On Christian Love, A Sermon by Hugh Latimer, Part 2

St. Paul has an expression in the 13th chapter of the first of the Corinthians, which, according to the outward letter, seems much to the dispraise of this faith, and to the praise of love; these are his words, "Now abideth faith, hope and love, even these three; but the chiefest of these is love." There are some learned men who expound the greatness of which St. Paul speaketh here as if meant for eternity. For when we come to God, then we believe no more, but rather see with our eyes face to face how He is; yet for all that love remains still; so that love may be called the chiefest, because she endureth forever. And though she is the chiefest, yet we must not attribute unto her the office which pertains unto faith only. Like as I cannot say, the Mayor of Stamford must make me a pair of shoes because he is a greater man than the shoemaker is; for the mayor, though he is a greater man, yet it is not his office to make shoes; so though love be greater, yet it is not her office to save. Thus much I thought good to say against those who fight against the truth.

 

Now, when we would know who are in Christ's livery or not, we must learn it of St. Paul, who most evidently described charity, which is the only livery, saying, "Love is patient, she suffereth long." Now whosoever fumeth and is angry, he is out of this livery: therefore let us remember that we do not cast away the livery of Christ our Master. When we are in sickness, or any manner of adversities, our duty is to be patient, to suffer willingly, and to call upon Him for aid, help and comfort; for without Him we are not able to abide any tribulation. Therefore we must call upon God, He has promised to help: therefore let me not think Him to be false or untrue to His promises, for we cannot dishonor God more than by not believing or trusting in Him. Therefore let us beware above all things of dishonoring God; and so we must be patient, trusting and most certainly believing that He will deliver us when it seems good to Him, who knows the time better than we ourselves.

 

"Charity is gentle, friendly, and loving; she envieth not." They that envy their neighbor's profit when it goes well with him, such fellows are out of their liveries, and so out of the service of God; for to be envious is to be the servant of the devil.

 

"Love doth not frowardly, she is not a provoker"; as there are some men who will provoke their neighbor so far that it is very hard for them to be in charity with them; but we must wrestle with our affections; we must strive and see that we keep this livery of Christ our master; for "the devil goeth about as a roaring lion seeking to take us at a vantage," to bring us out of our liveries, and to take from us the knot of love and charity.

 

"Love swelleth not, is not puffed up"; but there are many swellers nowadays, they are so high, so lofty, insomuch that they despise and contemn all others; all such persons are under the governance of the devil. God rules not them with His good spirit; the evil spirit has occupied their hearts and possest them.

 

"She doth not dishonestly; she seeketh not her own; she doth all things to the commodity of her neighbors." A charitable man will not promote himself with the damage of his neighbor. They that seek only their own advantage, forgetting their neighbors, they are not of God, they have not His livery. Further, "Charity is not provoked to anger; she thinketh not evil." We ought not to think evil of our neighbor, as long as we see not open wickedness; for it is written, "You shall not judge"; we should not take upon us to condemn our neighbor. And surely the condemners of other men's works are not in the livery of Christ. Christ hateth them.

On Christian Love, A Sermon by Hugh Latimer, Part 1

This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you. John 15:12

Seeing the time is so far spent, we will take no more in hand at this time than this one sentence; for it will be enough for us to consider this well, and to bear it away with us. "This I command unto you, that ye love one another." Our Savior himself spake these words at His last supper: it was the last sermon that He made unto His disciples before His departure; it is a very long sermon. For our Savior, like as one that knows he shall die shortly, is desirous to spend that little time that He has with His friends, in exhorting and instructing them how they should lead their lives. Now among other things that He commanded this was one: "This I command unto you, that ye love one another." The English expresses as though it were but one, "This is my commandment." I examined the Greek, where it is in the plural number, and very well; for there are many things that pertain to a Christian man, and yet all those things are contained in this one thing, that is, love. He lappeth up all things in love.

Our whole duty is contained in these words, "Love together." Therefore St. Paul saith, "He that loveth another fulfilleth the whole law"; so it appeareth that all things are contained in this word love. This love is a precious thing; our Savior saith, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye shall love one another."

So Christ makes love His cognizance, His badge, His livery. Like as every lord commonly gives a certain livery to his servants, whereby they may be known that they pertain unto him; and so we say, yonder is this lord's servants, because they wear his livery: so our Savior, who is the Lord above all lords, would have His servants known by their liveries and badge, which badge is love alone. Whosoever now is endued with love and charity is His servant; him we may call Christ's servant; for love is the token whereby you may know that such a servant pertaineth to Christ; so that charity may be called the very livery of Christ. He that hath charity is Christ's servant; he that hath not charity is the servant of the devil. For as Christ's livery is love and charity, so the devil's livery is hatred, malice and discord.

But I think the devil has a great many more servants than Christ has; for there are a great many more in his livery than in Christ's livery; there are but very few who are endued with Christ's livery; with love and charity, gentleness and meekness of spirit; but there are a great number that bear hatred and malice in their hearts, that are proud, stout, and lofty; therefore the number of the devil's servants is greater than the number of Christ's servants.

Now St. Paul shows how needful this love is. I speak not of carnal love, which is only animal affection; but of this charitable love, which is so necessary that when a man hath it, without all other things it will suffice him. Again, if a man have all other things and lacketh that love it will not help him, it is all vain and lost. St. Paul used it so: "Though I speak with tongues of men and angels, and yet had no love, I were even as sounding brass, or as a tinkling cymbal. And though I could prophesy and understand all secrets and all knowledge; yet if I had faith, so that I could move mountains out of their places, and yet had no love, I were nothing. And though I bestowed all my goods to feed the poor, and though I gave my body even that I were burned, and yet had no love, it profiteth me nothing" (I Cor. xiii). These are godly gifts, yet St. Paul calls them nothing when a man hath them without charity; which is a great commendation, and shows the great need of love, insomuch that all other virtues are in vain when this love is absent. And there have been some who taught that St. Paul spake against the dignity of faith; but you must understand that St. Paul speaks here not of the justifying faith, wherewith we receive everlasting life, but he understands by this word faith the gift to do miracles, to remove hills; of such a faith he speaks. This I say to confirm this proposition. Faith only justifieth; this proposition is most true and certain. And St. Paul speaks not here of this lively justifying faith; for this right faith is not without love, for love cometh and floweth out of faith; love is a child of faith; for no man can love except he believe, so that they have two several offices, they themselves being inseparable.

Selection Implies Rejection

Again, we will take up the ever popular doctrine of reprobation. One of the more common ways of delineating the doctrine is to affirm something like this: Predestination of the elect is an intentional choice of God; whereas reprobation is merely a permissive choice, leaving them to their own devices with no active participation on the part of God in the preterition of the reprobate. In simpler terms, it is asserted that God actively chooses the elect for salvation, but the reprobate He merely passes over. I have long struggled to see the logic in such a suggestion. Some 1800 years ago, Tertullian wrote what seems to me to be the logical downfall of such an assertion. He says “for selection implies rejection.”

What could be clearer? If you are offered the chicken or the fish, and you choose the fish, you have ipso facto, rejected the chicken. What difference is there between rejecting it and passing it over? You have not chosen it. That is what rejection means: not choosing something. Again Tertullian says, “A preference for the one is not possible without slighting the other, and no choice can be made without a rejection. He who selects some one out of many, has already slighted the other which he does not select.”

So it seems rather impossible, in my estimation, flawed though it may be, to assert that God merely passes over the reprobate. The Bible unapologetically declares that God’s whole purpose for raising up Pharaoh was to condemn him as a demonstration of God's justice. Paul writes, “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’ But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory” (Romans 9:17-23 ESV) The weight of Paul’s polemic is aimed at the natural assumption of fallen humanity that this is inherently unfair somehow.

But Scripture goes even further. We are told that God also hardens the reprobate and sends a spirit of delusion to them: “Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2 Thess. 2:11-12 ESV)

And then going one step further, the Bible declares that God has predestined that they would stumble: “And ‘A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.’ They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.” (1 Peter 2:8 ESV)

Consonant with this are the two related statements of Jude: (a) “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ” (Jude 1:1 ESV) (b) “For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” (Jude 1:4 ESV) Jude puts the choice of the elect and the choice of the reprobate in the exact same relationship: God’s sovereign choice.

Lest we fall into the Arminian error that puts the cart before the horse by claiming that God foreknows what man will do, and then tailors His reactions to this, God informs us that He hated Esau before he was born and before he did good or evil: “though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’” (Romans 9:11-13 ESV)

At bottom, it would appear to be a question of God’s sovereign control over all things. What advantage do we gain by saying that God is active in the choosing of the elect, but passive in the damnation of the reprobate? The very term reprobate implies their being the passive recipients of some judgment. Why isn’t it more consistent to say that if the elect are predestined to salvation that logically the opposite is also true?

Commenting on Proverbs 16:4, Matthew Henry writes: “Note, 1. That God is the first cause. He is the former of all things and all persons, the fountain of being; he gave every creature the being it has and appointed it its place. Even the wicked are his creatures, though they are rebels; he gave them those powers with which they fight against him, which aggravates their wickedness, that they will not let him that made them rule them, and therefore, though he made them, he will not save them. 2. That God is the last end. All is of him and from him, and therefore all is to him and for him. He made all according to his will and for his praise; he designed to serve his own purposes by all his creatures, and he will not fail of his designs; all are his servants. The wicked he is not glorified by, but he will be glorified upon.”

On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached, “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” (Acts 2:23 ESV)

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’ (Acts 2:27-28 ESV)

If ever there was a reprobate, surely this was Judas Iscariot. In reference to him, we are told: Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray him. (John 6:70-71 ESV)

Hooked on a Feeling

I have recently encountered, again, a strange infatuation among Reformed folk for the strange goings-on in Pentecostal circles. I could say a lot about this, but I will limit my remarks to a few salient points.

First of all, some exegetical remarks are not out of line. It is as clear as day that whenever the Spirit of God did anything out of the ordinary in Scripture, the result was doctrine, content. Peter stands up on the day of Pentecost and preaches theology. No one on Pentecost raved about how wonderful they felt! There is nary a mention in Scripture to feeling in conjunction with any revelatory activity by the Holy Spirit. Period!

Fast forward to the present, and all you find when the Spirit supposed moves (whatever that un-defined term is supposed to mean), is nothing but fluff and goose bumps. People go on and on about how wonderful and sublime they felt, but not a word is mentioned about content. And that right there is enough to prove false all the professed manifestations of the Spirit among Pentecostals.

Secondly, there is simply no way to get around the issue of the sufficiency of Scripture. Either God has revealed all He intends to reveal to us in the Bible or not. There is no third choice. Admit even the slightest sliver of a possibility for any kind of revelation however inane, and you have in practice, if not on paper, jettisoned Scripture as any kind of authority at all. It is all or nothing.

In his book The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, written in 1882, George Smeaton nails it perfectly when he writes:

“These extraordinary gifts of the Spirit were no long needed when the canon of Scripture was closed. Up to that pint they were an absolute necessity. They are now no longer so. Nor is the Church warranted to expect their restoration, or to desire prophetic visions, immediate revelations, or miraculous gifts, either in public or in private, beyond or besides, the all-perfect canon of Scripture. The Church of Rome, which still claims these extraordinary gifts, is to that extent injurious to the Spirit as the author of Scripture. And enthusiastic sects that cherish the belief of their restoration, or an expectation to that effect, have not learned or duly pondered how great a work of the Spirit has been completed and provided for the Church of all times in the gift of the Holy Scriptures.”

Sometimes people grow accustomed to things and forget the reasons why they do them. Reformed folk need to be reminded of why we have always held to the cessation of revelatory sign gifts. Warfield wrote that this was one of the protests of the Reformation that earned us the name “Protestant.”

Is The Word "Sin" That Hard To Say?

Everywhere you turn these days, you are bombarded with articles, incidents, books, movies, etc., regarding homosexuality. Scan through any dozen news articles and there will always be three or four that mention it. It is my considered opinion that the pro-homosexual movement, from here on referred as the pro-Sodom agenda, is using exposure as a desensitizing influence on society. Keep something in front of the masses regularly enough and for long enough and they’ll start to see at as normal. Once the majority of people view something as relatively normal, all vestiges of the past will have been swept away.

This was brought home to me with peculiar impact by a documentary I saw a few days ago. The program was about the strange cosmetic surgeries some people want, and actually have done. I will not go into all the details of the show, but one example was a Russian woman who was having a procedure done in which her legs were broken, then her calves were stretched out millimeters at a time over a long period of time, thus making the new bones longer during the healing process. All of this agony was so that this woman could gain an inch or two in height.

Another woman had had a nose job, and several other procedures done to her face. She had ribs removed in order to get a small waistline. After nineteen breast related surgeries, she set her sights on an augmentation so outrageous that the unscrupulous American cosmetic surgeons, who had already bilked her on 19 other breast surgeries, laughed her out of their office. Not to be deterred, she went overseas and had the procedure done anyway. She contracted a horrific infection there which nearly took her life.

Through these, and the other portions of the program, the producers had a team of various experts, psychiatrists and psychologists commenting on these people’s strange behavior. The gist of all of the collective insight was simple: “These people have severe psychological problems. They have very big problems internally and they are trying to mask, evade or compensate for these by changing themselves externally. They should instead address their inner issues and change there rather than changing themselves on the outside.” Fair enough.

But then, lo and behold, there was a man who was having the first of several scheduled surgeries to change himself in a “woman.” So, of course he went to Thailand, were such profligate behavior is encouraged, and had the first surgery to feminize his face.

Based on all the comments by the panel of psychiatrists and psychologists, you could almost anticipate what they were going to say: “This man has a huge internal problem which he should change. Instead of ignoring it and forcing his external image to fit to his internal erroneous concept of reality.” But no dice. These same experts who decried cosmetic procedures which betrayed the subjects’ refusal to face reality by tampering with their bodies, then turned around and applauded this Sodomite for having to the courage to change his body, in the face of societal disapproval, because it is important to give yourself what you want to be happy. If this isn’t the acme of professional and ethical hypocrisy, nothing is!

As a Christian, you might expect a more consistent stance by our clergy. Yet again, no dice. Time after time, prominent ministers are queried (interesting word choice) regarding their position on homosexuality and one finds nearly as much waffling and hypocritical double standards. If one didn’t know better, one might think that the Bible has nothing to say about the matter. Yet time and again, pastors, with wide audiences and influence, mince words and obfuscate in a manner more becoming of ambulance chasers than ministers of the Gospel. It is really a very simple yes or no question: “Is homosexuality a sin?”  Plain answer: “Yes.” Now how hard is that? 


One is reminded of the highly satirical lyrics of the song by Steve Taylor, “What Ever Happened To Sin?” He writes:

“I heard the Reverend say,

‘Gay is probably normal in the Good Lord's sight.

What's to be debated?

Jesus never stated what's right’

I'm no theology nut,

But The Reverend may be a little confused.

For if the Lord don't care

And he chooses to ignore-ah

Tell it to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah”