Diotrophes and the Doctrine of the Visible Church

The Westminster Standards distinguish between the visible church and the invisible church. For example, we can read question and answer 61 in the Larger Catechism (see questions 61 through 65): "Are they saved who hear the gospel and live in the church? All that hear the gospel and live in the visible church are not saved, but they only who are true members of the church invisible." I agree with this statement as consistent with the Word of God. 

In contrast, we have the doctrine of the Anabaptists and some Baptists that the church has only one form, and consists only of the regenerate. They thus deny the existence of the visible church as described by the catechism. I consider this to be a false and dangerous doctrine. First, it is not a power given to men to judge the heart, such that we could infallible mark who is and who is not regenerate. And second, it creates chaos in the government of the church. And third, it is unbiblical. 

The Apostle John tells us of a man in the church, Diotrophes. We would call him an elder or overseer. "I have written something to the church, but Diotrophes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. So, if I come, I will being up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to, and puts them out of the church" (III John 1:9-10). 

So, we have John's warning of this man Diotrophes, a member of the church government in the congregation to which this epistle was written. John's warning is that Diotrophes is a false teacher who uses his power to put good men out of the church, an abuse of church discipline. 

The issue that this account presents for the doctrine we are considering is that the bad guy, Diotrophes, is a member of the church, while the good guys, whose names we are not given, are not members, due to their excommunication. If the denial of the visible and invisible church distinction is correct, then the Anabaptist must claim that Diotrophes is the true Christian while the friends of John are not. But that would be exactly opposite of John's warning to Gaius! 

On the other hand, the traditional Protestant doctrine, that of the Westminster Standards, easily resolves the situation: As a false professor, Diotrophes may be a member of the visible church, but he cannot be a member of the invisible church. And of the rest, regardless of the illegitimate action of Diotrophes, the friends of John are true believers, and, therefore, members of the invisible church, even though their membership in the visible church may have been canceled by the unlawful use of excommunication. 

"Progressive Christians" and Reinterpreting Scripture on Sodom and Homosexuality

"Progressive Christians" hate what the Bible says about homosexuality, so they rewrite it. For example, we have the story of Sodom, from which we get the word "sodomy," which tells the story of two angels who visit Sodom in the guise of men, in order to save Abraham's nephew Lot from the soon-coming judgment of God on that city and its neighbors. We know the story well. When the men of the city learn of the presence of these visitors in Lot's home, they demand access to the men for sexual relations (Genesis 18:16-19:29). 

According to the progressives, the judgment on Sodom is not due to the effort at homosexual molestation, but rather for the violation of God's standards of social justice. In support of the view, they cite Ezekiel 16:49: "Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride , excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy." That would seem clear, would it not? 

In isolation, maybe. But that is not a legitimate use of Scripture. 

The passage continues: "They were haughty and did an abomination before Me. So I removed them when I saw it" (verse 50). I attended a church at one time, where the pastor preached as described above, but stopped before reading this verse. I have no doubt that is the usual strategy of such progressives. 

We also have the fuller testimony of another portion of Scripture, this time in the New Testament. In II Peter 2:4-10, that Apostle tells us, "If God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if He did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, He condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if He rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for, as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority." 

So, the progressive elevates the possible meaning of one verse over the explicit statements of several other passages. Their effort to replace biblical authority with a cultural fad lies exposed. And traditional Christian belief regarding the immorality of same-sex relations is sustained. 

Dispensationalism versus God's Claim of the World.

"From the rising of the sun to its setting, My name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to My name, and a pure offering. For My name will be great among the nations" (Malachi 1:11). 

Part of what convinced me of postmillennialism is passages in Scripture like the one quoted above. God has claimed as His privilege to be worshiped, not just by Israel, and not even by a few Gentiles mixed in, such as Ruth, by rather by all the nations (see the Great Commission, Matthew 28:18-20). I think that there is great significance in the fact that this declaration occurs in the last book of the Old Testament, the last Scripture written before the coming of its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. "For I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and My name will be feared among the nations," He announces through the prophet (Mal. 1:14). 

There is a great failure among God's people to grasp God's plans for the conversion of the world, and to carry out our duties under that plan. Instead, we have surrendered the world to the realm of Satan, and congratulated ourselves for upholding the other-worldliness of the Kingdom of God. Yet that is the error of Gnosticism, the belief that the material world is evil, and only spiritual things belong to God. This is what dispensationalism has done to the American church. 

Prophet Malachi

God is the Potter, and Men Are the Clay

"The Lord has made all for Himself, yes, even the wicked for the day of doom" (Proverbs 16:4). 

This verse amazes me, because it turns a complex and difficult topic into one simple sentence. It tells us that God, Jehovah, is the Creator, and that He has made all things, including the wicked, not for our own purposes, but for His. Paul uses the image of the potter to convey the same concept: "You will say to me, then, 'Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?' But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, 'Why have you made me like this?' Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?" (Romans 9:19-21; see also Jeremiah 18:1-17). Paul's "vessel for dishonor" is the same as Proverbs' "wicked." 

Such Scriptures leave no ground for imagining human autonomy. The God of the Bible is no pagan deity who molds people like pinballs to bounce their own way through life at their own whim or mystical karma/fate. In fact, it is exactly this rejection of autonomy which is the real justification for unbelief. the unbeliever desperately desires to imagine that he is the captain of his own fate, and his imagination is cast down if he ever acknowledges that God is God and the man is not.

We see the same thing in the addict of free-will theology. He, too, retains from unbelief the assumption of his own autonomy. "God didn't create us to be robots," he protests. No, God made us to be His servants; it is sin that makes us robots. Yet, the free-will theologian has nothing to say about his enslavement sin. That, he never says out loud, is preferable to being enslaved to the God who made him. 

The Universal Sovereignty of God

"God reigns over the nations; God sits on His holy throne. The princes of the people have gathered together; the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God; He is greatly to be exalted" (Psalm 47:8-9). 

There is a common belief among evangelicals that only the church is accountable to God. In fact, dispensationalists would go even further and claim that only Israel is accountable to God, as a nation. But those assumptions are based on human presuppositions, not on any assertion of Scripture. 

Notice the verses above, in which the Psalmist tells us that God reigns, not over Israel, but explicitly over the "nations," which can also be translated as "Gentiles." When God created Adam, He created the founder of the human race, not of the people of Israel in particular. That is the establishment of His universal rule over all of mankind, of whatever nation we may be. 

The mistake that the dispensationalists make is that they overlook the role that Israel fulfilled as the reestablishment of a people in faithful covenant with God. Adam and Eve and their immediate descendants in the line of Seth were in such a faithful covenant. Yet they died out, such that God called Abraham, a pagan, into His covenant of grace, to restore the line of faith among men. Abraham, too, was not a Jew; they were to be his descendants. 

That is why Paul could refer to the Gentiles called by God's name, because this was not a new concept, contrary to the assertions of dispensationalists, but a return to God's original purpose, as described, not just in the psalm above, but also in Amos 9:11-12: "After this, I [God] will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will set it up; so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who are called by My name, says the Lord who does all these things" (in the Septuagint version, as quoted in Acts 15:16-17). 

After the Fall, the focus of God's revelation narrowed step by step to just one man, Abraham. From him, that revelation began to widen again step by step to its original scope, until it once again includes all elect men, whether Jewish or Gentile. Dispensationalists err when they try to distinguish between the Jews as the people of God and the Gentiles as a mere parenthesis in His plans of redemption. 

Treason to God as Rational Justification for Eternal Punishment

I get challenged regularly by atheists who object to God because, they believe, they don't deserve Hell. they claim that Hell is overkill for the actions of most human beings. 

Do they have a case? No, I don't believe that they do. 

In his book, The Existence and Attributes of God, Puritan Stephen Charnock addresses this point: "Man would make himself his own end and happiness. As God ought to be esteemed [as] the first cause, in point of our dependence on Him, so He ought to be our last end, in point of our enjoyment of Him. When we, therefore, trust in ourselves, we refuse Him as the first cause; and when we act for ourselves and expect a blessedness from ourselves, we refuse Him as the chief good and last end, which is an undeniable piece of atheism. For man is a creature of a higher rank than others in the world, and was not made (as animals, plants, and other works of the divine power) materially to glorify God, but was made a rational creature, intentionally to honor God by obedience to His rule, dependence on His goodness, and zeal for His glory. It is, therefore, as much a sleighting of God for man - a creature - to set himself up as his own end as to regard himself as his own law." 

This concept was not new with Charnock. rather, he put into his own words the thoughts of the Apostle Paul: "Although they [i. e., unbelievers] knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things" (Romans 1:21-23). 

The two men are describing two different forms of unbelief, of course. While Paul is describing the turning to pagan worship, Charnock is describing the atheist. However, the two forms are fundamentally one, in that they put someone else in the place of our Creator and Sustainer, the triune God of the Bible. All unbelievers have chosen Satan's offer (Genesis 3:5) of autonomy, illusory though it be.

Now the question to the atheist or pagan should be one that either can understand rationally: if a traitor has pulled his rightful king off the throne, whether to take it for himself or to give it to an interloper, is that not a crime which should be subject to the highest penalty available? A political figure may have only the ability to hang a traitor, having no reach beyond physical death. But God's jurisdiction cannot be thwarted by mere physical death (Matthew 10:28). And just as the rebel in Hell does not eschew his rebellion, neither does his divine Judge relent in His judgment through the rest of eternity. 

So, contrary to the assertion of the atheist, the judgment of Hell is both real and perfectly just. The only escape is to flee to Jesus, to be covered by His atoning blood, and to recognize that God remains on His throne, regardless of the efforts of man to cast Him down.

The Puritans on the Sabbath

I think that it can be argued that the Fourth Commandment is the most-ignored among the ten, even among Christians. Or should I say especially among Christians? After all, it is we who should best understand the significance of the Sabbath. 

Here is what the commandment says: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy" (Exodus 20:8-11). 

So we notice several things here. First, the origin of the Sabbath is not in the commandment. That is a common error regarding this commandment, that it began with Moses. No, God Himself relates it back to his own actions in the creation: "On the seventh day, God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because, on it, God rested from all His work that He had done in creation" (Genesis 2:2-3). Surely we understand that this is not a description of the weariness of God. Such an idea doesn't even make sense. Rather, it is a description of His enjoyment of the completion of His work, like the artist who steps back to enjoy the painting that he has just finished. 

Second, Christians strangle every discussion of the Sabbath by wrangling over what we are and are not allowed to do on that day. That discussion misses the point. It also ignores what the description that God Himself gives us in His word: "If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken" (Isaiah 58:13-14). The Sabbath has never been about rules. That was the error of the Pharisees, which turned the Sabbath into a burden. 

The Sabbath was God's plan for His people to have joy, both in the work that we have done establishing His dominion in a fallen world, but especially in the work that He has done in redeeming us from the curse that sin has placed on us and our work! 

The Puritan Stephen Charnock, in his book The Existence and Attributes of God, chastised the Christians of his day, in words that apply even more to today's Christian, "A sleight and weariness of the Sabbath was a sleight of the Lord of the Sabbath and of that freedom from the yoke and rule of sin that was signified by it."

Joy! Not drudgery!