Modern Reformation Bilingual

When We Gather: A Biblical, Historical, and Confessional Case for Weekly Communion (Part 1)

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 15:00:00 +0000

This is the first installment in a three-part series on the frequency of the Lord’s Supper.

Preface—Why This Series?

This series began not with a proposal to change church practice, but with a question that emerged from conversation. In separate discussions with my own pastor and with my father-in-law, a retired minister, both appealed thoughtfully to church history and the Reformed confessions in support of a monthly observance of the Lord’s Supper. In both cases, the reasoning was careful and reverent. The Supper was treated not as incidental, but as something weighty enough to warrant restraint.

What struck me was not disagreement about the importance of the Supper, but the confidence with which its frequency was assumed rather than examined. The appeal to history and confession was sincere—but it raised a further question: do those sources, read carefully and in context, point in the direction we often think they do?

That question sent me back first and foremost to Scripture. What I found was not an explicit command for weekly communion, but something more formative: a consistent pattern. The New Testament presents the Lord’s Supper as a regular and assumed feature of the church’s gathering. The case for its frequency arises not from a single verse, but by what the Reformed tradition has long described as good and necessary consequence—conclusions that flow naturally from the whole counsel of God.

This essay forms the first part of a three-part series, making the biblical, historical, and confessional case for weekly communion—not as a liturgical innovation, but as the ordinary pattern of the church when it gathers. Framed this way, the question of frequency is not primarily about preference or novelty, but about what the New Testament itself appears to assume as normal Christian worship—and how those assumptions were received and carried forward by the church.

Any serious engagement with the church’s history must eventually reckon not only with continuity, but with divergence—especially where later practice reflects instincts formed under specific pastoral or polemical pressures. That reckoning lies beyond the scope of this essay and will be addressed more directly in a larger work. Here, my purpose is deliberately constructive rather than corrective: to present the strongest positive case for weekly communion possible, while honoring the good intentions and pastoral concerns that have shaped differing practices within the Reformed tradition.

For many churches, monthly observance has come to feel like a careful middle ground. Weekly communion can sound excessive, while quarterly observance feels insufficient. Monthly rhythms promise reverence without routine, meaning without monotony. The concern is not usually theological neglect, but pastoral caution—the fear that repetition will dull significance rather than deepen it. That instinct deserves to be taken seriously, even as it is examined in light of Scripture.

Behind that concern often lies a particular view of how meaning is preserved in Christian practice. We tend to assume that rarity safeguards value, while regularity risks familiarity. Yet Scripture frequently teaches the opposite. God forms his people not primarily through infrequent intensifications, but through steady provision. The question, then, is not whether weekly communion feels unfamiliar to modern congregations, but whether the New Testament treats the Supper as a special interruption or as part of the church’s ongoing life with God.

Framing the issue this way clarifies what is at stake. The question is not whether churches that observe the Supper monthly are irreverent or careless. It is whether the rhythms we have inherited reflect the assumptions of the New Testament itself—or whether those assumptions have gradually shifted under the pressure of pastoral caution, historical circumstance, or habit.

Reading Scripture for Pattern, Not Prescription

Any discussion of the frequency of the Lord’s Supper must begin with a clarification about how Scripture is being read. The New Testament does not provide a detailed liturgical manual, nor does it address every question of church practice by explicit command. Instead, it often teaches by pattern, assumption, and example. For this reason, the Reformed tradition has long held that the church is guided not only by what Scripture states directly, but also by what may be drawn from it by good and necessary consequence (WCF 1.6).

This principle applies whenever Scripture is read, but it becomes especially important when the church seeks to establish normative practices of worship in the absence of explicit commands. In such cases, Scripture forms the church not by filling in every detail, but by shaping patterns that must be received and ordered faithfully.

With respect to the Lord’s Supper, the New Testament nowhere issues a command that reads, “You shall observe the Supper weekly,” or specifies any other interval by name. The question before us, therefore, is not whether Scripture supplies a numerical directive, but whether its witness, taken as a whole, assumes a regular pattern of communion as part of the church’s ordinary gathering. If it does, then the absence of an explicit command does not weaken the case; it clarifies the kind of case Scripture itself invites us to make.

Devoted to the Ordinary: Acts 2:42

The clearest early picture of the church’s life together comes not in a prescriptive command, but in a description. Luke tells us that the first Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). The verse is familiar, but its force is often understated. It presents the ordinary shape of the church’s shared life.

Several features of the passage deserve attention. Luke speaks of devotion—a settled, ongoing commitment rather than sporadic participation. Moreover, the four elements he names form a coherent whole. Apostolic teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers are not isolated practices but together constitute the recognizable shape of the church’s gathering. Luke does not suggest that some of these belonged to the church’s regular rhythm while others were reserved for infrequent observance.

The phrase “the breaking of bread” has sometimes been reduced to a reference to ordinary, nonsacramental meals. Yet the context points in a more specific direction. The expression appears alongside practices that are unmistakably corporate and worship-oriented, and it is marked by the definite article: the breaking of bread. Whatever place shared meals held in early Christian life, Luke presents this act as a distinct and repeatable feature of the church’s common worship.

Reformed commentators have often read Acts 2:42 in precisely this way. R. Kent Hughes, for example, argues that “the breaking of bread” refers to the regular observance of the Lord’s Supper, noting both its placement among explicitly worship-oriented practices and its deliberate distinction from common meals later in the chapter.¹ [1. R. Kent Hughes, Acts: The Church Afire , Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1996), 50.] On this reading, Luke presents a church continually devoted to word, prayer, and sacrament as part of its ordinary life together.

What is striking is not merely that the Supper appears here, but how it appears. Luke does not pause to justify it or regulate its frequency. He assumes it. The Supper is treated not as a heightened devotional moment, but as part of the church’s settled life together—received as naturally as the word is preached and prayers are offered.

That assumption reflects a broader biblical pattern. Scripture consistently frames God’s provision for his people in terms of sustenance rather than intensification. When the Lord feeds Israel in the wilderness, he does not do so through rare abundance but through daily provision. Manna is given not as a feast for special occasions, but as nourishment for ordinary life, training the people in dependence rather than spectacle. Jesus echoes this logic when he teaches his disciples to pray for daily bread—not exceptional provision, but faithful supply.

Read in this light, the Lord’s Supper belongs to the same category of gift. It is not a reward for spiritual maturity or a capstone to worship, but nourishment given to a needy people. Like preaching and prayer, it is an ordinary means through which God strengthens faith over time. Repetition does not cheapen nourishment; it makes life possible.

Moreover, Scripture also frames God’s relationship with his people through covenant meals that signify belonging and communion. From Israel’s sacrificial meals to Jesus’s table fellowship, eating together is never merely social. It is theological. Meals mark reconciliation, shared life, and covenant identity. To eat at the Lord’s table is to belong to the Lord’s people—called to gather as his covenant community on the Lord’s Day.

The New Testament intensifies this logic rather than abandoning it. Jesus’s ministry culminates in a meal where bread and wine are given new covenant meaning. Each time the church eats and drinks, it remembers Christ’s death and anticipates the feast to come. The Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Rev.19:6–9) is not presented as a disconnected future spectacle, but as the fulfillment of a pattern already underway. The church’s present participation at the Table is a foretaste—not a replacement, but a pledge—of that final communion.

Seen in this light, the Supper is not functionally set apart from the church’s ordinary rhythm, but an enacted promise woven into it. The church eats now because it will eat then. Regular participation does not diminish eschatological hope; it trains the church to live in expectation of it. In that context, a simple question emerges: if God has given the gifts of bread and wine with such clear analogies to regular nourishment, why should the sustenance of spiritual life be treated differently?

While Acts 2:42 does not tell us explicitly how often the Supper was celebrated, it does tell us where it belongs. It belongs within the ordinary gathering of the church, as a constitutive practice rather than a periodic—even if frequent—supplement. Practices to which a community is devoted shape its regular rhythm.

That logic becomes clearer when Acts is allowed to interpret Acts. If “the breaking of bread” referred merely to ordinary meals, Acts 20:7 would seem to imply that Christians ate only once a week—an implausible conclusion. As Keith Mathison observes, Luke’s language is therefore best understood as referring to the Lord’s Supper, observed on the first day of each week as part of the church’s regular gathering.² [2. Keith A. Mathison, The Lord's Supper: Answers to Common Questions (Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2019), Kindle edition.]

Gathered to Break Bread: Acts 20:7

That pattern appears in more concrete form later in Acts. Luke records that “on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them” (Acts 20:7). Here the narrative moves from summary to situation. We are given a specific day, a specific purpose, and a recognizable shape to the gathering.

The church comes together on the first day of the week, and it does so to break bread. The Supper is not incidental to the meeting, but one of the reasons for it. Word and sacrament belong together in this assembly. Preaching and the Table are not competing emphases but coordinated acts. The Supper is not treated as a supplement to worship, but a defining element of the church’s Lord’s Day gathering.

Read alongside Acts 2:42, the picture that emerges is consistent. The New Testament does not legislate frequency by command, but it presents a pattern in which the Lord’s Supper belongs to the church’s ordinary, weekly worship.

Participation and Proclamation: 1 Corinthians 10–11

If Acts gives us the pattern of the church’s gathering, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians helps us understand the theological logic of the Supper within that gathering. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul frames the Supper in terms of participation: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?” (10:16). The Supper is not merely a reminder, but a corporate participation in Christ himself.

That participation is inseparable from the church’s unity. “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (10:17). Here sacrament and ecclesiology converge. The Supper both expresses and reinforces the church’s shared life. A practice that both expresses and reinforces the church’s unity naturally assumes a prominent place in its gathered worship, a pattern Luke elsewhere describes as belonging to the church’s regular assembly.

In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul turns from theological explanation to pastoral correction. The Supper in Corinth is being abused—marked by division and drunkenness. Yet Paul’s response is instructive. Again and again, he frames his instruction around what happens “when you come together.” He assumes a regular gathering in which the Supper is expected to take place.

Crucially, Paul’s solution to abuse is not reduction. He does not suggest that the Supper should be practiced less often in order to preserve its meaning. Instead, he calls the church to discern the body and to receive the Supper rightly. The problem in Corinth is not how often the Supper occurs, but how it is being understood—or rather misunderstood. As the longstanding Latin maxim puts it, abusus non tollit usum—abuse does not negate proper use. Put another way, when error occurs, the church’s task is reform, not retreat. For those standing in the tradition of the Reformation, this should come naturally.

Each time the Supper is celebrated, Paul says the church “proclaims the Lord’s death until he comes” (11:26). The act itself is a proclamation—repeated, public, and eschatologically oriented. Correction presupposes regularity. Paul reforms the practice of the Supper; he does not retreat from it.

Conclusion: When Scripture Assumes What It Does Not Command

Taken together, Acts and 1 Corinthians establish a trajectory rather than a timetable. Scripture does not issue an explicit command for weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper, yet it consistently portrays a church devoted to the breaking of bread as part of its shared life—gathering on the Lord’s Day to do precisely that, and receiving the Supper as a practice central enough to warrant sustained theological instruction and pastoral correction.

The biblical case for weekly communion, therefore, does not rest on a proof-text—no more than other central doctrines the church confesses, such as the Trinity. It arises by good and necessary consequence from the patterns Scripture presents and the assumptions it makes about the church’s worship when it gathers. If the Supper belongs to the church’s ordinary life, and if that life is ordered around the weekly Lord’s Day assembly, then regular—indeed weekly—communion follows naturally from the shape Scripture gives to the church’s worship.

Even if the biblical logic points in this direction, some may hesitate at the conclusion. Surely the early church did not practice the Supper this way—or did it? That question leads naturally to the historical evidence. In Part II, we will examine how the church immediately following the apostles understood and ordered the Lord’s Supper, paying particular attention to whether weekly communion was regarded as exceptional or ordinary.

This historical inquiry also helps address familiar Protestant concerns. Did the Reformers themselves practice weekly communion? If John Calvin supported frequent observance, why did many Reformed churches settle into quarterly patterns instead? Were those rhythms the product of theological conviction, pastoral compromise, or historical circumstance? By attending carefully to the early church, the Reformation period, and the realities that shaped post-Reformation practice, the historical case helps distinguish between what the church has sometimes done and what it has consistently understood the Supper to be. It is to that historical witness that we turn next.

Erik Warren O'Dell

Erik Warren O’Dell holds an M.A. in Theological Studies from Westminster Seminary California. He is an educator and Humanities curriculum writer with six years of experience in classical Christian education. Erik teaches a Sunday school series titled Church History as Apologetics, and the series is currently being developed into a book project. His other writings seek to integrate theology, philosophy, culture, education, and apologetics. Erik lives in Katy, Texas, with his wife, Jessica, who serves on staff at their home church, Christ Presbyterian Church of Houston (PCA).

Topics The Lord's Supper

Date Tuesday, June 2, 2026

What the Jews Heard at Pentecost and Why It Matters for Infant Baptism

Tue, 26 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000

When Peter stood up at Pentecost, his audience was entirely Jewish. What did they hear when he declared that "the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself" (Acts 2:39)? What they heard would have immediately governed their covenant practice, including whether they baptized their infants.

Peter's words identify three groups. Many interpreters today read "those who are far off" as Gentiles or "your children" as spiritual descendants. But the decisive question is not how we read these words now, with the benefit of progressive revelation; it is how the Jews heard them then—before Cornelius, before the Jerusalem Council—within the covenantal framework they had always known. And remarkably, Acts gives us the evidence to answer that question. Their subsequent behavior reveals their understanding.

This paper argues that the Jewish Christians at Pentecost understood Peter's three groups as follows:

You—the Jews standing before him
Your children—their physical offspring
Those who are far off—Jews scattered among the nations

As we will see, the narrative of Acts demonstrates that this was indeed their initial understanding. They were incomplete in their reading of the third group—"those who are far off" ultimately included Gentiles, as the Cornelius episode would reveal. But they were correct in their reading of the second group—"your children" meant exactly what every Jew would have understood: their offspring, the next generation of the covenant community. We know this because no corresponding revelation ever corrected their understanding of children. The correction that came addressed only the scope of adult entry into the covenant, never the status of children within it.

The book of Acts demonstrates that the Jewish Christians understood "those who are far off" as scattered Israelites, not Gentiles—proven by their behavior and their shock at Cornelius's conversion. If they heard "those who are far off" in traditional Jewish covenant categories, they would have heard "your children" the same way. The later revelation that Gentiles were included addressed adult entry into the covenant—it never revised the status of children.

Every line of scriptural evidence—behavioral, narrative, practical, and epistolary—converges on the same conclusion: the apostles understood and practiced infant baptism as covenant continuity.

The Deuteronomic Template

Peter's threefold structure was not novel. His Jewish audience would have recognized it immediately from Deuteronomy 30, the great covenant renewal passage that promised Israel's restoration after exile:

When all these things come upon you ... and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God and obey his voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes ... and gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. If any of you are driven out to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you. (Deut. 30:1–4, emphasis added)

The parallel is striking:

Deuteronomy 30:1–4	Acts 2:39
"You" (Israel present)	"You" (Jews at Pentecost)
"Your children" (30:2, 6)	"Your children"
"Scattered...to the farthest parts" (30:3–4)	"All who are far off"

Peter's Jewish audience would not have heard new covenantal categories. They heard him announcing the fulfillment of what Moses had promised—and Moses had explicitly included children.

But the parallel goes deeper. Deuteronomy 30 continues with a promise that sounds remarkably like Jeremiah's New Covenant: “And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live" (Deut. 30:6, emphasis added).

Here is the promise of heart transformation—the same promise Jeremiah would later elaborate as the law "written on hearts" (Jer. 31:33). Yet notice what Deuteronomy explicitly includes: the heart of your offspring (Hebrew: zar'ekha). The promise of heart circumcision is multigenerational. God pledges to transform not only the hearts of those who hear, but the hearts of their children.

The Jews at Pentecost knew this text. When Peter declared that the promise was for them, their children, and those far off, they heard the echo of Moses. And when the Spirit fell—the Spirit who circumcises hearts and writes the law within—they understood this as the fulfillment of what Deuteronomy 30 had promised. That promise had always included their offspring.

The Jeremiah 31 Objection Preempted

Before examining the historical evidence from Acts, we must address the primary Baptist objection—the appeal to Jeremiah 31. Baptists argue that the new covenant described there is fundamentally different from previous covenants. They point to Jeremiah's promise that all covenant members will "know the LORD, from the least to the greatest" (Jer. 31:34), arguing that this excludes infants who cannot yet demonstrate such knowledge.

But this objection overlooks what Deuteronomy 30 had already established. The promise of heart transformation—which Jeremiah elaborates—was given centuries earlier by Moses, and it included offspring. If Baptists claim Deuteronomy 30 is prophetic of the new covenant (and they must, since heart circumcision is the essence of new covenant blessing), then they must reckon with the fact that this new covenant prophecy explicitly includes children.

Jeremiah 31 does not introduce a new principle that excludes offspring; it elaborates a promise that had always included them. This requires us to read Jeremiah 31 according to the ordinary function of covenantal speech in Scripture. Covenant promises and obligations are frequently announced to the covenant community in comprehensive, adult-capacity language—as is typical of covenantal and prophetic speech—even when that language cannot yet be fulfilled by all members. Such language describes the intended character and maturity of covenant life rather than serving as a prerequisite that restricts covenant membership to those already capable of its full realization.

What then does "from the least to the greatest" mean? Baptists read it as describing the composition of the new covenant—every single member, without exception, will personally know God. Since infants cannot yet "know the LORD," they argue, infants cannot be covenant members. But this reading proves too much. Jeremiah also says, "no longer shall each one teach his neighbor." If needing to be taught disqualifies someone from covenant membership, then Baptists have a problem—they still teach their members. Every church has pastors, discipleship, and instruction. Clearly the phrase does not mean that teaching ceases in the new covenant.

The better reading is that Jeremiah describes the democratization of access to God, not a prerequisite for membership. Under the old arrangement, knowledge of God was mediated through a hierarchy—priests and prophets possessed access that ordinary Israelites lacked. The new covenant promise is that this mediation gives way to direct access through the Spirit poured out on all flesh. It describes what will characterize the renewed community, not a prerequisite that must be demonstrated before one may receive the covenant sign.

The pattern throughout Scripture is consistent: cognitive covenant commands describe what characterizes adult covenant members without excluding children from covenant membership and its sign. "Circumcise your hearts" (Deut. 10:16) was commanded to adults who could understand it; eight-day-old infants still received circumcision. "Hear, O Israel" (Deut. 6:4) was addressed to those who could hear; their infants were still covenant members. "They shall all know me" (Jer. 31:34) describes what characterizes the renewed covenant community; it does not specify that only those who already demonstrate this knowledge may receive the covenant sign.

The question is not whether heart transformation is essential to the new covenant—it is. The question is whether heart-transformation language functions as a prerequisite for receiving the covenant sign or as a promise that God will fulfill in the covenant community across generations. Deuteronomy 30:6 settles the matter: it is a promise, and the promise includes offspring.

The Evidence from Acts

The theological argument from Deuteronomy 30 is significant, but the historical evidence from Acts is decisive. We can actually test how the Jewish Christians understood Peter's words by examining their subsequent behavior.

When persecution scattered the church from Jerusalem, those who went out carried the gospel beyond the city—but only to Jews. Acts records that they preached "to no one except Jews only" (Acts 11:19). This detail is crucial. It demonstrates that the early church understood "those who are far off" as scattered Israelites, not Gentiles. Their missionary practice confirms that they were still operating within traditional Jewish covenant categories.

This is the key inference: if the Jewish Christians understood "those who are far off" as scattered Jews rather than as Gentiles or spiritual offspring, then they would have understood "your children" in the same traditional Jewish covenant categories—as their physical offspring who belonged to the covenant community and should receive the covenant sign. Some Reformed Baptists argue that "your children" should be understood spiritually—as the elect—appealing to passages like John 6:45. But this argument faces a decisive problem: the Jews demonstrably did not hear Peter this way. If "your children" meant spiritual offspring, then "those who are far off" should also be spiritual (elect Gentiles). You cannot selectively spiritualize one element while leaving another in its covenantal sense. They heard the whole statement through Jewish covenantal ears. The appeal to John 6:45 may work as a theological interpretation, but it fails as a historical claim about how these Jews heard Peter in 30 AD.

The Cornelius episode confirms this reading. In chapter 10, God gives Peter a vision—three times—declaring that what God has made clean, Peter must not call unclean. When messengers from Cornelius arrive, the Spirit tells Peter to go without hesitation. Yet even then, Peter struggles to understand what God is doing. When the Spirit falls on Cornelius's household, Peter is astonished. In chapter 11, the Jerusalem church rebukes him for associating with uncircumcised men.

Peter's defense is revealing: "If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way?" (Acts 11:17).

Peter admits that he had been standing in God's way. This is a retrospective acknowledgment that his earlier understanding had been incomplete. He had heard Acts 2:39 in traditional Jewish covenant categories—and he was wrong about the scope of "those who are far off."

The same logic applies to the qualifying phrase, "everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." Some read this as limiting the promise to those who are effectually called—that is, the regenerate elect. On this reading, only those who respond savingly to God's call are truly in view, which would exclude infants.

But this interpretation faces the same problem as the spiritual reading of "your children": it does not match how the Jews actually heard Peter's words. The Jewish Christians understood Peter within their existing covenantal framework—the framework they had inherited and lived within their entire lives. They would have heard "whom the Lord our God calls" as describing how God gathers his people into this new phase of covenant history—not as a restriction that would exclude their children from the covenant community.

Consider the covenantal logic. God calls; his people respond; the covenant community consists of those who answer that call together with their households. This is precisely the pattern we see throughout Acts—entire households entering the covenant when the head of household believes. The "call" explains how adults enter the covenant; it does not negate the covenantal structure that has always included believers and their children together.

If the qualifying clause meant "only the regenerate," we would expect the apostles to have clarified this—especially given how easily the Jews would have misunderstood. But no such clarification appears. The Jews heard the promise covenantally, and nothing in the subsequent narrative suggests they were wrong to do so.

But notice what the Cornelius revelation corrected: Peter's understanding of Gentile inclusion. What it did not correct—what is never mentioned, debated, or even hinted at—is the status of children. If the apostles' covenantal understanding of "your children" was also mistaken, the Cornelius moment was the natural point to address both errors. Yet only one correction appears.

The Household Principle After Cornelius

If the Cornelius revelation had corrected the covenantal understanding of children—if the apostles now understood that only professing believers should receive baptism—we would expect to see this reflected in subsequent baptismal practice. Instead, we find the opposite: household baptisms continue throughout Acts.

After Cornelius, Luke records:

Lydia's household—"She was baptized, and her household as well" (Acts 16:15)
The Philippian jailer's household—"He was baptized at once, he and all his family" (Acts 16:33)
Crispus's household—"Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household" (Acts 18:8)
Stephanas's household—"I did baptize also the household of Stephanas" (1 Cor. 1:16)

The Greek term oikos ("household") carries deep covenantal resonance—translating the Hebrew bayit, the household unit that received covenant blessings and obligations together from Abraham onward (Gen. 17:11–13).

This household principle continues unbroken through Acts. The apostles did not begin baptizing only professing individuals after Cornelius; they continued baptizing households. If the Cornelius revelation had taught them that children should no longer be included until they could profess faith, Luke's repeated mention of household baptisms would be inexplicable.

Baptists often respond that these households may have consisted entirely of adults, or that all members of the household believed. But this misses the point. The very category of household baptism reflects traditional Jewish covenantal thinking. If the apostles had come to understand baptism as the sign of individual profession only, they would have baptized believers, not households. The continued use of household language demonstrates that the covenantal framework remained intact.

The Epistolary Confirmation

If the apostles had corrected the Jewish understanding of "your children" from physical to spiritual, they would have needed to reinforce that correction in their subsequent teaching to the churches. Instead, we find the opposite—they continue using covenantal family language without any clarification that its meaning has changed.

Consider the evidence: "For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy" (1 Cor. 7:14).

Paul uses the same covenantal holiness language—hagios, "holy" or "set apart"—that described Israel's covenant status throughout the Old Testament. And he applies it to the physical children of believers. If "your children" in Acts 2:39 now meant spiritual offspring rather than physical descendants, Paul's continued use of this language would have been catastrophically confusing.

"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." (Eph. 6:1)

"Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord." (Col. 3:20)

Paul addresses children directly as members of the covenant community—"in the Lord"—recipients of apostolic instruction with obligations flowing from their covenant status.

Paul is writing to churches that include both Jewish and Gentile believers. If the covenantal understanding of children had been corrected—if "your children" now meant "the elect" rather than "your offspring"—Paul's continued use of the old covenantal language would be inexplicable. You do not correct a fundamental misunderstanding about covenant membership and then continue using the same terminology that caused the confusion.

Unless, of course, there was no confusion to correct.

The Argument from Silence

What is absent from the New Testament is just as telling as what is present. The great controversies concern whether to include Gentiles, never whether to exclude children. Had the apostles overturned the Abrahamic pattern, it would have provoked outrage, required explanation, and left a record.

For two thousand years, children of believers had received the covenant sign by God's explicit design (Gen. 17:7). To overturn this would have been a seismic shift—far more significant than Gentile inclusion, which the prophets had anticipated.

Yet Acts records no such controversy. We find extended debates about circumcision requirements for Gentiles (Acts 15), fierce resistance to eating with uncircumcised men (Acts 11:2–3), and careful deliberation about what to require of Gentile converts. But not a single word about excluding children from the covenant community.

The silence is best explained by continuity, not omission. The controversies of the early church concerned the horizontal expansion of the covenant (to Gentiles)—never its vertical contraction (excluding children). If both changes had occurred, we would expect both to leave traces. Only one does.

Conclusion

The new covenant did not narrow the scope of God's promises; it expanded them. The children were already in. The surprise was that the Gentiles were, too. Even if the early Jewish Christians initially misunderstood, their covenantal reading would have led them to baptize their infants—and the Cornelius revelation, which corrected their understanding of Gentile inclusion, never touched the status of children.

Deuteronomy 30 had promised that God would circumcise the hearts of his people and their offspring. Jeremiah 31 elaborated this promise as a new covenant with the law written on hearts. At Pentecost, Peter announced that this promise had arrived—for those present, for their children, and for all whom the Lord would call from the farthest parts of the earth.

From the day of Pentecost, Jewish believers would have continued the practice embedded in their covenantal DNA: including their children in the covenant community and marking them with the covenant sign. This was not theological innovation but covenant fidelity—trusting the same God who had promised to circumcise the hearts of his people and their offspring.

Ronnie Brown

Ronnie Brown has served as a ruling elder in the PCA for over twenty years. His professional background is in IT, but his passion is Reformed theology, particularly covenant theology, soteriology, and biblical exegesis.

Topics Baptism, The Covenants

Date Tuesday, May 26, 2026

A Veil Before the Eyes of the Enemy: On Tolkien, Foolishness, and the Ordinary Means of Grace

Tue, 19 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000

In recent years, there has been a fair amount of criticism of our cultural institutions. Whether they be political, academic, or ecclesiastical, anyone comfortably in a place of leadership in any institution is in the crosshairs of this criticism. Things have only gotten worse on their watch, after all.

Older pastors and confessional churches have been lumped into this kind of criticism as well, either for not being focused enough on social justice and activism; or, by those sympathetic to Christian Nationalism, for having what seems to be an incredulous posture to politics and culture.

The general mood, even on topics other than culture and politics, is that the church and its gatekeepers have become comfortable, weak, and even corrupt.

This fits within what many commentators have called a Meaning Crisis. Cognitive scientist John Vervaeke has created a 50-part course and written multiple books on the Meaning Crisis. “We are in the midst of a mental health crisis,” he writes. “This mental health crisis is itself due to, and engaged with, crises in the environment and the political system. Those in turn are enmeshed within a deeper cultural historical crisis that I call ‘The Meaning Crisis’.… People are feeling disconnected from themselves, from each other, from the world, and from a viable and foreseeable future.”

Even amongst committed Christians, there is a sense that the scripts and narratives of the previous generation simply are not working. Many are looking for more rebellious and radical alternatives. If current leaders are not offering a viable and foreseeable future, then things need to be torn down, discarded, started anew, etc. And as a younger millennial myself, I sympathize with the more youthful reactionary impulse. Things are not as they should be. But in my own wrestling with these matters, and with the help of J. R. R. Tolkien, I have become more convinced that even in the face of sclerotic ecclesiastical and cultural systems, the strategy of the church and its ministry—and even how we live our lives—should not be burnt to the ground; rather, it should be regrounded in the foolish, ordinary means of grace.

“There are other forces at work in this world”

In light of the institutional decay in late modernity, it is easy to look at any clerics in these institutions as gatekeepers and good ol’ boys in the country club. When a pastor over the age of 60 chides a young congregant to not spend so much time fretting about what he sees online and instead focus on the ministry of the church through the preaching of the law and the gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and observance of the ordinary means of grace, it is easy for the pastor to be dismissed as a “boomer with his head in the sand.”

It seems only natural for younger generations to sneer and roll their eyes at what feels like the superficial slogans and trite narratives they were raised with. And there are kernels of truth to this ironic sentiment. Speaking from experience, while you struggle with the prices at the pump, you can only drive by Southern California’s beachfront properties for so long before the opulence begins to feel gross. You can only be so earnest about defending the church before recurring stories of pastoral abuse wear you down.

The “focus on word and sacrament ministry” response, especially when the world is burning, can feel like pastoral negligence. For those who are struggling with any kind of existential concerns, it seems only fitting to harbor suspicions that everything, even the church, is broken and needs to change, now.

I’m not going to tell folks caught in the middle of that rumination that they simply need to chill out. Decadence, neglect, and acedia are real vices that far too many leaders are far too comfortable with.

And yet I am not going to applaud this cynicism—as some do—describing our world of wars, school shootings, unchecked abuses against the innocent, and various crises as impossibly difficult. After reckoning with the maladies around us, it is still important to say that the pessimistic pathology of younger generations, as reasonable as it feels, is also terribly naive.

It turns out that cynicism is not exactly a clear-eyed assessment of reality. Middle-class millennials will be financially better off than their boomer parents, and there are good reasons to be skeptical of alarmism and the catastrophic reads on the world that are laundered to us online. We can resist naive despair while still taking existential problems seriously.

In the midst of our bereavements, it is important to remember that our default assumption as modern Westerners, especially Americans, is to look for pragmatic solutions to all of life’s problems. We tend to think that the right methods and techniques, if tried with utmost sincerity, will bring about all of our desired outcomes. If things aren’t working, we can scrap whatever practices we are doing and try again. Scott Clark has explained some of this impulse as the “Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty (QIRC).” Any talk that plays down triumphal activism and instead encourages Christians to persevere as pilgrims on the way to the heavenly city smells of “amillennialist defeatism.” Instead, we desire for our faith to be manifested, the church to be visibly triumphant, for change and transformation to be measurable and quantifiable.

Whatever righteous anger we might feel, it is important to resist this tendency. This might appear like I am capitulating and toeing the line of the “gatekeepers.” But I am not advocating for a posture of resignation in the Christian life. Far be it.

The pessimism and cynicism that we breathe, day in and day out, keeps us blind to the wonderful works of God that are happening even now. We think that a clear-eyed assessment of reality means taking into account how the wheels of power are turning, which power brokers are part of backdoor conversations, what cabals are plotting, etc. However much those accountings might be helpful to understand, a deeper reckoning with reality—a deeper truth—is needed. It is not found in the structures and systems of the world but in the mystical and mysterious inbreaking of heaven, through prayer, the Lord’s Supper, baptism, and the foolhardy preaching of the word of God.

Such things might feel like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but to take our eyes off of these things and turn them to the wisdom of the world is to look away from God himself and to miss entirely what Tolkien calls the eucatastrophe, a "sudden and miraculous grace."

“Let folly be our cloak”

My fellow pessimists will find a fellow traveler in Tolkien. While his contemporaries were confident that the arc of history would be limitless progress, Tolkien vehemently opposed such modernist notions. And while Tolkien had a bleak view of history, he surely wasn’t a postmodernist, the likes of which, especially after WWI and WWII, radically deconstructed Western society’s modern optimism.

While our cultural moods ebb and flow between modern optimism and postmodern cynicism, Tolkien stood outside this pendulum. Tolkien was a committed Catholic. He saw the bleak effects of industrialization on his boyhood home and witnessed the horrors of trench warfare and the spread of authoritarianism. And like his friend C. S. Lewis, he was a medievalist.

Instead of seeing history as linear, evolving from the arcane and mundane to a progressive utopia, he saw history as cyclical. Each age deals with the same perennial problems but gets further away from its mythic grandeur, gradually succumbing to entropy with each passing cycle. More can be said about this, but Tolkien’s assessment of history isn’t just the musings of some dour and curmudgeonly professor. His views never amounted to despair or cynicism; as is his read on history, they are tethered and illumined by hope.

This is alluded to throughout The Lord of the Rings. In the film adaptation, while Frodo and Gandalf are in the Mines of Moria, Frodo laments,

“It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill Gollum when he had the chance.” Notice how Gandalf’s answer isn’t merely a reprimand or a lecture on providence.

Gandalf: “Pity? It's pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play in it, for good or evil, before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.”

Frodo: “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”

Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.”

There are other forces at work, indeed. And this is why, at the Council of Elrond in Rivendell, they decided not to strike back at the Dark Lord with his own ring. In the midst of the council’s deliberation, a chief counselor of Elrond's household says in Tolkien's work:

“What strength have we for the finding of the Fire in which [the Ring] was made? That is the path of despair. Of folly I would say, if the long wisdom of Elrond did not forbid me.”

“Despair, or folly?” said Gandalf. “It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.”

“At least for a while,” said Elrond. “The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is off the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”

In the epic of Tolkien’s literary masterpiece, he does in fantasy and fairy tale what few theologians and professors can do in lectures. In his characters, we see despair assuaged, courage enlivened, contempt tempered. Ultimately, Tolkien reminds us that God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise (1 Cor. 1:27). Precisely because this is what God does, we can trust that the best strategy for the church and for us individually in the Christian life is not to relent to our reactionary impulses but to “Let folly be our cloak!”

We might think hanging on to the ordinary means of grace is an act of despair, but it's not. We can’t fathom that in these plain practices, by faith, we are participating in the most powerful things in the world. Not in a methodological, technical, or pragmatic sense; the rituals of the church do not coax God as if he’s a feral animal. God’s mystical and mysterious work is beyond all of that. Rather, they are the very inbreaking of the New Creation in our lives.

You see, in a world where God has revealed himself, become incarnate, died for our sins, and risen for our justification, who promises to come again to judge the living and the dead, there is no room for cultural moods to dictate our life and ministry.

“With as much hope as the strong”

Around New Year’s, I finished reading The Fellowship of the Ring to my nine- and seven-year-old children. I was their age when I listened to the Fellowship on cassette tapes I rented from my town’s local library. Aside from this being a monumental moment in parenting, as I read these sections to my own children, I was moved to tears. I remembered bleak seasons in my life and church, where tears seemed to be my food day and night. Where harbored resentment and despair not only got the better of me, they consumed me. When I looked at my life, it felt as if I could only see the forces of darkness. It felt as though I could do nothing. I could only pray, I could only receive the Lord’s Supper, I could only hear my pastor preach the word of God—I could do nothing but attend to these foolish means of grace. As I read the Fellowship, it almost felt as if Gandalf were helping me with my burdens!

I can’t tell you when exactly light started to break through in life, but it did. I can’t say exactly when I grew in love for my wife and children, but I know that I have. I don’t remember the date on the calendar when my prayers went from lamentation to praise. I couldn’t precisely explain how so many desperate prayers over the years were answered, but when I look back, so many of them were. I can’t pinpoint how the Lord continued to guard and consecrate his church, but I know that he has.

In the faithful attendance to the ordinary means of grace, we are communing with the one true God where he promised to commune with us. We are tasting the morsels and hearing the words and declarations of heaven itself. If our attention and imagination is caught up with the malice and strategies of the enemy and the scales of power in the world, or even with our own sin and shortcomings, we will be utterly blind to it. Worse than that, it will be of no use to us, just as humble hobbits were deemed of no use by the “wise and powerful” in Middle Earth.

And yet, these foolish means are part of God’s strategy to save the world. They’re part of his plan to save and redeem you, to sustain you.

I say all this not to temper righteous zeal. As I said, things are not as they should be, and we shouldn’t be comfortable with that harsh reality. But the most powerful ways God is working to make all things new this side of the last judgment are not through our most cunning strategies or tactics or iconoclastic fantasies. As Elrond said, “Neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far. …This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is off the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”

Caleb Wait

Caleb Wait is the Director of Content for Sola Media and he holds an MA in Theological Studies from Westminster Seminary California.

Date Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Old Problems, New Proponents: The Sufficiency of Scripture Debate in Our Day

Tue, 12 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000

If You Will Diligently Listen: Hearing God’s Voice in Scripture By Michael W. Sciarra Christian Focus Publishing | 2026 | 160 pages (paperback) | $13.99

The church today finds itself amidst a revived trend of advocating for hearing God speaking to his people apart from his word. While there are new figures in this movement, the content of their message is hardly original. One can think of late medieval mysticism’s emphasis on a mystical encounter with God or the Quakers, who exalted the inner illumination of the Spirit over Scripture. There is nothing new under the sun (Eccl. 1:9). While the recurring problem persists, so, too, the same solution solves: a recovery of the sufficiency, authority and perspicuity of Scripture. For Christians seeking a lucid and helpful guide on how to advocate for such doctrines in the midst of a strong tide of different views, Michael W. Sciarra’s If You Will Diligently Listen: Hearing God’s Voice in Scripture, is such a resource.

A Timely Book

With so many books coming out at such a rapid pace, it is worth asking the question: Why was this book written now? Sciarra explains, “I write because of the widely popular and deceptive false teachers today, standing in opposition to Scripture’s authority and sufficiency, claiming God speaks apart from Scripture” (2). To prove this claim, he takes two chapters to survey various individuals who advocate the view that God speaks to people individually and personally apart from his revealed word. Initially, attention is drawn to major figures such as Dallas Willard (1935–2013) and Henry Blackaby (1935–2024), both crucial individuals in this trend within modern evangelicalism.

From there, Sciarra surveys this view amongst prominent evangelical figures today, such as John Mark Comer and John Eldredge. As a Presbyterian pastor, I was aware that such a belief existed, but unaware of just how widespread it has become amongst many evangelicals today. A major strength of this book is educating its readers on just how prominent this belief is as evidenced through the plethora of citations from works written by proponents of the view. As a reading practice, I often write exclamation points in the margins when I find something interesting or shocking. In these first two chapters, I found myself writing exclamation points next to quotes on each page out of pure shock. John Eldredge, on seeking to discern God’s answers to his questions, writes, “Still in quiet surrender, I ask the Lord, is it yes, you want us to go? Pause. In my heart, I am trying it on, letting it be as though this is God’s answer … By trying on the possible answers, I find it enables me to come into alignment with his Spirit” (32). If this is indeed as prevalent a method of deciphering God’s will as Sciarra claims it to be, then there is certainly a need for this book.

Defending the Sufficiency of Scripture

The cure this book provides to this problem of personal revelation is a recovery of the sufficiency of Scripture. In an age of confusion and questioning whether Scripture alone is sufficient for the Christian life, Sciarra does a good job defending the doctrine. He writes, “The sufficiency of Scripture means the Bible contains all the words of God He wanted us to have for salvation and for growth, everything we need for trusting and obeying Him” (61). Sciarra still gives guidance to earnest Christians who have questions about their lives, but encourages them to seek help through applying the principles of God’s word to their lives rather than expecting a personal spoken word.

For a book about Scripture, the author avoids irony in rarely citing biblical passages alone, but in interacting with them in a way that tries to illustrate the truth of his argument. The reader is confronted with the truth and beauty of God’s word on nearly every page. Especially helpful is the section that does exegesis on popular passages used by those who promote the idea of God speaking apart from his word (74–82). Although, it is curious that Sciarra does not interact in depth with 1 Samuel 3 here, given that many authors examined earlier cite that passage as a support for their view.

While demonstrating that God’s word does not promise that we will receive private revelation, the book draws attention to a wonderful fact: God does speak to us in his word (Heb. 3:7; 4:2, 7). Because of this, attention is drawn to trusting the Spirit to illuminate God’s inspired word to his people (1 Cor. 2:6–16). Both of these facts help exhort readers to rich meditation on Scripture that will yield a delight in the Lord (Ps. 34:8). In doing so, Sciarra draws out one of the wonderful implications of trusting in the sufficiency of Scripture: It leads God’s people on a sure path towards delighting in and enjoying the riches of the Lord through his word (93–98).

Pastoral Guidance

Far from just defending the sufficiency of Scripture in a theological sense, Sciarra shows the rich and beautiful implications for the Christian life in holding to such a view. Even when engaging with those who disagree, the book frequently instructs Christians to be gracious, gentle, and prayerful (51, 111–112). While it may sound good in theory to believe that God does speak to people apart from Scripture, this book draws Christians back to the biblical truth of who God is and how we should expect him to work ordinarily in the life of a believer. Sciarra writes, “This is not merely about semantics; it is about our understanding of God and how He works” (109). Exactly. While some prominent and influential church leaders communicate that we should anticipate hearing God speak to us outside of his word, it is crucial to recover the freedom of trusting in God’s word alone. The church needs to recover teaching the ways God has promised to work—through his Holy Spirit and the ordinary means of grace—in the lives of believers rather than being shackled by unbiblical expectations.

In light of the power of the word, Sciarra urges churches to give a prominent role to Scripture in worship services, both in the reading and preaching of the word, and also in discipleship, all of which leads Christians to a deeper maturity in their faith and relationship with God.

Finally, the book concludes with a focus on what the main goal of a word-centered life is: the glory of Christ. Helpfully, several practical examples are laid out about how Christians can treasure Christ by faith and through his word. Sciarra notes, “The more you cherish Christ as your greatest treasure, the more saturated with Scripture you will want to be; your thoughts flavored by, answers shaped and desires bent to God’s self-revelation in Scripture” (130). May the Lord be pleased to use the words of this book to draw us back to his word and to his Son, the Word, his fullest revelation.

Arie Van Weelden

Arie Van Weelden is an Assistant Pastor at Skyview Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Centennial, Colorado. He is a graduate of Westminster Seminary California. He is married to his wife Mary and has a daughter. When he's not working, he enjoys reading a good book, watching a good film and bird watching with his wife.

Topics Books, The Bible

Date Tuesday, May 12, 2026

A New Apologetic Front: Spirituality and Suffering in the Army

Tue, 05 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000

In an institution like the military, where soldiers must die, platitudes must die as well. Horace’s famous words, “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori” (How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country), grind to a halt before real suffering:

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.¹ [1. Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est" from Poems, ed. Siegfried Sassoon. New York: The Viking Press, 1921. Public domain.]

The realism inherent to such work often leads to more penetrating glances, not just at the world, but to the present culture and its blind spots. This is especially helpful in an age when the tried-and-true syllogisms of twentieth-century apologetics fall flat. What then can we learn from the military milieu that will help us to take every thought captive?

The Reemergence of Spirituality

Contrary to the claims of those who thought religion and spirituality to be a dead letter, spirituality is on the rise—claiming victims from atheism, Christianity, and everything in between. Some holdovers from the moral majority era might see this as an unmitigated good (we have more in common with someone who believes in a higher power than not, after all). Others may assume the sky is falling when they consider that, in loosening the theological bonds that once knit communities together, “spirituality” is often just shoe polish for a nihilistic narcissism.

There is one evident gain that Christians should take advantage of, however. In gaining a cultural consensus, spirituality now takes pride of place in how Christians engage the culture. The Army chaplaincy, for example, has quickly built upon the work of Dr. Lisa Miller, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University. With countless peer-reviewed studies, she has shown that every person is born with a “spiritual core” that reaches upward and outward and can be developed, wounded, and healed.

There is much that Christians could add to this discussion from Romans 1 and 2, but we would be jumping the gun. First, we need to show why the concept of a spiritual core is helpful. As psychologists and sociologists speak of an “epidemic of loneliness” in our culture, they generally describe loneliness as the lack of vertical and horizontal bonds that give rise to meaning, purpose, and identity.

Consequently, if we are made to connect vertically with God or a higher power, and horizontally with our fellow man, but are not doing so, then we have a problem. This concept of a spiritual core provides the principle; the epidemic of loneliness presents the need—in both the military and the wider culture.

To address this need, the Army has committed an entire chapter to “spiritual readiness” in their field manual on holistic fitness.² [2. Department of the Army, FM 7-22, Holistic Health and Fitness (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2020).] Of course, in formulating a doctrinal approach to spiritual readiness, the document—due to pluralism concerns—remains remarkably averse to any theological doctrine that may provide such readiness. But the point is not that the shot falls short of the target, but rather that the Army is taking a shot at all.

Spirituality no longer stands on one side of the culture divide. It is the deepest part of a person and arguably the most determinative factor in mental health. And, across disciplines, we are seeing that it is not effectively engaged. Thus, it stands as a key connection point between the believer and unbeliever. What is happening at the core level in each of our hearts? What was this core made for? How has it been shaped? Conversational doors open at each of these questions.

Spirituality is not only a present concern of the Army. In most Army writings concerning Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO)—future wars against major powers—there is constant mention of the indispensability of “spiritual resiliency” in our soldiers. While the term is not formally defined, the context makes the implication clear: We need soldiers who are able to undergo and ascribe meaning to suffering. They need a belief system—a religion—that makes sense of suffering and enables them to endure. Suffering—and the prospect of suffering—brings the topic of spirituality to the fore.

The Ever-Present Problem of Suffering

Conversations about spirituality could be stiff-armed away (and often are in our culture of distraction), if not for the ever-present problem of suffering. We live in an age of distraction, where most people find enduring and intoxicating ways to cope and avoid the problem of suffering. Yet, the universal nature of suffering means that reality will come knocking at the door of distraction unbidden.

In the military, service-members must reckon with this pernicious problem on a more regular basis. They must be prepared to take life or give it, suffer in myriad ways, and then come home healthy and whole. A key marker of spiritual readiness is resiliency—a term that implies the existence of external pressure, stress, or suffering—and the ability to persevere.

But how is a soldier—or any person for that matter—able to persevere in and through suffering? Sadly, many don’t—at least not well. This is where two other terms that are growing in prominence within the military are important: “moral injury” and “spiritual injury.”

Both resist simple definitions, but we’ll simplify nonetheless in order to keep the focus on the implications of these terms. Moral injury is the negative emotions that come with the betrayal of your moral code—either by yourself or another. These feelings—such as shame—cannot fully be comprehended by psychology, let alone the natural sciences, because they get to a fundamental understanding of the true, good, and beautiful.

Spiritual injury is a soul wound caused by trauma that alters your relationship to yourself, to others, and to God. This also cannot be quantified or fully addressed by other disciplines. How can a psychologist heal the breach you feel between yourself and God? There is likely a dissertation waiting for the person who can draw a throughline from the spiritual core to spiritual injury to the epidemic of loneliness.

Like PTSD, both concepts will likely grow in prominence due to their universality in scope. As with PTSD, these issues might be more urgent and prevalent in a military setting, but they also cast greater light upon the human condition at large. They remind us that within both the military and our cultural context, we don’t have an answer for the problem of suffering…and that is a problem.

The Theodical Approach

Tim Keller gets at the vacuous and hypocritical condition of our culture regarding suffering in his book, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering. Theodicy—the justification of God in the face of evil—is often treated as a problem for Christians. But what alternatives do people have to that which we have in the Bible? And for that matter, why should they care? Why would they consider it a problem unless we were made for something better?

It turns out that the quest inward has not allowed our spiritual types to escape the devil of suffering. Paraphrasing Luther on the monastics, our spiritual friends have merely taken the devil in with them. And guess what? They don’t know how to kick their unwanted guest back out.

A new apologetic front is opening—let’s call it the “Theodical Approach.” Instead of going on the defensive and trying to explain how the God of the Bible could allow evil or suffering to occur, we should challenge our friends to come up with a better alternative. How have they made sense of suffering? Let’s unpack this approach (which I use often with soldiers and even strangers at the brewery) with several moves:

The initial challenge. I recently lost a soldier. Not just any soldier, but the one I baptized on my recent deployment. I carried this grief with me to my neighborhood brewery, where I know all the locals, and talked about my soldier, my grief, and my hope. This vulnerability invites conversations, and sure enough, a young man asked, “How can you possibly believe in a God who allows suffering?”

This question is a well-intentioned trap. People who ask this question are rarely malicious, but it is an easy way to deal with a difficult issue. They know that there is no simple, satisfying way to answer the question. Christians often get caught in a myriad of webs. Perhaps our response is that suffering is a result of the fall of our first parents. Inevitably, the retort will lead us astray: “Why did God allow the fall?” “Why are we made to suffer for their failure?” There are responses to all these questions, but we will never get back to the original question.

The key to the initial challenge is to change the direction of the challenge. Why do they care about what Christians think about suffering? Do they have a personal interest or a story they want to share? Otherwise, the question is irrelevant (unless a Christian is directly evangelizing and they can fairly ask the question since we’re asking them to change their belief system). They ask us this question because they’re emotionally invested, and it is right to ask them to lay their investment upon the table.

Exposing the wounded bias. The term “wounded bias” is used intentionally. When we are hurt, we often like to challenge and distract others to keep people away from the hurt. When we protest, we protest because we care. People protest the God of the Bible because they believe that he exists (Rom. 1–2). They rightfully feel wounded—spiritually injured, if you will. They have a soul wound in need of dressing.

There are many ways to expose this wounded bias. We can ask abstract questions about why they care about suffering, why they call it wrong, or why they care about God amidst it all. But the more effective questions are usually more personal—something that gets at their own hurt. Why are they upset with the God who made them? If they’re willing to tell that story, we can start making our way home.

Be willing to be broken. Most people we meet in contemporary culture grew up in broken homes, and asking them to be vulnerable is asking a lot. This is a wonderful opportunity to share our own brokenness with them. Christians are no less stricken by suffering than others. We simply grieve as those with hope.

My new friend at the bar grew tired of unpacking his own story and biases. “We deal with all these stereotypes. What if it was your family? What if it’s something that is particularly hard to explain?” With tears in my eyes, I reminded him that the kid I baptized was a pastor’s kid. He professed faith on Easter Sunday and then committed suicide the day after Christmas.

There was a respectful moment of silence. I think we tapped our glasses together. This has happened many times. When we’re willing to be vulnerable, there is a moment when the glasses clink. We’re reminded that Jesus was born in the dark of the night, forsaken. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He dreaded the cup of God’s wrath, but declared “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). For the joy set before him, he endured the cross (Heb. 12.1). All of those threads come together when the glasses clink.

A place for tears. We weep for a reason. All of us end up weeping at some point—God designed our hearts that way. Our tears aren’t the problem. They are the right response to a broken world, as Jesus modeled for us (John 11:35). When we truly engage others in loving conversations about suffering, tears often ensue. Why?

My friend at the bar had no explanation. We can gaslight people and tell them that their tears are the problem. Or we can acknowledge—as only the Bible does—that we weep over a broken world. We miss Eden as we weep over the wilderness. We long for a new heavens and new earth.

This was the most compelling point. No other worldview can adequately account for our tears. Only the Bible sufficiently explains why we grieve. Only the Bible shows us what we can do with those tears. This is why Christians don’t need to feel threatened by the questions. The One we question is the One who alone holds our tears (Ps. 56:8).

Image: "Two Men by the Window," by Edvard Munch (1863–1944), oil on board. {CC BY-SA 4.0} Cropped by MR.

Stephen Roberts

Stephen Roberts is a US Army chaplain and has written for The Washington Times and The Federalist.

Topics Suffering, Apologetic Methodologies

Date Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Progressive Christianity’s Metamodern Posture

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:00:00 +0000

What does an elder who is leaving a local evangelical church because—in part—he felt this church wasn’t taking social justice issues seriously have in common with another Christian who is forsaking Classical Theism for Open Theism? Further, what unites these with a third Christian whose journey of deconstruction equates to a refusal to accept the status quo, who questions every whiff of Christian dogmatism because he thinks it arises from the hegemony of church history?

First, these are three friends of mine who do—in one case, did—profess to be Christians. Second, these three are sojourners to a city built by human hands, a trek some call “deconstruction” and others Progressive Christianity.

Third, though their journeys look different, they share an assumption: that historic Christianity should be questioned, and more, overturned by the canons of postmodernism, namely, the removal of metanarratives (overarching stories or beliefs/dogmas).

Complicating this, Progressive Christianity doesn’t fully embrace the logical end of deconstruction—abject moral relativity commensurate with postmodernism’s “death of God.” Progressive Christianity treats truth as if it is knowable, though it does so arbitrarily. Ultimately, Progressive Christianity adopts a metamodern posture toward the knowability of truth, retaining a sort of placebo-like-faith in modernism’s optimism in the knowability of truth, while ultimately maintaining postmodernism’s rejection of absolutes.

Progressive Christianity seeks to have its cake and eat it too.

From Blue Jazz to Rainbow Flags

Progressive Christianity has left the Emerging church behind. Up-and-comers like Brandan Robertson (leader of Sunnyside Reformed Church), Tim Whitaker (The New Evangelicals), or sophisticated thought-leaders like Pete Enns (The Bible for Normal People) have replaced the Rob Bells and Donald Millers (Blue Like Jazz) of the previous era.

Progressive Christianity has moved (note the word) from mere postmodern deconstruction to principled-but-selective metamodern reconstruction of religious ethics and belief adopted as if true. Metamodernism gets its assumptions from postmodernism—an “as if” true proposition still only performed as true—but escapes nihilism by appeal to the moral codes most suitable to its appetite. Metamodernism lives in perpetual pendulum swing between denial of truth and embracing truth “as if” it could be so.

As Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker define it:

Ontologically, metamodernism oscillates between the modern and the postmodern. It oscillates between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, between naïveté and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity. Indeed, by oscillating to and fro or back and forth, the metamodern negotiates between the modern and the postmodern.

This is why metamodernism has been likened to having your cake and eating it too. Robertson’s church, Sunnyside Reformed, is a good example of Progressive Christianity’s selective reconstruction of meaning. In scrubbing every page for a doctrinal statement, one finds only their Open and Affirming Covenant which gives primacy to inclusion and “all expressions of human diversity” in a homogenized and triumphant “unity of faith.” No creeds or confessions are referenced or affirmed.

What is clear is what Sunnyside church affirms above all: affirmation itself.

Nearly every page of the church’s website stresses the preeminent importance of inclusion. As Sunnyside’s church covenant expresses (adopted in October 2024), they consider themselves “one body with many members, embracing people of every race, ethnicity, creed, class, age, gender, marital status, physical or mental ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.”

This radical inclusion leaves open the full scope of “the life and mission of our church.” Anyone, regardless even of beliefs, is invited to “participate fully in our worship, rites, and sacraments, and to take leadership roles within our congregation.”

Sunnyside may be “over easy” on doctrine, but what they value appears clear: the only rule is that there are none. Or—scarcely different—no rule is allowed which seems to hurt or exclude another person. This selective dogmatization of inclusion at the expense of clear exclusionary teachings in Scripture—such as Romans 1:24–27, where homosexual behavior is clearly condemned—evinces Sunnyside’s metamodern, arbitrary posture, which has become a hallmark of Progressive Christianity. Indeed, Robertson and his church aren’t an isolated case. The widely adopted Phoenix Affirmations—twelve affirmations written originally in 2006 by United Church of Christ minister Eric Elnes—first affirms “walking fully in the path of Jesus, without denying the legitimacy of other paths God may provide humanity.” Radical inclusion, and the exclusion of Christ’s exclusivity, is upheld in Progressive Christianity, done so at the expense of Scripture’s clear teaching of the illegitimacy of any other way to God but through the Son (i.e. John 14:6).

But by what criteria does Progressive Christianity select its rules/beliefs? And how does this selection criteria show its metamodern posture?

The Emotive Metamodern Ethics of Progressive Christianity

What constitutes a rule (or belief) as hurtful or exclusionary in Progressive Christianity is defined by the internal psychological world of the “modern self” that Carl Trueman has ably detailed. Trueman’s work is programmatic for conservative Christians engaging with the “social imaginary” of the current day. It is also helpful in elucidating categories for the discussion of how Progressive Christianity forms its virtues.

Trueman, reliant on Alasdair MacIntyre—chiefly in his work After Virtue—details the concept of emotivism, which Trueman defines as an ethical philosophy where morality is “nothing more than the language of personal preference based on nothing more rational or objective than sentiments or feelings.”

Emotivism views good and bad as irrevocably dependent on the subject's perception of them as such. Emotivism unites the truth of a proposition and the subject’s perspective of that proposition. The two propositions “stealing is wrong” and “I disapprove of stealing” are, in emotivism, synonymous.

This is helpful for revealing how Progressive Christianity reformulates—via metamodernism—its morality after postmodern virtue-death. Deconstruction in Progressive Christianity becomes its own rule of faith, domesticating Scripture’s clear teaching to the rule of whatever is most agreeable to the community. It reformulates the community’s confessed ethics and doctrine along emotive lines, ethics and doctrine equated with what is most affirming of the other’s psychological feelings. This forms a veritable “canon within the canon,” Progressive Christianity adopting a red letter Christianity congruent with the community’s emotive sentiments. The community’s emotive sense of good and bad then become a magisterium in Progressive Christianity, having authoritative sway over what is acceptable or not. This emotive magisterium trumps Scripture, in the end making Scripture a handmaiden to it, rather than Scripture alone holding magisterial authority with its own retinue of subordinate handmaidens (i.e. Tradition, Philosophy, or any other non-inscripturated source of truth). This entailment of one of Progressive Christianity’s first principles—emotive affirmation—may not be a leap explicitly confessed by those who call themselves Progressive Christians, but it is a necessary entailment of Progressive Christianity as a theological system, and is a fruit tasted, even if not confessed, everywhere Progressive Christianity is found.

As the community’s emotive sentiments inform what is considered moral, this informs the community’s accepted doctrine. Progressive Christianity then dogmatizes what it wants to, or rather, what seems most acceptable to the widest number of people who consider themselves part of this community. This is why Progressive Christianity elevates the Golden Rule—do unto others what you want done to yourself—to the place of a central dogma. Only by “what you want done to yourself,” Progressive Christianity means: anything and everything the heart desires. Human desires (fallen) are then equated with morality, which is emotivism. This dogmatic misinterpretation of the Golden Rule is motivated by the key value of affirming the other in Progressive Christianity, leaving no room for Christianity’s exclusive claims.

It is no wonder that Progressive Christianity increasingly dogmatizes what it considers proper faith and practice based upon what pleases the most people. Anything goes—sexual or otherwise. It must be realized, though, that anything goes is a paraphrase for following the lusts of the flesh. Sadly, Progressive Christianity’s enshrinement of an “anything goes” ethic is merely a function of an emotive moral compass (Gal. 5:19–21; 1 John 2:16). Progressive Christianity, as a result, calls evil good (Isa. 5:20–21; cf., Gen. 3; Rom. 1:18–23).

Contrary to emotivism (and Progressive Christianity), Scripture presents facts that cut directly against the desires of fallen people. Who of their own accord, without Scripture’s testimony and the Spirit’s inward illumination, wants to admit there is a Hell? Who without God’s regenerating work wants to repent of dead works and cling to God in chastity and abstinence? Who wants to confess that a hard, narrow gate is the only way to finding God, a large swath of humanity missing it (Matt. 7:13–14)?

But it is precisely these truths which Scripture presents. It is also precisely these truths that the fallen person wants to avoid. Sadly, it is also precisely these truths that Progressive Christianity flattens, excises, or obscures by dogmatizing affirmation.

A Call to the Absolute Truth of the Cross

Back to my three friends. Each is a caring individual who—from my vantage—appears to desire nothing more than what they perceive is the best for society: their version of Christianity the solution. After all, God is a lover, not a fighter, wanting nothing else but to sweep the world into his arms, even—it seems—at the expense of his justice.

The problem is that such doctrinal conclusions are increasingly formulated along emotive, metamodern lines. Progressive Christianity dogmatizes—affirms—Jean Paul Sartre’s equating of freedom and existence: “Freedom is existence, and in it existence precedes essence.” As a theological system, Progressive Christianity dwells in a space beyond good and evil clearly (biblically) defined. A place where “if we must have virtues, have those only which have come to agreement with our most secret and heartfelt inclinations, with our most ardent requirements[.]” Modifying a concept from Philip Rief, Progressive Christianity is a third world, forging what it wants from the sacred order of the Christian second world. Though each of my friends wouldn’t confess these sentiments expressly, the theology they wear on their sleeves in regular conversation shows this as the case.

Progressive Christianity in final analysis forms and then ascends a mountain of its own making, at the summit transfiguring the community’s internal inclinations into external dogma. Such idol-making is the only recourse for Progressive Christianity, dwelling in the shadow of nihilism, rubbing modernism and postmodernism together in bifurcated hopeful-despair for a flame to arise.

I invite these friends—and many more—back to the absolute reality of the Cross; to the firelight of God’s glory revealed in the face of Christ, revelation given a priori to our fallen doubts. I adjure them to receive the exhortation—and blessing—Jesus spoke to doubting Thomas about those who would doubt after him: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

Jeffrey Beaupre

Jeff Beaupre is an M.Div student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is passionate about writing both academic theology and science fiction/fantasy. He has written for Christoverall.com, and you can find his writing on his substack, Captured Imaginary (https://jefferyryanbeaupre.substack.com). Additionally, he is working on an epic fantasy novel which is the first of a planned seven-part series. He lives with his beautiful wife and daughter in Northern California, and is a member at Neighborhood Church in Anderson, CA.

Topics Movements, Worldview

Date Tuesday, April 28, 2026

No Room for Post-Millennialist Optimism: Considering the Saints and the City of Chaos in Isaiah 24–27

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:00:00 +0000

Christians today join the saints before them in searching the Bible to understand what exactly God promises us about the Last Days. No shortage of speculation exists, and it would be hard to overstate the impact eschatology has had on Christian life as believers navigate the spaces of politics and culture. As Christians long for the Second Coming of Christ, concern has centered around what this final appearance of Christ will look like. Will he come and consummate a world that has been completely reclaimed—states and souls alike—by the church? Does his return hinge upon the efforts of his people to conquer the kingdoms of this earth in his name? Or can we expect the bad to get worse, for the kingdoms of this world to flourish in the darkness? Will this pilgrimage as strangers in a strange land continue to be the norm for believers before our Lord comes again and defeats, at last, the final enemy once and for all? Though cloaked in imagery that seems foreign to modern readers and separated from us by thousands of years, the words of Isaiah and Paul are especially helpful in understanding what Scripture tells us about the Last Days—and in what Christians should put their hope. It’s not for the faint of heart, not for those optimistic that Christendom can create a flourishing earthly city that will usher in the kingdom of God. But the hope is there, for final judgment and justice and the coming kingdom, for death conquered at last—it’s simply anchored in something greater than human effort.

The City and the Mountain

First, a broader framing is in order. Isaiah 24–27 is often pointed to as apocalyptic writings that both unveil Isaiah’s vision of the Last Days and anchor much of the other imagery that appears in the book. He makes use of several key terms in 24–27 that need to be contextualized within the entirety of his writings. “The City of Chaos” in Isaiah 24:10 and references to “this mountain” in 25:6–7, 10—echoed again in 27:13—are both crucial for placing Isaiah’s eschatological paradigm, specifically in understanding to whom the prophecy refers. Is this for the ancient nation of Israel, the people headed into exile—or for the Israel of today—or is this for all God’s people across time and place?

This “Isaiah apocalypse” holds a crucial place in understanding the cities that appear in the book, and urges us to wonder: Who is the City of Chaos meant to represent?¹ [1. Mark E. Biddle, “The City of Chaos and the New Jerusalem: Isaiah 24–27 in Context.” Perspectives in Religious Studies 22 (1995), 6.] Throughout Isaiah are references to Jerusalem and Babylon, cities that represent the great ladies in the narrative of redemptive history playing out the role of the elect nation of Israel and the pagan nations which surround her. As the poems wind through Isaiah, it is clear that Babylon is destined to fall and sinful Jerusalem to be replaced by a New Jerusalem. And then there are the unnamed cities. The unnamed city in Isaiah 57 presents as Jerusalem’s “sinful alter ego” which must fall and be remade, and in chapter 47 it is possibly meant to juxtapose Babylon.² [2. Ibid., 5–6.] Despite being addressed to the remnant of Israel, those crying out to God, the imagery surrounding the destruction language matches what is also said of Tyre, Sidon and other condemned cities in Isaiah 13–33.

So, is the City of Chaos a pagan lady or the sinful Jerusalem? He contends that this might be intentionally unresolvable, that the reader is left to wonder.³ [3. Ibid., 10.]

This analysis puts Isaiah’s eschatology into an interesting light. Indeed, without directly labeling a city, how can one say the people of one particular nation will be saved over another? Calvin makes an interesting note in his Commentaries, regarding Isaiah 24:14, that “as the Jews were the first fruits… they are here placed in the highest rank.”⁴ [4. Jean Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah . Translated by William Pringle. Calvin's Commentaries, (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Pub, 1948), 175.] And yet, Calvin also observes that these cries of joy and exaltation of the name of the Lord do come from both East and West, coastlands and valleys (vv. 14–16). He notes that Isaiah writes “of spreading the true religion through the whole world; and this makes it still more evident that the prophecy relates to the kingdom of Christ, under which true religion has at length penetrated into the foreign and heathen nations.”⁵ [5. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, 176–177.]

This is mirrored in chapter 25 where “the Lord of armies will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain” (v. 6). He removes the veil which stretches over all the nations (v. 7), which Calvin says is the ignorance of the sinful nature, now dispelled by the light of the gospel.⁶ [6. Ibid. , 198.] And then God wipes away tears from all faces (v. 8). Old Testament scholar Joseph Blenkinsopp writes: “It is also consoling, and perhaps remarkable, that all peoples are invited to the banquet, the mantle of mourning will be removed from all nations, and the tears will be wiped from every face, unconditionally, with no restrictions or reservations.”⁷ [7. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary . Firsted. The Anchor Bible Commentary Series, (New York, New York: Doubleday, 2000), 359. (emphasis original)]

It seems apparent, then, that the City of Chaos is made up of those who do not call on the name of the Lord, which might include even ethnic Israelites (Rom 9:6). Those who are invited to the banquet, whose tears will be wiped away, are from every nation—they call out to God as Lord and he saves them.

In conjunction with this perception of a multi-ethnic city of believers is the place where this victory shall be inaugurated. The first “eschatological banquet”⁸ [8. Ibid., 358.] happens “on this mountain.” It is a mountain referred to often in Isaiah, beginning in chapter 2:

Now it will come about that In the last days The mountain of the house of the Lord Will be established as the chief of the mountains, And will be raised above the hills; And all the nations will stream to it. (Isa. 2:2)

Mount Zion is notably quite low and, at the time of this writing, Jerusalem would have already been destroyed.⁹ [9. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah , 92.] It is thusly peculiar imagery to point to a small hill and a ruined city as the points of triumph, and Calvin explains that “it was the duty of the pious to look not at those ruins, but at this vision.”¹⁰ [10. Ibid., 93.] It is a vision of the temple, of Christ and of his kingdom.

Of course, Isaiah would not have had the context nor the vocabulary to include the incarnate Jesus and the New Testament era church into this prophecy, nor would Israel have been able to comprehend them. But they are here pictured in Mount Zion as the place where offerings are brought (Isa. 60:22), a house of prayer (Isa. 56:20), and the ones who take refuge in the Lord will inherit it (Isa. 57:13).

Although this imagery would have first been understood as the temple, it points forward even more to Christ and the church (Heb. 7:22–25), and in Isaiah 65:25, “My holy mountain” is used as capstone for the preceding passage about the new heavens and new earth. This mountain is then the church consummate—or perhaps more fittingly, as Isaiah 65:25 portrays with the lion and the lamb peacefully domesticated together, the church at rest.

Without the benefit of history, of seeing the fulfillment of God’s redemptive plan, Mount Zion was meant to be a picture of comfort for God’s people, and, as is true of the church today, Zion is extolled not in her own right but on account of what the Lord will do through her.¹¹ [11. Ibid., 92–93.]

This is an important framework for understanding the Last Days in our modern context. It is too easy to take the language of Isaiah and transpose it onto current political events or movements, but Isaiah isn’t just talking about one earthly nation or ethnicity. The eschatological banquet and the passages of 24–27 are intended for God’s elect, those in the nation of Israel at the time of this writing and those in the church in the age to come—to all those who join in singing “Glory to the Righteous One” (Isa. 24:16).

The Millennium in Isaiah

Isaiah’s apocalypse poem does more than tell us who will be saved in the Last Days. It offers perspective on the question of the millennium: when will the Kingdom of God come and how will it appear? As the nations continue to rage, and the church seeks to find its place amid their warring, this question remains prevalent.

To this end, Calvin’s observation about the Lord working through Zion, rather than Zion doing the work, is an important place to start. Based on 24–27, it would not seem that Isaiah envisions a world of pre-Second Advent glory, nor of an earthly post-Coming reign. Rather, Isaiah sees a time of bitterness and gloom where the saints are few and God’s judgment is brought upon the earth (ch. 24), followed by feasting and celebration, the curse conquered and the death-blow dealt to death (ch. 25). This pattern is largely repeated in 26–27. God’s people are saved, his enemies are destroyed.

This small remnant seen especially in chapter 24 is important in understanding Isaiah’s distinctly non-Post-Millennium vision. It is counterintuitive that the few inhabitants mentioned in Isaiah 24:6 could produce with their voices songs that are heard over all the earth (v. 16)—it is clearly a work of God’s hand, in salvation and in judgment.¹² [12. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, 175–176.] Surely, men will not bring about the triumph of the Kingdom of God, not as they are described here in Isaiah as a small number, scattered (v. 1) and dwindling (v. 4).

In addition to this gloomy picture is the City of Chaos itself. Though often translated as the City of Chaos, the ruined city, or the wasted city, the Hebrew construct in question might be better rendered “the formless city.” Tohu is the same word used in Genesis 1:2 when the Spirit of God is hovering over the waters of an earth that is “formless” and empty. Tohu is used often to refer to or to suggest a breakdown of order or a reversal of roles, and that is exactly what is pictured here. This City of Chaos is the antithesis of man’s achievements. Humans build, create, order, and fill the earth with great cities, grand monuments, and sprawling infrastructures. But this city is formless, desolate, barren. Described in Isaiah’s vision is the opposite of what humankind was called to do in the creation mandate: to fill the earth and subdue it. Here, people are scattered and few and they live in a city of emptiness. This is not Post-Millennium Glory.

It would be difficult from this text to draw the conclusion that any kind of grand earthly reign of the church will take place before or after the Second Coming of Christ, and it is worth noting that Isaiah himself would not have had context for two separate advents. His prophecy has no timeline for the events foretold (e.g. the virgin birth, the raising up of the suffering servant, the resurrection of the dead, etc.). And yet, in Isaiah 24:23, we are told that the Lord will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and we know that Mount Zion refers to the place of the church, yes, even the church entering into eternal rest. Isaiah even tells us as much in 2:2 when he introduces the mountain, according to Calvin:

When [Isaiah] mentions the end or completion of days, let us remember that he is speaking of the kingdom of Christ; and we ought also to understand why he gives to the kingdom of Christ this appellation. It was because till that time everything might be said to be in a state of suspense, that the people might not fix their eyes on the present condition of things, which was only a shadow, but on the Redeemer, by whom the reality would be declared. Since Christ came, therefore, if that time be compared with ours, we have actually arrived at the end of ages… Yet it ought to be observed, that while the fullness of days began at the coming of Christ, it flows on in uninterrupted progress until he appear the second time for our salvation.¹³ [13. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, 91–92.]

God’s kingdom reign will not be on a physical mountain in the Middle East but rather over his church. Although Isaiah makes it clear that God will reign over his people, he does not say specifically where that will be.

Death Shall Be Swallowed

While Isaiah does not provide a strict timeline for events (e.g. when God will lay waste to the earth, imprison kings, reign on his holy mountain, or wipe tears from the eyes of all people), the book does reveal one crucial aspect of the Kingdom of God: the resurrection.

Blenkinsopp submits that this reference to death being swallowed up might be a nod to the Canaanite myth about Mot (who embodies Death) swallowing Baal, but then later being himself overcome.¹⁴ [14. Blenkinsopp, Isaiah , 359.] Whatever similarities those Ancient Near East mythologies may share, the death being referred to here is much more than just the last breath of a person that passes from lungs to lips. It refers to the state of having death ever before one’s eyes, aware of the outward wasting away (2 Cor. 4:16). This is the presence of the curse which will be once-for-all overthrown. Death conquered is not just an extension of life but a reversal of the curse—the sin and suffering we are subjected to in so many ways will be overcome. Covenant promises will at last be fulfilled. In Christ’s first coming, he crushed the serpent’s head, but the final victory has not yet been consummated. This is shadowed in Isaiah’s imagery in chapter 24, where the people praise God amidst the desolation of the earth. This worship must indicate assurance of God’s victory because, as the psalmist writes, who can praise God in death? (Ps. 6:5)—death must already be conquered for the people of God to have such hope.

As Paul and Isaiah stare down the horizon of God’s promises from either side of the First Advent, they both equally look forward to a final day in which salvation will be fully consummated. But that optimism isn’t placed in earthly kingdoms or the rising of Christian empires. God doesn’t need humans or their governments to usher in the judgment of the Last Days—that is something only the Messiah can do. Isaiah penned this covenantal promise of life and judgment from his context as a prophet of the living God speaking to a ruined Israel, hoping for the return of God’s favor and the sign of its coming: the virgin birth of Immanuel (Isa. 7:14)—an Israel that has now seen the ingrafting of the nations and is called the church. Paul wrote about this promise having met the resurrected Christ himself on the Damascus road—he has seen the sign fulfilled, he himself bears witness to Immanuel and to the dead raised back to life. In 1 Corinthians 15:54, Paul is able to contextualize the words of the prophet Isaiah with the events of the first coming of Christ: “But when this perishable puts on the imperishable, and this mortal puts on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory’” (1 Cor. 15:54).

The when of this resurrection is important in the discussion of eschatological millennia. When is this resurrection, when is this last day, when death is swallowed and tears are wiped away? It cannot be this inter-advent period, because, as Paul outlines in Corinthians, death is still very much present, in both bodily demise and the external wasting away of the flesh, to say nothing of the persecutions and suffering of the saints (1 Cor. 4:9ff). This language is mirrored in the psalms and prophets, as persecution and death hound God’s people continuously (Ps. 44:22). But we know that Christ has conquered death and the songs lifted up in Isaiah 24 declare assurance of such before the consummation of the eschatological banquet. Calvin explains:

They must undoubtedly be referring to the universal kingdom of Christ;—universal, I say, because we must look not only at the beginning, but also at the accomplishment and the end: and thus it must be extended even to the second coming of Christ, which on that account is called ‘the day of redemption’ and ‘the day of restoration;’ because all things which now appear to be confused shall be fully restored, and assume a new form.¹⁵ [15. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah , 198–199.]

Paul interprets Isaiah 25:8 to take place “in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet” (1 Cor 15:52). “In these words, God intimates that he accomplishes the salvation of his people only when death and the grave are reduced to nothing.”¹⁶ [16. Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, 62.] Calvin’s case is that we do not enjoy that complete salvation until the last day; then death will be swallowed up accordingly, “in every respect, a complete victory over it.”

What we see in Isaiah 25:7–10 is a glimpse of the new creation, one which mirrors the picture of peace and rest seen in 65:25. There is no objective ground to support a millennialist view, but rather these passages of Isaiah by themselves indicate a period between first victory and final triumph when God’s people will be scattered in a broken world before he comes at last to swallow up death forever and comfort those who seek refuge in him. Kingdoms of earth will rise and fall—maybe even kingdoms espousing Christian virtues or beliefs—but they will be fleeting, like everything else in this age that is passing away. More so in light of Paul, we see that this coming resurrection, as promised with the risen Christ, is the hope of the Christian faith—not any man-made earthly fortification, but that on the last day, both the destruction of the body and the curse of this world will be overcome.

Mary Van Weelden

Mary Van Weelden is a writer and a journalist, and has a double M.A. in Biblical and Theological Studies from Westminster Seminary California. She and her husband are actively searching for the best taco place in Denver, CO. Come talk to her about practical theology and comma placements on Twitter at @agirlnamedmary.

Topics Bible Prophecy, End Times / Return of Christ

Date Friday, April 17, 2026

"A Different Way of Being," by David Kirwa Tarus: A Review

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:00:00 +0000

A Different Way of Being: Towards a Reformed Theology of Ethnopolitical Cohesion for the Kenyan Context By David Kirwa Tarus Langham Monographs | 2019 | 230 pages (paperback) | $40.99

I have had the pleasure of corresponding with David Kirwa Tarus while writing my children’s book on Byang Kato (an important African theologian). I have a high estimation of Tarus’s work in his African context, and I am a firm believer in the importance of learning from the global church because we can often get used to our comfortable blinders. I was eager to read this book, certain that it would have much to offer to churches outside of its geographical area. I was not disappointed.

Tarus begins by agreeing with a Facebook user that most Kenyan Christians pledge their allegiance first to their tribe, then to their political parties, and finally to Christ. Although this book was written to address the problem of ethnopolitical conflicts in Kenya, it made me wonder if, by substituting the word “tribe” with “family,” this assessment could be applied to some American Christians.

This misguided allegiance, Tarus argues, is at the root of the animosity, bigotry, and violence that have plagued his nation. The numbers are staggering. In the months following the disputed presidential election of Mwai Kibaki on December 27, 2007, more than 1,100 Kenyans were reported killed, thousands more injured, 650,000 people internally displaced and 78,000 houses were burned down. The descriptions of some of these acts of violence are disturbing.

In the face of this crisis, Tarus believes that “the search for ethnic cohesion in Kenya is a theological task that calls for a new theological anthropology and politics. Thus, a new future in Kenya calls for a new way of being human, which can only be availed of when people respond to the divine call and grace” (2).

The book goes on to consider how this goal can be achieved. What Tarus calls “a new theological anthropology” is essentially a return to the biblical teaching that humans are created in God’s image. Tarus devotes a whole chapter to this concept of the imago Dei as a reality that encompasses all humanity, though marred by the Fall. To this, Tarus adds a reminder that this image includes people of all ethnicities—a reality which he believes to be prelapsarian, given that “God’s creation is depicted as an intricate world of vibrant diversity” (6). (He follows this statement with biblical references.)

In the same chapter, Tarus examines several views of the imago Dei throughout church history and particularly in the writings of John Calvin. Drawing from the works of several authors, Tarus highlights ways in which a diminished view of God's image in mankind can lead to violence. Conversely, he shows how a true understanding of God's image, exemplified in the courageous actions of Kenyan Christians in the wake of the 2007–2008 violence, is foundational to the Kenyan value of utu (human dignity). This might be his most important chapter in the book, since the imprint of God's image on every human being is at the foundation of Tarus's challenge to the church.

The following chapter explores the meaning of identity for a Christian, showing how the Christian maintains his or her identity while forgoing aspects of that identity “that are not aligned with God’s will” (134). This chapter underlines the roles of Christ, the Holy Spirit, God’s word, and the church, as well as the progressive nature of sanctification.

Chapter six deals with the issue of politics. I have some qualms about the comparison of David VanDrunen’s thought with that of Neo-Calvinists such as Abraham Kuyper, since the use of terms such as “dualism,” “dichotomy,” and “antithetical” to describe VanDrunen’s view of God’s two kingdoms is not accurate. VanDrunen’s writings clearly outline that both kingdoms are God’s and are therefore complementary, although distinct. The chapter as a whole, however, is an excellent reflection on a Christian view of politics in light of Calvin's perception of it as an instrument for the common good, which includes the interests of the poor and marginalized.

The last three chapters in the book address the thought and work of four significant Kenyan theologians: David Gitari, Henry Okullu, Jesse Mugambi, and John Mbiti. Each of these men proposed different solutions to Kenya’s problems. After giving a brief description of their lives, Tarus examines their views in comparison with Calvin’s.

Throughout the book, Tarus quotes many other authors, including members of the Circle of Concerned African Women, a group that has made important contributions to African theology. Some Western Christians might react negatively to definitions such as “feminist” or “liberation theology,” but the meaning intended by the authors might differ from our assumptions. For example, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, founder of the Circle, defines feminist theology as “simply letting African women solve issues African women encounter in their day-to-day lives” (18).

History enthusiasts will enjoy the chapters devoted to the history of postcolonial Kenya, which highlights some problems of colonialism which are not typically discussed in history books. According to Tarus, even most missionaries unwillingly “precipitated the volatile problem of tribalism in Kenya by concentrating their outreach on specific ethnic communities while neglecting others” (94).

The book concludes with a challenge to Kenyan Christians not only to put into practice the doctrine of the imago Dei, but also to learn to converse charitably with others in their pluralistic society: “Kenyan Christians, as they respond to God’s gift of grace in their lives, are enabled to live lives that truly reflect the meaning of love and neighborliness in a society that is characterized by ethnic hatred and political divisions” (292).

While Tarus embraces a view of faith as integrated into all aspects of life, he strongly cautions against coercion and exhorts Christians to “be civil in their engagement with culture,” seeking language that emphasizes common ground (293).

This book may not appeal to everyone. Those readers with many daily responsibilities may not have time to study the history and challenges of the church in Kenya alongside proposed theological solutions. But for readers concerned about rising violence and division in our own country, listening to voices from contexts that have endured similar struggles—often on a greater scale—might prove beneficial and enriching.

Simonetta Carr

Simonetta Carr is the author of numerous books, including Broken Pieces and the God Who Mends Them: Schizophrenia through a Mother’s Eyes, and the series Christian Biographies for Young Readers (Reformation Heritage Books).

Topics Books, Social Issues

Date Tuesday, April 14, 2026

A Congregation of the Passover

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:00:00 +0000

One cannot exaggerate just how critical the sequence of events recorded in Chapters 11, 12, and 13 of Exodus is in the history of Israel, the church, and the world. What God does, says, and reveals to his servant Moses and his covenant people still resonate with God’s people today as the Lord not only fulfills his word of promise to them, but also foreshadows his plans for us. Integral to this section are Stephen’s words from his sermon in front of the Sanhedrin council, where he refers to the Israelites as the “church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:37). The congregation or ekklesia that has survived countless eras of division, persecution, and suffering finds some of its foremost ingredients in an ancient ritual that was first uttered to slaves. In other words, while we recognize Acts 2 and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost as the proverbial “birthday” of the church, and rightly so, the DNA for the church stretches all the way back to the days of Egyptian servitude, when God, with “a strong hand,” brought his people out of slavery and into freedom.

Setting the Stage for Salvation

To set the scene, we have to look at the prologue to the tenth and final plague and some of the elements that make it unique, chief among them being God’s extended introduction and reminder to set Moses’s expectations (Exod. 11:1–10). Back in Chapter 6, it was revealed that it would be none other than Pharaoh himself who’d drive the Israelites out of Egypt (Exod. 6:1). So far, though, that hadn’t happened. As the Lord reiterates what he said previously, he also reminds Moses of the “peaceful plunder” his people were about to mount on the Egyptians (Exod. 11:2–3). As that nation of slaves exited the land, they wouldn’t be doing so empty-handed; they’d leave with all the articles necessary to worship Yahweh just as he intended (Exod. 12:36; cf. Gen. 15:14).¹ [1. This detail becomes all the more tragic once you make the connection that the jewelry plundered from Egypt and earmarked for the Tabernacle is the same jewelry Aaron confiscates to fabricate his golden calf (Exod. 32).] And what would prompt the Egyptians to want to get rid of them is the final plague, which was the most personal and excruciating of them all, leaving every firstborn—regardless of socio-economic status—struck down and drawing a “great cry” from all those affected (Exod. 11:4–8).

A distinction is made, though, between those in Egypt and those who belong to the Lord. While the former’s hallways would rattle with the noise of their grief, not even a dog would growl in the latter’s homes—an obvious allusion to the solace, calm, and salvation the Lord would provide for them. After announcing the last plague and departing Pharaoh’s throne room in a rage (Exod. 11:8; cf. 10:28–29), Moses receives a special set of instructions that detail the means by which the people of Israel could survive the looming night of judgment, safe and sound (Exod. 12:1–13). This, of course, is the first announcement of the Lord’s Passover, that is, his offering of relief and escape from the plague of death, within which the Lord resets his people’s identity by resetting their calendar (Exod. 12:2). More than merely a new ritual or new rhythm, God was tethering who they were to what he was about to do.

In other words, they were to be a congregation of the Passover. Just as their calendars revolved around this day, so, too, were they to be absorbed by it. Each household was to take a lamb “without blemish” or defects, kill it, roast it, and then—according to a set of specific instructions (Exod. 12:8–11)—eat it. After sacrificing this lamb, they were to take some of its blood and apply it to the doorframes of their homes as a graphic emblem of God’s mercy and preservation (Exod. 12:12–13). As the rest of the land cried great cries of unfathomable grief, where no blood was found, the blood-stained doorframes were the Lord’s distinguishing ensign of who belonged to him and who were under his gracious protection. “When they sprinkled its blood on the posts,” Rev. Alexander Maclaren once said, “they confessed that they stood in peril of the destroying angel by reason of their impurity, and they presented the blood as their expiation.”² [2. Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture , Vols. 1–17 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1944), 1:1.40–41.] God’s people, you might say, have always been identified by the blood that sets them apart.

The point is that only those who listen to the Lord’s words would be safe (Exod. 12:21–28). They couldn’t get away with boiling the lamb or deep frying it, as much as that might’ve tasted better, nor could they apply the blood in any old way they liked. Judgment would pass over those who listened and believed in the words of God, which were words of grace, solace, and deliverance. Similarly, the Body of Christ is a congregation that listens to the words that offer relief and release from grief, judgment, and death, which come from Christ alone. The church isn’t set apart by the words of humans, institutions, councils, or symposiums—as important as they might be. Rather, the distinguishing mark of God’s people is and always has been that they are a people who listen to and find their identity in the Lord’s words, especially the Word who became flesh for them.

Exodused for Worship

Events unfold just as God said they would, as nightfall is accompanied by the angel of death who takes the life of all the firstborn where the blood wasn’t applied (Exod. 12:29–32). This, as you might imagine, sends Egypt into bedlam, with the king himself being roused in the middle of the night to find that he, too, was a victim of this divine judgment. With the deafening cries of his people echoing in the streets, Pharaoh finally had enough. After reaching the point of giving up, he forces Moses and Aaron to get out, along with the rest of their kind, much to the delight of every Egyptian citizen (Exod. 12:33). For them, the Hebrews were living reminders of the curse that had befallen them, one that would soon put them in the grave as well.

As the Exodus develops, it becomes a hurried and anxious affair. In fact, things moved so fast that the Israelites had no time to let the yeast in their dough work its magic and make their bread loaves warm and fluffy (Exod. 12:34). Instead, they were forced to bake unleavened bread due to how hastily they were constrained to leave (Exod. 12:39). But leave they did, every last one of them (Exod. 12:35–41). After more than four centuries of bondage and suffering, they were finally free; no longer slaves. This, of course, had nothing to do with them, and everything to do with their God, the I Am, who did what he promised in and for his people. They were “brought out” by someone much better and stronger than them—a fact that the Lord is eager for them to remember. In fact, near the beginning of Chapter 13, the Israelites are reminded some seven times in fourteen verses that they were “exodused” via the “strong hand” of the Lord (Exod. 13:3–16). This was an event made entirely possible through divine intervention.

But the point is that they weren’t just emancipated, and that was the end of it. They might’ve been thrust out by the Egyptians, but it was Yahweh who was bringing them out so that they could follow and worship him alone (Exod. 13:1–2, 11–12). He was their God, and they were to be his people. They weren’t just saved from something; they were saved to something. “The Israelites ate the Passover meal,” J. Alec Motyer notes, “as those committed to go walking with God.”³ [3. J. Alec Motyer, The Message of Exodus: The Days of Our Pilgrimage , Revised Edition, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021), 118–19.] They were rescued to become a worshiping people, that is, a community whose life and worth are found outside of them. This is the premise behind the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which called every Israelite to cast off the old leaven of sin and live in the “new” life of “sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:7–8).

Just as God had “set them apart” by making a distinction between them and Egypt, they were to set themselves apart, consecrating themselves for his service. In other words, they were “brought out” so that they could follow the Lord wherever he leads or wills, a quality that endures as a defining characteristic of the church (Rom. 6:17–18). The Body of Christ is comprised of those who’ve been set free by the strong, nail-scarred hands of the Christ of God, which reconcile and embrace them, forming them into an assembly that sings endless praise to the Lamb that was slain for them (Rev. 5:9–10). The church, in other words, has been exodused for worship by the Messiah whose wounds serve as the central melody of its song. We are not our own. Rather, gloriously, we belong to the one who brought us out so that we might be gathered into his presence as a worshiping assembly.

The Meal That Preaches

Chief among the characteristics of God’s newly formed congregation is that they are a people who remember. Right on the heels of instituting the Passover, God’s first move is to ensure that what he’s about to do won’t be forgotten (Exod. 12:14–20). The blood on the doorposts hadn’t even dried yet, nor had anyone even set foot beyond the borders of Egypt, and yet the Lord was already preparing a way for them to remember. He knows how easily his people move on, how quickly we drift, and how prone we are to take his mercy for granted. Thus, he offers tangible and repeatable means by which his provision and grace can continually be called to mind. Instead of ceremonial busywork, these God-ordained rituals were designed as divine memory aids, so that those who belong to Yahweh can recall what he did for them, generation after generation.

The Feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread were “statutes” created by God to “memorialize” the Exodus, wherein every element told the story of their deliverance. As Allan M. Harman says, “The ritual of the Passover also served to function as a teaching ministry, for there was a recital of the redemptive history.”⁴ [4. Allan M. Harman, Exodus: God’s Kingdom of Priests , Focus on the Bible Commentary Series (Ross-shire, England: Christian Focus, 2017), 134.] The slain lamb spoke of the cost of deliverance and how freedom always comes at a price. The unleavened bread spoke of the urgency of their deliverance and how there’s no room for delays when God places his call on you. The blood spoke of the means of their deliverance and the redemptive judgment that made them his. The bitter herbs spoke of the pain and misery from which God delivered them. In other words, every bite they took preached something to them. The whole meal was a sermon—one that was intended to be repeated, over and over again (Exod. 12:14, 17, 24), so that even centuries later, the same testimony of God’s gracious deliverance could resonate in the hearts of the redeemed (Exod. 13:8–10).

When the soon-to-be crucified Messiah reclined around the table with his disciples mere hours before he was betrayed and given the kiss of death, he shared in one last Passover, taking each of those familiar elements and reinterpreting them around himself, and the work he was about to accomplish (Luke 22:14–20). The bread and the cup are recast as marks of the new covenant that emerges from Jesus’s death and resurrection. Thus, whenever the church partakes of the Lord’s Supper, the resonance of that first Passover meal continues to reverberate, resonating even deeper and truer in a meal that preaches the good news of deliverance from sin.

The Rhythm of Remembrance

The Exodus wasn’t meant to be an event quarantined to ancient history. Rather, it was to be the abiding and defining event that preached to God’s people how they became God’s people. “The Passover,” Michael P. V. Barrett asserts, “as is true for the entire exodus, is more than history; it conveys the message of the everlasting gospel.”⁵ [5. Michael P. V. Barrett, The Gospel of Exodus: Misery, Deliverance, Gratitude (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2020), 107.] Thus, the rhythm of Israel’s worship was built around this rehearsed reality, where every feast, every law, every Sabbath, and every psalm was geared towards remembering the Lord who saves, who delivers, and who keeps every single one of his promises. And the reason this is so important is because forgetfulness is the first step on the road to rebellion (Deut. 8:11–14; Ps. 78:5–8). When God’s people forget what he has done, they soon start living as though he never did it, or they begin to take credit for who they are and where they are, causing gratitude to dissipate and worship to become dull and performative.

Consequently, right from the very start, God ingrained a pattern of remembrance into the lives of his people, a pattern that is maintained whenever the church gathers to remember the work of God in Christ for them (Acts 2:42). This is the heartbeat of Christian worship—namely, a steady, deliberate rehearsal of what God has done. “Perhaps the most crucial part of our worship,” Griffin Gooch recently wrote, “is that we worship repeatedly, rhythmically, and sustainably.” When we, as the church, assemble, we engage in the same divine rhythm of hearing (again) the story of our deliverance, proclaiming it (again) to one another, and letting it shape and inform how we live. We come together, not to hear some newfangled doctrine, fresh idea, or innovative lecture. Rather, we come together to hear and remember what’s been done. This is what keeps the church steady, which is why we keep telling the same story of grace on repeat. Because when we stop remembering, we forget who we are.

Bradley Gray

Bradley Gray serves as the senior pastor of Stonington Baptist Church in Paxinos, Pennsylvania, where he lives with his wife Natalie and their three children, Lydia, Braxton, and Bailey. He is the author of Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment and is a regular contributor for 1517 and Mockingbird. He also blogs regularly at www.graceupongrace.net.

Topics Redemptive History, Atonement

Date Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Sacramental Scaffolding: Calvin on the Continuity of the Old and New Covenants

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:00:00 +0000

Everyone is moving to Florida. Everywhere I look there are new roads, new subdivisions, new buildings piercing the sky. New everything. Several years ago, my oldest son and I sat and marveled as we watched construction workers scaling up and down a building using several stories of scaffolding, like ants winding their way through a labyrinthian ant farm. The scaffolding would be there only for a season, but for that time it would provide real and necessary support to the workers until they completed their task. And then it dawned on me—the scaffolding encircling the building was to those construction workers what the sacraments of the old covenant were to old covenant saints.

But perhaps I should back up first. Why did I see a sacramental analogy in scaffolding? Because of something John Calvin writes in his Institutes.¹ [1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendricksen Publishers, 2008).]

Continuity vs. Discontinuity

In book 4 chapter 14 of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin aims to convince his readers that the sacraments of the Old Testament served the same purpose as the sacraments of the New Testament—to lead believers to Christ, their substance. Sacraments, regardless of where they fall on the timeline of redemptive history, are God’s appointed means of confirming his promises of salvation and communing with his people.² [2. I refer to Old Testament sacrificial rites as “sacraments” in line with the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) 27:1, “Sacraments are holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace, immediately instituted by God, to represent Christ and his benefits, and to confirm our interest in him” and John Calvin, “The term sacrament, in the view we have hitherto taken of it, includes, generally, all the signs which God ever commanded men to use, that he might make them sure and confident of the truth of his promises” (4.14.18). Interestingly, Westminster Shorter Catechism (WSC) question 92 answers the question “What is a sacrament?” this way, “A sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted by Christ , wherein, by sensible signs, Christ, and the benefits of the new covenant, are represented, sealed, and applied to believers” (emphasis mine).” Though it may seem that the Confession and Shorter Catechism are at odds with each other (viz. old covenant ceremonies were neither instituted by the incarnate Christ nor signs of the new covenant but the old) WCF 27:1 should be understood instead as defining sacraments generally, and WSC Q.92 defining new covenant sacraments particularly. Because the Shorter Catechism goes on to treat only the Lord’s Supper and baptism in questions 93-97 and the Lord’s Prayer in questions 98-107, this narrower focus makes sense. The divines were focusing the minds of the catechumen on the outward and ordinary means of grace that we are to make diligent use of as new covenant believers (cf. WSC Q.88), not the means of grace in general.]

For those discipled in Christian traditions that stress the discontinuity between the old and new covenant, such symmetry feels foreign. It sounds like a flattening of redemptive history, a denial of the differences between the old covenant and new. But to those in the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, this continuity is foundational for our soteriology (cf. Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3) and our sacramentology, especially with regard to baptism (Gen. 17:7–8; Acts 2:38–39; Col. 2:11–12). While we fully acknowledge that there is considerable change in terms of the outward form and number of sacraments (WCF 7:6), and that “Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises” (Heb. 8:6), we nevertheless maintain that the “sacraments of the old testament, in regard of the spiritual things thereby signified and exhibited, were, for substance, the same with those of the new” (WCF 27:5). The gospel is one, from Genesis to Revelation, and so every sign, every ceremony, every drop of blood and water ushers us on to him who is the sum and substance of the gospel.

Shadows Only?

These two portions of the Confession were instrumental in helping me resolve a question that had racked my brain for years—what did old covenant saints get in the blood of bulls and goats? Was it all shadow, no substance? Was Christ only signified and foreshadowed in the blood of bulls and goats or was there a real participation in the grace of Christ even before his coming in the incarnation?

Before becoming reformed, I assumed the former view. After all, Hebrews 10:1 speaks of the law as having, “but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities.” A shadow is not, properly speaking, a part of the form it outlines. If traced to its origin, a shadow will lead you to the object that casts that shadow, but it would be wrong for me to point to the ground and say, “That shadow is a part of me.” And so, if the law (i.e. old covenant era) is a shadow as the writer of Hebrews says, then that must mean that Christ himself wasn’t present in the Old Testament sacrificial rites but only foresignified by them. It’s not a stretch to see why many, like me, understand Old Testament sacraments this way.

But now, together with Calvin, I maintain that the sacraments of the Old Testament weren’t merely shadows, but shadows with substance to them, and that substance was Christ. They were a real and true means of communing with the person of the Son and the benefits of his redemption.

Calvin confronts this “shadow only” understanding of Old Testament sacraments in several places. He writes, “The Scholastic dogma (to glance at it in passing), by which the difference between the sacraments of the old and new dispensation is made so great that the former did nothing but shadow forth the grace of God, while the latter actually confer that, must be altogether exploded” (4.14.23).

Calvin is adamant that the sacraments of the old covenant not only displayed the grace of God that would come in the incarnation, but that they actually conferred the grace of Christ to those who partook in faith. When believers killed, ate, and spread the blood of a year-old lamb upon the posts and lintels of their home, they were sacramentally partaking of the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). When they drank water flowing from the rock in the wilderness, they were participating in Christ (“That rock was Christ,” cf 1 Cor. 10:4).

Calvin continues:

I repeat what I have already hinted, that Paul does not represent the ceremonies as shadowy because they had nothing solid in them, but because their completion was in a manner suspended until the manifestation of Christ. Again, I hold that the words are to be understood not of their efficacy, but rather of the mode of significancy. For until Christ was manifested in the flesh, all signs shadowed him as absent, however he might inwardly exert the presence of his power, and consequently of his person on believers (4.14.25, emphasis mine).

Solid shadows. According to Calvin, Scripture refers to the time of the law as a shadow to signal that the old covenant was not the end, but the means to the end of Christ and the new covenant. Shadows, by their very nature, communicate that there is something more that lies ahead. In the same way that it would be strange to see a shadow on the floor, stop, and never look up to address the one who is casting the shadow, Paul is stressing that it was “impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb. 10:4). Those ceremonies were not meant to be looked to as though they had power to forgive sins. They were meant to draw the eyes of the offerer onto something beyond themselves in the same way that a shadow draws our eyes not to itself but to the shadow caster. The sacraments of the Old Testament and the New Testament are both 100 percent efficacious (effective) in terms of “inwardly exert[ing] the presence of [Christ’s] power.” But, they do differ in this—the old covenant sacraments signal that the fullness of redemption was still forthcoming and new testament sacraments confirm that the fullness has come.

Finally, Calvin reiterates that the language of shadow is not meant to deny the efficacy of old testament sacraments but to highlight the superiority of new testament sacraments, in the same way that the form casting a shadow is superior to the shadow it casts.

In this sense we are to understand the words of Paul, that the Law was a “shadow of good things to come, but the body is of Christ” (Col 2:17). His purpose is not to declare the inefficacy of those manifestations of grace in which God was pleased to prove his truth to the patriarchs, just as he proves it to us in the present day in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but to contrast the two, and show the great value of what is given to us, that no one may think it strange that by the advent of Christ the ceremonies of the law have been abolished (4.14.22, emphasis mine).

Remember the issue that prompted the book of Hebrews. Jewish Christians were being pressured to return to the sacrifices of the old covenant. And one can understand why it was so tempting. If, as they’d been told their entire lives, the sacraments of the Old Testament were God’s divinely appointed means of grace, then it would take something hugely significant, something superior to the old covenant sacraments, to justify their abolishment. This then is why the writer of Hebrews describes the old covenant sacraments as shadows, to stress that the new covenant sacraments were superior. And why so? Because fulfillment is superior to non-fulfillment (or that which is yet to be fulfilled).

Think of it this way—which is better, to be engaged or to be married? Married, hands down. Why? Because an engagement is not the full realization of the hopes and desires of the couple. Engagement is unto marriage. It’s a good thing, but not the ultimate thing. And so it is with the relationship between the old and new covenants and their respective sacraments. Christ has come, redemption has been accomplished and that is better than waiting for its accomplishment, which was the case with the types and shadows of the Old Testament. Quoting Augustine, Calvin writes, “Those [the sacraments of the Mosaic law] were promises of things to be fulfilled, these indications of fulfillment” (4.14.26).

Sacramental Scaffolding

So, taking into account all that Calvin says in these excerpts, here is how I see scaffolding as a fitting illustration for the function and importance of old covenant sacraments in relation to the new.

The sacraments of the old covenant, like scaffolding, were an efficacious means of supporting the faith of old covenant believers. Believers were able to make their way “up and down,” to commune with God, in the same way that we commune with God in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. As Calvin wrote, “Whatever, therefore, is exhibited to us in the sacraments, the Jews formerly received in theirs—i.e., Christ, with his spiritual riches. The same efficacy which ours possess they experienced in theirs—i.e., that they were seals of the divine favor toward them in regard to the hope of salvation.”
Nevertheless, just as scaffolding is disassembled once a building is completed with its internal staircases and elevators, so too were Old Testament sacraments abrogated with the coming of Christ and the sacraments of the new covenant (i.e. the completed building). A thing can be useful for a time, but inappropriate if used outside of that window of time.
Though it is true that elevators and staircases are much to be preferred over the scaffolding that preceded them, their superiority does mean that the scaffolding was ineffective in supporting the workers who scaled up and down it.

Conclusion

In extolling the superiority of the new covenant and its innumerable benefits, we need not disparage the old. That the old covenant is described as a shadow does not hollow it out of any and all substance or significance. Though the means of grace certainly looked different in that era of redemptive history, they were means of grace still, and that of the same grace in Christ Jesus. We should give praise to God for not only foreshadowing but feeding and nourishing the faith of our forefathers, just as he does ours. We are one people, in one Christ, who pours out his grace upon all, whether they looked forward to or back to his sacrifice upon the cross.

Stephen Spinnenweber

Stephen Spinnenweber is the senior minister of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, Florida. He is a graduate of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary (GPTS, 2019) and an Executive Council member of the Gospel Reformation Network (GRN). Stephen is an avid writer, having written Loving the Law: The Law of God in the Life of the Believer (Christian Focus Publications, 2025) and contributed to Tabletalk magazine, the Gospel Reformation Network, Reformation21, and the Heidelblog.

Topics The Covenants

Date Tuesday, March 31, 2026