiah 50:11

I don’t want to overstate my case here, but I’ll confess that one of the greatest challenges in doing biblical counseling is the necessary step of snuffing out man-made torches. I’m convinced that part of the reason we find it so hard to see the Lord at times is because we’ve created fires for ourselves. And rather than helping in counseling all of these other options actually distract from true help.

I’m not attempting here to say that in biblical counseling only the Bible will help. I think God’s grace is massive and he’ll reach us where we are—bad theology and practices and all. And he will often use broken means to provide substantial healing to broken minds. That’s the kind of loving God we serve. But I also believe that we’re often harmed by an insufficient view of the Bible. Our help is stunted because of our reliance on our torches.

Though one might be tempted to bristle at the way David Powlison describes this, I think his words here are helpful. He says that some have a “thin Bible”. He asks a pretty searching question of our view of the Bible:

What do you see when you look at your Bible? Do you see a book crammed with relevance? Do you see a book out of which God bursts as He speaks to what matters in daily life? Is your Bible packed with application to the real problems of real people in the real world: inexhaustible, immediate, diverse, flexible? Or is the Bible relatively thin when it comes to addressing human struggles?

We’re not born with hearts and minds that have a disposition to “trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God” (Isaiah 50:10). In the darkness our gut response isn’t to quietly wait until we hear the voice of the Servant. Instead, our fallen inclination leads us to fire up the torches so we can see.

Idols die hard. And so we’re hesitant to say that our torches actually blind us. We want to rescue our efforts instead of crucify them. And what we end up with is a thin Bible instead of a crammed one. Powlison continues:

When people with thin Bibles hear people with crammed Bibles talk about the sufficiency of Scripture for counseling, they hear, “Something thin and incomplete is sufficient for a very complex job.” That sounds ridiculous. Biblical counseling sounds absurd, doctrinaire, obscurantist, the rantings of small-minded know-nothings who glory in their ignorance. But when people with crammed Bibles speak of Scripture’s sufficiency they mean—or ought to mean—“Something living and active, inexhaustibly rich, comprehensive and relevant, is sufficient for a very complex job.” That sounds reasonable. And when in the trenches of face-to-face ministry the Lord Himself speaks to people, that profession of vision is vindicated.

Powlison, D. (1993). Do You See? The Journal of Biblical Counseling, Number 3, Spring 1993, 11, 4.

I’m one of those who believes that the Bible is sufficient for biblical counseling. But in saying that I’m not saying that our issues aren’t really all that difficult and you can just throw a Bible verse or two at it. Instead what I mean is that we are complex and our problems are usually a twisted mess. And we compound it by all the torches we’ve got glowing in our lives as well. And so part of the task of biblical counseling is showing the fullness of God and his answer to our greatest problems and doing this at the expense of all the matches we’ve struck.

Our issues are complex. But the Bible is more inexhaustible than we are. That’s good news.

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Could Jesus Have Sinned?

November 12, 2019Mike Leake

In the sermon on Sunday I toed up to this question, opened the can of worms, and then slowly walked away. It’s a difficult question which has good theologians on both sides of the argument.

Some hold to what is called the impeccability of Christ. This is the view that it was not possible for Christ to have sinned. Other believe that if Jesus were not able to sin then his temptations would have been a farce. How can temptation be real if you couldn’t fall?

How do we answer questions like this?

I like to think of a fire tower. If you’ve never been up one of these scary dudes, let me explain. A fire tower provides an absolutely beautiful view of the landscape. It’s kind of like a back porch but it’s high above the ground, jutting above all the trees in the forest. As you can imagine it has guard rails on all sides.

Theology is similar. It provides a beautiful scene but if you fall outside those guardrails it’s not quite as beautiful—it’s deadly even. When we come to difficult theological question like this one it’s helpful for us to first affirm all the guard rails.

1. Jesus never sinned.

2. Jesus was genuinely tempted.

3. God cannot be tempted to do evil.

As we answer this question we have to be certain not to fall over any of these guardrails. But there is a great deal of freedom upon the fire tower. Some folks will hold a position where they are hugging a particular guardrail and viewing the scenery from that position. Others will be on the other side of the fire tower.

This illustration isn’t to say that there isn’t an actually true answer to this question. Somebody is viewing the question at hand correctly. He/she is holding the most beautiful view. This illustration helps us to see that there are limits to our understanding and we can hold divergent views and still be on the fire tower of orthodoxy.

So Could Jesus Have Sinned?

I honestly, don’t know for certain because Scripture does not clearly say. I think we are far better to press deeply into both truths; namely, that Christ fully understands our temptations and that Christ the Divine does not desire sin and never fell into it.

This seems to be the main thrust of the author of Hebrews. He emphasizes the fact that Christ is able, as a faithful high priest, to sympathize with our weaknesses. In fact he even uses a stronger word there in 4:15 than he does of the other high priests in 5:2. Christ sympathizing with our weakness is his entering into suffering with us. The high priest who “deals gently” with the wayward and ignorant is a tad more distant. The author of Hebrews wants us to understand that Jesus enters into the suffering of humanity in a way that is unique.

But he also wants us to understand that another point where Christ is unique is that he never gave in to sin. As such he feels the full weight and force of hell against him. He knows temptation deeper and more fully than we ever will. We give in. He never did. As such he has a unique experience with temptation.

Which leads me to my conclusion on the question. Part of the reason we have such a difficult with answering this question is because it enters into one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith—the hypostatic union. Christ is unique in that he is fully human and fully divine. As the Chalcedonian creed states his “two natures are without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation.”

For me, I think those who affirm that Jesus could have sinned end up a bit too close to dividing the natures of Christ. But I also understand their argument that if sin was not possible for Jesus, then it couldn’t have been real temptation. But I would still prefer to say that Christ was tempted “just as we are” so that he truly understands the lure of fleeting pleasures and the emotional anguish that goes with being fully human. Yet, he was also the unique Son of God whose love for the glory of God was of such that the lure of sin could never win.

I appreciate Stephen Wellum’s treatment of this question: Could Christ Have Sinned? His view is probably closest to my own.

Conclusion

This is one of those places where we do well to passionately affirm what God has revealed and be careful about falling off into speculation trying to tie up loose ends that the Lord Himself didn’t see fit to solve for us. I’ve always appreciated John Calvin on this point:

Indeed, vanity joined with pride can be detected in the fact that, in seeking God, miserable men do not rise above themselves as they should, but measure him by the yardstick of their own carnal stupidity, and neglect sound investigation; thus out of curiosity they fly off into empty speculations. They do not therefore apprehend God as he offers himself, but imagine him as they have fashioned him in their own presumption. When this gulf opens, in whatever direction they move their feet, they cannot but plunge headlong into ruin

Could Jesus have sinned? I’m not totally certain. But I do know that he didn’t sin and also that he was fully tempted just as we are.

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Is My Pen Out of Ink?

October 22, 2019Mike Leake

I haven’t written much in the past couple months. I thought perhaps today I’d explain why.

I love writing. I have loved blogging. But for awhile now I can’t seem to muster the energy/courage/desire (you pick which word). I think it’s a combination of two things. First, I absolutely loath the online climate we’ve created. Secondly, I absolutely love the local church in which I’m serving.

Long ago I decided that I didn’t want to generate traffic through controversy. I’d prefer to be gentle and reasonable. I’m convinced that gospel truth is best adorned with a gracious disposition. And I think we do far better getting people to adopt and see and own truth themselves than we do by banging notions into people’s heads and getting tepid subscription to our dearly held beliefs.

I don’t do so well in our current climate of yelling at one another. And I think I’m feeling a bit adrift without having much of an online tribe anymore. And when you firmly believe that “whoever meddles in a quarrel not his own is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears” the amount of topic for you to write about is going to shrink. Less and less of these quarrels feel like they are “my own”. And so I stay silent.

Now, I could (and I might) just continue plodding along and writing about the things the Lord puts on my heart. Maybe it’d be helpful to the kingdom to hear the ramblings of a local church pastor about topics unrelated to the daily scream-fest.

But I wrestle with that idea as well. I struggle there because in our climate when you don’t write on whatever controversy is brewing for that day you are either ignored, assumed to be “sub-tweeting”, or considered a coward who is complicit in all that is wrong with the world. In other words even if you choose to not talk about the rage of the day the megaphones are so ear-numbing and attention-grabbing that it’s impossible to speak with any volume about something else.

So, why bother?

I’m still trying to figure that out. And in the mean time I absolutely love our local church. When I see God using us in the soil in which he has planted us it makes me a bit hesitant to spend much of any time in the chaotic waters of social media. By God’s grace, my voice does matter in this local church where he has placed us. And so it’s especially hard to spend time on a voiceless endeavor, scattering seeds indiscriminately and hoping that maybe something will land, whenever in another setting I’m seeing hungry sheep actually desiring to be fed God’s Word. I want to give my time to feeding those I pastor. And I’m finding less and less of a drive for an online presence.

But I still love to write. I still believe that the kingdom can advance through this medium. And I believe God has given me a bit of an audience/platform in which to gently and joyously speak of the excellency of Christ. So it’s hard to walk away from entirely. If God is calling me to write, still, then I’m going to do it. But if my pen is out of ink—even if for a season—I’m content.

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