“Jesus is Lord” is our confession as Christians (Romans 10:9), and our confession has a crescendo of consequences.
I can summarize my life’s whats and whys under “Jesus is Lord” and for the glory of God, and when I think about how that looks, I think about the Kuyperian Dispensationalist. He is not my imaginary friend, but he is always talking to me wherever I go; “Hey! Look at this!”
# (Re)Defining Terms
“Kuyperian” refers to a Christian who confesses that Jesus, the Logos, created all things and that He cares about all that He created. A Kuyperian mindset is like a filter through which a man sees that he can honor Christ in studying theology and in building swing sets, in walking in the Spirit while walking down the halls of Congress, or to the voting booth. A disciple of Christ isn’t defined as much by what he does (as if only sacred not secular, spiritual not earthly, eternal not temporal) as much as Who he does those things for.
The consequences of Abraham Kuyper’s (Holland, 1837-1920) confession that Jesus is Lord included that he *stopped* being a pastor and got into publishing and politics. He started a daily newspaper and edited a monthly magazine. He energized Christian education at the grammar and secondary levels, then helped to found a university where the students were free to study and steward every thumb’s width in creation. He saw Calvinistic soteriology and raised it with the implications of Calvinistic cosmology.
Also, big sheesh, we make disciples of Christ, not disciples of Kuyper. I don’t tell any of my unbelieving neighbors that they need to “ask Kuyper into their hearts” or end their prayers “in Kuyper’s name.” And at the same time, it may very well be that my neighbors observe something different about our family/community that I know grows out of a viewpoint and motivation I learned from considering the outcome of Kuyper’s way of living for Christ (per Hebrews 13:7).
Kuyper himself was *not* a Dispy; no one’s perfect. But he read the Bible right in many areas and obeyed with indefatigable obsession, he just didn’t do it with the intention to make the Jews jealous. That’s what we mean by the term “Dispensationalist.” Our type of Dispy is close to a certain type of Covy, even if some Covies claim Dispies teach two ways of salvation (which we don’t).
We read Scripture that reveals that there is still something special and unique about the nation of Israel. Before Christ, salvation came through faith in the coming Seed. After Christ, salvation comes through a Jew, Jesus, but does not depend on a man changing his passport to Israeli colors. Americans, Russians, Canadians, Netherlanders, Germans, and more believe as part of the church. Israelites who believe in these days are also part of the church.
But there is coming a day when the fulness of the Gentiles will “come in,” that is, all the elect non-Jews will be converted to Christ, and then “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25-26). There are national promises of salvation and blessing that remain to be fulfilled (per the New Covenant promise in Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31). That’s what makes us Dispies.
Some more things need to be said.
In history, most Dispensationalists have considered their lives, and the world, to be in a sort of throw-away, disposable category. We say catechesis matters, our lives not so much. Our lives *are* a vapor, as James wrote (James 4:14), but Dispensationalists tend to apply that to the *worth* of one’s life rather than the *duration* of it. Compared to eternity our lives on earth don’t last very long. That doesn’t make our lives here less valuable. It’s actually the opposite.
A Dispensationalist sings about how this world is not his home, he’s just a passing through, and he sings how the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of Christ’s glory and grace. A Dispensationalist runs everything through the comparative grid rather than the integrated grid (categories Joe Rigney described in his book, _The Things of Earth_). Compared to the Lord everything else is worthless, “there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25), but we have trouble comprehending that the Lord Jesus gave worth to what He made for us. We tend to be best at building Dispensational Bible colleges as well as walls between Denominations. We are good at seeing and criticizing and condemning sin in the culture. We major on strident apologetics and urgent evangelism and rapture fiction. We believe that Israel is still significant in God’s plans and promises, and we expect that God will work all that out on the other side of the globe. We’ll wait here, at home, in our prayer closets, and Jesus will be back to make things right at any moment.
The hope about Israel is good, the rest ruins our claim of better Bible reading. There are great promises of God to His elect people in the Old Testament. He made great and unconditional, and so *unbreakable*, covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We’ve recently looked specifically at the New Covenant promises to “the household of Israel,” promises to give them a new heart and the indwelling Spirit, as well as to return them to the land of their forefathers (Jeremiah 31:31-40; Ezekiel 36:22-32). We’ve seen Paul’s long section of confidence in Romans 9-11. God chose the nation of Israel for Himself, He chose to save many within the nation. He also purposed for many to reject His Son for a time, before He will save all of them in the future. God is faithful. He will finish what He started. While the fullness of Gentiles are grafted into salvation in Christ, the ethnic people of Israel will also be grafted back in. This what it means to be a Dispensationalist.
# What God Has Joined Together
Most Kuyperian-minded Christians have not been Dispensationalists. Most Dispensationalists have not been Kuyperian. There are verses for both, so there are blind spots to watch for on both sides. Whether or not one uses the labels, both truths are Bible truths.
Do they go together or do we just try to hold them both? God says them, we believe them, we can’t explain them further…? He’s sovereign, we’re responsible, He’ll have to figure out how it works…?
Perhaps the truths are like holding two seventeen pound bowling balls, one in the left hand and one in the right. There have been some Christians who believe and live like this, most of whom probably couldn’t explain it, but they do it. We shouldn’t drop either ball, but the left hand don’t really have much to do with the right.
That’s *not* the case. Kuyperianism is more like the cue ball that breaks the Dispensational rack, sending balls into pockets all around the table. Kuyperianism is the key that touches all the right parts of the eschatological lock, opening the door on the timeline of God’s plan. It’s not just that they *could* go together, they *must*. How so?
# Making the Jews Jealous
There is a key word used three times in Romans 10-11, a word that’s part prophecy, part observation, part motivation. The word is *jealous*.
We almost always take jealousy to be a sin, and usually it is. It is feeling of envy to be in someone else’s shoes, wanting to have what they have. The desire itself is not wrong, it depends on what you want and why you want it.
In Romans 10 Paul addressed why so many of his kinsmen did not confess that Jesus is Lord and in his explanation he quoted the second half of Deuteronomy 32:21.
> But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says,
>
> “I will make you **jealous** of those who are
> not a nation;
> with a foolish nation I will make you angry.”
> (Romans 10:19)
In Deuteronomy God warned Israel, under the name of “Jeshurun,” that they “grew fat, stout, and sleek; then…forsook God who made” them and “scoffed at the Rock of…salvation” (32:15). They “forgot the God who gave (them) birth” (32:18). God responded with jealousy for the glory of His name. He values it so much—as He should—that He reacts when His name isn’t honored, so He was going to make them jealous. That is the first part of the verse Paul quoted in Romans 10:19.
> They have made me jealous with what is no god;
> they have provoked me to anger with
> their idols.
> **So I will make them jealous** ….
> (Deuteronomy 32:21)
They gave worship due to Him to other gods, so God would give blessings offered to them to other peoples. He was going to give blessings to “those who are no people,” a people the Jews looked down on, in order to cause the Jews to want the good from God they could have had.
Paul stitches the jealous thread again in the next chapter.
> So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel **jealous**. (Romans 11:11)
“Stumble” refers to their rejection of salvation in Jesus. In God’s plan, Israel’s rejection led to salvation and “riches for the world…riches for the Gentiles” (Romans 11:12). God extended His grace in forgiveness and in fruitfulness. “Riches” are blessing, good gifts from above, eternal and temporal, spiritual and material. These riches “make Israel jealous.”
Making Jews jealous was a major motivation for Paul’s ministry.
> Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews **jealous**, and thus save some of them. (Romans 11:13–14)
Provoking jealousy was not an afterthought or an accident, it was his *aim*. Paul didn’t merely look back and realize an unintended consequence, he looked around for ways to increase the provocation effect. “I magnify,” the word is δοξάζω, “I glorify.” Salvation and blessing among the Gentiles provoked the right sort of envy in the elect in Israel. Paul maximized his blessing-bling to “save some” of the remnant in his day, but there will be a large-scale application in the end when the fulness of Gentiles come in so that “**all Israel will be saved**” (Romans 11:25-26). Toward that end Paul was making disciples jealousable.
*A Kuyperian Dispensationalist confesses that Jesus is Lord in everything he does on earth, and that God has purposed to make the Jews jealous through great blessings of salvation and fruitfulness as we live by faith that Jesus is Lord so that all Israel will believe and be saved.* Those blessings will be on earth and not just in our prayer closets. We are the means of God’s ends, like a cue ball breaking the rack and sending balls all over the table.
# Blessing Bling
In Genesis 1 God blessed Adam and Eve before He gave them their mandate (Genesis 1:28). He blessed them for sake of their marriage and mission of fruitfulness and filling and forming the earth. They were #blessed by Him.
In the Psalms the Israelites received and requested more of God’s blessing. The first word in Psalms is “blessed,” describing the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked but delights in the law of the Lord and yields fruit like a tree in season. The Lord’s blessings came in the form of good harvests and in victory over, or at least protection from, enemies. Blessings sometimes looked like gold with gladness and sometimes gladness without it. Blessings came in the form of a wise and righteous king as well as in judgment on transgressors. Blessing included land, livestock, and eating the fruit of one’s labor. Blessing came in the form of peace of heart, peace with God, peace among brothers. Blessings included forgiveness and feasts. Blessing came in the form of temple worship and in the form of kids all around the dinner table.
> The earth has yielded its increase;
> God, our God, shall bless us.
> God shall bless us;
> let all the ends of the earth fear him!
> (Psalm 67:6–7)
Fear of God extends on earth as God blesses His people. Salvation blessings are riches for the world.
# Eschatology for Today
We will not aim to make Jews jealous if we don’t think that Jews are still part of God’s plan. We will not be motivated to provoke them, or confident that God will give us the required blessings for it, if we think that His promises to Israel have been redefined. This is a *Dispensational aim* and a *Dispensational assurance*.
We also will not aim to make Jews jealous if we think that our lives are throw-away, that everything we do will “burn,” that we should hide out in the basement reading our Bibles, lamenting the 6 o’clock news and latest national/international outrage. We will not provoke the elect by our whimpering waiting for the rapture helicopter out of hell on earth, a common temptation among Dispensationalists. Provocative jealousy is a *Kuyperian end* requiring *Kuyperian energy*.
Because Jesus is Lord we marry and raise kids and bake cupcakes and attend City Council meetings and tweet against abortion and hire employees and drink wine at parties. These are merely a sample of the fruitful blessings God gives to those who believe.
This is not a new “prosperity gospel.” By faith we also suffer in joy and endure with perseverance by God’s blessing. Our confident *losing* by faith may be even *more* provocative to the Jews. “It has been granted to (us) that for the sake of Christ (we) should not only believe in Him but also suffer for His sake” (Philippians 1:29). When we are not frightened, it is a sign of winning (Philippians 1:28).
A Kuyperian Dispensationalist is a Christian who **confesses Jesus is Lord in everything he does on earth in order to make the Jews jealous of God’s blessing so that all Israel would believe in Christ unto salvation and even greater riches for the world**. We live by faith, more than conquerers even when we’re killed, bringing life from our sacrificial deaths. Informed by our Bible reading and study, we look for the the Word to yield its fruit in season, making us without a withering leaf, prospering us unlike the wind-driven chaff. Our meditation on His Word should produce provocative fruit.
# Conclusion
This cannot be fulfilled by any one individual, but it must be done by persons of faith. Because Jesus is Lord and we seek to honor Him in our culture maybe we will rebuild America in His name, or maybe we will thrive in Post-America in His name. This project isn’t tied to America’s future, but it is a project applied to the public square.
This is a reason for *everything*! It is a unified explanation of humanity and history, and it is a motivation for our intentional and joyful contributions. For too long we’ve been hanging out in our Baptistic bunkers and basements as bumps-on-a-log. We are good at talking about the cultural battle, not sure what we’d do if we won. We run in one direction: away, never toward. We’re complaining, combative, complacent Christians. Who wants more of *that*?
Our purpose is to, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, prudently and persistently provoke jealousy among elect Israel by how we seek and steward and sing about God’s blessings. This is the big perspective and driving passion of a Kuyperian Dispensationalist.
