Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Reading with the Church Fathers

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As we saw in the last post, the New Testament authors found Jesus throughout the Old Testament — not by a plain, literal reading of the text but by figurative, metaphorical and allegorical readings. The early Church Fathers followed this same pattern of interpretation. The examples of this are as numerous as the Old Testament Scriptures themselves, over the next few posts, we will focus on a few of them. We will first consider them from a literal or historical reading, then we will look at how the early Fathers understood them through a Christ-centered, gospel-centered reading.

Psalm 41
This psalm came up in my devotional reading this morning. By a plain, historical reading, it is about David and his experience of God. But the Church Fathers understood it as about Christ and the gospel. Theodoret of Cyr makes an observation in this psalm that is generally applicable to all the psalms: “Since the Lord says, ‘for the Scripture to be fulfilled,’ and shows the present psalm applies to him and no one else, I consider it rash and presumptuous to develop another explanation not applicable to him” (Commentary on the Psalms).

Ambrose comments on the superscription as it is found in the Septuagint version of this psalm. “He who had perished in Adam had to be restored in Christ. That is why we have, at the head of the psalm, ‘To the end,’ because Christ is the end to which all our hope is directed” (Commentary on Twelve Psalms).
Blessed are those who have regard for the weak; the LORD delivers them in times of trouble. (Psalm 41:1)
Gregory of Nyssa says of this: “The Word defines blessedness for us in another way than at the beginning. For in the first psalms, to depart from evil was blessed, but here to know the good more fully is pronounced blessed. Now the nature of the good is the ‘only-begotten God,’ ‘who, though he was rich, for our sake became poor.’ The Word here predicts his ‘poverty’ in the flesh, which is pointed out to us through the Gospel account, pronouncing the one who has recognized that ‘poverty’ with understanding blessed” (Treatise on the Inscriptions of the Psalms).
I said, “Have mercy on me, LORD; heal me, for I have sinned against you.” (Psalm 41:4)
Theodoret of Cyr understands this as Christ identifying with us in our poverty, suffering and sin: “I am the one who is poor, he is saying, who embraced voluntary poverty, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who makes my own the sufferings of human beings, who though having committed no sin offers the prayer for human nature as nature’s firstfruits” (Commentary on the Psalms).
My enemies say of me in malice, “When will he die and his name perish?” (Psalm 41:5)
Here, Augustine says: “He died, but his name did not disappear; far from it. Rather was his name sown like seed. As the grain was dead, the harvest sprang up. No sooner had our Lord Jesus Christ been glorified than people came to believe in him far more strongly and in much greater numbers; and then his members began to hear the same mutterings that their Head had heard” (Expositions of the Psalms).
When one of them comes to see me, he speaks falsely, while his heart gathers slander; then he goes out and spreads it around. All my enemies whisper together against me; they imagine the worst for me, saying, ‘A vile disease has afflicted him; he will never get up from the place where he lies.’ Even my close friend, someone I trusted, one who shared my bread, has turned against me. (Psalm 41:6-9)
Theodoret sees in this the false charges brought against Christ as he stood before Pilate. Ambrose and Augustine see Christ’s betrayal by Judas, as do Arnobius the Younger and Diodore of Tarsus.
But may you have mercy on me, LORD; raise me up, that I may repay them. I know that you are pleased with me, for my enemy does not triumph over me. Because of my integrity you uphold me and set me in your presence forever. (Psalm 41:10-12)
Theodoret says: “All this was said on the part of the nature assumed, which was involved also in the passion. Since, then, the assumed nature remained free of all wickedness, it was right for him to say, ‘But you supported me for my innocence and confirmed me in your presence forever’” (Commentary on the Psalms).

Second Kings 2:8-14
This passage also came up in my devotional reading this morning. By a literal, historical reading, it is about the prophets Elijah and Elisha.
Elijah took his cloak, rolled it up and struck the water with it. The water divided to the right and the to left, and the two of them crossed over on dry ground. When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?” “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied. “You have asked a difficult thing,” Elijah said, “yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours — otherwise, it will not.” As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his garment and tore it in two. (2 Kings 2:9-14)
The simple narrative is that Elijah parts the Jordan River by striking it with his mantle, then they both passed between the waters to the other side. There is a brief conversation about Elisha receiving Elijah’s spirit. Then a chariot of fire suddenly appears and Elijah is conveyed to heaven in a whirlwind. Reading through the lens of Christ and the gospel, however, the Fathers see that there is much more at work in this account.

Origen understands the parting of the Jordan and crossing to the other side as baptism, just as Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10:2, understood Moses leading the children of Israel between the waters of the Red Sea as baptism:
We must note in addition that when Elijah was about to be taken up in a whirlwind as into heaven, he took his sheepskin and rolled it up and struck the water, and it was divided on this side and that, and both crossed, that is to say, himself and Elisha. He was better prepared to be taken up after he was baptized in the Jordan, since Paul, as we explained previously, called the more incredible passage through water a baptism. (Commentary on the Gospel of John)
He understands the “spirit” of Elijah in regard to John the Baptist as a precursor of Christ:
And this also we have brought forward, because of John having come before Christ “in the spirit and power of Elijah,” in order that the saying “Elijah has already come” may be referred to the spirit of Elijah that was in John; as also the three disciples who had gone up with him understood that he spoke to them about John the Baptist ... And likewise, by Elijah, in this place, I do not understand the soul of that prophet but his spirit and his power; for these it is by which all things shall be restored, so that when they have been restored, and, as a result of that restoration, become capable of receiving the glory of Christ, the Son of God who shall appear in glory may sojourn with them.” (Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew)
Bede the Venerable, in his Homilies on the Gospels, understands the whole narrative as a rich typology of the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, the imparting of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the institution of the sacraments of the Church. This is a longer passage but provides a very good example of a Christ-centered reading of the Old Testament.
The prophets proclaimed the mystery of the Lord’s ascension not only by their words but also by their actions. Both Enoch, the seventh from Adam, who was transported from the world, and Elijah, who was taken up into heaven, gave evidence that the Lord would ascend above all the heavens …

Let your love take note, my brothers, how the symbolic event agrees point by point with its fulfillment. Elijah came to the river Jordan, and having laid aside his cloak, he struck the waters and divided them. The Lord came to the stream of death, in which the human race ordinarily was immersed, and laying aside from himself for a time the clothing of flesh that he had assumed, struck down death by dying and opened up for us the way to life by rising. The change and decline of our mortal life is properly represented by the river Jordan, since the meaning of Jordan in Latin is “their descent,” and since as the river flows into the Dead Sea, it loses its praiseworthy waters.

After Jordan was divided, Elijah and Elisha crossed over on dry land; by his rising from the dead the Savior bestowed on his faithful ones the hope of rising too. After they had crossed over the river Jordan, Elijah gave Elisha the option of asking for what he wanted. The Lord too, after the glory of his resurrection had been fulfilled, implanted in his disciples a fuller comprehension of what he had promised previously, that “whatever you ask in my name, I will do.”

Elisha asked that the spirit of Elijah might become double in him. The disciples, thoroughly instructed by the Lord, desired to receive the promised gift of the Spirit, which would make them capable of preaching not only to the single nation of Judah, which he himself taught when he was present in the flesh, but to all countries throughout the globe as well. Did he not pledge the double grace of his Spirit when he said, “A person who believes in me will himself also do the works that I do, and he will do even greater ones than these”?

As Elijah and Elisha were conversing together, a chariot with fiery horses suddenly snatched Elijah as if into heaven. By the chariot and fiery horses we are to understand the angelic powers, of whom it is written, “He makes the angels his spirits and his ministers a burning fire” (Elijah, being an ordinary human being, had need of them to be raised up from the earth). The Lord too was suddenly taken up as he was speaking with his apostles and as they were looking on; although he was not assisted by the help of angels, he was served by an angelic band of companions. He was truly assumed into heaven with the angels also bearing witness to it, for they said, “This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven.”

When Elijah was raised up to the heavens, he let the cloak with which he had been clothed fall to Elisha. When our Lord ascended into heaven, he left the mysteries of the humanity he had assumed to his disciples, to the entire church in fact, so that it could be sanctified by them and warmed by the power of his love. Elisha took up Elijah’s cloak and struck the waters of the river Jordan with it; and when he called on the God of Elijah, were divided, and he crossed over. The apostles and the entire church took up the sacraments of their Redeemer that had been instituted through the apostles, so that, spiritually guided by them and cleansed and consecrated by them, they too learned to overcome death’s assaults by calling on the name of God the Father and to cross over to undying life, spurning the obstacles of death.
Though we may not be accustomed to reading the Old Testament in this fashion, the Church Fathers were. But it is important to note that they were not undisciplined or unlimited in their approach. Their understanding of the Old Testament did not venture outside the boundaries of Christ and the gospel. All was understood within that framework.

Part 2 | Part 3

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Reading the Old Testament with New Eyes

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Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:45)
On the evening of his resurrection, the Lord Jesus encountered two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They were downcast and did not recognize who he was. Jesus asked about what they were discussing and the cause of their disquiet. They explained. Then Jesus said to them:
“How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Luke 24:25-27)
That same evening, Jesus appeared to Peter and the other disciples back in Jerusalem and said, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Luke adds, “Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45).

Jesus taught that the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms — which is to say, the Old Testament Scriptures — are about him. In his Sermon on the Mount, he said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). To the unbelieving Jewish leaders, he said, “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life … If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me” (John 5:39-40, 46).

The author of Hebrews shows us the same thing when he quotes Psalm 40:7 and applies it to Jesus. “Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come — in the volume of the book it is written of me — to do your will, O God’” (Hebrews 10:7 NKJV). The entire Old Testament, the “volume of the book,” is about Jesus.

This has profound implications for how the Old Testament Scriptures ought to be interpreted. For one thing, it means that any reading of the Old Testament that contradicts the revelation of Jesus Christ in the New Testament is a misreading. For another, inasmuch as Jesus is the “exact representation” of God (Hebrews 1:3), that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him in bodily form (Colossians 2:9) and that whoever has seen him has seen the Father (John 14:9), then any reading of the Old Testament that portrays God in a way that contradicts how God is portrayed in Jesus Christ is likewise a misreading.

The manner in which we read the Old Testament will differ from how we read the New Testament. In the New Testament, Christ is presented plainly in the text. In the Old Testament, Christ is just as present as in the New, but not as plainly. We need to read the Old Testament in a different way, through the eyes of Christ.

After the Emmaus disciples had been with Jesus, they asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32). This was something they had not experienced before. The Greek word for “opened” is an intensive one and means to open thoroughly and completely. It is the same word used about the disciples in Jerusalem later that evening, when Jesus “opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.” Now they could see in the Old Testament what had been there all along, that it is all about Jesus.

We do not find Christ in the Old Testament by a plain, literal reading of the text. A non-literal reading of the Scriptures was nothing new, not even among the Jews of Jesus’ day, but what changed for the disciples was that now they understood the Scriptures through Christ. We can find examples of this in the New Testament Scriptures.We have already noted that the author of Hebrews applies Psalm 40:7 to Christ. In a plain reading of that psalm, it is not about Jesus or Messiah but refers to David’s desire to keep all the Law of God. But the author of Hebrews now reads it with new eyes, as presenting Christ.

For another example, Matthew 2 tells us about Joseph taking Mary and Jesus down into Egypt and bringing him back to Judea after the death of Herod. Matthew records, “And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’” (Matthew 2:15). The prophet he quotes is Hosea 11:1, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” By a plain, literal reading, Hosea 11:1 refers to God delivering the children of Israel out of Egypt, an event we know as the Exodus. But Matthew understands it as a reference to Christ.

There are many other examples we could turn to, but in Galatians 4, Paul gives us a theological understanding of Abraham’s wife, Sarah, and her handmaid, Hagar, and he explicitly identifies it as an allegorical reading.
For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, which things are symbolic [allegoreo]. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar — for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children — but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. (Galatians 4:22-26 NKJV)
Paul tells us the meaning of Sarah and Hagar. They are two covenants. Hagar is Mount Sinai; Sarah is the Jerusalem that is above. Paul was not reading this back into the Old Testament, inserting theological ideas that were not already present in the Scriptures. They were there all along, and Paul simply discovered what was inherent in the Scriptures by reading them through Christ.

The disciples and the New Testament authors understood the Scriptures in a non-literal way because they were reading them with a Christ-centered understanding. Next time, we will look at how the early Church Fathers followed this same understanding.

Friday, June 10, 2016

Get Out of Hell Free?


There are many Christians who are offended at the thought of post-mortem conversion — that repentance and faith might be a possibility after death for those who had none before, so that they might turn and know God and be rescued. “They should receive a ‘Get Out of Hell Free’ card?” they chide.

“Get Out of Hell Free” is a mocking crude way to put it, but there it is, and it shows us something of the mentality of these offended ones. They assume that those who did not have the foresight to repent during life ought to suffer the torments of hell forevermore after death. It is too easy, they think, to repent once one has experienced that infernal place.

Leave aside that they often have a very unbiblical idea of hell. For them, hell is some sort of imprisonment — an eternal jail — imposed by God upon the wicked for having rejected God. Leave aside also the crudeness of the “Get Out of Jail Free” card analogy and let’s think about this for a moment. Would that not also be the same thing God has done for all who turn to God in this present life? Are such not considered to be rescued from an infernal existence in the age to come?

Why, then, should they be offended at the thought that God might offer the same for those who experience torment in the age to come? Is it somehow more difficult to repent in this present existence than it is for those who suffer torment in the next? That would seem to cast timely repentance as some sort of meritorious work. But repentance is always a gracious gift from God. Otherwise none of us should ever be able to break free from our bondage to self and turn to God.

Now think for a moment about Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. This son treated his father very shamefully then went off to an alien country far from home. There he squandered his inheritance on an immoral life. A terrible famine came and left him in a desperate situation. But then, Jesus says, “he came to his senses.” He remembered his father’s house and the goodness of his father. He was ashamed of how he had acted. He repented, got up and returned home.

And what did the father do? Did he say, “No, you don’t get a ‘Get Out of Famine Free’ card. Your repentance was too easy and came too cheaply”? Quite the opposite, the father saw him coming in the distance — he had been watching for his son all along, you see — and ran out to meet him. He embraced him as his son, receiving him fully and completely into his house. Then he threw a great feast in celebration, “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

But the father’s older son was upset by all this and thought his father far too gracious and forgiving of his younger brother. He wanted to shame his younger brother — and his father, as well — but the father would have none of it. “We had to celebrate and be glad,” he said, “because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” (I have written more about the Parable of the Prodigal Son here.)

Should we suppose that God is any less gracious than the father in Jesus’ parable, that he would ever turn away anyone who turns to him in faith — even if it be from the bowels of hell? But of course, the question remains: Is post-mortem repentance even possible? My answer is that it is not only possible, but I believe it is inevitable. The reason I hold this is that the New Testament tells us how everything will be in the end. There are several Scriptures that indicate this, but I will focus here on two. The first one is found in Paul’s letter to the Church at Philippi:
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)
In the end, every knee will bow and every tongue confess Jesus as Lord. This will be universal; there will be no being of whom this is not true and no realm in which it is not so. The language of knee bowing and tongue confessing is not the language of what has been coerced by force or threat or anything else. It is about what is freely and willingly offered, worship freely given. In another letter, Paul tells us that no one can confess Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. “Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). The confession that Jesus is Lord is the language of faith inspired by the Holy Spirit.

The second Scripture is 1 Corinthians 15:28, where Paul describes the final state of all things and tells us that God will be “all in all.” That is an all-inclusive statement and leaves nothing and no one out.

Because every knee will one day bow to Christ and every tongue confess him as Lord, and because God will finally be “all in all,” it seems quite apparent to me that even those who have not turned to God in this present life will have opportunity to do so in the age to come — and will indeed do so. For God, who knows the end from the beginning and what he has purposed to do in Jesus Christ, has told us what that purpose is and how it will all be in the end.

Call it “Get Out of Hell Free” if you must, though that is a crude depiction and betrays a man-centered understanding rather than a Christ-centered one. But I will speak of the eternal love, grace and mercy of God that pursues us even in hell.

Friday, June 3, 2016

Until All Are Home

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Then Jesus told them this parable: 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.” (Luke 15:3-6)
Jesus tells the parable of a good shepherd and a little lost sheep. The shepherd has a hundred sheep, and ninety-nine are doing fine. They are right where they are supposed to be. Perhaps they have strayed before — perhaps many times — but now they are safe and sound. Yet there is this one little sheep that is out on its own and lost. The shepherd has a 99% success rate, but that is not good enough for him. He will not be satisfied unless all of his sheep are safely in. So he goes after that little lost sheep “until he finds it.” It is the word “until” that particularly captures me here. It means that the shepherd is not going to quit; he is going to keep searching until he finds that sheep. The end of the story is that all will be safely home — and there will be great rejoicing.

This parable tells us something about God and his kingdom, as all of Jesus’ parables do. God is often portrayed in the Scriptures as a shepherd. Psalm 23, also known as the Shepherd Psalm, begins, “The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.” And in Isaiah 40:11, “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.” In the New Testament, Jesus identifies himself not just as a shepherd but as the Good Shepherd: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).

So what kind of shepherd is God? Is he like the one in Jesus’ parable? Does God practice what Jesus preached? Jesus is the Good Shepherd. Is he endlessly determined like the one in his parable? Will he be satisfied with even one sheep still lost? Or will he go out after all the lost ones until he finds them and brings them home? I believe it is the latter, or else I should have to think that he is not as good a shepherd as he preaches about.

“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way,” says the prophet (Isaiah 53:6). But Jesus is the Good Shepherd who never gives up on us but finds us and leads us home. And there will be great rejoicing.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Grace and the Wrath of God

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God gave them over. (Romans 1:24)
At the top of his letter to the church at Rome, the apostle Paul tells us about God’s wrath toward the wicked. It is not the retaliation of a vengeful deity. It is God giving them over to themselves — to their sinful desires and self-degradations (1:24), their shameful lusts (1:26) and their depraved minds (1:28).

Does this mean that God is then done with them, that all that is left for them is to suffer the torment of their own depraved ways? I don’t think so, for in a couple of other places, Paul speaks about turning people over to their own ways so that they might repent. Concerning the church member at Corinth who was sleeping with his father’s wife, Paul instructs the church to “hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 5:4-5). And in a letter to his protégé, Timothy, he writes about “holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck: Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have handed over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme” (1 Timothy 1:19-20).

The verb we are looking at in these two passages is the Greek word paradidomi, translated as “hand over.” It is the same word Paul uses three times in Romans 1 when he says that God “gave them over.” In the Corinthians and Timothy passages, the action of “handing over” these people to satan is not the final pronouncement on them or an end in itself but is for the purpose of restoration: “so that his spirit may be saved” and “that they may learn not to blaspheme.” When God likewise hands the wicked over to their depravity, should we assume that his purpose is any less restorative than Paul’s? Is it not that they might repent and glorify God?

The wrath of the world is often retributive. But God is interested in restoration. That is why Christ came, through whom God was reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). The love of God is never finished with us, never gives up on us, but is always at work for our good.

There is no wedge between the love of God and the righteousness of God. Righteousness is not the measure of how offended God is at unrighteousness. It is the faithfulness of God to love and do good toward us, even when we have failed to be faithful and do good. But if we conceive of the righteousness of God as God’s offendedness towards us so that he finally gives up on us, then that is a contradiction to the love of God, which never fails.

Likewise, there is no contradiction between the grace of God and the wrath of God, for the wrath of God is a manifestation of the love and grace of God. But if we conceive of the wrath of God as purposed for retribution instead of for restoration, then that is a contradiction to the grace and love of God. God’s wrath is about rescuing us from our waywardness, not from divine retaliation or offendedness.

Those who persist in rejecting God’s grace, God “gives over” to their unbelief. That is the “wrath.” It is not in order to damn them, for God did not send Christ into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. Rather, it is an act of grace — a hard grace, no doubt, but grace nonetheless. It is a manifestation of divine love, as everything God does must be, even toward the very ones who reject him. It is not an act retaliation but that they might, like the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable, “come to their senses” and return to the Father.

Monday, May 30, 2016

Wrath That Remains?

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Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on them. (John 3:36)
A common view among evangelicals is that we are saved not only by God (through Christ) but also from God. One verse used to support that is John 3:36, in which the wrath of God is said to remain on those who reject Christ. It is assumed that if one needs to be saved from the wrath of God, one therefore needs to be saved from God himself. I have addressed the wrath of God in other posts, particularly about how Paul understood God’s wrath. Simply put, it is not God’s retaliation against the wicked but God giving the wicked over to their own devices, not for the purpose of retribution but that they might repent and be restored.

We may understand the wrath of God in John 3:36 in the same way. If we follow this chapter from the beginning, we can see that the wrath of God is not for the purpose of condemnation. We find this particularly in the middle section:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should 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. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. (John 3:17-21)
God did not send Christ to condemn us. He sent Christ to rescue the world from condemnation. Those who reject Christ were already condemned before Christ came. But what was the nature of that condemnation? It was not a matter of some eternal decree or because God damned them or was unforgiving toward them. It was because they loved darkness rather than Light, so they turned away from the light. God did not withhold the Light from them; they simply did not want it. That was the state of condemnation they were in: they preferred darkness rather than the Light. God’s verdict did not decree that they should therefore be condemned. It simply pointed out what was true of them: they did not want the Light.

The “wrath” of God in verse 36, then, is that verdict concerning those who reject the Light of Christ. They love the darkness, so God leaves them to it. They will continue in darkness until they turn to the Light. And until they do, the Light will be a torment to them, for it exposes the evilness of their deeds. We can just as well say that the wrath of God is the Light of Christ shining in the darkness — not as a decree, or as a retaliation, but as a grace. For the Light of Christ is a manifestation of God in his love. We are saved by God, not from God.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Saved from Wrath

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Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! (Romans 5:9)
In my previous post, I wrote that we are saved by God, not from God. This contradicts a certain way many Christians have come to think, a view often known as penal substitutionary atonement. It teaches that God was offended by us because of our sin and that only the penalty of death could assuage his fierce and holy anger. So God became a man, Jesus Christ, in order to die that death and pay that penalty on our behalf. According to this theology, we are saved by God but also from God.

Such was the view I held for several years myself, but I have since come to see differently: Christ did not come to save us from God but to deliver us from the bondage of sin and death and so turn us back to God. Understandably, this has received some pushback from those who hold my former view.

One line of criticism has to do with the wrath of God, and Romans 5:9 is the prime go-to. The NIV and several other translations have it that we are, “saved from God’s wrath.” The Greek text, however, simply says σωθησομεθα δι αυτου απο της οργης — “saved through him [Christ] from the wrath.” Note that the text itself does not identify the wrath as belonging to God, but the translators have assumed it to be so.

Is it God’s wrath that Paul has in mind? Possibly, and I’ll address that in a moment. But first, let me suggest a different possibility. In the context of Romans 5, I think Paul could be referring to the persecutions suffered for the sake of the gospel. He speaks of such persecutions just a few verses earlier: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:4-5).

Paul “gloried” in those sufferings, not because of what they were in themselves but because of what they resulted in, namely, a hope that “does not put us to shame.” He goes on to explain that hope in the verses that follow. When he speaks of being “saved” from the “wrath” in verse 9, then, he could be referring to the wrath of persecution and the hope which saves us from being shamed by it.

But let’s also consider verse 10, where Paul asks, “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” Like verse 9, it is a “how much more” comparison, and along the same lines. Notice what it is that saves us in this instance. Yes, in verse 10, we are reconciled to God through the death of Christ, just as we are justified by the blood, or death, of Christ in verse 9. But in verse 10, notice that Paul says it is the life of Christ that saves us; this matches “saved from wrath” in verse 9. In other words, the parallelism of these two verses would seem to indicate that what saves us from wrath (v. 9) is the life of Christ (v. 10).

What is the wrath that the life of Christ saves us from in this context? The wrath of God? That hardly seems likely, especially considering that those who believe Christ saves us from the wrath of God usually believe he does so by his death on the cross. But the salvation Paul refers to in this passage is achieved by the life of Christ. Again, I suggest that the hope we have in the gospel — the expectation we have in Christ, and of his life in us — saves us from being ashamed of the gospel because of persecution.

But what if we assume, as many do, that it is God’s wrath that Paul has in mind — then what is that wrath and how does it work? Paul has already discussed the wrath of God at the top of this letter, in Romans 1 (I have blogged about that in How the Wrath of God is Revealed). In short, it is not about God inflicting something on the wicked in retaliation for their wickedness. It is God giving them over to the depravity of their ways, and to the consequences that naturally arise from them.

If the wrath Paul speaks about in Romans 5 is the wrath of God, then, contextually, we should understand it in terms of Paul’s discussion of that wrath in Romans 1. So if we are saved from the wrath of God, and the wrath is that he gives us over to our own sinful desires and self-degradations, then what we are really saved from is our own selves, the bondage of our depraved and sinful desires.

What saves us, then, is that we are reconciled to God, which is to say, turned back to him. For in our depravity, we turned away from God. But God did not leave us in that condition. Instead, through Christ and by the work of the cross, he delivered us from the sinful desires, shameful lusts and depraved thinking that held us captive.

The reconciliation we have in Christ, in Romans 5:10, is not about mollifying God, appeasing his anger or preventing him from retaliating against us. For it is not God who has been reconciled to us. Rather, it is we who have been reconciled to God. Just as it was not God who turned away from us; it was we who turned away from God.

The death of Christ on the cross does not change God’s attitude toward us. It changes our attitude toward God, by freeing us from death and darkness and depravity of mind so that we can return to God. By turning us back to God through Christ, God delivers us from shame by the life of Christ now at work in us.

Through the death and life of Christ, then, we are saved from death, from sin, from darkness, from depravity of mind — in a word, from ourselves. We are not saved from God but by God. For God was already kindly disposed toward us to deliver us from all those things. Paul tells us in Romans 5:8 that God demonstrated his love for us in that even while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. This was not the emotionally disordered action of a confused deity who, on the one hand, desired to save us but, on the other hand, what he must save us from is his own angry, retaliatory self. That would be simply incoherent. Rather, it was the gracious response of God who is love and who therefore looks on us always and only with love.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Saved By God, Not From God


Recently, I came across this quote from a popular evangelical teacher: “The grand paradox or supreme irony of the Christian faith is that we are saved both by God and from God.” This is a view common among certain segments of evangelicals. It is a view I once held but can do so no longer, for it is not one I can find in Scripture. Indeed, what I find in Scripture teaches me the opposite.

Nor is it a view that I can find in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the perfect expression of God. As I think of his Parable of the Prodigal Son, the image of God portrayed there, as loving father, is quite at odds with the image the above quote presents. The son did not need to be rescued from his father. Rather, he was rescued from a wayward and broken life by his father. Likewise, though we all have very great need to be rescued by God, how can we ever imagine that we need to be rescued from God? For the Gospel teaches us that God is love. We no more need to be rescued from God than we need to be rescued from love.

Nor is the judgment of God something we need to be rescued from, for it is the judgment of God that comes to rescue us and set us right. We have often been taught that God’s judgment is about retribution. In that view, death and torment and wrath are seen as the divine payback of an angry, offended deity. But neither death nor torment nor wrath are the acts of divine retribution; they are the natural, logical consequences of turning away from God, who is love and light and life.

In the beginning, Adam turned away from God, the very source of his life. And having turned away from life, all that was left for him was death. This was not God’s reprisal; it was what necessarily happens when one turns away from the source of life. God had warned Adam that in the day he ate of the forbidden fruit, “You will die.” But notice that God did not say, “I will kill you.” Big difference, that.

The torment that those experience who turn away from God is also a natural consequence. God is the source of peace and joy and all that is good. In turning away from God, they are turning away from those very things. All that is left for them, then, is torment — a life of emptiness and regret, devoid of joy and peace. Again, that is not divine retribution but natural consequence.

God is light, but when one turns away from God, what else is left for them except darkness. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). Light came into the world, but those who love evil despise the Light that reveals their evil for what it is, so they dwell in darkness. Yet God does not withhold the light from them. Quite the opposite, Christ gives light to all, but those bound in darkness turn away from the light. The Light of Christ continues to shine in the darkness but the darkness cannot extinguish it, so the Light becomes a torment for those who love the darkness.

God is love. When people turn away from God, they are turning away from the only true source of love. God does not ever cease to love them, but in their depravity, they do not want God’s love, so even the love of God becomes a torment to them.

Now we come to the wrath of God. Yet not even that is a matter of divine retaliation. Paul speaks of it quite differently. He addresses God’s wrath head-on in Romans 1. But notice how he describes it. Three times Paul says, “God gave them over” — to their sinful desires and self-degradations (v. 24), to their shameful lusts (v. 26) and to their depraved minds (v. 28). God’s “wrath” is not something he pours out in retribution; it is simply giving the wicked over to their wickedness, which brings its own consequences. There is nothing more terrible than for God to give us over to our own ways.

Think again of the loving father in Jesus’ parable. He let his prodigal son go his own way — but it was so the son might repent and be restored. The son did finally come to his senses, remembering his father, and returned home. The father had been watching for him all along, for he continued to love him nonetheless. When his son was still a long way off, the father ran out to embrace him. “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

God’s judgment and wrath are not for the purpose of retribution but for the purpose of restoration. God does not overcome evil with evil. He does what the apostle Paul instructs every Christian to do: He overcomes evil with good — should we not expect God to practice what he preaches?

So the cross was never about Christ saving us from God. It was always about Christ saving us from breaking the power of darkness, death, sin, fear and whatever keeps us from returning to God. The cross was indeed a divine judgment: it was where God judged the darkness with Light, where he judged death with Life, and where he judged demonic hate and fear and selfishness with divine, self-giving Love.

Monday, May 23, 2016

A Prayer to the Holy Trinity


Abba, Father,
   thank You for giving us Your Son
   and sending us Your Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit,
   by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father,”
   thank You for showing us the Lord Jesus,
   for taking what is His
   and revealing it to us.

Lord Jesus,
   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,
   thank You for showing us Abba, Father.

Monday, May 2, 2016

Random Thoughts

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiedecesare/1091367656/

Thoughts culled from my random file, gathered from my Twitter tweets, Facebook updates and Instagrams. About divine love, relationship with God and new life in Christ. Some have come to me in moments of quiet reflection, some in interaction with others. Offered as “jump starts” for your faith.
  • All humanity is connected, so in joining himself to humanity, Christ joined all humanity to God.
  • Jesus is the light of God who gives life to all and rescues us from our darkness.
  • The Father sends the Holy Spirit to bring forth in us the life of the Son.
  • The Incarnation was not a divine afterthought or merely a necessary solution to a terrible problem. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us because that was God’s desire from the beginning.
  • Faithfulness is faith working through love.
  • Faithfulness is faith lived out over time, turning to God in all weathers and every season.
  • Faith works through love. Love casts out fear.
  • Faith is like a seed. It must be planted before it can grow.
  • Neither faith nor doubt are fickle or fleeting. They are orientations of the heart.
  • When we focus on our faith, how small it seems. When we focus on Jesus, how great our faith becomes.
  • My paradigm is the God who is love and whose grace is far greater than any evil the world could ever produce.
  • God doesn’t distance himself from us because of our sin. He comes near and rescues us from it. So the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
  • Any time you think the Christian life is something you do for God, you’ve got it all backwards.
  • God is love. If he ceases to be love, even for a moment, he ceases to be God. God is loving in all his ways, always and toward all.
  • What if the love of God is deeper than hell? That changes everything.
  • Today I recklessly pursue the God who is love, whose love relentlessly pursues me.
  • Jesus is the perfect expression of God in human form. If we don’t see God as just like Christ, we are not seeing him as he is.
  • In the Incarnation, God became human so that we might become divine ... but also that we might become truly human.
  • By his love, by his Son, by his Spirit, God makes his enemies his friends.
  • Run wild, King Jesus, through Muslim camps and show them your great love for them. Through dreams and visions may they come to know you. Amen.
  • Today I contemplate my divinity in Christ, his divine life in me. It is a good day.
  • Christ in me changes the world.
  • In Jesus the Messiah, God has joined himself to humanity and broken the power of sin and death.
  • Jesus is the True Light who gives light to everyone in the world. What if today we looked for the light of Christ in each other?
More random thoughts …

Saturday, April 30, 2016

Christ the Source of All Being

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15-17)
All things are created in Christ, through Christ and for Christ. Nothing exists apart from him. He is not on the outside of anything. He is within everything, holding everything together, causing everything to continue to exist. This is true not only of material things but of spiritual things as well — it is true of everything that has been created.

God is not merely a being, not even just the greatest of all beings. He does not merely have being — he is being, and is the necessary source of all other beings. God does not merely exist; he is existence. If he were not, if existence were a separate thing that God possessed and that caused him to be, then existence would be a higher being than God. It must be, then, that God is existence and being itself, who causes all other things to be. God revealed himself as being when he identified himself to Moses as “I AM that I AM.” Several times in the Gospel, the Lord Jesus revealed himself simply as “I AM”. In Acts 17, Paul affirmed that we all “live and move and have our being” in God.

The relationship between God and his creation is not merely like that of an artisan and his artifact. An artisan can place his creation on a shelf or pack it up and ship it off to a client and be done with it. But God is not only the maker of creation, he is present throughout as the continuing source of its being. It continues to exist because God is present within every part of it. If God were absent from any part, that part would simply not exist. The idea that anything could continue to exist without God being present within it as the cause of its continued existence comes from a much later philosophy than any known by the New Testament writers or the early Church Fathers.

As the creator and sustainer of everything that exists, then, Christ is necessarily present everywhere in the universe. His presence permeates everything. He is in every part of everything, keeping them all going. He is not identical with every part — that would be pantheism — but he is ever present within them as the source of their continued existence.

The spiritual realm also is his, and he is, likewise, present throughout. Though there are souls in rebellion against him, Christ is never absent from them, for their continued existence, even as spirit, is totally dependent upon him. It is his very presence — his loving, sustaining presence — in them that becomes a torment for them for as long as they turn away from him.

The presence of Christ does not just surround us — it pervades us. Yet, though we live and move and have our being in Christ, we do not pervade him. He remains who he is and we remain who we are. We do not lose our identity but we begin to realize our true identity — who we were really created to be in Christ. In turning to Christ, we are embracing the source of our existence, blessing the source of our identity, and we experience his loving presence not as torment but as the blessing it is.

Christ is the source of all being. Only in him do we come to know our true selves. It is only in Christ, then, that we find true reconciliation — with God, the world, each other and ourselves — to become what we really are. This is God’s plan in Christ concerning all things, and in this way, Christ is making all things new.
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)

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Worship Freely Given

https://www.flickr.com/photos/vishpool/4442737059
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)
This is a wonderful scene in Paul’s letter to the Jesus believers at Philippi. It portrays the exaltation of Christ, “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8). Is there any greater demonstration of love than this? Or any greater proof that God is love? It should be no wonder, then, that every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth will bow to him, and every tongue will confess him as Lord.

There are some Christians, perhaps many, who view this scene as a mixture of those who freely bow the knee in reverence and gladly confess the Lord Jesus, and of those who are forced to their knees in abject horror and utter defeat, with the confession of Christ wrenched from their unwilling mouths — I used to think such myself, but have in recent years come to repent of it. These latter are thought of as pressed down with their faces in the dirt under the feet of Jesus. One Christian I was recently in discussion with even thought of them as like those who are forced to their knees with their necks laid bare, longing for the sword to remove their heads and put them out of their misery.

Friends, that is not a worthy portrait of Christ. Nor is it in keeping with the context, with the way Paul described Christ just a few verses earlier, or with the reason Christ has been exalted by God and given the name above all names.

No, this scene is not a mixture of some folks freely honoring Christ while others must be forced. It is a scene of every knee bowing in reverence and every tongue confessing in adoration. The language of bowing the knee is not about what is done against one’s will — and it is certainly not to be confused with an enemy having his neck under the foot of his vanquisher. Bowing the knee is honor willingly offered.

Likewise, confession is not what must be pulled through one’s teeth. It is freely given, and from the heart. Paul speaks two other times about the confession that Jesus is Lord. In 1 Corinthians 12:3, he tells us that no one can say “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. In Romans 10:9, he says that those who confess “Jesus is Lord,” will be saved. How, then, could we ever imagine that any of those in Philippians 2:11 who confess Jesus as Lord — which is everyone — are lost? We cannot.

Let us place this further in context. In the verses that follow, Paul returns to his original purpose for appealing to the self-giving nature of Christ and his consequent exaltation:
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed — not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence — continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. (Philippians 2:12-16)
Paul wants the Philippian believers to have the same mindset as Christ: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Philippians 2:3-4). It is not a question about whether or not they are saved. Nor is about somehow working for their salvation. But it is about living out the salvation that is already theirs in Christ.

Is there “fear and trembling?” Yes. Is it the abject horror and utter defeat of a vanquished foe? Certainly not. Is it the threat of damnation, of losing their salvation? Not a whiff of it. “Fear and trembling” is about being circumspect, careful, diligent and respectful. J. B. Phillips translates it as having “a proper sense of awe and responsibility” (The New Testament in Modern Speech).

Paul does not want them to stand in the overwhelming presence of the One who is perfect love and be ashamed to realize that they have not shown love to each other. It is not, after all, a matter of trying to somehow come up with such love ourselves but of yielding to the One who is Love. For it is Love himself who is at work in us, not only giving us the ability to do what pleases divine love but also creating in us the desire to do so. In this way we become light for others, shining like stars so that they may come and honor Christ, confessing him as Lord.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Making All Things New

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:5)
Here is an interesting realization I had the other day as I was thinking on this verse: I noticed that it is not in the aorist tense, that is, describing a completed action. It is in the present tense, the active voice and the indicative mood. In other words, it describes an ongoing action.

What is interesting is that it is said at the end of the book of Revelation, after the Great Battle has taken place and John is shown the new heavens and the new earth, with the Lord Jesus seated on his throne — but Jesus does not say, “I have made everything new.” He says, “I am making everything new.” This shows us a couple of things. First, it indicates an ongoing process that has not yet, at that time, been completed. Second, it indicates that the end point of this process is everything made new. This, then, is not the final scene, for there is more yet to do. In the final scene, everything will be restored and reconciled to God, for as Paul says, God will be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

But what yet remains to be done in between “I am making everything new” and “God will be all in all”? I think we can see an indication just a couple of verses later. Christ speaks of the water of life being given freely to those who thirst (v. 6), and of those who have “overcome” inheriting all things (v. 7). But then he speaks of a different group: “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars — they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death” (v. 8). Clearly, these have not yet been renewed. But in verse 5, Christ says that he is making everything new.

Is this “fiery lake of burning sulfur,” which is called “the second death,” a point of no return beyond which nothing can be renewed? That would seem to contradict the words of King Jesus in verse 5. But let’s look a moment at what fire and burning sulfur (or brimstone) signify. Fire was often used for the purpose of testing or purification. Sulfur, especially in conjunction with fire, was used for cleansing and purification. (See Fire, Brimstone and Torment

As we read further in Revelation, we see the great city, Jerusalem, come down from heaven to earth (vv. 9-21). There is no temple built therein, for God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple (v. 22). The glory of God illuminates the city and the Lamb is its Light (v. 23). But then something occurs that is quite unexpected, if we have been reading Revelation from the beginning: “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it” (v. 24). Where did these suddenly come from? Throughout the book of Revelation, the nations and the kings of the earth are the ones who have been the enemies of Christ and the Church.

The nations are shown in Revelation as being prophesied against (10:10-11), as the angry recipients of God’s wrath (11:18), as drinking the “maddening wine” of Babylon the Great (14:8 and 18:3), as those whose cities collapsed in their war against God (16:19), as part of the waters upon which the Great Prostitute was seated (17:15), as led astray (18:23) and as stuck down by the “sharp sword” coming out of the mouth of Christ (19:15). The kings of the earth are chief among those who hid in caves and begged the mountains to fall on them, to hide them from the face of the Lord and the wrath of the Lamb (6:15-17). They are the ones who have “committed adultery” with the Great Prostitute and become “intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries” (17:1-2). They “committed adultery” with her (18:3) and mourned over her destruction (18:9). Finally, they aligned with the “beast” and gathered their armies together to wage war against Christ and the saints. But they are defeated and dispatched, destroyed by the “sword” from the mouth of Christ.

But that is not the end of their story nor the final word on their destiny, for here they come now, the nations and the kings of the earth, entering into the Holy City, bringing their splendor with them in honor of the King. What accounts for this sweeping change? They have been cleansed and purified. They have been made new. (See After the Lake of Fire)

King Jesus is in the process of making everything new, and we will know when it is completed, for then God will be “all in all.

Monday, April 25, 2016

What if “All” Means All?

Basilica of St. Apollinaris in Classe

God’s plan of redemption through Jesus Christ is quite inclusive — all, everyone, the whole world, everything — not leaving out anyone or anything. All that has been lost because of man’s rebellion against God is in the process of being restored so that, in the end, everything will be made new and God will be all in all.

In the following catena of Scriptures, I take “all” as meaning all, understanding the all-inclusive nature of the language to be … well, all-inclusive.
  • Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. (John 12:31-32)
  • Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. (Acts 3:20)
  • Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. (Romans 5:18)
  • For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:22)
  • When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:28)
  • 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)
  • In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he 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 1:7-10)
  • Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)
  • 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)
  • The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)
  • 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)
  • He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:5)
Now, there are several important things to notice about this universal reconciliation and restoration: First, it does not happen apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s plan and purpose is to bring all things together into unity in and through Christ, reconciling all things in heaven and on earth to himself (see Ephesians 1:10 and Colossians 1:20).

Second, it does not happen apart from the cross. It is through the blood of the cross that God has made peace, making possible the reconciliation of all things in heaven and on earth (see Colossians 1:20).

Third, it does not happen apart from repentance, all who have turned away from God turning back to him (see 2 Peter 3:9).

Fourth, it does not happen apart from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In Philippians 2:9-11, Paul tells us that every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord. The language of the knee bowing and the tongue confessing is not about what is coerced but, rather, what is offered freely and willingly.

The final restoration of all things does not happen apart from any of the above, but in the end, it does and will happen. For in the end, God will be not just all in some but, as Paul declares, “all in all.”

No doubt, the view I express here will raise many questions and objections by people who believe or have been taught that the Scriptures teach otherwise. That is quite understandable — before I came to believe that God’s “all” truly means all, I had many questions and objections about it myself. But as I continued to study the Scriptures and meditate on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, I came to see that those questions and objections have sound, biblical answers. I have written about many of these over the past year, under the theme, Last Things.

Friday, April 22, 2016

Intention and Inerrancy


My faith as a Christian is that the Holy Scriptures are true and trustworthy, authoritative and infallible in all God intends to do and teach through them. That does not mean, however, that they are inerrant in whatever way we might wish to take them today from our culturally conditioned viewpoints. Nor does it suggest that they are subject to the empirical methods of modern science concerning what is acceptable as reliable knowledge, or to modern ideas of historicity.

The notion of biblical “inerrancy” that is generally on offer in many North American churches (though not so much elsewhere) is of fairly recent vintage. It arose in a fundamentalist fervor in the 20th century and was presented in an attempt to defend the veracity of the Scriptures against the perceived onslaught of modern empirical science.

In practice, though, “inerrantists” themselves tend toward the use of the empirical method to answer the empirical criticisms brought against the Scriptures. But in playing by the rules of the empirical sciences, they in effect concede that the Scriptures are subject to scientific verifiability. That misunderstands the Scriptures and what they are about.

Complicating matters even more, “inerrantists” also tend toward literalistic readings that were unknown in the early Church, by the authors of the New Testament, or even by the writers of the Old Testament. But it is these new, literalistic readings that they attempt to defend by the empirical methodologies of their opponents.

In the Scriptures themselves, however, we find a very different standard of infallibility and a very different understanding about the authority of God’s words. In Isaiah, the Lord speaks through his prophet and says:
As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10-11)
Here is the key point: The word that proceeds from the mouth of God accomplishes whatever God intends for it to do. This is the measure of the truthfulness, trustworthiness, authority and infallibility of Scripture.

What, then, does God intend the Scriptures to do? The Lord Jesus answers this for us: The Law and the Prophets — that is, the Old Testament Scriptures — are about him (the New Testament writings, of course, are manifestly about him). We see this, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17).

In a rebuke to the Jewish leaders who rejected him, he said, “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life … If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me” (John 5:39-40, 46).

To the two disciples who were on the road to Emmaus, on the evening following Jesus’ resurrection raised from the dead (Luke 24:13-32), he said, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” (vv. 25-26). Luke adds this comment: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (v. 27). Then when the two disciples finally recognized Jesus, they said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (v. 32).

That same evening, Jesus appeared to the eleven disciples in the upper room and said, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44). Luke adds, “Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.”

The Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament) are all about Christ. Their authority and trustworthiness is rooted in their testimony about him. That is how the New Testament authors all understood them, as teaching us about the Lord Jesus. Such understanding did not arise for them from a literalistic reading but because they had come to know the crucified and risen Christ, who taught that the Scriptures are about him. The early Church Fathers, likewise, receiving the tradition handed down by the apostles, read and understood the Scriptures as speaking about Christ.

The truth and trustworthiness of the Scriptures is found in what God intends for them to do: Jesus taught that they are about him. Within that, Paul finds a secondary purpose:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
Teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. These have nothing to do with the methods of modern science and history but everything to do with the truth of Christ and the gospel, so that followers of Christ may be thoroughly equipped for living the Christ life.

The truthfulness, trustworthiness, authority, infallibility of Scripture is in its testimony to Jesus Christ and its usefulness for the faith and life of the Church.

Friday, March 25, 2016

Breaking the Powers

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In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family.

So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says, “I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; in the assembly I will sing your praises.” And again, “I will put my trust in him.” And again he says, “Here am I, and the children God has given me.”

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 2:10-15)
Sons and daughters. Brothers and sisters. God is intensely interested in his children — his family. He is not ashamed to call us sons and daughters but desires to bring us into the full experience and participation of his glory.

Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. He came to set us free, and it is for this reason that God became a man. It was necessary that he fully share in our humanity, to become mortal flesh and experience death, so that by the life and power of God he might overcome death for us all. His death, then, became the means by which the power of the devil, the power and fear of death, was broken.

Death was not a retaliatory judgment of God on the sin of man but the natural consequence of man turning away from life. It was the devil who tempted man to sin, to rebel and turn away from God, the very source of life. When life is rejected, what else is left except death? So here is another reason why Jesus needed to become a man.
For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2:17-18)
Jesus knows exactly what it is like to go through trials and tests and temptations. He experienced them at their most fundamental level yet remained faithful throughout, even to the point of death. And having suffered such things himself, he is well able to help us in our time of testing. He has, in a word, broken the power of sin.

Here, then, is the reason for Good Friday and the Cross: It is where the Lord Jesus broke the powers — the power of sin, the power of the devil and the power of death. And having broken the powers, he is able to reconcile us back to God, by the blood of the cross, and breathe new life — his life — into us by the Holy Breath of God.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Christ the Covenant and the Light

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This is what God the LORD says — the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out, who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it: “I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.” (Isaiah 42:5-7)
In the first part of Isaiah 42, God spoke about Messiah, his chosen one in whom he delights and on whom he has put his Spirit. Now he speaks to him. It is a most solemn occasion and God recounts the basis of his authority for what he is about to convey to him. He speaks expressly as the creator of heaven and earth, the giver of life and breath to all who walk the planet. There is none higher, none mightier, none that compares to him in any way.

“I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness,” he says. It is out of his goodness, justice and rightness that he commissions Messiah. It is a powerful display of his holy love. So he commits to lead him as by the hand, and to guard him on through to the completion of his mission.

“I will … make you to be a covenant for the people.” Our LORD is a covenant-making God who commits himself to his people to always do them good. Now he comes to the final, once-and-for-all covenant, the new covenant he promised through the prophet Jeremiah. But Messiah is not just the one through whom God makes this final covenant. Messiah himself is the covenant, in whom all the promises of God are fulfilled.

Lord Jesus is the promise of God’s deliverance of his people, but more than that, he himself is that deliverance. He is the one whom God has sent to open blind eyes, free the captives and release those who dwell in the bondage of darkness. He is the light of God’s glory, revealed even for the sake of the pagan nations, which is to say, the Gentiles, to bring them out of darkness.

The solemnity with which God makes covenant is revealed by the offering of sacrifice, the giving of life, the shedding of blood. In this new and final covenant, by which God forever delivers his people, Jesus himself is the sacrifice, and the blood by which this covenant is cut is his own. This is made plain by Jesus at the Passover meal, on the night he was handed over to wicked hands — the night before he was crucified:
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:19-20).
The giving of his body and blood is the covenant act by which Jesus the Messiah delivers us from the bondage and darkness of sin and death, and in partaking of his covenant meal, we participate in the reality and presence of that deliverance and reveal his light to the world. “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup,” Paul says, “you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26).

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Light to the Ends of the Earth

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Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born the LORD called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in his quiver. He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.” (Isaiah 49:1-3)
Messiah, God’s chosen servant, is representative of the whole of God’s chosen nation, Israel. He is the righteous Jew, the faithful Israelite. In a very real way, he is Israel, and so assumes the role Israel was intended to play in the plan of God: to bear the light of God’s glory to the nations. Israel had failed disastrously in that role, which is why Messiah was needed in the first place, to come and deliver her.

Where Israel had failed, however, Messiah would succeed. God would display his splendor through him, yet not without difficulty. For Messiah says, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all. Yet what is due me is in the LORD’s hand, and my reward is with my God” (Isaiah 49:4).

In the Gospel, John speaks of the Word, Jesus, through whom the whole world was made, and says, “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:10-11). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).

From this it might seem that the mission of Messiah would be largely ineffective — he was rejected by many of his own people. Did Messiah labor in vain? No, because that is not the whole story, not even of this prophecy in Isaiah 49. Messiah leaves it in the hands of the Lord, and the Lord has a plan that is more encompassing than initial conditions might have suggested.
And now the LORD says — he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD and my God has been my strength — he says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth." (Isaiah 49:5-6)
It was not enough just to gather in and restore Israel — too small a thing for what God desired to do. God’s plan through Messiah was to give light to all the nations and reach the whole world with salvation. This was God’s promise to Abraham from the beginning: “All peoples will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3).

So in the Gospel, John says, “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:11-12). And in the Sermon on the Mount, though Jesus said that few would find the path to life, he was speaking of the Jews at that time, who within a generation would be facing the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. But in the very next chapter he says, “Many will come from the east and the west [the nations], and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 8:11). The book of Matthew ends with Jesus sending his disciples to make disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:18-20).

In Romans 11, Paul speaks of Israel’s blindness in rejecting Messiah. Yet it is not a permanent blindness nor a permanent rejection. “Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles [the nations] to make Israel envious” (Romans 11:11). Gentiles who turn to Messiah are “grafted in” to Israel, to be included in God’s promise. The end result: “I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25-26). Jews and Gentiles, counted together as Israel, come finally to salvation through faith in Jesus the Messiah. Yet Paul has even more to say about the reach of God’s saving purpose, which knows no limits.
  • In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to bring to unity all things in heaven and on earth under Christ" (Ephesians 1:7-10).
  • 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)
  • God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. (2 Corinthians 5:19)
  • Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)
  • When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:28)
In God’s eternal plan in Christ, it is too small a thing to deliver Israel and not the rest of the nations, too small a thing to redeem a few and not many, and too small a thing to save only some and not all. Christ is the restorer of Israel and the light for the nations who brings salvation to the ends of the earth.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

The Way of Christ’s Kingdom

Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his teaching the islands will put their hope. (Isaiah 42:1-4)
On the first day of that final week, Jesus rode into Jerusalem to deliver his people. It was in fulfillment of the messianic prophecy in Zechariah:
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.
This was the promise of deliverance for Israel. God’s Messiah King would come and defeat the enemies, removing their ability to make war. Yet, though he came to do battle, he rode in not on a warhorse but on a lowly donkey. His disciples — not only the Twelve but a whole multitude who were following him — recognized this prophetic fulfillment. They strew his way with their garments in recognition of his royalty.
When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:37-38)
Their deliverance was at hand, entering into the Holy City before their eyes. The kingdom of God was breaking into the world, just as Jesus had promised, and they rejoiced greatly over it. But were they prepared for how he would bring it about?

Isaiah 42 shows us Messiah as the Servant, on whom was the Spirit of the Lord, and how he would bring justice not only to Israel but to all the nations. Not by the violence of military might — no warhorses for him — nor by riots or brash demonstrations. It would come by meekness, which is not weakness but strength revealed in gentleness. “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.”

The kingdom of God comes by Christ’s patient endurance until the knowledge of His glory fills all the earth. It comes not by terror but by trust in him who is the hope of the nations. It comes not by military overthrow or political machination but by the cross, where Christ poured himself out for our sake and won complete victory over the real enemy. The Servant we see depicted in Isaiah 42 is the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, who is afflicted for our sake, to deliver us from our sins and make us whole with his divine peace. This is the way the kingdom of God comes and why Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Sunday must lead to the cross on Good Friday.