PicoBlog

I love engaging theology and culture; that’s the heart of what I do on this little corner of the Internet. On occasion, though, it’s nice to switch things up. We all need to take time to give thanks to God for his many blessings in our lives (Psalm 95:1-3). Here’s one of God’s undeserved gifts to me: my father-in-law, Dr. Bruce Ware.

Dr. Ware is a faithful and very gifted theologian. He has taught at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for over 25 years now, having previously served as Department Chair at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. The historians will write about the crop of scholars headed by Dr. Ware at SBTS that assembled in Louisville in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Alongside men like Tom Schreiner, Steve Wellum, Don Whitney, Greg Wills, and Tom Nettles (all of them recruited by President R. Albert Mohler, Jr.), God has used this team in a mighty way to strengthen his people. It is, simply put, the finest Baptist faculty ever assembled.

Southern’s story—particularly its incredible resurgence—cannot be told without Dr. Ware’s story. Over the course of his vocational career, Dr. Ware has been the President of the Evangelical Theological Society, the President of the Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, and the lead evangelical respondent to the theological movement called “Open Theism” about twenty years ago.

By any objective measure, Dr. Ware is one of the most skilled theologians of his generation. The author of a number of important texts, including Big Truths for Young Hearts, he is a crucial part of the conservative evangelical vanguard of the last forty years in church history. I could summarize the substance of his ministry like this: through the work of God in him, Dr. Ware has kept the charge and strengthened many in Christ.

As is apparent through the foregoing, I have been personally shaped and greatly blessed by Dr. Ware. In what follows, I will briefly unpack four primary effects of his life and ministry upon me and many others. (I’ll leave explication of the gift of marriage to Dr. Ware’s daughter, Bethany, for another day; suffice it to say that Bethany is my love, my greatest earthly blessing, and my Abigail per 1 Samuel 25.)

First, in a time of man-centeredness, his God-centered focus. It’s sometimes disappointing to get to know ministry leaders. From afar, they may seem strong and kind; up close, some of them are the opposite. Men whose “brand” is Christianity can be peevish, arrogant, self-focused, neurotic in extremity, sensitive to the high heavens, and closed-off. This is not the case with Dr. Ware.

Dr. Ware is a God-centered theologian and a God-centered man. In the simplest terms, Dr. Ware cares about what God thinks, not what man thinks. When he engages people, he converses at length, listens deeply, and shows graciousness. He is a genuinely humble man, a man who puts his big vision of God into practice. Grace is not merely something he talks about on stage; grace is operative in his life.

I have seen this with how Dr. Ware handles both praise and criticism. He is no perfect man, but he is a steady and stable man (see Colossians 1:23). This is because God looms very large for Dr. Ware. Standing firmly on Scripture, he proclaims God is as first transcendent, above us, and then as the God who delights— in the unsearchable heights of genuine divine affection—to draw near to us in mercy and love.

Dr. Ware has helped so many grasp the personhood of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Before studying with him, I confess that I knew of Trinitarian “threeness” but did not really understand it. This was in part because of Trinitarianism grounded more in logic and human reason, in which the Father, Son, and Spirit seem remote, more instantiations of high concepts than living persons. (Such teaching unwittingly—and ironically—paves the way for the tragic embrace of pantheism, open theism, and “dynamic” models of God.)

Dr. Ware’s ministry has offered the church many glorious biblical reflections (including some that are debated by fair-minded thinkers), but one of his greatest contributions has been to help recover biblical Trinitarianism. In biblical Trinitarianism, the three persons are divine persons, not celestial abstractions. The biblical God lives in Scripture, and in Dr. Ware’s vivifying theology.

This is the God of Scripture, a warm God and not a cold God. This is the God of consuming fire, yet a God who is slow to anger and quick to forgive because of divine love (Deuteronomy 4:24; Exodus 34:6). This God has no creaturely passions, but is as stated a personal God. In Dr. Ware’s theology, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit live, and our lives are centered in them.

Second, in an age of unfaithful men, his love for his family. In this era, it’s rather remarkable how many seemingly sound men burn through their testimony and crash out of ministry. We all know that we are no better than these individuals, and that our own sin could explode in this way. But still, when the news hits, the shock lingers (as well it should).

For this reason, it is very encouraging to see men of God stay faithful for many decades. Perhaps we once underplayed such a reality; perhaps we once were tempted to rank talent way ahead of character. If that was once true (as I think it was a decade ago in the hothouse age of ready-fire-aim church planting), it is not today.

This applies to a ministry leader’s family. As pastor Kirk Welch recently said to me on Grace & Truth, a man’s family should come first and his ministry come second (see Ephesians 5 and 1 Timothy 3). In Dr. Ware’s case, he not only formed a family, but excelled as a godly head (Ephesians 5:22-33). Over 45 years, Dr. Ware has been faithful to his wife Jodi (as my own father has to my mother); he has been a loving father to his daughters; he is now a terrific grandfather to his three grandchildren, my children (even as his wife is a marvelous grandmother).

What a commendation of a man’s teaching a happy Christian family is. When you see a ministry family that is not morose and glum and downcast, but is thriving and alive and joyful, you cannot help but give praise to God. Our families reflect our leadership; our leadership speaks to our own walk with God. I’m thankful for a family that is vibrant under Dr. Ware’s care.

Third, in a season of drifting affection, his love for Scripture. Dr. Ware is a man of Scripture. Simply put, he loves the Bible. (How rarely can we honestly say that of a man or woman?) The book of Isaiah is, by my lights, Dr. Ware’s most-referenced text. A book that shimmers with heavenly glory, Isaiah seems to fire his whole ministry. Dr. Ware is like a man who has had a transformative encounter with the living God, and gone on to tell as many as he can about this holy God.

This has not happened by accident. I have seen just how much Dr. Ware pores over Scripture. He reads widely, but in terms of his personal engagement with the Word, he reminds me of theologians like J. I. Packer and John Murray. This is because he practices what you could call “close exegesis” of a verse or passage, turning it over in his mind, asking probing questions of it from every angle before he correlates it with other texts.

Such a method yields a freshness that less exegetical approaches cannot. This Bible is not a tame book; it is lively, strange, shocking, glorious, explosive, and dramatic. Theologians who track the Bible closely will not thus come off as narrow or pedantic; they will give off something of the air of Scripture itself. They will not be formulaic, reducing God to a cold impersonal monolith in the sky; they are the men who study a God of fire and thunder, and as those who draw near to this God, you can almost smell heavenly smoke on their clothes.

Exegesis unto systematic theology is not an exotic method. It is only sola Scriptura in application. Yet it seems less popular in our time than in days past. Why is this? Here’s one reason: as many have observed, theology tends to be done in successive generations in the polar style. First one generation goes way over here to this extremity; then the next generation stampedes to the other side of the deck, nearly going overboard.

As one example of this tiresome trend, in evangelical circles of the last few generations, some Christians who had very little engagement with historical theology now focus on historical theology and philosophical theology to the (no doubt unwitting) detriment of exegetical theology. This ought not be so. It is good and right to read widely, but in our polarized days, we must take care that we do not lose our first love.

We who preach and teach must be men of Scripture above all. In making God’s Word the emblem of his efforts, Dr. Ware takes his place in the company of men like John Frame, D. A. Carson, Carl Henry, Wayne Grudem, Packer, Sproul, MacArthur, James Boice, James Boyce, Murray, Ovey, Steve Lawson, Spurgeon, Machen, Warfield, Berkhof, Hodge, Vos, and many others.

For this inspiring band of theologians, the animating concern of their method is, as I’ve heard Dr. Ware say on many occasions, “What does the Bible say?” This question is deceptively profound.

Fourth, in an era of rancor and division, his grace and good cheer. This is a hard age. It’s easy to be angry and perpetually riled, and hard to be joyful and calm. But we very much need men of grace and good cheer today. This is true regarding how we handle those who oppose us, wrongly slander us, and even persecute us.

Christianity is unique for many reasons, but this is one of the biggest: we seek to love our enemies (see Matthew 5:44). If attacked, we do not take vengeance, but leave it to the Lord (Romans 12:19). This does not mean that we fail to stand against evil and falsehood; we must preach the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27; 2 Tim. 4:2). But we are markedly different from the world in how we promote and defend our convictions.

We think of 2 Timothy 2:24–26 on this count.

And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

This passage eloquently reflects Dr. Ware’s ministry. He is a convictional man but not a “quarrelsome” man (24). He is “kind to everyone,” treating people with kindness. Furthermore, I have watched Dr. Ware “patiently endure evil” (24). The Greek is simpler: ἀνεξίκακον, which can literally be translated "forbearing." These two translations speak the same truth: the man of God must take the heat and not give it back. He must leave vengeance to the Lord (Romans 12:19).

I have seen Dr. Ware put this truth to work. At a scholarly gathering, a young theologian approached Dr. Ware in a less-than-respectful manner, seemingly forgetting the command of 1 Timothy 5:1 by Paul: “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father.” Instead of spitting back in an angry way, Dr. Ware talked calmly, answered a number of questions the young man had, and ended up helping him understand his position.

This was a master-class in “patiently enduring evil.” Over the course of the discussion, the young theologian was won over by a wiser, godlier man, and I am guessing there have been good effects on him to this day. Nor was this an isolated incident; Dr. Ware’s patient example has helped many. As one who must battle the flesh on a daily basis, I am deeply edified and instructed in this regard.

Conclusion

How strange all of this might sound to many modern ears. After all, gracious, humble, and convictional character of the kind I’ve sketched here seems rather weak to many today. In a hard season of history, many Christians are tempted to look to the world’s fleshly leaders for their example. They seem strong and effective, while Jesus and his apostles seem weak and inadequate in comparison.

This is not wisdom speaking, however. The way of Christ is the only “powerful” way there is (Colossians 1:24). Dr. Ware knows this. At base, he does not think highly of himself. He knows that God is great, not him, and he labors to help others understand this clarifying truth, and live accordingly. In ministry, as in everyday life, I pray to imitate him as he imitates Christ (1 Cor. 11:1).

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