Podcast: Is Evangelicalism Suffering from a “Sanctification Gap”? (Matthew Bingham)

May 12, 2025 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

In this episode, Matthew Bingham addresses the  theological, ecclesiological, and cultural dynamics at play that have contributed to a “sanctification gap,” discussing how Christians can engage with their faith in a robust way.

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A Heart Aflame for God

A Heart Aflame for God

Matthew C. Bingham

A Heart Aflame for God explores spiritual formation practices that are consistent with the 5 solas, presenting the riches of the Reformed tradition for 21st-century evangelicals.

Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:41 - The Sanctification Gap

Matt Tully
Matthew Bingham serves as vice president of academic affairs and associate professor of church history at Phoenix Seminary in Scottsdale, Arizona. He’s also the author of A Heart AFlame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation from Crossway. Matthew, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Matthew Bingham
Thank you. Great to be with you.

Matt Tully
You open this new book that you’ve written with a discussion of some of the weaknesses, I would say, of the evangelical church today. You highlight some of these, and you reference Mark Knoll’s landmark book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which really called attention to the intellectual weaknesses or deficiencies of evangelicalism of a certain time. But you also, in your book, start off by highlighting some of the spiritual weaknesses or deficiencies or confusions that sometimes can mark us as evangelical Christians today. And you actually reference this thing you call “the sanctification gap” as an important thing that we need to be aware of and thinking about. I wonder if you could start by explaining what you mean by that term “the sanctification gap”—where you got that from, and what it’s referring to?

Matthew Bingham
Thank you. The term “sanctification gap” comes from Richard Lovelace and his book Dynamics of Spiritual Life. It was a term that you hear people reference, and I think he puts his finger on something very real, which is, namely, that while we as evangelicals seem to have become very good at and enthusiastic about certain aspects of the Christian life—evangelism, for example, organizing activities and big events and this sort of thing—

Matt Tully
Conversion—getting someone to get saved.

Matthew Bingham
Exactly. The sort of spreading of the vine, as it were, which of course is a wonderful thing, and that’s a great strength of evangelicalism. When we think about the Great Awakening, the evangelical revival that gave rise to evangelicalism as a distinctive movement, what a wonderful witness that is to God’s saving power, and what a great advance of the Great Commission. So again, there is no desire on anyone’s part to disparage that. However, what people like Lovelace have pointed to is the fact and the reality that sometimes in that zeal for spreading the vine, as it were, as wide as we can, we neglect the roots; we neglect the depths of the growth of the individual Christian. And then, of course, the corporate community is made up of individual Christians, so often we see that pursuit of outward expansion and growth, frenetic activity at the expense of questions like, What does it look like to walk with the Lord? What does it look like to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ?

Matt Tully
Some authors and thinkers have referred to this dynamic as “a discipleship crisis.” They’ve used language like that. Do you resonate with that? Would you say that’s a fair way of portraying what you’re trying to put your finger on with this?

Matthew Bingham
Yeah, I think that is fair. In part, I think about my own upbringing. I reference this in the book. I grew up in an evangelical context that was really wonderful in many ways, and I’m thankful to the Lord for it. But it was characterized by some of those things that we were just referencing. There was a lot of activity, there was a lot of busyness. Again, much of it was good. It’s not to say this was all terrible. My own particular local church context was, as far as I was aware growing up as a young person, scandal free. If there were skeletons in the closet, I didn’t know about them. So it’s not as though I can point to anything and say, “Oh, they were really strongly off the mark.” And yet, growing up, I didn’t feel that a lot of attention was paid to, again, what does it look like to grow? What does it look like to know the Lord better? What does it look like to pursue a depth of spiritual experience and communion with God? Those questions were sort of, I don’t know, maybe assumed that everybody knew what that was about. But it didn’t feel like there was a lot of attention there. And so I think a lot of evangelicals experience that, and I think some of them end up leaving the faith altogether. I think others (maybe the majority) just sort of muddle along. And then I think a good number—maybe a growing number, or maybe they’re just growing in visibility—are actually looking to other historic Christian traditions, like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, because they perceive that that is where one would go for that sort of depth of experience and that depth of encounter with the living God. And so part of the burden behind the book is to speak into that and to say that we do, as Reformation-minded Christians, we do have tradition. We do have a tradition of spiritual growth. We do have resources, as it were, for what it means to know the Lord better and walk with him more closely. And so we don’t need to look to other traditions that our own Reformation forebearers rejected and had, I think, good and biblical reasons for rejecting. We don’t need to look to those to get the depth that we are rightly seeking.

06:13 - An Ahistorical Approach to the Christian Life

Matt Tully
We’re going to talk a little bit about the Reformation Triangle, as you call it, which is this helpful concept or simple framework for understanding some of the legacy of the Reformation for us that can help us to deepen our faith in a robust and rich way. But before we get to that, let’s spend a little bit more time on the problem—this sanctification gap, a discipleship crisis, or whatever we might want to call this. In your mind, what are some of the theological or ecclesiological or even cultural dynamics at play that have led to this situation that we’re in, that have contributed to the gap that we often wrestle with?

Matthew Bingham
I think there’s a number of them. First, I think often we’re ahistorical just in our approach to the Christian life. I think there have been a lot of dynamics and trends in American evangelicalism, in particular chronicled really well by somebody like a David Wells or Michael Horton in his Christless Christianity. There are good treatments that look at ways in which American evangelicalism has been shaped by consumerism and an appeal to what is current and what is now and connecting.

Matt Tully
What is new.

Matthew Bingham
Exactly. Read charitably, I think some of that is coming from a good place. It’s that same thing. It’s the emphasis on we want to witness to the people here in the twenty-first century, not some people that existed in some other time and place. And so, again, thinking charitably, I think there can be a health to that impulse to connect with these people that are here right in front me.

Matt Tully
We clearly can’t just live in the past.

Matthew Bingham
Exactly. That’s another danger, that you can become so interested in the past. This book looks to a lot of folks from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We don’t live in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that’s not going to happen, and frankly, as someone who’s looked into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I don’t think I’d want to live in those periods. But in any event, that impulse to speak to our present moment, while healthy, if pushed too far and if pushed to the exclusion of the reality that we stand in a line of godly men and women who have things to teach us, I think that can be deforming. I think there’s a historical case to be made that evangelicalism from the eighteenth century onwards has been, in many ways, a movement deeply shaped by the evangelical present—whatever the present moment was. A historian like David Bebbington talks about that a good bit. And so again, that’s not necessarily all bad, but there’s a danger there that we need to be aware of.

08:55 - The Problem of Pragmatism

Matt Tully
Yeah, we could go too far. Another danger or another dynamic that you highlight in the book is just the pragmatism that is so typical of the broader culture that we live in, but it can also affect us as Christians and our churches in how we think about what it means to be a Christian and to be a church and to do ministry. Expand on that a little bit for us, how pragmatism has impacted us.

Matthew Bingham
I think this is a big theme in the book. Namely, it’s this idea that I have this desire to connect with God and to pursue something sometimes vaguely defined as spirituality or whatever term we want to use, and so I’m going to use whatever tools work for me to get me there, to get me that sense of felt experience. And again, there’s a lot of aspects of life in which what works makes sense. How are you going to cut your lawn? Are you going to use this kind of lawnmower or that kind of lawnmower? Well, pick the one that works the best and try them out. So that is kind of how we operate, but I think in Scripture, when it comes to knowing God and the worship of God, I think the Scriptures point us to follow the directives that God gives us. We’re encouraged in Scripture not just to know God but to know him through the means that he has given to us. And so it’s this area where we’re actually not encouraged to just pursue whatever works. And so historically, Reformation-minded Protestants have looked to Scripture as the light to our feet and the lamp to our path, and that’s how we’re going to know who God is and how we can walk with them faithfully. And that includes these areas of discipleship and spiritual growth. And so that sense of pragmatism—“Well, this is kind of interesting; this seems to excite me in some way and to satisfy some curiosity I have”—I think that leads to all sorts of mischief in this area and leads people down roads that aren’t biblical and aren’t helpful.

Matt Tully
Your mention of buying a lawnmower—one that works well to cut your yard—it makes me think of another dynamic that even fits with this idea of pragmatism, and that’s just the choice that we’re used to having as Americans living in the twenty-first century. We’re used to just choice. We can look at all these different options in front of us, whether it’s a lawnmower or a type of jam or even our spirituality, and we get to choose from all these different options whatever meets our needs best and suits us best. And that’s something that, again, I think can maybe make us less excited about some of these historical means of grace or ways of relating to God that we’ve been handed from history. We kind of want to be able to shape it into what fits us.

Matthew Bingham
What’s interesting is that sense of choice and wanting a plethora of options—“Well, this works for me, and that doesn’t”—that picking and choosing is very much the way of things these days. All the media we interact with—you think about something like a Spotify streaming service versus the older way of going and you had to buy a CD. This is the album, this is the tracks. But now I can make my own playlist. So I think we’re very habituated to think in this way.

Matt Tully
And even in spiritual ways. The spiritual leaders we’re learning from, the kinds of messages that we’re hearing from the Bible. That also has been so affected by the internet and the ability to pick exactly what we want to hear, even on a spiritual front.

Matthew Bingham
Yeah, absolutely. The internet is a great gift, of course, and it’s wonderful that we can have access to all these different voices. But at the same time, it creates a real danger. And one of the things in this realm of discipleship and spiritual growth that you see often emerging with evangelicals is they’re thinking, Okay, I want to pursue this spiritual depth, and so this person sounds interesting, and that person sounds interesting. And actually, the two people that they might be drawing on might be totally incompatible theologically, and they’re attracted to maybe a spiritual practice or an approach, but those practices are downstream from theological convictions. And so again, if you are an evangelical Protestant, there are good reasons why the Protestants who came before sort of steered this way and not that way. And one thing that concerns me is that sometimes in this spiritual growth and spiritual formation space, you’re just sort of presented in some of the materials that are out there this sort of eclectic mix of theological guides. And you would often never know from the person presenting that on that A, B, C platter, that options A, B, C, and D are actually not especially theologically compatible with one another. They’re all just presented as sort of equally valid ways of thinking about the Christian faith, when in fact, the reformers strongly, in some cases, rejected some of the approaches to spirituality and to God that are represented by those voices.

14:27 - An Overemphasis on Conversion

Matt Tully
And I’m sure part of that is due to the fact that we’re not always making decisions based on theological principles or convictions that underlie them. It can often be this pragmatic decision-making process of, “Well, that fits my life schedule right now, that fits my personality, so I’ll take that and then I’ll take this from over here.” Let’s talk about one last dynamic that contributes to this issue that we’re facing, and that would be this emphasis on conversion. Obviously, as you said, no Christian is against conversion. We all want to see new believers born and created, and yet you would argue that there are ways in which we’ve maybe overemphasized conversion, and that’s actually impacted how we think about going deeper in discipleship. Unpack that for us a little bit more.

Matthew Bingham
Again, Christianity is a sent faith. We’re people on mission, and we would never want to take away from that. However, the danger is if you take one thing, even if it’s a good and true thing, but you emphasize it to the exclusion of other good and true things, you then have a sort of misshapen end result potentially. And so, again, my own experience growing up in an evangelical context was that often all the emphasis, all the excitement, all the enthusiasm was on evangelism and conversion and bringing people in and bringing them to faith. And then after that, it was sort of, and no one would ever say this, but it’s almost implicitly, “Well, you’re on your own,” or “That’s sort of just obvious at that point.”

Matt Tully
Just read your Bible.

Matthew Bingham
Exactly. It goes without saying. Exactly. It’s a sort of vague reference to yeah, of course we want to read our Bible and we want to pray, but what that means, what that looks like, how that fits into the warp and woof of life was often not unpacked and not explored in the depth that I think is helpful.

16:19 - The Reformation Triangle

Matt Tully
Okay, so let’s turn to the remedy that you see for this sanctification gap that we’re experiencing that’s so prevalent in our churches today. It’s something that you call the “Reformation Triangle.” What is that? Give us the high-level summary of what you’re getting at with that term.

Matthew Bingham
“Reformation Triangle” is a term used in the book to talk about this triangulated relationship between the three core practices or spiritual disciplines that I think Scripture gives us and that, in turn, the Reformers and those who followed after them leaned into and really embraced. So we’re talking here about Scripture intake. In the book I’m primarily talking about reading the Bible, though in principle, there’s not a huge distinction between hearing and reading. So Scripture intake (or we’ll just say Bible reading), and then prayer. And those are the two that we are more familiar with.

Matt Tully
Everyone’s kind of thinking, Check. Check.

Matthew Bingham
And then the third one in that triangle, though, which for the Puritans, especially the English Puritans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the third one that would be really important is what they called meditation. We can talk about that, but it doesn’t necessarily mean what we think of when we think of meditation today. The way I talk about those three is Scripture is hearing from God, meditation is essentially thinking about what you’ve heard and reflecting on what you’ve heard, and then prayer is speaking back to God. And what’s interesting about those three is that they’re conceptually distinct of course, but they often, in practice, and in the way Puritan authors talk about those three, they really bleed into one another, sometimes almost becoming indistinguishable. Where does one end and the other begin? And so I think the most helpful way to think about them, hence the term “Reformation Triangle,” is as three facets of the same thing, which ultimately is communion with the triune God through Scripture, meditation, and prayer.

Matt Tully
A couple of questions about this triangle, maybe the first one is I think when it comes to the Scripture intake and the meditation side, because you’re primarily meditating on Scripture, Christians might hear that and kind of think, Well, I would tend to put those together. Those are sort of one in the same thing. I’m of course thinking about the Bible when I read it. Why was it important for you to distinguish those two—not separate them completely, but to make them two separate things, two separate points on this triangle?

Matthew Bingham
I think people’s intuition there, in a sense, is correct. Yeah, I would hope if you’re reading the Bible, you’re thinking about it. And so it’s not wrong to ask if those are really different. And yet, one thing that you notice when you read the seventeenth century Puritans is they keep distinguishing between these. And again, sometimes they’ll talk about them in ways that they sort of suffuse each other, and you feel like they’re almost using one as a synonym for the other. But more often than not, they will conceptually distinguish between a thing called reading your Bible and a thing called meditation. And so why is that important? They like to use analogies to describe the relationship between these. One that you’ll see come up from time to time is they’ll compare it to eating. And so reading your Bible is taking your food in and chewing it and swallowing it, but then the meditation is compared to digestion. And, like all metaphors, you don’t want to push this one too far, but I think there’s something helpful in that essentially you can imagine if you take a bite of food and you chew it around, but then you just sort of spit it out and it doesn’t go in and get digested, it’s not actually going to nourish you. Nothing’s going to come from that. And so they found it helpful to say you need to read the Bible, but then you actually need to take what you’re reading and you need to meditate upon it until it starts to move your heart. And so they saw meditation as the link that joined head and heart. So we’re going to not just take in ideas about God and learn new pieces of information, but we’re actually going to sort of massage that idea into our heart and our soul until it starts to become a part of us and starts to affect us. And so godly affections then spring from meditating on what you read. And when you conceptualize them as different things, then it starts to remind you that actually doing the kind of Bible reading so I can tick my box for the morning, that’s not actually good enough. Now, there’s something good about just being disciplined and there’s a place for that, but ideally, you’re reading and then you’re meditating. And I think to have that conceptual distinction in one’s mind is a helpful prompt and a helpful reminder that at the end of the day, yes, we’re taking in information about God and the things of God when we read Scripture, but that is for the purpose of godliness. It’s for the purpose of we’re going to go somewhere with that. It’s not just information for information’s sake. It’s actually for transformation and growth and conformity into Christ’s likeness.

Matt Tully
I’m struck that it also pushes back against one of those other characteristics of evangelicals in the US and just life in the modern world today, where we often are looking for fast answers, fast results. And this idea of meditation just testifies to the fact that change happens slowly and that we need time with God’s word for it to do its effect on us. We’re not wired for that, culturally speaking, these days. One of the other questions I had about just these three things—Scripture intake, meditation, and prayer—I could imagine someone listening right now who’s like, “That’s it? That’s what it is? I thought you were going to reveal some really insightful method or avenue of communing with God from the Reformation or from church history that I’ve never heard of before.” And they feel a little bit disappointed, like, “Oh. It’s just reading the Bible, thinking about it, meditating on it, and praying.” What’s your response to somebody who’s maybe disappointed that that’s what this is?

Matthew Bingham
I think that is a big part of this issue in this whole space about spiritual formation. I think people are looking for some kind of technique—some kind of trick is pejorative—but some sort of new method or approach that is going to really give them the sort of secret key that unlocks all the mysteries and makes everything great. And so I think to someone who had that response, which I imagine people would, there are a couple things we can say. One, I want to say that, first of all, don’t sell these topics short. Think about what we’re saying when we’re talking about Scripture as hearing from God. We believe that God is speaking to us in and through his word. You’re hearing from the living God. And there’s a depth to that that will not be exhausted anytime soon in this life or the life to come. This is an infinite treasure here for us. That’s certainly the way the Bible speaks about God’s word and God’s words to his people. So one, we don’t want to sell it short. Secondly, to press more directly into the critique behind that, if you read people’s tales who move from evangelicalism to say Roman Catholicism, I was reading a collection of stories from ex-evangelicals who became Roman Catholics. And one of the threads that ran through all of these testimonies was this suggestion that finding Catholicism was like stepping into this bigger world, they said. I think one described it as a religion of more practices, more techniques, more ways of getting into this spiritual growth space.

Matt Tully
As opposed to the simplistic idea of just read your Bible and pray by yourself.

Matthew Bingham
Exactly. So basically, feeling that critique and thinking, There must be something more. It can’t just be read your Bible, meditate, and pray. And what’s interesting, though, is if you look at what that more is all about, these folks are pressing into ideas and things and techniques that just have no traction in Scripture. None whatsoever, or the most minimal sort of tangential connections. And you just think, Is that really a safe place to be? If we confess that God’s word is breathed out and there’s nothing else that’s breathed out by God in the way that Scripture is, we confess that he’s given us all that we need for life and godliness, do I really want to be staking my soul—and that’s not being overly dramatic—on techniques that were invented, essentially, by medieval mystics or this sort of thing. Is that a place you want to go? The Lord has said that his words are good, that they’re enough. The blessed man is the one who meditates on God’s law day and night, and he’s going to be the tree that grows and flourishes. And so I think especially in this space of spiritual formation in our Christian life, I think we have to be very careful when it comes to that itch for something other, something different. Throughout Scripture, you see God cares about not just that he’s worshiped but how he’s worshiped. He wants us to come to him but to come to him in the way that he prescribes.

Matt Tully
I think this is a great connection to something you were saying earlier about how so often these spiritual practices, these techniques, these approaches to relating to God have theological underpinnings, even if we don’t always know what they are. We’re not always familiar with them. They are coming from distinct theological perspectives. And that made me think about this distinct Protestant notion of sola Scriptura is such an important doctrinal foundation for what you’re saying about Scripture being this foundational component to this triangle, to what our spiritual lives look like. Speak to how this notion of sola Scriptura actually serves as the foundation for what we’re talking about right now.

Matthew Bingham
If God has spoken in his word, then that’s where we want to root all that we do. And when we look at Reformation approaches to spiritual formation, we see it is a word-based affair from start to finish. Protestants have been in the word. God’s word is setting the agenda for all that we’re doing. And so in the book, all the things that we’re discussing and looking at in terms of how we’re going to grow in faith and grow in godliness are all flowing out of God’s word at the center. So obviously, when we’re hearing from God in Scripture, that’s the most direct connection. But our meditation is not meditation and reflection on anything that strikes my fancy; it’s reflection on the word of God and how it applies. That’s not to say that it’s narrow. God’s word speaks into every aspect of who I am and who I will be. But it’s rooted there. And then when we pray, we’re praying in a way that honors Scripture. In a sense, we’re praying God’s words back to him—sometimes literally. Praying the Psalms is a wonderful practice, very word centered. But we’re also praying in accordance with Scripture and in a way that Scripture models. There are lots of other approaches to prayer that move away from that. One theme in mystical approaches to prayer is this idea that when you start out praying, you will pray in sort of normal words and propositions and this sort of thing. But then if you really are becoming adept and you’re really going deep, at some point you move beyond words into wordless prayer and this sort of state of more direct communion with God that doesn’t require the intermediary of words. Again, that has a certain logic and a certain appeal to folks, but you won’t find that in Scripture. When Jesus himself is praying, he’s praying in words and petitions that we can understand. When the disciples say, “How should we pray?” He gives them the Lord’s Prayer, which is words and petitions that we can understand with our minds, and then we can meditate on them so that they can take flame in our hearts. You never see moving beyond God’s word in Scripture. That’s never modeled. That’s never encouraged.

29:12 - Meditation

Matt Tully
Let’s talk about that second side of the triangle—meditation. And this is, again, as you alluded to, it might feel a little bit abstract to a lot of evangelical Christians today. There might be these other connotations to what that might be from Eastern religion. As you think about the Reformers and then think about maybe the uncertainty that current Christians today might feel about this topic, is there any advice or practical (I don’t want to say tips because that sounds almost too insubstantial) encouragement or models that the Reformers even had that would help Christians today understand what it might look like to intentionally, as a distinct practice, meditate on the word of God and benefit from that meditation?

Matthew Bingham
The whole concept of meditation is interesting to me. When you read Puritans on the subject, they will talk at great length about it, and sometimes I found it almost a little frustrating because you keep asking them, “Okay, what is it actually? What am I actually doing when I meditate?” And they’ll give these metaphors, like eating and digestion and things that kind of explain the relationship between head and heart. And that’s all good, but then, okay, well, what do I actually do? And they’ll talk at length, at length, at length. At points, I did come away thinking, Well, at the end of the day, it sounds like they’re really just kind of saying you need to really think deeply and intentionally on these things. And I do think however we want to slice it, and there’s more that you can say, but there is this sort of irreducible core of meditation on God’s word is thinking intentionally in a focused, deep, sustained way on God’s word. And so what does that look like? Well, often for the Puritans, it looked like the sorts of things that a good preacher is going to be doing on Sunday morning. You might even think that a sermon is, in a sense, it’s almost like a sort of public meditation on God’s word with and for the benefit of the congregation. And so you’re reading it, you’re reading the Scriptures, you’re thinking about how it connects to other Scriptures, but then you’re moving towards thinking, Well, how does it connect with me and with my life and with what God is calling me to do and to be? And so for the Puritans, the meditation element, again, if we wanted to I suppose we could say it’s that you have Bible study where you’re really just trying to understand the text, and that’s good. And then with meditation, they really emphasize this idea that you’re applying it to yourself and you’re saying, “Well, okay. Where does this intersect with me and with my life?” And again, it doesn’t need to be especially elaborate. It doesn’t need to be especially complicated or confusing. In one of the gospel narratives, we’re told Joseph of Arimathea took courage and then he went and asked for the body of Christ. Well, there you go. He had to do something that was hard and that required him to take courage, but he knew that it was right and it was what would honor the Lord. I have things in my life that require courage. What do those things look like? Where am I being asked to be more courageous than I am for the cause of Christ? And then, next thing you know, what am I doing? I’m asking the Lord that he would give me the courage that I require to walk worthy of the calling to which I’ve been called. And so we see this sort of movement, and this is what we’re talking about. They’re just sort of all organically connected, so it’s almost the same thing. So when am I reading about Joseph of Arimathea? When am I thinking about my own need for courage? And how am I asking God to give me the courage that I require? It’s sort of swirling together. So the process of the Christian with the Bible open, meditating, reading, praying—one sort of goes into the other. And this is why often with the Puritans, again, they’ll use these words sometimes interchangeably. Sometimes in their treatises on Christian growth, sometimes they’ll lead with prayer and talk about that as this is the foundation. Prayer is the foundation of religion, talking to God. Other times they’ll lead with Scripture. How would we know God at all if we didn’t hear from him first? Sometimes they’ll lead with meditation and talking about how you encounter this and then it becomes real to you subjectively as you sort of meditate on it. So they just have all these different ways in which the inner penetration of these three ideas and concepts comes to the fore.

33:48 - Prayer

Matt Tully
It strikes me as some kind of three-sided coin. It’s all together. You can’t separate them. That’s one of the main takeaways I got as I was working through the book is we really need to think of these three things as distinct but also inseparable. We can’t break them apart from each other, as we often will try to do. Finally, let’s talk about prayer just briefly here. Prayer is one of those things that, similar to Bible reading, sometimes in our fallen, sinful minds, it can start to feel more like a duty, more like a chore that we have to do and that we’re supposed to do and less like a delight. But you quote from Calvin in the book where Calvin writes, “It is by the benefit of prayer that we reach those riches, which are laid up for us with the heavenly Father.” It’s this idea that prayer is this means by which we enjoy and we come to appreciate and feel the richness of our relationship with God in a whole new way. And yet, you go on to note that this dynamic of asking God for blessing and then receiving that blessing can be something that we often overlook. So unpack that more. Why is it that we are so prone to undervalue something that in a scriptural worldview is meant to be this incredible source of blessing for us?

Matthew Bingham
I think it is one of those things that we sometimes overlook. The way in which Scripture describes prayer on a basic level is talking to God, asking your Father in heaven for things. Jesus compares it to a child asking his earthly father for something, for bread, and there’s a basicness to that. And again, sometimes maybe it’s this itch for something different, something more exotic. A lot of the mystical discourse on prayer talks about these otherworldly sort of experiences, and maybe prayer likened to a child asking his dad for something that he needs is just too mundane. And maybe we think, Well, that’s not exciting enough or interesting enough. Or maybe we just overlook it. One thing I like about the Calvin quote is I think sometimes the talk of unlocking or accessing (however he puts it) the blessings that God would have for us. Through prayer, I think sometimes maybe that feels to us a little too mechanical. Well, wait, so I’m going to do this thing, and then God’s going to bless me. But if I don’t do it, he’s not going to bless me. Is this prosperity gospel? And yet, you do not have because you do not ask.

36:19 - Practical Application for Pastors

Matt Tully
So let’s take a big step back. What role could pastors play in helping their people to understand the value of these simple practices, things that they probably already know to some extent, but perhaps don’t fully understand and appreciate and practice in a way that we should?

Matthew Bingham
I think there’s a number of things really. One is just drawing attention to these things, sitting on these things for a while, not assuming that everybody knows what they’re meant to do.

Matt Tully
Do you think a lot of Christians, in your experience as a professor and serving in a church, a lot of Christians open their Bible to read it and they literally just don’t really know what to do?

Matthew Bingham
Yeah. I mean it seems kind of funny to say, but I think there’s this general sense that I should read my Bible, and that’s connected somehow with spiritual growth or with my Christian duty or something. But again, unless we’re unpacking this and talking about it, I think that can remain somewhat opaque. It is one of these things where on the one hand, it seems obvious. Here’s the book, and you read the book. But then talking about it and getting people excited for it. There’s a great quote from one of the old Princeton theologians, B. B. Warfield, who said, “Life close to God’s word is life close to God.” And I think that that is the Protestant position. And I think that’s because that is the biblical position. We know God in and through his word, and we commune with him in and through his word. And so I think for pastors, communicating some of that excitement, communicating a sense of this isn’t just reading a book like any other. This is actually the means through which we know the living God and we draw close to him. I think connected to that as well, just thinking about pastors and encouraging folks in this, I would say point people back towards the heritage that we have in the Reformation tradition. I think point them to people like B. B. Warfield and this quote. I think sometimes there’s a tendency to say, “Well, I’m the pastor, so I’m going to read B. B. Warfield, and I’m going to read this quote. I’m going to learn from it, and then I’ll communicate the substance of that through my own remarks.” But I think there’s great value in saying, “Hey, here’s a guy called B. B. Warfield. Listen to what he said,” and give a little sense of when he lived and what he was about. And I think that encourages people. Because one of the things we talked about before is that a lot of evangelicals are disaffected with evangelicalism because they perceive it as shallow and lacking depth and lacking historical rootedness. And I don’t think that that is true. The Reformers themselves, of course, were deeply connected to those who went before them. But then within that Reformation tradition, we have so many godly men and women who pointed the way towards what a deep and living relationship with God looks like. And I think if we can tell our people about that, they will, I hope and I pray, see that you can have the depth that you want. You can have a real connection with saints who’ve gone before without going to some of these other traditions. It’s here. And I think if we’re going to press forward, we want to embrace that and we want to share that with folks.

Matt Tully
Matthew, so much for helping us as listeners perhaps understand a little bit better the tradition and the heritage that we all do already have and the riches of the resources there. And then just the simple blessing of reading God’s word, of meditating on his word, and of praying to God in that. We appreciate it.

Matthew Bingham
Thank you.

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