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.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
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!
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Biblical Salvation 2
2. Salvation is a "Done Deal."
So in the most literal sense of salvation, we have not been saved yet, for the wrath of God has not yet come upon the world. Nevertheless, we can be saved from the power of sin even in this world.
In a very real and objective sense, salvation is already accomplished, for Christ has already atoned for sins. His sacrifice cannot be undone. Salvation is a "done deal." It will take place for the creation and those who are "in him."
Hebrews 10:14 captures this truth majestically:
"With one offering he has perfected forever those who become sanctified."
We must be very careful as we read this verse to hear it on Hebrews' terms and not on the terms of our current Christian traditions. In particular, Hebrews thinks of human "perfection" and "sanctification" (making holy, making God's) in reference to the initial cleansing event when a person appropriates Christ's sacrifice, things that happen when you first become a Christian (cf. Heb. 9:13-14; 10:1-2). More about these things to come.
Our interest at this point is the fact that Christ has already done it. Hebrews words this verse in a way that says the act that perfects and sanctifies us is already completed. The offering it mentions is the death of Jesus, his sacrifice for sins. Romans 3:25 puts it in this way:
"God in His faithfulness offered Jesus as an atoning sacrifice through His blood."
The idea of a sacrifice is somewhat foreign to us today, but it was part of daily life throughout the ancient world. To keep the gods from getting angry, ancient peoples offered them animals both to appease their potential anger and as a kind of substitute for themselves.
Does God really require blood sacrifices? It is common in many Christian circles today to say that because justice is intrinsic to God's nature, someone has to pay for the sins against Him that people have committed.
On the one hand, there is good biblical evidence that God has set up things this way:
"Nearly everything is cleansed by blood according to the Law, and apart from the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Heb. 9:22).
Yet God could probably declare forgiveness by a divine order if He wanted to do so. The Parable of the Prodigal Son and the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant say nothing of someone having to pay. Those who represent God in these parables simply forgive by their command.
God thus chooses sacrifice because it teaches us about justice and about the judgment that awaits those who do not ultimately submit to His rule (Rom. 2:25-26). At the same time it demonstrates His great love for us in that God is willing to substitute His own Son for our reconciliation to Him (Rom. 5:8). For the first readers of the Bible, the idea of sacrifice and atonement was something they could understand and identify with immediately.
But with Christ, all sacrifice of this sort is now at an end. With one offering, atonement is accomplished. No amount of action or work on our part could secure what Christ did for us on the cross. It is strictly God's gracious willingness to count Christ's faithful death as atonement that effects our salvation:
"By grace you have been saved through your trust [in God], and this is not something of your instigation. It is the gift of God, not on the basis of your actions, so that no one can boast [about it]" (Eph. 2:8-9).
Ephesians' wording is careful--you are now in a saved state because you have trusted in what God has done through Christ. Although salvation is technically still a future event (cf. Eph. 1:13-14), your faith has secured your reservation. It's a done deal.
As Christians, we do not have to fear the future wrath of God, because Christ has atoned for sins. "We will be saved from wrath through his blood" (Rom. 5:9). As we will see, we are also freed from the power of sin as well through Christ:
"In his death, he died once and for all to sin; in his life, he lives to God. So also you also must reckon yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 6:10-11).
Salvation is a done deal. All we need to do is sign up for it.
So in the most literal sense of salvation, we have not been saved yet, for the wrath of God has not yet come upon the world. Nevertheless, we can be saved from the power of sin even in this world.
In a very real and objective sense, salvation is already accomplished, for Christ has already atoned for sins. His sacrifice cannot be undone. Salvation is a "done deal." It will take place for the creation and those who are "in him."
Hebrews 10:14 captures this truth majestically:
"With one offering he has perfected forever those who become sanctified."
We must be very careful as we read this verse to hear it on Hebrews' terms and not on the terms of our current Christian traditions. In particular, Hebrews thinks of human "perfection" and "sanctification" (making holy, making God's) in reference to the initial cleansing event when a person appropriates Christ's sacrifice, things that happen when you first become a Christian (cf. Heb. 9:13-14; 10:1-2). More about these things to come.
Our interest at this point is the fact that Christ has already done it. Hebrews words this verse in a way that says the act that perfects and sanctifies us is already completed. The offering it mentions is the death of Jesus, his sacrifice for sins. Romans 3:25 puts it in this way:
"God in His faithfulness offered Jesus as an atoning sacrifice through His blood."
The idea of a sacrifice is somewhat foreign to us today, but it was part of daily life throughout the ancient world. To keep the gods from getting angry, ancient peoples offered them animals both to appease their potential anger and as a kind of substitute for themselves.
Does God really require blood sacrifices? It is common in many Christian circles today to say that because justice is intrinsic to God's nature, someone has to pay for the sins against Him that people have committed.
On the one hand, there is good biblical evidence that God has set up things this way:
"Nearly everything is cleansed by blood according to the Law, and apart from the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Heb. 9:22).
Yet God could probably declare forgiveness by a divine order if He wanted to do so. The Parable of the Prodigal Son and the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant say nothing of someone having to pay. Those who represent God in these parables simply forgive by their command.
God thus chooses sacrifice because it teaches us about justice and about the judgment that awaits those who do not ultimately submit to His rule (Rom. 2:25-26). At the same time it demonstrates His great love for us in that God is willing to substitute His own Son for our reconciliation to Him (Rom. 5:8). For the first readers of the Bible, the idea of sacrifice and atonement was something they could understand and identify with immediately.
But with Christ, all sacrifice of this sort is now at an end. With one offering, atonement is accomplished. No amount of action or work on our part could secure what Christ did for us on the cross. It is strictly God's gracious willingness to count Christ's faithful death as atonement that effects our salvation:
"By grace you have been saved through your trust [in God], and this is not something of your instigation. It is the gift of God, not on the basis of your actions, so that no one can boast [about it]" (Eph. 2:8-9).
Ephesians' wording is careful--you are now in a saved state because you have trusted in what God has done through Christ. Although salvation is technically still a future event (cf. Eph. 1:13-14), your faith has secured your reservation. It's a done deal.
As Christians, we do not have to fear the future wrath of God, because Christ has atoned for sins. "We will be saved from wrath through his blood" (Rom. 5:9). As we will see, we are also freed from the power of sin as well through Christ:
"In his death, he died once and for all to sin; in his life, he lives to God. So also you also must reckon yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 6:10-11).
Salvation is a done deal. All we need to do is sign up for it.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
A Short Account of Biblical Salvation 1
This is not the manuscript I'm "running" for the July 15th contest, but my debriefing from the Saving Grace conference.
1. What are we saved from?
Before we can talk about what the New Testament means by salvation, we must figure out what we are being saved from. If I were to ask most Christians to answer this question, I suspect the first answer they would give is “sin.” Salvation is when we are saved from our sins.
But what does that mean? Are my sins out to get me? Are they lurking just around the corner waiting to jump out at me? In a sense they are! But that is not usually what a person means when he or she speaks of being saved from sins.
What we more likely mean is that we want to be saved from the consequences of our sins. In at least one respect, our world today can identify with the idea that certain actions bring about horrible consequences. Someone has an affair and a marriage falls apart. We are startled to find our children with judgmental or hateful attitudes we have modeled in front of them. You do something in a moment of rage with consequences you never foresaw or would have wanted.
The Bible places actions like these into the context of our relationship with God and calls them sins. 1 John 5:17 has perhaps the simplest definition of sin in the Bible: “all wrongdoing is sin.” It is not hard to figure out what wrongdoing is in relation to others. In general, it is anything that is hurtful or harmful in some way. Such “sins” against others can be intentional or unintentional. It is particularly hurtful if I intentionally ignore my wife’s birthday. But I have still wronged her if I forget it unintentionally.
This last example also reflects the fact that I can both sin against others by things I do and by things I don’t do. We might call the first wrong a sin of commission--it is something I do. The second is a sin of omission--it is something I do not do.
Further, groups can sin, even beyond the actions of individuals. If I had been a German in Nazi Germany, I would feel some sense of guilt for the Holocaust, even if I had opposed Hitler and had not been a Nazi. How could we have sinned against God and humanity in this way? We can thus distinguish between individual sins and corporate sins. This particular kind of sin is difficult for us to identify with, given individualistic Western culture. Nevertheless, we must at least reckon with it as a part of biblical culture (e.g., 2 Kings 23:26-27; Josh. 7:24-25).
Once again, the Bible places these different types of wrongdoing into the context of our relationship with God and calls them sin. The Bible mentions all these types of sin. Here two examples:
"It is sin if someone knows to do good and does not do it" (James 4:17). James refers here to an individual, intentional sin of omission.
"But into the second room the high priest enters only once a year, and he does not enter without blood to offer on behalf of himself and the sins that the people have committed in ignorance" (Hebrews 9:7). Hebrews here refers both to individual and corporate sins that Israel had committed in ignorance.
But the worst sins of all are those that by their nature do not acknowledge God as God. I believe that most of these sins come from the fact that we do not even take God into account in our lives--a horrible thing when you reflect that God is the one who owns this world. Would we treat lightly or ignore someone who had the power to prosper or destroy us? Christianity believes that God is interested in how we honor or dishonor Him. While the Bible portrays Him as loving to extremes unheard of on earth, it also teaches He ultimately will destroy those who do not recognize His authority over the universe.
We find both positive and negative examples of what serving and sinning against God look like. Here are two examples:
"Everything you do--whether in word or in action--do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, while giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Col. 3:17). Here is a positive example of how we can properly serve God--by factoring Christ into everything we do.
On the other hand: "Whatever is not [done] on the basis of faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23). Paul here is talking about instances where Christians disagree on what is right or wrong. While you can be convincedly wrongly, Paul teaches that what is most important is that you act in good faith toward God.
So what might it mean then to be saved from our sins? There are two principal ways in which God saves us from our sins through Christ.
1. God can save us from the power of sin over our lives today in this world. We will be talking about this possibility later in our short account.
2. God will literally save us from His wrath on the Day of Judgment.
Most of the New Testament thinks of salvation in these future terms. Romans 1:18 points out that there is a day of wrath yet to come:
"The wrath of God from heaven is revealed against all ungodliness and wrongdoing of people who fight against the truth by their wrongdoing."
But the good news about Jesus Christ is that "God has not appointed us for wrath but to obtain salvation through our Lord, Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5:9). "Therefore, since we have now been deemed right with God by Jesus' blood, how much more will we be saved through him from wrath" (Rom. 5:9).
The New Testament has other ways of formulating salvation. For example, Luke and Acts focus on the restoration of God's people when they speak of coming salvation. However, our discussion will focus primarily on the matter of eternal salvation and will center itself in Paul's writings.
1. What are we saved from?
Before we can talk about what the New Testament means by salvation, we must figure out what we are being saved from. If I were to ask most Christians to answer this question, I suspect the first answer they would give is “sin.” Salvation is when we are saved from our sins.
But what does that mean? Are my sins out to get me? Are they lurking just around the corner waiting to jump out at me? In a sense they are! But that is not usually what a person means when he or she speaks of being saved from sins.
What we more likely mean is that we want to be saved from the consequences of our sins. In at least one respect, our world today can identify with the idea that certain actions bring about horrible consequences. Someone has an affair and a marriage falls apart. We are startled to find our children with judgmental or hateful attitudes we have modeled in front of them. You do something in a moment of rage with consequences you never foresaw or would have wanted.
The Bible places actions like these into the context of our relationship with God and calls them sins. 1 John 5:17 has perhaps the simplest definition of sin in the Bible: “all wrongdoing is sin.” It is not hard to figure out what wrongdoing is in relation to others. In general, it is anything that is hurtful or harmful in some way. Such “sins” against others can be intentional or unintentional. It is particularly hurtful if I intentionally ignore my wife’s birthday. But I have still wronged her if I forget it unintentionally.
This last example also reflects the fact that I can both sin against others by things I do and by things I don’t do. We might call the first wrong a sin of commission--it is something I do. The second is a sin of omission--it is something I do not do.
Further, groups can sin, even beyond the actions of individuals. If I had been a German in Nazi Germany, I would feel some sense of guilt for the Holocaust, even if I had opposed Hitler and had not been a Nazi. How could we have sinned against God and humanity in this way? We can thus distinguish between individual sins and corporate sins. This particular kind of sin is difficult for us to identify with, given individualistic Western culture. Nevertheless, we must at least reckon with it as a part of biblical culture (e.g., 2 Kings 23:26-27; Josh. 7:24-25).
Once again, the Bible places these different types of wrongdoing into the context of our relationship with God and calls them sin. The Bible mentions all these types of sin. Here two examples:
"It is sin if someone knows to do good and does not do it" (James 4:17). James refers here to an individual, intentional sin of omission.
"But into the second room the high priest enters only once a year, and he does not enter without blood to offer on behalf of himself and the sins that the people have committed in ignorance" (Hebrews 9:7). Hebrews here refers both to individual and corporate sins that Israel had committed in ignorance.
But the worst sins of all are those that by their nature do not acknowledge God as God. I believe that most of these sins come from the fact that we do not even take God into account in our lives--a horrible thing when you reflect that God is the one who owns this world. Would we treat lightly or ignore someone who had the power to prosper or destroy us? Christianity believes that God is interested in how we honor or dishonor Him. While the Bible portrays Him as loving to extremes unheard of on earth, it also teaches He ultimately will destroy those who do not recognize His authority over the universe.
We find both positive and negative examples of what serving and sinning against God look like. Here are two examples:
"Everything you do--whether in word or in action--do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, while giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Col. 3:17). Here is a positive example of how we can properly serve God--by factoring Christ into everything we do.
On the other hand: "Whatever is not [done] on the basis of faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23). Paul here is talking about instances where Christians disagree on what is right or wrong. While you can be convincedly wrongly, Paul teaches that what is most important is that you act in good faith toward God.
So what might it mean then to be saved from our sins? There are two principal ways in which God saves us from our sins through Christ.
1. God can save us from the power of sin over our lives today in this world. We will be talking about this possibility later in our short account.
2. God will literally save us from His wrath on the Day of Judgment.
Most of the New Testament thinks of salvation in these future terms. Romans 1:18 points out that there is a day of wrath yet to come:
"The wrath of God from heaven is revealed against all ungodliness and wrongdoing of people who fight against the truth by their wrongdoing."
But the good news about Jesus Christ is that "God has not appointed us for wrath but to obtain salvation through our Lord, Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5:9). "Therefore, since we have now been deemed right with God by Jesus' blood, how much more will we be saved through him from wrath" (Rom. 5:9).
The New Testament has other ways of formulating salvation. For example, Luke and Acts focus on the restoration of God's people when they speak of coming salvation. However, our discussion will focus primarily on the matter of eternal salvation and will center itself in Paul's writings.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Saving Grace Conference
I went to a conference this weekend at Wesleyan Headquarters entitled "Saving Grace." The main topic of consideration was our doctrine of entire sanctification, although other issues popped up from time to time, including church membership, whether we were more a movement than a church, etc... This last possibility makes me laugh, not because it's a silly question but because I wonder if we should start petitioning various "churches" to ask if we can be a sectarian movement within them. How 'bout it Methodists?
If you want the Schenck summary, here's what I got out of it.
1. From Chris Bounds I learned that as long as we are to the "left" of the Keswicks, we're okay.
I mean "left" on his chart. If you don't know Bounds, his charts are to die for as a teacher. The rest of us watch his office closely when he is about to print some of them, then we all run in and photocopy them secretly before he comes to pick them up. Sometimes I wonder if he just lets them linger in the copy room to rub it in our faces--look what a better teacher I am than you all :>)
Then we secretly take them to our offices and study them. I have a special pile under my side desk for them. I study them so I can sound like I actually know what I'm talking about when I see Chris. "So Chris, I've been thinking a lot about Apollonarianism lately. Just how much of a heresy do you think it is?"
By the way, did I mention that he left for Russia today. So by the time he returns, this entry will be buried well beyond anything he's likely to read ;>)
Keswickians believe that we can be completely victorious over willful sin, but they believe it is a never ending struggle with our flesh. While we can be victorious over sin acts, we will never be free from our bent to sinning.
Bounds suggests that this position is not truly acceptable for an heir of Wesley. He suggests that a "Wesleyan" must believe that we can be free from the power of sin as well. Here he distinguished Phoebe Palmer's "shorter way" from what he called a "middle way" and what some of Palmer's day called a "longer way."
Palmer had a kind of "name it, claim it" approach to entire sanctification. Have it today. Wesley was sometimes more optimistic, sometimes less about when a person might have the experience. Bounds coined the phrase "middle way" of Wesley on his good days--the idea that you might have to wait some time after fully giving yourself to God before sanctification. The longer was is the idea that it might be just before death for most.
I could summarize Bounds' position as 1) definitely in this life and 2) sooner rather than later.
2. I personally culled from a couple other papers the idea that we need to take fully into account things like sins of omission, unintentional sins, and corporate sins/sanctification. These weren't main points of anyone or even main points of discussion, but it's my culling down of a bunch of stuff.
You can imagine that many things were said that were slightly off topic. Church membership is an important issue, but not exactly the topic of discussion. Next symposium they'll do ecclesiology. Isn't church membership what ecclesiology means?
There was a fine opening paper that left puzzled looks on the faces of many. Some wondered if he had simply reused an old paper that wasn't on topic, since he was supposed to talk about sin. What they didn't know is that they had pushed his buttons in the way they had assigned the topic, and he was doing it the "right" way.
He's a part of the trendy Trinitarian approach to theology that is all the rage. You can't start with humanity or the problem of sin, you have to start with God and the relationships between the Trinity. I've heard this approach used even with regard to husband-wife relationships--equal but with different roles. I just haven't decided yet whether my wife is the son or the Holy Spirit. Or maybe in some strange Freudian way I'm the son and she's the father?
On the other hand, I'll be using the word "capacious" a lot more than I was before.
3. Finally, a prominent pastor gave a helpful paper that suggested we should target the local church as the beach head of our Normandy invasion to reinfuse the church with holiness and holiness teaching. I agree.
He also argued that local pastors should become a Christian equivalent to Buddhist monks. I might note that he is probably the closest thing the Wesleyan Church has to a Buddhist monk :>) It will be a little more difficult for pastors without his personality and gifts, not to mention without a staff to free the pastor up for the requisite extended hours of prayer, spiritual discipline, and sermon preparation.
On the lighter side, I learned that pastors should be holy men. He is the first line of defense even though he is continually interrupted. He has to think on the run, shaped by the things he runs into. Several of us always tease about the way this pastor tends to tell everything from a guy's perspective. This one paragraph had fifteen "he's" in it :)
One funny moment was at a different point in the conference when the same pastor said we needed to write books not just for the universities but for the guy in the fourth row with his arm around some girl. I happened to be sitting next to a woman at the time and looked over to see a Cheshire grin on her face. He'd done it again.
"Of course, the girl might be able to read too," she said in low tones.
Well, no offence to any. If you were worried about the Wesleyan Church, worried that no one cared about holiness any more, worried that we didn't have anyone with a brain in our midst, don't worry... the future looks bright!
Final footnote: Mel Dieter is great. He was gracious enough to give us what he said would probably be his last major agreement to speak. He gave us precious memories that I hope someone is writing down.
If you want the Schenck summary, here's what I got out of it.
1. From Chris Bounds I learned that as long as we are to the "left" of the Keswicks, we're okay.
I mean "left" on his chart. If you don't know Bounds, his charts are to die for as a teacher. The rest of us watch his office closely when he is about to print some of them, then we all run in and photocopy them secretly before he comes to pick them up. Sometimes I wonder if he just lets them linger in the copy room to rub it in our faces--look what a better teacher I am than you all :>)
Then we secretly take them to our offices and study them. I have a special pile under my side desk for them. I study them so I can sound like I actually know what I'm talking about when I see Chris. "So Chris, I've been thinking a lot about Apollonarianism lately. Just how much of a heresy do you think it is?"
By the way, did I mention that he left for Russia today. So by the time he returns, this entry will be buried well beyond anything he's likely to read ;>)
Keswickians believe that we can be completely victorious over willful sin, but they believe it is a never ending struggle with our flesh. While we can be victorious over sin acts, we will never be free from our bent to sinning.
Bounds suggests that this position is not truly acceptable for an heir of Wesley. He suggests that a "Wesleyan" must believe that we can be free from the power of sin as well. Here he distinguished Phoebe Palmer's "shorter way" from what he called a "middle way" and what some of Palmer's day called a "longer way."
Palmer had a kind of "name it, claim it" approach to entire sanctification. Have it today. Wesley was sometimes more optimistic, sometimes less about when a person might have the experience. Bounds coined the phrase "middle way" of Wesley on his good days--the idea that you might have to wait some time after fully giving yourself to God before sanctification. The longer was is the idea that it might be just before death for most.
I could summarize Bounds' position as 1) definitely in this life and 2) sooner rather than later.
2. I personally culled from a couple other papers the idea that we need to take fully into account things like sins of omission, unintentional sins, and corporate sins/sanctification. These weren't main points of anyone or even main points of discussion, but it's my culling down of a bunch of stuff.
You can imagine that many things were said that were slightly off topic. Church membership is an important issue, but not exactly the topic of discussion. Next symposium they'll do ecclesiology. Isn't church membership what ecclesiology means?
There was a fine opening paper that left puzzled looks on the faces of many. Some wondered if he had simply reused an old paper that wasn't on topic, since he was supposed to talk about sin. What they didn't know is that they had pushed his buttons in the way they had assigned the topic, and he was doing it the "right" way.
He's a part of the trendy Trinitarian approach to theology that is all the rage. You can't start with humanity or the problem of sin, you have to start with God and the relationships between the Trinity. I've heard this approach used even with regard to husband-wife relationships--equal but with different roles. I just haven't decided yet whether my wife is the son or the Holy Spirit. Or maybe in some strange Freudian way I'm the son and she's the father?
On the other hand, I'll be using the word "capacious" a lot more than I was before.
3. Finally, a prominent pastor gave a helpful paper that suggested we should target the local church as the beach head of our Normandy invasion to reinfuse the church with holiness and holiness teaching. I agree.
He also argued that local pastors should become a Christian equivalent to Buddhist monks. I might note that he is probably the closest thing the Wesleyan Church has to a Buddhist monk :>) It will be a little more difficult for pastors without his personality and gifts, not to mention without a staff to free the pastor up for the requisite extended hours of prayer, spiritual discipline, and sermon preparation.
On the lighter side, I learned that pastors should be holy men. He is the first line of defense even though he is continually interrupted. He has to think on the run, shaped by the things he runs into. Several of us always tease about the way this pastor tends to tell everything from a guy's perspective. This one paragraph had fifteen "he's" in it :)
One funny moment was at a different point in the conference when the same pastor said we needed to write books not just for the universities but for the guy in the fourth row with his arm around some girl. I happened to be sitting next to a woman at the time and looked over to see a Cheshire grin on her face. He'd done it again.
"Of course, the girl might be able to read too," she said in low tones.
Well, no offence to any. If you were worried about the Wesleyan Church, worried that no one cared about holiness any more, worried that we didn't have anyone with a brain in our midst, don't worry... the future looks bright!
Final footnote: Mel Dieter is great. He was gracious enough to give us what he said would probably be his last major agreement to speak. He gave us precious memories that I hope someone is writing down.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
The Second Annual Running of the Manuscripts
It's that time of year again: the second annual Schenck running of the manuscripts.
Last year I wrote a manuscript in a week to enlist in the annual June 15 deadline for the Westminster John Knox Presidential Award, a 10,000 dollar award for a book contract. Last year I submitted Who Decides What the Bible Means? I've mentioned it before. I think it currently sits in some abandoned pile at Abingdon in a morphed form. I haven't forged any contacts there so I'm not hopeful. Frankly, for all I know the letter fell out of some plane at 30,000 feet and has been sitting in a swamp somewhere since late January.
In the meantime, it's time to try to spin out something again. I have some other pressing commitments that will probably keep me from making this year's deadline. Last year I overnighted the manuscript on special arrangement with the Marion Post Office at 5:30pm the day before the deadline :>) What was the hurry, alas!
I probably have too many commitments to get something done by the 15th, although four weeks is more than enough time to write a book :>) In any case, I'm not going to blog the whole thing anyway, just a few starter excerpts. At least that's the plan.
In the meantime, my usual blockhead commentary on things I know nothing about will continue. I probably won't get around to it, but I thought about an entry today on the women in the military issue in the news. Here's my suggestion: Let's let any individual woman do anything that individual woman can do and any individual man do anything that individual man can do. I know it's complex and a stretch, but that's my suggestion.
Last year I wrote a manuscript in a week to enlist in the annual June 15 deadline for the Westminster John Knox Presidential Award, a 10,000 dollar award for a book contract. Last year I submitted Who Decides What the Bible Means? I've mentioned it before. I think it currently sits in some abandoned pile at Abingdon in a morphed form. I haven't forged any contacts there so I'm not hopeful. Frankly, for all I know the letter fell out of some plane at 30,000 feet and has been sitting in a swamp somewhere since late January.
In the meantime, it's time to try to spin out something again. I have some other pressing commitments that will probably keep me from making this year's deadline. Last year I overnighted the manuscript on special arrangement with the Marion Post Office at 5:30pm the day before the deadline :>) What was the hurry, alas!
I probably have too many commitments to get something done by the 15th, although four weeks is more than enough time to write a book :>) In any case, I'm not going to blog the whole thing anyway, just a few starter excerpts. At least that's the plan.
In the meantime, my usual blockhead commentary on things I know nothing about will continue. I probably won't get around to it, but I thought about an entry today on the women in the military issue in the news. Here's my suggestion: Let's let any individual woman do anything that individual woman can do and any individual man do anything that individual man can do. I know it's complex and a stretch, but that's my suggestion.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Filibusters
The Filibusters don't evoke too much of a reaction from me. Business as usual. The usual feeling of detachment because who knows what these judges really think? And there's nothing I can do to stop whatever's going to happen anyway.
It's all about power. Shall I complain that the Democrats are stopping the nominations? I don't know; it's built into the system. Shall I complain if the Republicans nuke the option? I don't know; it's built into the system. What bugs me as usual is the pious hypocrisy of individuals from both parties who know full well they'd do exactly the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot. Or maybe they all live in the usual political lala-land of self-deception.
Part of the problem is our post-modern acknowledgement that there really is no such thing as some Spock-like judge that makes decisions purely on the basis of some alleged "Constitution." Of course I could give out stupidhead awards to all the talking heads who are pretending that "their side" just interprets the Constitution and isn't idealogically affected.
And as usual, I don't feel like little old powerless me knows whether these judges are psychos or not. I am concerned if this Texas woman believes 1 Tim. 2:12 means women should not have authority over a man today--except as a judge of course. The UN appointee at least seems psycho, but I know that smear campaigns are very good at what they do. But who knows what these people would really be like?
I don't. Long live the surrealism and numb detachment of political observation...
It's all about power. Shall I complain that the Democrats are stopping the nominations? I don't know; it's built into the system. Shall I complain if the Republicans nuke the option? I don't know; it's built into the system. What bugs me as usual is the pious hypocrisy of individuals from both parties who know full well they'd do exactly the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot. Or maybe they all live in the usual political lala-land of self-deception.
Part of the problem is our post-modern acknowledgement that there really is no such thing as some Spock-like judge that makes decisions purely on the basis of some alleged "Constitution." Of course I could give out stupidhead awards to all the talking heads who are pretending that "their side" just interprets the Constitution and isn't idealogically affected.
And as usual, I don't feel like little old powerless me knows whether these judges are psychos or not. I am concerned if this Texas woman believes 1 Tim. 2:12 means women should not have authority over a man today--except as a judge of course. The UN appointee at least seems psycho, but I know that smear campaigns are very good at what they do. But who knows what these people would really be like?
I don't. Long live the surrealism and numb detachment of political observation...
Monday, May 16, 2005
Newsweek Debacles
Well back to the whacky world of politics.
I personally think flushing Qurans down the toilet is a bad policy. You know, ticks a bunch of people off that are already ticked off at us. I'm sure it would be tempting for a non-Muslim interrogator or guard to do at Guantanamo. After all, you might be thinking this book stood behind mass murder. Or maybe you would want to show a fundamentalist Muslim that their god doesn't care about them.
But it's a bad idea and a bad policy no matter what you think of the Quran. It disrespects a lot of peace loving Muslims who interpret the Quran to teach peace with others--people we want to be friends with. Frankly, I don't think Bush would agree with such actions (now Rumsfeld, I don't know...).
Did it happen? I don't know. I can certainly believe it happened. No one has come anywhere close to proving that it didn't happen. And Newsweek actually did send the article to the Defense department for pre-correction, but the Pentagon didn't mention the desecration of Quran stuff in their response.
As usual, what infuriates me is the hypocrisy among the talking heads, as if Newsweek is the one responsible for the bad image we have among the Muslim world. That's right. The Muslim world was fine with our invasion of Iraq, Abu Graib and all that stuff. But this Newsweek article? After it, all their good will is down the drain! Absolutely unbelievable.
Did Newsweek mess up? I bet they did. Could they have done a Dan Rather and not retracted the article? I suspect that, unlike him, they could have gotten away with not retracting it. It's a he said she said.
But my hunch is they did the honorable thing and retracted the article. Were they covering themselves? Probably that too. Of course it is also possible that they actually wanted to allay some of the world consequences of the article. And of course, someone might have been breathing down their neck.
By the way, the people rioting in Afghanistan are Karzai opposition who hated us anyway and are using the article as an excuse to foment opposition to Karzai. They didn't belong to the "Friends of the U.S. of A Society" until they got their Newsweek in the mail.
What now infuriates me is the talking heads--Scarborough, Fox News and Friends, the woman opposite Ron Reagan on MSNBC in the afternoons, who now speak of how Newsweek represents the "liberal elite" who just don't get it, are hurting our reputation with Muslims by printing lies that have no support in reality. These things seem a tad bit overstated and, hmm, just a little opportunistic and skewed. Or, maybe, they know they're overstating things, but just trying to help our image in the Muslim world. How helpful and global minded of them!
Maybe these things didn't happen. I hope they didn't. But I don't think anyone who thinks they might have is a liberal elite who doesn't get it.
In the end, it is good for the news people to be more circumspect in the evidence behind their stories. You shouldn't publish because you can believe something--not when the consequences are this big. That the media will be more careful in dotting their i's and crossing their t's is a good thing.
As for blogs, this remains the place for venting and feelings... Warning: I am not double checking my sources
I personally think flushing Qurans down the toilet is a bad policy. You know, ticks a bunch of people off that are already ticked off at us. I'm sure it would be tempting for a non-Muslim interrogator or guard to do at Guantanamo. After all, you might be thinking this book stood behind mass murder. Or maybe you would want to show a fundamentalist Muslim that their god doesn't care about them.
But it's a bad idea and a bad policy no matter what you think of the Quran. It disrespects a lot of peace loving Muslims who interpret the Quran to teach peace with others--people we want to be friends with. Frankly, I don't think Bush would agree with such actions (now Rumsfeld, I don't know...).
Did it happen? I don't know. I can certainly believe it happened. No one has come anywhere close to proving that it didn't happen. And Newsweek actually did send the article to the Defense department for pre-correction, but the Pentagon didn't mention the desecration of Quran stuff in their response.
As usual, what infuriates me is the hypocrisy among the talking heads, as if Newsweek is the one responsible for the bad image we have among the Muslim world. That's right. The Muslim world was fine with our invasion of Iraq, Abu Graib and all that stuff. But this Newsweek article? After it, all their good will is down the drain! Absolutely unbelievable.
Did Newsweek mess up? I bet they did. Could they have done a Dan Rather and not retracted the article? I suspect that, unlike him, they could have gotten away with not retracting it. It's a he said she said.
But my hunch is they did the honorable thing and retracted the article. Were they covering themselves? Probably that too. Of course it is also possible that they actually wanted to allay some of the world consequences of the article. And of course, someone might have been breathing down their neck.
By the way, the people rioting in Afghanistan are Karzai opposition who hated us anyway and are using the article as an excuse to foment opposition to Karzai. They didn't belong to the "Friends of the U.S. of A Society" until they got their Newsweek in the mail.
What now infuriates me is the talking heads--Scarborough, Fox News and Friends, the woman opposite Ron Reagan on MSNBC in the afternoons, who now speak of how Newsweek represents the "liberal elite" who just don't get it, are hurting our reputation with Muslims by printing lies that have no support in reality. These things seem a tad bit overstated and, hmm, just a little opportunistic and skewed. Or, maybe, they know they're overstating things, but just trying to help our image in the Muslim world. How helpful and global minded of them!
Maybe these things didn't happen. I hope they didn't. But I don't think anyone who thinks they might have is a liberal elite who doesn't get it.
In the end, it is good for the news people to be more circumspect in the evidence behind their stories. You shouldn't publish because you can believe something--not when the consequences are this big. That the media will be more careful in dotting their i's and crossing their t's is a good thing.
As for blogs, this remains the place for venting and feelings... Warning: I am not double checking my sources
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