Personal piety or theological abstraction?

The new theme at Reformation21’s blog and the first installment therein are direct and forceful reminders of why Norman Shepherd has been so helpful to Presbyterian pastors in North American Evangelicalism.

The theme is why exposing sin is easier for us than applying grace. The assumption is that the problem and the solution lies in the private spirituality of the Minister.

Norm Shepherd has addressed this same issue. He insists that pastors need to be just as direct and pointed in asserting God’s grace in Christ as they are in asserting our listeners’ sinfulness and need. We should preach to Christians that God loves them and Christ died for them with just as much certainty and confidence as we preach to them that they are sinners.

The reason we tend to not be known for such even-handed preaching, in Shepherd’s opinion, is because of a widespread mis-application of the doctrines of “sovereign grace.” Many Reformed preachers are beset with the idea that, while they know that everyone is a sinner under God’s wrath, all they can say about God’s grace is that some people somewhere at some time are recipients of it. But who are these people? Why, it turns out, no one is quite sure.

You are a sinner but Christ died for his people.” The doctrine of limited atonement is true but it does not necessitate this imbalance. We should be encouraging people as much as warning them.

In my last year of seminary I got to meet with a classmate who had graduated the year before and was now an RUF minister. We had lunch once and got to chat a bit about ministering in an pluralistic context. This was the Bible belt so there were lots of professing Christians, but not many Reformed ones. He talked to me about some of the challenges of theological debate. One issue that was causing people to hesitate to listen to him was their certainty that it was proper and right to declare God’s love for everyone.

“But we can tell people that God loves them too,” I pointed out, “and that he desires their salvation. You remember what Jones taught about the free offer of the Gospel.”

Well, not all that precisely. We reviewed the data for a minute. My concern was that he not make people think they had to embrace a stingier God in order to be calvinists. He agreed with me. The problem was that he went to seminary quite new to the Reformed Faith and simply hadn’t had the time or space to digest all the issues while he was still trying to process TULIP and paedobaptism.

In any case, it seems to me that if this can be an issue in evangelism it could also be an issue more generally in pastoral practice.

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