Steve Lawson: What is the Spirit Saying to the Churches?
By: Deji Yesufu
In 1999, a year after I had come to living faith in Jesus Christ, I went to a local bookstore in my city of Zaria, Kaduna State (Nigeria). I had discovered that some of the best Christian literature were those written by dead men – theologians of centuries past. I also realized that some of these books were not particularly sought after by the reading public, so their prices were quite low. This was how I found J. C. Ryle’s “HOLINESS” – a 19th century English minister, a contemporary of C. H. Spurgeon – and the book was affordable. In the closing chapters of that book, Ryle wrote on 1 Chronicles 12:32, Which is the account of the sons of Issachar. Scripture said these men “had an understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do…” Ryle titled that chapter “The Wants of Our Time”. He was saying essentially that it requires great spiritual wisdom for one to take the whole 2,000-year history of the Christian church, combine it with the wisdom that the Bible teaches, and then use this to proffer solutions to the challenges of our day. If there is anything reformed theology teaches us, it is that God is loudest in difficult times.
Someone informed me recently that I have become the butt of a particular minister’s joke: the man thinks that biblical Calvinism has hit rock bottom with the recent announcement of Steve Lawson’s involvement with a woman besides his wife. He thinks that I should now renounce all my vaunted beliefs and join him in his dispensationalism. I know better than to do that. The Holy Spirit is speaking all the time. He speaks objectively in the word of God, and he can illuminate scriptures and the providences of God in our lives, particularly the hard ones, to make his counsel clear to the churches. What we need today are men like the sons of Issachar, who will be able to provide wisdom to the churches and help us navigate a path through these times. I will not venture to claim to have all wisdom; I, however, have been given a platform via my blog and perhaps ideas too that can help the churches at a time like this.
First, I believe the churches must revisit the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Many Calvinists are confessional Cessationists. Cessationism teaches essentially that apostolic miracles and biblical revelation have ceased with the first century. To preserve the authority of scripture, Cessationism teaches that God is no longer speaking outside of the Holy Scriptures. I am a Cessationist and I hold to these positions, except that I have also come to discover a hard-hearted extreme that this doctrine could posit: the idea that we should jettison anything supernatural and any possibility that God the Holy Spirit might wish to speak to the churches afresh today.
While teaching Roger Weil’s “Foundations of the Christian Faith” in church, we saw that God speaks to Christians through creation (Psalm 19), Conscience (1 Timothy 1:19) and Christ (Hebrew 1:1). The 1689 London Baptist Confessions states that “The whole counsel of God concerning all thing necessary for his glory… is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in Holy Scripture… Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God…” (bolded emphasis is mine) It is this inward illumination of the Spirit of God that I am calling Cessationists to revisit. God is not silent about issues in our lives; our God is speaking about them. Are we hearing? James counsels us that we should ask God for wisdom when we reach situations in our lives where we lack ideas to handle things (James 1:5). We must never think that we know it all; we don’t. These are trying times and seven times the glorified Christ told us in the book of Revelation “…he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches…” May God curse any theology that teaches that God is no longer speaking to Christians today. If you are no longer hearing God, like Saul, you may need to repent of your sins and hardheartedness; don’t extrapolate your Cessationism to such extremes. God’s objective word is the Bible. Yes, but the Spirit gives ears to God’s people to hear by illuminating scripture, enlivening our conscience, giving us eyes to sum up history, and seeing the magnificence of God in creation and providence. The Holy Spirit gives wisdom to God’s people to navigate the times. May God grant that we have ears to hear him in these times. Amen.
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Second, we must rebuild our local churches. When the scandal around Ravi Zacharias hit the limelight, Dr James White raised a very interesting observation. He asked: what local church does Zacharias belong to? In my previous essay on Steve Lawson, I warned against the propensity of reformed ministers to take up celebrity status. What very few of us do not realize is that Christ is the author of the revival of every biblical thing in any Christian tradition and denomination. Except that too many times, it requires only a few years for a true revival of God’s work to become corrupted with evil seeds from the devil. Every movement requires nurturing and this is best done in the context of a local church. When the Pentecostal revivals broke out in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Nigeria, people were awakened to prayer and godly living. Unfortunately, this very revival was infiltrated by the false doctrine of the prosperity gospel from the United States of America. The moment people began to leave the calling of carefully discipling God’s people within the context of a local church, and began to pursue stardom through preaching engagements at conferences, the rot creeps in. If reformed churches think this cannot happen to them, may God grant that they rethink it again. Jesus Christ is in the local church, where two or three are gathered around the faithful exposition of scripture and prayers. As God’s people apply the things they are learning from the Bible to God’s providential dealings in their lives, they will grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord. From such assemblies, missionaries will also be sent to other places to carefully disciple other people. Jesus Christ is not the author of annual conferences – there is no such thing in the whole of the Bible.
Third, we must equip our ministers morally and prayerfully. The a, b, c of Christian sanctification are Paul’s words in the book of 1 Thessalonians where he wrote: “…for this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour…” The key phrase in this admonition is that you and I should “…know how to possess (our) vessel in sanctification…” It is practical knowledge – each of us must know our triggers and know how to shut them down. We must know when the thoughts come and how to avoid them. Sanctification is the a, b, and c of the Christian life, and just as the alphabets form the bedrock of spoken and written English, sanctification is also at the root of all of Christian living. There is no Christianity without holy living. He is not a Christian who does not know how to handle his body. It is the reason why sexual sins are particularly heinous with Christian ministers because you will expect that someone who teaches the deep mysteries of the faith, should have settled the elementary part of the faith. Except that we must also realize that God puts these treasures in earthen vessels, and sometimes while bringing up the gold, we inhale some dust. It is this reality that demands that each congregation pray for their pastors. I mean set time out to ask God to help your minister to stand. It is simple: if the devil strikes the shepherd, it is you the sheep that will scatter. The shepherd will repent and be restored, but the sheep will no longer have godly, insightful, and purposeful preaching to listen to. There are not many faithful expositors of scriptures in our world today, and to lose one so carelessly as in the case of Steve Lawson is very depressing. So, pray for your ministers.
Fourth, we must re-examine biblical charity. I started to write this essay two weeks ago. I put the whole thing on hold as I tried to examine my conscience: am I cashing out on the fall of another man, to make a point? Is an article like this charitable – the reason is because as long as you are a man, you can become a Steve Lawson tomorrow. I resumed writing the essay because I felt that God might want me to finish it. Besides, the first article has become my most-read article on my blog this year. It means people are asking questions and they need answers. It is in this light, that I want to request that the churches re-examine biblical charity all over again. While the churches no longer burn people at the stake, reformed Christians carry out a cancel culture that could be worse than crucifixion and burning at the stakes. I would never understand why, in the light of Lawson’s fall, all his books, tapes, videos, etc, should be pulled down. Agreed, the man lived a double life, but the fact remains that its pleased God to put treasures in those earthen vessels. It is to the loss of the church and later generations that all the mighty preaching, ideas, and insights that Steve Lawson brought to the reformed world are almost today extinguished. I agree slightly with the point Lawson made in his final sermon: you cannot judge a man by a tiny hiccup in his ministry because in comparison, his infidelity is nowhere compared to the number of people that have benefited from his works in the past. He might have made that statement as damage control, but it remains true all the same. This is why I would never stop referring the reformed world to the injustice they did Alistair Begg in February 2024, and I am confident that Lawson will not be the last reformed celebrity preacher whose double life would be found out. We owe ourselves the duty of loving one another – if not for anything, but for the fact that Christ has saved us and commanded us to love each other. Love covers sins. Love might not restore Lawson to the pulpit, but it should restore him to a gathering of God’s people. Where, someday, he could still use his gifts in the local church. He would certainly not return to conference preaching, but he would be restored to the church. This is what I would encourage my local church to do to an erring minister among us, and this is what I hope God’s people will do for me if ever I were to fall into such a sin in my ministry.
Fifth, and lastly, we must go into the world and preach the gospel. Christian ministry and the Christian life in general should be a flowing stream, and never a stagnant lake. We tend most times to just enjoy all the glories of the gospel that Christ has given to us, and to spend all our time rejoicing in them. We forget that the primary reason Christ came was to save sinners. Jesus has revealed the glories of the gospel to us; thank God. Let us make the effort to share them with others. Sin creep into the churches when the churches become stagnant. When we are no longer sharing the truth with our unbelieving neighbors; when we have little space for apologetics; when we do not see how to translate gospel realities into everyday life and even into nation-building; when we are not making the effort to help the poor. David saw Bathsheba bathing and entered into sin when he was supposed to have been leading the armies of God at war. There is a complacency that can enter religion, that makes us relaxed and undiscerning. Paul told us in his letters to the Corinthians that we should not be unaware of devices of the enemy. When the churches grow wealthy; when church numbers increase; when we are becoming a force to reckon with – and well known, that is the time to become careful and prayerful. The Spirit of Christ is calling the churches to work, labour, evangelize, to charity, and prayers.
The Holy Spirit authored the Holy Bible, and within scripture are contained the very words of God. The Spirit illuminate scriptures today in such a way as to make issues of our time clear to us. Such that we know what the Spirit is saying to the churches, and by and large, what the Spirit is saying to each of us individually.
Deji Yesufu is the Pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Ibadan (Nigeria). He is the author of HUMANITY.
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