THE NATURE, MARKS AND PURPOSES OF THE CHURCH.
Four books reviews
Presented to
(Future)Dr. Bob Buchanan
Faith Baptist Church
Parker, CO
In Partial Fulfillment
Of the Internship of 2010-2011
By
Stephen M. Reese
September 20, 2010
Gilbert, Greg. What is the Gos-pel? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2010), 124 pages.
Anyabwile, Thabiti M., What is a Healthy Church Member? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 120 pages.
Dever, Mark, What Is a Healthy Church? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 126 pages.
Wayne Grudem, “The Church: It’s Nature, It’s Marks and its Purposes” in Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 1994) Chapter 44
Introduction
Greg Gilbert graduated from Yale University, and has been an associate pastor at Capital Hill Baptist Church and is now “the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, and is the author of What is the Gospel? (Crossway, 2010).” [1] I just emailed him should have more directly from the source ;)
Thabiti M. Anyabwile is senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Grand Cayman Islands. He holds B.A. and M.S. degrees in psychology from North Carolina State University. He and his wife, Kristie, have two daughters.[2]
Mark Dever has served as Senior Pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. since 1994. He and his wife Connie live and minister on Capitol Hill. He has multiple degrees his latest is a Doctorate for Philosophy in Ecclesiastical History from Cambridge University.[3]
Wayne Grudem is research professor of Bible and theology at Phoenix Seminary in Phoenix, Arizona. He holds degrees from Harvard (BA), Westminster Seminary (MDiv), and Cambridge (PhD).[4]
Summary
Gilbert presents a very simple, direct and coherent message as it concerns the gospel. There is no question that he has a firm biblical foundation and is quite adept at spelling it out, “Since the very beginning of time, people have been trying to save themselves in ways that make sense to them, rather than listening and submitting to God. They have been trying to figure out how to get salvation to work – how to get the gospel to work …apart from the cross of Jesus Christ.”[5]
In his introduction he points out that, “When you come right down to it, Christians just don’t agree on what the gospel is – even Christians who call themselves evangelical.”[6] I think this is especially true when you watch many of the Televangelists and listen to their seemingly profound words that have nothing to do with Christ’s message.
Gilbert uses Paul’s epistle to the Romans chapters 1- 4 as, “one of the best places to start looking for a basic explanation of the gospel …”[7] and Paul himself says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Romans 1:16 ESV
On the basic premise of “Paul’s argument in Romans 1-4, we can see that at the heart of his proclamation of the gospel are the answers to four crucial questions:
1. Who made us and to whom are we accountable?
2. What is our problem? In other words are we in trouble and why?
3. What is God’s solution to that problem? How has he acted to save us from it?
4. How do I,--- myself, right here, right now—how do I come to be included in that salvation? What makes this good news for me and not just for someone else?” [8]
He then uses the rest of the book to answer these questions in as simple and direct and readable a manner as any book I’ve read in quite some time. This book will be in my library from now on. Gilbert’s style is loving and persuasive without being grating or arcane; he presents the truth clearly and leaves no room for the reader to misinterpret what he is saying.
Gilbert’s goal I believe is to give the church an indispensible tool to educate both mature believers all the way down to seeking unbelievers and I think he has managed to do that in spades. I would, if I could, buy 100 or even a 1,000 copies of this book to hand out to everyone I know, so desperate is the need today for clarification of the gospel.
The thesis is also clear and direct; without the true gospel the church is lost and no longer has any power to teach God’s Word, nay even the ability to reach soul’s for harvest is so compromised that at best we’d be dealing with a false church, and like so many false churches we would be condemning people to Hell.
I had the privilege of hearing Thabiti preach at Together for the Gospel in April, 2010, in Louisville, KY. The name of his sermon was Fine Sounding Arguments, in which he dealt with the watered down gospel so prevalent in today’s churches.
That is not so far from what he teaches in his book, What Is a Healthy Church Member?, early on he states, “The greatest need in the church today is the gospel. The gospel is not only news for a perishing world, it is the message that forms, sustains and animates the church.”[9]
Anyabwile give ten marks of a healthy church member, I will attempt to distill these into 3 common areas, and cover them in an overarching theme. Marks 1, 2, and 3 of a healthy church member deal with being an Expositional Listener, a Biblical Theologian, and [being] Gospel Saturated. “ …, as members of Christian churches we should listen primarily for the voice and message of God as revealed in his Word.”[10]
The author makes five points that I think should be noted about the disparate roles of expositional listening.
1. Expositional listening cultivates a hunger for God’s Word.
2. Expositional listening helps us to focus on God’s will and to follow him.
3. Expositional listening protects the gospel and our lives from corruption.
4. Expositional listening encourages faithful pastors.
5. Expositional listening benefits the gathered congregation.
Anyabwile focuses next on the fact that, “Members of Christian churches continue to think small thoughts of God and great thoughts of man.”[11] This simple statement, I believe, exposes the weak underbelly of churches today and the prolific rise of New-Age culture and phenomena in our churches, of the ‘Jesus is Just Alright with Me,’ mentality. This, I believe stems from the lack of biblical knowledge in the church as much as anything that influences from the outside.
In the case of marks 5, 6, and 7, Anyabwile goes into a myriad of traps and cultural, as it pertains to certain churches, beliefs that have nothing to do with the gospel, such as answering the call at the end of the service and asking Jesus into your heart. He points out that without genuine conversion there can be no genuine church. In mark 5, he states that doing the work of an evangelist will be costly, and that sharing the truth of God’s redemptive work will often be rejected and we will be criticized. But he also makes the point that eloquence of language, mood lighting, or any other number of psychological tricks will make our presentation, if it is sincere, any more effective. It is the work of God through us to reach the lost.
It is mark 6 that spoke most to my own heart. “They are the “Lone Ranger Christians” who don’t want to be saddled with the burdens of church membership. They don’t want people “in their business.” They want to come into a church, consume what they need, and leave unattached.”[12] For I have been a reluctant participant in regular church services for years, rationalizing that I could do just as good a job as any preacher at exposing God’s Word to myself. Ah the delusions of grandeur!
The last four marks deal with discipline as it pertains to the Christian walk, Thabiti seeks to explain that a committed church member will seek out two forms of discipline, “: formative discipline and corrective discipline.” Formative discipline deals with that part of our walk that has to do with growing in Christ and his church. Whereas corrective discipline is that part of our walk that deals with loving reproof, and when needed condemnation of sin in our walk.
Mark #8 deals with a growing church member, “Advancement in the knowledge and likeness of Christ, spirituality and progress toward it, are supposed to be normal for the Christian”[13] he states that some have ‘fallen asleep’ as it were, and feel like there is no higher plateau to reach, while others are in the normal growth and solidification process and still others are simply apathetic. And mark #9 is the humble follower, this is a position of holding in honor those who have chosen to be leaders in the church, what I call “Having their back” and humbly accepting their decisions whether we agree with them or not. It is perhaps one of the most important things a church member can do in light of the fact that our leaders are already under so much spiritual attack.
And finally mark # 10 A Healthy Church Member is a Prayer Warrior, this is something that I am not, and I admit to hold in awe some of the people who can seem to spend so much time with the Lord. I believe American’s in general are poor prayer warriors simply because the act of prayer seems so passive, we’re not ‘working’ not being ‘practical’ or that we’re not good enough to ask for God’s consideration. But Anyabwile assures, “Believing the gospel changes our status from outsiders to members of the family of God, adopted sons of God through faith in Christ.”[14]And thanks be to God that truer words were never spoken!
Dever’s book What Is a Healthy Church in which the author points out, “It is particularly important for our churches to have sound biblical theology in one special area – in our understanding of the good news of Jesus Christ, the gospel. The gospel is the heart of Christianity, and so it should be at the heart of our churches.”[15] Again and again he emphasizes the importance of the gospel, not at all unlike Anyabwile and Gilbert do in their books. What Dever seeks to point out is that the church is in need of returning to the apostolic version of a Christ centered, Christ directed, Christ driven vision. Not something new or inventive to get people back into the church, but the gospel plain and simple: and as hard as that may be for some to enjoy it is what we are called to do in the church. “The basic principle here is quite simple: we must listen to God’s Word, and we must follow it. Only two steps – listen and follow.”[16]
At last we come to Grudem, who wraps everything up nicely in Chapter 44 of his Systematic Theology. Here the term “the church” is used to apply to all those Christ died to redeem, all those who are saved by the death of Christ. But that must include all true believers for all time, both believers in the New Testament age and the believers in the Old Testament age as well. So great is God’s plan for the church that he has exalted Christ to a position of highest authority for the sake of the church: “He has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph 1:22-23)[17]
Grudem also speaks of the visible and invisible church. Whereas the invisible church is that great ‘cloud of witnesses’ (Heb 12:1), and the church as God sees it. While the visible church, “is the church as Christians on earth see it.”[18] “Realizing this distinction between the church invisible and the church visible, Augustine said of the visible church, “Many sheep are without and many wolves are within.””[19]
The author gives a grand overview of the church as both next door and universal, and that if the church is to be relevant in this day or those before us, it must be Christ-centered, and therefore gospel centered.
Personal Reflection
What I found most striking in all four books was the simple massage of the ‘unadjusted gospel’. By that I mean laying out the simple truth of God’s Truth. The Creator was tossed aside by the created, thus incurring His wrath. The Law was given to show that man could not be perfect, but God sent His only begotten son to fulfill the Law, and Christ gave up his life willingly as the redemptive sacrifice for all mankind. Now it is up to us to repent from our sins and accept Christ’s gift and lordship in our lives. Nice and simple, and yet the modern evangelical church has lost or so watered down that message that millions are living without the whole truth.
I also found all three books reassuring, in the fact that they all three point us back to the gospel and the apostolic church. We are to teach and preach the gospel from our pulpits and from our lives; as an everyday, every minute Christ-likeness, centered in
the gospel to the best of our ability.
Another quote I found especially true, at least for me, was, “The gospel is a stark message, and it intrudes into the world’s thinking and priorities with sharp, bracing truths. Sadly there has always been a tendency among Christians – even among evangelicals – to soften some of these edges so that the gospel will be more readily acceptable to the world.”[20] All too often I find myself leaving out God’s wrath when I try to explain the gospel to a non-believer or even a new believer, it’s just such a sharp sword, the word that is, that we often balk at using it properly, to cut away the falseness of the world and expose the Truth as Christ has commanded us to do.
Grudem really struck a nerve when he quoted Augustine about the sheep without and the wolves within the church, I find the idea of non believers, and by non believers I mean those that will never be believers, attending a church and becoming active in its ministries both upsetting and angering, and I need to study this more. Grudem also verifies the sovereignty of Christ as the power over the church and that I find most reassuring.
As to criticizing the four works I was tasked to read I have none at this time, I find my ‘knowledge’ to be greatly lacking and therefore find myself in no position to criticize such men as these who have put forth great effort and thought into their respective works. I will say this; I wish to know more and will strive to do my best to learn as much as possible in the next year or year-and-a-half.
[1] http://www.9marks.org/ejournal/why-hell-integral-gospel
[3] Robert R. Buchanan, “A Display of God’s Glory, What is a Healthy Church and Nine Marks of a Healthy Church,” A three book review presented to Dr. Donald S. Whitney : Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. January 12, 2008
[4] Wayne Grudem, systematic Theology, (Grand Rapids, MI : Zondervan 1994) Back Cover
[5] Greg Gilbert, What is the Gospel? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books 2010) p102.
[6] Ibid, p17
[8] Ibid, p31
[9] Thabiti M. Anyabwile, What is a Healthy Church Member? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books 2008) p39
[10] Ibid, pp19,20
[11] Ibid, p27
[12] Ibid, p65
[15] Mark Dever, What is a Healthy Church? (Wheaton, IL : Crossway Books 2005) p75
[16] Ibid, p49
[17] Wayne Grudem, “The Church: It’s Nature, It’s Marks and its Purposes” in Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 1994) Chapter 44, p853
[18] Ibid, p857
[19] Ibid, p857
[20] Ibid, p21
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