A pastor can affirm the Nicene creed, defend the inerrancy of the Bible, be a staunch Calvinist, point out the popular heresies of the day, passionately preach the gospel, study church history, labor to build up the church, sacrifice for the ministry, write position papers excoriating false teaching…and be totally blind to the heart of Christ.
I wonder if you have ever seen that? It can be hard to put a finger on what is wrong. Everything the minister is saying is true, all of their doctrine is in order, they are preaching the Bible, the sins they are pointing out are really sins, and they don’t appear to be living hypocritically. Yet, like the smell of cigarettes rolling off the breath, you sense something is off. There is a brittleness, a harshness in their preaching and, most notably, a lack of the heart-melting wonder and joy at the grace of God extended to them. They seem to be more angry at sin (especially sin “out there”) than they are amazed at their Savior. They are more exasperated than they are refreshed in Jesus.
What’s gone wrong?
I have been re-reading Sinclair Ferguson’s *fantastic* work, The Whole Christ, and was struck by his comments addressing the consequences of a preacher having a dehydrated, malnourished view of the love of God:
A misshapen understanding of the gospel impacts the spirit of a minister and affects the style and atmosphere of his preaching and of all his pastoral ministry. [It is possible] to acknowledge the truth of each discrete chapter of the Confession of Faith without those truths being animated by a grasp of the grace of God in the gospel. The metallic spirit this inevitably produced would then in turn run through one’s preaching and pastoral ministry. There is a kind of orthodoxy in which the several loci of systematic theology, or stages of redemptive history, are all in place, but that lacks the life of the whole, just as arms, legs, torso, head, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth may all be present—while the body as a whole lacks energy and perhaps life itself. The form of godliness is not the same as its power.
What happens when a pastor affirms the truthfulness of unconditional election or efficacious atonement, while hesitating on whether God actually does so out of love? It leads to what Ferguson says is a “restriction in the preaching of the gospel.” Why?
Because it leads to a restriction in the heart of the preacher that matches the restriction he sees in the heart of God! Such a heart may have undergone the process that Alexander Whyte described as “sanctification by vinegar.” If so, it tends to be unyielding and sharp edged. A ministry rooted in conditional grace has that effect; it produces orthodoxy without love for sinners and a conditional and conditioned love for the righteous.
Of the many dilemmas facing our churches today, do we Reformed, take-the-Bible-seriously-types have a category for the deadly danger of doubting God’s free, unrestricted, unconditional love toward us? God actually loves us. He doesn’t just put up with us, or use us for His glory. No, His glory is magnified by His love for us! And Ferguson’s point is that we pastors must first be mastered and transfixed by this love, above everything else. If not, there are serious consequences:
In the nature of the case there is a kind of a psychological tendency for Christians to associate the character of God with the character of the preaching they hear—not only the substance and content of it but the spirit and atmosphere it conveys. After all, preaching is the way in which they publicly and frequently “hear the Word of God.” But what if there is a distortion in the understanding and heart of the preacher that subtly distorts his exposition of God’s character? What if his narrow heart pollutes the atmosphere in which he explains the heart of the Father? When people are broken by sin, full of shame, feeling weak, conscious of failure, ashamed of themselves, and in need of counsel, they do not want to listen to preaching that expounds the truth of the discrete doctrines of their church’s confession of faith but fails to connect them with the marrow of gospel grace and the Father of infinite love for sinners. It is a gracious and loving Father they need to know.
Such, alas, were precisely the kind of pastors who gathered round poor Job and assaulted him with their doctrine that God was against him…This will not do in gospel ministry. Rather, pastors need themselves to have been mastered by the unconditional grace of God. From the the vestiges of self-defensive pharisaism and conditionalism need to be torn. Like the Savior they need to handle bruised reeds without breaking them and dimly burning wicks without quenching them.
What is a godly pastor, after all, but one who is like God, with a heart of grace; someone who sees God bringing prodigals home and runs to embrace them, weeps for joy that they have been brought home, and kisses them—asking no questions—no qualifications or conditions required?
Lastly, if you are a pastor yourself, Ferguson ends with a question to you:
…[This] raises the questions: What kind of pastor am I to my people?
Am I like the father?
Or am I, perhaps, like the elder brother who would not, does not, will not, and ultimately cannot join the party?
After all, how can an elder brother be comfortable at a party when he still wonders if his once-prodigal brother has been sorry enough for his sin and sufficiently ashamed of his faults?
Sinclair Ferguson, The Whole Christ, pgs. 71-73
Friends, if I am your pastor, or if you are just a faithful brother or sister in Christ, pray that I may be “mastered by the unconditional grace of God.”
Marc Sims 