The Fourth Heaven

Master 262: Advent 2011, Matthew 1-2

2011-12-04T16:54:00.000-08:00

We're continuing in this series on the Christmas Story in the Four Gospels--that is, we are continuing to look at what each of the gospel writers has to say about the Advent of Jesus Christ. We want to get a sense of (1) how each of the gospel writers views this significant event and (2) how their perspectives complement one another, in order to expand our own view of Christ's work and ministry.

Mark begins his account of Jesus' ministry with his baptism, at the age of thirty. The coming of Jesus, according to Mark, opens up a radically new possibility for people--the possibility of life with God. Six hundred years before Jesus' baptism, the prophet Isaiah spoke of a day when God would come to His people. At Jesus' baptism, Mark says, the heavens were torn open and a point of access between God and humanity was established. The Spirit of God also descended at that time, and Jesus went on to announce that the kingdom of God is at hand. All of these things point to the presence and accessibility of God in Jesus Christ--the opportunity for relationship.

Matthew has a wider vision and scope. He pushes back the coming of Christ along two dimensions. He goes farther back to the birth of Jesus and to the experience of His step-father, Joseph. He also goes farther back in history. Instead of connecting Jesus' coming just to the prophecies of Isaiah, he connects it to figures like Moses and Abraham.

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Mark's gospel was likely written to a Roman audience, one that would have been unfamiliar (and largely uninterested in) the Jewish context that formed the background of Jesus' life. It's also possible that the strong influence of Roman mythology created special problems for their really grasping the message of Jesus. Perhaps it was to avoid confusion that Mark chose not to include a birth narrative in his gospel.

Matthew's gospel was most likely written in the region immediately surrounding Israel. After Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension, the small movement of Christ-followers began to grow in the region of Jerusalem and Judea. In those earliest days of the church, almost all of the followers of Jesus came from Jewish communities. But others of the Jewish people--especially the religious leaders--formed the principle opposition to the young movement of Christianity.

The prophets of the Old Testament spoke of a messiah and deliverer whom God would send. They spoke of a king, in the line of David, who would rise to lead His people. Many Jewish people saw, in Jesus, the fulfillment of these prophecies. But others saw Jesus in a different light--as a threat to the Jewish traditions and as undermining all their expectations. It was in this context that Matthew wrote his gospel, wrote his own account of the life and ministry of Jesus. And one of his aims in writing, it seems, was to show people that Jesus did indeed come in fulfillment of God's plan. Jesus did not come to abolish or overthrow what God had revealed in the Old Testament; rather, He came precisely to fulfill the plan that God had put in place all those years ago.

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Of all the gospel writers, Matthew refers to the Old Testament the most. At least ten times he uses the expression, "All this happened to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets." He cites the Old Testament directly 54 times and draws over 250 allusions and verbal parallels to the Old Testament.

At the same time that he is defending Christianity against its opponents, I think, Matthew is also writing for the community of early Christians, who are facing hard times and persecution. By pointing to the past, Matthew is reminding them that God's work is not random. He is a God of order, and He is working out a plan. They can trust that God has been and will continue to accomplish His work.

But this is the point at which we need to stop and think. That all sounds really good: 'God is a God of order. God doesn't do things randomly.' But doesn't it sometimes feel like God's work is random? Don't you sometimes feel like things are completely disordered and out of control? Sometimes we ask, "Why is God letting this happen?" "Why doesn't God change things?" "Why am I facing all of these problems and struggles?" It may sound good to say that God has a plan, but what does that actually look like?

For answers, we're going to look at the experience of Joseph, as recorded by Matthew. Joseph enters history at a crucial turning point in God's plan, so let's see whether we can find in his experience evidence of this highly ordered and organized God at work.

I won't copy the text of Matthew 1-2 into this blog. You can read through it by accessing this LINK. Do read through all of it. Matthew opens with a genealogy, but don't just skip over that. Read through it. Pay attention to the names listed. Do you recognize any? Think about the history and events that are reflected in the names listed there. And then go on to read through the end of chapter two.

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I'm not going to go step by step through this entire passage. (My entry on Mark was long enough and that was only fifteen verses, compared to the forty-eight here in Matthew.) I'm going to presuppose your familiarity with the outline of this story and focus just on Joseph's experience. Joseph plays a really important role in the life of Jesus. He raised and protected the infant messiah, along with Mary. Now what would we expect for a man who plays such a central role in God's plan? Just running through Matthew's account, one comes away with the impression that God was guiding his footsteps at every stage along the way. But let's look a little more closely and think about how things must have looked from Joseph's perspective. Again, our question is: does Joseph's experience provide evidence of the working of a highly ordered and organized God?

Joseph is introduced to us in the following way: "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit." (1:18) Now that is not a highly ordered or organized beginning. Some will understand better than others the train wreck that has just broken in on Joseph's life. Because we're familiar with the rest of the story, we may have trouble sympathizing. But we need to stop and realize what's happened here. Joseph has just learned that the woman that he is soon to marry--with whom he's never had sexual relations--is pregnant.

Try to put yourself in Joseph's place. He's a young guy--about eighteen years old, probably working for the family carpentry business. Their families have arranged for Joseph and Mary to wed. At that young age, what do you expect he's feeling? Excitement? Nervousness? The weight of responsibility? How much advice has come in over the last several weeks? How much planning has taken place? There's a lot of excitement and work involved. From what Luke tells us about these events, it seems that Mary went away to visit her cousin Elizabeth for some time. Joseph hasn't seen her in a while. There's probably been very little communication. Finally word comes that she's returned to their village. He goes to meet her. And he finds that she's pregnant.

How would you respond? What thoughts would run through your mind? Despite your best efforts to block those suggestions and voices in your head, what would you invariably dwell on? What questions would you ask? Could you resist asking who the "father" is? Would you even want to hear her explanation? And this is not a question just for men. For all the women, what would you do if you learned that your fiance had been with someone else? And there's not just the personal injury that's taken place. There's the humiliation and shame that comes with that too. Everyone's been invited to the wedding. What will people say? What will people think?

What would you feel? Anger? Resentment? Hatred? Hurt? Betrayal? What would you do? Notice how Joseph responds. Matthew writes, "And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her, decided to put her away secretly." (1:19)

Could you react in the way that he does? He does not want to disgrace her. Most people would think a desire to disgrace her perfectly natural--maybe even appropriate. After what she's done to him, wouldn't you expect there to be a desire for revenge or some form of pay-back? Yet there's none of that. Matthew tells us that Joseph is a righteous man. In light of her infidelity, he cannot, in good conscience, marry her. But he does not cease to care for her. It seems that he does not cease to love her. He wants to protect her. [We'll talk more about this later.]

"But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins." (1:20-21)

That is certainly unexpected. An angel shows up and tells him the truth about Mary's pregnancy. She has not been unfaithful but has been chosen by God to bear His Son. This, he is told, is from the Holy Spirit. Does that make everything better? Certainly, in some ways. But this revelation doesn't solve all their problems. How many people will believe their story? They're still going to have to live amongst family and friends who will wonder. There will still be whispers and stares on their wedding day. People will think Joseph a fool. Maybe they'll continue to think worse of Mary. This is not an easy road that the angel is recommending to them. But Joseph is obedient to the command he's received from God.

"And Joseph arose from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took her as his wife, and kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus." (1:24-25)

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The next section opens, "Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem…" (2:1) Matthew doesn't tell us at this point but a number of things have changed between the end of chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 2. We should take note of these. Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth, a small village in Galilee (that is, northern Israel). Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a town outside of Jerusalem in Judah (that is, southern Israel). From Luke's gospel we know that Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem for the Roman census and that Jesus was born in a stable there shortly after their arrival. When the magi arrive in Jerusalem, about two years have passed, and Joseph and Mary are still living in Bethlehem.

Now, Scripture does not give us anything clear on this point, but I think its worth reflecting on imaginatively: why are Joseph and Mary still living in Bethlehem? Nazareth is their home. Nazareth is where family, friends, and support for this young family are. They were strangers in Bethlehem when they arrived. In two years time, why have they not returned to Nazareth?

(Again, this is all pure speculation, but) I wonder if their experience wasn't unlike many of ours. We all have plans and goals. But often life has a way of interfering. I'm sure that they planned to return to Nazareth as soon as they had finished their legal obligations. But traveling with a new-born might be difficult. Maybe they decided that it would be good to stay in Bethlehem for just a short time--a few weeks or months--and return to Nazareth after that. Of course they couldn't continue to live in a stable, and they would need clothes and other things for the baby. Perhaps they sold their donkey in order to pay for these things. Of course, without a donkey, they were even farther from getting home. But Joseph would work and save money for another that they could use for the return trip. But maybe work was hard to find. We know that Joseph and Mary were poor to begin with. And how much help could they get in the city. The area around Jerusalem was fairly cosmopolitan. But Nazareth was more of a country, backwoods sort of community. Joseph and Mary probably didn't fit in real well. It was probably difficult for them to make friends. We can't be sure that this is what happened. But it is the sort of thing that does happen.

And, for whatever reason, Joseph and Mary continue to find themselves living in Bethlehem. Is this what we would expect for the family that is at the center of God's plan and work? Again, does this sound like it's well-ordered and organized? Or does it seem very random?

The next thing that happens certainly is very random. I imagine Joseph, one night, pulling the garbage cans out to the front curb. He opens up the side gate and finds himself staring into muzzle of a massive camel. Recovering from his shock, he looks out across his lawn and sees ten, twenty, thirty more camels and other pack animals. Men and women dressed in foreign costumes. Remember that Joseph doesn't know about the arrival of the magi in Jerusalem. He doesn't know about the star that they saw or that they were coming to his home. What must it have been like for him to see them in front of his home? For a more contemporary picture, just imagine coming out of your house and seeing a dozen black Escalades parked in front of your property. And a gentleman in a dark suit comes up to you, "Do you have a two-year-old boy in your home? We have reason to believe that he's the king of the Jews."

"And they came into the house and saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell down and worshiped Him; and opening their treasures they presented to Him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh." (2:12)

This is all certainly unexpected. But, of course, it's unexpected in a good way--these gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. There is probably more gold presented to the family on that night than Joseph has every seen at one place at one time. And isn't that more like the way in which we expect the servant of God to be treated.

What thoughts do you suppose are running through their heads? What thoughts would run through your head? Now we finally have enough money to make the trip back to Nazareth. Not only that but when we get there, we'll be able to afford the nicest house in town. Things look like they're really turning around. What an incredible blessing from God.

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And then verse 13 happens.

"Now when [the magi] had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, "Arise and take the Child and His mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him."

That very night! The magi leave, and in less than twenty-four hours, Joseph receives word of a death threat against the Child. The angel tells him to flee immediately to Egypt. They leave that very night. (2:13) The money that they were going to use to return to Nazareth is now being used to finance their trip to Egypt.

Have you been there? It seems a not-uncommon experience. You get your tax-return check in the mail and are all excited. "This money's going in the vacation fund!" or "This money's going into the 50-inch TV fund!" And that's when the dryer breaks, or the car needs an emergency overhaul, or the plumbing goes haywire, or a relative needs surgery. And suddenly--well--, "This money was going in the vacation fund." And it seems like this can't possibly be the work of an orderly and organized God. If God were orderly and organized then, surely, that money would be going toward the vacation fund! Have you been there?

And now Joseph and Mary find themselves running for their lives with the baby Jesus. They leave under the cover of darkness. Bethlehem is only a couple miles from Jerusalem where Herod is, and Joseph has no idea exactly what form this threat will take. Perhaps they avoid the roads to begin with, and that makes travel even more difficult. Eventually they'll join some sort of caravan headed for Egypt. Again, they'll be surrounded by strangers. But this time, as they travel, their eyes and ears are straining. What are the people around them saying? Is anyone taking note of or talking about them? Does anyone in the group look suspicious? Who can say whether any of them is a spy for King Herod? Every time the caravan stops for rest, Joseph's anxiety must increase. It's not safe for them to stop. It's not safe for them to wait.

There be many times, during this trip, when Joseph thinks of how much better it would have been if God had chosen a soldier or someone with more strength or resources to be the step-father of Jesus. Eventually, after many, many days, they arrive in Egypt. They probably settle in one of the many Jewish communities there. Do you suppose they feel safe at that point? Perhaps it's after their arrival that news finally reaches them about the massacre that took place in Bethlehem--about the soldiers who broke down doors and raided homes and butchered all the baby boys in that village. Joseph probably knows of children living in his neighborhood or a few streets over--children who are now dead.

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We don't know how long Joseph and his family remained in Egypt. But eventually an angel comes to him with the news that Herod is dead. The angel then directs him to return to Israel. "And he arose and took the Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he departed for the regions of Galilee, and came and resided in a city called Nazareth…". (2:21-23)

What do you think? Do these events bear the marks and finger-prints of a God of order? Is this how we expect the righteous servants of God to be treated? I think it's right to say that, from Joseph's perspective, the events that took place were extremely disordered. The things that he had to deal with, the challenges he faced, the problems that came up, the upsets and turn-arounds. They seem to be disordered in exactly the way that we've come to expect ordinary life to be disordered.

In what sense, then, does it make sense to speak of God working out a plan? Of course, in Joseph's case, angels appeared at crucial times and places to direct him. The thought might come to us: if only God would do that in my life. On the other hand, maybe we do recognize God's occasional interventions in our own lives, but what troubles us is the long stretches of time in between where God seems to be silent. The angel appeared to Joseph after Mary's pregnancy was discovered. The angel didn't return until two years later. It then may have been several more years before the angel came again. And in between those visits, Joseph had to struggle to make a life for him and Mary, in Bethlehem and then in Egypt. How often must they have fretted about finances, struggled with loneliness, and worried about their safety? Where was God in those times? Was He really working out a plan?

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This is the challenge that Matthew faces as He looks back on these events and prepares to write. He's trying to help the Jewish people understand that Jesus fulfills the Old Testament writings--that Jesus' life fits into the larger plan that God has revealed. Can he pull that off? Yes, he can.

From Joseph's perspective, things must have looked random and disordered. But Matthew looks back on these events from several years later. He recognizes the finger-prints of God on those events. But how can he help people to see that? He provides the reader with the interpretive key. [I'll focus on just this one example of Matthew's doing this.]

Go back to vv. 13-15. After describing the instructions of the angel to Joseph, Matthew writes, "And he arose and took the Child and His mother by night, and departed for Egypt; and was there until the death of Herod, that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, 'Out of Egypt did I call My Son.'"

You might not think twice about it, but that line of prophecy actually raises some pretty interesting puzzles. Matthew is quoting there from the prophet Hosea, and here's the trick: When God says those words to Hosea, He's not talking about the future Messiah. In that part of Hosea's book, God is actually recounting what He did in the past for the nation of Israel.

"When Israel was a youth I loved him,
And out of Egypt I called My son.
The more [the prophets] called them,
The more they went from them;
They kept sacrificing to the Baals
And burning incense to idols." (11:1-2)

This is enough of the material to give you the idea. In that passage, God isn't talking about His Son (Jesus) being in Egypt. He's talking about the nation of Israel being enslaved to the Egyptians and about the way in which He delivered them. What is Matthew doing, then, when He cites this prophecy. Has Matthew simply made a mistake? Is he twisting the words and meaning of Scripture? Is he trying to trick the Jews? Is there some hidden meaning to the Scriptures that only he's able to pick out?

No, none of these explain what Matthew is doing. What Matthew is doing is drawing people's attention to the pattern in God's way of working. He invites people to remember how God worked in the past so that they can better understand his work in the present. Matthew already understands that Jesus came to redeem humanity--to save people from their sins. Jesus' is the definitive redeeming and saving work. But it's not the first time that God worked redemptively or salvifically. And one of the biggest redemptive works in Israel's history took place when God delivered the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt.

Sending Jesus into Egypt was not the first time that God's plan involved sending His "child" into Egypt. Many centuries before, when the nation of Israel was still just twelve brothers and their families, God sent them into Egypt to deliver them from a terrible famine. In a similar way, God sent Joseph, Mary, and Jesus into Egypt to deliver them from death at the hands of Herod.

Later on, when the Egyptians turned against Israel and enslaved them, God raised up a deliverer for the nation of Israel. But while that deliverer, Moses, was still a baby, his life was threatened by a king who wanted to kill all the male Israelite children. Isn't that interesting. And when God raised up someone who would deliver people from their enslavement to sin, the life of that deliverer was also threatened by a king who wanted to kill all the male children in Bethlehem.

Years later, when Moses was about eighty years old, God called Him to Egypt to deliver the people of Israel from slavery. Moses' life had been threatened by the Egyptians and he was afraid to go there but God assured Him. "Moses, go and deliver my people. The men who were seeking your life are dead." And when God prepares to start the work of saving the world, how does that begin? With a message of assurance, "All those who sought the Child's life are dead."

Matthew can say to his Jewish audience, "Look, you've seen how God worked in the past. You know that God delivered you from slavery in Egypt. Well now He's sent another deliverer--one who will save you from your sin. Just look at His life and you'll see the marks and finger-prints of God. They are the signs that God is really the one accomplishing this work. Joseph didn't orchestrate these events. Joseph probably wasn't even aware of how his life was falling into this pattern. Joseph didn't plan to have Herod threaten his life. Joseph didn't want to go to Egypt. "I think I'm going to reenact typologically God's redemptive work in the Exodus in order to convince people that Jesus Christ really is the savior sent from God." That thought never crossed his mind. Yet these two sets of events, separated by over a thousand years, line up so well.

Secular historians will take this as evidence that Matthew invented or fabricated elements of the birth narrative. These kinds of parallels can only be explained by the intentional work of an author, they insist. And the Christian can reply, "Well of course." These events are the work of an author--but not a merely human author. When the story being told is the history of the world and the characters are real people, the one creating and inventing the story can't be any mere human being. God is the one true author. And He uses all the best literary techniques. There's no other way to explain it.

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What then should we take from this? It's nice to be able to look back with Matthew on Joseph's experience and see the marks of God's handiwork. But how should we cope with life when we're in the middle of it? Joseph can help us with that.

Joseph did not know or understand the big picture. He did not have a clear-sighted vision of how the events in his life were fitting into God's overarching plan. Yet his actions fell into perfect alignment with the pattern of how God works. How can this be? And how did Joseph cope with the uncertainty, with the questions about the future, with his ignorance of what was coming? Clearly there was a lot that Joseph did not know. But there were two things that he almost certainly did know.

First, Joseph almost certainly knew his history. Matthew also draws our attention to history--through Old Testament allusions and the genealogy with which he opens his gospel. The history of Israel is one long sequence of experiences of God's goodness and faithfulness. If you just sped through the genealogy, you probably missed that. If you just sped through the genealogy, you probably missed out on one of the key factors that enabled Joseph to walk through all the difficulties and challenges that he faced.

Joseph almost certainly knew his history. He almost certainly knew about the experience of the patriarch, Joseph (after whom he was probably named). Joseph started out life as the youngest and favorite of his father's children. He was given all the advantages within the home. His brothers were so jealous of him that they sold him into slavery in Egypt. But Joseph worked diligently and faithfully and was eventually placed in charge of his master's entire household. Unfortunately his high position drew the attention of his master's wife. When he resisted her advances, she retaliated by accusing him of trying to rape her. Joseph was thrown into prison. But while in prison, he conducted himself so admirably that he was placed in charge of that prison. This gave him the opportunity to interact with the king's own butler. He interpreted one of the butler's dreams and then asked the butler to bring his case before the king. But the butler forgot about him and he spent two more years in prison. But finally the butler did remember him, brought his case to the king, and because of Joseph's excellent gifts, the king appointed Joseph to be the second-highest ruler in Egypt.

Many Christians read the story of Joseph and come away expecting God to appoint them to the second-highest ruler positions in life. They ignore or forget that Joseph's journey to that destination was a long one. They don't pay attention to the way in which Joseph was diligent, obedient, and faithful throughout even under the most difficult and unfair circumstances. I wonder if Joseph, the step-father of Jesus, thought often about that other Joseph's experience. Perhaps his example served as an encouragement to not give up and to continue living and trusting in God.

Joseph almost certainly knew his history. Second, Joseph knew that God was with him in the present. We can point to the angel's visits to show that God was active in Joseph's life. But I think we find evidence elsewhere as well. Remember how Joseph reacted to the news of Mary's pregnancy. When everything about the situation pointed to betrayal, deception, and lies, Joseph still responded with love and compassion. How did he do that? I think it must have been that Joseph knew that God was with him. Joseph knew that God was taking care of him. Joseph knew that God would continue to provide for him. And that gave Joseph the freedom to be able to love Mary and care for Mary, even when he thought that she had betrayed him. So much of the anger that we feel comes from our awareness that someone has hurt us, that someone has injured us, that someone has taken something from us that we cannot reclaim. But the person who is close to God can rest in the knowledge that God will provide all that we need. The world can strip away so much from us, but with God we will lack for nothing. Again, maybe that sounds like so many pretty-sounding words, but the example of Joseph should cause us to pause. Here's a man who lived it out. When it looked like so much had just been torn out of his life, he was still able to be generous and loving to Mary. How else would you explain that?

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How was Joseph able to carry out God's will in spite of uncertainty and difficulty? When we face uncertainty our immediate response is often to cry out, "WHY???" We want the explanation now. When we sense God calling us to step out in faith, there's a natural impulse to want to know in advance how things will turn out. And if the end result is not to our liking or too difficult to see, we often refuse to step out in obedience. When facing a world that seems random and disordered, when confronted with decisions about what direction to take and where to go, we want to know why and we want to know the future. Joseph knew neither of these things. He knew his history and he knew the God that was with him in the present. That was enough for him. And that is enough for us.

Again, it was probably not easy for Joseph. There were probably many times when he felt frustrated or even abandoned by God. But he continued to walk in obedience. And because he walked in obedience, Matthew was able to look back on his life and see the finger-prints of God in the events of His life. Isn't that how it usually goes for us too. It's much easier to see the overarching plan in retrospect. We look back on the events of five, ten, or fifteen years ago and say, "Ah, I see now that God was teaching me something there or that these events took place for those reasons." Of course, if we choose not to obey God in the present, we won't be able to look back and see the finger-prints of God. But if we do live in obedience to God, our history tells us that we will be able to look back and see how God has directed our path at every turn.

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Mark points out that with the coming of Jesus comes a radical new opportunity: life with God.

Matthew helps us to understand what that life involves. With the coming of Jesus comes the opportunity to live in obedience to God and to become involved in the work that God is doing. You may wonder, "How can I become involved in God's plan if I don't know what the plan is--if I don't see or understand the big picture?" The truth is, we don't have to worry about that. If we'll only focus on being obedient to what God tells us to do right here and right now, he'll work out the big plan. After all, he is the author of this story. And we'll be able to look back, ten, twenty, thirty years from now and we'll see what an amazing thing God has done through us.

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 261: Looking for Advent Readings?

2011-11-28T13:58:00.000-08:00

Over the years I've put together a number of Advent Meditation Series. Not all of them are complete. If I get a chance I'll work on them this year. If you're interested in looking at some Scriptures over the next month, you might try looking at some of what I've written.

In December 2007, I put together a twenty-six part series, starting on 30 November (Graduate 77) and ending on 25 December (Graduate 102). That series is based on what's sometimes referred to as the Jesse Tree Advent calendar. That reading schedule moves through the Old Testament tracing the history and ancestry that leads up to Christ's birth.

In December 2009, I put together a twenty-five part series, starting on 01 December (Graduate 173) and ending on 25 December (Graduate 198). That series goes through the first chapter of the book of Ephesians--looking at one verse each day. That series is not complete; it's missing the last four days or so. I'll see about fixing that.

In November and December 2010, I started a five-part series (not yet finished) based on the four songs of Christmas. They are Zecharias' song (Master 220), Mary's song (Master 221), the angel's song (Master 222), and Simeon's song (Master 223), with one final Christmas meditation (Master 224). All of these songs appear in the gospel of Luke and have been an important part of the church's liturgy and celebration of Christmas. Each is supposed to correspond to one of the four Sundays of advent, which is why the first is posted on the last Sunday of November. Only the first two songs are posted.

This year, I'm going to put together a series on the Christmas story in the four gospels. The first entry is already posted.

However you choose to celebrate this season, I hope that you will take time and opportunity to remember and meditate on the Advent--the coming--of our Lord.

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 260: Advent 2011, Mark 1:1-15

2011-11-27T13:48:00.000-08:00

The Christmas Story in the Four Gospels

Prologue:

As I think about teaching during Advent, I find myself struggling with a question: How do we talk about the coming of Christ during this time of year without seeming to change the subject? "Changing the subject"? Now your first reaction might be to think: Talking about the coming of Christ during this time of year isn't changing the subject. After all, Christ's coming is what this season of year is all about.

That's true of course, but think about this. Think about your kids--especially if yours is one of those families that reads the Christmas story on Christmas morning before opening presents. How well do your kids take that? They may sit quietly, but I'll bet that when there's a pile of presents under the tree to be opened, turning to the biblical text feels to them like its "changing the subject." And as adults, its just as easy to get swept up in the fervor and excitement. Is there anything wrong with that? Is there anything wrong with parties and presents, warm feelings, happy moments, etc.? No! There's nothing wrong with those things in themselves. But when we fixate on them in such a way that turning to the Christmas story feels like an interruption...? And I wrestle with how to balance these. I don't want to be a killjoy. And I don't want to feel like I'm changing the subject whenever I call us to turn from the celebration of the Christmas season to the contemplation of the Christmas story.

Any suggestions? How should I deal with this tension as a teacher? How should you deal with it as a follower of Christ? As a parent or spouse? I'll return to that question at the end of this post.

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In this series, we're going to look at the Christmas story in the four gospels. Some who have been around church for a while or paid attention during Christmas may be immediately puzzled, because the Christmas story only appears in two of the four gospels. The angels, the wise men, the shepherds, the virgin birth--all of those things are only to be found in the accounts of Matthew and Luke. So how can we talk about the "Christmas story in the four gospels"?

Well, it's true that the Nativity is only recorded in Matthew and Luke. But Christ's Advent--his coming into the world to accomplish the work that God assigned to Him--: all of the gospel writers speak about that. And isn't that, after all, what Christmas is all about?

So we're going to look at Christ's Advent. Kind of like the introduction to a book, the introduction of Jesus Christ sets the stage and tone for everything that follows. And each of the gospel writers presents Christ's Advent in a slightly different way. Each of them writes from a unique perspective, with a different audience in view and set of concerns in mind. We want to look at all of these presentations in order to get a sense of the manifold significance of this event--an event that is larger and more complex than could be captured by any single perspective or treatment.

We'll start by looking at Mark's account. 'Why Mark's account?' you may ask. Isn't Matthew the first gospel in the New Testament? Well, there are a couple reasons for starting with Mark. Many scholars believe that Mark's was the first gospel to be written. Over 90% of the material that Mark covers appears in the other gospels, which has led some to think that their authors used Mark as a source. Not everyone buys into the theory of Markan priority. But it is still the case that Mark gives us the shortest and most concise presentation of the life and ministry of Jesus. While the other gospels record some of Jesus' longer sermons and discourses, Mark focuses primarily on the actions of Jesus. He presents one episode of Jesus' life after another in rapid suggestion with minimal commentary and few rhetorical flourishes. In fact, in some parts of the gospel you'll find that every verse and almost every sentence begins with words like, "and," "immediately," and "then." And Jesus did this. And Jesus did that. And then this happened. And immediately..."

Many scholars believe that Mark's gospel was written to the church in Rome--to a community of believers who would not have been as familiar with Jewish tradition and history. So Mark leaves a lot of stuff out that would have been more relevant and interesting for someone who grew up in the region of Palestine. For all these reasons, Mark's presentation of Christ's Advent seems like a good place to start this series. He'll give us the story in its most bare-bones form and we'll spend the next several sessions expanding on that basic picture by looking at what Matthew, Luke, and John add. Let's turn, then, to Mark 1:1-15.

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The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,

"Behold, I send My messenger before Your face,
Who will prepare Your way;
The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
'Make ready the way of the Lord,
Make His Paths straight.'"

John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. And John was clothed in camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey. And he was preaching, and saying, "After me One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of His sandals. I baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

And it came about in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him; and a voice came out of the heavens: "Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well-pleased."

And immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness. And He was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to Him.

And after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel."

(Mark 1:1-15)

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Your first thought may be that this all seems very un-Christmassy. No manger, no shepherds. It doesn't look, sound, feel, taste, or smell like what we expect of Christmas. But maybe that's exactly the point at which our thinking and view needs to be challenged. So let's dive into what Mark does say and see what we can learn about the Advent of our Lord.

"The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." Mark starts things off in a very straightforward and matter-of-fact way. "This is the beginning." Thanks, Mark. --but before we just skip over this first sentence to the meat of the passage, let's stop for a moment and think about that phrase: "the beginning of the gospel."

Where does the gospel begin? How does it begin? If you were to ask a lot of Christians, they'd probably tell you that the gospel of Jesus Christ begins something like this: Jesus died for my sins... But, of course, that doesn't happen until chapter 15. Jesus doesn't die until chapter 15 of Mark's book. If that were the beginning of the gospel, we wouldn't need the first fourteen chapters. Some people might like that--if every book of the Bible were only two chapters long. It wouldn't be so heavy. You could actually read it in a year. But Mark doesn't allow for that. He says that the gospel begins with chapter 1, verse 1.

Is Jesus' death part of the gospel? Absolutely. Is Jesus' death at the very center of the gospel? Yes. But is Jesus' death all there is to the gospel? No. Not according to Mark. There's more to it. The gospel is bigger than the death of Christ--just like Christmas is bigger than the Nativity and salvation is bigger than what God does for me individually and personally. Mark wants us to see that all of Jesus' ministry (at least) is included in the gospel.

A second thing to notice about this opening sentence is the way that it describes Jesus. This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus, Christ, the Son of God. Now at the beginning of Jesus' ministry probably no one was calling Him either Christ or Son of God. But Mark, writing after the fact, wants to make clear to his readers who this Jesus really is. He is the Christ--the Messiah, the Anointed One. He is the Son of God. Now those terms may not be totally transparent to us at this point, but we'll see that Mark fills in some of the details as he continues.

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With that, let's turn to the next verse. Mark has indicated that he is presenting the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he then goes on to tell us how the gospel begins. The gospel begins "as it is written in Isaiah the prophet." The gospel begins in the way that God outlined to the prophet Isaiah over 600 years before Jesus comes on the scene. Clearly the gospel is not something new. It's something that God's been planning for a while. And what is that plan? We get a description of it:

"Behold, I send My messenger before Your face,
Who will prepare Your way;
The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
'Make ready the way of the Lord,
Make His paths straight.'"

What we have here is actually a pair of quotations, first from Malachi 3:1 and then from Isaiah 40:3. It was not uncommon for first century writers and teachers, when quoting from Old Testament prophecies to name only the most important or prominent figure. Let's take a look at the Isaiah prophecy in order to get a fuller picture of God's agenda and plan.

This is how Isaiah 40:1-11 reads.

"Comfort, O comfort My people," says your God.
"Speak kindly to Jerusalem;
And call out to her, that her warfare has ended,
That her iniquity has been removed,
That she has received of the LORD's hand
Double for all her sins."

A voice is calling,
"Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
And let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley;

Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together;
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

A voice says, "Call out."
Then he answered, "What shall I call out?"
All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
When the breath of the LORD blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.

Get yourself up on a high mountain,
O Zion, bearer of good news,
Life up your voice mightily,
O Jerusalem, bearer of good news;
Lift it up, do not fear.
Say to the cities of Judah,
"Here is your God!"

Behold, the Lord GOD will come with might,
With His arm ruling for Him.
Behold, HIs reward is with Him,
And His recompense before Him.
Like a shepherd He will tend His flock,
In His arm He will gather the lambs,
And carry them in His bosom;
He will gently lead the nursing ewes. (Isaiah 40:1-11)

There's a lot here that we could talk about but the thing I'll focus on is just the two steps that are described here. First, God says, someone will come who will prepare the way for the Lord. And then "the glory of the LORD will be revealed," the cities of Judah will say, "Here is your God," and "the Lord GOD will come with might."

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After referring to this prophecy, Mark records, "John the baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins." In keeping with his style, Mark doesn't give us a lot of background of John the Baptist. The other gospel writers will give much more information about who he is, where he comes from, and who his parents are. Mark isn't concerned with all those details. What is important is that this man appears in the wilderness (as Isaiah's prophecy described) and he begins to prepare a people group.

Mark does give us this bit of description about John himself: "And John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey." This description might just seem to confirm John as an eccentric and as someone that we should probably not be listening to. That's certainly how most of us would react if someone came out of the desert today dressed like that, subsisting on grasshoppers and honey. But in that context, the people would have seen this a bit differently. In fact, they would have immediately recognized that John's appearance resembled that of the prophet Elijah. Elijah--who single-handedly took on 400 priests of Baal, who called down fire from heaven, who controlled the weather, raised a dead boy to life, and performed all sorts of other miracles--he was one of the greatest Old Testament prophets and he wore a hairy garment and a leather belt. That was strange dress in his own time. But the effect was that Elijah was immediately recognizable. People who saw or heard about the guy with the hairy garment and leather belt knew that he was Elijah.

Elijah was not only one of the greatest Old Testament prophets, but the prophet Malachi said that Elijah would come again one day before the final and definitive appearance of God in the world. (4:5) And then this guy, John, shows up in the wilderness. He looks like Elijah, he's calling people to change, and they're starting to respond.

The fact that people were responding is noteworthy for another reason: John was preaching a baptism of repentance. Baptism was not a ritual that one would undergo on a regular basis in order to be cleansed of sin. Baptism was a one-time ritual and it was reserved for those were converting to Judaism. So you can see why it seems strange that Jewish people from Judea and Jerusalem would be undergoing baptism. What are they converting to?

The people of Israel understood that they were God's chosen people. Going back to events in the life of Abraham and Moses we can see how God set a plan in motion that involved His having a special relationship with this particular people group. But over time the Jewish people began to take for granted their identity as the people of God. They thought that their ancestry and heritage gave them a privileged place in God's economy. And both John the Baptist and Jesus challenged these people to understand that just because they were descended from Abraham did not guarantee that they were the people of God. Just because they had a particular heritage, didn't make them the people of God. John the Baptist and Jesus challenged the Jewish people to respond personally to the call of God on their lives.

A similar challenge faces us in the modern world and church. Some people need to be reminded that just going to church doesn't make you a Christian. Just because you grew up in a Christian home, doesn't mean that you have a personal relationship with God. For that, a personal decision needs to be made--a decision to turn one's life around (i.e. repent) and live in obedience to God's will.

John preached this kind of message to the people of Israel and he began to gather a group of people who were waiting for what God would do. Remember how Isaiah's prophecy spoke of the messenger and then of how the glory of the LORD would appear. Notice, then, what Mark says of John. "And he was preaching, and saying, "After me One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of His sandals. I baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

John, just like Isaiah foretold, spoke of someone greater and mightier who would follow him. He would baptize people with the Holy Spirit. He would cover or anoint them with the very Spirit of God. John's audience would have had some notion of what this meant from the records of the prophets, priests, and kings of the Old Testament who were anointed with God's Spirit and, thereby, given special power and authority. John tells his audience that the same kind of thing is going to happen through the one who is about to come.

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"And it came about in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan." And then, one day, Jesus showed up and got baptized. Did you catch the tone? --how understated this was? There was no fanfare or flourish, no impressive displays. Jesus came in such a way that He'd be easy to miss--and most people probably did miss Him. He just showed up one day and got baptized.

Now what happened next is unusual: "And immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him; and a voice came out of the heavens: 'You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.'" That's unusual. That's definitely out of the ordinary. But did you catch how Mark described it: "And immediately coming up out of the water, He (Jesus) saw the heavens opening." Mark gives no indication that anyone saw this momentous event except Jesus. This event wasn't a bold display to impress the people around. Rather, what's being given here is a peak into what's going on behind the scenes in this event.

We're told, He saw the heavens "opening." That word actually might be better translated, "being torn open." That word appears in one other place in the book of Mark--toward the end. When Jesus is on the cross, having paid the penalty for sin, he gives up His Spirit, and the veil of the temple is torn in two. The veil in the temple, that separated the Holy of Holies--where the presence of God rested and no one was able to enter because they couldn't handle being before God and would die--the veil that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple and the rest of the world was torn in two. The barrier between God and humanity was removed at the cross of Christ. Or was it removed at Christ's baptism? When Jesus came on the scene, we're told, the heavens were torn open. With Jesus coming on the scene there was introduced a point of contact between God and humanity--the reconciliation of these two groups in the person of Jesus Christ. Do you see what significance Mark attaches to this coming of Jesus Christ? Ultimately these two events--the baptism and the crucifixion aren't isolated events. That's why it makes sense to see the reconciliation of God and humanity in both events. Because the gospel includes all of these things.

The reconciliation of God and humanity in this event is further affirmed by the presence of the entire Trinity. Jesus the Son is baptized, the Holy Spirit descends on Him or anoints Him, and the Father speaks words of affirmation and blessing. All of this is present and going on at the baptism of Jesus and most people probably didn't have a clue. This is part of Jesus' pattern throughout this gospel. In fact, according to Mark, Jesus will go out of His way to avoid telling people about His full identity. (Mark 1:34, 44; 3:12; 5:43; 7:36; 8:30) Why would Jesus do that? And why would Mark, in particular, emphasize that about Jesus?

Well we know that messianic anticipation and fervor were thick in first-century Palestine. The Jewish people were restive under the burden of Roman oppression. John tells us that after feeding the five thousand, the people contemplated forcing Jesus to be their king. Recognizing the power of Jesus--even we face the temptation of trying to use him as a pawn or instrument for getting what we want. But Jesus consistently refused to be so used. And he may have discouraged talk about who He was in order to keep people from jumping to conclusions--to give them enough time to see what He was really about and to see whether they really wanted to follow. When Jesus finally did begin to publicly own His identity as the Son of Man and Savior, He always spoke of that in close connection with His death and sacrifice. That definitely cut against people's expectations.

Why does Mark emphasize this aspect of Jesus' character and ministry? Possibly because he was writing to Christians in Rome. In that city, they would have witnessed the pomp and splendor, along with the decadence and corruption, of the great Caesars. They would have had certain expectations for what a leader would look like, how a king ought to act. But Jesus' life and Mark's presentation of His work undermine all of that. Jesus, even though He was king over all, the very Son of God, came as a servant and taught that true greatness comes not in the tyrannical exercise of power but in serving others. He not only taught that but He demonstrated that by His own life of service and humility. Mark allows us to see both of these things--what's going on behind the scenes, the greatness and majesty of this man--as well as His humility.

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Mark goes on to describe what happened after Christ's baptism. "And immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness. And He was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to Him." Again we see the understatement of Mark. Matthew and Luke will give us some of the details of this period of tempting, but not Mark. For him, it's enough to let us know that Jesus was contending with Satan for a time in the hostile environment of the wilderness. And what is the outcome of that face-off?

"And after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel."

Jesus emerges from his conflict with Satan and begins announcing the arrival of God's kingdom and power and authority on earth. Notice, then, the different parts of Jesus' message. "The time is fulfilled." Going back to Isaiah, remember, we saw that God had laid down a plan at least six hundred years before. And Jesus' is saying that everything is unfolding according to schedule and this is the time for the next step. What is that next step? The arrival of the kingdom of God. It is here now, He says. It is "at hand."

Now what does that mean, that God's kingdom is at hand. Well, in ancient times and for much of human history, kingdoms were not divided by clear geographical boundaries. A given kingdom extended as far as its rulers had authority. Consider some small village in the middle of nowhere. It might be part of one kingdom one day and part of another kingdom another day. Which kingdom it was a part of just depended on who had authority over it. So when Jesus announces the presence of the kingdom of God, he's not pointing to some geographical or even political arrangement. He's saying that the effective range of God's authority is at hand. And the point of making this announcement is that Jesus is inviting His hearers to enter that kingdom--to come under God's authority. He calls the people to "repent," to make a change in their lives and to "believe" in the good news that Jesus is announcing--that God's kingdom really is accessible and available.

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That is what the gospel is about. That is what Christ's Advent is about: the coming of God's kingdom into this world. God's kingdom came in the person of Jesus Christ. The reconciliation of God and humanity doesn't come primarily because of anything that Jesus does but because of who Jesus is. He is the Son of God.

You may not have realized it, but this theme of God's coming kingdom has absolutely pervaded these first fifteen verses. (1) The prophet Isaiah spoke of a day when God Himself would come to the people of Israel. (2) John the baptist said that the one coming after Him would baptize people with the Holy Spirit. The presence of the Holy Spirit in people's lives is another way in which God's kingdom--God's presence and authority--is brought to people. (3) At Jesus' baptism the heavens are torn open. The barrier between God and humanity is removed. (4) And Jesus' announces the presence and accessibility of God's present rule and kingdom. That's what the gospel is about. That's what Advent is about.

How, then, should we respond? Jesus Himself gives us the answer: repent and believe in the gospel. Now you might think that means ask for forgiveness of sins and believe that Jesus died for you. But don't forget: THE GOSPEL IS BIGGER THAN THAT! There's more to the gospel than forgiveness of sins and Jesus dying. The gospel includes all of Jesus' ministry. Why? Because what Jesus demonstrated by His ministry was the kind of life that God wants for you. He doesn't just want your sins to be forgiven. He wants you to LIVE in the kingdom of God. He wants you to LIVE under God's rule and authority. That's what it means to repent and believe in the gospel. It means making a change in the direction of your life and living in light of the fact that God's good kingdom really is here and accessible.

Now you might think that any decision-making is a bit premature at this point. I've said some things about the kingdom but I really haven't given you a lot of information. Where can you go for more? Well, I'd recommend reading the rest of the gospel of Mark. Look at Jesus' life. He's putting on display what it is like to live in God's kingdom. Watch His actions. Listen to His words. All of those things reveal who He is. You'll see that God's kingdom comes with a lot of benefits. You'll also see that it involves sacrifice and surrender. In the big scheme of things, the benefits hugely outweigh the costs--but ultimately you'll have to decide whether you're willing to surrender. But know and remember that is what the gospel is all about--what Christ's Advent is all about: the arrival of this remarkable opportunity to actually live in God's kingdom.

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In coming sessions, we'll look at the other gospel writers have to say about the significance of Christ's Advent.

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Epilogue

Maybe the gospel of Mark gives us an answer to the question I introduced earlier. How can we talk about the coming of Christ during this time of year without seeming to change the subject. Maybe the answer doesn't lie in pointing out that this whole season is supposed to be about the coming of Christ? Maybe the answer lies rather in realizing that Jesus has invited us to place our entire lives in His kingdom. He has invited us to live our entire lives under God's gracious rule and authority. And if we are doing that--not only during Christmas time but all the year round--then coming to the Christmas story won't feel like it's changing the subject. Because the Christmas story just reminds us of God's invitation to what we already want and are pursuing: life with God.

Think about that, this week. Is your life being lived in submission to God's kingdom? What does that look like? How does that affect your decision-making? God's kingdom comes with lots of benefits, but it also calls for sacrifice and service. Are you willing to walk in that? It might seem like a distraction from the celebration of Christmas--or it might be the very thing that draws you most fully into the Spirit of this season.

Merry Christmas!

[Thanks to my friend, Josh, for the awesome title graphics!]

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 259: Team H Drawing

2011-11-26T12:48:00.000-08:00

[I really enjoy my drawing projects, but they also stress me out. Of course it's worse when you're trying to portray (however tenuously) real people. There's a strong temptation to rehearse all the problems with this depiction, just to assure those with discerning eyes (and critical minds?--ha!) that I'm not oblivious to these various and numerous shortcomings, but that would make for a dull and tedious post indeed. So I'll just let it be.]

So this drawing (15" x 20") was inspired by the (bizarre) thought: "What would it look like if they were a crime-fighting team?" The initial sketch, I think, suggests a more highly-stylized direction than I was actually able to pull off. A bit of formal training, some research, and a bit more imagination would probably help with that. At any rate, I included all five in there: R, D, C, L, and B.

R is the leader, of course: calm, cool, collected. He's the brains of the group. He's got his motorcycle with him. Obviously I put this drawing together with lots of trial-and-error. R's left shoulder, from STEP3 to STEP4 presents a clear instance of this. It looks so much more natural after that change and it's interesting to think about what makes the difference there.

C is munitions. His sidearm went through a fairly dramatic revision between STEP4 and STEP5. I would have liked for it to be even larger but that would really only work in a more highly-stylized drawing. And who knows what other armaments and incendiaries he's carrying on his person. Long-range or short-range--he dispenses death or mayhem or justice or whatever, always with a some pithy quip or witticism.

D is the muscle. He's the only one of the characters without an accessory--but that's just because he doesn't really need one (or you might say he's always carrying his with him).

L is the beauty. Women are harder to draw. I'm sure that there are some basic techniques that would have helped a lot with that, but I didn't know any of those, so I just had to muddle through. STEPS 2, 3 and 4 show quite a shift. Lots of erasing. Still, I do like the way it turned out. I thought about giving her a handgun but that seemed just a little too sinister.

B is the "pluck" or "spirit." She may be the smallest in the group, but if you mess with any of her siblings, she will come after you. My original idea was to base her character design on Maka from "Soul Eater" but that didn't really end up coming across in the end. Maka's scythe did become B's bo staff. I really liked what seemed to be suggested by the STEP1 sketch, but it was hard to realize that in the subsequent drafts.

Hmm…, what else can I say? I like how the background turned out though that was definitely not my favorite part to do. As I draw, I learn more and more about light and shadows and shading--again, mostly by trial and error. --Ha! Well, there it is. I had lots of fun doing it.

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 258: A Wedding, Part 1

2011-10-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

And on the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; and Jesus also was invited, and His disciples, to the wedding. And when the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, "They have no wine."

I don't know about you, but this has always struck me as one of the more peculiar events in Jesus' life. In the course of His ministry, Jesus did many things. He received baptism, gathered a group of disciples, taught in synagogues and in the countryside, disputed with the religious leaders, healed people of various diseases, cast out demons, walked on water, multiplied loaves and fish; He was put on trial, crucified, and rose again. Yet this episode in Jesus' life seems different from all those others.

The whole setup is just different. We're told that Jesus, along with His family and disciples, was invited to a wedding. At that wedding, they ran out of wine. And Jesus' initial response to the situation is no less unusual. Look at what happens when His mother informs Him about the problem.

And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what do I have to do with you? My hour has not yet come." His mother said to the servants, "Whatever He says to you, do it."

Jesus seems to indicate that He's unwilling to do anything about the lack of wine. Yet His mother responds by telling the servants to do whatever He says. Is she going "over His head" in some way? And then Jesus actually does jump into action.

Now there were six stone waterpots set there for the Jewish custom of purification, containing twenty or thirty gallons each. Jesus said to them, "Fill the waterpots with water." And they filled them up to the brim. And He said to them, "Draw some out now, and take it to the headwaiter." And they took it to him.

And when the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom, and said to him, "Every man serves the good wine first, and when men have drunk freely, then that which is poorer; you have kept the good wine until now."

John wraps up His account of this event with the following summary statement: "This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him." John says that Jesus manifested His glory through this miracle, yet only a handful of people knew that any miracle had taken place. John says that the disciples believed in Him, but what does that mean? What did they come to believe?

Questions abound. What are we supposed to learn about Jesus through this event? Why did John choose to include it in His gospel? (None of the other gospel writers speak of this incident.)

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I'd like to think with you about this episode from Jesus' life over the course of a couple blog posts and see what we can take from it by prayerful reflection and meditation.

Let's begin by thinking about the setting--a wedding. I attended a wedding recently. Actually, I was the best man in the wedding of Daniel Bernstrom to the woman whom regular FacingGrace readers know as "Significant."

Now I've participated in and attended the weddings of other friends, but this one was different. I think that had to do with the fact that I knew so much more about the relationship between these two. Those of you who have followed Daniel's Disability Blog know that the process of their coming together was not a perfectly smooth one. There's been plenty of room for doubts and questioning on both sides. Yet they've persevered, worked through the challenges, talked together about everything, and striven for openness and integrity along with love and affection. They have very consciously chosen to put Jesus Christ at the center of their relationship, relying on Him to be their solid foundation.

Again, those of you who have followed Daniel's journey through blindness training know that His trust in and relationship with God have grown and matured in the context of difficult hardship and trials. Yet he would be the first to tell you that it has all been worth it. In talking and praying with Him, I find myself being drawn into the presence of the divine and supernatural, which is the only thing that can account for the joy and gratitude that fill His being in spite of the challenges he faces.

Why do I share all this? Because it puts a whole different spin on marriage. Marriages are so commonplace, and divorces, unfortunately today, seem almost as commonplace. Views about just what marriage is differ radically, as do people's expectations of what it will be like. But Daniel and Significant's marriage reminds me that marriage (along with many other things) really is tied to the supernatural. When a man and woman come together to become "one flesh"; when they covenant to do what no two mere mortals could ever pull off--love one another through whatever may come "till death do us part"--; when each of them, aware of his or her own inadequacies and the challenges that lie ahead, calls on God to lead them into ever more faithful service and sacrifice--that all connects to the supernatural.

In a world in which marriages come and go so easily, Daniel and Significant remind me that God intended for marriage to involve the supernatural. God intended that the good things that come through and from marriage would be supernatural in quality--that they would far surpass anything that two people could cobble together on their own as they navigate the hills and valleys of life. Daniel and Significant remind me that God smiles on marriage.

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Why do I find it so odd that Jesus would go to a wedding? Is it, perhaps, because I've forgotten that God smiles on marriage? Have I forgotten that in the beginning, God created and ordained marriage? Have I forgotten that because of this, Jesus declared, "What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate"? Have I forgotten that there is a whole book of the Bible dedicated to celebrating marriage and romantic love? Have I forgotten what a marvelous and remarkable thing marriage is?

Here's an interesting fact to consider. John tell us that, upon hearing of the wine shortage, Jesus instructed the servants to fill six stone waterpots with water. These pots had been set apart for use in purification rituals. By using these pots in this way, then, Jesus actually temporarily defiled them. Can that be right? --that Jesus would defile these ceremonial vessels just to provide wine for a wedding celebration? He must have thought that wedding celebration was pretty important.

It's often difficult to overcome our preconceptions and expectations. We may have all sorts of ideas about what Jesus was like, where He would go, and what He would do. Yet, again and again, we find Jesus popping up in the most unexpected places and doing the most unexpected things. We find Him constantly challenging us to realign our values to match His. Let's see what happens when we try to do that.

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Reflection questions:

In what other ways do Jesus' words and actions at this wedding challenge our expectations of Him?

What is your view of marriage? For those of you who are married, what does God have to do with you and your spouse?

Have you ever experienced God showing up in unexpected places? Where do you expect to meet God? Where do you expect not to meet Him?

Those of us who are surprised that Jesus would show up at a wedding may be even more surprised to learn that He can and will show up in a broken home as well. For those who have gone through the pain of divorce, know that Jesus' grace, power, and love can reach you where you're at too.

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This blog series is written for FacingGrace.com. Another version of this post may be viewed on that website via this link.
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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 257: FacingGrace & Intrinsic

2011-10-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple links to work that friends of mine are doing.

This first link is to a website called "FacingGrace." It is managed by a friend of mine, Daniel Bernstrom, whom I met during my time at APU. He is an author and creative writing graduate student at Hamline University, recently married (I was the best man!), and all-around amazing guy. The Holy Spirit's presence is very evident in his life. FacingGrace.com is a Christian resource site for devotional encouragement. Daniel draws from his own experience as an adopted child, victim of sexual abuse, and disabled adult in his writing to bring words both challenging and encouraging to his readers. I've been privileged to be able to contribute a little to the work that he is doing.

Here's the Website Welcome video for his site.

Website Welcome from Daniel Bernstrom on Vimeo.

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The second link is to the website for a company called Intrinsic. This company was started by a friend of mine, Steven, who is passionate about fighting poverty and transforming communities around the world. Intrinsic began in Kibera, Kenya. It is the second largest slum in Africa. The vision of this company is to help connect the skilled workers and artisans in these communities to global markets and high-demand industries so that their hard work can actually make enough money to support families and build up the community there. They've started with laptop and tablet cases. And they're going to build from there.

Here's their latest ad:

Intrinsic Promo from Intrinsic on Vimeo.

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus, through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 256: Christian Doctrine Series, Part 5

2011-09-24T18:02:00.000-07:00

The Doctrine of Humankind

Outline

I. Introduction
II. Attunement: Psalm 8
III. Foundations for Understanding Humankind and Human Nature
A. Two Preliminaries
B. Creation
C. The Puzzle and Mystery of Human Nature
D. The Image of God
E. Jesus Christ: the Perfect Human Being
IV. God's Purpose and Intention for Human Beings
V. Human Nature
A. Parable of the Train Engineer
B. The First Step: Dualism
C. The Five Parts of the Human Person
D. Understanding Sin and Sanctification: The Good and Bad Trees
VI. Humanity and Sin
A. The Fall
B. The Nature of Sin
C. Consequences and Manifestations of Sin
D. Original Sin
VII. Toward the Restoration of Human Nature
A. Excerpts from C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce.

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I. Introduction

Much of PART ONE comes from or is based on material from a lecture by Dr. Matt Jenson (Professor, Biola University) entitled "Humanity and Sin." This forty-five minute lecture was delivered as part of the 2011 G. Campbell Morgan Theology Conference. It is accessible through iTunes University.

All Willard quotations, along with most of the content, in PART TWO are taken from Dallas Willard's book, Renovation of the Heart.

The Attunement helps to orient or reorient us in preparation for thinking about what the Bible and Christian tradition teaches about the nature of humanity. I get the sense that most Christians are familiar with the first half of Psalm 8 and the sense of the smallness or insignificance of humanity that it conveys. Various people reflecting on some of the findings of science have drawn our attention to the smallness of the earth in relationship to the cosmos, to the insignificance of human history when set on a geologic time scale. Take the numbers in isolation and we may seem quite small indeed. But numbers aren't everything and the psalmist does not leave us with this incomplete picture of the human being. It's interesting to note that as David exults in the greatness of humanity, he does so, not on the basis of great accomplishments, great abilities, great power, or anything like. Rather, the greatness of humanity, he says, is based on God's appointment and decree. It therefore depends upon our being related to that God.

In the next section, we introduce some points that serve as Foundations for Understanding Humankind. This section begins with a reminder about our starting point, in biblical revelation, and the practicality of this doctrine. Then we look at a couple passages that highlight humanity's dual nature. This will be taken up in more depth in PART TWO, but it's important to get that before our minds at the outset. Next there is a discussion of the challenges connected with trying to pin down human nature. Ultimately the core of what it means to be human is grounded in the image of God. But speculation about the image of God and its essence have often led to very bad results. A more adequate understanding of the image of God requires that we look to Jesus Christ who is the image of the invisible God and exemplifies God intent for humanity.

The section on God's Purpose and Intention for Human Beings further develops the idea of our purpose within God's created order consisting in living and reigning with God.

The section on Human Nature opens with a parable that highlights, in particular, the problem of misunderstanding human nature. A misunderstanding of human nature is responsible for many of the world's ills. The basic challenges that we face in life become aggravated when our response to those challenges comes from a misinformed view about human beings work. One serious error involves treating human beings just as physical entities and discounting their spiritual dimension. After commenting on that error, we look at the five parts of the human person as identified and treated in Dallas Willard's Renovation of the Heart: mind, heart, body, soul, and social relations. (This treatment is incomplete.) A proper understanding of human nature is crucial for how we respond to sin and how we go about pursuing sanctification. This is the last point to be treated in this section.

PART THREE takes up the topic of Humanity and Sin. Different obstacles stand in the way of people taking sin and the biblical revelation concerning sin seriously. By looking at the history of the nation of Israel and God's progressive revelation, I hope we can begin to see why these people would take seriously that what God said about sin is true. Once we've established that, we can actually look at the fall and nature of sin themselves. The consequences and manifestations of sin in our world then need to be discussed. Talk of "sin," unfortunately, is often not heard because it is thought to be an abstract theological (impractical) concepts. The gravity of sin is realized when we take serious time to consider its real-world manifestations. Finally we come to the topic of original sin.

The last section, Toward the Restoration of Human Nature, begins to paint a picture of sin that will hopefully help to grow in us a desire for redemption and restoration. It is an odd fact that so many have a hard time taking seriously that sin really is bad. And that in turn makes it hard for them to take seriously the need and opportunity for redemption. We would like to be able to go our own way while simultaneously avoiding the bad consequences of going our own way. But these two things go together and once that is clear then we can actually begin to think about making effective changes. This section consists of excerpts from C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce--chapters 4, 7, 10, and 11. I would recommend reading the whole book to anyone.

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PART ONE

II. Attunement

O LORD, our Lord,
How majestic is Thy name in all the earth,
Who hast displayed Thy splendor above the heavens!
From the mouth of infants and nursing babes Thou hast established strength,
Because of Thine adversaries,
To make the enemy and the revengeful cease.
When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;
What is man, that Thou dost take thought of him?
And the son of man, that Thou dost care for him?
Yet Thou hast made him a little lower than God,
And dost crown him with glory and majesty!
Thou dost make him to rule over the works of Thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet,
All sheep and oxen,
And also the beasts of the field,
The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
How majestic is Thy name in all the earth!

Psalm 8

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God created man in His own image, innocent, morally free and responsible to choose between good and evil, right and wrong. By the sin of Adam, man as the offspring of Adam is corrupted in his very nature so that from birth he is inclined to sin. He is unable by his own strength and work to restore himself in right relationship with God and to merit eternal salvation. God, the Omnipotent, provides all the resources of the Trinity to make it possible for man to respond to His grace through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. By God's grace and help man is enabled to do good works with a free will.
(Book of Discipline: Free Methodist Church – 2007 Articles of Religion: Man – A Free Moral Person)

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III. Foundations for Understanding Humankind

Two Preliminaries

First, as with all the doctrines that we look at, our examination of the Doctrine of Humankind must take its orientation from biblical revelation and a fundamentally Christian worldview. In seeking to answer questions like, "What does it mean to be human?" we cannot rely just on our intuitions or historical consensus. Different worldviews may converge on certain points about human nature--that the capacities for rationality and creativity set human beings apart from other animals, for instance--but where the most important questions about human nature are concerned, the major worldviews will inevitably disagree. And even on those points where various worldviews seem to agree, we'll always find that closer examination reveals deep and important differences.

Second, again as with all the doctrines, the Doctrine of Humankind is eminently practical. We may have trouble accepting this, inasmuch as few people are given to speculating about this topic. But just about every major decision that a person makes or can make about the course of his or her life presupposes some set of answers to the question of what it means to be human. Moreover, our behaviors and, in particular, our struggles often reveal gross misunderstandings about human nature.

Creation

Genesis 1:26-29 and Psalm 103:13-18

Notice, in these passages, the juxtaposition of the physical and the spiritual. Consider, now, where does the life principle come from? What is it that makes us living beings? Where does the hope of eternal life come from? And what does all that suggest about where we should look if we want to understand human nature. (See also, Genesis 3:18-25; Psalm 104.)

The Puzzle and Mystery of Human Nature

What does it mean to be human? This question has proven harder to answer than it might at first appear. We might expect that each of us would be an expert on at least one human being--namely the one that he or she is. But it's often the case that we understand ourselves only very tenuously. We may be quite unclear about what will make us happy, what we really want out of life, how to control our desires and actions, why we're here, etc. And with such a shaky starting point, its inevitable that attempts to generalize and make claims about human beings as a whole would fall into trouble. We may be tempted to think that what are actually just aspects of human nature actually constitute the essence of human nature--rationality, creativity, volition, relationality, etc. How can we avoid these pitfalls.

The Image of God

'Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.' [Genesis 1:26-29]

'And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.' [Romans 8:28-29]

'But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.' [2 Corinthians 3:18-4:4]

'And He [the Son] is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation.' [Colossians 1:15]

'But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him--a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.' [Colossians 3:8-11]

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What, then, is the image of God? Or perhaps, the better question is: who is the image of God? And in what context or way do we most clearly manifest God's image in us?

We are created in God's image.
Jesus is God's image.
And we are growing into God's image.

Jesus Christ: The Model of Humankind

From looking at creation, we realize that to really understand what it means to be human, we must consider humanity in its relationship to God. God created us to be with Him, to enjoy relationship with Him.

"To be human is to be one of those with and for whom God is." – Matt Jenson

But our relationship with God has been marred by sin. So we cannot learn what it means to be human just by looking at ourselves. Rather, we must look to Jesus. He is the only one who has perfectly fulfilled and carried out God's purpose for humanity--because He was fully human, was the image of the invisible God, and enjoyed a perfect and unbroken relationship with God. (See Hebrews 2-3.)

We come to a better understanding of humanity generally and our own humanity as we move deeper in our understanding of who Jesus is. If we engage in this exploration seriously, it will inevitably lead to our encountering Jesus. We will move away from the question, "Who is Jesus?" to the question, "Who are you, Jesus?" And answering that second question will always require and involve changing our lives.

[Reflection on these points reveals that] "...to be made in the image of God is to be made for a purpose. ... We have been created to correspond to God, to reflect His way of being and doing--His life in the world. And this requires living on our part. To be made in God's image is to be projected toward a destiny. To move toward ever fuller fellowship with God and His world. That's why the creation of Adam and Eve is immediately followed by their vocation--by their calling to rule the earth by caring for it and directing it toward its appointed end of glorifying God by doing all that for which it was created." – Matt Jenson

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Colossians 3 (esp. vv. 3-4) and Romans 8:19

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IV. God's Purpose and Intention for Human Beings

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PART TWO

V. Human Nature

Parable of the Train Engineer

Misunderstandings about the nature of reality hinder our ability to interact with it successfully. We remember putting our keys on the dresser, but they're not there now. Someone auditions for American Idol because she thinks she's got a great singing voice. A young man interprets a woman's body language as indicating that she's interested in him. Someone believes that if he only has enough faith, God will make him financially prosperous, or protect him from getting laid off, or heal his wife of cancer.

Misunderstandings about the nature of reality can have detrimental effects on people's relationships with God. A new convert (or even a long-time Christian) may have all sorts of muddled ideas about what God is like and what it is like to follow Him. This often leads to disappointment and disillusionment. A person may reach the conclusion that Christianity as a whole just doesn't work and is a sham. Others may settle for a watered-down version of Christianity and just choose to ignore all that talk about "abundant life," "power," "freedom," and so forth. The effective result of either of these paths is that people do not engage in the sorts of activities that would bring God's radically different life into theirs. Instead they rely on their own best judgments and wisdom to navigate the world and to get what they want and need. They leave the path of discipleship to Jesus without having actually tried it.

Human nature is one of the areas about which people today have such very confused ideas--with the expected damaging effects.

The First Step: Dualism

One of the most fundamental errors concerning human nature that people make, especially in our contemporary American culture, involves neglecting the spiritual dimension of the human person. The idea that human beings just are their bodies and the sum of their physical components has become a widely-accepted view. This has radical implications for how we go about analyzing and solving the various challenges and problems that face human beings and societies.

More and more, we are trying to manage emotions and feelings using medications. Psychiatrists and therapists look for the causes and explanations of our various dysfunctions in the events of our past, patterns in our upbringing, and the chemistry in our brains. Politicians and policy-makers look for resource-distribution and money-distribution strategies to resolve the problems of poverty and starvation. Every day the news media reports the findings of new research--indicating that sitting for long periods of may shorten one's life-span, drinking green tea reduces risk of cancer, coffee is good for you, coffee is bad for you, ingesting a certain multivitamin daily..., drinking eight cups of water..., exercising fifteen minutes a day..., avoiding trans-fats..., avoiding cholesterol..., avoiding sodium..., etc., etc., etc. Our culture is becoming increasingly obsessed with physical fitness and exercise. Even those who do not engage in regular exercise have absorbed the idea: "Well I know I ought to...". Yet, in light of this, notice what Paul says to his student/apprentice, Timothy:

"But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come." [1 Timothy 4:7-8]

We regularly receive reports and figures related to life-expectancy. How long can the average American, born in the 1980s, expect to live? How does that compare with Americans from a century ago? How does it compare to people from other countries? How do Californians compare to the rest of Americans?

Yet for all of our obsession with living long and living well, we often end up neglecting the very things that make for life eternal and life abundant. (Psalm 36:9; Proverbs 4:20-27; 6:20-24; 10:16-17; 19:23-24) The key to the truly good and long life does not lie in the findings of scientists, doctors, psychologists, or psychiatrists. It is found in the word of God and in the person of Jesus Christ.

(Note: A strong cultural reaction to the inadequacies of naturalism and scientism has led some people to focus, once again, on the spiritual. But almost all of this resurgence has consisted in a rehashing of pagan and pre-Christian ideas, inconsistent appropriations of Eastern mysticisms and philosophies, and shallow pop-psychology. Some people are actually advocating a return to some form of pluralistic polytheism (appropriately updated). Most of us are familiar with people who have dabbled in faux feng shui, yoga, meditation, and other forms of "returning to nature." And there is no shortage of pop-culture icons advocating the power of positive thinking under various guises. The point is that just emphasizing the spiritual will not solve the problem. What we need is genuine insight into human nature.)

The Five Parts of the Human Person

"And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, 'Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?' And He said to him, 'What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?' And he answered and said, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.' And He said to him, 'You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.'" [Luke 10:25-28]

(Make sure to take note of the question as well as the answer.)

Regarding the make-up of the human person, we can say a bit more than just that each has both a material and an immaterial component. It is possible and helpful to draw some further distinctions. Dallas Willard, expanding on the text of Luke 10 and drawing upon his own philosophical research, identifies five parts or dimensions that compose the human person. These are the mind, heart (or will), body, social dimension, and soul. What life consists in is the conformity of these different dimensions of the person to the will and purposes of God.

"The ideal of the spiritual life in the Christian understanding is one where all of the essential parts of the human self are effectively organized around God, as they are restored and sustained by him. / Spiritual formation in Christ is the process leading to that ideal end, and its result is love of God with all of the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and of the neighbor as oneself." (Willard, 31)

"I will bless the LORD who has counseled me; indeed, my mind instructs me in the night. I have set the LORD continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory [soul] rejoices; my flesh (body) also will dwell securely." [Psalm 16:7-9]

What does it look like to love God with each of these parts? What does it look like to bring these parts into conformity with God's will and purpose? In what ways can these parts stray from God's intended purpose?

Mind

The mind is that faculty by which we engage with thoughts and associated feelings. The realm of thought involves four main factors.

Ideas (worldviews, presuppositions) – "[Ideas] are ways of thinking about and interpreting things. They are so pervasive and essential to how we think about and how we approach life that we often do not even know they are there or understand when and how they are at work." (Willard, 97) E.g. freedom, science, feminine and masculine, the way of the flesh and the way of the spirit, our view of suffering. We see a compelling example of Christ-minded ideas at work in Paul's letter to the Philippians.

Images – "Images are always concrete or specific, as opposed to the abstractness of ideas, and are heavily laden with feeling." (Willard, 99) E.g. hair and clothing trends, images of success in advertising, self-image, organs and guitars in church, fathers and fatherhood. Reflection on the person of Jesus provides the principle antidote to corrupted images.
Information – Information is crucial for resisting and replacing harmful ideas and images. Information is what our mind works on and with in order to direct our thinking in helpful and uplifting directions. Good and useful information, then, is extremely important. The Bible is the principle source of correct and helpful information about God and how we can be related to Him.

Ability to think – "The prospering of God's cause on earth depends upon his people thinking well. ... [T]o serve God well we must think straight; and crooked thinking, unintentional or not, always favors evil." (Willard, 105-106)

"The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon. We are not totally free in this respect. But we do have great freedom here..." (Willard, 95)

Keep in mind that ordinary life in the contemporary world does not generally promote clear and careful thinking. On the other hand, we must also guard against the pride and overconfidence that sometimes come from the mere accumulation of ideas, images, and bits of "information." Knowledge and information are not ends in themselves. And our thinking should be guided by what is true, not by a desire to prove that we are right.

Feelings – ' "Feeling" encompasses a range of things that are "felt": specifically, sensations, desires, and emotions. We feel warm, hungry, an itch, or fearful. "Feelings" include dizziness and thirst, sleepiness, and weariness, sexual interest and desire, pain and pleasure, loneliness and homesickness, anger and jealous; but also comfort and satisfaction, a sense of power and accomplishment, curiosity and intellectual gratifications, compassion for others and the enjoyment of beauty, a sense of honor, and delight in God." (Willard, 120)

'Feelings are a primary blessing and a primary problem for human life. ... Our first inquiry as we greet people for the day is likely to be, "How are you feeling today?" Rarely will it be, "How are you thinking?" Feelings live on the front row of our lives like unruly children clamoring for attention.' (Willard, 117)

Feelings are an essential part of human life and of the good human life. Feelings, in and of themselves, are not good or bad, but they can be extremely destructive if they are misplaced. Feelings of anger, desire, and resentment may be quite uncontrolled in a person's life. In other cases, feelings become the focus and displace concern with other more important things. When we become more concerned with feeling loved than with the person we're relating to, when we become more concerned with feeling accomplished or feeling accepted than with doing hard work and being true to who we are, life falls dangerously out of balance.

Such enslavement to feelings contributes significantly to the power of addictions. Feelings add a great deal to one's quality of life and to one's sense of being alive. Because of that, a person trapped in destructive feelings may be unwilling or unable to seriously consider or pursue a radically pursue change in this area. Many in today's culture have a hard time separating their identity from their feelings. For them, to act against one's feelings just is to deny one's self. The desire for instant gratification and preoccupation with doing what makes you happy reflect these patterns and trends in our culture.

"Most people cannot envision who they would be without the fears, angers, lusts, power ploys, and woundedness with which they have lived for so long." (Willard, 120)

For the person who recognizes the presence of destructive feelings in his or her life, and wants to change, its important to remember that to try to control feelings by the direct action of the will is to fundamentally misunderstand their nature. Trying to get people to feel certain things (as in some relationships or religious contexts) is seriously manipulative, will not work long-term, and should always be avoided.

Learning that we can, and in some cases should, act contrary to what we feel is an important part of breaking their control on our lives. In this connection, we should keep in mind that those times when we feel most inclined to compromise on our principles, in order to pursue something else or otherwise act on what we feel at that moment, are the very times when we most need to act on our principles.

"I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad--as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth--so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane--quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot." (Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre)

But our ultimate goal should be to bring our feelings, along with every other part of us, into conformity with God's will for us. We want for certain feelings to become dominant in our lives--feelings of love, joy, peace; also compassion and hope. Again, we cannot accomplish this by directly willing to feel certain ways. Rather, we must engage in those activities which tend to produce these feelings. At the beginning stages, we may act on faith and hope--though we may not enjoy the activities in question, we engage in them with the expectation that God will use them to begin to work in our lives. Attending to our thoughts, the state of our bodies, and the condition of our social relations are all crucial for coming to affect our feelings and mold them after the pattern of Christ.

Heart (Will, Spirit)

"[H]uman life as a whole does not run by will alone. Far from it. Nevertheless, life must be organized by the will if it is to be organized at all. It can only be pulled together "from the inside." That is the function of the will or heart: to organize our life as a whole, and, indeed, to organize it around God." (Willard, 35)

"Will is the ability to originate or refrain from originating something: an act or a thing. ... Will is the capacity for radical and underivative origination of events and things." (Willard, 144)

"[The] will is not the same thing as character, but character does develop from it, as specific willings become habitual and, to some extent, "automatic." Character is revealed most of all in what we feel and do without thinking. But to a lesser extent it is revealed in what we repent of after thinking and what we then do as a result of repenting." (Willard, 144-145)

It is our will that enables us to choose to pursue what is good and in conformity with God's purposes. It is our will that enables us to order all the other dimensions of our lives in a particular direction. This is the proper function of the will--to so order the dimensions of our lives in such a way that they naturally are directed at what is good--so that our feelings are aligned with what is good, so that our minds are filled with what is true, so that our bodies are fit dwelling places for the Holy Spirit, so that our relationships are God-honoring and uplifting, so that our soul is well-ordered and unified.

Many people think that the will's main function is to produce actions, but that is a serious misunderstanding. People who hold this view often find themselves trying to will actions that are not in accord with what they truly believe or feel. The results of that are deceit, duplicity, and a divided self. A person who despises his family or dislikes his neighbor or feels no real religious conviction may try to act as if he loved his family, as if he disliked his neighbor, and as if he had a strong relationship with God. But if that person doesn't do anything to change his feelings or beliefs about those matters--if he simply tries to produce the 'right' or 'acceptable' actions--this will produce division and brokenness. God's desire for human beings is not just that they would produce certain good or right actions. Rather, His desire is that they would become a certain kind of people.

The first proper action of the will then is surrender to God. This will be difficult at first but, in time, we will learn that God is truly good and that He will provide for us as we surrender ourselves to Him. Surrender, therefore, leads to contentment, and finally to full-fleged, mature participation in the work that God is doing. God's desire is that we should work with Him.

'Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it. For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?"' [Matthew 16:24-26]

Spiritual disciplines and willing to engage in certain activities is crucial for the formation of the self in conformity with Christ-likeness. But those disciplines and activities are not ends in themselves. When learning to shoot a basketball, the will plays an important will. It's not possible to will to make a shot directly (we cannot control the individual muscle fibers or will them to fire in exactly the right way), but we can will to keep on practicing--especially when frustration sets in and we want to quit. And the result of our so willing is that we will eventually become able to make a basketball shot easily and naturally. The roll of the will in the spiritual life is similar. We do not will to be transformed directly. But we can and do will to engage in those activities that will lead to our being transformed.

Body

"Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace." [Romans 6:13]

"Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body." [1 Corinthians 6:19-20]

"For good or for evil, the body lies right at the center of the spiritual life..." (Willard, 159)

Misunderstandings of the human body come in two main forms. On the one hand, there are people who exalt the body, treating its associated desires, inclinations, and automatic responses as master. On the other hand, there are those who despise the body, thinking of it as essentially wicked or abhorrent. Both views are problematic. The body was created for good and, properly subordinated to the will of God, is a good thing.

The body is the place where habits and character take up residence. When learning to play a sport, drive a car, master a craft, or negotiate a social context, our bodies play a crucial role. We indicated earlier that it's not possible to sustain a life that involves constantly willing every action. Rather, our life going on depends on our body's ability to develop the required habits and automatic responses.

In its fallen condition, the body, rather than God, governs human life.

Social Dimension

Soul

Understanding Sin and Sanctification: The Good and Bad Trees

"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor gifs from thistles, are they? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit; but the had tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit." [Matthew 7:15-18]

"Either make the tree good, and its fruit god; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit." [Matthew 12:33]

If we are to properly diagnose and take effective steps toward resolving the problems that beset our world along with our individual lives, we must take seriously the close connection and rigorous consistency that exists between the human self and human actions. It is very tempting to deceive ourselves on just this point. We try to take all the credit for our good actions and none of the blame for our bad actions. The truth is that bad actions flow naturally from a self that is operating independently of God's kingdom and will. And good actions flow naturally from the self whose every dimension is rooted and anchored in God's good kingdom.

--

PART THREE

VI. Humanity and Sin

Taking Biblical Revelation Seriously

God appears to Abram
-- Genesis 12:1-9.
-- Offer of blessing, invitation to follow.
Abram travels to Egypt.
Abram and Lot separate.
Abram against the four kings.
Abram blessed by Melchizedek. -- See Genesis 14:19-20. -- Abram acknowledges God's help.
Abram promised a son. -- God cares about Abram.
The LORD makes a covenant with Abram.
Hagar bears a son to Abram.
The covenant of circumcision. -- See Genesis 17:1-2.
Birth of Isaac promised.
The judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Conflict with Abimelech at Kadesh.
Isaac is born.
Hagar and Ishmael are sent away.
Covenant with Abimelech. -- See Genesis 21:33.
The offering of Isaac -- Genesis 22. -- God's demands and provision.
A bride for Isaac. -- See Genesis 24:12, 48. -- The God of Abraham.
Abraham dies
Jacob and Esau are born
Jacob acquires Esau's birthright
Isaac settles in Gerar. -- See Genesis 26:2-5 -- Offer of blessing; invitation to follow.
Quarrel over the wells. -- See Genesis 26:24-25. -- The God of Abraham.
Jacob steals Esau's blessing.
Jacob is sent away. -- See Genesis 28:10-22. -- God of Abraham and Isaac, omnipresent.
Jacob marries Leah and Rachel.
The sons of Jacob.
Jacob returns to his home. -- See Genesis 31:13, 53-54. -- The God of Bethel; the God of Abraham.
Jacob meets Esau. -- See Genesis 32:9-12. -- God of Abraham, Isaac, and promise.
Jacob moves and is named Israel.
Joseph sold into slavery.
Joseph's in Egypt. -- See Genesis 39:2, 9. Sin against God. -- See Genesis 39:21; 40:8; 41:16, 50-52. -- See Genesis 43:23
Jacob goes to Egypt. -- See Genesis 46:1-4.
Jacob blesses Joseph. -- See Genesis 48:15-16.
The burning bush. -- See Exodus 3:6, 13-16.
The plagues. -- See Exodus 5:1; 6:2-3.
Parting the Red Sea. -- Exodus 14.
God provides water and manna. -- Exodus 15; 16.
Israel defeats Amalek. -- Exodus 17:8.
Israel at Mt. Sinai. -- Exodus 19ff.
The Law committed to Joshua. -- Deuteronomy 31:9-11

The Fall

The Nature of Sin

Consequences and Manifestations of Sin

"And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of the this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. ..." (Ephesians 2:1-3)

Original Sin

--

VII. Toward the Restoration of Human Nature

Excerpts from C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce

At the beginning of this book, the author finds himself in a dark town, dull and dreary, populated by misfits and malcontents, trapped in perpetual twilight. He finds himself in line for a bus bound for he-knows-not-where. Once on board, the bus takes off--not down the road but up into the sky, and as it ascends, the space around it begins to fill with light. The bus moves higher and higher, up a massive cliff face that the growing light reveals. Finally it reaches the top and comes to rest on a lush, open field, covered with grass and bordered by tall trees, with a river flowing through it and high mountains in the distance.

As he steps off the bus, the author realizes several things. First, the bright light reveals what he had not noticed in the dim light of the town below--that his body is translucent, thin, and frail. He and all his companions are actually ghosts. Second he learns that his body is not feeble in appearance only but actually so. The grass on the ground, which is much more solid, will not bend under the weight of his insubstantial feet. The blades of grass are like so many jagged spikes and everything else in this bright and beautiful world is equally unyielding.

In time, the author learns that the town below is hell and that this field is the outer edge of heaven. He also learns that anyone who has come up from hell and wishes to remain in heaven may do so. In fact, every visitor from hell is greeted by someone they once knew during their life on earth, who has been sent to help them on their journey deeper into heaven. These glorious beings are marvelous to behold--bright, solid, and majestic--as they move naturally and easily through the grassy meadow toward the huddled group of spirits. All are assured that if they choose to take the journey into heaven and make it their home, their frail bodies will grow more solid and substantial so that they too can live in and enjoy this perfect paradise. All they have to do is choose.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 255: Christian Doctrine Series, Part 4

2011-09-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

Doctrine of God, part 2 (supplement).

Here is the outline of my treatment of the doctrine of God. Most of these segments can be found in Master 243: Christian Doctrine Series, Part 1. Here I've included an extended list of the names of God, some passages to consider in connection with loving God, a short treatment of the nature and works of God the Father, in particular, and a heading for a section on the worship of God.

--

The Doctrine of God

Outline

I. Introduction
II. Attunement: Exodus 3-4
III. Arguments for the Existence of God
IV. God's Attributes
A. God's transcendence and autonomy
B. God's immanence and relationship
C. Other attributes
D. The names of God
V. The love of God
VI. The Holy Trinity
A. God, the Father
VII. The Proper Response: Worship

--

... D. The names of God

'In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth.' (Genesis 1:1. 430)

'And she [Hagar] called the name of the YHWH who spoke to her, "El Roi (Thou art a God who sees)"; for she said, "Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?"' (Genesis 16:13. 410 & 7210)

'Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the YHWH appeared to Abram and said to him, "I am El Shaddai (God Almighty); walk before Me, and be blameless."' (Genesis 17:1-20. 410 & 7706)

'And Abraham called the name of that place YHWH Jireh (The Lord Will Provide) as it is said to this day, "In the mount of the YHWH it will be provided."' (Genesis 22:14. 3608 & 7200)

'And he [Melchizedek] blessed him [Abram] and said, "Blessed be Abram of El Elyon (God Most High), possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be El Elyon, who has delivered your enemies into your hand."' (Exodus 14:19-20. 410 & 5945. Isaiah 14:13-14)

'And Moses built an altar, and named it YHWH Nissi (The Lord is My Banner); and he said, "YHWH has sworn; YHWH will have war against Amalek from generation to generation."' (Exodus 17:15)

'And YHWH spoke to Moses saying, "But as for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, 'You shall surely observe My Sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am YHWH Maccaddeshcem (the Lord who sanctifies you).'"' (Exodus 31:13. 3608 & 6942)

'Then Gideon built an altar there to the YHWH and named it YHWH Shalom (the Lord is peace). To this day it is still in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.' (Judges 6:24)

'The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered; He raised His voice, the earth melted. YHWH Sabaoth (The God of hosts) is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah.' (Psalm 46:6-7. See also 1 Samuel 1)

YHWH Raah (the Lord is My Shepherd): Psalm 23:1.

'Do you not know? Have you not heard? El Olam (The Everlasting God), YHWH, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable.' (Isaiah 41:28. 410 & 5769. Isaiah 40:28)

' "Behold, the days are coming," declares YHWH, "When I shall raise up for David a righteous Branch; and He will reign as king and act wisely and do ustice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is His name by which He will be called, 'YHWH Tsidkenu (The Lord our Righteousness).'"' (Jeremiah 23:6. 3608 & 6664)

' "For YHWH is going to destroy Babylon, and He will make her loud noise vanish from her. And their waves will roar like many waters; the tumult of their voices sounds forth. For the destroyer is coming against her, against Babylon, and her mighty men will be catured, their bows are shattered; for Jehovah El Gmolah (The Lord is a God of Recompense)."' (Jeremiah 51:56)

' " 'Now I will shortly pour out My wrath on you, and spend My anger against you, judge you according to your ways, and bring on you all your abominations. And My eye will show no pity, nor will I spare. I will repay you according to your ways, while your abominations are in your midst; then you will know that I, YHWH, do the smiting.'"' (YHWH Nakeh, The Lord Who Smites. Ezekiel 7:9)

YHWH Shammah (The Lord Who is Present or The Lord is There): Ezekiel 48:35.

--

... V. The Love of God

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

When years of time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men, who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hill and mountains call,
God's love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam's race--
The saints' and angels' song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

Frederick M. Lehman

Psalm 136.

' "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life."' (John 3:16)

'But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.' (Romans 5:8)

--

... A. God the Father

God the Father, is first and foremost the eternal Father of the eternally one and only-begotten Son. We must be clear that the 'fatherhood' of God is not an idea that is based on or derived from human forms or analogies. Before there was a church, before there was a nation of Israel, and before any created thing existed, God the Father was and is with His Son and with the Holy Spirit. The clearest revelation of God as Father, then, comes in the Incarnation. There we most clearly what God the Father is like because we see how He relates to His only-begotten Son.

It is also the case that God the Father acts in a 'fatherly' way in all that He does and especially toward all of His creation. So, in Acts 17:29, the Apostle Paul reminds the Athenians that, in God, "we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we also are His offspring.'" Certainly, then, there is a sense in which God is the father of all humanity and all created things. But beyond this, God also revealed Himself as father to the nation of Israel. (Exodus 4:22; Deuteronomy 32:6; Isaiah 63:15-16; 64:8; John 9:41) He established a special covenant relationship with that group of people and, in that way, gave a more complete picture (albeit still imperfect) of what God's fatherhood consists in. The most complete revelation of God's fatherhood, in the Incarnation, coincides with His invitation to us to enter into His family. So God invites all of us to know Him as our own Father. So the Apostle Paul writes,

"But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son in our hearts, crying "Abba! Father!" Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God." (Galatians 4:4-7. See also 3:26.)

Here are a few particular places where the works of the Father are highlighted.

A. In creation.

'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.' (Genesis 1:1-3)

'By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host.' (Psalm 33:6)

'For He [the Father] delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. And He [the Son] is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation. For by Him [the Son] all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things have been created by Him and for Him.' (Colossians 1:16)

B. In election.

'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

'who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,

'just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.

'[who, in love,] predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.' (Ephesians 1:3-6)

C. In begetting and sending Christ.

' "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life."' (John 3:16)

'Jesus therefore said to them again, "Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you."' (John 20:21)

D. In sending the Holy Spirit

' "And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you, and will be in you."' (John 14:16-17)

E. In disciplining His children (Hebrews 12:4-17)

--

... VII. The Proper Response: Worship

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 254: Illuminated 'A'

2011-09-12T12:50:00.000-07:00

Here's the last in this (first) series of illuminated letters. ("Series" is one of those interesting words that is the same in both its singular and plural forms.)

I was surprised by how much I liked the "teardrops" in this piece. Depending on how you look at them, they may resemble teardrops, ears, seashells, or lamps. Very suggestive.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 253: Illuminated 'E'

2011-09-07T16:44:00.001-07:00

This is the second in my series of illuminated letters. I'll only post one more after this one. That will have to do for a while.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 252: Illuminated 'T'

2011-09-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

This is the beginning of a series of illuminated letters that I've started putting together. I like calligraphy and text illumination/decoration. Here's the letter "T".

The final product is pen and marker on cold-press board and measures about 4 in. x 4 in.

I still haven't gotten used to documenting the creation process, but here's how the pencil sketch I started with looked.

I love art.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 251: Living Long and Living Well

2011-08-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

How can we live long and live well? That question certainly sums up one of the most basic human concerns. What makes for a good life? How can I acquire that good life? And how can I enjoy that good life without worrying about it being cut short through untimely debilitation or death?

We regularly receive reports and figures related to life-expectancy. How long can the average American, born in the 1980s, expect to live? How does that compare with Americans from a century ago? How does it compare to people from other countries? How do Californians compare to the rest of Americans?

Certain groups of people have come to the conclusion that the answer lies in controlling the material stuff around us. More and more, we are trying to manage emotions and feelings using medications. Psychiatrists and therapists look for the causes and explanations of our various dysfunctions in the events of our past, patterns in our upbringing, and the chemistry in our brains. Politicians and policy-makers look for resource-distribution and money-distribution strategies to resolve the local and global problems of poverty and starvation. Every day the news media reports the findings of new research--indicating that sitting for long periods may shorten one's life-span, drinking green tea reduces risk of cancer, coffee is good for you, coffee is bad for you, ingesting a certain multivitamin daily…, drinking eight cups of water…, exercising just fifteen minutes a day…, avoiding trans-fats…, avoiding cholesterol…, avoiding sodium…, etc., etc., etc. Our culture is becoming increasingly obsessed with physical fitness and exercise. Even those who do not engage in regular exercise have absorbed the idea: "Well I know I ought to…".

Others, especially those reacting against the inadequacies of naturalism, physicalism, and scientism, have taken to focusing on the spiritual. But much of the popular and best-selling material consists just in a rehashing of pagan and pre-Christian ideas, inconsistent appropriations of Eastern mysticisms and philosophies, and shallow pop-psychology. Some people are actually advocating a return to some form of pluralistic polytheism (appropriately updated). Most of us are familiar with people who have dabbled in faux feng shui, yoga, meditation, and other forms of "returning to nature." And there is no shortage of pop-culture icons advocating the power of positive thinking under various guises.

We could multiply examples of responses to these basic questions. And, of course, there are some really serious candidate answers out there. But a lot of what comes to us through the media, Internet, talk shows, and break-time conversations just consists of this messy assortment of answers. What answers do Jesus and His followers give to these questions? Consider, first, these words of the Apostle Paul to His apprentice, Timothy:

"But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come." (1 Timothy 4:7-8)

You've heard of "old wives' tales", yes? An awful lot of what gets absorbed as the latest and greatest word on living long and living well is little better than that stuff. Paul suggests that we take up an alternative strategy: godliness. He affirms that godliness is useful for the present life as well as the life to come. Can that be right? Is godliness really useful for my life now and the stuff I care about and have to deal with? You might still be skeptical. Consider, then, this conversation that Jesus had with one of the religious leaders of His day.

'And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and put [Jesus] to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?" And he answered and said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." And He said to him, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live."' (Luke 10:25-28)

I claim that Jesus, here, affirms that godliness is useful for present life as well as the life to come.

"But, wait!" you may say to yourself, "That can't be right. The lawyer's question has to do with eternal life, not the present life." Or does it? Is Jesus giving the lawyer advice about the present life or about eternal life?

I've brought this whole thing up because I think it serves as another example of how our close acquaintance with religion and religious language can actually undermine our ability to recognize the relevance of Jesus' words and teaching to the matters of our daily lives. When many of us hear words like "eternal life" and "spiritual," that immediately begins to conjure images of the ethereal, ideal, and distant future. But go back to the questions I raised at the beginning of this blog and think about them for a moment.

How can we live long and live well? What makes for a good life? How can we acquire that good life? And how can we enjoy that good life without worrying about it being cut short through untimely debilitation or death? These are questions that concern all human beings, and they are at the heart of this lawyer's question to Jesus. Of course the language of "eternal life" comes out of the Jewish tradition. They took for granted that the good life was one appropriately related to God and so this lawyer asked about how one could be properly related to God. The language and particular way of formulating the question was Jewish--but the underlying concern was and remains universal. It may require a little mental work for us to see it, but it's there. When the lawyer asks, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" he is, in essence, asking, "How can I live long and live well?"

Getting clear on this question is important because only in this way can we really hear Jesus' answer as addressing this universal human concern.

And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and put Jesus to the test, saying, "Teacher, how can I live long and live well? What makes a good life? How can I acquire that good life? And how can I enjoy that good life without worrying about it being cut short through untimely debilitation or death?" And He said to him, "What did all your forefather's learn about this? What can you conclude from their experiences?" And he answered and said, "I should love God with my entire being--with every part of who I am, acknowledging Him as Lord--and act in accordance with that love, toward God and toward others." And He said to him, "You have answered correctly; do this and you will have the good life that even death cannot bring to an end--that will go on forever."

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 250: Are Jesus' Words Relevant?

2011-08-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

Rafting Reflections, Part 3

Is Jesus relevant to your life? Does Jesus have anything to offer your life? Does He have anything to say about your life, or is there anything that He says that touches on some point in your life?

These sorts of questions filled my mind as I interacted with the junior high and high school students at this church youth camp. But let me give a little more background before expanding on that:

When it comes to teaching children or young people, the question often comes up: Are these kids (or students) able to engage seriously with spiritual questions and spiritual matters? Obviously, young people at different stages of cognitive and spiritual development will be able to do so only to varying degrees. Sometimes it is the case that, "We can't really talk about that 'til you're older." In other cases, lack of maturity may just rule out the possibility of "serious discussions." But I do find myself wondering (and I think it's a good thing for all teachers and youth workers to wonder often about) whether kids and students are more ready to have these discussions than we sometimes think.

Here's the big question that comes to my mind: Is it the case that so many children and youth are simply not ready or willing to have conversations about spiritual matters? Or is it the case that the real obstacle to their meaningful and serious engagement with issues related to spirituality lies in our failure (as teachers) to articulate spiritual truths in such a way that the relevance of those truths to the their actual lives is communicated clearly?

Let me step back, again, before continuing. What I've presented here are two possible explanations for the (apparent) lack of engagement with spiritual questions by young people. Obviously there are other answers that one might give or consider. Also, one might simply deny that there actually is any such lack of engagement. But I take it that there are plenty of people (including, parents, church workers, and other concerned adults) who worry that young people simply are not connecting with the values, ideals, and concepts that their devout forbears might take for granted.

The explanation (or, at least, possible contributing cause) of this that I want to consider here is that those of us who would be teaching/educating these young people are not successfully communicating the relevant concepts and ideas to them in terms and vocabulary that they can understand. In suggesting this, I am not trying to lay blame on anyone. Rather, I'm raising the question as a rhetorical device and heuristic in order to get us thinking, again, about our communication styles and their effectiveness.

Consider that, when it comes to raising children, especially through adolescence, there's a constant tension between expecting too little of them and expecting too much of them. At the moment, I'm pulling in one direction, while recognizing that that is only half the story. I'm asking whether we can expect more of our children and youth. If the answer is 'yes,' then we need to get clear on how to go about doing that. It's not enough to just say, "We're going to start expecting more of you." The solution may not lie in just "pushing harder," but rather in "pushing smarter." Perhaps a reevaluation of our communication techniques--the ways in which we go about raising spiritual questions--can do a lot to create greater openness and receptivity to engaging with these topics.

--

What are some things to consider as we go about this? (Eventually we'll get around to taking up the particular questions that I opened with: Is Jesus relevant to your life? etc.)

One thing to consider is that the whole topic of "spiritual questions" may, itself, be standing in our way. I used the expressions "spiritual question(s)" and "spiritual matter(s)" five times in the last section. Did you notice? What ideas or images did those conjure in your mind? What is a "spiritual question"? What is the difference between a "spiritual question" and a "non-spiritual question"? Can you give a clear definition?

What sorts of things would you list under the heading "spiritual"? God? The Bible? Church, angels, heaven, non-material things, eternal things, praying, "spiritual" experiences, meditation, holy things, rituals, fasting, hymns, monasteries, cathedrals, pastors, saints, relics? What sorts of things would you list under the heading "non-spiritual." Your job? Your home? Family, cars, vacations, bills, school, television, the Internet, airplanes, grocery stores, shopping malls, summer barbecues, little leagues, politics, foreign policy, the economy?

If you agree with me that many people would generate lists like these under the headings "spiritual" and "non-spiritual", I hope that you can also see the problem. On this construal, to take up spiritual questions and topics just is to take up things that are completely separate from the issues and concerns that dominate our everyday lives. We may even find ourselves saying things like, "Set aside your job, home-life, medical issues, etc., and focus on God." Properly understood, that's a fine thing to say, but what many people may hear in that is a suggestion to stop thinking about the important and immediate concerns in order to think about something that will only really matter once we've died.

Now some may eagerly point out that, properly understood, there is no such opposition between the spiritual and non-spiritual. And that's quite correct, properly understood. But now consider, have we done the hard work of communicating that to children and youth? Or have the older adults, long-time Christians, and teachers in our churches just continued to throw around "spiritual" language, all-the-while assuming that young people understand what it means when they really don't. Have we taken the time to really explain what we mean by words like, "spiritual"? Do we really understand what that word means, or have we simply become accustomed to using it and responding appropriately to it in certain contexts?

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The general point is that we need to be very careful about how much we take for granted in our talk about God and Jesus. I think more children and youth than we think are ready to have spiritual conversations, but in order to do that they have to have some command of a body of conceptual vocabulary. [1] Are we making sure that they really understand what we're talking about, or are we only assuming that they do?

I'll talk about "spiritual" as an important vocabulary term in another entry. I'll wrap up this entry by resurfacing the question, "Is Jesus relevant to your life?" How would you answer this question? Does Jesus have anything to offer your life? Do the words He spoke touch relevantly on anything that you're dealing with?

Long-time Christians may jump quickly on this one: "Of course Jesus is relevant. In fact, His teachings and commands should have absolute authority in our lives, governing every choice that we make and how we live every moment of every day." Ah! But there's an awful lot that's being assumed in that response. Do you see that? And especially if people already associate the "spiritual" with a range of matters wholly distinct from the stuff that they deal with on a daily basis, that answer will immediately strike their ear as unconvincing. What can we do to correct this problem?

Here's one suggestion: we can remind our students (and ourselves) that in the case of God's own special self-revelation, even He did not begin by simply asserting His own absolute authority. That might strike some as a surprising claim, but think about it: What concept of God did Abram have at the time that God called Him out of his homeland? It was probably very different from the concept that we have inherited from the five-thousand or so years of subsequent history. Very likely Abram thought that God was just another one of the many deities that populated the spiritual world of the Ancient Near-East. But that Deity made him a promise:

"Go forth from your country, and from your relatives, and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Genesis 12:1-3)

Did Abram know that this was the one true God speaking to Him? Did he know that this was the one who created him and the entire universe? [Did he know that this was the one who, at the end of time, would judge all peoples? Did he know that this was the one against whom he, Abram, had sinned? Did he know that this was the one whose only begotten Son would serve as the propitiation for the sins of all who believe in Him?] Did Abram know that this was the one whom he ought to acknowledge as absolute authority in His life? Probably not.

Abram probably understood little to nothing of what was true about God's nature and character. But He did understand that God was relevant to His life. The words of God pretty clearly had something to do with Abram's life and the things he cared about. Abram cared about his family, about his descendants, about his future, about his well-being later in life and God had things to say about all these matters. But at this early stage, God did not come in with just commands. He came, rather, with an invitation and a promise. He did not say, "Go to a land that I will show you or else I'll punish you." He did not say, "Go to a land that I will show you because I'm your creator and Lord." Instead, He said, "Go to a land that I will show you and I will bless you." It was Abram's choice, to follow God and receive that blessing or else to refuse God and miss out.

God did not begin his relationship with Abram by demanding that he acknowledge Him as Lord of all. Even though He was and is Lord of all, He did not come right out and say that. He did not expect Abram to believe that. Instead, He began a long process of showing Abram who He was and what He was like. Abram decided to follow God's instructions and God took care of Him. In the course of doing so, Abram began to learn a number of things about this God. He learned that He would have to wait on this God's timing. He learned that this God did expect to be able to place obligations on Abram. He learned that this God could touch him wherever He went. But because He chose to be obedient, He also learned that this God is faithful, that this God does keep His promises, that this God could be relied upon to take care of Him.

This progressive self-revelation of God's character continued. God came to Isaac and revealed Himself as the God of Abraham--the God who had been with Abraham and had revealed Himself as faithful and as trustworthy in all these areas of life. (Genesis 26:1ff) God invited Isaac to the same kind of trust in God that Abraham had.

God revealed Himself, then, to Jacob, as the God of Abraham and Isaac--the God who had been with them and who would be with Jacob if he would trust in Him. (Genesis 28:13) Do you see what's going on? He worked in the life of Joseph, one of Jacob's sons as well. The God who is almighty, the God who created the cosmos, the God to whom all are accountable, the God who is sovereign over all things, revealed His character over time in the context of these special relationships.

Jump forward from Joseph, 400 years, and we find the burgeoning nation of Israel in captivity in Egypt and God comes to them. He tells them that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--the God who came to them, was faithful to them, and took care of them. (Exodus 3) He demonstrates His power over Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt by bringing the ten plagues against them. He demonstrates His power over nature by parting the red sea, bringing water from rocks in the desert, and feeding the multitude with both natural and non-natural foods.

It is within this context that God reveals to Moses, from Mt. Sinai, and states clearly and definitively that He is not just one of many gods but the one and only true God. He relates to Moses how He created the world and humankind, how Adam and Eve sinned, the judgment that He visited on the world in the time of Noah and the consequences of the arrogance that came with the Tower of Babel. These records were not just human (in origin), but neither did they simply drop out of heaven. What we see here, instead, is the God whom the people already knew from the experiences of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, revealing more about His nature and character.

Keep thinking about this with me: Why would the people of Israel take seriously that the history they received from God was the truth? Why would they take seriously (eventually) that this God, alone, was the proper object of their worship and devotion? Why would they take seriously (eventually) that this God, alone, was to be obeyed and could properly claim to have all authority in their lives? Answer: Because God gave them abundant evidence to that effect. He demonstrated, again and again, that He had power over all things political, all things natural, and all things supernatural. No ruler or king could stand up against the God of heaven. No prophet, priest, or spiritual force could stand up against the God of heaven. No famine or plague or other natural disaster was outside of His control. This God revealed to prophets what would happen 500 years in the future, and it happened. When we actually think about all this, it's not surprising at all that they would conclude that the God of heaven, alone, is God. When this God, then, placed demands on people, it was appropriate for them to treat them as having absolute authority. When this God revealed things about the dim, dark past or the far-distant future, it was appropriate for the people to take those statements as true.

How did a man who knew almost nothing about God give rise to an entire nation of people who acknowledged His absolute authority over their lives? Let's be clear on this: this did not come about through their being especially concerned with "spiritual" things. What they experienced was actually God's authority and sovereignty over their very practical concerns. It was precisely God's relevance to the everyday concerns of people that they came to their clear understanding of how He works and His relevance and authority over all areas of life (including the non-physical and the afterlife).

Hopefully this helps us to see that these various dichotomies that we often set up--between the spiritual and non-spiritual, the religious and secular--are false dichotomies. Your job, your home, your family, how you spend your money and your various financial obligations, your entertainment, travel, food and daily needs, friendships, recreational activities, political and cultural involvements--God has things to say about all of these. And the things he says aren't limited to "Do it my way or I'll punish you," or "Do it my way because I have absolute authority." Men and women, throughout history, who have taken seriously what God says about all these things, have found that what He has to say is the best that there is to be found anywhere.

Now, very often, what God has to say about these things runs contrary to conventional wisdom. He says that we should love our enemies, forgive those who hurt us, give generously and even sacrificially, spend lots of time in His word and in prayer, esteem only lightly the opinions of those in power, and always always always speak the truth. People may have a hard time taking these instructions seriously (just as it must have been hard for Abram to take seriously God's instruction to abandon everything that he had ever known and every form of stability and security that he had ever known to go into a foreign country). But what people have learned who have followed God's words (what Abram also learned) is that God really is the only true God, with authority over all things, fully trustworthy, reliable, and good.

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Now we in the church, today, have inherited this body of knowledge about God's nature and character. We should, unequivocally, preach and proclaim that God is only One, that He is sovereign over all things, that He is the one creator and sustainer of the cosmos, the one righteous judge of all, the one to whom all will be held accountable. But we should not assume that everyone accepts that--that even the "Christians" in our churches take that for granted. We need to help people understand, not only these facts about God, but also His absolute relevance to their everyday lives. After all, if the stuff Jesus says has nothing to do with the stuff that people care about, if what He has to say really doesn't touch on the stuff that people actually have to deal with, can they really be expected to trust that He has things like the afterlife well in hand? As people learn about Jesus' relevance to their lives, as they begin to act in accordance with His instructions and experience how He really has the best things to say about how to live, they will come to acknowledge His absolute authority.

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FOOTNOTE:

[1] Footnotes hopefully allow me to make qualifying remarks without interrupting the flow of thoughts. Again, I don't think that just clarifying some conceptual and vocabulary issues will make just anyone or everyone more receptive to talking about God and their relationship to Him. People also need to be exposed to the reality of God's work. And they must be willing to open their eyes long enough to see and recognize what is going on all around them. There's a lot more to the story, still. I'm just emphasizing one aspect of that.

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 249: To Be Free

2011-08-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

Two friends of mine have formed an electronic music group, based out of Los Angeles, that goes by the name "Holy Buckets." Although relatively new, they are producing work that is unique within the electronic music scene, being technically well-grounded and drawing upon a variety of music styles. Both have strong musical performance backgrounds (especially in percussion, trumpet, and voice) and training (both studied music at the college level and one has a master's degree in performance) that enrich their songs. They are currently working on putting together an album of their own work, while looking for remix opportunities as well. Logic Pro is their exclusive workstation.

The most recent song that they've produced, I especially like. It is entitled, To Be Free.

To Be Free by Holy Buckets

In his letter to the Galatian church, the Apostle Paul says, "It was for freedom that Christ set us free." Freedom is an integral part of the gospel and the life that God has offered to us in Jesus Christ.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. (Or, rather, I believe that God has been directing my attention that way.) I won't say more here, but I will recommend listening to this song. Lyrics are available here.

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 248: Christian Doctrine Series, Part 3

2011-08-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

Doctrine of the Word of God, part 2.

So I'm continuing, in my Sunday school class, to move through this doctrine series. We're now into the Doctrine of Humanity. I've been slowly organizing the material we've covered. Here's an outline of the stuff I put together on the Doctrine of the Word of God. Some of it may repeat stuff I covered in the part 1 entry, but at least now it's all together. For those who are interested, I hope it's helpful. (I'm also going to try really hard to format this all well for blog posting. We'll see how it goes. It will probably show up less well on the Facebook version. Be aware.)

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The Doctrine of the Word of God

Outline

I. Introduction
II. Attunement
III. Context
A. The Word of God – Various Manifestations
B. The Son of God as the Word of God
IV. The Bible – the Word of God
A. A Living Legacy
V. Major Doctrinal Points
VI. The Canon of Scripture
A. The story of Marcion
B. Canonicity and Inspiration
C. Development and History of the Old Testament Canon
D. Development and History of the New Testament Canon
E. Reflection on the Four Gospels

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I. Introduction

The Attunement is intended to reorient our thinking about the Word of God. The Bible may have become so familiar to us that we actually take it for granted and fail to esteem it as we ought. Francis Chan's very open way of speaking about his experience with the Bible is both challenging and disarming. He invites us to consider that there is much more to be found in the Word of God than we might have thought. The words of the Psalmist contribute to this reorientation.

To properly understand how the Bible fits into God's redemptive plan, it is helpful to consider how the word of God operates in general and in various different ways. So, in the Context section, we begin by considering the important role that words play in the divine and spiritual world. It is also helpful, along these lines, to consider the role and power of words in our own human social context. Our experience with the power of human words is but a dim reflection of the power that God's words have. Consideration of the role of words in God's economy climaxes in the revelation of the divine Word of God--the Son and Second Person of the Trinity.

The third section, The Bible – the Word of God, moves away from talking about the word of God, in general, and the Word of God that is the Son of God to focus on the Bible as the Word of God. Passages from various Scriptures and authors are introduced. One of the main points that I want to emphasize, in this connection, is that the Bible is not just the record of the words of God that were spoken in the past. Rather, in the Bible, we encounter the living and dynamic word of God. The Word of God is alive in the same way and for the same reason that anything is alive, because it is imbued with a spirit--in this case, the Spirit of God.

In this connection, it's especially interesting to consider the works cited in A Living Legacy. Those works and passages were among the last of the New Testament to be written. Paul and Peter and John must have been conscious of the fact that the church would outlive them all and thus must have been concerned about how best to prepare for the future. It's interesting that they don't direct the people to human teachers, to any sort of priestly or apostolic succession. Instead, they enjoin the Christians to return to the Scriptures. John, in several places, seems to indicate that, through the Scriptures, people can enjoy the same kind of face-to-face interaction with God that the apostles enjoyed with Jesus. How is that possible and why would the apostles place such an emphasis on the Scriptures?

This question, more or less, is what guides the section on Major Doctrinal Points, which actually enters into (albeit extremely briefly) the formal elements of the doctrine of the Word of God. The treatment is very brief but can serve as an outline for further study and hopefully (perhaps, more importantly) shows how the different parts of the doctrine fit together. That section closes with an excerpt from the Westminster Confession of Faith that, I think, nicely sums up how we can helpfully think of the doctrine of the Word of God. Again, reflection on this doctrine cannot replace but rather should drive us to deeper direct engagement with the Word of God.

The last section focuses on just one part of the Doctrine of the Word of God: the Canon of Scripture. Someone in my Sunday school class asked about this point in particular; that is why it is treated at such depth. The Story of Marcion helps us to understand why anyone would care about the canon of Scripture and why it is important. Canonicity and Inspiration clarifies how the question of canonicity fits into our larger understanding of the Scripture and its inspiration.

The Reflection on the Four Gospels is my attempt to help us think a little differently about the gospels in particular. (Material for that is borrowed from a message delivered by Dr. Fred Sanders as part of Biola University's Chapel series on John 1. Some people wonder about why there are four separate accounts of the ministry and work of Jesus Christ. Others also wonder about whether there might not be other works that should be considered on par with those gospels or with the other New Testament writings. Regarding just the four gospels, here's an interesting thought to consider. The four gospels present an ever-increasingly-expansive picture of the ministry of Jesus Christ. Mark was the first gospel to be written and offers the shortest and most straightforward presentation of the works of Jesus. But even he takes time to connect what Jesus did with the history of the nation of Israel. In the first chapter of Mark, he refers back to the prophecies of Isaiah (c. 600 A.D). He wants to make the point that Jesus did not just show up on the scene to do a bunch of cool stuff. Rather, He came in fulfillment of a plan that was at least 600 years old. Matthew, makes a similar move by laying out a genealogy of Jesus Christ. But he goes past Isaiah and traces the significance of the work of Jesus all the way back to Abraham--the founding father of the Jewish nation. Matthew was written primarily for a Jewish audience and, in that work, Matthew presents Jesus as the fulfillment of God's purposes for the Jewish people. Luke was written next and primarily with a Gentile audience in mind. In his genealogy of Jesus (in chapter three) Luke traces the ancestry of Jesus back to Adam. In doing so he underscores the fact that what Jesus accomplished was not just for the Jewish people but for the entire human race. John completes this movement of the gospels by opening his own gospel with the words, "In the beginning". He highlights, definitively, the absolute, complete, and cosmos-encompassing significance of the work of Christ.

With this in mind, now consider: If there were a fifth gospel, where would it begin? What would it add to the story of Jesus? Not just any collection of stories about Jesus can count as a divinely-inspired, authoritative, word-of-God account of Jesus' life and actions. This is not a knock-down argument for the completeness of the canon, but at least with respect to the gospels this should give us pause when considering the words and arguments of those who claim that other sources should be considered or added to the Bible. Though the various works that compose the Old and New Testament were written at various times and places, from various perspectives, and reflect the characteristics, quirks, and attributes of their human authors, they also bear the signs of God superintendence. They testify to their having been divinely-inspired, and so we should treat them as such.

Bible quotations are taken from the NASV. Some Scripture passages and book quotations are cited multiple times.

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II. Attunement

Francis Chan. "Texting God."  Cornerstone Church, Simi Valley. Sermon, 18-October-2009.  URL: http://vimeo.com/9481300 (Time: 8:59-19:55).

For, "All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls off, but the word of the Lord abides forever." [1 Peter 1:24-25]

"...like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord." [1 Peter 2:2-3]

"All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." [2 Timothy 3:16-17]

"...but these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name." [John 20:31. See also 1 John 1:3-4.]

'May Your lovingkindnesses also come to me, O LORD,
Your salvation according to Your word;
So I shall have an answer for him who reproaches me,
For I trust in Your word.
And do not take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth,
For I wait for Your ordinances.
So I will keep Your law continually,
Forever and ever.
And I will walk at liberty,
For I seek Your precepts.
I will also speak of Your testimonies before kings,
And shall not be ashamed.
And I shall delight in Your commandments,
Which I love.
And I shall lift up my hands to Your commandments,
Which I love;
And I will meditate on Your statutes.' [Psalm 119:41-48]

'Princes persecute me without cause,
But my heart stands in awe of Your words.
I rejoice at Your word,
As one who finds great spoil.
I hate and despise falsehood,
But I love Your law.
Seven times a day I praise You,
Because of Your righteous ordinances.
Those who love Your law have great peace,
And nothing causes them o stumble.
I hope for Your salvation, O LORD,
And do Your commandments.
My soul keeps Your testimonies,
And I love them exceedingly.
I keep Your precepts and Your testimonies,
For all my ways are before You.' [Psalm 119:161-168]

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III. Context

A. The Word of God – Various Manifestations

God created through His word.

'By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host.  ... For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and [the earth] stood fast.' [Psalm 33:6, 9]

[Hebrews 11:3. 2 Peter 3:5-7]

God rules through His word.

'He sends forth His command to the earth; His word runs very swiftly.  ... He sends forth His word and melts [the snow]; He causes His wind to blow and the waters to flow. He declares His words to Jacob, His statutes and His ordinances to Israel.' [Psalm 147:15, 18-19]

[Numbers 20:8-12. Psalm 29; 119:89-91. Isaiah 55:10-11] 
[Jeremiah 23:29. Matthew 8:5-13. Luke 7:1-10]

God redeems through His word.

'Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble; He saved them out of their distress. He sent His word and healed them, And delivered them from their destructions.' [Psalm 107:19-20]

[Psalm 119:81-82, 123. Psalm 130:5-6]

'All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD swore to give to your forefathers. And you shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. And He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.' [Deuteronomy 8:1-3]

Consider, in addition, God's decrees, commands, promises, and prophecies.

The power of the Word of God

'Thy word is a lamp to my feet, And a light to my path.' [Psalm 119:105]

'Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been bounded upon the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and it fell, and great was its fall.' [Matthew 7:24-27]

'It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.' [John 6:63]

'If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you.' [John 15:7]

'Jesus therefore was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."' [John 8:31]

'Sanctify them in the truth; Thy word is truth.' [John 17:17]

Response to the Word of God

'[L]ike newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation... ' [1 Peter 2:2]

'Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God. For, "All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls off, but the word of the Lord abides forever." And this is the word which was preached to you.' [1 Peter 1:22-25. Quotation from Isaiah 40:7-8]

'Therefore putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.' [James 1:21-24]

'Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth.' [2 Timothy 2:15]

'And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.' [Ephesians 6:17]

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B. The Son of God as the Word of God

'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. ... And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.' [John 1:1-3, 14]

'God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high; having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.' [Hebrews 1:1-4]

[1 John 1:1-3. Revelation 19:11, 13]

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IV. The Bible – the Word of God

"The Bible is God's written Word, uniquely inspired by the Holy Spirit. It bears unerring witness to Jesus Christ, the living Word. As attested by the early church and subsequent councils, it is the trustworthy record of God's revelation, completely truthful in all it affirms. It has been faithfully preserved and proves itself true in human experience.

The Scriptures have come to us through human authors who wrote, as God moved them, in the languages and literary forms of their times. God continues, by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, to speak through this Word to each generation and culture.

The Bible has authority over all human life. It teaches the truth about God, His creation, His people, His one and only Son and the destiny of humankind. It also teaches the way of salvation and the life of faith. Whatever is not found in the Bible nor can be proved by it is not to be required as an article of belief or as necessary to salvation." (Book of Discipline: Free Methodist Church – 2007 . Articles of Religion: The Scriptures – Authority, ¶108.)

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Here are affirmed: the inspiration of the Scriptures, the authority of Scripture, the unity of the Scriptures, the inerrancy of Scripture, and the sufficiency of Scripture.

The canon of Scripture consists of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament.

"The Bible is one of the results of God's speaking. It is the unique written Word of God. It is inerrant in its original form and infallible in all of its forms for the purpose of guiding us into a life-saving relationship with God in his kingdom. It is infallible in this way precisely because God never leaves it alone.

The inerrancy of the original texts is rendered effective for the purposes of redemption only as that text, through its present-day derivatives, is constantly held within the eternal living Word. ...

The Bible has its own special and irreplaceable role in the history of redemption. We can refer any person to it with the assurance that if they will approach it openly, honestly, intelligently and persistently, God will meet them through its pages and speak peace to their souls. ...

The word of God in the larger sense portrayed in the Bible is therefore available to every person through the Bible, the written Word of God. All may hear the living Word by coming to the Bible humbly and persistently, with burning desire to find God and live in peace with him.

As for others the Bible may prove a deadly snare, as it did for those in Christ's earthly days who actually used Scripture to dismiss him and his claims on them (Jn 5:36-37). Because of this we are warned in the Bible that we can even destroy ourselves by Bible study: specifically by the study of Paul's epistles, for "some things in them [are] hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures" (2 Pet 3:16).

Our only protection from our own pride, fear, ignorance and impatience as we study the Bible is fellowship with the living Word, the Lord himself, invoked in constant supplication from the midst of his people... ." (Dallas Willard, Hearing God, 141-143.)

'[C]ontinue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them; and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.' [2 Timothy 3:14-17]

'For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.' [Hebrews 4:12]

'For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, "This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased"--and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.' [2 Peter 1:16-21]

'[Jesus speaking to the Pharisees:] You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life.' [John 5:39]

"God speaks in and through the Word. It is not that God [spoke] long ago, and that the record of His acts and words, His revelation, was embodied in a perfect manner, and preserved for us in Scripture. This is true. But God gave us the Bible not to be silent now and let the Bible speak instead of Him, and be a guarantee for Him, but that He Himself may through His word speak, comfort, and confirm the soul, filling it with His light and love." (Adolph Saphir, The Hidden Life: Thoughts on Our Communion with God, 93.)

"We cannot speak, think, and feel too highly of Scripture in its vital connection with Christ and the Spirit; but there may be a way of viewing Scripture by itself apart from Christ and the Holy Ghost, and transferring to this dead book our faith, reverence, and affection; and this surely would come under the category of idolatry--substituting something, however good and great in itself, or rather in its relation to God, in the place of the living God." (Adolph Saphir, Christ and the Scriptures, 124-125.)

'And for this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the word of God's message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.' [1 Thessalonians 2:13]

'And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your heart to God.' [Colossians 3:15-17]

'Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless.' [Ephesians 5:25-27]

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A. A Living Legacy

2 Timothy – the last letter of Paul.

2 Peter – among the last writings to be composed of the New Testament.

The Gospel of John (especially chapter 20) and 1 John – the last gospel to be written and a letter from the last living apostle.

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V. Major Doctrinal Points

Guiding Question – Formula A: What must be the character and nature of this text, such that (1) it had the impact that it did on the lives of the men and women who interacted with it and (2) we can expect to share in those same experiences by so interacting with it?

Guiding Question – Formula B: What explains the impact that the Bible has had and continues to have in the lives of the people who abided and abide in it?

1: The Bible is "God-breathed," or "inspired by God".

'[C]ontinue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them; and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.' [2 Timothy 3:14-17]

'For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, "This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased"--and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.' [2 Peter 1:16-21]

This inspiration extends to the very words of the Bible, and to all the words in the Bible.

Vocabulary: "Verbal plenary theory of inspiration."

Notice Jesus' argument in Mark 12:26-27.

Or, for another example, note the language of Ephesians 5:23.

The human authors were active and engaged in producing the biblical text.

'And for this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the word of God's message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.' [1 Thessalonians 2:13]

2. The Bible (in the original manuscripts) is inerrant in what it teaches.

3. The Bible has been faithfully and accurately preserved through copying and translation over the centuries.

'Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God. For, "All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls off, but the word of the Lord abides forever." And this is the word which was preached to you.' [1 Peter 1:22-25. Quotation from Isaiah 40:7-8]

"The inerrancy of the original texts is rendered effective for the purposes of redemption only as that text, through its present-day derivatives, is constantly held within the eternal living Word." (Dallas Willard)

Note the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls finding and of the New Testament textual evidence.

Tacitus, Annals of Imperial Rome. Composed A.D. 116. Earliest extant manuscript: A.D. 850.

Josephus, The Jewish War. Composed in the first-century A.D. Earliest extant manuscript: fourth-century, one Latin translation. Tenth-century, nine Greek translations.

Gospel of John. Composed between A.D. 60 and 100. Earliest extant manuscript: A.D. 150.

4. The Bible includes all and only those books that God intended for it to contain.

66 books, including 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament.

In the case of the New Testament books, was the book marked by apostolic authority, did it accord with the rule of faith, and was it widely used and recognized as useful by the churches?

Consider the example of the gospels and their progression: Mark, Matthew, Luke, John.

Consider the case of Marcion.

5. The Bible contains all that is necessary for coming to saving knowledge of and relationship with Jesus Christ.

"The Bible has its own irreplaceable role in the history of redemption. We can refer any person to it with the assurance that if they will approach it openly, honestly, intelligently and persistently, God will meet them through its pages and speak peace to their souls." (Dallas Willard)

6. The Bible is authoritative in all matters on which it speaks.

7. The Bible presents us with a single, unified revelation of the Person, will, and work of God.

8. God continues to speak through the Bible.

'For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.' [Hebrews 4:12]

"The word of God in the larger sense portrayed in the Bible is therefore available to every person through the Bible, the written Word of God. All may hear the living Word by coming to the Bible humbly and persistently, with burning desire to find God and live in peace with him." (Dallas Willard)

"But God gave us the Bible not to be silent now and let the Bible speak instead of Him, and be a guarantee for Him, but that He Himself may through His word speak, comfort, and confirm the soul, filling it with His light and love." (Adolph Saphir)

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"We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts." (Westminster Confession of Faith (1643-1646), chap. 1, para. 5.)

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VI. The Canon of Scripture

A. The story of Marcion

(Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity.)

"Marcion, whose father was a bishop of Sinope in Pontus, knew Christianity from an early age. But he had a profound dislike towards both Judaism and the material world. He thus developed an understanding of Christianity that was both anti-Jewish and anti-material. About A.D. 144 he went to Rome, where he gathered a following. But eventually the church at large came to the conclusion that his doctrines contradicted several fundamental points in Christian doctrine. He then founded his own church, which lasted for several centuries as a rival to the orthodox church.

Since Marcion was convinced that the world is evil, he came to the conclusion that its creator must be either evil or ignorant. ... According to him, the God and Father of Jesus is not the same as Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. It was Jehovah that made this world. That Father's purpose was that there be only a spiritual world. But Jehovah, either through ignorance or out of an evil intent, made this world and placed humankind in it... .

This means that the Hebrew Scriptures are indeed inspired by a god, although this is Jehovah, and not the Supreme Father. Jehovah is an arbitrary god, who chooses a particular people above all the rest. And he is also vindictive, constantly keeping an account on those that disobey him, and punishing them. In short, Jehovah is a god of justice--and of an arbitrary justice at that.

Over against Jehovah, and far above him, is the Father of Christians. This God is not vindictive, but loving. This God requires nothing of us, but rather gives everything freely, including salvation. This God does not seek to be obeyed, but to be loved. It is out of compassion for us, Jehovah's creatures, that the Supreme God has sent his Son to save us. ... Naturally, at the end there will be no judgment, since the Supreme God is absolutely loving, and will simply forgive us.

All this led Marcion to set the Hebrew Scriptures aside. If the Old Testament was the word of an inferior god, it should not be read in the churches, nor used as the basis of Christian instruction. In order to fill this gap, Marcion compiled a list of books that he considered true Christian Scriptures. These were the epistles of Paul--according to Marcion, one of the few who had really understood Jesus' message--and the Gospel of Luke. All other ancient Christian books were plagued by Jewish views. As to the many quotations from the Old Testament in Luke and Paul, Marcion explained them away as interpolations--the handiwork of Judaizers seeking to subvert the original message.

...

Marcion's list was the first attempt to put together a "New Testament." When early Christians spoke of "Scripture," what they meant was the Hebrew Scriptures, usually in the Greek version known as the Septuagint. It was also customary to read in church passages from one of several Gospels, as well as from the epistles--particularly Paul's. Since there was no approved list, different Gospels were read in different churches, and the same was true of other books. But Marcion's challenge required a response, and thus the church at large began to compile a list of sacred Christian writings. This was not done in a formal manner, through a council or special meeting. What actually happened was that a consensus developed gradually. While very soon there was a general agreement as to the basic books to be included in the canon of the New Testament, it took a long time to come to an absolute consensus on every minor detail."

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(Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology.) (Norman Geisler and William Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible.) (Walter A. Elwell (ed.), Evangelical Dictionary of Theology)

B. Canonicity and Inspiration

Canon: from the Gk., kanon, meaning rule, rod, or staff.

Canonization refers to the process whereby human beings came to recognize what books God had determined to be canonical and form part of the canon. Strictly speaking, the canonicity of a book is determined by God and is a consequence of His inspiring act. When people find those books to be valuable or beneficial, that is a consequence of and evidence of canonicity, not what determines canonicity.

"When the Word of God was written it became Scripture and, inasmuch as it had been spoken by God, possessed absolute authority. Since it was the Word of God, it was canonical. That which determines the canonicity of a book, therefore, is the fact that the book is inspired of God. Hence a distinction is properly made between the authority which the Old Testament possesses as divinely inspired, and the recognition of that authority on the part of Israel." (Edward J. Young, "The Canon of the Old Testament.")

In looking at the writings of the early Church Fathers, we can see that they sought to be sensitive to five considerations when it came to determining what writings belonged to the canon of Scripture.

(1) Is the book authoritative? (2) Is the book prophetic? (3) Is the book authentic? (4) Is the book dynamic? (5) Has the book been widely received?

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C. Development and History of the Old Testament Canon

For the most part, the authority and inspiration of the books of the Old Testament were recognized almost immediately following their publication.

The books of Moses (or the Law: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) were immediately recognized as authoritative and preserved beside the ark of the Covenant. (Deut. 31:24-26) They continued to be treated as authoritative throughout the subsequent history of the Jewish people.

Ezekiel (13:9) makes reference to a "register of the house of Israel" which would have included authoritative writings, either having a prophetic character or authored by a prophet. The writings of Joshua (24:26) and I and II Samuel (see I Samuel 10:25) were added to this list. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel*, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi would have been immediately recognized as prophetic. Psalms, Proverbs*, Ecclesiastes*, Song of Solomon* were authored by David, Solomon, and other men recognized as having spoken prophetically at different times. At many places in I and II Chronicles (I Chronicles 29:29; II Chronicles 20:34; 26:22; 32:32) reference is made to the history of the kings of Israel (e.g. I and II Kings) having been recorded by different prophets. Judges, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther* were probably recognized as worthy of inclusion in the canon on similar grounds or were connected to other history books. Ezekiel (14:14, 20) makes reference to Job, suggesting that the book of Job was, at that time, recognized as belonging to the Scriptures.

(*) The canonicity of five books of the Old Testament was disputed for some time: Song of Solomon (possibly for its sensual content), Ecclesiastes (because of the skeptical views expressed therein), Esther (for the conspicuous absence of the name of God and, alleged, lack of spiritual content), Ezekiel (some sections of this book were taken to be contrary to Mosaic law), and Proverbs (because of the contradiction in 26:4-5).

Other writings composed a large body of Hebrew religious literature--including the Book of Jasher (Joshua 10:13); the Book of the Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14); the Visions of Iddo the Seer (II Chronicles 9:29); and the Book of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41)--but these were not included in the Old Testament canon--in "the Law and the Prophets."

The composition of the book of Malachi (c. 435 B.C.) coincides roughly with the writing of the last historical books (458-423 B.C.). The subsequent history of the Jewish people was recorded in other writings but these were not considered to be part of God's word.

Reference is made, in those books (1 Macc. 4:45-46; 9:27; 14:41), to the fact that the prophetic spirit of God departed from Israel.

Josephus (born c. A.D. 37/38) explained, "From Artaxerxes to our own times a complete history has been written, but has not been deemed worthy of equal credit with the earlier records, because of the failure of the exact succession of the prophets".

The Babylonian Talmud says concerning this period, "After the latter prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi had died, the Holy Spirit departed from Israel".

Jesus and the New Testament authors quote 295 times from the Old Testament, but never from the Apocryphal books.

The earliest Christian list of Old Testament books that exists today is by Melito, bishop of Sardis, writing about A.D. 170, "When I came to the east and reached the place where these things were preached and done, and learnt accurately the books of the Old Testament, I set down the facts and sent them to you." His remarks are referenced in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History (written c. A.D. 325). Melito lists all the books of the Old Testament canon except Esther.

Early church fathers did, in various places, quote from the Apocryphal books. Athanasius acknowledges this in a letter from A.D. 367, but points out that these were still not accepted as part of the Canon.

A number of concerns about doctrinal and historical inconsistencies have been raised against the Apocryphal books.

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D. Development and History of the New Testament Canon

"But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." (John 14:26)

2 Peter 3:16 and 1 Timothy 5:17-18 both suggest that, even at that early stage, the writings of Paul and of Luke were recognized as on par with the Old Testament Scriptures.

The main criteria for assessing canonicity of the New Testament writings was apostolic authority and acceptance.

Matthew and John (who also wrote I, II, III John** and Revelation*) were both apostles. Mark was a companion of the Apostle Peter (who also wrote I and II Peter*) and Luke, who also wrote Acts, was a companion of the Apostle Paul. Paul also wrote Romans, I and II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I and II Thessalonians, I and II Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. James* (who led the Jerusalem church) and Jude* were half-brothers of Jesus. Hebrews*

All of the books of the New Testament canon were cited or quoted in the writings of the early church fathers. (Note, in particular, Polycarp (A.D. 150), Justin Martyr (A.D. 140), and Irenaeus (c. A.D. 170).

The authorship and authority of various writings was discussed throughout the second century.

(*) The canonicity of seven books of the New Testament was disputed for some time: Hebrews (because of its anonymity), James (because of its apparent conflict with Paul's epistles), II Peter (because of doubts about its authorship), II and III John (because of doubts about authorship and limited circulation), Jude (because it quotes the pseudepigraphal Book of Enoch), and Revelation (because of doctrinal disputes).

Though some of the writings of the early church fathers were circulated (apocrypha), they were not ultimately recognized as Scripture. In some places, the authors draw a clear distinction. For instance, Ignatius, about A.D. 110, said, "I do not order you as did Peter and Paul; they were apostles, I am a convict; they were free, I am even until now a slave". These works are not recognized as canonical by the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant Churches.

A large body of literature (over 280 works by the ninth century) were almost universally rejected. Though important names were often attached to these works, many of them were written after the second century, many contain fanciful stories, and many betray the influence of later heretical movements like Gnosticism and Docetism.

Athanasius, in 367, lists the twenty-seven New Testament books as canonical.
The earliest ecumenical councils (e.g. Nicea, 325) did not take up the question of the canon of Scripture. The first council decision on the matter was at Carthage in 397.

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E. Reflection on the Four Gospels

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 247: Then You Shall See

2011-08-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

How does service fit into the Christian life? Lots of Christians will talk about the importance of service and plenty of Christians will engage in service, but do we really understand it?

That might seem an odd question to ask. "Do we really understand service?" What's to understand. You go out and help people. It's simple. Isn't it?

I certainly don't want to overcomplicate something that is simple, but I think that reflection reveals that service actually is naturally shot through with shades of complexity. A person who engages in community service voluntarily is different from a person who is required by a judge to perform the same service. When we hear about a wealthy CEO donating money or volunteering time--in certain contexts--we may wonder whether that is from a sincere desire to help or a sincere desire for a tax-break. And motivations aren't the only point of complexity.

Even people who sincerely desire to help others can become stressed out and weighed down by the logistics of doing so. How much organization is required to run a homeless shelter, coordinate volunteers for community events, run a day-care or baby-sitting service? Many people who set out to help people end up buried under the heavy burden of all the means involved.

And what happens when our best efforts fall short? When the teenager we've been counseling decides to commit suicide? When the addict we've been trying to help returns to his drugs? When we don't meet our goals? When we let down the people we're trying to help? Some people are very good at picking up and moving on--at standing strong under the weight of opposition or lack of help. But others struggle with that.

Plenty of people aren't troubled by any of these questions just because they never actually do engage in service. Maybe they would if they could, but their schedules are just too busy. Family, school, kids' sports, entertaining, hobbies, health problems, may all give the sense that there just isn't the time to reach out to other people and help them. Is that right?

These sorts of reflections prompt all sorts of questions: Are some motivations for service better than others? (And this is not just an academic question, for if there is an answer to it, we should try to adjust our lives accordingly.) Are some ways of going about service better or more effective than others? What is the goal or aim of service? (The answer to this question will have important implications for how we deal with apparent failure.) Is service the sort of thing that everyone ought to do? And why?

These have been just a few reflections to, hopefully, help to motivate this question--to help us see that there is something here worth investigating. Now I'm not going to take up all these questions. Some of these questions (like the question about proper means) can only be answered by considering particular cases. Instead, I want to reflect on a very general question: How does service fit into the Christian life? I won't try to give an exhaustive answer but just point to some things for us to consider.

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The church that I attend just completed a "weekend of service." On Friday, we hosted an event called "Summer Splash" on our campus. It's the last event in a two-week day camp for children with autism that's hosted by one of the larger churches in our area. We had over three hundred people (kids, parents, volunteers) on our campus with waterslides, water obstacle courses, wading pools, snow cones, popcorn, hamburgers and hotdogs. This is the second year that we've hosted this event as part of this camp and, we were told, it's the highlight of the camp for many of the kids.

On Saturday, groups from our church went to two homes, each belonging to elderly couples in our congregation. At one home, the group did a bunch of yard work and lawn maintenance--weeding, trimming, mowing. At the other, they painted and touched up the exterior of the house.

On Sunday morning, a group went out to one of the local elementary schools to paint the picnic tables and benches. Groups at the school and back at the church were gathering, preparing, and organizing school supplies for teachers and students. Gift sets of school supplies were prepared to give to children. Another group of volunteers, working with the local MOMS of the Military group, prepared "cool ties" for the soldiers and wrote letters of encouragement. A number of people also passed out fliers for a Del Taco fundraiser, the proceeds of which went to support Riverside Life Services, an organization that supports and resources women in crisis pregnancy.

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At the end of the day, about fifty of the volunteers got together for a short service--a time of sharing, singing, prayer, and communion. It was during that time that a few thoughts about service crystalized for me and I'd like to share those now.

I raise the question, "How does service fit into the Christian life?" just because I'm concerned that a lot of people don't know the answer. Or if they do know the answer, they have a hard time applying that beneficially to their lives.

Whether or not they have ever been taught this explicitly, a lot of people have absorbed the idea that the Christian life involves something like working for God. People might not be able to articulate this thought, but the grip that it has on people's minds and imaginations is made clear by their behavior and attitude. Service, for many people, is frustrating--in much the same way that work is frustrating. We would rather not do it if we didn't have to. We are happy to get out of it if we can. Service is a burden and inconvenience. It always manages to crop up on my days off when I'm supposed to be relaxing from my job. Instead of doing that, I'm volunteering time, manual labor, effort and energy.

Notice the picture of the Christian life that emerges from considering these reactions of people. In our ordinary lives we have all sorts of responsibilities and concerns--job, family, bills, cleaning house, cooking meals, driving the carpool, maintaining the lawn, participating in community events, club or sports activities. And the Christian life is then conceived of as adding on a whole bunch of other things: Sunday morning church services, midweek Bible studies, prayer meetings, committee meetings, quiet times, weekend retreats, and also service and ministry projects. As if life weren't already busy enough, becoming a Christian seems to involve adding even more to the pile. Can that be right.

One of the ideas that I keep on trying to emphasize in my writing and teaching on Christian living is that service is not just something that we do. It's not just one more item on the list that God hands down to us from heaven. And it is not an end in itself. Obviously service does take time and effort and energy, but that's not the whole story. Hobbies all require time, effort, and energy. But the result of a few hours spent making crafts or playing games or hiking or whatever often is that the person is more energized and refreshed. Now are service projects the sort of thing that are more likely to energize people or more likely to drain people of energy? That depends on how you approach it. If you approach it like so many people approach their work, you probably will come out of it drained and empty. But (especially) if you're open to God's working through you, you can expect that energy and refreshment will follow. What was neat about this weekend is that that's what we saw.

As different people shared, during our celebration service, about their experiences of the weekend, we heard over and over about how people took away a great deal from the activities. A few people commented on the strong sense of unity that they felt watching and interacting with the various people who were working. Through working alongside people that, previously, some had only ever seen in church and never talked to, new relationships were formed. Both of the couples who were helped on Saturday expressed their deep gratitude and talked about the love that they felt and had received. One woman shared about how, in the course of the day's activities, she managed to break two sewing machines. The whole group of volunteers laughed together about what had happened, and despite the setbacks, a lot of good work was accomplished and people were uplifted. A few people drew our attention to the many different ways in which members of our church have served the community--encouraging us to celebrate and look beyond just the work of this one weekend.

My favorite comment came from one man who helped paint on Sunday. In the heat of the morning and amidst the hard work, he began to reflect, with gratitude, on the fact that Christ has delivered us from the necessity of earning our salvation. The biblical authors make clear that we cannot stand before God or in relationship with Him on the basis of merit. Our disobedience and rebellion against God have placed us under His righteous judgment and condemnation. From our estranged position, it is impossible for us to heal or repair that relationship. But God, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, has opened the way for our reconciliation.

And that thought is exactly right: aren't you glad that Christ has delivered us from the necessity of earning our salvation. Sure we undertook some hard tasks and work over that weekend, but none of it was with the aim of meriting God's favor. What would it be like if that was what we were trying to do? Can you imagine? --that we had to do all that manual labor and time in the hot sun in order to get on God's good side. --that the only thing about that counted about that weekend was the fact that we accomplished things that counted on God's good list. --that when all was said and done, the real take-away value consisted just in our being one step closer to getting on God's good list. (Only 5,798 more good things to do.) Can you imagine? --what that would mean for the woman who broke those sewing machines. (Her chances of getting one more good deed to her name would have been shot.) A theology that insists that we must earn God's favor, merit his regard, work for His love, etc., etc. ends up draining so much of the richness and joy from these activities.

On the other hand, consider how much good we were able to draw from this weekend of service, in part because it wasn't just about earning God's favor. We were able to celebrate all the relationships that were built, the love that was communicated, the fun that was had, the experiences that were shared--all of this above and beyond the work that was accomplished. Even when the sewing machines malfunctioned, that didn't destroy the possibility for good being accomplished that day--because the sewing that needed to be done was not the only (or even the main) goal of the day.

What reflection on all these good things does is help us to see that service projects (within the Christian life) really are intended to be points of access through which God can pour His blessings into our lives. Service and service projects are so much more than just items on God's list of things that we have to do. They are opportunities for grace to move into our lives. When we're open to that possibility, especially when we are serving with eyes wide open--looking for what God can and will do in the midst of our work--sometimes even in spite of the hiccups and problems that crop up--, then we are in the best position to receive. If we are narrowly focused (as with tunnel-vision or blinders) on just the task, then unexpected problems will tend to frustrate us and we'll miss out on all the other stuff (above and beyond the mere "work") that God wants to give to us.

This is why those who have really cultivated a life of service will so often affirm that, when serving, the recipient of real blessing is the one who serves. So many of us go into service with the mentality: I'm going to help this person. I'm going to help this group. I'm going to bless this person. But if we approach service in the right way, we'll usually find that the person who serves is as blessed as the person who is served. "It is more blessed to give than to receive." That's really true. But it only works for those who recognize that giving is not just something that I do. Rather, it is a point of access through which God can pour His blessings into my life. Why should this be so? Because when we give and do so in the right attitude, we are coming alongside the work that God is doing. (This is at His invitation, of course.) To work alongside God is for Him to become involved in our lives. And God's presence in our lives is the greatest blessing of all. And as the blessed presence of God enters our lives, it manifests itself in all sorts of ways--in feelings of affirmation, in relationships built, in love communicated, and, yes, in work accomplished.

[I didn't think about this at the time, but as I continue to reflect. When we teach in the church about giving, we often go to Malachi 3:10. '"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this," says the LORD of hosts, "if I will not open for you the windows of heaven, and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows."' The problem with our common ways of thinking about this verse is that we do so in transactional terms. We imagine God to be speaking here of a transaction. You do this for me and I will do this for you. Bring the tithe into the storehouse and I will bless you. But that misunderstands how God works. You can even see the shadow of "earning" and "meriting" images infiltrating our thinking here. God does not work in this transactional way, fundamentally. When we bring our tithe into the storehouse, we come alongside the work that God is doing, we open up a point of access through which he can move into our lives; and as He moves into our lives, His presence, which is the greatest blessing of all, manifests itself in all sorts of ways. Psalm 37 and Proverbs 11, 19, and 22, speak of the good condition of the generous person. Is this so because God gives special rewards to the generous because of their deeds? Or is it just because generosity draws God into the life of that person?]

With this all in mind, consider this thought: if we do, indeed, believe that salvation is not earned, that our work does not merit God's favor, that service is just one more way in which our generous God can move into and through our lives--then why do we get so stressed out about service? This is especially relevant for those on the administrative/logistical end of things. When planning something like a weekend of service, administrators are likely to get all bent out of shape. They worry about whether they've accounted for all the details, whether there will be enough volunteers, whether the work will get done, and whether people will get along. They can become very impatient with volunteers who make mistakes, forget things, don't get the job done correctly, or otherwise fall short of expectations. Of course there's something to this. When engaging in service, we should try to do good work, be conscientious, attentive to and concerned for people--all these things are good. But the kind of stress and anxiety that so many go through seems to go above and beyond just caring for people. What's going on there?

Are we worried that failure will result in God's disfavor? Are we worried that people will be disappointed in us or angry with us? Are we worried that we will fail to measure up to our personal high standard of quality and accomplishment? The last point probably strikes closest to home. Can you imagine what it's like to finish up a monthly service activity and the most you can say is, "Well we were able to pull this month off. Now we've got to get ready for next month." Some of you can imagine that all too well because that's how you think. You slave away under the anxiety and fear of failure. When a project is finished well, the most you can say is, "Thank goodness this didn't blow up in my face." But of course, the next project might, and so there's never a let-up in the pressure and anxiety.

So many well-meaning Christians end up approaching service as if a job well-done lifted them just over the threshold of minimal acceptability. Anything less and they wouldn't have made it. The truth is that Jesus Christ has already carried us over that minimum threshold. Service, then, and all of our life with God is then just an opportunity for God to pour even more abundance and blessing and grace into our lives. The most colossal failure won't dropus below the line and, even when we do fail, those with eyes wide open will always find some good in what happened--because God was there all along and His presence is the greatest blessing.

Are you starting to get the picture?

What was so exciting about this weekend of service, for me, was that I actually got to see how God works in this way. In my teaching, I try to emphasize to people that service is more than just accomplishing the work. Service is more than just doing stuff for God. And through this weekend of service I saw that happen. It happened in the life of the church members and they were the one's talking about it. Whether they fully understood what they were saying and what was happening is a further question. That's part of the reason I blog about these sorts of things, to help draw people's attention to what is going on in their lives and to help them see that their experiences are not just random. Rather, they fall into an intelligible pattern.

One of the reasons that it's important to draw our attention to this pattern is that it allows us to make informed and intelligent decisions about our behavior. You see, Satan has a way of working on our minds. We hear about service opportunities or are asked to donate money or volunteer time and our first thoughts may be: "How inconvenient," "This is going to ruin my weekend," "But I wanted to do something else with that money," "But I volunteered last month," "I don't even know these people," "Why do they keep asking?" etc., etc., etc. These are the thoughts that come to us first, so often, and we forget all of the good that comes from service.

I've had this experience so many times. For two summers in high school I helped to lead neighborhood Vacation Bible School programs. Every morning I struggled to motivate myself for work. Every morning I questioned whether or not it was worth it to do this. I complained to myself about the inconvenience and worried about how the day would go. And at the end of every day I marveled at my recalcitrance just because the days went so well and were so full and good. For two summers, in Riverside, I helped with a two-week camp for kids with autism, hosted by one of the churches in our community. And on so many mornings I would ruminate on the inconvenience of the whole thing and consider skipping out. Yet every day was good. So many good things happened through that camp.

Yet it is so easy for us to lose focus, to see service as drudgery, to forget about and not even look for (and so miss out on) all the good that comes through faithful obedience, submission, and sacrifice. Have you experienced that? If we're to make progress in this area, we have to be able to make decisions based on more than just our immediate feelings--because our feelings will often betray us. We need to be able to recognize the truth and to act in light of that. And one of the most important truths that we need to internalize is that service really is a good thing.

Unfortunately we're so used to people telling us that things are "good for us" that really aren't. We're used to well-meaning but misguided people putting us through the dull, tiresome, inconvenient, tedious, banal, all the while telling us "it's good for you." When Jesus pushes us in that direction, His call is different. He's not just feeding us a line. He wants to give us life abundant.

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What a long post. And I could still go on. During that celebration service, I made brief reference to Paul's exhortation in Ephesians: "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma." (5:1-2) If I had had much more time, I would also have talked about Jesus' mission statement in John 5: "My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working." (v. 17) The last thing I would have done, and I'll wrap up here with that, is cite a letter from the second century in which one of the Apostolic Fathers shares with a non-Christian about what it means to be a follower of Christ.

This letter is written by an anonymous Christian whom historians have referred to as Mathetes, a word that just means "disciple". He was writing to Diognetus, defending the movement of Christianity. After explaining what Christianity is all about and how it is superior to the various pagan religions, he says this:

"If you also desire to possess this faith, you likewise shall receive first of all the knowledge of the Father. ... And when you have attained this knowledge, with what joy do you think you will be filled? Or, how will you love Him who has first so loved you? And if you love Him, you will be an imitator of His kindness. And do not wonder that a man may become an imitator of God. He can, if he is willing. For it is not by ruling over his neighbours, or by seeking to hold the supremacy over those that are weaker, or by being rich, or showing violence towards those that are inferior, that happiness is found; nor can any one by these things become an imitator of God. But these things do not at all constitute His majesty. On the contrary he who takes upon himself the burden of his neighbour; he who, in whatsoever respect he may be superior, is ready to benefit another who is deficient; he who, whatsoever things he has received from God, by distributing these to the needy, becomes a god to those who receive his benefits: he is an imitator of God.

[When you do these things, t]hen you shall see, while still on earth, that God in the heavens rules over the universe; then you shall begin to speak the mysteries of God; then shall you both love and admire those that suffer punishment because they will not deny God; then shall you condemn the deceit and error of the world when you shall know what it is to live truly in heaven, when you shall despise that which is here esteemed to be death, when you shall fear what is truly death, which is reserved for those who shall be condemned to the eternal fire, which shall afflict those even to the end that are committed to it. Then shall you admire those who for righteousness' sake endure the fire that is but for a moment, and shall count them happy when you shall know the nature of that fire."

Mathetes ("disciple"), Epistle to Diognetus (c. 130 A.D.)

Did you catch it? What does Mathetes tell Diognetus will be the result of his imitating God? He says, "Then you shall see, while still on earth, that God in the heavens rules over the universe." Notice, he doesn't say, "Then all the people you help shall see that God rules over the universe." Of course that is also true. But the thing he focuses on is that you (the one serving) shall see that God rules over the universe.

Again, this is why I so love hearing about what God is doing in other people's lives--because it reminds me and affirms that what God has revealed in His Word is true--that God really is present and active in this world. It's so easy, in the hurried frenzy of our every day lives, for the presence and promises of God to seem very distant and remote. But people's experiences of God working remind me that God really is present and active. They challenge me to step out and do more in faith. And service, again, is one of those points of access, through which God can enter into our lives, work, and in doing so remind us that He really is present and active. This has the effect of calling us out to do more, to step our in faith more, to submit more, and in doing so to enter more fully into what God desires for us and into fuller experience of His life in us.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 246: My Heart, Christ's Home

2011-08-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

This last Sunday, I was able to co-preach with the Associate Pastor at my church. Actually, what we did is deliver a sermon written by Robert Boyd Munger, entitled "My Heart, Christ's Home." It's a very well-known sermon, has been published in pamphlet form, and is probably easily accessible online. In that message, illustrates the process of sanctification by describing the human heart as a home, full of rooms. He traces the Jesus Christ's movement through His own heart and some of the challenges that He faced.

The sermon is excellent and I would highly recommend it. After we spoke, two people came up to me and asked for copies of the message to review and to share with family.

Below are a few remarks that I made after we read through Munger's text. A lot more could be said but this is just intended to help prompt further reflection.

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Munger says, "He took my life that day and I can give you my word, there is no better way to live the Christian life." I think the claim should be even stronger: there is no better way to live life period. That's what Jesus offers to us--what He offers to you. He says, if you'll let me, I'll come into your heart--into your life--, take up residence there, and I'll change and transform every part of it, to make it new and good, clean and whole.

Through Robert Munger's imaginative depiction, we are reminded that this sort of change and transformation does involve a process. Our lives consist of many different parts; our hearts contain many different rooms. Some of these rooms are easily accessible, right on the surface. Others are hidden very deep inside and take time to uncover and reach. But Jesus Christ wants to move into them all. He wants to change and transform them all for good. The question for you, this morning: Will you allow Him to do that? Will you invite Him in?

Some of you, perhaps, have never invited Jesus to take up residence in your heart. You've never said to Him what Munger said at the beginning of his message: "Lord, I want this heart of mine to be yours. I want to have you settle down here and be perfectly at home. Everything I have belongs to you. Let me show you around and introduce you to the various features of the home that you may be more comfortable and that we may have fuller fellowship together." That is the first step: inviting Him into the home of your heart; and then surrendering the lordship and control of each area of your life to Him and His will.

Some of you may have taken that first step. Jesus has entered into your heart and worked some changes in your life. But there are still rooms in your heart that you're trying to keep Him out of. Some of you have been Christian for years, and yet you know that Jesus Christ is not completely at home in your heart. And, if you were honest, you'd admit that you're not completely at home with Him either. Maybe you sense that Jesus has moved his bed out onto the back porch of your life and, as a result, the truths and promises of His Word don't seem to be working out for you.

Some of you have a growing and vibrant relationship with Jesus. You have made Him Lord of your life and you are, daily, surrendering more and more of yourself to God and experiencing how good that is. And perhaps, this morning, you sense God's Holy Spirit drawing your attention to yet another area of your life, asking you to let Him in to change and transform it.

We're all at different places in our lives and walks with God, but the basic question is the same for everyone: Will you invite Jesus in? Will you submit each room of your heart to His will and lordship? Will you allow Him to change and transform you for good? Remember, He will only come in if you allow Him to.

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If you fill your mind with the things of the world, you're going to think just like the world thinks. Now you need to stop for a moment and consider what that's like. If you're constantly desiring and chasing after the things of this world--what the world considers to be valuable and worthwhile--you're never going to be satisfied. Isn't that what you've found? If you neglect that time of quiet fellowship with God around His Word and prayer, you're just asking for the pressure of responsibilities and the weight of people's expectations to grind you into the ground. If you don't come alongside of the work that God is already doing, the most that you can hope to accomplish will be limited to what you can pull off on your own, by yourself. If your hobbies and relationships are drawing you away from God, then your relationship with Him will inevitably suffer, along with your experience of the joy and love and peace and contentment that come from Him. If you stray from God's intention for your sexuality, you're going to miss out on what is best for you and for your relationships. If you refuse to let God into that closet of your darkest secrets, hidden sins, and deepest hurts, then you will never experience the full depth of God's love for you, the full extent of His power to redeem, the great relief that comes from knowing that you are completely forgiven, and the real, deep, and abiding assurance that there is nothing in all creation that can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Jesus wants to give you life. He wants to change you in such a way that you'll look back on your life before or your life even a couple years ago and you'll say, "I thought I was living then. But everything that I had then is death in comparison to the life that I have now."

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The conceit of Munger's sermon comes from a line from Paul's letter to the Ephesians: "that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith". (NASB) Here's a bit more of the context. And notice what Paul expects to be the result of Christ's dwelling in the believer's heart.

"For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God." (Ephesians 3:14-19)

Paul then closes this section of His letter with this wonderful benediction.

"Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen." (Ephesians 3:20-21)

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus, through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 245: The Pattern

2011-08-01T17:41:00.001-07:00

Rafting Reflections, Part 2

In my last entry I made a suggestion about how we ought to understand "encountering God". Encountering God involves recognizing His presence and activity in our lives. We do this most clearly when we notice that our lives (or aspects of our lives) are taking on a shape that accords with the particular patterns that God has revealed in Scripture.

In this entry I want to expand on that basic idea and try to say something more about that pattern. My comments will still be very general and may not fit well with everyone's experiences, but I think they will be helpful.

The pattern of life that, I think, is presented in Scripture as the model is something like this:

Life with God involves a series of peaks and troughs. I take it that this accords with most people's experience. There are good times and there are bad times. The question is, how are the good and bad times related. Are they just random? Do the good and bad times come as a result of my choices or are they just a matter of luck? Two things to say at this point: (1) the experience of good and bad times is not random (although we may not be able to appreciate their point at the time and (2) the peaks and troughs do not correspond just to the difference between good and bad times. In trying to represent the course of life with just a single line, obviously, I am oversimplifying. But even as I do oversimplify, I hope that I can draw our attention to some very real patterns and things that are happening in our lives.

On the model that I am recommending, the periods of decline do not just represent periods of hardship or suffering. Certainly it makes sense to represent times of suffering as a downward trend, but I think it is also useful to represent times of submission and of sacrifice by this sort of downward line. These are going to be the times when we are most challenged--challenged to remain faithful with God, challenged to be obedient, challenged to surrender ourselves to God. Submission often involves setting aside our own desires in order to pursue what God calls us to. Sacrifice involves letting go of things that I want in order to pursue what God wants. And suffering comes when we make God's will a higher priority than our own comfort and sense of well-being. Of course suffering comes as a natural part of being in a fallen world and as a result of our sin. But that is not the kind of suffering I want to focus on. The suffering that is most clearly a part of the pattern that we're interested in is suffering that comes, from whatever source, in the midst of our actively pursuing God's will.

The periods of increase represent the ways in which God responds to our faithful submission, sacrifice, and the suffering that we endure. God takes our acts of obedience and brings good things out of them. He takes our experiences of hardship, the things that we've lost, and He works them to good results. He redeems the dark times, restores what has been damaged or broken (usually making it better and stronger than it was before), and generally reacts to what we have done in various, often miraculous ways.

Life, then, on this model, is a series of movements like this. Sometimes we find ourselves being obedient without much in the way of tangible assurance that God is with us and working. Sometimes we find that God's blessings are very evident. And it's usually in hindsight that we're best positioned to recognize how God has used our past submission, sacrifice, and suffering to bring about better results.

A few more things to point out about this initial diagram before moving on. Notice that even while there are periodic ups and downs, the overall trend of the life represented here is upward. That is the way it is with those who are faithful in walking with God. The hard times may still be hard, but through each successive experience, we are drawing closer and closer to the ultimate redemption, restoration, and divine reaction. Also, one should keep in mind that even within each of these cycles, there will often be smaller cycles. If you were to take a magnifying glass to one of the sections, you would see that it is composed of a series of smaller peaks and troughs. Even in the midst of tough times or times of great sacrifice or submission, God still reminds us in small ways that He is present and working. And even in times when things are moving up and up, there will still be challenges that we face and continual opportunities for submitting to and obeying God's will and instructions.

My suggestion is that this may serve as a general model for understanding how life with God is supposed to work. God calls us to faithful obedience and as we enter into that, as we submit to Him, even in the midst of hard times, He will work in our lives. His work in our lives and the results of our obedience that we see throughout our lives assure us that God is real, working, and present with us. This will be so, especially, when it is clear that the results of our obedience are more than we could account for by our own effort and energy. When God takes our gift of submission and sacrifice to Him, He is the one who multiplies it 30-, 60- and 100-fold.

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Now the main reason for highlighting this pattern is that it helps us to make sense of our own lives and enables us to more easily make intelligent decisions about how to act and respond to the different things that life throws our way. I'll talk more about that later.

What I want to do now is to draw our attention to the fact that this really is the pattern of how God works as revealed in the Scriptures. We can point to the lives of many, many biblical figures to see this pattern.

The history of the people of Israel matches this pattern. Even though Israel was a small nation, surrounded by powerful enemies who were constantly threatening them, when the Israelites obeyed and submitted to God, He took care of them and gave them victory over their enemies. Joseph's life, which is recorded in the book of Genesis, fits this pattern. His brothers hated him and sold him into slavery, but he was obedient to God and eventually he was made the steward of his master's household. His master's wife framed him and he got thrown in jail, but he was obedient to God and eventually was put in charge of the entire prison. He was abandoned by close friends, but he remained obedient to God and was actually made the second highest ruler in all of Egypt. Down and up, down and up, down and up.

King David's career followed this pattern. He was the youngest son in his family but God raised him up to be king of Israel. Before he was appointed king he had to live in the wilderness and hide from various ones who wanted to kill him, but he was faithful to God and God took care of him. At a few places he disobeyed God and betrayed his people's trust, but whenever he returned to following God, God took care of him.

Daniel was one of the Jewish exiles to Babylon. He and his friends were held captive there for over sixty years. They experienced many of these troughs and peaks but since they remained faithful to God, God carried them through all of that. At one point, Daniel was under a death sentence, but after God helped him to interpret King Nebuchadnezzar's dream, he was appointed to be one of the king's chiefs. When Daniel's friends refused to bow to the king's golden statue, he threw them into a fiery furnace. But God preserved them and they were given all sorts of honors as a result. King Nebuchadnezzar had some kind of nervous breakdown late in his reign, because of his refusal to recognize God as sovereign, but when he submitted to God, his entire kingdom was restored to him. Daniel's faithfulness to God was so well-known that his enemies used it as a basis for throwing him into a den of hungry lions, but God protected him and showed the King of Persia that Daniel's God was the one true God.

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These are just a couple examples from the Old Testament. The ultimate example of this pattern though is found in the life of Jesus Christ Himself. To see this look at one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture (and one that I've referenced in a number of other places): Philippians 2:5-11.

"Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Here's how this description of Jesus' life and work lines up with the pattern I've described:

Jesus began as being equal with God. He was and is God, co-eternal and of the same substance with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but He submitted Himself to the will of the Father, emptied Himself, became human, took on Himself the sins of the world, came under God's curse; and in that act of submission, sacrifice, and suffering He went as far down as one possibly can go. But since He did all this in obedience to the Father, that trough did not mark the end of the story. Through Christ's sacrifice, the way was opened for the redemption of all humankind. Not only that but God restored Him to His rightful place on the highest throne in heaven.

And did you catch Paul's opening words: "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus." Paul is exhorting the Philippian Christians (and us as well) to follow the example of Jesus, to follow that model or pattern that He set out for us. Jesus modeled what it is like to live in perfect harmony and relationship with God. He trusted completely in His heavenly Father, submitted obediently to the Father's will, and the Father responded by bringing incredibly good things from Jesus' acts of submission, sacrifice, and even from His suffering.

Notice, then, how each of the downs-and-ups that we experience in life, matches the basic pattern of Christ's life:

And as we remain faithful to submit to God continually as Christ did, God will move us ever upward toward the place that God has prepared and appointed for us.

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Now I already referred to some Old Testament examples of this pattern. Are there any New Testament examples of people who followed the same pattern that Jesus did? There are. One example can be found in the ministry of the Apostle Paul as recorded in Acts 13 and 14. There Luke tells of Paul's first missionary journey. The Holy Spirit directed him to spread the gospel and he obediently set out. First he went to the island of Salamis. There, as he preached the gospel, some opposition arose against Him, but God miraculously intervened so that even the Roman proconsul came to believe. (13:1-12)

From there Paul moved to Pisidian Antioch where he began to teach in the Jewish synagogue. But some of the Jews didn't like what he taught and opposed him to such an extent that he left there and decided to go reach the Gentiles instead. (13:13-52)

So he went to Iconium and began to preach there. He had some success there until some of the embittered Jews from Pisidian Antioch came and turned the Iconians against Paul. They even made plans to kill Paul so he fled to the cities of Lystra and Derbe. (14:1-7)

In Lystra and Derbe the people misunderstood Paul's work and message completely and they actually did stone Paul. They dragged his apparently-dead body outside of the city and left him there. But the disciples prayed for Paul and he got up and continued with his preaching. (14:8-19)

After Paul finished there, he went back through all the cities that he had visited. He encouraged the Christians in each city and helped all the churches that he had founded. Eventually he returned to Antioch and reported all the good things that had happened. (Acts 14:20-28)

In looking at this diagram, do you see how Paul's ministry followed the pattern of Jesus' ministry. Paul was obedient to God--even to the point of death. After beating his body with large rocks, the people of Lystra and Derbe were certain that he was dead, but God restored him in the same way that he restored Jesus. And God brought great good out of Paul's faithful obedience in the same way that He brought great good out of Jesus' obedience.

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My suggestion is that God wants for all of us to walk in this same pattern of life. We may not end up enduring suffering to the same degree that Paul or the other Apostles did, but we need to carefully consider whether we are willing to submit to God's will, as they did, no matter how much it costs, in confident hope that He can and will work all things together for the good.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Paul had stopped ministering after the second city. Suppose he had thought about the opposition that he faced and decided that this was too much for him to handle. Or suppose that he had lost confidence in God's faithfulness and plans. He would never have reaped the good harvest that he finally did.

This is, unfortunately, what many people end up doing.

They enter into a period of trial or begin to follow God's call to obedience. They may do so with the expectation that God will work and redeem and bring good things out of their sacrifice. But if it doesn't happen quickly enough, or the amount of suffering or difficulty is greater than their willing to take, they may step out of God's plan. They may refuse to continue to submit and sacrifice. And what's the result? They miss out on what God had for them. They may be able to avoid serious hardship or difficulty, but they will also miss out on God's best for them. (And the, still harder, truth is that the life not submitted to God is slowly and gradually moving downward and farther away from God's purpose and intention.

Remember, I said earlier: "[T]he main reason for highlighting this pattern is that it helps us to make sense of our own lives and enables us to more easily make intelligent decisions about how to act and respond to the different things that life throws our way. I'll talk more about that later." This is where I want to talk about that.

How should we deal with challenging times, times of suffering, and times of trials? If we don't have any sense of how God works, then we may interpret suffering as a form of punishment or as the result of dumb luck or as the result of our own failings. If we take seriously that God can use suffering and our obedience and submission in the midst of suffering to bring about great good, we will have greater confidence. But we should remember that our one responsibility is to faithfully submit to God. God is the one who takes care of redeeming, restoring, and using our obedience to bring great good. If we are too confident in our ability to judge how God should work, then we will become impatient when God does not respond quickly enough. And if we become impatient, then we may lose confidence in God's good purposes. That is the point at which we'll step out of the process; we'll do whatever it takes to get out of our difficulties, we'll stop being obedient and stop submitting. And when we stop submitting, God can no longer work in our lives in the way that He intended.

Of course, even if we understand how God works, that doesn't mean that the process will be easy or painless. But understanding the process can give us hope. God the Father took Jesus from the very lowest place possible (he was under God's curse, bearing the punishment for all the sins of the world) and He raised Him back to the very highest place (at the right hand of the throne of God). The God who can bring that much good out of that much bad can certainly bring good things out of our lives. The key is that we must trust in Him. It's not enough to trust Him until He does what we don't like or to trust Him just as long as what He's doing makes sense to us. After all, God knows a lot more about what's going on and what's good for us than we do. If we are going to move in the upward direction that God has for us, then we must be willing to submit to Him and trust Him completely. That trust is manifested in faithful obedience. Of course there will be times when we'll fall out of the pattern, but from Scripture we learn that as soon as we get back into the pattern, God is ready and eager to continue working with us. He really does have a good plan and purpose for us.

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One additional note before wrapping up: A friend's comment alerted me to the fact that I really have not said enough about how acts of service--especially to the poor, the needy, the outcasts, etc.--provide an important point of access to this pattern. I've talked about submission, sacrifice, and enduring suffering, but I haven't said much about service. The ways in which God works alongside us as we humble ourselves before others, as we follow Christ's example of love for others, and as we look out for the "least of these" are absolutely central to our experience of God's reality, presence, and action with us. Maybe people would make that connection anyway, but because it is so easy to focus just on "spiritual experiences," it's a good idea to draw our attention explicitly to the importance of service. I may try to say more about this in a later entry.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 244: "Encountering God"

2011-08-01T17:38:00.001-07:00

Rafting Reflections, Part 1

What does it mean to "encounter God"?

This past week I had the exciting opportunity to join a friend of mine and the church youth group that he leads on their summer camping trip. We spent two days white-water rafting (--a total of four days camping--) on portions of the American River.

We spent a lot of time rafting, swimming, playing volleyball, sitting around the camp fire, and relaxing. At various points, we also took time to sing together, pray, and hear from the word of God. Our speaker took as his theme the topic of encountering God. We talked, at various points, about the Apostle Paul's conversion, the miraculous healing that Jesus brought about in Luke 8:43-48, and the youths' various experiences of meeting with God through their camping experience.

Reflection on what was discussed and shared prompts me to raise (yet again, perhaps) the question: What does it mean to "encounter God"? It's very easy for those of us who have grown up in Christian circles to throw this kind of language around, but it's not necessarily obvious just what it means. People who are not steeped in Christian culture may be confused by this idea, and I suspect that many within the Christian community, if honest, would admit that it is mysterious to them as well. Regardless of where you find yourself at present, it is worthwhile and helpful for us to reflect on this question: What does it mean to "encounter God"?

One of the reasons that people go on spiritual camps and retreats is to "meet with God". But what does that mean? What are people looking for when they pull away from the normal routine and the busyness of daily life? What are people experiencing in a moment of "worship"? What sense can we make of the "feelings" that people sometimes have? Do all of those count as "encounters with God"?

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Of course we need to take seriously, if we take the notion of encountering God seriously and want to treat the Bible as the foundation for thinking about it, that what we are trying to get at involves some kind of personal encounter--i.e. an encounter with a person. For that reason, we should not expect that all "encounters with God" will be identical, either in form or content. In fact, if every person's "encounter with God" was identical to every other, that would be good reason to doubt that they were actually engaging with a living, responsive, dynamic, personal presence.

At the same time, however, not just any experience can or will count as an encounter with God. Along these same lines, not any experience can or will count as an encounter with me, or with any person. My various friends' encounters with me will all be different, but they will still be ordered and structured--in particular, by who I am, my character and personality. If the person you meet is a pop culture and sports trivia fanatic, enthusiastic about business and finance, and can't stand tea, then you have not met me.

So there are two points that stand in tension with one another and serve as constraints on our attempting to articulate what it means to encounter God. On the one hand, our conception of such encounters should not be too narrow. On the other hand, it should not be too inclusive. But when we talk about these two points constraining our articulations, we are not saying that either or both should serve as starting points. It is not as if these were two facets of reality that we have latched on to and from which we can derive helpful conclusions about the nature of encounters with God. They are only descriptions of the limitations of our articulations. To get at the substance of what falls within those limiting constraints, we must look to the thing itself. That is what we are trying to get at when we ask: What does it mean to encounter God?

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In seeking to answer this question, it would be very easy for us to fall into the error of confusing some aspect of such encounters with the essence of that encounter. For instance, many people may point to some kind of emotional experience or feeling, images, impressions, or sensations. Others may point to outward actions like speaking in tongues, singing, or shouting. Others may look for miraculous events as marking an encounter with God. Others will point to a settledness, feeling of peace, tranquility, or sense contentment. None of these, I expect, gets at the essence of what it means to encounter God. If we pick out any one of these items and try to peg that as what encountering God consists in, we will have moved to one of the extremes that we were supposed to avoid.

If this route to answering our question is no good, how should we begin. First, I think, we need to return to a point mentioned earlier and, perhaps, spend some extended time reflecting on the fact that encountering God involves and consists in interacting with a person. A person who encounters me--who interacts with me--will have all sorts of experiences that he or she may describe in various ways. But if those experiences were somehow separated from me--if those "experiences" were part of some artificial or virtual reality simulation--they would not amount to experiences of or interactions with me.

This point might seem so obvious as to not require even being mentioned. It's obviousness may also give some people the sense that, in pointing out that encountering God involves encountering a person, we have not said anything really helpful. We started out by asking, "What does it mean to encounter God?" The answer, "Encountering God means encountering a person," may not seem to be very helpful. But if that's right, it suggests that we may actually be unclear about the question we're asking.

Perhaps we are really asking a question like, "How can I recognize that some experience is actually an instance of encountering God?" "By what marks or signs can I be certain that I am encountering God?" These questions might not seem to be very different from the original one that we raised. But these ways of formulating the question, I think, do a better job of making transparent the fact that while the object of our inquiry is related to the core and essence of "encountering God" what we are asking about is not identical to that essence. At the heart of "encountering God" is an instance of real interaction between two persons. But how do we cultivate that interaction? What sense can we have of how it's progressing? Is it possible to know with any certainty that I am, in fact, connecting to God? How so?

Hopefully it's clear that this question has important implications for the work of pastors and disciples alike. The question struck me particularly forcefully as I interacted with the students at this youth camp. One desire of Christian pastors and teachers is that people would "encounter God." Our expectation is that, as people grow in their relationship with God, they would have an increasing number of "encounters" and "interactions" with God. Also, we expect that mature Christians would be aware of God's presence with them and activity in and around them. But how do we communicate this desire and help individual disciples to take ownership of that? How can I communicate to a teenager (or any person) what it means to encounter God, so that they can actually make sense of my desire for them to have such an encounter?

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Here's my attempt to answer this question:

Encountering God involves recognizing His presence and activity in our lives. We do this most clearly when we notice that our lives (or aspects of our lives) are taking on a shape that accords with the particular patterns that God has revealed in Scripture.

Some important manifestations of this pattern include: obedience, prayer, Bible study, sacrifice, worship, devotion to God, loving and serving people, trusting and believing in Jesus Christ. These, it's important to note, are just part of the overall pattern to which we want to attend. I already indicated that a person may have many experiences that seem to be of me, but if they are not appropriately connected to me, then they are not experiences of or encounters with me. In the same way, just the acts of obeying the instructions written in the Bible, offering prayers, and studying a particular set of revered texts do not by themselves amount to encountering God. Obedience is always done in faith and trust. Prayers are offered with the expectation of a response. And Christians study the Bible because they believe that God will speak through the text. That response on God's part is a crucial part of the pattern with which we are concerned. I said we encounter God most clearly in situations where we actually notice that our lives are taking on a shape that accords with the biblical pattern. That pattern is one of our acting and God responding.

A side-bar: some people may become concerned at this point and want to remind us or otherwise assert that any encounter with God requires that God take the initiative. And most Christians (should) take seriously that in our fallen state, humankind's ability to initiate such interactions is, at least, seriously impaired. It is true that, for instance, "We love because He first loved us," and that the possibility of our enjoying significant relationship with God depends upon His having reached out to us. But insofar as He has reached out to us, as He has sent His Son who has made atonement for sin, the question that we have to consider is: Will we receive God's gracious gift and accept His provision? Our response to God's action and His offer of salvation and relationship is what opens the way for applying what God has done in Jesus Christ to our lives through the Holy Spirit. So I think it is not misleading to say that the biblical pattern into which we are invited is one in which we act and God responds. Or another way of saying it: the invitation is to enter into a pattern that God has already erected and put in place.

The kinds of actions that we are called to have been laid out already: obedience, prayer, Bible study, sacrifice, worship, devotion, love, service, trust, belief, etc. But I don't want us to focus just on the particular actions but on the overarching pattern. We may already be so used to hearing teachers talk about the importance of prayer and Bible study that we may have missed the way in which those activities fit into this larger pattern. To get some sense of that larger pattern, and to illustrate it, we turn to the pages of Scripture: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Rahab, Gideon, Barack, Samuel, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, the twelve apostles, the various people with whom Jesus interacted during His ministry, and the Apostle Paul. What their stories help us to understand is the various ways in which God works. All of their interactions with God involved them acting (entering into the pattern that God had put in place) and God responding.

Again, all of this may seem obvious but I suspect that many Christians have a hard time connecting these dots where their own lives are concerned. They hear messages over and over about all the things that they ought to be doing. They ought to read their Bibles and pray and evangelize and serve in the church and be part of a small group and periodically participate in fasting and join a Bible study and help the poor and go on spiritual retreats and volunteer for outside projects and memorize Scripture and have daily devotions, etc., etc., etc. Christians hear these messages all the time and they may submit to such teaching and (try to) participate in these activities. But do those people understand that when they engage in those activities they are entering into this pattern of our acting and God's responding? Do they see themselves as doing the same thing that Abraham, David, Hezekiah, Josiah, the ten lepers, or the Syrophonecian woman did?

This is one of the main reasons that Bible study is so important--because that acquaints us with the pattern and manner after which God works. Familiarity with the history of the church over the past two millennia is important for the same reasons. Without that foundation, we don't have a way of interpreting or making sense of our experiences. We have no way of understanding what is going on when bad things happen or when good things happen. We may mistakenly interpret good things as signs of God's favor and we may mistakenly interpret bad things as signs of His displeasure. We may shake our fist at God and ask Him 'Why?' when He's already given us all the information we need to make sense of our experiences through the words of Scripture and the history of the Christian movement.

Notice that this damaging kind of ignorance does not necessarily have to be total. People who focus on just a few passages of Scripture, rather than on the whole revelation, may misinterpret their experiences. They may think that they are encountering God when they are actually not. They may think that certain people are blessed by God and others not when the exact opposite is the case. Jesus taught on just this point at several places.

If we want to know how we can move into the pattern that God has laid out--how we should act and in what ways God will respond--then we need to look at the whole of the biblical revelation. If we do that, we will notice two things: first, the external manifestations of God's presence and activity vary widely. Moses, Elijah, and Elisha stand out in the Old Testament as miracle-working prophets. They are the only one's in the Old Testament who were gifted in this particularly dramatic way. God allowed Joseph and Daniel to interpret dreams. He gave visions to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other prophets. He spoke to the kings of Israel through the prophets. Sometimes He showed up in a cloud, or in fire, or in a gentle breeze. When Jesus healed people, He did so in many different ways. He spit on one guy's tongue, put mud in another's eyes and told that man to wash, spoke to one dead girl, touched another dead man, and called out to a third in order to raise them to life. Sometimes He didn't do anything at all, as when one woman was healed after just touching His robe. In some cases He visited the sick or dying and in others He healed from a distance. Really, the manifestations of God's presence and activity will not fit into a single box. There is no formula for healing someone. There is no formula for meeting God. In pointing this out, we avoid one of the two unacceptable extremes that we pointed out at the beginning of this post.

We avoid the other unacceptable extreme by pointing out that, despite the fact that the manifestations of God's presence and activity are so varied, a common underlying logic unites them all. Each time someone encounters God, in the Old or New Testaments, there is a common underlying pattern. That pattern involves our acting and God's responding. So not just any experience of good things--not just any set of funny feelings, etc.--will count as an experience of God or encounter with Him. Where we encounter God is in those places where we recognize that our lives fit into this pattern.

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Here I am making the point in very broad strokes. I encourage anyone to read the Scriptures and look for this pattern at work. But for now let me skip ahead to address myself to a few particular practical points.

I started this post by talking about my time at a youth summer camp. Part of the reason for raising this question, "What does it mean to encounter God?" is that a better understanding of this will help us to better articulate to people what our desire for them is. If I say, "I want for you to encounter God," what does that mean for the person who's hearing it. He or she may also want to encounter God, but if they don't know what that means or what that looks like, then they will have a hard time making that happen.

Having gone through this bit of reflection, we are hopefully in a better position to be able to guide people into encounters with God. If the question is, "How can I have an encounter with God?" or the thought is, "I want to encounter God but I don't know how," or "I've tried to meet God but it's never worked," we now have a way of helping. If you want to encounter God, you need to move into the pattern of God's activity. You need to act in a way that moves you into that pattern with the expectation that God will respond. If you aren't acting, the encounter will not happen. If you are acting without being alert and expectant in the appropriate way, the encounter will not happen. If you act and are appropriately expectant, the testimony of all those who have done these things before us is that God will respond and meet us.

There are some further practical elements to consider in this connection. What does it really look like to act in accordance with this pattern? Is it just a matter of obeying the Bible, praying, studying, etc.? What does that really look like? We'll discuss those more in some of the other entries in this series. But there's at least one point I want to consider now.

One of the questions I raised earlier was about the connection of spiritual retreats and camps to "encountering God." One of the reasons that people go on spiritual camps and retreats is to "meet with God". Just what are people looking for when they pull away from the normal routine and the busyness of daily life in this way? Is it reasonable to expect that one could or would encounter God in this context?

Retreats play a very important role in one's life and walk with God. One of the biggest challenges that we face in life is the wealth of things that distract us from really attending to God and His activity. We become so easily preoccupied with the day-to-day. Our minds are filled with worries and anxieties. Our chief thoughts concern the next business deal, avoiding that troublesome co-worker, the problems at home, frustrations with kids, worries about the economy, grandmother's health problems, the custody battle, loan and credit card payments, etc., etc., etc. Our fixation on these things is often precisely what leads us away from God and outside of that crucial pattern of faithful obedience and submission to His will. Taking a spiritual retreat, then, when approached properly, is itself an act of faith and a step into God's pattern.

When a person makes a decision to step away from the mad rush, to intentionally pursue quiet time, to set aside those worries and anxieties and to spend a day or a week in intentional pursuit of God, that creates a space in which God may work and meet that person. Men and women from throughout the history of Christianity can attest to this. To encounter God in this context may involve experiencing a significant change in perspective (perhaps coming to recognize just how big God really is in comparison to all the little things about which we constantly obsess.) It may take the form of an audible voice, feeling, or sensation. But what marks out such experiences as divine is that they fit into this pattern and point toward more and deeper such movements.

It's important to remember that spiritual retreats are not just momentary glimpses of peace and tranquility that we enjoy before diving headlong right back into the madness of the routine. The purpose of retreats is to learn about and draw closer to God in such a way that we can carry those kinds of interactions with God back with us into our daily routine. The goal is to learn how to meet with God in the easy setting (away from the mad world) so that we can learn to meet with God in the difficult setting as well (amidst the mad world).

So spiritual retreats do fit in with the very pattern that I am pointing out here. You might want to consider taking one.

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 243: Christian Doctrine Series, Part 2

2011-07-10T14:11:00.001-07:00

Doctrine of God, part 1.

Our understanding and grasp of who God is and what He is like comes from His self-revelation. General/natural revelation refers to the aspects of God's character that are revealed through the created universe. But God has also seen fit to make Himself known to humanity through very direct and personal communications and interactions. Finally, He has revealed Himself most fully in connection with the work of salvation, especially through Jesus Christ. (Colossians 2:9; Hebrews 1:1-3) Though philosophical reflection is useful for helping us to systematize our understanding of God and for interpreting God's general revelation, we must always test our ideas about God against the standard of what He has revealed.

[The part of this entry that most excites me is the part on the Trinity. If you don't have time to peruse the whole thing, read that section.]

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Arguments for the Existence of God

[This topic will not be treated in this entry.]
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God's Attributes

I. Through their experiences and interactions with God, the people whose experiences and histories are recorded in the Bible learned over time that God is the one unique, free, independent, autonomous, transcendent, self-existent, eternal, unchangeable, sovereign, omnipotent, and unified (ordered, simple) Spirit. (Joshua 5:13-15; 1 Samuel 2:1-6:21; 1 Samuel 28; Job 38-42; Proverbs 1:7; Isaiah 43:10; 44:6-8; 46:9; Jeremiah 1 (esp. v. 17); Daniel 1:1-2 (see also, Isaiah 42:14-25); Hebrews 10:26-39 (esp. v. 31).)

'Then Moses said to God, Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I shall say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you.' Now they may say to me, 'What is His name? What shall I say to them?" And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "This you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"' (Exodus 2:15-4:23)

'Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!' (Deuteronomy 6:4)

' "And do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. ... Therefore do not fear; you are of more value than many sparrows."' (Matthew 10:28-31)

In the Bible, we learn that God, alone, existed prior to and independently of the created order. (He is unique.) He is the creator of everything outside of Himself, so is dependent on and bound to nothing outside Himself. (He is independent and unchangeable.) Space and even time are His creations. He existed 'before' either of these and so is not bound by the constraints of either matter (He is Spirit) or time (He is eternal). (He is transcendent and self-existent.) Since everything besides Him that exists was created by Him, it is all under His control. (He is sovereign and omnipotent.) He is not bound by the laws of nature or by the will and demands of any sentient creature (humans, angels, demons, gods). (He is free and autonomous.) Ultimately these are not separate characteristics but different manifestations or reflections of God's fundamental nature. (God is unified.)

Two responses to the revelation of these attributes of God are appropriate: fear and trust. That God is radically transcendent and independent means, among other things, that we cannot force Him to bow to our projects and purposes. If we set our wills against His, then we should expect that we will encounter obstacles to reaching our own ends and goals. And to proceed at such cross purposes is to pursue a course that will end ultimately in God's righteous and just wrath and punishment. On the other hand, that God is radically transcendent and independent, means that we can and should trust in Him completely. That God is so radically free does not mean that He is capricious. Rather, it means precisely that He is not subject to whimsy or fancy, much less to the will of other human beings or even of powerful spiritual forces. 'I AM THAT I AM', God says, or, 'I AM WHO I AM.' That is the foundation on which God's whole redemptive work is built. That is why it is secure: because it is founded on God Himself.

II. God is omnipresent, omniscient, wise, truthful, faithful, good, loving, merciful (gracious and patient), holy and righteous (just). (Genesis 16; 28; 39:2; Exodus 2:23-25; 25-31; 1 Kings 8; 17; 2 Kings 5; 18-19; Daniel 1-6; Jonah; John 14-17. Most of these passages have to do with God's omnipresence. Consult a systematic theology text or theological dictionary for references to the other attributes.)

'Then Moses said, "I pray Thee, show me Thy glory!" And He said, "I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the LORD before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion." ... And the LORD descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the LORD. Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations." And Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship.' (Exodus 33:18-34:9)

"And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1)

"For in Him [Christ] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form..." (Colossians 2:9)

As with the first group of attributes discussed, these attributes ought not to be thought of as discrete or independent qualities or characteristics of God. Rather, they all flow together from God's singular and unified fundamental nature. Additionally, we should remember that people came to recognize that these attributes belonged to God through their interactions with Him. So we should take seriously that God's having these attributes has very practical implications since it was in such practical contexts that people learned that God had these attributes. That God is omnipresent came to be understood as people encountered God in all kinds of circumstances and settings--particularly in places where they were expecting not to find Him. They also learned that God's knowledge and competence are all-encompassing, extending to the deepest concerns of the human heart and to the most distant past and future. (God is omniscient and wise.) They learned through experience that God is absolutely reliable--that the person who desires to know and follow God can stake his or her very life on His words with complete confidence. (God is truthful and faithful.) God's goodness, love, mercy, graciousness, and patience are attested to repeatedly by the biblical authors. It is interesting, in this connection, to notice that the same people who praised God as good and merciful are the same people who were often on the receiving end of God's judgment and punishment. They learned, through experience, that God is holy, righteous, and just--that He abhors and directs his wrath toward sin, disobedience, and injustice. They learned all this as they attended to the work of God in their lives and in the life of the nation of Israel. They recognized that God held the fate of mighty nations in His hand, and that He was also attentive to the plight and needs of the most insignificant person.

III. Other attributes often ascribed to God include perfection, blessedness, beauty, and glory.

IV. The Names of God

'In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth.' (Genesis 1:1. 430)

'And she [Hagar] called the name of the YHWH who spoke to her, "El Roi (Thou art a God who sees)"; for she said, "Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?"' (Genesis 16:13. 410 & 7210)

'Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the YHWH appeared to Abram and said to him, "I am El Shaddai (God Almighty); walk before Me, and be blameless."' (Genesis 17:1)

'And Abraham called the name of that place YHWH Jireh (The Lord Will Provide) as it is said to this day, "In the mount of the YHWH it will be provided."' (Genesis 22:14. 3608 & 7200)

'And he [Melchizedek] blessed him [Abram] and said, "Blessed be Abram of El Elyon (God Most High), possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be El Elyon, who has delivered your enemies into your hand."' (Exodus 14:19-20. 410 & 5945)

'The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered; He raised His voice, the earth melted. YHWH Sabaoth (The God of hosts) is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah.' (Psalm 46:6-7. See also 1 Samuel 1.)

'Do you not know? Have you not heard? El Olam (The Everlasting God), YHWH, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable.' (Isaiah 41:28. 410 & 5769)

[Of course, this is a very incomplete list.]

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The Holy Trinity

There is but one living and true God, the maker and preserver of all things. In the unity of this Godhead there are three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three are one in eternity, deity, and purpose; everlasting, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness.

Book of Discipline: Free Methodist Church – 2007 
Articles of Religion: God – The Holy Trinity ¶101

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God's most complete self-revelation comes in the context of the work of redemption. This makes sense since the goal of God's redemptive work just is our incorporation into the life of God--into the fellowship that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit eternally enjoy. God discloses most fully His desire for us to live as sons of God in the sending of His only-begotten Son to earth. He [Jesus] is the one who both shows us what it means to live as a son of God and opens the way for us to become sons of God. (He is uniquely able to accomplish this because He is the only-begotten Son of God.) So the invitation to become sons of God and the revelation that sonship (along with fatherhood) is part of God's essential nature come together.

The same connection applies where the Holy Spirit is concerned. Our incorporation into the life and fellowship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit involves our being indwelt by the Holy Spirit. But this empowering and enlivening activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives is not just something that God gives to us. Rather, it is an extension of the same kind of activity that the Holy Spirit has been engaging in for all eternity within the fellowship of the Godhead. That is why this movement and activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives actually incorporates us into the very life of God--because it is the same kind of movement and activity that the Holy Spirit has engaged in for all eternity. The two are of a piece. And that is why this particular part of God's redemptive work coincides with the revelation of the Holy Spirit.

An analogy may help here. Imagine a landlord who employs several workers. The landlord lives in a house at the top of a hill. The workers never go up to the house and only know the landlord through the messages that they send back and forth through a courier. Their only experience of the landlord's goodness is through the gifts and money that he sends to them.

Suppose, then, that the landlord decides to adopt one of the workers as his son. In the course of doing so, that worker will learn a great deal about the landlord but all in the context of his being incorporated into that landlord's family. He will learn that the landlord has a number of rooms in his house--at the same time that those rooms become his own rooms. He will learn about the landlord's other children--at the same time that they become his brothers and sisters. He will learn about the landlord's wife--at the same time that she becomes his mother. In all these cases, it's no coincidence that the worker learns these things about the landlord at the time that he does. He learns about them at the same time that they become his.

Unfortunately, many people seem to think that the timing of God's revelation of the Son and the Spirit has no such underlying rationale. A lot of people approach the Doctrine of the Trinity as if God just decided one day to open up the windows of heaven and shout down, "By the way, there's a Son and Spirit up here too, and if you don't believe that they're also divine then you'll burn!" They don't see the connection between the revelation of the Son and Spirit, and the salvation or work that God is accomplishing in the world. Such people seem to see God as a landlord who, along with the gifts and money that he's been sending to his workers, also sends down messages about the rooms of his house and the children he has, but without adopting any of the workers into his family. In fact, to extend this analogy, many people treat forgiveness and salvation as just another pair of gifts that the landlord sends down to his workers.

But salvation is not like just one of the other gifts that the landlord sends down. Salvation is much more like the experience of the worker who is adopted into the landlord's family. His understanding and experience of the good things that the landlord has to offer is the understanding and experience of a family member. (This is why I tend to focus so much on adoption-language in Scripture.)

The revelation that God has a Son came at the same time that people were being adopted as sons of God. The revelation that the Holy Spirit is a distinct, divine person came at the same time that people were receiving that Spirit from God. The revelation of the shape and dynamics of God's own inner life came at the same time that the invitation was extended to all people to enter into that life.

God's most complete self-revelation comes in the context of the work of redemption. Since the Bible basically is the history of God's redemptive work, we should pay attention to what the entire Bible teaches about the nature and character of God. But we should also take seriously that the Incarnation and Pentecost are the climax points in this unfolding history. (Colossians 2:9) The people of Israel, prior to the coming of Jesus Christ, had some understanding of what it meant to be a son of God. (See John 8:41 for a simple proof-text.) They also had some experience of what it meant to be anointed by the Spirit--in the case of prophets and kings. There were even indications that sonship and anointing would involve even more in the future. (E.g. Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17.) But did (or could) they really understand what more sonship and anointing could involve? God solved that problem with the Incarnation. Jesus is the one who could show people what a perfect and complete son-like relationship to God looks like, because for all eternity He has existed as the perfect and only-begotten Son of God. Through the Holy Spirit's resting on Jesus, God showed what is the fullest extent of the Holy Spirit's power to cover and empower, because that is what the Holy Spirit has been doing within the Godhead for all eternity.

The revelation of God's triune nature, moreover, prompts us to reevaluate our understanding of the traditionally-conceived attributes of God. Whereas we might have been tempted to conceive of God's autonomy as consisting in the independence of an isolated individual, we now see that God exists eternally within and as community. God is completely independent of everything outside Himself--not just as a brute fact--but because, within the Godhead, there is and always has been a perfect, loving, and sufficient community. To say that God is independent is not to say something, primarily, about God's power or imperviousness. Rather, it is to say something primarily about His love and goodness, which are His most defining characteristics, and only something secondarily about His power or imperviousness.

Notice, also, that a tendency to conceive of God as a radically independent individual can lead us to idealize and pursue a condition of similarly radical independence. The irony is that we cannot be truly independent, but in trying to attain that condition approximately, we may find ourselves being cut off from genuine community, stepping back from full openness and self-disclosure. We may feel shame when having to admit weaknesses or ask for help. We may feel it is important to convey a sense of strength or power. None of these characterize the internal life of God (as revealed by the Son and Spirit) in and of which we have been invited to partake. Since the church is the community of people who are being caught up into that life, these qualities should be no part of our fellowship with one another. In this way we can begin to see the far-reaching and vitally important implications of God's fundamentally triune nature for our understanding of what God is like, His relationship to the world, human nature, His plan for salvation, and the nature of the church.

Remember that God's invitation to us is a radical one and that the doctrines of the Christian faith only make sense if we take seriously that radical call.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 242: Christian Doctrine Series, Part 1

2011-06-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

Introduction.

Doctrine of the Word of God, part 1.

So I'm trying to lead my Sunday school class, at church, through a series on the major doctrines of the Christian faith. This has proven to be quite a challenge. As usual, the bulk of the challenge lies in the fact that there is such an extraordinary wealth of information on any one of the topics we take up. You could could run multiple college courses on even a single aspic of a given doctrine. And I'm trying to treat each of the doctrines in two or three forty-five minute sessions? Ridiculous!

Additionally, I'm trying to teach the material in such a way that the students can appreciate, more directly, the relevance of these doctrines to their lives. I've taken as a guiding principle (which might be obvious to some but I think it's at least worth making explicit) that the doctrines of the Christian faith only make sense if one takes seriously that what God intends and desires for those who follow Him is something quite radical. (Of course the details of that need to be filled in, but that's at least a helpful starting point.) There's a strong temptation, especially for long-time Christians, to settle for something less than God's best. We get the idea that being a decent, basically moral person is about the extent of what God requires and wants of us.

Francis Chan, opens the preface to his book, Crazy Love, with the following rhetorical question from Francois Fenelon's The Seeking Heart: 'To just read the Bible, attend church, and avoid "big" sins--is this passionate, wholehearted love for God?' C.S. Lewis also challenges this conventional view in his Mere Christianity. (See my blog post, Master 238: The Little Things.)

If you think that just getting a little bit of God into your life is what Christianity is all about, then the doctrines of the Christian faith aren't going to make sense to you. The Word of God. The Holy Spirit. The Church. The moments of salvation. Of course, building that background into any lesson is only going to add to the amount of material that you've got to convey.

It also strikes me that the major doctrines--at least in their more-or-less familiar formulations--did not spring up in a vacuum. I'm generally attracted to an historical approach to understanding ideas anyway, and it strikes me that the impetus for formulating the doctrines probably came from conflicts and debates that rose up over the course of the history of the church. The earliest followers of God might not have had anything as spelled out as a "Doctrine of the Word of God." They probably did not articulate the presuppositions that undergirded their practices of conscientiously studying and abiding by the words that God had spoken to them through the prophets and apostles over time. But when controversy arose--when someone wanted to add to the canon or developed clearly problematic views about the nature of inspiration or authority, then it became necessary to formulate the doctrines. Appreciating this historical context, I think, helps us to better appreciate the need for and importance of these doctrines, but, again, presenting this historical background requires still more time.

So that's the challenge that I'm dealing with. I haven't yet figured out how to resolve it, but I do often find that blogging is a helpful way for me to process ideas so I'm going to do that at least with this first doctrine--the doctrine of the Word of God. The complete list of doctrines that I would touch on are these:

Doctrine of the Word of God
Doctrine of God (esp. the Father)
Doctrine of Humankind (including the Fall)
Doctrine of Jesus Christ
Doctrine of the Holy Spirit
Doctrine of the Application of Redemption (i.e. Salvation)
Doctrine of the Church
Doctrine of the Future

Wayne Grudem, in his Systematic Theology defines a doctrine as "what the whole Bible teaches us today about some particular topic." (25) Given that definition, of course, it is possible to take up as doctrines much more narrowly-focused topics, but these at least pick out some of the most important points.

--

Since I am a member of the Free Methodist Church, I will use their Articles of Religion as the backbone for my explorations of each doctrine. This is how paragraph 108 reads:

"The Bible is God's written Word, uniquely inspired by the Holy Spirit. It bears unerring witness to Jesus Christ, the living Word. As attested by the early church and subsequent councils, it is the trustworthy record of God's revelation, completely truthful in all it affirms. It has been faithfully preserved and proves itself true in human experience.

"The Scriptures have come to us through human authors who wrote, as God moved them, in the languages and literary forms of their times. God continues, by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, to speak through this Word to each generation and culture.

"The Bible has authority over all human life. It teaches the truth about God, His creation, His people, His one and only Son, and the destiny of humankind. It also teaches the way of salvation and the life of faith. Whatever is not found in the Bible nor can be proved by it is not to be required as an article of belief or as necessary to salvation." (Free Methodist Book of Discipline, 2007)

--

How should one approach teaching the doctrine of the Word of God? Of course, one could just read off a set of propositions and leave it at that. "The Bible is God's written Word, uniquely inspired by the Holy Spirit", etc., etc. But what's the motivation for articulating the doctrine in this way? And what hangs on the truth or falsity of these propositions. Many people are far too used to their Christian experience being filled with lots of propositions that they do not understand but that they are told they must affirm or else suffer the consequences. But what are those consequences? In his synopsis of Bible doctrine, Charles Rylie lists nine different theories of biblical inspiration. What hangs on accepting one rather than another?

Taking this as our approach to understanding the doctrines is, I suspect, not going to be very helpful for us. It won't do to just present all nine theories of inspiration, list their various pros and cons, evidences for and against, and then pick one. That's certainly not how the "inspiration" component of the doctrine of the Word of God developed through the course of history. Another problem with approaching this doctrine in this way is that such an approach fails to draw a clear connection between adopting the correct theory of inspiration (for instance) and actually meeting with God in the biblical text. In connection with this point, some might point out that it is possible to hold, intellectually, what is widely believed to be a false theory of inspiration and still encounter God in the text. (And I'd be willing to grant that this is possible.) But this suggests that what theory of inspiration one holds is irrelevant to whether or not one can meet with God in the text.

At this point, I've only introduced this language of "meeting God in the text" without saying what that means. I'll clarify that later, but want to at least place that idea in our minds as one of the principle aims of Bible study. The Word of God was given to us not just to convey information or tell us about historical events or give us a series of models to either follow or eschew. The Word of God, more fundamentally, offers a venue in which the seeking person can be certain of meeting God. But already, we're getting ahead of ourselves.

What should we take as the guiding question that will help us to make sense of the various parts of this doctrine and its relevance to the Christian life as a whole? Here's one suggestion: What must we believe about this text and in what ways should we approach this text, so as to make sense of and share in the experiences of the men and women who guided their lives by this text? Let me clarify what I'm aiming at in this question. The men and women whose stories we find recorded in the Bible enjoyed a certain kind of relationship with God and experienced many things in the course of their interactions with Him. Their experiences serve as a model for us today. Their interactions with God provide guidance and clues for how we should approach God and what we can expect from Him. Some of this material will be taken up when we talk about the doctrine of God.

Some of their experiences involved reading and acting in accordance with the written word of God. When the Torah said to do something and they did it, God responded in certain ways. When the Torah said to do something and they didn't do it, God responded in other ways. But this kind of interaction doesn't just reveal something about God. It also reveals something about His word. The Torah, apparently, provided reliable insight into God's desire and will for His people, because when the people obeyed or disobeyed the words of Torah, God reacted as if they were obeying or disobeying Him. The sensible thing to say is that God wrote down His will for His people. He gave them the Torah.

Now, right there, you get certain familiar elements of the doctrine of the Word of God. We could talk about the authority of the Torah, the inspiration of the Torah, and the canon of the Torah. This is the kind of approach that we want to take when assessing the characteristics of the word of God as a whole. I first framed our guiding question in this way: What must we believe about this text and in what ways should we approach this text, so as to make sense of and share in the experiences of the men and women who guided their lives by this text? But as I continue to reflect, it strikes that this formulation is a bit too subjectivist. So let's rephrase the guiding question: What must be the character or nature of this text, such that (1) it had the impact that it did on the lives of the men and women who interacted with it and (2) we can expect to share in those experiences by so interacting with it? To put the question in slightly simpler form: What explains the impact that the Bible had and continues to have in the lives of the people who abide(d) in it?

If the explanation of the Bible's impact is that it is the inerrant, inspired, authoritative word of God, then, if we want to be similarly impacted we should approach the text in that way--as the inerrant, inspired, authoritative word of God.

Here we're still summarizing the main points and we'll get into some of the details later (although this is already proving to be immensely helpful for me). The next natural question that, I think, arises is: What happens if we fail to approach the Bible in this way. And here's one big problem with the way that many people, I think, try to make sense of the doctrine of the Word of God. Many people think that failing to approach the Bible as the inerrant, inspired, authoritative word of God just means failing to affirm a particular proposition about the character of the word of God. But that leads to an unfortunate caricature of God and His way of revealing Himself.

We might imagine to people: Angela and Bernard. Angela believes that the Bible is the inerrant, inspired, authoritative word of God. Bernard is like Angela except that He denies inerrancy. Now if we think that the crucial difference between these two is just that one affirms and one denies a certain proposition, then we can come away with the goofy idea that God is supposed to speak to Angela through His word and not to Bernard just because of what one believes and the other doesn't. God sits up in heaven and observes, "Angela believes that the Bible is inerrant so I will reveal Myself to her. Bernard denies that the Bible is inerrant so I will not reveal Myself to him." Is that why affirming or denying inerrancy is so important? Certainly not! But this is the kind of caricatured picture that, I suspect and fear, plagues many Christians who have been taught the doctrine of the Word of God only as a set of propositions without properly relating them to our life and walk with God.

What is the better way of thinking about the problem of denying inerrancy? (And I realize that I haven't yet tried to articulate just what inerrancy amounts to. Just go along with me for now. I'll take that up later.) Why is it that the person who denies inerrancy should not expect to share in the experiences of those men and women throughout history who have committed themselves to abiding in the word of God? Answer: Because the person who denies inerrancy will be inclined to reject, ignore, and revise what they take to be errors in the Bible. If, indeed, the Bible is inerrant, than the person who thinks that the Bible contains errors will tend to ignore passages that he or she takes to be erroneous. If the Bible is inerrant, than the person who chooses to ignore those passages will probably act and live in ways inconsistent with God's revealed will and intention. And the person who lives in ways inconsistent with God's revealed will and intention cannot expect to enjoy the same kinds of experiences and relationships as the person who does act in accordance with God's revealed will and intention.

Now you may not, at this point, believe that the Bible is inerrant or have an opinion one way or another, but I hope that you can see why the inerrancy of Scripture matters and why it makes a difference. It makes a difference, not because having the wrong doctrinal beliefs automatically puts us on the wrong side of God, but because having wrong doctrinal beliefs opens us up to acting in ways contrary to God's will and inconsistent with His character. And if you take seriously that acting in accordance with God's will and character is important, failing to do so looks like a big problem.

Believing that the Bible is inerrant doesn't involve just believing a proposition. (e.g. "The Bible is inerrant--true!) Rather, believing that the Bible is inerrant involves a readiness to submit one's life to the directions revealed in Scripture. It involves actually being guided by the Words of Scripture--not picking some to follow and discarding others, saying that some are true and judging that others are not. And the latter sort of belief is what will reinforce conviction in the proposition, because one will enjoy the experience of actually meeting God in the text and in one's life as one faithfully follows Him.

--

At this point, having summarized my main approach, I actually think I'll take up some of the details in a separate entry. There's quite enough to think about in this entry as it is.

Again, all the usual caveats and qualifications apply. As I explore this topic just a little, I'm struck by the chasm that separates my lay-speculations from the work of professional theologians. Hopefully what comes out here will at least be a bit helpful. Until next time, then.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 241: Writing style

2011-06-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

I'm a pretty self-conscious writer, I think. That may not be a good thing. That often means that it takes me an inordinately long time to write things. The process of writing and revising and revising and revising can be rather arduous. Because of this, it's interesting to notice patterns in my writing--especially patterns that I didn't consciously adopt, but which seem to reflect very definite values and ways of seeing the world.

The pattern that I want to highlight here is a tendency to couple things together a lot. A-and-B. C-and-D. Take, as an example, the following excerpt from the essay from my application to teach at APU.

--

I believe, not only that studying philosophy is worthwhile as one way of loving God and living with Him in His kingdom and world, but also that it is helpful and relevant to the general task of growing and maturing disciples. (Connected with this second point) I think that one strong impetus for philosophical inquiry comes from the experience of cultures and worldviews in conflict. Anyone presented with such a plethora of perspectives and value-systems as we find in contemporary western culture must wonder, as many have wondered throughout history, whether there is a way to know the truth about what is most real, what is good, and how best to live life. In most cases, I fear, failure to engage intentionally with these questions results just in one's unreflectively accepting some jumbled assortment of answers received from the loudest and most pervasive cultural voices. For many who would be disciples and followers of Jesus Christ, then, part of that journey will consist in taking some time to carefully consider these foundational questions. Careful study of the long tradition that has engaged with these issues and the exercise in critical thinking that comes from such study are both extremely useful for equipping students to engage with these topics; and they are both central focuses of philosophy courses.

If, as I think, both philosophy and Christian discipleship have to do with training in how to think about and approach life and the world, what does an integrated approach to such training, carried out in the philosophy classroom, look like and consist in? Some of it will consist in direct engagement with the 'big questions' and their various answers, many of which have been articulated by men and women seeking to honor God and walk in the way of Jesus Christ. Some of it will consist in my displaying an integrated approach to philosophy and academic scholarship. Prayer, for instance, has become an increasingly important part of my own approach to studying and writing philosophy. So it would make sense for me to open lectures by praying and invoking the Holy Spirit. But underlying all of these particular means, I take it, is the truth that the extent to which my students will encounter Jesus in my classroom depends, to a significant degree, on the condition of my own walk and relationship with God. As I seek to grow and abide increasingly in the love of the Father, the grace of Jesus Christ, and the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit, my students will come to know Him better and better.

--

At least some of the couples are importantly contentful. For instance, "(1) Careful study of the long tradition that has engaged with these issues and (2) the exercise in critical thinking that comes from such study". That I list two rather than one item here is important for the point that I am making in the essay.

On the other hand, I was able to identify at least seventeen couples that are not or are less contentful. The point, in other words, could be made using one rather than two elements and sometimes the coupling might appear to be something like inconsequential repetition or qualification:

loving God and living with Him
kingdom and world
helpful and relevant
growing and maturing
cultures and worldviews
perspectives and value-systems
loudest and most pervasive
disciples and followers
think about and approach
life and the world
look like and consist in
honor God and walk in the way of Jesus Christ
philosophy and academic scholarship
studying and writing
praying and invoking the Holy Spirit
walk and relationship
grow and abide

Why mention two things when only one seems like it would suffice. Why talk about perspectives and worldviews? Why distinguish between walk and relationship? Is the really a difference between being helpful and being relevant? And why crowd the essay with all these extra conjunctions?

Maybe you think that having the two actually does make a significant difference. If that's the case, then you're probably seeing things along the same lines as myself. I take it that this pattern reflects a tendency in my own thought-life to envision things as always being more and richer than we can capture with words. Some people might think that loving God just is the same thing as living with Him, but if I were to use only one of those designations, I would be left with the unhappy sense that I had inadequately or inaccurately represented the thing that I was trying to talk about. How can you capture the idea of "loving God" with just that phrase. Those two words are clearly inadequate. The solution? Add more words. Identify every phenomenon or activity with two expressions--closely related but slightly varied in meaning so that the reader comes away with the sense that we are talking about something that is related to both but not identical with either of them.

Does the point come across? What do you think? Are there other patterns in my writing that you see? Fun stuff.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 240: Why study philosophy?

2011-06-05T18:09:00.000-07:00

I interviewed last week to teach as an adjunct at Azusa Pacific University. One of the things we talked about in that interview was the challenge of motivating undergraduates (and people in general) to take the project of philosophy seriously. Particularly since it often seems to engage questions and topics that are so far removed from the exigencies of daily life, how can we help students to appreciate the value of studying and doing philosophy? Philosophy of science? Logic? Epistemology? Theories of truth? Dualism vs. materialism vs. idealism? Why ought a student to study these things or why would it be worthwhile for a student to study these things?

After talking about this a bit in my interview, I happened to glance through the first chapter of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. In that chapter, I think Screwtape does a nice job of clarifying the choice that we (humans) have before us. Of course, he's focusing on keeping Wormwood's patient from Christianity--not keeping undergrads out of philosophy. But I actually think there are strong parallels and connections between the two projects.

So I invite you to read Screwtape's first letter. (The bold-facing is mine. The italics are original.) Then ask yourself whether it might not be important to take at least some time to think about the 'big questions'.

--

My dear Wormwood,

I note what you say about guiding your patient's reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naive? It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily 'true' or 'false', but as 'academic' or 'practical', 'outworn' or 'contemporary', 'conventional' or 'ruthless'. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous--that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.

The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle on to the Enemy's own ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father Below. By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favor, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it 'real life' and don't let him ask what he means by 'real'.

Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy's!) you don't realize how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary. I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years' work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defense by argument I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the counter-suggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear what He says to them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least I think that must have been His line for when I said 'Quite. In fact much too important to tackle at the end of a morning,' the patent brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added 'Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind,' he was already half way to the door. Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of 'real life' (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all 'that sort of thing' just couldn't be true. He knew he'd had a narrow escape and in later years was fond of talking about 'that inarticulate sense of actuality which is our ultimate safeguard against the aberrations of mere logic'. He is now safe in Our Father's house.

You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things. Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as defense against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can't touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don't let him get away from that invaluable 'real life'. But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he know it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is 'the results of modern investigation'. Do remember you are there fuddle him. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was our job to teach!

Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape

--

Of course I'm not suggesting that everybody ought to think about the philosophical or the abstract all the time. I don't even think that most people should think about that stuff most of the time. But I think probably everybody needs to think about the philosophical at some time, especially given our contemporary pluralistic, relativistic culture.

If you have never taken the time to think about the presuppositions that you take for granted and the worldview that informs your way of understanding your life and the world around you, that's probably not because you happened, by accident, to fall into a way of making sense of the world that's consistent, coherent, and sensible. Most people, I suspect (and fear), who have never thought about what they really believe, and whether that body of beliefs makes sense, have probably just unreflectively fallen into patterns of life that echo what the loudest voices around them tell them. And we all know, I hope, that the loudest voice isn't always the right voice.

So, do undergraduates have a vested interest in taking their philosophy classes seriously, even if doing so doesn't have an immediate, 'practical' pay-off? Well, let me put the question in a more 'loaded' way: is better or worse for undergraduates to be the pawns of Wormwood's schemes?

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 239: Matt Jenson on singleness and homosexuality

2011-05-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder about my readiness or willingness to broach difficult or uncomfortable topics on my blog. Of course I recognize that the simple fact of my Christian commitments puts me on one side of a proverbial fence. It's simply not possible to agree with everyone, (if you think it is then try agreeing with my last statement) but I do always try to be congenial in my discourses. And I don't plan to stop being congenial any time soon, but I do want to flag my particularly acute awareness of the unease often associated with the two topics that this blog is concerned with: singleness and homosexuality. These topics touch me and close friends of mine very deeply, and, I recognize, touch a lot of people's lives in a number of different ways.

I have a friend, who actually knows something about writing, who chides me for being so apologetic in my blogging. So that's all I'm going to say by way of preliminary qualification. And, in fact, I'm not going to say anything about these topics in this entry. (What a cop-out that is.) Instead, I'm going to direct you to a chapel message, given by Professor Matt Jenson over at Biola University. I found it to be a very encouraging, thought-provoking, and challenging. Note: this is not a message just for singles or those struggling with homosexuality. There is something in this message for absolutely everyone. I hope that it is helpful to you. Here's a link:

Matt Jenson: Reflections for Singles and Those Struggling with Homosexuality

Matt Jenson blogs at the Scriptorium|Daily. And, in case you were looking for suggestions, I also particularly enjoy following Fred Sander's postings on that site.

Listening to Matt's message makes me still more aware and appreciative of those in my life who have been (extended) family to me. Here in Riverside, I think particularly of the Jansens, Hubbards, two Bishop couples, and two Wallace couples. Here I'm just mentioning sets of spouses--and that list is still incomplete. Steve Gerali, from APU, has probably done more to teach me about the church as family than anyone else. Like I said, I think there's a real challenge for all of us here.

Well, I'd like to write about the church and postmodernity, what I've been learning about trusting in Jesus, the dangers of dwelling on fantasy, how to love God, cognitivism and non-cognitivism in the philosophy of action, the last installment of my Ann and Voskamp series, spiritual disciplines, and a whole lot more, but there simply isn't enough time for that. Oh well. I'll try to get around to some of it.

Blessings all,

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 238: The Little Things

2011-05-16T13:42:00.000-07:00

"The Christian way is different:... Christ says 'Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked--the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.'" (Mere Christianity, 196-197)

This is one place where C.S. Lewis tries to encapsulate what is meant by and involved in the "Christian way". The tone may strike some as rather harsh and exacting. And even for long-time Christians it can conjure distasteful notions and impressions, of self-denial, mortification, and asceticism. Many have the uneasy sense that serious Christianity involves selling everything you have, living out of a cardboard box, being perennially outcast, having to say 'no' to everything that you have ever enjoyed or cared about, doing missions work in an alien and hostile environment, always being poor, always being hungry, always lacking. Even many Christians seem to operate under the idea that serious Christianity would most likely mess of their lives.

There are lots of things that could be said in response to this reaction that many people have when confronted with the idea of real devotion or commitment to Christ. One would involve asking whether we are really thinking through the picture of God that is operating in the background here. What does it reveal about our view of God that we are unwilling or fearful of trusting Him? We may say that we have placed our faith and confidence in Him, but is that really the case?

One might also point out that, once you really get clear on what the way of Christ leads to, what does it say about us that we're willing to forego that. I've used this example before: on at least a couple occasions, I've heard preachers joke about how you shouldn't pray for patience. Because learning patience involves being placed in tough circumstances; and if you pray for patience, God will place you in those tough circumstances. --But isn't some of the humor that comes from this point a kind of guilty humor? Because how many of us hear that and then go on to pray for patience. Probably not many. And the reason for that is that we have the sense that to seriously pursue patience would involve our becoming worse off. Imagine that: thinking that by becoming patient people, we would be worse off! Of course most people don't actually entertain that explicit thought; they just act in accordance with it.

Both of these responses could be explored in greater depth, but I want to focus on a different response. After saying all these things about giving all and killing the natural self and surrendering desires, you might expect Lewis to follow up with some very weighty applications. But that's exactly what He doesn't do. Having presented this way and acknowledged the seriousness of it, he writes as follows:

"That is why the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fission's and fretting; coming in out of the wind." (198)

Isn't it interesting that Lewis doesn't start with selling all your possessions or moving to a foreign mission field. He starts at the place you least expect: at the very moment you wake up each morning. That's where the difference is made. That's where the battle is won or lost. Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but I think that we often and seriously underestimate the importance of starting your day in just the way that Lewis describes.

When I wake up in the morning, thoughts about what I've got to do today are right there waiting for me. Very often cares and worries that I took to bed with me are still there as well. And if there's something that's especially urgent or stressful, that's going to be right in my face. The temptation is to jump immediately into the routine of washing up, showering, dressing, eating breakfast, gathering my books, going to school, and the sequence of things to do can easily run on continuously and without interruption until the end of the day when I finally lay my head down to sleep. It may take some very deliberate reflection to realize that I have actually surrendered the power to determine how I feel and think about myself to those tasks. Whether those tasks are pleasant or burdensome determines whether I am happy or sad for the day. Whether the people I need to deal with are friendly or bothersome determines how at ease or stressed out I am. Have you found this to be so with you.

What if we were to base our feelings on something different? What if, instead of focusing on our responsibilities, to-do lists, and appointments, we focused on our heavenly Father. What if, instead of thinking about what we've got to accomplish, we remember what Jesus Christ accomplished. What if, instead of working ourselves up or amping up for the tasks ahead, we actually stopped and prayed to the Holy Spirit for help and power. And I'm not just talking about throwing a "Help, God" over your shoulder on the way out the door. I'm talking about actually taking time.

Of course, some people (especially those who have never done it) will be skeptical of my recommendation. Even some who have tried it will say that it's really not that helpful. One question, at least, to consider in response: Have you really, honestly tried it? --have you really thought carefully about what you're doing and trying to accomplish? --or have you just spent the ten minutes because your Sunday school teacher told you to without really understanding why or how you were supposed to get anything out of it. It's funny that in many areas of life, we recognize the importance of discipline and making steady progress. We understand that playing scales is boring but that it is necessary for learning to play an instrument well. We understand that weight training is arduous but that it is necessary for developing professional-quality athletic skill. We understand in so many fields that mastering the basics is the foundation for everything that comes afterward, but for some reason, where spiritual matters are concerned, all that competence seems to evaporate and we actually think that we ought to be able to find gratification instantly. How absurd.

--

I'm going to wrap this blog up by looking at one episode from the ministry of Jesus. I want to invite you to look at it in a slightly different way:

'And a certain ruler questioned [Jesus] saying, "Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments, 'Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother.'"

And he said, "All these things I have kept from my youth." And when Jesus heard this, He said to Him, "One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess, and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."

But when he had head these things, he became very sad; for he was extremely rich.' (Luke 18:18-22)

Now some people will be puzzled by my selecting this passage. I've been trying to say that what really matters in the Christian way is the little things, not the big things. Yet Jesus confronts this man, whom He's meeting for the first time, with just one of these big things. The man wants to follow Jesus and Jesus immediately asks Him to give up everything. What's the deal?

I think understanding this one episode requires having a much bigger picture of how God works--one that can only come from looking at the character of Jesus' entire ministry. But I'll make a suggestion here about how we should think about this. Part of our problem is that we are tempted to focus on particular actions, whereas Jesus is much more interested in character. So when the rich young ruler says that He's kept all the commandments, we are inclined to take him at his word. Even if we doubt his credibility, we will tend to focus on the question of whether he has actually carried out the commandments or not. But Jesus is more interested in character. And that is what He is testing in this episode.

The rich young ruler asks what is required to inherit eternal life. He claims to have kept all the requirements of the law. What Jesus then does is test his character. "So you claim to have kept all the commandments. Then you must be a person of strong character. You must have a deep love and commitment to your parents. Not only to your parents, but to all people. Your care for them means that you will not treat them in a sexually degrading way. You care about people's property. You value them and so live honestly, openly, and transparently before them. In your business dealings you are always above bar. You are respectful of all people and feel deep compassion for those in need. And above all, you must have learned that keeping God's commandments is the very best thing for you. Since you understand that, since you have such an incredible love for God and for people, a desire to be obedient, a yearning for what is good and right, and an abiding trust in God's faithfulness and goodness, go ahead and sell your possessions, distributing the funds to the poor, and come, follow me.'

Again, I'm building a lot into the passage that comes from a picture of Jesus' way of operating that extends beyond just this passage. But do you see what Jesus might have been getting at. Do you understand what that rich young ruler was saying in claiming to have followed all the commandments? Maybe he didn't understand what he was saying. But Jesus understood that he was claiming to be radically devoted to God. And Jesus pointed out that He really wasn't. And the sad end to the story reveals, not so much that this ruler was unwilling to be wholly devoted to Jesus, but that he actually was not wholly devoted in the little things. If he had truly worked out the little things all the way, then he would have been ready to eagerly lay down everything at the feet of Jesus. (In fact we have stories about people who did just that in the early chapters of the book of Acts.)

Now if you're not at that place in life where you're ready to hand everything over to Jesus, don't sweat it. Above all don't pretend that you're ready to hand everything over. That will just make you a liar and a hypocrite. Instead, start attending once more to the little things. Make sure that you've got the basics down. Those are the foundation on which it is possible to build a really stable life.

[There's always more details and qualifications and clarifications that need to be put in than I can put in. But I'll have to leave that at that.]

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 237: The nature of sin

2011-05-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

Intermediate Theological Speculations (ITS): The Nature of Sin

The 24th chapter of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology has to do with "sin."

He opens with the following remarks:

"The history of the human race as presented in Scripture is primarily a history of man in a state of sin and rebellion against God and of God's plan of redemption to bring man back to himself. Therefore, it is appropriate now to consider the nature f the sin that separates man from God.

"We may define sin as follows: Sin is any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature. Sin is here defined in relation to God and his moral law. Sin includes not only individual acts such as stealing or lying or committing murder, but also attitudes that are contrary to the attitudes God requires of us." (490)

Then, in assessing the implications of Adam and Eve's decision to eat of the rut of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he notes, "First, their sin struck at the basis for knowledge, for it gave a different answer to the question, 'What is true?' … Second, their sin struck at the basis for moral standards, for it gave a different answer to the question, 'What is right?' … Third, their sin gave a different answer to the question, 'Who am I?'" (493) In eating the fruit, Adam and Eve called into question the veracity of God's claims, what He claimed to be good and right, and their status before God. They wanted to be "like God."

Now it's interesting to note that, already, this analysis builds a lot more into the significance of sin than the mere failure to conform to the moral law. Failing to conform to the moral law is conceptually distinct from questioning God's veracity, challenging His moral standards, and wanting to be like Him. I expect most people would grant that there is a deep connection between these four things, but that just prompts the further question: How are these related? And which, if any, is most fundamental?

Now Grudem resists defining sin in terms not directly related to conformity to the moral law. He gives four reasons for thinking that sin should not be defined in terms of selfishness. And then he writes:

"It is far better to define sin in the way Scripture does, in relationship to God's law and his moral character. John tells us that "sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3:4). When Paul seeks to demonstrate the universal sinfulness of mankind, he appeals to the law of God, whether the written law given to the Jew (Rom. 2:17-29) or the unwritten law that operates in the consciences of Gentiles who, by their behavior, "show that what the law requires is written on their hearts" (Rom. 2:15). In each case their sinfulness is demonstrated by their lack of conformity to the moral law of God." (491)

Now I'm already suspicious that the idea of anomia (trans. "lawlessness") involves more than just failure to conform to the moral law. Following some suggestive remarks by John Mark Reynolds (Biola University), I think it may include the idea of the absence of culture, of coherent worldview, or of an internally consistent and stable outlook (narrative) on life in terms of which everything is rendered intelligible. (Obviously these remarks are suggestive. I just want to push wider the envelope of our thinking about anomia.)

Regarding the Romans references, I want to take seriously, of course, Paul's reference to "what the law requires [being] written on their hearts." Moreover, vv.17-29 have a great deal to say about the problem with transgressing the law. However, I'm beginning to wonder whether all that means the same thing as saying that sin is to be defined and understood primarily in terms of failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature. The law is pretty clearly a big part of what we've got to consider in trying to understand sin, but have we quite figured out just what that big part is.

--

Here's my suggestion: sin consists fundamentally in rejecting the grace of God. Such rejection, I'll grant, manifests itself primarily in failure to conform to the moral law of God, but that failure of conformity, I propose, is not what is fundamental.

To test this claim, we turn first to the story of Adam and Eve. Here is where some will become immediately puzzled. How did Adam and Eve reject the grace of God? Most of us are used to thinking of the grace of God as something that entered history in the person of Jesus Christ. Most of us are used to thinking of the grace of God as a New Testament thing. But that's not right. The story of the entire Bible is the story of the outpouring of God's grace on humankind. The law that He gave to Moses, the ram that he substituted for Isaac, and the animals whose skins were used to cover Adam and Eve are all pictures of and expressions of God's grace. (The mosaic law offers an interesting case-study, since its history shows us how sinful human beings can take the graciously-given gifts of God and turn them into heavy burdens and obstacles to relationship with Him. Many Christians do the same thing with the cross. We need to be reminded that the law was intended to serve as an instrument of grace.)

Now if we focus on the skins that covered Adam and Eve or the mosaic laws about atoning sacrifices, we may get the impression that grace has to do primarily with covering sin, but that is not right either. If grace were primarily for covering sin then the perversion that Paul denounces would be perfectly sensible: let us continue in sin that grace might increase. (Romans 3:8, 6:1) Dallas Willard puts the point nicely in one of his lectures when he says, "Grace isn't for sin. It's for life." Grace is the abiding presence and action of God in our lives. It is not something we deserve or can earn but it is a gift that He freely offers to everyone. Once we have this larger conception of grace in our minds, we can see, not only how life as the redeemed followers of Christ is supposed to work, but also something of what it must have been like for Adam and Eve before the fall. Before the fall, Adam and Eve were living lives upheld and sustained by the grace of God. They enjoyed the abiding presence and action of God in their lives. They didn't deserve it and couldn't earn it, but He gave Himself to them nonetheless.

Once we have this picture in our minds, we can begin to understand how the different dimensions of their sin fit together. Defining sin just as failure to conform to the moral law leaves a gap between sin and doubting God, between sin and challenging God's standards, between sin and wanting to be like God. If Adam had inadvertently, accidentally, or in ignorance eaten of the fruit, then he would have failed to conform to the moral law of God, but He would not have thereby challenged God's veracity, His moral law, or His unique status. This suggests that mere failure to conform to the moral law is not really the issue when it comes to sin. Rather, what is at issue is these other things and, ultimately, to my mind, the refusal to continue living by and within God's gracious provision.

The sin of Adam and Eve consisted in or involved the attempt to live and stand autonomously, apart from and independently of God. Adam and Eve committed themselves to truth claims incompatible with God's revelation, they erected standards of moral conduct that did not have God as their foundation, and they wanted to stand independently, in the way that God stands independently--to be "like God." And their attempt to stand and live independently of God involved them in actions that were clearly contrary to God's will.

Why does acting apart from God's grace lead to acting contrary to His will? God intended for us to live in relationship with Him and He made us in such a way that we would be dependent on Him. (It's not clear that God could create any being who was wholly independent of Him.) He made us so that our lives would work in concert with His abiding presence and activity. Now if we choose to live independently from God, we will not be able to live in that dependent way. That's the very meaning of in-dependence. We will have to act on the assumption that we, alone, can and must secure what is necessary and good for us. That is what leads (so often) to selfish action.

The problem, of course, is that since we were designed to live in relationship with and dependence on God, to embark on the project of living independently from him is to embark on a losing project. That is why God warned Adam and Eve in the garden, "in the day that you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die." Basically he was saying, "If you try to make a life for yourself apart from Me, it's not going to work. All you're going to find is death." And that's what happened.

As we approach the end of this post, we still have to consider whether I can fit this widely held point about failing to conform to the moral law into my account of what sin consists in. I think I can. I've already indicated that rejecting a life built on the grace of God will lead us to act in ways contrary to God's moral law; but I think there is also a deeper connection between these two things. Once we choose to live apart from the grace of God, then we have committed ourselves to the project of meeting some standard for what counts as living independently, being my own person, being obligated to no one. One of the standards that we set up for ourselves is that of moral uprightness. If I can be morally righteous, the thought goes (approximately), then I won't have to rely on God's charity. Rather, the good things that come to me for my good moral conduct will just be what I have earned and deserve. (Whenever we find ourselves thinking in terms of such transactions, in family, amongst friends, or with God, that is a pretty clear sign that we are not operating on the basis of grace.) The problem, again, is that we are not able to keep the moral law perfectly. We can never attain to that level of perfection whereat we can look at God and say, here's what you owe me. We are still in this dependent position though, perhaps, refusing to admit that.

This leads to, perhaps, the most radical thought connected with these speculations that I'll pose: "Is God the one who holds us to the standard of moral perfection, or is that a standard that we impose on ourselves." When we define sin as failure to conform to the moral law, often implied in that is the idea that conformity to the moral law is what God requires of us, and our failure to meet that standard is what estranges us from Him. Adam and Eve were punished, on this picture, for failing to meet the standard of the moral law. I'm suspicious that that view is missing something big.

I agree that Adam and Eve were punished for their disobedience, but I don't think they were punished for failing to conform to the moral law. How is that not an incoherent claim? To say that they were punished for failing to conform to the moral law suggests that their relationship with God was predicated on their keeping that perfect standard. What I'm suggesting is that their relationship with God was actually predicated on their willingness to continue living in the grace of God. What their disobedience revealed was not just a failure to keep the moral law but a refusal to continue living in God's grace. The latter is what they suffered for.

Now there is one way that I have been tempted to articulate the upshot of these reflections, that I'm pretty sure is unacceptable and not wholly sound. That way is this: "Many people think that what God requires of us is moral perfection. Acceptance of Christ's atoning sacrifice is then understood as what makes us count as morally perfect in God's sight. But I wonder if God isn't sitting up in heaven asking us to forget about being morally perfect. I wonder if He's not asking us to just come back to living dependent on His grace. Maybe God cares more about our living in grace than our being morally perfect. Perhaps accepting Christ's atoning sacrifice is crucial, not because it renders us (ostensibly or actually) morally perfect, but because that is how we come back to that place of resting in God's gracious provision."

As I said, I'm pretty sure that this way of framing things is unacceptable, ultimately because it places moral perfection and life with God in opposition to one another. The whole point of this reflection has actually been to move in a direction that makes these things more clearly connected and mutually illuminating. I worry that a gospel articulated just in terms our need for atonement for violations of the moral law misses something big. But one that neglects the real problem of sin and the biblical language of atonement misses something just as big. That's why this is just an intermediate speculation.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 236: Ann & Voskamp, Part 2

2011-05-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here's the update on my latest art project. My last post will include the three final phases of the coloration and the story of how this bizarre idea came about. Here, though, are a few introductory paragraphs from the story, as I envision it, of Ann and Voskamp. I hope you enjoy them.

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In Spring, ____, Artemis Industries appointed Dr. _____ Voskamp to the position of project director of its lunar biosphere and terraforming project. His installment was not uncontroversial. His reclusive and misanthropic tendencies were widely known and promised to pose significant public relations, as well as internal human resources, problems. But his credentials in bio-engineering and xeno-ecology were unmatched, and it was hoped that his expertise would place the project, already suffering from three significant set-backs, back on track. Unfortunately, the exact opposite occurred.

Three months after his appointment, during his first visit to the biosphere project site, a code three disaster alert was issued: mandatory evacuation. Two scientists from that project site, three researchers from two other science stations, and seven guests and staff from the Astral Hotel and Landing Station (the only commercial lunar project) blasted into space within eleven minutes. Dr. Voskamp, alone, remained unaccounted for.

The two scientists from the biosphere reported that one of the containment units in laboratory number two, where Dr. Voskamp was working, had ruptured, releasing spores from bio-engineered plants into the ventilation system. A satisfactory account of the containment failure has never been given. Because of the nature of the disaster, the twelve evacuees were denied permission to reenter terran air-space until any biological threats could be assessed. Within 36 hours, the two scientists from the biosphere site showed signs of massive infection and mutagenesis. Both died within the week. The remaining ten never showed symptoms but were quarantined on an orbital space platform for six months before finally being allowed to return to earth.

The International Space Cooperative established a containment zone around the biosphere--forbidding all persons, under any circumstances, from moving within two hundred miles of the site. Five robotic probes were released in succession to study the biosphere and its environs, but each mission was aborted due to mechanical failure. No adequate explanation of these failures has been found, and further investigation has been discouraged by worries about contamination. Satellite photography showed signs of explosive vegetative growth within the biosphere in the months following the disaster, but the Cooperative determined that the biosphere was intact and that there was no immediate danger of outside contamination.

In the weeks immediately following the disaster, there was widespread speculation about the fate of Dr. Voskamp and any connection that he might have had to the biosphere disaster. But after a year, only those on the fringe continued to seriously consider the possibility that he was alive and was responsible for frustrating the Cooperative's efforts to gather more data about the biosphere.

Moon-based research and commercial ventures dropped off for about a decade after the disaster, but now, fifteen years later, there are seven active research stations and two commercial projects being developed on the moon.

Our story opens on a view of a small ship reentering earth's atmosphere--a converted two-person military space plane. This model was retired from official service twenty years ago. And this particular plane shows marked signs of wear. At the controls sits a white-haired, white-mustached, balding, middle-aged man, wearing a space suit that looks like it ought to have been retired forty years ago. Behind him sits a young woman, his only daughter, Ann. …

--

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 235: Ann & Voskamp, Part 1

2011-04-27T07:59:00.000-07:00

So this is my latest art project. I'm officially blaming Matt, Christy, and Kate for inspiring it. Basically I'm designing the cover of a graphic novel for a story (unwritten, and probably never to be written) entitled Ann and Voskamp. At this point it's still a bit of an inside joke. I'll explain in later posts just how the idea came about.

The point of this couple of posts is to chronicle the production of this piece through its various parts. (I didn't mean for that to be alliterative, but was compelled by the end to replace "stages" with "parts".) I absolutely love it when an idea grabs my imagination and moves me to draw and paint. I absolutely love it.

As indicated on the cover-page, my profuse apologies to the author of One Thousand Gifts.

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 234: Good Friday Meditation

2011-04-22T13:48:00.001-07:00

Here is a (slightly edited) copy of a series of readings that I got to deliver at one of the Holy Week services at my church. Thanks to my pastor and the worship leader and everyone else who helped for this opportunity and for putting together a great service. And perhaps others will find these reflections to be helpful in this season of celebration and solemn remembrance. (Scripture quotations are from the NASB, unless otherwise indicated.)

Good Friday and Happy Resurrection Sunday to you all!

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On Good Friday, we focus on that event towards which all the events of this Passion Week and of Jesus' entire life and ministry, were moving: His crucifixion and death. To do that, we'll look at the Seven Last Words or Statements of Jesus, spoken by Him as He hung on the cross. They all come from different gospels, but we bring them together in order to reflect and meditate on them, to consider what they reveal about what Jesus accomplished and what that means for us.

The cross stands at the center of what Jesus came to do on earth. At several places throughout the gospels, Jesus spoke of His future trials and sufferings. On one such occasion, we're told:

'...He took the twelve aside and said to them, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things which are written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles, and will be mocked and mistreated and spit upon, and after they have scourged Him, they will kill Him; and [on] the third day He will rise again."' (Luke 18:23)

And everything unfolded, just as Jesus foretold. But what does it all mean? Jesus' disciples didn't know; they only came to understand after everything had taken place. So we look to the words of Jesus, from the cross, and the events surrounding those words, to remind ourselves of what He did on that cross for us and for our salvation.

As we read and meditate, remember that these are not just words—a bunch of things that Jesus happened to say. But they reveal truths about what Jesus did, what He experienced, and what He accomplished on the cross for you and for me.

1. The first three of these last statements of Jesus draw our attention to His forgiveness, mercy, and compassion. The first of these comes from the gospel of Luke. There he reports that, on the night that He was betrayed, Jesus was led before the Jewish Council of Elders. After being questioned there, He was taken to Pilate, the Roman governor. From there He was sent to King Herod of Galilee and then back to Pilate, who, even though he could find no basis for a charge against Jesus—no law that He had broken, no good reason for sentencing Him—finally consented to the crowd's angry demand and ordered that He be crucified.

On His way from one trial to the next, Jesus was subjected to multiple beatings and abuse. We're told:

'The men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking Him, and beating Him, and they blindfolded Him and were asking Him, saying, "Prophesy, who is the one who hit You?" And they were saying many things against Him, blaspheming.' (Luke 22:63-65)

We're told that Herod and his soldiers mocked Jesus and treated Him with contempt, even dressing Him in a gorgeous robe before sending Him back, beaten and bloodied, to Pilate. And while He was on the cross, we're told:

'...even the rulers were sneering at Him, saying, "He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His chosen One." And the soldiers also mocked Him... saying, "If You are the King of he Jews, save Yourself!"' (Luke 23:35, 37)

And Luke writes: 'But Jesus was saying, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."' (Luke 23:34)

We may marvel at the humility, meekness, and heart that would look on these wicked, evil, cruel, men and pray for their forgiveness. But when you stop to think about it, in that oh-so-natural impulse to judge them, do we not judge ourselves? In condemning their blasphemy, villainy, and corruption, do we not condemn ourselves?

And aren't you glad that when Jesus looked down from heaven on a world in rebellion—full of people who had rejected Him, full of people obsessed with their own concerns and goals—, at a world that placed Him no higher than second place—that refused to acknowledge the rightful lordship and sovereignty of the one true God—, aren't you glad, that He chose to do what was necessary to bring us forgiveness.

The Apostle Paul reminds us that in Jesus "we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace." (Ephesians 1:7) And he writes in his letter to the Romans, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners [and in rebellion against Him], Christ died for us." (5:8)

We get a glimpse into the heart of God, the heart of Jesus, when, as He hangs on that cross, having endured that mockery and those brutal beatings, He prays, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."

2. Jesus offers that forgiveness, that gift of mercy and hope of reconciliation to everyone. No one is beyond its reach. He offers it to the broken and diseased, the outcasts of society, to tax collectors and prostitutes, to Samaritans and Gentiles. He even offers it to the convicted criminal hanging beside Him. Luke records:

And one of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuse at Jesus, saying, "Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!" But the other answered, and rebuking him said, "Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong." (23:39-41)

What thoughts must be running through the mind of that man as he hangs there beside Jesus, looking back on his life, facing imminent death? What thoughts and questions come to him? Things like: How did I end up here? What have I done with my life? I never thought it would end this way? Looking back on squandered potential, wasted opportunities, bad decisions, a self-centered life, all the people that I've hurt and for what. And now it's just going to end.

Then to look at Jesus and recognize that this Man, who had devoted Himself to loving and caring for others, healed the sick, delivered those wracked by demons, preached a message of grace and forgiveness, was full of the Spirit of kindness and compassion, who had never done anything wrong—to realize that He is being subjected to this very same punishment—one that He doesn't deserve...

And he knows what he wants to say. He knows what he must ask. And I wonder how long he struggled before finally laying it out there. Jesus, I really messed up. I know that sounds so stupid to say. And I was always chasing after one thing or another but now I see that it was all a waste. And I've got nothing. I've done nothing, except take what God has given me and toss it in the dirt. Jesus. Jesus, I know I have no business asking you. I know I have nothing to offer you. I know I've only made a mess of everything I've ever been given, but I've got no hope and nowhere else to turn. Jesus, please, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!

And Jesus, through the pain and the anguish, the torture and the agony, says to him, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise." (Luke 23:39...)

3. When Jesus looks down from the cross, he sees the people who came to view the spectacle, He sees the religious leaders who mock and deride Him, the Roman soldiers who play dice for His clothes, He sees the disciple John, standing with some of the women who had followed Him, and He sees His mother, Mary, at the foot of that cross.

Jesus has assured that convicted criminal beside Him that they will be together in Paradise on that very day. But what about the rest of His followers? And what about His mother? What is she to do, once He is gone. He knows there will be a resurrection in three days but forty days after that He'll go up into heaven. And who will take care of those who are left behind to make their way in this dark and broken world.

Did Jesus overlooked that point? Did He have a plan for that? He did. During that last supper, on the night He was betrayed, He told His followers: "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth." He told them, "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." (John 14:16, 18) Jesus made sure to provide for His followers. He made sure to provide for you and me.

And He made sure to provide for His mother too. The apostle John writes:

When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, "Woman, behold, your son!" Then He said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her into his own household.

4. We see Jesus' forgiveness and mercy, His grace and compassion, His gentleness and provision. But do we understand what it cost? Do we understand the cost?

At about noon, the middle of the day, the gospel writers report that darkness covered the entire land for about three hours. In the middle of the day when the sun was at its peak, the whole sky became like night. And yet as bizarre, and unsettling as that must have been, it was nothing compared to the darkness that closed around the heart and person of Jesus Christ. Sin had to be atoned for. For there to be real forgiveness, real reconciliation, to really defeat the power of guilt and shame to separate us from God and us from one another, sin must be atoned for.

That's why Jesus went to the cross: to be that spotless sacrificial Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Paul says to the Galatian Christians, "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." (5:21) The prophet Isaiah, speaking six hundred years earlier about what Jesus would accomplish, wrote:

'Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,
Yet we considered him stricken by God,
Smitten by Him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him
And by His wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way
And the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.' (53:4-6 NIV)

King David, when he spoke about his own sin and wrongdoing said,

'Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; My bones have no soundness because of my sin. My guilt has overwhelmed me Like a burden too heavy to bear. My wounds fester and are loathsome Because of my sinful folly.' (Psalm 38: 3-5 NIV)

If that's how King David described the experience of carrying around just His own sins, what must it have been like for Jesus to receive the weight of the sins of the world—of lies and deception, lust and envy, slander and gossip, sloth and indifference, malice, anger, bitterness, resentment, contempt, greed, pride, and arrogance... to name a few. And you know the pain that comes from these things: from betrayal, abandonment, abuse, rape, murder, torture, violence, enslavement. All of that was laid on His shoulders, and on top of that the loneliness and despair, hurt and pain, grief, sorrow, agony, anguish, torment, darkness, despair, confusion—"My God! My God! Why have you forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34)

5. Did God really forsake Him? Did God really abandon Him? That's hard to say. The author of Hebrews tells us that on the cross, Jesus offered Himself to His Father, through the Holy Spirit. (9:14) But even with His Father there, those were certainly His darkest and most lonely hours.

That's what sin does? It separates husbands from wives, parents from children, brothers from sisters, friends from friends, neighbors from neighbors. It separates us from God. Sometimes it's our own sin that creates that separation. Sometimes we may actually be at the center of God's will for us—as Jesus was—and still, because of someone else's sin or just because we still live in this broken, fallen world, God seems so distant. And we cry out in confusion and we beg for a touch from Him, for some relief. Jesus felt that too.

Jesus' torment on the cross was not an act. There were no Hollywood props and no Hollywood make-up. The blood and sweat and tears were real. Jesus felt. Jesus understood—what it's like when hard times have hit and just seem to keep on hitting us, when years go by and we're still alone, when you've been without a job for nine months, twelve months, eighteen months, when the doctor's appointments are just filling up your calendar, or the funerals, and you wonder when it will stop and you beg for some relief. Jesus understood that.

Think about this: angel's don't experience physical pain. Spirits don't hunger for food or drink. But Jesus wasn't like that. He was a man. And we're reminded by these next simple words that He knew what it was like to suffer, to keep on suffering, and to beg for even the slightest relief from these physical needs, when He said, "I am thirsty." (John 19:28)

6. Three hours of suffering and torture--longer and more severe than anything you or I have had to endure or ever will have to endure. But He did it for a purpose--for you and for me. He took our sins on Himself, so that sin would not have the final word in our lives. He endured our suffering, so that our suffering would not have the final word in our lives. So that the loneliness and brokenness that comes from sin would not have the final word.

And so even in His weakened, broken, bleeding, dying state, He could pronounce triumphantly, though only a few probably heard Him say it on that day, words that have echoed down through history--words of hope that are heard today by everyone who receives what He has given: "It is finished." (John 19:30)

7. He has given His all, to His heavenly Father, through the Holy Spirit, on our behalf. What now? What do you do when you've given everything you had to give, when you've got nothing left, when you're so exhausted and broken that you can no longer even lift your head? You do what Jesus did?

His body is broken so that nothing in nature or even the best medicine can possibly restore Him. There's no natural way for Him to come back from that. No amount of rest and recuperation, bandaging or physical therapy can restore the flesh and blood that have been shredded and drained. So what does Jesus do? The same thing that He's been doing every day of His life on earth. The same thing that He's been doing since before the foundation of the world. He surrenders Himself to His God and Father—the God and Father to whom He prayed, "Forgive them," the God and Father to whom He cried when He felt abandoned and alone: that is the same God and Father to whom He now surrenders Himself totally. He's not able to hold Himself up any more and so He says: "Father, into Your hands, I commit My spirit." (Luke 23:46)

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Jesus Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 233: Discipleship manual, Part 1 of 4

2011-04-19T09:51:00.000-07:00

The following is something that I wrote up for the leadership team of my church on the topic of discipleship. I'm very thankful for the helpful feedback that I've already received on it. The document is dense and presupposes a great deal in terms of understanding of biblical ideas; fair warning to all prospective readers. My goal was to begin to connect the various dimensions commonly associated with discipleship and Christianity into a coherent picture. I was also responding to the particular proposal that my church leadership team has been considering, so my remarks are not completely general but tied to that particular context. Still, for those who are interested, I hope that these remarks will be helpful.

If you're interested in a more concise presentation of the main point, I would recommend reading "Is Christianity Hard or Easy?"--a chapter from C.S. Lewis' deservedly famous book, Mere Christianity. He sums up, in about six very accessible book-size pages, the basic point that I have tried to unpack in ten single-spaced 8.5" x 11" pages. I was absolutely floored when I read them last night.

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What follows is an attempt to expand upon and further develop a proposal made to the Missions Leadership Team of the Riverside Free Methodist Church. That proposal is to structure (and restructure) this church's ministry programs around a single process that is defined by and clearly articulates the way in which we want to see people grow and mature in their relationship with God as followers of Jesus Christ. The proposed process has three stages: loving God, transforming lives, and impacting community. In what follows, I want to try to get clearer about what each of these stages consists in, how they are related to one another, how they are related to the larger project of living and walking with God, and what moving through such a process might look like and involve practically.

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Part One: How should we think about a (the?) discipleship process?

There are a number of different ways in which we might structure a discipleship (or "people-flow") process. (A) We might do so in terms of the goals that we want to achieve: start by moving people into a loving relationship with God, then work on transforming their lives, and end by encouraging them and giving them opportunities to impact their community.

(B) We might structure the process in terms of the different programs that are available for them: start with the Sunday morning worship service, then move people into participation in smaller groups and Sunday school classes, and finally get them involved in long-term service projects.

(C) We might structure the process around the transition from being a passive recipient of teaching to an b in one's own walk with God: people begin by receiving teaching and instruction but later are encouraged to take some deliberate action steps, which may involve joining a class or study, a prayer group, or other more service-oriented activities.

The relationships between these different ways of structuring a discipleship process are complex and there's no straightforward way in which to layer them one on top of the other. For instance, developing a loving relationship with God does not correspond exclusively or exhaustively to the aim of the Sunday morning worship service. And transforming lives is not the special concern just of small groups.

Also, moving to a new stage in a discipleship process does not entail that one has completed or "mastered" the previous stage. Underlying the "process of discipleship" is a real and dynamic loving relationship with God. This relationship is to be ever-growing and ever-deepening. And given God's infinite, inexhaustible, and incomprehensible (in the sense that our minds are not able to grasp the totality of God) nature, we should expect that there will always be more to learn and experience at every level and regarding every facet of our relationship with Him.

This is an important dimension of the discipleship process that is not well-captured by a three-step or four-step sequential structure. That is not to say that we should avoid such structures. It is just to remind us that what we are aiming at is far more and far bigger than can be captured in such a series of steps. Impacting community may be the last step in our process, but it is not the final goal of discipleship. Impacting community (by itself or understood just in terms that the world would find intelligible) is a goal far too small and far below the high calling that God has placed on our lives. So we want to begin by trying to understand how discipleship fits into God's larger purposes and intentions.

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The goal of discipleship, like the goal of sanctification (of which discipleship may be seen as a part) and the goal of God's entire redeeming work (of which sanctification is a part) is nothing less than life in fellowship, community, and union with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That may not seem a very "practical" definition, but I think it is important to keep in mind. At the very least, it may help us to guard against settling for inadequate means and confusing our interests and aims with those of the world.

Now this last point might lead some to worry that any discipleship process we come up with will inevitably appear inadequate when measured against that high calling and standard. And I think we should acknowledge that that is correct. No curriculum that we develop, no program that we set up, no process that we implement can be, in itself, adequate to the task of moving people into the life that God has and intends for us. Jesus said, "I am the way". (John 14:6) Jesus posited Himself as the path to God--not the things that He did, not any program that He set up, not any set of beliefs about Him, but the Person. He also promised to send the Holy Spirit, a Person, to help and teach us. So, I think, our discipleship process should focus on bringing people into interactive relationship with these Persons. No discipleship process, by itself, can transform people. Our goal in the first stage of this process, then, should be to bring people before the Person who can transform them.

What does that involve, one might wonder? Well, it must involve more than just a cold introduction (or its spiritual analogue): "Jeremy, meet God. God, meet Jeremy." Life-transformation, understood biblically, only happens in the context of a relationship with God. Our goal is relationship (fellowship, communion), and relationship involves some informed commitment on the parts of both individuals. To help facilitate the forming of such relationships then, at a very basic level, we will need to inform people about who God is and what He is like. We will need to talk about what He has done, including both the works of creation and of redemption. We will need to talk about His power and authority, His justice and righteousness, His grace, love, compassion, and mercy. We will need to talk about what He has done in the past and how He is working now, His relationship to this world, His desire for relationship with us, the sin that stands as a barrier to that relationship, and what God did in Christ Jesus to overcome that barrier. We should put the invitation to walk with God clearly before people, giving them the opportunity to know God, to come to love Him, and to decide to follow Him. Should they choose to take those steps, that will open up a setting in which God can work to transform those individuals' lives.

This first goal, and the steps involved in achieving it, may then be seen as roughly corresponding to the first stage in the discipleship structure: loving God. A lot more could be said about how to go about this, but I will say more about that in part two. (Also throughout the rest of this first part, I'll periodically make remarks connecting the later stages back to this first stage.)

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Biblical life-transformation (to be treated here and more extensively in part three) only happens in the context of a relationship with God. This relationship need not be long-standing or very mature, but there must be some relationship--some decision on the part of the individual to follow. But to what end? How should a person, so related to God, expect to change and be changed?

The goal of spiritual transformation is our becoming like Christ. I'll offer only a few indications here of what that looks like and will treat more of the details in the third section; but I want to get this big picture before our minds. God's desire is that we should become like Christ--that we should share in the family resemblance and live as His sons and daughters.

In our fallen condition the shape of our lives is naturally inconsistent and incompatible with God's character and nature. Indeed, the manner in which we have molded and structured our lives just is directed at the goal of living without God. We have devised various ways and methods for coping with this world and carving out our own place in it. These techniques are built on the following presumptions: (1) either that God does not exist or else that He has no claim on our lives, (2) that we are autonomous and independent, (3) that we are responsible for guiding our lives, and (4) that any chance of our surviving and thriving in this world depends on our own ability to manage resources, people, and ourselves. Certainly a life guided by these principles must fail to align with God's plans and purposes, as well as require us to act in ways contrary to His will.

The return from our fallen condition back to relationship with God depends wholly on the grace of God--on His taking the initiative to reach out to us, even in the midst of our rebellion, and opening the way for reconciliation. Every stage of that reconciliation requires God's direct involvement, through the work(s) of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

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The first stage of a person's incorporation into this reconciliatory work comes in conversion. (Some theologians may point to earlier stages, but this should work for our purposes.) There are a number of elements connected with conversion. One is the acceptance of Jesus Christ's propitiatory and atoning sacrifice on the cross for our sins. Upon receiving this gracious gift, the convert is justified--declared righteous before God--and received into fellowship with God. But this is not the end of the story. The goal of God's redemptive work is not just that we should be forgiven of our sins and placed in good standing before Him. The goal of God's redemptive work is to bring us into fellowship, relationship, and life with Him. In the same way that marriage is just the first stage in a new kind of life, so also with conversion. It's import and implications necessarily reach beyond the limits of a single moment or a single act.

So conversion also involves deciding to make Jesus the Lord of one's life--to follow Him and submit to Him in obedience. It involves establishing a trajectory for one's life, the end-point of which is Christ-likeness, sharing the family resemblance, and living as sons and daughters of God.

The shape of our lives apart from God presupposed God's irrelevance to our lives and the idea that we must secure our own survival and success. So the shape of our lives with God should presuppose God's absolute relevance to (and preeminence in) our lives, along with the idea that the surety of our life and well-being rests in Him. Molding our lives in this new way will certainly require us to un-learn a number of the habits, techniques for living, and ways of thinking that we developed in our time apart from God. Some of that un-learning will have been accomplished through teaching at the first stage (see above and in part two), though that will also be an ongoing process. Some of the un-learning may be worked instantaneously by the Holy Spirit. But there are other (I would suggest, the majority of) elements of this process in which God invites us to be more actively involved.

How do we become actively involved in the process of life-transformation and sanctification? The answer being offered here is discipleship or apprenticeship to Jesus. What is meant by that is our following Jesus in order to become like Him; our learning from Him how to live as a son or daughter of God.

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Obviously I've used the label "discipleship" already to describe this entire process, including stage one (above). Why, then, am I also using "discipleship" to characterize this second stage in particular. In my view, this second stage is the heart of the work that we have to accomplish--with respect both to our own lives and the lives of those to whom we minister, contextualized within the larger redemptive work that God is accomplishing, with full reliance upon the gracious provision of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit--: this process of walking alongside Jesus, looking at His life, speaking to Him, listening to what He has to say, taking direction from Him, following His example, aligning our lives with His life, and so coming to share in the same dynamic love relationship that He enjoys with His Father and the Holy Spirit, along with all the fruits and outward manifestations of that relationship that we would expect to see. This is the stage at which deep life-transformation happens and the center of this entire process.

Once we get that clearly in view, we'll see that the first (above) and third (below) stages of this process are inextricably connected to it and really just moments in it. It is impossible for us to become disciples of Jesus without knowing and coming to love Him (see above and in part two). It is impossible for anyone to decide to follow Jesus into the second stage of this process if they have no idea who He is or don't really believe that His kind of life is a good one and worth pursuing. That's why the information conveyed and decision made at the first stage is so important. And one of the fruits of walking with Jesus and becoming like Jesus that we would expect to see is a love for and commitment to helping people around us, including our community (see below and in part four). These moments derive their significance from their connection to this second step. So it is right to say that this whole process is a "discipleship" process because the second and central stage of that process is all about "discipleship."

Remember, though, that "discipleship" is not just a general term for any process that moves people toward deeper relationship with God. Discipleship is not the same thing as sanctification. Discipleship is not the same thing as life-transformation. Discipleship is one aspect of the larger works of sanctification and transformation, but I think that it is a central one. If our goal is to become like Christ, to live in and enjoy fellowship and relationship with Him, His Father, and the Holy Spirit, our point of access can be none other than Jesus Himself. Jesus' death on the cross and resurrection opened the way, but it is in discipling (apprenticing) ourselves to Jesus that we actually learn how to walk in that way and live the kind of life that God intended for us.

Let me make one more point about the relationship of the first step (above) to what we are looking at now and one of its implications: Salvation and redemption come to us not just through what Jesus did, but through Jesus Himself--because everything that Jesus did, He did because of who He is and His relationship with God. So as we seek to facilitate the process of spiritual transformation, our focus should not be on what people do, primarily, but rather on who they are. Just as Jesus' actions--including His sacrifice on the cross--issued from His character and relationship with His heavenly Father, so our goal should be that the actions of the spiritually transformed person also arise from his or her character and relationship with God.

Many of the world's methods for transformation (and even the approaches of some "Christians") neglect this crucial element. They focus on the modification of external behavior without considering the character and internal condition of the person or his relationship to God. Such an approach is wholly incompatible with biblical teaching (Matthew 23:25) and largely ineffective for producing transformed individuals. This is why we must not neglect the first step (above) of this discipleship process. Modification of behavior motivated by social pressure, bare conformity to a set of precepts, and even appropriate fear of punishment (human or divine) is not the kind of transformation that Jesus offered. The successful modification of mere behavior is not the hope that the apostles celebrated.

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So how do we help to facilitate genuine personal transformation? How does that look in our church and congregation? Considering the various ways in which we have learned to cope with this world apart from God may serve as a useful starting point. At one level there needs to be some basic teaching about what God requires and expects of those who follow Him. His commands, as articulated in both the Old and New Testaments, should be made clear. But remember, our goal here is not just to secure conformity to a list of rules--and that wasn't Jesus' either. Becoming the kind of person who easily and routinely does what is good and right--that is the goal. Pursuing that requires a significant reorientation along with a high level of commitment on the part of the individual.

Here's an example to consider: how does one become the kind of person who easily and routinely speaks the truth--for whom open, honest, and loving words come naturally? First, the disciple will have to alter, fundamentally, her way of looking at the world. In a world and life apart from God, lying and deception are basic techniques for survival. Living in truth is dangerous because the truth is sometimes uncomplimentary, truth is sometimes uncomfortable, and truth can sometimes make life difficult. Living well apart from God depends upon our being able to mold our world in certain ways that are inconsistent with what is actually true. The techniques that we develop, in the world, for doing that are very deeply engrained. The tendency to try to manage our own lives and problems in this way comes very naturally to us. If we are to become the kind of people who easily and routinely speak the truth, all of this will have to change.

How do we change that? First we must bring the truth about reality before the disciple's mind. God is the one true source of life and well-being. He is the God of truth. We cannot walk with Him and fellowship with Him while hiding in the darkness of untruth. God is good and faithful, and He has promised to provide for us as the Good Shepherd and loving Father. This is the beginning of a teaching component but more will naturally be required. People may wonder, "But what about this situation...?" or "What if things don't work out...?" or "But if I were to tell the truth in that setting then this bad thing might happen." We should help people to understand how the concerns that they have (many of which arise from their being so thoroughly enmeshed in the world) are and should be related to what is truly good and valuable in God's sight. We should cite many, many examples, from the life of Jesus, and from the rest of the Bible and the history of the church, of men and women who lived in truth. We should hold those up as models and examples, being open and honest about the good and bad consequences that came from them. Our goal, in this, is to help people to see that the way of truth truly is the good way. In spite of the real bad consequences that may issue from it, but also because living in truth is part of living with a God who can and does act in our lives, living in truth is a good thing. This is an important foundation for bringing up people who not only tell the truth, but for whom telling the truth is the easiest and most natural thing.

There is no room for shortcuts at this stage, and any hints of coercion must be avoided. We want people to see that the way of truth truly is the good way. If they see that it is the good way, then they will want to live in that way and they will be (at least) open to doing what is necessary to move in that direction. But if they don't actually see that--if we just tell them that it is so or if we pressure them into verbally acknowledging that it is so, then the deep transformation will not work. We may get them to the stage where their external behavior matches up (or appears to match up) to what we expect, but there will not be the deep transformation that is the whole point of God's redemptive work, sanctification, and discipleship. We must lay the foundation first. (Some of this foundation will be laid in stage one (see above and in part two) and some in the course of activities (e.g. teaching) similar to those involved at stage one.)

Of course, even with this foundation, telling the truth will not come easily and naturally to people, especially at the beginning stages. Teaching is a part of working this deep transformation, but it is not enough. The people we are discipling will likely still work with, hang out with, and spend the majority of their time with people who don't value truth in this way. And it is hard to move against that grain. Still, if a person is to change in such a way that truth-telling comes easily and naturally, she will at some stage have to push against that grain. At this second stage, a person, recognizing that living in truth is the best thing (even if she has occasional doubts about that) must begin to actually speak the truth--even in difficult settings. But notice, at this stage, that such truth-telling is not yet the product of a transformed character but only an exercise--one step on the way to becoming a transformed individual. There is a danger is that we will look at a particular episode of truth-telling at this stage and just give approval or disapproval based on the action performed. If we fail to take each episode as a teaching opportunity, then we will just have fallen back into the project of reinforcing external conformity to rules. A person who struggles within herself to speak the truth in an uncomfortable situation may find that speaking the truth produces unexpectedly good results. That needs to be talked about and related to the teaching that went before. A person who struggles within herself to speak the truth in an uncomfortable situation may find that things go very badly as a result. That also needs to be addressed, because that experience will automatically tend to reinforce the worldly conviction that living in truth is actually detrimental to life and well-being. If, at this point, the young disciple is left to herself without the support of a loving community that will help to draw her attention back to what is true and real, we should expect that her commitment to truth will waver and wane.

Throughout this process we must be careful not to lose sight of that relationship with God--for which a foundation is supposed to have been laid at the first stage (see above and in part two) of this discipleship process. Apart from a relationship with God, there is no point in speaking the truth. Apart from a relationship with God, lies and deception are absolutely necessary for survival and success. If we push people to speak the truth while neglecting to emphasize their relationship with God, while neglecting to draw the connection between truth and relationship with God, and while failing to support and uphold them through this difficult learning process, then we will be pushing an incoherent (and unbiblical) agenda. (Many Christians have taken this route and so come to the point of abandoning the way of truth and settling for the mere appearance of truth-living.)

Apart from God, it is impossible to live in truth. Let me say that once more: apart from God, it is impossible to live in truth. So when we encourage and challenge people to speak the truth, even in uncomfortable circumstances, we should also encourage and challenge them to look for God in those same circumstances. If all the focus is on performing the action and none on where God is in the midst of that, then we should expect that a person will not be able to sustain life in truth. Even with that understanding, we should still expect that speaking the truth in the early stages of discipleship will be very difficult. But as the young disciple intentionally and deliberately seeks to follow Jesus--to walk alongside Him, look at His life, speak to Him, listen to Him, align her life with His life--we should also expect that Jesus would meet her, help her, speak to her. The witness of Scripture and testimonies of other people may go a long way, but nothing can replace God's entering into the life of the disciple. That is what reinforces and solidifies deep conviction in the goodness of God and the goodness of living in truth. The experience of this truly distinct and altogether supernatural kind of life is what will enable a person, even in the midst of this crooked and misguided world, to become and be the kind of person who easily and routinely speaks the truth in love.

My suggestion is that the basic model that I've illustrated in the case of truth-telling can be applied to the transformation of people's lives in connection with any number of issues--marriage, raising kids, overcoming addictions, controlling one's anger, coping with loneliness, finding freedom from greed and lust, dealing with enemies, conquering fear and anxiety, reaching out to the needy, building and rebuilding relationships, conflict management, mastering money, living with integrity, and impacting community. Teaching will have to be combined with opportunities for real practical application. Assessment and evaluation of how the disciple responded to those opportunities should be combined with encouragement and exhortation. The disciple should be encouraged to look for Jesus in all circumstances. And through this all, the church community must support that disciple as he or she deals with the consequences that come from altering the shape of his or her life to bring it into conformity with the life of Christ.

What will be called for or required with a particular individual in a particular situation may vary from case to case. I doubt that a single one-size fits all method can be made to work where discipleship and life-transformation is concerned. That will also be true for evaluation and assessment of a particular individual's progress. But hopefully this illustrative case gives an idea of some of the main contours of the process and a discipleship program can be built around those. Ultimately what we want is for a person's everyday conduct to be informed and motivated by his character and relationship with God--not just in the sense that he takes seriously God's commands as guiding his conduct, but also in the sense that His awareness of God's goodness and abiding presence with Him, promise of faithfulness and constant interaction, will serve as the foundation of his entire outlook on the world. That is certainly what Paul and Peter, the other apostles, and the early Christians had.

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Now we turn to consider the third stage of this discipleship process: impacting community. As indicated earlier, impacting community is not a further step in the process of discipleship (something that only long-time disciples can do, for instance), nor is it a goal or project altogether distinct from the earlier stages of this larger process. Impacting community is just one of the results that we should expect to see from the life of an individual who has been significantly transformed by the grace and redemptive, sanctifying work of God.

But if that is the case, one might wonder, why are we giving special attention to this particular fruit of transformation as opposed to one of the others. Why is the third stage in this discipleship process "impacting community" and not "speaking the truth," or "controlling one's anger"? One reason why it is appropriate to focus on impacting community is that doing so draws our attention back to a value that is at the very center of God's overarching purpose and plan for human beings, and that is love. In fact love is the distinguishing and defining attribute by which Jesus says people will recognize His followers. "By this all men will know that you are My disciples," He says, "if you have love for one another." (John 13:35)

In Colossians 3, Paul gives instructions about how members of the church should conduct themselves having put on the new self (i.e. having been transformed). He says, "Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry. ... [P]ut them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another... . [A]s those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you." (excerpts, vv. 1-13) Then, in v. 14, he writes: "And beyond all these things put on love, which is the uniting bond of perfectness." The Amplified Bible puts it this way: "And above all these put on love and enfold yourselves with the bond of perfectness which binds everything together completely in ideal harmony." Here love is presented as the supreme virtue that holds together and completes all the others.

1 Corinthians 13, where Paul addresses himself to a church that was very rich in spiritual gifts but poor in love, is another place where the preeminence of love is emphasized.

I said earlier that the goal of discipleship, sanctification, and God's entire redemptive work is to bring us into life in fellowship, community, and union with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Also, I said that God's desire is that we should become like Christ, that we should share in the family resemblance and live as His sons and daughters. But actually God's vision for us extends even farther than that. In His high priestly prayer, Jesus offered this request to His Father:

"I do not ask in behalf of these [the apostles] alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me. And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me." (John 17:20-23)

Jesus was not only concerned with our individual relationships with God but also with our relationships with other people. Actually, what Jesus is talking about here seems not so much to be something separate from fellowship with the Trinity as an extension outward of that Trinitarian fellowship.

The point is that love is at the very center of God's intention for human beings--not just love of God but also love of people. In fact, the two are inextricably connected. (1 John 4:20) We were created to live in loving relationships with God and people. So we should expect that the person who has been transformed into Christ-likeness will be one who not only loves God but also loves people.

[I will address more directly, in part four, the question of whom we should love. Jesus' teachings in Matthew 5:43-48 and Luke 10:25-37, for instance, clearly indicate that our love should extend beyond the community of faith. But I am concerned that some people who emphasize this point have been sloppy in their use of Scripture. My purpose in citing the above Scripture passages in this summary is just to emphasize the importance of love of people to God's purpose for human beings. Working out the details of that point will come later.]

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But, of course, we can't assume that loving others is just going to happen automatically in the course of transforming all the other areas of our lives. To become the kind of person who loves in the way that Jesus loves should be one of the goals that we pursue--just as we pursue becoming the kind of person who naturally speaks the truth and controls his or her anger. How do we do that? We should follow the same model as that illustrated in the case of truth-telling. We will need to begin by looking at what love is. The world has all kinds of mixed-up notions about what love is, and for those of us who have grown up in the world and developed all the habits and techniques for coping with the world apart from God, those confused ideas about love have become deeply embedded. Once we begin to understand what true love (agape) really is, I expect all of us will be forced to acknowledge that we are really no good at loving. Through teaching and instruction then, we want to help people come to see that the life of love really is the good life. By looking at Jesus' example and the lives of His followers (past and present) we want to bring people to a point where they can make the decision: I want to become a loving person.

Practice and exercise will enter at this point. People should be moved into situations where they are challenged to love people and to do what is loving. This will involve engagement with people both inside and outside of the church. Assessment of the results of those experiences and further teaching and instruction should all be part of building up a person in such a way that, eventually, the most easy and natural thing for him to do is love people and act in loving ways. If a person is transformed in this way, that will certainly result in the lives of the people around him being affected. That is one place where community impact comes in.

But community impact is not just one of the results of transformation, it is also one of the arenas in which discipleship training happens. A person cannot learn how to love people without actually interacting with them, just as a person cannot learn to serve people without actually doing stuff for them. So we should expect that reaching out to and touching the lives of people will be as much a part of the second stage (above) of this process as the third. But we must also keep in mind how the community impact at these different stages differs.

There is a big difference between (1) helping someone as part of a training program for becoming a loving person, (2) helping someone as an automatic expression of one's mature loving character, and (3) helping someone as a way of conforming to some standard of right conduct or just in order to make people believe that one is loving. Again, we must not confuse these. Actions like (3) have no place in a biblically-grounded discipleship program and are no part of the fruit of such a discipleship program. And if we confuse (1) and (2), we will probably fail to help and support young disciples in their journey toward maturity and true loving character.

Further reflection on (3) should remind us to carefully guard against watering down our understanding of what is involved in community impact. It is possible to (positively) impact a community without loving the people. It is also possible to (positively) impact a community without loving God. But neither of these can be part of the life of a person who is mature in Christ. This is just to return to the point that loving God, knowing God, and relationship with God (discussed in connection with the first stage of this process, above, and in part two) are absolutely indispensable to this process of biblical discipleship and biblical life-transformation. While there is an important sense in which we should expect that community impact will be one of the fruits of a transformed life, it is still the case that impacting community (even though it is the third step in the process) is not the goal of this discipleship process. This is especially true if impacting community is understood in a way that is wholly intelligible to and compatible with a worldly sensibility.

Within the context of a discipleship program, then, there are basically two reasons for a person to be reaching out to and touching the lives of people: (1) these forms of outreach express a mature life with God and (2) these forms of outreach are part of growing into a mature life with God. How we set up our discipleship process should be sensitive to this point. More will be said about how impacting community relates to the discipleship process and how to get people to that stage in part four.

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We've already covered a lot of ground. (And this was supposed to be the summary introduction to the more extensive treatments.) My goal was to get a bit clearer on what each of the stages in the proposed process consists in, how they are related to one another, and how they are related to the larger project of living and walking with God. My special concern with the last of these aims has led me to repeatedly emphasize the centrality of the disciple's relationship with God to every stage of this process. In the three remaining sections, I want to expand on all these points and look in more detail at what each stage might look like and involve practically. I'll close this section, then, just by reiterating these few foundational points:

The goal of the discipleship process (also sanctification and God's entire redemptive work) is nothing less than fullness of life in loving fellowship, community, and union with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, where that community (by God's gracious design) has been extended to include all who have been adopted as His sons and daughters. The goal of discipleship is that we should become like Christ, that we should share in the family resemblance, possess His loving character, and live as sons and daughters of God. This life in us will manifest itself in all sorts of outward fruits and actions. We will come to put on the loving character of Christ (that is, of sons and daughters of God), in part, through intentional discipleship and apprenticeship to Jesus Christ--which includes taking up particular practices and activities. What that looks like practically will be treated more extensively in the following three sections, as we look more closely at each of the three stages that compose the proposed discipleship process: loving God, transforming lives, and impacting community.

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Part Two: How can we help people to come to Love God?

Part Three: How can we facilitate the process of Life-Transformation?

Part Four: How does biblical life-transformation lead to Loving and Impacting Community?

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 232: Desire fulfilled

2011-04-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

I'm convinced that my brain is positively stuffed full of ideas that I would love to blog about, but the times when it actually flows coherently from my mind to the page seem frustratingly scattered, and I simply don't have the time to dedicate to ten-page postings. (Ha!)

Anyhow, here's a really quick thought. I've had two conversations in the last month, both with guys about my age, about the purpose of life, what we should be aiming at, what is really worthwhile and valuable. Of course I think about stuff like that all the time, but I often wonder just how much "normal" people do reflect on those big questions. Most people who have reflected on these points, I take it, have tended to conclude that the worthwhile life is one aimed at something larger, longer-lasting, and more significant than one's own gratification and mere desire-satisfaction. And this seems right, or at least it seems to move in the right direction.

But I think a problem can emerge if what one aims at is something the fulfillment or completion of which is essentially beyond one's reach. And this places one in a curious paradox. Human experience seems to teach that aiming just at attainable goods will not satisfy. For every accomplishment and milestone that we achieve, there is always one more to be attained. There's always a step that we haven't yet reached. And certainly one of the hardest thing for a person, having actually reached the top of one of these ladders, is to learn that it's been leaning against the wrong building all along.

But it doesn't seem better to reach only for what is unattainable. The constant deferral of satisfaction is frustrating and becomes more frustrating with time. I would suggest that the protracted deferral of satisfaction or fulfillment is a bad thing. (In connection with this point, I think it would be good for Christians to reflect on how they think about and frame the hope of heaven and eternal life that is spoken of in the Bible.)

Solomon, it seems, agrees with me, for he writes:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But desire fulfilled is a tree of life. (Proverbs 13:12)

Now the great thing about proverbs is the way in which they present (or don't present) the truth. The meaning isn't always obvious and requires some work to get at. In fact, you might want to stop and reflectively read through Proverbs 13 before continuing.

On the surface, it looks like Solomon is advocating the pursuit of desire-fulfillment. 'If you have a desire, you should seek to fulfill it, to satisfy it. Don't wait. Don't delay. That will just make your heart sick. Get it now!' Isn't that just the philosophy that so many in our world advocate?

But wait a minute: there's a problem! There is a whole lot of people seeking to fulfill their desires and it's not working well for them. Even when they fulfill those desires they're not satisfied. And the relentless pursuit is wearing away at them. Was Solomon simply mistaken then? What could he possibly mean?

The key to understanding this proverb, I think, lies in recognizing that the way of the world is actually not the way of "desire fulfilled" but rather of "hope deferred." You might think that getting that job or that raise, that marrying that girl, moving to a new area, making some new friends, finding a worthwhile hobby, or whatever else will satisfy you, but the truth is that it won't. You'll find you need still more money, that she's not as perfect as you thought (and neither are you), that your problems have followed you to your new residence, that the feelings of loneliness still haunt you, and that boredom keeps on sapping you of strength and vitality. Those things were supposed to satisfy you, but they actually don't. And as long as you're chasing after those sorts of things, you're going to be running down the road marked "hope deferred."

That's the only thing you'll find if you run down that road--the only thing that you'll get for all your trouble: hope deferred. If you want desire fulfilled, you've got to look elsewhere. And if you do that, if you earnestly seek, you'll discover that the thing you really wanted has actually been sitting right next to you all along. (Acts 17:22-29.) You can share in and enjoy a dynamic and interactive relationship with the creator of the cosmos, who because of His love for us and the overflowing abundance of His grace, sent His Son and the Holy Spirit to dwell with and in us, that we might partake of that tree of life continually, enjoying the fruits of fellowship, peace, love, and mercy, from now into eternity.

Of course I would like to go more into the "tree of life" image, and explore the context of the surrounding proverbs, and write in more careful detail about the meaning of life, but then I'd be aiming at a ten-page post, and I don't have time for that. This will have to do for now.

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.