The Place of Dependence

We live in a strange world, a world which presents us with tremendous contrasts. The high and the low, the great and the small, the sublime and the ridiculous, the beautiful and the ugly, the tragic and the comic, the good and the evil, the truth and the lie, these all are heaped up in unfathomable interrelationship. The gravity and the vanity of life seize on us in turn. Now we are prompted to optimism, then to pessimism. Man weeping is constantly giving way to man laughing. The whole world stands in the sign of humor, which has been well described as a laugh in a tear.¹ 

Herman Bavinck may have have written those sentences 111 years ago, but he could be describing the present. Life as we know it has changed drastically for the entire world. Every level of society has been impacted, and what we once knew may never return. I am more aware than I have ever been of the complex tangle of human lives, basic needs, information, and decisions that are "heaped up in unfathomable interrelationship."

In March, two pastors on Twitter asked if Christians would be willing to fast and pray for an hour on Friday afternoons regarding the coronavirus. I was gung-ho the first two weeks and eager to pray. The hour passed quickly as I prayed for everyone and everything I could think of. But as the weeks passed, the number of situations and people needing prayer seemed to grow exponentially. When the last prayer time rolled around, I began to think of government employees from national to local levels, medical staff and researchers, essential workers, the unemployed, the elderly, those with compromised health or mental illness, and the list went on and on. All these people so dependent on each other.  Some have positions of authority with decision-making power over many. But there are others previously overlooked who we are literally depending upon for our daily bread. So many people. So many lives. Any attempt to untangle these interrelationships would inevitably result in harm to someone because this is a no-win situation. These thoughts were too overwhelming, so I had to give way to the tears and lament that had been building up inside. The only words left to pray were, "Lord, you know."

In our inmost selves, we are immediately  -- without benefit of reasoning, that is, and prior to all reasoning -- conscious of ourselves as created, limited, dependent beings. We are dependent upon everything around us, upon the whole spiritual and material world. Man is a "dependent" of the universe. And further, he is dependent, together with other created things, and dependent this time in an absolute sense, on God who is the one, eternal, and real being.²

If our sole dependence rested on other fallible human beings, we would have good reason to fear. There is a limit to the best wisdom, knowledge, and skill any person can offer, and that "best" is still tainted with sin. But there is Someone greater, wiser, and more powerful undergirding our interrelationships and interdependence on each other. Someone on whom we truly depend. He is not the watchmaker god of the deists who winds the timepiece and observes what will happen from afar. Our God sees perfectly and judges righteously. His purpose will not waiver and neither will his love. He took on humanity that he might redeem us, purchasing pardon with his death and providing righteousness with his life.

As his children, we have an open invitation to the throne of grace. We are welcome to pour out our hearts in petition, but we are also free to come when we are too overwhelmed to even know what to pray.  We can come to the end of our rope and the end of ourselves in this place of dependence. A place where Christ accepts a feeble, "Lord, you know," and gives us assurance that he does.

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Heb. 4:15-16 NASB

1. The Wonderful Works of God, Herman Bavinck, Westminster Seminary Press, 2019, pg. 29.
2. Ibid. pg. 27.
Photo attribution: Paulo Barcellos Jr. / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

Bavinck on Justification

One of the most challenging teaching assignments I've ever had was when Todd and I taught basics of the Christian faith to 3rd through 6th graders. We discussed who God is and how we can know him. We talked about sin and how it separates us from God. The material wasn't easy, but the questions from the kids were especially challenging.

My husband, who is far more insightful than I am, commented once that all the questions essentially boiled down to a couple of basic ideas. Is salvation really a gift? Isn't there something I need to do to add to it? The answer is the same: If our salvation depended on something we could do, we have no hope. It's the same question the apostle Paul dealt with, it was still being asked in Bavinck's time, and it's one we'll be grappling with until Jesus comes again.

Justification is the doctrine on which the church stands or falls. Either we must do something to be saved, or our salvation is purely a gift of grace. If our work, our virtue, our sanctification is primary, then we remain in doubt and uncertainty to our last breath; Christ's unique, all-encompassing, and all sufficient mediatorial office is set aside and God is robbed of his honor. [1]

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. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

We cannot earn our salvation, but because of Christ, we can be assured of our salvation, right down to our dying breath.

[1] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 563.

Herman Bavinck - Reformed Dogmatics

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) was a Dutch Reformed Theologian. In 1902 he succeeded Abraham Kuyper as Professor of Theology at the Free University of Amsterdam. He is best known for his four volume work, Reformed Dogmatics (also available in a abridged version, edited by John Bolt).

I first became aware of Bavinck from my friend Gloria Furman. She kept putting these fantastic quotes up on Twitter, which made me wonder who this Dutch guy was.

We can benefit by reading all sorts of different things. Some things, like blog posts, are like salad or potato chips. Light and (sometimes) beneficial, but not always filling. A few contemporary classics, like J.I. Packer's Knowing God, are like a steak dinner, one of the heavier meals, but manageable. And then works like Reformed Dogmatics are akin to fudge or cheesecake--rich and filling. While a few exceptional people might be able to take works like Reformed Dogmatics (or foods like fudge) in large gulps, most of us have to take it slowly.

For the past few years, I've been drawn to readings on the attributes of God. People have been trying to come to God on their own terms since Genesis 3. When it comes to God's attributes, we tend to elevate the attributes we find less threatening. This leaves us with a God more akin to a kindly grandpa or Santa Claus and not the God revealed in Scripture.

I like what Bavinck has to say about the subject.

When a single attribute is chosen as foundational it affects the total portrait of God; a wrong choice here points us to a different God than the one revealed in Scripture. Choosing love, for example, exposes us to the danger of regarding other attributes of God, such as righteousness and holiness, as less real. (1)

And later:

Each attribute expresses something special about God. God himself reveals his many perfections to us; we name him with the names Scripture itself provides. No one perfection fully expresses God's being. This diversity does not clash with God's simplicity. God reveals himself to finite creatures by many names because the divine essence is so infinitely and profusely rich that we cannot grasp it all at once, and God relates to us in many ways, now in one relationship, then in another. God remains eternally and immutably the same, but our relation to him varies in the same way that the light that breaks up into many colors remains the same (Augustine), and fire does not change whether it warms us, illumines us, or consumes us (Moses Maimonides). (2)

God certainly is a God of love, but he's a holy God as well. He never changes, nor does he need anything from us. Our finite minds can never fully grasp him in his fullness, but when we reflect on his attributes as revealed in Scripture, we glimpse a holy God who could not ignore our sin, but because of his love made a way for us to come to him through the sacrifice of his Son on the cross (Ephesians 1:4-5). It reminds us what a privilege it is to be able to go to him in prayer. It shows how futile our good works are in light of his perfection and holiness. When I focus on these things, grace becomes more than just an empty word, but a beautiful, undeserved gift.

As A.W. Tozer said, "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." Knowing God better helps us love him more and worship him more sincerely. Meditating on God's attributes helps us think about him rightly.

(1) Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 176.

(2) Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 177.