Listen as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of sanctification and growth in this address from The Gospel Coalition sermon library.
Facilitator: …live conference a time where we can hear spontaneous answers from the speakers that have been here. We’ve had a wonderful conference beginning on Friday afternoon with the pastor’s luncheon when Dr. Carson talked about the personal bogs we get in, and using a psalm from David’s life, and then we have looked at Romans. We’ve looked at Psalm 1, we’ve been in Jeremiah, and Dr. Kaiser continued that theme and the sermon this morning. But our overall theme has been true spirituality. What does it mean to be genuine as a Christian? And we’ve heard a repeated theme over and over this weekend, and I’m going to ask our speakers, for those of you who have not been with us the entire time, I’m going to ask the impossible of theologians, and that is to briefly tell us what has been said. If you had to say, what is the main point that has been made during the conference thus far, could you tell us in a paragraph what that is? And I’m gonna start with Dr. Carson.
Dr. Carson: Well, clearly, Susan Nash believes that the age of miracles is not dead.
Dr. Kaiser: She’s a believer. Yeah.
Dr. Carson: Well, from my side of the street, believe it or not, he is of age, so he will speak for himself. But from my side of the street, I’ve been trying to push the notion of spirituality closer to the center of what the gospel is. You don’t want spirituality to spin out until it’s talking about technique at the periphery, or spirituality is for the elite of the elect, or something like that. How can you be spiritual if you are wallowing in sin? How can you be spiritual if you don’t really know what the cross is about? How can you be spiritual if your whole passion is not to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength? If instead, you assume all of those things so that they’re merely assumptions and not your passion, while your passion is some technique called spirituality, then there’s the loss of a center. So this has really been, from my point of view, an attempt to get back to the big picture, who God is, what sin is, what the cross is about, living in the light of eternity and so forth. So, that’s been my 2 cents worth.
Facilitator: That’s good. And Dr. Kaiser.
Dr. Kaiser: Well, I think if I were trying to summarize it, it would be that too frequently we have a tendency to put up all of the things that we do that are religious and are good in and of themselves, but yet hold back on our heart and on the need for personal cleansing. I really think the question of spirituality is not so much wrapped up in technique or in methods, where most of our popular writing is today, but it’s really wrapped up in God sending a genuine revival in our midst, where there just is good old fashioned confession to God, and we all feel clean once again, therein starts the spiritual life. So that’s the whole thing in a nutshell.
Facilitator: That’s wonderful. Thank you. And what I would add, what I’ve heard consistently through every message is, has to do with the word of God. You’ve got to know, you’ve got to study, you’ve got to commit the word of God to your mind, but it’s more deep than that. It has to do with it going down to your heart, that you don’t just hear the word of God, but that you, as you said in your sermon, you do it. And Dr. Carson is going to answer some questions again that have been given by people who were here over the last few days. We had a question box, and so we have questions, but he caused a little stir and some interest in people by saying that Christians cannot sin, and that has continued to come back to him in a question form. What does that mean after all, because I do sin? So, I’m going to ask you a question along those lines. Where does the book of James fit into the believer’s life in regard to the full spectrum of the scale you described in your discourse of Psalm 1?
Dr. Carson: Since you introduced that by mentioning this business of not sinning, to set the record straight, when I said that Christians cannot sin, I was merely quoting somebody, his name was John. And so my authority on this matter is a bit slim, his is pretty hot. And that’s what the text actually says in 1 John 3:9. But on the other hand, I tried to make it clear and I wanna say it again, that John is not saying it is to use the philosophical term ontologically impossible for Christians to sin. It is not possible in the very nature of our being for us ever to commit any sin anymore. That’s not quite what he’s saying. He’s saying exactly what is meant when a school teacher yells, “You cannot sin here,” or “You cannot chew gum here,” or “You cannot cheat here,” or whatever.
And it quite misses the point then to say, “Yeah, but I’m doing it.” The point is, in the church of Jesus Christ, sinning is not done here. It is always without excuse. It is always condemnable. It is always reprehensible. It is always disgusting. It is always idolatrous. But the same book, 1 John, which says that Christians will love and they do obey, and they don’t sin and they can’t sin, all these strong things also insist that if any Christian in this life goes around saying that he or she doesn’t sin, he’s a liar, and he’s calling God a liar because God says we do sin. And then he points us to Christ on the cross. We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one, and he’s the propitiation for our sins and so on. And if all you take is the one phrase from 1 John 3:9 and absolutize it, you will head very quickly into either despair or heresy.
So once again, it’s a question of putting truth in a context and hearing the flow of the argument, and the balance of things, or else we’ll get a wobble in there. Now, in that framework then I also talked about how different parts of the Bible, because God and His wisdom has given them to us in different literary genres. I mean, there’s lament, and there is exultant praise, and there is letter, and there is fable, like [inaudible 00:07:16] fable, and there’s parable, and there’s apocalyptic and so on. And they each have their ways of making their rhetorical appeal to make a composite picture, because finally, God Himself is behind it. Yet nevertheless, you’ve got to listen to how these things work. And some kinds of these biblical literatures set out the blacks and whites very clearly.
And yet a narrative account of actual believers, whether a David or a Peter can include the wrinkles and the warts and the inconsistencies and so on. And you mustn’t then draw the wrong lessons from either side. You don’t look at Peter and say, well, he was inconsistent, so it doesn’t matter if I am too. And then you don’t look at the absolutes of Psalm 1 and say, well, you know, you’re either good or you’re bad. I guess I better be on the good side. Then you realize you’re not, and you’re dumped into the slew of despair. You need both. You need the absolutes so that you never start playing mental games with your sin. On the other hand, the sheer honesty of confronting all of our inconsistencies drives us back to the cross, back to the cross, back to the gospel all over again.
Now, on that front, although James alludes to distinctly Christian themes, he has a lot of moral instruction to give about how Christians live and how they treat poor people, and whether or not they’re succumbing to favoritism, and what they’re doing with their tongue, and whether or not they have the kind of confidence in God that they actually have joy, even in the midst of suffering and tribulation. “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into trials of various kinds,” he says. So, in all of these fronts, you’ve got a moralizing framework, which is reminiscent in some ways. They’re actual word parallels to some of what his half-brother Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount. So, there is more emphasis of that sort of thing in James, but you still have to remember at the same time that it needs to be integrated into all of the Bible says to make a holistic picture.
Facilitator: Thank you. I’m going to continue with Dr. Carson just a minute, and then there are some questions for you, Dr. Kaiser.
Dr. Carson: Eventually, people will rise up higher.
Facilitator: Saturday morning, Dr. Carson, you clearly demonstrated the cross is an act of justice, and a cross is an act of righteousness. Later in Romans, the believer is stated to have the righteousness of God imparted to him. Does it follow? That is, am I right to conclude that the righteousness imputed is Christ dying on the cross and rising and ascending, and all the reality that work implies as delineated in the rest of Romans?
Dr. Carson: You know, it’s always nasty when somebody is asked a question and then starts challenging the question, but that’s what I’m gonna do. What can I say? Because the question sort of runs from imparted to imputed, and there’s a slightly different overtone of that, historically, that might cause confusion for some. So, I do want to pick that up just a wee bit, if I may. It’s not as if the Bible portrays Christ on the cross as somehow dumping a whole lot of some mystical thing called righteousness upon us. Here, here’s a chunk of righteousness. I’ve now imparted it to you.
Rather, our sins are reckoned to him. That’s imputation. They’re counted, his, and he dies in our place. That’s why the Bible can go so far as to say, “He was made sin for us.” I know it can have an overtone of sin offering, but he stands condemned because my sins are reckoned as his. But his righteousness is also reckoned as mine. That’s the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us. That argument is interwoven in more subtle language throughout Paul’s writings, but it’s there. And yet at the same time, this business of God seeing me by looking through Christ as it were. That is, he sees me as a righteous person because Christ’s righteousness is mine. His righteousness has been counted mine as my sin has been counted his.
Although that’s true, that’s not the only gospel truth. That lies at the heart of everything, but the gospel itself is, dare I say it, bigger than that. That lies at the heart of it, but also bound up in the gospel and the good news is regeneration. He transforms us, but pours out his spirit upon us. He adopts us and makes us his children. And he’s working in us to conform us to Christ and on the last day, he will glorify us. Look at the whole string of things that God does in Romans 8, ultimately to glorification and to resurrection body and sinless perfection. That’s where we’re heading. And that’s why the church and every generation cries, even so come, Lord Jesus.
So, within that framework, it is important to see on the one hand the full sweep of what the gospel does. And on the other hand, it’s important not to confuse some of the different bits, or else you start confusing what you really trust. You see, if you point out that the gospel really does transform us and make us righteous, and gives us a new heart to wanna follow after God, and ultimately, we will be sinless. You see all of that, and that’s all you see, and it’s somehow loosely connected to Jesus’ cross. But that’s all you see. Then you start saying, “Boy, am I holy enough? I mean, if I really am a Christian, why do I have such nasty, bitter thoughts? And why do I succumb to lust sometime? And why do I really wanna swear at that cab driver who cut me off,” and then you feel guilty again, and you just walk through life crippled.
Well, it is important to see that that is sin. There’s no excuse for it. And God does transform us and gradually change our heart. And on the last day, there won’t be any more of that ever again. I sometimes tell my students that in heaven, there aren’t going to be any signs posted, you shall not commit murder, partly because murdering a resurrection body is probably pretty difficult. But, in addition, we won’t want to. We’ll so be transformed that the fulfillment of the murder prohibition will be in lives of such love that it will never even cross our horizons. But if all you focus on is the moral aspect and do not see that our fundamental ground for being accepted before God is not that like, number two, we try harder, but that Christ died for us, and His sacrifice is offered on our behalf.
He was not an accident or a martyr. He bore my sins in his own body on the tree. He was wounded for our transgression, and His righteousness, likewise, is reckoned to me. That is my fundamental ground of acceptance before God. So then when I stand before him on the last day, I will make only one plea, not “I tried hard.” And, you know, I’ve had about 30, 40, 50 years of Christian discipleship, and I’m not as good as I ought to be, but I’m better than I was. My fundamental plea on the last day will still be, “Jesus died for me.” There’s your confidence, but it also becomes the incentive to being passionate about holiness. You never divide the two or confuse the two.
Facilitator: Thank you. And that is a good segue, Dr. Kaiser, to a question you were asked regarding your reference to 2 Corinthians 5:10. “When we stand before Jesus at the judgment seat of Christ, even as a believer, we will be accountable for both the good and the bad.” But when Christ died for me, he stood in my place and took my judgment upon himself. Therefore, at the judgment seat of Christ will only my level of reward be addressed since my judgment was satisfied at the cross?
Dr. Kaiser: Thank you for the question.
Dr. Carson: Next question.
Dr. Kaiser: I’m thinking real hard. No, I think the answer is as I said when I gave that verse, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, given the count, the deeds done in the body, whether good or bad. And I somewhat said, teasingly, after that, “Oh, that’s not my favorite verse. My favorite verse is Romans 8:1. There is therefore now no,” that’s how you italicize in the pulpit. You shake your voice. “There’s therefore now no condemnation.” And I said, “I like that. That’s very, very good.” So, I’m gonna claim this is my light verse and let someone else have 2 Corinthians 5:10. And…
Facilitator: That’s not fair.
Dr. Kaiser: It’s not fair. But let me go on to answer it then. Romans 8:1 is a status-standing position verse. All of that Christ has accomplished as put onto my account, plus the riches in Christ Jesus. And all of us on the body of Christ are wealthy kids indeed. I mean, my heavenly Father, your heavenly Father owns the whole nine yards, and so do we. It’s a beautiful teaching. Ephesians 1, of course, but what you have in 2 Corinthians is fruit inspection. Say, fruit inspection, what kind of fruit inspection is this? And I think our Lord has a right to say, “Okay, I gave you 20 years, 40 years, 60, 80, 100. What did you do?”
I imagine what some of stating in line are saying, you know, “Oh, Lord, you should have been there. That 21st century was a bummer. I mean, it was tough. I really was gonna get involved. But there was NFL and just a lot of things that were going on, you know? And now that I’m in heaven, I’m gonna go door to door. I’m gonna do the four laws and go to the prisons in heaven. I really wanna get involved.” And as you know, offer rescinded. And so I think our Lord is telling us that He does have the right to say, okay, I gave you life. I gave you health. I gave you all of the possessions that you have, your family. What did you do? What did you do? He has a right to because He’s Lord, He’s Lord. The question that Don was answering gets a little bit more complicated.
Let’s suppose we go on. We talk not only about what we call the passive obedience of Christ’s death, but some theologians have a inferential theology. It’s not taught in a particular verse, but by inference, they talk about the active obedience of Christ. And therefore say that when Christ died, okay, that took care of my sins. But when he lived a perfect life for 30 years, he actively obeyed. And that was imputed to me too. And now, I am hearing in Christian circles, not to dispute that point, though we all acknowledge it’s an inferential theology, there’s no direct verse that says that. But even if you take that as an inference, now I’m hearing some of God’s men and women saying, well, if He kept everything and abated perfectly and imputed it to me, why then must I obey? Why must I work? Why must I do anything? Which is almost a kind of antinomianism against the law in a reverse kind of fashion. And it’s coming into evangelical circles that understand justification so well.
God declares that we are just before Him, and nobody, nothing is going to take that away. But on the other hand, that doesn’t mean we’re free from the law. Now I can sin and there’s no perdition. There still is a giving of an answer to our heavenly Father with how we live. So I like the hymn, which sometimes our hymns do get the theology right, and this one does, it’s trust and then obey for there just isn’t any other way in true spirituality. Believe first, oh, yeah. Don’t try to start walking and you’ll limp, you’ll fall badly. But trust, believe first, and then obey.
Some of God’s men and women must come to understand that by the works of the law, no one was ever saved. That’s true. But you have to understand, this wasn’t Moses’ law, it was God’s law, and He still is giving it. Matter of fact, the whole book of James we’re just discussing is a sermon on Leviticus Chapter 19:12-22. The only verse missing in those five chapters is verse 14. All the other verses are commented upon. And so you have a homily, a message based upon of all things, a part of the law that most people said, “Whew. There’s nothing left there at all.” Now, sure, when God gave the law, He told us when He got to the tabernacle and to the priest, and to the sacrifices, “I want you, Moses, to make this after the top knee, the model, the plan of what is real in heaven.”
There is a real, but you only have a mockup. So, these sacrifices, these animals, these offerings, these priests, this building is only a pointer. Hebrews will say it’s a shadow, same thing, which helps us to look away from it, but behind it stands principles and realities. Just when I do the book of Philippians, I see a cultural thing there. “I beseech you Euodia and Syntyche to be of the same mind.” You say, skip that verse, they’re none of my rallies. But nevertheless though, Syntyche and the other girl must have been having a squabble in the church. And someone has, years ago, tried to nickname these girls, but skip that part. But nevertheless, they were having this. And what was the principle? What do we teach when we get there? We go to Ephesians 4, “Therefore be tender-hearted, gentle, forgiving one another even as Christ forgave us.”
See, it’s a cultural, it’s specific address, yet behind it stands a principle. Now, that same kind of thing operates through the whole of the biblical text, and that’s what God is calling us to. So, obedience is not a spiritual luxury. It’s not an optional feature of a Christian life. It’s not something you can take it or leave it, depending on your level of spiritual achievement. Well, no. Our Lord calls us to that and measures us by that. Why? Because it’s law? No, it’s his character. Moral law is based on the character of the living God. So it’s always gonna be wrong to take life because He is life. It’s always gonna be wrong to tell a lie because He’s the truth and so forth. The bureau relates to measurements is the character and nature of God. And until we come to understand that, then I think we’ll miss it as if it’s so many notches on our belt. So many chinks of to-dos, to-do list. It’s not a to-do list. It’s about a person, and it’s about walking with Him. Does that help a little bit…
Facilitator: Thank you. That helps. And…
Dr. Kaiser: …or too much?
Facilitator: No, it helps a lot.
Dr. Kaiser: Yeah. Okay.
Facilitator: Dr. Carson, would you like to say something about it?
Dr. Carson: Yeah. And this is such a difficult question, and what Dr. Kaiser said is really important. One of the things that’s helped me to think about the reward side is a little illustration provided by C. S. Lewis. C. S. Lewis pictures two men, one goes to the red light district of town, finds a woman, pays his money and has his reward. The other courts a young woman, treats her with ineffable honor, wins her affections, gets to know the whole family. There is trust, respect, love, compassion, integrity. And eventually, they’re married in a glorious ceremony in which the families too are exalting before God, and he has his reward. What’s the difference? You’ve got rewards in both cases.
What Lewis says is, in the first instance, the payment and the reward are so incommensurate that the transaction is obscene. Whereas in the second instance, the reward is nothing other than the culmination of a relationship. Isn’t that nice?
Facilitator: It’s beautiful.
Dr. Carson: So, the relationship is established in the gospel all right, and that’s why Paul and Romans can likewise speak of the Christian rewards as being according to grace. Do you see? Because it all flows up. It’s not as if God has saved us and then said, “All right, now it all depends on you.” Just obey and you’ll have a few rewards at the end. Because at the end of the day, even though we’re supposed to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, it is God working in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. It’s still grace at the end of the day that goes back finally to the cross, but it is never the cross and forgiveness abstracted from the entailment then of this relationship that ultimately issues in the consummation of glory. Do you see? Put it all together. Is that fair?
Dr. Kaiser: Yeah. I like it.
Facilitator: I’m going to ask one more question that follows in the same vein, and then I’m going to give you a warning about what the next question is that I’ll ask both of you. And it has to do more with your personal development and spirituality. And the reason I’m gonna ask it, and the reason I’m giving you advanced warning is it may take you off guard, but out in this sanctuary, you’ll have people who’ve been a Christian for 30, 40, 50 years. You might have someone who’s been a Christian for one to five years, and there may be seekers who have not come to believe this yet, but are interested. And what they may be wondering is, you have been schooled in scripture. You teach this, it’s in your blood, you write books about it. And how does that translate to them? They may be looking at you as though you have an extra advantage. And so will you be willing to share how did this happen in your own lives? And what have you seen over the years? But first, I’ll start with this, and you can be thinking, I’m gonna ask Dr. Carson this. You can be thinking about this. And, Dr. Carson, you won’t have time.
How do we balance self-denial and deference to your neighbor with exercising dominion? I swing from milquetoast by displaying humility or submission to almost rebellion, questioning corporate rules, laws, man’s authority by looking for injustice to justify my actions. What helps me know I’m on the right track?
Dr. Carson: In 25 words or less?
Facilitator: Yes, of course.
Dr. Kaiser: With a box top.
Dr. Carson: Yeah, that’s right. Let me put that in a concrete frame of reference first, and then talk about the general thing. On the one hand, turn the other cheek. Somebody asks you for a mile, give them 2 miles. And on the other hand, Jesus taking his cords and whipping the animals out of the temple and denouncing the Pharisees and the hypocrites in Matthew, “You fools, you snakes in the grass. You generation of vipers.” Where’s Jesus turning of the other cheek? And you suddenly realize that this whole business of integrating, turning the other cheek and so on is complicated, otherwise you’re gonna start accusing Jesus of two-face in this and hypocrisy.
There is a sense in which to handle both the humility and the dominion. The best model is to go back to Jesus himself and start thinking this one through very carefully. At the risk of telling a story that takes us slightly adjacent. I was brought up in French Canada in a context when the Catholic Church in Canada, in the French side was very, very, very powerful, very medieval, and Baptist ministers alone in French Canada, between 50 and 52, when I was just a little gaffer, spent eight years in jail. I was regularly beaten up as a Moody Protestant, a Dan [SP] Protestant. I mean, those were some tough years, you see. And I have a slightly older sister, and she was about 9 or 10. And she was being beaten up by one of the neighborhood tufts pretty regularly, you know, and my parents were trying to say, you know, “Turn the other cheek and Jesus will look after you,” and all this sort of thing. And she’d come in crying every day from this neighborhood tuft, you know. We’d call her Moody Protestant, clobber her again, and she’d cry.
Well, one day my mother, bless her sanctified talks, said, when my father wasn’t around one day, you know, “Joyce, I’m gonna tell you what to do. The next time he hits you. You don’t do this first, you don’t do…but the next time he hits you, you put your fist tight like that, you know, with your thumb on the outside, and you do it with both fists. And then you hit him as hard as he can, just once, but as hard as he can. And then you come back and tell me.” Well, she went out there and pleased as punch, you know. And this brute came up and clobbered her, and she just hauled back and hit him. And that solved the neighborhood problems. Was my mother disobeying Jesus? I mean, it comes down to that, doesn’t it? Tell him. He wants to know how I’m gonna get out of this.
Facilitator: We all are wondering that.
Dr. Carson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Kaiser: It’s time to pray.
Dr. Carson: He’s been talking about the importance of confession. Here we go. Well, again, let me come back to this Sermon on the Mount from which this instruction is drawn. You see, Jesus elsewhere says in the Sermon on the Mount, for example, that you’re not supposed to swear. You’re not supposed to give oaths. Let your yes be yes and your no, no. Well, let me ask you this question then. Is that contradicting Deuteronomy 6? Deuteronomy 6 explicitly says, “Swear by the Lord, don’t take your oath by anybody else.” You swear by Him. And now Jesus comes along and says “Don’t swear at all.”
So, is Jesus contradicting the Old Testament? It’s the same sort of question, isn’t it? It’s question about an apparent internal contradiction. But again, in every one of these cases, there are contexts, contexts that are literary, contexts that are theological, even contexts that are cultural. In the Deuteronomy 6 situation, when Moses says, “Make sure you swear by the Lord,” the point is that people tend to swear by that which is most important to them. So even an atheist is “I swear on my mother’s grave,” or something like that, you see. So, in the context of ancient Israel, the danger was that as idolatry came in from the outside, the danger was that you start swearing by the Baals or you swear by one of the female goddesses on the hilltops or something. Do you see? And that means that you’re no longer cherishing Yahweh.
No. Make sure that the person who is most important to you, the most value thing, your God is Yahweh. You swear by Him. But if at some point in the whole game then, swearing by Yahweh becomes a system of nice rules, like if you swear facing the temple, that really counts. But if you swear by Yahweh and you’re not facing the temple, that doesn’t count. It’s like a little kid, “Oh, I promise. I swear. I cross my heart, hope to die.” Then the other person goes: “Cross my fingers.” And at that point, you start realizing that all the swearing is really becoming an excuse, an evasive action that justifies lying. And that’s the way for some, at least, 1st century oath-taking, that’s where it got to. And at that point, Jesus comes along and says, “Hey, let your yes be yes and your no, no. Whatever’s more than that is sin.”
But in both cases, you’re still supposed to be telling the truth. You’re still supposed to be honoring God. But how that works out is going to depend a bit on how corruptly we’ve handled things. Likewise with this, turn the other cheek. There is a pacifist tradition in the Christian heritage, of course, which makes that absolute, I understand that. And I’ve read deeply in that literature, and I respect those who have suffered a great deal in the name of holding that tradition. But in my view, they don’t understand the New Testament very well. Because at the same time, you have the instruction from Paul, for example, that God Himself has given the sword to the state. And then that starts raising all the fundamental questions about how Christians relate to the state. And that then infects an even bigger question about how Christians are related to culture and in culture at the same time, you see.
So, I warn you, you’ve pressed my button. I’m just about finished a book now called “Christ and Culture Revisited.” That is exactly looking at these kinds of things all over again because we forget them every once in a while. We have to refresh our memories about how the Bible does paint these things and put them together. Do you see? Now, in this particular case, if people are going through life full of resentments, “I will do my duty to roam, but I’m not gonna do one blessed thing more. The only reason I do have to do anything is because there’s somebody there with a sword telling me to do it.”
And then some trooper, which under Roman law was allowed, demands that you carry his bags for a mile. Okay, 1 mile. 5,280 feet. That’s it. Not 1 inch more. But Christ says, no, take it for two. Smile. Give him a cup of coffee at the end of it. And boy, it changes everything, doesn’t it? I mean, it looks so different. But that’s not saying that then God becomes the upholder of every injustice. Turn the other cheek. You know, somebody goes after you and it’s just resentment, or worse yet, actual persecution for Christ’s sake, and you smile and absorb it again, because that fits into a whole theme about the suffering servant. And if he was pummeled, why should we expect not to be? You talk to Christians in parts of the world that are suffering persecution. We ask them, “How do you live with this tension all the time?” They will turn around and say, “How do you live without it? I mean, this is sort of normal Christian living, isn’t it?”
But if on the other hand, you start saying that means therefore that all the bullies and all the rapists and all of the murderers in the world should never, ever have force exerted to prevent them from doing what they want to do, then that’s misunderstanding another whole strand of scripture. When I was at seminary, all my education was either in Canada or Europe, and when I was at seminary, I was at a seminary in Toronto that was in a slummy area. And it’s now moved from there, and that area has been revitalized. But when I was there, it was a pretty crummy area. And I lived about half a mile away in a cheap tenement and so on. And because I was holding down another job and so on, I often left the study carrels at 2 in the morning and walk home through these slummy streets.
And I remember one night hearing a woman cry out, she was being attacked by a rapist, and I intervened. Why didn’t I just let her get raped? I mean, turn the other cheek and all that. Another night I turned around the corner. There was a drunk with a broken bottle threatening a couple, you know, wanting to shaft them with his bottle. Well, I had been trained by a Canadian army guy how to handle myself, and a drunk with a bottle is not gonna be a big problem under those circumstances. What should I have done instead? Turn the other cheek? Would that have been the Godly thing to do? The righteous thing to do, the loving thing to do? It just misunderstands the text entirely. It is not a question at that point of a hard attitude that wants to stand off and not go one stage further, it’s a question then also of imposing justice and exercising righteousness and so and so and so on. The thing is, watch your heart, watch the literary context, put it all together to honor God and not become the bully yourself. Does that begin…
Facilitator: Yeah. You’ve gotta look at the whole of scripture. And we know it was really because your mother raised you that you intervened in those cases. Now, we’ve just got a little time, and we do wanna get onto this question because I know the people in the congregation would like to hear how you’ve done this personally. How have you grown in Christ over these years? Has it been hard what you’re saying and asking us to do? And, Dr. Kaiser, we’ll begin with you then if…
Dr. Carson: That’s because he’s had more years.
Facilitator: Just remember we’ve got a little time.
Dr. Kaiser: Yeah.
Facilitator: Okay. Both you and Dr. Carson, and we wanna hear from you both.
Dr. Kaiser: I like the Pauline phrase, “As you have received Christ Jesus, so walk in him. So live in him.” Oh, I’m sorry. I quoted King James there. I was raised on King James, so I’m bilingual. But the phrase have been, “As you have received Christ Jesus,” which was by faith, it can’t get any more complicated than that. It really has to do with going on by faith and walking with him. Is it easier because I was in theology? No. I think a little bit more vulnerable. The Christian community expected a little bit more of me. My kids expected more of me, but most of all, the one who knew me best and would forgive me the most, but required the most was my wife. She also would call me back and say, so was that what you preach? It was helpful but humiliating. But it was helpful.
And wives are a wonderful gift. In my case, it was very special. I remember one Sunday morning, early in the morning, we had a real hard freeze in the Chicago area where I was at that time. And it was 20 below zero. The electricity had gone off. The refrigerator was moaning because it wanted to make ice cubes or something. I came down early in the morning, and I thought, well, I better go out. We had a diesel Oldsmobile at that time. I thought I’d try to start that. That had been on electricity all night. They just, vocalized that was that. We weren’t gonna go to church. We weren’t gonna go anywhere. Later on that morning, about 10:00 in the morning, the electricity came on.
I went down in our crawl space under a split-level home. And I thought, well, the water lines are frozen. I’ll take my daughter’s hair dryer, and I’ll try putting that on the pipe so it won’t be too warm. That wasn’t helping at all. We went to the neighbor, got some water, we had lunch. Marge always made a sit-down Sunday meal. We were in that old-fashioned format still. And because she worked and made the meal, she got to pray for the meal. So she prayed and she said, “Lord,” the kids all respected her in her prayers, she says, “Lord, you know our problems. You’ve told us to bring anything. Our water pipes are frozen. We ask you to help us, and thank you for the food in Jesus’ name, amen.” And with that, I kid you not, all the faucets that had been opened out in the kitchen starts spitting ice. Our kids were amazed. And “Wow. We’re not gonna fool around with mom anymore.”
So, it’s a matter of walking together and having a sense of humor about ourselves, laughing. Because we do fail, we have to come back to our heavenly Father, but it’s still walking by faith and that’s what I have found. When I’ve been out speaking, Marge has said, “Things are going pretty well this weekend, didn’t they?” I said, “Yes. How do you know?” Oh, she said, “The car broke down. The kids, I had ’em rushed into the hospital.” She thought that there was, and I subscribed to that too, that the evil one, because we were in ministry, was also trying to get an undercut back at home too, as well. But the gospel’s more powerful and all of that stuff too, as well. So, I’m not there yet. I sold the button, be patient with me. God’s not finished and I’m growing, and I try to keep on growing, but I grow by faith.
Facilitator: Thank you, Dr. Carson.
Dr. Carson: It’s probably worth saying, although it’s something we all know, that those who teach the word of God don’t have priestly status in the church. We do not have an inside track with God. I don’t have some access that the rest don’t have. Under the terms of the new covenant, there is only one priest. And so to use the body metaphor of 1 Corinthians 12, you can sort of think of me and of Walt, and of Sandy Wilson and others, you can think of them as stomachs. They taken a fair bit of food and then sort of digest it and distribute it to the rest of the body. Now, we’ve just destroyed our image entirely at that point, you know. You’re gonna see him during the morning service. You’re gonna, “Boy, that’s an interesting-looking stomach.” But that means we’re part of the body too, do you see? We have no inside track with God.
We have to learn to pray, same as everybody else. We have to learn to read our Bible, same as everybody else. We have to learn to obey, same as everybody else. What we do have is an enormous privilege and a frightening responsibility. The enormous privilege is we are freed up by the generosity of the people of God to give our lives to the ministry of the Word. And a lot of people don’t have as much time to do that as I do, because I’m paid to do it. That is an enormous privilege. And if we ever forget that it’s a privilege, God help us. I mean, we’re just becoming arrogant. But the frightening responsibility is, coming back to James, what he says in James 3:1. I mean, our wives are frightening enough. When you read James 3:1, it’s absolutely terrifying.
Those of you who teach will bear the greater judgment. Did you see? So that’s what God says. And then so what do I do? I go all around the world teaching everybody, and that’s a scary thought. So, to whom more is given, whether because of time or opportunity or whatever, from them also show more be required. That’s true of you. It’s true of me, isn’t it? And I have no doubt in my mind at all that when the saints go marching in, there’ll be people way ahead of me on the line. Little old ladies who looked after a crippled husband, brought up three children on nothing, and then looked after an aged parent with Alzheimer’s, and during all of that, did not curse God, and walk faithfully and quietly and humbly, but basically, semi-literate. I have no doubt that people like that will go in way, way, way ahead of the George Whitfield’s of the universe. Do you see?
So, at the end of the day, to our own masters, we stand or fall, judge nothing before the time, God will sort it all out at the end. And meanwhile, you mustn’t look at those who have the privilege of ministry as if they’ve got some sort of inside priestly trek. Same Bible. You’re gonna read the same as I. And there will be some of you who… I look at my PhD students now, and my PhD students are coming out much more knowledgeable, much more mature, with a better grasp of biblical theology, with more Christian maturity than I had when I was their age coming out the same place. I wonder what God will do with ’em.
I mean, it’s wonderful to see. Do you see? But they’re standing on somebody else’s shoulders as I stood on somebody else’s shoulders. We give and take in the whole church of God. In some ways, I’ve ducked the question because I wanna put it in the framework of the whole corporateness of the body of Christ. And then if there were more time, then I’d be happy to give lots and lots of practical suggestions about how to watch your life and how to learn to pray, and how to read your Bible. I’m happy to do that, but I only wanna do that once that large framework is established.
Facilitator: Thank you. We’ve got to stop here, but I want to encourage you to get books. Both Dr. Kaiser and Dr. Carson have books in the bookmark. The tapes of the conference or the CDs are available. And you can see the Whitemores down at the reception area today for those. Dr. Carson will be with us for the evening service, and he’s going to look at this whole topic as catalogically. What about the end? And how do you end well? So, be with us tonight at church. Dr. Kaiser is going to have to leave very shortly after the late service. So, he won’t be around to tell you bye. Would you like to say anything now?
Dr. Kaiser: I like everyone very much.
Facilitator: That’s very good. In light of what you’ve been preaching.
Dr. Kaiser: Can I tell you one other things? One of the questions, so we weren’t able to get to archeology. One of the things that we have you’d be interested in March 1st, we’re expecting a shipment from China of an archeological study Bible, which is coming out under the ages. It’s owned by the Gordon-Conwell Seminary. Be in four colors throughout the whole thing. I think you’ll enjoy it very, very much. Has about 8,000 notes, 500 four-color pictures right alongside the archeological discovery, alongside the text that it talks about. And then with about 500 sidebar discussions of major fines that confirm or illuminate the background to the Bible. We’re very excited about that. Recommend it to you and trust that it aids the body of Christ very much.
We have about 120 different individuals working on that, and we trust that it’s very helpful. We’ll have the NIV text. Sonder Band preferred that one since that’s the widest-used text today. Most widely used, the New International Version. But thank you for that, and for this wonderful opportunity to be with Don again. We spent a good number of years together at Trinity, and now to be with you these days. We are just deeply delighted, and I trust God will bless you. I’m on my way to Bible study fellowship board meetings Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday down in San Antonio, so that’s why I’m taking off early.
Facilitator: Thank you. And there was an archeological question. So, we didn’t get to it by the book, and you’ll get the answer, I’m sure. Let me pray for us and then we’ll be excused. If you wouldn’t mind, if you have been to early church, go ahead and make your way out because those coming to Lake Church are coming in now. Let’s pray. Dear Lord, we thank You for this time together. We thank You for Your word, and we thank You for these gentlemen who’ve studied it in its original text and studied it long and hard, and are here to give us insight about the questions that we have. We thank You that You are spirit and that You indwell us, and that You’ve called us to a life that is wonderful and abundant. And we pray that we would be at Your feet and in Your word, that we would take up that life that You’ve called us to, and make the most of it as we have time here on Earth. We thank You for the guidance we’ve been given this morning, and we pray that we would honor You as we continue worship today. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.
