Author: Jonathan Dodson

I’ve been out of the blogosphere for a few days since we were on vacation. I had a incredibly relaxing and edifying time with my wife, son, parents and Jonathan Edwards.

We spent a few days in the Stockbridge area, nestled in the Berkshire mountains of Western Mass. After being dismissed from his Northampton church, Jonathan Edwards spent ten years in Stockbridge, where he wrote Freedom of the Will, Original Sin, and the Nature of Virtue, prior to his short-lived presidency at Princeton.

We also made our way to Northampton, where Edwards preached for twenty-one years. The town has changed significantly, very little evidence of Edwards or his legacy remain (though Edwards scholar, Richard Lovelace lives there). We did have the privilege of standing on a step preserved from Edwards’ church, but apart from that the church is no longer standing.

Perhaps it is fitting to wrap up with a quote from Edwards. Commenting on the centrality of Christ to all things, in creation and consummation, he writes:

“God had a design before the foundation of the world of gathering all things to himself. Since all things are of him and through him, so he intended they should be to him and also of uniting all chosen creatures one to another in one society in perfect union, one unto another. When he made the world, it was with this purpose. When he made heaven and made the angels in it, it was with this design. When he made this lower world and made man in it, it was with this design. His Son was the person pitched upon and chosen of God, by whom and in whom this great event should be brought about. He was to be the head of the union, that all might be united in him and by him to himself. Therefore, God created all things by Jesus Christ (Eph 3.9-11).”

Taken from his sermon, Jesus Christ is the Great Mediator and Head of Union in Whom All Elect Creatures in Heaven and Earth Are United to God and to One Another

Here’s some insight on love, partially gleaned from David Gray, that I shared with my church recently.

The love your husbands are to give you is not lollipop love, all sweetness and no substance. Love isn’t romance—dates, dinner, dancing, and dressing up. Love isn’t gifts—roses, rings, sewing machines, and new shoes. It isn’t the scripted words of David Decoveny (?), Brad Pitt, or Mel Gibson. God and your husband offer much more than romance, gifts, and scripts.

David Gray, perhaps the 21st century James Taylor, is an incredible song-writer and musician. His latest album, Life in Slow Motion, contains a song that articulates exactly what love is without God.

“Ain’t No Love” goes:

Maybe that it would do me good
If I believed there were a god
Cut in the starry firmament
But as it is that’s just a lie
And I’m here eating up the boredom
On an island of cement
Give me your ecstasy I’ll feel it
Open window and I’ll steal it
Baby like it’s heaven sent

This ain’t no love that’s guiding me
This ain’t no love that’s guiding me

Some days i’m bursting at the seams
with all my half remembered dreams
and then it shoots me down again
i feel the dampness as it creeps
I hear you coughing in your sleep
beneath a broken window pane
tomorrow girl i’ll buy you chips
a lollipop to stain your lips
and it’ll all be right as rain

This ain’t no love that’s guiding me

In case you dont know it, David Gray is an atheist, an honest atheist as far as I can tell. His brutal honesty exposes love for what it is apart from God. If our wives are not made in the image of God and loved with the love of Christ, they are reduced to relational, sexual, and emotional objects, wells for male “ecstasy.” No sacrifice, just satisfaction. No substance, just sweetness—-lollipop love.

But, in Jesus, love is more than romance, gifts, and scripts, than buying chips and lollipops for the one you love. More than a relational, emotional, or sexual hight. In Christ, there’s more than lollipop love.

It has been said that love is as strong as death. So it was with Christ. His love led to his death. Your love for your wife should be that strong. Death to your perceived rights and desires in order to promote the holiness and happiness of your wife. Death to your right to not do the dishes because you worked all day. Death to your desire to not change another diaper. Death to your spiritual sloth which makes excuses to not pray with and for your wife. Death to your desire to be right, to win the argument, to hurt her with harsh and angry words. Self-dying love gives life.

We can give life–love–to our wives by loving them according to their love language. Stay with me. Do you know how to love your wife? What communicates love to her? Time, Gift, Service, Communication, Touch? All of these are important for everyone, whether they acknowledge it or not, but some tend to communicate love more strongly than others. My wife likes to receive gift love. Early in marriage I confused this with money love. Robie does not feel love from gifts based on how much they cost, but on the fact that I took the time, thought and energy to think of her and express it concretely. I give her love she can hold when I buy her something. It took me a while to catch onto this. And its not my natural inclination to buy Robie something. Gift love is not my love language, so I don’t naturally think this way. Plus, I tend to be pretty cheap, unless of course, it comes to buying a computer. Early on I thought it my duty to “protect” her from materialism. That’s not what was going on. The point is that love thinks the way others think. We get into our wives’ mindset, we know them, we affectionately study them. Peter says it like this: “husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way….” (1 Pet 3.7). Literally, live with them according to knowledge. Study, know and love your wife. Husbands, love your wives.

This week, at the 2006 SBC Pastors Conference, Al Mohler (Southern Seminary) and Paige Patterson (Southwestern Seminary) debated and discussed the implications of Calvinism for mission. See Thabiti’s blog for a rough transcript.

This is refreshingly informative and winsome, unlike many theological debates. Here are two interesting quotes:

Patterson:
“I cannot subscribe to Calvinism because I am a Baptist. As Richard Muller in his article, “How many points?” (1993 Calvin Journal), points out, Calvinism is a system and Baptists are inconsistent for not buying into the entire system of Calvinism including church-state relations and infant baptism.”

Mohler:
“I’ve said it before, there are two impossible persons. The person who doesn’t wish to respond but is drawn to Christ against his will, and those who wish to respond but can’t.”

Bill and Melinda Gates have donated $5 million to International Justice Mission, a splendid Christian justice agency, earmarking it to combat sex trafficking in the launch of Project Lantern.