Telos is a Greek word which means end, goal, termination, conclusion, final destiny. The Bible uses this word often. For instance:
1 Peter 1:8-9: …though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.
2 Cor 11:14-15: …even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.
Telos also became a technical term in Greek philosophy to speak of the end, goal, or purpose of life. According to Aristotle and his counterparts, “Human beings… have a specific nature; and that nature is such that they have certain aims and goals, such that they move by nature toward a specific telos… There is a fundamental contrast between man-as-he-happens-to-be and man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-essential-nature (telos). Ethics is the science which enables men to understand how they make the transition from the former state to the latter” (Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue). In moral philosophy this is known as teleological ethics: an ethic that argues for what we should do based on what we are destined for.
The Bible and Aristotle both held that human beings had some ultimate destiny. According to the Bible, the end, goal, and purpose of all things is the glory of God. According to Aristotle, the end of human life is blessedness, fullness, well-being – the good life. As MacIntyre points out, the whole point of ethics (in both the biblical and classical understanding) is to help us become the people we were intended to be. The virtuous life is a life oriented toward our proper end, our purpose, our telos.
However, in After Virtue, MacIntyre argues that it is precisely this concept of telos which has been lost in the past 300 years of philosophical discourse. This gap lies at the root of modern pluralism and emotivism: “Unless there is a telos which transcends the limited goods [of particular situations] and constitutes the good of a whole human life… a certain subversive arbitrariness will invade the moral life… The replacement of Aristotelian or Christian teleology… [is not] the replacement of one set of criteria by another, but rather a movement towards and into a situation where there are no longer any clear criteria.”
So, if we are to seriously cultivate the virtues extolled in Colossians 3, we must first rebuild our understanding of the purpose of human life and existence. We must be rooted in the biblical meta-narrative of creation-fall-redemption-consummation. We must have a clear vision not just of what God saved us from, but what he saved us for.
In other words, we must live with the end in mind. More this Sunday.
A few weeks ago, a relatively mundane post on singleness and busyness became the most-trafficked post in the history of the Coram Deo blog, thanks to some nice folks at Focus on the Family who linked to it and created a firestorm of chaos (apparently a number of people aren’t very busy and have plenty of time to blog). To quell the uproar they asked me to do a radio interview for their podcast, which aired last week.
So, for all who want to hear me clarify my thoughts on the matter, you can jump here to listen to the Boundless podcast. My interview takes place between 11:00 and 29:30 on the recording.
Colossians 3 and 4 are full of moral exhortation. In preparation for preaching through these chapters, I have been reading Alasdair MacIntyre’s seminal work of moral philosophy entitled After Virtue. MacIntyre is a highly respected Notre Dame professor of philosophy who advances a startling thesis: though in 21st-century Western culture we still use the language of morality, the actual substance of morality (i.e. the philosophical foundation we assume to be underneath that language) is in shambles. Reason: the philosophical foundation for morality relies upon the Judeo-Christian worldview and also the (poly)theistic worldview of the ancient Greek philosophers. Enlightenment rationalism, having discarded those worldviews, has therefore (unknowingly) thrown out the philosophical underpinnings of morality as well. Here is MacIntyre’s hypothesis:
Imagine that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe. A series of environmental disasters are blamed by the general public on scientists… A political movement takes power and successfully abolishes science teaching in schools and universities, imprisoning and executing the remaining scientists.
Later still there is a reaction against this destructive movement. Enlightened people seek to revive science, although they have largely forgotten what it was. All that they possess are fragments: instruments whose use has been forgotten; half-chapters from books, single pages from articles… children learn by heart the surviving portions of the periodic table and recite as incantations some of the theorems of Euclid. Nobody, or almost nobody, realizes that what they are doing is not natural science in any proper sense at all… The contexts which would be needed to make sense of what they are doing have been lost, perhaps irretrievably.
The hypothesis which I wish to advance is that in the actual world which we inhabit, the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science in the imaginary world which I described. What we possess… are the fragments of a conceptual scheme… we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have – very largely, if not entirely – lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.
[Objection:] If a catastrophe sufficient to throw the language and practice of morality into grave disorder had occurred, surely we should all know about it! It would indeed be one of the central facts of our history.
[Answer: Yes. Unless] the catastrophe of which my hypothesis speaks had occurred before… the founding of academic history, so that… from [modern history’s] value-neutral viewpoint, moral disorder must remain largely invisible. [In this case,] the forms of the academic curriculum would turn out to be among the symptoms of the disaster whose occurrence the curriculum does not acknowledge!
My thesis… [is that] the language and the appearances of morality persist, [but] the integral substance of morality has to a large degree been fragmented and… destroyed.
We’re a little slow on the take in posting this… many of you who are tech-savvy have already caught this video through Mars Hill or Resurgence. But in case you haven’t, this is Mark Driscoll’s special sermon last week chronicling his trip to Haiti. It includes graphic video of the situation on the ground. Please watch it to better understand the devastation and to get a sense of how the relief money we’re sending to Churches Helping Churches will be used.
Baptism is both a sign and seal of: union with Christ, initiation into God’s family, and cleansing from the guilt and defilement of sin. It’s a physical sign and seal of a spiritual reality, that one’s identity has changed. This past Sunday we gathered as a church family to celebrate this new life in Christ as 12 folks were baptized. Their names and some pictures are below…
Aaron Bearinger, Erin Bearinger, Daryl Bunning, Glenna Freemyer, Oscar Gonzalez, Brooke Dillon, Mary Johnson, Dustin Llewellyn, Micalah Magee, Michele Gardner, Bethany Larson, Andrew Biehl
In our preaching through the book of Colossians, we have come to Colossians 3:5: “Put to death, therefore, whatever is earthly in you…” Precious little is written or taught these days on how to put sin to death. But thankfully, our forebears spent some ink on this issue – the most notable work being John Owen’s marvelous treatise On the Mortification of Sin.
Even the most educated scholars find Owen’s writing style dense. J.I. Packer avers that Owen is “heavy and hard to read;” an earlier biographer observed that he “travels through [his subject] with an elephant’s grace.” I pray that some of the more daring Coram Deo attenders will read Owen’s work firsthand, because despite its cumbersome nature, it is some of the finest theological writing in the English language. But for those who don’t wish to do so, I am posting below my summary outline of Owen’s treatise. This outline was organized for preaching, so it is not exactly correlative to Owen’s layout. However, it does preserve the general logical flow of the original. For those who prefer a more thorough and analytical outline, including some of the more memorable quotes from Owen’s pen, you can download my 12-page reading summary in PDF format.
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Why Must We Mortify Sin?
Because sin is always active
Because unmortified sin weakens and darkens the soul
Because unmortified sin hardens others to the gospel
What Does It Mean to Mortify Sin?
To mortify sin is not to utterly destroy it. (That’s Jesus’ job, not your job.)
To mortify sin is not to forsake the practice of it outwardly. Those who do this are just “more cunning; not … more holy.”
To mortify sin is not to have a quiet, sedate nature. “Some men have an advantage by their natural constitution… they are not exposed to unruly passions and tumultuous affections as many others are.” This does not mean they have mortified sin.
To mortify sin is not to divert it. “He that trades sensuality for Pharisaism has not mortified sin… He has changed his master, but he is a servant still.”
To mortify sin is not to experience “occasional conquests” against it.
Positively, to mortify sin is:
A habitual weakening of it.
A constant fighting against it.
Success. Victory over sin!
How Do We Mortify Sin?
Four General Principles -
You must set faith on Christ. (Fill your soul with the consideration of who Jesus is and what he’s done for you)
You must rely on the Holy Spirit. “A man may easier see without eyes and speak without a tongue, than mortify a sin without the Spirit.”
You must be truly converted.
You must intend universal obedience. If you don’t intend to obey God in every area, You don’t hate sin; you hate the particular sin that is bothering you. Which means you don’t love Christ; you love yourself. A particularly strong, besetting sin commonly issues from a careless, negligent spiritual life in general.
Nine Specific Directives -
Get a clear and abiding sense upon your mind of the guilt, danger, and evil of your sin.
Load your conscience with the guilt of your besetting sin.
Long for deliverance from the power of sin. “Longing, breathing, and panting after deliverance is a grace in itself, that has a mighty power to conform the soul into the likeness of the thing longed after… unless you long for deliverance you shall not have it.”
Consider whether you are prone toward a particular sin because of your personality or disposition. This should awaken your zeal. “So great an advantage is given to sin and Satan by your temper and disposition, that without extraordinary watchfulness, care, and diligence, they [sin and Satan] will prevail against your soul.”
Consider what occasions your sin uses to exert itself, and watch against them all.
Fight strongly against the first actings of your lust. “Sin is like water in a channel – once it breaks out, it will have its course.”
Dwell on thoughts that humble you and remind you of your sinfulness.
Know the warning signs of particularly dangerous sin patterns: persistent, habitual sin; secret pleas of the heart to leave sin alone; giving into sin without struggle; ignoring the conviction of the Holy Spirit; avoiding sin because you fear punishment. If a lust has any of these symptoms, it cannot be dealt with by an ordinary course of mortification; it requires extraordinary measures.
Do not speak peace to yourself before God speaks peace to you.
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May these principles be useful and helpful to you in your fight against sin.
At last week’s Sunday gathering a guy offered to match whatever funds our church could put together for relief work in Haiti. The news has been horrifying and perhaps many of you have already given to the urgent needs there. But if you haven’t, or if you want to give more, we’ll have a special offering box for Haiti at the Resource Table this coming Sunday. All donations will be matched, which will allow us to double our impact.
We’ll pass the funds along to two reputable organizations: Samaritan’s Purse and Churches Helping Churches, a brand-new initiative started by Mark Driscoll and James MacDonald last week in the wake of the Haiti earthquake.
Driscoll just returned from Haiti yesterday. He reports some news that will make you angry as well as heartbroken – like relief workers hiring teenage Haitian girls for sex. Check out his interview with USA Today for more. You can also see all his Twitter updates and photos sent on the fly from Haiti here.
This is the first post in a new series I will be starting to highlight some of the songs we sing together on Sunday mornings. When we gather as a church and sing, we are seeking to drive the truths of the Gospel down into our hearts and minds that it might overflow into a life of worship. Therefore, the songs we sing and our interaction with them is important. My hope in these posts is to bring out some of the rich theology in our songs in such a way that raises both your understanding and affections for who God is and what He has done. So to start us off…
Awake My Soul was written and composed by Sandra McCracken in 2002 and was on Derek Webb’s (Sandra’s husband) 2003 release She Must and Shall Go Free. The lyrics are rooted in the beauty of Christ’s supremacy and all-sufficient nature. In the verses we sing that Christ holds all things together, that God’s grace through Jesus provides all we need, and that He is bringing and will bring redemption to our brokenness. Then in the chorus we conclude and affirm that, because of all this, we boast only in God (Jer. 9:23-24) and His revelation in Christ (Gal. 6:14). These themes are a great fit for our preaching series in Colossians.
As we were singing this song together this past Sunday, a few lines especially stood out to me, and I have been meditating on them since:
This grace gives me fear
And this grace draws me near
And all that it asks it provides.
These are weighty words, but what exactly are we singing? Let’s look at each of these lines and see how they powerfully fit together.
“This grace gives me fear”
As we encounter God’s grace, we necessarily encounter His holiness. We begin to learn something of God’s divine nature, that He is altogether separate in being than we are, and that in Him is contained the perfection of all power, beauty, and moral excellence. The holiness of God, encountered only by His grace, produces in us a healthy amount of fear when held up to our sinfulness (Is. 6:1-5).
Furthermore, the grace we are singing about is God’s work through the person of Jesus to reconcile us to Himself. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). God’s grace towards us in Jesus is a gift, it is unmerited and undeserved, there is nothing in our effort or doing that makes us worthy of God’s grace. Jesus died precisely because there was nothing we could do in and of ourselves. This kind of grace is threatening. It threatens our pride, our struggle for self-worth, our religious efforts, and our very identity. We are not our own, we have been bought with a price and our identity has changed. God, in His grace, has purchased us through the blood of Jesus. And this new identity brings with it a new reality, a calling on our life—a call to come and die, a call to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus. God’s grace in our life is calling us to a life of discipleship; it is costly grace, not cheap. God’s grace is threatening, it strikes fear into our very being.
“And this grace draws me near”
But this same grace also draws us near, reconciles us, and gives us confidence to approach a Holy God. Because of God’s grace towards us in Jesus, we now have a great high priest who pleads on our behalf. God grants and imputes to us, the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ so that we might enter His presence with worship that has been purified. This grace is both threatening and comforting. Dietrich Bonhoeffer captured these two aspects of grace well…
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.
It is as we draw near to God that we discover that this costly grace, this call to come and die, is actually a call to life in all its fullness. It is the call of Jesus: “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25).
“And all that it asks it provides” God’s grace calls us to lose our life and follow Jesus, and it is also the very power that enables us to actually be able to follow Him. The Gospel (God’s grace towards is in Jesus) is the means for both our justification (God’s saving grace) and our sanctification (God’s empowering grace). God’s grace draws us to Himself, justifies us by faith in Jesus Christ, and sanctifies and empowers us by the Holy Spirit. What God’s grace asks of us it also provides, and in so doing awakens our soul to life in Him, the fullness of joy.
Since Coram Deo’s inception, we have had an active concern for the poor. I take no credit for this; it’s all a result of God’s good providence, and His good plan to sanctify me. I am wired with a primary concern for the word of the gospel. But in the early days of Coram Deo, God placed on our launch team a number of people with an equally aggressive concern for the deeds of the gospel. These folks were relentless. They helped me come to grips with my own faulty understanding of poverty, and they helped form a vision for social justice that lodged itself in the DNA of our church.
Hashing out that vision for social justice proved more difficult than anyone expected – primarily due to the lack of good books on the subject. The language of “social justice” had been almost entirely co-opted by liberal theologians, who were heavily influenced by liberation theology and tended to equate serving the poor with the gospel itself. The more conservative evangelical types were still recovering from a century of fundamentalism and were suspicious of any model for helping the poor that didn’t start with evangelism and gospel proclamation. In the (very narrow) middle stood some disaffected Christians who didn’t seem to fit comfortably in either camp – guys like Ron Sider and Shane Claiborne – who were making important contributions to the dialogue, but tended to say things in ways that made my “gospel reflex” twitch with discomfort. Finally, at a loss for good theological material, we tasked JD Senkbile with writing a position paper on poverty to provide a starting point for our church’s thinking and practice.
In light of our concern for this subject – and the lack of good foundational resources – it is a great joy for me to report that the book we’ve been waiting for has finally been written! When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself was put out late last year by Moody Press. Authors Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert run the nonprofit Chalmers Center for Economic Development and also teach economics at Covenant College. In other words: they’re respected in the field and they know what they’re talking about. In the book, they have crystallized both a sound, gospel-centered theology of poverty and the “best practices” of poverty alleviation. They have succeeded in being academic but not heady, helpful but not condescending, challenging but not demoralizing.
I had an inkling this book would be genius when I saw it endorsed by both John Perkins (a founding father of community development who “gets” the practical side of poverty-fighting) and Brian Chappell (a seminary president who “gets” the gospel). Corbett and Fikkert strike all the right notes. They help us understand poverty as something more than an economic problem. They help us confront the unrecognized “God complex” that often hinders our effectiveness. They introduce us to best practices (like asset-based community development) and help us recognize crucial distinctions (like those of relief, rehabilitation, and development). And they do all of it through a rich, gospel-driven perspective. They write neither as smug experts who have already arrived, nor as distant prophets who are content to point out our faults, but as humble practitioners who are learning what it means to seek for God’s kingdom to come “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Those of you who have been around Coram Deo for awhile know that we love our partnership with inCommon Community Development primarily because of their relational approach to ministry. Corbett and Fikkert will take you further in understanding why that’s so crucial to reducing poverty – and why, in fact, other strategies are doomed to fail. Furthermore, as the title indicates, they’ll show you why many well-meaning approaches to poverty alleviation – both governmental and private-sector – actually hurt the very people they’re designed to help. Oh, and if you’re gung-ho about short-term missions trips… you might want to read chapter 7 before you plan your summer.
If you care about the poor… if you long to see the church recover a heart for justice… if you desire to alleviate poverty in ways that are truly sustainable and empowering… if you just want to learn more so you can participate intelligently in the conversation… or if, like me, you know you need to grow in this area and want a reliable tutor… you should buy this book. While you’re at it, get some copies for your friends and family. The evangelical church has a long way to go in living out our biblical mandate to “the least of these.” Corbett and Fikkert have written a book that will resonate with liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, big-church folks and small-church folks, academics and novices. It’s well worth your time.
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. (James 1:22-24, ESV)
