You Must Die, If You Want to Live

At the center of the Gospel of Matthew, God the Father revealed to Peter, a man like you and me, the way to a victorious life. That way is through the faithful confession that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of the Living God (Matt 16:13-20). A little later, after Peter demonstrated that he did not fully understand how this victory would be achieved (Matt 16:21-22), Jesus the Christ offered a lesson about how we must go about living the victorious life that He freely offers to believers.

In Matthew 16:23-27, it is written that Jesus told his disciples,

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.”

With these poignant, even piercing, words, Jesus totally reorients the lives of his listeners. Through years of trying to live, at first without the Word of God, but afterward with the Word of God ever before my eyes and in my ears and on my tongue, I have learned that the Word of God challenges us, changes us, compels us. His words have power, life-altering authority, and in this text He speaks to you today.

Jesus sets out a command for how to conduct your life, and then He offers one compelling reason, expressed in three increasingly demonstrative terms, as to why we should take his command with utmost seriousness. Let us look quickly at “the cost of discipleship,” which is death, and “the cause for discipleship,” which is life:

I. The Cost of Discipleship: Death

If you want to be Jesus’s disciple, then you are required to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow him. The Germans use the term Nachfolge to convey the Greek mathetes. It means, literally, “to follow after.” A disciple is one who follows after a master. He or she fashions his life upon the life of his or her master.

Because Jesus denied himself in his needs and his desires in order to bless the other, so we must do likewise. In his profound book, Nachfolge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously cried out, “When God calls a man, He bids him come and die.” Every time I read those words, they challenge me to the core of my being. Will I really deny myself? Will I really die to this world, so that I might rise with Him? Again and again, I cry out, like Bonhoeffer, with my whole heart, “I am yours, Lord!”

Because Jesus embraced the calling of God to live and then to die in this way, so we must do likewise. This does not mean we carry a literal wooden cross and are nailed upon it. Nor does it mean that we may propitiate for the sins of others, for that is far beyond our capabilities. However, it means we are called to a life of suffering on behalf of the needs of other people in other ways.

Because the life of Christ is the exemplar for the life of the Christian, it means we are to adopt his humility, his way of life, his higher purpose. The high calling of Christ is a claim that our lives mean more than the mean goals to which we are prone to reduce ourselves.

If I have noticed one thing that is highly detrimental to Christian believers of whatever age, it is the short memory we have regarding the high calling that He has given to each of his children.

• While God may bless you with a face of beauty, this is a mere means to the higher call. 
• While God may gift you with a mind of acuity, this is only an intellectual instrument to strive toward the higher calling.
• While God may grant you gifts of wealth and power and status, they are not what you really should be concerned about. Rather, see them as avenues toward a greater way of life.

Don’t let the little things, the lesser aspects, the mean moments become the purpose of your life.

Yes, develop your bodily beauty, your mental capacity, and your other talents and gifts to their utmost potential. However, keep the higher calling in mind. Your life is not about the things you own or the people with whom you cavort. Your life is about the One who owns you and who gave you all these things to use and all these people to love.

II. The Cause for Discipleship: Life

Why should you follow Christ? Why should you take up the cross God is laying upon your life? Why should you deny yourself and allow God to ensconce Himself exclusively upon the throne of your personal life?

Jesus offers three descriptions for the one reason for being his disciple:

1. You must lose your life to save it.
2. You must give your life to gain it.
3. You must prepare for judgment or glory.

Behind each of these expressions lays the overwhelming truth that we must ultimately give an account to God for what we do with our lives.

You must lose your life to save it? It is admittedly counter-intuitive from a humanistic perspective. I must lose my life in order to save my life. It only makes sense in the light of the sovereignty of God. By “lose your life,” Jesus means that you must stop trying to “save your life.” Your sin has already brought to you the loss of life. The only way that it can be saved now is if God himself does that for you. He wants you to trust him with your life.

You must give your life to gain it? Again, this is counter-intuitive from a purely anthropological perspective. It only makes sense from the theological perspective. By “give your life,” Jesus means that, once you have begun the life of faith, you must entirely dedicate to living your life God’s way. We want to gain things in this life—family, friends, experiences, joys, adventure. And yet, God tells us that we must give it away to get it. The older I become, the more I am convinced that this life is a grand adventure, a progress, a pilgrimage, and I am an adventurer, a pilgrim, a temporary resident on my way through the vagaries of this world headed to the promised land. This is not my home yet, and if I must give everything I have and I am in order to go home, then I will give it away.

This brings us to the third cause for discipleship: The final judgment. Jesus made it very clear in the Gospel of Matthew that there is a judgment coming (Matt 24:29-25:46). And every single person shall give a personal account. The Son of God will divide humanity into two groups on the basis of their response to Him. There are only two possible categories, and the result of one's placement therein is ainios, “eternal.”

1. Those who have turned away from him in disbelief shall be judged and condemned to “eternal punishment.”
2. Those who have walked with him in faith shall be ushered into “eternal life.” 

The subject of hell is not exactly a popular subject these days, but these are the words of Jesus, and they stand at the center of his gospel. The subject of heaven, however, is very popular, but there is no eternal heaven without a life of discipleship, a cross of death, and a resurrection.

Conclusion

And, thanks be to God, Jesus has paved the way through death into eternal life by his cross. When life is understood through the paradigm of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as well as the coming judgment, then our lives take on their ultimate meaning.

Life will give you so much, and you will have many choices to make. May I encourage you to keep the life, death, resurrection, and return of Jesus Christ at the center of your every consideration?

• May I ask you to accept the adventurous life that He has for you? 
• May I ask you to keep your faith in Christ first, your spouse second (if He grants you such), your children third (if He grants you such), and finally your diligence to work hard and to study hard in whatever particular vocation He grants you? 
• May I ask you to leave the gifts of joy in this life—gifts that He will grant you, because He loves you and wants to bless you? Can you leave the gifts up to Him and focus on the life He wants you to lead? Leave the delights of this life to be divine surprises that He delights to give to you. 

Pursue the high calling He has laid upon you. You won’t ever regret it. Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow your Creator, your Redeemer, your Consummator through this life, through the death at the end of it, and beyond that into eternity. You won’t ever regret following Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, fully God and fully Human.

The Evangelistic Seminary

 And he said unto them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

Matthew 4:19

            Christianity is perhaps best described as a twofold following after the Lord Jesus Christ. On the one hand, Jesus' first and foremost rallying cry was, "Come, follow me!" On the other hand, our Lord taught His disciples to extend that call to the world. Likewise, expressing the theme of both the Lord's premiere sermon (Mark 1:14-15 and parallels) and His final sermon, now known as the Great Commission (Matt 28:16-20), the final chapter in the New Testament tells us that the Spirit and the church must entreat, "Come and drink freely of the water of life!" (Rev 22:17). From beginning to end, there is a twofold determination in the heart of the New Testament that ought not be quenched: it includes, first, a desire to follow Christ; it includes, second, a necessarily correlative passion to call other people to follow Christ.

            In establishing His roving school of wannabe theologians, Jesus called the disciples to quit their prior vocation of fishing for fish and to learn, instead, to fish for human beings. The first Christian seminary, the seminary of the Apostles, presided over by Jesus Christ, was thus dedicated to evangelism. And, oh, some of those disciples were not at first what they would become when Christ had completely ushered them through His curriculum. This was a motley student body: their leader, appointed by the Lord Himself, was an ill-educated, impetuous loudmouth who went on to deny his Lord in His hour of greatest human need; another was committed to armed rebellion, though his Master identified a different way; yet a third, a betrayer, was providentially allowed by Christ to enroll. When you can see inside and properly evaluate each human heart, as the Lord can, yet you still allow such students to enroll, perhaps you are seeing not who people currently are, but who they may become through the preaching and teaching of His Word.

            The Seminary of the Apostles was an evangelistic seminary that was itself the subject of the Lord's evangelism. That a seminary should be evangelistic, primarily outwardly but also inwardly, is a fact that was not lost upon the founders of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; it is a fact that is still evident in the president and faculty of Southwestern Seminary; and it is a fact that must challenge any seminary that dares to claim that it follows the Lord's commandments and example. That a seminary, literally a "seedbed," should include seed bearers whose broadcast of the Word would yield a worldwide harvest was part of the Lord's plan. That a seminary might include the odd student who was not committed to the Lord's ways was also apparently part of the Lord's plan.

            Please allow me a moment of your time to explain why and how Southwestern Seminary became and remains, shall we say, "The Evangelistic Seminary."

1. Southwestern Seminary Was Founded with an Evangelistic Purpose

            When Texas Baptists began their cooperative pilgrimage, the first problem they faced was a controversy over missions and evangelism. The missionary Baptists who formed the Union Association in 1840 were opposed on the one side by the Predestinarian Baptists under Daniel Parker and on the other side by Arminian Campbellite-influenced Baptists under T.W. Cox. Both of these extremes opposed "the promissionary, proeducation, and proeffort leaders" among the eventually victorious traditional Baptists.[1] When the founding president of Southwestern Seminary, the esteemed Benajah Harvey Carroll, began to promote the idea of a Texas institution entirely dedicated to theological education, he emphasized the intended result as first the "stimulation" of "evangelism," followed by missions, then the harmony of the churches.[2] During the 1906 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, Carroll successfully proposed a new policy for the Home Mission Board, crying out, "Brethren, give me evangelists."[3]

            Soon after, before the Texas state convention, Carroll famously proposed, "There is great need to create and endow a chair of evangelism." His argument was based on the fact that this was "the mind and spirit of Jesus." According to Carroll, Jesus Christ's "school of the prophets was intensely practical. The wisdom he inculcated was the winning of souls."[4] This chair of evangelism, the first chair that Carroll wanted to be endowed,[5] and the first such chair in the United States, became known as the "Chair of Fire," and its first occupant was also Carroll's chosen successor as president of the seminary, Lee Rutland Scarborough. Indeed, Carroll was so passionate about evangelism that when he discovered that faculty leaders sought to diminish evangelism as a requirement and turn the school in a primarily academic direction, he summarily fired two of the very men he had hired.[6] Robert A. Baker noted that Carroll's godly character was so impressive that other leaders simply accepted such decisions as Carroll directed.[7]

2. Education Without Evangelism Is a Betrayal of Our Calling

            Carroll's decisive leadership in an evangelistic direction was furthered with the choice of the next president, L.R. Scarborough. Scarborough's foundational influence was as great upon Southwestern Seminary, if not greater, prompting the faculty to refer to him with reverence as their seminary's "father" and with fondness as their "brother." They also characterized Scarborough as "a flaming evangelist and a compassionate soul-winner."[8] This was, of course, part of Carroll's plan. He had written Scarborough to leave the pastorate and come to the seminary when it was first founded; he had appointed Scarborough to lead the committee that built the Fort Worth campus; and, after firing the errant faculty, he had requested the trustees to appoint Scarborough as his assistant. He had also given a discipleship-oriented deathbed commission to Scarborough to "keep the Seminary lashed to the cross," according to W.W. Barnes, the church historian who witnessed this event.[9] For Carroll, Scarborough was his necessary successor.

            When Scarborough took the reins of Southwestern's presidency, he delivered a masterful inaugural address entitled, "The Primal Test of Theological Education." In that address, delivered in May 1915, he declared, "Christian education in all lands finds its earliest motive and supreme passion in a desire to train men to be efficient preachers of the gospel."[10] By "efficient," Scarborough meant that Baptists need, more than anything, men who will make the winning of the lost the goal of their greatest and most effective efforts. And by "supreme passion," Scarborough meant that Baptist preachers must be fervent soul winners, in the public pulpit and in private conversations.

            Scarborough offered five marks for the type of preacher that Southwestern must generate, including character, spirituality, scholarship, doctrinal conviction, and denominational sympathy and co-operation. It is in his comments on the second mark that he becomes most pointed. By "spirituality," Scarborough did not mean some type of inward, quietist devotionalism. No, by "spirituality," he meant a white-hot passion for souls. For a minister to be truly "spiritual," he must be "evangelistic." Anything less is a false ministerial spirituality. Listen to Scarborough:

 Too many of our evangelists are unlearned, and too many of our scholars are unevangelistic. We will never win the world by the evangelists alone. We must train a strong group of scholarly pastors, who will go into the church with the soul-winning spirit and power and build evangelistic churches, and from them as centers win the regions round about. A seminary should not put a premium on ministerial stiffness, dryness, and starchiness, and turn out stilted clergymen. An unspiritual, unevangelistic ministry will never be an efficient ministry. The soul-winning spirit and compassion for lost men in our seminaries will enlarge their popularity and favor with the people, contribute to their spiritual life, keep them in vital touch with God and with the unseen realities of religion, and thus preserve our teachers and students from theological drift in doctrines and life, keep them close to the common suffering heart of a lost and ruined world, turn their energies constantly out of the uplifting movements among men, build in them the constructive spirit of missions, and thus make them power-plants, pulsating with the life of God. The final test of a preacher's efficiency is not found in what he knows about the deep things of God's Word, but in what he does with what he knows in bringing in Christ's kingdom among men.[11]

            There are so many passages in Scarborough's works that ring with such power. Was he interested in proper theology? Absolutely, and to read his declarations about orthodox dogma will encourage the heart of every biblicist. But even more, this "father" of Southwestern Seminary was interested in theology being demonstrated in the winning of the lost. For any Christian to refuse to go "with Christ after the lost" is unthinkable. Moreover, the "spiritual life and atmosphere of Christian schools should be kept distinctly and continuously evangelistic."[12] The profoundly appreciated Roy J. Fish summarized Scarborough's legacy, noting that our seminary's father held the line against the social gospel that was so prevalent in his day; that he was "passionate" about the lost; that he started the whole movement toward state evangelism conferences through the first such meeting in Cowden Hall on Southwestern's campus in 1936; that he defined the church as "a group of baptized believers going with Christ after the lost"; that he described personal evangelism as a "fine art," "the finest of fine arts." In summary, "One cannot understand L.R. Scarborough without seeing him primarily as a person of great passion for people who are lost. He not only preached it but he lived it."[13]

3. We Assume Lost People Are in Our Classrooms

            Southwestern Seminary has a legacy of winning lost people to Christ in the classroom. When B.H. Carroll was a young man, he first confessed Christ, but he soon denied our Lord and asked to be removed from his church's membership. He was "an avowed infidel" when he sought entrance to Baylor, but was nevertheless admitted by its president, Rufus C. Burleson, on the basis of Carroll's obvious intellectual attainments and debating skills.[14] Years later, after several crises, upon hearing an evangelistic sermon he went down the aisle to the front of a church, "casting myself unreservedly and for all time at Christ's feet, and in a moment the rest came, indescribable and unspeakable, and it has remained from that day until now."[15] He was subsequently baptized at the hands of W.W. "Spurgeon" Harris, a former Baylor schoolmate. Six years earlier, Harris had been an eloquent opponent of the infidel whom he was now baptizing. That infidel admitted by Burleson into Baylor would become the founder of Southwestern Seminary.

            Another young man was admitted into Baylor, this time in 1888, and he was not a baptized believer. His father sent him to the school with the understanding that the young man would attend all of Carroll's sermons at the First Baptist Church of Waco and send his father a summary. That young man's letters to his father started short but eventually reached sometimes fifty pages in length as he absorbed Carroll's preaching. That young man was baptized at the hands of B.H. Carroll during his first year as a student at Baylor. That young man would later go on to win thousands of people to Christ as a pastor. That young man would then receive letters from Carroll begging him to hear God's call to take up the chair of evangelism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. That young man was Lee Rutland Scarborough, the "father" of Southwestern Seminary.[16]

            One of the surprises that many new faculty at Southwestern Seminary have when they come on board is that Paige Patterson, our current president, regularly proclaims the gospel evangelistically, not only as part of his public sermons outside the seminary and not only as a regular personal soul winner, but also in chapel. Patterson has consistently presented the gospel in his sermons and has issued altar calls and other invitations during the most public gatherings of the seminary, during both Convocation and Commencement.

            Paige Patterson once explained to me that he does not want to waste any opportunity to lead a lost person to salvation. With a gentle but firm spirit, after proclaiming the Word of God, after explaining about human sinfulness, divine wrath, and the offer of salvation in Jesus Christ, Patterson will invite any students at Convocation to come forward and receive counseling from professors who are ready and willing to lead them to a sure salvation in Christ. At the Commencement ceremony, which typically has people from all over and from every walk of life, many who may never otherwise hear the gospel, he will invite everybody to bow their heads and lift their hands if they wish to receive Christ. Then he will lead in a sinner's prayer of salvation, appealing to the Word of God externally and to the movement of the Spirit internally. President Patterson assumes that there are lost people at Southwestern Seminary and he issues invitations to all sinners to believe and be saved. And many are.

            I have discovered the same phenomenon in my own classroom. My systematic theology lectures are grounded in hours of consistent biblical exegesis and begin with a detailed and passionate scriptural exposition before proceeding to historical examples and concluding with systematic concerns. As a result of this teaching method, learned in part from my own mentor at Southwestern Seminary, James Leo Garrett, Jr., primary emphasis is placed upon biblical proclamation. Because I preach the Word when I teach systematic theology, students may be convicted, even converted. One day, to my surprise, a student stood in class and thanked me publicly for leading him to be born again during one of our systematic theology lectures. He explained that he could not keep silent. My first thought was not to expel the young man and ask him to reapply to seminary for admission, but to praise the Lord and help this man to complete his degree. That young man, formerly a Presbyterian, is now a successful Baptist pastor of a dynamic and growing large church in Texas. I no longer assume that every person in my classroom is truly born again. Indeed, I hope that some are not, for there is no greater privilege on this planet than being used by God to midwife a rebirth. Professors ought to be preachers, too.

            When I remember the history of Southwestern and how its founders made so much of evangelism, perhaps because school administrators and pastors had made so much of it in their lives, I am emboldened to make more of evangelism in my own life. Indeed, while L.R. Scarborough assumed most of his students would be believers (after all, this is a Southern Baptist seminary), he was under no illusions all his students would be. In his famous work, With Christ After the Lost, he has a chapter devoted to "Educational Evangelism." Therein, he discusses how students in Christian schools should meet together "to pray for their college friends" and thus "they have become burdened for those who are lost." "This burden has caused them to go out under the leadership of the Holy Spirit to witness personally to the lost and to lead them to the Lord."[17]

            In the same chapter, on "Educational Evangelism," he discusses "imperatives for denominational schools." Therein, he argues that the administration and trustees must be responsible to the churches and that the faculty must be faithful Christians and that it is best if they are also faithful to their denomination. What Scarborough never argues is that students themselves must subscribe to the denomination's confession, nor even that they must be Christians.[18] Similarly, when directly addressing the fundamentals of Southwestern Seminary, he again puts the emphasis on the fidelity of the faculty, by subscription, and of the trustees to their Christian and Baptist confession. Again, he does not presume to make such a requirement for students. To the contrary, he states bluntly, "No such requirement is made for students."[19] Why would the father of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary make such a claim? Perhaps Scarborough understood by personal experience that the Christian school itself is a place for lost people to be evangelized and not a disconnected ivory tower for starched shirts. The seminary is a place where evangelism should be practiced by professors and students alike towards everybody they encounter, whether in the school or outside it.

4. Evangelism Suffuses Our Teaching

            Robert Baker writes movingly about how Southwestern Seminary has several ingredients that constitute its spirit. One of those concerns "the nature of a theological seminary." "Carroll, Scarborough, and the faculty did not conceive of Southwestern Seminary as an academic ivory tower in which to retire from the world for study but saw it as a front-line bunker where students participated in the contemporary spiritual battles." And the first example that Baker offered concerned evangelism: "The weekly memorization of many Scripture verses in the evangelism class of L.R. Scarborough was not an academic exercise; it was the loading of the students' weapons for regular use in winning people to Christ, after the example of their teacher."[20] As a student of Scarborough's successor in the Chair of Fire, Roy J. Fish, I can attest that the practice continued into the late twentieth century.

            The second example that Baker offered concerning the evangelistic ethos of Southwestern regards Walter Thomas Conner. In the historical hierarchy of Southwestern Seminary, Conner receives the honor of third place, after Carroll and Scarborough, as indicated in an authoritative collection of essays on the legacy of Southwestern.[21] When Carroll was putting together his plans for the future of the seminary during the seminal years of 1906 through 1908, the founder indicated to the young Conner that he "would be offered the position of teacher of theology in the seminary" if he "would make proper preparation."[22] Conner went on to study with A.H. Strong and Walter Rauschenbusch at Rochester Seminary and E.Y. Mullins at Southern Seminary. He was subsequently appointed as professor of theology at Southwestern in 1910 and retired in 1949. His theology shaped generations of preachers and his influence was profound among Southern Baptists. He declined a professorship at Baylor and the presidency of the Kansas City seminary in order to become the leading theologian at Southwestern Seminary during the first half of the twentieth century. It is said that his "recommendation of young men for the Southwestern faculty was tantamount to their election."[23] Providentially, Conner's student, James Leo Garrett, Jr., became Southwestern's leading theologian during the second half of the twentieth century.

            One of Conner's greatest contributions concerned his understanding of theology as a practical discipline. He argued, "the purpose of theology is to furnish us with a knowledge that is practical in its aim. It is not meant to give us a speculative knowledge that is all-comprehensive and logically complete. It aims rather to give us truth by which we are to live."[24] Through a series of brilliant responses to the acidic trends in his day, Conner concluded thus:

 Properly speaking, Christian theology is the statement of the meaning of the Gospel. A man does not have to have a complete philosophy of the whole universe in order to grasp and state the meaning of the Gospel of Christ. This is not to say that we should not, so far as we can, relate the truth of the Gospel to every other truth. But it is to say that one does need a theology that he can preach. And a theology that is not preachable is not good theology; there is something wrong with it. A good way to test your theology is on a sinner. The Gospel is good news. It is good news because it announces spiritual redemption for the whole world of lost sinners. Theology is the statement of the meaning of this good news in terms that will appeal to the people of our day. This is the thing that makes Christianity a preaching religion. When Christianity ceases to be a preaching religion, you may know that it has lost the passion that grows out of the experience of redemption; that is, it has ceased to be Christianity.[25]

With appreciation, James Leo Garrett, Jr., started his wonderful two-volume systematic theology by summarizing Conner's argument that theology must be evangelistic to be good theology.[26]

            In my own teaching and preaching, I have taken the assertion of Conner and the affirmation of Garrett to heart, both as a pastor and as a professor. (To be honest, I cannot teach without preaching, nor can I preach without teaching, just as I cannot evangelize without preaching, nor can I preach without evangelizing.) At the end of the second semester of the required course in systematic theology at Southwestern Seminary, I require my students to share the good news of Jesus Christ with a lost person. Their job is to be faithful to the Word of God and proclaim it to lost people. During the final examination, they are given an opportunity to reflect theologically on the witnessing event itself. This practice of correlating systematic theology with evangelism has yielded both evangelistic and disciplinary fruit.

            With regard to the first issue, of evangelistic impact, for example, during this last year alone, 146 of my 151 systematic students shared the gospel with a lost person to meet their class requirement. Of those 146 testimonies to Christ, 19 souls were won to profess personal faith in Jesus Christ![27] Nineteen new converts to Jesus from a systematic theology assignment at Southwestern Seminary: I cannot help but get excited about my students having the privilege of leading lost people to an eternal relationship with the living Triune God!

            With regard to the second issue, of personal discipline, the students benefit in profound ways. Some students have sheepishly admitted that their Reformed theology previously stood in the way of their witnessing, but now they were so happy that their systematic theology professor had "forced" them to overcome that. Others have talked about ingenious ways they have brought the gospel into a public classroom, or have been compelled to learn or relearn their Spanish in order to testify better to the growing Hispanic population, or have corrected a heretical teaching about the Trinity, or have led a Hindu to faith in the one true God, or have been led to become a fulltime missionary to Mormons, or have learned that the Holy Spirit is responsible for salvation while we are responsible for speaking the Word, and the list goes on.

            Moreover, systematic theology is not the only discipline that is suffused with evangelism. A New Testament professor, Dr. Terry Wilder, regularly joins Southwestern Seminary's students in order to reach the area around Seminary Hill. When asked why and how he incorporates evangelism into the New Testament course, he writes, "I incorporate evangelism into my discipline largely because (1) God commands us to evangelize/make disciples (Matt 28:19-20; 2 Tim 2:2), and (2) he wants everyone to be saved (2 Pet 3:9)." He accomplishes this goal "primarily by teaching it from biblical texts and by requiring my NT students to share their faith a certain number of times each semester, always being sure not to ask them to do something that I myself am not willing to do or model for them."[28] We have Old Testament, Missions, and Education professors and administrators who are just as adamant about evangelism as our New Testament and Theology professors, and we have not even mentioned the dynamic and vivacious current occupant of the Chair of Fire, Dr. Matthew Queen.

            Similarly, a professor in our Preaching and Pastoral Studies division, Dr. Thomas Kiker, writes, "If we don't train our pastors to be intentional evangelists we will continue to have plateaued and declining churches. The main role of the pastor is to make disciples and equip the saints to make disciples. Evangelism has got to be at the forefront if we are to do what God has called us to do."[29] In a day when our Southern Baptist Convention is forming task forces to examine why baptisms have been in decline, while other task forces seek to dampen arguments over divisive theological speculations, Dr. Kiker's words are especially convicting.

            Finally, Dr. Keith Eitel writes, "Theology without evangelism/missions is like a body without a soul. The one needs the other for human existence in this world. The soul lives on either in heaven or hell. Hence evangelism is the only basis to alter the destiny of anyone who is lost."[30] In a time when our seminary comes under scrutiny for making so much of evangelism, Dr. Wilder's claims about Scripture's demands upon Christians and Dr. Eitel's reminder about the eternal destinies of the human beings who are at stake—these take on even more relevance.

A Final Word

            Evangelism permeates the lives of the presidents, professors, and students of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. We exist to help the churches fulfill the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ. Evangelism is, from a practical theological perspective, our raison d'être. If I may paraphrase W.T. Conner, our seminary's founding theologian, applying his words to the nature of our school, as revealed in its historical and contemporary character, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is "The Evangelistic Seminary," and the day it ceases to be such is the day it ceases to be a Christian seminary. We are fishers of men making fishers of men and may nothing ever stand in the way of that overriding dominical policy.

Malcolm B. Yarnell III

Director, Center for Theological Research

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Fort Worth, Texas

Written on the 487^th Anniversary of the Anabaptist

Margarita Sattler's Drowning for Testifying to Christ

---

[1] Robert A. Baker, Tell the Generations Following: A History of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary 1908-1983 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1983), 33.

[2] Baptist Standard (May 11, 1905), cited in Baker, Tell the Generations Following, 120.

[3] Carroll Papers, File 22, cited in ibid., 125.

[4] Proceedings, BGCT, 1906, cited in ibid., 125-26.

[5] Alan J. Lefever, Fighting the Good Fight: The Life and Work of Benajah Harvey Carroll (Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1994), 101.

[6] Baker, Tell the Generations Following, 166.

[7] Ibid., 168.

[8] Faculty Minutes (May 14, 1942), cited in ibid., 278.

[9] James Spivey, "Benajah Harvey Carroll," in Theologians of the Baptist Tradition, ed. Timothy George and David S. Dockery (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 169.

[10] L.R. Scarborough, A Modern School of the Prophets: A History of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, A Project of Christ, A Product of Prayer and Faith, Its First Thirty Years—1907-1937 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1939), 165.

[11] Ibid., 176-77.

[12] Note the title of his most popular work. L.R. Scarborough, With Christ After the Lost: A Search for Souls (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1952), 98.

[13] Roy J. Fish, "Lee Rutland Scarborough, Evangelism," in The Legacy of Southwestern: Writings that Shaped a Tradition, ed. James Leo Garrett, Jr. (North Richland Hills, TX: Smithfield Press, 2002), 24-27.

[14] It is said that Carroll was such a profound debater as a young infidel that he could argue that the Campbellite doctrines were correct and win the debate, then he could turn around and argue the opposite and win again. Baker, Tell the Generations Following, 56-57.

[15] J.B. Cranfill, Sermons and Life Sketch of B.H. Carroll D.D. (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1908), 13-23.

[16] Baker, Tell the Generations Following, 139-40. H.E. Dana provides more detail regarding the drawn out process in Scarborough’s conversion, including his premature baptism, subsequent conversion, and proper baptism. H.E. Dana, Lee Rutland Scarborough: A Life of Service (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1942), 52-57. Cf. L.R. Scarborough, Prepare to Meet God: The Way Made Plain (Nashville: Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1922), 88-89.

[17] Scarborough, With Christ After the Lost, 98.

[18] Ibid., 97.

[19] Scarborough, A Modern School of the Prophets, 169.

[20] Baker, Tell the Generations Following, 286.

[21] Garrett, "Walter Thomas Conner, Theology," in The Legacy of Southwestern, ch. 3.

[22] Conner, "My Religious Experiences," 12, cited in James Leo Garrett, Jr., "Walter Thomas Conner," in Theologians of the Baptist Tradition, 205.

[23] Ibid., 207.

[24] W.T. Conner, "Theology, a Practical Discipline," Review & Expositor 41 (1944): 350.

[25] Ibid., 360.

[26] James Leo Garrett, Jr., Systematic Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, 2 vols (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000-2001), 1:8.

[27] These were tallied by my graduate assistant, John Mann. Email, May 9, 2014.

[28] Email, May 21, 2014.

[29] Email, May 21, 2014.

[30] Email, May 22, 2014.

Life in the Midst of the Storm (A Letter for Men)

Para el español

NOTE: The letter below was written to the 40 men in our Men's Bible Study class at Birchman Baptist Church, which has been in existence for a year now. The letter ministered to many of our men and it has taken on a life of its own among others to whom our men minister. It is reprinted here for easy dissemination. One of our men has received a request for a Spanish translation and that will be posted here soon.


22 January 2011

Gentlemen,

This morning I woke up and prayed for each of you by name.

I imagine your life is much like mine. It seems to proceed from one adventure to the next, and often an adventure will be one of danger and tragedy. We know, conceptually, that the safest place to be is in the center of God’s will. Yet, life presents difficulties, even when we follow Jesus.

The disciples of Jesus experienced an example of this in Matthew 8. In verse 18, Jesus told the disciples they were going to get up and go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Some decided to stay behind. Yet others were faithful to Jesus and did what Jesus said. In verse 23, it says that Jesus got in the boat and, immediately, “his disciples followed him.” However, in the very next verse, the boat was in the middle of “a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with waves.”

How do you like that? You follow Jesus, the Son of God, the Savior of the World, and Jesus leads you into a storm! This is not exactly the kind of life that the health and wealth preachers are preaching on the television. No, the Bible teaches another paradigm: Follow Jesus, enter turmoil. Be a disciple like He commands, and life heads into a life-threatening storm. Get in the boat with the Son of God, live in the midst of the storm!

If you are like me, you begin to cry out sometimes and say, “Why, Lord?! What is this mess? Why is this happening? This happened and then that, and then my friend had this happen, and then that (and on and on). Will everything in my life come apart now? Why is everything so difficult? Why is everything so messed up? Why won’t my kid...? Why did my wife...? Why did I...? Lord, I am so confused and so burdened and so helpless. Lord, help! Lord, are you even listening? Lord, are you awake?!”

Then, as everything is falling apart, you become frantic. Maybe not on the outside, for we men are supposed to be strong and stoic. But on the inside, the turmoil of life becomes the turmoil within our hearts and minds. And we cry. Maybe not with tears, because, you know, we are men who are supposed to be strong and stoic. Which often means that the inner turmoil may only build and show itself in other ways. The turmoil in the world around us can so easily become the turmoil inside us.

So, like the disciples, we reach the point where we go to the Lord and try to wake Him up. Like them, we cry out, “Lord, save us; we’re dying here!” (verse 25). And when God doesn’t act immediately, we begin to doubt. All sorts of strange thoughts run through our mind: “Is God listening? Does God care? Is He really there? Does He really have power over this life? Why is He letting me toss and turn and flop all over the place? Is there any meaning in this life?”

However, when we have reached the end of our rope, when we have given up the last hope, it happens. Yes, it happens. We look at God one last time, as if to seal our unbelief, and we notice that He is looking straight at us. We notice that He is real, that He is alive. We notice that the eyes of the God who knows everything are focused like a laser on our situation. And that stupid question we had gets answered. “Is God listening?” Of course! He is omniscient; He knows it all. He knows exactly what is happening in my life.

We also notice that His eyes, which are fixed like a laser on our life, are fixed with a look of love. Sometimes, a weary love, at having to show us yet again that His way is the best way. But, His eyes look at us with that deepest love that ever was, that love which is the basis of all creation and all redemption. And we remember that second odd question we asked: “Does God care?” Yes, He absolutely cares.

Afterwards, we notice behind those laser-like, loving eyes, there is raw power. We see that in, behind, above, before and all around those eyes is the power that created all things, the power that sustains their existence, the power that brings everything to its final end. He is in control. He does see the injustice, but He has been waiting. He does see the pain, but He has held back. He does see the death, but He has been patiently working with His power to the perfect solution. And we remember that third set of ignorant questions, “Is He really there? Does He really have power over this life?”

Before we can even proceed to try to answer the other questions we were asking, God speaks. Yes, the Lord speaks. And, this voice of comfort and rebuke says to us, “Why are you afraid, man of little faith?” Now, as a Texan, that hurts, because there is nothing little in the life of a Texan! Except, now, here, we have evidence of the littleness of our faith. But Jesus promised that He could take even faith as small as a mustard seed and make something great out of it, didn’t He? He did. And He does.

As we try to understand all that this means, the Lord stands in His power and with one word, He speaks to the storm in our life, and He rebukes it. And the silence is awesome. The meaning of the stillness breaks on you with the mind-grabbing clarity of clanging cymbals and beating drums. Except, there is no sound, there is no movement. There is nothing but you and the other disciples and God. You and God. All the problems have faded. The storm has disappeared. And you know that He is real, this God, the Lord, the Creator, the Redeemer; the Father Who sent His Son, the Son Himself, and the Holy Spirit.

And, as the peace descends, like the disciples, we begin to wonder at what has happened. One moment, the storm is overwhelming us. We cry out to God. The next moment, we notice that the One whom we thought didn’t care or couldn’t care really does care. And we marvel. "What manner of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey Him!"

In the reflections of the silence, the truth the Father revealed to us through Peter becomes ours: We know that this man, Jesus, is also God. He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!"

My friends, my brothers, my fellow disciples. God really does care. He cares for you. He cares about the storm in your life. He cares. And He will calm it. And in the stillness, when it comes, we will marvel together.

When I was a young man, a teenager, I was in a storm of depression. God comforted me with John 10:10--”The thief comes not but for to steal, to kill, and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and that more abundantly.” That verse helped me tremendously through my earliest and most violent storm of life. And, now, as I see all of the storms around me, ready to crash into me and you, I understand that the abundant life is a life lived in the adventure of storms. The only thing I need to do is get in the boat with Jesus and keep my eyes on Him. He knows it all and He can take even my small faith and do something great with it, in spite of me.

In Christ,
Malcolm

Creativity & Discipline

Discipline is necessary to accomplish almost anything worthwhile in this life. Christ Jesus, we are told, 'learned obedience', most likely a reference to his humanity, as an ascription to the divine nature would call into question his constancy and omniscience. So, the human Jesus learned obedience. He grew in his knowledge of the divine will, bringing the human will into conformity. Here is an argument for a free will, a will exercising true freedom in obedience to God. How did he do it? 1) As the revelation of God, he knew the divine will. For us, this requires constant exposure to divine revelation, finding our life in the living word that gives life, exulting in the presence of God in our ears, on our lips, in our hearts, hearing, confessing, believing. 2) He obeyed the divine will, submitting himself to the will of the Father, even when it brought him duress in extremis in the garden. For us, this requires divine grace, since the human heart, having sold itself into wickedness, is locked in its depravity. By faith (itself a grace) we accept this grace into our lives and are thereby saved, being saved by grace, holding onto our salvation until its completion by grace. Christ 'learned obedience' and the restoration of a truly free will among the redeemed is manifested in a similar learning of obedience to God. This obedience is through the Word in the Spirit unto the Father; this obedience is by the Word in the Spirit from the Father. (The mystery of free grace and human response is again before us.) This obedience is otherwise known as discipline, discipleship, taking up the cross and following Him. So far, discipline.

And yet, as beings made in the image of the God who creates, we humans, male & female, also share in creativity. Do we as creatures fashion ex nihilo, out of nothing, as God did in the beginning? No, but we do fashion that which God has made. Surely, God finds joy in his image mimicking his creative acts. Like God's Word, we also use words to name creation--God found delight in Adam naming animals. Like God's Spirit, our spirits become one in the flesh of man & wife and we marvel at the mystery of the gift of a new breath coursing through the body of a newborn child. Beyond these acts of creation, is not work itself, for which God made us, by nature a creative activity? Whether it be the subduing of the earth in rows of corn, or the reporting of responsible capitalism in the columns of an accounting ledger, or the brushing of the swirls of an approaching storm splashed upon a taut canvas, these are acts of creation. Creativity from a human perspective involves taking two or more related yet often seemingly irreconcilably conflicting created things and bringing them together into some new created thing, 'new' in the sense of not previously recognized in our experience. And in that moment of creative action, the artist, the pilot, the scientist has a sense of exhilaration that is fundamentally pleasurable. As when God declared such and such to be good at the end of its creation, we too mimic him. The 'aha' of the creative work of man is a statement of discovery that echoes the 'it was good' declaration of God, an echo diminished qualitatively by the depravity of man, but an echo of goodness nonetheless.

So, what has creativity to do with discipline? Discipline brings the creative acts of male & female closer to the 'it was good' of God. When a human musician disciplines her fingers to pluck the strings of a classical guitar, chords of the divine symphony orchestrating creation throughout all time whispers mystery into our ears. When the architect disciplines his eyes and hands with his mind to connect this line with that circle at that particular angle in a reflection of the perfection of a divine thought, we glimpse behind the maker of the building another Maker whose glory is at the same time overwhelmingly awesome yet only vaguely perceived now. And when Christ disciplined his body and his mind to glorify his father, we see him take with divine authority the most gruesome deformation of wood & metal devised by human depravity for the sake of human torture, the cross of death, and through his human discipline, which he learned, transform that grotesque instrument by his own blood into the most glorious means by which his humanity, our humanity, reaches out and fully embraces and is embraced by the perfection of the God of love who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The discipline of the man who was God recreated humanity again into the image of God. And what cannot a humanity recreated by the cross of Christ itself create to bring us closer to the knowledge of his perfect formation of creation? Greater works than the miracles he performed in his first ministry upon the earth he promised his people would do. The key to the grace of creativity is the grace of discipline, a discipline with its eyes set on the revelation of God in Christ, and its hands wrapped around the pain of brokenness of whatever cross he lays upon his own, and its feet moving whither the Spirit would take them, and its mouth opening to speak nothing but his Word, for his glory, by his power. This is the discipline of Christian creativity. What ugliness, Lord, would you have transformed through the instrumentality of this body, which is learning the beauty of discipline to your will? Speak, Lord, your servant is ready to be disciplined for the sake of your creation.

(I offer this piece only at the encouragement of my bride, who read this entry from my private diary.)