Crossing in Hope
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Over the last eight months I've probably spent more time in hospitals than in the previous thirty years combined. I had three kidney stone related trips to three different hospitals in three different states, and one happy trip to have Maili, our youngest. What I discovered in spending so much time either in, or with someone in, those back-door exposing flimsy little pj things was that nurses do not, in their schools, spend a great deal of time on elementary grammar. They learn how to be nice, and how to be helpful, but they do not learn the proper use of pronouns. Invariably the door would swing open and some sweet-faced woman would ask, "So, how are we doing?" When the question was being asked, either Denise or I felt like that guy in the original Alien movie, that there was something inside each of us that couldn't find a pain-free escape route. The nurses, however, had no such pain. Part of "we" were perhaps putting in some long, unappreciated hours for a too small paycheck, but the other part of "we" was in physical agony.

That nurses are in error for thinking, or at least pretending to think, in corporate terms, however, does not mean that such is always a wrong thing to do. Despite how annoying such can be in a context of great pain, it is, on its face, a healthy, counter-cultural move. We live in a disconnected, disjointed, individualistic age. We are a nation of loners. We make it on our own; we, each of us, do things our way.

This propensity, however, is not merely the result of millions upon millions of individual decisions. We have come to see every man as an island ironically because of assorted cultural ebbs and flows. The very circumstances of the populating of our culture pushed in this direction. It takes a rather independent minded person to pack ones bags and move to what was at the time essentially another planet. When the eastern seaboard of the New World became populated, that same spirit pushed westward, as pioneers went out on their own to face the elements, the Indians, and the untamed wilderness.

It is a good thing to have the fortitude to take a continent wide jungle and to make a garden of it. We are, after all, called to not only exercise dominion over the earth, but to fill it. But there are weaknesses and temptations that come with the spirit of individualism as well. And we see them made manifest among the American Puritans. Now, before I say a few unkind words about these great heroes of the Reformation, let me at least try to shield myself from the backlash. There is much to be commended among the Puritans. They were a people given to putting Scripture to practice. They weren't content to have a sound theology, but a worldly world-view. They, like many who came after them, wanted to take every thought, and every deed captive.

Which, as I'm sure our readers know, is not the same thing as succeeding in taking every thought and deed captive. Just as we fail, so too did the Puritans fail from time to time. Their failures, often, were the fruit of individualism, a failure to think in corporate terms. I first ran into this problem while reading a Puritan hook, A Token For Children. A compilation of two smaller works by James Janeway and Cotton Mather, the book was a collection of conversion stories of small children on their deathbeds. My problem, mind you. was not that the Puritans believed that children need to be converted. They had no patience for our modern doctrine of justitication by youth alone. The problem was that they had no sense of God's covenant faithfulness.

The child is on his deathbed. The parents look on anxiously, and implore the child of the covenant, "Son, pray that God would be pleased to give you faith. Seek godly sorrow." And the son replies, "Yes, my loving parents. God was good to me to place me in your home. His grace is sweet, and I have prayed and will continue to pray that He would deign to grant me faith, before I draw my last breath." You understand that this child believed that he was a sinner. He believed that Jesus died to save sinners, that He atoned for the sins of the elect. He believed that there was no hope outside of Christ. He found Christ to be sweet. But he couldn't concede that he actually believed savingly because he hadn't had a sufficiently dramatic conversion experience, at least not yet. He hadn't yet succeeded in filling a bathtub full of tears, and so, obviously was not yet regenerated.

It is a had thing to assume that one can ride the coattails of one's parents into the kingdom. The Baptists are right, that God has no grandchildren. We are redeemed by name, one at a time. But we are redeemed in and through God's covenant faithfulness. As the redeemed we are a part of the bride of Christ. That God has promised to be a God to us and to our children doesn't remove the necessity of individual faith, but it does preclude any allowance for an individualist faith. That both the parents and the child looked upon actual belief of a covenant child as too good to believe, and something for which they required an ocean of evidence, is evidence that they did not believe in God's covenant promises. Both should not only have believed God's redemptive promises, (that He would he the God to all those who repent and call upon the name of the Lord) but should have believed in His covenant promises (that He would be the same for you, your children, and as many as are afar off).

We can see the fruit of this error in the history of New England . That the church embraced an inward looking religion, one that was more interested in judging the depths of one's sorrow than the depth of the grace of God, one that was more interested in gazing at navels than gazing upon the Christ, led the church first to Arminianism, and then to Unitarianism. When we lose sight of God's covenants, we know that the center will not hold.

You see much the same thing, the propensity in this direction in Bunyan's great classic, Pilgrim s Progress. As with the Puritans, my concerns do not destroy my appreciation. Bunyan is to be commended and not despised. There are many valuable lessons to be learned from Pilgrim's journey. But though Pilgrim ~s Progress is second only to the Bible in worldwide book sales, it is not the Bible, and Bunyan is not inerrant.

Consider, for instance, the nature of his journey. Christian, while visiting with assorted characters along the way, makes the journey, by and large, on his own. Yes there are assorted tempters, and assorted helpers along the way, but, I ask, where is the church? Oh, it too makes an appearance. Pilgrim finds solace, comfort, and rest there, as he ought, as he stops at Palace Beautiful. But then once again he sets out on his journey alone. And on his own, albeit through the invisible and amorphous grace of God, he makes it to the Celestial City .

What is missing is any hint of those means of grace that we drink from in a corporate context. Self-discipline is good. Self-study is good as well. And communing with Christ in private prayer, that's good too. But God made no man an island. Church discipline exists because self-discipline fails. We grow accustomed to our sins, and so need others to call us to account. The proclamation of the Word exists because the Word tells us that God is pleased to work through the foolishness of preaching. To suggest that one can get the same thing from private reading is to succumb to true foolishness.

While prayer is a true communion with Christ, it is not some individual approximation of the Lord's Table. Communion is not quiet time with a snack. The greatest difference, however, isn't in some miracle in the bread and the wine, hut in the dual nature of the union. That is, because we feed upon Him, we become more united to Him. He is our strength, our sustenance, the very bread of heaven. But it is vital not to miss that it is we who commune with Him. That is, when we come to the table we come as a we; we commune mystically not only with Jesus, but with each other.

In short, it is not enough that we begin to think more covenantally in terms of our salvation. We need to think the same in terms of our sanctification. Jesus, after all, is at work not removing every blemish and wrinkle from His brides, but from His bride. We are on Pilgrim's journey together. It is we whom Peter calls a royal priesthood, a holy nation. And likewise he calls us to live as sojourners and pilgrims. We not only gather together to ask the Lord's blessing, but we travel together as we receive the Lord's blessing.

Today is Friday. In two days I will take two trips. The second one will be to Michigan . There I travel to officiate, with Laurence, in my first funeral. Hope Dewey, for whom we asked prayer in our last issue, was born two days ago, eight weeks early due to severe fetal distress. She lived for two hours, and then she went ahead on the journey. She has already finished her pilgrimage. She did not, however, go alone, as those who gather to celebrate the gospel in her life will attest at her funeral. That she is ahead of us in crossing over the Jordan doesn't mean we are not crossing together.

Which brings us to my first journey this Lord's Day. I, not alone, not even merely with my fellow pilgrims at Saint Peter, but with all of God's people around the world, will travel, through the power of the Holy Spirit to the eternal and unassailable holy Mount Zion . Hope will be there, as will you. We will, on that day, peak over the river to the Promised Land, and we will, together, taste that He is good.

If we would live simple lives, we must live them simply, together. We do not simplify by eoeooning ourselves, by uncluttering our lives of the love of others. That love, of course, is focused most deeply on that corporate bride of Christ. We are simple in that because we love our king, so we love His bride. We are simple because we remember that we are one thing together, the people of God.

Our separateness, in like manner, isn't a separateness from each other. Again it is we, and not I that have the call to be set apart. We who are not together with the world are in fact together with each other. This, in fact, is precisely what sets us apart. The world, Jesus tells us, will know that we are His by our love for each other. The more tightly bound together we are, the more we call the world to come and join us.

If we would be deliberate, we must be deliberate together. In fact, to be deliberate is to deliberate, to consider together the best way to make our journey. We first jettison the individualism of the world around us as so much baggage that will only slow our journey. We then jettison the individualism of the church as so much baggage that will only slow our journey. We think together, we talk together so that we might walk together.

Our end goal is not the creation of millions of fiefdoms, little realms in which we might reign on our own. Rather we make our pilgrimage toward the kingdom of God , that we might build the kingdom of God , where we will all rule together, in union with the King, and in union with each other. May God be pleased to lead us on this journey, not as an army of ones, but as an army of one.