Grace and Judgment

Thoughts on the bread of life: you are what you eat

2010-07-30T08:30:00.001-04:00

What happens when we eat, say, a piece of bread?

First, most foods are not bite-sized, so we have to cut it up, tear it apart, or bite off a chunk. Second, when we put it in our mouth, we chew it. That breaks it up even more. Third, we digest it in our stomach and intestines, breaking it up very thoroughly. From there, it enters the bloodstream and is carried to every cell in our body.

On the last evening of his earthly life, Jesus broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said, "Take. Eat. This is my body" (Matthew 26:26).Earlier, he had claimed to be the bread of life in a synagogue filled with adversaries and disciples who then abandoned him. His message was the same: people cannot live unless they eat his body.

So what happens to the bread we take at communion? In the natural, the same thing that happens with anything else we eat. Spiritually, it matters that Jesus himself broke the bread, for it is not only his body, but his body broken for the remission of sin.

The Lamb of God, to change metaphors, was slain before all worlds. He died for our sin before we were alive to sin. He broke the bread of life and gave it to us. In sin, we broke it further, down to the molecular level, so to speak. When we eat the bread of life in remembrance, it enters the spiritual "bloodstream" and is carried to every part of our spirit.

In the same way, Jesus took the cup, called it his blood, and commanded the disciples to drink it. He had earlier told the congregation in Capernaum that they had to drink his blood in order to live. Under the law, however, eating blood--especially the blood of a sacrificial animal--was strictly forbidden, even though in some kinds of sacrifices God not only allowed but commanded the priests and sometimes even the people to eat the meat.

What changed? The body of Christ has another meaning besides the bread at communion. The church as a whole is likewise the body of Christ. Apart from the incarnation and the risen Christ, there can be no body of Christ on earth. Under the law, Christ had not come, died, or risen. Within the body, blood cleanses. Outside the body it stains, ruins, and contaminates.

Paul warned people to examine themselves lest they eat and drink judgment to themselves. The judgment fell for not judging the body rightly. Surely in this context Paul does not warn against someone failing to judge his or her own body, but rather the body of Christ--understood both as the bread and the church.

Think of grape juice or wine. When we drink it, it goes through the digestive system into the bloodstream and provides nourishment. When we spill it, we have only a mess to clean up and possibly something ruined beyond all hope of getting clean. So meditate on the body and blood of Christ at communion time in order to drink the blood and not spill it.

What, therefore, does it mean for the church to be the body of Christ? You are one cell in that body. You are what you eat. You eat Christ's body, the bread of life, as an individual sinner and receive the nourishment as a member of the body of Christ, the church.

Everyone you see in the church is a cell in that body--unfortunately including anyone who has hurt you or offended you. Don't daydream and take communion absentmindedly. Don't look across the congregation and remember offenses without forgiving. You want the bread of life to nourish you, not make you sick. You want to drink the blood of Christ, not spill it. That way it will cleanse, not pollute you.

All you need is love

2010-07-27T08:30:00.001-04:00

The Beatles claimed, "All you need is love," but "Now That the Magic Is Gone" by Joe Cocker contains these words:

You know love can be tender
Love can be cruel
It can smile like an angel
While it treats you just like a fool
It captures and haunts you
Until you give in
And it starts the dice against you
In a game you never can win
Just when I was thinking
Maybe luck was here with me
You're telling me it's over
Say it's time for breaking free

That's love in popular song. Everyone has heard lots of songs about the magic and rapture of love, and many others about the pain when it ends. Songs run the gamut of emotion from the supreme joy in love to cynicism and disgust when it doesn't seem to keep its promises.

Our songs reflect our society. People fall in love and marry, but half of all marriages end in divorce. Not all of the other half are happy. In many marriages, at least one partner has been divorced at least once. As Frank Sinatra sang, "Love is lovelier the second time around," although at least one wag suggested that some folks in Hollywood must have heard, "Love is lovelier the seventh time around." It's nothing new. More than 200 years ago, Samuel Johnson declared a second marriage "the triumph of hope over experience.

Some people seek to avoid the cycle of marriage and divorce simply by moving in together and establishing a household without getting married. When they break up, it is every bit as complicated and nasty as any divorce. Shacking up does not help love last. What does? A different kind of love, a kind untouched by notions of romance:

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails. -- 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a

All of our popular songs celebrate, or denigrate, love as a feeling between two people. Feelings come and go. Scripture, on the other hand, does not limit love (as it does marriage) to a special relationship between one man and one woman. It commands that everyone love everyone. It speaks of love as a way of living, despite whatever feelings may or may not be present.

If I feel impatient, love is kind anyway. Love is not easily angered. If I get angry, whether easily or not, love is not rude. Love is hard work. It means putting up with people I don't like very much. It means seeking the best for everyone, even if it means someone else gets a prize that I don't. It means I can't feel glad when bad things happen to some enemy.

That's just not natural! Actually, it's supernatural. It's the way God regards each one of us, despite all we do to grieve him. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can love others with God's own love. That kind of love, and that kind alone, will never fail. John Lennon was right: all you need is love--just not necessarily the kind he and other song writers have in mind.

While I was hunting for the quotations I used in this post, I came across one I had never heard before, but it seems a very fitting conclusion:

A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there's no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it's an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin. -- Henrik Ibsen

Light, darkness, and the return of Christ

2010-07-23T08:30:00.001-04:00

Living by faith requires living not only in the light of the resurrection, but also in the hope of the return of Christ. Jesus himself said that he, in his earthly body, did not know when he would come back. He told his disciples that they should always be ready, because a thief cannot surprise a homeowner who is watching.

There are times in my life when a promise of God seems so vivid that I’m sure it will happen in the next fifteen minutes. Then the waiting starts. I know I'm not alone. The whole church has been waiting impatiently for the return of Christ for about two thousand years.

We see that impatience in one of Paul's earliest writings. The Lord will come like a thief in the night. No one has any forewarning about when either Jesus or a thief will show up. In fact, thieves look to see who is unprepared before they choose which house to strike.

Paul used two different words for time when he said we need to know the times and seasons. One of them (chronos)is the time we can measure by the clock or by the calendar. That is the kind of time that tells us that about 2000 years has passed since the events described in the New Testament.

The other word means a kind of indefinite and immeasurable time. Where NIV has “dates,” translations in the King James tradition have "seasons." It could be better translated “appropriate time.” A flower blooms when it is good and ready, certainly not on any kind of schedule that we can control.

If clock time is man’s time, then this other kind of time is God’s time. We have all wished at one time or another that he worked on our time, but he doesn’t. I heard once about a woman who tried to schedule everything a whole week in advance. One day her schedule read something like this: remind John to take the day off work; take the cat to mother’s; go to the hospital; have baby. . .

What are the chances everything ran smoothly according to her schedule on that day? What are the chances the baby came earlier in the week? Don’t we have God and the baby making their own decision without consulting mama’s schedule?

That is precisely why students of “Bible prophecy” are almost bound to be wrong if they say Christ will be back in a particular year, or even that a particular historical event marks the beginning of some kind of timetable. And Jesus warns us to watch for signs of his return.

The return of Christ emphasizes hope for those who accept him as Lord and Savior, but judgment and punishment for those who oppose him. You can stop worrying about anyone else's salvation but your own. We can’t look on another person’s heart any more than we can understand God’s relationship to time.

So again, Jesus will come like a thief in the night. Like a thief’s victims, he will surprise the complacent. Whoever goes about his business in the world without recognizing that Jesus will return, or without considering his return important enough to take into account, will suffer some kind of sudden destruction. That does not necessarily mean going to hell, but It does mean some kind of loss that people who are prepared for return of Christ will not suffer.

The way to avoid loss is to live in the light instead of in darkness. Remember, we have to think God’s time here, not clock time. In God’s time, someone might be in the dark while someone else right next to him physically is in the light. We can go to sleep on clock time and still be alert on God’s time.

In that sense, people of the darkness live in unbelief, unawareness, and willful ignorance of the things of God. People of the darkness might profess Christ with their mouths and attend church regularly, but not go on to believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead. Paul says people of the darkness fall asleep and get drunk. Jesus added in one of his parables that they cheat God and oppress each other.

People of the light, on the other hand, live alertly, deliberately aware that Jesus will return. People of the light know that the Spirit of Christ is available to them even as they wait for it.

Does that mean that no one who has not heard the gospel and professed Christ with their lips can live in the light? Not necessarily. Only God can look on the heart and see its condition. Let’s stop worrying about things that are none of our business.

Here’s what is our business: faith, hope, and love. Probably everyone knows the end of 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul says these three will never pass away. But here they are (v. 8), together for at least the second time in 1 Thessalonians. You will frequently find them mentioned together throughout the New Testament.

These three virtues characterize and motivate the people of the light. Paul compares them to the armor of a Roman soldier. A soldier in armor stands ready for anything he encounters. He is awake, sober, vigilant, and prepared for anything that’s likely to happen.

People of the night, being asleep, drunk, and complacent, are destined for trouble. Since Paul uses the imagery of night to describe people living in unbelief, unawareness, and willful ignorance, we can say that night-people are destined to face God’s wrath.

Day people, who have already made peace with God, are destined to receive salvation. That does not mean that they can acquire it by their own goodness and effort. It means that they have already acquired it through God’s grace.

Finally, Paul said that Christ died for us, so that whether we are asleep or awake, we can live with him. In a sense, that garbles the distinction between light and darkness that he just made. If Christians can be asleep, then Christians can be people of darkness.

I find two ways of making sense of that. First, even though the church at Thessalonica was only a month or so old, some of its members had died—possibly as a result of the persecution that drove Paul out of town and continued after he left. The end of the fourth chapter, which is not part of any of your lessons, addresses that problem more directly. “Asleep” is a euphemism for “dead,” and dead Christians are still saved.

Second, wrath and judgment are never God’s last word on any subject. We have probably all experienced both in some measure at some time or another. Throughout the Bible, once God has pronounced judgment and released his wrath, he always offers grace.

Until such time as someone definitively rejects Christ, he can always turn to him and receive salvation. So taking into account all that Paul said about the people of night and darkness, if any of them accept the chance to repent, they will enjoy the same salvation upon the return of Christ as anyone else.

As for me, I want to be a person of light sooner rather than later. If I ever slip back into darkness and start to nod off, the sooner I wake up and rejoin the light, the better. I know Jesus is with me now. I know that he will come back to get me.

I know that I will either rise from the earth or from the grave to meet him. I can’t know that about anyone else, but each of you can know it for yourselves. That is the basis for Christian hope in the return of Christ.

Love your enemy: a dangerous prayer rewarded

2010-07-20T08:30:00.002-04:00

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,' but I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you."--Matthew 5:43-44 (NASB)

The Bible, Jesus in particular, has a way of commanding whatever is most counterintuitive. We are such creatures of the world that, even as believers in Christ, the ways of the world seem more normal than what Jesus asks. Here he tells us to love and pray for enemies.

I have prayed salvation for Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and other enemies of America and Christ. I hope all my readers have, too. Of course, I have done it only in either the privacy of my own solitude or in the safe and friendly environment of a worship service. I can pray for enemies without testing my love for them.

In the ninth chapter of Acts, we meet a man named Ananias. Jesus appeared to him in a vision and told him to pray for Saul of Tarsus, a dedicated and violent persecutor of the church. Not only that, he told Ananias Saul's address and told him to go lay hands on Saul.

That's more serious. It was not enough to add Saul to his prayer list and mention him every day. It was not enough to go to a prayer meeting and offer a prayer for Saul. It was not enough to do any of the things I suppose most of us do when we pray for enemies. Those things may be enough much of the time, but not for Ananias and not necessarily always enough for any of us.

Let's suppose I learn that a gang from some kind of rival group is coming to Greensboro to arrest me and my closest friends and drag me off somewhere else to face some kind of gang justice. Then Jesus tells me where the leader of the gang is holing up and wants me to go there and lay hands on him.

Or let's imagine Jesus telling a Hatfield to make a social call on a McCoy or a Capulet to go knock on a Montague's door. It kind of puts loving and praying for enemies in a much more personal perspective.

Ananias was afraid. Like many other Biblical characters--and probably like many if not all of us--he told Jesus that it was not a good idea. Before long, though, he got up and obeyed the call. One key to why he swallowed his fear and went to the house on Straight Street: when Jesus called, "Ananias," Ananias answered, "Here I am." How many times has Jesus called me and I wasn't there?

We know the result, of course. In love, Ananias addressed his enemy as "Brother Saul." By the laying on of Ananias' hands, Saul accepted Christ and received the Holy Spirit. Years later, known as Paul, he went all over the known world proclaiming the gospel and wrote more New Testament Scripture than anyone else.

We owe so much of the Bible and nearly all of our basic theological understanding to Paul. Before Saul the persecutor could become Paul the apostle, someone had to pay him a dangerous call. Jesus chose Ananias for the task. Of course, the assignment was not as dangerous as it seemed. Jesus had already blinded Saul and prepared his heart to receive Ananias. I suppose more often than not, what Jesus asks is not as dangerous as it seems.

How to become wise

2010-07-16T08:30:00.000-04:00

The book of Proverbs often personifies wisdom as a female character, sent by God to accomplish God's purposes. It often presents wisdom as advice from parents to children. Wisdom consists of both moral instruction on how to live a righteous life and practical advice that covers a wide variety of situations. Wisdom requires some knowledge, but think of wisdom, in part, as knowing what to do about knowledge.

Read the scripture emphasizing the "if" written or implied before every verb. All these actions are necessary in order to obtain the promise.

if you accept
if you store
if you turn
if you apply
if you call
if you cry
if you look
if you search

If we want wisdom, we must accept it when we hear it, and not only that, count it as valuable. We must pay attention to it and actively seek to understand it. And that won't come just by letting some wise person's advice wash over our ear drums. We have to go looking for wisdom. We have to ask questions. We have to seek it like silver or hidden treasure.

Now, pure silver does not exist in nature. In order to obtain it, miners must first discover where the ore is. They can't find it just anywhere, and there is no sense in looking for a vein of silver in places that are not suitable for finding it.

Once they find a vein of silver, they have to dig it out of the rock formations. When they finish their work, they have nothing but a pile of rocks that have a little bit of silver in them and a lot of stuff they don't want. So the next step is to refine those rocks, to extract the desirable silver and get rid of all the undesirable other stuff.

That long list of conditions explains why so many people learn wisdom imperfectly or not at all. If I do not have wisdom and someone tells me about wisdom, I will not get wisdom if I don't pay attention, or if I reject the advice and go on in my unwise ways.

If someone tells me about wisdom and it seems really good, and I really want to be like that, but then go about my business and forget what I heard, I will not get wisdom. If I meet wise people and don't let them know that I value their wisdom, chances are they will not talk to me about it, and I will not get wisdom.

And if I form the closest possible relationship with a wise person and learn everything I can, I still have to realize that their wisdom is not pure. All have sinned, that is missed the mark, and fallen short of the glory of God.

Abraham was a wise man. He knew God more intimately than anyone else of his time. And he spent hours and hours making sure that Isaac knew God, too. But he had at least one foolish habit. Every time he went into a new community, he told everyone that Sarah was his sister, not his wife.

It got him into trouble at least twice before Isaac was born. Apparently he got away with it often enough that he still thought it was clever. So Isaac learned that, too. He tried it on one of the same people that Abraham had tried it on. That man wasn't amused, and Isaac finally decided it wasn't a clever enough tactic to pass on to his sons.

So if we are going to become wise, we not only need to understand the wisdom of the people we know, but also understand the limitations of their wisdom. To get our own wisdom, we have to refine it like silver. And what does the passage say we will get in return for our work? Not that we will be wise. We will understand the fear of God and find the knowledge of God.

Now, if we're supposed to seek God and follow after God and love God and believe that God loves us, why, after working so hard to refine some nugget of wisdom, do we find the fear of God?

The answer has at least two parts. For one thing, we're redeemed, but our sin is not. We are each a walking civil war, with a redeemed nature remade in the image of Christ and an unregenerate flesh that loves nothing better than sin. That part of us will always feel uncomfortable in the presence of God. That feeling, that kind of fear is part of what the word awe means. In love, our reborn spirit wants to draw near to God, even as our flesh wants to draw away; so awe is a sign of our love for God.

Now, I never had any children, but I have observed some, and I used to be one. Children are constantly presented with opportunities to do things that they know their parents don't want them to do. Suppose one child thinks of the punishment that will come when the parents find out and another child thinks of how sad and hurt the parents will be. The first might do a cost/benefit analysis and decide that the possible punishment is worth it. The second probably will not.

The first case involves fear of the parents' anger. The second involves fear of their grief. The Bible makes it clear that fear of God's wrath does not deter sin. Fear of his grief means that we love God enough to care what he thinks. That kind of fear is part of what we mean by respect. So working to become wise leads us to awe and respect for God, and these kinds of fear go hand in hand with loving him.

God drove Adam out of Eden so he would not find the tree of life and live forever in his sinful state. We can't go back to Eden. We can't on our own, recover the innocence of Eden, the close relationship with God that Adam once had there, or the chance to live forever. But God still wants all of that for us. If we can't get there on our own, we can get there by following the wisdom that God has sent to guide us there.

If we choose another path besides wisdom, we might very well get more money, more influence over people, more fame, more of all kinds of things. But we will miss out on life. And that's not wise.

Church unity in little choices

2010-07-13T08:30:00.001-04:00

Methodist churches get their ministers by appointment from a bishop. After every annual conference, lots of congregations get a new minister. For all you Methodist readers who still have the same staff you had before, if your senior pastor has been appointed to his or her seventh year, chances are better than even that you will have a new one this time next year. Not everyone will be happy with the new minister. Some folks will wind up leaving that congregation.

Many other Protestant denominations call their own pastors. Changes of pastorates occur at less predictable intervals. They can be very messy if a bare majority of the church wants to dismiss a pastor. I belonged to one congregation where the pastor was caught both in an adulterous affair and embezzling money from the mission fund. Undercurrents of resentment over another failed pastorate seventeen years earlier interfered greatly with the process of calling another leader.

The New Testament insists on church unity over a number of issues. In Paul's epistles, most frequently he insists that it unite around the teaching of the apostles and reject various false teachings. In Corinth, however, he found a doctrinally pure church squabbling over other things, including whom they should acknowledge as leader.

Paul planted the church in Corinth and stayed there longer than he had ever stayed in any one place before. He loved that congregation, and many of them loved him. Then he left and someone named Apollos took over. Now Paul learned to be a Jewish Pharisee, and he had a very Jewish style. Apollos got his education at a major center of Greek philosophy and had a style that was more appealing to the Greek mind.

The people who liked Apollos pointed out that he was a good Greek and more philosophical than Paul ever tried to be. Paul might have gotten us off to a good start, they said, but we're in better hands now. Paul's friends pointed out that he knew the other apostles personally, and that Apollos may be a good speaker, but he still didn't have as much authority as Paul.

Some people in Corinth didn't want to take sides like that. They said that neither Paul nor Apollos were really world-wide leaders. Ultimately, they had to take their lead from the men who actually knew Jesus. Peter was the leader of that group, so whether Paul or Apollos or anyone else was in Corinth, Peter was the real authority in the church.

To all of which some others piously replied that they were just going to follow Christ and not pay attention to anyone else. The result? Two pastors, four arguing factions not speaking to each other except to shout.

Paul goes on to mention other problems and quarrels in that church. We know more about the inner workings of the church in Corinth than any other New Testament church. It isn't pretty.

If we're honest, we have to admit that our church and every church we have ever been a part of is too much like the one in Corinth. We spend too much time squabbling with each other over stuff that doesn't matter and not enough time building ourselves and each other up in faith.

A big part of the problem is that both the church in Corinth and the church in America adapt the gospel to our cultural expectations rather than allowing the gospel to renew our minds after the image of Christ.

There is an old saying that is helpful for us to remember: In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity. We have to know what is essential to the gospel and be in agreement about that. There can be no unity between the gospel and any kind of false teaching. But if something isn't essential to the gospel, everyone can think or do anything they want.

Christians can be Methodist, or not. Believe it or not, Christians can be Democrats or Republicans or neither. Christians can like different kinds of church music or worship styles. Christians can drink beer or not. Christians can eat meat or be vegetarian or even vegan. In North Carolina, where college basketball appears to be everyone's real religion, some Christians root for North Carolina and others for Duke.

We all have our own cultural preferences. And when someone else makes a different choice, we have to accept and love each other and concentrate our full attention on what we have in common in Christ.

Learning what Satan is like--the hard way

2010-07-09T08:30:00.001-04:00

I suppose not many readers spend much time with 1 or 2 Kings or 1 or 2 Chronicles. That's too bad, because the stories in the Old Testament often provide clear pictures off New Testament truths. Amaziah, a king of Judah who served God half-heartedly, illustrates what happens to the double-minded man mentioned in James 1:6-8.

This post will comment on the time when he was afraid that his army wasn't strong enough for a war he wanted to make against Edom. He hired mercenaries from Israel, but then a prophet said if he let them fight, he would lose.

Amaziah fussed a bit about the money he had already paid for the Israelite soldiers, but before he went to war, he dismissed them. Their behavior proved the folly of ever trusting them. It provides a great picture of what Satan is like.

They eagerly came when called. After all, as soldiers in a society that glorified war, they loved to fight, and Amaziah offered to pay them well. When he dismissed them and told them they couldn't fight his war, after all, they got offended. Satan, too, comes eagerly. He loves to kill and to betray.

They left unwillingly. Having received the call to arms with eagerness, they responded to their dismissal with anger. They had their money. They could have, indeed should have, gone back home to enjoy it. Perhaps they were angry having been excluded from the chance to fight and kill.

Since Amaziah had already paid them and had made no apparent attempt to get his money back, the Israelites had no just grievance. Satan never has a legitimate grievance, either. The blood of Jesus has defeated him, and God expelled him from heaven. In impotent rage, he still loves to steal, kill, and destroy.

They picked on the defenseless. The Israelites could have changed sides, taken Amaziah's money to Edom, and offered to repel Amaziah's army, and gotten more money from the King of Edom in the process. Even though Amaziah thought little of his army, it was still a powerful force. His offended allies chose not to challenge it. Instead, they plundered and pillaged Judah's towns and cities, like cowards.

Satan, too, loves to pick on the defenseless. As leader of his own cause rather than a mercenary for someone else's, he cannot avoid attacking strong prayer warriors. Anyone who does great works for the Lord can testify of Satan's savagery. But he also loves to prey on people of weak faith and make them believe that God does not love them or cannot protect them. He, too, is a coward.

I have written at greater length elsewhere of how Amaziah responded to the Israelites' outrageous behavior. Having spent his life doing what was right but not wholeheartedly, he crumbled.
Satan played him like a drum. Militarily, Amaziah leared what Israel had done, but Israel only played the role of a type of Satan. Spiritually, he never knew what hit him.

James tells us the double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, cannot expect to receive anything from the Lord. What does double-minded mean? The same thing as half-hearted. Doubt, unbelief, fear, and reluctance to seek a strong, personal relationship with God undermine faith and obedience until they fail completely.

Miracles explained by higher mathematics

2010-07-06T08:30:00.001-04:00

Edwin Abbott, an English classics scholar and theologian whose hobby was higher mathematics wrote a charming classic called Flatland 1880s. Flatland is a two-dimensional space inhabited mostly by various equilateral polygons and ruled by circles.

The narrator, A. Square, explains how two-dimensional objects can recognize each other's shapes by calculating angles. Except for triangles, irregular shapes present a public danger and are not allowed to live. He also explained their culture and history.

In their year 1000, someone went insane and insisted that a third dimension existed. He caused quite a commotion until the circles passed harsh laws against proclaiming such a ridiculous heresy.

As their year 2000 dawned, A. Square was instructing his grandson in mathematics and explaining that while higher dimensions than the second were mathematically possible, they could have no meaning in geometry. Just then, a voice from, well, there's no logical explanation where it could have come from, told him he was wrong.

A being appeared in his house, even though the door was shut and locked. At first it appeared to be a straight line, meaning it was female and thus of no particular intelligence or standing. But then the square's wife approached it, felt it, and discovered it to be a circle. Can you imagine the horror of insulting a circle by daring to feel it?

It turned out to be a sphere, who was trying for a second time to persuade Flatlanders to believe in the reality of a third dimension. Of course A. Square had to proclaim what he had learned, and of course he was put in prison as a mad man and suffered greatly for his heresy.

Abbott, a theologian, wrote Flatland as much as an evangelical tool as an exploration of higher mathematics. Compare the story with the account of the Ascension in Acts.

The sphere appeared to the square as a circle, because that's all of a sphere that could fit into a two-dimensional space. But it had this weird ability to grow, or appear to grow, larger and smaller at will.

Abbott wanted his 3D readers to recognize the possibility and likelihood of 4D beings, who would look to us like ordinary 3D beings but do weird things. People who believed in these extraordinary, indeed supernatural beings would proclaim miracles, which unbelievers would scoff at.

So, if the risen Christ reclaimed the fourth dimension he had put aside at his Incarnation, he could appear and disappear at will. If he allowed people to see him leave gradually, what would it look like? C. S. Lewis wondered that. In a passage I remember reading but have no idea where to look for, he said that Jesus might have vanished in an instant, as apparently he did in that house in Emmaus. Or he could appear to rise into the sky or sink into the ground.

Well, I suppose he could have also slowly faded, like the Cheshire cat, leaving only the grin. Lewis pointed out that each of these possibilities would have a very different symbolic meaning to anyone who saw or tried to describe them. Luke says that the disciples watched Jesus ascend to the sky. Two angels appeared out of nowhere and explained it to them

Since I first read Flatland, I have believed that all of the miracles of the Bible have a perfectly good scientific explanation as soon as we suppose a fourth physical dimension that we can't directly experience and perhaps spiritual beings that can, contrary to Einstein, travel at speeds faster than light.

I say this, not because I find such an explanation necessary for belief. After all, the central truth of Christianity is that God became a man, died, and rose again from death. If God can bring those miracles off, how is it reasonable not to believe all the others in the Bible?

But for those who compare everything with science, I modestly suggest that higher mathematics provides all the explanation they could ask for.

Finding blessing in dangerous situations

2010-07-03T08:30:00.001-04:00

"Out of the eater came something to eat, and out of the strong came something sweet." -- Judges 14:14 (NASB)

One day, when Samson was on his way to marry a Philistine woman, a lion attacked him. By the Spirit of God, Samson killed the lion. On the way back home, he noticed that some bees had made honey in the carcass. He stopped to enjoy it. At the beginning of the wedding feast, he proposed a riddle based on the incident.

Let's leave aside the fact that, as one living under the covenant of Moses, Samson had no business marrying a pagan. Let's also leave aside the fact that, as someone under a Nazirite vow, he had no business approaching the lion's corpse.The incident and the riddle teach some valuable lessons about how God works in our lives.

We live in a dangerous world. Most of us will not encounter lions as we go about our daily business, but we certainly encounter other dangers. Besides physical dangers, our world has always been fraught with emotional and spiritual dangers as well.

Samson killed the lion by the power of the Holy Spirit. That same Holy Spirit resides within each Christian, and we can call upon that same power in time of need. Along with help in dangerous encounters, God brings blessings that could not have happened without them. Samson found honey in the lion's dead body.

Does that last paragraph seem pat, sugary, unreal, and just religious? Here are illustrations I find in an issue of Guideposts (January 2010) that I picked up at random:

A college student had to return home for a funeral. Travel arrangements didn't give her enough time to catch up with friends. She had faced the twin dangers of death in the family and loneliness. Waiting for a connecting flight, she ran into a group from her home town church, whose flight back home had been delayed.

An unemployed man and his wife virtually stopped talking to each other. Whenever they tried to talk, they fell into arguing about money. They found silence more comfortable than that. He accepted a temporary job in another city. As they spoke once a day on the phone, they recognized that they missed each other. Their conversations rekindled their affection for one another. What had threatened their marriage revitalized it.

A woman whose family life was already in turmoil learned that a divorced son would be moving back home and bringing a dog. Instead of becoming yet another problem, as she feared, that dog became her greatest comfort.

Widowed after a 54-year marriage, a woman wanted to die. She had loved to cook for her husband, but after his death the kitchen became the saddest room in her house. She found joy in her memories again after she started teaching cooking classes there.

That issue has more stories than I have room to describe. Each issue has more just like them. Other magazines besides Guideposts publish stories about ordinary people and how joy came from sorrow.

Not everyone who discovers blessing in dangerous or painful circumstances sends their stories to national magazines. People with eyes to see can find evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit to redeem our brushes with danger literally anywhere in the world.

Look again at Samson's little poem. Taken by itself, it no longer appears as a riddle spoken by an irresponsible young man. It becomes a paraphrase of a well-known verse in the New Testament: "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose." -- Romans 8:28 (NASB)

The joy of forgiveness

2010-07-01T08:28:00.002-04:00

I found a very interesting post that lists 35 reasons not to sin. One person commented that knowing reasons is not enough to keep him from wanting to sin. That, in a nutshell, expresses the entire human condition. But sinning brings only momentary pleasure. Then it causes all the pain that the list enumerates. God hates sin, but longs to forgive the sinner. Forgiveness received brings joy.

David described the process in Psalm 32. Where Psalm 51 describes his repentance for his sin with Uriah's wife Bathsheba, Psalm 32 describes his process of receiving forgiveness and the joy it brought.

But first, notice three words in the first two verses. Although these verses exemplify the parallelism so characteristic of Hebrew poetry, the nouns mean distinctly different things.

Transgression breaks a relationship, as David's adultery resulted in the murder of one of his most faithful mighty men. Iniquity breaks the law. Sin means missing the mark, or falling short, as in an archer's arrow not making it all the way to the target. God expects us to maintain relationships and uphold the law, and we miss that mark.

David missed it spectacularly when he learned of Bathsheba's pregnancy. He recalled Uriah from battle in the hope he would have sex with his wife and therefore believe the child was his own. When that failed, he sent Uriah back with a message that resulted in his death in battle.

Even before Nathan the prophet called him out, David felt an oppressive uneasiness in his spirit. He had also broken his relationship with God and could no longer experience the close fellowship he had enjoyed all his life.

When David confessed, God forgave. The heaviness lifted. The sin, and the burden of it, no longer served as a barrier to his relationship with God. Forgiveness restored it in two ways. God on his part offered the forgiveness. David humbly received it.

As long as God was an angry judge of David's sin, David suffered many sorrows. Spiritually, he could not breathe, as a man drowning in a flood of negativity. He had no refuge, because the inescapable God pursued him.

His confession, in Psalm 51, contains the plea, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation." He confessed. God forgave. He received the forgiveness. The heaviness lifted and joy returned.

His sin still had consequences. Having been such a poor role model, he had to suffer the misbehavior and eventually rebellion of his own sons, fleeing one of them as he had fled from Saul. But the flood could no longer drown him. He could once again seek refuge in God. In all his self-inflicted troubles, he lived in the joy of forgiveness.

Who is Jesus? Why does it matter?

2010-06-29T08:28:00.000-04:00

Jesus Christ ministered in a corner of the Roman Empire known as Palestine. He rather explicitly claimed to be the Son of God, as well as the Son of Man described in the book of Daniel.

He offended the religious leaders of his day. They subjected him to an illegal trial and committed judicial murder by crucifixion. On the third day, as he had claimed before hand, he rose from the dead, appeared to his disciples, then ascended into heaven.

The earliest books of the New Testament describe Jesus' life and ministry and explain his eternal significance. Before the end of the century, false teachers went around denying the entire explanation. They also claimed to be Christian teachers who had a better understanding of the truth than the original eyewitnesses.

During the so-called Third Reich, Hitler oversaw the systematic murder of millions of people, including some 6 million Jews. At the end of the Second World War, allied troupes found concentration camps and liberated the survivors. They also found corpses, instruments of execution, instruments of torture, and all manner of evidence of the atrocity.

Shortly thereafter, the survivors of these camps, the soldiers who rescued them, and other eyewitnesses began to write descriptions of what they had seen and experienced. Before long, the holocaust deniers boldly began to claim that the whole thing never happened.

The false teachers depicted in John's epistles and other later-written scriptures are the moral and intellectual equivalent of holocaust deniers. Why, in both cases, have people gone to such great lengths to deny truth and confuse people, to the point of denigrating eye-witnesses and participants?

In the case of holocaust deniers, it appears that they approve of Hitler's plan to exterminate Jews. They want to neutralize the revulsion against the holocaust as quickly as possible so that they can once again make the world unsafe for Jews and kill them with minimal opposition from world opinion.

In the case of the false teachers in New Testament times, they wanted to exterminate the truth about Jesus. If Jesus was perfectly man, it would prove that it is possible for a man to live without sin. No one would need to buy into the religion of legalism. If Jesus was perfectly God, it would prove that God hates sin and loves people enough to take drastic action to destroy sin and redeem people.

No one in those days questioned the reality of sin. If, somehow, they could say that spirit was good and matter was evil, then of course people sinned. God (spirit) could not become man (matter), of course, but gullible people could think so. Only those with superior intellect and greater knowledge of philosophy could understand the difference.

Some of these teachers could proclaim that if people became really strict in following prohibitions, they could live sin-free lives on their own power. No need for a savior or redeemer. Jesus replaced the antiquated Mosaic law with a better one.

Others could proclaim that people should just develop their spiritual side, perhaps through gaining some kind of arcane knowledge that had, of course, been withheld from Jesus' closest associates. It didn't matter at all what the body did in satisfying its desires. It couldn't be sin if it couldn't be helped.

Hmm. That sounds really contemporary. Don't we have a bunch of "scholars" today who implicitly claim to have better understanding of spiritual and historical reality than the people who decided what writings to put in the Bible?

Don't we have a bunch of people within the church who claim that we have to give up all notion of a supernatural Jesus now that we have modern science?

Don't we have a bunch of people within the church today who proclaim that people can live holy lives by not drinking, dancing, watching television, wearing attractive clothing, and so on--including some prohibitions that Jesus himself did not observe?

Don't we have a bunch of people within the church today who teach that God's universal love somehow condones behaviors that that nasty fellow Paul said would keep people out of the kingdom of God?

Don't we have a bunch of people within the church today who deny the reality of sin and condemn as judgmental anyone who would dare to hold up absolute moral standards?

Could all of these church people be like holocaust deniers who approve not just of exterminating Jews but of sin in general? They must want sin, and not the grace Paul proclaimed, to rule peoples' lives to their ultimate ruin. Odd that they all claim to be Christian.

Grace: free, or unavailable

2010-06-26T20:09:00.000-04:00

Simple Simon met a pie man. We know that rhyme. He had no money, so he got no pie. That's how the world works. If Simple Simon were around today, he could possibly get free food at a soup kitchen, but people find that humiliating. No one wants charity. How different it is with God! He operates not on working and earning, but grace. The feast is free, or else you can't have it.

Before the days of brand-name bottled water, or even treated water distributed by municipalities, anyone who thirsted could drink water for free. They only had to find it. But wine? Milk? Food? Only Simple Simon thought he could buy without money, and yet that is God's invitation, the very meaning of grace.

To those with money, God asks why they spend it on what does not nourish. He asks those who work why they work for rewards that will not satisfy. What could he possibly mean?

As for water, Jesus is living water. Whoever drinks ordinary H2O, as he told the Samaritan woman at the well, will get thirsty again and have to find water again. Jesus is the bread of life. Other bread keeps people alive for a while, but even those who ate miraculous bread from heaven for 40 years all died in the desert.

"He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty" (John 6:35). Hunger does not mean the urge to eat. Plenty of people today eat when they're not really hungry for food. Hunger indicates a want or lack of something, not necessarily food. Food will not satisfy hunger for something else.

God invites us to "buy wine and milk without money and without cost" (Isaiah 55:2). Why? Because he offers it by grace, not works. Sinful humanity can do nothing to earn what God has to offer. All our labor can only earn unsatisfying things. Our labor, tainted with sin, can purchase only what sin pays: death.

If only a simpleton thinks he can buy food without money, then God calls us to be simpletons. If our money buys only junk food and our labor brings only death, then simpletons wind up with the best deal. After all, none of us ultimately hungers for food. As dead men walking, we hunger for life, and there's no way to pay for it. Life comes only by grace.

The violence of Jesus: cleansing the temple

2010-06-24T08:30:00.002-04:00

We probably all have our favorite images of Jesus. In a well-known scene from Talladega Nights, Ricky Bobby preferred to pray to the Baby Jesus. Others of us might be drawn to the healer, the teacher, the man who loved children. I suppose all of the favorite thoughts come under the heading "gentle Jesus, meek and mild." So what about the violent man who upset tables and drove the money changers out of the temple?

It is one of the few incidents in his life mentioned in all four gospels: Matthew 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-17, Luke 19:45-46, John 2:13-22. According to the synoptics, Jesus erupted after his triumphal entry. John describes an incident early in Jesus' ministry. Could he have behaved that way more than once?

According to Mark, Jesus went to the temple the afternoon of his entry and looked around. He drove out the money-changers the next morning. John says that Jesus made a whip with cords. That's not the work of a few seconds. In both cases, clearly, Jesus did not suddenly go berserk. He carried out a premeditated plan.

The Pharisees, Sadducees, and elders naturally took great offense at Jesus' actions. Before we assign them to their usual role as antagonists and villains, we should acknowledge that they had a very high concept of what the temple stood for.

It was the place of the sacrifices ordained by God himself. It was the place where Jews could come to make atonement for their sins and receive cleansing from God. It was the center of the Jewish national identity. It was very holy.

The sound of children shouting praises in the temple shocked and offended them. Jesus' apparent claim that he could destroy the temple and raise it up again in three days shocked and offended them. His violence against the money changers and vendors of sacrificial animals--a time-honored part of the entire sacrificial system--shocked and offended them.

I doubt if anything ever shocked Jesus, but the presence of merchants and all the attendant haggling and cheating offended his own very high concept of what the temple stood for.

The first time he ever saw the temple, as a child of 12, he regarded it as a place of instruction. He taught within its confines every time he visited Jerusalem thereafter. Scripture described it as a house of prayer. Nowhere in Scripture did Jesus ever take any interest in the sacrifices. After all, he had come as a better sacrifice.

He could not reject the holy ritual of the sacrifices without invalidating his own mission and death, but he could and did reject the cheap commercialism that had grown up around it. He rejected it violently.

According to Christian teaching, Jesus is both fully human and fully God. Can we regard God merely as some kindly fellow, full of good advice and kind deeds? Can we think of him as a kind of ideal role model who really doesn't expect anything like obedience? Why on earth did God expect sacrifices in the first place?

Jesus became violent against those who polluted the sanctity of the house of prayer and instruction for the same reason he preached more vividly about the reality of hell than any other person in the Bible. He hates sin. He hates how it diminishes holiness. He hates how it distracts people from getting right with God.

Matthew and Mark recount how Jesus cursed a fig tree at about the same time. This act likewise seems uncharacteristic at first until we recognize it as an parallel to the cleansing of the temple, an enacted parable.

If we want to accept God's grace, we must also accept his violent hatred of sin and judgment against it. Grace means undeserved favor. We don't like to think we don't deserve it.

Jesus' violence (as well as God's violence throughout the Old Testament) serves as an uncomfortable but necessary reminder that the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness, and only by grace are we not consumed.

Identifying and dealing with false teachers

2010-06-22T19:46:00.000-04:00

Besides his epistles to churches, Paul wrote four of them to to three individuals: Philemon, Timothy, and Titus. 1 Timothy begins with a warning about false teachers. These are not just men who somehow disagreed with Paul. They taught things that could only drive a wedge between the people who believed them and the grace of God.

Sound doctrine enables righteous people to remain righteous. Righteousness does not come through anyone's own effort. It is a gift that we can receive only by faith. The law is like a medicine to apply when the moral nature is diseased.

Some people, with no understanding of righteousness by faith, and no interest in understanding, taught that Christians can only be righteous by following every detail of the Mosaic law. No one can live up to that, not even the self-deluded teachers who set that up as a standard.

How else do false teachers manifest themselves?

•False teachers promote controversy instead of understanding
•False teachers promote themselves instead of building up the congregation's faith
•False teachers are unloving in their quest to make themselves look good
•False teachers do not understand what they claim to teach
•False teachers replace the law and the gospel with pseudo-intellectual gibberish.

Paul did not urge Timothy to counter false doctrine by arguing with the teachers who proclaimed it. He did not give him the kind of arguments he would need in order to point out any of these things. Quite the contrary: the only way to counter false doctrine is to insist on the truth and proclaim it with boldness and clarity.

In just that way, people can learn to identify counterfeit money not by studying all the possible signs of phoniness but by studying real money so carefully, thoroughly, and often that any difference becomes readily apparent.

Strength in teamwork

2010-06-19T08:30:00.001-04:00

"Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken." -- Ecclesiastes 4:12

As John Wesley frequently said, “The New Testament knows nothing of solitary Christianity. The Scriptures refuse to believe that there could be such a thing as un-churched Christian.” God expects Christians to meet together, but even more than that, he encourages teamwork. That's one way that they get the strength to carry out work for the kingdom.

Sometimes two seemingly unrelated incidents in Scripture can shed light on the meaning of a third. Paul's experience in Athens and Jesus' preparations for his last visit to Jerusalem may seem unrelated, but they both illustrate the truth of the quotation from Ecclesiastes about strength in teamwork.

The one time Paul spent any length of time without any associates in a city, he had no strength to start a new church (Acts 17:15-16). After enemies started stirring up crowds in Berea, some of the brothers there took him to Athens, and he instructed them to send Silas and Timothy to him.

After a masterful presentation on the Areopagus, Paul went to Corinth and had Silas and Timothy meet him there. Apparently he regarded his ministry in Athens as a failure. In Corinth, he first became friends with Aquila. He put together a new team even before he sent new instructions to his earlier associates.

Jesus did not entrust even such a simple matter as fetching a colt or finding a room to a single disciple (Mark 11:1; 14:13). Many commentators have suggested that in both cases, he had made arrangements in advance.

At least in the case of the colt, one disciple could have come back with it as easily as two. Jesus never sent anyone alone to do anything. Sending disciples at least two at a time underscores the importance he places on teamwork.

As something of a loner, I find this a difficult and uncomfortable teaching, but my life testifies to its truth. I can do all kinds of things on my own, but not very much for the kingdom of God without being personally involved with at least one other Christian. God expects teamwork even of introverts. Or better, God grants the strength of teamwork even to introverts.

Solomon may have had God in mind for the three-fold cord. But it appears that the two mentioned in Ecclesiastes that band together to withstand an enemy must both be people.

Redeemed from the curse of the law

2010-06-17T08:30:00.001-04:00

"Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree'), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." -- Galatians 3:13-14 (NKJV)

What, exactly, is this curse of the law that we are redeemed from? Check out Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. Both chapters begin with a blessing that the people would obtain for keeping up their end of the covenant. Both chapters enumerate the dire consequences of failing to keep the covenant. In both cases, the curse is about three times longer than the blessing.

Most Christians are probably familiar with the passage from Galatians, but have probably never read much of Deuteronomy and even less of Leviticus. Nonetheless, it's worth looking at these two chapters in order to understand the awesome grace that Paul proclaimed. I call particular attention to three verses from Leviticus.

In this remarkable passage, we see that there is no mechanism in the Mosaic covenant for forgiving the nation if they break it and then repent. Instead, God promises in that case to remember the older Abrahamic covenant.

Disobedience to the law ends any possibility of obtaining any of the blessings in the first 13 verses of the chapter. God made other provisions for restoration in not superseding his covenant with Abraham, a covenant in which God made extravagant promises and demanded nothing of Abraham in return!

The law established what God's people would have to live up to in order to earn God's blessing. With the single exception of Jesus Christ, no one has ever come close. But in Leviticus 26:42 God renewed all of his promises to Abraham to any Hebrew who repented of sin. Paul says that Jesus' death on the cross bought that same blessing for everyone else! Amazing grace!

The most popular of 100 posts on Grace and Judgment

2010-06-15T08:30:00.001-04:00

It hardly seems possible, but since beginning this blog at the end of October 2009, I have posted more than 100 Bible studies and devotionals. Allow me to reminisce a little and highlight the most popular posts so far.

Who are you calling evil?
Jesus prefaced a comment saying, "If you, then, being evil. . ." But no one took offense at him. Wouldn't most of the audience be offended today?

Prayer that really works
I have learned that instead of asking for my will to be done, I can ask God to conform me to the image of Jesus. When I ask for a blessing, I keep an open mind about what it is.

Thoughts on the night sky
Does the vastness of the night sky make you feel small and insignificant? Even David wondered what value mankind has. But then he turned his attention to the greatness of God and discovered man's significance.

Speaking what's right of God: thoughts from Job on pride and humility
Three friends came to comfort Job in his affliction and got into a nasty argument again. God sided with Job, but only after he took back everything he said in the argument.

Robbing God in tithes and offerings
As Christians, we don't pay tithes to the church. We pay them to God. Or, if we don't pay, we do not rob the church. We rob God.

A prayer Jesus answered, but did not grant
Jesus always had compassion. The disciples, not always compassionate, sympathized with a crowd of people late in the afternoon and urged Jesus to let them go so they could go back home and get some food. He had a better idea.

When I am afraid. . . I will not be afraid
When you find yourself threatened by what seems endless turmoil and chaos, confront your fear as David did: trust God. Maybe the turmoil won't go away, but the fear will.

Fear of God: the wrong way
In Jesus' Parable of the Ten Minas, one servant buried his mina in the ground out of fear of his master. Proper fear of God recognizes his love and does not prevent us from doing works for him.

Is not his word like a fire?
The Bible speaks of consuming fire and refiner's fire. Everyone's works will be tested by fire. It may feel like punishment and judgment, but in God's hands, fire is a tool of grace that destroys only sin.

Jesus, the towel, and us
On the night before Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread. Before that, he took the towel. Why is that not as much a symbol of Christianity as the cross or the communion elements?

Next words of Jesus: wait for the gift
God's ways are not like our ways. All of the gospels end with Jesus' commandment "go." No one wanted to. Forty days after the resurrection, when everyone was eager and confident, the book of Acts opens with the commandment "wait."

Moses' presumption

2010-06-12T08:30:00.000-04:00

"And Moses said to Joshua, 'Choose us some men and go out, fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hands.'" -- Exodus 17:9 (NKJV)

Among the many gifts God gave Moses, his rod was a tangible object that he could use any way he chose in order to release God's power. He usually used it wisely and with great effect. Sometimes he did not use it wisely, and it got him in trouble.

His best-known mistake came when God told him to speak to a rock so that water would come from it. In anger he struck it with his rod instead. As a result of that direct disobedience, God forbade him to enter the promised land.

An earlier misjudgment, which happened immediately after an earlier water-from-the-rock miracle in which God told him to strike the rock with his rod, occurred when the Amalekites decided to attack and fight the Israelites.

This time, instead of disobeying God, Moses made a decision without consulting God. We all do that every day of our lives. Sometimes we choose something similar to what God may have told us if we had asked.

In this case, an enemy had attacked Moses' people, and Moses had a duty to protect them. He delegated to Joshua the task of recruiting and army and leading them in the fight. I don't presume to know if that's what God would have told him, but it worked.

But in the same breath, he said that he would stand at the top of the hill and hold up the rod of God. He had not just made an ordinary, earthly decision. He had decided how he would bring God's power to bear on the battle. God had not decided any such thing. Moses acted in presumption. He couldn't follow through.

As long as he could hold his hand up, Joshua and his troops prevailed in the fight, but Moses had no strength to hold up his hands long enough for Joshua to finish it off--with or without the extra weight of the rod.

Some time, try to hold your hand up, with your arm stretched out in front of you. When that hand gets tired, it's fair to change hands. How long do you think you can last? Certainly not for a few hours. But whenever he let down his hands to rest, the Amalekites began to win the battle.

Moses had presumptuously planned to use the power of God with the strength of his own flesh, and he did not have enough strength. Fortunately, he had also decided to take Aaron and Hur with him to the hilltop. They found a stone he could sit on, stood one on each side of him, and held his hands up until Joshua finally defeated the enemy.

It could have been much worse. Generations later, two ungodly priests named Hophni and Phinehas took the ark of the covenant into battle against the Philistines. They lost not only their lives, but also the ark itself.

God gives believers access to his power, but it's still his power. Shouldn't we continuously ask him how to use it?

A personal lesson in the fullness of grace

2010-06-10T08:30:00.001-04:00

It's hard, for me anyway, to discuss anything in Romans without it coming across like a theology lesson. Well, it is a theology lesson, but it's very practical theology. I can testify that it can become very personally real as well.

Paul tells us we have peace with God through Christ—whether we feel like it or not. It's an outcome of the very nature of God. God expelled sinners from the Garden of Eden and chased them from his presence, but not before he told them of his plans to redeem them from sin.

In Wesleyan terms, prevenient grace started right then and there. That's the kind of grace that goes before everyone so that it is always possible for them to repent any time they want to.

Justification essentially means that rebels have laid down their arms and surrendered. They admit that on their own strength, they can only sin, and that they can only live godly lives through faith in Jesus Christ.

If God's objective is to restore fellowship with rebels, what will he do when they surrender? Throw them in jail? Treat them harshly? Of course not. As soon as we surrender, we have peace with God. Justification by faith becomes an introduction to a new life of faith, and we rejoice in the hope that we will see and live in God's glory

That hardly means all of our troubles are over. Repentant sinners have lots of wounds to heal and bad habits to change, and God does not reveal them all at once.

Not only that, peace with God means intensified enmity with the devil, and he hinders us in obvious ways and in ways that perhaps we'll never notice as long as we live. Life under the sun is a hard slog, frequently an exercise of futility.

For years, I looked at the futility and at the Bible. As much as I wanted to believe the Bible, I believed the futility more. Hope was a religious word I couldn't quite wrap my mind around.

It was hard for me to remember that all of the heartbreak of life under the sun cleanses believers as we continue to walk in faith. Some day, all of the futility will be behind us, and we will see that glory clearly. We will no longer rejoice in the hope of that glory, but in the reality of living in it.

So how do we get there from here? The Bible answers our most difficult questions by insisting on something entirely counterintuitive. In this case, Paul says that the way to overcome suffering is to rejoice, exult, while we suffer!

The suffering itself is the means to the glory we hope for. In Wesleyan terms the process is called sanctification. That is the kind of grace that causes a justified sinner to become more and more like Christ.

First, suffering trains us to endure. It impels us to keep seeking God, to keep meditating on his word and his nature, to keep praying, to keep worshiping.

I know that I went through years of doubting whether God really loved me. Eventually, he pointed out to me that I had to believe first and see the evidence later.

That was hard spiritual labor, but I kept at it. My troubles at the time, though a heavy burden, were not nearly as serious as what I'm going through now, but I have never again been tempted to doubt his love.

The Greek for the NIV's "character" must be difficult to translate. It literally means "proof," but it would be overly cryptic to say that perseverance produces proof. KJV translates it experience, and NEB says that "endurance brings proof that we have stood the test."

I like that. I endured through my suffering to learn that God really does love me. That perseverance gave me the experience of victory and proved to me that I had passed the test. That gave me additional hope.

And here's the key. Christ died for me while I was still a sinner, still ungodly--prevenient grace. Justification gave me hope of the glory of God. That's at the moment of salvation, before the faith that God gave me ever came to a time of testing.

The testing produced perseverance, and the perseverance gave me the experience of victory, which added to the hope that I already had. Salvation gave me hope of the glory of God and the experience of sanctification added to that hope.

We can hope for lots of things in this life and be let down, but the hope we get from God's grace cannot disappoint us. God has given us not only hope, but the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And through the Holy Spirit, God has flooded our inmost being with his love. That's how we can rejoice in suffering.

The flood: grace and judgment on display

2010-06-05T08:30:00.000-04:00

Here's the quickie narrative of the flood that almost everyone knows: God made people and got mad at them, so he decided to wipe them out. He liked one fellow, though, so he made him build an ark and collect pairs of animals. Everyone else drowned, but when the floodwaters subsided, the few people and animals on the ark repopulated the earth.

On the surface, that sound like overkill. I mean, surely there must have been some nice folks that died along with the bad guys, right? To many people who understand only that much of the story, God must be some kind of angry, capricious monster--at least until gentle Jesus meek and mild came along.

As always, a closer look gives a different perspective. In 6:3-7, God said, "His (mankind's) days will be a hundred and twenty years" and, being sorry that he made people in the first place, declared he would destroy everyone. But, as 6:8 says, Noah found favor. He commanded Noah to build the ark.

According to the story of the fall (Genesis 3:15), God had promised that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head. God had to keep someone alive in order to be able to fulfill that promise! Thus, at the time of the most crushing act of judgment recorded in the Old Testament, grace was at work.

Was Noah a better man than everyone else? Not necessarily. He must have been a godly man, but we need hardly assume that he was the only godly man for God to choose from. Grace means undeserved favor, and out of however many godly men lived in the world at the time, God selected one on whom to bestow that particular grace. But what about everyone else in the world?

If you look over at Genesis 5, you'll find that it claims people lived a lot longer in those days than at any time since. Methuselah's only claim to fame is living to the age of 969. His father Enoch, it seems, never died. God just took him out of the world when he was a mere 360.

It used to puzzle me that God said that man would live 120 years, and then we find all of the patriarchs living longer than that. But in fact, God meant that from the time he decided to destroy mankind until he sent the flood, mankind would have 120 years to repent. During that time, Noah built the ark.

Must that not have seemed strange to everyone else? An ark is not any kind of a boat. It's more like a coffin, except this one was vastly larger than an ordinary coffin. It must have attracted at least curiosity. As Noah explained what he was doing and why, people had a chance to repent of their sins and get right with God.

Then, according to 7:4, when the ark was finished, God decreed that every living thing on the earth would perish in a flood--seven days later. Noah didn't have to gather up animals, by the way. He and his family were in the ark, and the animals just showed up.

What would that say to anyone who had continued to scoff at Noah? Things were getting serious, but they could still repent and get right with God. If there were other righteous people besides Noah, or if any repented of their wickedness while Noah built the ark or while the animals came to get on it, they all drowned. They all died.

But here's the grace: the godly always pass from death to eternal life. God could have simply sent a flood without warning, but he had an earlier covenant to keep. Surely he could have found some faster way to preserve Noah and his family, but he continued to love other people even as he decided to destroy all of human society.

That God, the God of compassion, love, and grace, is the God who created the universe and continues to maintain it, even though Scripture decrees a fiery end to the world. Everyone has an open invitation to turn from wickedness and to our compassionate Savior.

Don't let caution put your fire out

2010-06-03T08:30:00.003-04:00

"For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline." -- 2 Timothy 1:6-7 (NIV)

Paul loved Timothy and trusted him with the most difficult of tasks. He wrote to the Philippians that of his entire staff, only Timothy was like-minded. Like Paul, Timothy suffered persecution, but it seems to have gotten into his mind.

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul reminded him that the spirit God has given Christians is of power, love, and a sound mind. Power and love don't regularly fit together in the world. In fact, a most effective way to gain power is to withhold love.

When a person repeatedly suffers rejection or other disappointment, he or she tends to get very cautious about becoming vulnerable again. That has certainly been my weakness. In the face of a major disappointment, I am likely to hold back from anything that seems likely to lead to another similar feeling. That, in turn, makes it hard to be loving in a situation that feels similar.

Perhaps that is what happened to Timothy. Paul had to remind him to stir up his gift. His spiritual gift had become like an ember in the ashes. How do we stir up a fire that's about to go out? In the natural, a fire needs fuel, heat, and oxygen.

Paul says that the fuel is the spirit that God gave us, not the spirit of timidity that bids to let the fire die. The power of God is supernatural and unlimited. The love of God is unqualified and unrestrained. God's power and love work together perfectly and inseparably. Love, in fact, is power--the power to continue to love even when that love is met with hostility.

Self-discipline means that the spirit God gives refuses to let any worldly stimulus take control. It does not value the sort of love or other rewards that the world gives. Therefore, the presence of absence of them makes no difference. It is a supernaturally healed, disciplined, and obedient mind. Power, love, and self-discipline, then, provide the fuel, heat, and oxygen needed to return a cooling ember to a roaring fire.

Examine yourselves

2010-06-01T08:30:00.001-04:00

"Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Prove yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?--unless indeed you are disqualified." -- 2 Corinthians 13:5 (NKJV)

"These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. -- 1 John 5:13 (NKJV)

My mother had an uncle named John. He was one of the leading businessmen in his town, and active in one of the Methodist churches. When he was in his late 80s, a Baptist friend suggested he should really do something about his baptism; "You're too good a man to go to hell."

That's but one example that immediately comes to mind of people assuming that someone else will go to hell for some perceived failing. Probably all my readers can think of other examples.

On the other hand, I remember reading that an Aztec chieftain listened to a Spanish priest explaining Jesus and heaven. Finally, he said that heaven sounded like a great place, but he had one question: will conquistadors like Cortez be in heaven?

The priest, knowing that they were all members of the Roman church in good standing answered that of course they would be in heaven. The old Aztec told him not to talk to him any more about Jesus or heaven. If the raiders who had so brutally conquered his people would be in heaven, he wanted no part of it.

Nowadays, lots of congregations like to sing hymns like, "When We All Get to Heaven." So what do these scriptures, Uncle John, Cortez, and the hymns have to do with each other?

Paul said, "Examine yourselves." Search Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. Is there any verse that tells us, or even permits us to examine anyone else? Judge teaching and prophecy to be sure, but leave the judging of people to God.

John said, ". . . that you may know that you have eternal life," not that any of us can know that anyone else has eternal life. I would be inclined to have a different opinion of Cortez's salvation than the sixteenth-century priest, but the fact of the matter is that it's none of my business. I would like to assume that my wife, my pastor, my church friends, etc. are all going to heaven, but that's none of my business, either.

Why have Christians made assumptions about each other's salvation or damnation for so many generations? Perhaps it's because that's much easier than obeying the word of God and examining ourselves instead.

I doubt if any of us can examine ourselves much more accurately than we can examine anyone else, but at least God will help us on that. He will help us to do anything he told us to do, but not to do anything that's none of our business.

What is true holiness?

2010-05-29T08:30:00.001-04:00

A lot of people, Christian and non-Christian alike, think of holiness as not doing certain things: don't drink or cuss or chew or run with folks that do. That's not a biblical definition. It's certainly not what Isaiah thought about when he saw God.

God is holy. That means at least three different things. He is unique, entirely unequaled in all he created. He is pure and incorruptible. He is separate from sin and from sinners. Yet at the same time, he desires the companionship of his creation, including the sinful human race.

According to the law, a leper had to be expelled from the community. The presence of a leper made the whole community unclean. Think about it. The law also reminded every one of them that they were sinners, but the presence of a leper would make them even more unclean.

Jesus was different. He did not shun lepers. By his grace, he touched them and they were healed. Isaiah lamented his unclean lips, but an angel touched him and purged his sin.

So a holy God does not shrink back from touching sinners. Leprosy and sin flee at his touch. Christians, filled with the Holy Spirit, should not define holiness simply by the particular sins they do not commit. We should live out a holiness that, far from being corrupted by the presence of sin, brings cleansing and healing to whatever part of this unclean world we can influence.

Dry bones and new life

2010-05-27T08:30:00.001-04:00

In one of the best-known passages of an otherwise obscure book, Ezekiel described his vision of a valley of dry bones coming to life. Actually, it was more than a vision; he had to prophesy to the bones before anything happened.

Ezekiel recognized that the bones represented the whole lineage of Jacob. Both kingdoms that represented that lineage had been destroyed, their people exiled and scattered. In their shattered hope, the survivors felt as dead and dried up as the bones.

At Ezekiel's first word of prophecy, the bones formed together as complete skeletons, and then the flesh returned. Now instead of a valley of dry bones, it was a valley of corpses. What value is that?

So at God's command, Ezekiel prophesied again, this time to the breath. In place of corpses lying on the ground, a mighty army stood, ready to move forth and do God's work.

The Hebrew for breath, ruach, is also the word for spirit in general and the Holy Spirit of God in particular. It came from the four winds. Again at Pentecost, the Spirit came with the sound of a mighty, rushing wind, bringing a new life previously unimagined.

The church has not yet finished the commission given to it before Jesus ascended into heaven. The whole earth has not yet heard the good news of Jesus Christ. That is in part because the church has become infected with much the same sin that rendered ineffective the Jewish establishment of Jesus' time.

Look around. Some segments of the church are up doing the works of God. Some segments are corpses, not operating in the power of the Holy Spirit. Some segments are nothing but bones lying on the ground. I'm sure each of these conditions exist within every denomination on earth

The Bible is never just the story of what God did. It's also the story of what he does. In Ezekiel, he brought a valley of dry bones to life, but only after he had shown it to this son of man and commanded him to prophesy to them.

If you see bones or corpses where the living army of God ought to be, pray. Prophesy over it. Just make sure you are operating in the power of the Holy Spirit yourself. There's work to do, a war against sin to win. Only God can resurrect a dead army, and he has given each of us a part in making it happen.

Gathering and restoration of a forgiven people

2010-05-25T08:30:00.002-04:00

Because it refused to turn away from its sins and rebellions, God destroyed the Kingdom of Judah and sent the people to exile in Babylon. According to an overriding biblical principle, God is never finished with a situation after he has executed judgment on sin. The next step is always grace and restoration.

Through the prophet Ezekiel, he promised not only to gather up the exiles and return them to Jerusalem. He also promised to give them a new heart and a new spirit.

They would remove all of the abominations and detestable things from the land; no more would Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside see the idol worship that had led to judgment in the first place.

Those who chose to remain in sin could do so, but they would also remain under judgment. God offers grace freely to everyone, but people must accept it in order to benefit from it.

God judged sin once for all on the cross. The resurrection of Jesus Christ demonstrated its final defeat. Grace and restoration came at Pentecost. Jews from all over the world had gathered at Jerusalem for the feast, just in time to witness the power of the Holy Spirit manifested in a new way.

One hundred twenty people, filled with the Holy Spirit, glorified God in languages they had not learned, and Jews from all over the world heard the praise in their native tongues. Peter got up and preached a sermon, and the Christian church was born.

By that time, idolatry was nowhere to be found in or around Jerusalem, but other abominations had arisen that required cleansing, including legalism, judgmentalism, political intrigue, and dullness of heart toward the things of God.

These stubborn sins have worked themselves into the church. The power of the Holy Spirit and the revelation knowledge of the New Testament have been given to cleanse these sins. But again, people must accept grace to benefit from it. Those who refuse remain under judgment.