Ask Ligonier: Made in the Image of God

Today on Renewing Your Mind. How can we confront feelings of despair for our friends and family who don't know the Lord stay with us Renewing Your Mind is next. That was just one of the questions are teaching fellows feel good at a live streaming event we held not long ago, focused on what it means to be made in the image of God will hear the answer to the question later in the program.

Our communications director Nathan W.

Bingham moderated our time with Drs. Sinclair Ferguson Derek Thomas Burke Parsons and Stephen Nichols was concerned. What are some ways a young Christian can avoid falling into dead orthodoxy or the mere semantics of theological study. First of all, all students of theology should join the church and participate in church life from attend church on Sundays and be in a Sunday school class and have prayer times with folks who are more senior than they are. Keep a devotional life.

The regular habits of reading the Scriptures on prayer for me as a theological student that was done was a lifesaver for me because you can so easily slip into study habits that that is just wrote and and you lose touch with reality and touch with what this is all about, namely walking day by day with Jesus and being involved in local churches absolutely vital resist a sermon. Warfield preached at Miller Chapel at Princeton seminary. The religious life of the theological students been reprinted.

It's out there.

I would deftly recommend that you track that down and read it. He talks about the importance of church at one of the things Warfield talks about is us the importance of recognizing your calling as a student and in your work as a student, you're glorifying God. I think sometimes we think of studies as a means to an end. We don't realize that God is working on is now God wants us to serve him and worship him now if you're studying for the ministry or studying for some full-time ministry position and I can all of a sudden once you become full-time ministry just the button come on and it will click in everything you do will be for God's honor and glory that needs to be part of your habit now, even as a student, you're cultivating that so I would just recommend that piece the great piece of historical advice.

Just recognize that it's a calling as a student to study theology and in that act, it can be done for God's honor for his glory and as an act of worship and acceptable service to him. Yeah I you know I think it's very important, but we loan to do even our most scholastic studies talk so logically, but we do them conscious that we are doing this in his presence before his face for his glory. Couple of things I would say is make sure you're getting your theology from your Bible because the tendency I think is in theological students that you get your theology from your systematic theology textbooks on general all of us here would subscribe to the view that systematic theology on systematic theology textbooks are really important, but I think that is a different product on the life and the person who has land always theology from a textbook from the person who is grounded theology are all Scripture. The only thing I think I would say is so you know those of us who have a certain age when we were students we lived on a very impoverished diet of evangelical literature no available libraries full of, but not all of the lot literature that creates what I would think all of us. The architecture of how you think Kaiser and intelligent Christian know all about literature has infused the nourishment of your life. And so I think it's important, I think it's important for all students. Actually, however difficult it is to create a parallel program of transformation with excuse the alliteration was not intentional, clear your reading the works of those who enable theologians who wrote their theology in a toxicological context because I think that will make a difference to your whole future distro quickly Nathan to the question regarding dead orthodoxy.

I think it's important that we understand fundamentally that there's really no such thing as dead orthodoxy and that we recognize that all orthodoxy, being true doctrine of Scripture is alive and it transforms and the Spirit uses it and God's truth goes forth and it changes us is I think it's important we recognize that I'm certain the questioner understands that as well. I think I think another thing that is really important when so many books are being published right now by so many men and women who do not know the Lord by writing under the name of Christian into Christian publishers that students depending on where they are in their studies. Now if they're doing postgraduate studies they're going to have to interact usually with authors and scholars that they're not going to agree with but at undergraduate and graduate levels. I think it is very important that they spend the majority of her time reading those Christian authors. Theologians who know the Lord and are pointing them to Jesus Christ Brian on Twitter is asking what should our approach be with friends who hold to different doctrines. First of all, remember you hold to different doctrines. It takes two to tango theologically so all kinds of biblical considerations, but first of all mean that you understand that you're speaking to another human being. Second, that you remember you probably did not come to the doctrines you hold overnight so be very careful about treating us to put somebody who doesn't shale them because you once were stupid.

I think of something to say is you need to discern the difference between people who are coming down the hill and people who were going up the hill and with people who are going down the hill you need to think of ways of preventing them rolling dying from the people who are going up the hill you need to patiently help them up the hill because in these matters fun when we think of how patient God has been with us before suddenly, it's clicked with us all not understand, then I think this is why Paul says in something when you're trying to instruct someone else, you need to do it with great patience. So there's a few things I think about principles for me and I think the.

The emphasis on patients is very important and that we remember that we are not the Holy Spirit and the lives of our friends and loved ones that we really need to trust the Holy Spirit to do the work that he's going to do, and that we need to spend time pointing them to Scripture over the years when people have wanted to argue a point with me.

Also, let let's spend some time in Scripture together, not just reading it, but really studying it and getting some good commentary. So be patient. Trust the spirit and pour over Scripture.

This is a very important question because Paul seems to make the point in Corinthians that there are some truths that are first of all, and another was the primary truths and by implication directors that are secondary in their public truths that are tertiary so so if if the difference of opinion is over justification by faith alone in Christ alone. That's one thing but it's over the mode of baptism. That's another thing so so the not all equal, and I think that our response to friends who have different opinions. It also depends on what the doctrine about which we are different is as to how we respond to this question coming in from Facebook.

How do we make sure that we don't preach or teach a modern day in the way word faith, the prosperity preachers do, what should we avoid what we simply need to emphasize. Of course, is what the Bible emphasizes on on the image of God and to have a very high view of man, something that Dr. scroll throughout his ministry emphasized from the beginning in the way in which we honor others in a way in which we respect others because every individual is made in the image of God and what one of the things we saw throughout his ministry is that fairness and kindness and respect to all individuals, no matter their background amount of their socioeconomic background, sociocultural background, a matter of the race there is that respect and honor and love and fairness shown to all human beings and to outsourcing, just the opposite of that and among the prosperity preaching. There seems to be sort of a praying upon certain peoples from certain backgrounds and certain socioeconomic classes. We are to show the honor and respect to all those upon whom God is given dignity that is made in his image. You hang with things it helps here. If we think of human beings as having both dignity and depravity and recognizing that it is a fallen world, and that's it. That's a huge problem for prosperity gospel. It doesn't see this as of a fallen falling has stitched on for called in a fallen falling world that we live in an and there's a sort of naïve view of the impact of the fall others naïve view in prosperity gospel of the role of suffering and lives in even being human and frailty as part of the condition of being human, but also as the fall so in the biblical portrayal of who we are is complex is both beings of dignity and depravity. And if we relax that tension either way were going to end up with the problematic worldview of problematic anthropology and ultimately we will not have the right gospel will have a false gospel and you see that in the prosperity gospel.

It's a false gospel because is a false understanding of anthropology will have everything God Christ and man not had something of an obsession with Job pretty much all of my adult life and I'm Job's friends were prosperity gospel preachers that the reason why Job didn't have health and wealth was because he had sinned in some way. He didn't have enough faith in this classic health and wealth preaching and in the context of the book of Job, that teaching is as wicked. It's wrong because God says it's wrong and when I hear is I haven't written within the last couple weeks of folks who are suffering from cancer on their going through chemotherapy and radiation possible surgery, and so on. And then there Christians write to them and say they shouldn't do this issue just trust and believe fund and that is so unhelpful that's not a strong enough word for for what they're suggesting here Luke sending a note in through the applicant in chat service he's asking.

I know that a true Christian can full away and come back, but is there any possibility that a person can full into deep sin and die and still be saved.

We are not the final arbiters of any minor women's final destiny.

To me, that is a supremely important thing to grasp. So we of relatively poor measures to understand all but gone done so in the lives of people who said on the roof that a grievous sentence clearly Christians commit for Scripture does say is constantly to Joseph not to receive the grace of God in vain in our lives in the way we understand how God's grace lacks God's grace all was arranged through righteousness in our lives and in a sense, it seems to me to be our chief responsibility not to speculate about what may happen if, but to respond to Abdul and send the way Scripture encourages us to respond to unbiased or consistent with all our might and main it is possible to commit grievous sins like Simon Peter. My own conviction as it bumped into Simon Peter on the evening of Christ's crucifixion and then bumped into Judas Iscariot you would not of been able to tell the difference. Not to be able to tell the difference. What made the difference was the intercession of Christ for Simon pizza that led to his repentance and again and again in Scripture Hebrews chapter 6 is a notable example.

It's possible to experience mandate aspects of the power of the kingdom of God is apparently a scientist, passage not actually to experience salvation not to experience salvation because he says we've persuaded of better things with you unveiled what Hebrews is arching on us. Do not mistake the things that accompany salvation in your life from the reality of repentance wants God and faith in him about Jesus Christ. So I think these two things are what give us balance will not.

The final judge of anyone's life.

We don't know what happens in the secret places of their minds.

Even when they send in the last bath.

But we do have a responsibility for ourselves on this I think is how Jesus responds to that kind of question casino.

But don't be many who will be saved of many who will be lost.

Make sure you I think when we do that we refocus on the things that are central and we know that the judge of all the aspects right Andre on Facebook is asking when speaking about the Trinity as three persons in one essence what we mean by person and what remained by essence by essence, we mean God is one being essence comes from the Latin verb essay to be so what we mean is she is one being when we speak about him as being three persons. I think the best way to understand this whole approach valid Chuck try this list God has made as was his image.

And because we are his image that are things about our life as well as about our one note but reflect who she is and what he is like.

So we have this privilege of using language letters, terrestrial because we have no other language that is legitimated by the fact that we are made as the image of God to speak about him.

But when we use that language in the sense that is this connection between us because we image we are persons and we see in Scripture about that so many statements about God made that what we would call personal for the outlet church was seeking to do when spoken.

These times was to use this language. This is terrestrial to describe the celestial, but use that language in a way that was open to and defined by God himself and not idled by out experience of the vocabulary around dictionary definition of attempt. So when we see that God is a person yeah we are persons, but we are the microcosm we exist in bodily form exist on the we understand that God is also a person. In other words, what makes us a person reflects that which is true of him, but is not identical with what is true of him and all of our language about God is like this is always the language of those throughout the analogy of an we use that language. We have no other language to use is legitimated by the dynamic that we have made us the image of God but we are always recognizing he's given us this privilege of using that language enables us to know him without totally comprehending him just what those angry theologians also meant when they spoke about the incomprehensibility of God, but at the same time insisted the one that is the God we know is the incomprehensible God. We don't know him as he knows himself but we do really know him who knows himself. So all of our theological language is off the saunter legitimated by the fact that we are made us the image of God is right so important for us not to begin with ourselves and then to employers that language from God, but to realize that God has imprinted himself into our lives into our world legitimated during this vocabulary, but some bond in this world, but is a bridge to that world so that we may really know him and all knowledge of persons is actually like.

I sometimes think what I see young man a young woman in front of me and the young man is about to pledge himself forever. I can see his eyes. No man has ever known and loved woman the way I know and love this woman and I'm kind of standing there thinking come back in two years time son until make you an idea who she was and when you been moderate. The land sweeping matted you still able to say yes you need to say with a smile, but your wife is still incomprehensible to that doesn't mean you don't know how but you realize there are gaps in mysteries to the south of Patterson, because I'm not the other person how much more with the law and it's wonderful when it's true. If your wife because of the fellowship that you have with her and it's even more wonderful of the Lord because he is even greater than your wife. I can't wait to go home and tell Amber that she's incomprehensible to me in the Dr. Ferguson said I could say that her amen Larissa on Facebook she's asking how can we confront feelings of despair for our friends and family who do not know the Lord. I presume this is a question being asked in the context of coded 19.

I think there probably are multitudes if they if they watch the news for 12 hours all day long they are going to be full of despair and gloom, I think these are gospel opportunities to reach out nothing we do need to minister to folks who are understandably in despair because this is something that is completely and utterly beyond our control and ended almost looks at times that it's beyond the control of governments. It's beyond the control of trillions of dollars that are going to be thrown into this. I don't know what's true and what's not true, but were way past that it seems to me, and we now need to consider use this opportunity wonderful gospel opportunity say there's hope this assurance and is found in Jesus Christ and trusting and believing in him alone having the assurance that whatever lies around the corner. We in a right relationship with God. This world is not our home were going to be with Jesus were going to a new heaven and a new earth, for eternity, I think those are wonderful gospel opportunities.

The question is these folks that don't know Christ and and I think that's a really hard thing. We can't live without these truths we go back to that classic apologetics text first Peter 315. It's because of these truths that we have hope and I think one of the hardest things for us as Christians is we do so want this to be true for all these people we love and no and we almost sometimes feel like all the burden is on us for that person being regenerated or unregenerate, and he just takes that true handing them over recognizing that they are in God's hands and we have that responsibility to be faithful witnesses, but we don't have that responsibility for them to become converts and that's hard anxious hard for us to say this this truth means so much. We just want other people to have it to and it really takes that just resting in God's wisdom and in God's all goodness and trusting in him with the lives of these people that we love this will said I know many people who are unbelievers and I think the thing is to clearly and simply explained to them what it is we do believe not only about the gospel.

But what is we believe about God. And then we need to exemplify before them what it means to follow Christ in times like this and what it means to truly trust the Lord that we exemplify the spirit of con truly resting and are not, and I think we also have to remember to pray for our thanks to Dr. Burk Parsons. There are Dr. Steven Nichols, along with two of our other teaching fellows Sinclair Ferguson and the Derek Thomas. They were part of an online streaming event that took the place of our legacy or national conference.

Just as the pandemic broke out back in March we wanted to hold the conference we realized we couldn't do that in person.

So we switched to this online streaming event in that what you heard, there was one of the question-and-answer sessions that we held timely questions and answers at that time as they are even now, you know, as we witness the unrest around us. The incivility that's on full display. We are reminded that we must be different.

We have to view everyone in every situation as image bearers of God and to help us do that were offering Dr. RC Sproul's book the hunger for significance in this nearly 270 page paperback volume RC explores our worth as human beings and our destiny were happy to send you a copy for your gift of any amount or call us at 800-435-4343 to make your request work. You can go online to Renewing Your Mind.word today is the last day were making this offer available so requested with your gift of any amount.

Again, our web addresses Renewing Your Mind.word in our phone number 800-435-4343 well when the shutdown began because of the pandemic back in March we made the decision to open our online library free to stream and we seen an incredible increase in traffic on our website that people from all over the world are accessing the truth of God's word, our president and CEO Chris Larson says that in ways we are only beginning to understand. It seems that the Lord has prepared legionnaire for this challenging moment to bring needed reinforcements to God's people.

Dr. Sproul fixed our purpose is a ministry to awaken as many people as possible to the holiness of God. We been doing that since 1971 and it's a kindness from the Lord that he's allowing us to do that during these turbulent times. So thank you for your continued support. What many observers believe we are living in a post-Christian error against that backdrop will bring you several messages from Dr. school series defending your faith help you make plans to join us. Beginning Monday for Renewing Your Mind