Imperishable Inheritance

Ugghh… That “c” word makes me cringe, but that title has a dif­fer­ent mean­ing than is espoused in pop­u­lar Chris­tian­ity. Adrian Warnock has done us all a favor by giv­ing a sit­u­a­tion that might shed light on if you are a “reformed charismatic:”

“You are in a reformed church but secretly long for more of an expe­ri­ence of God, you are in a charis­matic church but secretly enjoy lis­ten­ing to preach­ing and read­ing books that teach sub­stan­tial theology.”

I would obvi­ously be in the first cat­e­gory, but I’m sure there are many in the lat­ter. It should be noted that there are many areas of pop­u­lar charis­matic the­ol­ogy that I out­right repu­di­ate. The fol­low­ing list is impor­tant to note.

Part­ing From Mod­ern Charisma

• The sub­se­quent expe­ri­ence of the Spirit was lim­ited to a redemptive-historical shift in Acts. The com­mon expe­ri­ence today is that every believer receives the Spirit after regen­er­a­tion as a pledge of their inher­i­tance (Eph 1:13–14).
• I do not believe that the mirac­u­lous gifts of the Spirit are nec­es­sary to ver­ify sal­va­tion (although not all charis­mat­ics hold to this).
• I believe that the mirac­u­lous work­ings of the Spirit are not the norm for reached areas. The Spirit works in mirac­u­lous ways to val­i­date the min­istry of Christ largely in unreached areas. (See my arti­cle: A The­ol­ogy of the Gifts.)
• With the point above, I would describe myself as “open but cau­tious” in regards to the mirac­u­lous gifts.
• I believe many charis­matic churches wor­ship the Holy Spirit more than He would be com­fort­able with. After all, the Spirit desires to mag­nify Christ to the praise of the Father: “the Spirit of truth who pro­ceeds from the Father, He will tes­tify about Me” (John 15:26).

What About Cessationism?

Most believ­ers in the reformed tra­di­tion believe that the mirac­u­lous work­ings of the Spirit were con­fined to the Apos­tolic age. I dis­agree, because I believe you have to “tap dance” around the Scrip­ture to ver­ify such a posi­tion. In fact, I almost laugh out loud when I hear some ces­sa­tion­ist arguments.

They love to con­fine the “per­fect” in 1 Cor 13 to the com­pleted canon of Scrip­ture, and it bog­gles my mind how they can sub­stan­ti­ate such a posi­tion. They’ll openly admit that if the mirac­u­lous gifts of the Spirit work today than it could endan­ger the author­ity of Scrip­ture yet most of their argu­ments revolve around church his­tory and not exeget­i­cal argu­ments. Fur­ther, to build sup­port for their posi­tion they tend to take the worst-case sce­nario in charis­matic the­ol­ogy and brush it across all of Chris­ten­dom (cf. John MacArthur’s Charis­matic Chaos & B.B. Warfield’s Coun­ter­feit Mir­a­cles). I am less than con­vinced by their straw-man arguments.

Final Thoughts

I don’t have the time now to elab­o­rate more on my the­ol­ogy of the gifts, but I have been bur­dened to pub­licly admit this the­o­log­i­cal lean­ing in my life. I came to a point where the fol­low­ing words by Daniel Wal­lace really struck me:

“The prob­lem with some charis­mat­ics is that they believe that God not only can heal, but that he must heal. That is one rea­son why, up until fairly recently, charis­mata has been a move­ment among Arminians…At the same time, the prob­lem with many non-charismatics is that although they claim that God can heal, they act as if he won’t. We often don’t believe in God’s ability’we don’t really believe that God can heal.”

I want to know God in a deeper way then many of the Reformed churches I’ve been to espouse. We can wor­ship God “in Spirit and truth,” and I want to seek out a body of believ­ers that has this at the fore­front of their hearts and minds. I want to know God per­son­ally, to feel Him, to love Him, to know Him. I thank God that His Spirit is indwelling me, and I hope he uses my inad­e­quate ves­sel to expe­dite the return of His King­dom to earth to the honor, praise, and glory of His name.

Resources

• Who’s Afraid of the Holy Spirit? The Uneasy Con­science of a Non-Charismatic Evangelical
• Answer­ing the Ces­sa­tion­ists’ Case Against Con­tin­u­ing Spir­i­tual Gifts
• Signs and Won­ders: Then and Now
• Mirac­u­lous Man­i­fes­ta­tions of the Holy Spirit: Their Pur­pose and Rel­e­vance Today
• A The­ol­ogy of the Gifts