In Depth:  Michael Reeves

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

In practice, evangelicals have often tended to be individualists in their faith. But our understanding of what it is to be truly evangelical should be taken not from evangelical practice but from the evangel.

Evangelicals are people who have been born again, but to be born again is to be born or baptised into Christ (Rom. 6v3; Gal. 3v27). From the moment of our regeneration, we are part of a bigger whole, the body of Christ (Rom. 12v5; 1 Cor. 12v13).

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

For people of the gospel, the gospel serves as our mooring anchor. An anchor stops a ship from drifting while allowing it a certain amount of movement on the surface of the water. Just so, the gospel holds us to Scripture’s matters of first importance while allowing some slack for differences of opinion on other matters.

As Paul called the Romans and Corinthians to unity in the gospel and liberty in what to eat, so the anchor keeps us from making shipwreck of our faith (1 Tim. 1v19) without making our every disagreement a cause for schism.

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

I wonder if you’ve read C. S. Lewis’ The Four Loves? If you haven’t, you’ve got a treat to enjoy sometime. His chapter on friendship is a favourite of mine. It’s an insight-packed paean to friendship. And friendship is a vital part of our life together in Christ, a foretaste of what is to come.

A friendship is not the same thing as an exclusive coterie or cabal. “True Friendship,” says Lewis, “is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend.” The foundation for friendship, Lewis says, is companionship, which is what we often mean by the term “fellowship”. Companionship entails a basic willingness to get on and work well with others.

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow... And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him – a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecc. 4v9-10, 12).

One of the greatest practical problems I see across the church is the isolation of so many church leaders. There are many contributing factors, but surely one of them is the idea that spiritual growth occurs only or mainly through the purposeful, influential actions of elevated individuals. We might call this the “great man” theory.

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

We can submit to Scripture with confidence because of our Lord. Jesus was consistently clear that what Scripture says, God says.

For example, conversing with the Pharisees, he said: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Matt. 19:4–6)

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

The reason why evangelicals treat Scripture as their supreme authority is because it is the word of God. In other words, evangelicals believe in what is traditionally called the “inspiration” of Scripture.

Today, the word “inspiration” can be a little misleading, as if Moses, Paul, and Luke simply felt enthused one day and started scribbling. That is not at all what is meant! By inspiration is meant what Paul teaches Timothy when he writes of how “from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings … All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:15-17).

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

Again and again since the close of the New Testament, the church has reasserted the essential evangelical principle of the supremacy of Scripture alone. Why so? Quite simply, because that is what Jesus taught about how we can know the truth.

Mark 7:1-13 depicts Jesus’s controversy with the Pharisees over Scripture and its authority. A dispute had arisen over handwashing. The Pharisees’ concern was a religious one, that they might be “defiled” (v.2) and they therefore insisted on a ceremonial handwashing according “to the tradition of the elders” (v.3). Their objection to Jesus was that His disciples did not walk according to this tradition (v.5). To this, Jesus replied: “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men” (v.8).

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

What is the most urgent need of the church today? Better leadership? Better training? Healthier giving? Orthodoxy? Moral integrity? Each of these are undoubtedly needs, but underneath them all lies something even more vital: gospel integrity.

In Luke 12, when thousands had gathered together to hear Jesus, He began to say to His disciples first: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (v1). That might have been unsurprising had He been warning the people as a whole, but He said it to his disciples first, to those who had already left all and followed Him.

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

Is ‘the good life’ a life without suffering? Ease and prosperity in and of themselves are not really what make up the good life. Christ Himself was made like His weak and tempted brothers in order that He might help those who are tempted (Heb.2:16-18), and in the same manner, it is weak and suffering people that God has chosen to minister to the weak and suffering.

The great Refiner uses the days of small things. He uses the setbacks and discouragements, and even severe suffering, for our ultimate blessing. He did just that at the cross: it was through that darkest and most discouraging day that He definitively overturned and defeated the very root of darkness and suffering. Through that death He defeated death; through our comparatively light sufferings He is able to defeat our selfish independence and our foolish wandering and to make us more like His free and victorious Son. For those who have even glimpsed the unfettered beauty of Jesus, that thought itself puts mettle in our joy.

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

‘Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings...’ (1 Pet. 4:12–13).

Peter can urge us to rejoice in our sufferings not because he’s a religious masochist but because he knows: Christ is the firstborn, our forerunner, and where He goes, we follow. He is our Head, and like in a birth, the body must follow where the head goes. This is the pathway through suffering to glory.

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

Underneath every mistake the Pharisees made lay a root problem. Jesus put it simply: ‘They loved the glory of men more than the glory of God’ (John 12:43, my translation).

Jesus’ words cut like a scalpel through to their fundamental motivation. They would not confess Him because of what they loved. But what exactly did Jesus mean? Did He mean that they loved the glory that comes from men more than the glory that comes from God? Or did He mean that they loved the glory of men more than the glory that belongs to and is due to God?

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

Evangelicals are never about propositions alone: we want the theological truths of the gospel to transform us by the renewing of our minds (Rom.12:2).

We want to know God, in a personal way. We don’t simply affirm that Scripture is our supreme authority and that we are justified by faith alone through Christ alone. We actually submit to Scripture as our supreme authority and enjoy Christ as our only Saviour, praising Him from our hearts for His all-sufficiency and grace.

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

Justification of sinners by grace alone lies at the heart of the gospel. It is the proof and consequence of the fact that Christ is so entirely all-sufficient a Saviour that His work needs no supplementing by us. While this may be good news, it is not an easy truth for the fallen to swallow.

The fact that Jesus pronounces a foul sinner righteous while condemning a life committed to religious uprightness (see Luke 18:9-14) offends our pride. For the humbling effect of Jesus’s teaching, so entirely condemning our self-reliance, makes it far easier to reserve the message of justification by grace as one only for beginners or outsiders. Justification may be an essential evangelical truth, but it is one that all evangelicals struggle to live by.

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

To be faithful to the gospel means treating Christ and His redeeming death and resurrection as matters ‘of first importance’ (1 Cor. 15:3-4). And yet, through the centuries, Christians have managed to downgrade Jesus, cast Him in their own image, or use Him as the icing to sell some other agenda.

But that is not the evangelical way. Evangelicals look to Scripture to know Christ, and there they find the unique Son of God, exclusive in His glorious identity and completely sufficient as a Saviour.

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

At the heart of being an evangelical is humility. That might seem a laughable claim amid all the empire-building and hubris that has blackened the name of evangelicalism.

And there is something about evangelicalism that can make it a fertile soil for pride. Evangelicals are people of the word, and so learning is in the blood. Yet learning so commonly fosters arrogance.

everyday theology

Michael Reeves

If the desire of the Father, the work of the Spirit, and the purpose of Scripture is to herald Jesus, then so it must be for the faithful preacher.

If the Son’s great and eternal goal is to win for Himself a bride, then His heralds must woo for Him. They are like Abraham’s servant in Genesis 24, commissioned to find a bride for His master’s son. Only when we take our eyes off ourselves and herald Him will we truly glorify God. But when we do that, we may be sure that our preaching will always be evangelistic and, at the same time, always edifying to the saints.