Let us not then be ashamed to confess the Crucified.  Be the Cross our seal made with boldness by our fingers on our brow, and on everything; over the bread we eat, and the cups we drink; in our comings in, and goings out; before our sleep, when we lie down and when we rise up; when we are in the way, and when we are still.  Great is that preservative; it is without price, for the sake of the poor; without toil, for the sick; since also its grace is from God.  It is the Sign of the faithful, and the dread of devils:  for He triumphed over them in it, having made a shew of them openly (Col. ii. 15); for when they see the Cross they are reminded of the Crucified; they are afraid of Him, who bruised the heads of the dragon. Ps. lxxiv. 13..  Despise not the Seal, because of the freeness of the gift; out for this the rather honour thy Benefactor (from section 36 Lecture XII, “On the Words  Crucified and Buried”).

Cyril makes a good point regarding the centrality of the cross for the Christian.  Sins are forgiven and Satan is defeated because of Christ’s work on the cross.  He makes a mistake, however, when he says that that power can be invoked by making the sign of the cross.  My point yesterday was that the power of the cross belongs to us by faith in Jesus Christ, not by making the sign of the cross or by doing any other religious rituals (for Protestants such acts of ritualistic devotion may take other forms, as I also noted yesterday).

In John 12:36 Jesus says, “While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.”  To believe is to have faith–the root is the same Greek.  So, Jesus emphasizes faith in Himself as the light of the world (John 8:12).  Paul emphasizes faith in Christ as well.  In Romans he writes, ”For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:22-25).  When Paul says that God put Christ forward as a “propitiation by his blood” he is speaking about the crucifixion.  A propitiation was a sacrifice offered to avert wrath.  God’s wrath on sinners is placed on Jesus on the cross.  All who receive Christ by faith receive this this benefit from his crucifixion.  This cross work of Christ received by faith, is the basis for our salvation.  So Paul writes in Ephesians, ”For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

The forgiveness of sins and freedom from spiritual darkness purchased by Christ on the cross is ours by faith in Him.  Sadly, for many people the sign of the cross has become a ritual, rather than something that bolsters real faith in Christ.  For those who think that they are accessing Christ’s power through making this sign, it has actually become a deadly substitute for faith that saves and sanctifies.  Certainly, if one thinks that by making this sign one can be forgiven, scare demons, receive some special blessing, or bring about a substantial change in the elements used in the Lord’s Supper then one has departed from the teaching of Jesus and Paul.

We should learn from the early fathers and from the traditions of the church, but we must always to Scripture to regulate our faith and our practice.  Not one time does the New Testament tell believers to make the sign of the cross.  Christ and his benefits are ours by faith alone.

The full text to the blog post at the White Horse Inn is below.

I was intrigued by a recent conversation between Doug Wilson and Mark Driscoll (interview video above).

I’d prefer to keep my thoughts to myself, but I think there’s a crucial piece missing from the “debate.”

As I said in an earlier post ( Reformed and Charismatic?), I’m not willing to die on the hill of cessationism. In fact, I’d fit into the category that Doug Wilson describes as “a cessaionist who believes strange things happen.” A sovereign God is free to fulfill his purposes as he pleases. As God, the Holy Spirit is not on a leash.

However, this misses the point. No Calvinist would believe that the Spirit is not free or that he cannot speak directly to people today as he did in the days of the prophets and apostles. Nor are Reformed Christians deists for believing that, as a rule, he doesn’t. In fact, the church was not guided by anti-supernaturalism when it rejected the claims of the Montanists in the late second century. Nor were Luther and Calvin under the spell of the Enlightenment when they challenged the “enthusiasts” for pitting the Word against the Spirit.

The Spirit is not bound by anything, but he freely binds himself to his Word. The question is not where the Spirit may work, but where he has promised to work. If strange things happen—similar to events in the era of the prophets and apostles, praise the Lord! However, one doesn’t have a right to expect the Spirit to work except where he has promised to work and through the means that the Triune God has ordained.

Like older charismatic-cessationist debates in evangelicalism, this newer discussion therefore has the wrong categories. The real issue isn’t whether the sign-gifts have ceased; it’s whether the Spirit works through ordinary means that Christ ordained explicitly or whether he works through extraordinary means that were identified with the extraordinary ministry of the apostles. Even deeper than that, it’s a question of whether we embrace a paradigm in which the Spirit’s work is identified with direct and immediate activity within us apart from ordinary means or through the external Word and sacraments. The history of “enthusiasm” (Protestant or otherwise) trends toward an almost Gnostic dualism between spirit and matter, indirect and inner experience versus mediated and external ministry, the individual heart and the covenant community. This is where the seismic fault is revealed. It’s at this point where the real differences—paradigmatic differences—become evident. And there are plenty of cessationists as well as charismatics who presuppose the “enthusiastic” paradigm.

In this interview, my friend Mark Driscoll expresses his worry that cessationists believe in the “Father, Son, and Holy Bible.” That may well be. In fact, one of the things that I’ve emphasized especially in recent years is the richness of the Spirit’s person and work that is actually far more evident in classic Reformed as well as patristic faith and practice than today. The temptation to celebrate the Spirit over the Word in our day is in part a reaction against a conservative tendency to separate the Word from the Spirit. He has also said elsewhere that where Reformed people attribute God’s work to the gospel, charismatics attribute it to the Spirit. We talk past each other, he says. I’m not so sure. Rather, I think we’re operating with quite different paradigms. When we attribute God’s work to the gospel, it’s actually attributing it to the Spirit who works through the gospel.

The choice between Spirit and Word is a false one that has typically been forced by Protestant enthusiasm. We do speak past each other, but because we have different paradigms—not just because of different views of whether the sign-gifts have ceased. For example, the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “Where does this true faith come from?” Answer: “The Holy Spirit creates it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel and confirms it by the holy sacraments.” Who creates it? The Holy Spirit. How? Through preaching the gospel and by ratifying it through the baptism and the Supper.

When Reformed people (and others) speak of preaching, baptism, Communion, covenantal nurture in the home, church discipline, diaconal ministry and so forth, our charismatic brothers and sisters wonder, “Where is the Holy Spirit?” Why? Because they have come to see the Spirit’s work as separate from—even antithetical to—the external ministry of the church and ordinary means of grace.

Of course, this point doesn’t address the issues, much less pretend to solve them. However, my hope at least is that we could have a better conversation than the usual debate question: “The Sign-Gifts Have Ceased: Pro or Con?”