In Sunday’s sermon, “Restoring Marriage,” Ryan preached from Colossians 3:18-19, where Paul writes, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as  is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and  do not be harsh with them.” Those words are simple, but they are charged with implications.

Since the language of submission can be misunderstood, Ryan clarified its meaning against what it does not mean according to Scripture. In doing so, Ryan referenced six points from a sermon delivered by John Piper indicating “What submission is not,” according to 1 Peter 3:1-6. Here they are:

1. Submission does not mean agreeing with everything your husband says. You can see that in verse one: she is a Christian and he is not. He has one set of ideas about ultimate reality. She has another. Peter calls her to be submissive while assuming she will not submit to his view of the most important thing in the world—God. So submission can’t mean submitting to agree with all her husband thinks.
2. Submission does not mean leaving your brain or your will at the wedding altar. It is not the inability or the unwillingness to think for yourself. Here is a woman who heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. She thought about it. She assessed the truth claims of Jesus. She apprehended in her heart the beauty and worth Christ and his work, and she chose him. Her husband heard it also. Other wise Peter probably wouldn’t say he “disobeyed the word.” He has heard the word and he has thought about it. And he has not chosen Christ. She thought for herself and she acted. And Peter does not tell her to retreat from that commitment.
3. Submission does not mean avoiding every effort to change a husband. The whole point of this text is to tell a wife how to “win” her husband. Verse one says, “Be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won.” If you didn’t care about the Biblical context you might say, “Submission has to mean, taking a husband the way he is and not trying to change him.” But if you care about the context, you conclude that submission, paradoxically, is a strategy for changing him. The goal of this text is to help wives bring about the most profound change in their husbands that can be imagined—the transformation from being a spiritually dead unbeliever to a spiritually alive believer. Submission does not say, “I renounce all efforts to change my husband.” What it does say we’ll see in a moment.
4. Submission does not mean putting the will of the husband before the will of Christ. The text clearly teaches that the wife is a follower of Jesus before and above being a follower of her husband. He is going on the path of unbelief. She does not follow him in that, because she has been called to be a disciple of Jesus. Submission to Jesus relativizes submission to husbands—and governments and employers and parents. When Sara calls Abraham “lord” in verse 6, it is lord with a little “l”. It’s like “sir.” And the obedience she renders is secondary obedience, under, and because of, and filtered through obedience to the LORD with a capital “L”.
5. Submission does not mean that a wife gets her personal, spiritual strength from her husband. A good husband should indeed strengthen and build up and sustain his wife. He should be a source of strength. There are ways in which a wife is the “weaker vessel” as verse 7 says. But what this text shows is that when a husbands spiritual nurturing and leadership is lacking, a Christian wife is not bereft of strength. Submission does not mean she is dependent on him to supply her strength of faith and virtue and character. The text assumes just the opposite. She is summoned to develop depth and strength and character not from her husband but for her husband. Verse five says that her hope is in God, not the husband.
6. Finally submission does not mean that a wife is to act out of fear. Verse 6b says, “You have become [Sarah’s] children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.” In other words submission is free, not coerced by fear. The Christian woman is a free woman. When she submits to her husband—whether he is a believer or unbeliever—she does it in freedom, not out of fear.

So, What then is submission? Piper continues:

It is the disposition to follow a husband’s authority and an inclination to yield to his leadership. It is an attitude that says, “I delight for you to take the initiative in our family. I am glad when you take responsibility for things and lead with love. I don’t flourish when you are passive and I have to make sure the family works.” But the attitude of Christian submission also says, “It grieves me when you venture into sinful acts and want to take me with you. You know I can’t do that. I have no desire to resist you. On the contrary, I flourish most when I can respond creatively and joyfully to your lead; but I can’t follow you into sin, as much as I love to honor your leadership in our marriage. Christ is my King.”

If you’d like to further explore the subject of Christian marriage or biblical manhood and womanhood, the following books should be a great help:

• What did You Expect? Redeeming The Realities of Marriage, Paul Tripp
• When Sinners Say “I Do”: Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage, Dave Harvey
• This Momentary Marriage, John Piper
• Sex, Romance, and The Glory of God: What Every Christian Husband Needs to Know, C.J. Mahaney
• Feminine Appeal: Seven Virtues of a Godly Wife and Mother, Carolyn Mahaney
• The Masculine Mandate: God’s Calling to Men, Richard D. Phillips

Also, check out the messages portion of our site, which includes a number of sermons on the subject of marriage and biblical manhood and womanhood.

Update: Michael Horton’s excellent nine part response to Love Wins is now available in one spot on the web and in pdf form.

This Wednesday night, Ryan preached a sermon from Romans 8:1, where Paul writes,”There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” The sermon’s title was, “‘Now No Condemnation’ – What Condemnation?”

That’s an important question. What precisely are we rescued from through our union with Jesus Christ? What is so great about “no condemnation,” after all? To appreciate all that we have in Christ, we must understand all that Christ’s work rescued us from. To clarify what Paul means by “condemnation,” Ryan made the following points from Scripture:

• Condemnation is Hell
• Hell is Abandonment
• Hell is Destruction
• Hell is Conscious Torment
• Hell is Forever
• Hell is Punishment
• Hell is Just
• Hell is Wrath

This is a sober subject, but we can praise God that His grace is greater than all of our sin. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus! In His life, Christ met God’s righteous demands for us. In His death, Christ absorbed God’s wrath for us. Death has no sting. Hell has no victory.

The question of the nature of hell is of particular relevance given the national attention received by a new book by Grand Rapids area pastor, Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.

While Bell does not adopt the label of “universalist,” he can only do so by redefining what he means by that. Bell asserts that every human person, in the end, will be won over by the love of God. In other words, everyone goes to heaven. Some will turn to him before death, and some after death. God wants all to be saved so, in the end, God gets what he wants.

That would sound like good news, but it does damage to Scripture. In addition to mishandling the Bible’s specific teaching on the subject of hell, Bell’s proposal undermines the constellation of Scripture’s teaching concerning nature of God and the nature of what Christ accomplished on the cross.

Whenever we find the Bible mishandled we have a chance to apprehend God’s glorious grace in Jesus Christ more fully by returning to the Scriptures with greater interest for clarity and understanding. To clarify your understanding of the Bible’s teaching against this occasion of false teaching, we recommend the following four resources for your review:

• Tony Reinke, “The Rob Bell Debate: A Reader’s Digest, with Suggested Resources“
• Michael Horton, “Bell’s Hell: A Review by Michael Horton“ (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9)
• Kevin DeYoung, “God Is Still Holy and What You Learned in Sunday School Is Still True: A Review of ‘Love Wins’“
• Albert Mohler, “We have Seen all This Before: Rob Bell and the (Re)Emergence of Liberal Theology“

In his interview with Bell on MSNBC, Martin Bashir made this timely interpretation of Bell’s work:

“You’re creating a Christian message that’s warm, kind, and popular for contemporary culture. . . . What you’ve done is you’re amending the gospel, the Christian message, so that it’s palatable to contemporary people who find, for example, the idea of hell and heaven very difficult to stomach. So here comes Rob Bell, he’s made a Christian gospel for you, and it’s perfectly palatable, it’s much easier to swallow. That’s what you’ve done, haven’t you?”

God is just. That is a good thing, even if it means bad news for us. But, thankfully, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). And He did this “that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).

May we be found believing, defending, and proclaiming this best of all good news while there is time.

One reason to join us for Clarus ’11 is a new tradition of book giveaways. These giveaways are the kinds of books we want you to have from the kind of publishers we are happy to recommend.

One of our giveaways this year is by Jonathan Leeman called, Reverberation, complements of Moody Publishers. On Sunday, Ryan preached from Colossians 3:16-17 where we are commanded to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” What follows is a quote from a chapter of Leeman’s book on the centrality of Scripture in our singing.

What I Behold

We’re singing the sixteenth-century words of “A Mighty Fortress”, and I notice a woman who was recently assaulted now sing with all her might of a “bulwark never failing.”

We’re singing the eighteenth-century words of “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” and I’m heartened by the older saint who has persevered in the faith for decades, still singing, “prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; here’s my heart, O, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.”

We’re singing the nineteenth-century words of “It Is Well with My Soul,” and I look out and see the middle-aged brother struggling with discouragement over his fight against sinful anger now raising his voice to shout, “My sin-oh, the bliss of this glorious thought: my sin, not in part, but the whole is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more; Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul.”

We’re singing the twenty-first century words of “In Christ Alone,” and I see the talented young mother who is tempted to regret what she’s given up to have children now exult in her new ambition: “In Christ alone my hope is found, he is my light, my strength, my song.”

As I sit, look out, and behold, my own praises to God are strengthened by the stories and songs of others. My faith is invigorated and enlarged by His work in them.

The Echoing Word

Christians in our churches sing because their new hearts can’t help but echo the Word that has given them life. Whether those songs were written in the sixteenth century or today, they should echo Scripture. If there is any place where God’s Word should literally reverberate, it should reverberate in the church’s songs. Remember, Scripture alone gives life. Therefore, a church’s songs should contain nothing more than the words, paraphrases, or ideas of Scripture.

And Christians sing together because it helps us to see that our hearts’ praises, confessions, and resolutions are shared.  We’re not alone. Singing in the church, I believe, is about listening as much as it’s about singing. So Paul commands us to “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord” (Eph 5:19 NIV). If I’m to speak to others in song, I’m to listen to others as well. In fact, I do sometimes stop singing just to listen and thank God for the voices around me!

You might think of the dim and temporary unity all the home team fans experience as they root for their team at a football game. Together they rise to their feet and cheer.

How much more should a church of Jesus Christ, both enjoy and display its unity when it sings! These brothers and sisters share our new identities, our Lord and Savior, our comfort and support, our hope and our joy. You’re with them, they’re with you, and we’re with Him.

That’s a good word and we’re grateful to Moody Publishers for this complementary book giveaway.

Don’t forget, if you haven’t purchased your ticket for Clarus, you can do so online.

In Sunday’s Sermon, “God’s Pervading Word among His People,” Ryan Kelly preached from Colossians 3:16-17, where Paul writes, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”

Ryan’s points drew attention to the various ways in which God’s word functions among His people. If you recall, he said that each point could be the subject of a sermon on its own.

So, if you’re interested in exploring any of Ryan’s points further, they are listed below with links to several sermons previously preached here at DSC:

1. The Word Planted within
   “I Resolve to Give Myself to the Word”
2. The Word Propagated among Others
   “The Urgency of Unity: A Display of God’s Power in the Church“
3. The Word Praised back to God
   “Spirit Filled Singing“
4. The Word (and Worship) Permeating All of Life
   “A Mother’s Daily Tasks as Worship”

By way of reminder, audio from previous sermons is always available and searchable at the messages portion of the site.

Today, Collin Hansen posted an interview with Ryan Kelly at the TGC Blog about Clarus ’11. The interview has five parts:

• What does Clarus mean, and how did you arrive at that name?
• How did Clarus become a regional conference of The Gospel Coalition?
• Tell us about this year’s theme, “Scripture: God Speaks.”
• Who do you want to show up for the conference?
• Tell us a bit more about your speakers, G. K. Beale and Carl Trueman

Of particular interest to those unfamiliar with The Gospel Coalition will be TGC’s Foundational Documents and Ryan’s answer to Collin’s question, How did Clarus become a regional conference of The Gospel Coalition?

Several developments have led to this partnership. Becoming a council member of TGC this past year obviously had a lot to do with it. Also, this past year we organized a TGC regional chapter in Albuquerque. In years past, Clarus was the annual rallying point for a number of these local friendships, and Clarus is where many of these friendships were formed. Since Clarus fits so nicely under the TGC umbrella, it seemed natural to both us and TGC’s executive leadership to tie the existing local/regional conference efforts of Clarus into the broader movement of TGC. We hope this partnership will serve God’s purposes for his glory.

For those who have attended Clarus in previous years, it will be clear that this partnership will not change much of the feel and aim of the conference. Our hope is that, now as a regional conference of TGC, this event will be able to more broadly serve pastors and other interested Christians in the Southwest (Phoenix, Denver, El Paso, among others). We are thrilled to have TGC’s support and to be able to help the gospel-centered resourcing and networking efforts of TGC.

As Ryan mentioned on Sunday, with increased exposure to the conference we expect ticket sales to increase. To secure your place, purchase your ticket in advanced at the Information Center, the Resource Center, or online.