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PRESIDENT BARTLET’S REALLY MAD NOW

Adopted kids almost always get an allowance to spend and an occasional trip to Disney World. But they also get an assignment of chores and a list of rules. Dad has certain expectations. And the higher the dad, the whiter the White House, the more lofty those expectations seem to get.

Does God ever get mad even at His adopted children, the ones He “will never cast out”? Are spankings (spiritually speaking) and “You’re grounded for two weeks, young man!” ever in order for a son or daughter of the King, the heirs who are completely sure of their salvation?

Well, we have to be careful in announcing what God will do or not do, but we can say with some certainty that human dads can get rather red in the face when kids — and I’m talking about kids they love, kids they protect, kids they would never erase from the family tree — when kids get drunk at the frat house and stain the family’s coat of arms.

For sure this is true in the White House. I don’t know if you’ve been watching the fictional goings-on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as portrayed on NBC’s The West Wing. But writer Aaron Sorkin seems to know a little bit about Christian theology. President Josiah Bartlet is often heard quoting the Bible, and religious themes are included on a regular basis. But in one episode, the entire staff of the West Wing is blindsided by the administration’s Surgeon General, a Dr. Griffith. On an Internet chat room roundtable, she types in some “plain medical facts” about drug use — specifically marijuana — in a way that runs contrary to the Bartlet administration’s public stance of opposing the legalization of any drugs. It undercuts everything they stand for, and so the main players — Josh, C. J., Sam, Toby, Leo — are ready to get her resignation.

And then — disaster. The president and his wife, Abby, have three daughters, as we’re told on The West Wing’s web site. And the middle daughter, Eleanor, who’s away at school, calls up a hotshot reporter named Danny Concannon. By the way, a bit of trivia: this Surgeon General happens to also be her godmother. But she says to the reporter, on the record, with him taking notes: “My father won’t fire the Surgeon General. He would never do that.” And there it goes on the front page: “Daddy won’t do such-and-such.” She puts her own father in a box; she puts the administration she’s a part of in a terrible dilemma; she delivers a body blow to the Bartlet team and the entire Democratic Party.

And Pop is just livid. Martin Sheen, who’s been overseas in Tokyo many time zones away, returns in a lather. “Eleanor, how could you do this to me?” He rips and he slices and he scolds. After protecting and shielding his girls from the Fourth Estate, the press and the cameras, she calls them? And sells him out?

It’s a painful scene . . . but at the end of the hour, there in the White House theater as they’re watching the evening film, President Bartlet — “Dad” — wordlessly reaches out and puts an arm around his kid. She’s still his daughter. She’s still part of the family. True, next time she might want to run things by the press secretary, C. J., but he still loves his child with all his heart. The relationship is intact.

Now, let me quickly leave the NBC web site and come back to the Voice of Prophecy and our topic of spiritual adoption. We’ve been studying together from a very helpful book entitled Knowing God, and author J. I. Packer is sharing with us five powerful benefits of being the sons and daughters of God. Right now we’re ready for number four in the list, and here it is:

“Our adoption shows us the meaning and motives of ‘gospel holiness.’”

Well, what does that mean? The fact that God’s people are to live holy lives is a common, unavoidable thread throughout all the pages of the Word of God. We join the three Bartlet girls — Elizabeth, Eleanor, and Zoey — in gulping hard when the Secret Service — make that the Bible, Matthew chapter five — sternly tells us:

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” And: “Faith without works is dead.” That’s James 2:17.

But what exactly does “gospel holiness” imply? If your name is Jenna or Barbara these days, and the last name on your underage driver’s license is Bush, how are you supposed to live? And what does this have to do with adoption? Dr. Packer explains further:

“‘Gospel holiness’ is no doubt an unfamiliar phrase to some,” he says. “It was Puritan shorthand for authentic Christian living, springing from love and gratitude to God, in contrast with the spurious ‘legal holiness’ that consisted merely of forms, routines and outward appearances, maintained from self-regarding motives.”

Is there such a thing as “going by the book” holiness? Sure there is . . . and every White House kid who ever lived, going back to Tad Lincoln and beyond, knows about being good ‘cause the Secret Service makes you. But friend, that isn’t the same at all as genuine holiness because you’re thrilled and honored and proud that your dad is the commander in chief in the Situation Room, that your father is making the world a better place by his prudent leadership, that the man who gave you life is now counting on you to bring honor to the administration by what you say to reporters and where you go with your college buds on a Saturday night.

So Packer gives us this very positive definition:

“[‘Gospel holiness’] is simply a consistent living out of our filial relationship with God into which the gospel brings us. It is just a matter of the child of God being true to TYPE, true to his FATHER, to his SAVIOR and to HIMSELF.” And mark this down for sure: “It is the expressing of one’s adoption in one’s life.”

That’s classic, isn’t it? Of course, it’s right here, still in Matthew chapter five — in fact, a few verses earlier — where Jesus Himself talks about White House living.

“Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise [or glorify] your Father in heaven.”

And the motive for us to strive for this “gospel holiness” is the adoption itself! We weren’t born into the White House; we didn’t have the name “Bartlet” or “Bush” on our birth certificate naturally. No, a wonderful Father adopted us and gave us a beautiful home and our own private suite right next to the Lincoln Bedroom.

“The adoptive relationship,” Packer writes, “which displays God’s grace so signally, itself provides the motive for this authentically holy living. Christians know,” he points out, “that God ‘predestined us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself,’ and that this involved His eternal intention that ‘we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.’”

That’s all from Ephesians chapter one, a marvelous passage of Scripture. Friend, God had His eye on you long before you were born; He was picking out wallpaper and a bassinet in the White House for your bedroom even before the beginnings of life on planet earth, it says there in verse four. “Before the foundation of the world,” announces the King James. And the plan here in God’s administration does include holiness and a pure life. Packer takes us over to the book of First John, chapter 3, verse 2, where God’s plan for us is spelled out.

“When He appears [Jesus], we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”

And there in the magnificent halls of the White House, a son or daughter knows just what they’re called to. Dr. Packer goes to the very next verse, which reads:

“‘Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.’” Then he adds: “The children know that holiness is their Father’s will for them, and that it is both a means, condition, and constituent of their happiness, here and hereafter; and because they love their Father they actively seek the fulfilling of His beneficent purpose. Paternal discipline exercised through outward pressures and trials helps the process along: The Christian up to his eyes in trouble can take comfort from the knowledge that in God’s kindly plan it all has a positive purpose, to further his sanctification.”

There’s no denying that when your name is Eleanor Bartlet, expectations are higher than if you’re just Suzy Q. Public, going out to a Creedence Clearwater Revival reunion concert. If you’re a young man named George, partying hard, drinking heavily, Dad, there in the Oval Office, might lean on you pretty hard. After all, YOU have a chance of being president yourself someday.
James Packer concludes the thought by taking us to Hebrews 12:

“In this world, royal children have to undergo extra training and discipline which other children escape, in order to fit them for their high destiny. It is the same with the children of the King of kings. The clue to understanding all His dealings with them is to remember that throughout their lives He is training them for what awaits them, and chiseling them into the image of Christ. Sometimes the chiseling process is painful and the discipline irksome; but then the Scripture reminds us: The Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes everyone He accepts as a son. Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. . . . No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.’”

As C. S. Lewis liked to tell his audiences:

“We have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us.”