Confessions #4: Paul made Sabbath-keeping optional.

Number 4 in my new series, Confessions of a Bible Know-It-All: 25 Ways I Changed My Mind.

1. I am not the "you" of the Bible. 
2. Try reading the verse before your favorite verse. 
3. Then I read the verses before the prophecies.
x. Resurrection isn't going to heaven when you die.
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1. I grew up with a lot of Sabbath rules. I wasn't rebellious, although it did make Sundays pretty boring for me. We went to church at least twice. As an attention-deficit boy, that was a little torturous, if I am honest.

We didn't "buy or sell" on Sundays, which meant we didn't go out to eat or to the store. Part of why we didn't go to restaurants on Sunday is so that someone else didn't have to work. My dad occaionally got the opportunity to work overtime on weekends. He'd do the Saturdays but not the Sundays as a matter of conviction.

We didn't watch TV on Sundays. My dad felt like he would end up watching football all day if that door was open. So we set the day aside for worship. When Star Wars and E.T. premiered on TV on Sunday nights, I missed them. (I had already missed them at the movies because we didn't go to movies either.)

Sunday was serious, solemn. It was a holy day, set aside, sanctified. That means we didn't throw a football or baseball. I was kicked off a playground at a holiness camp ground once because Sunday was too serious for play.

This was all very normal for me. It was one of many practices that set my family apart from other people. We knew we were a "peculiar people," as Deuteronomy 7:6 in the King James Version says.

There's nothing wrong with any of the practices I mentioned above. As I studied the Bible more and more, though, I realized that these things were really a matter of personal conviction. A deep reading of Scripture won't see them as practices that God requires of his people.

2. Two things began to change my mind on these practices. One is an increasing ability to read the Bible in context, and the second was an openness to listen to the Bible over my tradition.

For example, the most glaring insight is that Sunday isn't the Sabbath. Saturday is and was. There's not a verse in the entire Bible that refers to Sunday as a Sabbath. [1] Sunday is the "Lord's Day," not the Sabbath. In the Bible as in Judaism still today, the Sabbath referred to the period from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday.

There are groups like Seventh Day Adventists and Seventh Day Baptists that have recognized this fact and they do keep Saturday as the Sabbath even today.

Of course, many Christians recognize this fact and will immediately respond, "The specific day is not what's important. What's important is that you set aside a day as your Sabbath." For example, many pastors set aside Monday or another day as their day of rest.

Many other Christians have blurred the Sabbath into a day of worship. So what becomes important is going to church to worship on Sunday. If you do that, they believe, then you have kept the Sabbath.

These are all very interesting (and practical) traditions. There's just one thing about them They're not in the Bible. They are like the traditions of the elders of the Pharisees in Mark 7:1. They are oral traditions that Christians have come up with to explain how they keep the law without exactly keeping the law.

And that's ok. It is fantastic to set aside a day of rest. It is very healthy! It is spectacular to set aside a day of worship! The Lord deserves our worship every moment of every day, and setting aside a day to gather together to worship him is VERY biblical (cf. Heb. 10:25; Rev. 1:10).

3. Here's the thing though. The farther I went into my study of the Bible, the more I let each passage say what it wanted to say. I didn't let myself continue to say, "OK, this verse sounds like it says x, but I can't let it say that because of passage y." I tried to stop "cooking the books," so to speak.

So, consider Colossians 2:16: "Do not let anyone judge you because of food or because of drink or in respect to a feast or a new moon or a Sabbath." What is this verse saying?

If I let the verse speak, it seems to say that the non-Jewish Colossians (Gentile Christians, in other words) should not feel pressure from anyone in the city to observe the Jewish food laws, festival days, or Sabbaths. That is to say, Colossians does not consider Sabbath-observance binding on Gentile believers!

If you were in doubt, let's go to Romans 14, a chapter that was very important to me on my spiritual pilgrimage. It says, "There is the one who considers one day above another and another who considers every day [the same]. Let each person be fully convinced in his or her own mind. The one who observes the day observes it for the Lord" (Rom. 14:5-6).

Verses like these are sometimes difficult for us, not because they are hard to understand, but because they wreak havoc with what we think we know. Paul here indicates that keeping the Jewish Sabbath was a matter of personal conviction, not a universal requirement. Some Christians would believe God requires it of them. Others would not.

Why is this so striking? It is striking for several reasons. For example, this is one of the Ten Commandments. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy" (Exod. 20:8). And Paul says you don't have to keep it. I think he especially had Gentile Christians in mind. I suspect he and other Jewish Christians continued to observe Saturday as a Sabbath.

Let that sink it. Not only does he not consider it an absolute. He does not even consider it a universal requirement. By definition, he puts it in the category of the relative, a "relativist" categorization. That's really the category in which personal convictions go. It's wrong for me, but it might not be wrong for someone else. Paul says that, on this issue, what is important is that you are fully convinced in your own mind (Rom. 14:5).

There's no way around it. That's what he says.

I was talking to a family member about this once and the response was, "But Exodus 20:11 bases the Sabbath law in creation" (cf. Gen. 2:2-3). 

"I know," I responded. "But it doesn't seem to matter to Paul."

4. Let me give it to you straight. Despite our traditions, despite what makes sense to us, despite the fact that it is one of Ten Commandments, rooted in the creation story, despite all these things... the New Testament does not consider the Sabbath to be binding on Christians.

That was a huge admission for me as a Bible know-it-all. When you listen to the biblical text, it often doesn't want to be read the way my tradition wants it to be read. Then I have to decide whether my idea of the Bible is more important to me than the real Bible itself.

[1] I did hear an ingenious argument that the Greek of verses like Matthew 28:1 changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. A wooden reading of the Greek is "Now after the sabbaths, at the dawning of the first of sabbaths." Some have argued that this verse changed the old Sabbath to Sunday as the first of the new Sabbaths. Brilliant!

But of course it is this sort of game-playing with truth that caused me to have a bit of a faith crisis. The expression "first of sabbaths" was an idiom for "first day of the week." It existed before Easter, and it existed after Easter. This interpretation is just a very sophisticated version of ripping a phrase out of its historical context. The meaning of these phrases was "Now after the Sabbath, at the dawning of the first day of the week," which is how pretty much every version translates it.

Confessions x: Resurrection isn't going to heaven when you die.

Just for Easter, number x in my series, Confessions of a Bible Know-It-All: 25 Ways I Changed My Mind.

1. I am not the "you" of the Bible. 
2. Try reading the verse before your favorite verse.
3. Then I read the verses before the prophecies
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Confession #n: Resurrection isn't going to heaven when you die.
1. I grew up with two beliefs that I never really tried to fit together. The first was that, when you die, you go to heaven or hell. The second was that the dead would rise from their graves when Jesus came back to earth.

Later on, I tried to make them fit. When you die, you are in some sort of intermediate state. Perhaps your soul is in "Abraham's Bosom" (Luke 16) or Paradise (Luke 23:43). On the other hand, you may find yourself in torment (Luke 16 again).

Then when Christ returns, your soul is reunited with your body, like Iron Man calling his suit from afar. The soul of the Christian is reunited with an upgraded body. And, on the Day of Judgment, the damned are also reunited with their bodies before going to eternal torment.

2. There are many Christians who, perhaps without even realizing it, simply do away with the resurrection part. A few years ago, when an ossuary with the name James on it was discovered, there was speculation about what would happen if the bones of Jesus were found. A colleague of mine -- teaching at a Christian college, no less -- didn't think it would make any difference if they found the bones of Jesus. Apparently, he thought the afterlife was purely spiritual. Our physical bodies didn't matter, as far as he was concerned.

Some of us were stunned. Admittedly, the person didn't teach in the religion department. They taught in a completely different field and really didn't know any better. They didn't realize that resurrection in the Bible is an embodied resurrection. Jesus' tomb is empty -- and that matters.

When I was growing up, I didn't realize how important our bodies are in the Bible for eternity. But 1 Corinthians 15 makes it very clear. When Paul talks about resurrection, he isn’t imagining a disembodied existence. He can’t even conceive of an afterlife without a body (cf. 1 Cor. 15:35). For Paul, salvation isn’t escape from the body. It’s the transformation of it. 

For Paul, the alternative to resurrection isn’t “your soul goes to heaven.” It's no future at all.

3. Come to find out, our popular notions of the immortality of the soul are more Greek than biblical. It's not that we can't make them fit. There are several hints of something similar. "Into your hands, I put forth my spirit" (Luke 23:46). There are martyred "souls" under the altar in Revelation 6:9.

But Jesus' resurrection is a bodily resurrection. Luke and John make a big deal of this fact. In Luke, the risen Jesus asks for fish to show he is not a ghost (Luke 24:39-43). In John, he offers the marks in his hands, feet, and side for Thomas to touch to know it is him (John 20:27).

And I've already mentioned the apostle Paul, who apparently can't understand what the Corinthians are thinking about resurrection. He doesn't understand how they can believe Jesus is alive and yet not believe in resurrection. As a former Pharisee, resurrection for him obviously means that our corpses rise from the dead. [1] "Someone will say, 'How will the corpses be raised?' and 'With what sort of body are they coming?' (15:35). 

He just assumes everyone knows that resurrection involves our bodies. It doesn't even occur to him there might be another view like, "You die your soul is freed." In this part of his ministry, he even talks about the time between death and resurrection as "sleep" (1 Thess. 4:13; 1 Cor. 15:51).

Resurrection of the dead is the rising of dead corpses. The Greek story said, "Your soul escapes your body." The biblical story says, "God raises your body."

4. But the biggest shift came when I realized that this embodied eternity in the New Testament is almost certainly on earth. The kingdom of God in the Bible is God's kingdom come to earth.

This seemed heretical to me as a young man studying for ministry. And I know I wasn't the only one. I know a church leader who was shocked to hear a professor at my seminary point out that this is exactly what Revelation 21 describes. Somehow, while we took all the rest of Revelation literally -- the parts that probably weren't meant to be taken literally -- we took this part figuratively. We took the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem as a poetic expression of the future rather than something that might literally happen.

Yet, when I became a professor, my theology colleagues would assure me that historic Christianity has always believed that eternity is on a new earth, the redeemed earth of Romans 8:18-23. That was news to me. "Orthodoxy" in my low church background meant an eternity in heaven.

But it's all there in the New Testament. I just mentioned Romans 8 and Revelation 21. But Jesus too talks of people coming from north, south, east, and west to feast with him in the kingdom of God (Luke 13:29). I had just always ignored the clear implication that this was on earth somehow. But it's strange verses like that one that lead to paradigm shifts.

I still believe we are conscious between death and resurrection, somewhere, in some form. The details are above my pay grade. I believe in spending eternity with Jesus.

But I now believe it will be in a glorified body. And I believe the kingdom of God will be right here, on a new earth. Christianity isn’t about leaving earth for heaven. It’s about heaven coming to earth.

[1] N.T. Wright emphasized this fact in his book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (HarperOne, 2008).

Confessions 1 -- I am not the "you" of the Bible.

New Tuesday series... Confessions of a Bible Know-It-All: 25 Ways I Changed My Mind. Way #1
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Confession #1: I am not the "you" of the Bible
I'm not sure I ever gave it much thought, but for the first 18 years or so of my life, I assumed that when the Bible said "you," it was talking to me.

Take Jeremiah 29:11 -- "I know the plans I have for you." Wow, I thought. God is talking about me!

"Be strong and courageous. I am with you wherever you go" (Josh. 1:9). Wow, I thought! God is with me wherever I go.

I went through a time of struggle when I was ten. My mother gave me these verses to hold on to, promises to remember while I was at school. She wanted me to remember God was with me while I was at school.

Now, don't get me wrong. I do believe God is with me and you wherever we go. I do believe God is love and has good plans for those who trust in him. What I didn't realize until much later, though, is that those verses weren't actually written to me at all. I am not the "you" of those verses.

When I realized what was going on here, it completely changed how I read the Bible. And once you see it too, you'll start to notice it everywhere.

2. I always say that the Bible is for us but it was not written to us. Once you see it, you see it. "Hear, O Israel" (Deut. 6:4). I'm not Israel. The Israel of Deuteronomy lived about 3000 years ago. The Israel Isaiah addressed lived 2700 years ago.

Paul says he's writing to Romans, Corinthians, Thessalonians, and other churches in his day. Am I a Roman? A Corinthian? A Thessalonian?

Nope. None of those letters were written to me.

Why did I think those books were written to me? Why did I think that the Y-O-Us of Scripture are for me? That's not actually what the Bible says.

So, does that mean the Bible has nothing to say to me?

3. Of course it does. That's how the idea of a "Scripture" works. The idea of a Scripture is that it speaks beyond its own time to the people of the religion whose Scripture it is.

But, mind you, Paul didn't know his letters were going to end up in a Bible. "Scripture" for him was what we call the Old Testament. He was just writing letters. Important letters, to be sure. Letters that he believed carried authority for the churches to which he was writing. 

But did he think he was writing part of a future Bible? Almost certainly not.

4. Yes, I was once an unreflective reader of the Bible. Still am, of course, to some extent. We can never become fully self-aware.

But I narcissistically read the Bible as if it was just about me, which meant that I was mostly misreading it. And I didn't even know it. A little self-centered, really. To ignore the message it actually had. To ignore the people it was actually written to.

It's like picking up a love letter to someone else and applying it to yourself. "Wow, whoever's writing this really loves me." That's how we often read the Bible. Kind of funny, really, how clueless we can be when reading the Bible.

"I know the plans I have for you"? God said this through Jeremiah to the Israelites who had been captured and taken to Babylon. It wasn't written about anyone alive today. God was telling them to buy property but that in 70 years he would bring them back. They're all dead now, of course.

"The Lord is with you wherever you go"? God said this to Joshua before he started a military campaign. It's over. You can go visit the ruins of Jericho if you want today. The verse wasn't a promise to anyone alive now, let alone to anyone today who is about to start a military campaign. To read it that way is to rip it out of its context.

I know, it's hard for a lot of people to see it. "No, no, no! It's for me." Yes, I was a narcissist once too.

But it wasn't written to you. Those words weren't originally to you. Just read what the words actually say. 

5. We're talking about learning to read the Bible "in context." That is, reading the words for what they actually meant. Realizing that the love letter was first to someone else before we immediately clutch it longingly to our chests with stars in our eyes. 

Yes, I believe by faith God preserved the Bible for us as Scripture, even though the Bible mostly doesn't say that. It's an idea I learned in church, a tradition about the Bible that the Bible mostly doesn't say. It's a true tradition, but it mostly goes beyond what the Bible itself says.

Bottom line. If I really love this text -- if I really respect the Bible -- shouldn't I first stop and listen to what it actually says? That is, before I rip the words out of context and smack them on myself? 

Before I ask what it means for me, shouldn't I first ask what it meant to them?