“The ‘law’ given to the first Adam, the first son of God, was broken, and mankind was thrown out of the garden into the wilderness. The law given to Israel, the son of God, was broken, and the nation was thrown out of its promised land into the wilderness of exile. A last Adam came as the truly obedient covenant partner of God, signifying his identification with a people that desperately needed this help. We can almost hear heaven’s sigh of relief, ‘At last! A true son of God.’ ‘You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased’ is God’s word of approval. Then this true Adam, this true Israel, goes out into our wilderness to be tempted and to be victorious, so that he might make for us a way back into the garden of God.”

-from Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture.

In recent news, I’ve heard gross moral failings repeatedly described as resulting from “a culture of” some particular type of undesirable thing or another. Most recently, the Secret Service scandal has prompted questions about the Secret Service being a culture of partying and debauchery. Before that, the NFL bounty program was explained as existing in a culture of violence. In the wake of soldiers posing with the dead bodies of their enemies and videoing torture scenes in military prisons the military was described as harboring a culture of violence and the abuse of authority. The Catholic Church, following the sex abuse scandal among priests, was called a culture of secrecy. Pretty much every facet of both the hip-hop and rock-n-roll industry has been described as a culture of sex, drugs, money, power, or violence (or all of the above) at one time or another. Wall Street breeds a culture of corruption and greed. Fraternities establish cultures of alcohol abuse and hazing. There are cultures of racism, cultures of sexism, cultures of hate, cultures just about anything.

To be sure, the “culture of” language is helpful in several ways. First, the “culture of” language admits that there is a massive problem that is inherent to the existence of various entities. We know that the problems we explain as a “culture of” something or another can’t exist because of one or two bad apples. Second, there is an implied acceptance of a general morality. When things go wrong on a large scale, we hang up our moral relativism pretty quickly. Third, when we describe cultures of problems, we are also longing for a culture without those same problems. We know things can’t be right as they currently exist.

Nonetheless, this language also falls short in several ways. First, describing the NFL bounty program (just for example) as resulting from a culture that accepts and celebrates violence distances the real people involved from the issue. The people are not the issue, the culture in which they exist is the issue. In other words, the players who were willing to attempt to hurt other players purposefully are only that way because of the culture in which they exist. It can’t be the case that the players are failing to love their neighbors as themselves. It can’t be an issue of sin. Of course, there is often a fall guy(s), but, it seems to me, the fall guy is generally viewed as the cultural figurehead taking the rap for the culture. The fall guy is someone we can point to in order to prove our disdain for the identified problem and feel like we are actually making progress in our attempts to clean things up a bit. A second issue is related to the first. Describing sin in terms of a “culture of” allows us to distance ourselves from the actual, particular sins that exist in that culture. If there is a culture that we can identify from the outside, then it is a culture we are not part of (or at least can choose to no longer be a part of). However, if I say that the issue is people, who are very much like me, are sinful, then I may have to deal with the fact that I am growing from the same root. The distance we create allows us to judge the situation without feeling like we are judging anyone in particular, and this helps us keep our own hands clean. Third, the “culture of” language points to the fact that it often takes large scale wrong, or particularly egregious wrongs, for us to start caring. In our decries of cultures of this, that, or the other, we overlook the fact that we are operating within a (dare I say) culture of apathy that allows us to say, “Who am I to judge?” when it comes to individual issues (or issues that we may benefit from by not judging). Our overlooking of individual sins betrays our outrage at corporate, communal, and particularly egregious sins.

The problem with various pockets of humanity is not that they exist within a culture of something bad. The problem with various pockets of humanity is that they are filled with humans, sinful humans. Cultures of violence exist because we despise, deny, and therefore are willing to deface the image of God that all people necessarily bear. Cultures of sexual exploitation exist because we are adulterers. Cultures of secrecy exist because the truth is not in us. Cultures of racism exist because we long for a permanent identity and need some way to define it. Cultures of greed exist because we want security and will do anything to attain it. Of course there are complicated combinations of reasons why these cultures exist, but the base issue is, we are sinners. In the end, we all exist together in a “culture of sin”, and we are all pulling our weight in shaping that culture.

Here is a great paragraph from Michael Horton regarding why church tradition is not all bad, the larger Christian conversation can be very helpful, and the banal mantra, “No creed  but Christ; no book but the Bible,” is not all that helpful.

“Creeds, confessions, a good systematic theology can all help us to see the limitations of our own narrow range of ideas, presuppositions, experiences, and longings. We must rid ourselves of the notion that it matters little what others have said in their reading of Scripture through the ages, since we are just reading the Bible. So, too, of course, were those others who have gone before us. The choice is not between following ‘mere men’ and Scripture directly; it’s a choice between interpreting Scripture with the larger church rather than thinking of ourselves as omnicompetent. It is a sign of humility when we are able to conclude that we, like the Ethiopian eunuch, are hampered by our own blind spots. ‘So Philip ran to him [the Ethiopian], and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ And he said, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him… Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this Scripture [Isa. 53:7-8], preached Jesus to him’ (Acts 8:30-31, 35 NKJV). Instead of pretending to start from scratch, join the conversation already in progress since Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” From Michael Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship.

This post requires four qualifications right up front (which may mean I should rethink clicking publish).

First, to keep at bay the potential responses that I am just an Apple hater trying to make what I don’t like sinful, I will say right up front, “I like and use Apple products a lot.”

Second, the issue is not limited to Apple products, or even techno-gadgets.

Third, this is not a call for smashing your gadgets with a hammer and returning to sticky notes, steno pads, and Franklin Covey binders. Although, if you feel so moved, I would like to help because smashing stuff with hammers is fun.

Fourth, it is not necessarily sinful to have, or even like, gadgets.

With that said, this article by Carl Trueman on the Reformation21 blog raises a great question, “To what degree do we look to things other than Christ for relief (or at least distraction) from our condition and need?” Karl Marx declared, “[Religion] is the opium of the people;” Carl Trueman points at gadgets (probably as a typical example) as the modern opium and says we’re basically acting like a bunch of junkies.

Coming out of our Wednesday School study there were a number of questions being asked that can be summarized as follows, “How does the Christian relate to the Law?”

There are essentially three answers:

1. Legalism – We keep the law to gain some favor from God. This favor can be construed as justification or as some temporal blessing in this life. The former is saying, “Because I am good, God saves me.” This is patently false. No one is justified by works of the law. The latter is saying, “Because I am good, God blesses me” (makes me rich or successful or happy or whatever). This is also patently false. We simply cannot earn God’s favor either eternally in the form justification or temporally in the form of “blessing”.

2. Antinomianism – We need not keep the law at all. We have been freed from the Law in Christ, and it therefore has nothing to say to us. This is antinomianism and fails to make sense of either Scripture or life. It is clear in Scripture that murder is wrong for all people, even those in Christ. This is a law. You should keep it and not reject it. Antinomians take statements in which Paul is dealing with pursuing justification through the law (most often from books like Romans and Galatians), and applies them too broadly.

3. Biblical Christianity – The New Testament takes a more nuanced approach to the law that says you cannot earn God’s favor by keeping the law, but you can glorify him by loving him and obeying his commands. You cannot be one of God’s people by keeping the law, but because you are one of God’s people by grace through faith in Christ, obey. Paul says in Ephesians 2.8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (ESV). We are all familiar with this. Paul then goes on to say in Ephesians 2.10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” So, clearly there is some concept in Christianity of a “good work”, and God has defined them. So, what are they? Are they not just keeping the law. Well, yes and no. Historically, we have distinguished between the moral, the civil, and the ceremonial laws of the Mosaic Covenant. In one sense, the civil and ceremonial laws are particular applications of the moral law for the people of Israel as the existed as this ancient theocracy. Therefore, while these particular applications don’t make sense for us today, the moral law that underlies the civil and ceremonial and is summed up in the ten commandments still serves as a guide for holy living, what Calvin called the third use of the law. This is why Jesus expounds the ten commandments in the Sermon on the Mount and God tells Peter to eat unclean food in Acts 10.

If you are interested in further reading on this issue I recommend this article by Rev. Richard Phillips and this article by Dr. Richard Alderson. If you are interested in a lengthier treatment of the ten commandments and the Christian life, I recommend, The Law of Perfect Freedom by Michael Horton and How Jesus Transforms the Ten Commandments by Ed Clowney.

Here is an exerpt from an article by Vern Poythress that relates to our Wed night study.
You can read the full article here  Overview of the Bible :A Survey of the History of Salvation

Covenants
The promises of God in the OT come in the context
not only of God’s commitment to his people but also of
instruction about the people’s commitment and
obligations to God. Noah, Abraham, and others whom God
meets and addresses are called on to respond not only
with trust in God’s promises but with lives that begin to
bear fruit from their fellowship with God. The relation of
God to his people is summed up in various covenants that
God makes with people. A covenant between two human
beings is a binding commitment obliging them to deal
faithfully with one another (as with Jacob and Laban in
Gen. 31:44). When God makes a covenant with man, God
is the sovereign, so he specifies the obligations on both
sides. “I will be their God” is the fundamental obligation
on God’s side, while “they shall be my people” is the fundamental
obligation on the human side. But then there are variations in the details.
For example, when God first calls Abram he says, “Go
from your country and your kindred and your father’s
house to the land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1). This
commandment specifies an obligation on the part of
Abram, an obligation on the human side. God also indicates
what he will do on his part: “And I will make of you
a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name
great, so that you will be a blessing” (Gen. 12:2). God’s
commitment takes the form of promises, blessings, and
curses. The promises and blessings point forward to Christ,
who is the fulfillment of the promises and the source of
final blessings. The curses point forward to Christ both in
his bearing the curse and in his execution of judgment and
curse against sin, especially at the second coming.
The obligations on the human side of the covenants
are also related to Christ. Christ is fully man as well as
fully God. As a man, he stands with his people on the human side.
He fulfilled the obligations of God’s covenants
through his perfect obedience (Heb. 5:8). He received the
reward of obedience in his resurrection and ascension (see
Phil. 2:9–10). The OT covenants on their human side thus
point forward to his achievement.
By dealing with the wrath of God against sin, Christ
changed a situation of alienation from God to a situation of peace.
He reconciled believers to God (2 Cor.
5:18–21; Rom. 5:6–11). He brought personal intimacy
with God, and the privilege of being children of God
(Rom. 8:14–17). This intimacy is what all the
OT covenants anticipated. In Isaiah, God even declares that his
servant, the Messiah, will be the covenant for the people
(see Isa. 42:6; 49:8).

Last week, in our adult Wednesday School class, the question, “Why should we believe the Bible?” was raised. This question has been asked time and time again throughout history, and the answer to this question has taken different forms.

Often times, someone who is skeptical of the Christian faith may ask this question in the following, challenging maner,”You say the Bible is the authoritative Word of God. Why should I believe you?”

“Because this is not just my opinion, it is the very thing that the Bible claims,” we respond.

Our friend thoughtfully replies, “Yes, but why should I believe what the Bible says about itself? Aren’t there lots of books that make similar claims? Why should I believe the Bible over the other books that make similar claims? And isn’t that a circular argument anyway?”

Well, now, it may seem, we are in a pickle. How do we respond? Can we respond? Is accepting Scripture on its own authority wrong? These and many other questions immediately flood into our minds, and we often do not know how to respond.

Like many questions of a philosophical nature (indeed any good philosophical question is this way), it is much easier to ask the hard question than it is to answer the hard question. We often wrongly assume that questions must be as easily answered as they are asked, but such is not the case. It need not be a disconcerting that we do not have a simple, impenetrable, pocket-answer for serious questions. (On a side-note: I think the churches emphasis on pre-packaged, one-two-punch style evangelism and apologetics has done a great disservice to Christians by causing them to think that they can or even should have an easy answer for every skeptical question.) There are hard questions that take hours long discussions to work through in anything approaching a satisfactory manner, and that is okay. Moreover, there are theological truths, such as the sinful nature of man, that remind us of the barriers that no amount of debate and proof can break through. Every person’s heart is hard with sin and must be shattered by God if we are to come to terms with his Word.

Therefore, I would like to provide links to several articles for those interested in thinking through this issue in a deeper way. You will see that none of these articles provide short, pocket answers. Neither do these articles provide answers that will ever be fully satisfying to a faithless mind; nonetheless, they are helpful in thinking through the issues that surround that self-attestation and authority of Scripture.

Kim Riddlebarger has written a series of short, helpful articles titled Basics of the Reformed Faith on the blog of Westminster Seminary California. Two of these article, “The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible,” and “The Sufficiency of Scripture” are helpful in the present discussion.

John Rogers, a reformed minister in New Zealand, has written an article titled, “Why should We Believe the Bible?” which is a helpful introduction to the issues that are at stake with the current question and our various possible answers.

John Murray and John Frame offer longer, more thorough treatments of the question that can be found here and here.

If you want more reading on the doctrine of Scripture, you can find these and an host of other links at monergism.com.

THE HYMNS MOVEMENT

Here are a couple thoughts on rediscovering the “rich heritage of old worship practices” as well as a link to some interesting articles on “The New Hymns Movement”

“Modern worship is witnessing a renaissance.  Within the now decades-old phenomenon known as “contemporary worship,” a new generation of young people is discovering (perhaps for the first time) the rich heritage of the old worship practices and the ancient song of the Christian church.  Diving into the deep waters of Christian hymnody, they are reopening a dusty vault filled with hymn texts long forgotten.  As they pilfer the files, they are discovering songs that their hearts long to sing but contemporary worship rarely provides.  And they are now bushwhacking an overgrown but once well-trodden path of church music…setting old hymns to new music.  They are re-fitting ancient texts into the idioms and expressions of modern folk, pop, and rock music. They are singing these “new hymns” in college gatherings, urban and suburban church plants, student camps, and now even some mainstream established churches.  They are producing albums which rival the sonic heights of the more popular worship leaders and artists.”

~ Zac Hicks

Want even more explanation/analysis?

Cardiphonia: Observations on the New Hymns Movement ( Part 1 | Part 2 )

This song has been encouraging to me this week, especially in light of the message this past Sunday from 1 Corinthians 15 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

“Absent From Flesh” is another great song reminding us that our future glory is secure and in fact something to look forward to with great anticipation.

Absent'From'Flesh
by Isaac Watts / Jamie Barnes

Verse 1
Absent from flesh, O blissful thought
What joy this moment brings
Freed from the blame my sin has brought,
From pain and death and its sting.

Verse 2
Absent from flesh, O Glorious day!
In one triumphant stroke
My reckoning paid, my charges dropped
and the bonds 'round my hands are broke.

CHORUS:
I go where God and glory shine,
To one eternal day
This failing body I now resign,
For the angels point my way.
For the angels point my way.

Verse 3
Absent from flesh! then rise, my soul,
Where feet nor wings could climb,
Beyond the sky, where planets roll,
And beyond all keep of time.

Acts 8 records a conversation with Philip and an Ethiopian eunuch.

Philip, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, encounters the Ethiopian reading Isaiah and asks, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

The Ethiopian man replies, “How can I unless someone guides me?”

Paul asks the following questions in Romans 10, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’ But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?’ So faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of Christ.”

Again Paul writes, this time in Ephesians 4, “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature man hood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, Jesus Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

God has given people with “word gifts” to the church to announce the gospel for the salvation of his people, to announce the gospel for the equipping of his people, and to announce the gospel for the sanctification of his people. John Calvin reminds us that it is not the Word of God that needs help in these ways, but the hearers and readers. He writes, “Although the Holy Scripture contains a perfect doctrine, to which one can add nothing, since in it our Lord has meant to display infinite treasures of his wisdom, yet a person who has not much practice in is has good reason for some guidance and direction, to know what he ought to look for in it, in order not to wander hither and thither, but to hold to a sure path, that he may always be pressing toward the end to which the Holy Spirit calls him.”