Thankfulness: The Order & Structure of the Christian Life

Thanksgiving is not just a yearly celebration, where we eat entirely way too much, watch football, and sale-out to the American way of consumerism. Giving of thanks, rather, is a way of life for the Christian–its structured ethos. The apostle Paul reminds us to, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess 5:17-18).

As Christians we should live and move and operate in giving thanks to God, always.

Paul agrees. Elsewhere he says we should be, “Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 5:20). Thanksgiving as a national holiday comes and goes, so once a year we give thanks as a whole people in some form or another. But for Christians, our lives all the year long should be ordered in a continual mode of giving thanks.

Two Ways

 How we continually give thanks to God will look a little different for all of us, but it should lead us all to worship.^[1] Our culture likes to order things differently. In terms of Thanksgiving nowadays, the culture is ordered towards Black Friday or Cyber Monday. The same can be said of other yearly events such as Amazon Prime Day or various end-of-the-year sales events. These are some examples of nationally and culturally-shaped days, that, for better or for worse, have been ordered for us.

If you’re thinking is geared towards these kinds of events, for the sole purpose of acquisition or self-improvement, you’re thinking is wrong. This is what disorder looks like.

Each year it comes earlier and earlier. You start to see it and hear it as early as August, in malls, Targets, and Costco’s. A new season of which we have our days ordered in our society at large. Our western culture at Christmas is driven by product, structured by online sales’ countdowns, and the filling and emptying of shopping carts, real or virtual. (You will notice an abundance of pink and red hearts suddenly appearing at the turn of the year.) It’s Disorder. The Church, though, has also ordered its calendar year by marking the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, including the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Ordered Thinking About Giving Thanks

For the Church, each year goes by ordered by the redemptive-historical revelation of God’s mighty works and words.

The indicative Redemption-act of the Father through Christ Jesus the Son by the Holy Spirit is preached and believed upon in the world, which then leads to the imperative working out in love for our great God and our communities.

This is the Christian’s ebb and flow of an ordered life. Your life is ordered––ordained––by God. And the redemptive work of God was ordained before the very foundation of creation. (Go look at the first chapter of Ephesians).

Now notice this ordering of things for us: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5).

Now here in this Galatians passage, Paul refers to the contextual time and place of the Incarnation: he calls it completely perfect. It had to be at this time; at the height of Hellenism–Greek culture, and Pax Romana–the peace of Rome in the Mediterranean world, born of a woman (recall Genesis 3:15 and the first promise), born under the law, to redeem. Talk about order! And this grand ordering is for us! How could we not give thanks!

The Reformed churches have seen the liturgical flow of our Christian lives in the number fifty-two, for there are fifty-two Lord’s Days, or Sundays, in the year. There are fifty-two days in which our lives are ordered, and that to the Christian Sabbath.

The liturgy in the church reminds us of our structured time, ordained of God for our great benefit, which is worshipful rest. We take in this God-given day of rest in worship of the Giver, and then we ready ourselves to be faithful witnesses the remaining days of the week. More on this later.

Structure and Thanks in Church History

Theologians have attempted to dive deep into Scripture for centuries through a variety of disciplines: Systematic theology, an ordering system of Christian doctrine; biblical theology, an ordering and linking of the redemptive story revealed; exegetical theology, describing and understanding the biblical languages; historical theology, working through the Church’s proclamation of revelation.

An early example is seen in the Apostles’ Creed. The early Church professed what was called the Regula Fidei, or Rule of Faith. Near word for word examples are found in the works of Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Augustine, to name a few.

The Creed states: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, our Lord…” The Creed goes on to confess the Holy Spirit as well (very trinitarian) and the whole of the redemptive order until Christ comes again. Shortened versions of what could be very long systematic or exegetical treatises are found succinctly in our Creedal and Confessional theology.

The Belgic Confession and the Westminster Confession of Faith are finely-tuned documents regarding the faith, built upon the shoulders of the earlier Church creeds, such as the Apostles’ and Nicene.

The bulk of the Heidelberg Catechism serves as a commentary of sorts on the Creed. The large middle section focused upon grace mentions the “Articles of Faith.” Question twenty-two asks, “What then must a Christian believe?” To which the catechism answers, “All that is promised us in the gospel, a summary of which is taught us in the articles of our universal and undisputed Christian faith.” What are these articles? It’s the Apostles’ Creed.^[2]

On the topic of order within the doctrine of God’s providence, the Westminster Confession of Faith says, “As the providence of God does, in general, reach to all creatures; so, after a most special manner, it takes care of his church, and disposes all things to the good thereof” (WCF 5.7).

All things that happened in redemptive history from Genesis to Revelation and all things that occur now, are disposed toward the good for his Church. All of creation is ordered this way, Scripture has revealed it to be so, and Church history and our experiences prove the goodness of God.

Article 13 of the Belgic Confession is also fantastic in this regard. Nothing happens, certainly not what has happened and continues to happen in the redemptive work of Jesus the Christ through the Spirit, by fortune or chance. “We believe that this good God, after he created all things, did not abandon them to chance or fortune but leads and governs them according to his holy will, in such a way that nothing happens in this world without his orderly arrangement.” Again, we must give thanks.

Peter in the first sermon in the book of Acts refers to the definite plan of God in the redemptive work of Christ, even though the human perpetrators are not guiltless. All of these events are of “his orderly arrangement,” complete in “the fullness of time.”

The Heidelberg Catechism asks the question, “What does it mean that he ‘was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary’?” as it cites in commentary fashion, the Apostles’ Creed. The catechism answers, “That the eternal Son of God, who is and remains true and eternal God, took to himself, through the working of the Holy Spirit, from the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary, a true human nature so that he might also become David’s true descendant, like his brothers in all things except for sin” (HC 35).

In good order, the author of the catechism stands in line with the history of the Church with great accuracy. We can give thanks for the long, successive transmission of the one holy catholic and apostolic faith.

All According to Plan

While we were sinners – and historically – before any of us were born, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. These, in so many words, are from Paul in Romans five. At the right time–let that sink in. Then the Holy Spirit through the Word of the gospel brings us to faith. Pentecost had to happen.

At the right time, we are brought to faith, given new birth from above. It is within God’s grand, ordered plan of salvation. This in small part is the ordo salutis in conjunction with the historia salutis – the order of salvation within the history of salvation.

We who are saved are part of that plan, brought into God’s amazing story. “Many, Lord my God, are the wonders which you have done, and your thoughts toward us” (Ps 40:5). How wonderful are the works of God!

Paul helps us order our days by giving thanks always and in everything–our week is ordered this way and leads to worship. Because of the revelatory truth of Christ, however, our days and weeks can be ordered from worship, spilling out into the remaining days of the week. Throughout the book of Acts, the people of God – the Church – gathered on the first day of the week, the day of Christ’s resurrection.

The Old Testament people of God found their rest at the end of the week; the New Testament people of God begin their week with rest already attained in Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath, both now and in the untimed not yet, future everlasting rest. Our weeks are then ordered eschatologically, from a place of rest with a view towards the ultimate rest in the second advent of our Lord. It was Augustine who famously said, “Our heart is restless, until it rests in you.”^[3] Thank God that he gives us rest.

So, in any season of busyness, and in all the seasons through the years of our lives, may we be thankful always, have hearts and minds to worship our triune God, and know the joyful peace of our rest in Christ. The Heidelberg Catechism says that prayer is one of the chief ways we display our thankfulness to God.^[4]

Let us finish with prayer then, a prayer saturated in the love of the Trinity for us and for our redemption, from John Calvin:

Lord, you are our Father and we are but dust and filth; you are our Creator, and we are the work of your hands; you are our Shepherd, we are your flock; you are our Redeemer, we are the people that you have purchased; you are our God, we are your inheritance. Therefore, do not be angry with us to correct us in your fury. No longer remember our iniquity to punish it, but chastise us gently in your kindness. Your wrath is kindled because of our  demerits; but remember that your name has been pronounced over us and that we bear your mark and standard. And continue, rather, the work that you have begun in us by your grace, that all the earth might know that you are our God and our Savior. Amen.^[5]

END NOTES

^[1] See my review of a fantastic little book entitled Thank God, by Reuben Bredenhof at the Heidelblog. Thankfulness is an act of worship. https://heidelblog.net/2024/06/review-thank-god-by-reuben-bredenhof/

^[2] The last section of the Heidelberg Catechism is focused upon our gratitude to God through the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. Question eighty-six asks about why we do good works and it responds positively. “Because Christ, having redeemed us by his blood, is also restoring us by his Spirit into his image, so that with our whole lives we may show that we are thankful to God for his benefits, so that he may be praised through us, so that we may be assured of our faith by its fruits, and so that by our godly living our neighbors may be won over to Christ.”

^[3] Augustine, The Confessions, Maria Boulding, trans., (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998), 3, 1.1.

^[4] HC 116. Q. Why do Christians need to pray?

1. Because prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us. And also, because God gives his grace and Holy Spirit only to those who pray continually and groan inwardly, asking God for these gifts and thanking God for them.

^[5] From John Calvin’s 1545 Strassburg and 1542 and 1566 Geneva liturgies, “Form of Ecclesiastical Prayers,” in Reformation Worship, edited by Jonathan Gibson and Mark Earngey, (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2018), 320.