Live like it
"We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him." (Romans 6:6-8)
June 3, 2025
Dear friends,
I don't really get it, why some Christians are not interested in doctrines of the Bible. Well, I guess I do get it... Sometimes doctrinal positions divide people. Of course, people can be divisive with or without doctrinal differences. (Our beliefs can indeed separate us from others, and that's not all bad.) Theology may also seem abstract and unrelated to life itself. Sometimes we might just be lazy and not want to take the time or energy to understand how a biblical doctrine relates to our faith and life.
The Bible is truth (John 17:17), and doctrine -- or theology (here I'm using those terms interchangeably) -- is truth distilled from the truth which is God's word. Doctrines are summaries of what God has said in his word. Theology then is our attempt as the people of God to understand what God has said and done about particular topics, like who he is, who we are, and what salvation is. It's not merely about religious concepts or speech, as John Calvin said, "Doctrine is not an affair of the tongue but of the life. It is received only when it possesses the whole soul."
I love the study of theology and heartily agree with C. S. Lewis when he wrote, "…I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that 'nothing happens' when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand." (From his preface to On the Incarnation of the Word, by Athanasius, d. AD 373). In that work the topic was the deity (godhood) of Jesus.
Yesterday, my wife and I were reading Romans chapter 6 together, along with commentary made by Francis Schaeffer to his students at Lausanne in the 1960s. The topic is the believer's union with Christ in his death and resurrection, which is a magnificent truth about our salvation in Christ. Schaeffer connects this doctrine with relevance to our life in this way:
"It is wonderful to know that, having accepted Christ as our Savior, we, like Him, shall someday be raised physically from the dead; but what Paul is hammering away at here is that the certainty of our future resurrection means something for our lives right now.
"Think of it this way: Jesus died in history. Jesus rose from the dead in history. We accepted Christ as our Savior in history. We will be raised from the dead at some real, historical moment in the future. ‘Now,’ Paul is saying, 'live like it!' Through faith, we are to live now on the basis of what has happened in the past, as though we were already in the future.
Jesus died in history. Jesus rose from the dead in history. We accepted Christ as our Savior in history. We shall, in the future, be raised from the dead. Now the call is, by faith, to live in the present as though we were already in the future. This is the Christian call. It is sobering and beautiful and wonderful all at the same time."
(Francis Schaeffer, The Finished Work of Christ, p. 156.)
The truth about our union with Christ may be a difficult doctrine to understand, but once you do, you will find it life changing. Biblical doctrine says, "this is true... now live like it!"
WHAT I'M READING.
-- Just finished reading Who was Adam: A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man, by Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross (NavPress, 2005). This is a very good introduction to the search for "historical Adam" in light of the claims of anthropologists today. Rana is a biochemist and he's fair in his treatment of the evidence while seeking to be faithful to the Bible.
-- Continuing to read Thomas Howard's Dove Descending (Ignatius, 2006), and also studying God's attributes as explained by Herman Bavinck in Reformed Dogmatics, volume 2.
-- "Christianity won’t transform the political world by obsessing over politics, but only by obsessing over Jesus, his table, and his Bride." (Peter Leithart in First Things)
-- Podcast: "Understanding Different Views of the End Times," a discussion with Sam Storms and Darrell Bock on the key differences between Christian end-times views -- amillennialism, postmillennialism, and premillennialism -- and what difference does it make.
-- "These two opposing natures will never stop struggling as long as we are in this world." (C. H. Spurgeon)
-- Sobering: "380 Million Christians Face Brutal Persecution in Muslim-Majority Regions." (European Conservative) Pray for Christians in these countries!
FINAL QUOTE. "Fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith are more than just a backpack on the journey, something optional to carry along with us in case we need them. Instead, they’re more like the map that makes clear our destination, warns us away from dead-ends, and orients us to the landscape, helping us interpret our current moment and walk forward as faithful sojourners." (Trevin Wax, The Thrill of Orthodoxy [IVP, 2022])
That's it for this week!
Sandy
Afterwords is an occasional newsletter on topics of interest to me (Sandy Young) since my retirement from full-time pastoral ministry. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.