Before I recap today, Tuesday, our final day here, I thought I would fill in the gaps.
I left off I think in terms of continuity with Qumran on Friday. It was truly great for me to be there since I have delivered a paper on the Dead Sea Scrolls and twice taught a course on the intertestament. Let me say how incredibly helpful it is for me to remember things when I can picture it. I now know where at least some of the caves are in relation to Qumran (and can now dismiss out of hand the fanciful theories that suggest the scrolls might have nothing to do with the site).
I've seen the graves running north and south now, to the east of the site. I've seen the miqvaoth (baptismal pools), the tower, the so called "scriptorium" (bad choice of words for extraneous meaning imported in) and the refractory. These are great things. I had a novelistic picture of it (yes, I did once start a novel with Judas starting in the Qumran community) that was quite wrong.
Then we swam in the Dead Sea, which was great. I wish we could have swam all the way across to Jordan. I already mentioned that Ian Swyers, Clint Ussher and I climbed up Masada. That was a highpoint for sure.
Then we made our way to a hotel in Arad.
The Sabbath was soon approaching at the hotel there, and Jewish women could be seen scurrying to the elevator. The elevators here on the Sabbath run on their own so that no one has to push a button and thus "light a fire." They won't turn on coffee pots on Saturday or do any of these mundane things. Wilbur told a story of how he actually had to turn on the oven for a hotel back in 58 I think it was, with a rabbi standing guard over the kitchen to make sure no Jew did.
I'm too tired to pontificate, but I think some of the legalistic practices of my own Wesleyan background approach such silliness.
I'll just mention the problem Jews have with having meat and dairy products together. It goes back to a verse that appears in three different places in the Pentateuch about boiling the kid in its mother's milk. So they won't serve meat (the kid, I presume) with any milk. Of course discoveries at Ugarit show, as usual, that this is in part a reaction to Canaanite practice and thus that the Jews are making a big hullaballo about a verse that has nothing to do with them or having butter with supper.
I'm too tired to pontificate, but Wesleyan buns and not letting guys have goatees measure about the same on the "I don't have a clue what the words of the Bible were really about" scale.
On Saturday morning we went to Arad, Israel's defense from the southeast, and Beer Sheva, Israel's defense from the southwest. This was in Rehoboam's time.
Very interesting to me in Arad was the fact that Rehoboam had set up a three part temple in the fortress. I think Hezekiah may have dismantled it in his attempt to make Jerusalem the only legitimate place to worship Yahweh.
Then we stopped at Lachish for a few. Then we came up to the Valley of Elah where the Philistines and the Israelites met and traditionally David killed Goliath. Then we came to Bethlehem.
It was crowded with Palestinian police all around. We went into the church where Palestinians just a couple years ago walled themselves up and where there were bullet holes (I didn't personally see any). The church is Greek Orthodox again and the traditional site is in a cave under the church. There is as usual a place to touch or kiss, and a place to the side where the baby Jesus traditionally was laid.
You come up to a Fransiscan church right next to it. As usual it's hard for me to know what to make of it, since I have no confidence that any of these spots are the right spots.
Then we came here, I discovered wireless in the rooms, and the blanks are filled.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Monday, June 20, 2005
Balancing Things Out with Faint Praise
I will say that I think Bush has grown up a bit while he's been in office. I completely approve of what Condoleeza Rice did here over the weekend in pushing for Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza strip.
But most nations in this part of the world do not view her or Bush as having moral authority. The Iraq war has castrated them. They must be received because America has power, and for this reason they must be heard as well. But the climate of a good nation with the moral high ground, the friend you want to do favors for--this is not the aura we bring to this part of the world.
We have become like any other powerful nation to the world. We are a force with which they must deal. But we come without any aura of moral integrity in their eyes. They will view any pontification on what is "moral" as hypocrisy.
I believe that the difficulty Bush is having with his appointments and things like Social Security are revealing examples that deep down on a subconscious level, even those who voted for Bush do not really trust his judgment.
He's a good guy, but a eunuch in my estimation. May the points of my ignorance not sway you and feel free to post dissenting positions.
I end with another story of the craziness here. This morning's paper tells of a college woman who tried to blow herself up at a Beersheba hospital. She came from Gaza. She wanted to blow up 40-50 people, primarily children. Remember we were just at Beersheba on Saturday.
The average Palestinian on the street doesn't agree with any of that stuff, I don't think. But those talking about Israelis loosening check points and stuff like that or taking down this offensive wall--the crazies leave them no room for argument. The Israelis are doing what they need to do to be safe and it has worked.
I'll try to steer back away from politics next entry. We're off...
But most nations in this part of the world do not view her or Bush as having moral authority. The Iraq war has castrated them. They must be received because America has power, and for this reason they must be heard as well. But the climate of a good nation with the moral high ground, the friend you want to do favors for--this is not the aura we bring to this part of the world.
We have become like any other powerful nation to the world. We are a force with which they must deal. But we come without any aura of moral integrity in their eyes. They will view any pontification on what is "moral" as hypocrisy.
I believe that the difficulty Bush is having with his appointments and things like Social Security are revealing examples that deep down on a subconscious level, even those who voted for Bush do not really trust his judgment.
He's a good guy, but a eunuch in my estimation. May the points of my ignorance not sway you and feel free to post dissenting positions.
I end with another story of the craziness here. This morning's paper tells of a college woman who tried to blow herself up at a Beersheba hospital. She came from Gaza. She wanted to blow up 40-50 people, primarily children. Remember we were just at Beersheba on Saturday.
The average Palestinian on the street doesn't agree with any of that stuff, I don't think. But those talking about Israelis loosening check points and stuff like that or taking down this offensive wall--the crazies leave them no room for argument. The Israelis are doing what they need to do to be safe and it has worked.
I'll try to steer back away from politics next entry. We're off...
Israelis and Palestinians
As I write an Islamic chant is blaring outside my window. I imagine a few years ago I might have found that pretty innocuous. But after the two intifadas of Hamas and friends and after 9-11, I find it irritating, almost offensive.
Mind you, I'm willing to give any individual of any race or religion an opportunity to prove themselves profitable members of the human race. And Christ bids me to love them, to grieve for them. But I'll admit that my trip here to Israel has generally increased my irritation with the ignorance that is so prevalent in all three of the "great" monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I'm sure this applies to non-monotheistic religions as well, but that will have to wait some future trip to India or somewhere.
I feel like I have a better sense of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis after being here. Frankly I feel sympathy to both sides. Before WW1, this territory was under Turkish control. Since they aligned with the Germans, it came under British management after WW1. I'm fuzzy on some of the details, but in 1948 the United Nations had a two state solution that Israel accepted but the Palestinians and their friends (Egypt, Jordan, Syria) rejected.
When Israel came into the land, some Arabs stayed and became incorporated into Israel, these are the Arabs of Nazareth, Cana, etc... Others fled on the advice of Egypt and Jordan.
For the next almost 30 years, the West Bank was a part of the country of Jordan (a backwards B with its center point in Jerusalem. The coast and Galilee were under Israeli control.
Then in the 6 day war of 1967, Israel took Jerusalem and a lot of other West Bank territory. Jordan abandoned any claim to the area west of the Jordan River. Since then, Israel has been expanding and expanding.
Now we have the current situation. The Israeli settlements are slowly but surely taking over the land. Palestinian territory has bascially been reduced to individual cities, with the Israelis for all intents and purposes controlling everything around them.
If I were Israel, I would stall peace negotiations as long as possible. The more time passes, the more the land becomes Israel's. Forget Gaza--it's off on its own anyway. Let it become the center for the Palestinian state. As for the West Bank, it is isolated from the other territory and has no where to go.
But I understand the Palestinian side as well. Who told this foreign group called the Israelis that they could move in and take over? Wouldn't you want to have all the space you had before? Lacking the power to fight directly, they turned to terrorism. Some don't like the analogy, but there is some similarity to the Native Americans. The Palestinians were faced with a more advanced invader of the land they used to roam. Power wins. I am not justifying terrorist actions. I just think I understand what's going on. It's the oldest story in the book, a variation on the take over of space from a less powerful group by a more powerful group.
But reality is reality. They will never have it all back, and they have rejected some very generous offers in the process. Frankly, the best thing for them would be to swallow their pride and become incorporated as citizens of Israel like the citizens of Nazareth and Cana. Then they could enjoy prosperity like the rest of Israel. But of course this is not a possible solution either.
Complicating matters is the expansion of Islam among the Arab peoples here. In earlier days, many of these Arabs were Christians. Even today, there are far more Christian Palestinians than Christian Jews. But the support of American Christians for secular Israel along with Bush's actions in Iraq have only pushed Arabs away from Christianity and toward Islam.
So here are my political indictments of American Christianity. First, as Christians we should have been supporting the Christians of the Middle East--whether Jewish or Arab--rather than political entities like the pagan Israel of today. It is not the Israel of promise for it has not accepted Christ.
The orthodox Jews here are not Christian and are not appropriate objects of our support. They are just as divisive as the fundamentalist Muslims. They do not believe the messiah has come and have views that we as Christians (and scholars) consider patently false. The ridiculousness of orthodox Jewish practices will have to wait for another entry. They'll work for pay on the Sabbath but won't flip a switch on a coffee pot. They'll serve butter for breakfast but not for supper, only margarine--all on the basis of a ridiculous interpretation of a statement in the Pentateuch.
Meanwhile, we abandon the Syrian Christians, the Iraqi Christians, the Palestinian Christians. Bethlehem used to be a heavily Christian Arab town, but Saudi Arabi is pouring money into it to make it Muslim. No one visits the tomb of Lazarus even though it is a Christian site with a Russian Orthodox church next door. But on the other side is a brand spanking mosque renovation going on. I am not anti-Israel--there's no question about where I feel safest and most at home. But it is not Christian and must behave morally like any nation.
My second indictment is one I can do nothing about, the milk is spilt. But I stand by my earlier indictments of the war in Iraq. Toppling Hussein was a good goal, as was the idea of bringing democracy to the Middle East.
But the recent British documents that have surfaced are nothing more than what I said back during the election. Ho hum, who is suprised by any of these things? It's exactly what I said and I'm stupid nobody from Marion, Indiana.
Bush and his cabinet had a plan for the Middle East--not a bad plan in theory. But they took a leap into Iraq to get the plan started without sufficient cause and without real understanding or foresight. Doesn't everyone want democracy--we're Americans, everyone loves us. They jumped the gun because of a two-dimensional view of the world--one I dare say dominates dreamy eyed but oh so shallow conservative American Christianity. They closed their eyes and jumped with visions of hot dogs and apple pie in their heads. Bush had never been a trip like this one to have any real sense of how people think outside America. The whole thing was an enterprise in giving power to people who only know their own way of thinking.
Now consider that after 9-11 we had the sympathy of the whole world, even the lip service of the Arab nations. There was nothing wrong with going into Afghanistan given their direct connections to bin Laden. But with Iraq we managed to polarize the entire Arab world against us in a way it had not been before, even among our long term allies like Egypt and Turkey. Because of Bush, fundamentalist Islam has advanced in places where we could have made strides for Christ if we hadn't been sleeping.
And now, the prize for singlehandedly doing the most to promote fundamentalist Islam around the world goes to.... envelope please.... George W. Bush, yes, for advancing the idea that Islam is the religion of Arabs, while Christianity is the religion of the West.
I know most American Christians thought that all the Arabs were Muslims anyway. Guess what? We were ignorant to think that. But don't worry. They are now.
Mind you, I'm willing to give any individual of any race or religion an opportunity to prove themselves profitable members of the human race. And Christ bids me to love them, to grieve for them. But I'll admit that my trip here to Israel has generally increased my irritation with the ignorance that is so prevalent in all three of the "great" monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I'm sure this applies to non-monotheistic religions as well, but that will have to wait some future trip to India or somewhere.
I feel like I have a better sense of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis after being here. Frankly I feel sympathy to both sides. Before WW1, this territory was under Turkish control. Since they aligned with the Germans, it came under British management after WW1. I'm fuzzy on some of the details, but in 1948 the United Nations had a two state solution that Israel accepted but the Palestinians and their friends (Egypt, Jordan, Syria) rejected.
When Israel came into the land, some Arabs stayed and became incorporated into Israel, these are the Arabs of Nazareth, Cana, etc... Others fled on the advice of Egypt and Jordan.
For the next almost 30 years, the West Bank was a part of the country of Jordan (a backwards B with its center point in Jerusalem. The coast and Galilee were under Israeli control.
Then in the 6 day war of 1967, Israel took Jerusalem and a lot of other West Bank territory. Jordan abandoned any claim to the area west of the Jordan River. Since then, Israel has been expanding and expanding.
Now we have the current situation. The Israeli settlements are slowly but surely taking over the land. Palestinian territory has bascially been reduced to individual cities, with the Israelis for all intents and purposes controlling everything around them.
If I were Israel, I would stall peace negotiations as long as possible. The more time passes, the more the land becomes Israel's. Forget Gaza--it's off on its own anyway. Let it become the center for the Palestinian state. As for the West Bank, it is isolated from the other territory and has no where to go.
But I understand the Palestinian side as well. Who told this foreign group called the Israelis that they could move in and take over? Wouldn't you want to have all the space you had before? Lacking the power to fight directly, they turned to terrorism. Some don't like the analogy, but there is some similarity to the Native Americans. The Palestinians were faced with a more advanced invader of the land they used to roam. Power wins. I am not justifying terrorist actions. I just think I understand what's going on. It's the oldest story in the book, a variation on the take over of space from a less powerful group by a more powerful group.
But reality is reality. They will never have it all back, and they have rejected some very generous offers in the process. Frankly, the best thing for them would be to swallow their pride and become incorporated as citizens of Israel like the citizens of Nazareth and Cana. Then they could enjoy prosperity like the rest of Israel. But of course this is not a possible solution either.
Complicating matters is the expansion of Islam among the Arab peoples here. In earlier days, many of these Arabs were Christians. Even today, there are far more Christian Palestinians than Christian Jews. But the support of American Christians for secular Israel along with Bush's actions in Iraq have only pushed Arabs away from Christianity and toward Islam.
So here are my political indictments of American Christianity. First, as Christians we should have been supporting the Christians of the Middle East--whether Jewish or Arab--rather than political entities like the pagan Israel of today. It is not the Israel of promise for it has not accepted Christ.
The orthodox Jews here are not Christian and are not appropriate objects of our support. They are just as divisive as the fundamentalist Muslims. They do not believe the messiah has come and have views that we as Christians (and scholars) consider patently false. The ridiculousness of orthodox Jewish practices will have to wait for another entry. They'll work for pay on the Sabbath but won't flip a switch on a coffee pot. They'll serve butter for breakfast but not for supper, only margarine--all on the basis of a ridiculous interpretation of a statement in the Pentateuch.
Meanwhile, we abandon the Syrian Christians, the Iraqi Christians, the Palestinian Christians. Bethlehem used to be a heavily Christian Arab town, but Saudi Arabi is pouring money into it to make it Muslim. No one visits the tomb of Lazarus even though it is a Christian site with a Russian Orthodox church next door. But on the other side is a brand spanking mosque renovation going on. I am not anti-Israel--there's no question about where I feel safest and most at home. But it is not Christian and must behave morally like any nation.
My second indictment is one I can do nothing about, the milk is spilt. But I stand by my earlier indictments of the war in Iraq. Toppling Hussein was a good goal, as was the idea of bringing democracy to the Middle East.
But the recent British documents that have surfaced are nothing more than what I said back during the election. Ho hum, who is suprised by any of these things? It's exactly what I said and I'm stupid nobody from Marion, Indiana.
Bush and his cabinet had a plan for the Middle East--not a bad plan in theory. But they took a leap into Iraq to get the plan started without sufficient cause and without real understanding or foresight. Doesn't everyone want democracy--we're Americans, everyone loves us. They jumped the gun because of a two-dimensional view of the world--one I dare say dominates dreamy eyed but oh so shallow conservative American Christianity. They closed their eyes and jumped with visions of hot dogs and apple pie in their heads. Bush had never been a trip like this one to have any real sense of how people think outside America. The whole thing was an enterprise in giving power to people who only know their own way of thinking.
Now consider that after 9-11 we had the sympathy of the whole world, even the lip service of the Arab nations. There was nothing wrong with going into Afghanistan given their direct connections to bin Laden. But with Iraq we managed to polarize the entire Arab world against us in a way it had not been before, even among our long term allies like Egypt and Turkey. Because of Bush, fundamentalist Islam has advanced in places where we could have made strides for Christ if we hadn't been sleeping.
And now, the prize for singlehandedly doing the most to promote fundamentalist Islam around the world goes to.... envelope please.... George W. Bush, yes, for advancing the idea that Islam is the religion of Arabs, while Christianity is the religion of the West.
I know most American Christians thought that all the Arabs were Muslims anyway. Guess what? We were ignorant to think that. But don't worry. They are now.
Monday in Jerusalem
Now the day is over, at least the touring day.
We first went to the church of Gallicantu, the rooster crowing church. A jail like underbelly makes us wonder if this was the house of Annas that John says Jesus went to on Thursday evening. The dungeon-like atmosphere of the one part, with a hole in the top that gives you a picture of them lowering Jesus down by rope, brought powerful emotions.
The signs around the place indicate, however, that that particular hole as well as the dungeon like aspect of the place probably date to the Byzantine era, if I understand things correctly. It seems more likely to me, therefore, that Jesus would have been chained to the walls in the adjoining rooms. Of course it is not certain that this was Annas' house, although it fits the part of what we're looking for.
Outside, however, is a walkway that Jesus probably was brought up the night of his betrayal. Wilbur suggested it was the most certain site of all the sites in Jerusalem relating to Jesus.
We then went to a museum where they had a model city of Jerusalem. That was helpful in locating everything in relation to everything else.
We went to the Qumran museum. This was particularly enjoyable to me, although I didn't get to spend as much time there as I would have liked.
Then we went to the Jerusalem museum. Wilbur was like a cannon, boom, boom, boom, he moved from one thing to another with lightning speed. He'd been on this dig, then that one. Particularly memorable to me was his explanation of the Assyrian relief of the seige of Lachish. He was animated, a scholar comparable to any. This is a Wilbur to see. If you want to know what a scholar looks like, watch him when he goes into this mode. He becomes like a machine gun: tat a tat tat, tat a tat tat.
Particularly memorable to me there were some things I knew about but actually had in front of me: the Gezer calendar, Caiphas' ossuary, photos of Egyptian steles that mention Israel in the 12th century, mention of David in the ninth...
We had lunch, went to Bethany (Palestinian city), crawled into Lazarus' tomb--quite a crawl at one point.
We came back and went to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. To get there we entered the Damascus Gate and walked through a narrow passage of Arab shops, like a flea market. The church itself has chapels of Greek Orthodox, Coptic, Roman Catholic, Ethiopic, and Armenian. There are probably more but those are the ones we saw (that is, those of us who ran off after we'd seen the main sites, Charlie Alcock and son, the Bignells, and Clint Ussher).
What we saw of the traditional site of Golgotha was again a rock surrounded by holy drappings. We could reach in and touch the rock. I remember the History Channel expressing some doubts about this rock I think, but it's hard to remember from a TV program. I'll want to see it again now that I've been there.
I had imagined the church to be divided into three parts, but it really is a Greek Orthodox base with several side chapels. As far as I could tell, the only Roman Catholic chapel was next to Golgotha, which was upstairs.
Then we went to the traditional site of the burial, which the surrounding rock apparently taken away. There was also a tomb attributed to Joseph of Arimathea nearby.
But I seem to remember Jerome Murphy-O'connor suggesting a site further beneath. The Armenian chapel was downstairs from the other places, and it seems to me that he suggested a place down there as the most likely. We didn't find it in our quest, but there was a barred door I wondered about down there. I'll need to see the segment again.
We ended at the Garden Tomb, where we had communion. I think everyone in the group agrees that the feel of it is closest to what the original tomb would have been like. Nevertheless, few if any scholars think it was the original site.
That concludes today. I'll have to go back and fill in Friday and Saturday later.
We first went to the church of Gallicantu, the rooster crowing church. A jail like underbelly makes us wonder if this was the house of Annas that John says Jesus went to on Thursday evening. The dungeon-like atmosphere of the one part, with a hole in the top that gives you a picture of them lowering Jesus down by rope, brought powerful emotions.
The signs around the place indicate, however, that that particular hole as well as the dungeon like aspect of the place probably date to the Byzantine era, if I understand things correctly. It seems more likely to me, therefore, that Jesus would have been chained to the walls in the adjoining rooms. Of course it is not certain that this was Annas' house, although it fits the part of what we're looking for.
Outside, however, is a walkway that Jesus probably was brought up the night of his betrayal. Wilbur suggested it was the most certain site of all the sites in Jerusalem relating to Jesus.
We then went to a museum where they had a model city of Jerusalem. That was helpful in locating everything in relation to everything else.
We went to the Qumran museum. This was particularly enjoyable to me, although I didn't get to spend as much time there as I would have liked.
Then we went to the Jerusalem museum. Wilbur was like a cannon, boom, boom, boom, he moved from one thing to another with lightning speed. He'd been on this dig, then that one. Particularly memorable to me was his explanation of the Assyrian relief of the seige of Lachish. He was animated, a scholar comparable to any. This is a Wilbur to see. If you want to know what a scholar looks like, watch him when he goes into this mode. He becomes like a machine gun: tat a tat tat, tat a tat tat.
Particularly memorable to me there were some things I knew about but actually had in front of me: the Gezer calendar, Caiphas' ossuary, photos of Egyptian steles that mention Israel in the 12th century, mention of David in the ninth...
We had lunch, went to Bethany (Palestinian city), crawled into Lazarus' tomb--quite a crawl at one point.
We came back and went to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. To get there we entered the Damascus Gate and walked through a narrow passage of Arab shops, like a flea market. The church itself has chapels of Greek Orthodox, Coptic, Roman Catholic, Ethiopic, and Armenian. There are probably more but those are the ones we saw (that is, those of us who ran off after we'd seen the main sites, Charlie Alcock and son, the Bignells, and Clint Ussher).
What we saw of the traditional site of Golgotha was again a rock surrounded by holy drappings. We could reach in and touch the rock. I remember the History Channel expressing some doubts about this rock I think, but it's hard to remember from a TV program. I'll want to see it again now that I've been there.
I had imagined the church to be divided into three parts, but it really is a Greek Orthodox base with several side chapels. As far as I could tell, the only Roman Catholic chapel was next to Golgotha, which was upstairs.
Then we went to the traditional site of the burial, which the surrounding rock apparently taken away. There was also a tomb attributed to Joseph of Arimathea nearby.
But I seem to remember Jerome Murphy-O'connor suggesting a site further beneath. The Armenian chapel was downstairs from the other places, and it seems to me that he suggested a place down there as the most likely. We didn't find it in our quest, but there was a barred door I wondered about down there. I'll need to see the segment again.
We ended at the Garden Tomb, where we had communion. I think everyone in the group agrees that the feel of it is closest to what the original tomb would have been like. Nevertheless, few if any scholars think it was the original site.
That concludes today. I'll have to go back and fill in Friday and Saturday later.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
To the Museum
Fifteen minutes till departure, I thought I would summarize Friday.
Friday we left Galilee for the south, travelling along the Jordan River to a large extent in West Bank territory, as I've mentioned. Our first main stop of the day was at Jericho, almost to the Dead Sea. This is a Palestinian controlled city. My initial impressions were that this was a tourism starved city, although it does have a rather large new casino.
Jericho is not a big tourist stop unless you're an Old Testament or Hebrew Bible professor, I suspect. We took a picture of an old sycamore tree (think Zacchaeus), and someone phoned ahead to warn the shops at our next stop. The beginning of approaching ware salesmen commenced, often difficult for Americans when things are being shoved in their faces by adults and children for the sympathy vote.
High on the hill is the "traditional site" of Jesus' wilderness temptation, a Greek Orthodox controlled place with cable cars to boot.
Then we arrived to camel rides and overpriced shopping, but there was also some very nice fruit.
The archaeological site of Jericho itself was irritating, almost a waste of time if it weren't for sentimental reasons. Here were some of the notorious failures of early archaeology. The science was infantile at the time, and Garstang blew through massive layers of stuff, disgarding everything as he went until he could find the Jericho of Joshua's day. When he thought he had finally found it, we now know he was at about 7000 BC. He had removed the Joshua time layer way above it in the process. So the tel as it now stands is about twenty feet lower than it was a hundred years ago.
Kathleen Kenyon continued the dig in the 50's I think and did much to improve the way archeology is done. The current majority view is that there was no city there at the time of Joshua, but you couldn't prove or disprove it because cursed Garstang threw away the evidence a century ago (maybe a little less). !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, I'll continue with Qumran later. Got to go.
Friday we left Galilee for the south, travelling along the Jordan River to a large extent in West Bank territory, as I've mentioned. Our first main stop of the day was at Jericho, almost to the Dead Sea. This is a Palestinian controlled city. My initial impressions were that this was a tourism starved city, although it does have a rather large new casino.
Jericho is not a big tourist stop unless you're an Old Testament or Hebrew Bible professor, I suspect. We took a picture of an old sycamore tree (think Zacchaeus), and someone phoned ahead to warn the shops at our next stop. The beginning of approaching ware salesmen commenced, often difficult for Americans when things are being shoved in their faces by adults and children for the sympathy vote.
High on the hill is the "traditional site" of Jesus' wilderness temptation, a Greek Orthodox controlled place with cable cars to boot.
Then we arrived to camel rides and overpriced shopping, but there was also some very nice fruit.
The archaeological site of Jericho itself was irritating, almost a waste of time if it weren't for sentimental reasons. Here were some of the notorious failures of early archaeology. The science was infantile at the time, and Garstang blew through massive layers of stuff, disgarding everything as he went until he could find the Jericho of Joshua's day. When he thought he had finally found it, we now know he was at about 7000 BC. He had removed the Joshua time layer way above it in the process. So the tel as it now stands is about twenty feet lower than it was a hundred years ago.
Kathleen Kenyon continued the dig in the 50's I think and did much to improve the way archeology is done. The current majority view is that there was no city there at the time of Joshua, but you couldn't prove or disprove it because cursed Garstang threw away the evidence a century ago (maybe a little less). !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, I'll continue with Qumran later. Got to go.
Picturing Jesus' Ministry
I thought I would make a quick post on some of my initial impressions of Galilee. After our first night in Tel Aviv last Tuesday, we left for Galilee on Wednesday. We went up through Caesarea, Mt. Carmel, Megiddo, the Jezreel Valley, and eventually to a lovely kibbutz on the south of Galilee at a place called Maagan. There we swam in the Sea of Galilee (Clint Ussher, Ian Swyers, and Danielle Evans swam way out to a buoy in a "Hey, I could actually die doing this" kind of way). We noticed a sign forbidding swimming in the sea at our location after we all got out.
Then on Thursday we sailed on the Sea of Galilee from Tiberias to the boat museum, then to the Beatitudes, Feeding of the 5000, and Feed my sheep sites. Finally we came to Capernaum to the site where Peter and Jesus may actually have lived. I enjoyed the ride on the sea very much and the Capernaum site was very meaningful to me, although I was a bit out of it from jet lag and there was the monstrous spider church over it and things were much too hurried for me there. I would have rather meditated there than at some of the other churches.
Then we went to Cana where two of our company began their wedding on videotape. They'll finish it in about 8 weeks. I don't know how many times Wilbur emphasized that they weren't married yet. It was a "you can't have sex" reminder he made about ten times. Cana was our first primarily Arab city.
Nazareth followed and I, being paranoid, was a little uneasy walking through the markets to the church of Joseph and another big church the Roman Catholic church has built. These are located over caves where Jesus may have lived and Joseph may have had a "carpentry" or stone work shop.
Finally, we came back to the Jordan River where I baptized, rededicated, and helped rededicate several people. That was a neat experience.
None of that, however, is what I started out to write. I started to write my impressions of Jesus ministry in the light of these forays.
The first thing that struck me is that the Sea of Galilee isn't as big as I had pictured it. In fact the distances in general are nothing like I pictured them. Perhaps in terms of how the distances seemed to them they were similar. We Americans travel so much and so far that the distances of the ancients seem puny. Yet in Jesus' day I'm sure these "small" distances to me were much bigger.
The Sea of Galilee is only 13 miles across. You can actually see the other side and the Golan Heights from the southernmost tip of it (and of course you can bomb the other side as well, as has been done in the past). I had pictured something much more along the lines of Lake Okeechobee in Florida.
Also my reading indicates that the villages would have been very small. Nazareth might have had 500 people and Capernaum 1000. You can still get a little feel for Capernaum because it is a ruin but Nazareth is hopeless. I hardly gained any feel for Jesus from going there personally.
The plain at the edge of the Sea of Galilee yields to the rather high hills of Upper Galilee. Unless you found a good path, travelling from Nazareth to Cana some five or six miles north would be a chore. Jesus stayed away from the large Greek cities of Sepphoris and Tiberias.
In my devotional Thursday night I remarked on how insignificant a place Jesus came to. What a small group of people he ministered to in a backwater part of Antipas' peculiarly divided domain. It was like he gave us a little snippet of what ministering is all about. Before he died for the world, he ministered to a little group of peasant villagers trying to survive the building programs and thus taxation of Herod Antipas. They farmed enough to live on, but he demanded much more. These were the poor to whom Jesus spoke good news.
Well, I think I'll go to bed now. It's the museum tomorrow (this time for real)...
Then on Thursday we sailed on the Sea of Galilee from Tiberias to the boat museum, then to the Beatitudes, Feeding of the 5000, and Feed my sheep sites. Finally we came to Capernaum to the site where Peter and Jesus may actually have lived. I enjoyed the ride on the sea very much and the Capernaum site was very meaningful to me, although I was a bit out of it from jet lag and there was the monstrous spider church over it and things were much too hurried for me there. I would have rather meditated there than at some of the other churches.
Then we went to Cana where two of our company began their wedding on videotape. They'll finish it in about 8 weeks. I don't know how many times Wilbur emphasized that they weren't married yet. It was a "you can't have sex" reminder he made about ten times. Cana was our first primarily Arab city.
Nazareth followed and I, being paranoid, was a little uneasy walking through the markets to the church of Joseph and another big church the Roman Catholic church has built. These are located over caves where Jesus may have lived and Joseph may have had a "carpentry" or stone work shop.
Finally, we came back to the Jordan River where I baptized, rededicated, and helped rededicate several people. That was a neat experience.
None of that, however, is what I started out to write. I started to write my impressions of Jesus ministry in the light of these forays.
The first thing that struck me is that the Sea of Galilee isn't as big as I had pictured it. In fact the distances in general are nothing like I pictured them. Perhaps in terms of how the distances seemed to them they were similar. We Americans travel so much and so far that the distances of the ancients seem puny. Yet in Jesus' day I'm sure these "small" distances to me were much bigger.
The Sea of Galilee is only 13 miles across. You can actually see the other side and the Golan Heights from the southernmost tip of it (and of course you can bomb the other side as well, as has been done in the past). I had pictured something much more along the lines of Lake Okeechobee in Florida.
Also my reading indicates that the villages would have been very small. Nazareth might have had 500 people and Capernaum 1000. You can still get a little feel for Capernaum because it is a ruin but Nazareth is hopeless. I hardly gained any feel for Jesus from going there personally.
The plain at the edge of the Sea of Galilee yields to the rather high hills of Upper Galilee. Unless you found a good path, travelling from Nazareth to Cana some five or six miles north would be a chore. Jesus stayed away from the large Greek cities of Sepphoris and Tiberias.
In my devotional Thursday night I remarked on how insignificant a place Jesus came to. What a small group of people he ministered to in a backwater part of Antipas' peculiarly divided domain. It was like he gave us a little snippet of what ministering is all about. Before he died for the world, he ministered to a little group of peasant villagers trying to survive the building programs and thus taxation of Herod Antipas. They farmed enough to live on, but he demanded much more. These were the poor to whom Jesus spoke good news.
Well, I think I'll go to bed now. It's the museum tomorrow (this time for real)...
It was on a Sunday in Jerusalem
It's heading toward the end of Sunday here, our third holy day in a row. Friday we went through the West Bank along the Jordan river on the Muslim holy day (the Palestinians there didn't seem too bothered--I've only heard prayer chants here in Jerusalem even though Nazareth, Cana, Bethlehem are all Arab cities).
Saturday was Shavat, and I'll reserve a special entry for my venting on the stupidity of fundamentalisms in all three faiths--Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. Just a few simple lessons on hermeneutics explode a ridiculous way of life for the orthodox Jews here.
Then today is the Christian Sabbath. The juxtaposition of faiths in these ways gives us pause. Do I look as silly to them as they do to me? Maybe I don't, but I bet the ones kissing the rock in the church where Jesus was allegedly tempted do. By the way, I actually almost kissed it myself, so I don't mean any of my comments personally.
I'm going to try to catch up while also keeping up with these new days a bit. Today was a great day--immensely helpful in getting a perspective on things. I'll list our pilgrimage today:
1. Mount of Olives--panoramic view of the Temple Mount
2. Church of Tears (whatever it's really called), where Jesus is said to have weeped for Jerusalem. It's right across from the Eastern Gate and quite a good place to do that.
3. Garden of Gethsemane, including cave where they may have hid out from authorities.
All the above are in primarily Palestinian occupied areas and are on the east side of the temple mount. Below the Mount of Olives are cemetaries and the Kidron Valley.
4. We went to the traditional site of the upper room, next to the Church of the Assumption of Mary.
5. We went through the Zion Gate and looked at a road Hadrian made through the city when he conquered and rebuilt it as Aelia Capitolina in 135 after the Bar Kochba revolt.
6. We shopped in the Jewish quarter.
7. We ate in the Jewish quarter.
8. We visited the wailing wall, men on the left, women on the right. Men can only go down with a cap of some kind. Some of the men went into a chamber with the psycho-orthodox praying like crazy and saw a vaulted ceiling I think Herod had built.
I felt bad and angry for the women of our group. I'll save my finger pointing at Christians who divide life between men and women for another blog. Prepare to be compared to the silly Orthodox Jews still waiting for the Messiah and the fundamentalist Muslims here. You're not much better, just as ignorant and displeasing to God.
9. We went to the temple mount. We had to surrender all our "holy items": prayer shalls, mezuzoth, etc... so the Muslims wouldn't be angry to find foreign holy things on their mount. At least that's the way I understood it.
10. We went to the spot Wilbur believes the temple had stood. He thinks the ark of the covenant is buried underneath. The Muslims stopped a dig he was on once. They refuse to believe that any temple ever stood there before the Dome of the Rock. Of course no one who knows anything about anything could make such a claim of utter stupidity. I'll save it for the other entry. I'll just say that you hold the mirror up to many Christians and say, we're not really much smarter with the way we sometimes manipulate evidence and truth. I'm sure this is true of me as well.
11. We went back to get our holy items.
12. We went out the Dung Gate (what does that make us?) and rode the bus to the burial site of Sanhedrin members. We were all very tired by now.
13. But it continues, we drove out north to the traditional burial site of Samuel, which is next to Gibeon where Joshua is said to have conquered some Canaanites and Gibeah, of Saul fame, and of course, Solomon sacrificed a bunch of animals at the Samuel site as well to dedicate the temple.
Did I mention that this was north of Jerusalem, in the West Bank. One of the benefits of going with Wilbur is all these incursions into the West Bank (no pun intended). I asked Wilbur to point out where Ramallah was in relation to the Samuel site (we were way up on top of the building, surveying the kingdoms of the world). It was just over the hill a bit, a little more than five miles according to my map.
Well, that's enough for now. I need a nap...
Saturday was Shavat, and I'll reserve a special entry for my venting on the stupidity of fundamentalisms in all three faiths--Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. Just a few simple lessons on hermeneutics explode a ridiculous way of life for the orthodox Jews here.
Then today is the Christian Sabbath. The juxtaposition of faiths in these ways gives us pause. Do I look as silly to them as they do to me? Maybe I don't, but I bet the ones kissing the rock in the church where Jesus was allegedly tempted do. By the way, I actually almost kissed it myself, so I don't mean any of my comments personally.
I'm going to try to catch up while also keeping up with these new days a bit. Today was a great day--immensely helpful in getting a perspective on things. I'll list our pilgrimage today:
1. Mount of Olives--panoramic view of the Temple Mount
2. Church of Tears (whatever it's really called), where Jesus is said to have weeped for Jerusalem. It's right across from the Eastern Gate and quite a good place to do that.
3. Garden of Gethsemane, including cave where they may have hid out from authorities.
All the above are in primarily Palestinian occupied areas and are on the east side of the temple mount. Below the Mount of Olives are cemetaries and the Kidron Valley.
4. We went to the traditional site of the upper room, next to the Church of the Assumption of Mary.
5. We went through the Zion Gate and looked at a road Hadrian made through the city when he conquered and rebuilt it as Aelia Capitolina in 135 after the Bar Kochba revolt.
6. We shopped in the Jewish quarter.
7. We ate in the Jewish quarter.
8. We visited the wailing wall, men on the left, women on the right. Men can only go down with a cap of some kind. Some of the men went into a chamber with the psycho-orthodox praying like crazy and saw a vaulted ceiling I think Herod had built.
I felt bad and angry for the women of our group. I'll save my finger pointing at Christians who divide life between men and women for another blog. Prepare to be compared to the silly Orthodox Jews still waiting for the Messiah and the fundamentalist Muslims here. You're not much better, just as ignorant and displeasing to God.
9. We went to the temple mount. We had to surrender all our "holy items": prayer shalls, mezuzoth, etc... so the Muslims wouldn't be angry to find foreign holy things on their mount. At least that's the way I understood it.
10. We went to the spot Wilbur believes the temple had stood. He thinks the ark of the covenant is buried underneath. The Muslims stopped a dig he was on once. They refuse to believe that any temple ever stood there before the Dome of the Rock. Of course no one who knows anything about anything could make such a claim of utter stupidity. I'll save it for the other entry. I'll just say that you hold the mirror up to many Christians and say, we're not really much smarter with the way we sometimes manipulate evidence and truth. I'm sure this is true of me as well.
11. We went back to get our holy items.
12. We went out the Dung Gate (what does that make us?) and rode the bus to the burial site of Sanhedrin members. We were all very tired by now.
13. But it continues, we drove out north to the traditional burial site of Samuel, which is next to Gibeon where Joshua is said to have conquered some Canaanites and Gibeah, of Saul fame, and of course, Solomon sacrificed a bunch of animals at the Samuel site as well to dedicate the temple.
Did I mention that this was north of Jerusalem, in the West Bank. One of the benefits of going with Wilbur is all these incursions into the West Bank (no pun intended). I asked Wilbur to point out where Ramallah was in relation to the Samuel site (we were way up on top of the building, surveying the kingdoms of the world). It was just over the hill a bit, a little more than five miles according to my map.
Well, that's enough for now. I need a nap...
Saturday, June 18, 2005
My Modernist, Protestant Biases Come Out
Fifteen minutes till departure on Father's Day for the Jerusalem museum. I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on the presence of Fransiscan and Greek Orthodox churches here.
First of all, copious, copious kudos to the Fransiscans and Greek Orthodox who bought up the land where holy sites are so many years ago. They have preserved them when they might otherwise have been destroyed. For this I am eternally grateful.
Now for venting. Given the mindset of these groups, they just have to built these churches on the sites. I suppose the reasoning is once a holy site always a holy site; once a church always a church. The result is that modernist Protestants like me, who want to see and get the feel for what it was really like, have to struggle to look around all the "stuff" the Catholics have piled on.
Of course I don't mind half of it. The church of the Beatitudes or where the 5000 were fed or where Jesus told John to feed his sheep are unlikely the real spots, despite good attempts by the early Christians to identify prominent rocks. Hey look, there's a good rock, let's build a church here. So I don't mind those. They give concreteness to important memories and have been some of the best places for meditation.
On the other hand, the Fransiscans just had to build this monstrous, spider like looking church on top of the site where Peter and Jesus may have lived. I want to see the real deal, not have to peer from afar under this big metal thing to see the site. It was better before they venerated the site, from pre 1990 pictures.
Frankly, hurray for the Old Testament sites and the Roman ruins. The church has left them alone so you can picture what things were really like without the monstrosities. Of course, they're not the sites I'm really interested in.
I close with the church of the nativity, although I hear the Holy Sepulchre will win the prize for competing churches. You know, Greek Orthodox squeezed next to Roman Catholic. Add the Armenians at the Sepulchre and we're ready to lose all site of reality.
Hurray for the imagination; laments for reality.
Ken Schenck, reporting from Jerusalem
First of all, copious, copious kudos to the Fransiscans and Greek Orthodox who bought up the land where holy sites are so many years ago. They have preserved them when they might otherwise have been destroyed. For this I am eternally grateful.
Now for venting. Given the mindset of these groups, they just have to built these churches on the sites. I suppose the reasoning is once a holy site always a holy site; once a church always a church. The result is that modernist Protestants like me, who want to see and get the feel for what it was really like, have to struggle to look around all the "stuff" the Catholics have piled on.
Of course I don't mind half of it. The church of the Beatitudes or where the 5000 were fed or where Jesus told John to feed his sheep are unlikely the real spots, despite good attempts by the early Christians to identify prominent rocks. Hey look, there's a good rock, let's build a church here. So I don't mind those. They give concreteness to important memories and have been some of the best places for meditation.
On the other hand, the Fransiscans just had to build this monstrous, spider like looking church on top of the site where Peter and Jesus may have lived. I want to see the real deal, not have to peer from afar under this big metal thing to see the site. It was better before they venerated the site, from pre 1990 pictures.
Frankly, hurray for the Old Testament sites and the Roman ruins. The church has left them alone so you can picture what things were really like without the monstrosities. Of course, they're not the sites I'm really interested in.
I close with the church of the nativity, although I hear the Holy Sepulchre will win the prize for competing churches. You know, Greek Orthodox squeezed next to Roman Catholic. Add the Armenians at the Sepulchre and we're ready to lose all site of reality.
Hurray for the imagination; laments for reality.
Ken Schenck, reporting from Jerusalem
A Blog Before Supper
This hotel has wireless, so I thought I would share a few quick thoughts on Israel.
I tend to be paranoid (which doesn’t necessary mean that people aren’t out to get me), so I’ve been a little tense these last couple of days. Yesterday we went through the West Bank quite a bit: Jericho and down along the Jordan river. We swam in the Dead Sea and stayed in Bedouin country in the south (Arad). Then today we lunched, shopped and toured in Bethlehem, which is Palestinian controlled.
I feel like the situation here politically has come into even better focus, and I’ll share sometime. I know it’s not spiritual, but the main thing I was thinking in the Church of the Nativity was, “Just think, there were Palestinians holed up in here in a standoff with the Israelis just two years ago.” “Just think, there are bullet holes in the side of this church.”
It was just bizzare as we road down along the Jordan River. I kept thinking as we went. Just think, Janin is just a few miles to the west of us. The Israelis mowed down houses there a couple years ago. Okay, just think, Nablus (Shechem) is just a few miles to the west of us now. That's where they mowed down a bunch of stuff. Or just think, now we're passing Ramallah where Arafat was holed up for so long.
It was just bizarre. The walk from here to there is no big deal--it's just space. But the significance of the space from here to there is unbelievable and sometimes deadly.
Well time for supper. More later…
I tend to be paranoid (which doesn’t necessary mean that people aren’t out to get me), so I’ve been a little tense these last couple of days. Yesterday we went through the West Bank quite a bit: Jericho and down along the Jordan river. We swam in the Dead Sea and stayed in Bedouin country in the south (Arad). Then today we lunched, shopped and toured in Bethlehem, which is Palestinian controlled.
I feel like the situation here politically has come into even better focus, and I’ll share sometime. I know it’s not spiritual, but the main thing I was thinking in the Church of the Nativity was, “Just think, there were Palestinians holed up in here in a standoff with the Israelis just two years ago.” “Just think, there are bullet holes in the side of this church.”
It was just bizzare as we road down along the Jordan River. I kept thinking as we went. Just think, Janin is just a few miles to the west of us. The Israelis mowed down houses there a couple years ago. Okay, just think, Nablus (Shechem) is just a few miles to the west of us now. That's where they mowed down a bunch of stuff. Or just think, now we're passing Ramallah where Arafat was holed up for so long.
It was just bizarre. The walk from here to there is no big deal--it's just space. But the significance of the space from here to there is unbelievable and sometimes deadly.
Well time for supper. More later…
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Off to Israel
Tomorrow morning, Lord willing, I'm off to Israel with a Wilbur Williams group. I might do a diary here if I'm able to get online reasonably, but I'm not really expecting to do so much.
I'm excited about going to see these sights. I'm trying to get myself prepared to look for things so I don't kick myself when I get back. Prayers for my family left behind. I wish they could be with me (aside from worries about the safety situation--I'm not really too worried).
I'm torn about what to focus my writing energies on. I might put a smattering of samples here from the following possible projects:
1. Finally getting my dissertation on Hebrews in a form I'm willing to submit for publishing. Don't hold your breath. I have this as a goal every year. Also, I wouldn't want to bore with scholarly discussions. But I might put something here.
2. Similar thoughts on my afterlife sabbatical research.
3. I have a proposal in with WJK that I think is waiting for a few more samples from me to be considered. I might start a book review section on my website.
4. The running of the manuscripts. Is it worth trying to cram in a book for July 15. The proposed topic is "What Faith Will You Integrate?" In a climate where everyone is talking about integrating faith with learning, how do we help a PhD in psychology integrate his or her discipline with something more than a Sunday School level faith?
5. A small book, something like "Discerning the Will of God: Learning How to Draw on the Bible, the Church, and the Spirit." My goal would be to create something that could be used in an Inductive Bible Study class to teach some basics about how to bring good Bible study and the wisdom of the ages to bear on finding God's will for today. If my fellow professors at IWU wanted to use it, I would self-publish it. I have in mind about a 50-60 page mini-book.
6. Then I thought I might start a new novel (#18). Why not?
Any votes?
I'm excited about going to see these sights. I'm trying to get myself prepared to look for things so I don't kick myself when I get back. Prayers for my family left behind. I wish they could be with me (aside from worries about the safety situation--I'm not really too worried).
I'm torn about what to focus my writing energies on. I might put a smattering of samples here from the following possible projects:
1. Finally getting my dissertation on Hebrews in a form I'm willing to submit for publishing. Don't hold your breath. I have this as a goal every year. Also, I wouldn't want to bore with scholarly discussions. But I might put something here.
2. Similar thoughts on my afterlife sabbatical research.
3. I have a proposal in with WJK that I think is waiting for a few more samples from me to be considered. I might start a book review section on my website.
4. The running of the manuscripts. Is it worth trying to cram in a book for July 15. The proposed topic is "What Faith Will You Integrate?" In a climate where everyone is talking about integrating faith with learning, how do we help a PhD in psychology integrate his or her discipline with something more than a Sunday School level faith?
5. A small book, something like "Discerning the Will of God: Learning How to Draw on the Bible, the Church, and the Spirit." My goal would be to create something that could be used in an Inductive Bible Study class to teach some basics about how to bring good Bible study and the wisdom of the ages to bear on finding God's will for today. If my fellow professors at IWU wanted to use it, I would self-publish it. I have in mind about a 50-60 page mini-book.
6. Then I thought I might start a new novel (#18). Why not?
Any votes?
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
The Rest of the Sermon 5
The light at the end of the tunnel for me with regard to this story is to realize how foreign human sacrifice--or any animal sacrifice--is from my world. Indeed, even by the time the Old Testament books were reaching their current form, human sacrifice was becoming a horrible thing of the past.
But in Abraham's world--and perhaps at whatever time this story is approaching the form in which we now see it--child sacrifice was a known category.
The Greeks knew legends about Agamemmon sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia at the behest of a god to ensure Greek victory against Troy.
We remember that Jephthah offered to sacrifice the first living thing that came out of his house when he returned from battle if God would give him success. It turned out to be his daughter and Jephthah followed through with his vow.
Solomon and other wicked kings horribly allowed the sacrifice of children in the valleys outside Jerusalem.
In one of the most startling OT stories (2 Kings 3), the king of Moab sacrifices his son to the God Molech on top of the wall of Moab to keep Israel away. And the horrible thing is that it works. Israel withdraws!
It is in a context such as this that we realize that offering his firstborn son is not an unusual thought for Abraham. The remarkable thing is that God does not actually require it! If Tozer emphasized the obedience part of my title "obedience...," the original meaning of Genesis 22 emphasizes the "...not sacrifice" part. God does not want or require human sacrifice.
Abraham of course had no Bible, not even the Law. He did not have Deuteronomy 12:31 that tells Israel not to be like the horrid Canaanites who burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods. In the world of Genesis, this story is the narrative proclamation that God does not require human sacrifice, a proclamation of His "nature" in this regard.
Ironically, the very point of this story is that God is not a God who requires human sacrifice. It is an amazingly optimistic story that tells of God's graciousness, not his arbitrary whimsy!
I ended the sermon with the echoes of this story in the story of Jesus. The words at the baptism, "This is my son whom I love" and the words of John about Jesus as God's only son, allude to the fact that God sacrificed his Son for us. Genesis 22 begins the same way, "Take your only begotten son whom you love..."
I ended with words from 2 Corinthians 5:21, Romans 5:7-8, and finally, John 3:16.
But in Abraham's world--and perhaps at whatever time this story is approaching the form in which we now see it--child sacrifice was a known category.
The Greeks knew legends about Agamemmon sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia at the behest of a god to ensure Greek victory against Troy.
We remember that Jephthah offered to sacrifice the first living thing that came out of his house when he returned from battle if God would give him success. It turned out to be his daughter and Jephthah followed through with his vow.
Solomon and other wicked kings horribly allowed the sacrifice of children in the valleys outside Jerusalem.
In one of the most startling OT stories (2 Kings 3), the king of Moab sacrifices his son to the God Molech on top of the wall of Moab to keep Israel away. And the horrible thing is that it works. Israel withdraws!
It is in a context such as this that we realize that offering his firstborn son is not an unusual thought for Abraham. The remarkable thing is that God does not actually require it! If Tozer emphasized the obedience part of my title "obedience...," the original meaning of Genesis 22 emphasizes the "...not sacrifice" part. God does not want or require human sacrifice.
Abraham of course had no Bible, not even the Law. He did not have Deuteronomy 12:31 that tells Israel not to be like the horrid Canaanites who burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods. In the world of Genesis, this story is the narrative proclamation that God does not require human sacrifice, a proclamation of His "nature" in this regard.
Ironically, the very point of this story is that God is not a God who requires human sacrifice. It is an amazingly optimistic story that tells of God's graciousness, not his arbitrary whimsy!
I ended the sermon with the echoes of this story in the story of Jesus. The words at the baptism, "This is my son whom I love" and the words of John about Jesus as God's only son, allude to the fact that God sacrificed his Son for us. Genesis 22 begins the same way, "Take your only begotten son whom you love..."
I ended with words from 2 Corinthians 5:21, Romans 5:7-8, and finally, John 3:16.
The Sermon 4
The sermon's over, but I thought I'd just give you the gist as it ended up.
1. Introduction: my usual fare on the Bible as a sacrament of revelation. This sermon was the first of its kind for me. Rather than swim around a topic or the original meaning of a passage, I swam through various spiritual interpretations of a passage. No one would know it, but it was a fair illustration of where I am at currently hermeneutically.
Basically, I see the task of appropriation and proclamation as a word for today and a specific audience. To find and proclaim that word best, we must sit at the table of revelation with the committee of witnesses. As preacher, I am the one appointed to bring the decisions of the council to the congregation/audience.
Sitting at the table are several committee members. The ones who I usually let speak first are the original meanings of the passages of the Bible. They speak to each other, discuss and debate. The words of Jesus have special weight in that discussion, and the New Testament has authority over the Old. Also sitting at that table is orthodox Christian theology, which itself is a subcommittee of the church, which sits there as well. They help me prioritize the biblical discussion. In some respects they have veto power over the appropriation of individual biblical passages, stop signs that keep those voices from leaving the committee.
The church has many voices as well, recognized spiritual thinkers like Augustine, Kierkegaard, Tozer, etc... There are also voices there like Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Keith Drury, Max Lucado.
My task as the speaker for the committee is a daunting one. I am required to bring Spirit filled, faith filled thinking to bear on their discussion, the discussion of the ages. I must pray and humbly wait on the Spirit to illumine me. I want to be in conversation with as much of the church as I can and in continuity with the faith of the ages. Then with a prayer that God's word will be heard in my words, I dare to speak.
2. I focused on the biblical words, "obedience, not sacrifice."
This first led me to the story of Saul and Samuel, as in my first entry.
3. Then I turned to the Abraham passage, which I was most interested in today.
First Tozer gave witness to a spiritual understanding of the passage, as in my second blog. His part of the phrase was obedience...
4. Then I explored the difficulty of the Abraham passage, how it leads us to wonder whether God requires something immoral here.
I read James 1:13-18, which says God doesn't tempt people with evil. Telling someone to murder seems an aweful lot like telling someone to do evil.
5. I talked a little about 2 Samuel 24, where God tells David to number Israel in a sting operation, then sends a plague on Israel for doing it.
But I went on to show that 1 Chronicles 21 says that it was actually Satan that told David to do this. I did my usual thing on the lights of revelation coming on between Samuel and Chronicles with regard to the Satan. I mentioned Job and how from Job's perspective, he never finds out that in fact he was just a pawn in a wager between God and the Satan.
By the way, this theology in my opinion debunks the all too common idea that Job is the earliest book of the OT written. I think the idea is usually that the story of Job must predate Israel since there's no awareness of Israel in it. In some cases, this is the same kind of premodern thinking that would unthinkingly assume the gospels were written first because Jesus came before Paul. Or there are those who put true on quizzes that say 1 Corinthians was written by Paul from Corinth to us.
This is the pre-modern inability to distinguish between the content of these texts and these texts as events in history. The gospels may be about Jesus but they are some of the later books of the New Testament written and in some cases represent the later theology of the New Testament. Similarly, regardless of when Job might have lived, the book need not be written at that point.
All the evidence points to the idea of the Satan coming into Israelite thought after the Babylonian captivity. Samuel doesn't have him, Chronicles in the Persian period does. My sense is thus that Job in its current form must date to the Persian period.
6. I have suspected for some time that if Genesis had been written in the Persian period, it too would identify Satan rather than God as the one who gave Abraham these instructions. I was thus delighted one day to find that in fact this is exactly how the book of Jubiliees tells the story, a possibly Essene writing that dates to about 150 BC.
While in a sermon I didn't feel comfortable saying it with any strength or assertion, I suspect that what we see in Samuel/Chronicles also applies here. Taking the fullness of the OT into account, we should probably more precisely see the Satan as the instigator of the sacrifice rather than God directly. God is of course the Ultimate Sovereign whose permissive will is involved in everything that happens in the world, both good and evil.
However, the Satan is the instigator of temptation in the later OT, and the NT in James confirms that God does not tempt anyone directly with evil.
7. At this point in the sermon I talked about Kierkegaard and the mystery of God, my third entry above. I read Romans 11:33-36.
8. Finally, I gave what I think is a more accurate original meaning for the passage. Since this entry seems long, I'll post a different entry to tell you what I think it is.
1. Introduction: my usual fare on the Bible as a sacrament of revelation. This sermon was the first of its kind for me. Rather than swim around a topic or the original meaning of a passage, I swam through various spiritual interpretations of a passage. No one would know it, but it was a fair illustration of where I am at currently hermeneutically.
Basically, I see the task of appropriation and proclamation as a word for today and a specific audience. To find and proclaim that word best, we must sit at the table of revelation with the committee of witnesses. As preacher, I am the one appointed to bring the decisions of the council to the congregation/audience.
Sitting at the table are several committee members. The ones who I usually let speak first are the original meanings of the passages of the Bible. They speak to each other, discuss and debate. The words of Jesus have special weight in that discussion, and the New Testament has authority over the Old. Also sitting at that table is orthodox Christian theology, which itself is a subcommittee of the church, which sits there as well. They help me prioritize the biblical discussion. In some respects they have veto power over the appropriation of individual biblical passages, stop signs that keep those voices from leaving the committee.
The church has many voices as well, recognized spiritual thinkers like Augustine, Kierkegaard, Tozer, etc... There are also voices there like Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Keith Drury, Max Lucado.
My task as the speaker for the committee is a daunting one. I am required to bring Spirit filled, faith filled thinking to bear on their discussion, the discussion of the ages. I must pray and humbly wait on the Spirit to illumine me. I want to be in conversation with as much of the church as I can and in continuity with the faith of the ages. Then with a prayer that God's word will be heard in my words, I dare to speak.
2. I focused on the biblical words, "obedience, not sacrifice."
This first led me to the story of Saul and Samuel, as in my first entry.
3. Then I turned to the Abraham passage, which I was most interested in today.
First Tozer gave witness to a spiritual understanding of the passage, as in my second blog. His part of the phrase was obedience...
4. Then I explored the difficulty of the Abraham passage, how it leads us to wonder whether God requires something immoral here.
I read James 1:13-18, which says God doesn't tempt people with evil. Telling someone to murder seems an aweful lot like telling someone to do evil.
5. I talked a little about 2 Samuel 24, where God tells David to number Israel in a sting operation, then sends a plague on Israel for doing it.
But I went on to show that 1 Chronicles 21 says that it was actually Satan that told David to do this. I did my usual thing on the lights of revelation coming on between Samuel and Chronicles with regard to the Satan. I mentioned Job and how from Job's perspective, he never finds out that in fact he was just a pawn in a wager between God and the Satan.
By the way, this theology in my opinion debunks the all too common idea that Job is the earliest book of the OT written. I think the idea is usually that the story of Job must predate Israel since there's no awareness of Israel in it. In some cases, this is the same kind of premodern thinking that would unthinkingly assume the gospels were written first because Jesus came before Paul. Or there are those who put true on quizzes that say 1 Corinthians was written by Paul from Corinth to us.
This is the pre-modern inability to distinguish between the content of these texts and these texts as events in history. The gospels may be about Jesus but they are some of the later books of the New Testament written and in some cases represent the later theology of the New Testament. Similarly, regardless of when Job might have lived, the book need not be written at that point.
All the evidence points to the idea of the Satan coming into Israelite thought after the Babylonian captivity. Samuel doesn't have him, Chronicles in the Persian period does. My sense is thus that Job in its current form must date to the Persian period.
6. I have suspected for some time that if Genesis had been written in the Persian period, it too would identify Satan rather than God as the one who gave Abraham these instructions. I was thus delighted one day to find that in fact this is exactly how the book of Jubiliees tells the story, a possibly Essene writing that dates to about 150 BC.
While in a sermon I didn't feel comfortable saying it with any strength or assertion, I suspect that what we see in Samuel/Chronicles also applies here. Taking the fullness of the OT into account, we should probably more precisely see the Satan as the instigator of the sacrifice rather than God directly. God is of course the Ultimate Sovereign whose permissive will is involved in everything that happens in the world, both good and evil.
However, the Satan is the instigator of temptation in the later OT, and the NT in James confirms that God does not tempt anyone directly with evil.
7. At this point in the sermon I talked about Kierkegaard and the mystery of God, my third entry above. I read Romans 11:33-36.
8. Finally, I gave what I think is a more accurate original meaning for the passage. Since this entry seems long, I'll post a different entry to tell you what I think it is.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Abraham, Obedience, and Kierkegaard 3
For Tozer, Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac showed the level of his obedience. He is in the James category--James uses the Abraham story to show that a person is considered right with God by the things they do and not simply because of what they say they believe (James 2:20-24).
By contrast, Soren Kierkegaard predictably saw Abraham as an example of faith in the preposterous and absurd. As for Paul, Abraham was the consumate example of faith (cf. Romans 4; Galatians 3).
For Kierkegaard, the thing that God commanded of Abraham was absurd. After all, God himself had given him Isaac as a miracle in his old age. And now God was taking him away! Who among us would not doubt? Am I sure that it was God talking to me? Maybe God isn't really serious.
Yet Abraham believed unwaveringly. Without a moment's doubt he got up early, proceeded at a measured pace to Mt. Moriah, and proceeded to sacrifice.
To me, Kierkegaard's Abraham is a reminder that I can't put God in a box. There is something just a little fearsome about Him, and my puny mind can't hope to understand His ways.
There are some Christian philosophers who think they can tell you about God's nature, how He must behave because of who He is. I say with Kierkegaard that we can talk about who God is because of who He chooses to be. I don't think for one moment that I have God all figured out or that I can assure you how He's going to act on any given occasion.
Are you going through a time of great suffering? As we speak there is a funeral going on at College Wesleyan--that's why we're here in the PAC. I won't pretend to tell you why God allows the innocent to suffer or why we sometimes endure the things we do. I don't know why God allows tsunamis or 9-11's.
But I believe that God is good and loving, and I believe that God is in control. And perhaps He'll let me in on the details when we get to heaven.
Footnote: Fear and Trembling is the work where Kierkegaard discusses Abraham. Of course I also think Kierkegaard goes too far with his idea of blind faith. I don't think God is a trickster, and you'll eventually see where I come out in terms of the original meaning of the Abraham story.
By contrast, Soren Kierkegaard predictably saw Abraham as an example of faith in the preposterous and absurd. As for Paul, Abraham was the consumate example of faith (cf. Romans 4; Galatians 3).
For Kierkegaard, the thing that God commanded of Abraham was absurd. After all, God himself had given him Isaac as a miracle in his old age. And now God was taking him away! Who among us would not doubt? Am I sure that it was God talking to me? Maybe God isn't really serious.
Yet Abraham believed unwaveringly. Without a moment's doubt he got up early, proceeded at a measured pace to Mt. Moriah, and proceeded to sacrifice.
To me, Kierkegaard's Abraham is a reminder that I can't put God in a box. There is something just a little fearsome about Him, and my puny mind can't hope to understand His ways.
There are some Christian philosophers who think they can tell you about God's nature, how He must behave because of who He is. I say with Kierkegaard that we can talk about who God is because of who He chooses to be. I don't think for one moment that I have God all figured out or that I can assure you how He's going to act on any given occasion.
Are you going through a time of great suffering? As we speak there is a funeral going on at College Wesleyan--that's why we're here in the PAC. I won't pretend to tell you why God allows the innocent to suffer or why we sometimes endure the things we do. I don't know why God allows tsunamis or 9-11's.
But I believe that God is good and loving, and I believe that God is in control. And perhaps He'll let me in on the details when we get to heaven.
Footnote: Fear and Trembling is the work where Kierkegaard discusses Abraham. Of course I also think Kierkegaard goes too far with his idea of blind faith. I don't think God is a trickster, and you'll eventually see where I come out in terms of the original meaning of the Abraham story.
Obedience, Not Sacrifice 2
A. W. Tozer found in the story of Abraham and Isaac a mirror of the soul's struggle to let go of worldly possessions and to become poor in spirit.
Tozer made sense of the story by supposing that Abraham had a problem. Isaac had become the idol of his heart. When the significance of Isaac had become so great to him that his very soul was in peril, God set before him the choice. Sacrifice the thing most important to you on earth and make Me your all.
When Abraham gave Isaac to God, Abraham truly became poor in spirit, someone who possessed nothing of earth. He became "a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient."
There's an old hymn I remember from my childhood that may very well allude to this same story. One line asks, "Is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid?" Tozer saw in this story a very Wesleyan idea, the idea that we must all come to a point in our lives where we give everything to God. God will sooner or later bring this same test to us that Abraham experienced. At some point God will bring this choice: "just one and an alternative." Will we give everything to God or not?
All these spiritual points are true. We must give the whole of our lives to God. How could we truly call Jesus "Lord" if we were still ruling some part of our life?
And in a sense, we have much more to give to God today than most people in most times and places. That is not simply to say that we possess more, although on average we certainly do. But we have more time and more potential, not to mention a greater awareness of ourselves.
Although I work all the time, I enjoy my work. In some ways I feel like every day is a Sabbath rest for me. I think back to one summer I did construction when I want to picture what the daily lives of people in Abraham's day must have been like. I would lay down during every break that summer before going home, eating supper and collapsing. Although business brings its own temptations, I feel like the relatively leisurely pace of our lives today gives ample time for our hearts to wander. "Idle hands are the Devil's business."
Then again, we are so self-focused today as well. I do psychotherapy on my children all the time, trying to give them the requisite hug time each day so that they turn out to be well balanced individuals. So many of us spend so much time looking into ourselves, doing therapy. I imagine it was easier to give yourself entirely to God when you were so busy you rarely had time to think about anything but eating and protecting your own.
But of course as true as all these things might be, Genesis says nothing about Abraham struggling in this way. To us, God just tells Abraham seemingly out of the blue to sacrifice Isaac. Tozer saw spiritual truths in the text the way we all do as God made the text come alive to him.
The truth we learn from Tozer with regard to obedience is that God requires total obedience, not one shred of our lives must be out of His governance.
Footnote: Tozer gives us some great pre-modern interpretation in his chapter "The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing" in The Pursuit of God. I delighted to read of Abraham's agony the night before sacrificing his son, as Tozer put himself in Abraham's shoes and felt what he would have felt if he were Abraham. I'm sure Abraham felt agony, but I suspect it was vastly different from the way Tozer or we would agonize. After all, child sacrifice was the rule of the day, and lots of people sacrificed their firstborn sons back then.
Similarly, he makes this great comment about how no one perhaps struggled as much as Abraham did until the Garden of Gethsemane. Again, the flow of the canon is history to Tozer, and since he finds no similar struggle in the rest of the Old Testament, he is inclined to think there never was one.
Next he has this great sentence where he says, "As is frequently true, this New Testament principle [first Beatitude] of spiritual life finds its best illustration in the Old Testament" (24). This is classic! The Old Testament is not read in context, but as a typological backdrop to the New Testament understood as a compendium of timeless principles. Great stuff and I hope you know I'm not dismissing the spiritual truths so many see by reading the Bible this way. It's just textbook pre-modern lack of awareness of how to read the words for their original meaning.
Finally, he reads Abraham through Hebrews, as Abraham trusts God for the resurrection of Isaac. This is also great pre-modern conflation. The New Testament, like Tozer, reads the Old Testament spiritually as well and out of context. It is unlikely in the extreme that the historical Abraham trusted God for resurrection, as we have no evidence of belief in resurrection until some 1300 years after Abraham (and that's actually highly debatable even then). I'm not at all discounting what Hebrews says, for the New Testament consistently reads the Old Testament spiritually. The points that the New Testament makes are true--as are Tozer's, I think. But they're made by way of a spiritual meaning rather than a strictly contextual one.
The sermon part is at the top, but I couldn't resist a teachable moment at the bottom.
Tozer made sense of the story by supposing that Abraham had a problem. Isaac had become the idol of his heart. When the significance of Isaac had become so great to him that his very soul was in peril, God set before him the choice. Sacrifice the thing most important to you on earth and make Me your all.
When Abraham gave Isaac to God, Abraham truly became poor in spirit, someone who possessed nothing of earth. He became "a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient."
There's an old hymn I remember from my childhood that may very well allude to this same story. One line asks, "Is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid?" Tozer saw in this story a very Wesleyan idea, the idea that we must all come to a point in our lives where we give everything to God. God will sooner or later bring this same test to us that Abraham experienced. At some point God will bring this choice: "just one and an alternative." Will we give everything to God or not?
All these spiritual points are true. We must give the whole of our lives to God. How could we truly call Jesus "Lord" if we were still ruling some part of our life?
And in a sense, we have much more to give to God today than most people in most times and places. That is not simply to say that we possess more, although on average we certainly do. But we have more time and more potential, not to mention a greater awareness of ourselves.
Although I work all the time, I enjoy my work. In some ways I feel like every day is a Sabbath rest for me. I think back to one summer I did construction when I want to picture what the daily lives of people in Abraham's day must have been like. I would lay down during every break that summer before going home, eating supper and collapsing. Although business brings its own temptations, I feel like the relatively leisurely pace of our lives today gives ample time for our hearts to wander. "Idle hands are the Devil's business."
Then again, we are so self-focused today as well. I do psychotherapy on my children all the time, trying to give them the requisite hug time each day so that they turn out to be well balanced individuals. So many of us spend so much time looking into ourselves, doing therapy. I imagine it was easier to give yourself entirely to God when you were so busy you rarely had time to think about anything but eating and protecting your own.
But of course as true as all these things might be, Genesis says nothing about Abraham struggling in this way. To us, God just tells Abraham seemingly out of the blue to sacrifice Isaac. Tozer saw spiritual truths in the text the way we all do as God made the text come alive to him.
The truth we learn from Tozer with regard to obedience is that God requires total obedience, not one shred of our lives must be out of His governance.
Footnote: Tozer gives us some great pre-modern interpretation in his chapter "The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing" in The Pursuit of God. I delighted to read of Abraham's agony the night before sacrificing his son, as Tozer put himself in Abraham's shoes and felt what he would have felt if he were Abraham. I'm sure Abraham felt agony, but I suspect it was vastly different from the way Tozer or we would agonize. After all, child sacrifice was the rule of the day, and lots of people sacrificed their firstborn sons back then.
Similarly, he makes this great comment about how no one perhaps struggled as much as Abraham did until the Garden of Gethsemane. Again, the flow of the canon is history to Tozer, and since he finds no similar struggle in the rest of the Old Testament, he is inclined to think there never was one.
Next he has this great sentence where he says, "As is frequently true, this New Testament principle [first Beatitude] of spiritual life finds its best illustration in the Old Testament" (24). This is classic! The Old Testament is not read in context, but as a typological backdrop to the New Testament understood as a compendium of timeless principles. Great stuff and I hope you know I'm not dismissing the spiritual truths so many see by reading the Bible this way. It's just textbook pre-modern lack of awareness of how to read the words for their original meaning.
Finally, he reads Abraham through Hebrews, as Abraham trusts God for the resurrection of Isaac. This is also great pre-modern conflation. The New Testament, like Tozer, reads the Old Testament spiritually as well and out of context. It is unlikely in the extreme that the historical Abraham trusted God for resurrection, as we have no evidence of belief in resurrection until some 1300 years after Abraham (and that's actually highly debatable even then). I'm not at all discounting what Hebrews says, for the New Testament consistently reads the Old Testament spiritually. The points that the New Testament makes are true--as are Tozer's, I think. But they're made by way of a spiritual meaning rather than a strictly contextual one.
The sermon part is at the top, but I couldn't resist a teachable moment at the bottom.
Monday, June 06, 2005
Sermon Starters: Obedience, Not Sacrifice 1
Well, I'm preaching at employee chapel Wednesday, so I thought I would flesh out some of my thoughts tonight and tomorrow. Yes, I already have the general flow of the sermon in mind so I have been working on it.
The title is misleading, because I'm not preaching on 1 Samuel 15:22, where Saul gets tired of waiting on Samuel to arrive for the pre-battle sacrifice. Like a child (or adult) impatient to get the "prayer out of the way," he offers the sacrifice and gets on with it.
Of course, in good sitcom fashion, Samuel arrives just as Saul's given up waiting. A cruel irony! Or perhaps the failure of a test on God's part. Samuel sets things straight for Saul--obedience is more important than the sacrifice.
But that's not the text I'm preaching on, even if this story in the end may have similar overtones to where I'm headed.
No, my text is Genesis 22--the binding of Isaac, the Aqedah!
What a troublesome story this is to so many! I remember learning about it as a child, but I don't remember that it bothered me in particular. Thought and reality have always been heartily separated for me, so it never seemed that strange to me, the way it no doubt would if I were to experience it. That's why I like philosophy. That's why I don't find some humor offensive while others do. Things just aren't very concrete to me, I'm afraid.
But this story has troubled countless Jews and Christians through the ages. How can this be the God that we serve? What's going on here.
Let the journey begin. The stops on our trip include Tozer, Kierkegaard, the book of Jubilees, and finally, Genesis 22.
The title is misleading, because I'm not preaching on 1 Samuel 15:22, where Saul gets tired of waiting on Samuel to arrive for the pre-battle sacrifice. Like a child (or adult) impatient to get the "prayer out of the way," he offers the sacrifice and gets on with it.
Of course, in good sitcom fashion, Samuel arrives just as Saul's given up waiting. A cruel irony! Or perhaps the failure of a test on God's part. Samuel sets things straight for Saul--obedience is more important than the sacrifice.
But that's not the text I'm preaching on, even if this story in the end may have similar overtones to where I'm headed.
No, my text is Genesis 22--the binding of Isaac, the Aqedah!
What a troublesome story this is to so many! I remember learning about it as a child, but I don't remember that it bothered me in particular. Thought and reality have always been heartily separated for me, so it never seemed that strange to me, the way it no doubt would if I were to experience it. That's why I like philosophy. That's why I don't find some humor offensive while others do. Things just aren't very concrete to me, I'm afraid.
But this story has troubled countless Jews and Christians through the ages. How can this be the God that we serve? What's going on here.
Let the journey begin. The stops on our trip include Tozer, Kierkegaard, the book of Jubilees, and finally, Genesis 22.
Sermon Starters: Mind of Christ
A couple of passages immediately came to mind when I thought of the mind of Christ. The first was the Sermon on the Mount. The second was the Philippian hymn of Philippians 2.
As I try to think of what three points might be (I'm old school), here's what I come up with. Sorry it doesn't rhyme or begin with the same letter or form an acronym.
1. The mind of Christ is a servant's mind.
2. The mind of Christ is a suffering mind.
3. The mind of Christ is a perfect mind.
1. For the servant's mind section, I might talk about Philippians 2--having the mind that is willing to stoop down and play the role of a servant. Here Jesus was God and he not only became human, he stooped to the lowest death of the low. What status do you have that you're not willing to give up? BUZZ. Sorry, doesn't measure up. If Christ can be a servant, you have no excuse. I might bring in the foot washing story too.
2. For the suffering mind, I might bring in 2 Corinthians 4 where Paul basically compares his sufferings for the gospel as something like "carrying around the body of Jesus," suffering like Jesus suffered for the gospel. I might bring in Hebrews 12:2 where Jesus is an example for us to run the race of life with patience, despising the shame. You might bring in Jesus' turn the other cheek stuff from Matthew 5, doing good to those who persecute you, Romans 12 and not rendering evil for evil.
3. For the perfect mind, I might bring in Matthew 5:48 and mention that biblical perfection here is about going the whole way rather than half way. It's not just loving your neighbors, but your enemies as well. It's not just about not committing adultery; it's about not plotting adultery.
I might also bring in Philippians 3 and what Paul says is the mature (same word: perfect) attitude is. It's working together to reach the Day of Salvation and the resurrection. It's not falling from the point we've reached and pushing forward to new points in our striving toward the resurrection.
You might also bring in James 3 and the perfect person as someone who can control their tongue, although that's a little tangential.
You could of course make a whole series out of this and make this entry three different sermons.
Just some thoughts...
As I try to think of what three points might be (I'm old school), here's what I come up with. Sorry it doesn't rhyme or begin with the same letter or form an acronym.
1. The mind of Christ is a servant's mind.
2. The mind of Christ is a suffering mind.
3. The mind of Christ is a perfect mind.
1. For the servant's mind section, I might talk about Philippians 2--having the mind that is willing to stoop down and play the role of a servant. Here Jesus was God and he not only became human, he stooped to the lowest death of the low. What status do you have that you're not willing to give up? BUZZ. Sorry, doesn't measure up. If Christ can be a servant, you have no excuse. I might bring in the foot washing story too.
2. For the suffering mind, I might bring in 2 Corinthians 4 where Paul basically compares his sufferings for the gospel as something like "carrying around the body of Jesus," suffering like Jesus suffered for the gospel. I might bring in Hebrews 12:2 where Jesus is an example for us to run the race of life with patience, despising the shame. You might bring in Jesus' turn the other cheek stuff from Matthew 5, doing good to those who persecute you, Romans 12 and not rendering evil for evil.
3. For the perfect mind, I might bring in Matthew 5:48 and mention that biblical perfection here is about going the whole way rather than half way. It's not just loving your neighbors, but your enemies as well. It's not just about not committing adultery; it's about not plotting adultery.
I might also bring in Philippians 3 and what Paul says is the mature (same word: perfect) attitude is. It's working together to reach the Day of Salvation and the resurrection. It's not falling from the point we've reached and pushing forward to new points in our striving toward the resurrection.
You might also bring in James 3 and the perfect person as someone who can control their tongue, although that's a little tangential.
You could of course make a whole series out of this and make this entry three different sermons.
Just some thoughts...
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Sermon Starters: Transformed Mind
I told a friend I would blog just a little on what texts I might preach from in relation to having a transformed mind and having the mind of Christ.
With regard to having a transformed mind, I would preach from Romans 12:1-2: "Therefore, I encourage you brothers to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your appropriate worship. And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you can demonstrate the will of God--the good and pleasing and complete will of God."
After just finishing teaching an online course for Asbury on Romans, my head is echoing with the richness of this verse. Here are just some thoughts that somewhat might piece together in some way into a sermon:
1. The "therefore" makes it clear that this verse is the logical conclusion of the teaching that Paul has been presenting in the preceding chapters. In particular...
2. ...presenting your bodies as living sacrifices relates directly to things Paul has said in Romans 6 and 8 about not letting sin reign in your mortal bodies (6:12, I believe), about being a slave to righteousness (chapter 6) and about the hope we have as we await the resurrection and the redemption of our bodies (see 8:11). Our obligation in the meantime (8:12) is not to let our flesh rule.
3. The word for worship (latreia) has connotations of sacrificial systems. In other words, this is our priestly duty--to offer ourselves as the sacrifice to God.
4. When Paul says not to be conformed to the world, therefore, it also has all these connotations as well.
5. But more particularly, Paul spells out what transformed thinking is in the chapters that follow. It involves not thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought. It involves not repaying evil with evil. It involves respectable behavior toward those in authority over us.
6. Most of all, it involves love, which Paul spells out in Romans 13 as the essence of God's righteous requirement. Love is the ultimate transformed mind.
7. Romans 14-15 continue to play out this transformed mind by showing that Christianity is not about me exercising my freedom or getting my rights. Rather, it's about building up others.
This is truly rich stuff, and you could easily pull out a whole sermon series from it.
More on how you might follow the transformed mind up with the mind of Christ later.
With regard to having a transformed mind, I would preach from Romans 12:1-2: "Therefore, I encourage you brothers to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your appropriate worship. And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you can demonstrate the will of God--the good and pleasing and complete will of God."
After just finishing teaching an online course for Asbury on Romans, my head is echoing with the richness of this verse. Here are just some thoughts that somewhat might piece together in some way into a sermon:
1. The "therefore" makes it clear that this verse is the logical conclusion of the teaching that Paul has been presenting in the preceding chapters. In particular...
2. ...presenting your bodies as living sacrifices relates directly to things Paul has said in Romans 6 and 8 about not letting sin reign in your mortal bodies (6:12, I believe), about being a slave to righteousness (chapter 6) and about the hope we have as we await the resurrection and the redemption of our bodies (see 8:11). Our obligation in the meantime (8:12) is not to let our flesh rule.
3. The word for worship (latreia) has connotations of sacrificial systems. In other words, this is our priestly duty--to offer ourselves as the sacrifice to God.
4. When Paul says not to be conformed to the world, therefore, it also has all these connotations as well.
5. But more particularly, Paul spells out what transformed thinking is in the chapters that follow. It involves not thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought. It involves not repaying evil with evil. It involves respectable behavior toward those in authority over us.
6. Most of all, it involves love, which Paul spells out in Romans 13 as the essence of God's righteous requirement. Love is the ultimate transformed mind.
7. Romans 14-15 continue to play out this transformed mind by showing that Christianity is not about me exercising my freedom or getting my rights. Rather, it's about building up others.
This is truly rich stuff, and you could easily pull out a whole sermon series from it.
More on how you might follow the transformed mind up with the mind of Christ later.
Friday, June 03, 2005
New Schenck Web Site
Partially under a grant from the Wesleyan Society for the Subversion of Reformed Theology (WSSRT for short), I have opened a web site with some of my stuff in more accessible form.
www.kenschenck.com
I haven't tidied it to my satisfaction, but you'll find a lot of stuff from my blog as well as a few other additions. If there's something missing, feel free to holler. The link to my campus courses web site wasn't working last time I checked.
I will continue to use this blog as the entry way to what I'm thinking. It helps me write, allows for feedback fairly quickly, and lets me vent on a level that doesn't merit publishing elsewhere :>). Things that I want to tidy up from here and that I'm writing in other contexts will then go to the other site.
Blessings...
www.kenschenck.com
I haven't tidied it to my satisfaction, but you'll find a lot of stuff from my blog as well as a few other additions. If there's something missing, feel free to holler. The link to my campus courses web site wasn't working last time I checked.
I will continue to use this blog as the entry way to what I'm thinking. It helps me write, allows for feedback fairly quickly, and lets me vent on a level that doesn't merit publishing elsewhere :>). Things that I want to tidy up from here and that I'm writing in other contexts will then go to the other site.
Blessings...
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Richard Nixon: A Tale of Stupidity
Perhaps I am no smarter, but just listening to some of the tapes of conversations in the Nixon White House makes me think that Nixon must have been one of the most stupid smart people of recent history.
I don't remember Watergate. I don't know whether it's because I was too busy flying spaceships around the back yard or that my family just didn't talk about it. My family was pro-Nixon, so to this day I'm not sure what they did with it then. I'm sure today they would side with Liddy, Buchanan, and Colson.
I've not done my homework. I hope maybe I can form some informed opinions on the subject in the next few weeks.
But I was especially struck by an interview with Kissinger on Hardball last night. If you listen to some of the recordings of things Nixon said, they were atrocious. One in particular stood out to me--a hateful remark about Felt being a Jew. Wasn't Kissinger Jewish, I thought when I first heard the tape.
So I was glad that Chris Matthews brought Kissinger on to discuss those comments and the whole Deep Throat situation.
Kissinger said that Nixon said a lot of things that you just knew didn't mean anything. And many of them were said when a particular person was in the room--I forget the name. Kissinger said that Nixon was always saying things like "Let's break into the x," but no one with any sense would actually follow through with it.
I doubt it is the case, but a comic scene unfolds in my mind--one not too far from a Saturday Night Live skit Dan Ackroyd did in the 70's. Some idiot hears Nixon doing his usual think about "Let's break into the Watergate building..." and actually does it. Then Nixon finds himself in this situation of having instigated something he never really planned to do. The SNL skit had Ackroyd joking around with the mike, knowing he's being recorded. Everyone's laughing as they say "Hey, I have an idea. Hee, hee, hee. Let's break into the Watergate building, hee, hee, hee."
I'm sure that Nixon must have been extremely intelligent and competent on one level. But he was really stupid on another. Even the best case scenario sees him as someone who acted disgracefully when he was around certain people--said shameful things and expressed shameful words and sentiments.
I don't know a lot about the particulars of it all. But I think he was unworthy of the presidency. His "outing" led to a important climate of critical thinking at least by many toward public officials. I know there is still a lot of hero worship that goes on by both sides.
But a lot of us now have a healthy suspicion about just about anyone's motives when it comes to power and money. We won't just take a politician's word for it.
P.S. As a side note, I actually think the current Bush is one of the most honest presidents we've had in a long time (probably since Carter). It's his ideology that I fear.
I don't remember Watergate. I don't know whether it's because I was too busy flying spaceships around the back yard or that my family just didn't talk about it. My family was pro-Nixon, so to this day I'm not sure what they did with it then. I'm sure today they would side with Liddy, Buchanan, and Colson.
I've not done my homework. I hope maybe I can form some informed opinions on the subject in the next few weeks.
But I was especially struck by an interview with Kissinger on Hardball last night. If you listen to some of the recordings of things Nixon said, they were atrocious. One in particular stood out to me--a hateful remark about Felt being a Jew. Wasn't Kissinger Jewish, I thought when I first heard the tape.
So I was glad that Chris Matthews brought Kissinger on to discuss those comments and the whole Deep Throat situation.
Kissinger said that Nixon said a lot of things that you just knew didn't mean anything. And many of them were said when a particular person was in the room--I forget the name. Kissinger said that Nixon was always saying things like "Let's break into the x," but no one with any sense would actually follow through with it.
I doubt it is the case, but a comic scene unfolds in my mind--one not too far from a Saturday Night Live skit Dan Ackroyd did in the 70's. Some idiot hears Nixon doing his usual think about "Let's break into the Watergate building..." and actually does it. Then Nixon finds himself in this situation of having instigated something he never really planned to do. The SNL skit had Ackroyd joking around with the mike, knowing he's being recorded. Everyone's laughing as they say "Hey, I have an idea. Hee, hee, hee. Let's break into the Watergate building, hee, hee, hee."
I'm sure that Nixon must have been extremely intelligent and competent on one level. But he was really stupid on another. Even the best case scenario sees him as someone who acted disgracefully when he was around certain people--said shameful things and expressed shameful words and sentiments.
I don't know a lot about the particulars of it all. But I think he was unworthy of the presidency. His "outing" led to a important climate of critical thinking at least by many toward public officials. I know there is still a lot of hero worship that goes on by both sides.
But a lot of us now have a healthy suspicion about just about anyone's motives when it comes to power and money. We won't just take a politician's word for it.
P.S. As a side note, I actually think the current Bush is one of the most honest presidents we've had in a long time (probably since Carter). It's his ideology that I fear.
Monday, May 30, 2005
Those Silly Frenchies
Well, the French are at it again. They've voted down the proposed EU Constitution. And Chirac may soon resign.
I haven't paid attention to the details. The main sticking point I've heard is that the Constitution was too capitalist for the somewhat socialist leanings of the nation.
Well, I'm not surprised. Before I begin my fun, let me say that I give any individual of any stripe the chance to be themselves no matter the groups to which they belong. Let me also say that I still eat French Fries and wish I could speak the language fluently. There's a part of me that just has to love the French, despite their suicidal and perverse ways.
Here's another example. The French are some of those self-destructive people who just can't help but shoot themselves in the foot and any one else they can pull down with them. Here is a moment of progress for Europe, an opportunity for the EU to move further toward being more of a world power and eventually a counterbalance to the United States. But the French will have none of it.
Now mind you, I am not a mega-capitalist. I would style myself an Adam Smith capitalist--someone who sees capitalism as a way to improve the lives of the little people. Today that means a good deal of regulation and control of the capitalistic monster. Smith did not foresee the Microsofts and Wal-marts that actually run over the little guys. I suspect Smith would be appalled with his economic worshippers and say, "I have ought against thee because you have left your first love."
But the Frenchies are a completely different story. They weren't stung enough by communism to get the depravity to which it led in Eastern Europe and Russia. They enjoy protesting and guillotining people too much in the name of freedom and individual rights to set up a more prosperous society. They want to be able to strike every other day in the name of la boheme.
I have mixed feelings about France. I have been to Paris a half a dozen times and spent a week in Mougins last year while we were in Europe.
But I also have memories of leaving hastily for Germany because the whole city of Paris was going on strike (again). I have visions of ticket checkers just waiting at my train door in hope that I hadn't filled out the date on my Europass before the train started moving (I hadn't gotten it out yet because I was in a sweaty luggage fest. He fined me twenty Euros). I remember filthy dirty streets in Paris and Parisian hotel managers lying about not taking American Express when the sign on the door said they did (which threw my budget off). I remember being cheated on change in Strassbourg and nearly being pick-pocketed at McDonalds. Hmm, I don't have those memories of England or Germany.
Would I go back? You bet. Are they nice people--not generally, but it's nothing personal. It's just their way. Most of them would still give your child their seat, even if they did it with a scowl on their face muttering something under their breath.
They're just a funny people that sometimes, of course, aren't so funny. Eventually, after they've bickered and complained for as long as possible, they get around to doing what they need to.
I haven't paid attention to the details. The main sticking point I've heard is that the Constitution was too capitalist for the somewhat socialist leanings of the nation.
Well, I'm not surprised. Before I begin my fun, let me say that I give any individual of any stripe the chance to be themselves no matter the groups to which they belong. Let me also say that I still eat French Fries and wish I could speak the language fluently. There's a part of me that just has to love the French, despite their suicidal and perverse ways.
Here's another example. The French are some of those self-destructive people who just can't help but shoot themselves in the foot and any one else they can pull down with them. Here is a moment of progress for Europe, an opportunity for the EU to move further toward being more of a world power and eventually a counterbalance to the United States. But the French will have none of it.
Now mind you, I am not a mega-capitalist. I would style myself an Adam Smith capitalist--someone who sees capitalism as a way to improve the lives of the little people. Today that means a good deal of regulation and control of the capitalistic monster. Smith did not foresee the Microsofts and Wal-marts that actually run over the little guys. I suspect Smith would be appalled with his economic worshippers and say, "I have ought against thee because you have left your first love."
But the Frenchies are a completely different story. They weren't stung enough by communism to get the depravity to which it led in Eastern Europe and Russia. They enjoy protesting and guillotining people too much in the name of freedom and individual rights to set up a more prosperous society. They want to be able to strike every other day in the name of la boheme.
I have mixed feelings about France. I have been to Paris a half a dozen times and spent a week in Mougins last year while we were in Europe.
But I also have memories of leaving hastily for Germany because the whole city of Paris was going on strike (again). I have visions of ticket checkers just waiting at my train door in hope that I hadn't filled out the date on my Europass before the train started moving (I hadn't gotten it out yet because I was in a sweaty luggage fest. He fined me twenty Euros). I remember filthy dirty streets in Paris and Parisian hotel managers lying about not taking American Express when the sign on the door said they did (which threw my budget off). I remember being cheated on change in Strassbourg and nearly being pick-pocketed at McDonalds. Hmm, I don't have those memories of England or Germany.
Would I go back? You bet. Are they nice people--not generally, but it's nothing personal. It's just their way. Most of them would still give your child their seat, even if they did it with a scowl on their face muttering something under their breath.
They're just a funny people that sometimes, of course, aren't so funny. Eventually, after they've bickered and complained for as long as possible, they get around to doing what they need to.
Glorious Ultimate Salvation
7. Glorious Ultimate Salvation
Romans 3:23 says that
"all have sinned and are lacking the glory of God."
Many take the glory of God here in some way to refer to a moral standard to which we cannot attain. Thus the New Living Translation renders it "God's glorious standard."
But when we get into Paul's world, it becomes extremely likely that Paul is alluding to Psalm 8 in his Greek Bible:
"What are humans, that you remember them,
or the son of a human, that you look on him?
You made them lower than the angels for a little while.
You crowned them with glory and honor.
You appointed them over the works of Your hands
You subjected everything under their feet."
We find a number of places in Hebrews and Paul's writings that allude to this psalm. From these scattered comments we can reconstruct the story of salvation:
1. God created humanity to be in the role we read about in the psalm. Humanity was meant to have glory and honor in the creation. "When He subjected everything to humanity, he left nothing unsubjected to them" (Heb. 2:8).
2. But Adam sinnned, and all have sinned like Adam, "and are lacking the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). Humanity did not attain to the glory God intended them to have. This is the problem. As Hebrews says, "Now we do not yet see everything subjected to them" (Heb. 2:8).
3. But God had a solution.
"But what we do see is one who was made lower than the angels for a little while--Jesus--who because of his suffering of death was crowned with glory and honor so that by the grace of God he might taste death on behalf of all" (Heb. 2:9).
At the resurrection, Jesus will conquer death for good.
"Death is destroyed as the last enemy, for God subjected everything under Christ's feet... and when everything is subjected to Christ, then the Son himself will be subjected to the One who subjects everything to Himself" (1 Cor. 15:26-27).
4. Ultimate salvation certainly means escaping God's wrath. But it also means attaining finally the glory God intended humanity to have.
"Through Jesus we have had our entrance into this grace in which we stand and we boast because of our hope of the glory of God" (Rom. 5:2).
"It was fitting for God, because of whom and through whom all things exist, to perfect Jesus, who leads many children to glory, the pioneer of humanity's salvation, through sufferings" (Heb. 2:10).
This "glorification" will take place at the resurrection for those Christians who have already died at the time of Christ's return. For those who are alive and remain at his coming, it will take place at the same time as we are caught up to be with the Lord:
"Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we all will be transformed, in a moment, in the twinkle of an eye at the last trumpet" (1 Cor. 15:51-52).
"For our citizenship exists in the heavens, from which we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humility to the same form as the body of his glory according to the power that enables him even to subject everything to himself" (Phil. 3:20-21).
And it is not just we who will experience this transformation, this ultimate liberation from our mortal bodies. The creation itself as a whole will finally experience its salvation from the power of sin and corruption.
"For we consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy in comparison to the glory that is about to be revealed to us. For the eager expectation of the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility because of hope. For even the creation itself will be freed from the slavery of corruption for the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (Rom. 8:18-21).
What a glorious hope! It is full salvation, by any reckoning.
8. Conclusion
This short account of salvation in the New Testament is a story that begins even before the story as we began it. It begins with a gracious God who creates a universe full of hope. He creates humanity and shows His greatness by His concern for such a small part of all that is. He creates us to experience a place of glory and honor over the creation.
But it doesn't happen. As a result of Adam's sin humanity is demoted and is lacking the intended glory of God. The created realm, including our physical bodies, are enslaved to the power of sin and the decay we now see in the creation.
Still, the story does not end at this point. Because of His great love and His saving righteousness, God sends Jesus His Son to troubleshoot the human problem. Jesus lives out the human experiment without sin (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15). Accordingly, he is able to attain the glory intended for humanity and is now in a position to lead many other children to glory as well.
At the resurrection, God will transform our bodies to be like Christ's glorious body. We will be finally and ultimately glorified. We will no longer face even the possibility of being in the flesh for "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 15:50). Further, the creation itself will be transformed. It will no longer be subject to decay and corruption.
"Thanks be to God, who gives to us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!" (1 Cor. 15:57).
Romans 3:23 says that
"all have sinned and are lacking the glory of God."
Many take the glory of God here in some way to refer to a moral standard to which we cannot attain. Thus the New Living Translation renders it "God's glorious standard."
But when we get into Paul's world, it becomes extremely likely that Paul is alluding to Psalm 8 in his Greek Bible:
"What are humans, that you remember them,
or the son of a human, that you look on him?
You made them lower than the angels for a little while.
You crowned them with glory and honor.
You appointed them over the works of Your hands
You subjected everything under their feet."
We find a number of places in Hebrews and Paul's writings that allude to this psalm. From these scattered comments we can reconstruct the story of salvation:
1. God created humanity to be in the role we read about in the psalm. Humanity was meant to have glory and honor in the creation. "When He subjected everything to humanity, he left nothing unsubjected to them" (Heb. 2:8).
2. But Adam sinnned, and all have sinned like Adam, "and are lacking the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). Humanity did not attain to the glory God intended them to have. This is the problem. As Hebrews says, "Now we do not yet see everything subjected to them" (Heb. 2:8).
3. But God had a solution.
"But what we do see is one who was made lower than the angels for a little while--Jesus--who because of his suffering of death was crowned with glory and honor so that by the grace of God he might taste death on behalf of all" (Heb. 2:9).
At the resurrection, Jesus will conquer death for good.
"Death is destroyed as the last enemy, for God subjected everything under Christ's feet... and when everything is subjected to Christ, then the Son himself will be subjected to the One who subjects everything to Himself" (1 Cor. 15:26-27).
4. Ultimate salvation certainly means escaping God's wrath. But it also means attaining finally the glory God intended humanity to have.
"Through Jesus we have had our entrance into this grace in which we stand and we boast because of our hope of the glory of God" (Rom. 5:2).
"It was fitting for God, because of whom and through whom all things exist, to perfect Jesus, who leads many children to glory, the pioneer of humanity's salvation, through sufferings" (Heb. 2:10).
This "glorification" will take place at the resurrection for those Christians who have already died at the time of Christ's return. For those who are alive and remain at his coming, it will take place at the same time as we are caught up to be with the Lord:
"Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we all will be transformed, in a moment, in the twinkle of an eye at the last trumpet" (1 Cor. 15:51-52).
"For our citizenship exists in the heavens, from which we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humility to the same form as the body of his glory according to the power that enables him even to subject everything to himself" (Phil. 3:20-21).
And it is not just we who will experience this transformation, this ultimate liberation from our mortal bodies. The creation itself as a whole will finally experience its salvation from the power of sin and corruption.
"For we consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy in comparison to the glory that is about to be revealed to us. For the eager expectation of the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility because of hope. For even the creation itself will be freed from the slavery of corruption for the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (Rom. 8:18-21).
What a glorious hope! It is full salvation, by any reckoning.
8. Conclusion
This short account of salvation in the New Testament is a story that begins even before the story as we began it. It begins with a gracious God who creates a universe full of hope. He creates humanity and shows His greatness by His concern for such a small part of all that is. He creates us to experience a place of glory and honor over the creation.
But it doesn't happen. As a result of Adam's sin humanity is demoted and is lacking the intended glory of God. The created realm, including our physical bodies, are enslaved to the power of sin and the decay we now see in the creation.
Still, the story does not end at this point. Because of His great love and His saving righteousness, God sends Jesus His Son to troubleshoot the human problem. Jesus lives out the human experiment without sin (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15). Accordingly, he is able to attain the glory intended for humanity and is now in a position to lead many other children to glory as well.
At the resurrection, God will transform our bodies to be like Christ's glorious body. We will be finally and ultimately glorified. We will no longer face even the possibility of being in the flesh for "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 15:50). Further, the creation itself will be transformed. It will no longer be subject to decay and corruption.
"Thanks be to God, who gives to us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!" (1 Cor. 15:57).
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Biblical Salvation 6
6. Working out Salvation Together
Western culture pushes us to think of salvation and sanctification as an individual experience, but the Bible thinks about most of these things as much in corporate as individual terms. So while we tend to think of our individual bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit, Paul uses the plural word for you:
"your [plural] body is a temple of the Holy Spirit in you [plural]" (1 Cor. 6:19).
The Holy Spirit inhabits the church as his body even more than our individual bodies.
Similarly, Paul's prayer for the Thessalonians is "May the God of peace Himself sanctify you [plural] completely, and may your [plural] whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5:23). Paul equates belonging to God and thus being holy (being sanctified) to being free of blame. He prays that the Thessalonians will be this way collectively even more than for each one individually.
And so we are not surprised that Paul also encourages his churches to work together so that they are all saved on the Day of Judgment:
"So, my beloved ones, just as you always obeyed, not only when I was there but now even more now in my absence, work out your [plural] salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12).
As usual, Paul is speaking in the plural. The Philippians are to work together to help each other make it to the day of salvation.
The idea of "working" having anything to do with salvation goes against the grain of much Christian thinking today, but it was an essential element in Paul's understanding. Here it is important to point out the difference between justification--becoming right with God--and salvation--escaping God's wrath on the Day of Judgment because you remain right with Him. Only faith or trust is operative in justification. But God expects us to honor Him in response to His grace in order to be saved ultimately.
Paul only contrasted faith and works when he was writing about becoming a Christian. Even then, he primarily contrasted faith in Christ with works of the Jewish Law (e.g., Gal. 2:16). At the same time he made it clear that faith will yield a certain kind of "fruit" in one's life (e.g., Rom. 6:22). In 1 Thessalonians, Paul commends the Thessalonians for their "work of faith" (1:3).
Further, the same passage in Ephesians that says "by grace you have been saved through faith... not on the basis of works so that no one can boast" goes on in the very next verse to say,
"For we are his creation and we have been created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared ahead of time so that we might walk in them" (Eph. 2:10).
It is thus God's will that Christians walk together ("we") in a certain way after they are justified, a way that Ephesians calls "good works."
We can gain great clarity on these things if we realize that one way in which the original audiences of the New Testament would have understood grace, which is often defined as "unmerited favor," is in terms of what scholars call patron-client relationships. Patrons were wealthy individuals with excess resources. Clients were individuals who could use these resources. Patrons often gained honor and prestige in the ancient world by accruing clients to themselves. The clients of course did not earn or merit such hand outs--the giving was much greater than anything the client could return. But at the same time, the client was usually expected to do various things for the patron in turn, not least of which was give them honor for their giving. If they did not appropriately honor their patrons, the giving would of course stop.
While this model is not the only way early Christians would have understood their relationship with God, grace and gift language pushes us to see it as one way they did. God was a divine patron who freely gave to those who sought Him. No one could earn His divine patronage. On the other hand, the idea that such patronage came with no strings attached would have made no sense at all to any of the New Testament authors or audiences. After all, this is the same God who made a covenant with Israel in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 28 leaves no doubt that such a covenant involved clear expectations of God's people or else the relationship with specific individuals was severed.
Thus in the New Testament, God expects His people to serve Him in return for His gracious gift of justification and salvation. If they do not serve him, 1 John 5:16-17 speaks of a "sin unto death" that severs our relationship to God. Similarly, Hebrews 10:26-27 says,
"If we continue to sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, the sacrifice for sins no longer remains, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and of the eager fire that is about to eat God's enemies."
Paul himself expresses the need for faithfulness when he says things like
"So I run not as if I did not have a goal. So I box not as if I were beating the air. But I keep my body under control and I lead it as a slave so that I myself might not become disqualified somehow after I have preached to others" (1 Cor. 9:26-27).
And
"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings as I am conformed to his death, if somehow I might attain to the resurrection of the dead" (Phil. 3:8-11).
Even Paul himself did not believe his acceptance in Christ was unconditional. It demanded an appropriate response, a response Paul was determined to give.
Paul had not yet attained the resurrection. The next verse in Philippians 3 continues:
"Not that I have already received [resurrection] or have already been perfected [as I move into the next age], but I pursue [the resurrection] if also I might take hold of that for which I was even taken hold of by Christ. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of [this resurrection]. But one thing [I do], forgetting the things behind and reaching out to the things before me, I pursue with my eye on the goal the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:12-14).
It is common to think of Paul as forgetting his past sins and failures here when he says he is forgetting that which is behind. But we can only do that if we rip these words from their context. The earlier part of the chapter is a rehearsal of Paul's accomplishments on a human level--that which was "to my gain" (Phil. 3:7). Indeed, Paul here says that he had been blameless as far as the righteousness that was in the Jewish Law (3:6). This comment debunks the all too common notion that Paul felt like a failure at keeping the Law before he became a Christian. On the contrary, Luke 18:9-14 probably is a better picture of the pre-Christian Paul.
It is also common to see Paul's comments in Philippians 3:12-14 as a basis for the idea that "I'm not perfect, just forgiven." Again, you have to ignore what Paul has been talking about to interpret it this way. The verse that precedes this passage is talking about resurrection. Paul is saying he is not yet absolutely guaranteed a place in the resurrection and thus, salvation. I don't think Paul ever had serious doubts or felt insecure--nor should we. But he reminds the Philippians that they must remain faithful to God even after He has graciously made us right with Him through Christ (cf. Phil. 3:9).
Paul ends the section in this way:
"Therefore, as many of us as are perfect [mature], let us have this attitude. And if you think differently on something, God will also reveal this fact to you. However, let us walk appropriately to that which we have already reached" (Phil. 3:15-16).
After Paul has mentioned perfection as something that will happen at the resurrection (Phil. 3:12), he refers to the Philippians as already perfect or complete in a sense (3:15). The mature attitude is for them to continue together on their journey toward salvation. God will reveal areas of growth. But far from saying, you will mess up continually on things you've already mastered, Paul says not to fall back on those things. Move forward without falling back from where you are.
How can we move forward toward salvation together?
There are any number of obvious answers. We can pray for each other (1 John 5:16). We can carry each others burdens (Gal. 6:2). We can confess our sins to one another (James 5:16). We can intercede for others that we see sinning and work for their reconciliation (James 5:19-20).
There are any number of enslavements we know of today that most often seem healed through the care of others. We hear testimonies of instantaneous healing from various addictions in the past. Is it our lack of faith that keeps us from seeing them today? Regardless, God seems to work often today through the body of Christ and through others to bring us to healing on various enslavements in our lives. We should not shun each other. The person who tries to be victorious over some temptation alone today is often someone who repeatedly fails. The Bible urges us to bear each other's burdens, and this can only take place if we share them with people we trust and to whom we can be accountable.
Many Protestants are also prone to ignore various "means of grace" that God has given the church as a way of experiencing His presence and strength. If communion is practiced correctly, we should feel an extra shot of God's power after we have received it and be invigorated by the "communion" with the rest of the church.
Prayer and devotions have become means of grace in our time. But we've forgotten things like fasting, hospitality, and confession. Some of these things we can do in private to find God's strength in our struggle against sin. But the Bible urges us not to forget the corporate ones as we work toward salvation. We should "not abandon meeting together, as is the habit of some, but we should [come together] to encourage each other"(Heb. 10:25).
We can celebrate the return of the small group in recent years. John Wesley organized small groups like these with a rigor we would feel uncomfortable about today. But the idea was exactly what we need to work out our salvation together, not as a group afraid or insecure, but secure and optimistic in the love of God for us. When we think that the Corinthian church may have only constituted a group of about 40-50 people, we realize that they were far more accountable to each other than many of us are in our churches today.
We probably should not close our discussion without some mention of corporate sin. The goal is of course for us to find ourselves before God as a "glorious church, without spot or wrinkle" (Eph. 5:27). But it seems unfathomable that we will ever find the church on earth to be entirely pure. There is a place for the church as a whole to confess its corporate sin, particularly those things that we have left undone.
Luke and Acts especially speak of salvation in terms of the restoration of God's people and the forgiveness of their sins. To be sure, Luke-Acts think of this salvation firstly in terms of the forgiveness of Israel's sins and the restoration of Israel (formulated on the Israel of that day). But we find in these books a model for the forgiveness of the church today as it moves toward ultimate salvation.
The church is also meant to be God's yeast in the world, changing it by God's grace to be more and more like Him. It will not always be possible in every time and place for us to have great impact on our worlds. At least it may not seem that we are. But God calls the church to go and to make disciples. Acts does not model a pessimistic view of the success we will have in this task. We must keep in mind that the church that wrote Revelation and 1 Peter was a suffering church. In some times and places God does not foresee the times getting worse and worse. In some periods of history God has used the church to make things better and better.
Western culture pushes us to think of salvation and sanctification as an individual experience, but the Bible thinks about most of these things as much in corporate as individual terms. So while we tend to think of our individual bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit, Paul uses the plural word for you:
"your [plural] body is a temple of the Holy Spirit in you [plural]" (1 Cor. 6:19).
The Holy Spirit inhabits the church as his body even more than our individual bodies.
Similarly, Paul's prayer for the Thessalonians is "May the God of peace Himself sanctify you [plural] completely, and may your [plural] whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5:23). Paul equates belonging to God and thus being holy (being sanctified) to being free of blame. He prays that the Thessalonians will be this way collectively even more than for each one individually.
And so we are not surprised that Paul also encourages his churches to work together so that they are all saved on the Day of Judgment:
"So, my beloved ones, just as you always obeyed, not only when I was there but now even more now in my absence, work out your [plural] salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12).
As usual, Paul is speaking in the plural. The Philippians are to work together to help each other make it to the day of salvation.
The idea of "working" having anything to do with salvation goes against the grain of much Christian thinking today, but it was an essential element in Paul's understanding. Here it is important to point out the difference between justification--becoming right with God--and salvation--escaping God's wrath on the Day of Judgment because you remain right with Him. Only faith or trust is operative in justification. But God expects us to honor Him in response to His grace in order to be saved ultimately.
Paul only contrasted faith and works when he was writing about becoming a Christian. Even then, he primarily contrasted faith in Christ with works of the Jewish Law (e.g., Gal. 2:16). At the same time he made it clear that faith will yield a certain kind of "fruit" in one's life (e.g., Rom. 6:22). In 1 Thessalonians, Paul commends the Thessalonians for their "work of faith" (1:3).
Further, the same passage in Ephesians that says "by grace you have been saved through faith... not on the basis of works so that no one can boast" goes on in the very next verse to say,
"For we are his creation and we have been created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared ahead of time so that we might walk in them" (Eph. 2:10).
It is thus God's will that Christians walk together ("we") in a certain way after they are justified, a way that Ephesians calls "good works."
We can gain great clarity on these things if we realize that one way in which the original audiences of the New Testament would have understood grace, which is often defined as "unmerited favor," is in terms of what scholars call patron-client relationships. Patrons were wealthy individuals with excess resources. Clients were individuals who could use these resources. Patrons often gained honor and prestige in the ancient world by accruing clients to themselves. The clients of course did not earn or merit such hand outs--the giving was much greater than anything the client could return. But at the same time, the client was usually expected to do various things for the patron in turn, not least of which was give them honor for their giving. If they did not appropriately honor their patrons, the giving would of course stop.
While this model is not the only way early Christians would have understood their relationship with God, grace and gift language pushes us to see it as one way they did. God was a divine patron who freely gave to those who sought Him. No one could earn His divine patronage. On the other hand, the idea that such patronage came with no strings attached would have made no sense at all to any of the New Testament authors or audiences. After all, this is the same God who made a covenant with Israel in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 28 leaves no doubt that such a covenant involved clear expectations of God's people or else the relationship with specific individuals was severed.
Thus in the New Testament, God expects His people to serve Him in return for His gracious gift of justification and salvation. If they do not serve him, 1 John 5:16-17 speaks of a "sin unto death" that severs our relationship to God. Similarly, Hebrews 10:26-27 says,
"If we continue to sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, the sacrifice for sins no longer remains, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and of the eager fire that is about to eat God's enemies."
Paul himself expresses the need for faithfulness when he says things like
"So I run not as if I did not have a goal. So I box not as if I were beating the air. But I keep my body under control and I lead it as a slave so that I myself might not become disqualified somehow after I have preached to others" (1 Cor. 9:26-27).
And
"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings as I am conformed to his death, if somehow I might attain to the resurrection of the dead" (Phil. 3:8-11).
Even Paul himself did not believe his acceptance in Christ was unconditional. It demanded an appropriate response, a response Paul was determined to give.
Paul had not yet attained the resurrection. The next verse in Philippians 3 continues:
"Not that I have already received [resurrection] or have already been perfected [as I move into the next age], but I pursue [the resurrection] if also I might take hold of that for which I was even taken hold of by Christ. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of [this resurrection]. But one thing [I do], forgetting the things behind and reaching out to the things before me, I pursue with my eye on the goal the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:12-14).
It is common to think of Paul as forgetting his past sins and failures here when he says he is forgetting that which is behind. But we can only do that if we rip these words from their context. The earlier part of the chapter is a rehearsal of Paul's accomplishments on a human level--that which was "to my gain" (Phil. 3:7). Indeed, Paul here says that he had been blameless as far as the righteousness that was in the Jewish Law (3:6). This comment debunks the all too common notion that Paul felt like a failure at keeping the Law before he became a Christian. On the contrary, Luke 18:9-14 probably is a better picture of the pre-Christian Paul.
It is also common to see Paul's comments in Philippians 3:12-14 as a basis for the idea that "I'm not perfect, just forgiven." Again, you have to ignore what Paul has been talking about to interpret it this way. The verse that precedes this passage is talking about resurrection. Paul is saying he is not yet absolutely guaranteed a place in the resurrection and thus, salvation. I don't think Paul ever had serious doubts or felt insecure--nor should we. But he reminds the Philippians that they must remain faithful to God even after He has graciously made us right with Him through Christ (cf. Phil. 3:9).
Paul ends the section in this way:
"Therefore, as many of us as are perfect [mature], let us have this attitude. And if you think differently on something, God will also reveal this fact to you. However, let us walk appropriately to that which we have already reached" (Phil. 3:15-16).
After Paul has mentioned perfection as something that will happen at the resurrection (Phil. 3:12), he refers to the Philippians as already perfect or complete in a sense (3:15). The mature attitude is for them to continue together on their journey toward salvation. God will reveal areas of growth. But far from saying, you will mess up continually on things you've already mastered, Paul says not to fall back on those things. Move forward without falling back from where you are.
How can we move forward toward salvation together?
There are any number of obvious answers. We can pray for each other (1 John 5:16). We can carry each others burdens (Gal. 6:2). We can confess our sins to one another (James 5:16). We can intercede for others that we see sinning and work for their reconciliation (James 5:19-20).
There are any number of enslavements we know of today that most often seem healed through the care of others. We hear testimonies of instantaneous healing from various addictions in the past. Is it our lack of faith that keeps us from seeing them today? Regardless, God seems to work often today through the body of Christ and through others to bring us to healing on various enslavements in our lives. We should not shun each other. The person who tries to be victorious over some temptation alone today is often someone who repeatedly fails. The Bible urges us to bear each other's burdens, and this can only take place if we share them with people we trust and to whom we can be accountable.
Many Protestants are also prone to ignore various "means of grace" that God has given the church as a way of experiencing His presence and strength. If communion is practiced correctly, we should feel an extra shot of God's power after we have received it and be invigorated by the "communion" with the rest of the church.
Prayer and devotions have become means of grace in our time. But we've forgotten things like fasting, hospitality, and confession. Some of these things we can do in private to find God's strength in our struggle against sin. But the Bible urges us not to forget the corporate ones as we work toward salvation. We should "not abandon meeting together, as is the habit of some, but we should [come together] to encourage each other"(Heb. 10:25).
We can celebrate the return of the small group in recent years. John Wesley organized small groups like these with a rigor we would feel uncomfortable about today. But the idea was exactly what we need to work out our salvation together, not as a group afraid or insecure, but secure and optimistic in the love of God for us. When we think that the Corinthian church may have only constituted a group of about 40-50 people, we realize that they were far more accountable to each other than many of us are in our churches today.
We probably should not close our discussion without some mention of corporate sin. The goal is of course for us to find ourselves before God as a "glorious church, without spot or wrinkle" (Eph. 5:27). But it seems unfathomable that we will ever find the church on earth to be entirely pure. There is a place for the church as a whole to confess its corporate sin, particularly those things that we have left undone.
Luke and Acts especially speak of salvation in terms of the restoration of God's people and the forgiveness of their sins. To be sure, Luke-Acts think of this salvation firstly in terms of the forgiveness of Israel's sins and the restoration of Israel (formulated on the Israel of that day). But we find in these books a model for the forgiveness of the church today as it moves toward ultimate salvation.
The church is also meant to be God's yeast in the world, changing it by God's grace to be more and more like Him. It will not always be possible in every time and place for us to have great impact on our worlds. At least it may not seem that we are. But God calls the church to go and to make disciples. Acts does not model a pessimistic view of the success we will have in this task. We must keep in mind that the church that wrote Revelation and 1 Peter was a suffering church. In some times and places God does not foresee the times getting worse and worse. In some periods of history God has used the church to make things better and better.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Biblical Salvation 5
5. From Theory to Practice
It is fairly clear in theory that the New Testament teaches that Christians are supposed to be consistently victorious over the temptation to sin. But even if we did not look any more at the New Testament, we would all affirm that this theory doesn't always make it to our practice.
1 John 2:1-2 powerfully attest to this fact:
"My children, I am writing these things to you so that you will not sin. And if someone should sin, we have an advocate with the Father: Jesus Christ the righteous one. And he himself is an atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only our sins, but even for the sins of the whole world."
Similarly, in the middle of Paul's presentation of the powerful truth of victory over slavery to sin, Paul writes,
"Do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies so that you obey its desires" (Rom. 6:12).
Willful sin remains a possibility for believers, even if they have the Spirit. While we should be free from the power sin can have over our mortal bodies, in a sense, the power of sin is only as far away as our bodies, just as victory over sin is only as far away as the Holy Spirit.
The Corinthian church provides us with a helpful, although unfortunate example of the fact that Christians can be torn between "flesh" and "spirit." On the one hand, Paul refers to the members of this church as "sanctified" (1 Cor. 1:2)--they belong to God and are set apart by the Spirit as His. They are the "temple of God," and "the Spirit of God dwells in you" (1 Cor. 16).
Yet at the same time, they were fleshly:
"I was not able to speak to you as to spiritual people but as to people made of flesh, babies in Christ. I gave you milk to drink and not solid food, for you were not yet able. Even now you are not able [to stomach it]. For you are still fleshly" (1 Cor. 3:1-3).
While the Corinthians claimed to be spiritual, Paul makes it clear that they are not really.
What did their fleshliness look like? It looked like the deeds of the flesh Paul mentions in Galatians 5:19-21.
"You are still fleshly. For when there is jealousy and strife, are you not fleshly and walking on a human level?" (1 Cor. 3:3).
Here we have a sharp point of dissonance between where the Corinthians were and where they needed to be. Paul encourages them to "become what they are."
Again, we should not think of their fleshliness in terms of passing desires or of thoughts swirling around in their minds. 1 Corinthians is a testimony to the concrete ways in which jealousy and strife were showing themselves in the every day lives of the church.
Historically, various traditions have taken different approaches to the question of "becoming what you are" in Christ. Among those with an optimistic view of God's power over sin, some have still seen the Christian life as an endless struggle between a desire to sin and God's power over temptation (Keswick). John Wesley had some days of optimism, in which he taught a person could in God's timing deliver you even from an orientation toward sinning.<1> On his pessimistic days, he might see this moment just before death. Phoebe Palmer in the 1800's argued for a "shorter way." She saw God's removal of the bent toward sin as a matter of faith that a Christian might appropriate almost immediately after coming to Christ.
All these discussions go well beyond anything a New Testament author would recognize. Paul was dealing with someone who wanted to do good but couldn't, not with someone who could do good, but had a part that didn't want to. Nevertheless, these traditions bespeak a common truth: that God can make you consistently victorious over sin in this life and that He can even change a person's bent toward sin.
Some testify to an instantaneous moment when they experienced an empowerment over sin of immense proportions, a time when after long struggling with the desire for sin they were freed and empowered. Others would attest to a gradual empowerment over certain desires and struggles over time. Regardless of the path, the destination is clear--God can and wants to give us the power to defeat sin in our lives, whatever its form.
God will scarcely do this work for us unless we are a "fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ," to use a phrase made popular by Bill Hybels at Willow Creek Community Church. The first step in power over sin is to surrender our lives as best we know how to God. Sure, new things will enter our lives--we will need to surrender those as they arise. And from time to time we might struggle again with things over which we had previously seen victory--we must surrender them again. But God will only "fill" those parts of our lives that we have made available to Him.
But ultimately, power over sin and an orientation toward righteousness is not something we can do in our own power. Becoming a "fully empowered follower of Jesus Christ" is only something God can do for us through His Holy Spirit. This is a matter of faith and, as we will see, usually involves God's church.
"Therefore, in the light of God's mercy, I urge you, brothers, to be presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice, well pleasing to God, your appropriate service of worship. And stop being conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you can demonstrate what the will of God is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will" (Rom. 12:1-2).
<1> I am indebted to Dr. Chris Bounds of Indiana Wesleyan University for this breakdown of movements in the Wesleyan tradition.
It is fairly clear in theory that the New Testament teaches that Christians are supposed to be consistently victorious over the temptation to sin. But even if we did not look any more at the New Testament, we would all affirm that this theory doesn't always make it to our practice.
1 John 2:1-2 powerfully attest to this fact:
"My children, I am writing these things to you so that you will not sin. And if someone should sin, we have an advocate with the Father: Jesus Christ the righteous one. And he himself is an atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only our sins, but even for the sins of the whole world."
Similarly, in the middle of Paul's presentation of the powerful truth of victory over slavery to sin, Paul writes,
"Do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies so that you obey its desires" (Rom. 6:12).
Willful sin remains a possibility for believers, even if they have the Spirit. While we should be free from the power sin can have over our mortal bodies, in a sense, the power of sin is only as far away as our bodies, just as victory over sin is only as far away as the Holy Spirit.
The Corinthian church provides us with a helpful, although unfortunate example of the fact that Christians can be torn between "flesh" and "spirit." On the one hand, Paul refers to the members of this church as "sanctified" (1 Cor. 1:2)--they belong to God and are set apart by the Spirit as His. They are the "temple of God," and "the Spirit of God dwells in you" (1 Cor. 16).
Yet at the same time, they were fleshly:
"I was not able to speak to you as to spiritual people but as to people made of flesh, babies in Christ. I gave you milk to drink and not solid food, for you were not yet able. Even now you are not able [to stomach it]. For you are still fleshly" (1 Cor. 3:1-3).
While the Corinthians claimed to be spiritual, Paul makes it clear that they are not really.
What did their fleshliness look like? It looked like the deeds of the flesh Paul mentions in Galatians 5:19-21.
"You are still fleshly. For when there is jealousy and strife, are you not fleshly and walking on a human level?" (1 Cor. 3:3).
Here we have a sharp point of dissonance between where the Corinthians were and where they needed to be. Paul encourages them to "become what they are."
Again, we should not think of their fleshliness in terms of passing desires or of thoughts swirling around in their minds. 1 Corinthians is a testimony to the concrete ways in which jealousy and strife were showing themselves in the every day lives of the church.
Historically, various traditions have taken different approaches to the question of "becoming what you are" in Christ. Among those with an optimistic view of God's power over sin, some have still seen the Christian life as an endless struggle between a desire to sin and God's power over temptation (Keswick). John Wesley had some days of optimism, in which he taught a person could in God's timing deliver you even from an orientation toward sinning.<1> On his pessimistic days, he might see this moment just before death. Phoebe Palmer in the 1800's argued for a "shorter way." She saw God's removal of the bent toward sin as a matter of faith that a Christian might appropriate almost immediately after coming to Christ.
All these discussions go well beyond anything a New Testament author would recognize. Paul was dealing with someone who wanted to do good but couldn't, not with someone who could do good, but had a part that didn't want to. Nevertheless, these traditions bespeak a common truth: that God can make you consistently victorious over sin in this life and that He can even change a person's bent toward sin.
Some testify to an instantaneous moment when they experienced an empowerment over sin of immense proportions, a time when after long struggling with the desire for sin they were freed and empowered. Others would attest to a gradual empowerment over certain desires and struggles over time. Regardless of the path, the destination is clear--God can and wants to give us the power to defeat sin in our lives, whatever its form.
God will scarcely do this work for us unless we are a "fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ," to use a phrase made popular by Bill Hybels at Willow Creek Community Church. The first step in power over sin is to surrender our lives as best we know how to God. Sure, new things will enter our lives--we will need to surrender those as they arise. And from time to time we might struggle again with things over which we had previously seen victory--we must surrender them again. But God will only "fill" those parts of our lives that we have made available to Him.
But ultimately, power over sin and an orientation toward righteousness is not something we can do in our own power. Becoming a "fully empowered follower of Jesus Christ" is only something God can do for us through His Holy Spirit. This is a matter of faith and, as we will see, usually involves God's church.
"Therefore, in the light of God's mercy, I urge you, brothers, to be presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice, well pleasing to God, your appropriate service of worship. And stop being conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you can demonstrate what the will of God is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will" (Rom. 12:1-2).
<1> I am indebted to Dr. Chris Bounds of Indiana Wesleyan University for this breakdown of movements in the Wesleyan tradition.
Biblical Salvation 4
4. Saved from the power of sin
An area of the New Testament's teaching that is greatly misunderstood is the place of sin in the life of a Christian. You will commonly hear Christians today say that a Christian cannot help but sin, that sin is part of what it is to be human.
In some senses of the word "sin," this sentiment is true. We will never be absolutely perfect in what we do. Take sins of omission, for example, most if not all of us from time to time will unintentionally fail to do things we should have done. Or take sins of ignorance: most if not all of us will unintentionally wrong others or fail to give God His due at some point or another. The Old Testament considers these kinds of wrongdoing sin and requires their atonement.
But for the most part, the New Testament is not referring to these types of sin when it ascribes blame. The New Testament almost exclusively is thinking of willful, intentional wrongdoing when it speaks of sin. I can honestly say that there is not a single passage in the New Testament that teaches a Christian cannot help but sin intentionally. The New Testament teaches that all have sinned (Rom. 3:23; 1 John 1:10) and thus that all of us have sin that we need Christ to cleanse (1 John 1:8). But it does not teach that Christians cannot help but do sin.
While the New Testament does not use the word "salvation" in reference to the power of sin, part of being in Christ is being saved from the power of sin over our lives, the power that makes it impossible to "do the good" we might want to do. One of the most important respects in which we can be saved today literally is being saved from the death grip of sin over our lives and the way we live. Paul puts it in this way:
"What will we say? Should we remain in sin so that grace might abound? Certainly not! How will we who have died to sin still live in it?" (Rom. 6:1).
And again,
"For when you were slaves of sin, you were free to righteousness..., but now that you have been set free from sin and enslaved to God, you have your fruit in holiness and the end result of it is eternal life" (Rom. 6:20, 22).
"For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins aroused through the Law used to work in our members, so that we bore fruit to death, but now because we have died [with Christ] we have been released from the Law by which we used to be held so that we might serve in the newness of the Spirit..." (Rom. 7:5-6).
"There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:1-2).
"A wretched human am I! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Praise be to God! Through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 7:24-25).
Some will notice that I have given Paul's words both before and after a famous passage that is often quoted to say that Paul did not believe a Christian could ever keep from sinning. The broader context in Romans makes this popular reading impossible. When Paul says "the Law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold under sin" (Rom. 7:14), he cannot be talking about his current experience without contradicting his entire train of thought in Romans 6-8. He has already made it powerfully clear that Christians--including himself--are no longer "slaves of sin" but "have been freed" (Rom. 6:20, 22 above).
It is an atrocious and violent misreading of Paul to see Romans 7:13-24 as a testimony to Paul's failure at keeping the Law. If we read these verses in context rather than ripping them out of Romans, they are Paul explaining why a person under the Law is unable to do good even if he or she wants to.
But in Paul's thought, a Christian is no longer under the Law. These verses in Romans 7 thus depict a person who might want to do good, but who does not have the Spirit to enable them actually to do it. Such a person in Paul's thought is still "in the flesh," under the power of sin over human flesh. Such a person might say, "I find a rule in me--the one who wants to do the good--that bad is present in me" (Rom. 7:21).
It is a beginner's understanding of language that thinks the present tense always means present time. Let's say I am wanting to talk about what it is like to want to do good but not be able to do it. Although I try to do good, I can't because of the power sin has over me. This last sentence is in the present tense, but I was not talking about my current experience. I was talking in vivid terms about the person who is "in the flesh" rather than in the Spirit.
But Paul pleads for us to read on.
"Those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:8).
This is a somewhat difficult passage for us to get our minds around. Did Paul not write these words while he was in his body? The flesh for Paul must have something to do with our "mortal bodies" or else it is a strange word to use. We can think of the flesh for Paul as our bodies under the power of sin. To be under the power of sin for Paul primarily meant that we found ourselves helpless against tempation, we could not help but give into it and sin.
To be freed from the power of sin is thus to do the right, to "fulfill the righteous requirement of the law" (Rom. 8:4). Paul and other New Testament authors sum up the essence of the law as loving of our neighbors and enemies (e.g., Matt. 5:44, 48; 22:34-40; Rom. 13:8-10; James 2:8). Or in another place, Paul tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23).
In contrast the kinds of things that a Christian can be victorious over include: "sexual immorality, uncleanness, indecency, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, strife, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, divisiveness, factionalism, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things that are similar to these" (Gal. 5:19-21). Paul calls these the deeds of the flesh, and strongly affirms that if a person will "walk by the Spirit and you will never follow through with the desire of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16).
We find similar passages elsewhere in the New Testament that make it clear that a Christian should be victorious over temptation and not sin intentionally:
"No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to humanity. And God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are capable. But He will make with the temptation a way of escape so you are able to bear it" (1 Corinthians 10:13).
An area of the New Testament's teaching that is greatly misunderstood is the place of sin in the life of a Christian. You will commonly hear Christians today say that a Christian cannot help but sin, that sin is part of what it is to be human.
In some senses of the word "sin," this sentiment is true. We will never be absolutely perfect in what we do. Take sins of omission, for example, most if not all of us from time to time will unintentionally fail to do things we should have done. Or take sins of ignorance: most if not all of us will unintentionally wrong others or fail to give God His due at some point or another. The Old Testament considers these kinds of wrongdoing sin and requires their atonement.
But for the most part, the New Testament is not referring to these types of sin when it ascribes blame. The New Testament almost exclusively is thinking of willful, intentional wrongdoing when it speaks of sin. I can honestly say that there is not a single passage in the New Testament that teaches a Christian cannot help but sin intentionally. The New Testament teaches that all have sinned (Rom. 3:23; 1 John 1:10) and thus that all of us have sin that we need Christ to cleanse (1 John 1:8). But it does not teach that Christians cannot help but do sin.
While the New Testament does not use the word "salvation" in reference to the power of sin, part of being in Christ is being saved from the power of sin over our lives, the power that makes it impossible to "do the good" we might want to do. One of the most important respects in which we can be saved today literally is being saved from the death grip of sin over our lives and the way we live. Paul puts it in this way:
"What will we say? Should we remain in sin so that grace might abound? Certainly not! How will we who have died to sin still live in it?" (Rom. 6:1).
And again,
"For when you were slaves of sin, you were free to righteousness..., but now that you have been set free from sin and enslaved to God, you have your fruit in holiness and the end result of it is eternal life" (Rom. 6:20, 22).
"For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins aroused through the Law used to work in our members, so that we bore fruit to death, but now because we have died [with Christ] we have been released from the Law by which we used to be held so that we might serve in the newness of the Spirit..." (Rom. 7:5-6).
"There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:1-2).
"A wretched human am I! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Praise be to God! Through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 7:24-25).
Some will notice that I have given Paul's words both before and after a famous passage that is often quoted to say that Paul did not believe a Christian could ever keep from sinning. The broader context in Romans makes this popular reading impossible. When Paul says "the Law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold under sin" (Rom. 7:14), he cannot be talking about his current experience without contradicting his entire train of thought in Romans 6-8. He has already made it powerfully clear that Christians--including himself--are no longer "slaves of sin" but "have been freed" (Rom. 6:20, 22 above).
It is an atrocious and violent misreading of Paul to see Romans 7:13-24 as a testimony to Paul's failure at keeping the Law. If we read these verses in context rather than ripping them out of Romans, they are Paul explaining why a person under the Law is unable to do good even if he or she wants to.
But in Paul's thought, a Christian is no longer under the Law. These verses in Romans 7 thus depict a person who might want to do good, but who does not have the Spirit to enable them actually to do it. Such a person in Paul's thought is still "in the flesh," under the power of sin over human flesh. Such a person might say, "I find a rule in me--the one who wants to do the good--that bad is present in me" (Rom. 7:21).
It is a beginner's understanding of language that thinks the present tense always means present time. Let's say I am wanting to talk about what it is like to want to do good but not be able to do it. Although I try to do good, I can't because of the power sin has over me. This last sentence is in the present tense, but I was not talking about my current experience. I was talking in vivid terms about the person who is "in the flesh" rather than in the Spirit.
But Paul pleads for us to read on.
"Those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:8).
This is a somewhat difficult passage for us to get our minds around. Did Paul not write these words while he was in his body? The flesh for Paul must have something to do with our "mortal bodies" or else it is a strange word to use. We can think of the flesh for Paul as our bodies under the power of sin. To be under the power of sin for Paul primarily meant that we found ourselves helpless against tempation, we could not help but give into it and sin.
To be freed from the power of sin is thus to do the right, to "fulfill the righteous requirement of the law" (Rom. 8:4). Paul and other New Testament authors sum up the essence of the law as loving of our neighbors and enemies (e.g., Matt. 5:44, 48; 22:34-40; Rom. 13:8-10; James 2:8). Or in another place, Paul tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23).
In contrast the kinds of things that a Christian can be victorious over include: "sexual immorality, uncleanness, indecency, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, strife, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, divisiveness, factionalism, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things that are similar to these" (Gal. 5:19-21). Paul calls these the deeds of the flesh, and strongly affirms that if a person will "walk by the Spirit and you will never follow through with the desire of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16).
We find similar passages elsewhere in the New Testament that make it clear that a Christian should be victorious over temptation and not sin intentionally:
"No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to humanity. And God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are capable. But He will make with the temptation a way of escape so you are able to bear it" (1 Corinthians 10:13).
"Everyone who has been born of God does not practice sin, because God's seed remains in him. And he is not able to be sinning because he has been born of God" (1 John 3:9).
The New Testament authors thus taught that the norm for a Christian was to beat any temptation to sin that comes your way. Many debates have arisen over the particulars of this claim. Some have simply reinterpreted the words to mean something else--surely Paul could not have meant such a thing. Others have systematized and internalized Paul's words in ways that take them well beyond anything he was thinking. While we expect Christian thinkers to expand and re-appropriate the New Testament's teaching in our categories, we should remember the simple aspects of the New Testament's way of thinking.
Thus these authors were not talking about feelings or, really, even about attitudes or orientations as we conceptualize them. We have become very introspective in modern culture, and we think a lot about things that go on in our heads that never express themselves in concrete action or even become clear intentions. Feelings in themselves are neither good or bad; they just are. It's what we do with them that relates to sin--and whether they are moving in a certain direction over time.
But the power of sin for Paul referred to concrete action or concrete intention. He would not recognize our debates about whether God eradicates or suppresses a fleshly, carnal nature inside us. If we are victorious over sin, then we are freed from sin in his mind.
To be sure, we can sin intentionally and concretely in our heads as well. Thus the Sermon on the Mount indicts not just the person who has an affair, but the person who plans one out in his or her head. But Jesus was not likely referring to passing thoughts or feelings. The ancient mind just wasn't wired to focus in on such detail about our internal eddies of thought and emotion. As one contemporary proverb says, "You can't keep a bird from flying over your head, but you can keep it from making a nest in your hair."
Therefore, in theory, all Christians should be consistently victorious over temptation and should not sin intentionally and willfully.
Biblical Salvation 3
3. Signing up for salvation
Christians today often talk about when they got "saved." What they mean is when they "signed up" for salvation.
Romans 10:9 gives us a simple overview of how we can reserve our salvation on the Day of Judgment:
"If you confess with your mouth 'Jesus is Lord,' and have faith in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
The apostle Paul argued both with his fellow Jews and even some other Christians about how a person might be considered right with God. Some of his Jewish brothers thought that they had inherited acceptance with God because of God's relationship with Israel in the Old Testament. Paul disagreed:
"All [that is, both Jew and Gentile] have sinned and are lacking the glory of God [intended for humanity]."
Paul had been very diligent at keeping the Jewish law (cf. Phil. 3:6), so when he found out even he was not right with God, he concluded that no one could be right with God apart from Christ:
"We reckon that a person is considered right with God on the basis of faith apart from keeping the Jewish law" (Rom. 3:28).
This faith is a trust in what God has done for us through Jesus Christ. God considers those right with God "who have faith in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification" (Rom. 4:24-26).
Justification is a legal term that has to do with us being considered acceptable to God. If we think of a court scene, it is being acquitted of sin and being found "not guilty." God "justifies" us, declares us right with Him, if we trust in what he has done through the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ. Further, we accept Jesus as the Lord of all, as we saw above in Romans 10:9.
Our faith in God and Christ thus brings about our justification:
"Therefore, since we have been justified on the basis of faith we have peace with God" (Rom. 5:1).
Acts 2:38 also speaks of repentance and baptism as a part of being reconciled to God:
"Repent and let each of you be baptized on the basis of the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."
In this response of Peter to the Jewish crowds in Jerusalem, Acts gives us some other important pieces to the puzzle of signing up for salvation. We must turn toward God and away from those aspects of our lives that have been contrary to Him. Water baptism represents the cleansing of our sins and God's forgiveness.
But the most essential component of all in coming to Christ is God's part. After God justifies us on the basis of our faith in Him, His Holy Spirit enters our life and makes us officially His: "you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."
Paul says on this topic that "if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not of Him" (Rom. 8:9). God is "the one who has sealed us [in ownership] and has given us the guaranteeing down payment of the Holy Spirit in our hearts" (2 Cor. 1:22). The Holy Spirit inside a Christian thus is the tell-tale sign of God's ownership of us. Spirit is the stuff of heaven, and the Holy Spirit inside us is a foretaste of glory divine.
Acts tells us that receiving the Holy Spirit involves a cleansing of the heart on the basis of faith (Acts 15:9). 2 Thessalonians 2:13 speaks of God choosing the Thessalonian church "for salvation by the sanctification of the Spirit and by trust in the truth." Sanctification means that something becomes holy--it comes to belong to God. You don't treat lightly something that belongs to a god.
The term holiness has as much of a feel to it as a definition. It is the godness or holiness of God that led the prophet Isaiah to fall on his face in Isaiah 6. It was the godness or holiness of God that led Israel to put to death any animal that happened to touch the mountain where God was speaking to Moses in Exodus 19. When 1 Peter 1:16 says "Be holy, because I am holy," it means to live in a manner that is worthy of the One to whom you belong.
If we think of sin as something that makes us dirty, the sanctification we experience when we become a Christian is like a cleansing, as we saw in Acts 15:9 above. Hebrews 9:14 tells us of the cleansing of our spirits that takes place as the sacrifice of Christ sanctifies and cleanses us of our past sins.
We can tie all these images together:
1. We "sign up" for salvation by placing our faith in what God has done for us in Christ, including Christ's sacrificial death and his victorious resurrection. By acknowledging Christ's resurrection we acknowledge him as Lord. In response, God justifies us and considers us right with Him, acquitted of our sins.
2. We must repent or turn from our sins if this faith in God is to be authentic.
3. We will be baptized in water as a demonstration of the cleansing God does inside us.
4. God will cleanse our "inside" by sending His Holy Spirit in our hearts. This sanctifies us or makes us God's possession.
As we will see, it also empowers us!
Christians today often talk about when they got "saved." What they mean is when they "signed up" for salvation.
Romans 10:9 gives us a simple overview of how we can reserve our salvation on the Day of Judgment:
"If you confess with your mouth 'Jesus is Lord,' and have faith in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
The apostle Paul argued both with his fellow Jews and even some other Christians about how a person might be considered right with God. Some of his Jewish brothers thought that they had inherited acceptance with God because of God's relationship with Israel in the Old Testament. Paul disagreed:
"All [that is, both Jew and Gentile] have sinned and are lacking the glory of God [intended for humanity]."
Paul had been very diligent at keeping the Jewish law (cf. Phil. 3:6), so when he found out even he was not right with God, he concluded that no one could be right with God apart from Christ:
"We reckon that a person is considered right with God on the basis of faith apart from keeping the Jewish law" (Rom. 3:28).
This faith is a trust in what God has done for us through Jesus Christ. God considers those right with God "who have faith in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification" (Rom. 4:24-26).
Justification is a legal term that has to do with us being considered acceptable to God. If we think of a court scene, it is being acquitted of sin and being found "not guilty." God "justifies" us, declares us right with Him, if we trust in what he has done through the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ. Further, we accept Jesus as the Lord of all, as we saw above in Romans 10:9.
Our faith in God and Christ thus brings about our justification:
"Therefore, since we have been justified on the basis of faith we have peace with God" (Rom. 5:1).
Acts 2:38 also speaks of repentance and baptism as a part of being reconciled to God:
"Repent and let each of you be baptized on the basis of the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."
In this response of Peter to the Jewish crowds in Jerusalem, Acts gives us some other important pieces to the puzzle of signing up for salvation. We must turn toward God and away from those aspects of our lives that have been contrary to Him. Water baptism represents the cleansing of our sins and God's forgiveness.
But the most essential component of all in coming to Christ is God's part. After God justifies us on the basis of our faith in Him, His Holy Spirit enters our life and makes us officially His: "you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."
Paul says on this topic that "if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not of Him" (Rom. 8:9). God is "the one who has sealed us [in ownership] and has given us the guaranteeing down payment of the Holy Spirit in our hearts" (2 Cor. 1:22). The Holy Spirit inside a Christian thus is the tell-tale sign of God's ownership of us. Spirit is the stuff of heaven, and the Holy Spirit inside us is a foretaste of glory divine.
Acts tells us that receiving the Holy Spirit involves a cleansing of the heart on the basis of faith (Acts 15:9). 2 Thessalonians 2:13 speaks of God choosing the Thessalonian church "for salvation by the sanctification of the Spirit and by trust in the truth." Sanctification means that something becomes holy--it comes to belong to God. You don't treat lightly something that belongs to a god.
The term holiness has as much of a feel to it as a definition. It is the godness or holiness of God that led the prophet Isaiah to fall on his face in Isaiah 6. It was the godness or holiness of God that led Israel to put to death any animal that happened to touch the mountain where God was speaking to Moses in Exodus 19. When 1 Peter 1:16 says "Be holy, because I am holy," it means to live in a manner that is worthy of the One to whom you belong.
If we think of sin as something that makes us dirty, the sanctification we experience when we become a Christian is like a cleansing, as we saw in Acts 15:9 above. Hebrews 9:14 tells us of the cleansing of our spirits that takes place as the sacrifice of Christ sanctifies and cleanses us of our past sins.
We can tie all these images together:
1. We "sign up" for salvation by placing our faith in what God has done for us in Christ, including Christ's sacrificial death and his victorious resurrection. By acknowledging Christ's resurrection we acknowledge him as Lord. In response, God justifies us and considers us right with Him, acquitted of our sins.
2. We must repent or turn from our sins if this faith in God is to be authentic.
3. We will be baptized in water as a demonstration of the cleansing God does inside us.
4. God will cleanse our "inside" by sending His Holy Spirit in our hearts. This sanctifies us or makes us God's possession.
As we will see, it also empowers us!
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