The Unwillingness of God

There are some things God is not willing to do, and this is marvelously portrayed in the three parables that comprise Luke 15. Jesus told them in response to the Pharisees and teachers of Jewish law who were offended that tax collectors and sinners were coming to Jesus, and were even more offended because Jesus welcomed them and ate with them. The parables are about a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son.

The Parable the Lost Sheep
In Luke 15:3-7, Jesus tells of a shepherd who has a hundred sheep, but one has strayed. He puts it to the Pharisees directly:

Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.” I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

Clearly, the answer is, Yes, the Pharisees, if they were shepherds, would go out and find that lost sheep. They would not be content with the ninety-nine while one was still out in the wild. The stray was just as valuable to them as the ones that did not stray.

Of course, we think immediately of Jesus in this story, not simply because he is the one telling it but because we recognize him as the Good Shepherd who lays down his lie for his sheep (John 10:11). He is the one the psalm writer cries out for: “Save your people and bless your inheritance; be their shepherd and carry them forever” (Psalm 28:9). He is the one the prophet foretold: “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young” (Isaiah 40:11).

If the Pharisees would not be content with 99% of their flock, if they would not be willing to leave one sheep behind, why should we expect that Jesus would be. More to the point, because Jesus is the perfect image of God, why should we expect that God would be satisfied with only 99%? But Jesus is the Good Shepherd who goes out searching for the least one, the last one, lost one until he finds it. He simply does not give up. And when he finds it, he carries it home on his shoulders, and there is great rejoicing. (See also Until All Are Home)

The Parable of the Lost Coin
The second parable, in Luke 15:8-10, tells of the woman and the lost coin. Like the first parable, it is very brief, but just as powerful.

Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.” In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

Imagine this woman with ten silver coins. They are likely her dowry and so would be very precious to her. But she has somehow lost one. Perhaps it fell into the cracks between the stones in the floor. She still has nine coins left, but she is not content to leave it at that. She is unwilling to let that tenth one go. So, she turns the house upside down searching diligently for it, shining a light into every dark corner, sweeping the floor in case she might hear it clinking in some crevice. She will not give up. She will not even think of giving up but will keep searching for it until she has found it. And then how great will be her rejoicing.

If the shepherd in the first parable points us to Christ the Son, and the father in the third parable, which we will come to next, is like God the Father, it seems only natural that the woman in this middle parable may perhaps be likened to the Holy Spirit. We would not be alone in thinking that. St. Ambrose, back in the 4th century understood it that way.

The Holy Spirit is always bearing witness to of us Christ, taking the things that are his and revealing them to us. How shall we suppose that the Spirit of God would ever stop before every dark corner has been made light, every crevice has been swept clean, and that which is lost has been found?

The Parable of the Lost Sons
Now we come to the longest of the three parables, too long to quote in full here but found in Luke 15:11-32. In this tale, there is a man, a father who has two sons. One day, the younger son comes to his father and asks that his share of the inheritance be given to him. This is terribly dishonoring to his father, tantamount to saying that all he wants from his father is his wealth and that his father might as well be dead. Nonetheless, the father loves his son. Indeed, he loves both of his sons greatly and he gives them both their inheritance.

The younger son takes it and goes off to a distant land, as distant as his heart is from his father. There he wastes away all he has received, squandering it in reprehensible ways. But then there is a catastrophe: a terrible famine comes upon the land, and the younger son, his wealth now gone, must hire himself out to a farmer who has him feed the pigs — quite a lowly job to begin with, but especially shameful work for a Jewish boy.

After a time, the younger son comes to his senses and realizes the terrible state he is in and how much better life had been for him at home. He decides to go to his father and beg to come back home, not as a son but as a servant.

Now, while he is still a good way off, his father sees him on the horizon, for he has never stopped watching for his son, being unwilling to give up on him. Then the father, in a culturally undignified act, girds up his robe and runs to embrace his son. The son is hardly able to get a word out of his mouth about how unworthy he is to be a son before the father cuts him off, commanding his servants that the best robe be put on his son, a ring placed on his hand and the bests sandals put on his feet — all of them signs that the father fully accepts him as his son.

“Bring the fattened calf and kill it,” the father says, “Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” So, they all celebrate and are very merry.

End of story. Or not. Remember, there is also an older son — an older brother. He finally becomes aware of all the commotion and asks his servant about it. “Your brother has come home,” the servant says, “and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.” The older brother becomes enraged and refuses to join in the celebration.

But the father loves both of his sons, so he goes out to find the older one, who has distanced himself not only from his younger brother but from his father as well. The older son pours out his fury, about how he has always obeyed and slaved for his father but was never given even a young goat to celebrate with his friends; about how the younger son, “this son of yours,” has whored everything away — and now here is the father welcoming him home with the greatest of feasts!

The father pours out his love: “My son,” he said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

The father has two sons and loves them both very much, and he is unwilling to give up on either one of them; unwilling to have the older but lose the younger, and just as unwilling to have the younger but lose the older. He will not be satisfied until both are reconciled and safely home. (See also The Lifter of Our Shame)

God is Unwilling
This is how God is. God is like the shepherd who is unwilling for even one of his sheep to remain lost. God is like the woman who is unwilling to let even one precious coin remain missing. And God is like the father who is not willing to let either of his sons remain unreconciled.

“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness,” we read in 2 Peter 3:9, “but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

See, it is not God’s will that anyone perish but that everyone come to repentance. There is never a point at which God gives up on anyone. Never. God’s love always perseveres, and not even death can finally keep God’s love or God’s will from prevailing.

Random Thoughts

Thoughts culled from my random file, gathered from my Twitter tweets, Facebook updates and Instagrams. About love, forgiveness, divine grace, and finding our lives in Christ. Some have come to me in moments of prayer and quiet reflection, some in interaction with others. Offered as “jump starts” for your faith.

• We are united with Christ not by reason of our faith but by reason of His Incarnation. What we do with that is a matter of faith. We can rebel against it, but we cannot undo it.
• Funny thing. The more I consider Christ, the more my theology changes in conformity to Him ... and that seems to be confusing for some people.
• The judgment of God does not come to condemn us but to restore us. Not to enslave us but to set us free.
• Christ is God’s Yes to us. Faith echoes Amen.
• The Resurrection of Christ shows that the love of God is truly unconditional, for not even death can stop it.
• Eternal life. Eternal love. Same thing.
• We live continually in the presence of Divine Love.
• Whatever it is for which you would be rewarded, that you must beware.
• The confession that Jesus is Lord is a form of anarchy, for it means that Caesar is not.
• If you would see the kingdom of God, forgive one another.
• God always gets the last word, and it is a good word: Love.
• If ever there was a time when God hated anyone, even for a moment, it would be His undoing, for God is love.
• If you are seeking Christ, you will find Him in the middle of your mess and at the bottom of your ditch.
• Faith is not about certainty but about trust.
• Lord, keep me from being part of the strife but make me a part of the peace. Amen.
• Thank God, nothing depends on our certainty.
• Christ is God’s elect who, by the Incarnation, has become one with all of humanity.
• Believe the life of Christ in you.
• Christ is our only true reality. In Him we live and move and have our being, and in Him all things hold together. Everything that moves away from Him moves towards nothing.
• Christ inhabits every broken story until all the world is mended.
• Christian theology does not begin with philosophy or theological abstraction but with the concrete revelation of God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.
• Christ is not only God’s Yes to us, He is also our Yes to God.
• Christ did not come to institute a new moralism but to give us New Life.
• When the brokenness of sin meets the faithfulness of Christ? No contest. When the power of death meets the life of Christ? No contest. Sin and death were doomed by the Incarnation, when God became one with us.
• The Incarnation means that whatever is true of Christ in his humanity is true of us in ours. But it also means that we partake of his divinity and become by grace what Christ is by nature.
• Christ is God’s humanity and our divinity.
• Christ is the image of the invisible God, in whom all the fullness of divinity dwells in bodily form, and in whom we are made complete and become partakers of the divine nature.
• Christ is the True Light who gives light to everyone in the world. Faith is an awakening to the light of Christ within us.
• Sometimes my failures all gang up and fool me about who I am. Sometimes my successes do, too.
• Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us ... for we are all in the same boat.
• We are holy not by keeping a moral code but because God has chosen us in Christ through the Incarnation. It is by faith that we embrace this holiness.
• If it comes down to a choice between prayer and politics, I’ve seen what both can do. I will choose prayer. Every time.
• The gospel means there is nothing so broken that it cannot be mended, for Christ is making all things new.
• Prayer is not a way of escaping the reality of the world but of becoming more deeply aligned with it.

More random thoughts …

The Possibility of Repentance After Death

Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment ... (Hebrews 9:27)

Evangelical universalism entails the possibility of “post-mortem conversion,” that is, the proposition that, though many depart this life without faith in Christ, yet is it still possible for them to come to such faith after they have died.

A common objection to this view has been Hebrews 9:27, “Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment …,” and it is supposed that this precludes any post-mortem opportunity for salvation. It is then further assumed that if one has not come to faith in Christ when they die, all that is left for them is an eternity of conscious torment.

What is the Context?
But there are a few problems with such a reading. First, it ignores the context. Verse 27 is not a stand-alone statement or a completed thought but is part of a larger discussion about Christ as our high priest, holding him in contrast with the Levitical priesthood of the Old Testament:

For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. (Hebrews 9:24-28)

The high priest of the Old Testament had to go into the Holy of Holies every year to make sacrifice for sins. But Christ did not come year after year to offer himself as a sacrifice over and over for our sins. He did not suffer many times but only once. Mark the word “once” in the verses immediately preceding and following verse 27; it is the key to the comparison the author makes.

• Christ has appeared once for all to do away with sin (v. 26).
• Just as people are destined to die once (v. 27).
• So Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of the many (v. 28).

Note also the use of “just as” by the NIV (or “and” in several other versions) at the beginning of verse 27. It indicates the continuation of a preceding thought. The use of “so” at the beginning of verse 28 shows a continuation of the thought carried along in verse 27 and completes this portion of the argument the author is making: Just as people are destined to die once, so Christ was offered once, in sacrificial death.

What is the Judgment?
Here, we come to my second point, though still considering the context. The second clause in verse 27 has to do with judgment. If we think of this in general terms, it is worth noting that the author does not specify how soon after death this judgment comes, only that people are destined once to die, and after this comes the judgment. We cannot simply assume that it comes immediately, leaving no room for coming to repentance and faith.

But the author of Hebrews has been focusing our attention on Christ, and that, it seems to me, is how we should think of judgment here. The first part of verse 27, “destined to die once” is answered by the first part of verse 28, “Christ was sacrificed once.” So also, the second part of verse 27, about judgment, is answered in the second part of verse 28: “to take away the sins of the many.”

To see how the taking away of our sins in verse 28 corresponds to judgment in verse 27, we need to understand something important about the nature of God’s judgment: it is not retributive but restorative. Our own sense of judgment is often about retribution or pay-back, even to the point of the destruction of offenders — and we tend to imagine that God must be that way, too.

But God’s judgment is always about restoration, for God is love, and love does not seek retribution. God comes to set things right — to set us right. The judgment of God does not come to destroy the offender but to remove the offense. For God did not send Christ into the world to condemn us (John 3:18) but to bring about reconciliation (more on that in a moment).

The judgment of God, then, does not preclude any further possibility of repentance, for repentance and faith are exactly what it is intended to bring about. Think of the many times in the Old Testament when God judged wayward Israel. It was not to abandon Israel forever but to bring her to repentance, for there was always the promise of the day when God would finally gather her in from the nations.

The ultimate judgment of God took place at the cross, where the “once for all” death Christ died destroyed the works of the devil (1 John 4:8), disarmed the principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15), broke the power of death, and the power of the devil, who held the power of death (Hebrews 2:14), and so, broke the power of sin. The cross is where the forgiveness of God was revealed, and the judgment of God made manifest.

The author extends the thought at the end of verse 28, showing that the One who was offered once for our sins, “will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” The death of Christ brings salvation — and that is the judgment of God.

The author of Hebrews is not arguing that death is a “point of no return” that precludes any possibility of post-mortem conversion but showing us something very different, a Christ-centered focus. Nor can we conclude that the future appearing of Christ is the cut-off point for repentance and faith; the author simply does not make that argument.

What is God’s Purpose in Christ?
This brings me to my third point: there are numerous passages in Scripture that clearly indicate God’s purpose is the reconciliation of all things in heaven and on earth through Christ and by the blood of the cross. I have listed several of them in another article, “What If ‘All’ Means All?”, but I will mention three here:

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)

With all wisdom and understanding, [God] made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment — to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. (Ephesians 1:9-10)

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1:19-20)

In the end, God will be, as Paul said, “All in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). The reconciliation of all things will not happen apart from Christ, or the cross, or repentance and faith. But Paul does seem convinced that it will indeed happen.

If that is so, and all are finally to be reconciled, then it seems to me that post-mortem conversion is not only possible but is inevitable, seeing that so many people appear to depart this present life without having come to any repentance or faith in Christ. Hebrews 9:27 does not preclude this; it does not even address the question, much less answer it.

What Does It Mean to be “In Christ”?

We hear it a lot — I say it a lot — but what does it mean? Simply put, to be “in Christ” is to be in union with Christ, one with Christ. To be in union with Christ is to be in union with God, one with God, because Christ is God become human. He did not become merely one like us — he became one with us. Christ is fully human, as well as fully divine, and participates fully with us in our humanity, so that we may share in his divinity, sharing by grace what Christ is by nature.

In the modern Western world, we are used to thinking of ourselves and others very individualistically: You are you and I am me, and apart from close biological relationships, we recognize no real connection to each other, only whatever social or psychological associations we decide to have with one another.

But the truth is that there is only one humanity, and we all partake of it. This means that we are all vitally and deeply connected to one another. Whatever happens with one of us ultimately affects all of us, and the loss of one of us diminishes all of us. There is no “us” and “them,” there is only us.

The apostle Paul recognized this profound connection when he compared Christ with Adam. We can see this, for example, in Romans 5:18, where he says, “Consequently, just as one trespass [Adam’s] resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act [Christ’s] resulted in justification and life for all people.” And again in 1 Corinthians 15:22, “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

Just as Adam’s act of disobedience affected all humankind, bringing mortality upon all, so the faithful obedience of Christ resulted in justification and life for all. In both instances, this could only be because the humanity in which we all share is a deep and abiding connection, a union we all have with one another. So, when Christ became human, it was not a union with only some of us but with all of us.

The great mystery of the gospel is that the God who created this one humanity has joined with us in it by the Incarnation of the Son, Jesus Christ. Christ is our union with God. This is not something we must strive for — or even can strive for. But through the Incarnation, we now have this union with Christ, and so with God, purely by the love, will and desire of God. It is not even our faith that puts us “in Christ” or in union with God, but it is solely the grace of God, the faithfulness of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit that has done this.

What this means for us is that we are “accepted in the Beloved,” as the old King James Version puts it in Ephesians 1:6. The Greek word behind that means that we are fully graced and highly favored by God, and this is though Christ’s union with us. Our faith did not bring this about; the faithfulness of Christ has done it. But it is by faith that we begin to understand and live out the truth of what Christ has already done for us.

So, when we read in Paul’s letters about being “in Christ,” it has nothing to do with what we have done or ever could do, not even our faith, but has everything to do with what Christ has done. It is about the union with God every human being has because of Christ, the Incarnation, and the victory of the cross and resurrection that inevitably resulted from that union.

No Coercion Required

How hard it is even for Christians to believe that God intends to save the whole world. This is even though the New Testament indicates in several places that this is exactly what God has purposed in Jesus Christ (see What If “All” Means All). One objection that comes up, and I encountered it twice just yesterday, is that for God to fulfill his purpose would require that he must coerce people to believe — and wouldn’t that just make puppets of them?

The first time it came up was in a discussion I had with a Christian friend on his Facebook page. The second time was because I posted the opening sentence above on my Facebook page: “How hard it is even for Christians to believe that God intends to save the whole world.” Almost as if to demonstrate my point, another Christian friend, who I hadn’t heard from in a while, brought up the same objection in the comment section. Here, with a few edits to smooth it out a bit, is how I responded:

The question at hand is, of course, about free will. And it is usually asked as if anyone has a will that is truly free outside of a relationship with Christ. But the human will apart from Christ is not in any way free; it is in deep, dark bondage. This is one reason why Christ came into the world: to set free our bound and broken wills so that we may turn to God.

Many people think of freedom of the will as the ability to choose between competing options, to deliberate between good and evil, to calculate between choosing God or not choosing God. But which tree in the Garden of Eden does that sound like to you? The Tree of Life? Sounds to me more like the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The decision to eat of that tree was not one freely made but by one who was deceived, and it led only to misery, destruction and bondage to fear and further deception. A will that is bound up in deception is not one that is truly free.

Many other folks, and I am one of them, understand freedom of the will to be the ability to act and respond according to our true nature. This leads us to ask, what is our true nature? I understand it this way: God made us to be in God’s own image and according to God’s likeness — that is, to be like God. That is our true nature, the truth of who we really are and were always meant to be. But through the deception and darkness of the evil one, our true nature, and so also our will, was bound up so that we were no longer able to act according to how God created us to be.

But Christ came to set us free from all bondage. He came to destroy all the works of the devil, to bind up the “strong man” and plunder his house. Through the Incarnation, Christ joined himself with all humankind — he did not become merely one like us but one with us. That is why his cross, which was inevitable because of the Incarnation, was not just Christ’s victory but our victory as well.

Christ, who is fully human as well as fully divine, is the perfect expression of God. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ in human form. Christ is the one to whose image God conforms us. Christ is exactly what God had in mind from the beginning, when God said, “Let us make man in our image.”

We were chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world (see How God Chose Us In Christ and Chosen in Christ for the Unity of All Things). This is the truth of all humankind: Christ is now our true nature. With Christ as our true nature, then, freedom of the will is the ability to act according to Christ.

And the love of God is always at work in us like a consuming fire to burn away all the chains of lust, anger, violence, pride, egoism, rebelliousness, etc., until our wills are truly free and we are able to simply respond to God according to our true nature, the truth of who we are in Christ and who Christ is in us.

In the end, every knee in heaven and on earth will bow before Christ and every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord (Philippians 2:9-11). This is not the language of anyone being coerced. It is the language of that which is offered freely and willingly. A coerced confession is not a true confession but a contradiction in terms. A coerced confession would be nothing more than lip-service, and God has no interest in that. The confession of Jesus as Lord is not one that can be made apart from the Holy Spirit (12 Corinthians 12:3), and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, not coercion.

So, no coercive force is required for the complete fulfillment of God’s purpose to save the whole world — or else God would be no better than Zeus, a cheap and petty deity, and not the God revealed in Jesus Christ. The only “force” needed is the power of God’s non-coercive, self-giving, other-centered love. It is out of such divine love that God was in Christ reconciling the whole world to himself, not counting our sins against us (2 Corinthians 5:19).

The Surprising Vengeance of God

Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. (Romans 12:19)

There is something very deep and dark within us that craves revenge and reaches for retribution. “Paybacks are hell,” we say, and it is often from that dark place that we love to hear, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” For we have often imagined that God is like us, and that wrath and vengeance mean the same for God as they do for us. So, we latch on to Romans 12:19 “with a vengeance” and pay little attention to the context, which is all about love:

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. (Romans 12:9-18)

This is how we are to be, and it sounds very much like what Jesus taught us and lived out to the fullest. So, when we come to verse 19, how can we understand it in the way we are accustomed to thinking of vengeance? We cannot. For Jesus is the perfect expression of God and the one in whom all the fullness of divinity dwells in bodily form, so we must expect that God lives what Jesus preached. We must understand it in a way that fully demonstrates love, for as the biblical witness teaches us, God is love (1 John 4:8, 10). To take the “vengeance” of the Lord in a way that is less than fully loving toward all would violate the very nature of God and the perfect revelation of God we have in Jesus Christ. It would also violate the surrounding context in Romans 12.

How do we understand this verse, then? What is the “wrath” and “vengeance” of which it speaks? The Greek word for “vengeance” is ekdesis and is about doing justice. David Bentley Hart’s translation has it as “The exacting of justice is mine.” But here again our dark thoughts interfere, for we usually think of justice as retribution. But that is not how it is with God. God is not vindictive, for that is not the nature of love, and so, not the nature of God, who is love. Search the majestic description of love we have in 1 Corinthians 13 and you find that there is not even the slightest whisper of anything retributive in it.

God is just, but the justice of God of is not at odds with the love of God. Rather, it expresses the love of God. Retributive forms of justice simply do not do that. So, the justice of God is not retributive but restorative. Though it may read as punishment, it is always for the sake of correction and reconciliation. It is always about restoration, putting everything right according to how God made everything to be from the beginning. And it is always a perfect expression of God’s love, even toward those who are objects of such correction.

How does the justice of God operate here, and what does it look like? We can see an example of it in the Romans 12:20-21, where Paul shows us how we ought to be towards those who hate or mistreat us. We should not expect that God behaves any differently from the way we ought to behave. Instead of taking revenge or rendering evil for evil, Paul says, “On the contrary: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

How does God treat his enemies? When they are hungry, God feeds them. When they are thirsty, God gives them something to drink. Jesus said that God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Mark 5:45). This is how love responds.

God is always loving and good toward all, but those who have turned away from God may not perceive it as love and goodness being extended toward them. God offers them light — Christ is the true light who gives light to everyone (John 1:9) — but they may have become so used to the darkness that the light of God seems a torment to them. “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). And though it may feel like “burning coals” have been heaped upon their heads, neither the love nor light nor goodness of God are intended to be a torment to the wicked. Rather, earlier in Romans, Paul tells us that God’s kindness is intended to lead us to repentance (Romans 2:4).

When we turn and see that God loves us, that God is for us and not against us, then we understand the “burning coals” for what they are: light against the darkness and warmth against the cold, not intended as evil against us but to do us good. So, God does what Paul tells us to do: God overcomes evil with good, and this is how God repays evil and puts things right.

The Gospel Changes How We See Each Other

From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. (2 Corinthians 5:16)

The gospel changes how we view every human being. The cross certainly does, for Christ died for all of us. And referring to the cross, Jesus said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” That being so, we can no longer look at each other through the lens of “us” and “them.” That lens is a “worldly” point of view, how the world determines things. But it is a failed way of seeing each other, and the cross of Christ puts the lie to it. There is no “us” and “them,” but only those for whom Christ died, which is everyone.

Along with the cross, we must also consider the Incarnation, through which the death of Christ could be effective for any of us and, by the same reason, was effective for all of us. For it is through the Incarnation that God joined himself with all humankind; in Jesus Christ, divinity and humanity became one. All the fullness of divinity dwells in Christ in bodily form, in whom also all the fullness of humanity dwells, so that, in Christ, we are made complete and become partakers of the divine nature.

In the Incarnation, Christ did not just become one of us, or even just one like us, but he became one with us. This union does not depend upon anything we have done or ever could do; it does not even depend upon our faith. Rather, it depends upon Christ and his faithfulness, who is completely faithful. It is this union that made the cross of Christ effective for every one of us, so that Paul could say, “one died for all, and therefore all died.”

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. (2 Corinthians 5:14-15)

Christ died, therefore all died. This could only have been possible because of the Incarnation. Indeed, the Incarnation made the cross inevitable, because the one who has joined himself to us is Life and would therefore confront the human mortality to which we are all subject. And in confronting death, he overcame it, even as light overcomes darkness. The death of Christ is our death and his victory, our victory, so that his life has now become our life. This is true of every one of us because of the inclusive nature of the Incarnation.

This is why Paul could say, “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.” Paul had once considered Christ from a death-bound point of view, but then having met the living Christ on the way to Damascus, he could no longer see him that way. Christ, who died for all, had been raised from the dead for all, and the death-bound perspective of the world no longer made any sense.

“Therefore,” Paul says, “if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Elsewhere, Paul calls Christ the “firstborn over all creation” and the “firstborn from among the dead” (Colossians 1:15,18). Christ, by whom, for whom and through whom all things were created, and in whom all things consist, became part of his creation, joining himself to us through the Incarnation. When Christ died, all creation died; when Christ was raised from the dead, all creation was raised to new life with him. The new creation has come!

When Paul says, “If anyone is in Christ,” he is not suggesting that there are two groups: those who are in Christ (“us”), and those who are not (“them”). That is the old, worldly point of view that has been done away by the gospel. Rather, all are in Christ, for when Christ died, all died. Paul could not have asserted that all died when Christ died unless all were in Christ. But the “if” in Paul’s statement makes a logical connection and shows what it means that we are in Christ, that we have new life and are part of the new creation.

We see this same dynamic at work elsewhere in Paul’s letters. In Romans 5:18, for example, he says, “Just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.” The one trespass was Adam’s, and it resulted in condemnation for all, because all were in Adam. The one righteous act was Christ’s and resulted in justification and life for all people, because all are in Christ. In 1 Corinthians 15:22, Paul says, “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” Paul sees everyone as being in Christ, as having died with Christ, as having been raised to new life with Christ, and even as having been seated with Christ at the right hand of the Father (Ephesians 2:4-6).

So, for those who are in Christ, which is all of us, the new creation has come, and we are part of it. This is why we can no longer view each other through the old way of the world.

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)

In Christ, the whole world has been reconciled to God, and God has not counted our sins against any of us. All are forgiven, and this has been demonstrated at the cross. The good news of the gospel is the announcement of that reconciliation and forgiveness — our at-one-ment, as the word “atonement” literally means.

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. (2 Corinthians 5:20)

This reconciliation is objectively true, but clearly, not all have known it or experienced it. Our subjective response to it is a matter of faith, but our faith does not make it true, nor does our lack of faith undo the truth of it. It is objectively true of us that we are in Christ and reconciled to God whether or not we have any subjective sense of it or response to it. The work of evangelism, of bringing that message of reconciliation, is so that others may begin to know and experience what has been done for us in Christ and live in the truth of our fellowship with God.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

God was in Christ, and Christ became sin for us. This happened in the Incarnation. In Christ, God became a human being (though no less God), joining himself with all humankind, even at our very worst, taking all our darkness, all our brokenness, all our shame into himself. For whatever in us he did not join himself to, he could not deliver us from.

Why did God do this? So that in Christ we would become the righteousness of God. In Christ, we have, and are, God’s own righteousness. Not by imputation, nor by impartation, but by Incarnation. That is, this righteousness is not a legal fiction, or something that is merely reckoned to our account (imputation). Nor is it merely something imparted to us, as if it were some discrete substance delivered to us from the outside. But we have it by the Incarnation, in which we participate in Christ and Christ participates in us. By that participation, then, we participate in God’s righteousness. We share in it because we share in Christ and Christ shares in us.

Because we are in Christ, chosen in him from before the creation of world (Ephesians 1:3), and have been reconciled in him, have died with him, have been raised with him and seated with him in the heavenlies, and share with him in the righteousness of God, we can no longer see each other through the old eyes of the world. The gospel changes that, giving us new eyes to see.

Oriented Toward Light

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him. (Psalm 103:11)

How high are the heavens above the earth? It is more than we can comprehend. Yet that is how great God’s love is for those who fear him. But it is also how great God’s love is for those who do not fear him. For God is love. Love is not something God has, or a choice God makes; it is the nature of God to love, for love is what God is in his very being. For God to ever cease to love anyone to the fullest would be for God to cease to be God.

There is no difference, then, between the love God has for those who fear him and those who do not. It is the exact same love for both. But the difference is in how each perceives or experiences that love. Those who fear God, that is, who turn toward him, love him, trust him and walk in his way, they experience the love of God for what it truly is. But those who turn away from God, who love themselves above all others, and walk in their own way, the way of the world, they experience God’s love very differently. God’s love is the same for them as it is for the others, but their understanding is distorted, so the love of God seems to them a torment and a condemnation.

They walk in darkness, and the light of God’s love shines brightly. Like coming out into the sunlight after a long while in the dark, it can be somewhat painful, because our eyes are not used to the splendor of the sun. We want to shade our eyes and return to the darkness. But if we let the light in, our eyes gradually grow accustomed and we begin to see clearly.

The light of God is a judgment upon darkness — not upon us but upon the darkness within us. God comes to enlighten our darkness, to banish it from us so we can see with unhindered eye the absolute goodness of his divine glory. The love of God comes to heal us, to cast out the fear and hatefulness that causes us to turn away from God and from each other, and even causes us to despise our own selves.

Christ is the True Light who has come into the world to give light to everyone. He is the love of God fully revealed to the world, even when we were caught up in the hatefulness by which we crucified him and each other. Through Christ, God has “qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:12-14). This is the good news of the gospel.

In 1 John 2:8, we read that “the darkness is passing, and the true light is already shining.” It is as we turn to Christ and let his divine light penetrate our darkness and his love penetrate our hearts that we begin to experience the light and love of God as they truly are. And also the truth of who we really are, for it was for light and love and life — fellowship with the Divine — that we were created in the beginning.

Trampling the Fear of Death

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil — and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14-15)

For the past couple of posts, we have been looking at the relationship between sin and death, particularly at the question of whether we are mortal because we sin, or we sin because we are mortal. My understanding of Scripture is the latter, that we sin because we are mortal. (See Whereupon All Sinned and The Sting of Death.) But how is it that mortality leads to sin? I think Hebrews 2:14-15 provides a clue.

First, let’s notice what the author of Hebrews identifies here as the problem that is solved by the death of Christ. It is not sin but death, which is to say, the power of death, and the power of him who holds the power of death. It may come as a surprise that the one identified here as holding the power of death is not God but the devil. But God is not the one who kills.

God has the power of life, not of death. Death is nothing in itself; it is the absence of something. Just as darkness is nothing but the absence of light, so death is nothing but the absence of life. Christ is life, and when he encounters the power of death, as he did at the cross, it is “game over” for death. There is simply no contest.

In Revelation 1:18, Christ says, “I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” But what does he do with those keys? In Revelation 20, both death and Hades (the place of the dead) are cast into the “lake of fire,” but before they are, they are emptied out.

At the cross, Christ broke not only the power of death, but also the power of the one who held the power of death, that is, the devil. In 1 John 3:9, we read that Christ came to destroy the works of the devil. This, too, happened at the cross and was revealed in the resurrection when Christ broke the gates of Hades and set its captives free.

Now, let’s look at how the author of Hebrews describes what the power of death and of the devil does: It causes us to fear, and that fear leads us into bondage. But Christ has broken that power so to “free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

Fear of death is a terrible bondage, causing people to do all sorts of things to avoid it, or else to get all the pleasure they can out of this life before they meet their inevitable end (supposing that death has the last word). It is fear of death that whispers in us, “What shall we do? How shall we survive?” Jesus speaks to this deep anxiety in his Sermon on the Mount:

So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:31-33)

We live in bondage and the fear of death when we do not know we have God as our loving Father who takes care of us in every way. It causes us to live as orphans, believing we must make do for ourselves in whatever way we can. Fear of death blinds us to the truth: “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father’” (Romans 8:15). “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 4:7).

There is an illuminating scene toward the end of the comedy movie, Moonstruck. It is a brief conversation between Rose Castorini (Olympia Dukakis) and Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello).

Rose: Why do men chase women?

Johnny: Well, there’s a Bible story ... God ... God took a rib from Adam and made Eve. Now maybe men chase women to get the rib back. When God took the rib, he left a big hole there, where there used to be something. And the women have that. Now maybe, just maybe, a man isn’t complete as a man without a woman.

Rose: [frustrated] But why would a man need more than one woman?

Johnny: I don’t know. Maybe because he fears death.

[Rose looks up, eyes wide, suspicions confirmed]

Rose: That’s it! That’s the reason!

Johnny: I don’t know ...

Rose: No! That’s it! Thank you! Thank you for answering my question!

Fear of death is a terrible bondage. But Christ rescues us from it, having delivered us from the power of death and of the devil — and so from the power of sin. He did this:

• By the Incarnation, in which he fully participates with us in our humanity (and we participate with him in his divinity).
• By the Cross, where he experienced the full measure of our mortality, destroying the power of death and the works of the devil.
• By the Resurrection, shattering the gates of Hades through the victory of his death, binding the strong man — the devil — and liberating captive humanity.
• By his Ascension to the right hand of the Father, leading captivity itself — death and Hades — captive, showing himself as Lord and victor over them. And being emptied out, they are finally cast into the “lake of fire.”
• By Pentecost, where he poured out upon all people the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit by whom we cry out “Abba, Father,” so that no longer need we live in fear of death or of anything else.

The Sting of Death

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. (1 Corinthians 15:56)

Last time, we looked at the question of what Paul meant in Romans 5:12, on whether universal sin resulted in universal death, or conversely, it was universal death that resulted in universal sin (see Whereupon All Sinned). That brief study brought to mind another passage where Paul speaks of the relationship between death and sin. It is at the end of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul’s extended discussion of Christ and the resurrection. In verses 55-56, Paul taunts death, the defeated foe: “‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:55-56).

The Greek word for “sting” is kentron and refers literally to the sting of creatures such as bees or scorpions. This sting of death is sin, Paul says (metaphorically, of course). Commentary on this verse usually seems to have the sting, sin, as the cause of death. But would that not be like saying that the sting of a bee is what causes the bee? Is it not rather the bee that causes the sting? So when Paul says, “The sting of death is sin,” is he not saying that it is death that causes sin rather than sin that causes death?

Besides this passage, kentron appears two other times in the New Testament. In Revelation 9:10, it is used of the sting of scorpions. “They had tails with stingers [kentra], like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months.” Again, should we suppose that the sting was what caused the scorpion to be? Rather, it is the scorpion that produces the sting. But what the sting does produce is a temporary torment.

The other occurrence of kentron is in Acts 9:5, where Saul (Paul), heading to Damascus to hound the Christians there, encounters the risen Christ. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Jesus says. Saul asks him, “Who are you, Lord?” and receives the answer: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads” (NKJV). The word for “goad” is kentron. A goad was used for prodding oxen or other beasts of burden. In this case, something was prodding Saul, trying to move him in the right direction, but Saul was resisting, and it was painful for him. (This bit about kicking “against the goads” does not appear in the oldest manuscripts of this passage but it does show up in later ones, and so is instructive for us about what kentron means.)

If we translate kentron as “goad” in 1 Corinthians 15:55-56, we have: “Where, O death, is your goad. The goad of death is sin.” The direction of causality should become apparent: it is not the kentron that produces death, but death that produces the kentron. What is the kentron death produced, and toward what does it prod? Sin.

So, it is not our sin that causes our mortality; it is our mortality that prods us or stings us with sin. Sin is brokenness of relationship, the alienation we experience toward God, each other, the rest of creation and even within our own selves. Death took full advantage, revealing itself as sin.

Next time, we will look at an important clue to how that happens — and how Christ delivers us from it.

Whereupon All Sinned

Therefore, just as sin entered into the cosmos through one man, and death through sin, so also death pervaded all humanity, whereupon all sinned. (Romans 5:12 DBH)

Here is a very interesting rendering of this verse, particularly at the end, presented to us by David Bentley Hart in his recent translation of the New Testament. Other translations end it with “because all have sinned” (for example, NASB, NIV, NKJV, ESV, CSB, LEB). Hart’s version, “whereupon all sinned,” is substantially different from that. The difference is in whether Paul poses universal death as the result of universal sin (“because all sinned”) or whether he puts it the other way around, that universal sin is a consequence of universal death.

The Greek text at this point is εφ ω (eph ho), a preposition followed by a pronoun. It is found no more than six other times in the New Testament:

• “Jesus replied, ‘Do what you came for, friend.’ Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him” (Matthew 26:50 NIV). We may put it as the Context Group Version does: “[Do] that for which [eph ho] you have come.”
• “And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein [eph ho] the sick of the palsy lay.” (Mark 2:4 KJV). The Greek text used in most modern versions does not have eph ho but uses a different word that is translated similarly.
• “Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God” (Luke 5:25). The Context Group Version has, “and took up that whereon [eph ho] he lay.”
• “For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:4 NIV). Both Robertson’s Word Pictures and Vincent’s Word Studies translate the phrase as “Not for that [eph ho] we would be unclothed.” Perhaps eph ho might work okay as “because” here, but that is not so clear. It would work as well, or better, to take it as meaning, “so that.”
• “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which [eph ho] Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me” (Philippians 3:12 NIV).
• “I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it” (Philippians 4:10 NIV). In this and in other versions, it is difficult to identity the eph ho in back of it, but Young’s Literal Translation locates it more clearly for us: “And I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at length ye flourished again in caring for me, for which [eph ho] also ye were caring, and lacked opportunity.”

“For which,” “wherein,” “whereon,” “for that” — Hart’s rendering of eph ho as “whereupon” in Romans 5:12 seems quite in line. In his translation notes on this verse, Hart points out that, “Typically, as the pronoun [ho] is dative masculine, it would be referred back to the most immediate prior masculine noun, which in this case is θανατος (thanatos), ‘death,’ and would be taken to mean (correctly, I believe) that the consequence of death spreading to all human beings is that all became sinners.”

This reading, however, does interfere with a certain theological bent in the West, one influenced by the Latin version of the New Testament. In the Latin version, Hart’s reading, “whereupon all sinned,” would not be possible.

First, it retains the masculine gender of the pronoun (quo) but renders θανατος by the feminine noun mors, thus severing any connection that Paul might have intended between them; second, it uses the preposition in, which when paired with the ablative means “within.” Hence what became the standard reading of the verse in much of Western theology after the late third century: “in whom [i.e. Adam] all sinned.” This is the locus classicus of the Western Christian notion of original guilt — the idea that in some sense all human beings had sinned in Adam, and that therefore everyone is born already damnably guilty in the eyes of God — a logical and moral paradox that Eastern tradition was spared by its knowledge of Greek.

But we must also consider the context here. The idea that death came to all because all sinned seems to contradict the verses that immediately follow.

To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone's account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. (Romans 5:13-14)

Sin was in the world before the time of Moses, when the Law was given. But notice: where there is no Law, sin is not charged against anyone. From the time of Adam to the time of Moses, then, sin was not charged against anyone. And yet, death still reigned upon all during that period. Everyone died, though not all sinned.

But how can this be if death came to all because all have sinned. The Western theory of “original sin” (more like, original guilt) is that all sinned in Adam and are therefore guilty of sin. Even if they have not actually committed any sin, they are nonetheless judged guilty. This is not what Paul says in Romans 5:12-14.

From both the context and how the words eph ho are normally used elsewhere in the New Testament, it appears that in Romans 5:12, Paul is not attributing the sin of all as the cause of the death of all but, quite the opposite, that it is the mortality that pervades humanity that causes all to sin.

The good news of the gospel is that through the Cross and Resurrection, Christ has delivered us from the power of death and, therefore, from the power of sin.

Random Thoughts

Thoughts culled from my random file, gathered from my Twitter tweets, Facebook updates and Instagrams. About love, forgiveness, glory, divine grace, and finding our lives in Christ. Some have come to me in moments of prayer and quiet reflection, some in interaction with others. Offered as “jump starts” for your faith.

• When we are unwilling to forgive, we put up a roadblock to what God wants to do in us and in the world.
• If we are not ready to forgive those who have sinned against us, we are not ready to pray the prayer Jesus taught us.
• The ability to truly forgive others is a miracle, a gift of God’s grace.
• To forgive others requires repentance on our part. On our own, we do not wish to forgive, so we must turn our soul toward God, who alone can work that miracle in us.
• Faith is not so much about certainty as it is about trust.
• Haters are gonna hate. Lovers are gonna love. Which will you be?
• If a literal reading of the Old Testament contradicts the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, then the literal reading must give way.
• The Christian life is one shaped by the death and resurrection of Christ.
• If we are disappointed in others on Jesus’ behalf, we probably need to spend more time with Jesus, who is not disappointed in any of us — he came to rescue all of us.
• The light of Christ shines in every human being and the darkness cannot overcome it.
• There is nothing that could ever put to shame the love Christ has for us.
• Sin is not a broken law but a broken relationship — with God, with each other, with creation, even within our own selves. Christ came to turn us back to God and each other, to restore all of creation and make us whole.
• Jesus entered into our darkness and faced down the accuser of our souls. He is our light.
• The light of God does not come to condemn us but to free us from our darkness.
• Salvation is not so much a matter of destination but of transformation by the divine fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
• True repentance, the turning of the soul toward God, is a miracle, a gift of God’s grace.
• The love of God, wisdom of God, justice of God, holiness of God — these are all one. For God is one, and God is love.
• There is no us and them in Christ. There is only the union of all things in heaven and on earth.
• The ability to see things from a different perspective is a miracle, a gift of God’s grace.
• The love, mercy and grace of God are with us always, without limitation or condition.
• You are created in the image of God, and there is nothing you can do that could ever change that. It is the truth about who you are.
• All humankind is summed up in Jesus Christ, in whom God became one with us — even in all our brokenness.
• Discipleship is learning to live in the reality of King Jesus.
• Discipleship is learning to live in the divine fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
• Discipleship is learning to live in the fullness of God and our completeness in Jesus Christ.
• Lord my rest, teach me Your way, the simplicity of Your love.

More random thoughts …

Weeping with Those on Social Media

Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. (Romans 12:15)

In times of tragedy, it has become common on social media to see people offer “thoughts and prayers,” condolences for folks who have been bereaved or injured, and regions that have experienced disaster. It is a way of reaching out, of grieving with and for them and each other. It is a recognition that, in the words of John Donne, “no man is an island entire of itself,” and “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Every day the bell tolls somewhere, as it always has, but with the coming of instant news and the sharing of social media, we now experience its resonance more immediately and pervasively than we did before. Every day, almost every hour, we hear the bell toll, and it tolls for us.

We can easily become overwhelmed. Our thoughts are filled with it, our hearts moved by it, and we look for the light of hope, for our own sake as well as for others, lest we all sink into despair. Many offer up a prayer, whether out of great faith or feeble. We post our “thoughts and prayers” and our “heart goes out.” Unsophisticated words, no doubt. Even clichéd. Yet they express our grief, our hope and our faith nonetheless for it.

The apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Christians at Rome, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” Rejoicing with those who rejoice is the easier of the two. On Facebook, we literally “Like” their announcements of good news, new homes, new jobs, anniversaries, retirements, vacations, children, grandchildren — even their pets and their meals. We have a lot of fun with it. But we also weep with those who weep. It is not merely some external idea about what we ought to do. The grief dwells within us, however much we may realize it, and it flows out of us one way or another.

Like our rejoicing, our weeping shows up on social media, too. When someone describes a difficult situation they are going through, friends often offer a simple comment like, “Praying.” Likewise, when someone specifically asks for prayer, friends will even use the “Like” button in response, as if to say, “Yes, I’m praying for you.” That may seem inadequate, and perhaps it is, but I have seen many friends on Facebook express great appreciation for the abundance of such responses they received, and how they somehow felt the prayers and were encouraged and strengthened by the outpouring.

When there are natural catastrophes such as the recent hurricanes, earthquakes and wild fires, or acts of terrorism, mass destruction or other man-made evils, such as last month’s heinous Las Vegas shootings, and this month’s killings at Sutherland Springs, we all feel the grief of it. We mourn, and one way it comes out is with such modest words as, “Our thoughts and prayers are with you.” It is a way of reaching out to each other, that we might all know that none of us are alone in our grief. And we pray, for we believe that God does hear and that he does care. It is a faith that God will somehow get the last word, and that it will be a good word.

In recent days, some folks have deemed “thoughts and prayers” something to be mocked, shamed, and dismissed as “virtue signaling.” More often than not, from what I have seen, those who have been dismissive have an agenda they seem impatient to get to, and all this grief-sharing just gets in the way unless it can be exploited for their politics. But however inadequate “thoughts and prayers” may seem for one’s activism, it is at the least an expression of grief and should be respected as such instead of shamed or mocked.

And if it comes down to a choice between prayer and politics, I’ve seen what both can do, and I will choose prayer every time.

Reading the Old Testament with the Early Church

There are three things we should understand about the Old Testament and the early Church if we want to read the Scriptures the way the first Christians did. First is that, for the early Church, the Old Testament constituted the Scriptures. The Gospels and Epistles had not yet been written. It was not until about the AD 50s that the epistles began to be written, and the 60s that the Gospel writers began their work. But the Church had the Old Testament, and their faith was that it was all about Jesus, because that is what Jesus had taught his disciples, and they found Jesus and the gospel all throughout. Even when the New Testament writings came along, the Old Testament remained indispensable for the Church in her understanding of Christ.

The second thing to realize is that the Old Testament the early Church used was not the Hebrew version but the Septuagint, also known as the LXX, an ancient translation of the Hebrew text into Greek. This was the common form of the Scriptures used among the scattered Jews because, in their exile, a great many of them did not know Hebrew. It was natural then for the early Church, even though the first Christians were Jewish, to read and study and incorporate this Greek version into their liturgies. And whenever the New Testament writers cited or quoted the Old Testament Scriptures, as they very often did, it was the Greek version that they used. The Septuagint deserves much more respect than many evangelicals have been willing to give it.

The third thing we need to recognize is that, though the early Church found Christ everywhere in the Old Testament, they did not do so by a literal or grammatical method of interpretation but by allegorical or figurative readings of the Scriptures. We can observe this in how the New Testament writers handled the Old Testament. Whenever they cited, quoted or alluded to the Scriptures, the take-away for them was always about Christ and the gospel, even when a literal reading of those Scriptures would have shown no evidence of such — indeed, there are several Old Testament passages which, if taken literally, would be a contradiction of Christ and the gospel. For several centuries, the early Church followed the exegetical pattern of the apostles and New Testament writers. They did not go to the Old Testament Scriptures for history lessons but for spiritual nourishment, the testimony of Christ they contained — and they did not lack for food.

We Are God’s New Creation in Jesus Christ

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:8-10)

Last time, we looked at Ephesians 2:8-9, at the patron/client relationship in Paul’s day, at the nature of faith as faithfulness when the object of faith is a person, and considered that faith/faithfulness is not our own doing but the gift of God’s grace. My belief is that the faith/faithfulness through which we have been saved is the faithfulness of Christ himself.

As we come to verse 10, we should remember that it is just as much about salvation by grace through faith/faithfulness as verses 8-9 are. Paul does not switch gears but continues his thought. This is indicated by the Greek word gar, translated as “for,” which connects to the previous verses. But the salvation aspect should also be apparent to us by the remainder of verse 10: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

In the patron/client relationship, marked by “grace” and “faith”, there was an expectation that good works would follow. So, in verse 10, Paul speaks of good works. But notice whose works these are: “We are God’s handiwork,” he says. The Greek word for “handiwork” is poeima and refers to something that has been made or done. We are God’s workmanship, God’s doing, and not our own. This is not only the reality of our creation, it is also the reality of our redemption. We are, Paul says, “created in Christ Jesus.” We are part of God’s new creation in Christ. If any man be in Christ, Paul says elsewhere, he is a new creature — the old has passed away and now there is new creation! (2 Corinthians 5:17).

We are created in Christ Jesus “for good works.” The NIV wording is misleading — “which God prepared in advance for us to do” might sound like God preordained a to do (or to don’t) list for us to follow. But that misses what Paul is talking about. Having been saved by the grace of God through the faithfulness of Christ, our new life in Christ does not now collapse back down into moralism.

The Lexham English Bible does a better job here: “which God prepared beforehand, so that we may walk in them.” What God prepared for us beforehand was not a moralistic list but the good works themselves. This is why Paul does not say that we should do them — the only doing here is God’s — but that we should walk in them. Because we are God’s workmanship, these good works are God’s works, not ours.

Paul speaks of this divine work in his letter to the church at Philippi: “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). And a little bit later he tells them to continue to “work out” their salvation, “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13). It is God in us, willing his will and desire in us, and energizing it in us.

Because we are created in Christ Jesus, these “good works” are his works, not ours. Our part is to walk in them, to live in what God has prepared and what Christ has done, to yield to the life of Christ in us, and to the new creation we are in him. In Galatians, Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith [faithfulness] of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20 KJV).

We may also think of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) manifesting the life of Christ in us. This fruit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) is not something we generate ourselves — fruit is not something we clip onto the tree but is what comes forth from the life of the tree. It is the Holy Spirit who brings forth his fruit in us.

All of this is God’s work through and through — the work of God, the life of Christ, the fruit of the Spirit. Our part is to walk in it, yielding ourselves to it in faith. It is purely by the grace of God that we are saved through the faithfulness of Christ. And by faith, we come to know God through Christ, to embrace who Christ is in us (and who we are in him), and begin to live out the reality of God’s new creation.

Salvation By Grace Through Faithfulness

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

You have been saved by grace through faith, Paul tells his readers. In the context of the Greek and Roman culture of the day, they would have recognized the language of “grace” and “faith,” especially when used together, as the language of personal relationship, especially one of benefaction; that is, a patron/client relationship.

A patron would extend himself in friendship to another person and show him favor. It was a gift, and offered freely. He was not obliged to extend his friendship but would offer it because he desired to do so. The other person, the client, would decide whether he wanted that friendship. If he did, he would respond to the benefactor’s gracious act with faith. (You can read more about patronage culture in Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture, by David A. deSilva.)

What is the nature of faith in such a situation? If the object of faith is a set of propositions, then it might be sufficient to think of it merely as mental agreement to the reliability of those propositions. In the abstract, we might even agree that another person is trustworthy, but that is not the same thing as having faith in or toward that person. In the context of human relationships, of entering into friendship, faith is more than that. It is not only trust in the reliability of that person as friend; it is also faithfulness to that person. In the patron/client relationship, both parties have each other’s back. The patron is on the side of the client and the client is on the side of the patron. It is the idea that “we are in this together.” They keep faith with each other.

In Ephesians 2, there are a couple of things that set God’s patronage apart from that of Paul’s surrounding culture, and their significance would be immediately grasped by Paul’s readers. First is that God has, in Christ, extended his patronage, which is to say his grace and favor, even to his enemies, to people who are against him. At the beginning of chapter 2, Paul reminds his readers that they had formerly been dead in trespasses and sins, in rebellion against God (vv. 1-3). But God did something that was completely unexpected and undeserved:

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7)

For no other reason than his deep and abiding love for us, God showed the richness of his mercy and extended grace and favor, making us alive together with Christ, raising us up together with Christ, seating us with Christ in the heavenlies. This is salvation, freely and unconditionally given to us in Jesus Christ. In a key moment in the book of Romans, Paul declares, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). This is the unprecedented grace and patronage of God in extending his friendship even to all who have rebelled against him (which we have all done in one way or another).

The second remarkable thing about God’s patronage that sets it apart from all others is that even the pistis, the faith/faithfulness with which to respond to God’s patronage, is itself a gracious gift of God. That was quite unparalleled (and by the nature of things, quite impossible) in the patronage of Greek and Roman culture. But God has shown grace upon grace by his gift of faithfulness. It means that we do not have to somehow generate it in ourselves — and, indeed, we cannot — but it has been gifted to us. All is done by God, and that leaves absolutely no room for any of us to boast. In the patronage of men, a faithful client could boast of how faithful he was to his patron. But with God, there is no such room because even the faith/faithfulness is supplied by God.

Whose faith/faithfulness is this, then? Certainly not ours, for Paul tells us that it is the gift of God. I suggest that the faithfulness that has been given and through which we have been saved is the faithfulness of Christ. This would not be the first time Paul brings out this point. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul relates the words he spoke in rebuke to Peter:

We are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that no one is justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by the faithfulness of Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. (Galatians 2:15-16, NET Bible)

We are justified, put right with God, by the “faithfulness of Christ.” The underlying Greek words are pisteos Christou. Grammatically, it is a genitive construction, and taken as a subjective genitive, indicates possession; in this case, the faith/faithfulness of Christ. However, it is also grammatically possible to take it as an objective genitive, which would indicate faith/faithfulness in or to Christ. There is ongoing discussion in scholarly circles concerning which is the most appropriate way to understand pisteos Christou as it is used several times in the New Testament.

My own view is that it should be understood as referring to the faithfulness of Christ. I have several reasons for this, but if I may digress for a moment, one I would like to mention briefly is what Paul says in Romans 5:18 in regard to Christ and our justification: “Consequently, just as one trespass [Adam’s] resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act [Christ’s] resulted in justification and life for all people.” Adam’s act of disobedience resulted in condemnation for all; Christ’s act of obedience — we may say “faithfulness” — resulted in justification for all. It is not our faith but Christ’s faithfulness that has done this.

Returning to Galatians 2:16, notice that Paul contrasts the “faithfulness of Christ” with the “works of the law.” Paul is adamant that we are reconciled to God by the former, not by the latter, and that justification by the faithfulness of Christ is the reason for having faith in Christ.

In Ephesians 2, there is a similar contrast between faithfulness and the works of the law. We are saved, Paul tells us, through God’s gift of faith/faithfulness, “not by works, so that no one can boast” (v. 9). The works in view here are the works of the Mosaic law. Paul goes on to show that the division between Jews and Gentiles, which was a division demarcated by the law, has been broken down by Christ, “by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility” (vv. 14-16). One of the issues was circumcision (v. 11), a work of the law that, for the Jews, marked out who belonged to the people of God.

In Ephesians 2:8-9, then, as in Galatians 2:16, faith/faithfulness is contrasted with the works of the law. We are put right with God through the former, and clearly not through the latter. And it is through Christ’s faithfulness, not our own, that we are saved.

In the next post, we will see how the faithfulness of Christ continues in Ephesians 2:10, and that our salvation, from beginning to end, is the work of God in Christ.

Random Thoughts

Thoughts culled from my random file, gathered from my Twitter tweets, Facebook updates and Instagrams. About love, freedom, glory, humility, and finding ourselves in Christ. Some have come to me in moments of quiet reflection, some in interaction with others. Offered as “jump starts” for your faith.

• The love of God never forces our wills ... it frees our wills.
• Freedom is not the power to change who we really are but the grace to discover who we really are in God.
• The story the Scriptures tell looks very different from the outside than it does from the inside, where we realize we are part of it. It is only from the inside that we begin to understand it as the story of the gospel, the story of Christ — and truly good news.
• Mercy is God’s judgment.
• We are chosen in Christ. Faith does not make this true. Faith embraces the truth of it.
• The manifestation of evil is not in any way necessary for the glory and goodness of God to be revealed.
• The passion of the bird is to fly, and of the fish, to swim. In this way, they honor the God who made them and what they were created to be. Likewise, the passion of man is to worship and adore in holy fellowship. But when the object of our worship is anything less than God, the world disintegrates.
• The glory of God and the humility of Christ are the same thing.
• You cannot experience God second hand.
• Today I contemplate God in Christ and Christ in me. It is a good day.
• The love of God burns away all our delusions so that our wills may be truly free and we become the divine image God created us to be.
• Today I partake of Jesus my healer, in whom I am made whole.
• The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has joined Himself to us. This changes everything. Literally.
• The good news of the gospel is that you and I are part of God’s new creation in Christ.
• The good news of the gospel is that we are chosen in Christ for the unity of all things in heaven and on earth — which means that all are chosen.
• Jesus has never been about the difference between us and them — He came for all.
• To the extent we are willing to forgive others, we are allowing God’s forgiveness a place in us.
• The good news of the gospel is that in Jesus Christ we discover our true selves being renewed to the image of our Creator, and so become who we really are.
• When we love well, we are doing good theology, for God is love.
• Weep with those who weep, for tomorrow it may be your turn. And rejoice with those who rejoice. Same reason.
• Every moment, regardless of season or circumstance, is an opportunity for me to become what God has created me to be — to discover my true identity in Christ.
• Christ is the lens through which we read the Scriptures and the context by which we understand the world.
• We are always reaching out for God and each other. We just very often do not realize it.
• We fulfill the Law not by following the Law but by following the Spirit, whose fruit is love.
• Christians are those whacked-out people who believe that God has, in Christ, broken the power of sin and conquered death on our behalf — and that this changes everything.

More random thoughts …

God’s Anger is Not Forever

The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
    nor will He harbor His anger forever;
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
    or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
    so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

(Psalm 103:8-12)

There are several striking things in this brief passage, and they are perfectly revealed to us in Jesus Christ. First, we see that the Lord is full of compassion and grace. There is nothing God has ever done or ever will do that is lacking in either of these. God, in his holiness and justice, always deals with us according to mercy. God overflows with love toward all, even to those who have turned away and consider God as their enemy. The Father loves them nonetheless. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said,

You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matthew 5:43-45)

What of God’s anger, then? The psalm writer tells us that the Lord is “slow to anger.” God is longsuffering toward us, exceedingly patient with us. Alongside God’s patience, there are a couple of other things the psalm writer would have us understand about God’s anger. The first is that, however we might think about the anger of the Lord, it is always for the sake of God’s love toward us all. See in these verses how it is couched in the middle of God’s compassion, grace and abounding love. God’s anger is always conditioned by his faithful love toward us. His anger is not at us but at sin and evil and darkness — how we break vital relationship not only with God but also with each other, with creation, and even within our own beings. By such dark ways, we do harm to others and to creation as well as to ourselves.

Second, however we might think about the anger of the Lord, the psalm writer tells us this: It will not last forever. It is never God’s last word about anyone. For the anger of the Lord does not come to condemn us but to deliver us. For God is forgiving towards us and does not treat us according to our sins. He does not hold them against us — he removes them from us! Such is God’s love and mercy toward us.

The people whom the psalm writer primarily has in mind as the object of God’s faithful and enduring love are the people of Israel. God made covenant with them and, through Moses, showed them wonderful deliverance. The Lord, “made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel” (v. 7). But in Jesus Christ, God reveals that this same love is not just for Old Testament Israel but for all the world. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17). “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

This calls for faith, for it is through faith, turning from our own darkness to the light of Christ, that we embrace this great reconciliation, come to know our forgiveness and find our true freedom in God. But if we embrace the darkness, the light of Christ will seem to us like the anger of God instead of the love that it is, for light is God’s judgment on the darkness. The anger of God will not last forever, not because God changes in his disposition toward us — God is ever and always disposed toward us in love, for God is love — but because our disposition toward God changes and we finally see Divine Love for who he is.