This is my personal summary of the Adult Sunday School session on 18th Nov 2007 by Dn.Charles Chang, combined with his inputs on other fellowship discussions. All teaching and sharing are originally done in Chinese and I translate them to English.
Building A Reformed Framework by Charles Chang
(Application Examples: Prayer, Changed Lives, Humility)
Without a clear framework, we tend to run into all kinds of difficulties in our judgement, often times making a whole mess of contradictory statements from one application to another.
Four general principles below provide an important framework to evaluate things with coherence and consistency:
1. Activity and Passivity
2. Phenomena and Essence
3. Case and System
4. Piety and Academy
I. Activity and Passivity
Is Christianity an active or passive faith? People tend to be trapped in the dichotomy, as though it must be either fully active or fully passive. One group tend to view it all active so they are do everything they can, whether praying, fasting, evangelizing, etc., as if God’s works are somehow dependent on them to make something happen. The other group tend to view every human element as passive, so they take all their activities with a very indifferent attitude, as if human effort is not important at all since God is sovereign in His will.
We know God is sovereign, and we know human beings are created with freewill. How then should we position what is active and passive, and how should we understand the relationship between the two?
Case Application: Prayer
Heidelberg Catechism Q116 states the necessity of prayer:
Q116: Why is prayer necessary for Christians?
A116: Because it is the chief part of thankfulness which God requires of us(1), and because God will give His grace and Holy Spirit only to those who earnestly and without ceasing ask them of Him, and render thanks unto Him for them(2).
1 Psa. 50:14-15
2 Matt. 7:7-8; 13:12; Luke 11:9-10, 13; Eph. 6:18
Someone raised a question in response to the statement above. Do we receive something because we pray for it? Or do we receive because God gives it to us purely by His sovereignty?
Before going further, one important principle of prayer needs to be established, and it is actually stated in the next part of the Heidelberg Catechism:
Q117: What belongs to such prayer which is acceptable to God and which He will hear?
A117: First, that with our whole heart(3) we call only upon the one true God, who has revealed Himself to us in His Word, for all that He has commanded us to ask of Him(4);…
1 John 4:22-24
2 Rom. 8:26; I John 5:14
Therefore, the Scripture has never taught us to pray according to our own will. God has already made clear in His Word what we should pray for. This negates the statement that we receive something from God because of our own initiative to pray, because before we can even pray, we need God’s Word to teach us not only how to pray, but also WHAT to pray.
So is prayer active or passive? The truth is, both elements exist.
Firstly, passivity contains activity.
We become believers because of the grace of God. In this sense, it is all by God’s sovereignty and we are passive. But because God puts faith in our heart, we begin to respond to His grace and we want to seek after Him and know Him better. Our response is active. So our passivity (God’s sovereignty on our salvation) contains activity (our response to His grace).
Secondly, activity contains passivity.
God is the God who initiates. As we are made in His image and likeness, as human beings, we also reflect His attribute of initiation. We can also initiate. We make decisions. We take actions. We decide to pray. We decide to fast. Are they all our decisions? It looks like it because when we make a decision in our heart, we does it willingly and we know nobody forces us. In that sense, we are active. However, we know that nobody seeks after God unless God first puts the desire in a person’s heart to seek after Him. So we know that our activity (our personal decisions) actually contain passivity (God’s working in our heart, which is not our work).
The apostle Paul summarizes the paradox beautifully:
But by the grace of God I am what I am (passivity), and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them (activity) —yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me (passivity). (1 Corinthians 15:10)
So, is prayer active or passive? Is Christianity passive or active? The answer is both. Passivity contains activity and activity contains passivity. Above all, God’s sovereignty overrules.
II. Phenomena and Essence
This is another trap. People tend to make judgement based on appearance, which is very relative. We forget that as we live in a relative world, this can be a very sticky issue due to the limitation and distortion of our human judgement.
Case Application: Changed Lives
Recently, there have been a lot of discourses and challenges on question of changed lives. Of course, a changed life after salvation is important, but do we first question our judgement?
A person might think of someone as a very good testimony of a changed life, but another person who hears the same story might think that is a normal case and there is nothing incredible in that testimony. Not to mention many incredible testimonies also arise from the non-believers’ camp, and often times, not surprisingly, far surpass the things believers have done. Further, one same person can be valuated very differently in different cultures and his position will also shift in history. A hero in one country might be deemed as a villain in another. Think about the terrorists. A man greatly admired initially might considered a failure later on, like leaders once admired and now accused. So who is a good testimony?
Do we think we have the capacity to judge what is a changed life merely using our senses? A fundamental problem we often forget is that as fallen beings, we cannot escape the influence of our feelings and biases in making judgment. We underestimate the effect of phenomena, of what our eyes see.
A truly changed life must be measured from God’s eyes, not ours. That means, there is an absolute reference, and this we must look into the Scripture. The greatness of Christian faith is that it seeks to break beyond the boundary of phenomena, i.e. our human subjectivity. into true essence, i.e., how God sees things from heaven.
A related example on the case of humility (what is humility?) will be elaborated in the 4th principle later.
III. Case and System
Issues do not exist in isolation. Behind every single problem is a system that relates all issues together. Therefore, we should learn to view every separate issue with an overall system in mind.
Case Application: Prayer
For example, prayer is a specific issue. Yes, we need to pray. But we have to build a right understanding of prayer in order to pray fruitfully. Prayer is not an isolated activity, but is necessarily related to God’s sovereignty, His eternal will and our position as human beings. It is an element that is connected in an entire system of doctrines.
One very important distinction is the difference between common grace and saving grace.
Christians often make the mistake of treating God’s gracious answers for common grace (such as physical healing, academic excellence, success in job, deliverance from a difficult situation, etc.) with overboard excitement and go around giving testimonies about these as though they are uniquely Christian testimonies of God’s blessings. They forget that in such common grace issues, God can similarly bless non-Christians, not seldom even in greater extent. What impression would such high-spirited testimonies give to non-Christians who have gone through similar difficulties in the past and solved their problems through their own perseverance, without prayer, and taking it as a normal life struggle without making so much noise?
What then is truly Christian prayer? What is uniquely Christian? It cannot be separated from the entire system of understanding – who God is, His eternal will, His Kingdom and His righteousness, His redemption of the Church through Jesus Christ. These, we can pray absolutely, because God commands us to ask for these things. Does that mean we cannot pray for common grace? Not necessarily. It does mean that we position common grace in the right place, not viewing them absolutely. Pray for absolute things absolutely, and for relative things relatively. With such system of understanding, our entire prayer life will be elevated.
When a person prays, he is guided by a theology system behind whether he is conscious or not. And our prayer reflects our level of understanding.
In one discussion, someone once shot a question, “It’s great that you talk so much about establishing such a high system. If there is someone seriously sick and dying in front of you, and ask for your prayer, what are you going to do? Are you still going to rattle about system, about saving grace and common grace?”
To respond to this question, we must first reflect on why we have the impulse to pray in such a situation. What is our purpose of praying? Do we think our prayer we can change God’s will about a person’s life and death? Or is it just to make the dying person feel better and to make ourselves feel better by showing care, regardless of whether our prayer is right or not? We often jump off too quickly without knowing what we are doing.
What should be the direction and content of prayer in such a situation? Based on the right theology, we understand that our prayer cannot alter God’s will on a person’s life and death. Therefore, we cannot make the person well by our prayer, if it is not God’s will. Of course, if God wills, the person will be healed. Most of the time, however, we do not know whether it’s God’s will to heal a person or to let a person die. So, how should we pray?
At the very least, we should take the time to reflect on the futility of our lives on earth. We pray that God grant the person the grace to go through the path ahead with peace, pray for God’s mercy upon the person, and that may the person be strengthened to submit to God’s dealing with him. We ought to pray to God to let us understand what reminders and lessons He wants us to learn through this situation, particularly on how we should look at our futile life on earth, His grace upon us and our response towards His grace. At such situations, we should be drawn closer to the truth.
From the prayer case alone, we see that behind a person’s prayer is an entire big system which guides and drives not only his prayer, but every issue in his entire life.
We do need to solve specific issues, but we need to use each issue we encounter to look beyond to identify the system behind the issue. Once we tackle the system, we can deal with all kinds of applications consistently and our progress is definite. But if we tackle only specific issues without touching the overall system, year after year we will come back with the same unsolved old issues and we will be moving in circles all our lives.
IV. Piety and Academy
Piety towards God is foundational to build up one’s understanding. Without piety, without a reverential fear towards God, it is impossible to know Him.
But people tend to divorce the two. What it means is that people tend to see that the pious people do not need to pursue understanding, while those who are academic are frequently not pious. This needs to be corrected.
A truly pious person will want to understand God’s Word. He will want to respond to His Word. The emphasis here is the DIRECTION, not the level of understanding. Obviously, different people have different background, different capacities and different levels of understanding, so it is not right to compare levels of knowledge as the standard of whether a person is truly pious.
Rather, it is the attitude of the heart towards the truth that we should compare here. Someone asks, “What is the attitude of the heart? How do you judge it?”
We cannot see a person’s heart completely. But we can compare the attitudes of our hearts in various things. Some people say they are too tired when they read the Bible. So they find it hard to read the Bible regularly, much less to read other books to improve their understanding. In contrast, they willingly put in extra effort to hunt for the best teacher and pay high fees for their kids’ education. The kids cannot miss any class. This is extremely important. Even if they have to lose sleep and rush to and fro, they are willing to sacrifice. Just from this illustration alone, we have a good sense what it means by the attitude of the heart. It will show in the amount of effort we are willing to make in order to pursue the right understanding.
Case Application: Humility
Another hot topic that has been going on recently is the issue of humility. Humility is often emphasized among in Christian circles. Christians often tell one another, “You need to be more humble.” It is true that it is very important. But the problem is that humility is a shifting concept even among the Christians. How do we emphasize it when we do not have a standard on what it means?
One simple exercise in asking what is humility and what is not, demonstrates that we judge someone as humble or proud almost purely based on our feelings and impressions, which has very little whatsoever to do with an objective standard. A person might be considered humble by one and proud by another. So, is this person humble or not? Our judgment is indeed bounded by phenomena. We tend to view a person who never says things we are uncomfortable with as a nice and humble person. We tend to look at a gentle and polite person as humble. Someone who is always bringing food and serving us, we consider humble. But the fact is, these are not the criteria for humility. In fact, a person who speak words that are not comfortable might not necessarily be proud. In certain cases, such action could be an act of humility. We need to remind ourselves that humility is not judged based on what we like and feel comfortable with. Our feelings give us a lot of false judgement.
What then is humility? True humility must be seen from God’s eyes, not from men’s eyes. And it is certain that a person who is humble in the eyes of God might not necessarily be considered such in the eyes of men, and the contrast is true. But true humility is measured by a person’s reaction towards God. So we need to learn to make proper judgement.
From general principles of the Scripture, we can at least draw up a few references:
1. A humble person is never satisfied with his spiritual growth
The fact is, God is never satisfied with human’s achievement. In Joshua 13:1, God spoke to Joshua that he was already old but there were still many lands untaken. We are not easily content with material things, but very easily content with our spiritual understanding, which on a deeper reflection, shows our pride – we think we are good enough and no longer need to improve.
2. A humble person continues to pursue the truth all his life
Moving back to the issue of piety and academy, the point of emphasis is not the level but the direction and the attitude of the heart. It is not easy for human beings to change. Even in our diligence, we like to stay doing what we are good at and comfortable with. But a humble person always challenges himself to move forward in his understanding of the Word of God, which involves both lifelong learning of the mind and applications in life.
3. A humble person is willing to serve people who are despised and considered lowly in the eyes of men
This is a very important element that relates to our relationship with our fellow beings. Willingness to serve those people who are rejected and despised as lowly in the sight of men is a sign of humility. We do not see ourselves as being too high to serve them. It is the attitude of Jesus Christ, the Servant of all.
4. A humble person gives ALL the glory back to God.
This is very difficult. Even when we give glory to God, often times we take partial glory for ourselves. One who does not steal glory from God but give all glory back to Him is a humble person as he recognizes his position correctly and does not take wrong credit for himself.
