Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Ryle on the Visible Marks of Sanctification

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  1. True sanctification then does not consist in talk about religion.
  2. True sanctification does not consist in temporary religious feelings.
  3. True sanctification does not consist in outward formalism.
  4. Sanctification does not consist in retirement from our place in life, and the renunciation of our social duties.
  5. Sanctification does not consist in the occasional performance of right actions.
  6. Genuine sanctification will show itself in habitual respect to God’s law, and habitual effort to live in obedience to it as the rule of life.
  7. Genuine sanctification will show itself in an habitual endeavour to do Christ’s will, and to live by His practical precepts.
  8. Genuine sanctification will show itself in an habitual desire to live up to the standard which St. Paul sets before the Churches in his writings.
  9. Genuine sanctification will show itself in habitual attention to the active graces which our Lord so beautifully exemplified, and especially to the grace of charity.
  10. Genuine sanctification, in the last place, will show itself in habitual attention to the passive graces of Christianity. When I speak of passive graces, I mean those graces which are especially shown in submission to the will of God, and in bearing and forbearing towards one another.

. . . . . . . . . .

Such are the visible marks of a sanctified man. I do not say that they are all to be seen equally in all God’s people. I freely admit that in the best they are not fully and perfectly exhibited. But I do say confidently, that the things of which I have been speaking are the Scriptural marks of sanctification, and that they who know nothing of them may well doubt whether they have any grace at all.

Extracts from Ryle, Holiness, 24-29.

Ryle on Original Sin and Common Grace

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I admit fully that man has many grand and noble faculties left about him, and that in arts and sciences and literature he shows immense capacity. But the fact still remains that in spiritual things he is utterly ‘dead,’ and has no natural knowledge, or love, or fear of God. His best things are so interwoven and intermingled with corruption, that the contrast only brings out into sharper relief the truth and extent of the fall. That one and the same creature should be in some things so high and in others so low—so great and yet so little—so noble and yet so mean—so grand in his conception and execution of material things, and yet so groveling and debased in his affections—that he should be able to plan and erect buildings like those to Carnac and Luxor in Egypt, and the Parthenon at Athens, and yet worship vile gods and goddesses, and birds, and beasts, and creeping things—that he should be able to produce tragedies like those of Æschlylus and Sophocles, and histories like that of Thycydides, and yet be a slave to abominable vices like those described in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans—all this is a sore puzzle to those who sneer at ‘God’s Word written,’ and scoff at us as Bibliolaters. But it is a knot that we can untie with the Bible in our hands. We can acknowledge that man has all the marks of a majestic temple about him—a temple in which God once dwelt, but a temple which is now in utter ruins—a temple in which a shattered window here, and a doorway there, and a column there, still give some faint idea of the magnificence of the original design, but a temple which from end to end has lost its glory and fallen from its high estate. And we say that nothing solves the complicated problem of man’s condition but the doctrine of original or birth-sin and the crushing effects of the fall.

J. C. Ryle, Holiness (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, n.d.), 4.

Exodus 21-23

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I recently read Exodus 21-23. The emphasis on loving your neighbor is very clear. That statement really does aptly summarize most of the laws in these chapters. Further, the capsule form of “love your neighbor as yourself” is memorable and thus can be recalled throughout the day as a guide.

But the specificity of the laws in these chapters reminds us that loving our neighbor needs to be worked out in specific ways. A person can’t say he loves his neighbor and then refuse to make restitution when the animal he borrowed from his neighbor dies while in his care.

Calvin on Theological Speculation

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Is it not evidence of stubbornness rather than of diligence to raise strife over the time and order in which [angels] were created . . . . Not to take too long, let us remember here, as in all religious doctrine, that we ought to hold to one rule of modesty and sobriety: not to speak, or guess, or even to seek to know, concerning obscure matters anything except what has been imparted to us by God’s Word. Furthermore, in the reading of Scripture we ought ceaselessly to endeavor to seek out and meditate upon those things which make for edification. let us not indulge in curiosity or in the investigation of unprofitable things. And because the Lord willed to instruct us, not in fruitless questions, but in sound godliness, in the fear of his name, in true trust, and in the duties of holiness, let us be satisfied with this knowledge. For this reason, if we would be duly wise, we must leave those empty speculations which idle men have taught apart from God’s word concerning the nature, orders, and number of angels. I know that many persons more greedily seize upon and take more delight in them than in such things as have been put to daily use. But, if we are not ashamed of being Christ’s disciples, let us not be ashamed to follow that method which he has prescribed. Thus it will come to pass that, content with his teaching, wee shall not only abandon, but also abhor those utterly empty speculations from which he calls us back.

Calvin, Institutes, 1.14.4

Caveats

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The nature of Leithart’s theological commentary varies. At times he is connecting the passage to redemptive history (as with the introduction, noted previously). Other times he demonstrates how a passage sheds light on a theological issue (e.g., a discussion about the rightness of prophetic declarations of judgment concludes with a reflection on the justice of eternal punishment in Hell). Most often, Leithart identifies various typological connections between Scripture texts. Some of these typologies are probably legitimate (i.e., though I don’t see a Moses-Elijah typology as Leithart does, I do think that the text presents parallels between Moses and Elijah for the purpose of demonstrating that even the great prophet Elijah is not the Prophet like Moses that the people are to anticipate),in many cases the parallels are more dependent on Leithart’s imagination and clever phasing than on the text (e.g., taking the three year drought during Ahab’s reign to foreshadow the three days that Christ, “the true Israel,” was in the tomb [133]).

So while I enjoyed Leithart’s introduction (especially after having a read a number of non-evangelicals on theological interpretation), I’m not inclined to actually buy this volume.

Leithart on Kings

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Peter Leithart’s contribution to the “Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible” is clearly evangelical.

By contrast, Stanley Hauerwas in his BTCB contribution interprets Matthew according to his political paradigm.

Matthew’s gopspel is about ‘the politics of Jesus,’ which entails an alternative to the power politics of reading the gospel. a right reading of the gospel requires a people who are shaped by the ‘oblation familiar to the faithful,’ that is, a community whose fundamental political act is the sacrifice of the altar—an alternative to Herodian power politics. A theological reading of Matthew, therefore, reaffirms that the church be an alternative politics to the politics of the world. [28]

Leithart, however, interprets Kings according to the evangel.

He notes that in the Hebrew canon Kings is one of the Former Prophets. According to Leithart,

The message of the prophets is not, ‘Israel has sinned; therefore, Israel needs to get its act together or it will die.’ The message is, ‘Israel has sinned; therefore, Israel must die, and its only hope is to entrust itself to God who will give it new life on the far side of death.’ Or even, ‘Israel has sinned; Israel is already dead. Cling to God who raises the dead.’ [18]

Leithart also relates Kings to the wisdom books:

After Solomon, wisdom simply disappears from 1-2 Kings. The words ‘wise’ or ‘wisdom’ occur twenty-one times in 1 Kgs. 1-11, but never again after those chapters. Never again does Israel or Judah have a philosopher-king, a sage on the throne. Royal wisdom, touted so heavily at the opening of the book, fails to deliver, showing that Israel’s hope for restoration, blessing, and life does not lie in human wisdom, no matter what heights it attains. [18f.]

And to the Torah. He notes that Joshua 1:8 promises success to the one who obeys the Torah,

Yet, the only king connected to Torah in 1-2 Kings is Josiah, and we are no sooner assured that he keeps Torah to perfection (2 Kings 23:25) than we learn that Yahweh still intends to destroy Judah" (1 Kings 23:26). "Once Israel sins, wisdom cannot save Israel and Judah; nor can Torah obedience. [20]

The Temple plays a similar role. The Temple is the place to which Israel can pray when facing the curses (1 Kings 9:3).

But no Davidic king ever prays in or toward the temple until Hezekiah is threatened by the Assyrians (19:1), and in the following generation Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, defiles the sanctuary more than any other king of Judah when he places a sacred pole for Asherah in the temple precincts. After a history of neglect and abuse, 2 Kings ends with an account of Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the house. [20]

Leithart then relates all of this to the gospel:

Wisdom cannot save Israel from division; Torah cannot save Judah from destruction; and the last refuge of hope, the temple, is torn apart and burned by a Babylonian king. All that made Israel Israel—king and priest, Torah and temple—is destroyed. As a prophetic narrative, 1-2 Kings makes it clear that there is no salvation for Israel within Israel. Having broken covenant, it faces the curse of the covenant: in the day you eat, you will be driven from the garden. Dying, you shall die. [20]

Against this dark backdrop Leithart turns to discuss the longsuffering of God in Kings which points to the hope of the gospel.

I would like to see the gospel developed in terms of Jesus, the king who accomplished what Solomon, Hezekiah, and Josiah could not; the prophet who faithfully declares God’s word and turns people’s hearts as Elijah could not; the priest and sacrifice who fulfilled God’s Torah; the builder and sanctifier of a temple of living stones; and the Wisdom who will instruct those who fear him how to be like him.

Providence and the Sun

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No creature has a force more wondrous or glorious than that of the sun. For besides lighting the whole earth with its brightness, how great a thing is it that by its heat it nourishes and quickens all living things! That with its rays it breathes fruitfulness into the earth! That it warms the seeds in the bosom of the earth, draws them forth with budding greenness, increases and strengthens them, nourishes them anew, until they rise up into stalks! That it feeds the plant with continual warmth, until it grows into a flower, and from flower into fruit! That then, also, with baking heat it brings the fruit to maturity! That in like manner trees and vines warmed by the sun first put forth buds and leaves, then put forth a flower, and from the flower produce fruit! Yet the Lord, to claim the whole credit for all these things, willed that, before he created the sun, light should come to be and earth be filled with all manner of herbs and fruits [Gen. 1:3, 11, 14]. Therefore a godly man will not make the sun either the principal or necessary cause of these things which existed before the creation of the sun, but merely the instrument that God uses because he so wills; for with no more difficulty he might abandon it, and act through himself. Then we read that at Joshua’s prayers the sun stood still in one degree for two days [Josh. 10:13], and that its shadow went back ten degrees for the sake of King Hezekiah [2 Kings 20:11 or Isa. 38:8], God has witnessed by those few miracles that the sun does not daily rise and set by a blind instinct of nature but that he himself, to renew our remembrance of his fatherly favor toward us governs our course.

Calvin, Institutes, 1.16.2

Ryle on Holiness 2

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True holiness does not consist merely of believing and feeling, but of doing and bearing, and a practical exhibition of active and passive grace. Our tongues, our tempers, our natural passions and inclinations—our conduct as parents and children, masters and servants, husbands and wives, rulers and subjects—our dress, our employment of time, our behaviour in business, our demeanour in sickness and health, in riches and poverty—all, all these are matters which are fully treated by inspired writers. They are not content with a general statement of what we should believe and feel, and how we are to have the roots of holiness planted in our hearts. They dig down lower. They go into particulars. They specify minutely what a holy man ought to do and be in his own family, and by his own fireside, if he abodes in Christ. I doubt whether this sort of teaching is sufficiently attended to in the movement of the present day. When people talk of having received ‘such a blessing,’ and of having found ‘the higher life,’ after hearing some earnest advocate of ‘holiness by faith and self-consecration,’ while their families and friends see no improvement and no increased sanctity in their daily tempers and behaviour, immense harm is done to the cause of Christ. True holiness, we surely ought to remember, does not consist merely of inward sensations and impressions. It is much more than tears, sighs, and bodily excitement, and a quickened pulse, and a passionate feeling of attachment to our own favourite preachers and our own religious party, and a readiness to quarrel with everyone who does not agree with us. It is something of ‘the image of Christ,’ which can be seen and observed by others in our private life, and habits, and character, and doings. (Rom. 8:29.)

J. C. Ryle, Holiness (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, n.d.), x.