Knowing the Difference Between Accommodation and Adaptation

Mike Leake

Allow me to give you the profile of two preachers.

The first preacher is one who is incredibly consistent. You are never going to be shocked by this guy. If you watched a sermon of this guy you wouldn’t have any idea if he was preaching to a bundle of small children or to a gathering at the local nursing home. He doesn’t shy away from using big words in his sermons. Nor does he pull any punches in presenting the truth. He just “tells it as it is”. There isn’t much nuance in this guy. If you’d ask him about this he would say something like, “it’s my goal to preach and present God’s truth. It’s not my concern how people respond”.

The second preacher is a bit like Groucho Marx. “These are my principles, if you don’t like them I have others.” He’s a chameleon. If he’s speaking to a group who wants a nice and warm ear-tickling message then he’ll give it. If they wanted a fire and brimstone fear-mongering type of message then he’d give that one too. Whatever the audience wants. He knows how to give them the truths they want to hear.

Which one of these preacher’s is faithful?

I’d argue that neither of them are. In fact, I think they bow to the same idol. Self. One is a people-pleaser for the sake of self-concern and the other is self-pleaser under the guise of biblical fidelity. What they both have in common is a lack of concern for the hearer and of honest submission to the Word of God. 

I would argue that both of them haven’t learned the difference between accommodation and adaptation. The first guy refuses to adapt because he believes it’s capitulating. He doesn’t want any one to accuse him of accommodating sinners. The second guy is accommodating, perhaps because he’s never learned the wiser path of adaptation.

I think Jay Adams is helpful here:

Adaptation is not accommodation. The two are opposites. The accommodator changes God’s message to conform to the listener, to the speaker, or to both. There is concern about people, but it is a humanistic and unbiblical concern that overrides concern for God. And it is a concern that, in the final analysis, is superficial and often not genuine. This concern to accommodate truth often amounts to little more than a concern for one’s self—what others will think of me. True concern for others will push self into the background while concentrating on what is best for them; it will cause one to speak in season (when the results are likely to enhance relationships) and out of season (when they are not). It will impel him to speak hard things for the benefit of others when necessary, even at his own peril.

While accommodation is self-centered (or, at its best, humanistically oriented toward others), adaptation is other-concerned. The speaker who takes the time to adapt his message doesn’t change the message at all; he changes his own ways and in every circumstance adopts the best possible method of conveying that message to others. He changes himself, not the message; he, himself, becomes flexible and moldable in order to meet each situation and/or group of persons to whom he is speaking. He is the one who moves—he is willing to discover where his audience is and to travel to that spot. Unlike the professional, he does not expect his audience to make all of the movement toward him.

There is a balance here and it’s crucial. If we don’t catch this then we’ll end up calling our friends heretics or we’ll end up becoming heretics ourselves in the name of winning friends for the sake of the gospel. We must be absolutely dedicated to the truth of God but we must be willing to adapt ourselves so we can reach sinners where they are.

Consider the Apostle Paul who “became all things to all people”. Notice what changed for Paul. His message never changed. To the Jew he became as a Jew—but he still preached as a Christian. To those under the law he became like one under the law—but he still preached as a Christian. That’s the key. We can’t tamper with God’s message. But we can and must continually work through the best ways to communicate God’s message to diverse people for the glory of God. We must learn the difference between accommodation and adaptation. Rejecting one and learning to embrace the other.

—

Photo source: here

My Understanding of The Warning Passage in Hebrews 6:4-6

Mike Leake

4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. –Hebrews 6:4-6

I’m currently preaching through Hebrews. Last week we came to those difficult verses in 6:4-6. I didn’t preach only those verses. In fact, I preached a massive chunk of text, 5:11—6:20. And I did that because I’m convinced we’ve lost the forest for the trees when it comes to this 6:4-6.

When I began my sermon preparation for this sermon it was tempting to get lost in all the detail of the passage. There are so many questions asked of these verses. Is this describing a believer? Is this talking about an almost believer? Is the situation entirely hypothetical? Is this teaching it’s possible that a true believer can lose their salvation?

But I’m convinced that these questions are absolutely not on the mind of the author of Hebrews. For the author of Hebrews salvation is almost entirely seen as something future. He doesn’t use that word in the same way that Paul does. Asking, “Is it possible to lose your salvation?” is forcing a conversation on the author which he isn’t interested in having. Instead his purpose is to give a very real warning to a very real people.

The image for us to have is of a group of people who are standing outside the Promised Land. Will they trust in the promises and provision of God and enter in or will they end up dead out in the wilderness?

Again, I know that all of our questions about eternal security are easily thrust upon that topic. But if we can suspend those for a moment and simply let the author speak, he has something important to say.

The Problem of Dull Hearing

The fundamental problem with his audience is that they have become dull of hearing. They ought to be teaching others and instead their still having to be spoon fed. The author wants to move on to “maturity” but cannot because they are still stuck on foundational things.

At first glance it seems as if the author of Hebrews might be against gospel-centrality. It almost sounds as if he’d disagree with the assertion that the gospel is the A-Z of Christian living. But upon further inspection I think he’s saying the exact opposite. And understanding that helps us understand the nature of the warning in 6:4-6.

Their fundamental problem is that the gospel message is being met with dullness. While they seem to understand the initial aspects of salvation (repentance, baptisms, laying on of hands) and issues of eternity (resurrection and eternal judgment), they seem to be missing the now component of the gospel. The gospel—the milk of the Word—isn’t impacting their Monday. It’s not actually producing ethical change within them. In fact it’s met with dullness and sluggish living.

How Dull Hearing Relates to 6:4-6

And this is why I think he says what he does in 6:4-6. His point is that if the truths of the gospel cause you to want to go back to Egypt then there isn’t anything left for you. The gospel alone saves. The new covenant alone creates the type of obedience that is pleasing to God. So if the good news of the gospel is being met with dullness then while this is the case of your heart there isn’t hope for you. Because there isn’t another path. There isn’t something else that sparks repentance.

I do believe that all of those things in verse 4-5 are experiences of believers in Jesus. But it’s also a picture of some of the blessings given to the Israelites. So again I don’t think it’s for us to say, “Is this a person who is saved? Is this a person who isn’t saved yet? That’s not the topic at hand. What he’s talking about is what happens in our hearts with the good news of Jesus—with the new covenant—with this elementary doctrine of Christ. Does it produce maturity? Or dullness? He’s talking about having received these benefits and blessings of God—this word of righteousness from the Lord.

And I think verses 7-8 tell us that we are on the right path here. You’ve got rain falling on land—that’s the benefits of God, this word of God. And for one piece of land it drinks it in and as such it produces crop that is useful—it receives a blessing from God. But this other land receives that same rain and what comes up is thorns and thistles. It’s worthless—not able to be used for anything. It’s near being cursed. The farmer is going to have to burn the field off because something is radically wrong with the soil.

What you have in Hebrews 6:4-6 is something closer to Jesus’ parable of the soils than really anything related to the discussion about whether a believer can or can not lose their salvation. This text isn’t meant to ask that question. Instead it’s meant to give a very powerful warning and say be careful how you listen so you don’t end up being like the dead Israelite’s outside the Promised Land.

—

Photo source: here

Your Bible is More Inexhaustible Than You Are

Mike 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.

—

Photo source: here

Could Jesus Have Sinned?

Mike 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.

—

Photo source: here