Proclaimer Blog
On not preaching what we know is there, part 2
Another example of the strange phenomenon of a preacher in his preparation actually spotting something central in his text, but then losing sight of it and not preaching it because he lacks the necessary biblical/theological apparatus to make sense of it, to relate it rightly to Christ and to his people, and therefore to preach and apply it faithfully and powerfully…
I recently heard a seminary lecturer claim that the active obedience of Christ is the most sadly underused doctrine in pastoral ministry. Now we could probably think of other candidates for that unwanted accolade, but I do think that the speaker is on to something.
One place in which this comes out is in the difficulty that many evangelical preachers have with those OT figures who are said in one way or another to be blameless before God.
David is an obvious example.
Another is Noah, of whom it is said that he ‘found favour in the eyes of the Lord’ (Gen. 6.8), and that he ‘was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God’ (Gen. 6.9). For many of us, our most controlling theological grid says, “Avoid any hint of works-salvation at all costs”, which leads to the common reading of these verses that’s often summarised as ‘grace found Noah’. I have an exegetical problem with that: it inverts what v.8 in fact says. It does so, I think, because it’s assuming a view of salvation which plays up Christ’s passive obedience at the cost of his active obedience. In other words, an assumed theological grid has twisted the text a bit.
The text looks a little different, though, if I come to it knowing that I have been saved, in part but significantly, because there is ultimately one man whom the Father judged worthy of passing through judgment to emerge alive on the other side precisely because of his life of obedience to the Father. If this is in my mind, I can allow Gen 6.8-9 to point me to Christ without having (in my view) to bend it a little out of shape. (Of course, in the richness of God’s word, Christ’s passive obedience for us, quite apart from our works, is foreshadowed straight after the flood in Noah’s sacrifice, 8.20-21).
One other tricky “he keeps insisting he’s righteous” figure in the OT is Job. If I may plug a (former) colleague’s book: Christopher Ash’s recent commentary on Job in the Preaching the Word series handles the issue of Job’s righteousness quite superbly. Here he is on Job’s final self-defence in ch.31: ‘There will come a man whose perfect obedience will extend both to his single-hearted worship and love for his Father and to his perfectly sinless and utterly good treatment of all his fellow human beings…. [Christ] fulfils the innocence of Job in the perfection of his obedient life.’ We will see this, says Christopher, only if we read Job 31 ‘in the light of the doctrines of justification and of union with Christ from the rest of Scripture’ (p.320).