The April 2020 issue of Tabletalk carries the theme of “Misunderstood Doctrines,” and considers such truths as Sola Scriptura, Limited Atonement, Predestination and Human Actions, and Paedobaptism (infant), among others.
Burk Parsons, the editor, includes these comments in introducing the issue:
The proper study of doctrine is not easy. It takes time, a lot of hard work, and much prayer. For those reasons, many people don’t study doctrine. Others don’t study doctrine because they think it is just for professionals, and even some pastors don’t study doctrine because they think it is just for scholars. Still, there are others who don’t study doctrine because they are indifferent to it. They are content with being fed milk and knowing only the basics of the faith, but they are largely apathetic to pursuing the doctrinal meat of the faith.
I find it hard to tolerate this kind of indifference in myself and in other Christians. Indifference when it comes to what we believe is deplorable, for how can we be indifferent to those vital truths that can save or damn our souls? As one Puritan pastor said, “Indifference is the mother of heresy.” If we become indifferent about doctrine, we will soon become indifferent about Scripture and eventually indifferent about God. [“Indifference to Doctrine”]
The featured articles are worth reading (I found the one on Limited Atonement by Jonathan Gibson to be excellent!), but the one I wish to highlight this Saturday evening is one that appears in the back of the issue. It is written by Stafford Carson for the rubric “Heart Aflame” and is titled “A Heavenly Vision.” It seems especially relevant for these times. And as we anticipate the Lord’s Day tomorrow, we have a foretaste of what he describes and calls us to hope for.
I give here an extended quotation, but find the rest at the link provided here.
There is only One who shows us the Father, and in Him we see His glory, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14; see also 6:46). The glory of the gospel is that the invisible God makes Himself visible to us in Jesus Christ. Having tasted His grace and truth, we desire to view that face in all its majestic glory and attractive radiance.
Recent theological reflection on eschatology has not given prominence to this hope of seeing the face of God. The emphasis has been on the renewal of creation rather than on understanding Christian hope as “going to heaven when we die.” For many people, the climax of redemptive history consists merely in our resurrected bodies and the renewal of the earth. Little is made of our hope of standing in the presence of God and beholding the face of God first in heaven and then in the new creation.
Without denying that more earthly understanding of the glory to come, rightly maintaining a heavenly perspective is crucial to our Christian devotion and discipleship now. The psalmist prays,
One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple. (Ps. 27:4)
Of all the matters for which David sought the Lord, here is his first priority, his “one thing”: to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.
The priorities of our lives are transformed by this desire to see the face of God. As a result of our fallen nature, we once lived “in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind” (Eph. 2:3). But now we are called to consider our “spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (1:3), to be filled with “all the fullness of God” (3:19), with “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (1:23). Maintaining that eternal focus means that our loves and desires here and now have been recalibrated (4:1–3). Consider John Owen’s words:
The constant contemplation of the glory of Christ will give rest, satisfaction, and complacency unto the souls of them who are exercised therein. Our minds are apt to be filled with a multitude of perplexed thoughts;—fears, cares, dangers, distresses, passions, and lusts, do make various impressions on the minds of men, filling them with disorder, darkness, and confusion. But where the soul is fixed in its thoughts and contemplations on this glorious object, it will be brought into and kept in a holy, serene, spiritual frame. For “to be spiritually-minded is life and peace.” A defect herein makes many of us strangers unto a heavenly life, and to live beneath the spiritual refreshments and satisfactions that the gospel does tender unto us.
The psalmist realizes that one day he will fall asleep in death. But that will not be the end of his story or his experience. He will awake and will be satisfied with seeing God’s face and in being fully transformed into the likeness of his Savior. The face of God will not destroy him or annihilate him; it will satisfy him. All his longings, desires, and hopes will be fulfilled. If this life is one of unfulfilled longings and unmet desires, then that will not be true of the life to come. Then we will say: “This is it. This is what I have longed for and desired all my life. I need nothing more.”
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