Only Trust Him

I recently rediscovered this precious hymn, which is quickly becoming one of my favorites.

Alas! and did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

Thy body slain, sweet Jesus, Thine—
And bathed in its own blood—
While the firm mark of wrath divine,
His Soul in anguish stood.

Was it for crimes that I had done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!

Well might the sun in darkness hide
And shut his glories in,
When Christ, the mighty Maker died,
For man the creature’s sin.

Thus might I hide my blushing face
While His dear cross appears,
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness,
And melt my eyes to tears.

But drops of grief can ne’er repay
The debt of love I owe:
Here, Lord, I give my self away
’Tis all that I can do.

I recently introduced the topic of baptism and listed a few areas that I wanted to address in more detail. The first area I’ll try to tackle is continuity and discontinuity between the testaments.

I want to start by defining what I mean when I talk about God’s covenant with man. O. Palmer Robertson, in His book Christ of the Covenants defined covenant as “a bond in blood, sovereignly administered.” This covenant is established and administered solely by God, and establishes duties and consequences for mankind– blessings to those who are faithful and cursings to those who aren’t faithful. It’s a great book if you’re not already familiar with covenantal theology.

From my perspective, it’s impossible not to see God’s covenant of redemption woven throughout all of scripture, and at the center of it all, binding everything together, Christ. The Old Testament points forward to Christ in prophesies, symbolism, and ceremony, and the New Testament points back to Christ and His finished work on the cross. Things become clearer as more is gradually revealed, but even in the garden, we see God establish a covenant with Adam and Eve, along with the promise of the serpent’s imminent destruction.

So, where does continuity and discontinuity come in? We know that God himself doesn’t change, but scripture is clear that there are changes and discontinuities between the Old and New Covenant because of Christ’s fulfillment of things like the ceremonial law. So, when we attempt to parse the things that are fulfilled in Christ from the things which do not change, hermeneutical questions are raised.

A hermeneutical principle I hold to is that the New Covenant is the clearest revelation of the Word, and that in order to truly understand the new, we must read and interpret with a solid understanding of the old– through the eyes of the original readers so to speak.

When we look at baptism, the first question that must be asked is, “what are the explicit commands of scripture?”, because explicit commands take precedent over any arguments that may be formed through inferences, implication or analogy. Credobaptists present verses from scripture that they find compelling for the practice of baptism of believers alone. If the Credobaptist interpretation of those verses is right, there is no further need for discussion or consideration of other possible arguments. Watershed passages such as Jeremiah 31 and New Testament passages about baptism must be closely examined to see if an explicit case can be made. Many good men have come down on both sides.

Part two coming soon…

I’ve been wanting to get a bow tie for a while, and finally made the plunge. I’m still undecided on whether I’d ever don a kilt, but I do like Tartan fabrics. =D

As a sacrament and clear command of scripture, baptism is an important area of theology. Baptism has been a topic hotly debated for centuries as godly men have studied the proper application of this command. Over the course of this last year, I’ve also searched out what the scriptures say regarding baptism so that I would be fully convinced in my own mind (Romans 14:5), ready to give an answer (1 Peter 3:15) and familiar with the views of other men.

I believe that at the heart of the debate are differences in hermeneutics. Because of these differences, discussions on baptism can easily be noneffective as the arguments used by both sides often don’t meet each other head on. Paedobaptists start with the covenant, household structure and circumcision, while credobaptists start with verses supporting believer’s baptism in the New Testament.

So, what are hermeneutics? Hermeneutics are the principles by which scripture is properly understood. A few foundational principles would include: looking carefully at context surrounding the passage and broader context, letting the clear portions of scripture interpret the less clear portions, considering how the original hearers might have interpreted the text, and studying the definitions and grammatical structure of the original languages.

Everyone applies hermeneutical principles in their interpretation of scripture, whether they consciously realize it or not. Hermeneutics are critical to dissect because they impact our understanding of scripture.

Here are a few questions that I think are helpful to think about. I hope to address these questions further in a future post, along with some of the key verses that have most impacted my thinking.

1) What is the nature of the relationship between the New Testament and Old Testament?
a) Should we, in general, view the new covenant as an extension of the old covenant or as something that is distinct?
b) How much emphasis should be placed on Old Testament context for interpreting New Testament passages?
c) Does the New Testament, as the greater revelation, make administrative changes implicitly, or are changes always explicit? (ceremonial law, sacrifices, etc)
d) What are continuities and discontinuities between circumcision and baptism? (Col 2:11-12)
2) What is the significance of “circumcision of heart” and the newness of the new covenant as discussed in Jeremiah 31, and Hebrews?
3) How do we define “the covenant”?
4) What has God promised to believers about their children?