The Reformed Pastor Chapter 1: The Oversight of Ourselves

The emphasis of this chapter relates one’s personal discipleship with their witness as a child of God. Baxter’s target audience here is primarily Church leadership, though anyone could benefit from his admonition to live a life worthy of the gospel of Christ. It was through Baxter’s repeated stresses to “take heed to yourself”, that I was further challenged to the urgency and gravity of ministry. His honest approach makes it hardly possible to avoid the weightiness of these lofty responsibilities, whereby his passionate arguments become quite compelling, specifically in reference to Christ’s honor and our witness. “For I fully expect and hope that I will never be ashamed, but that I will continue to be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past. And I trust that my life will always bring honour to Christ, whether I live or die.” - Philippians 1:20.

During Baxter’s years of ministry, (indeed maybe in our time as well), an unfortunate but apparently common occurrence of his time saw men put into pulpits who were either unconverted or undiscipled. He remarks, “Alas it is the common danger and calamity of the Church, to have unregenerate and inexperienced pastors, and to have so many men become preachers before they are Christians…” To these Baxter affixes a stern and foreboding warning. No quarter is given based on any positive responses to their preaching. Baxter instead proclaims a day of reckoning awaits the Shepherd’s unfit servant. Church leaders are to take stock of their lives now while they can, and according to Baxter, it must start with their own present eternal condition. “Though there is a promise of shining as the stars, to those ‘who turn many to righteousness,’ that is but on supposition that they are first turned to it themselves. Their own sincerity in the faith is the condition of their glory, simply considered, though their great ministerial labors may be a condition of the promise of their greater glory.”

One Condition: Sincerity in the Faith?

Allow me to digress a little at this juncture. The above bolded quote where Baxter asserts “sincerity in the faith is the condition of their glory”, is a troubling statement to interpret due to its context. Baxter has just issued a warning to preachers whose lives in his estimation, seem to fall short of reflecting the life of a penitent, surrendered servant of the Most High. They were preachers to be sure but hardly practicing. Specifically, their lives depicted convenience and self-indulgence over service and sacrifice. To these he threatens an unpromising future. Accountability constitutes the theme of this chapters opening address but the challenge this statement presents lays where Baxter seems to draw conclusions concerning the relationship between Christian works and ones eternal future.

We are not certain whether these ministers are genuine converts, albeit lazy, or unconverted and merely filling the position as an occupation. Probably a mixture. It is to be noted that Baxter does not directly address these with the gospel message, but instead focuses attention to works, specifically the lack of, and makes some very ominous remarks concerning the eternal future of these men. This raises a question concerning Baxter’s winnowing reproofs. Is he admonishing them to confirm their salvation through bearing the fruits of salvation, or to secure their salvation through them? One would tend to conclude the latter given his following remark “many a preacher is now in hell, who hath a hundred times called upon his hearers to use the utmost care and diligence to escape it.”

Is he merely addressing unconverted hypocrites or the negligent converted just the same? Although this kind of statement would have led some of his contemporaries to immediately conclude Baxter as challenging the firm Calvinist view of Unconditional Election and Limited Atonement, it is not in the scope of this posting to elaborate those views. Rather I wish to emphasis the statement’s ambiguous defining stipulation and its qualitative wordage suggests something measurable, perhaps over time, with implications of personal effort and responsibility. How does one identify and qualify “… sincerity in the faith …”, and what exactly is meant by “ …the condition of their glory”? At first glance this statement may seem innocent but the difficulty is found in its connection to Christ’s work of justification which Baxter at various times through out his earlier writings, infers such a connection.

In the above statement I have emphasized, it is the usage of the grammatical word “in” indicating that something or somebody is within or inside something. It’s association with “the faith”, denotes a dynamic characteristic in the work of the faith in addition to ones faith in Christ’s work, while if the author had used the preposition “of”, the association would have conveyed a quality about ones faith, rendering a supportive characteristic consequential to ones’ faith and a benefit of their faith - better understood as a work of the Spirit of grace establishing our sanctification. Then “the condition of their glory” would be a result of their faith in Christ, and not of their works for Christ. Perhaps this is where one discovers the neonominian ideology of Baxterism.

Questions that came across my mind during this reading were: How does one measure and qualify sincerity? Is it defined by certain works or attitudes? Is there a designated time period whereby these evidences must manifest Are we driven by a sense of obligation, overflowing passion, deep conviction or all the above? If so, are the expressions of “sincerity” generated and maintained completely by self, or an intervening entity? As I understand the statement, “the condition of their glory”, Baxter is referring to ones’ conversion while the later statement, “the promise of their greater glory”, is reference to rewards for faithful service. With this in mind I have asked these questions and would love to hear your thoughts.

Source of Truth: A Rebuke to the Wise

This is an interesting period of time noted in other studies as the emergence of the “age of reason”: 17th century “Cultural revolution”. A period in history A.K.A., “the Enlightenment”, follows on the heels of this book’s first publication of 1656. Baxter ends the paragraph with a bold statement declaring “None but a Christian can read one line of his Physics so as to understand it rightly.” This statement at first may cause one to stumble, however, if all truth relates back to the nature and Person of God, Romans 1:20, then this assumption seems more plausible. A. W. Tozer in The Knowledge of the Holy writes, ”What we see in nature is simply the paths God’s power and wisdom take through creation… The trustworthiness of God’s behavior in His world is the foundation of all scientific truth. Upon it the scientist rests his faith and from there he goes on to achieve great and useful things in such fields as those of navigation, chemistry, agriculture and the medical arts. Religion, on the other hand, goes behind nature to God. It is concerned not with the footprints of God along the paths of creation, but with the One who treads those paths.” - page 86.

In Lesslie Newbigin’s book “Foolishness to the Greeks”, Newbigin offers some insight into what fostered this Cultural Revolution, and lists the influences of Greek sciences, metaphysics and Aristotle thought as chief contributors. Institutionalized educational facilities called universities arose with displaced ideals on the foundation for the pursuit of true knowledge. Classical Renaissance ideology proliferated. The Reformations theological and political conflicts, new science: Bacon, Galileo, Newton, and Descartes philosophies all contributed to this period depicted as ‘The Awakening’. The secret of knowledge had been discovered and it’s purpose redefined; newly translated - knowledge is power. If one can control the knowledge, one could control the world. Knowledge was the new blood lust. I say knowledge, not wisdom. Religious creed was dethroned and the science of cause and effect reigned in the stead. Determinism and Newtonian physics were the new masters, impeaching the framework of Divine purpose, order, faith and free will. This new reality substituted the spirituals. In this new world God was found to be obsolete; if one continued to believe at all. Analysis supplanted faith whilst focus was being shifted from the Creator to the creation. Immanuel Kant’s “Dare to know” became the new anthem; lyrics reminiscent of that encounter in the garden where satan says to Eve; “you can be like God, knowing…” - Genesis 3:5. (Note: this statement does not intend to convey an anti-reason, anti-mind position but promotes right theological understanding of scripture through biblical exegesis and hermeneutics as a necessary tool to Life and Truth in Jesus. The enemy in the garden suggested these could be attained outside of relationship with God.) Somewhere in the mid eighteen hundreds, man had become the new gods. So my questions as they relate to this book are, I wonder if Baxter was a cognizant eyewitness of this cultural shift of worldview, and in fact was attempting to address it in some manner? I wonder if he was part of the first wave of resistance to this new world order?

Whatever Baxter’s views concerning the cultural times, the disposition and responsibilities of ministers and the relationship academia should have with theology, I find myself in agreement with the fundamental nature of his following statement. It should be the preliminary stand we all take before instructing others. “If such a wretched man would take my council, he would make a stand, and call his heart and life to an account, and fall a preaching awhile to himself, before he preach any more to others.” I have always esteemed the value of being teachable and so to incorporate this value into our lives, two things should be the consistent practice of every believer – we should seek to mentor and seek to be mentored. Mentored through personal reading of the scriptures. Mentored through study and biblical exegesis. Mentored through lives biblically exampled. What a world of misadventure could we avoid if we would but submit ourselves one to another in the fear of the Lord. Too many times I have caught myself thinking some truth would best apply to someone else before me. Some practice better applied in another’s life other than me. Pride is one of the most seductive and elusive natures of the fallen self. “First take the beam out of your own eye...” declares the scripture.

Chapter one sees Baxter addressing a rising attitude within academia that is hostile to God and holds the unorthodox concept that man has evolved past the need for God. In fact it proposes truth can be found apart from God. I love the warning he attributes further in the chapter, apparently targeting those who seek knowledge about God’s creation over knowledge of God. It is truly a quote worthy of noting. “Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied.”

Page 57 of The Reformed Pastor makes a wonderful statement that flows out of Baxter’s assessment that true knowledge is only completely understood in the context of knowing God. To me it is reminiscent of Roman’s 1:25. “That if man had held on in this course, he would have continued and increased in the knowledge of God and himself; but when he would needs know and love the creature and himself in a way of separation from God, he lost the knowledge both of the creature and the Creator, so far as it would beautify and worth the name of knowledge; and instead of it, he hath got the unhappy knowledge which he affected, even the empty notions and fantastic knowledge of the creature and himself, as thus separated.”

Baxter ends with these final comments, “Your studies of physics and other sciences is not worth a rush, if it be not God that you seek after in them... this is the true and only philosophy; the contrary is mere foolery, and is so called again and again by God Himself. This is the sanctification of your studies, when they are devoted to God, and when He is the end, the object, and the life of them all.”

Keep in mind that I have tried to present an accurate, although not extensive view of this chapter. My submissions of Newbigin are also subject to the same. The points brought forth are not a complete representation of the worthy thought this chapter offers. In your reading of this book you may find my understanding and perceptions to be lacking or exaggerated. I have tried to be neither and welcome any insight that would encourage and edify us all. Please feel free to make comment.

Further Study

*The Age of Reason - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

*Lesslie Newbigin “Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture”

*A. W. Tozer “The Knowledge of the Holy”