I’m Jeff Mikels, and I wrote Evangelical Idolatry because I believe American Christianity is broken.

There are some who have fully embraced a violent nationalism claiming they are standing up for “biblical values” while ignoring everything Jesus or the Old Testament prophets had to say about caring for the outcasts, the foreigners, the poor, and the oppressed.

There are others who have fully embraced a progressive spirituality claiming they are for the character of Jesus while disregarding the Bible’s clear instructions about pure living, the need for repentance, and the warnings of coming judgment.

We have fallen into the trap of the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Some of us want earthly power, and some of us are sticklers for keeping the law of God, most of us are a mixture of each, and all of us have our own ideas about what proper earthly power is and what it really means to keep the law of God.

What we need today is a fresh understanding of the revelation of God, a fresh understanding of the words of the Bible.

What we need today is a fresh voice defending the intent of the ancient voices.

I’m trying to be that voice.

With me, you will hear the old tropes and false doctrines dismantled:

• What does the Bible really say about Hell, the Lake of Fire, and the final judgment? Is it eternal conscious torment? Is it annihilation?
• Are “Christians” the only ones to be saved? What does the Bible actually say?
• Is there really a conflict between the life of faith and the world of science? Is the Bible really opposed to science?
• Is Satan really a fallen angel who now has authority over this planet? What did Jesus teach?
• Is sexual immorality the greatest sin of the world?
• Is persecution the greatest threat faced by the American church?
• Are Christians supposed to be in charge?

With me, you will gain a completely new insight into how to understand the Bible on its own terms: hearing the intent of the original author and discovering the authority therein.

• My messages take people back to Jesus as the ultimate authority, the model and filter of everything the rest of the Bible has to say.
• My messages open people’s eyes to the original meaning of the words as they were intended by the original authors of the text.
• My messages help people see how the ancient truth of the text provides both insight and encouragement for the real world everyday problems we are facing today.
• My messages challenge presuppositions, complacencies, and fears: tearing down idols and offering encouragement.

If you are interested in getting back to the Jesus of the Bible, putting his kingdom first and center in your life, and leading the people in your care to do the same, consider booking me for a spiritual retreat, a conference, a Sunday morning sermon, or a mid-week Bible study.

I have a selection of topics I can bring to the table, but I am more than happy to bring a fresh word from any passage you choose or any topic your people need to hear.

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I’m not sure we can remedy that situation, but I need to make this appeal.

Dear Christian Conservative, the primary vote is the last time this election cycle you will have to truly vote according to your Christian convictions. Let me explain.

From childhood, I, like most (predominately white) evangelical Christians, was trained to understand two things about politics:

• Republicans were more righteous than Democrats (mostly because of their opposition to abortion, but also because of their support of “religious freedom” and other culturally conservative positions).
• If you ever have a Republican of bad character running against a Democrat, you must still stick with the Republican because even a bad Republican is better than a good Democrat. (Lesser of two evils argument.)

These ideas were delivered to me almost word for word in many contexts for the past 44 years of my life beginning back in 1980. I was only 5, but I remember Reagan v. Carter, and I was very interested in the reasons my parents had for supporting Reagan instead of Carter. Yes, I was a weird child.

Nonetheless, if you are a conservative Christian, and you believe that voting for a conservative Republican is the right thing to do, I won’t try to change your mind today; however, I will simply point out that as long as you have two Republican options to choose from, neither of the top two principles apply.

Rather, your voting plan is literally trumped by consideration of which candidate is the better person, which candidate has the better character. At this point, you still have the choice between two candidates who equally fit the Republican bill except that one of those candidates, Donald Trump, is a morally reprehensible person from every metric of Christian ethics.

True conservatives value character over competence.

True conservatives value values over pragmatism.

Christian conservatives moreover value the model set for us by Christ.

In November, you once again will be faced with the standard option of Republican vs Democrat, and at that point, I might make the argument that you should vote for a Democrat or not vote at all, but for now, during this primary season, you still have a real option that doesn’t violate your conscience. You have the chance to vote for a Republican who is not prone to adultery, who has not been convicted of slander or fraud, who is not currently on trial for racketeering or insurrection, and who is just frankly a nicer person.

If you are a conservative Christian who wants to vote Republican, this primary season is your last chance to vote according to principle. This is your last chance this election cycle to honor your conscience with your vote.

In my previous post, I considered a large number of passages in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) referring to salvation and forgiveness, and I closed out that post with the following conclusions. When it comes to forgiveness, Jesus demonstrated and taught the following things:

• Everyone who asks for forgiveness gets it.
• Many people who don’t ask for it get it anyway.
• Those who reject it don’t get it.
• Those who withhold it don’t get it.

Before I dig into the examples from John, I want to mention a couple of things.

First of all, my second point above, that many people who don’t ask for forgiveness get it anyway, is an observation regarding what’s actually recorded in the gospels. Of course, the gospels also indicate that Jesus knows people’s hearts, so he can know if a person is “asking” for forgiveness whether those words come out of the person’s mouth or not. Jesus can see repentance in the heart of a person even if the repentance isn’t visible to us. Nevertheless, it’s important for us to say the statement as I did because we don’t know people’s hearts nor do we know all of Jesus’s reasons for offering forgiveness. We only know his example, and his example was that he offered forgiveness many times without people asking for it.

Secondly, nothing in the previous study addressed the wrath of God against people and their sinfulness. This is a major theme of modern evangelicalism and I did mention it at the beginning of my last post, but we didn’t address it. Don’t worry, I’ll circle back to it at the end. Jesus definitely talks about judgment and who is eligible for it. In fact, we’ll begin to consider it now as we look at what John wrote about salvation, and then in the next post, we’ll circle back to what the synoptics had to say about it.

John’s Purpose

At the end of his gospel, John tells us exactly why he’s writing what he’s writing:

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
John 20:30-31 NIV

John tells us that his gospel was written specifically so that the readers would “believe” that Jesus is the real Messiah / Christ, that he is the real Son of God, and that through belief, the reader would have “life” in his name.

John wanted his readers to put their faith in Jesus so they could experience the full life Jesus promised both in the here and now and also in eternity. John’s purpose was to point people to Jesus as the source of true salvation and forgiveness. It’s no wonder salvation is a major theme of his book.

Jesus & Nicodemus

In one of the most famous passages on salvation, Jesus is talking to a man named Nicodemus. The encounter goes like this:

Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. ”

“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.

“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
John 3:1-18 NIV

Once again, we have an important, perhaps rich, man coming to Jesus and bringing some flattering comments, but once again, we have Jesus immediately shift the conversation to something away from flattery. In this case, he uses a metaphor that takes the man off guard: being “born again.”

Nicodemus doesn’t understand, but the only explanation Jesus gives is that there’s a “spiritual” kind of birth that people need.

Nicodemus still doesn’t understand so then Jesus effectively says, “It’s not because you don’t understand; it’s because you don’t believe.” But then, Jesus really puts it out there. In just a few more words he says this:

• I am the only human who has come from heaven.
• I will be lifted up, and people who believe in me will have eternal life.

Now, we don’t know exactly when the quotation of Jesus ends and the commentary of John begins. Ancient Greek had no punctuation (or lower-case letters, or even spaces for that matter). However, whether the next few words came from Jesus to Nicodemus or whether they came from John after the fact, they communicate two more truths about Jesus.

• It’s because Jesus has been sent to the world to save it.
• And that’s because without him, the people of this world stand condemned.

Now, we are getting into familiar evangelical territory. All people start out as unbelievers, therefore, all people start out condemned, destined to “perish” but Jesus came to “save the world” and by believing in him, a person is “born from above” or “born again” and is given “eternal life.”

This is the fundamental definition of the evangelical gospel I outlined in the previous post, and you can see it explicitly taught here by Jesus. But there’s something else I want you to see. Pay close attention. What does Jesus tell Nicodemus to do?

It’s a strange question isn’t it?

If you are familiar with John 3, you probably get that Jesus is telling Nicodemus to believe in him, but don’t run ahead of the text. Jesus doesn’t tell Nicodemus, “You should believe in me” Instead, Jesus just teaches Nicodemus, “People should believe in me.”

Why?

Jesus could have poked at Nicodemus’s flaws. “You are ignorant of the Scripture.” “You are intentionally hard-hearted against me.” “You are rejecting the minister of God in your midst.” “You only come out to me under the cover of darkness.”

Jesus could have flattered Nicodemus. “You are brave coming to learn from me.” “You are wise to ask such insightful questions.”

He did neither.

Rather, Jesus spoke words of doctrine to a man who was steeped in doctrine. He referenced a story to a man who knew that story. But in the metaphor of being “born again” he did something brilliant. He let Nicodemus know that there was something more to his spiritual awareness up to that point, and that message, I’m sure, would have made a Pharisee salivate. “You mean, there’s a deeper spirituality than what I already know? There’s a new life open to me?”

Pay attention to what is said and what is not, and you see the following elements in play:

1. Someone comes to Jesus and he welcomes it.
2. The man is flawed, but Jesus doesn’t poke at it.
3. Rather, Jesus teaches the teacher something insightful and inspiring.
4. No accusation, command, or even invitation is expressed, although the need for faith is strongly implied.

Oh, and one more thing. The word “save” only shows up in this passage toward the end, and it’s not about an individual salvation at all. It’s about a work of salvation Jesus is doing somehow for the whole world. Nicodemus needs to be “born again” but for whatever reason, Jesus didn’t tell him how to do it other than to talk about faith in him. Nicodemus asks, “How?” but Jesus didn’t give him a recipe.

The Woman at the Well

This is one of my favorite passages in the book of John, but I’ll try to do my best to make the analysis brief.

(4) Now he had to go through Samaria. (5) So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. (6) Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

(7) When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (8) (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

(9) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. )

(10) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

I have to pause here because I think you probably already know this story, and therefore, I think you probably already have thoughts and expectations about it. So I’m pausing here to highlight something. Right now, the first thing Jesus says to the woman is: “Give me a drink” (asking her to serve him), and the second thing he says to the woman is this: “If you knew me, you’d ask me for the drink and I would give you living water.”

Doesn’t the first question seem a bit facetious in light of the second statement? It seems that maybe Jesus is asking for a drink specifically because he wants to make the point that she should ask him for water!

Once again, a person approaches Jesus and he instantly subverts expectations.

But I’m going on a tangent. Let’s keep the main thing the main thing. Jesus just made a promise to the woman: If you ask me for it, I will give you living water.

(11) “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? (12) Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Again, I stop because this is hilarious to me. “Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well”? What a hilarious question! Yes! A thousand times yes! Jesus is so much greater than Jacob! Jesus invented the water in the well, the dirt around the well, and the hands that dug the well! She has no idea!

(13) Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, (14) but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

(15) The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Another stop.

I know you know what’s coming next.

So, I’ll just add a few lines here.

And here.

To push the text a bit away from your eyes.

So I can remind you of what Jesus had promised her:

“If you ask me for it, I will give you living water.”

And to highlight what she just said:

“Sir, give me this water.”

What is the expected next thing in the story?

Don’t you expect Jesus to give her some living water?

(16) He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

(17) “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. (18) The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

This.

Right here.

So many people from so many church traditions read this in so many ways because it doesn’t seem to make sense.

• Some people think Jesus is calling out the woman’s sin. He’s gone through all this niceness so far, making her promises and such, but this was the plan all along. He needed to somehow make her feel exposed and shamed and guilty. These people think the first step of getting living water is to feel guilt over your sin, and so Jesus has to make her feel like a sinner before he can offer salvation.
• Other people think Jesus is speaking words of implied grace. Sure he’s pointing out her sin, but he’s been so nice up to this point, and maybe he had a loving look on his face as if to say, “I know how bad of a sinner you are, but look at me, being nice to you.” These people think that Jesus’s presence and words are an act of grace that coincides with his identification of her sin. These people also feel like pointing out a person’s sin is a prerequisite to salvation, but they attempt to point out that sin more nicely perhaps than the people in the first group.
• Other people have recognized rightly that back in that society, a woman who had been divorced 5 times was either terrible to live with, or had been abused and violated by a lot of men, or both. What if these 5 former husbands had not divorced her but died instead? Maybe then, the town would have seen her as a curse to men. Maybe that’s why this 6th guy hasn’t had the guts to marry her. No matter how you slice it, she’s an outcast. Maybe that’s why she’s at the well in the heat of the day instead of in the morning when all the other women would be there. Bottom line, she already knows she’s messed up and she doesn’t need anyone else to point it out, but when Jesus says the word “husband” that must’ve stung even so.

All three of these perspectives have Jesus speaking words of accusation toward her.

But there’s another option.

What if Jesus were keeping his promise.

He promised her to give her living water if she asked for it.

She asked for it.

He told her to get someone else.

What if a person “gets” the living water in the process of “going” to “get” someone else?

File that away for a moment.

There’s also one last thing to notice about this little encounter. Jesus says words of truth to the woman, but he doesn’t call her a sinner.

In fact, what if Jesus meant it when he said “husband”? What if Jesus intentionally chose to call man #6 her “husband” even though that man never made the commitment legal? What if Jesus had chosen to give that woman in that relationship more dignity than she gave it herself? Yes, yes, I know that she wasn’t legally married to the man, Jesus concedes as much too, but you need to remember that Adam and Eve never had a ceremony either. No law endorsed the marriage between Isaac and Rebekah either. Abraham slept with the slave Hagar once and a couple places in the story refer to her as his “wife.”

What if Jesus were giving more dignity to her relationship than she was willing to give it herself?

And what if he was authentically saying, “For you to get the living water, you need to bring someone else to me”?

Is that possible?

Whatever the case, the woman is clearly not offended by what Jesus said.

(19) “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. (20) Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

(21) “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. (22) You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. (23) Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. (24) God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

There’s our word… salvation… and it is from the Jews… from the Jews, not for the Jews. The time is here for people outside the Jewish nation to receive salvation… somehow.

(25) The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

(26) Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Boom. This is the very first time Jesus directly admitted that he was the Messiah, and that’s super important, but his grammar was also a bit weird when he said it. You see, this, like many other places in the gospel of John contains the Greek phrase, “ego eimi” which means, “I am he” but doesn’t actually contain the pronoun “he.” In fact, this is the phrase used in the Greek versions of the Old Testament when Moses asks God to speak his name and God says, “I Am.” In Greek, this phrase means “I am he” but it is also the only way to translate the Hebrew words, “I Am.” For anyone familiar with the public reading of Scripture back in that day, Jesus’ use of the phrase would have made them think back to the burning bush. And here, Jesus is revealing that part of himself, for the first time ever, to this Samaritan woman.

Let’s just finish the passage. If I keep stopping us, we’ll never get to the end!

(27) Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

(28) Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, (29) “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” (30) They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

(31) Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

(32) But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

(33) Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

(34) “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. (35) Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. (36) Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. (37) Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. (38) I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

(39) Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” (40) So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. (41) And because of his words many more became believers.

(42) They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
John 4:4-42 NIV

The end of the story really tells us something, doesn’t it. The same Jesus who starts the story tired, hungry, and thirsty ends the story filled because he is satisfied by doing the will of the Father which involved telling the truth about him to a woman at a well.

The woman, likewise, came to the well at exactly the right time to avoid people, but ended up leaving her jar at the well and running back to get everyone’s attention, and she effectively becomes a town hero.

The disciples went into the town to buy food, but at the end of the story, the “harvest” is coming out of the town to them!

I think the narrative is pretty clear. Whether you call it “living water” or “food to eat that you know nothing about” the ultimate sustaining power is in doing the work of God, and the work of God involves these things:

1. Jesus is approached by someone.
2. He initiates relationship with that person through humility and a shocking but hopeful claim.
3. He avoids accusation and invites the person to join the work even before offering any truth.
4. He clearly declares two unfathomable truths:
   1. Salvation (here, a relationship with God) is open to anyone (Savior of the world).
   2. Jesus himself is Messiah and Lord (Savior of the world).
5. He demonstrates that participation along with belief is central to the blessing.

People may debate me on #3 because it’s very tempting to see in this story an accusation of someone’s sin followed by an invitation of grace and forgiveness, but I’ll make the point once again if it wasn’t clear:

Not only does Jesus never call the woman a sinner, he also never mentions forgiveness, and he never invites her to repent.

Good Shepherd

It’s not a story of a gospel presentation or a person turning their life around, but the passage where Jesus says he is the Good Shepherd is worth a look:

Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

The Jews who heard these words were again divided. Many of them said, “He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?”
John 10:7-20 NIV

This passage is incredibly metaphorical, but there are a few things we should notice:

1. Jesus claims that those who “enter through [him] will be saved.” Clearly, he’s claiming that he himself is the entry point to salvation. Somehow, salvation depends on a connection to him.
2. Jesus claims that his sheep “know him” and are also known by him. That is, the sign of the sheep is that it listens to the shepherd’s voice and follows.
3. Jesus claims that his own death is somehow connected to all this.
4. Many people who heard the words of Jesus rejected what they heard.

The overall point of this story is clear to me. Jesus is saying that he is the only way for a person to enter into eternal life/salvation. He’s saying that his death makes it happen somehow. And he’s saying that the real sheep are the ones who follow him. Then, as fulfillment of the very words he just said, many people rejected his words.

As before, we can see Jesus promising people that if they come to him and heed his words, they will receive eternal life.

However, also as before, we don’t see anything about sin here. Jesus mentions his death, but he doesn’t say anything more than that his death will be for the protection of his sheep. Although other passages connect his death to our forgiveness, this one doesn’t. For sure, if you expand the context and read the surrounding passages, you will see Jesus talking about judgment and sin, but if you look closely, his words of judgment are reserved exclusively for the Pharisees, the religious people who claimed they didn’t need any forgiveness.

As an example, consider this.

Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”

Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
John 9:39-41 NIV

This encounter happens right after the blind man Jesus healed was cast out of the synagogue and Jesus finds him to have a conversation. In the encounter, Jesus says he will bring judgment, that his judgment will not match the expectations of people, and then, in the most stark statement of all, he declares that the Pharisees are guilty of sin because they claim to see, but the ignorant people are not guilty!

I’m not going to build a theology on this yet. After all, back in John 3, Jesus said that all people stand condemned before God for their sin, so he doesn’t mean ignorance absolves you from sin. Nevertheless, he’s definitely accusing the Pharisees of sin while not accusing the blind man of sin.

About Forgiveness

As I did in the previous article, I also want to consider the ways John uses the word “forgiveness.” We’ve seen many times when he could have brought up forgiveness but didn’t. What about those times when he actually teaches something about it?

Well, would you be surprised to know that the word for “forgive” or “forgiveness” or “forgiven” only shows up in one single verse in the entire Gospel of John? Here it is:

If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
John 20:23 NIV

This one is worth a deeper look. Here it is in context:

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
John 20:19-23 NIV

This is the Great Commission as recorded by John.

“As the Father has sent me, I am sending you,” says Jesus.

Then, he gives them the Holy Spirit.

Then he gives them the charge: “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

I don’t know about you, but for me that line feels pretty heavy.

If we don’t forgive someone’s sins, they are not forgiven!

If we do forgive someone’s sin, they are forgiven!

If Jesus is telling the truth, then you and I, as followers of Jesus, literally hold the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven and eternity, and according to Jesus’ words right here, the determining factor between whether they get in or not, whether they have forgiveness or not, is whether we forgive them.

Once again, I don’t want to build a whole theology off this one verse (no matter how much it syncs up with what the other Gospels say about binding and loosing and holding the keys to the Kingdom).

I’d be too nervous to assert that you have the power to get someone into heaven by merely forgiving them.

But it sure sounds like Jesus is saying something like that doesn’t it?

Conclusion

The evangelical framework for evangelism has worked well for a couple hundred years:

• Help a person understand their sin.
• Help the person understand the consequences of their sin.
• Help them understand how Jesus solves the problem.
• Promise them eternal life if they repent of sin, receive the message of Jesus, and follow him.
• Give them an invitation.

However, nowhere in the Gospels do we see that happening. Parts of this framework show up. Jesus tells Nicodemus that he needs to be born again, but doesn’t say it’s because of sin. Jesus calls people to repent and follow him, promising eternal life, but doesn’t preface it with a discussion of sin or how his death solves the sin problem.

We also see parts of this framework in the rest of the New Testament. Paul will tell the people of Athens that God in the past overlooked their sin but has now appointed his ultimate Judge, the risen Christ, and they will be accountable to him, but even in that sermon, he won’t call their idol worship “sin.” Peter on the day of Pentecost, will also call people to repent, but the only sin he will mention will be the fact that the people of Jerusalem killed Jesus.

The real problem is that the normal evangelical framework is just too easy, too comfortable, too formulaic. It makes too much sense, and is too useful. Because it’s so convenient, we assume it must be right or at least the best, but it’s a problem because it’s not strictly biblical.

Sure, every part of it is biblical, Romans 3:23 (All have sinned), Romans 6:23 (sin brings death), Romans 5:8 (God in love sent Jesus to die for us), Romans 8:1 (in Christ, we are forgiven) & Romans 10:9-10 (salvation is applied to your life when you believe it). But at the same time, we must assemble this formula verse by verse, piece by piece.

I’m not going to stop using the formula.

However, I wonder if Jesus might just want us to put grace and forgiveness closer to the front of our conversation. Perhaps Jesus’ method really works. Perhaps we don’t need to get people lost before they get saved. Perhaps an early offer of forgiveness could do just the same. Perhaps we just need to show them the authentic Jesus—Grace, Truth, Death, Resurrection, Exclusivity and coming Judgment—and perhaps we should remember which one comes first.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14 NIV

I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea recently: What would it look like if we were as eager to forgive as Jesus was?

This is a tough question because for most of my life, I thought exactly like a post I recently saw online:

You won’t find a single place in the Gospels where Jesus Christ condones, excuses, or tolerates sin.

Not in His healings.
Not in His miracles.
Not with the humble.
Not with the proud.
Not even during His own humbling with Pilate.

Instead, you will consistently find Him warning people about sin. People were convicted just by being in His presence.

I ended up replying because I’ve started really wrestling with an evangelical presupposition I now question.

Here’s how the narrative goes:

• Jesus’s mission is to “save” the lost. — Luke 19:10
• Because this world is so broken, people don’t even know they are lost, and they need to be first convinced of it. — Romans 3:10-12
• Once they accept they are lost, the message of Jesus will be “good news” — John 3:16-18, Romans 6:23
• When a person really hears the “good news” they will accept it with joy — 1 Thessalonians 2:13
• Once a person receives the gift of salvation, then we can embark on the journey of fellowship and discipleship with them. — Matthew 28:19-20

This sequence of statements is generally what evangelical Christians mean when they use the word “Gospel.” They are usually talking about the doctrine that (1) people are sinful and destined for eternity separated from God, (2) but Jesus died on the cross to save them from sin and reconcile them to God the Father, (3) so if they believe, they will be forgiven and welcomed into eternal life.

Is there anything wrong with that doctrine?

No, I don’t think so.

But what’s interesting is that we have taken a truth and turned it into a technique.

We have taken the truth of history’s salvation milestones and turned it into a sequence of steps for us to take someone else through.

It’s a good technique, too. Or, if not good, it’s at least effective. I myself came to faith through that technique. I’ve used that same technique on dozens maybe hundreds of other people too if you include my sermons.

There’s just one problem with that technique.

It’s not what Jesus or his followers did.

Let me take you on a journey through the New Testament, and we are going to consider every single time the text tells us someone is saved, every single time the text has a person being forgiven, and how the sequence happens. I wonder if we will find any kind of consistent technique.

Salvation in Matthew, Mark and Luke

Let’s do a search for these words as they show up in the NIV. But let’s also filter them to find just the ones that are talking about a person being saved.

For example, consider these two passage:

You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.
Matthew 10:22 NIV

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
Mark 8:34-38 NIV

There are many passages like this about salvation, but many of them don’t apply to our discussion here because in many of them Jesus is talking to his own disciples, people who are already “in” so to speak. Also, there are many times when the Bible uses the word “save” to mean something different than that moment when a person becomes a believer and is “saved.” For example, both of these passages are Jesus talking to people who are already following him, and he’s talking about a salvation that is entirely future. If you endure to the end, if you lose your life, then you will be saved. It’s a future promise.

It’s definitely a good lesson, and there’s good theology there, but for the purposes of this study, we are trying to find the ways Jesus and his followers present salvation to a person who is not yet a believer or who is making the transition from unbelief to belief. You might be surprised to know that there aren’t many stories like that in the Bible, but the ones we find are powerful.

A Rich Young Man

Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”

“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”

“Which ones?” he inquired.

Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Matthew 19:16-26 NIV

This is a weird passage in so many ways. First, Jesus pushes back on the man over the concept of good. Then, Jesus gives the man an obviously works-based religion: If you keep the commandments, then you will enter life (heaven). Then, the man asks Jesus for specificity and Jesus oddly mentions commands 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 from the 10 along with the command he elsewhere called the “second” greatest commandment. It’s odd because Jesus left out all the commands that put God first and he also left out the command against coveting.

Then, the man shockingly says, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?”

That’s exactly the point, isn’t it? Jesus mentioned only the commands the man had no problem with. Jesus effectively affirmed all the good things the man was already good at doing. On top of that, Jesus entirely avoids the sins he knows this rich man to have.

It was a quiz. It was a trick. Jesus was trying to see if the man already knew his own sins. And he didn’t.

Jesus made it obvious which ones the man “lacked” but even then, the man didn’t get it.

So Jesus does something else brilliant. He tells the man to sell his possessions, give to the poor, so he will have treasure in heaven, and then follow Jesus. What is the man to do? Defeat his own greed and his coveting (sell everything and give to others). Defeat his own idolatry by valuing the treasure of heaven above earthly stuff. Defeat his own self-centeredness by following Jesus. The man couldn’t do it.

Here are a few principles:

1. The man approaches Jesus with a question about eternity.
2. Jesus wisely gives the man a chance to confess his own sins, but doesn’t mention them himself.
3. Jesus gives the man the chance to repent by calling him to do what he lacks, but he doesn’t even call it repentance.
4. Jesus invites the man to follow him, but he doesn’t mention a single doctrine.

That’s a story of a man who is invited to repent but doesn’t. What’s next?

A Sinful Woman

When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
Luke 7:36-50 NIV

Again, this is a passage with some difficult parts to it. First, Jesus is at the home of a Pharisee. That in itself is weird. It’s weird that a Pharisee would invite Jesus in, and it’s weird that Jesus would accept the invitation. Elsewhere, Jesus calls down curses from heaven onto the Pharisees (something we’ll get to in a bit), but this Pharisee is willing to welcome him and Jesus is willing to accept.

What happens next is an amazing contrast. An uninvited sinful woman shows up in the house, she stands near Jesus’s feet, she weeps, and she eventually washes his feet with her tears, her hair, and this expensive perfume. And Jesus lets it happen.

At issue is the exact thing the Pharisee thinks.

Should Jesus call out the woman’s sin or not? The Pharisee thinks that’s the important thing to do, but Jesus doesn’t fit the mold. Instead, he tells the Pharisee a story that contrasts the love the Pharisee has shown Jesus with the love the woman has shown him.

“You did not give me any water for my feet… You did not give me a kiss… You did not put oil on my head.”

However, Jesus says the woman did all that and more.

And here’s the kicker. Jesus says to the Pharisee:

Her many sins (he does acknowledge that she has a lot of sins) have been forgiven.

But some people just aren’t very grateful… are they, Mr. Pharisee?

Then, Jesus looks at the woman and says three things:

1. Your sins are forgiven.
2. Your faith has saved you.
3. Go in peace.

Let’s pay attention to some details. First, Jesus knows the woman is sinful and doesn’t do anything about it, doesn’t say anything about it at all until he declares her forgiven. Secondly, Jesus is drawing a contrast between the woman who knows she’s a sinner and the Pharisee who doesn’t seem to realize the same about himself. Finally, Jesus gives three affirmations to the woman and the order matters: You are forgiven. Your faith is a saving faith. Go in peace.

What are the principles we can pull out of this story when it comes to our technique of saving the lost?

1. A man invites Jesus over and Jesus accepts
2. A woman approaches Jesus and he welcomes
3. The woman knows her own sin and showers love on Jesus.
4. The man is ignorant of his own sin and offers Jesus very little.
5. Jesus verbally mentions the failings of the self-righteous man not those of the woman.
6. Jesus offers the woman forgiveness, salvation, and encouragement.

Once again, there is no mention of doctrine here. There is no mention of the cross, no call to repentance. Jesus simply offers forgiveness and encouragement to the one who knows she needs it and a healthy challenge to the one who doesn’t.

That’s a touching story, but we still didn’t get a picture of transformation. Isn’t there a story about a guy who really does hear the message of Jesus and turns his life around?

Zacchaeus

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Luke 19:1-10 NIV

Zacchaeus was a “chief tax collector” meaning that among all the tax collectors, he had proven himself even more effective than most! From the perspective of the people in Jesus’ day, he was the worst of the worst. Tax collectors were lumped with prostitutes as the worst of the sinners because they were literally betraying their own Jewish national interests, taking money from their countrymen, keeping some, and sending the rest to Rome.

But he approached Jesus and did whatever it took for him to get a good vantage point.

Jesus saw him.

Jesus went to his house.

And…

Seemingly out of nowhere, Zacchaeus stands up and declares he is going to give half of his possessions to the poor AND ALSO he will additionally repay four times the amount to anyone he has defrauded!

Now, you can speculate all you want about what Jesus said to Zacchaeus over that meal, but if you are a person who believes in the inspiration of Scripture, then you have to trust the inspired lack of words here. As far as we know, Jesus said nothing to this man about anything he had ever done. At the very least, the Holy Spirit wanted Luke to write absolutely nothing about what Jesus did or didn’t say.

What does Jesus say? “Salvation has come to this house.”

Principles?

1. Someone approached Jesus
2. Jesus “welcomed” the person (welcomed himself into that person’s home!)
3. That person, aware of his own sin, decides to turn his life around.
4. Jesus declares salvation.

Terms Other than Save or Salvation

Forgiven

Although salvation is the most commonly used phrase by Christians in America today, there are other terms used by Jesus to indicate that a person was in right standing with God: forgiven and justified are two of them. Let’s add those to consideration. However, once again, let’s focus on the passages that indicate a person receiving forgiveness and especially how a person is to receive forgiveness or justification. Specifically, what if any are the pre-requisites for receiving forgiveness?

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Matthew 6:14-15 NIV

Previously in the prayer Jesus taught us, he had used the phrase “Forgive us our debts…” but it’s after the prayer when Jesus gives the rationale for that request. Specifically, he gives us a clear picture of how a person receives forgiveness. According to him, it’s by being a person who gives forgiveness. Modern American Christians have a general distaste for making God’s behavior toward us conditional on any behavior of our own. They will say this required pre-requisite to forgiveness sounds like a “works” salvation or “legalism,” but let us remember this doctrine comes from Jesus directly after the prayer Christians of all varieties have memorized. Not only that, but Jesus reiterates that same requirement multiple other times:

And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins. ”
Mark 11:25 NIV

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Luke 6:37 NIV

Then, in response to Peter’s question about how many times he should forgive someone, Jesus tells a story about a man who was forgiven a great debt but refuses to forgive someone else who owed him a small debt and is then thrown in prison as punishment. Then he says this:

“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
Matthew 18:35 NIV

How does a person obtain God’s forgiveness? Throughout the gospels, this is the only direct instruction. From Jesus’ mouth, this is the only instruction: Forgive others and God will forgive you.

But there are other times where forgiveness is offered to someone without any corresponding instruction. Let’s look at those.

Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”

At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming!”

Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” Then the man got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to man.
Matthew 9:2-8 NIV

This story is told in all three of the synoptic gospels. Here it is in Mark and Luke:

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
Mark 2:1-12 NIV

One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.

When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”
Luke 5:17-26 NIV

These gospels all differ slightly on the first words Jesus said to the man, but they all agree exactly on what preceded his words: “When Jesus saw their faith,” and the substance of his first sentence, “your sins are forgiven.” Modern evangelical Christians do a weird thing with this story and it all comes down to the relationship between faith and forgiveness. The narrative goes, “See, Jesus doesn’t forgive until there is faith,” and the implication is that forgiveness follows putting one’s faith in Jesus. We’ll see that taught in the gospel of John, for sure, but don’t jump out of this passage just yet. What is the faith Jesus sees here, and for that matter, what kind of “faith” can be “seen” in the first place? Clearly, all three accounts key in on the efforts of these men to get their friend in front of Jesus. For good reason, they thought they should get their friend in front of Jesus, but they went through a great deal of effort to act on their inclination. In fact, the Bible word translated faith is the same word that sometimes refers to the columns that hold up a building and refers to something stable, strong and secure. One way to understand this verse might be, “When Jesus saw their determination…” or “When Jesus saw their commitment…”

Regardless of how you translate the word, there are a few things that are essential to note:

1. These men had demonstrated nothing like “faith in Jesus for salvation” or “faith in Jesus for eternal life.”
2. These men knew nothing about Jesus’ death for the sins of the world, and therefore, their faith couldn’t be in that.
3. These men certainly weren’t putting their faith in Jesus as the divine Son of God or even the promised Messiah. The only thing revealed in the text is that Jesus had the power to heal, and these men were determined to get their friend in front of Jesus for that.

So let’s be clear. Not one of the men in this story, not the men on the roof or the man on the mat came to Jesus that day to get sins forgiven. They came for a healing miracle.

And Jesus saw their faith, their faithfulness to their friend, their hope in the power of Jesus, their determination to do whatever it took, and he said the exact thing no one expected him to say:

“Your sins are forgiven.”

On the one hand, this phrase might make sense because ancient people often thought sickness was a sign of God’s judgment and so they probably thought this man was paralyzed because he too was being punished for some sin (maybe that of his parents). Maybe he actually was paralyzed because of a sin in his past. Maybe Jesus needed to forgive this man’s sin to heal the man. We don’t know. All we know is that Jesus has been healing a lot of people by this point. Luke makes sure we know that, and this must have been the first time he said “Your sins are forgiven.” We know it must have been the first time because everyone around him was shocked by the statement.

Therefore, we have to conclude that Jesus was trying to make a very specific point. With this guy here, in this house surrounded by people who could hear his words, he declares, “Your sins are forgiven.” Then, he goes through with the healing not to prove that he has the power to heal. That had been proven already. He does the healing to prove that he has the authority to forgive sins.

So let’s put the story together.

What pre-requisite is there to receiving forgiveness?

• Must we believe Jesus will heal us?
• Must we believe Jesus will heal our friend?
• Must we dig through a stranger’s roof?

Or is it somehow different?

Is it possible that in order to receive forgiveness, a person merely needs to come to Jesus? Not come to Jesus for healing. Not come to Jesus even for forgiveness. Maybe, just maybe, to receive forgiveness, a person merely needs to in the presence of Jesus. Maybe, just maybe, Jesus forgives more generously than we thought.

The bottom line for this story is a pattern we have seen before:

1. Someone approaches Jesus.
2. Jesus declares forgiveness.
3. Jesus proves forgiveness.

Jesus’ offer of forgiveness here is given exactly the same way, freely and without pre-condition, as with the woman who washed his feet with her hair.

So watch yourselves.

“If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”
Luke 17:3-4 NIV

Once again, Jesus describes a very generous approach to forgiveness, and once again, it’s a horizontal forgiveness. It’s a forgiveness from one person to another. Here, though, Jesus issues a pre-requisite to this forgiveness. The person comes back to you and says “I repent.” I’m tempted to do a lot more with this word than Jesus does, though. You see, I want proof of repentance. I want to see the other person really feel bad about what they did to me, and I want real evidence that they have changed their behavior and won’t let me down again. I want them to feel pain; I want revenge. If I’m honest, what I’m really saying is that I don’t want to forgive. I want them to pay for what they did.

Jesus says something different. They don’t have to prove their repentance. All they need to do is come back to you with enough words to indicate that they want to maintain the relationship with you.

And you are supposed to forgive.

Caveat: If someone is abusive, I believe you need to forgive, but it doesn’t mean you have to keep yourself in their sphere of abuse. Forgiveness is not the same as sticking around.

Are you ready for this next one?

Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”

The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar
Luke 23:32-36 NIV

What was the pre-requisite for this forgiveness?

The soldiers are nailing him to a cross. Forgive them.

The religious leaders had caused it all. Forgive them.

The criminals were hurling insults at him (at least until one of them changed his tune later on). Forgive them.

The people were mocking him. Forgive them.

Is ignorance the pre-requisite for forgiveness? Nope. They didn’t know they were killing the Author of Life, but they all certainly knew they were killing an innocent man.

Forgive them.

There are three more concepts we need to consider to round out this discussion of forgiveness and the pre-requisites for it according to the synoptic gospels.

Repentance & Forgiveness

We already talked about this in the context of people forgiving other people, but we haven’t mentioned it once as a prerequisite for forgiveness of sins from God. There’s a reason for that. In the gospels, the connection is a lesson that’s taught, but rarely illustrated. As we saw, the woman with the alabaster jar of perfume doesn’t display repentance. The paralytic doesn’t, and neither do the people nailing Jesus to the cross. However, the connection is taught nonetheless. Here are a few of those verses:

And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Mark 1:4 NIV

He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, “ ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’ ”
Mark 4:11-12 NIV

…during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Luke 3:2-3 NIV

Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
Luke 24:45-47 NIV

Clearly, there is a connection between repentance and forgiveness, but I think we have a good handle on what it is so long as we don’t muddy the waters with modern ideas or doctrines that weren’t addressed in the gospels themselves. Consider the word we translate repentance: metanoia is a word that means to change your way of life, change your attitude, and that’s why it is so often connected to baptism—washing away the old and coming out new. Jesus also quotes the prophecy about people being forgiven after they “turn.” I suspect we have seen repentance many times already without actually recognizing it as such because it was so small.

The woman takes her money her sinful life and puts it into perfume that she pours over Jesus. She’s coming to Jesus in a way that declares a changed life.

Zacchaeus invites Jesus to his house knowing that he is hated by Jews for his tax-collector ways, but he declares a changed life.

The paralytic comes before Jesus knowing that if he is healed, he will have no longer have an excuse for his friends to take care of him, and that will certainly be a changed life.

We’ve seen it many times already.

The simple act of coming to Jesus was, for most people, an act declaring and welcoming a changed life.

1. Come to Jesus.
2. Expect to change.
3. Hear him say you are forgiven.

This is starkly illustrated in a story that doesn’t even use the word “forgiveness” but means the same:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Luke 18:9-14 NIV

Both men “come” to God in prayer, but that’s where the similarities end. One man is “justified” (meaning to be “made right” often synonymous with “forgiven”) while another isn’t, and the only difference is that one of them knows about his sin and the other one doesn’t. One of them, is like the friend who comes back and says, “I repent,” and the other one is a man convinced he has nothing to repent for. One man knows he needs forgiveness, and the other one thinks he needs none.

The person who wants forgiveness gets it.

The person who doesn’t need it, doesn’t get it.

Binding & Loosing

I’d be completely remiss if I didn’t mention a very difficult passage, because I’m convinced it has something to say about forgiveness that we miss too often because of a translation issue:

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
Matthew 16:16-20 NIV

If you want to know what binding and loosing mean in this passage, don’t make any decisions about it without flipping two chapters over:

(15) “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. (16) But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ (17) If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

(18) “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

(19) “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. (20) For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

(21) Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

(22) Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

(23) “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. (24) As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. (25) Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

(26) “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ (27) The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

(28) “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

(29) “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

(30) “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. (31) When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

(32) “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. (33) Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ (34) In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

(35) “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
Matthew 18:15-35 NIV

I know you’ve seen this before, but notice a few things now that we are keeping it in context:

1. The phrase about binding and loosing is the same here as it was in chapter 16.
2. In chapter 16, binding and loosing are related to them having the “keys to the kingdom.”
3. Here, the entire context is one of forgiveness.

There’s one more thing you need to know, the word “loose” in Greek is an incredibly common word in Biblical Greek and it can refer to all kinds of different “loosening” behaviors. It can mean freeing someone from captivity, it can mean breaking the seal of a book, it can mean untying a rope, and metaphorically, it can mean releasing someone from a debt… as in forgiveness.

In chapter 16 and in chapter 18, Jesus is giving the power of forgiveness to the gathered church and clearly telling them that they have the authority to forgive people on earth, have that forgiveness be registered in heaven, and thereby open the doors of the kingdom to them.

What is the pre-requisite to this forgiveness?

1. A person whose conscience is seared and will not embrace repentance of sin is not part of the kingdom.
2. A person who refuses to forgive someone else is a person unfit for the kingdom.
3. The kingdom have the literal power to open or shut the doors of the kingdom to others.

Again, there seem to be guidelines to forgiveness.

Surely, some people are ineligible for it.

But the overall tone is that Christians are called to be generous with their forgiveness, to be agents of God’s forgiveness.

The Unforgivable Sin

“Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” –
Mark 3:28-29 NASB

I pulled this from the NASB because the NIV translates it too well, and I wanted to explain it myself. I merely want to highlight one aspect of this verse. Literally every sin is eligible for forgiveness except for rejecting the work of the Holy Spirit. The gospels all recognize that in rejecting Jesus, people were actually rejecting the work of God that was happening in and through Jesus by the power of the Spirit. Therefore, if you reject that God is at work in Jesus, that’s a sin that can’t be forgiven. Nevertheless, all other sins “shall be forgiven.” Does that mean “will be forgiven” or “might be forgiven”? Honestly, we don’t know. It’s entirely possible that Jesus means literally every sin from every person for all time will be paid for on the cross, but some people will reject the work of God through Jesus and will therefore be stained by one remaining, unforgivable sin.

Whatever your interpretation of the passage, you have to at least recognize this. In this passage there is no pre-requisite mentioned. Go ahead, read the context of these verses, and you’ll see there is no pre-requisite for receiving this predicted forgiveness.

Conclusion

In my next post, I’ll look at salvation and forgiveness in the gospel of John, but for now, I’ll end this study with a few observations.

First, although the concept of salvation is central to the ministry of Jesus (after all, he came to seek and to save the lost), there are precious few instances in the gospels of a person becoming saved or of Jesus declaring that a person is saved.

Secondly, although there is clear teaching that forgiveness is connected to repentance, there is no description of what repentance really means, and there is no direct line saying, “Unless a person repents appropriately, withhold your forgiveness.”

Thirdly, there are only three ways to guarantee you won’t be forgiven:

1. Somehow reject the work of the Holy Spirit, the power of God at work in Jesus.
2. Believe you don’t need forgiveness.
3. Refuse to forgive your neighbor.

Finally, since Christians are people who believe in heaven, and since Christians want other people to enter eternity with God, and since God himself wants people to enter eternity with him, and since Jesus has literally given us the power of forgiveness as the key to the kingdom, why would we ever withhold forgiveness from someone and thereby eternally lock them out of heaven unless they literally disqualified themselves in one of the three ways we just mentioned?

The apparent application of this lesson is that Christians should be more likely to offer more forgiveness more readily and more generously than anyone else and that we should be less likely to put stumbling blocks or roadblocks in the way of people who would come to Jesus if only they could see the way to him.

Is there a distinction in the gospels between forgiveness and salvation? Is there a temporary forgiveness that’s different from an eternal forgiveness? Jesus doesn’t teach that. For all we can tell, forgiveness is salvation, and when it comes to forgiveness, the message of Jesus in the gospels is clear.

• Everyone who asks for forgiveness gets it.
• Many people who don’t ask for it get it anyway.
• Those who reject it don’t get it.
• Those who withhold it don’t get it.

The question on my mind is this: How do I talk about my book with people who don’t know me all that well?

Or, more to the point: What do I say about my book when I know it’s content is likely to offend the person I’m talking to?

This has been my dilemma since moving to Upland, Indiana and joining a church where I’m not the pastor. Jen and I have joined a church, joined a small group in the church, I meet regularly with the pastors of the church, and we have been investing in relationships with people in this church. Many of them know that I’m under contract to publish a book, and many of them are interested in the content of the book.

But I don’t know what to say about it or how to talk about it because the book contains the thoughts that lost me many friends.

At the same time, I’ve had to write a number of summary statements about the book. Both when I was pitching the book to publishers and now after getting the contract, I’ve had to write a number of “summaries” and “descriptions” and “synopses” so the publishers and marketing teams know how to position the book.

Here are some of the things I’ve sent them:

There are idols embedded in the evangelical church. These idols have empowered the evangelical church to deny science, ignore racism, and embrace the conservative political agenda in contrast to the true gospel and to the detriment of our witness. However, I and other pastors like me are guilty of perpetuating the worship of those idols.

It was all from good intentions; we didn’t mean to establish idols. But we uncritically merged Biblical truth, American values, evangelical traditions, and an evangelical subculture into an amalgam where discerning the difference between what was true doctrine and what was idolatry became almost impossible. As a result, we built congregations of poorly discipled people who worship the wrong things, fear the wrong things, and fail to model the life of Christ.

I’m a pastor who is complicit both by teaching and by silence, but distance has given me new eyes to see where these idols come from and how they function. I’m on a journey to not only recover from them but to help other pastors and laypeople dismantle them in their own lives and perhaps prod the evangelical church in America to get back to living out the good news of Christ.

Here’s another thing I’ve written about it:

For 17 years, I led my church without a partisan bent, but whenever I said anything, it was decidedly conservative largely because I knew saying anything that sounded like a Democrat would offend my congregation. As a result, people got the idea I was just as conservative as they, but in 2020 when I took a stand that COVID was real, that Donald Trump was immoral, that racism was real, that vaccines weren’t the Mark of the Beast, etc. people left my church feeling that I had changed or that I had betrayed them. We lost 80% of our congregation during the summer of 2020.

Brokenhearted, I couldn’t understand why my church was filled with people whose faithfulness to Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Republican party outstripped faithfulness to me, their church, or the character of Christ. I wasn’t alone, but I felt alone. Reporting shows that countless pastors felt as alone as I but we all had nowhere to turn and no framework for understanding what was going on. After years of reflection, I’ve come to realize that I was part of the problem. My teaching actually contributed to the evangelical idolatry of our day. I needed to say something, but I had to confess my complicity first.

This book is my confession, and then my call for other pastors and church people to step away from misunderstandings and misapplications of Scripture, to tear down the idols of partisanship, divisiveness, pride, and their theological justifications, and to return to living like Jesus.

There are many pastors and laypeople whose hearts are broken over the condition of the evangelical church in America. They know something is wrong but they can’t tell what is wrong. These people, both pastors and laypeople, need a framework for understanding and talking about the issues they feel. What’s more, they need the perspective of someone who has begun to see differently after nearly 50 years in the evangelical church world, 20 years as an evangelical pastor and 7 years of formal training in evangelical institutions. That is the perspective I bring to the table.

Just today, Jen and I were meeting with one of the elders of the church where we are now members, and he asked me what my book was about. I hesitated. I didn’t want to give the full answer, and I told him so. I said, “I’m just developing a relationship with this church and with you, and I don’t want to say anything that will jeopardize that relationship. My book has some things that are potentially offensive and my heart is to open dialogue rather than put off, so I’m hesitant to talk too much about it just yet.”

Nevertheless, I need to get serious about finding a way to talk about these things.

This blog post is a bit of a first pass at that.

The book is all about the idols embedded in evangelical doctrine and perpetuated by pastors like me. Through things I said and things I left unsaid, I gave people in my congregation the opportunity to think that Christianity was deeply linked to things that had nothing to do with Christ.

For example, in sermons about loving your neighbor, I talked about how “love” can sometimes be “tough” but I avoided all applications that might have sounded liberal. In sermons about sharing your faith, I focused on teaching “truth” more than washing someone’s feet or laying down your life. In sermons about the unity of the body of Christ, I ignorantly avoided all talk about the vast gulf between the experiences of white Christians and Black Christians in this same country. In sermons about the beauty and wisdom of God displayed in creation, I carefully avoided any real encouragement toward climate action and was cautious in my approval of scientific disciplines. In many ways, I gave my congregation the impression that Christianity and political conservatism were compatible if not equivalent belief systems.

Much like Aaron standing before an unruly crowd, I asked people to give me their gold, and I gave them a poor representation of the image of God.

The book is me going into detail regarding just a few of the idols I helped to build up in the lives of the people in my church. It’s an exploration of my evangelical education, the doctrines I taught, the doctrines I avoided, and the misunderstandings I held for too long myself.

The book is also me describing in detail why a number of things evangelical Christians hold onto are really just false idols.

I am 100% certain that some people will read the book and conclude…

• that I am “woke”
• that I am falling for the “religion of the culture”
• that I am “watering down the gospel”
• or even that I’m a heretic.

And that’s what makes me nervous about the whole endeavor.

I’ve been convinced for 4 years now that there are idols in evangelicalism that need to be torn down.

I’ve been convinced for 2 years now that these idols must be called out by name and brought out into the open.

I’ve been convinced for 1 year now that I (and pastors like me) are largely to blame for the problem.

If we can recognize our failure and start tearing down the idols, I think God will bless the endeavor. But I’m nervous about the road ahead.

Why have I ignored the perspective of my Black brothers and sisters?

1. My direct experience was white, evangelical, and protestant. More than that, since my dad was a pastor and I went to a school run by our church, I had the idea that our perspective was the right one. I was unwilling to give much consideration to the perspectives of anyone in any other church.
2. I was specifically taught in different contexts that Black preachers like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and perhaps Dr. King himself were somehow invalid as preachers/pastors because of their admixture of Christian faith with “politics.”
3. I personally believed that racism didn’t really exist anymore. Slavery and Jim Crow were in the past. Every Black person who came to our church and school (there weren’t many of them) proved that racism was behind us. In my young mind, racism didn’t “exist” as much as it was “perceived.” It only existed insofar as a person felt prejudiced against another or felt overly sensitive to the actions of another.
4. Finally, I didn’t pay attention to the theological thinking of African Americans because they were uneducated and wrong. It wasn’t just that my tradition was right. I believed the doctrinal thinking coming out of the Black church was theologically inept. Whether it was over the definition of the gospel, the importance of liberation, the meaning of the cross, the methods of preaching and worship, or even the doctrine of the Trinity, it was reinforced to me that the Black church was misled, immature, and in many ways just wrong.

Nevertheless, in the past 10 years or so, I’ve intentionally decided to change my mind. I’ve invested in relationships with Black pastors, I’ve read books and done research into the unique perspectives on theology coming from the Black experience, and most recently, I’ve become enamored with the teaching of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Much has been said about his personal failings, and I’m not going to defend him as a moral exemplar, but I nevertheless want to honor his passionate commitment to the doctrine and way of Jesus. I probably disagree with him on the doctrine of atonement and other matters of theological precision, but his advancement of Jesus as the model for living, his incessant hope in the ongoing work of God, and his inexplicable hope in the eventual transformation of his “white brothers” inspire me.

Recently, I’ve been reading The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone. James Cone is a key figure in what scholars call Liberation Theology and I have been trained to think of that framework as a heresy against the gospel. But I’m reading the work for myself to see if my training told me the whole story (spoiler alert, it has not).

Chapter 3 of his book focuses on Dr. King, and it contains a number of quotations from him. Now, considering that many of my readers are coming from white evangelical traditions, it’s likely that Dr. King’s sermons are as unfamiliar to you as they are to me, so here are a few quotations from the book that are certainly eye-opening.

… it may mean walking through the valley of the shadow of suffering…. Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear.

I can’t be neutral on this [anti-war, anti-poverty]… The word of God is upon me, it’s like fire shut up in my bones…. It may hurt me, but when I took up the cross I recognized its meaning…. It is not something that you wear. The cross is something that you bear and ultimately that you die on.

There are some who still find the cross a stumbling block, and others consider it foolishness, but I am more convinced than ever before that it is the power of God unto social and individual salvation…. The suffering and agonizing moments through which I have passed over the last few years have also drawn me closer to God. More than ever before I am convinced of the reality of a personal God.

Whether you agree with every point of King’s doctrine, or whether you agree with his methods of activism, you cannot deny his commitment to the Word of God and the cross of Jesus. That’s what drove him. That’s what empowered him.

And that can be motivating to you and me too!

If you have ever felt that the world is against you…

If you have ever felt that you are losing ground to your enemies…

If you have ever felt the temptation to push back or fight back…

Consider the teaching of Christ exemplified in the words of Dr. King:

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. — Luke 6:35-36 NIV

When the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed in 1963 and those four little girls lost their lives, King’s commitment to the love of Christ didn’t waver. In a profound act of faith, he exhorted his hearers to keep living the life of Christ no matter what. In his “Eulogy for the Martyred Children” he said these words:

So in spite of the darkness of this hour we must not despair. We must not become bitter; nor must we harbor the desire to retaliate with violence. We must not lose faith in our white brothers. Somehow we must believe that the most misguided of them can learn to respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

Or, as Jesus would say: Love your enemies.

Back in 2005, I had the chance to see the last Star Wars movie made by George Lucas (he later sold the franchise to Disney). It was called Revenge of the Sith, and it was the culmination of years of my own fascination with the story. As someone born in 1975, I was a person shaped by Star Wars, and the prequel trilogy was released in perfect timing for me to rejoin that universe with my son, but the biggest and most important reason it’s a film still worth talking about today is that it’s a narrative of what it takes to turn someone from an innocent child with a lot of promise into the literal embodiment of evil, Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader.

What has the power to do such damage to a human soul?

Fear.

Now, it’s no secret that Lucas pulled from Buddhism, Christianity and other religious traditions of the world to form the basic idea of his mythical _Force_ and therefore, it doesn’t surprise me when I see something in his work that resonates with my own religious convictions, but there’s a comment made by Yoda, the main guru for good in the story that has profound significance to all of us these days.

Yoda said, “You need to let go of all that you fear to lose.”

This line was delivered to a youthful Anakin Skywalker who had in the previous film witnessed the death of his mother, but his greatest pain was that he had the chance to save her if he had only reached her sooner. Now, in this movie, he was being lured to the dark side by a similar fear that he might lose his wife to death. He determined to do whatever it took to prevent it. A child who was never nurtured to have healthy emotions, a person with so much power, he needed no one else to solve his problems, the emotionally stunted and aggressively confident Anakin bought the lie that death was to be avoided at all costs and that he could possibly prevent it.

How many of us likewise feel this way about death?

How many of us likewise feel this way about losing something or someone that we love?

Strangely, we Christians, we who follow Christ even though our Christ was executed millennia ago, we who follow Jesus specifically because he defeated death, we who believe death itself has been defeated forever, we are just as afraid of losing power, losing influence, being persecuted or killed as Anakin on his way to becoming Darth Vader.

We are afraid of losing what we have. We are unwilling to let go. And that puts us on a path toward evil.

In many ways, it’s even worse for people of religious conviction.

So often in Christian circles, we feel especially justified in holding on to things that are somehow endorsed by God. Just consider the battles that Christians have fought with each other over songs and traditions. They seemed spiritual to us at one point and therefore, we feel they must be universally ordained by God. We feel we have the right to hold onto the past because it was so spiritually meaningful to us in the past.

Just consider how Peter responded when Jesus was transfigured before his eyes.

After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” — Mark 9:2-5 NIV

The word translated “shelters” in this passage could also be translated “shrines” or “tabernacles.” It’s the literal same word John uses to say the Word made his “dwelling” among us. It’s the same word used for the “tabernacle” in the Greek versions of the Hebrew Scriptures. The text will go on to tell us Peter didn’t know what he was saying, but it’s clear that he used a word charged with spiritual and religious overtones because he wanted to preserve this holy moment. He wasn’t concerned about shelter. They could have gone into town for shelter. What he wanted to do was to stay right there forever. Shrine, shelter, it doesn’t really make a difference. Peter had just seen something absolutely remarkable, and he thought that since it was such a holy moment, it should be preserved for the future.

We love to preserve holy moments. We love to hold on to the past.

I’m like this too. It’s the reason I’m a packrat. In fact, I have the hardest time ever throwing things away. I just can’t bring myself to pitch a piece of kleenex that once held some kind of significance to me. I have receipts from the first road trip I ever took with my wife. I have papers of mine from elementary school. I have electronic documents that date all the way back to before high school! Those things are great for romanticising the past, but they don’t do anything for our future.

Nostalgia doesn’t motivate rightly.

Nostalgia for the past can make us fearful of the future.

The way we feel about the past and the things associated with them are just an illustration of how we feel whenever we have to “let go” of something. When someone passes away, when a friend moves, when a good job comes to an end, whenever we have to let go, it’s hard. Nevertheless, we will someday have to say goodbye to everything we have. Possessions are fleeting. Relationships are not guaranteed. Memories can be forgotten. And because we know all that, we fear the future pain from losing something we have today.

But we know better, don’t we? We know that we will actually lose what we have. We know that improper attempts to preserve what we have will yield more future pain. So why do we still hold on to things so tightly now; why do we still have so much fear?

Go back to the story in Mark. The climax of the story isn’t the appearance of Moses and Elijah, it’s the voice of God:

Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” — Mark 9:7 NIV

The answer to our desire to hold on is, according to God himself, to listen to the Son. Hmm… I wonder what Jesus had to say about things like this:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. — Matthew 6:19-20 NIV

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. — Matthew 6:31-34 NIV

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. — Luke 12:32-34 NIV

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” — John 16:33 NIV

So much of Jesus’ teaching is about moving our attention away from the petty, fleeting pursuits of this life to focus ourselves on the all-surpassing greatness of life with him in the age to come. Why should we rigidly fear losing something here on earth, whether it be power or influence or significance or our very lives, when we have been given the Kingdom of God itself!

Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. — 1 Peter 1:17-21 NIV

Why is it so hard to let go? Why do we feel the need to hold on? Why do we feel the need to protect ourselves, our stuff, and our circumstances?

Ultimately, it’s a lack of faith.

It’s a lack of faith that God is telling us the truth. It’s a lack of faith that the Kingdom is real, that the Kingdom is coming, and that the coming Kingdom is not of this world.

It’s a fundamental belief that we need to preserve this.

It’s an abandonment of Jesus’ words that we should pursue that.

Let me get personal.

Are you one of the many modern American Christians who fears the culture war? Do you long for some age a century ago with Norman Rockwell nostalgia? Do you worry that you yourself or Christianity in general is losing its status, its influence?

Are you perhaps even worried about persecution coming at you from a secular world?

Do you feel the need to fight? Do you feel a longing to preserve what you have so strongly that you are willing to set aside Jesus’s command to love your neighbor?

You need to learn to let go of that which you fear to lose.

Or perhaps more eloquently than Yoda:

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. — Philippians 3:7-11 NIV

Christ.

Becoming like him in his death.

Everything else is garbage.

Let it go.

If I couldn’t preach it, I would write it. I was convinced we were dealing with a kind of idolatry in the hearts of my Christian brothers and sisters (and likely in myself too), so I decided I would write it all down, all my thoughts and concerns, and use the exercise to sort it all out.

Deciding What to Write

By the midpoint of 2021, I had spent the previous 12 months wrestling with my personal dilemma of what to say out loud and what to keep to myself. I toyed with posts to Twitter (now X), Facebook, and my blog here, but more often than not, people in my life were encouraging me to keep those thoughts to myself. “What good can come from it? Does anyone ever change their mind through social media?” I was asked.

The pain of that indecision was palpable for me. I’m a preacher, a born communicator, my strongest talent is to use my words to teach people what the Bible says and what it means when it says what it says. Then, the reason for teaching people the Bible is that the Bible would transform them:

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. — Hebrews 4:12 NIV

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. — Psalm 119:105 NIV

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. — James 1:22-25 NIV

In other words:

1. I believed that words really can change people.
2. I believed that I was gifted and called to use my words toward that transformation.
3. I was convinced that both spoken and written words could be effective toward that end.
4. I also saw many examples of people whose minds were being shaped in the wrong direction by what they were seeing online, and I felt the need to counteract that.

However, I repeatedly experienced the ineffectiveness of my strategies, and the people in my life were increasingly telling me not to say the things I wanted to say.

During those months, I wrote a lot of things that I never published:

• I wrote about white Christians refusing to say “Black Lives Matter”… but didn’t publish it.
• I wrote about Christians falling for conspiracy theories like QAnon, Flat Earth, anti-vaccine, etc… but didn’t publish.
• I wrote about the idolatry of American Christianity and the various nearly-true doctrines we hold.

Eventually, I decided to write a real book-length work and release it to a small group of people. I still didn’t know what I needed to say, so I thought there might be wisdom in a group of counselors.

I turned to Facebook, started a group (Jeff Writes a Book) and asked people if they wanted to join it. I got about 20 people and I started writing.

Defending Me, Critiquing Them

During those early days, I had two big issues on my mind:

• Some of my friends saw me as a “political activist” and I wanted to push back on that. On the one hand, I wanted to push back that I was somehow a different person than I was before, but I also wanted to push back on the idea that it was wrong to talk about political ideas through the lens of Jesus’s teaching.
• Secondly, I wanted to push back on the false ideas prevalent in the church that I thought were leading us away from the Jesus of the gospels.

In other words, I wanted to defend myself, and I wanted to “call out” or critique the evangelical Christian subculture.

Over the next few weeks, I wrote, edited, and then published to that group one chapter at a time. However, I was mostly disappointed with the results.

First of all, there were people who roundly agreed with what I was saying. They were people who cheered for me and affirmed me. They had basically nothing negative to say about the concepts from the book, and mostly left comments that supported my claims. It felt good to read those comments, but it was disappointing because I wasn’t just looking for affirmation. I was looking for insight and guidance, and the positive affirmations didn’t help me move forward.

Secondly, there were people who said nothing. They were in the group, they were close friends, so I was pretty sure they would actually read the chapters, but they said nothing, left no comments, and didn’t interact with the other comments. I was confused by that. Of course, I concluded that they must be keeping silent because they didn’t want to offend me or they didn’t want to start an argument with the other commenters. That was disappointing because my entire motivation for the project was to engage difficult conversations over difficult topics with people I cared for, and their silence proved it wasn’t working.

Nevertheless, there were a few people who chose to engage me by pushing back on something I said. They did so with grace and good will, but they were specific about their disagreements with me. Of course, in the heightened emotional state of Facebook comments in 2021, I read each one of their comments initially negatively, but I forced myself to not respond until I had researched and worked through the details of their statements to me, and that process was immensely helpful to me. I learned three things from their pushback:

• My experience of evangelicalism was much more broad than others. I had seen evangelical churches from the inside my whole life, known the inner opinions of hundreds of churchgoers, and been in dozens of churches from California to Chicago. I had been taught things others hadn’t ever even heard of. I had heard opinions others hadn’t considered. My experience was so broad it didn’t relate to everyone in my audience.
• My understanding of doctrine was likewise more “inclusive” than others. Having been educated in multi-denominational institutions, and holding a commitment to the entirety of Scripture, I developed an understanding of theology that was in the middle of most doctrinal controversies. As a result, although others had been trained to see a doctrinal war between “Legalism” and “Grace” I saw synergy between obedience and faith, works and grace. I thought it was obvious to read Paul through the lens of Jesus, but others had been taught to read Jesus through the lens of Paul. As a result, when I made comments about the gospel, or when I quoted Scripture, other people weren’t seeing what I saw in it.
• My tone was combative and defensive. Of course it was! I was mad at the evangelical church for following inane conspiracies, for supporting immoral politicians, for being vicious against unbelievers, and for ignoring the clear example of Jesus. Furthermore, I was mad at the people who turned their backs on me accusing me of being “political” or whatever. However, my combative tone was exactly the thing causing some people to cheer for me in the comments and others to hold their tongues for fear of getting in an argument.

Honestly, I didn’t fully understand the third point until a year later, but in mid 2021, I learned enough to start rewriting.

Confession & Teaching

Out of the Facebook experiment, I decided to change two things about the book.

First, I would make it more introspective. If my experience of the church was different from that of others, I needed to spend some time talking about my experience. Additionally, I realized that if I used my experience as the basis for a critique, people could get the feeling that I was battling a straw man instead of reality. More than once, people have disregarded my critique because I was speaking against something they had not personally experienced. They thought I was talking about fringe ideas in the church and not anything substantive. To counteract that, I decided people might be more receptive to my experience if I framed it as a confession instead of a critique. This started out as a persuasive technique, but the more I wrote from that perspective, the more I realized my own complicity in the things I was critiquing. I completely rewrote one chapter, transforming it from a critique of evangelicalism to a confession of my own beliefs and teaching. I surely described how I came to those beliefs and the teaching I had received, but I took ownership of my own role in holding and propagating those beliefs.

Secondly, I would invest more heavily in teaching. Since I had pushback on the nature of works v. grace, I decided I needed to spend additional time in the book discussing what the Bible really teaches about the meaning of the gospel, the nature of salvation, and the calling Christians have to be salt and light in the world. I added a chapter just on the gospel, and I revised the rest of the content to add and explain the relevant Bible passages on each topic.

It was an important addition, and the writing process helped me get my thoughts worked out.

By December 2021, I had finished the revisions, but had lost motivation for the work. I had received good feedback, but I had also inspired very little constructive dialogue among the people in my Facebook group. I lost motivation for the group, and therefore, I saw the book content as having no future.

But in 2022, a friend of mine on Facebook announced that his book was about to be published with Zondervan, and I suddenly saw that I might have an opening with a major Christian publisher. I reached out to my friend to see if he would put me in touch with his contact at Zondervan, and he did. After a conversation with that editor, I was inspired to come back to it.

Addressing the Idols

The very first motivation for the book included the desire to critique the idols present in American Evangelicalism, and although that concept formed a chapter in the original work, it was mostly a list of my grievances with evangelicalism. I didn’t build a case for why these idols existed, where they came from, or why they were bad enough to be called “idols” in the first place.

Still, after my conversation with that editor, I began to think the real value of the work was there, and I set to work making that a more central theme in the book. I gave the book a new title: “Deconstructing Evangelicalism’s Idols” and I added a new chapter entirely on selling the idea that now was the time for the church to identify and address our idols. I wrote a proposal for Zondervan and sent it off. However, they did not accept the proposal and gave two reasons. First, there were other books in their pipeline that had similar aims. Zondervan/Harper Collins would later publish Andy Stanley’s Not in It to Win It and Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. Secondly, I didn’t have a verified audience (social followers, church attendees, etc.) large enough for them to guarantee a minimum number of sales. Publishers are in business, and they couldn’t guarantee enough sales to make a profit.

Again, I set the book on the back burner.

The Real Insight

Throughout the whole journey, one thing had been weighing heavily on my mind: If there were all these problems with evangelicalism, and if I could see the answers, why wasn’t it any different in the church I led? At the beginning of 2023, my wife and I decided to relocate so she could pursue a new career path, so I resigned from my church. No longer preaching every week, away from the pressures and burdens of pastoring, I was able to reflect perhaps a bit more honestly over that question. Why wasn’t my church immune from the problems I saw in evangelicalism?

I had to come to the uncomfortable conclusion that I was honestly part of the problem with American Evangelicalism. A small chapter on “confession” wasn’t enough. I had to see the entire work as a reflection and critique of my own ministry. Then, while driving home one day, a Bible metaphor came to mind: Wood, Hay, and Straw.

By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. — 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 NIV

Paul talks about people who build their lives out of worthwhile materials or flammable materials, but what he’s really afraid of in this passage is that some teacher will give people those worthless materials to build with. I had to realize that I was that “someone else” in the passage. In so many ways, I had tried to give people the material of Jesus, but throughout my ministry, I also gave people a lot of wood, hay, and straw.

Suddenly, I had a newfound insight both into what I needed to say in the book and why I was someone who needed to say it.

Unlike all the other books on the market talking about what’s wrong with evangelicalism, my voice was going to be one of honest confession. What did I do to create these problems? What role did I play?

With this new metaphor in hand, I added a new chapter and worked through the entire book two more times to get the tone right, to make the confession more personal, honest and real, and to more directly connect myself with the idols I was now trying to tear down.

And with this new motivation, I wrote a new proposal, and submitted it to Zondervan again, but this time, I also submitted it to a variety of other publishers including Moody, Thomas Nelson, and Eerdmans among others.

Zondervan wrote back to say it was a better proposal but still didn’t meet their criteria.

Eerdmans wrote me back and said it looked like an exciting new project for them eventually offering me a contract to publish.

Topic & Tone

During the process, I grew a lot. My journey went from my initial anger and frustration, toward more understanding of other perspectives, toward more understanding of my own complicity. Finally, I think I’m at the place where the book makes sense. I much more fully understand what I’m trying to accomplish, why my voice is unique, and how it can be helpful to others.

I’m, of course, not at liberty to give away the content of the book anymore as I’ve effectively sold the content to Eerdmans, but I will be writing more here about the themes and topics. Plus, I’m more convinced than ever that I’m bringing something helpful and unique to the conversation, and I hope this process will result in more honest communication among pastors and church members regarding what it means to really follow Jesus with each other in this complex, modern world. After all, that’s my real goal. To see Jesus lifted up, and to see more people follow his life and teaching. His Kingdom matters, and though it isn’t of this world, its citizens affect this world. May we do so rightly.

In the second half of 2021, some close friends of mine told me that I probably wasn’t suited to be a pastor. Instead, their suggestion to me was that I switch careers and try to be a professor or a writer or something.

Interestingly, only a month before they said that, I had begun writing a document that would become my first published book.

If you are here, chances are you might not know that late last year (2023), I signed a publishing contract with Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, and they currently have my completed manuscript in their hands. I’m over the moon excited, but also worried about it too. I’m about to put myself out there to the world like I’ve never done before, and that’s a little nerve-wracking mostly because the things I say in the book are things that made my friends tell me I shouldn’t be a pastor anymore. On the one hand, it’s encouraging that Eerdmans thinks my work should be published, but on the other hand, it’s work that made people mad at me.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

This post is to talk a little bit about the journey I went through to come to this point. What it took for me to write, re-write, choose to publish, and so forth. I figured you might be interested in the journey.

Becoming a Writer

My first post to this blog was written on February 21, 2001. I had just become the pastor of Northwest Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois, and I thought it might be good for me to start keeping a journal of my experiences. Because I’m a nerd, I set up my journal as a blog here.

Of course, I never got any traction with the blog, never any popularity with it, and I never tried to make it a popular blog anyway, but every now and then, I’d come back here to post another article about something in my life, something about the Bible, or something interesting in the world. That’s not making a decision to write. That’s just doing some writing on the side as a hobby.

However, in the summer of 2021, I took the idea to write seriously.

For most of the previous year, my wife and I had met with some friends three times weekly to talk about the church ministry and also to talk about how we each were doing. It was a rough few years, and we each needed encouragement. Most of all, I was thoroughly frustrated, confused, and angry over the events of 2020 and how they had changed me and my ministry. Internally, the big dilemma I had boiled down to one simple question:

• What things should I say and what things should I avoid saying?

In my conversations with other people, I brought this question up repeatedly. Over Zoom with my friends three times a week. Face to face with my wife. Over the phone with my dad. Over email with friends. In social media with strangers.

I brought it up over and over because during 2020 and again in 2021, I lost a number of friends because of things I said. I had accused Trump of being a false teacher when he posed for a photo in front of a church awkwardly holding a Bible. I had accused him of being an immoral man because of his past history with women and his current history with deception and aggression. I further had declared that Christians should be concerned about caring for their neighbors during the COVID pandemic, that we should be concerned about climate change, and that racism was alive and well in our country. All those things were at odds with the conservatism so popular among evangelical Christians, and people were offended that I had said those things. Many told me my opinion was valid, but those topics were taboo for a pastor to address.

In the first weeks of 2021, I proposed the question to a pastor friend of mine: “What things should a pastor talk about and what things should he avoid talking about?” He told me the story of how he handled things at his church. His plan throughout the pandemic was to avoid all the possible hot-button issues. For people who wanted to stay home, they had a live stream. For people who wanted to show up, they were open like normal. For people who wanted to wear masks, they had a mask-wearing section in the sanctuary. Essentially, they just attempted to accommodate the wishes of everyone.

However, he also told me two stories. He told me that some people in his church had been caught up in the Flat Earth movement and it had caused quite a problem for the church but he hadn’t addressed it publicly. He also told me that a number of people had left the church because he wasn’t being forceful enough in his endorsement or conservative Republican talking points.

It was in that conversation that I changed the question I was asking myself. My new question became this: Are there non-biblical issues that are so problematic that the pastor must address them? For some reason, he had people in his church who were so caught up in Republican policies, QAnon conspiracies, and Flat Earth ideas that they were willing to disfellowship from Christians as a result. He had made the call to ignore the conspiracy theories, but I was feeling differently. If there were people in his church who valued QAnon more than the unity of the body of Christ, that was idolatry and it should be confronted by a biblical pastor. Still, I know if I had addressed QAnon from the stage during 2020, people in my church would leave accusing me of being divisive myself and not focusing on the Bible.

Being a pastor is a weird job. On the one hand, your job exists for you to speak the truth of God’s Word to people. Every pastor knows that some people might get offended when he “speaks the truth,” but every pastor knows that’s the job anyway. However, your job also exists at the pleasure of a group of people in the church. Sometimes, the congregation voted the pastor in, sometimes it was a leadership board decision, sometimes the pastor was appointed by higher ups, but nonetheless, every pastor can be fired if the people with firing power don’t like what is being taught. More than that, a pastor doesn’t need to be fired. People can just leave the church, and if the people leave, so does the money.

Therefore, even though the purpose of the pastor is to teach the Word of God boldly, the job of pastor involves offending just the right people in the right way so that the other people with power are pleased with what you say.

It’s for this reason, pastors divide themselves into one of the following camps:

• One kind of pastor takes the approach of “never watering down the gospel” and by that, they mean speak aggressively and boldly about the things the majority of their congregation agrees to. These pastors rarely address subjects that are controversial to their own congregation, but they frequently address the divisions between their congregation and the outside world or other churches.
• One kind of pastor takes the approach of speaking “only what is useful for building others up.” This kind of pastor decides to never talk about anything that could rub someone the wrong way and instead focuses on positive, encouraging messages that only challenge presuppositions if it can be done winsomely.
• However, every pastor is eventually faced with a choice. If something or someone is causing division in the congregation, they are forced to choose between boldly addressing it as a biblically important issue or downplaying it as an unbiblical distraction. Most pastors fall into this camp eventually because difficult issues arise in every church, and how the pastor addresses that issue will determine if he keeps his job.

Midway through 2021, I came up with my solution.

If I couldn’t preach it, I would write it. I was convinced we were dealing with a kind of idolatry in the hearts of my Christian brothers and sisters (and likely in myself too), so I decided I would write it all down, all my thoughts and concerns, and use the exercise to sort it all out.

In my next post, I’ll talk about the journey to figure out what I really wanted to say.

In my ministry, I have performed a number of weddings, and those have involved a number of remarriages. In one case, a woman came to our church when she was married to her first husband, and our church was her support network when that man decided to divorce her. Later, I performed her wedding when she got remarried. However, that marriage failed, and a few years later, I then had the privilege of officiating at her third wedding.

To some pastors, my willingness to endorse a remarriage and my further willingness to do it again proves that I’m unqualified to address this issue, but I have strong Biblical grounds for why I have taken my position, and I hope by writing it here, I might provide some encouragement to those who have been misled or even wounded by alternate positions.

To be frank, there are some positions taken by pastors and church people that appear biblically sound on the surface but are deeply flawed underneath. The people of God and specifically the people who study the Word of God have been doing this for thousands of years… since the days the Word of God was first written down. Aaron’s sons misunderstood (or ignored) the instructions of God regarding the incense in the tabernacle, and God struck them down. Aaron, when he made the golden calf, told the people it was a valid way to worship the God of the burning bush. He referred to the golden calf as Yahweh! We see this again in the time of the prophets, and it becomes obviously evident in the interactions between the Pharisees and Jesus.

The bottom line is that people use the Word of God to hurt people, or they misunderstand the Word of God and thereby hurt themselves. We must be wary of both errors.

In the discussion of marriage and remarriage and fornication and adultery and all that, there are a number of Bible passages that are quoted frequently, and there are a few that are generally ignored. However, there actually aren’t many of them, and so we can effectively deal with all of them here. In the following verses, I will be using the NIV because it is the most common translation, but I will make reference to the Greek or Hebrew if it is ever relevant.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Defining Marriage

The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Genesis 2:23-25 NIV

When Jesus talks about marriage, he refers back to this passage directly by quoting from it, so let’s admit that it is the most important passage about marriage.

There are three things to note:

1. There is a responsibility placed on the man to embrace his wife as his new family. He “leaves” his father and mother. Now, we understand that the same “leaving” wasn’t mentioned about the wife because the ancient audience of this text would have already assumed that. Her departure from her family was a given. However, when Moses wrote these words, he was making the case that the man likewise needed to leave his family identity as he began to form a new identity with his wife.
2. The man and the wife are “united” into “one flesh.” This perhaps is the most important concept of all biblical concepts regarding marriage. These words encompass all the other concepts regarding marriage. Since the man is “united” to the wife and since they are “one flesh,” the ideas of them ever separating or of ever adding a third person into the mix, both fall outside this basic definition of marriage. The only way to divide “one flesh” is death. Similarly, a union with one person precludes a union with another person. Finally, the “one flesh” imagery clearly also contains the concept of sexual union.
3. The word “marriage” is not contained in this passage nor is the concept of a wedding. This is important because the original marriage was a physical and spiritual covenant of “identity” more than any governmentally enforced contract. The man takes the woman as his wife not by going through some ceremony but by making the social statement that he is no longer aligned to his mom and dad, by making the relational commitment to be united with this woman for life with total vulnerability, and by consummating the “one flesh” arrangement through sexual exclusivity.

Now, centuries later, we have embraced a wide variety of additional rules and regulations about marriage. There are laws of the state, there are family rules, and there are social expectations, but these three principles are the fundamental principles. In fact, I will summarize these principles in one formula for what the Bible means when it talks about what it means to be married:

One man, one wife, united for life.

This is our fundamental definition. Everything begins with that. Biblical marriage isn’t primarily about uniting two families because the man must leave his family of origin. It’s not primarily about the man becoming the dominator in the home because the two are fully united. It’s not about creating an environment for children. It’s not a foundation of social order. It’s not even about a governmentally endorsed relationship or covenant. Biblical marriage is simply this: One man, one wife, united for life.

However, if this is the definition of marriage, we need to realize that any deviation from this concept creates something that isn’t marriage.

If you change the word “man” to “woman” or “wife” to “husband” you no longer have a marriage.

If you change the word “united” to “in love” or “compatible” or “happy,” you no longer have the definition of marriage. It doesn’t mean that a marriage can’t be happy or filled with feelings of love, but that’s not the biblical definition.

Finally, if you change the phrase “for life” to “for a long time” or “until the kids grow up” or “as long as you treat me right,” then you also don’t have a biblical marriage.

The only concept of the Bible according to Genesis 2 is this one, and unless some place later in the Bible redefines marriage, this is the definition we should hold onto for the rest of the teaching on marriage.

However, as we will see, the Bible never will redefine marriage although there will be many places where this definition is strained. As just one example, consider this event from the life of Abraham:

(1) Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; (2) so she said to Abram, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”

Abram agreed to what Sarai said. (3) So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. (4) He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. (5) Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.”

(6) “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

(7) The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. (8) And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.

(9) Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” (10) The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”

Genesis 16:1-10 NIV

I bring this up because two things are incredibly important to notice:

First, immediately in the context of Abram sleeping with Hagar, she is referred to as his “wife.” However, the whole rest of the passage refers to her as Sarai’s slave. Clearly, the writer of this text is trying to communicate that sex implies marriage or that sex is only appropriate between a man and his wife, or at the very least that by sleeping with Hagar, Abram was violating his unity covenant with Sarai. This behavior along with all other acts of polygamy in the Bible is never endorsed or even spoken of positively.

Secondly, and this is the more important of the two, this passage illustrates how God himself is on the side of the woman who has been sexually exploited. Even though Abram is the recipient of the covenant, even though Sarai is the one who will bear the promised child (eventually), God goes out of his way to find Hagar and comfort her. Furthermore, this is the first occurrence in the Bible of the being called the “angel of the LORD” who is by most scholarly accounts Jesus, the Son of God himself, making a pre-incarnate appearance as the personal, visible presence of the God of grace and mercy.

Therefore, even though this passage puts a strain on our definition of marriage, it also actually confirms the definition we have already seen and it adds the nuance that where the definition is strained, God will take the side of the victimized person.

There are many other stories I could turn to in the interest of confirming this point, but we have many more passages to consider, so let’s move onward.

Instructions on Marriage and Divorce

Let’s turn our attention to the instructions given by Moses to the people of Israel.

Leviticus

First, in Leviticus, we get a number of instructions about sexuality in general, and Leviticus 19-20 are the main instructions often quoted. Now, I will look at these verses at the end of this article when I address the topic of punishment for adultery, but for the moment, I want to highlight just a few aspects of this instruction to bolster my claim about the definition of marriage.

First, take note of the framework for the sexuality commands, the instructions that come before them in Leviticus 19:

(13) “ ‘Do not defraud or rob your neighbor.

“ ‘Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight.

(14) “ ‘Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD.

(15) “ ‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

(16) “ ‘Do not go about spreading slander among your people.

“ ‘Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the LORD.

(17) “ ‘Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt.

(18) “ ‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

Leviticus 19:13-18 NIV

Clearly, these social commands are all about upholding a social order of dignity to all people and consideration of one another. Verse 18 is in fact the verse Jesus quoted when he was describing the second greatest commandment.

It’s in this vein that we get the commands about sexuality later in the chapter. The commands about sexuality fall under the context of loving your neighbor as yourself and giving other people honor instead of taking advantage of them. Here’s just one of the commands:

(11) “ ‘If a man has sexual relations with his father’s wife, he has dishonored his father. Both the man and the woman are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

Leviticus 20:11 NIV

Note that the reason this kind of sexuality is prohibited is that it brings dishonor to someone. The specific act of sex isn’t what is condemned here. Rather, the condemnation falls on the fact that this sexual encounter has brought dishonor to the man who was rightfully married to that woman. This sexual encounter is prohibited because of the social and relational impact of it and because it has violated the central tenet of marriage:

One man, one wife, united for life.

Deuteronomy

Moving into Deuteronomy, we find additional instructions about sexuality that inform our understanding of marriage. Consider this one:

(28) If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, (29) he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NIV

Although much is made about the Old Testament commands to kill adulterers, this instruction does not require killing. Why? Well, make note of the fact that this woman was not already committed to another. Therefore, since these people weren’t already married, this act of sex was not “adultery” properly defined, and therefore, the rules about adultery don’t apply. Rather, a different set of rules apply.

First, because the woman was not married to this man, the act of sex is called “rape.” We do ourselves a disservice to think of this in modern terms as if our definition of rape is the only one. However, we must also recognize that all sexual activity without the covering of a lifelong commitment is a kind of violence in itself. In this case, by sleeping with this woman, the man has “violated her.” He has caused her to be sexually tainted, and in that society, no one would want her after that.

Secondly, the required “punishment” placed on the man is that he pay the bride price to her family, he must marry her (officially take her into his own household), and to never divorce her.

Now, this is important. To our modern ears, this sounds like the law requires the woman to live with her rapist. We recoil at that notion with proper horror. However, the original intent of this law was something completely different. This law requires this woman to be taken care of for the rest of her life. This law is a requirement that the man who violated this woman will be financially responsible for her forever. A modern translation of the principle might be that any man who sleeps with a woman not his wife must pay her living expenses for the rest of her life. If such a law were on the books, what would that do to the rates of extramarital sexual activity in our society!?

Still, this passage reaffirms what we noticed at the beginning of this study. When it comes to marriage, the ceremony is insignificant. Rather, the one-flesh relationship is the determining factor. If sex happens with a person who is your spouse, that’s under the umbrella of marriage. If sex happens with a person who is someone else’s spouse, that’s adultery and is subject to a wide range of punishments. If sex happens with a person who isn’t already married, that act of sex initiates a lifelong covenant of responsibility and care.

Sexual activity either initiates, continues or violates a marriage.

This next passage confirms the point:

(13) If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her (14) and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” (15) then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin. (16) Her father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. (17) Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, (18) and the elders shall take the man and punish him. (19) They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.

Deuteronomy 22:13-19 NIV

In this case, the man has slept with a woman but for whatever reason doesn’t think she’s a virgin when they come together. Based on the context, we can assume it has something to do with the presence or absence of her hymen and the evidence of the blood that is collected whenever the hymen was broken. We don’t know all the details of their cultural customs regarding proving virginity, but we do know this: If a man somehow causes a woman to be sexually dishonored, whether by “violating her” sexually or by slandering her in relation to her sexuality, then he must pay for such acts of violation. In this case, as before, he is obligated to continue to financially support her for the rest of her life.

Both of the previous passages addressed divorce. Specifically, they gave us two cases when divorce was entirely prohibited for the people of God. However, these instructions imply something else. They both imply that in the majority of cases, divorce was permitted for the people of God. Why would that be? Well, we will have to wait for Jesus’ commentary on it to know the real answer, but for the time being, we can just observe that human beings are fickle. We regularly make commitments that we come later to regret, and the marriage commitment is no exception. As a result, through Moses, God also gave instructions for how to handle divorce. Take a look at these instructions in Deuteronomy:

(1) If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, (2) and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, (3) and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, (4) then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the LORD. Do not bring sin upon the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.

Deuteronomy 24:1-4 NIV

This passage presumes that the idea of “writing a certificate of divorce” was a well-known practice. Moses never gives instructions regarding how to write such a certificate or what it needs to say, but one thing is clear. The process of divorce involved the man giving the woman written proof of her freedom.

This is important. Remember this comes in the context of a society where women had no material rights. They didn’t have the ability to own property, they didn’t have the ability to engage in commerce, and therefore, they were completely cut off from the economics of the day. If a man didn’t want his wife anymore, and if he kicked her out of his home, he was issuing her a death sentence. She couldn’t go home, because her parents wouldn’t want to be accused of harboring a runaway wife. She couldn’t take up with another man because that man wouldn’t want to be accused of taking another man’s wife. No, her only hope is if she had an actual document written by her husband declaring that he was relinquishing his claim to her.

Let’s be frank. The whole point of a divorce certificate was to give the woman her dignity back. The whole point was to make it possible for her to go on living in that society. With such a certificate, she could safely return home to her parents and/or be taken in by another man. The whole point of a divorce was to care for the woman, to de-victimize her.

However, this instruction from Moses also makes another interesting point. If a man divorces a woman, he must reconcile with her before she finds a home with another man or else he must never reunite with her again. He had his chance. He disgraced her, defiled her, and he didn’t resolve the situation with her. Once again, this instruction is to provide dignity to the abused woman.

However, these instructions about divorce also seem to indicate that our definition of marriage should be expanded a bit.

Based on these instructions, we might conclude that the biblical definition of marriage goes like this:

One man, one wife, united until death or divorce. (?)

Let’s see if that definition gets reconfirmed in the rest of the Bible. Hint: when we get to Jesus, he will say clearly that we need to keep the original definition, but we’ll come to that in a bit.

There are a number of other references to divorce in the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. Here are three.

Prophets

In Isaiah, we read this:

(1) This is what the LORD says:
“Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce
with which I sent her away?
Or to which of my creditors
did I sell you?
Because of your sins you were sold;
because of your transgressions your mother was sent away.
(2) When I came, why was there no one?
When I called, why was there no one to answer?
Was my arm too short to deliver you?
Do I lack the strength to rescue you?
By a mere rebuke I dry up the sea,
I turn rivers into a desert;
their fish rot for lack of water
and die of thirst.

Isaiah 50:1-2 NIV

This is an interesting passage where God is complaining that his people have not desired a relationship with him. He called them and they didn’t answer. Was it because they didn’t think he could save them? Did they not know about all his power? The bottom line is that since they wouldn’t stay in relationship with God, he divorced them and sent them away. In other words, God is using the metaphor of divorce to describe his own behavior toward the people of Israel. Because of their unfaithfulness, he is justified in cancelling his covenant with them. For our purposes, we should recognize that God himself endorses divorce as the proper response to persistent unfaithfulness.

We see this same idea confirmed in the words of Jeremiah:

(8) I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery.

Jeremiah 3:8 NIV

Jeremiah is using the word “adultery” in a metaphorical way here. Certainly, there was adultery in the land of Israel and in Judah, but the context makes it clear that the adultery Jeremiah is talking about is their unfaithfulness to God.

Regarding unfaithfulness, Malachi also addresses divorce:

(13) Another thing you do: You flood the LORD’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favor on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. (14) You ask, “Why?” It is because the LORD is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.

(15) Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth.

(16) “The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the LORD, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the LORD Almighty.

So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.

Malachi 2:13-16 NIV

I want to take a few moments on this passage, because it’s one of the passages that has been misused by many in the Christian world. And this misuse has been augmented by a translation issue. Consider verse 16 in some other translations:

(16) For I hate divorce,” says the LORD, the God of Israel, “and him who covers his garment with wrong,” says the LORD of hosts. “So take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.”

Malachi 2:16 NASB

(16) “I hate divorce,” says the LORD God of Israel, “and I hate a man’s covering himself with violence as well as with his garment,” says the LORD Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith.

Malachi 2:16 NIV84

This translation is based on the old King James Version:

(16) For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.

Malachi 2:16 KJV

Here “putting away” is the word we translate in modern times by the word “divorce.” From these translations, we can get the idea that divorce is the thing God hates. The party line goes like this:

God hates divorce, so avoid it at all costs, because if you allow divorce to be part of your society God will no longer pay attention to your prayers and cries for mercy.

Based on this understanding, churches and Christians continue today to act as if divorce itself is the thing God hates.

However, this understanding of the passage is wrong in two ways.

First, the translation of the old King James was wrong. The problem isn’t that God hates divorce. The problem is that the man hates his wife. Consider that the current revision of the NIV agrees with the widely respected ESV and other translations that reflect more up to date scholarship:

(16) “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the LORD, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the LORD of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”

Malachi 2:16 ESV

(16) “The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the LORD, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the LORD Almighty.

So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.

Malachi 2:13-16 NIV

The better translations based on better scholarship understand that the hatred is from the man toward his wife, not from God toward divorce. But the translation issue isn’t the only thing wrong with the party line. The second issue has to do with the context of the passage.

Take special note that the last line of verse 16 is the admonition to “not be unfaithful.” What’s important is that the entirety of chapter 2 is God’s accusation against the people for “breaking faith.”

(10) Do we not all have one Father ? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?

(11) Judah has been unfaithful. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the LORD loves by marrying women who worship a foreign god. (12) As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the LORD remove him from the tents of Jacob —even though he brings an offering to the LORD Almighty.

Malachi 2:10-12 NIV

Here, the people of God are being accused of faithlessness. They were unfaithful to each other (10), but they were also unfaithful to God because they had brought the worship of foreign gods into their own homes. Note that in this case, the act of getting married was the act of faithlessness.

Then, when you come to verse 14, the accusation is that the men have been unfaithful in another way. They have divorced the wives of their youth. In other words, their unfaithfulness to God is represented both by their marriage to women who bring foreign gods into their home, and also by their divorces from the women who came from among their own people.

The point is not the marriage or the divorce. In all these cases, the point is all about the faithfulness.

Once again, the best way to understand this passage isn’t that God hates divorce. Perhaps he wanted the men who married foreign women to divorce those women (something that the people of Ezra’s day actually do). The best way to understand this passage is that God hates unfaithfulness and violence. He hates it when someone makes a promise and then breaks it. He hates it when people claim to follow him, but don’t live that way. He hates it when a person makes a promise to another person and then violates that promise.

Let’s be clear. It’s not that God hates divorce. He hates unfaithfulness, and he hates it when one person does an act of hate or violence against another. Reading the passage in context makes that point abundantly clear.

Teaching of Jesus

At this point, we are finally able to enter the New Testament to address the teaching on divorce and remarriage found there.

Let’s begin with Matthew 1:19.

(18) This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about : His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. (19) Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

Matthew 1:18-19 NIV

I won’t spend a lot of time on this, but it’s important to note two things. Because Mary is found to be pregnant, Joseph concludes that she has violated the rules of marriage and adultery. However, if he issues her a certificate of divorce, then she won’t be engaged when word of her pregnancy comes out, and therefore, her action won’t be labeled “adultery.” By giving her such a certificate, he will be saving her life. Alternatively, since in his mind, she has committed a violation of their marriage, the proper response from him is to do what God did with the people of Israel in the Old Testament. Issue a divorce. Whichever rationale was more prominent in Joseph’s mind, we know one thing. Divorce, according to the text, was the righteous thing for him to do.

The lessons get a bit harder to deal with when we get to the actual teaching of Jesus, though.

(31) “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ (32) But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Matthew 5:31-32 NIV

This lesson from the sermon on the mount is effectively Jesus’ manifesto on what marriage really is. We will get more detail later, but this by itself is enough for us to learn something really important.

For clarity, let’s see it in another translation too:

(31) “It was said, ‘WHOEVER SENDS HIS WIFE AWAY, LET HIM GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE’; (32) but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Matthew 5:31-32 NASB

Jesus says that if a man divorces his wife, he causes her to become an adulteress. (The NIV interprets this to mean “the victim of adultery.”) Now, that’s a weird statement. It feels backwards because we think of “becoming an adulteress” as what happens when a woman sleeps with a man who isn’t her husband. But according to Jesus’ words, she doesn’t become an adulteress when she marries another. She becomes an adulteress when the divorce takes place. Why is that?

Honestly, it doesn’t make sense unless we go all the way back to our original definition of marriage.

One man, one wife, united for life. (!)

I made the claim earlier on that if you change any of those words, you no longer have a biblical marriage. What if Jesus is working from this original definition? Well, let’s consider the scenario he lays out. The man divorces his wife. At the moment of their divorce, the marriage is declared to be over. That means the woman is no longer his wife and they are no longer united. But it also means you have to redefine what they had up until the divorce. It means you have to re-interpret what relational context they were living in when they were sexually active with each other. For the couple in this scenario, the context they were living in must be re-interpreted with this definition:

One man, one wife, united until divorce.

This definition doesn’t match the original definition of marriage. Therefore, if Jesus is embracing that original definition, their sexual relationship wasn’t a marriage regardless of whatever people thought about before the divorce. If it didn’t survive until death, it wasn’t ever a marriage at all. And finally, since their sexual relationship wasn’t in the context of a biblical marriage, their entire relationship is best defined by the word “adultery.”

The woman didn’t “commit adultery” in the sense that she slept with another man while she was married, but the act of the divorce re-interpreted the entire relationship they had before and invalidated it as a marriage meaning she is retroactively an adulteress. The husband’s act of divorce “makes her commit adultery.” And that’s why the second marriage will also be labeled as adultery; the second marriage will also not meet the definition of marriage, since it adds a second man into the narrative.

In other words, Jesus’ teaching doesn’t make sense unless you go back to the original definition of marriage, but when you do go back that far, his teaching makes perfect sense.

By saying what he said, Jesus is confirming that the original definition of marriage is the right one, not the re-defined version that allowed for divorce, but Jesus also mentions an exception, and some people have taken that exception to be a redefinition of its own. Jesus said, “except for sexual immorality,” and many people use Jesus’ words to offer a new definition of marriage that goes like this:

One man, one wife, united until death or an affair.

Other Christians will make a different definition by playing off the Greek word translated “sexual immorality” in the NIV. That Greek word is “porneia.” It is the root word for our word “pornography” and it also is sometimes translated “fornication” and carries connotations of all kinds of sexual deviance. Those Christians will then say that a marriage can end with any number of other sexually-related behaviors including the abuse of pornography or other things. At the extremes, they will even attempt to make lists of what kinds of behaviors fall into the category of porneia and therefore which kinds of behaviors allow you to divorce your spouse.

However, those redefinitions miss the point. We don’t need any new definitions because as long as we hold to the original definition, everything else falls into place. If Jesus’ definition of marriage is one man, one wife, united for life, then the introduction of any other person, a second man, a second woman, or any one-flesh “union” of any sort with someone outside that marriage umbrella, violates, or more precisely, invalidates that marriage. Furthermore, at the moment such a violation happens, the present situation is no longer a biblical marriage. Something changed to make the present situation not fit the biblical definition, and therefore the present situation is better named “adultery.”

In other words, sexual immorality isn’t the thing that “allows” you to get divorced. Sexual immorality is the thing that transformed the relationship into one of adultery. Jesus says, if you divorce a woman, you cause her to become an adulteress unless your or her previous behavior had already done that.

Now, in light of this, let’s recognize something else Jesus said about adultery just a few verses earlier:

(28) But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Matthew 5:28 NIV

From the perspective of Jesus, adultery abounds. It’s everywhere. Every person who lusts is guilty of adultery. Clearly, that’s because an act of lust violates the concept of being “united” in the definition of marriage. Every marriage that isn’t perfectly and completely in line with the one man, one wife, united for life definition is an expression of adultery.

Therefore, according to the words of Jesus himself…

I am guilty of adultery.

And most likely, so are you.

Before we go any further down this hole, we must fully embrace this teaching. What Jesus says about divorce is exactly the same as what Jesus says about lust. If you are divorced, you are an adulterer. If you have ever lusted, you are an adulterer. Therefore, let me show my hand just a bit by asking a (for the moment) rhetorical question:

Should we bar from marriage anyone who previously in their life had a lustful thought?

I’ll come back to that.

For now, let’s turn to the last thing Jesus had to say about divorce. Both Matthew and Mark record the interaction:

Let’s start with the version found in Mark

(2) Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

(3) “What did Moses command you?” he replied.

(4) They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”

(5) “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. (6) “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ (7) ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, (8) and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. (9) Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

(10) When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. (11) He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. (12) And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”

Mark 10:2-12 NIV

Jesus here is merely confirming what we already suspected. Even though Moses gave rules about divorce, those rules didn’t change the definition of marriage. Jesus confirms that the original definition still holds true. There is one new wrinkle he adds here, though, and we’ll see it along with another new thing in the version recorded by Matthew.

(3) Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

(4) “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ (5) and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ ? (6) So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

(7) “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

(8) Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. (9) I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

(10) The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

(11) Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. (12) For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

Matthew 19:3-12 NIV

Notice that Matthew reports one thing exactly the same as Mark did. Jesus gives us a reason for the divorce commands in the law of Moses. Jesus said, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard.” Primarily addressing men, Jesus confirms that the ungodly behavior of men is the motivation behind the commands about divorce. Now, back in that day, divorces had to be initiated by men. Since divorces in our day can be initiated by women, this same principle can apply to women today. Divorce happens when one person in the marriage decides to act in an unfaithful, ungodly, hard hearted way toward another, and the laws about divorce exist to protect the other person in the relationship. The laws exist to stand up for the victimized person in the process.

I’ll say it again. God created the divorce laws to specifically mitigate the damage caused by ungodly, unfaithful, hard-hearted people (especially men).

I’ll say it differently. Divorce exists to protect the victim of an ungodly person.

It’s also important to note that Matthew gives us one other piece of information. It’s a lesson no one else has taught before this moment. Simply put, Jesus says that singleness is honorable. When the disciples said, “it’s better not to marry,” Jesus ends his reply by agreeing with them, “The one who can accept this should accept it.”

Paul’s Teaching

At this point, we have everything we need from the Hebrew Scriptures and from the direct teaching of Jesus to understand anything else the New Testament teaches about sexual immorality. To illustrate this, let’s consider the longest teaching in the Bible on the topic of sex, marriage and remarriage. It’s from 1 Corinthians 7, and I’ll add my own comments as we work through it.

(1) Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”

We know from history that Corinth was a city of religious and sexual excess. It was a major port city, and it was famously bold about it’s own identity. In parts of the ancient world, a promiscuous person could be called a “Corinthian.” In that context, it seems that the Corinthian believers were nervous about their own sexual behavior and decided maybe it was better to just abstain from sex altogether. They must have made such a commitment and wrote to Paul to get his approval of their plan. He says, “sure, that’s not a bad commitment to make.” But then he continues to give them more guidance.

(2) But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. (3) The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. (4) The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. (5) Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (6) I say this as a concession, not as a command. (7) I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.

Here, Paul describes his alternative and he does so by placing sexuality back into the original context of Genesis 2. He says that since they live in a society filled with sexual immorality, they need to reclaim God’s original plan for sexuality. He implies exactly the same definition we have been working with.

One man, one wife, united for life.

And then Paul describes how that plays out practically for people. He says sex should be exclusive to the marriage relationship, confined entirely to the one husband-one wife dynamic. He says sex should be mutually generous. It’s not about one person demanding anything from the other person but about each person choosing to yield their desires and their body to the other person. Finally, he also says that sex comes in the context of a spiritual union. Sex can take a back seat at times to a temporary focus on the higher priority of a spiritual relationship, but sex is also a gift given to us by God to solidify the one-flesh union that marriage is supposed to be. That’s why Paul instructs them to actually use sex to stave off alternate temptations. Nevertheless, Paul also informs them that marriage and sexual activity are not commanded. For those people content with celibacy, he affirms it as a gift from God. Hopefully you can see that Paul is taking his lessons from Jesus on this topic.

(8) Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. (9) But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

On the heels of verse 7, Paul affirms that singleness is a good thing, but notice also that he clearly declares marriage to be the solution for a person who desires sexual intimacy. Simply put, do you want sexual intimacy? Get married. Can you live a celibate life? Stay single.

(10) To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. (11) But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.

Here, Paul is directly quoting from the teaching of Jesus, but he’s also doing some interpretation. Recall that Jesus never directly commanded “don’t ever get divorced.” Rather, Jesus said, “What God has joined together, let man not separate.” Furthermore, Jesus never directly said, “If you are divorced, stay unmarried.” What Jesus said was, “If you divorce and marry another, you are guilty of adultery.” Therefore, Paul here is taking Jesus’ warnings about divorce and declaring them to be commands. I trust Paul. I trust that he knows more about what Jesus did and didn’t say than I do, so I’ll roll with that. Simply put, if you are married, consider it a command not to divorce your spouse or if you do separate, then to remain celibate unless you reconcile with your spouse.

(12) To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. (13) And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. (14) For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
(15) But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace. (16) How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

In this section, Paul highlights that he is writing based on his own understanding of the principles involved. He doesn’t have a direct command from Jesus on this topic, but he is convinced that the Spirit is leading him so he instructs them regarding divorce. His simple instruction is that if you are married and you become a believer and your spouse is okay with that, great. However, if your unbelieving spouse wants to leave, go ahead and let them go. Because the bottom line is that God wants us to live in peace AND God can use any relationship to bring salvation to someone.

Now, I want to take a moment to just highlight this principle. The principle here isn’t that God wants the marriage to stay intact at any cost, the principle is that God wants peace to be a prominent characteristic of a household. That’s important. If there is peace in the home, keep it up! If the only way to have peace is to separate, do so! I’ll also add that peace is supposed to be a fundamental characteristic of a person of faith: it’s number three in the fruit of the Spirit! Therefore, if the husband or spouse is not a person of peace, perhaps that’s an indication that they aren’t really a believer either.

(17) Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches. (18) Was a man already circumcised when he was called? He should not become uncircumcised. Was a man uncircumcised when he was called? He should not be circumcised. (19) Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts. (20) Each person should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.

(21) Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so. (22) For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person; similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave. (23) You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of human beings. (24) Brothers and sisters, each person, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.

(25) Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. (26) Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. (27) Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. (28) But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.

It might seem like a digression, but Paul’s thoughts on slaves and circumcision are just a description of a principle he’s applying to marriage and engagement. God meets people where they are. If you were married and sexually active when God found you, go ahead and keep it up unless there are some other reasons why things need to change. If you were a virgin planning to get married when God found you, don’t change your plans.

However, there’s another important point here. Even though Paul’s general principle is that you don’t need to change your marriage plans when you become a Christian, if you do change them, you haven’t done anything wrong.

(29) What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; (30) those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; (31) those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.

(32) I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. (33) But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— (34) and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. (35) I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.

I had a friend once whose wife told him she was no longer going to have sex with him because she had read this passage and was convinced that God wanted her to “live like she wasn’t married.” He, of course, didn’t like the idea, but he couldn’t do anything because he was trying to be a man of peace. I watched for a couple years as he dealt with the pain of all that.

Paul’s instructions were not meant to be taken that way. Remember that he previously said that the husband and wife needed to “fulfill” their “marital duty” to each other. This passage is not a contradiction of the previous one. Rather, it’s a continuation of that previous one. Recall that marriage is supposed to have a spiritual unity component to it also. In this passage, Paul is merely trying to emphasize that. He’s trying to say that since the time is short, we all need to see all of our circumstances as temporary. Furthermore, since all things now are temporary, if you can live a celibate life you will be blessed by the ability to focus your energies fully on matters of eternal significance. Nevertheless, he doesn’t end with a statement about singleness. Paul will finish his instructions by affirming some fundamental truths about marriage.

(36) If anyone is worried that he might not be acting honorably toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if his passions are too strong and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married. (37) But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no compulsion but has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin—this man also does the right thing. (38) So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does better.

(39) A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord. (40) In my judgment, she is happier if she stays as she is—and I think that I too have the Spirit of God.

1 Corinthians 7 NIV

If you are in a relationship and you want to get married, go ahead. There’s nothing wrong with that.

If you have decided to live a celibate life, go ahead. There’s great honor in that.

If your spouse dies, you are free to remarry, but if you choose not to, that might be even better.

But when is remarriage okay?

At this point, we have covered almost the entirety of the Bible’s teaching on sexuality, marriage, divorce and remarriage, but this last teaching of Paul raised one thing up to the level of “command” that we hadn’t seen before.

Paul taught that if a person gets divorced, that person must remain single and celibate until one of two things happens.

When can a divorced person get remarried?

1. If they get back together with their spouse.

2. If their spouse dies.

From Paul’s perspective, divorce doesn’t actually end a marriage. From his perspective, a marriage never ends until one person is dead. Now, we should think the same thing because that’s the literal definition of marriage we’ve been working with all this time and the definition that Jesus reaffirmed.

One man, one wife, united for life.

Even if a piece of paper says you are divorced, the original definition of marriage says you aren’t.

However, when go back to what Jesus said, I think we can add a bit of nuance to Paul’s instructions. You see, Paul effectively says you are married until the person dies, but Jesus also said another thing invalidates a marriage: sexual behavior outside the marriage. Furthermore, the teaching in Deuteronomy said that if a person gets divorced and sleeps with another, reconciliation with the original spouse is no longer allowed.

Based on that, I think it’s reasonable to add one more thing to the list of when a person can get remarried.

3. If their spouse has sex with (marries) someone else.

Conclusions

The Bible’s teaching on sexuality, marriage, divorce and remarriage is far less extensive than we would like. There are parts that are clear, but must also be understood through the lens of other parts. There are parts that sound like traditional Christian teaching and there are parts that actually seem to go against that traditional teaching.

In this study, I haven’t even addressed the claims of those who affirm same-sex relationships, those who affirm gender and sexual identities not addressed in the Bible, or those who focus on issues of sexuality as if they are the most important issues in the Bible. Rather, I’ve focused on the one through-line of the whole topic. What is the definition of marriage throughout the Bible, and how does that inform our understanding of sexuality, divorce, and remarriage?

Therefore, let me offer a few concluding thoughts about all this.

First, everything begins with a clear understanding of what God intended when he created sexuality from the beginning:

One man, one wife, united for life.

If you want to know if God affirms or opposes something, simply line it up with this phrase and see how well it fits.

Second, anytime a marriage fails to live up to this ideal, the best word for that relationship is adultery no matter who is “at fault.”

Third, nearly everyone is guilty of violating God’s marriage ideal. Adultery is rampant in our hearts even if it has never been expressed by a physical relationship.

Fourth, divorce is a mechanism to protect and provide for the victim of a godless, hard-hearted person.

Fifth, any divorced person whose spouse wants to come back is free to remarry that person.

Sixth, any divorced person whose spouse committed adultery, has died, or has remarried, is free to marry whomever they wish.

Seventh, literally everything we have said so far falls under the larger umbrella of God’s grace and loving our neighbor. Consider these words from both Paul and James.

(9) The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (10) Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Romans 13:9-10 NIV

(8) If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. (9) But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. (10) For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. (11) For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

(12) Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, (13) because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

James 2:8-13 NIV

So, returning to a question from before:

Should we bar from marriage anyone who previously in their life had committed an act of adultery, someone who caused a divorce by their own sinfulness? Well, according to the direct teaching of Jesus, that’s equivalent to asking a different question. Should we bar from marriage anyone who previously in their life had a lustful thought?

Although many in the Christian tradition would want to ban all adulterers from marriage, there is clear guidance in the Bible for when a remarriage is allowed and none of the passages in the Bible make any special provisions or punishments for “previous adulterers.” There is no past sin that disqualifies you from future participation in the life of the kingdom of God. On the contrary, there is great glory for our King when his grace and mercy are applied to one who doesn’t deserve it.

• Where harm has been done, reconciliation can be beautiful.
• Where reconciliation cannot be done, forgiveness is necessary.
• And at all times, we are they who…

(12) Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, (13) because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

James 2:12-13 NIV

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https://anchor.fm/jeff-mikels

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Matthew 2:1-11

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Luke 2:1-7

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Matthew 1:18-25

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Luke 1

In my own ministry, I am transitioning away from the church my family planted back in 2006, and that means Lafayette Community Church will be hiring a new pastor soon, and I’m hearing people tell me they are worried that the next pastor will be “too political.”

Therefore, I thought I would publish this little guide to help you identify if your pastor is being too political.

Preliminary Considerations

Jesus and Politics

First things first, though. I need to remind you that Jesus was political. Consider these statements:

If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.

Matthew 5:41 NIV

Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

And they were amazed at him.

Mark 12:17 NIV

In Jesus’ day, the law said a Roman soldier could command a person to carry their load for up to one mile. Jesus was telling Jewish people to obey the Roman law and then do even more.

It’s the same thing regarding the taxes. In Jesus’ day, the Roman government demanded taxes, but the individual tax collectors determined how much to collect. It was an unjust system from the ground up, but Jesus told people to go along with it anyway. He then told them to do even more by dedicating themselves more fully to God.

In both cases, Jesus identified a specific legal statute and gave an opinion on that statute. Depending on your perspective, you might call Jesus “moral” and “wise” or you might write him off as being too “political.”

Definition of Terms

This leads directly to the second thing we need to address: your own definition of terms. I want you to investigate what you mean when you use the word political. In fact, let’s do an exercise. Write for yourself a definition of the three words political, moral, and biblical:

• When I say political, I mean…
• When I say moral, I mean…
• When I say biblical, I mean…
• I can tell these three things apart from each other because …

Then, let me ask you to make a list of some current issues that are important in our world and give them a label:

• I consider Abortion to be a ( biblical / moral / political ) issue because…
• I consider Universal Healthcare to be a …
• …

Finally, let me ask you to answer two more questions for yourself:

• A church / pastor should avoid political issues whenever…
• A church / pastor should address political issues whenever…

Until you know the boundaries for your own definitions and your own expectations, you won’t be able to understand someone else’s perspective or be able to evaluate whether they are being inappropriate or not.

Examples From A Pastor

I’ve been a pastor for over 20 years now, and in that time, I’ve taught a lot of messages on a lot of different passages in the Bible. In those years, I’ve taught on the following topics without ever being accused of being political.

• I taught that every life was sacred and that Christians should oppose the practice of abortion in our country.
• I taught that greed was opposed by God and that Christians should oppose a “greedy” government that would increase taxes.
• I taught that industrious living was valued by God and that Christians should oppose the “enablement” of welfare programs.
• I taught that God put the image of God in all people equally so that Christians should oppose “affirmative action” programs.
• I taught that God created human sexuality to be expressed in specific ways and that Christians should oppose easy divorce and forms of marriage that didn’t conform to heterosexual monogamy.

Every time I taught on these topics, in my context, I heard only affirmative comments from those who heard my message. Although these topics are obviously about political policies, and although they are obviously part of the conservative (Republican) platform, I was never accused of being political when I taught about them. At the time, I believed that was because I was actually being biblical, but now I realize that it was because I was playing the same song as the other people in the room. All who agreed with my opinion saw my opinion as “biblical” because it was also their opinion and they thought of themselves as “biblical”!

My perspective on all this changed gradually over the years. I started seeing social programs more and more through the eyes of the people who relied on them. I started seeing the reality of systemic racism and the hypocrisy of being “pro-life” on abortion while taking no stance on anything else in the world of healthcare. I started seeing the dangers of a government that would prioritize the greed of companies over the need of people. More and more, I started seeing these issues through the eyes of other people. More and more, I began to see my perspective not as “biblical” but as “conservative.” More and more, I began to see either ambiguity in the Bible or clear teaching in contrast to my own presuppositions!

But if I ever hinted at any of these changes in my heart or ever taught a biblical perspective that was not also conservative, I received accusations of being political.

• I spoke against sexual harassment and mentioned the inappropriate partying Brett Kavanaugh did when he was younger and how that led to women accusing him of sexual indiscretions. People left the church because I was “too political.”
• I made a reference in a message that racism was alive and well in our society, but people accused me of being too political.
• I encouraged people to wear masks and get vaccinated to protect themselves and others during the COVID pandemic, but people left the church since I was too political.
• I vigorously spoke against Donald Trump’s rhetoric, his deceptions, and his moral failings, and attendance at my church plummeted.

Yes, I’m still wounded by all that, and to this day, I hate the fact that I was called “political” when my teaching disagreed with conservatism but not when it agreed.

Nevertheless, I hope by publishing this, I might give you some insight when it comes to evaluating your pastor.

The Political Pastor Questionnaire

The Wrong Questions

1. Do I agree with what my pastor said or do I disagree?
2. Is there a way I can match what my pastor said to a political policy I oppose?

Too often, these are the questions people ask when it comes to the political nature of their pastor or their church. It always starts with something that rubs them the wrong way, and then they start looking for the reasons. If the reason is that the pastor has taught a perspective that lines up with something political, the questions stop and the accusations begin.

On the other hand, it’s both naive and arrogant to think that I will always agree with what my pastor teaches. Until I receive my glorified eternal body, I will still be subject to the thoughts and desires of this flesh, and that means I will still have room to grow in knowledge and faith. Until I reach full maturity, I will still need to be challenged in my behaviors and beliefs. Until I look like Jesus, it’s likely my pastor will say things that rub me the wrong way.

Therefore, we need to address different questions first.

Must Answer First

1. Do I know the Bible well enough to know its teaching on the political issues of the day? That is, do I know which passages in their contexts agree with any perspective and which ones don’t? And have I studied them myself?
2. Do I know my pastor well enough to understand what he/she meant by what they just taught? Am I giving my pastor the benefit of the doubt, and am I willing to hear my pastor out on the matter?

If you can’t say yes to both of these questions, then you don’t have enough information to determine whether your pastor is being biblical or political. No matter what your personal position is on an issue or what you think of your pastor’s opinion on the issue, if you can’t say “Yes” to both of these questions, you don’t have the right to evaluate your pastor.

I say this to people all the time: What does the Bible actually say? It’s not enough to think you know what the Bible says. Too many people have leveraged their own agendas to tell you what they think the Bible says, and sometimes those people have told you the truth, but you can’t know if they told you the truth until you see it for yourself.

Now, sometimes the Bible will say things that you can’t fully understand without some broader perspective that only a good teacher can give you. In those cases, you really need to get a broad perspective from excellent scholars, but the point remains the same: Do you know what the specific Bible passages in their context say about the issue at hand? If not, work on that first.

Now Evaluate

1. Is my pastor teaching a perspective that honestly reflects the teaching of the Bible? Sometimes you have multiple possible ways to understand a passage, so the question is whether this specific teaching is honestly in line with one of those possible perspectives.
2. Is my pastor adequately addressing the parts of the Bible that disagree with or give nuance to that perspective? Because biblical interpretation is difficult, honest teaching needs to place itself in context with contrary perspectives.
3. Is my pastor aware of and respectful to other pastors and scholars who disagree with that perspective? Honesty coincides with humility and humility is a fundamental quality of a Christ follower. Anytime there are multiple perspectives on an issue, humility doesn’t require us to remain ambivalent, but it does require us to be respectful. We can and should take positions, but never in ways that denigrate our opponents who like us are honestly trying to understand the teaching of the Bible.

What Next?

If you’ve been through this process and you have determined that your pastor is being improperly political, then before you take any action, force yourself to get more specific about what you mean.

• Is your pastor displaying arrogance by teaching a controversial perspective without respect for those on the other side?
• Is your pastor promoting heresy by teaching something directly opposed to an honest reading of God’s Word?
• Is your pastor advocating idolatry by encouraging allegiance to an authority other than Christ and the Word?

If your answer to any of these is “Yes” then you have identified a sinful behavior in your pastor. The issue isn’t whether he/she is political, but the issue is whether your pastor is being sinful. If you have identified a sinful pattern in your pastor, it is your Christian duty to address that sin the way Jesus taught you to in Matthew 18:15-17.

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

Matthew 18:15-17 NIV

Until you have approached your pastor about your perception of sin, until you have brought evidence of that sin, until you have involved the elders of the church in addressing that sin, your job is not over.

At the end of that process, if you really have done the work of the above questions, and if with all that work done, the elders of the church support the pastor rather than the clear teaching of the Bible, that’s probably the time to consider leaving the church.

But if you do, don’t say it’s because the church or the pastor was being too political.

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Psalm 23

How do you understand the book of Revelation? Previously, I taught a series of messages on the end times, but I haven’t ever written it all out in any kind of systematic way. This article is the second of two attempting to cover the relevant Biblical teaching on the topic of the end times. In the previous article, I covered the teaching of Paul, Jesus, and Daniel and in this article, I’ll address the teaching of the Apostle John (specifically Revelation).

But first, let’s do some review.

Review

In my previous article, I started with the teaching of Paul, then because he quoted Jesus, I looked at the teaching of Jesus, and then because Jesus quoted Daniel, I went to Daniel. After looking at all those passages, I assembled the main points they were making into the following chronological list of end times events:

• Gospel Transmission / Increasing Wickedness, Apostasy
• Removal of Restrainer (?)
• Rise of the Man of Lawlessness (Antichrist)
• Great Distress and Persecution (Tribulation)
• Return of Christ in Power (Resurrection & Rapture)
• Great Judgment (Book of Life)
• Eternal Life or Eternal Fire (Jesus taught these two destinies, recorded in Matthew 25)

However, I also said there are key parts of end times doctrine that aren’t included in this list because neither Jesus, nor Paul or Daniel addressed them. Among those things are the doctrine of the Rapture, the doctrine of the Millennium, and the nature of Eternal life. In this article, we will swim through the book of Revelation (and other bits of John’s writing) at a rapid clip to fill in those blanks. Specifically, we will address the following questions:

• Does Revelation or any other New Testament text give us any justification for the Rapture doctrine?
• What does Revelation teach about the Millennium, Armageddon, the Antichrist, or the time of God’s wrath?
• What should we know about the nature of eternity and the eternal destiny of human beings?

Methodology

As before, I want to share the methodology I’m using to study the book of Revelation. Also as before, there are two general approaches to the book of Revelation. The first approach is to see Revelation in a broader systematic framework like Dispensationalism. From a Dispensational perspective, various parts of the book could be referring to different time periods in the age of the church. Other systematic approaches are sometimes employed too. The second approach is to see Revelation as a deeply encoded book that must be decoded by the reader for proper understanding. This approach allows for an unending stream of new interpretations and new ideas, but it also faces the weakness of reflecting the thought, culture, time, and perspective of the interpreter more than the intent of the text.

My approach will be the same as before: look for the author’s intent. However, when it comes to the book of Revelation, discerning author intent is more difficult because there are two layers of authorship to the book. A very small portion of the book is claimed by John as original to him. The major part of the book is John writing down the words dictated to him by Jesus or an angel, or John simply recording in text what he experienced in a vision. As a result, we need to pay attention to any time John addresses his audience directly because those moments reveal what he thought of his experiences. Additionally, we need to pay attention to those moments when the experience John had was beyond his own ability to express or when the angelic messenger gave him direct guidance about the message he was given.

Finally, my approach toward Revelation will reflect one fundamental presupposition of my own. I’m convinced we are not meant to know the details of these prophecies, and therefore, efforts to see the trees in the forest are doomed to failure. Let me try to make this point.

Forest Not Trees

Sometimes the Prophet Doesn’t Know the Meaning

In Daniel 12:8-9 we read this:

(8) I heard, but I did not understand. So I asked, “My lord, what will the outcome of all this be?”

(9) He replied, “Go your way, Daniel, because the words are rolled up and sealed until the time of the end.

Daniel 12:8-9 NIV

Both Daniel and John were writing apocalyptic literature in response to visions from angelic beings, and Daniel’s prophecy shows us one key precedent in biblical apocalyptic writing: The prophet often doesn’t understand the prophecy, and sometimes, no explanation is ever given.

Sometimes the Prophet is Commanded to Hide the Meaning

John’s writing in Revelation goes a step further than this. Consider Revelation 10:4:

(4) And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven say, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down.”

Revelation 10:4 NIV

In this passage, the angel specifically tells John not to write down what he has heard. For some reason, John was allowed to experience something but then was not allowed to communicate it to his readers.

Most Times, Readers Get it Wrong

On top of that, I am utterly convicted by the testimony of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. Consider just a few relevant verses from those prophetic texts:

(1) My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?

(7) All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
(8) “He trusts in the LORD,” they say,
“let the LORD rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him.”

(16) Dogs surround me,
a pack of villains encircles me;
they pierce my hands and my feet.
(17) All my bones are on display;
people stare and gloat over me.
(18) They divide my clothes among them
and cast lots for my garment.

Psalm 22:1, 7-8, 16-18 NIV

Psalm 22 described the Messiah’s crucifixion in extreme detail nearly 1000 years before Jesus was even born. You’d think the people of Jesus’ day might be aware of a prophecy about piercing hands and feet, but no. When Jesus was hanging on the cross, he literally quoted the first verse of the Psalm and the people didn’t get it even then:

And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ).

When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”

Mark 15:34-35 NIV

Then, consider these verses from Isaiah 53:

(3) He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
(4) Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
(5) But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
(6) We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
(7) He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
(8) By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.
(9) He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
(10) Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
(11) After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied ;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
(12) Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

Isaiah 53:3-12 NIV

Some servant of God would be rejected by people, pierced and whipped, killed along with wicked men, buried in a rich person’s tomb, and yet resurrected back to life! Written hundreds of years before Jesus, this resemblance is astonishing! Still, before the crucifixion, none of Jesus’ followers expected him to be killed, and even after the resurrection, the Jewish leaders still didn’t make the connection.

Here’s the point. God’s people have (almost) never been able to understand prophecy except in hindsight. The one exception is when Daniel reads Jeremiah’s prophecy about 70 years in captivity and realizes that the 70 years is just about over. However, when it came to the Messiah, the most important set of prophecies ever given, no one other than Jesus understood them until after they were fulfilled.

Therefore, out of hubris I could say, “But I’ll get it right when I look at the details” or out of humility I could say, “Maybe I’m no better than those people and should reserve judgment until God brings it about.” Speculation may sometimes be valuable, but in any case, I want to choose the path of humility.

Speed is Our Friend

So, my general approach to a book like Revelation is actually to go through it faster rather than slower. Instead of the slow bit by bit analysis of every tiny detail, I think it’s more valuable and more accurate to go through it at the pace John experienced it. It’s highly likely that it took him longer to write down his visions than it did for him to see the visions, and I think we will benefit from that same kind of experience.

Therefore, in the following article, I will at times quote passages from Revelation, but my assumption is that those quotations are coming in the context of a fast reading rather than a slow one. If you want to join me in this journey, it’s probably in your best interest to pause before each section below to read through the relevant section in Revelation before continuing with what I have to say about it.

Let’s dig in.

Prologue: Revelation 1

The Pre-Prologue

The first three verses of Revelation are a section to themselves, and there are two bits of information often missed by readers.

• The main point of Revelation is to give the servants of Jesus information about the Father’s plans for the future, and through that information to bless them.
• The expectation is that the book would be read aloud, heard, and taken to heart. That is, the book itself has a preference against detailed study and analysis and a preference for the kind of absorption that comes from hearing it read aloud.

Therefore, we have additional justification for our faster approach to the text, and we understand that the goal is for the servants of Christ to experience a blessing through this book.

John’s Introduction

John records a vision of a glorious Jesus who tells him to record seven letters to seven churches in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey).

John addresses the book to seven churches in Asia, but rather than focusing on himself or his audience, he quickly shifts to an expressive doxology that references what Jesus had said about his return.

In this introduction, John also uses a literary device he will employ often in the book.

On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet,… I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest.

Revelation 1:10, 12-13 NIV

The device we will see used over and over again goes like this:

• I heard something like something.
• I turned or looked (sometimes left out).
• I saw something like something.

In this case, he hears a voice like a trumpet, but when he turns he sees lampstands first and later sees someone like a son of man. The important thing for us at this point is to realize that what he hears first (voice like a trumpet) is the same thing as what he sees later (someone like a son of man). This will help us in the rest of the book.

Secondly, I want to highlight something else that happens often in the book. The voice gives a lesson in the meaning of some of the metaphors. In this case, after identifying himself as the one who died and rose again, the Son of Man describes the meaning of the stars and the lampstands. However, he doesn’t give a meaning for anything else in the previous vision like the sash he wears or the sword coming from his mouth. We might speculate about those things, but we should remember that the meaning is not specified.

Aside on the Deity of Jesus

Finally, there’s a point of doctrine in this section that has nothing to do with end times understanding, but whenever I teach on Revelation, I make a point of this because it is incredibly important for our understanding of the identity of Jesus. After John gives his expressive description of the Son of Man, the Son of Man speaks and reveals that he is Jesus (without using that word) who is “the First and the Last.” Make a note of that, “the First and the Last” is a phrase referring to Jesus.

Additionally, at the end of the book we hear Jesus say this:

“Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

Revelation 22:12-13 NIV

Make a note of that, “the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last” is a phrase Jesus uses to refer to himself.

However, back in Revelation 1:8 we saw this:

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Revelation 1:8 NIV

Clearly, “the Alpha and the Omega” is a phrase used by God Almighty to refer to himself. This is important because God uses an all-inclusive phrase to refer to himself as the beginning of all things and the end of all things, but Jesus uses the exact same idea to refer to himself. However, the very first verse of the book said that it’s a revelation given to Jesus by God, and later in the first chapter (verses 4-6) it is again emphasized that Jesus and God are separate from each other. Simultaneously, the book affirms a distinction between Jesus and God while also affirming the equality of Jesus and God. If Jesus is “First” and God is “First” then Jesus is God.

This line of reasoning supports both the full deity of Jesus in contradiction to the teaching of Jehovah’s witnesses and Mormons and others while also affirming a distinction between Jesus and the Father in contradiction to the teaching of Oneness and other modalist traditions.

Those who support the authenticity of Revelation should also support this understanding of the nature of Jesus.

The Seven Letters: 2-3

Those who overcome will be rewarded.

At various points in history, people have attempted to decipher allegorical meanings from the seven letters or to see each letter as a reference to a different age of the church. Perhaps not so strangely, those who take the approach that each letter is a different age of the church usually see themselves in the seventh letter giving themselves justification for concluding that they are living in the last days. However, nothing in the text itself indicates that these seven letters are to be taken for anything other than what they are: seven letters to seven churches under John’s ministry purview. Perhaps they are a reference to seven ages of the church. Perhaps they are a reference to the seven kinds of problems churches face. But neither of those interpretive angles is supported by the text. What’s more, those approaches can make us think one or more of the letters might not apply to us.

The better interpretive framework for these seven letters is the widely respected one we all know as if the shoe fits interpretation. That is, if something in the letter applies to you, apply it to you.

Nevertheless, these letters, although informative and interesting, give only minimal prophetic information about the end times, and therefore, for the purposes of this article, we will only consider the brief promises Jesus gives each church about the future:

(2:7) Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God….

(2:10) Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown. (2:11) Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death….

(2:17) Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it….

(2:26) To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations—…

(3:3) Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you….

(3:5) The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels….

(3:10) Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. (3:11) I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. (3:12) The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on them my new name….

(3:21) To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne.

Revelation 2:7, 2:10-11, 2:17, 2:26, 3:3, 3:5, 3:10-12, 3:21 NIV

There are repeated promises for eternal life in spite of earthly death, authority with Christ over the rest of the world, and a new identity, but there are also two other promises that are worthy of specific attention.

First, in 3:3, Jesus promises to “come like a thief.” This is similar to the language of Matthew 24, and is often used to support a secretive Pre-Tribulation Rapture, but note that both here and in Matthew 24, the language is used as a threat against those who are unfaithful. As we saw in the previous article, Matthew 24 includes the threat that unfaithful people will be “taken away” while the faithful people will be “left,” and that same idea can apply here too.

Secondly, in 3:10, Jesus praises the faithfulness of the church in Philadelphia. Because they have “kept” his command, he will “keep” them from the hour of trial. For proponents of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture, this passage promises that faithful Christians will be removed from the earth before the days of Tribulation begin. However, the word “keep” could just as likely mean “preserve” as it might mean “remove.” One way to keep something safe is to remove it from danger. Another way to keep something safe is to protect it in the midst of danger. One way to stay safe is to never go out during a pandemic. Another way to stay safe is to get a vaccine. If you start with a presupposition of Pre-Tribulation Rapture, this verse has a simple meaning, but if you don’t start with that presupposition, the nature of the protection is less clear.

Additionally, we need to remember that these letters were written to churches in John’s day. The people in Philadelphia were not raptured away from any persecution, and all the people who were in that church when the letter was written are dead now. Therefore, it’s hard for us to know exactly what these promises have to say to us today. Where the promises indicate something in the distant future like being spared from the second death or being welcomed into the new Jerusalem, we can hold out hope, but where the promises indicate something unique for that church, we can’t draw any strong conclusions.

The Throne and the Lamb: 4-5

The Lamb who was slain is the Lion who is worthy to unseal the end of days.

Chapters 4 & 5 are filled with rich references to previous prophetic visions. Ezekiel, Daniel, and Isaiah each record visions of the Throne Room of Heaven that bear significant resemblances to this one. Once again, there isn’t a lot of predictive prophecy going on in these chapters, but there are a few specific things that are worthy of note.

“Come Up Here”

Verse 1 is one more verse used by proponents of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture to support their position. Their claim is that from the beginning of chapter 4 John himself is a symbolic stand-in for the Church itself. He gets to watch things unfold for the rest of the book as an outside observer even as the Church will be raptured away before the real end times hardships begin. Therefore, when John hears the voice, like a trumpet, call “Come up here,” it’s a symbolic representation of the moment Christians will be “caught up” to meet Jesus in the air.

However, once again, that point of view only makes sense if you start with the presupposition of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. John never refers to himself as a symbol of all Christians. He is instructed to “come up” so that he can be shown a vision in heaven, and then he describes his experience as being “in the Spirit.” However, the “caught up” moment in 1 Thessalonians 4 has Christians rising bodily from the earth to meet Jesus in the air and no mention of heaven is made at all. This is another case where if you start with a doctrine, the verse makes a certain kind of sense, but if you don’t start with that presupposition, the verse means simply what it says: John had a vision of heaven.

Indescribable

The second thing to note from this section is that everything is indescribable in human language. Compare this moment to the writings of Ezekiel, Isaiah and Daniel, and you get the clear impression that the prophet is experiencing something utterly ineffable.

John says he sees a “rainbow” that looks like an “emerald,” Isaiah (chapter 6) says of the Lord, “the train of his robe filled the temple,” Daniel (chapter 7) says his visions “disturbed” him, and Ezekiel just ran out of words when he said:

Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.

This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.

Ezekiel 1:28 NIV

By comparing these four accounts of the throne room of heaven, you can see incredible similarities, but you can also see a completely indescribable scene. This is important to realize because it sets the stage for one of the most important interpretive principles of the book of Revelation: John is doing his best. By that, I mean John is literally incapable of describing what he sees and experiences in these visions. What he writes down will be not exactly flawed but thoroughly inadequate and incomplete compared to the reality of what he saw. Even Ezekiel with his intensely detailed account of his vision ended his chapter with vague words: appearance, likeness, glory.

Hear, See

For the second time, John uses the literary device to make a point out of something incomprehensible.

Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.

Revelation 5:5-6 NIV

The voice tells John to look at the triumphant Lion of Judah, but when he looks, he sees a Lamb, slain, yet standing. The voice describes a Lion, but John saw a Lamb. We know these metaphors refer to Jesus as both Sacrifice and King, but it’s important to recognize once again that John has employed the device to say that what he heard and what he saw are different but the same, incompatible yet complementary perspectives of the same reality.

Seals, Trumpets, and Bowls

The bulk of the book of Revelation happens in a sequence of three increasingly dramatic scenes. The Lamb opens the seven seals of the scroll, and with each seal, some new calamity befalls the earth. Then, angels blow seven trumpets with more calamities. Then, angels pour out seven bowls with even greater distress. Intermixed with these seals, trumpets and bowls are other visions as well, and after the final bowl is poured out, the visions resolve from distressful to glorious and blissful.

Of course, the most important interpretive questions boil down to these two:

• What’s the meaning of the events? Are they literal, metaphorical, or code for something else?
• What’s the timing of these events? Are they sequential or simultaneous, and are they all future, or might some of them be in the past?

Again, I encourage you to read through the sections quickly before reading what I have to say about them.

Seven Seals: 6:1-8:1

Seals 1-6

Before we do anything else, we should recognize that even though John describes a sequence of seal-opening, nowhere in the text is it hinted that this means the events described are temporally sequential. It’s possible that the conquest comes before the famine, but it’s also possible that they all come at the same time or even in a different order. The text doesn’t explicitly order them in time or describe their extent. Therefore, we shouldn’t either.

The seals describe a variety of tragedies that will befall people on the earth: conquest, warfare, a broken economy (perhaps as a result of famine), death (as a result of many causes), martyrdom, extreme cosmic distress (darkened sun, blood-red moon, and more). At the end of the sixth seal, the people of the earth expect the “great day of [God’s] wrath” to be at hand, but an angel speaks to declare that the wrath won’t come on the earth until God’s “servants” are sealed. (It’s interesting that after six “seals” are opened, the people of God are to receive a “seal” upon them before the seventh “seal” is also opened.)

The 144,000

Once again, John employs the device of hear, look, see to demonstrate the equivalence of two seemingly opposite truths—remember when an angel told John to see the Lion, but when John looked, he saw a Lamb. Many false interpretations of this passage come from misunderstanding this simple hear, look, see structure in Revelation. In this case, John hears that 12,000 people are sealed from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, but then it says:

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.

Revelation 7:9 NIV

Even though John heard that 144,000 were selected, chosen, or sealed from the tribes of Israel, he sees that the crowd is uncountable and comes from every tribe and every nation. The 144,000 was symbolic, but the reality is that there are many more. Calling them Israelites was also symbolic. In reality, they come from all over the world.

If you read my previous article on the end times, you might be able to see how important this interpretation is, but it’s worth my time to make it plain. A major expectation of the Dispensational / Pre-Trib Rapture understanding of the end times depends on the belief that the Church is distinct from Israel and that God will remove the Church from the earth so that he can renew his work with national Israel. Dispensationalists support that claim by making reference to the 144,000 mentioned here and also elsewhere in Revelation.

To dispensationalists, the 144,000 taken from Israel proves that God still has work to do with Israel. However, in the context of the actual text of Revelation, it means exactly the opposite. Not only does the dispensationalist perspective ignore the hear, look, see device used in Revelation, it also ignores one of the most foundational truths from the history of Israel. Aside from Judah, Levi, and Benjamin, all tribes are lost to history. When the Northern Kingdom was conquered by Assyria, the people were deported and dispersed throughout the Assyrian empire. Their entire identity, heritage, and genealogy was lost. In other words, no one is alive today who can trace their lineage to Naphtali or Reuben or Gad, and therefore, when John hears of 12,000 sealed from those tribes, either the number or the tribe or both must be understood metaphorically.

There is one more thing we should note about the 144,000 / great multitude. They are described as those who have been clothed in white robes. Now, just a few verses earlier, when the fifth seal was opened, John saw a bunch of martyrs who were told that more would be added to their number and who were promised white robes. In other words, it seems likely that the 144,000 who are sealed are not going to be protected from martyrdom. It’s a popular idea that the 144,000 will be protected from harm, but the text seems to indicate otherwise. In fact, when John asks about the crowd wearing white robes, we see this:

Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”

I answered, “Sir, you know.”

And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Revelation 7:13-14 NIV

The 144,000 / great multitude are those who have “come out of the great tribulation.” That is, these servants of God went through the “great tribulation.”

Now, it is possible that the 144,000 and the great multitude are two different groups, and it is further possible that to “come out of the great tribulation” might mean they were raptured out of it. However, the best approach seems to be that the martyrs of seal #5 are joined by more martyrs who are the symbolic successors of Israel, and who have remained faithful to God through the time of the tribulation.

The Seventh Seal

When the seventh seal is opened, we are told that there is nothing but silence. Many attempts at interpretation have been given for this silence, but John himself gives no interpretation of it. I’m personally taken aback by the contrast of all the drama found in seals 1-6 and the utter silence of seal 7. Perhaps it’s because we all need to take a breath. Perhaps it’s because John needed an interlude. Whatever it means, the next sequence of the vision is about to begin.

Seven Trumpets: 8:2-11:19

Next, John sees seven angels receive seven trumpets and prepare to blow them. Similar to the section of the seven seals, this section will see the angels blow their trumpets in turn. Many interpreters see the sequence of seven trumpets as nested inside the seventh seal. Others see the seven trumpets as taking place after the seventh seal. Pragmatically, it doesn’t much matter. Also John doesn’t indicate one way or another which it is or why it would matter. In fact, it only matters if you are trying to build a timeline of events from the book of Revelation. If all the trumpets happen inside the time of the seventh seal, then you might conclude the trumpets happen faster than the seals do. However, recall that John isn’t describing a timed-out sequence of events. He’s describing a vision and merely writing down what he saw in the order he saw it.

Trumpets 1-4

When the angels do sound their trumpets, great calamity falls on the earth. First, one third of all the earth is burned up by fire from the sky. Secondly, a burning mountain (volcano?) falls into the sea, and a third of the life in the sea dies along with a third of the ships on the sea. Thirdly, a burning star fell from heaven (asteroid?) and destroyed a third of all fresh water, killing many people. Fourthly, a third of the heavenly lights were put out such that the day was a third dark and the night was also a third dark.

Before going on, I want to recognize that during the sixth seal, the sun was darkened and the moon became like blood. This point is important because here, only a third of the sun is affected and likewise the moon. In some ways, the trumpets are less intense than the seals. In other ways, they are more intense than the seals. However, in both cases there is overlap between the seals and trumpets. Perhaps the cataclysm of trumpets 1-4 happens simultaneously with seal 6. Perhaps the sun and moon recover after seal 6 only to be later affected in trumpet 4.

Or perhaps we should just realize that in both visions, John is seeing a cosmic calamity that will come to pass. Furthermore, note that all these trumpets so far can be describing a singular event. For example, if an asteroid hit the earth, it would produce all these effects. That doesn’t mean John is predicting an asteroid, but it does show how one event could satisfy all these trumpets so far. John is describing the effects sequentially, but they could be happening simultaneously. Again, John never claims the sequence of the vision equates to a temporal sequence of the future.

Trumpet 5 / Woe #1

When the fifth trumpet sounds, an angel proclaims that it is the first of three “woes” and the events described are woeful indeed. John sees a thing or person he describes as “a star that had fallen from heaven” and who is given a key to open “the abyss.” From the abyss comes enough smoke to darken the sky and also locusts who look like armored horses but also people and also have power like scorpions and who are permitted to torment for five months the people who do not belong to God. The locust/horse/scorpion people are governed by the “angel of the abyss” who is called Abaddon or Apollyon (words that mean destroyer).

I want to highlight a few important things from this section. First, there is way too much going on in this passage for us to fully understand it. Each generation has its own way of interpreting the symbols. Most recently, it has been popular to think of the locusts as armored helicopters because helicopters would be flying things with human faces at the front and scorpion-like tails at the back. However, John was a smart man, and he would have known the difference between people inside something and a creature with the face of a human. His description does not say people were inside something else. His description is that there were locusts who looked like horses with human faces and tails like scorpions. In other words, John had no words to describe what he saw, and it’s arrogance for us to think we can understand his vision based on his inadequate words.

Secondly, and more importantly, these locusts consider the “angel of the abyss” known as the Destroyer to be their king. Perhaps the Destroyer is a reference to Satan (as a rival king to God), perhaps the Destroyer is a reference to the Beast (who will come up from the Abyss in a later vision), perhaps the Destroyer is a reference to a destroying angel (like in the Passover Plague of Exodus). Nevertheless, no single solution fully explains the vision, and it’s not important anyway. There’s something more important. No matter who the “fallen star” is, no matter who the “angel of the abyss” is, one thing is certain: this terror is controlled by and constrained by God to pour out wrath on the earth but to protect his own people, those who have been “sealed” by him, the 144,000 / great multitude we have already talked about. Yes, there will be tribulation and martyrdom, but God’s faithful people will be protected from the greatest woeful events in the tribulation (recall Jesus’ promise to the church in Philadelphia).

Trumpet 6

When the sixth trumpet sounds, four angels who have been prepared for that moment are released to kill a third of the human race. Once again, John’s vision is beyond words. He describes an army of 200,000,000 mounted soldiers on armored horses with lion heads and snakes for tails. However, he also describes them as producing multiple plagues of fire, smoke, and sulfur.

Again, we could attempt to discern the significance of all these symbols, but let’s be honest. There’s no way for us to know what a plague of smoke means, what an army two hundred million strong would be like, or what is meant by a horse with a snake tail. That’s not the important point anyway. John tells us what the important point is at the end of chapter 9: regardless of the great tragedies that befall humanity and regardless of the protection offered to the people of God, the people of the earth still refuse to repent and turn to God. They continue in idol worship, in greed, in murder, sexual immorality and theft, and therefore, they are still eligible for judgment.

Trumpet 6 Extended / Woe #2

From 10:1 to 11:14, John records a number of other visions that may or may not be connected with the sixth trumpet. This follows the structure of the seven seals from earlier. Each of the first five seals had a relatively brief explanation, then the sixth seal had a similar description followed by an extended scene of the 144,000 and the great multitude before the seventh seal was opened. The trumpets follow the same pattern. The first 6 trumpets have a relatively brief description, but then there is a sequence of other visions before the seventh trumpet sounds.

In the first extended scene, John sees a glorious giant angel come out of heaven and stand with one foot on land and another on the sea. The angel calls out something, John hears seven “thunders” respond, and when he is about to write down what he heard, another voice tells him not to. Then, he is commanded to take a scroll from the hand of the giant angel and eat it. It tastes sweet, but makes him feel sick, and then he’s commanded to keep prophesying. This is exactly parallel to what Ezekiel experienced in chapter 3.

And he said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the people of Israel.” So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat.

Then he said to me, “Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.” So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.

He then said to me: “Son of man, go now to the people of Israel and speak my words to them.

Ezekiel 3:1-4 NIV

Additionally, the words God gave Ezekiel to speak would be bitter words indeed.

In the second extended scene, John is given a measuring rod and is told to measure the inner temple area (excluding the court of the Gentiles). He is told that the “nations” will “trample” the city for 3.5 years, but that God’s two “witnesses” will also be empowered for 3.5 years to speak prophecy, to be protected from harm, and to do miracles like Elijah and Moses did. The two prophets will eventually be killed by one John calls “the beast” and will lie dead in the same city where Jesus was crucified (note John doesn’t name it as Jerusalem, rather, he calls it Sodom or Egypt!). Finally, after 3.5 days, the prophets will return to life, they will visibly ascend to heaven, and an earthquake will kill thousands.

John identified this as the second woe.

As a disappointing side note, John never tells us what the third woe is.

Let’s Talk About the Temple

I want to take a moment now to address something that’s commonly assumed by the predominant Christian interpretation of the End Times. The Pre-tribulation / Rapture / Dispensational interpretation holds that before the end can come, the Jewish Temple must be rebuilt in Israel. According to them, since John was commanded to measure the Temple, this must be a prediction that there will be a real measurable Temple in the future. However, there’s one thing this interpretation fails to recognize. John received this vision while he was in exile on Patmos near the end of his life. Our best dating indicates that John was there on Patmos in the early 90s A.D.; however, the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D. When John received this vision, the Jerusalem Temple had been gone for 20 years, and he certainly would have known about that! Therefore, when John was commanded to measure a temple in his vision, if he thought it was a real future temple, he would have called it the rebuilt temple. At least he would have made a clear prediction that the Temple would be rebuilt. We know that John was not talking about an earthly temple anyway because multiple times in Revelation, he tells us this temple is in heaven. Later in this very chapter we see:

Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm.

Revelation 11:19 NIV

The book of Revelation does not predict the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple. In fact, Revelation 21:22 will teach that a temple is not even a desirable thing!

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

Revelation 21:22 NIV

Trumpet 7

When the seventh seal was opened, there was silence in heaven. When the seventh trumpet sounds, John hears loud voices in heaven singing praise to God and declaring that the time has come for God to bring judgment on the earth.

Woman & Dragon, Beasts & Lamb: 12-14

Nothing happened between the seventh seal and the first trumpet, but after the seventh trumpet sounds, John receives a sequence of visions that form the basis for much modern speculative interpretation. As before, I’ll recognize that very little of what we read in this section can be understood with concrete specificity. Nevertheless, there is one super important lesson John wants us to know throughout these visions, and I’ll get to that at the end.

The Woman, Child, and Dragon

John sees a vision of a giant woman in the sky in labor. She has 12 stars on her head (12 is the number of the tribes of Israel and also the number of the disciples). There’s a dragon with seven heads (Rome was built on seven hills, but who knows what the seven heads might mean) planning to eat her child when it is born. A male child is born and is identified as king over all the nations before being “caught up” to the throne room of God. The woman flees and God protects her for 3.5 years.

Next, John sees a war in heaven where Michael (likely a reference to the “archangel” who was assigned to protect the people of God according to Daniel 12) and his angels war against the dragon and his angels. The dragon is defeated, cast out of heaven, and identified as Satan. A song in heaven rings out rejoicing that the “accuser of the brethren” has finally been defeated.

Following the heavenly defeat, Satan attempts to persecute the woman but she is aided in her escape and is protected. The 3.5 years time is reiterated. However, when Satan can’t do anything to the woman, he goes after her offspring, those faithful to the testimony about Jesus.

Although we can’t fully understand this vision in detail, we can probably be accurate in understanding the broad brushstrokes of it.

The woman is probably symbolic of both Israel and Church. It’s out of historic Israel that Jesus was born, but the vision refers to the followers of Jesus as the woman’s offspring. Additionally, the woman is protected from the dragon just as Jesus told his followers that the gates of Hades would not prevail against his church. Also, even though the woman (the Church) is protected, Satan still has the ability to go after her offspring, individual believers.

My best interpretation of the meaning of this section is that John was seeing an allegorical depiction of all history being condensed to it’s most important moment. God planned to use Israel to bring a Savior to the world, Satan tried to oppose that plan, but the plan succeeded, the Savior is now in heaven, and Satan was defeated. Although he is now still able to annoy Christians, he is powerless to defeat the total people of God.

Let’s Talk about Satan

I’ve addressed this topic elsewhere but it’s worth mentioning again. Some have seen in this Revelation passage an “origin story” for Satan. The narrative goes that Satan was an angel in heaven who chose to rebel against God, who convinced a third of the angels to follow him, who fought against God, and was eventually cast out of heaven to earth. The narrative provides for us an origin story for one of the most interesting spiritual beings in the Bible, and it also seems to line up with this vision in Revelation. However, we should note that the Revelation account is of a future time when Satan will be defeated. Satan has been “accuser of the brethren” for a long time before he is defeated by Michael. Whatever this heavenly battle is, it hasn’t happened yet, and therefore, this part of Revelation cannot function as an origin story for Satan. What is his origin story? We don’t know. In fact, no part of the Bible claims to give an origin story to us.

Dragon, Beast, and Mark

In the next scene of this vision, John sees a “beast” come up out of the sea. The beast has horns and heads and crowns and is described with layers of symbolism that we will not be able to decipher before he is actually revealed. However, the most important symbol is that the beast looks as if it had survived a fatal injury. The dragon gives it power, and the whole earth falls in love with the beast and the dragon who empowered him, even worshipping them. The whole earth will worship the beast except for those whose names are written in the “Book of Life.”

John also sees another beast that looks like a lamb but speaks like a dragon (a false Christ?). The second beast points people to the first beast and even builds an image of the first beast. The second beast is able to give breath to the image and the image itself speaks and exercises authority. The image mandates worship of itself and requires people to get a mark signifying their allegiance to the beast. John says the mark of the beast is the name of the beast or the number of the name or the number of a man or the number 666.

Let’s Talk about the Mark of the Beast

Christians are fascinated or terrified by the idea of the mark of the beast. Where I live in Lafayette, Indiana, there is an area of Main Street where a building has been divided into 5 separate businesses each with the exact same width, each with the exact same blue awning out front, and each with the address of the unit clearly displayed on that awning in large white text. From left to right, you can see the numbers: 660, 662, 664, ?, 668. What number do you suppose they put on the awning of the fourth building? Nope, not 666! The number they used was 666 1/3?! Someone somewhere decided that marketing a business at 666 would not be good for business, so they changed the address to be just a tiny bit bigger. I personally would have gone with 665.9, but they didn’t ask me.

During the early days of 2021 as vaccinations for COVID-19 were rolling out around the world, I heard many Christians declare they would never get the vaccination because they thought it was “the mark of the beast.”

When I was a teen and ATM machines were getting popular, I heard Christians decry them saying they were “the mark of the beast.”

When I was a child and VISA and Mastercard were rising in popularity, I heard people say they were “the mark of the beast.”

Before I was born, when the Federal government was rolling out Social Security Numbers, Christians of the day were calling that “the mark of the beast.”

Simply put, none of those things have ever been the mark of the beast because none of those things have ever been associated with the beast, the second beast, or the image of the beast, because the beast hasn’t shown up yet. There has never yet been a global demand that all people everywhere worship a single man, and the mark of the beast is intrinsically tied to that demand for worship and a person’s willingness to join that worship. I’ll come back to this in a moment.

The Lamb, the 144,000, and the Reaping

The next scene in John’s vision has him seeing the Lamb standing on Mount Zion (usually a reference to the hill in Jerusalem where the Temple had been) with 144,000 people that had been marked by the name of Jesus and the Father. They are described as faithful and undefiled, those who followed the Lamb.

John hears an angel declare the coming of judgment, another angel declare the fall of “Babylon the Great,” and a third angel declare coming torment for those who receive the mark of the beast and the need for endurance on the part of the faithful.

Finally, he sees the Son of Man seated on a cloud sweeping a sickle over the earth to “harvest” it. Then a second angel sweeps a second sickle over the earth, harvesting grapes that are then trampled in a winepress, but the wine flowing from the winepress is actually blood.

The Point of All This

Though John doesn’t give any detailed analysis to any one of these fantastical images, there are a few things we should discern.

First, Satan might try to destroy God’s plans but it will never work. He is a loser, and he will always be a loser.

Secondly, Satan will never be able to defeat the people of God, but he will have power to cause us pain and hardship. We shouldn’t lose hope, because once again, we need to remember he is going to lose.

Thirdly, the best Satan can ever do is to imitate God’s work. Each of the beasts has something that looks like Jesus but isn’t quite the same. One looks like it was mortally wounded but lived while the Lamb looks like it was actually slain. One of the beasts looks like it is a lamb but actually speaks like a dragon. This is Satan’s true power. He is able to imitate the work of God in ways that are more attractive to us than the real work of God. Both of the beasts are more attractive to our natural human tendencies than is Christ. It’s hard to follow a man who sacrifices his life, but it’s exciting to follow a person who survived a mortal injury. It’s hard to follow a man who keeps his mouth shut like a lamb going to slaughter, but it’s exciting to follow the voice of a dragon.

Additionally, the threefold combination of dragon-beast-beast, is simply Satan trying to mimic the threefold combination of Father, Son and Spirit, and the mark of the beast is Satan trying to mimic the fact that God has sealed his own people with his own name for himself.

People who follow God will never get the mark of the beast because they will see through the fraud. People who get the mark of the beast will never get marked by God because they will have fallen prey to the imitation rather than the true. Nevertheless, one of these days, Jesus is going to gather up his own to himself, and all the rest will be trampled in judgment.

The Seven Bowls: 15-16

Similar to the seven seals and the seven trumpets, John gets a vision of seven last plagues to be poured out on the earth as if from bowls. Before the plagues begin, though, John describes hearing a song from the faithful who had “won the victory over the beast” and remained faithful to God in spite of the opposition from the beast. Then, he sees seven angels receive the seven bowls of wrath and they pour them on the earth one by one.

• Painful sores appear on all those who received the mark of the beast.
• The sea turns to blood and all life in the sea dies.
• The fresh waters turn to blood, and an angel declares that the people of the earth deserve it because they shed the blood of God’s people.
• The sun scorched people and they further rejected God.
• The kingdom of the beast is engulfed in darkness, but the people still don’t repent.
• The Euphrates dries up, and demonic spirits come from the dragon, the beast, and the other beast (now called the false prophet) to assemble the kings of the earth to a place called Armageddon.
• Finally, with the seventh bowl, a voice declares, “It is done!” and the earth is ravaged by a great earthquake, the fall of cities, and a hailstorm of 100 pound hail!

The account of the seven bowls is remarkably brief compared to the seven seals or the seven trumpets, and there is no gap between the description of the sixth and seventh bowls even though we expected to hear about the battle at Armageddon. Later in Revelation, John will record a vision about that battle, but here in the account of the bowls, he gives no details about it. Because of that, I want to point out two things to keep in mind for later:

• The different visions John gets are not showing everything in chronological order. Some later visions describe events contained within earlier visions. The different visions interweave or overlap with each other, and drawing a full, clear timeline is likely impossible.
• The battle at Armageddon involves the energy of the dragon, the beast, the false prophet and the kings of the earth, but it materializes as merely a blip in human history. They assemble, and shortly thereafter a voice declares, “It is done!” The point we will see is that when God decides to move, nothing can stand in his way.

Following the bowls, John’s visions will be grandiose, detailed, and cryptic, but they give us broad brushstrokes for the final narrative of the earth. That final narrative will involve a time of great destruction, a time of God’s victory, and the recreation of heaven and earth.

Destruction of Babylon: 17-18

John is approached by an angel who takes him away into a new vision. This vision is of a woman dressed in splendor riding a beast with seven heads and ten horns. The beast has blasphemous things written on it, and the woman holds a cup of abominable things and she bears the title on her forehead: Babylon the Great, Mother of Prostitutes and Abominations.

The angel then actually gives John an explanation of this vision, but the explanation is nearly as cryptic as the vision itself:

The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.

Revelation 17:8 NIV

Either the beast is a person who has died and will rise again, or more likely, the beast is a symbolic representative of a thing that has come multiple times in history and will eventually come again. This, in fact, perfectly correlates to what Daniel and Jesus called “the abomination that causes desolation.” Daniel predicted a man who would bring such abomination, and it happened when Antiochus desecrated the Temple. Hundreds of years later, Jesus predicted a man who would bring such abomination, and it too happened when Titus destroyed Jerusalem in 70AD, but Jesus’ prediction hinted that it would still happen another time too. Perhaps the angel means that what has happened before is going to happen again—this future beast is just the latest version of the thing we have seen before. However, John has also seen a vision of a “beast” who had what looked like a mortal wound. Perhaps the language of the angel is merely a reference to that.

Next, the angel gives more details. The seven heads are seven hills or mountains (an apparent historical reference to the city of Rome which was built on seven hills), but they are also seven kings. Five kings have already come, the sixth is currently reigning, and the seventh is in the future. However, the beast is an eighth king. Additionally, the angel then says the ten horns are ten future kings who will someday receive authority to strengthen the authority of the beast. The beast and the kings will make war against the Lamb, but he will overcome them easily along with his followers. Then, the angel describes the beast and the ten kings as hating the prostitute, killing her, and eating her! However, the angel also describes the woman as the great city that rules over the kings of the earth!

Let’s be clear, this explanation doesn’t really give us much information. The heads represent both hills/mountains and kings? The beast has seven heads for seven kings, but the beast itself is an eighth king? The woman sits on the beast and rules the kings of the earth but is also consumed by them? She is the city who rules the kings? Everything here is two or three things.

Talking about Interpreting Details

Soooooo many different interpretations have arisen to decode the vision John just received! Sometimes people think the kings are different emperors of Rome. Sometimes people think the kings are different historical kingdoms. Sometimes people think it’s all metaphorical and the seven kings just refers to the totality of all human kingdoms. But there aren’t just seven kings, there are seventeen kings or eighteen if you include the beast itself.

What makes it worse is that we feel baited to decode the symbols by the words of the angel himself:

Then the angel said to me: “Why are you astonished? I will explain to you the mystery of the woman and of the beast she rides, which has the seven heads and ten horns…. “This calls for a mind with wisdom…

Revelation 17:7, 9 NIV

It seems like the angel wants us to know the meaning. It seems like the angel is teasing us: “If you really were wise, you’d get it,” or even, “If you devote yourself to wisdom you will be able to understand this.”

However, there’s another way of understanding what the angel says.

The angel understands the vision because the angel has the mind with wisdom to understand it. However, neither John nor we have been given the same mind. What we have is John’s description of the vision, and the words of the angel, but we haven’t been granted the actual mind to understand the details. Perhaps the angel is saying: “Listen, I’ll try to tell you what it means, but you aren’t going to get it. The only way to understand it is to have the mind of wisdom for this kind of thing. Anyway, here goes.”

Nevertheless, there’s one bit of interpretation we can easily get from this section.

The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.”

Revelation 17:18 NIV

There are always kings who think they are in charge, but there is a “city” that rules over all them. It’s a “city” associated with all manner of abominations and sinfulness, greed and luxury, promiscuity and pleasure. It’s a “city” that will be consumed by itself.

Perhaps this is talking about a specific city, perhaps it’s talking about a specific society, perhaps it’s talking about a sinful worldview, perhaps it’s a combination of them. In fact, as we will see next, the woman, the great city, “Babylon,” is a great social/economic system that dominates the world, but is also identifiable enough with a specific city or state that it can “fall” and the world can mourn when it does.

The Fall of Babylon

John hears one angel declare that “Babylon the Great” is fallen. That angel also declares her sins: she harbored evil spirits and indulged with the kings of the earth in pleasures and luxuries. John hears another voice call the people of God to come out of Babylon before declaring more of her sins. The kings of the earth and the merchants of the earth will mourn her destruction because they will no longer have the benefits from her wantonness. All those who watch her downfall marvel at how fast it happened: “In one hour…”

What is Babylon the Great?

John devotes a whole chapter to commemorating the destruction of Babylon even though the method and moment of destruction is never described, but two details are worth pointing out. Babylon is both a worldview and a society representing that worldview.

In her was found the blood of prophets and of God’s holy people, of all who have been slaughtered on the earth.”

Revelation 18:24 NIV

This verse clearly indicates that Babylon is not one specific city or even one specific society or state. All the holy people who have been slaughtered owe their death to the activity of Babylon which means Babylon is a system of sinful indulgence that is opposed to the ways of God.

However, when Babylon falls, kings, merchants, and sailors all stand apart from the destruction mourning the loss of their lifestyles. In other words, when Babylon falls, kings, merchants, and sailors are still around. That means Babylon cannot only be a reference to a system. Some agents of that system will mourn the loss of Babylon from the outside. Therefore, we should conclude that Babylon is both a sinful indulgent worldview and a real society that embodies that worldview on a global scale.

For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”

Revelation 18:3 NIV

Throughout human history, there has always been one or maybe two predominant expressions of this worldview. The empires of Babel, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Alexander, and Rome are just a few world-dominating representations of that indulgent worldview.

Furthermore, every one of those societies has fallen. It is inevitable that the predominant indulgent society of the earth will always fall, and one of these days, even the greatest and most dominant expression of that society will also fall.

But here’s the most challenging question for any age: Which current society most fits the description of Babylon?

For roughly 200 years now, the best candidate for Babylon has been obviously the United States of America. Which society is the economic engine of the world? Which society runs the currency that powers global trade? Which society is so consumer-driven that merchants get rich on her indulgence? Which society has the kings of the world answer to it? Which society is known for its luxury and indulgence? No other society of modern life comes even close to the United States as a possible candidate for Babylon, and therefore, we are left with one unavoidable conclusion: Either the United States, the current embodiment of Babylon the Great, will be the society to empower the beast and then to fall as recorded in Revelation 18, or the United States will cease to be the economic engine of the world and another will rise up to take its place. Either way, the economic diminishment of the United States is guaranteed by the book of Revelation.

Victory: 19-20

After the destruction of Babylon is proclaimed, John hears a multitude of voices singing praises to God for his victorious vengeance against Babylon. A line in the song refers to the people of the Lamb as his bride clothed in white linen (a call-back to the promise in 3:18). However, no actual wedding feast is described.

Then, John sees a vision of a rider on a white horse with call-backs to many previous visions. The rider is called Faithful and True, the rider also has a name written on him that no one knows, the rider also has the name “Word of God,” the rider wears clothes dipped in blood, has eyes like fire and has a sword coming from his mouth, and the rider is also the one who treads the wine of God’s wrath. Finally, he also bears the name “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” We are to understand this as Jesus, but John avoids using such a personal name for one so glorious.

The kings of the earth and the beast gather to oppose Jesus and his army, but there is literally no description of the war. All it says is this: “but the beast was captured.” The battle ends before it begins; the beast and the false prophet are thrown into the Lake of Fire, and all their followers are killed by the sword from the mouth of Jesus.

John then sees an angel seize the dragon, identifying him clearly as Satan, and locking him in “the Abyss” for a thousand years. Then, John sees many thrones on which are seated people who were given authority to judge, and he sees the faithful martyrs who had not received the mark of the beast raised to life and given authority to reign with Jesus as priests for a thousand years. John calls this the first resurrection. Christians today use the word “Millennium” or “Millennial Kingdom” to refer to this period of time.

John then reports that after the thousand years are over, Satan will be released to deceive the nations again. He will do so gathering all he can for another battle against the people of God. However, as before, the battle ends before it begins.

They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

Revelation 20:9-10 NIV

This is the final end of Satan.

Then, the last act of victory comes in what we call the Great White Throne Judgment. John describes a vision of a great white throne with Jesus sitting on it. In his vision, the earth and sky both disappear from view, and he is left with a vision of the throne and a multitude of people in front of it. The multitude is every person who has ever lived brought back to life for judgment. Each person is then judged according to two kinds of criteria. First, everyone is judged according to what they have done in life. Then, the Book of Life is checked for that person’s name. That’s the only criteria that really matters. If a person’s name is not in the Book of Life they will be cast into the Lake of Fire where Satan and his followers were sent. John calls this moment “the second death.” The final two chapters of Revelation will be concerned with the destiny of those whose names were found in the Book of Life.

Talking About Hell

Before finishing our discussion about the people whose names were found in the Book of Life, we should make a few quick observations about another important doctrine—the nature of Hell.

In many Christian traditions, the doctrine of Hell is defined by three words:

eternal, conscious torment

However, those three words never show up in the text of the Bible. Furthermore, the idea of Hell is a major stumbling block to many people contemplating Christianity. Many Christians believe that the consequence for living 70 years as a flawed human, committing sins and sometimes doing good will result in conscious torment for all eternity unless a person prays a prayer of salvation. However, most non-Christians think eternal punishment for a finite number of sins is an expression of a completely unjust and irrational God.

What’s important to note is that the doctrine of eternal, conscious torment is not the only perspective on Hell held by the Church. Catholics believe that eternal torment is reserved for the worst people while Catholics will only experience a temporary torment in a place called Purgatory. Other Christian traditions embrace annihilation (the belief that the soul will cease to exist in the Lake of Fire), universalism (the belief that no human other than the beast and the false prophet will ever actually end up in Hell), or what I’m calling eventualism (the belief that each human soul will eventually graduate out of Hell or be annihilated).

The reason that’s important is simply because no text in the Bible directly teaches eternal, conscious torment. Many texts teach conscious torment without mentioning the duration:

But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Matthew 8:12 NIV

They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 13:42 NIV

Many texts teach eternal punishment without mentioning consciousness. Consider these texts:

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.

Mark 9:43 NIV

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels…. “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Matthew 25:41, 46 NIV

Some texts even seem to indicate that the Lake of Fire is a place where the soul is destroyed.

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 10:28 NIV

Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.

Revelation 20:14 NIV

The bottom line is that no Scripture gives us a clear picture of what the Lake of Fire is like for those who are in it or what the extent of their torment will be. As a result, we should be very cautious regarding how we talk about it.

New Creation: 21-22

At the beginning of chapter 21, John has seen visions of the people of God persecuted and killed, he has seen the rise of individuals and societies opposed to God, he has seen the destructive vengeance of God poured out on heaven and earth, and he has seen the final victory of Jesus over all evil. The book ends with a final vision of the renewal of creation before a final epilogue.

In this final vision, John describes the appearance of a “new heaven” and a “new earth” because the old heaven and earth had “passed away.” He also says of this new creation, “there was no longer any sea.” At this point, I want to pause to address the nature of this new creation.

What is the New Heaven and New Earth?

The most natural way of understanding the new heaven and earth is to say that God literally destroys planet earth and builds a new one. This idea is supported by other passages in the New Testament:

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

2 Peter 3:10-13 NIV

However, we should recognize that neither Peter nor John used the word “heavens” to refer to a spiritual dimension. They used the word “heavens” to refer to everything “above” them including the sun and stars. Therefore, in order for the heavens to be fully destroyed, God will have to destroy the entire universe and then build it all over again. This isn’t really a problem for anyone who thinks from a Young Earth or Flat Earth perspective, but for those who accept the lessons of science, the idea that God will destroy and rebuild the entire universe because of what he’s doing with people on the earth doesn’t fully make sense. Furthermore, John gives the cryptic comment that the new earth no longer has any sea in it. If God were going to recreate the earth in a way to support life, we should assume he would put water on it somewhere, right?

As a matter of fact, the comment that there is no sea opens up the door for us to understand this entire moment more metaphorically. You see, for ancient people, the “sea” was a common metaphor for the powers of chaos and destruction. When John says from his vision that there is no longer any sea, he was almost certainly speaking of a world that is perfectly ordered not a world that is void of all large bodies of water, and therefore, we should understand that the vision is fully intended to be taken metaphorically more than literally.

What does that mean?

Honestly, we don’t know. Both Peter and John are clear that the world we know will be destroyed somehow and God will rebuild it somehow, and Jesus and Paul also teach something similar, but does that mean God plans to incinerate planet Earth and build an entirely new one? Does that mean God will relocate Christians to another planet? Does that mean that God is going to destroy this universe and move Christians to a completely different universe or different dimension? Simply put, we don’t know. What we do know is that Jesus will raise to life his own, and he will take us to be with him into an eternal future.

New Jerusalem

John’s metaphorical vision of eternity continues as he sees a “new Jerusalem” descend out of heaven to the earth. The City itself is “dressed” as a bride, and a voice from heaven declares perhaps the most important and most encouraging words in the entire book:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.

Revelation 21:3-7 NIV

Not only is this an impressively strong picture of the doctrine that Jesus is God, it is an impressive reaffirmation of the words of the ancient prophets:

The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”

Genesis 17:8 NIV

Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. They will know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of Egypt so that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God.

Exodus 29:45-46 NIV

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

Jeremiah 31:33 NIV

My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. Then the nations will know that I the LORD make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever.’ ”

Ezekiel 37:27-28 NIV

In other words, John’s vision in Revelation is the fulfillment of the oldest promise God ever made with people, and it’s the fulfillment of the specific promises God made to the people of Israel.

John then hears an angel invite him into a new vision with a new perspective on the “bride” of the Lamb. As before, he sees the New Jerusalem descending from heaven, but gives more detail this time. The city is brilliant like a jewel but also clear as crystal. It has a wall with twelve gates and an angel at each gate and the name of a tribe of Israel at each gate. The city has twelve foundations, each foundation with the name of an apostle on it (I wonder if one of them says Judas or Matthias or even Paul). Finally, the angel tells John to measure the city, and he measures it as a cube with each dimension 12,000 stadia long and he measures the wall as 144 cubits thick.

Let’s take a brief detour to note that it’s impossible for John to have personally made these measurements. A Roman “stadia” was 125 paces or about an eighth of a mile, and that means the New Jerusalem was 1400 miles in every dimension according to the calculation done by the NIV translators! Not only is that an insane distance to measure along the ground by hand, but it would be even more insane to measure that height. Mount Everest is only 5 miles above sea level. Space begins 62 miles above sea level. 1400 miles is almost one fifth the diameter of the whole Earth!! The 144 cubits measurement is far more reasonable at only about 200 feet, but still, we can conclude that John did not literally measure the New Jerusalem. The numbers had to be given to him, but more than that, the numbers are certainly symbolic. The point of all this counting and measuring is simply to say that the number 12 shows up everywhere. Twelve Tribes and Twelve Apostles demonstrate the unity of Old Testament and New Testament, the unity of Israel and the Church, the consistency of God who has used both to build his people.

This final vision also contains the two most memorable visual elements that people associate with “heaven”: The Pearly Gates (not gates of pearls, but gates that each are made from a single giant pearl) and the Streets of Gold (not really yellow streets, but streets that are somehow both pure gold and clear as glass. Additionally, just because of the mythology associated with it, please note two important things: (1) the text does not call this “Heaven” but describes it as a physical location that came out of heaven and has descended to the earth; and (2) neither Peter nor any other person stands at the pearl gates to let people in because at this point, all the people have already been sorted.

The last thing John notes about the New Jerusalem is that the city has no temple and no need for sun or moon because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are present in the city. They themselves are the temple and the source of light. There will never be any night, the gates will never be shut, and all shameful deeds will never enter it because the only people left are those whose names were in the Book of Life.

Tree of Life

The final vision John receives is of a river running through the center of the city. Somehow “the tree of life” stands on “each side” of the river. It bears a crop of fruit every month… twelve in total, and its leaves provide healing. John says the curse (from Genesis 3) is now gone and there will be perfect relationship between people and God, and they will “reign” with God forever and ever.

Epilogue

After all these visions, John ends his book the way he began it, by quoting Jesus and by describing something about his own situation. Jesus says: “Behold, I am coming soon…” John testifies that he is the one who heard and saw all these things. He also says that much of the revelation was given to him through an angel who commands him to spread the prophecy he just received.

John again quotes Jesus who says he will come soon and bring rewards to the faithful. The faithful will be welcomed into the city and have access to the tree of life.

Finally, John gives an invitation: The free gift of the water of life is given to anyone who is thirsty and will come. But John also gives a warning: anyone who messes with the words of prophecy in Revelation will be subject to God’s judgment.

On this point, I think we should admit that what passes for “interpretation” of Revelation is often a violation of John’s warning to not mess with the words of the prophecy. For example, the vision had locusts with heads like men and tails like scorpions. If we interpret that and say, “Oh that means military helicopters,” then we have added something to the text and taken something away. The text said the locusts had human faces, but we said the helicopters had human pilots. Maybe one is meant by the other, but if the text doesn’t say so we are adding to the text when we say so. Let’s admit it, there is almost no way to do the modern “decoding” of Revelation without adding or removing from the text, and John specifically warns against doing either.

It might be fun for us to guess what is meant by some of the imagery in the text, but we should never pretend that we have understood the real meaning of the text unless we are quoting from the text and letting it stand on its own.

Then, as a final benediction, John gives this:

He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.

Revelation 22:20-21 NIV

Summary

Twenty-three thousand words in (both posts so far) I finally come to this concluding summary.

The book of Revelation is far less informative about the end times than we want it to be. We want the book to be a clear description of future events in sequence so that we can have the psychological reassurance that only comes from knowing details of the future. However, the book never pretends to offer us such clear knowledge. At various points it specifically indicates that we can’t understand it or that we shouldn’t understand it. At many points the language says two opposite things at the same time (Streets of gold clear as glass? A countless multitude numbering 144,000? A “city” who rules over kings but is devoured by them?).

Nevertheless, there is are two lessons that thread their way from the beginning of the book throughout its entire length: (1) No power in heaven or on earth will be able to resist the glorious judgment of God and (2) Those who hold fast to Jesus will be rewarded at the end even though they should expect great persecution before then. This is the main point of the book: God is fully in control, and he will bring victory through Jesus, so remain faithful.

I cannot overstate this. Although it’s tempting to view Revelation as a code book to be deciphered, all such attempts are futile at best and dangerous at worst. Recall John’s warning that adding or taking away from the book is a recipe for disaster. On the other hand, what’s abundantly clear from the beginning to the end of the book needs no decoding. God’s Kingdom WILL come on Earth as it is in Heaven; God is currently in charge of the world and even great tragedies and persecutions are under the umbrella of his plan and constrained by his will; Jesus himself WILL return in power and glory, the enemies of God’s people will be cast into the Lake of Fire, and the faithful will be rewarded with a glorious eternity.

But What Specifics Can We Know?

After all the caveats against our attempts to decode Revelation, there are some details in the text that need no decoding to understand, and these events line up remarkably well with what we have seen from Daniel, Jesus, and Paul:

• Before the “time of the end” begins, the people of Jesus are called to a faithfulness that means loving Jesus and loving each other, maintaining personal holiness and purity, holding to the truths of the gospel, and enduring persecution whenever it comes.
• During the time of the end there will be a sequence of events expressing both the wickedness of people and the wrath of God. Though we can’t fully discern the timeline or the details of these tragedies, they will involve extreme events that affect the whole earth at once (i.e. asteroid impact, nuclear war, volcanic activity); large portions of the planet (plants, animals, and people) will die; famines and pandemics will kill many as well; and human conflicts will likewise happen.
• During the time of the end, the faithful followers of Jesus will face persecution and martyrdom, but they will also be spared from the truly terrible expressions of God’s wrath on the earth.
• During the time of the end, Satan will empower a man (called the beast) as well as another (called the false prophet) to rise up. The beast will become a global leader deceiving many, working miracles, and demanding both loyalty and worship. He will clearly identify his followers (with a “mark”) and will persecute and kill those who don’t receive the mark. However, after a span of 3.5 years (mentioned many times, but perhaps metaphorical), God will disrupt the reign of the beast with dramatic expressions of his wrath similar to but worse than the events previously mentioned.
• Satan, the beast, and the false prophet will attempt a direct act of aggression against God (maybe metaphorical), but Jesus will return, gather his followers to himself, raising the dead back to life, and will defeat them. The beast and false prophet will be immediately judged and sent to the Lake of Fire, but Satan will be imprisoned for a time while Christ reigns.
• After 1000 years (maybe metaphorical), Satan will be released for a second try at leading the world astray. He will once again be defeated. This time, he and his angels will be cast into the Lake of Fire.
• All humans still dead will be raised to life, and all will face the final judgment. Those whose names are in the Book of Life will be welcomed into the glorious eternity of God’s Kingdom while all others will be cast into the Lake of Fire, and thus begins eternity.

Although I myself believe these events will be real historical events (I take a pre-millennial view), many Christians through the centuries have taken even these bullet-points to be metaphorical too. The tragic events might be metaphorical, the rise of the beast might be metaphorical, and the 1000 years of Satan’s imprisonment might be metaphorical or even happening right now! Sadly, this metaphorical understanding is just as consistent with the teaching of Revelation as is the historical understanding. I say “sadly” because we want more details, but it’s wrong to think we have been given them when we haven’t. Still, we don’t need to worry because there are two firm details we can hold onto; all Christians of all centuries have agreed that some of these events are actually historical. Specifically, the first and the last bullet points are taught explicitly by Jesus himself and his first followers to be actual historical realities. Before the end, authentic followers of Jesus will live lives of faithfulness and endurance even in the face of persecution. Eventually, Jesus will raise all people back to life to face the final judgment and enter either an eternity with Christ or an eternity away from his presence.

The Rapture?

I kinda hate to say it, but once all the decoding attempts cease, there is no longer any evidence for a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In fact, the plain evidence in the text speaks against a Rapture of any sort until the very end when the Son of Man harvests his own from the earth. In the text, God’s people are repeatedly encouraged to endure persecution and are promised protection from God’s wrath while the rest of the world goes through great tribulation. The text, from beginning to end, blurs the lines between God’s holy people from Israel and God’s holy people from the Church. The text even obviously equates them with each other as in the 144,000 / great multitude vision.

As I always tell people, I want there to be a Pre-Tribulation Rapture, but it’s just not taught in the book of Revelation.

Conclusion

The number of people who will disagree with my understanding of Revelation is astronomically high. For whatever reason, Christians often have opinions of Revelation that are as strong as their opinions on politics or the nature of the atonement. However, I’m convinced that interpretations of Revelation, perhaps more than with any other book, ought to be held lightly. If God really wanted us to know the future, he would have written some dates down for us. However, he didn’t. What he did give us repeatedly is the invitation to be faithful no matter what and the promise that he would bring rewards with him when he finally makes all things new.

Back in 2006, 16 years ago, Jen and I moved our family to Lafayette, Indiana to plant the church that would become Lafayette Community Church. We’ve invested our heart and soul (and money) in the ministry and in building relationships here in Lafayette, and we had no real intention to ever leave… until God opened an unexpected door.

A number of years ago, Jen was given the opportunity to go back to school and get a master’s degree while still working. Although it was challenging for our family for years, we all supported her, and she completed her Master of Computer Science in Cybersecurity through Purdue. Her job didn’t require a master’s degree, and we didn’t think it would lead to anything else, but it was an opportunity God was giving us, so we took it. Turns out, God was setting her up for something new.

Last Spring, my daughter heard through the grapevine that her University (Taylor University, in Upland, Indiana) was looking to hire a professor in Computer Science who specialized in Cybersecurity. She suggested to her mom that she apply.

Since Jen was deeply uncomfortable with some situations at her current job, I encouraged her to apply for the Taylor position mostly because I thought it could give her some negotiating power at her current job. We weren’t pushing for more income, but we both thought she deserved more respect. However, as the interview process progressed, we increasingly realized that the toxicity of her current job would not be changing anytime soon and that the Taylor environment would empower her to be her whole self in a way that no job before ever did. Not only would she be using her technical skills, but she would also be instrumental in developing the spiritual life of hundreds of hungry students while working with a loving and supportive faculty team!

Sure, there are questions we both have about this opportunity, but this will literally be the first job where Jen can be completely herself, technically, emotionally, and spiritually all at once. It’s an opportunity too interesting for either of us to let pass by, and a door we think God has opened for us.

We moved to Lafayette in 2006 for me to pursue my dream job of planting a church, but I now want to support Jen in this potential dream job for her.

What About Me?

The saddest part of this whole situation is that we need to leave Lafayette, and that means I will need to resign from my position as pastor of Lafayette Community Church. Being a pastor is a weird profession because there are really only three ways to get a pastor job. If you are in a multi-staff church, you can rise through the ranks and possibly eventually replace the current pastor. If you can raise support, you can start a church from scratch as the founding pastor. Or, you put your name into the national hat and then relocate to the town of whichever church hires you. It almost never works to move first and then find a pastoral ministry opportunity where you live. As a result, I’ll need to find some kind of employment for myself while I wait on God to reveal my next ministry step. Since I have a B.S. in Mathematics and a track record of freelance software development, I think I’ll be able to get a job in tech for the short term, but I also plan on pursuing writing and speaking as a long-term ministry goal. I may even use this time to go back to school, get my Ph.D., and become a professor myself.

If you want to stay up to date with me, follow me on Twitter, or subscribe by email:

What About LCC?

The bottom line is that Jen and I both knew that I would never leave LCC unless God pushed me out somehow, and LCC would probably never have asked me to leave, so perhaps God is opening this door for Jen to take both LCC and me into a new phase of ministry for each of us.

I’m proud of the leadership at LCC. Even though Jen and I told the church about all this yesterday, the Elders and other leaders of LCC have known about our potential move since early summer. We have been making early transition plans and have been praying together about all of this for months, and I’ve seen the different leaders step up with motivation and enthusiasm. From the earliest moment I mentioned to them that Jen and I were considering moving, the other leaders said, “Jeff, we love you, but this church is more than you. We’ll keep going.”

Although the process for my transition away will seem quick (we are moving at the end of December), the process for the church to find my successor will seem slow. It’s the nature of the pastor profession that finding a new pastor takes time. However, LCC will not be doing it alone. They are hiring the consulting services of our church network (Converge) to help them identify and recruit candidates, and in the meantime, they have plans in place to handle all the regular operations of the church.

More details about their transition plans can be found here: Pastoral Transition FAQ.

Other Reflections

My kids grew up in this house in this town with these people, and the idea of leaving Lafayette is hard for all of us in more ways than one. We will all of you and all of it, but that’s just the way transitions go. We are confident that God will continue to lead us and that God will continue to lead LCC. Although much of our future is uncertain, one thing is not: God will be with us. As I said yesterday at the end of our worship gathering. All we really need is Jesus. So long as we are walking with him, that’s all that matters.

Additionally, Jeff gives a bittersweet announcement regarding his family’s move to Upland, Indiana and an upcoming pastoral transition for LCC.

We follow it all up with a time of live Questions and Answers.

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

Previously, I taught a series of messages on the end times, but I haven’t ever written it all out in any kind of systematic way. This article is the first of two attempting to cover the relevant Biblical teaching on the topic of the end times. In this article, I will cover the teaching of Paul, Jesus, and Daniel and in the next article, I’ll address the teaching of the Apostle John (specifically Revelation). But first, let me give an explanation of my methodology.

Methodology

When it comes to studying the end times, the discipline called eschatology among scholars, there are a number of different approaches people take, but two methods that can be dangerous are these. If you start with a system of understanding the Bible as a whole (sometimes called systematic theology) and then try to figure out how the specific bits of teaching fit into that bigger picture, your understanding of specific teaching will depend more on your own understanding of the whole system and less on the intent of the person who originally wrote or spoke that teaching. Additionally, if you take each individual bit of teaching as a sort of “code” that must be cracked or deciphered to get real understanding, then your own biases and creativity will take precedence over the intent of the original teacher.

Let me illustrate with two examples:

• There’s a school of thought in systematic theology called Dispensationalism that says God isn’t finished with national Israel yet. He is currently working with the church, but one day, he will need to resume his work with Israel. This isn’t based on any specific teaching in Scripture, but it is based on the idea that some Old Testament prophecies about Israel and the Temple have not been fulfilled yet. Dispensationalism is one way to understand those prophecies.
• In 2 Thessalonians 2, you will see Paul talking about a man of lawlessness who will establish himself in opposition to the temple of God but that he won’t be revealed until the restraining force is removed.
• If you start with a dispensational perspective, you will interpret this to say the restraining force is the church which must be removed in the “rapture” so God can resume working with Israel, so the temple can be rebuilt, and so the “antichrist” can rise up against the temple of God.
• However, if you don’t start with a dispensational perspective, your interpretation can be wildly different.

Here’s another example:

• In the book of Revelation, we learn about the “beast” who forces people to get an identifying mark so they can participate in the economic life of the society.
• If you take the idea that end times teaching is a cryptic text that must be decoded, you can conclude that the “mark of the beast” really means something else. It might mean a vaccine, a credit card, a computer, or a social security number. All of those things allow a person to participate in the economic life of the society, so any of them are equally possible as the “true meaning” of the “mark of the beast.”
• However, if you don’t take the approach that the end times is a cryptic text to decode, you are free to leave the interpretation to whatever the text actually says: The “mark” is simply the “name” of the beast.

Additionally, each of these approaches suffer from an abuse of the relevant biblical texts.

Specifically, each of these approaches will frequently take one passage out of its context, combine it with different passages out of their context, and assemble them together like a jigsaw puzzle from pieces scattered throughout the Bible to form what seems like a coherent picture. The final picture might be rather consistent and even attractive, but it depends on ripping the Bible up into pieces. Approaches like that end up revealing more about the presuppositions of the puzzle solver than they do about the text itself.

My approach is different from either of these. In the following analysis, I attempt to discern the meaning and intent of the author first and allow that intent to color any interpretive work. Along the way, I will also bounce around from passage to passage, but I will do so only within the framework of the author’s intent. That is, when Paul refers to the words of Jesus, I will move over to consider the words of Jesus. When Jesus refers to the teaching of Daniel, I will consider the teaching of Daniel. This way, I honor the intent of each teacher in the context of their own teaching. Again, the aim is to understand what the original intent was and not to decode some secret meaning that can only be discerned by me in my unique “wisdom.”

Rapture, Antichrist, Day of the Lord, etc.

Also, before looking too deeply into any of the passages about the end times, I have to address the most popular understanding of the end times. I have to address it first because its popularity is so widespread it will inevitably be the mental starting point for many of my readers. It’s so popular and well-known that even non-Christians in America know about it on some level. Hollywood even made a movie (Left Behind) about it with Nicholas Cage as the lead actor.

The narrative of this perspective goes like this:

• The world is going to keep getting worse and worse morally speaking until God is finally fed up with it.
• Simultaneously, the gospel is going to spread throughout the world until everyone has had a chance to hear it.
• Additionally, the temple of God will be rebuilt in Jerusalem, and Israel will be restored as a truly Jewish nation.
• At just the right time, God will remove faithful Christians (living and dead) from the planet and take them to heaven through a secret and surprising disappearance event known as the rapture.
• After the rapture, a man known as “the Beast” or “the Antichrist” will rise to power over the entire earth convincing many that he is an agent of God and making a covenant of protection over Israel for 7 years.
• Those 7 years will also involve increasing persecution for people who become Christians during that time and is known as The Tribulation.
• Halfway through those 7 years, he will break his covenant with Israel, declare himself superior to all gods and will demand worship and allegiance (signified by people getting “the mark of the beast”) from all the earth initiating even greater persecution for all who don’t worship him.
• The latter 3.5 years are known as The Great Tribulation and will also involve extreme expressions of God’s wrath on the people of earth. Faithful followers of God will face earthly persecution but will be spared from God’s wrath.
• At the end of the Tribulation years, Jesus will return in power and glory, the Beast will assemble an earthly army against the forces of heaven, and there will be a great battle at a place called Armageddon.
• Jesus will defeat the Beast there, throwing him into the Lake of Fire and killing his army.
• Jesus will lock Satan up in “the Abyss” for 1000 years and will establish a kingdom on earth with his followers acting as priests ruling with him for those 1000 years: a time known as the millennium.
• Then Satan will be released, will raise up another army from the earth, and will assemble them again for battle, but they will be defeated by fire from heaven, and Satan will be thrown into the Lake of Fire.
• Every human who has ever lived will then be raised to life (if dead) and brought to the Great White Throne of judgment to answer for what they have done. But regardless of their deeds, if their name is found in the Book of Life, they will be given entrance into eternity. All others will be cast into the Lake of Fire.
• Finally, God will establish “a new heaven and a new earth” where “the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them” (Revelation 21:1-4).

Using the technical terms, this narrative can be summarized as the following sequence of events:

• Gospel Transmission / Increasing Wickedness, Apostasy
• Rapture (secret return of Christ)
• Antichrist & Tribulation
• Armageddon / Return of Christ
• Millennium
• Great White Throne Judgment: Book of Life
• Eternal Life or Lake of Fire
• New Heaven and New Earth

This view of the end times arises from the Dispensational perspective on the Bible and it is known as Pre-Tribulational and Pre-Millennial because the Rapture happens before the Tribulation and the real return of Christ happens before the Millennium. It’s the most popular view of the end times mostly because of its prevalence among evangelical books and media and their influence on popular culture.

However, this is not the only way to view the end times nor is it even the most widely held view once you consider the views of Catholics and the broader history of the church. These other traditions generally read Revelation in a more metaphorical way and are known as Post-Millennialism (the Millennium has already started, and the church is currently ruling with Christ to usher in an age of increasing faithfulness on the earth) or Amillennialism (the whole concept of the Millennium is unknowable in scope).

There are also a variety of scholars who hold to a Pre-Millennial but Post-Tribulation perspective believing the Rapture to happen when Christ returns to initiate the Millennium and not at some secretive earlier time. I am one of those as you will see.

Working Backwards

Starting with Paul

We are going to start with the Apostle Paul because when he wrote his letters to the Thessalonians, he was writing to specifically address their fears about the end times. They were worried that some of their loved ones had died but Jesus hadn’t returned yet. Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians to address that problem. Then, not much later, they started worrying that maybe Jesus had actually already returned and they missed it. 2 Thessalonians was written to address that.

1 Thessalonians 4

Here’s the first relevant passage:

(13) Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. (14) For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. (15) According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. (16) For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. (17) After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. (18) Therefore encourage one another with these words.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 NIV

In a moment, I’m going to list off the important bits of information we get from this passage so we can start building an end times timeline, but before we do that, we need to recognize three important items from the context. First, Paul waited until chapter 4 to talk about the end times. It clearly wasn’t the most important thing he wanted to talk about. Secondly, notice that verse 13 and verse 18 describe the reason for the whole paragraph. Paul wanted them to be encouraged and hopeful regarding the eternal destiny of the dead and the eventual return of Christ. He didn’t write this to give them details and explanations beyond whatever they needed to be encouraged. Thirdly, the beginning of verse 15 is essential. Paul didn’t make this up, nor did he get it from some supernatural revelation to him. No, Paul was simply re-teaching something Jesus had previously taught. Paul’s information came from “the Lord’s word,” and therefore, we will later flip over to what Jesus had to say about the end times. We will definitely need Jesus’ words to give Paul’s words their proper context, but first, let’s list out the details from this passage.

Here is the sequence of events from 1 Thessalonians 4:

• Jesus’ death and resurrection promises a resurrection for humans.
• When Jesus returns, the souls of the dead will come with him.
• Jesus will come “down” from heaven.
• There will be a loud command, the voice of the archangel, and the blast of a trumpet.
• The bodies of dead believers will rise.
• Living believers will be caught up and lifted from the earth.
• In the air, souls will be reunited with bodies and all believers will be united with Christ.
• Thus begins “forever.”

Aside on the Rapture

Among American Evangelicals, this passage is the primary passage used to support the doctrine of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. There are three main components of that argument. First, the passage clearly teaches that living Christians and resurrected dead Christians will be “caught up” to “meet the Lord in the air.” The fundamental idea of the Rapture is the belief in a literal, bodily departure from planet earth. Secondly, there is no reference in this passage to anything about an antichrist or time of tribulation, so it seems most natural to take it as an event that happens before the time of tribulation. Thirdly, “forever” appears to be initiated “in the air.” Pre-millennials believe Jesus will someday establish a kingdom on earth, but this passage doesn’t mention that, and so the assumption is made that levitated Christians are simply taken to heaven like Enoch or Elijah of old.

As I said, we won’t fully understand Paul’s words here until we see the context of Jesus’ own words, but before we get there, we can at least acknowledge three weaknesses of the Pre-Tribulation interpretation from the passage itself.

First, the idea that the Rapture will be somehow secretive doesn’t match the dramatic description of this event which includes a loud command, a trumpet call, dead people rising, and living people levitating.

Secondly, unless you begin with a Pre-Tribulation perspective, this passage most naturally seems to say Jesus is coming from heaven all the way to earth. It says at the beginning that God is bringing with Jesus the souls of dead believers. At first glance, this seems like the moment the Father has chosen to send Jesus back to earth and to bring with him the souls of dead believers to be reunited with their bodies. If the point of this moment is to sweep away believers into heaven, what’s the point of all the souls of the dead traveling with Jesus?

Thirdly, the Greek word chosen by Paul for us to “meet” the Lord in the air is the same word used in history to describe the behavior of citizens when a victorious king would return to his city. As the king was on the way into the city, the citizens would rush out of the city to “meet” him on the way and escort him to his palace. We actually saw that happen with Jesus on Palm Sunday as he entered Jerusalem on the donkey. Since Paul doesn’t say anything about what happens after we “meet” Jesus in the air, it’s as likely that we escort him down to establish his kingdom on earth as it is likely he makes a U-turn and we all continue on to a heavenly existence.

We will not be able to fully understand what Paul means without understanding what Jesus said, and as we will see, Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 4 echo the teaching of Jesus recorded in Matthew 24. However, Matthew 24 also mentions things that Paul didn’t touch until 2 Thessalonians. Let’s stop over there before we go to Matthew 24.

2 Thessalonians 1 & 2

In 2 Thessalonians 1, Paul made a quick reference to the coming day of judgment:

(6) God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you (7) and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. (8) He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. (9) They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might (10) on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.

2 Thessalonians 1:6-10 NIV

Quick bullet points:

• Jesus will be revealed from heaven with blazing fire and powerful angels (same as his arrival in 1 Thessalonians 4).
• Judgment and reward will immediately follow his arrival on the day he comes (now we know what happens after he shows up).
• Reward will be given to the “holy people:” all who believed the message, know God, and obey the gospel.

Then, in chapter 2 Paul really got into more detail.

(1) Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, (2) not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. (3) Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. (4) He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

(5) Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? (6) And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. (7) For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. (8) And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. (9) The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, (10) and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. (11) For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie (12) and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

(13) But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. (14) He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

(15) So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.

(16) May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, (17) encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.

2 Thessalonians 2 NIV

Once again, recognize that Paul’s main point for writing (indicated at the end of the chapter) was to provide encouragement to the Thessalonian Christians. This was not a passage designed primarily to inform them about end times details but to give just enough details to offer them the encouragement they needed.

Here are the main points:

• “The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him” refers to the same moment as “the day of the Lord.” They are synonymous concepts.
• The return of Jesus will not come until “the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed.”
• The man of lawlessness will set himself up in God’s temple, against God, against all gods, demanding worship.
• His arrival is being held back by a restraining force that is also personal (notice the use of what & who).
• When Jesus comes, the lawless one will be destroyed with a breath from Jesus.
• The lawless one will rise through displays of power that serve his lie.
• God himself will enhance the deception so unfaithful people will be deceived.

Aside on the Rapture

As with 1 Thessalonians, I need to take a detour at this point to discuss the doctrine of the Rapture in light of 2 Thessalonians 2. As we saw before, the moment believers are “caught up” to meet Jesus in the air lines up perfectly with the moment Jesus returns in power and judgment, a moment that happens after the man of lawlessness, and, as we will see by considering the words of Jesus, after the great persecution and great distress of those days.

However, scholars who believe in the Rapture hold to that idea more because of the passage we just read than because of the “caught up” passage in 1 Thessalonians 4. In fact, the primary argument for a Pre-Tribulation Rapture is based on this passage in 2 Thessalonians 2. The argument is based on two specific interpretive decisions.

First, the word translated in the NIV as “rebellion” is the Greek word apostasia which is sometimes translated “falling away” as in the KJV.

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

2 Thessalonians 2:3 KJV

Taken literally, the word can mean to “fall away” from the faith. However, some choose to interpret “falling away” as meaning to “depart from” the earth. Coincidentally, in the ancient world, the word most naturally meant “rebellion” as in an “uprising” or “rising up” against some authority, which some may interpret as believers “rising up” from the earth. However, both of those interpretations depend on viewing apostasia as a possibly positive word, and there is no evidence in the New Testament of it ever being used as such. In all such cases, whether the best translation for the context is “rising up” or “falling away,” the word always means a rejection of truth or a rejection of proper authority. (It’s also interesting to note that the Greek word apostasion meant a certificate of divorce!)

Still, not many scholars pin their Rapture doctrine entirely on the translation of the word apostasia. In fact, the strongest argument for the doctrine of the Rapture actually comes from this phrase: “…the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.” In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul taught that there was some kind of restraining force that was also personal (sometimes it’s a what and sometimes it’s a who) and that the restrainer needed to be “taken out of the way” before the man of lawlessness could be revealed.

Although there is no biblical evidence for what this restrainer is or could be, it’s clear that the power of the restrainer must be greater than “the secret power of lawlessness.” Although the restrainer could be an angelic being or God the Father himself, most interpreters conclude that the restrainer being both a what and a who is the Holy Spirit. By making that interpretation, the scholar must then determine what it means for the Holy Spirit to be “taken out of the way.” Assuming that the Church is the embodiment and the temple of the Holy Spirit on earth (a good assumption for sure), the conclusion is that the Holy Spirit will be “taken out of the way” when the Rapture takes Christian believers off the planet.

Therefore, the belief is that the Church must be raptured away, so the influence of the Holy Spirit can be removed, so the man of lawlessness can be revealed, so the end can come.

However, that is not the only possible interpretation, nor is it even the most likely. If the Holy Spirit is the restrainer, there’s no reason to believe his work of restraint is also tied to the physical presence of Christians on the planet. If the Spirit is the restrainer, the Father might simply say to him one day, “It is time. Take away your hand, and allow the end to come.”

Even though most people think the idea of the Rapture comes from specific verses in Matthew 24 or 1 Thessalonians 4, the real foundation of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture doctrine is this interpretation of the person and work of the restrainer. Those other passages can be talking about the final return of Christ, but this passage gives us something that must happen before the arrival of the man of lawlessness which also comes before the return of Christ. Therefore, this is the only passage that clearly describes a “removal” event preceding the return of Christ. Some think it is the Church which must be removed, but there is no biblical evidence for that conclusion.

1 Corinthians

Finally, it’s widely believed that Paul wrote his letters to the Thessalonians while he was in the city of Corinth, and in his first letter to the Corinthians after he had left them, he mentioned briefly a few points about the last days. To understand Paul’s mindset in context, it’s helpful to see what he said there too.

(51) Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— (52) in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. (53) For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. (54) When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

1 Corinthians 15:51-54 NIV

In bullet points:

• Some Christians will die (sleep) and others will be alive when the end comes. (matches 1 Thessalonians 4)
• At some future moment, a trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised. (matches 1 Thessalonians 4)
• The risen dead and the living will all be “changed”—clothed with imperishable immortality. (new information)

This passage lines up perfectly with what Paul taught in 1 Thessalonians 4, but there is the additional bit of information that when the dead are raised, when the “last trumpet” sounds, the risen dead and the living faithful will all be transformed into something imperishable and immortal.

Summary of Paul

We won’t be able to fully understand Paul’s meaning until we see his source material, Jesus’ teaching on the topic, but for now, we can spell out at least a basic bullet point summary of the sequence of events Paul has addressed:

• At some future moment, there will be a “rebellion” and a “man of lawlessness” will be revealed when God so chooses.
• The man of lawlessness will set himself up in God’s temple, against God, against all gods, demanding worship and deceiving many.
• Jesus will return in glorious power to destroy him with a breath.
• When Jesus returns, the archangel will call out, a trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised, believers will be “caught up” into the air, transformed, and gathered to Jesus.
• The great judgment will immediately follow with reward for all who know God and obey the gospel, and punishment for the rest.

Now that we’ve seen what Paul said, let’s go back to his source material. What did Jesus actually teach about these things?

Back to Jesus

The most thorough account of Jesus’ teaching on the end times comes from Matthew 24 & 25, but for building a timeline of the end, Matthew 24 is the most relevant. However, there’s a part of it that is so often misused I want to address it first before we deal with the whole context.

Aside on the Rapture in Light of 37-41

These verses deserve special note, so let me quote them on their own here:

(36) “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. (37) As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. (38) For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; (39) and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. (40) Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. (41) Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

Matthew 24:37-41

Once again, we see a passage people use to support the idea of Jesus secretly whisking away his faithful followers to be with him in heaven. After all, it says, “Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.”

This is the linguistic root behind the series of books and movies called Left Behind. You don’t want to be the person who is left behind when Jesus returns, right? Of course, there’s one problem.

Look closely at this passage, and you’ll see Jesus made a comparison between the day of his return and the days of Noah. Now, we all know that the days of Noah were filled with wickedness, right? However, Jesus didn’t mention any of that wickedness. Rather, he mentioned normal human life. Eating, drinking, and marrying are all normal, sometimes even noble things humans do! When Jesus mentioned the days of Noah, he wasn’t referring to their wickedness. He was referring to their ignorance: “they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.”

If you grew up with the doctrine of the Rapture, this should astonish you. Who were the people who were “taken away” but the ignorant people who were not in the family of Noah and who were not ready for the flood! Who were the people who were “left behind” but Noah and his family!

The crazy irony of this passage is that it is used colloquially by ignorant Christians to support the exact opposite point Jesus was making. Do you want to be taken or left behind? According to Jesus, you should want to be left behind! No one wants to be swept away by the floodwaters of God’s judgment, so be ready. That’s the point Jesus was making.

Therefore, now that we know 37-41 are talking about being ready for coming judgment and not about being ready for a secret rapture, we can look at the rest of the passage with more objectivity.

Main Points of Matthew 24

Here it is completely.

(1) Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. (2) “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

(3) As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

(4) Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. (5) For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. (6) You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. (7) Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. (8) All these are the beginning of birth pains.

(9) “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. (10) At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, (11) and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. (12) Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, (13) but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. (14) And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

(15) “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— (16) then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. (17) Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. (18) Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. (19) How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! (20) Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. (21) For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.

(22) “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. (23) At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. (24) For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. (25) See, I have told you ahead of time.

(26) “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. (27) For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. (28) Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.

(29) “Immediately after the distress of those days
“ ‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

(30) “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. (31) And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

(32) “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. (33) Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. (34) Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. (35) Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

(36) “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. (37) As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. (38) For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; (39) and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. (40) Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. (41) Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

(42) “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. (43) But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. (44) So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

(45) “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? (46) It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. (47) Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. (48) But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ (49) and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. (50) The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. (51) He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 24 NIV

When Paul wrote, he wanted his readers to be encouraged, but Jesus had a different focus. Jesus wanted his followers to be ready. Thus, Jesus’ words were split between encouraging the faithful and warning the unfaithful. Nevertheless, let’s take note of the sequence of events Jesus mentioned when the disciples asked him “when will this happen”:

• There will be deceivers claiming to be the Messiah; there will be wars; there will be natural disasters.
• However, “the end” is still not yet. These things are merely the “beginning of birth pains.”
• There will be persecution, deceivers, and increasing wickedness leading many to turn from the faith or “grow cold,” but others will remain faithful.
• The gospel will be preached in the whole world, and then the end will come.
• The “abomination that causes desolation” prophesied by Daniel will arise, and the faithful should flee.
• Then, there will be “great distress” greater than ever before or ever again.
• God will cut those days short to spare the “elect.”
• More false prophets will arise deceiving many.
• But the distress will end with cosmic effects, and the arrival of the Son of Man who will come with power and glory, with angels, with a trumpet blast.
• The angels will gather together “the elect” from all over the earth.
• When you see these things, the end is “at the door.”
• It will all happen within the time of that generation.
• The Father alone knows when the Son will return.
• When the Jesus returns, he will reward and punish.
• So, people should be ready.

That’s a long list, so let’s condense it by first noticing that all the wars, rumors of wars, and natural disasters are not signs of the end. They are merely the normal flow of life on earth and at most just the beginning of a hint that the end is coming.

Now, let’s simplify the main points by combining things together a bit:

• Many will fall away, some will be faithful, disasters and persecutions will come, but that’s not the end yet.
• The gospel will be preached in the whole world, and the end will begin with the abomination of desolation predicted by Daniel.
• Then there will be great distress and great deception, but God will limit those days for the sake of the elect.
• The distress will end with cosmic effects, the arrival of the Son of Man in power and glory with angels and a trumpet blast.
• Then, the elect will be gathered together to Jesus.
• Somehow all this will happen during the current generation, but also, no one will be able to predict it.

This simplified list still leaves some major questions unanswered. Who are the elect Jesus talks about? What is the abomination that causes desolation? To answer the question about the elect, we will need to go back to Paul, but we can’t do that until we spend some time with Daniel. Jesus specifically said that his statements needed to be understood in the context of Daniel’s prophecy, so to that we turn next.

Further Back, to Daniel

There are three places in the book of Daniel where the phrase “abomination that causes desolation” shows up. Let’s look at all of them.

Daniel 9

 (24) “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.

(25) “Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. (26) After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. (27) He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.”

Daniel 9:24-27 NIV

This is the entire content of the prophecy Gabriel gave to Daniel in chapter 9. There is no explanation given whatsoever. All we know is that an Anointed One will be put to death and that some ruler will eventually arise and do something so abominable in the temple that desolation is assured to follow. We also know that the terrible ruler will eventually come to his end.

Daniel 11

In chapter 11, there is a long and complicated prophecy about kings rising up against other kings, but it culminates in a prophecy about a king from “the North” who is bent on conquest:

(29) “At the appointed time he will invade the South again, but this time the outcome will be different from what it was before. (30) Ships of the western coastlands will oppose him, and he will lose heart. Then he will turn back and vent his fury against the holy covenant. He will return and show favor to those who forsake the holy covenant.

(31) “His armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple fortress and will abolish the daily sacrifice. Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation. (32) With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant, but the people who know their God will firmly resist him.

(33) “Those who are wise will instruct many, though for a time they will fall by the sword or be burned or captured or plundered. (34) When they fall, they will receive a little help, and many who are not sincere will join them. (35) Some of the wise will stumble, so that they may be refined, purified and made spotless until the time of the end, for it will still come at the appointed time.

(36) “The king will do as he pleases. He will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say unheard-of things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been determined must take place. (37) He will show no regard for the gods of his ancestors or for the one desired by women, nor will he regard any god, but will exalt himself above them all.

Daniel 11:29-37 NIV

This gives more context to the abomination that causes desolation. It happens because some ruler is licking his wounds from defeat and decides to demonstrate his authority by desecrating the temple. However, this prophecy also gives additional information. Specifically, we learn the following:

• Some people will forsake the holy covenant, but those who actually know their God will stay faithful despite persecution.
• The king will set himself up against all religious devotion and demand his own exaltation.

Daniel 12

Finally, Daniel also references this moment in chapter 12. The entire chapter is relevant:

(1) “At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. (2) Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. (3) Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. (4) But you, Daniel, roll up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end. Many will go here and there to increase knowledge.”

(5) Then I, Daniel, looked, and there before me stood two others, one on this bank of the river and one on the opposite bank. (6) One of them said to the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, “How long will it be before these astonishing things are fulfilled?”

(7) The man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, lifted his right hand and his left hand toward heaven, and I heard him swear by him who lives forever, saying, “It will be for a time, times and half a time. When the power of the holy people has been finally broken, all these things will be completed.”

(8) I heard, but I did not understand. So I asked, “My lord, what will the outcome of all this be?”

(9) He replied, “Go your way, Daniel, because the words are rolled up and sealed until the time of the end. (10) Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand.

(11) “From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days. (12) Blessed is the one who waits for and reaches the end of the 1,335 days.

(13) “As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.”

Daniel 12 NIV

Notice the key points of this prophecy:

• There will be a time of great distress unequaled in history.
• The people of God, whose names are in a book, will be delivered. (Book of Life!)
• Dead people will rise, some to reward and some to judgment.
• The words of the prophecy will be “sealed” until the time of the end.
• Daniel asked about timing, and three different answers that all indicate something like 3.5 years of distress after the abomination that causes desolation is set up.
• Daniel asked for more explanation but was not given one.

Summarizing Daniel

The three prophecies in Daniel give us the following basic sequence of events:

• At some point a wounded ruler will attack God’s people and their faith by establishing some abomination that causes desolation.
• That ruler will set himself up against all gods and all religions demanding his own exaltation and the persecution of the faithful.
• He will come to an end after roughly 3.5 years when Michael arises to deliver the people whose names are in the book.
• A great resurrection will happen, and some will be given eternal life while others get eternal judgment.

Linking Back to Jesus

Now that we know what Daniel’s prophecy is about, we can put it together with what Jesus said in Matthew 24. Items in bold are the new additions.

• Many will fall away, some will be faithful, disasters and persecutions will come, but that’s not the end yet.
• The gospel will be preached in the whole world, and the end will begin with the abomination of desolation predicted by Daniel.
• Some ruler will attack God’s people, do something abominable in the temple, and establish himself as worthy of worship.
• Then there will be great distress and great deception, but God will limit those days (to roughly 3.5 years) for the sake of the elect (the people of God, the people whose names are written in the book).
• The distress will end with cosmic effects, the arrival of the Son of Man in power and glory with angels (Michael) and a trumpet blast.
• Then, the elect will be gathered together to Jesus.
• The gathering will involve a great resurrection and a great judgment that initiates eternal life for some and eternal judgment for others.
• Somehow all this will happen during the current generation, but also, no one will be able to predict it. Not even Daniel understood all the details.

Linking Back to Paul

This all started with Paul who claimed he was quoting Jesus. If you go back to Paul’s statements, you will see that they line up perfectly with everything Jesus taught directly, and what Jesus implied by his own references to Daniel. Here’s the list we previously created from Paul’s instructions:

• At some future moment, there will be a “rebellion” and a “man of lawlessness” will be revealed when God so chooses.
• The man of lawlessness will set himself up in God’s temple, against God, against all gods, demanding worship and deceiving many.
• Jesus will return in glorious power to destroy him with a breath.
• When Jesus returns, the archangel will call out, a trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised, believers will be “caught up” into the air, transformed, and gathered to Jesus.
• The great judgment will immediately follow with reward for all who know God and obey the gospel, and punishment for the rest.

Notice that literally nothing Paul said was new information. He used the terms “rebellion” and “man of lawlessness” in the exact same way Jesus and Daniel referred to the persecution and apostasy associated with the ruler who sets up the “abomination that causes desolation.” He used the word “archangel” where Daniel mentioned the name of Michael.

In fact, there are only two pieces of information that are somewhat new for Paul. Where Jesus spoke of the elect being “gathered,” Paul explicitly mentions the levitation of believers off the planet to meet Jesus “in the air.” And where Jesus used the word “elect,” Paul specifically mentioned all who had believed his message and were faithful to the gospel.

Essential Points

Now, the main reason I took this extensive detour through the words of Jesus and through the prophecies of Daniel is to highlight the extremely strong continuity between these three different biblical teachings on the end times. There is a temptation to take individual words and phrases out of context with each other, but we shouldn’t do so. Paul said his source material was Jesus, and Jesus said his source material was Daniel, so by considering Paul’s words in their broader context we can make some very simple conclusions.

• Jesus will not return until the gospel reaches the whole world, there is a great abandonment of the faith among even apparent believers, and a powerful and deceptive man rises to global influence.
• Believers will face great persecution and the world will experience great distress (Tribulation), but the time will be brief.
• After the distress of those days, Jesus will return in glorious power, and there will be a “rapture” event where the dead rise, and believers meet Jesus in the air on his way to earth.
• At that point, Jesus will initiate the final judgment with eternal rewards and punishments.

Although there is a doctrinal argument that supports a Pre-Tribulation Rapture, there is no strictly biblical argument for it. No biblical text says the Holy Spirit is the restrainer, that the church must be removed so the restraining can cease, or that any partial return of Christ happens before the real return of Christ.

Granted, we haven’t considered the book of Revelation yet, but at this point, we can clearly say there is nothing in the teaching of Paul or Jesus or Daniel that says anything beyond the few essential bullet points just mentioned.

Understanding “This Generation”

Before turning our attention to Revelation to conclude our study, I want to step back to something Jesus said as recorded in Matthew 24.

(32) “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. (33) Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. (34) Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. (35) Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

Matthew 24:32-35

Scholars have debated for a long time what Jesus might have meant by “this generation.” There are two predominant interpretations.

First, perhaps Jesus meant “generation” in the way the Bible usually uses the word: roughly 40 years. Maybe he meant it in a way similar to us saying, “The Baby Boomers won’t pass away until all this happens.” If that’s the case, it seems like Jesus made a false prophecy since all those people are long dead and some of the predictions still haven’t happened.

Secondly, perhaps Jesus meant “generation” to mean way of life, worldview or simply everything that happens before the beginning of “forever.” He often uses the phrase “this age” to mean everything before “the age to come.” In that way, he’s merely saying that human life will continue all the way until the end days actually come upon the earth.

However, there’s an interesting middle ground… a perspective that says both interpretations are correct, and it comes from a basic understanding of history.

Almost 200 years before Jesus taught what he taught in Matthew 24, a warrior/king named Antiochus IV swept through Jerusalem, ravaged the temple, and did something abominable there. He sacrificed a pig on the altar of God! Then, he initiated great persecution against the Jews.

The story of Antiochus IV so perfectly lines up with the prophecy in Daniel 11 that some modern scholars who deny prophecy think Daniel 11 must have been written after the time of Antiochus. In other words, by the time Jesus was talking about the abomination that causes desolation, it had already happened, and everyone knew about it. The Jewish defeat of Antiochus is commemorated every year during the festival of Hanukkah! Nevertheless, even though the prophecy of Daniel already happened, Jesus spoke about it as if it were still to come. Jesus said, “When you see the abomination that causes desolation…” as if they should still look for it.

Another interesting piece of history is that roughly 40 years after Jesus said what he said in Matthew 24, a warrior/king named Titus (who would later become emperor of Rome) swept through Jerusalem and did something abominable at the temple. He burned it to the ground, but not before going inside to steal the holy items. He paraded them around Jerusalem while the temple burned. As before, this evil man launched great persecution against Jews and Christians. After all, like the Roman emperors before him, he demanded to be worshipped like a God and punished those who wouldn’t.

When Matthew wrote his gospel and when Paul wrote 1 and 2 Thessalonians, this second event hadn’t happened yet. However, John wrote his letters and books after the destruction of that temple. We’ll look at it soon, but in Revelation, we will see John refer to a world ruler in exactly the same way Daniel and Jesus previously did, leading us to conclude that a third “man of lawlessness” is still yet to come.

Putting all these things together, we get a picture of a pattern that repeats at least three times in human history. An evil man sets himself up against God and God’s people, desecrating the worship of God and persecuting the faithful, but he is defeated. Daniel said it would happen and it did. Jesus said it would happen within the life of that “generation” and it did. But still, some things Daniel and Jesus both predicted haven’t happened yet (great resurrection & great judgment), and as a result we should expect to see this whole scenario play out at least one more time.

Summary of Daniel, Jesus, and Paul

Near the beginning of this article, I listed off the technical terms that usually comprise the end times narrative held by American Christians. Here’s that list again:

• Gospel Transmission / Increasing Wickedness, Apostasy
• Rapture (secret return of Christ)
• Antichrist & Tribulation
• Armageddon / Return of Christ
• Millennium
• Great White Throne Judgment: Book of Life
• Eternal Life or Lake of Fire
• New Heaven and New Earth

However, based on our study of Paul, Jesus, and Daniel, we really need to adjust the list some.

• Gospel Transmission / Increasing Wickedness, Apostasy
• Removal of Restrainer (?)
• Rise of the Man of Lawlessness (Antichrist)
• Great Distress and Persecution (Tribulation)
• Return of Christ in Power (Resurrection & Rapture)
• Great Judgment (Book of Life)
• Eternal Life or Eternal Fire (Jesus taught these two destinies, recorded in Matthew 25)

At this point, you can see that much of the traditional understanding matches up with the teaching of Paul, Jesus, and Daniel, but there are a few items that are different. Paul and Jesus (and Daniel, in a way) refer to a great in-gathering of believers when Jesus returns, but none of these men directly teach a secret rapture or partial return of Christ. Therefore, based on what we’ve seen so far, the traditional idea of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture needs to be discarded unless we can find evidence for it in our remaining study of the book of Revelation.

Additionally, none of the prophecies we have considered mention a millennial kingdom or what the nature of eternal life will be. I’ll leave them out of our list until we study Revelation. That will be my next post.

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

Seven Recommendations

In my previous posts, I’ve mostly addressed the reasons why Christians are often anti-intellectual, and I’ve discussed the proper way to understand passages like 1 Corinthians 2 where Paul seems to prefer spiritual wisdom over earthly wisdom.

In this post, I’m offering up seven specific recommendations for how you can do a better job of loving God with your mind.

1. Know what the Word of God actually teaches and not just what you’ve been told.

Often, the conflict between Christian thought and secular thought boils down to the Christian thinking things that aren’t actually taught in the Bible.

• Some Christians disagree with scientists over the age of the earth, but the Bible never actually tells us how old the earth is.
• Some Christians disagree with science over the process of evolution, but the Bible actually allows for the process of evolution to play a part in God’s overall work of creation.
• Some Christians think that God made three or four specific races of people and desires them to remain separate, but the Bible never teaches that.
• Some Christians think the earth is flat, but the Bible doesn’t actually teach that.
• Some Christians reject the science of Neanderthals and other proto-human species, but the Bible actually describes multiple human-like species on the planet before the time of Noah.
• Some Christians think “secular” scholarship can’t be trusted, but the Bible is filled with examples of godly people accepting information from non-godly sources.
• Some Christians think their job is to aggressively and publicly oppose “human wisdom” and the “forces of evil” in the world, but the Bible teaches Christians to judge themselves only and not pass judgment on the world around them.
• Some Christians use the story of Satan’s origin to guide current behaviors, but the Bible never actually gives us an origin story for Satan.
• Some Christians think that “natural” remedies are better than modern medicine, but the Bible never teaches that.
• Some Christians think that modern day Israel is the fulfillment of prophecy, but Paul teaches that Christians are the fulfillment of those prophecies.

There are so many ways Christian teaching has gone beyond the actual teaching of the Bible. In times past, this false teaching wasn’t worth debating, but in our current day, belief in these myths leads to real dangers.

2. Know the real dangers of some Biblical myths.

You can’t love God with your mind if your mind is stuck believing myths and falsehoods, but beyond that, some of these mythical beliefs lead to real dangers.

• The belief that the earth is young and that evolutionary forces don’t play a role in creation leads to the conclusion that different skin tones indicate truly different races of people. Moreover, it leads to the conclusion that God chose to create distinct races and therefore wanted them to remain distinct. Belief in this falsehood leads directly to evils of segregation and white supremacy on both small and large scales.
• The belief that Satan was the greatest angel who was cast down to earth leads to the belief that Satan’s power somehow rivals God’s power and that Satan has almost unhindered power over the earth. This makes Christians paranoid thinking that the entire world is against them because Satan and his minions are around every corner. Yes, the Bible teaches Satan is the enemy of believers, but it doesn’t encourage paranoia. Such paranoia breeds antagonism rather than love.
• The mythical belief that modern day Israel is synonymous with ancient Israel and that God is fulfilling prophecy through them leads to Christians supporting modern day, national Israel without any empathy for the plight of the Palestinians or other Arab peoples in the Middle East.
• The belief that only Christians can be trusted leads to a feedback loop of Christians increasingly supporting conspiracy theories that feed greater paranoia and hostility.
• Many of these false beliefs come together in the rejection of modern medicine which leads directly to more infant and maternal mortality, and greater suffering and death at the hands of preventable diseases like cervical cancer, measles, polio, COVID-19 and more.

A belief in these myths is not benign. These myths have direct and dangerous consequences. They hurt our witness in the world, they lead to greater suffering, they make us people of antagonism rather than love, but most of all, they fail to love God with our minds.

3. Learn the fundamental principles of historical study, scientific inquiry and journalism.

Sadly, many Christians, by being raised in anti-intellectual environments with skepticism of the secular world, have no real understanding of the fundamental principles of history, journalism, science, or even proper biblical study. Specifically, many Christians don’t understand that the best principles of biblical study are the same principles employed by history, science and journalism!

Historical Study

The fundamental principles of Bible study are closely aligned with the fundamental principles of any historical study:

• Start with the primary sources in their own languages.
• Understand the historical, and literary context of those sources (who wrote them, why, what genres and idioms are employed).
• Understand the transmission process of the texts (who copied them, what was their motivation).
• Compare textual variants to reconstruct the original if needed.
• Employing grammatical linguistic analysis to the text in the context of the text, discern the author’s intent.
• Consider secondary sources to discern the original understanding and effect of the original text.
• Share your conclusions with others to invite feedback.

Scientific Inquiry

The fundamental principles of science are almost exactly the same, but the goal of science is not to understand someone else’s work as much as it is to replicate, confirm and extend someone else’s work.

• Start with something someone else claims to have discovered.
• Following their methods, attempt to replicate their results.
• If successful, attempt to improve the methods or extend the results.
• If not, attempt to identify the error.
• In either case, attempt means to follow the experimental method.
  • make a guess about what went wrong or what might work better
  • devise a test that changes only one thing from the original method
  • perform the test and record the results
  • repeat until a single guess is confirmed by repeated tests.
• Write up your process, your results, and ask others to do this whole process with your work too.

Many Christians don’t know this, but the fundamental power of science comes from the humility of the scientists. All scientific achievement comes through this process of learning from others, trying hard to take that learning to new places, reporting your work in detail, and inviting criticism from others. Even when a scientist is abundantly confident (or even arrogant) about their work, other scientists will only accept it if that work gets repeated and confirmed by others. This is what is meant when people refer to the scientific community, and this is the true scientific method.

Journalism

Much the same can be said for journalism. Sadly, the modern Christian has been taught to be skeptical of “mainstream media” because of its “secular agenda.” However, the people who are actually in journalism are merely trying to apply the principles of journalistic integrity, principle designed to accurately communicate important information to people who don’t have the time to research something themselves.

According to the Ethical Journalism Network, there are five core principles of ethical journalism:

1. Truth & Accuracy — all relevant facts should be communicated and if information cannot be corroborated, that lack should be stated.
2. Independence — The voice of the journalist must not represent a particular special interest, and where biases or conflicts of interest exist they should be declared.
3. Fairness and Impartiality — Stories should always recognize competing viewpoints and provide context, but impartial doesn’t mean only objective. The goal of impartiality doesn’t require treating brutality or inhumanity with dignity.
4. Humanity — Journalists should consider the impact of their words on the lives of others.
5. Accountability — Journalists should own up to errors, offer corrections and expressions of regret.

In other words, journalists usually care about being both accurate and ethical. Consider this article for even more examples, especially this line:

Quality journalism that scrutinizes and criticizes social, political and economic authority – is in a constant state of vulnerability to manipulation and censorship, particularly from those with money and power.

Honestly, one of the power structures in the world today is Christianity itself, and therefore, one of the forces that can potentially corrupt journalism is Christianity itself. Simply put, when a work of journalism seems to resonate with my own worldview, that’s a moment to question the work itself. When a work of journalism challenges my worldview, that’s a moment for learning and investigation.

So, for Christians, when it comes to understanding journalism and evaluating works of journalism, ask the following questions.

1. What in this article is the result of reporting, that is, the process of research, reading original sources and performing interviews? Does the article reveal those sources so others can double-check them?
2. What is this organization’s policy regarding anonymous sources, and has this organization proved in the past to act with integrity regarding anonymous sources?
3. What in this article is the result of speculation or opinion? Does the author have enough personal humility and experience with the subject matter to reliably draw such a conclusion?
4. What in this article is designed to make me angry or afraid? Does the article focus on asking speculative emotional questions or on providing impartial facts and conclusions?
5. What are the motivations behind this organization, this journalist, and this article? Do they make their money by making me mad? Or does their success depend on their own integrity?

Loving God with all our mind means having a basic ability to interact with the truth claims in the world around us.

4. Be humble enough to accept the words of specialists and experts.

It seems there are always some people who think it’s cool to doubt the experts and specialists. We all used to be those people when we were in school and it felt cool to challenge our teachers or professors, but truthfully, that’s not being cool; it’s being arrogant.

Also, depending on your perspective, you might really value the voices of those who “challenge the predominant narrative.” To be sure, every community needs the contrarian voice to be a check against our preconceived ideas, but too often, we simply embrace the contrarian view when it aligns with our own preferred view. Once again, this is not noble; it’s arrogant.

Finally, it’s also true that some people pretend to be experts and specialists when they really aren’t. There’s always someone who has a platform they don’t deserve saying things they shouldn’t and claiming evidence they don’t really have. Uncovering the scammers is noble, but falsely accusing honest experts is not.

Here’s how you can determine who is an expert and who is not. People who devote their lives to the study and understanding of a thing whether they ever get mass recognition for it or not are likely to be experts in their field of study. People who do what they do to benefit others more than to receive benefit from others are more likely to be experts. On the other hand, People who do what they do primarily to build an audience that benefits them are more likely to be scammers.

Questions to ask:

• Has this person put in the time and effort to understand their topic with depth and breadth?
• Did this person do this thing before they developed this audience?
• Has this person demonstrated a commitment to their convictions in spite of how it affected their audience?
• Does this person walk in step with other similarly experienced experts in this field?

If these things are true, then listening to them is the wise and humble thing for you to do.

In most cases, you should take the advice of your doctor.

In most cases, you should heed the words of your pastor.

In most cases, you should listen to the counsel of your therapist.

In most cases, you should receive the conclusions of the scientific community.

If infectious disease experts say to wear a mask or take a vaccine during a global pandemic, just do it. If your pastor says your loyalty to a public figure is getting in the way of your loyalty to Christ, just stop it. If the journalistic community offers evidence that some public figure is dishonest, trust it.

The wise and humble thing to do is listening to those smarter and more experienced than you.

5. Be humble enough to change your mind when you learn something new.

We are always upset when a public figure, politician, or other leader “flip-flops” on some issue. For some reason, we have determined that having integrity means always believing and acting the same way your whole life long. Of course, that’s naive and sometimes dangerous. New information should lead to new conclusions, and humble people are willing to change their minds in the face of new information.

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US people were regularly upset with the CDC and other scientific agencies for “changing their minds” on mask recommendations and so forth. Before that, people were discrediting climate science because the models from the experts were all slightly different from each other. In general, non-science people get upset with scientists when they change their mind on an issue, but that’s simply the way science is done. One of the bedrock principles of science is the willingness to change conclusions whenever new information is collected.

Simply put, humble people change their minds when they get new information.

6. Connect the truths of the Bible to the truths of the world.

This is now the time we can bring Romans 12:2 back into the picture:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:2 NIV

Some people use this verse to teach that Christians should reject the wisdom of the world, but as we have seen in our previous posts, that’s a misunderstanding of Paul’s teaching. In fact, this verse is clear about it’s own aims. Paul doesn’t tell us to avoid the knowledge of the world. Paul tells us to avoid the way the world applies its knowledge. Christians should not conform to the pattern of this world. When Paul tells us to have a renewed mind, he doesn’t want us to reject secular knowledge. He’s telling us to reject secular applications.

A renewed mind means that Christians can know God’s will for responding to the realities of the world. Christians can know what to do with what they know.

This doesn’t mean Christians will know how to do taxation better than secular economists or that Christians will know how to mitigate climate change better than secular scientists. This means that Christians will know what the goals need to be. By knowing Jesus, his teaching, and the broader teaching of God’s Word; by being transformed by that knowledge; and by developing practical maturity through living out those things, Christians can know what values are on God’s heart.

For example, Christians can know that a tax policy that benefits the rich at the expense of the poor is an immoral tax policy. The Christian will need to rely on economic experts to know which tax policies benefit the rich, but when those conclusions are drawn, the Christian will have a moral foundation for evaluating them.

The same can be said for many issues, but hopefully I have made my point. Christians with renewed minds can know how to apply the things they are learning. It doesn’t mean they always already know the right answers.

7. Be prepared to do something.

Finally, there’s a powerful verse in Hebrews that is worth our deep attention:

In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Hebrews 5:12-14 NIV

When it comes to the life of the Christian mind, we have three kinds of knowledge: secular knowledge (knowledge that anyone may obtain regardless of their spiritual condition), spiritual milk (knowledge of the fundamental basics of the things of God, understood by many, but accepted only by those who have been led to do so by the Spirit of God), and spiritual solid food.

Many Christians make the assumption that “solid food” refers to the deep truths of God; the mystical things that can only be discerned through moments of meditation, through visions and revelation, or through decoding the hidden meaning of sacred texts; however, the writer of Hebrews tells us what solid food really is. Solid food is a deep understanding of righteousness that comes only when a person has diligently lived out what they already know.

Solid food is what happens when mature people, by constant use and training, have developed the ability to distinguish good from evil and the commitment to do the good.

Loving God with your mind means being ready and willing to love God with your strength.

Conclusion

Thank you for joining me on this journey. For too many Christians, loving God with all of our mind is a difficult task indeed. It’s far too easy to love God in the obviously spiritual ways while ignoring the other things Jesus said.

Furthermore, in our world today, it has become increasingly evident that some Christians are loving God, but are using their minds improperly. Either they are rejecting the knowledge in the world around them, or they are blindly accepting falsehoods because they have come from another believer claiming to have the answers.

Let us not be those people.

Let us be the people who love God through a robust and rich mental life that loves the God who created truth, that loves the truth he has placed in the world, and that loves to walk in that truth by blessing others.

Let us be the people who love God with all our mind.

Understanding 1 Corinthians 2-3

So far in this series of posts, I’ve made a number of references to 1 Corinthians 2 because, taken out of context, that chapter gives Christians multiple reasons to be anti-intellectual.

However, the problem is that we have taken lines out of context. I want to show you the passage with its context, but note two things in the following. First, I’m including chapter 3 because when Paul originally wrote this letter to the Corinthians, he didn’t put chapter numbers in. His was a continuous chain of thought from beginning to end, and we should honor that when we study what he said. Secondly, I’m going to quote the two chapters but will be abridging heavily by leaving out some big sections of the text. I need to do that so you don’t miss the forest for the trees, but please double-check what I say here. Read the passage yourself and make sure I’m not misrepresenting the context either.

(1) And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.

(2) For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (3) I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. (4) My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, (5) so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

(6) We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing….

(13) This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. (14) The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. (15) The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, (16) for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ….

(1) Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. (2) I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. (3) You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? (4) For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?…

(18) Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. (19) For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness” ; (20) and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.” (21) So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, (22) whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, (23) and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

1 Corinthians 2:2-6, 13-16, 3:1-4, 18-23 NIV

Important Observations…

Paul’s resolve to know nothing except Christ was in service of his desire to avoid “eloquence and human wisdom.” Why was he wanting to avoid human wisdom? Why was he avoiding eloquence?

Paul’s resolve to know nothing except Christ was because he had come to them in “weakness and fear.” Why was he afraid? What was he afraid of?

Paul’s own reasoning was so their “faith” would rest on God’s power not human wisdom. Why was Paul avoiding human wisdom?

Paul also claimed to have more wisdom that he usually gives to people who are mature. Does this mean Paul thinks the Corinthians weren’t mature enough to handle other wisdom?

Paul attached earthly wisdom to the “age” and to the “rulers” of the age. Who were these authoritative people who taught this other wisdom?

Paul explains that spiritual truths come from the Spirit and are understood by the Spirit and that unspiritual people consider them to be foolish. Who are the unspiritual people who don’t understand the spiritual truths Paul has been teaching?

Paul overtly accuses the Corinthians of immaturity and intentionally gave them only milk. Aha! They are the immature ones. He didn’t think they could handle anything other than a simple message of Jesus.

The are still immature as proven by their jealousy and allegiance to earthly leaders. Aha! That’s why Paul can’t approach them with eloquence or fine arguments. It’s because he is trying to avoid a celebrity culture. If there is human wisdom involved, they will latch on to human authority, and he doesn’t want that. He wanted them to have allegiance to Christ above all.

The Corinthians themselves are the ones who need to change their minds about wisdom. They are the ones who think they are wise. They are the ones who think others are foolish. They are the unspiritual ones Paul mentioned earlier.

The entire reason Paul spoke against “human wisdom” and “rulers of the age” and the entire reason he emphasized spiritual truth and a simple gospel is that the Corinthians were too immature to handle anything else. They were already prone to celebrity worship. They were already prone to thinking of themselves as “wise,” so Paul intentionally worked against all that. He was afraid they would fall in love with him and not his Jesus, so he kept things simple. He was afraid they couldn’t handle anything more than milk, so that’s what he gave them. His fears were proven true when he learned later they were still quarreling with each other over which leader was best!

Application

The study of this passage in context is evidence of a major problem among modern Christians. Coincidentally, the way Christians misread this passage is an expression of their own lack of maturity, their own need for milk instead of solid food, their own propensity to pay attention to earthly leaders.

Since the context of the passage is so clearly about Paul working against the immaturity of the Corinthians, why do so many think his resolve “to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” is a noble model for us today? Is it not because beloved preachers have taken that verse out of context and have preached compelling, eloquent messages about Paul’s simple approach to the gospel? It’s almost hypocritical the way we eloquently talk about Paul’s “simple” approach! At the very least, it completely misunderstands the context and misapplies the lesson.

Since the passage is so clearly against a celebrity culture among Christians, why do so many think Paul’s problem was with “worldly” knowledge and not the “worldly” way Christians play around with supposedly Christian knowledge? Is it not because we ourselves are stuck in a celebrity culture mindset? Is it not because we naturally think of the world as our enemy and are looking for more ways to confirm that bias? Is it not because some celebrity pastor spoke eloquently and convincingly that “worldly” knowledge really was something to be avoided?

The problem described in 1 Corinthians 2 is not a problem of “spiritual” truth versus “unspiritual” truth. The problem is with immature people pretending they know what spiritual truth is really all about!

Does Paul want you to avoid the truth of secular scientists? Not his point.

Does Paul want you to avoid reading the opinions of mainstream media? Not his point.

Does Paul want you to treat your own wisdom as better than anyone else’s? No way! That is one of his main points!

Does Paul want you to follow some earthly leader with loyalty? No way! Christ is your only loyalty.

In light of these things, let me offer up some ways to apply what we’ve just learned:

1. Don’t take someone’s word for what the Bible says, especially when it comes from a small verse taken out of context.
2. Don’t limit your thinking; rather, expand your maturity.
3. Don’t latch on to an earthly leader; rather, learn from and live like Christ.

Conclusion

Isn’t it interesting that by using anti-intellectual techniques (taking verses out of context) to study this passage we end up with anti-intellectual conclusions? Isn’t it interesting that by teaching this passage with eloquence and passion, earthly leaders can build for themselves a following that’s antagonistic toward others and toward the world?

Isn’t it interesting that immature people use and abuse this passage against immaturity?

May it not be so with you.

May you strive to understand the Word of God correctly. May you challenge those who abuse it. May you grow in maturity as you strive to learn and apply what is really taught. And may your loyalties lie with Christ himself above all things.

Review

I think there are three reasons Christians tend to be anti-intellectual, and I’ve covered the other two in previous posts. The first reason came from 1 Corinthians 2:1-2:

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

1 Corinthians 2:1-2 NIV

In summary, I said that Christians wanted a simple message to proclaim to the world, but that our desire for simplicity often leads us to simplistic answers to complicated questions and to a preference for simplistic answers over proper ones.

The second reason came from another part of 1 Corinthians 2.

We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began…. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.

1 Corinthians 2:6-7, 13 NIV

Based on this passage, Christians tend to think that spiritual truths are more valuable than other truths and that spiritual methods are more reliable than other methods. I mentioned a number of problems with that way of thinking in my previous post.

In this post, I will address the third reason Christians can tend to be anti-intellectual, and it is, in my opinion, the worst and most dangerous of the three reasons.

Thinking My God is the Source of All Understanding

Of course, something similar to this is supported by Scripture. Consider this:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Proverbs 9:10 NIV

Christians love this verse because it seems to put religious people on an intellectual pedestal over the rest of the world. I call it the doctrine of the Anointed Intellect, but really it’s just a form of arrogance. However, Christians find other passages in the Bible that seem to support the doctrine. In fact, going back to 1 Corinthians 2, we can find one right there:

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

1 Corinthians 2:14 NIV

Or consider this one:

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

2 Corinthians 4:4 NIV

It’s a popular Christian doctrine that non-Christian people just don’t think as well as Christian people do.

However, there are two huge problems with this way of thinking:

First of all, the passages indicating the blindness or the ignorance of the unbeliever are passages that are talking about spiritual matters alone. In 1 Corinthians 2, the topic is understanding the things that only come from the Spirit. In 2 Corinthians 4, the topic is understanding the “light of the gospel.” In neither case is it talking about “All Understanding.” In both cases, it’s talking about “Spiritual Understanding.” Only the people of God can understand the things of God.

The second problem is more dangerous, though. The second problem is the presupposition all Christians make that their understanding of God is the right understanding of God. That’s why I used the phrase above “thinking my God is the source of all understanding.” It’s not wrong to think that God is the source of all understanding because God in fact created all things, knows all things, and created our minds to understand them. However, it is arrogant to think that my understanding of God is the ultimate arbiter of all knowledge. Effectively, that way of thinking says, “If I don’t already know something to be true, or if it doesn’t make immediate sense to me, then it isn’t true because I have a relationship with the true God, and he isn’t telling me that it’s true.”

How arrogant, right?

Nevertheless, this is the sin of all religious people of all time in all places everywhere. It was the sin of the Pharisees who thought they knew God well enough to know that Jesus was a fraud. It was the sin of the Samaritans who thought they knew God well enough that they should worship on Mount Gerazim instead of in Jerusalem. It was the sin of Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu who thought they knew God well enough that they should worship him with a novel kind of fire (and were consumed by miraculous fire in return).

It continues to be the sin of us today when we say that our way of understanding God is the right way of understanding God and therefore our way of understanding the world is the right way of understanding the world.

Terrible Consequences

On top of the problems just mentioned, the doctrine of the Anointed Intellect leads to at least three incredibly bad consequences.

An “Anointed Intellect” Leads to Paranoia

If I believe that my relationship with God makes me more able to think clearly, then I can start evaluating truth claims not on the objective facts or the expertise of the one making the claim but on whether the claim comes from a fellow Christian, that is, another Christian who holds the same beliefs as I do. That’s problematic in itself, but it leads to a really dangerous place too.

If I believe that my intellect is anointed by God to get the right answers, then whenever I encounter another person who believes something differently than I do, I don’t evaluate their claims directly. Rather, I evaluate them as a person. Is the person a good, Christian person or not? All by itself, this places me in a position of antagonism against the person with whom I disagree, but my logical conclusions will take me farther down that path.

You see, if they are saying something different from what I believe, it must be from one of three places:

• They are ignorant of the truth I know.
• They are deceived because of their own spiritual weakness.
• They are nefarious and are actually working against me.

I will try to inform them of the truth once to see if the problem is their ignorance, but if they don’t immediately change their mind to agree with me, I’ll conclude that one of the other two options must be true, and practically speaking, it doesn’t matter whether they are deceived or are actively evil because I know their deception comes from one who is actively evil… Satan. Paul told me the god of this age has blinded their minds, right?

The bottom line is that if I believe the doctrine of the Anointed Intellect, I will conclude that the world really is out to get me either consciously or by the deceptive work of Satan, and therefore, anything I don’t already know or agree with, if it comes from a non-Christian, or from a different kind of Christian, must be designed by Satan to destroy me, ruin my faith, or do damage to someone around me.

Christians who believe this literally walk around with a sense of paranoia almost constantly.

An “Anointed Intellect” Makes us Gullible

The second terrible consequence of the Anointed Intellect doctrine is that it makes us gullible and prone to believing all kinds of false teachings and conspiracy theories. You see, if I’m already paranoid, and if someone offers me an easy explanation for my feelings, then I’ll be tempted to quickly latch on to that explanation. It’s how all conspiracy theories operate.

• There’s something I don’t fully understand, but I think I should understand it.
• Someone gives me a simple explanation that’s easy to understand.
• They also give me an explanation why my enemies don’t want me to know the explanation.
• Then, they remind me that the only real solution is for the lies to be exposed. All I have to do is spread the message.

All kinds of people are prone to conspiracy theories. It isn’t only Christians. However, Christians have the disadvantage that we are overconfident in our ability to understand things. We have an Anointed Intellect! If anyone can understand this thing, it should be us!

It’s intellectual arrogance and our own paranoia that makes us look for simple conspiratorial explanations for things we don’t understand.

An “Anointed Intellect” Makes us Evil

Yes. The doctrine makes us evil and not just because arrogance is itself evil but because it leads us to do terrible things and think they are good.

Here’s just one example from history.

Back in the 1920s, George McCready Price published a book claiming that the earth was young and that the flood of Genesis was the cause of all the geological realities we see in the world today. It was a fringe belief, held by very few Christians, and was strongly rejected in the 1950s.

However, in the early 1960s, a man named Henry M. Morris revived the doctrine and initiated the modern Young Earth Creation movement we see at work today. His claim was that unless a Christian believed in a young earth, that Christian didn’t actually believe the Bible. His claim was that any science opposed to young earth conclusions was fraudulent and evil.

Now, the question I have is this. Why did young earth creation gain no traction in the 20s through the 50s but find resurgence in the 60s? I don’t really know all the reasons, but I do know one thing. I know one way YEC was used to address a problem some people felt in the 60s—civil rights.

You see, if God created the world in 6 days 6000 years ago, and if everything in the early chapters of Genesis are to be taken as simplistically and literally as possible, we need to conclude that humanity hasn’t been on the earth long enough to have developed the different “racial” features different people have through merely natural processes. Rather, the YEC doctrine which required a fully global flood embraced the doctrine that God had specifically created the different “races” of humans for his own reasons. In fact, the claim was that Noah’s three sons each became the father of the three main races. According to this doctrine, Japheth moved to Europe and became the father of the white-skinned people. Shem moved to the Middle East and became the father of the olive-skinned people. Ham moved to Africa and became the father of the dark-skinned people. (In the YEC worldview, there is no consensus about where native Americans came from.) As a result, YEC doctrine was used to support two truly evil ideas:

1. Because God specifically created three separate races, he must have wanted them to stay separate from each other. God must value “pure” bloodlines and therefore, people embraced YEC as one rationale for the promotion of segregation.
2. Because Noah had once pronounced a curse over his son Ham, YEC can be used to claim that his descendants (people from African origin) are also under that curse to this day and should be seen as somehow subservient to the other “races” of people.

Neither idea can survive without the YEC interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis. But both ideas were able to thrive among Christians largely as a result of the resurgence of YEC thought in the 60s.

There are other examples of Christians being led to evil because of the belief in an Anointed Intellect. Some Christian parents have chosen to reject medical science and have jeopardized the health and lives of their children in the process either by using “natural” remedies instead of proven medical treatments or by rejecting successful vaccines. Christians are not the only ones guilty of this. Not too long ago, the measles ravaged a Jewish community in New York State and led to many deaths because they too had rejected vaccination for over a generation.

Simply put, the belief that we have an Anointed Intellect is nothing more than arrogance masked as something spiritual, and it leads to great harm even great evil in many ways.

Reclaiming Intellectual Humility

Two facts will help us reclaim intellectual humility.

First, some things are not spiritually discerned. Yes, there are things that the believer understands but the unbeliever doesn’t. Paul mentioned that fact in 1 Corinthians 2:14. Here it is again.

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

1 Corinthians 2:14 NIV

Don’t lose sight of the fact that the ignorance of the unbeliever extends only to the things that come from the Spirit because they are discerned only through the Spirit. However, if there are any truths that come from the world around us, those are truths that can be discerned by unbelievers and believers alike, and in fact there are many truths that come from the world around us.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Psalm 19:1 NIV

Mere investigation of the natural world has brought about great human achievements. Natural science has enabled us to extend lifespans, deliver more babies, protect more mothers, feed more people and make life more comfortable and enriching.

Secondly, believers are not the only recipients of God’s grace. Consider these words from Jesus himself:

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Matthew 5:44-45 NIV

Jesus reminds his hearers that God himself has showered blessing on both the righteous and the unrighteous. This is what we call common grace, and it is the doctrine that God gives a measure of grace to literally every person on the planet. Each of us bears a bit of the image of God, and therefore each of us has something god-like about us, and therefore, each person can be a benefit to me whether they are a believer or not.

What is true about rain is also true about the intellect. God has given rationality and logic to all, and some will discover God through that logic, and some will discover nature through that logic, but all of us should humbly receive from the people around us whatever blessing God has brought into the world through those other people.

Christians are just like all other people. We are just as arrogant intellectually as others are, but we have given ourselves spiritual justifications for our arrogance, and in doing so have fallen pray to all manner of evil. That is how Satan devours us; by using our own doctrines to make us into despicable people who turn the world away from God and his love rather than drawing them closer to Him.

May we wake up to our own false doctrines and learn again to love God with our whole mind.

Review

I think there are three reasons Christians tend to be anti-intellectual. The first reason came from 1 Corinthians 2:1-2:

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

1 Corinthians 2:1-2 NIV

Christians read this verse and decide that Christianity should be simple and straightforward. As a result, there is a presupposition that Christian truth should be simple and straightforward. In most cases, that’s a good perspective and a good goal, but it easily transforms into an over-simplification of complicated matters. It can lead to a rejection of complicated answers in favor of answers that seem more simple. It’s a temptation for all people, not just Christians. However, it’s a problem for Christians because it causes us to miss complicated truths in favor of simple falsehoods. In the previous two posts, I shared just two of the myths that Christians have developed because they seem simple and straightforward even though they have no solid evidence for them.

In this post, I will move on to the next reason Christians have for being anti-intellectual. Once again, it is drawn from statements of Paul in 1 Corinthians.

The Over-emphasis on Spiritual Truth

More accurately, the reason Christians tend to be anti-intellectual is that there is a general conviction that spiritual truth is more important than other truths, and that truth discerned through spiritual means is more trustworthy than truth uncovered through other means. Here’s the passage from 1 Corinthians 2 that seems to bolster this idea:

We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began…. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.

1 Corinthians 2:6-7, 13 NIV

This isn’t the only time Paul will say something that seems to go against “human reason” or the “wisdom of this age.” Consider these other verses:

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.

Colossians 2:8 NIV

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:2 NIV

In all these passages, it seems that Paul is creating a preference for spirit-revealed truth about spiritual matters over all other truths and methods of discovery. At least, they do if we limit ourselves to the simplistic / literal understanding of these verses and ignore their context. In a future post, I’ll address the proper interpretation of 1 Corinthians 2, so for this post, let’s discuss why the over-emphasis on spiritual matters is wrong.

Why It’s a Problem

1. It improperly handles the Word of God.

Of course, the first reason it’s a problem is that it fails to properly understand the teaching of the Bible on the matter. Yes, there are times when Paul encourages people to learn the spiritual truths of God, but he never makes the point that other forms of inquiry should be rejected. Let’s consider one of them.

Remember this verse:

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.

Colossians 2:8 NIV

It really seems like Paul is opposing philosophy and human traditions, but put the verse back in its context:

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ….

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

Colossians 2:6-8, 16-19 NIV

The purpose of Colossians 2 is that Paul wants the Christians in Colossae to continue trusting in Christ rather than the “philosophy” and “human tradition” that has taken hold among them. Then, later in the chapter, Paul reveals that when he says hollow philosophy he means the reasons for religious tradition! People have good reasons for their religious traditions, but those reasons are hollow and deceptive. They have fallen for “idle notions” from an “unspiritual mind” and have been expressing “false humility and the worship of angels.”

Let’s be clear. Paul is not opposing the “philosophy” of Isaac Newton who used the word “philosophy” the way we use the word “science.” Paul is not opposing the “philosophy” of Plato, Socrates, or Kierkegaard who were philosophers because they loved (philo) wisdom (sophia). No, Paul is opposed to the empty-headed thinking of people who claim to have developed some kind of spiritual discipline that doesn’t actually come from the teaching of Christ.

Paul’s point is that when it comes to the spiritual life, Christ himself is the only authority.

The simplistic/literal understanding of the Bible can lead you to take verse 8 out of context and think it means spiritual truths are better than other truths, but a closer look at the bigger picture reveals that spiritual truths are better than other truths only when it comes to spiritual questions!

2. It rejects Biblical examples.

Throughout the Biblical story, we see time and time again that someone has learned something about the world through methods we should rightfully call scientific and not at all spiritual. Consider these examples:

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.

Proverbs 6:6-8 NIV

He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing. He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.

Job 26:7-8 NIV

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world…

Psalm 19:1-4 NIV

We can learn a great deal from observing nature, and the Bible encourages us to do so.

3. It leads to the heresy of belief-ism.

When we over-emphasize spiritual matters over other matters, we fall into the trap of belief-ism. It’s a trap that focuses on doctrine more than anything else, and it’s an eternally dangerous trap. Consider this:

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Matthew 25:44-46 NIV

Certainly, Jesus wants his followers to have a correct understanding of him, his work on the cross, and the promise of eternal life to all who believe, but obviously, he also wants his followers to know that belief by itself is never enough. Paul emphasizes the obedience that comes from faith, James reminds us faith without works is dead, and Peter tells us to work to make our calling and election sure.

However, if we believe the lie that doctrine matters more than all other things, we can easily fall into the trap of trusting our doctrine to save us rather than getting to know Jesus by following him in his work to love the world.

4. It makes us antagonistic.

Finally, an overemphasis on spiritual matters against all other matters leads us to avoid, reject, and disdain any truth that comes through “unspiritual” means. Of course, determining which truths are spiritual and which ones are not is another problem. Once I decide what I think is spiritual and true, I then can reject other people who think differently.

This one presupposition, that spiritual truth matters most, leads to all kinds of problems for each of us. Who gets to say when a truth is spiritual enough? Who gets to say when a claim to spiritual truth is actually false? What’s the process for “testing the spirits” as John encourages us to do? Who determines when I’m right and you’re wrong or vice versa?

An over-emphasis on spiritual truth leads invariably to animosity and antagonism between believers and each other and between believers and the world.

5. It shoots us in our own foot.

Something Christians frequently fail to remember is that all the “spiritual” truth we have has come to us through “unspiritual” means. Sure, there are people who claim to have received revelation directly from God in the modern day, but those claims are frequently spurious, and I won’t address them here.

On the contrary, the entirety of our faith is based on one specific historical event:

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

1 Corinthians 15:17-19 NIV

According to Paul himself, the fundamental truth claim of Christianity is that Jesus Christ died and rose again.

But, here’s the kicker: How do we know it to be true?

Someone told us it was true.

How do we know that person is trustworthy?

We tested their claim against the evidence.

The entirety of the Christian faith depends on the truth claim that Jesus died and rose again, but we believe that truth claim because it has held up according to the methods of journalistic investigation and historical integrity. Let me illustrate briefly.

• Methods of normal archaeological investigation have acquired for us truly ancient fragments of New Testament writings.
• Methods of normal textual analysis have enabled us to reconstruct the original manuscripts of the New Testament with extreme accuracy.
• Methods of normal historical inquiry have demonstrated the accuracy of the original writings in the New Testament and the martyrdom of the first followers of Jesus.
• Methods of normal journalistic inquiry have demonstrated that the followers of Jesus really did believe he had risen bodily from the dead.

The bottom line is that Christians have used the “unspiritual” methods of secular science to validate the central claim of Christianity. No, it doesn’t make scientific sense that a man died and rose again, but it makes clear historical sense that he did. The accuracy of the Bible has resulted from these same methods of inquiry.

Simply put, to reject truth unless it comes to us through some “spiritual” method is to reject the truths underpinning our faith itself.

Conclusion: Truth is Truth

Once again, what sounds simple, literal, and noble turns out to be dangerous and wrong. We think it makes sense to trust spiritual information over other information, but an over-emphasis on spiritual matters leads to all kinds of problems.

However, there is a simple solution.

All we need to do is realize that truth is truth wherever it is found. If an evil person discovers a truth, that truth is still true regardless of the one who discovered it. If an invalid method leads to a true conclusion, that true conclusion is still true even when the method to find it was flawed.

The secular world has generally accepted this perspective and has created for itself a system of checks and balances in the pursuit of real truth.

• Claims of truth are compared against known facts and other claims.
• Claims of truth are tested by multiple people and multiple groups.
• Claims of truth are investigated for improper bias.

These checks and balances help us discern truth in science, in journalism, and even philosophy, and we all should be grateful for a world that has done so much work to test truth claims. However, Christians should be even more grateful because we have access to bonus truth. Unlike the world of unbelievers, Christians have put their trust in the truth claims of Jesus and as a result have access to a world of truth taught to us directly by the resurrected Son of God.

Christians do not have access to different truth, we have access to more truth. More than that, Christians know that God is the God of truth no matter who discovers it or how. Therefore, no matter where or how a truth is found or what that truth is, all truth is a reason to worship!

It’s no wonder Jesus said the Father is looking for people who will worship him in spirit and in truth.

In my previous post, I shared the first biblical reason Christians have to be anti-intellectual:

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

1 Corinthians 2:1-2 NIV

I mentioned how Christians use this verse to justify a “simple” approach to the life of the mind, but then I went on a long digression about how the “simple” approach can get us into trouble. I went into great detail about how a literal reading of the Bible can lead us to believe things the Bible never actually teaches. Specifically, we looked at how the origin story of Satan is a comforting myth that answers a lot of questions and in some ways fits a literal reading of a number of passages, but ignores all the context and the meaning of those passages to do so.

Today, we’re going to stay with the same idea by addressing another overly simplistic way of understanding the teaching of the Bible to prove the point that our desire for simple answers can actually lead us away from using our minds the way God would want us to.

In this post, we’re going to talk about Young Earth Creationism or the belief that God created the Earth roughly 6,000 years ago in contrast to all the evidence of modern science.

The Over-Simplicity of Young Earth Creationism

Many other resources are better than anything I can offer here, so if you want to learn more on this topic, just head over to BioLogos. Still, what I can offer here is a brief explanation for why Young Earth Creationism (YEC) is so attractive to so many Christians, why it is an unnecessary belief, and why it perpetuates Christian anti-intellectualism.

Basically, YEC has its power in its claim that it takes the Creation account in Genesis 1 literally. Furthermore, YEC proponents use fear tactics to keep doubters in line by saying that without YEC, the authority of all Scripture comes into question. If you deny YEC, you might as well burn your Bible because nothing else matters.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the claim that it takes Genesis 1 literally.

Consider Genesis 1. I won’t print the entire chapter here, but I’ll quote a few portions:

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Genesis 1:3-5 NIV

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

Genesis 1:11-13 NIV

And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

Genesis 1:14-19 NIV

The first thing to notice is that “day” seems to refer to a period of light and darkness, or more accurately, a period of productivity, then a period of darkness, then an end to the darkness… a “morning.” The simplest and most straightforward way of understanding this seems to be that “day” means a 24 hour period coinciding with the rotation of the earth. From this perspective, God took 6 earth rotations, or 144 hours to take the earth from complete darkness to a place teeming with light, plants, animals, and people.

Those who hold to a YEC viewpoint start here and claim that a literal reading of the chapter is best and that a literal reading requires belief in creation taking 6 literal 24 hour days.

There’s just one problem… or actually two problems.

The Textual Problems with YEC

Both problems show up in Genesis 2:1-7. Here it is:

(1) Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
(2) By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. (3) Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

(4) This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.

(5) Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, (6) but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. (7) Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Genesis 2:1-7 NIV

The first problem with the simplistic/literal YEC interpretation of Genesis 1 is that it doesn’t know what to do with the apparent contrast between the two accounts of creation. Genesis 1 is the account of God creating the heavens and the earth and then filling the earth and the heavens with all manner of things. However, Genesis 2 gives a secondary more detailed account of the creation of human beings, but there’s an interesting and important detail. According to the YEC understanding of Genesis 1, God created all the land plants on day 3 and humans on day 6, but according to Genesis 2, God created the first man before any “shrub” or any “plant” had appeared on the earth. If we take the simplistic / literal interpretation of these two chapters, there seems to be a pretty stark contrast between the two accounts. YEC defenders get around this by attempting to define “shrub” and “plant” in specific ways that bypass the problem. They claim that God created a lot of plants on day 3, but that the “shrub” and “plant” referred to in 2:5 were a different kind of plant not yet created. However, YEC defenders still embrace chapter 2 heartily because it appears to say that God created humans before rain existed. That would require a young earth indeed. It’s important to note that this sequence problem between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 is only a problem for the simplistic / literal interpretation of the two chapters. If you take a more poetic interpretation of Chapter 1, then Chapter 2 can be understood as a specialized, localized, detailed picture of how God made and cared for Adam and his wife Eve, and there is no conflict of sequence between the two.

However, the second problem is the one I find the most interesting. Verse 4 is an obviously transitional verse, but as such it’s also hard to know whether the verse more appropriately goes with the stuff before it or the stuff after it. Consider these translations:

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. (ESV)

These the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, (KJV)

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven. (NASB)

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. (NIV)

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens— (NIV84)

This is the account of the creation of the heavens and the earth.

When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

Genesis 2:4 NLT

Notice the 1984 edition of the NIV and the New Living Translation both split the verse into two sentences. The first half goes with the previous section and the second half goes with the next section. The first half is a summary phrase concluding the first account, and the second phrase is the initial phrase of the second account. However, the more recent translations all agree that the entire phrase concludes the first account. They are almost certainly right to do so because the phrase forms a bookend with Genesis 1:1.

Why does that matter? Well, it matters because of a single word that shows up in the ESV, KJV, and NASB translations. Did you notice the word “day” in those verses? That’s right. In the original text, verse 3 tells us that God rested on the seventh day, and the very next phrase tells us the summary statement, this is how God created everything in the day he created them. Don’t miss this. In Chapter 1, we are told about 6 days of creation, but in the concluding verse for the entire account, it all gets expressed as a single day. Which is it? If “day” is a literal period of 24 hours, then did God create the earth in 6 days or just 1 day?

Those who claim “day” in Chapter 1 must be 24 hour periods of time need to play translation games with the very same word between 2:3 and 2:4. Either they push the phrase containing “day” into the secondary creation account, claiming they are different enough to result in different meanings for the word, or they simply translate “day” as metaphorical in 2:4 when they had previously demanded it be understood in a simplistic literal sense throughout Chapter 1! The point is that a fully simplistic literal understanding of Genesis 1 & 2 is unsustainable. At some point in the account, you have to appeal to metaphorical language or play translation games, or split the two accounts up in ways that do damage to the integrity of the Bible text itself. If you don’t have a good and compelling reason for Moses to use “day” in a literal sense in 2:3 and then immediately shift to using it metaphorically one verse later, perhaps it’s reasonable to accept it as a metaphorical word throughout, and to claim that 24 hour days is the only way to read Chapter 1 is a violation of basic literary study.

One more thing. I want to emphasize that nothing I have said here requires the appeal to modern secular scientific reasoning. I’m not saying we should abandon YEC because science tells us so. I’ll say that eventually, but for the moment, I want you to see that the text itself has problems with the simplistic / literal claims of YEC defenders. There are textual reasons to believe “day” should be taken metaphorically, but it might help to actually see what a more metaphorical interpretation looks like.

What Is Required By the Text

There is a beautifully simple but not simplistic way of understanding both accounts of creation. It is simple because it only goes as far as the text goes and not any further. It is not simplistic because it leaves a bunch of questions unanswered.

Notice that Chapter 1 is a beautifully structured poetic account of God creating a thing and then filling the thing. God created heaven and earth in verse 1, but then spends the rest of the chapter filling both heaven and earth. God creates day and night in day 1, but then in day 4, he creates the things to govern day and night. He creates water and air on day 2, but then fills them with birds and fish on day 5. He creates dry land on day 3, but then fills it with animals on day 6, and it all culminates in the creation of humans in his image and then his own day of rest. The point of the passage is not to emphasize the sequence of events or the passage of time or the mechanism of Creation (did you notice he often commands other things to do the work of Creation, like when he commands the land to “produce” living creatures), but to emphasize the creative wisdom of God who sets things up and then gives them life.

Similarly, a poetic understanding of Chapter 1 leads to a simple understanding of Chapter 2. At some unknown point in the creative process, God decides to find an empty wilderness, fill it with rivers and a garden, and then make a man to care for that place and enjoy it while doing so. It’s a detailed closer look at one part of the story of the earlier chapter and gives that other story a much more personal touch.

How long did creation take? The text doesn’t actually say. Perhaps the 6 days were the 6 days it took God to reveal all of this to Moses. Maybe God condensed creation into a 6 episode mini-series that Moses binge-watched in 6 consecutive days. Perhaps the 6 days refer to 6 different epochs of time. Perhaps the 6 days are purely metaphorical and nothing more. Perhaps they really were 6 24-hour periods. The point is that we don’t know and the text doesn’t require any particular conclusions especially when you see the two chapters side by side.

I don’t want to take the time now to address the other misunderstandings from the Creation account, but I’ll mention a few of them.

• No, the Bible does not teach that there was a glass dome above the earth either now or in the past. It uses the word “vault” or “firmament” but we honestly don’t really know what Moses meant by that.
• No, the Bible doesn’t teach that the earth is flat, that the moon produces its own light, or that planets are also stars. I’d love to dig into those things some other time, but for now, I’ll just leave it at that.
• Although we are meant to think of Adam and Eve as historical beings (specifically because Jesus referred to them as such), it’s important to point out that no, the Bible doesn’t claim Adam was the first example of Homo sapiens. There are many, many land-based creatures hinted at by this text, but the Bible makes no attempt to classify any of them in any kind of scientific way or order them in history. Adam was the first being mentioned as having the breath of life in him, but could there have been other sentient creatures on the planet before or after him? Could God have breathed the breath of life into another being on the other side of the world? Does the breath of life mean Homo sapiens? We don’t know any of those answers, and that’s okay!

Conclusion Regarding YEC

Yes, YEC seems at first glance to be a simple solution to the interpretation questions of Genesis 1 & 2, but it is overly simplistic. It claims to be a literal interpretation, but it can’t sustain a purely literal interpretation throughout both accounts.

Still, that’s not the problem with YEC. The real problem is that it makes improper claims about how to properly understand the Bible; claims that improperly set Christians up to be at odds with the claims of science. Christians raised with YEC beliefs must conclude that the entire program of secular science is antagonistic to them and therefore is untrustworthy. This simplistic idea leads directly to an unhealthy rejection of science and by extension and unhealthy rejection of the intellectual endeavors that drive science.

However, rejecting YEC interpretations is wildly liberating. It brings in an even simpler understanding of the creation accounts, but it leaves us with the challenge of not having many answers we would want to have. It drives us to think more deeply about how to understand the text of Scripture. It drives us to think more broadly in embracing the disciplines of scientific discovery. It opens our minds up to new revelations and new understandings about the intricate wisdom of God’s creation.

In my previous post, I shared a bit about my story with Christian antagonism toward science, but today, I wanted to address something a bit more fundamental than that. In this post, I want to address why Christians are so prone to anti-intellectualism in general. You see, we have biblical reasons.

Consider these verses (taken out of context for important reasons):

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

1 Corinthians 2:1-2 NIV

This is one of the most famous verses quoted by people who are trying to sound spiritual while giving a reason for their own opposition to intellectual pursuits. On the surface, it really seems like the Apostle Paul was saying that nothing was as important as a clear, simple presentation of the gospel, a presentation that was reduced to the fundamental truth of who Jesus is (Christ) and what he did (died for us). Of course, Paul doesn’t mention the resurrection in this tiny verse, nor does he mention the deity of Christ or the reason for his death, all essential components of the faith, but Christians love to read this verse in a selectively reductionist way. It’s because Christians are just like everyone else.

We all want something simple and straightforward to hold on to.

There’s something abundantly appealing about a simple answer to complicated questions, and there is nothing wrong with Christians trying to package the message of the gospel in as simple and appealing a way as possible.

This is what we are doing when we translate the Bible into other languages. It’s what happened with the invention of the printing press. The ability to get the Bible to as many people as possible packaged in a way they can understand has been a major and worthwhile goal of believers for hundreds of years now. However, the danger predicted by the Catholic church has fallen upon us today. That is, the common people have access to the Bible without any commitment to rigorously understanding it and careless or nefarious teachers have taken advantage of that opportunity to lead people astray.

Consider the narrative of the origin of Satan.

The Simplistic Myth of Satan

It is a widely held belief that Satan was the first and most important of all the angels, that his beauty was beyond compare, but that he became jealous of God, desired to usurp the throne of God, convinced a third the angels to join his side, but failed in his coup and was cast out of heaven. That narrative appears to be bolstered by passages like this one:

How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit.

Isaiah 14:12-15 NIV

There’s just two problems:

1. The passage in Isaiah isn’t talking about Satan.
2. Nowhere else in the Bible is the origin story of Satan ever taken up.

Let me show you.

First, in the Isaiah passage, the context matters. Continue reading one verse more and you see this:

Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate: “Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble,

Isaiah 14:16 NIV

The very next verse, after people stop reading, shows that the previous verses were talking about a man and not an angel. Furthermore, just go back to the introductory comments of the prophecy and you see this:

…you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has come to an end! How his fury has ended!

Isaiah 14:4 NIV

The whole prophecy is a taunt song against the king of Babylon who thought he was a god on earth but who will be brought low, thrown down and humiliated when God brings the kingdom of Babylon to nothing. Those who are familiar with the story of the early Old Testament should remember that Babylon was the site of the ancient tower of “Babel” where the people of the earth said they would ascend to the heavens to become like God himself. It’s abundantly clear to anyone who really knows the story of the Old Testament that Isaiah 14 is a prophecy against the king and land of Babylon and not some kind of origin story about Satan.

So how did people ever start thinking this was a passage about Satan in the first place?

Well that’s complicated, but one of the reasons is that the word translated “morning star” in verse 12 is the Latin word, lucifer. Have you ever heard that “Lucifer” was another name for Satan? Well, that comes from a bit of circular reasoning that resulted from the King James Version of the Bible deciding to turn that word into a proper noun instead of translating it. The reasoning goes like this:

• The KJV says “Lucifer” has fallen from heaven after having desired to be like the Most High.
• Therefore, Lucifer must have been some heavenly being that desired to be like God.
• That sounds like a good origin story for Satan.
• Therefore, Lucifer must be another name for Satan.

Then, later on, someone says, “See, it says Lucifer right there. It’s talking about Satan!”

In other words, we think Lucifer is the name of Satan because the story sounds like it’s about Satan, and we think the story is about Satan because it has the name Lucifer right in it! The reason we think Lucifer means Satan is this story. The reason we think Satan fell from heaven is this story. But knowing the context and translating the word properly solves the problem for us. It’s a taunt against the king and people of Babylon who thought they were so great but fell anyway.

Now, I hear you say, “But what about all the other passages that talk about Satan’s origin story?”

If I were being snarky, I would make you tell me what passages you are talking about, but because I’m working on my own humility, I won’t make you find them. I’ll show them to you anyway.

There are three other passages that are used to formulate this narrative about Satan.

They are Ezekiel 28:13-17, Revelation 12:1-9, and Luke 10:17-20.

Ezekiel 28:11-19

You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: carnelian, chrysolite and emerald, topaz, onyx and jasper, lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings.

Ezekiel 28:13-17 NIV

A “cherub” who was in Eden who became proud and who was driven away from God and thrown to earth? Wow! It sounds like Satan right?

Well, wait a minute. Why do you think that passage sounds like Satan? Isn’t it true that it sounds like Satan because you already know the supposed Satan origin story? In fact, there are a lot of parts of this passage the don’t sound like Satan.

First, notice that this guardian cherub had a positive association with Eden, but the Satan we know about was a negative influence in Eden. If this is talking about the Eden of Adam and Eve, then it can’t be talking about Satan and vice versa. Beyond that, the problem is not that this being rebelled against God, but that this being engaged in violence that came from the wealth of trade. Finally, we know from the book of Job that Satan had permission to enter the presence of God and converse with Him, but the character in Ezekiel has been banished from the place of God. Once again, the character in Ezekiel can’t be Satan.

Then, by reading the opening words of the prophecy, you see this:

The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, take up a lament concerning the king of Tyre and say to him: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: “ ‘You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

Ezekiel 28:11-12 NIV

Again, the introduction lets us know God is talking about a king, the king of Tyre, a region of great beauty in the ancient world, a region close to where the ancient people thought Eden had been.

Then, by reading the concluding two verses of the prophecy, we get this:

By your many sins and dishonest trade you have desecrated your sanctuaries. So I made a fire come out from you, and it consumed you, and I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight of all who were watching. All the nations who knew you are appalled at you; you have come to a horrible end and will be no more.’ ”

Ezekiel 28:18-19 NIV

Here, we see the real sin was “dishonest trade” and religious desecration, and that the result was total destruction visible to all the surrounding nations.

The context requires us to see this as a prophecy against the nation-state of Tyre and its people, and all the metaphors make sense in relation to Tyre while many of them can’t make sense in relation to Satan.

Luke 10:17-20

The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”

He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Luke 10:17-20 NIV

This passage has Jesus directly telling us that he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. It obviously seems to confirm the idea that Satan was cast out of heaven right? However, there are two important things to recognize:

1. There are two ways to take Jesus’ opening quote: “I saw Satan fall from heaven and it looked like lightning.” or “I saw Satan fall as dramatically as lightning falls from heaven.” We don’t know exactly which way Jesus meant it, but it’s clear he wasn’t trying to teach a lesson about the Satan origin story because he didn’t give any more detail about it.
2. The context clearly indicates that the disciples were rejoicing over the submission of demons and Jesus takes it to another level.

Nothing about this passage requires us to think Jesus is talking about any long-ago event. It’s possible that Jesus is talking about the present moment in highly metaphorical terms. The demons are being defeated, Satan himself is being defeated. Sure, if the Satan story is real, then Jesus’ words here could be a reference to that, but Jesus’ words do not require it to be so. Using Jesus’ words here as proof of the Satan narrative is putting the cart before the horse.

Revelation 12:1-9

(1) A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. (2) She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. (3) Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. (4) Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. (5) She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. (6) The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

(7) Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. (8) But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. (9) The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Revelation 12:1-9 NIV

Finally, we come to the passage in Revelation that gives us the most vivid portrayal of this narrative yet. Notice in this passage, the dragon is identified as Satan (v. 9), he loses his place in heaven, he is hurled to earth, he takes angels with him, he swipes a third of the stars out of the sky. It sounds very similar to the myth we described above. However, as before, there are a few important things to note:

• This passage in Revelation happens in the future. The passage immediately before this section rejoices that the final judgment is at hand. The passage immediately following this section has the saints rejoicing that the “accuser of the brethren” (the word Satan means “accuser”) has finally been defeated.
• The sin in this passage is that the dragon is trying to destroy a miraculous child, not that the dragon is trying to usurp God’s throne.
• The number 1/3 is used in reference to the destruction of stars in the sky not the corruption of angels.
• No scholar actually understands the meaning of this section of Revelation. It’s too deeply shrouded in layers of metaphor for us to fully understand what John saw or what we are supposed to learn from it other than the fact that God will eventually win over Satan and his companions.

Conclusion about the Satan Origin Story

I’ve taken a long digression into this origin story to try to prove a point. Christians want simple answers to difficult questions. So when it comes to the difficult question of who Satan is, why he is opposed to God’s people, and where he came from, it is wonderfully comforting to tell this origin story. Furthermore, once you have heard this origin story, all these other complicated passages become easier to understand. The metaphorical language can be taken literally: the “guardian cherub” has actually “fallen from heaven.”

But the simplicity of the story doesn’t make it true.

Sure, it’s possible that parts of the Satan origin story are true, but the Bible never actually teaches it. The Bible never tells us who Satan is, how he got to be that way, or why he’s against the people of God. We literally don’t know the answer, and God’s Word never attempts to teach us that answer.

Back to the desire for Simplicity

It’s strange, but not having an answer to a difficult problem drives us to do the un-intellectual thing of making up an answer or “finding” an answer that isn’t really there. The process of “finding” such answers can actually feel intellectual. We think we are uncovering hidden information. We think we are seeing things other people can’t see. We get explanations for problems other people can’t solve.

It all makes us feel really smart, but it’s not true inquiry. It’s not true study. And since we didn’t get there through the proper application of honest inquiry, we find ourselves threatened by others who apply such scholarly methods.

This desire for simplicity goes far beyond the desire to share the gospel with people in a way they can understand. It also leads us to think the “plain reading” or the “literal reading” of the text is the best one. The Bible says “Lucifer”! The Bible says “guardian cherub”! It must be talking about Satan right?

But once we enter that way of thinking, we find ourselves in a very vulnerable place:

• First, we build up other doctrines and beliefs based on the faulty foundation of our overly simplistic understandings and therefore, we end up with bad and sometimes harmful doctrines.
• Secondly, because the foundation is so fragile, we put up defensive walls against anyone who would challenge one of these fundamental oversimplifications.

In my next post, I’m going to continue this same conversation by considering another overly simplistic solution Christians have embraced that puts us at odds with modern intellectual rigor: Young Earth Creationism.

Yesterday, I brought a message that has been on my heart for two years at least. It was a message that I’ve wanted to bring for a long time, but one that I’ve been afraid to address. Furthermore, even though I delivered the message yesterday, I still worry about whether I said what needed to be said or not.

As a result, I’m going to share a few blog posts here about all of the things I tried to address in the message and also talk about the things I failed to address. Also, if you have questions for me regarding any of this, you can post them in the comments or feel free to contact me directly through this site or my Facebook Page.

Introduction

Having been raised in a Christian home, going to a Christian school, specifically a predominately white, evangelical school, I learned a lot of things from that perspective, and though most of what I learned was the same stuff other students in other schools learned, I was also taught to have a deep suspicion for anything that came from the world of science. On many occasions, I was taught something that went like this: Secular scientists believe this, but we know better because scientists who believe the Bible do better science than other scientists.

Here’s just one example.

When I was in sixth grade, I had a teacher who gave us a bunch of reasons to believe the Earth had to be less than 10,000 years old. Before that moment, I had no problem with the idea that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago, but in that class, he told us the earth was only 6000 years old according to the Bible, and that good scientists knew so. He gave us a number of proofs. He said that floods could create canyons quickly, that volcanoes could create fossils quickly, that radiometric dating was inaccurate and error-prone, but the proof I remember most vividly was the one about the size of the sun.

He told us that the sun was burning its fuel at a fixed rate, that we could measure it, and that the sun was therefore shrinking at a certain amount per year. I can’t remember what he told us, but I remember him saying that because of the annual shrinking, we could extrapolate back in time and conclude that 10,000 years ago, the sun would have been so big that life on Earth would have been impossible. Therefore, according to him, this one fact proved that life on Earth had to be under 10,000 years old.

That class amazed me! I remember it vividly because I loved learning that. I have always loved science, and I loved learning that scientific fact. A shrinking sun!? How amazing!

Unsurprisingly, when my children were in high school at a local Christian school just a few years ago, this very same proof was used at one point to teach them that the Earth was young!

Do a search on the shrinking of the sun, and you’ll see Young Earth Creationists are still talking about it!

However, you’ll also see that pretty much only Young Earth Creationists are still talking about it. The original claim was made back in 1979, and it was quickly debunked by further investigations that showed measurement errors in the original paper. Furthermore, what has been well-supported is that the sun is actually growing hotter and larger as it ages!

But if the claim was debunked in the early 80’s, why was I learning about it in 1986? Why were my kids hearing it in the late 2010’s? Why are Young Earth Creationists still using it today?

All of this illustrates the love-hate relationship Christians have with science, any science that seems to confirm a previous religious belief is loved while any science that seems to discredit it is hated.

It was not always that way, however.

At the end of Isaac Newton’s most famous work, Principia Mathematica, he wrote this (abridged by me):

…This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems… lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another.

This Being governs all things… The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect… He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity; he governs all things and knows all things, that are or can be done… we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion: for we adore him as his servants…

Hitherto we have explained the phenomena of the heavens and of our sea by the power of gravity, but have not yet assigned the cause of this power. This is certain, that it must proceed from a cause that penetrates to the very centres of the sun and planets, without suffering the least diminution of its force… But hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phænomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phænomena is to be called an hypothesis… In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the mobility, and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of motion and of gravitation, were discovered.

Amazingly, Newton used science to increase his appreciation of God, concluding that distances between stars were truly immense, that other stars likely had their own planetary systems, and that what we didn’t yet know could become known by continued scientific inquiry! His was a mind that used scientific inquiry to increase his worship of God! He truly loved God with his mind.

However, Christians today are often unwilling to approach the world as humbly and honestly as this. “Wherever the evidence leads” might have been embraced by Newton, but it is not honestly embraced by many Christians today.

To be sure, my high school teacher would disagree as would the teachers my kids had at their school. They would say that “Christians are the only ones doing truly honest science because all the other scientists have an anti-Christian, anti-Bible, naturalistic bias or agenda.”

Therefore, in this one example, you can already see three issues Christians have when it comes to loving God with our minds:

1. We tend to think that we do thinking better than unbelievers. This is a doctrine I call, “The Anointed Intellect,” but in reality it is simply arrogance.
2. We tend to think that people who disagree with us must be either deluded or have an ulterior antagonistic motive. Those who aren’t with us must be against us or at least deceived by others who are against us.
3. When something we think is challenged, we keep looking for ways to confirm our previous thoughts instead of simply changing our minds.

In the next few blog posts, I’m going to address all of this, and I’m going to invite you to join me in embracing a love for God that fully employs the mind he gave you and humbly honors the minds he gave others too.

God gave you your mind, and he wants you to love him with it not by limiting it, but by using it well.

Understanding

Much of the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement has been in response to examples of police brutality in our country, but there are also a lot of people who have friends and relatives who serve in the various police forces of our country and they are concerned about retaliation against them. More than that, they embody a deep, daily fear that their loved one is on a literal battlefield every time they leave their house.

Much of the work police do is on the razor’s edge of unpredictability, and therefore, police have been trained to be authoritative, aggressive, and quick to respond to threats. We love that training when the response involves our protection even though that training might someday lead to an aggressive response against ourselves. Furthermore, those of us who have been raised in predominantly white environments, have been trained repeatedly that the police are on our side, their uniform is a symbol of help and advocacy, and that they can be trusted with our lives. Those who hold that perspective find it relatively easy to comply with the instructions of a uniformed officer even when their tone is harsh or abrasive. In these communities, there’s a presupposition that the police exist to serve and protect us.

Nevertheless, police, like referees of a sporting event, are both loved and vilified, and since they live in an environment where deadly force is always part of the picture, their battle-ready approach is also understandable.

Those who are sympathetic to the plight of police officers are understandably eager to say, “Blue Lives Matter” as a direct response to calls to “defund police.” Their response is to emphasize the fact that police will do their jobs better if they are given even more resources, more training, and more support from the general public. While some see the structure of policing to be the problem, others see antagonism against the police as the real problem. Therefore, in direct response to “Black Lives Matter,” others have adopted the slogan, “Blue Lives Matter,” claiming that the true injustice is how our law enforcement officers are the ones in danger and how the police system itself is under attack.

Response

As I said previously regarding the Black Lives Matter slogan, I don’t fully understand the feeling of being under constant threat and therefore, I don’t fully understand the experience of the police officer who signed up to serve and protect but feels himself to be under threat of attack. I don’t know what it’s like to live constantly on the razor’s edge of safety. I don’t know what it’s like to have the power of life and death in a holster on your side, the pressure of a bullet proof vest and body cam on your chest, and the knowledge that today might be the day I don’t return to my family. I don’t know what it’s like to be hated regularly for “just doing your job.”

Additionally, since I adopt the philosophical position that every single life matters to God and to me, it seems that I should also be willing to say, “Blue Lives Matter,” but I must admit that I am still generally unwilling to support this slogan.

I have relatives in law enforcement, and I want them to be safe, to feel safe, and to feel supported by the communities they serve. I want dangerous confrontations to work out in favor of my loved ones, but still, there’s a sentiment behind Blue Lives Matter that I can’t fully support.

Specifically, my reasoning is that Blue Lives Matter is directly antagonistic to Black Lives Matter. It’s a slogan that presupposes the problem of unarmed Black men dying at the hands of police is really a problem of criminals posing an increasingly greater threat to police officers. It’s a slogan that treats the deaths of unarmed Black people at the hands of police as the unintended casualties of an increasingly dangerous and violent war where our police officers are the front-line soldiers. Therefore, it’s a slogan that was designed to be antagonistic toward others and dismissive of a legitimate problem in our culture.

Finally, there is a fundamental difference between the point of the two slogans. Black Lives Matter is a slogan that attempts to draw awareness to a problem that has been in the shadows for too long: the problem that there is a statistical imbalance between outcomes for white and Black people when they have encounters with the police. However, Blue Lives Matter is a slogan that attempts to disregard that imbalance entirely. While Black Lives Matter attempts to elevate the position of an oppressed population, Blue Lives Matter is a slogan that aims to give even more support to an already well-supported population.

When it comes to the two slogans, I choose to affirm the one that lends voice to the oppressed and not the one that exists primarily to silence that voice.

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

Understanding

Over the past few years, I have grown to understand that “Black Lives Matter” as a slogan is used by its supporters in many different ways, but the most gracious way of understanding the mindset behind the slogan (as I see it) is to realize that for literal centuries in the land we now call the USA, people with dark skin were mistreated simply on the basis of their color and/or heritage. Granted, it was always better in some parts of the country and worse in others, but the predominately white power structures for centuries did little to empower or even protect the lives of Black people.

Again, there are exceptions, but in general, the power structures of our country have been shaped in a way to intentionally or unintentionally disenfranchise people of color and to communicate time and again that Black lives don’t matter as much as white lives.

This has come to a head in recent years through the highly publicized shootings of unarmed Black men and women by police officers and the apparent lack of accountability faced by those officers.

The call “Black Lives Matter” is an attempt to provoke change in our system that will begin to treat Black lives as valuable. Of course, people have attached all kinds of policies to this overall call (defunding police is perhaps the most prominent and misunderstood policy), but the root intent of the slogan is to simply say, “Please treat Black people with respect as fellow humans.”

Of course, good people can debate these matters, and even the claims I have just made, but simply put, the perception of many Black people in the country is that the odds are stacked unfairly against them even to the point of allowing bad cops to get away with racially motivated murder.

Problems

Strangely, among white evangelical Christians, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” has been strongly opposed, and the reasons for evangelical opposition are few but strong:

• Evangelical Christians are generally believers in the practice of colorblindness as a virtue. The idea is that racism exists wherever race is considered relevant. For many evangelicals, anything that seems to depend on a racial identity is intrinsically racist, and therefore, the use of the word “Black” in the phrase “Black Lives Matter” is what makes that phrase racist itself. Therefore, many evangelicals are convinced that “Black Lives Matter” is reverse racism. (1) It treats race as an essential concern, and (2) it attempts to elevate the cause of that one race.
• Evangelical Christians are moral conservatives who oppose many aspects of progressive modern morality. Specifically, evangelical Christians are opposed to the practice of homosexuality, but the “Black Lives Matter” slogan has spawned a “Black Lives Matter” organization that openly embraces the idea that homosexuality is a viable alternative lifestyle that should be embraced with pride. For white evangelicals, the slogan has been stained by the morality of the organization.
• Furthermore, evangelical Christians are often political conservatives who claim to value “law and order” while the “Black Lives Matter” slogan is specifically formulated as a claim that policing in the US is broken. Many evangelicals hear the phrase “Black Lives Matter” and think to themselves, “Well, those people just need to obey the law and respect the police, and they wouldn’t have these problems.”

Therefore, for at least three reasons, evangelical Christians are morally opposed to the sentiment, the implications, and the organization behind the slogan “Black Lives Matter.”

Response

I have not personally experienced racially motivated bias in my interactions with cops.

I have not been asked to leave my car during a stop for a moving violation.

I have been stopped multiple times for speeding and I rarely get a ticket.

Therefore, I don’t have enough personal experience with injustice to understand where Black people are coming from in this. But how should I respond to this slogan when it reflects a reality I have not known?

Well, first of all, I need to address the biases that I come from, and since I come from a white evangelical perspective, I should address those oppositions:

1. Evangelicals embrace colorblindness as a virtue. This is modern racism in disguise, and I reject it. Back in the day when racism was overt and signs on the side of a building said “Colored People Not Welcome,” it was noble for a person to embrace a colorblind perspective. A restauranteur who said, “I don’t care what color your skin is; you can sit anywhere and order whatever you want,” was doing the right thing. However, once racism goes underground, once systemic forces push us to use code words like “urban” and “ghetto” and “low-income” to mask previously overt racism, colorblindness is merely a capitulation to the racism of the society. Once racism has gone systemic, the noble thing is to bring it back to the surface of our awareness. To be colorblind is no longer to be virtuous.
2. Evangelicals oppose the organization of Black Lives Matter because it endorses sexual ethics they can’t support. There are two reasons this is a bad faith argument. First of all, the ethics of unbelievers are not ours to control. Christians should be the voice of love even toward those with whom we disagree. However, secondly, white evangelicals did exactly the opposite of this with Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Christians disregarded his own sexual ethics because he verbally supported their own judgmentalism. As they said with Trump throughout his presidency, “we don’t support him for his theology but for what he stands for.” Evangelicals could say the same thing about Black Lives Matter, but they don’t.
3. Evangelicals oppose the apparent problem of “law and order” raised by the Black Lives Matter slogan. They claim that Black people are getting what they deserve in some way by either breaking the law or by resisting the police or that so many Black people get arrested that it’s likely for some “bad apple” cops to do some bad things and for it to appear like a racial problem. However, the statistics are clear that Black people have far worse outcomes with police for far smaller offenses than white people do.

I’ll say one more thing against the evangelical oppositions: Exactly zero of their oppositions to “Black Lives Matter” come from Jesus. Colorblindness is not a virtue taught by Jesus. Opposing the sexual ethics of others is not a virtue taught by Jesus. Supporting the police in an unjust system is not a virtue taught by Jesus. However, sacrificing yourself to elevate another is very much a virtue taught by Jesus.

Therefore, those of us who do not share the experience of our Black brothers and sisters have to make a decision regarding what we think of their perception of injustice. We have three basic options:

1. We could decide they are acting out a “victim” mentality, being too sensitive to situations that really aren’t that bad.
2. We could decide they are being opportunists who are looking not for equality but a chance to get something for nothing.
3. We could decide that their experience is based on reality, and that there might be real societal forces that have convinced them they don’t matter.

I choose to take option #3. Since I don’t share their experience or understand their experience, I choose to accept their experience, learn about it, and try to understand it. And, the more I have learned, the more I have understood, the more I sympathize with their plight, and the more I feel the need to speak out in solidarity with them in their call for justice.

Whether I share their experience or not, for me to say, “Your life matters to me more than mine,” is to say, your understanding of your experience is enough for me to join your cause, and therefore, I too choose to say “Black Lives Matter.”

… a uniquely Christian slogan for troubling times …

The Trouble with Slogans

For years now, our society has been inundated with three competing slogans:

• Black Lives Matter
• All Lives Matter
• Blue Lives Matter

Each slogan describes a different philosophy, and in many respects, they are each Christian but in many other respects they are each flawed.

I’d like to spend a few posts thinking about the significance of each of these slogans, but before I do that, I’d like to recommend a new slogan for our times… a slogan that I think is uniquely biblical:

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

However, that slogan is too easily pushed aside into the realm of impractical platitudes. It’s a slogan that Christians hold and think they are keeping because they have some sort of internal “spiritual” affinity toward another person they are actively opposing. I’ve heard it in the phrase, “I have to love you, but I don’t have to like you.”

So let me for a moment give you some of the Bible’s synonyms for this slogan:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God. — Micah 6:8 NIV

The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. — Romans 13:9-10 NIV

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” — Galatians 5:14 NIV

If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers…. Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. — James 2:8-9, 12-17 NIV

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. — Romans 12:9-21 NIV

A More Biblical Slogan

So, in light of this, what might a more biblical, more Christlike slogan sound like?

Are you ready?

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. — John 15:13 NIV

Given all the teaching of the Bible on this topic, I think the most Christlike slogan we could embrace goes like this:

“Your life matters to me more than mine.”

Right now, our world is in the midst of unrest from a pandemic. Our nation is in the midst of unrest from a political storm rampant with deceptions and vitriol, and at the same time, our brothers and sisters with darker skin are crying out in pain and anguish at the injustice they have had to endure. For 401 years now, they have experienced systematic abuse, and they are crying out for help.

Of course, I could go on. Today, many police officers feel they are being mistreated. Farmers feel they are being mistreated. Even churches and Christians feel they are being mistreated regardless of the fact that Christianity has held an extremely privileged position in this country.

Finally, each of us is being tempted to point the finger at another group and accuse them of having a “victim” mentality. “You aren’t being mistreated, I’m the one being mistreated!” “Your experience of injustice doesn’t matter as much as my experience of injustice!”

Still, the call placed on Christians is still the same as it has ever been.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. — Romans 5:8 NIV

The love of God is so great for the entire world that the Son would sacrifice himself for us.

The only Christlike thing to say in a time like this is:

Your life matters to me more than mine.

Practical Application

I’ll talk about this more in a subsequent blog post, but it’s important enough to say it now.

Since the emphasis is on the contrast between my life and your life, the behaviors we embrace should also emphasize the need to affirm the other person, and that’s the main reason I’m also willing and proud to say “Black Lives Matter” too.

Listen,  I know there are a bunch of Christians who are opposed to the “Black Lives Matter” movement and they will tell me that because of theology problems with the movement I shouldn’t even say the phrase, but let’s be frank, I’m not following BLM theology or philosophy as my authority. I’m merely saying that I want to live in a world where the balance of power shifts toward equity and justice for my Black and Brown brothers and sisters. I’m stating that I’m further willing to make personal sacrifices to affirm that for too long Black lives have not mattered enough and it’s time to change that. More than that, I want to communicate to my Black brothers and sisters that I’m willing to put my own interests down so I can lift their interests up.

These days, I have the opportunity to address their social injustice.

Will I say, “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter?” Yes! or maybe, depending on the context. I have relatives and friends who are good cops, and I deeply desire their safety. But I also know that those other slogans carry as much baggage for some as “Black Lives Matter” carries for others. Therefore, my guiding principle is that I will not use any slogan at all if it implies that I’m trying to defend my own rights or downplay another’s experience of injustice.

Over the next few posts, I’ll share my own reflections on the slogans that are out there, but I pray that God will help me and my Christian brothers and sisters to have the same attitude as Christ regarding these matters.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus… — Philippians 2:3-5 NIV

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Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

When it comes to the study, there are generally two questions I hear over an over. The first question is “How can I get my people to talk!?” Perhaps in the future I’ll be able to write something about group dynamics, but my simple answer to that one is always: “Ask them.”

However, the second question has been on my mind recently. It is this: “My group wants to go deeper, do you have any suggestions?”

I’m glad you asked.

Usually, when I get this question, the group leader is thinking about curriculum: “Can you suggest a book to study?” “Is there a video series that might cover this topic?”

However, I’ve been around long enough to know that even though there is some great curriculum out there, the answer to this question is almost never curriculum.
When Christians talk about wanting to go deeper, something deeper is already going on.

I’ll come back to that in a bit.

First, deeper study requires study. That is, everyone needs to be doing homework. If we want deeper discussions, we must be very clear with people that completed homework and serious forethought is required for participation. I’m astonished at the number of times a group will claim to want more in depth study but not actually put in the effort. Do not be ashamed to poke and prod people on this front or to boldly tell them what the expectations are.

For my group, I am not looking for deeper discussions if by deeper we mean new insights and more knowledge. I’m looking for deeper discussions in the sense of more deeply personal. I want people to share what’s going on in their hearts and in their lives. Previous study can uncover “deeper” truths, but the only thing to produce deeply personal discussions is the level of trust in the room.

Secondly, book studies are great fun and can be really inspirational, but they also make it difficult to invite new people into the group. It’s always hard for people to join something in the middle. If you choose a book study, Bible study, or any other tool to follow, be prepared for a season when people will be less likely to visit your group. I think this is reduced by us basing our studies on the Sunday message because anyone who came to Sunday Worship can feel prepared for the study that week, but it is something to keep in mind.

Thirdly, “deeper” studies can sometimes mask the real need people in the group have. For example, in your group, you might have a person who doesn’t actually know the Bible very well. They have been in church for a long time, but they just don’t read the Bible for themselves. For those people, reading a Christian book might actually exacerbate their problem by giving them the illusion they are doing something spiritual when they are actually avoiding God’s Word. You as the leader need to determine if that is true or not.

So here are a few ideas from me about ways to up the “spiritual depth” of your group discussions:

• Assign everyone homework that they are to take notes during my message and review them once before group time.
• Assign everyone homework that they are to read each verse from the Sunday message in context, and make notes about what they think that verse teaches.
• Assign everyone homework that they are to spend 10 minutes a day in prayer and Bible reading and bring those notes with them to the group.
• Assign everyone homework that they are to have one conversation with one person (preferably a non-Christian) each week about what they learned on Sunday before the group time.
• During group time, don’t allow the discussion to end until each person around the room has identified one specific behavioral commitment they are making in response to the topic, and to kick it up another notch, pray individually for each person and the commitment they have made, and to kick it up a notch further, begin every group meeting with a review and report of the previous week’s commitments.

Too easily, a group will begin to feel a sense of hunger for “something more,” and that’s when you as the leader need to assess why they want more before giving in to what they say they think they want.

Here’s an illustration. This last week, I preached an intentionally shallow message (let me explain to you the different books in the Bible) not because I think the people in your groups can’t read the table of contents in their Bible, but because we are coming out of Easter with an outreach focused message series. Your discussion could be just as shallow as the message was or you can turn it into something deep by helping to apply it to the lives of the people in your group. For some of your people, they need to make a commitment to pick up the Bible and read it. For some of your people, they need to open up a conversation with someone else and talk about the Bible to them!

Take advantage of the weeks of “shallow” discussions or “shallow” messages to go deeply personal with your people. And, to top it all off, when a person or group says they want to go deeper, don’t simply trust they know what they are talking about. Be their leader, help them identify both why they want to go deeper and what “deeper” means to them.

As for you, please continue to go deeply into reading God’s Word, deeply into prayer, deeply into sharing your faith, and deeply into leadership! Deeply assess where your people are and where they need to go and gently push them in that direction.

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Mark 10:17-22

Do pets go to heaven?

Scripture is almost silent on the matter of whether animals have an eternal soul like humans do or whether they might be subject to the same laws of sin and death and Heaven and Hell as we are. However, it does say that humans are the only creatures into which God breathed “the breath of life.” As a result, it’s my belief that animals do not have a soul, and that they cannot go to heaven or hell or be resurrected when Christ returns. However, God is a loving and creative God, and in the ages to come, when all things are restored, it’s entirely possible that you or I could say to our Heavenly Father, “When I was on Earth, I had this goldfish…” and your loving Heavenly Father might say, “Oh, I’d love to make that exact one all over again! He’ll even remember you.”

What does purgatory mean?

Purgatory refers to a place in Catholic doctrine between heaven and hell. According to Roman Catholic teaching, after a person dies, the truly bad people and those who have committed certain kinds of sins will go directly to hell, and some Christians because of their truly saintly lives on earth will go directly to heaven, but most Christians will end up in a middle place called purgatory. It’s called that because it is the place where remaining sinfulness gets “purged” from our souls. The theory is that God can only let perfect people into heaven, and that Jesus’ death only covers most of your sins, so that when you die, there will still be more sins to get rid of, and that will happen in the process of purgatory.

Here is an article from the Catholic perspective attempting to give historical and biblical context for the concept of purgatory.

Personally, I don’t believe in purgatory simply because the New Testament doesn’t teach it. As I said on Sunday, the only bits of evidence the New Testament really gives us about the human soul after death is that immediately after death, some souls go to a place Jesus called Hades while others go to the place Jesus calls Paradise. No real information is given about either place except that Hades is unpleasant and Paradise is pleasant. However, Jesus also speaks of a future final judgment that will take place and will involve every human soul. In that final judgment, those who know Jesus and are covered by his forgiveness will enter into “eternal life” and the rest will be cast into the “lake of fire” also sometimes called “outer darkness.” In other words, there are only ever two places mentioned. Before the final judgment, disembodied souls go to Paradise or Hades. After the final judgment, resurrected souls go to eternal life or the outer darkness.

What does it mean “to bind and loose”?

We sang a song on Sunday about binding and loosing, and a few weeks ago, I explained what it meant, but this question came up again on Sunday, and it’s controversial enough that I wanted to address it briefly again.

“Binding” and “loosing” are frequently used by Christians to pretend that we have the authority to “bind” up evil forces in the world and “loose” godly forces in the world. Frequently, these words get applied to angels and demons and sicknesses and such. People will declare that they are “binding” the spirit of something or other and “loosing” or “releasing” the power of God over a person.

Sadly, that application is based entirely and only on the words “bind” and “loose” as interpreted out of context by modern Christians.

In their original context, their meaning is far more clear. Jesus said this to Peter:

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” — Matthew 16:18-19 NIV

That’s all well and good, but our problem in understanding this passage comes from ending it at verse 19. If we kept reading, we’d eventually get to chapter 18 and read this:

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

“Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Matthew 18:15-22 NIV

In this passage, Jesus repeats the same idea about binding and loosing, but in this passage, we get a context, and the context is all about what it takes to forgive and restore a person to fellowship with the church. Furthermore, the words used here “bind” and “loose” could just as easily be translated “hold onto” and “release” or even “retain” or “forgive.” Jesus’ point in context is that Christians have the power of forgiveness in their grasp and their forgiveness on earth relates to the forgiveness in heaven. He said something similar in the Lord’s Prayer when he tied our willingness to forgive others to God’s willingness to forgive us.
The promise isn’t that we have the ability to demand things of the spiritual world. The promise is that forgiveness on earth truly is a spiritual action.

Truly, what does it take to go to heaven?

Our question is what it takes to go to heaven because we are C– people. We want to know the minimum requirement for “getting in.” We want to know it so that we can be confident about ourselves and so that we can rest assured about people we love, and so that we can more accurately try to convince others of it.
However, that C– kind of thinking, that thinking aimed at just doing the bare minimum to pass the test is exactly the kind of legalistic thinking Jesus repeatedly accuses the Pharisees of having. The Pharisees were all about trying to determine which laws really needed to be kept so that God would be happy with them, and Jesus calls them blind guides, hypocrites, whitewashed tombs, and more.
Consider this:

For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. — Matthew 5:20 NIV

Entering the kingdom of heaven has nothing to do with checking off a box, and it has everything to do with something far more personal.
Consider this:

After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. — John 17:1-3 NIV

… and this …

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. — 1 John 3:19-23 NIV

… and this …

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. — Romans 3:23-24 NIV

… and this …

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. — Romans 10:9-10 NIV

The New Testament is clear that salvation happens when a person responds to the message of Jesus with faith, trusting him completely for the forgiveness of their sins, and then walks with him for the rest of their life living in love and sharing that love with others. That person is guaranteed an eternal home; however, scripture gives no promises regarding the person who doesn’t do those things. What about a person who lives like Jesus and asks the God they understand for forgiveness but has never heard the name of Jesus or the message of the cross? The Bible doesn’t say. What about the person who prays the prayer, is faithful for a while and then falls away? The Bible doesn’t give a definitive answer. There are many questions, but if you want to be comforted, if you want assurance of the condition of your own soul, go back to the verse I quoted before:

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence… we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. — 1 John 3:19-23 NIV

Love people. Trust Jesus.

What does it mean for the Holy Spirit to be upon someone?

Some churches think that the Holy Spirit’s presence in a person’s life comes with very specific “signs.” For example, churches that embrace the word “pentecostal” to refer to themselves believe that all believers will eventually have an experience of being “baptized” by the Holy Spirit and receiving the gift of speaking in tongues (speaking in tongues usually refers to the practice of a person speaking gibberish words in a moment of spiritual euphoria). To be sure, there are a few times in the Bible when the arrival of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life is accompanied by this particular manifestation, but it is not always that way. In the book of Acts alone, there are at least three different ways the Holy Spirit comes on people and not all of them involve speaking in tongues.

As for me, I’m entirely convinced that the best way to understand the Holy Spirit is to let the Bible speak for itself.

Who gets the Holy Spirit? Every believer at the moment they enter the family (Acts 2:38-39), whether they feel the Holy Spirit or not, the promise of his presence is there.

What does the Holy Spirit do in a believer? Enlightens the word of God to us (John 14:26), comforts us (John 14:16-18), and empowers us for ministry (Mark 13:11, 1 Corinthians 12:7).

What about speaking in tongues? What about other “sign” gifts? What about being “slain in the Spirit”? The New Testament doesn’t tell us how or why or when the Spirit does what the Spirit does other than what I said before. If the Holy Spirit wants to give someone the gift of tongues, he will. If he wants to do some other sign, he will. If he wants to put someone into a visionary trance, he will. He is the Spirit of God and has all the power and freedom of God. The problem always comes when we expect him to act according to our will and not his own.

One more thing. The presence of the Spirit in a person’s life was different before Jesus. For example, the Spirit came upon Saul to empower him to be the king, but then the Spirit left him when Saul was disobedient. Then the Spirit came on David, and that’s why in Psalm 51, David prays for God to not take his Spirit away from him. For the people back then, the Spirit would reside with a person so long as that person had God’s favor. In our day, God grants his Spirit to everyone who puts their faith in Jesus.

Full Articles

For the following questions, I’ve written separate articles on the topic.

The world today is so broken and events are aligning to set the stage for fulfillment of Bible prophecy. The next event is the rapture why are so many churches not responding with urgency to reach the lost?

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Who/what is the antichrist?

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Does LCC believe Hell is a literal place and is there a spirit of urgency to tell His truth to those that are lost?

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YouTube Clips

For the following questions, I’m just sharing the YouTube clips, ’cause I think my answer on Sunday was pretty good.

The Bible talks about both predestination and free will but those two are paradoxical in a way. Do you think that people really have free will in relation to salvation or have God’s people been chosen and set in stone since the beginning?

Is being angry with God a sin? What about being angry yet humble?

Youtube Clip:

1 Samuel 15:35 says God regretted making Saul king over Israel. If God is perfect and His choices are best, then how can God have regret?

If it’s a sin to kill, then why is there so much killing in the Bible?

Is believers baptism necessary to receive complete salvation and receive your spiritual gifts?

• At some point in the future a child will be born who is Satan’s version of Jesus, perhaps even possessed by Satan or another demon from the time of his birth.
• He will grow in power through his life eventually suffering a mortal wound of some kind.
• He will survive the mortal wound, possibly even appearing to have come back from death.
• He will team up with another individual who will be his spokesperson, and they will gain power.
• Through miraculous works, they will convince moderately spiritual people that they are somehow worthy of worship, and people will worship them.
• Through political power, they will convince the rest of the world to give them authority, and the whole world will honor them.
• Once they have attained global power, they will declare the antichrist to be the only one worthy of worship, and they will launch a time of persecution against all those who attempt to stay faithful to God.
• Those who follow the antichrist (sometimes called the Beast) will receive a mark on their body that identifies themselves with him.
• Those who have the mark can participate in society, and those who don’t will be prevented from all commerce before eventually being killed.

Each of those bullet points has some connection with something in the Bible. However, there is no part of the Bible that explains all of that all at once. Rather, the only way to get this idea is to combine the concept of “the Beast” from Revelation (written by John) with the word “antichrist” from the letters of John even though John himself doesn’t connect them in his writings. Additionally, you have to include the concept of the “man of lawlessness” described by Paul and add that to the vision of the “little horn” from the book of Daniel and the “abomination that causes desolation” from both Daniel and Jesus.

If you add all those things together, you kinda get the picture of the antichrist painted above.

However, if you don’t add them all together, if you keep them all in their separate prophecies in their own contexts, they all still make sense. No one in the Bible links all these prophecies together, and as I said, John himself doesn’t link the prophecy of the “Beast” with any of the other prophecies even though he certainly knew of Daniel’s prophecy, and he certainly knew of Jesus’ predictions, and he certainly knew of his own use of the word antichrist.

Therefore, if you really want to know who the antichrist is, you should pay closest attention to the only one in the New Testament who uses that word and see how he used it:

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us—eternal life.
1 John 2:18-25 NIV

According to John, “antichrist” doesn’t refer to one specific person but to a category of people. People who started out as Christians, but then moved away from the true teaching about Christ to something else. According to John anyone who denies the work of the Father in the life of the Son, anyone who denies the identity of Jesus as the Son of God, that person is the antichrist. Literally, every unbeliever qualifies as an antichrist according to John’s definition, but he was probably mostly meaning the false teachers who were pretending to be Christians but who didn’t actually believe that Jesus was the Son of God or that they should follow him as Lord. Bottom line, the antichrist is any person who is “anti” Christ. What should we do about it? Stick with what you have learned about Jesus, and remain in him.

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
1 John 4:1-4 NIV

Once again, John is concerned about the false teaching and the false prophets of his day. These people were claiming to have spiritual knowledge from spiritual beings, but John says there is an easy way to test their spiritual claims. If they claim that Jesus is the Christ, that he really came to earth in the flesh, and that he really came from God, then that person is speaking with the authority of the Spirit of God. However, if they do not recognize the identity of Jesus, that person is speaking with the “spirit of the antichrist.”

Pay attention to the last phrase of that first paragraph: “…the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.” This phrase completely invalidates the idea that there is an “antichrist” figure who is yet to show up on the scene of human history, because there is an interesting grammar thing going on here. If “which” refers to “antichrist,” then according to John, the antichrist was already in the world during his day. However, if “which” refers to the “spirit of the antichrist” (more likely), then according to John, there is a general attitude of “anti-christ-ness” that is present in the world.

But don’t miss the final phrase either. John literally says that the Christians of his day had already overcome the antichrists in the world because the Spirit who was in them is greater than the spirit who is in the world.

Finally, just to put a pin in it, John also mentions the antichrist in his next letter:

I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. — 2 John 1:7 NIV

Once again, he simply says that any person can be the antichrist, and in fact, everyone who doesn’t recognize that Jesus is the Christ who came in flesh is the antichrist.

According to John, there isn’t one antichrist. Everyone who isn’t following Christ is anti-Christ especially those who use their voice to disparage or deny the identity of Jesus.

Not to put too blunt a point on it, but the antichrist could be you.

But I believe better things for you. I believe you are a person who has received the truth of Christ, and you want to live in that truth, representing him well in this world and living by his Spirit in you. If that is you, you have nothing to fear from any antichrist because:

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. — 1 John 4:4 NIV

The world today is so broken and events are aligning to set the stage for fulfillment of Bible prophecy. The next event is the rapture why are so many churches not responding with urgency to reach the lost?

I wanted to address this question because it has two parts to it that (1) depend on a specific doctrinal understanding and (2) result in specific behaviors among Christians.

In this question, the first particular thing is a doctrine about the end times, and the second particular thing is a doctrine about what it means to reach the lost, to reach unbelievers who haven’t responded to or don’t even know the message of the gospel.

Regarding the urgency of reaching the lost, I want to link to this other article I wrote on the matter.

But regarding the doctrine of the end times, I want to take a moment and address it here. However, bear with me. I need to take a detour into something else first.

The question made a reference to something called the “rapture,” and most modern theories about the rapture are based on a way of understanding the Bible called “Dispensationalism.” It’s a big and elaborate doctrine that I will summarize here and then show how it is the foundation of the question.

Dispensationalism says that God works differently with different groups of people through different ages of time.

• The Age of Works: From Adam through Noah to Abraham, each person was just supposed to be good.
• The Age of Covenant: With Abraham, God entered into a covenant relationship with the people of Israel based on faith, family, and obedience.
• The Age of Law: With Moses, God enriched and modified the covenant and instituted specific rules outlining what it means to be God’s holy people.
• The Age of Jesus: With Jesus, God began a new work, but Jesus himself was a bridge between the old work and the new work. Most of his ministry happened before the cross, and therefore, the 3 years of Jesus’ ministry form an age to itself.
• The Church Age: After the cross, through the teaching of Paul and the other Apostles, God took a detour away from Israel to build a brand new family called the church who would relate to him on the basis of grace alone by faith in death and resurrection of Jesus.
• The Rapture & Tribulation Age: Eventually, Jesus will partially return to the earth and remove his followers, the church, from the world so that God can get back to his relationship with Israel, but Israel will be opposed by the “Antichrist” and great trouble will come on the earth.
• The Millennial Age: At the end of the Tribulation, Jesus will fully return, imprison Satan, and establish an earthly kingdom for 1000 years.
• The Eternal Age: At the end of the Millennium, Satan will be released, there will be a final battle of God vs. Satan, God will win, there will be a final judgment, the righteous will go to eternity with God while the rest will join Satan in the Lake of Fire, and God will create a brand new heaven and earth establishing his own eternal kingdom.

You can probably see how a few points depend on and provide rationale to the doctrine of the rapture, but I’ll spell it out. Usually, when people talk about “the rapture” they are talking about an unknown, surprising moment when Jesus will partially come back to earth, miraculously whisk away his followers (both living and dead), to meet him in the air and return to heaven with him. The rationale for this event is that God must do the rapture to accomplish three purposes: (1) The church must be removed from the earth because God has unfinished business with Israel. There were promises in the Old Testament that haven’t been fulfilled yet (like the rebuilding of the Temple), and it doesn’t make sense for God to fulfill the promises to Israel while we are living in the Church age. Therefore, the church must be removed so God can get back to fulfilling his promises to Israel. (2) The church must also be removed because the church collectively is the current temple of the Holy Spirit on earth, and the Holy Spirit is currently “restraining” the evil in the world from reaching it’s fullest levels. The church must be removed so the Holy Spirit will be removed so that the time of the Antichrist and the Tribulation can begin. Finally, (3) the church must be removed to protect it from the time of Tribulation.

What is the Tribulation? Well, the Tribulation has five main components according to dispensationalist doctrine:

• God will renew his work with Israel, including the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem
• A man known as the Antichrist (or the Beast) will rise up and become the leader of the whole world
• The Antichrist will bring great persecution on the people of God throughout the world
• God will also pour out his wrath on unbelievers
• Everything will culminate in a great battle between heaven and hell at a place called Armageddon.

This understanding of the rapture and the doctrine of dispensationalism work hand in hand because each of them needs the other as an explanation. Most dispensationalists are also believers in a “pre-tribulation rapture.”

A side consequence of all this is that most believers in a pre-tribulation rapture are also deeply interested in the signs that the rapture is coming soon. They compare current events to the things described in Bible prophecies about the end times. This belief that Jesus will rapture his church away from the earth at any point in time combines with the belief that prophecies are being fulfilled and builds a sense of urgency in the believer to save the unbelievers. Once the rapture happens, this age of grace will be over and all the people left on the earth will then have to face all kinds of terrible consequences. It will be very much like hell on earth, and therefore, if you want to get someone saved, you have to do it before the rapture happens, and since the rapture is getting nearer and nearer, the urgency should be getting greater.

The whole point of view is internally consistent, and I don’t blame people who believe it for believing it. I myself used to be a die-hard believer in the whole thing too. However, there are a few problems with it:

• The doctrine of the rapture and the sequence of events known as the Tribulation is just one of many ways to understand the teaching about the end times from the Bible. In fact, this doctrine of the rapture and the Tribulation is not directly taught by any passage of Scripture and depends on a specific way of assembling unrelated passages together. From my perspective, a much better argument can be made for the rapture of the church happening after a time of Tribulation when Jesus returns to establish his kingdom.
• The argument that the rapture has to happen before the Tribulation so that God can get back to working with Israel is based on nothing in Scripture, but just the belief that the age of the church was a detour in God’s working with people. In other words, a pre-tribulation rapture only makes sense in the bigger context of dispensationalism, but that isn’t the only way to understand God’s working with his people. In fact, a much better argument can be made that all of the old promises to Israel are actually now fulfilled in the church. According to many passages in Paul’s writings, we should understand the church not as a detour from Israel but as the new Israel.
• Finally, our ability to connect Bible prophecy to modern day life is entirely colored by our own presuppositions of what we should look for. For two thousand years, Christians have been seeing “signs of the times” all around them, and for all that time, they have been making predictions about the return of Christ, but they have been wrong every time.

I want to key in on that third point right now for a moment. Consider this passage:

(3) He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. (4) Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. (5) But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

(6) We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (7) He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

(8) By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. (9) He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. (10) Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

(11) After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied ; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. (12) Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. — Isaiah 53 NIV

This is an amazing description of the crucifixion of Christ, but it was written up to 600 years before Jesus was crucified! The people of Israel were sitting on this prophecy for 600 years and yet even then, they couldn’t connect the dots that the prophecy meant the Messiah would be pierced, killed for the sins of others, killed with criminals, will be buried in a borrowed tomb, and will rise again afterward! Those things seem obvious to us on this side of the crucifixion, but they were completely unknown by the best Jewish scholars at the time of Jesus!

This one truth leads me to believe there is no way we will be able to fully decipher the meaning of the end times prophecies until they actually come true, and our mandate to spread the good news of Jesus, and our willingness and urgency to do so have nothing to do with a sense that the end times are near and everything to do with the simple fact that Jesus told us to do it.

So, let’s put all this together in relation to the original question.

Are current events indicators that the end times are near? Yes because Christians of every generation have believed it about their generation, and we should too. Every day gets us closer to the end days. Paul wrote this in his letter to the Romans:

(11) And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. (12) The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. — Romans 13:11-12 NIV

Is the current brokenness of the world any special indicator that the end times are close? Yes and no. Yes, because of the previous passage, but no because they really aren’t that much more broken now than they were before. Part of our problem is that we are far more nostalgic of the past than we have a right to be and so we think of the current days as more broken than they actually are. Our world is broken, but it was broken in the days of Jesus too. Remember that the people of Corinth were dealing with sexual promiscuity and false religions that far surpasses our own. Remember that the earlier days of our own country were filled with the injustice of slavery and a deeply racist society. Our world is broken, but our brokenness today is not necessarily more than it has been before.

Is the next event in spiritual history the rapture of the church? Probably not. It is far more likely according to Scripture that we will slide right into the days of the antichrist and renewed persecution of the church and that the rapture won’t happen until the day Jesus finally returns to set up his eternal kingdom.

Why don’t churches respond to the doctrine of the rapture with more urgency? The reason most churches don’t respond to the doctrine of the rapture with more urgency is twofold. Most churches don’t believe this uniquely American understanding of the rapture, and the Bible never uses the rapture as motivation for urgency. Yes, we should be passionate to see the message of Jesus reach the ends of the earth, but our motivation for that should be the command of Christ and the goodness of our message rather than any sense of impending doom.

Yes and no. I say yes, because I believe in what the Bible teaches, but I say no, because a lot of beliefs about hell don’t come from the Bible.

Regarding Hell:

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. — Revelation 20:11-15 NIV

… and here …

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left…. “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’… “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” — Matthew 25:31-33, 41-43, 46 NIV

Both John in his Revelation and Jesus refer to a future moment of judgment when Jesus will determine the eternal destiny for each human soul. Those who are known by Jesus, those who were in relationship with him, those who had received his name and had their names written into his book of life will enter eternal life, while those who were not in relationship with him, who did not live the way he lived, who did not have their names in his book will be cast into eternal fire. However, let’s be clear. The Bible never tells us in any sort of detail what “eternal life” for us will look like. Nor does the Bible ever tell us in detail what “eternal punishment” will look like.
Scholars have speculated that an eternal punishment could be exactly what it said in Revelation 20: “The lake of fire is the second death.” In other words, the lake of fire could very well be the annihilation of the human soul into non-existence. On the other hand, it could also mean never-ending conscious torment for the human soul. Here’s the point, though. The Bible doesn’t tell us which one is which. Nowhere in the New Testament are we told that the human consciousness will continue for eternity in the lake of fire, but nowhere are we told that the human consciousness will come to an end in the lake of fire. We just don’t know.
Therefore, when the question is asked regarding whether we believe in a literal Hell, the only answer I can say is that we believe the lake of fire is real, and we believe eternal punishment is real, and we believe some will enter eternal life while others enter eternal punishment. If your notion of Hell is in any way more detailed than that, your notion of Hell has come from someplace other than the Bible.
But let’s tackle the second part of the question. Is there a spirit of urgency in our church to tell the truth to the lost?
Yes and no. I say yes because I have a desperate passion to tell the good news to the lost through my words, through the words of the people in our church, and even more than that through the lives of the people who are following Jesus in this town. I desperately want the lost in Lafayette to know how much God loves them.
However, I also say no because “telling the truth to the lost” is often misunderstood by Christians to mean telling people they are going to Hell unless they get saved. I once sat in a coffeeshop having a conversation with a man who saw it as his duty to go to college campuses with a megaphone to tell women they were harlots and men they were murderers in their hearts and that they were all going to Hell unless they turned to Jesus.
I tried to convince him to stop that, but he didn’t listen to me.
Why do I want him to stop? Am I not worried about people’s eternal soul!? Am I okay with the fact that people are dying and going to Hell?!
I’ll give a simple answer.
I’m trying to imitate Jesus.
Literally the only time Jesus ever told someone they were headed for Hell was in this passage:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!
“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?
Matthew 23:29-33 NIV

The people who thought they were following God by telling other people how to follow God were the people Jesus said were going to Hell because they acted spiritual but failed to actually live out the message of the prophets.
Let’s be blunt. If Jesus didn’t use “You’re going to hell” as his method for convincing people to follow him, neither should I. Also, if Jesus wasn’t impatient with people trying to get them saved at any cost, then neither should I be. If God wants to save someone but he can’t because I don’t get there in time, or because I wasn’t aggressive enough, then that’s a pretty weak God, isn’t it?
Nevertheless, every single moment that goes by in a person’s life where they think God hates them or where they think they are unworthy, or where they think they are living life on their own, or where they think this life is all there is, every one of those moments are wasted moments when that person could have felt the presence of God with them when they could have known the love of God over them.
Beyond that, every single moment a person who claims to follow Jesus doesn’t live like Jesus is a wasted moment for the Kingdom of God. God can figure out a way to work around our failings and our laziness, but isn’t it better to join him in his work!?
No, I want to live the way Paul encourages followers of Christ to live:

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. — Colossians 4:5 NIV

Practical Questions

How can we engage in evangelism without judgment and hypocrisy?

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When pursuing God, what are the key practices to pursuit? Is there a difference between pursuit and rote obedience?

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Why do many churches not offer an altar call—an invitation to come pray, leave burdens, respond if the Holy Spirit has prompted and allow the lost to come when convicted to further learn or step into salvation?

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In the Great Commission, Jesus commands the disciples to teach the Nations to obey Jesus’ commands. Are there any examples of what it looks like to do this practically without coming across as self-righteous and judgmental?

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In the Great Commission, Jesus commands the disciples to teach the Nations to obey Jesus’ commands. Are there any examples of what it looks like to do this practically without coming across as self-righteous and judgmental?

I’ve never heard the question phrased this way before, but it really helps me understand a dynamic of modern Christianity that I hadn’t understood before.
This question is based on the passage we call the Great Commission as quoted by Matthew at the end of his book. It says this:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” — Matthew 28:19-20 NIV

The question understands the “them” in the third phrase to refer to the word “nations” in the first phrase. I’ve never heard anyone make that connection before, but let me explain what the significance of that connection is.

If “them” refers to “nations,” then Jesus is commanding us as his followers to perform baptisms in every nation, and also to work in every nation of the world to get the people of those nations to obey Jesus’ commands. Understanding the command that way, it’s easy to see how modern Christians are behaving in such self-righteous and judgmental ways. Here in America, there is a growing movement known as Christian Nationalism. It’s a movement that has been going on for a long time, but it has been picking up speed more recently. Basically, the movement says this: America was created to be a Christian nation, but our modern world is sliding away from those Christian principles, so Christians need to step up and take back our rightful place as leaders of the nation to re-establish those Christian principles as the law of the land. In simple terms, it says Christians should be in charge.

A softer version of this doesn’t say Christians should be in charge, but it says that Christian morality is universal and should be universally applied. That is, since Jesus teaches against sexual immorality, Christians should speak up against sexual immorality, pointing our fingers at those who are sexually immoral and openly talking about how morally wrong they are. Christians who act like that will obviously be seen as judgmental or even self-righteous by the watching world.

I’ve been personally upset by both the hard and soft versions of this idea, but I have been confused about where the idea came from. However, because of the way this question was phrased, I now see something I never saw before. I now see that some Christians think we are supposed to teach the nations to obey.

That interpretation is wrong, though.

The proper antecedent to the word “them” is not “nations” but “disciples.” Jesus doesn’t say we should teach the nations to obey his command. Jesus said we should make disciples in every nation, and teach those disciples to obey his commands. That is a terribly important distinction. Jesus wasn’t about using coercive methods to get people to fall in line with him or the will of his Father. Jesus was doing something far more subversive but more meaningful. Jesus was a man who gave his life to others and for others. He showed us love we did not deserve, and he totally transformed the lives of a few people around him. Then those few people followed suit and took on the same attitude. They didn’t try to control society. Rather, they did the incredibly subversive thing of living sacrificial lives in the midst of the broken world. They gave their lives to and for others, and as a result, they totally transformed the lives of a few people around them. Then, those few people repeated the process again and again.

The command is to make disciples, and train the disciples to be disciples, and then deploy them to repeat the process.

If we think our job is to teach the nations, we will try to get unbelievers to live by the code of Jesus, and we will fail so often that we will be tempted to resort to normal earthly techniques of power and coercion.

However, if we think our job is to teach disciples to actually be disciples, we will be part of the most subversive and most successful movement in human history. And if the disciples are living like actual disciples, if the disciples are really looking like Jesus, then no one will be able to accuse us of being judgmental because we will reserve all judgment only for the other disciples as we strive to admonish one another. No one will be able to accuse us of being self-righteous because we are focused on personally living in dependence on the righteousness of Christ.

No one accused Jesus of being judgmental or self-righteous.

Disciples are supposed to look like him.

Here’s the bottom line: Disciples encourage other disciples to live like disciples, to move through the world the way Jesus moved through the world, and to invite the people of the world into fellowship with them and their Heavenly Father just as Jesus did.

Why do many churches not offer an altar call—an invitation to come pray, leave burdens, respond if the Holy Spirit has prompted and allow the lost to come when convicted to further learn or step into salvation?

There are a number of reasons churches do what they do. First of all, let me explain what an altar call is for those who might not know.
Many church traditions have for centuries ended their Sunday morning time of worship with a call for people to come forward to the front of the sanctuary for some kind of commitment. It’s called an “altar call” because Catholic churches have a table at the front of the room that they call the “altar.” Catholic churches have people come forward for communion. Many non-Catholic churches continue the practice but make it about salvation, baptism, membership or prayer. Regardless, the idea of an altar call is to get people to make a visible commitment in front of other people. That is both the strength and weakness of an altar call.
Catholics do the altar call because their doctrine requires only priests to hand out communion. Therefore, to receive communion, a person must go to where the priest is.
Protestants who do altar calls do them because they get people to take immediate, visible action in response to the teaching or the worship experience. They work too. That is, churches that regularly issue altar calls get more people to make decisions for Christ than churches that don’t. There’s something psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually powerful about making the decision to follow Jesus, getting out of your chair, walking to the front of the room, encountering all that potential embarrassment, and then to be received with cheers and pride from other people. Anyone who has come to faith that way describes it as a powerful moment. Anyone who has gone forward for an altar call describes it as a powerful moment. It’s no wonder that altar calls really became popular during the various moments of revival in the United States. Protestant churches that do altar calls today are living in the legacy of those revivalist preachers, and are hoping for future revival to come as well.
However, there are four reasons I don’t do them. (Now, for most of the history of Lafayette Community Church, we have had people available for prayer at the end of our worship gatherings, and I have invited people to come forward for prayer if they wished to, but I don’t consider that an altar call because we never made it obvious, and we focused on it being for prayer mostly.) The major reason some churches don’t do altar calls is that they don’t accomplish the larger goal of making disciples. Talk to any pastor of any church that does an altar call, and you will hear of all the numbers of people who have come forward to receive Christ or be baptized or become members, and you will also learn of all the people who after that moment of coming forward disappeared from the church completely. They made a decision to follow Christ, came forward, prayed the prayer, and then never came back. The momentary passionate decisions are sometimes incredibly formative for some people, but the majority of the time, those decisions are fleeting.
Refer to my earlier answer about evangelism, and you’ll understand that some churches don’t care about the endurance of a person or the follow-up with that person as much as they care about the momentary decision made by that person. From that perspective, the altar call got them saved, the church did it’s job, and then after they are saved, what they become is between them and God. However, Scripture doesn’t support that framework. The New Testament writers consistently talk about faithful living and endurance in the faith far more than any kind of momentary salvation decision. The reason I don’t do evangelistic altar calls is that I don’t think they produce disciples, and I’m afraid of giving a person the false reassurance that because they went forward that one Sunday and prayed that prayer, then they are “saved” and are guaranteed Heaven when they die. I don’t want to be responsible for a person having a false sense of salvation.
The second reason I don’t do them is similar to the first. Altar calls don’t just empower someone to develop a false sense of salvation, but they can also empower hypocrisy. Because they are public, a person can go forward at the altar call just to look spiritual in front of others. On the flip side, a person can live a life of guilt and shame and disobedience all week long and then go forward on Sunday to turn their lives over to Christ all over again with no real intention of changing.
The third reason I don’t do them builds on the second. Since altar calls are visible, and since the people who go forward at an altar call can be perceived by others to be the truly spiritual people, an altar call can actually discourage a person from coming to faith in Christ. A person can be in that place where they are aware of their sin, they are ready to make a change, the work of God is starting to happen in their heart, but then they learn they need to do the embarrassing thing of walking forward, and then they see other people going forward, and they just don’t feel spiritual enough or brave enough to take that step. Yes Jesus said he wanted his followers to acknowledge him before people, but Paul also says we shouldn’t put any stumbling block in anyone’s way.
The fourth reason is simply that altar calls aren’t found in the Bible. There is no moment in any passage of any part of the New Testament where a person says, “Come forward to receive Christ.” The closest we get to it is on the day of Pentecost when the people begged Peter what they should do to be saved, and he told them to repent and be baptized. But then what? There was no “altar” up front. There was no baptism tank. Peter wasn’t even in a sanctuary. Scripture gives us no indication how the people were baptized or where they went. Furthermore, there are no accounts in the rest of the New Testament where a church gathering took place and people were invited to stand up and come to the front. How did evangelism and discipleship happen in the New Testament? Relationships.
I’m convinced that altar calls have great potential to give a person that tangible moment of decision when they need it, but those tangible moments of decision are not needed and might actually be counter-productive. Emotional, spontaneous, momentary decisions often don’t lead to faithful endurance but they can give a false sense of security to the unfaithful person.

When pursuing God, what are the key practices to pursuit? Is there a difference between pursuit and rote obedience?

My most recent series of messages focused on our need to be people who pursued God, but never in the series did I talk about how to pursue God. There’s a reason for that. Very few places in the Bible give us any kind of recipe for how to pursue a relationship with God. But we are people of how, so how?

Christians through the centuries have tried to establish different systems for pursuing God. Here are just a few things that have come to be known as spiritual disciplines:

• go to church
• sing worship songs
• read your Bible
• pray
• fast
• meditate
• give to the poor
• practice chastity
• walk in nature
• visualize / imagine God speaking to you and write it down
• produce something creative like a work of art

Each of those things has been used by some as a recipe for their own spiritual development, each one has felt beneficial to someone, but each one has also been a burden to someone else. That’s why the motivation behind the question is about the difference between pursuing God and “rote obedience.” It’s because somewhere along the line, someone got the idea that obedience and pursuit were the same thing, or someone took a thing that looked like pursuit and enforced it as a rule on themselves or on others.

Paul mentions this kind of thing in his letter to the Colossians:

Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
Colossians 2:20-23 NIV

The people in Colossae thought that there were behaviors and rules they could follow that would somehow bring “wisdom” into their lives or somehow get them closer to God, but Paul calls these rules and practices “false humility” and says they don’t have any value in “restraining sensual indulgence.”

That’s a weird way to end the paragraph. Why would Paul bring up the failure of rules and rituals in restraining indulgence? I think it’s because the bottom line war is down deep in our hearts, a war of competing desires: our desire for something in this world vs. our desire for relationship with God.

A person can pursue God by praying, but a person can pray without pursuing God. A person can pursue God by going to church, but they can also go to church without pursuing God. None of the so called spiritual disciplines do any good in and of themselves.

So, let’s go back to the question: What are the key practices? There are no practices that produce pursuit, but there are practices that historically have been embraced by those who are truly pursuing God. They are practices modeled by Jesus, David and others, and I’ll describe them this way:

• Do something that connects your mind to God. Read the Bible and study it. Memorize it. Listen to people teach it.
• Do something that connects your emotions to God. Listen to worship music, sing it, join others in singing it. Reflect meditatively on something in God’s Word while doing something that feeds your emotions like taking a walk, making art, or just resting with your eyes closed.
• Do something that connects your body to God. Fast from food to remind yourself of God’s provision. Kneel in prayer. Raise your hands in singing.
• Do something that connects your will to God. Tithe your income. Give to a Christian charity. Serve in your church.
• Do these things alone. Do them with other believers. Do them with unbelievers. Do them in the morning, the afternoon, evening, when you wake up in the middle of the night, or any other time.
• Do them because you realize every single moment in your life is a moment for you to seek God afresh, and he is ready to meet you in your mind, your feelings, your body, and your behaviors.

It has widely been held by Christians that evangelism–the practice of leading another person to become a Christian–is one of the central components of what it means to be a Christian, and I totally agree; however, the common way of understanding evangelism is based on two misconceptions:

Misconception #1. “Becoming a Christian” is what happens when a person is convicted of their sin, has come to understand the consequences of sin, has been informed of the gift of salvation made available to them through Jesus, and decides to receive that gift often through some kind of spiritual discipline like praying a prayer of confession and commitment or getting baptized. This process goes by many names: asking Jesus into your heart, getting saved, being born again, trusting Christ, etc, and it is considered by many to be the fundamental first step in being a Christian.

However, this is a misconception because it only tells a part of the story. Yes, being born again, receiving Christ, confessing sins, and getting baptized are all components of a person’s entrance into the family of faith, but never in Jesus’ ministry does he ever create a specific framework or recipe for a person entering the faith. None of the other New Testament writers ever describe one specific recipe. The only time this framework is ever followed is in Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost, but the formula is different for different people throughout the book of Acts and throughout the rest of the New Testament. This might be a good framework, and it might in some cases be the right framework, but it is certainly not the only framework for how a person enters the faith.

Misconception #2. The primary goal in any interaction between a believer and an unbeliever is to get the unbeliever to become a Christian. Additionally, this misconception depends on the previous one regarding what it means for a person to become a Christian. A person who holds this idea believes that since the consequences of sin are so real and so devastating and so eternal (Heaven and Hell), literally nothing on earth matters as much as a person’s eternal soul, and therefore literally no interaction with another person matters as much as getting that person “saved.” Add to it the fear that a person could die at any moment from an accident or tragedy or sickness, and you have an urgency to get the other person saved now. When those things combine, even judgment and hypocrisy become tools in the arsenal. How do you get a person saved unless you first point out how lost they are, and how do you point out their lost-ness without being judgmental? Why waste time getting your own life in order when the other person’s eternal destiny rides in the balance right now, and therefore, what I have to say to that other person matters far more than how I’m living it out.

This too is a misconception for one major reason. Nowhere in the Bible are we ever told to prioritize “getting people saved” over anything else at any cost. On the day of Pentecost, Peter wasn’t trying to get people saved when he started talking about the gift of the Spirit, but God saved people anywah. On the day Peter spoke to Cornelius, he also wasn’t trying to save Cornelius. At that point, he didn’t think Gentiles could be saved! Paul in fact said that his number one goal was to win people (winning people over to Christ is much different than saving them), and his methods had absolutely nothing to do with making people feel bad about themselves; in fact, his methods were the opposite of that:

To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. — 1 Corinthians 9:20-22 NIV

Rather than pointing out how wrong people were in their sin, we should be trying like Paul to win them to a reconciled relationship with their Heavenly Father. The example of Jesus, Peter, Paul, and the rest of the New Testament followers was consistently to be winsome toward the unbelievers by proclaiming the Good News of the Father’s love. All the commands in the New Testament regarding how to live are given always and only to people who are already believers.
Furthermore, the New Testament simply doesn’t care about getting people saved. Consider Jesus’ final words:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” — Matthew 28:19-20 NIV

The great commission doesn’t involve evangelism at all. Evangelism, understood simply as proclaiming the good news, is presumed in this great commission because a person needs to hear the good news before they are able to respond to it, but evangelism isn’t even mentioned by Jesus here. His commission to his followers is to disciple. That is, to welcome people into the family of faith through baptism and then to train them toward the imitation of Christ. Discipleship is our calling, not evangelism. Evangelism is presumed because who wouldn’t want to tell other people about the good news they have learned! But the goal is helping people follow Jesus not merely getting them “saved”.

Finally, it’s hard to defend a notion of salvation in the New Testament that is independent from discipleship. Consider these words:

You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.
Matthew 10:22 NIV

Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.
Matthew 24:12-13 NIV

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,
Philippians 2:12 NIV

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
1 Peter 1:8-9 NIV

The New Testament consistently depicts salvation as both an initial event whereby a person receives the message of Jesus, puts their faith in him, and is granted the presence of the Holy Spirit, and also a final moment where the endurance of that person’s faith and faithfulness culminates in their eternal reward. There is no salvation without discipleship, and therefore, from that perspective, evangelism alone is almost pointless.

Proper Evangelism. Therefore, returning to the main question regarding how people can participate in evangelism without sliding into either judgment or hypocrisy or some other error, the best answer we can give is this: Imitate Jesus in both word and deed. This is the solution to both judgmentalism and hypocrisy, and it likewise is the solution for bringing authentic salvation to the people around us.

First, actually living like Jesus eliminates hypocrisy because Jesus was a fully authentic human being and he called us to be fully authentic human beings too. Secondly, living like Jesus eliminates judgmentalism. Sure, Jesus wasn’t afraid to speak the truth about sexual sin, religious sin, or social sins, but he never judged people for those sins (other than a number of times when he called out the self-righteous religious leaders in his midst!). Why wasn’t he judgmental? Because he literally knew that he was the answer to their sin problem! In a few short years, he would be giving his life for their salvation. He didn’t have to judge them because their sin was going to be paid for by his own death. Instead of judgment, he simply declared to them their forgiveness and then he made it happen.

If Jesus wasn’t judgmental toward people, then neither should we be. It’s fine for us to say, “Jesus told us that lust is equivalent to adultery and anger can be as bad as murder,” but it’s inappropriate for us to point our finger at a lustful person and accuse them of their sin or verbalize their condemnation. Rather, we should do what Jesus did when he saw Levi sitting at his tax collector booth and offer an invitation to a good-news life or what he did with the woman caught in adultery and say she is not condemned. We know the truth that all these sins have already been paid for. Therefore, there is no judgment left for any sin, and we can honestly love people where they are.

Should they change their lives after they decide to follow Jesus? Yes! Of course, that’s what following Jesus means. But do they need to feel the weight of our judgment before they make that decision? Absolutely not!

Evangelism should do what it’s name specifically implies. Evangelism is the English transliteration of the Greek word that literally means to do the work of the good news. Evangelism is only evangelism when it is proclaiming good news to people.

It depends on what you mean by “trust” and it depends on which book you are talking about. For example, Jude, in the letter he wrote, actually quotes from the book of Enoch, but he doesn’t tell us we should “trust” the book of Enoch. Also, just because a writer quotes something doesn’t mean the entirety of the source material should be accepted as Scripture too. Paul quoted Athenian philosophers and poets, Jesus quoted the teaching of the Pharisees back to them.

This question is really about three sub-questions:

• Do non-canonical (outside the Bible) documents tell us the truth?
• Should other books have been included in the Bible and treated with similar authority?
• How authoritative is our Bible anyway?

First, we need to recognize that people have been writing books about spiritual matters for thousands of years and many things that were written were never included in the Bible. Books that are in the Bible refer to books that are not in the Bible. Jude quotes the Book of Enoch; 1 & 2 Kings refer to other books about the ancient kings of Israel and Judah; the gospels make a few references to the story of the Maccabees, and Paul quotes Greek philosophers. Yes, there are other ancient documents that give interesting and potentially reliable information. Most historians think the books of the Maccabees (part of a collection of books called the Apocrypha and still revered by Catholics to this day) are an accurate historical account of what happened between the time of Malachi and Matthew. However, many of these ancient documents contain inaccurate and sometimes outright false claims. For example, the Book of Enoch doesn’t show up on the scene until around the time of Christ, but the man Enoch died hundreds if not thousands of years before Abraham! The Gospel of Thomas contains a bunch of rambling phrases that may or may not represent things Jesus taught, but it was certainly not written by the real Thomas who was a disciple of Jesus, and it also tells the unlikely story of Jesus raising a bird back to life when he was a child.

I could go on, but I hope the point is clear. There are books outside the Bible that can give us truth, but should they be included in the Bible or should they be given similar authority in our lives? Let’s tackle that.

Second, should non-canonical books be treated with similar authority to the books in the Bible? The short answer is No, but you need to know why. The long answer involves the story of why we treat the books of the Bible with authority in the first place. Once you understand why the Bible has authority, then you understand why these others do not.

Christians treat the Bible with authority for one reason and one reason only. Jesus.

Everything about Christianity revolves around Jesus. It starts with Jesus. Because he rose from the dead, his words and his life have authority. Some of his earliest followers wrote down what he said and did. Some of those followers also wrote down their reflections on the life and significance of Jesus as the church family developed through the first century. Early Christians decided early on that they were going to use a few pieces of criteria to decide which writings should be circulated and preserved. Basically, it came down to these three: (1) Did the author know Jesus directly or have direct access to someone who did? (2) Did the author speak the truth? (3) Did other Christians find the author’s work valuable? Regarding point #2, remember that this is before “the truth” had religious overtones. #2 wasn’t an effort to make sure the different works were consistent with each other. Consider how different Paul’s letter to Galatians feels from James’ letter. Point #2 was a simple evaluation of the trustworthiness of the author. As a result, a small collection of documents started to form and get circulated by the end of the first century, and when John, the last living Apostle, died in the 90s CE, everyone collectively felt that no new documents should be treated with as much importance as the ones they already had.

What about the Old Testament? Well, Jesus was a Jew, and he quoted from the Old Testament. Matthew was a Jew, and in his gospel, he quoted from the Old Testament a lot. In fact, all the first followers of Jesus were Jews, and they were convinced Jesus was the fulfillment of everything God had been doing on earth from Adam to Abraham to Moses to David and beyond. As a result, the first century Christians valued the Hebrew Scriptures just as much if not more than what was being written in their day. Peter compares Paul’s writing to “the other Scriptures” (2Pe 3:16). Paul admonishes Timothy to think of the Scripture as the breath of God (2Ti 3:16). For both Paul and Peter, the only written “Scripture” they had was the Jewish Scripture!

What about the Apocrypha? Apocrypha means two different things. When capitalized, it means the collection of books still retained in Catholic editions of the Bible as a third section between the Old Testament and the New Testament. When not capitalized, it just means “doubtful” or of unknown origin because that’s what the word means. As I said above, there have always been books and documents that existed outside of authoritative scripture, but it’s important to remember that even at the time of Jesus, there was a strong consensus about which books measured and which ones didn’t. For example, no one doubted the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) because they had the authority of Moses. No one doubted the books of history the Jews called “The Former Prophets” from Joshua through 2 Kings, no one doubted the books of wisdom known as “The Writings” going from 1 Chronicles through Song of Solomon and including Lamentations, and no one doubted the prophecies of “The Latter Prophets” from Isaiah through Malachi. At the time of Jesus, these documents were all well established for very specific reasons by the Jewish community, and Jesus reaffirmed all of them in one way or another. However, the ancient scribes who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek also translated some other documents at the same time. Modern Catholics include those extra books in the section they call the Apocrypha. Protestants, however, do not include that section and only concern themselves with the Hebrew Scriptures Jesus and his followers considered authoritative.

What about the other books like the Book of Enoch or the Gospel of Thomas or anything else? These other books are sometimes called pseudepigrapha because their origin is even more doubtful than the books of the Apocrypha. There is a simple way to determine whether these books should be included in our collection of authoritative Scripture. Apply the threefold test: Did they come from someone who knew Jesus or who was close to someone who did? No. For example, the Gospel of Thomas pretends to have been written by Thomas, but it didn’t get written until many years after Thomas was dead, and the book of Enoch doesn’t even claim to know anything about Jesus. Do they tell the truth? No. Both books are dishonest about their authorship, and both books contain claims that fail the truthfulness test. Did the early church consider them helpful and/or authoritative? Jude apparently thought it was worthwhile to quote from the Book of Enoch, and he might actually have thought the book was helpful, but that opinion wasn’t strong enough for him or anyone else to advocate for it’s inclusion in the authoritative texts circulated by Christians.

The bottom line is that these other books have some historical value since they tell us something about the thinking of their day, but they don’t have the same eternal value as the 66 documents we call The Bible.

This is a fascinating question. Let me address it in two different ways. First, I want to describe the best understanding science has about the interplay between the different “hominid” species, and then I’ll get into how this fits into our understanding of the Bible.

A Little Bit of Science

First, let’s get this out of the way. The evidence for slow evolutionary processes leading to the arrival of homo sapiens on Earth is thorough and compelling. The fossil record strongly supports the idea that many human-like species have been on earth going back 2 million years or more and that all but one are extinct today. According to the this article from the Natural History Museum, Neanderthals are the ones we know the most about because of how many artifacts we have from them. They lived from 400,000 to 40,000 years ago mostly in Europe and Asia (including the region around Israel). Homo sapiens have a history in the fossil record that goes back to around 45,000 years ago originating in Africa. However, for at least 5,000 years there was some overlap between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis, and DNA evidence has proven that they interbred. Many people today have up to 2% Neanderthal DNA in them! Therefore, even though they get a different species name, and even though they had significantly different mental capacities than we do, there are many ways Neanderthals should be considered “human.”

Now, let’s go to the Bible.

Revisiting the Creation Account

First off, there are many Bible people who will try to convince you that the Bible is incompatible with evolution because the Bible says God created the world and all the animals in 6 days. I’ve addressed this before here, but I’ll revisit it now too. The people who claim Genesis needs to be understood as 6 literal 24 hour days are misunderstanding two important truths about understanding the Bible. First, when something is portrayed as poetry, read it as poetry. In this case, Moses clearly constructed the creation account of Genesis 1 in a strongly poetic way and the poetic points are clearly understood. The first three days are descriptions of God creating one domain after another followed by three days where God fills that domain. The first day gets light and dark, but day 4 gets a sun, moon, and stars. The second day gets water and sky, and day 5 gets fish and birds. The third day gets dry ground, and day 6 gets the animals who live on dry ground. There is deep significance to this, and Moses was explicit in his construction of this account. If he wanted to give us a purely historical step -by-step approach to the origins of everything, he could have, but he chose to describe it poetically to show us this balance God wired into creation.

Secondly, it’s important to let the details speak for themselves. For example, multiple times in Genesis 1, God gives a command for something else to do the actual work of creation. Consider this:

And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. — Genesis 1:24 NIV

Note the detail. God is commanding the land to do the work of production. In other words, God is giving the power of creation to the Earth itself.

Thirdly, it’s important to not pick and choose which parts of the Bible we read and how we read them to fit our own narrative. For example, many people will say that the word “day” in Genesis 1 has to mean a literal 24 hour period of time both because of the phrase “evening and morning” and also because the simplest way to understand the Hebrew word day is to consider it a single sequence of night and day. (Oops… did you see what I did there? I said the simplest definition of “day” was a sequence of night and “day.” That definition isn’t even internally consistent.) Truthfully, we don’t have to make any appeals to translation issues. All we have to do is keep reading. For some reason, someone put a chapter break after Genesis 1:31 even though the narrative account is clearly supposed to continue in the next verses. Let’s put these verses back together in their context:

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.…
Genesis 1:31-2:4

Hiding there in Genesis 2:4 are two very interesting bits of Hebrew information that don’t translate well into English. First, let me show you that verse in another translation that translates this verse a little more literally.

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven. — Genesis 2:4 NASB

You might be able to see something interesting already, but I want to spell it out for you. Two things are going on. The first thing is that this is another example of chiastic poetic parallelism. I’ve talked about it before, but it basically just means that the author has put the different phrases into a parallel structure that works like an arrow pointing to the most important concept. Additionally, if we go super literal with our translation, we can see the parallels from the original Hebrew even more clearly:

This is the genealogy
— of heaven
—— and earth
——— in their creation
———— in the day
——— the LORD God made them
—— earth
— and heaven

Yes, the word at the beginning is not the word “account” but the word “genealogy” as if Moses were telling us the genealogy of creation itself (important because ancient genealogies were intentionally selective and non-exhaustive accounts of a person’s origin). Secondly, the Hebrew parallel structure puts the singular word DAY right in the middle of the whole thing. Moses is specifically emphasizing that all of this happened in ONE DAY!

You have to know that the word “day” in Genesis 2:4 is the exact same word “day” in all the previous verses. Why would Moses take all this time to tell us God took 6 days to create the world, only to change his mind in the last verse of the account to tell us God took only one day? Clearly, Moses didn’t change his mind. Clearly Moses was using the word “day” metaphorically in 2:4 and some modern translations intentionally change the word “day” to reflect the metaphor in 2:4 by using the word “when” or something else. Nonetheless, good scholarship requires us to wrestle with these questions: If Moses is using “day” literally in days 1-7, why does he use it metaphorically in the very next verse? or If Moses is using the word “day” metaphorically in 2:4 why should we take it literally in the previous verses?

All of that is to reaffirm this simple truth: people might interpret Genesis 1 to be describing a Creation sequence that took 144 hours to complete, but our best evidence is that Moses didn’t understand it that way nor was he expecting his readers to understand it that way. Furthermore, there is no indication whatsoever that “Day 6” happened only 6,000 years ago. I should get into that some other time. If I tackle it now, I’ll never get back to the main question.

Revisiting the Creation of Humans

God did something special when he made humans.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” — Genesis 1:26 NIV

Three things are important to note here. First, God doesn’t command the earth to do it. He intends to take this creative task on himself. God uses the word “we” to refer completely to himself either because he is Trinity or because he is the King and Kings use “we” to refer to themselves. He is not asking the angels to help him. He is going to tackle this job all on his own.

Secondly, God uses a new word that hasn’t shown up yet in this passage: make. The earlier words for God’s creative activity were different. In the Hebrew language, this word is different and is used more like we would use the word craft. I can make a computer do something, I can make a poster, I can make a box out of wood, but replacing any of those instances of make with the word craft and you change the meaning significantly. God intends to specially craft human beings into something special.

Thirdly, God intends to shape human beings according to himself, somehow according to his image. God planned to put something of himself into these creatures that wouldn’t exist anywhere else on earth.

Skipping over to Genesis 2, Moses describes in greater detail what God’s creative crafting activity looked like when he made people:

Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. — Genesis 2:7 NIV

Again, we see a crafting activity. God is doing this work directly with his own hands. Human beings are special acts of creation different from every other creature that was ever made. However, there is something essential to note here. God didn’t start from scratch when he made people. Moses makes sure to tell us that God took dust from the ground… God took what was already on the Earth… God took stuff that already existed and shaped it and breathed into it and made it new.

One More Thing About Human Origins

While Genesis 1 and 2 give us indications about the first creatures who bore the image of God, it does not give us a totally exhaustive account of all human-like beings on the earth. In fact, the Bible clearly indicates that there were other beings on the earth that were sexually compatible with the family of Adam and Eve. Consider the conclusion to the story about Cain:

Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

But the LORD said to him, “Not so ; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. — Genesis 4:13-17 NIV

I have many times been asked about whether Adam and Eve’s children had to marry their siblings. Christians generally take the approach that since Adam and Eve were made by God, they were genetically perfect, and therefore, their children could interbreed without consequence. However, we have a better answer. Notice that Cain is afraid that God is sending him away from his family, but that he’s also afraid he will meet people out there who will kill him! Cain feels safe with his family, but he expects there to be non-family members out there who are violent. God agrees.

Now, this is one of those details we should not avoid.

If you believe that Adam and Eve were the first and only human-like creatures on the earth during their day, then you will conclude that Abel and Cain were the third and fourth human-like creatures on earth, and then you will conclude that when Cain kills Abel, there are only 3 human-like creatures on the earth, and they all know each other. However, God promises to put a mark on Cain so that when he meets a stranger that stranger will be deterred from messing with Cain. The only way for Cain’s fear to make sense and for God’s actions to make sense is if there were in fact other human-like creatures out there in the world who were violent and a potential threat to Cain.

That’s where Cain got his wife… out there away from his family. Furthermore, why would Moses tell us Cain was building a city if Cain and his wife were living by themselves in the wilderness!?

Additionally, the story around the time of Noah also gives us interesting information:

When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. — Genesis 6:1-4 NIV

Somehow the “sons of God” began to marry and have children with “daughters of humans” and also a group of human-like creatures known as the “Nephilim” were on the earth who were “heroes of old, men of renown.” There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on here.

First, there are two sexually compatible groups of people on earth. There are the “sons of God” and there are the “daughters of humans.” Some people through history have claimed that the “sons of God” means angelic beings. They claim that angels came and slept with women and had children with them. However, that doesn’t make sense because Jesus tells us later on that angels don’t and can’t be married (that is, angels are not sexual beings), and even if they were somehow, they couldn’t produce human children.

In fact, the best way to understand this story is that “sons of God” refers to the descendants of Adam (see Luke 3:38 and Genesis 5:1 where we are reminded that Adam came from God) and “human” refers to the descendants of whatever other human-like creatures were on earth at the time. However you understand it, you need to conclude that on planet Earth, there were at least two distinctly different but sexually compatible groups of people. Additionally, one of those groups gets a name: Nephilim. Finally, Genesis 6 refers to the Nephilim as “heroes of old,” which means that in the days of Noah, they already had legends and stories of mighty men from previous ages!

Finally back to Neanderthals

Let’s put these pieces together.

The Bible tells us that God is responsible for creation, that the process of creation involved the Earth itself having the power to produce life, and that the process of creation took an unknown amount of time.

Secondly, the Bible tells us that Adam and Eve were specially created by God to be his representatives on the Earth, but that God also used some pre-existing material to create them both.

Thirdly, the Bible indicates that Adam and Eve were not the only human-like beings on the planet at the time.

Fourthly, the Bible indicates that Adam and Eve and their descendants were sexually compatible with the other human-like beings on the planet.

Fifthly, there were at least three different categories of sexually compatible human-like beings on the planet at some point in human history: sons of God, humans, and Nephilim.

Additionally, science has identified three categories of human, Neanderthals, Homo sapiens, and Denisovans, who were sexually compatible. See this article.

Conclusion: Although the Bible doesn’t give any direct information about Neanderthals or Denisovans, it does indicate an understanding that Adam and Eve were progenitors of the image of God in humans but not the first version of humanity or the only version of humanity on the planet. Furthermore, just because humans today go by the species name Homo sapiens, that is no guarantee that Adam and Eve would have been called Homo sapiens. Adam and Eve might have been more like Neanderthals or Denisovans. We simply don’t know.

How old was David when he struck down the giant? When he was anointed?

The only definitive age given for David in the Bible is that he was 30 when he became king and he reigned 40 years. His age at his anointing and when he fought Goliath are not given. However, we have some clues. We know that everyone considered him a “boy” and that he was tending the sheep instead of fighting in the army, and we know that his three oldest brothers were all in the army (meaning they were over 20), but that there were other brothers older than David who were not in the army. David also had sisters who could have been older than him. In other words, if his mom never had twins, David’s age would likely have been 13-15 when he fought Goliath. Here are two articles on the topic: here and here.

How many years was Saul king?

Saul was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned over Israel forty-two years. — 1 Samuel 13:1 NIV

What happened to the Ark of the Covenant?

No one knows. Rumors abound. The last time it is mentioned in the history of Israel is in 2 Chronicles 35:3 when Josiah told the priests to put the ark back into the Temple. Where was it before? We don’t know that either. After that, there is no mention of it again in any historical context. Jeremiah prophesied in Jeremiah 3:16 that there would come a day when people would completely forget about the ark. “…it will not be missed…,” he says.

There are multiple times in history when the ark could have been lost or destroyed because there were multiple times when the Temple holding the ark was destroyed:

• When Jerusalem was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, he took all the valuable things from the Temple before destroying it. A box covered in gold would certainly have been considered valuable! However, when this is described in 2 Kings 24:13, it says Nebuchadnezzar took “all the gold articles,” but the ark is not mentioned.
• When the Persian king Cyrus sends Ezra back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, he also sent with him “the articles belonging to the temple of the LORD, which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:7). Ezra records a list of those articles, and once again, the ark is not mentioned.
• Years later, the temple built by Ezra was destroyed by a Greek general named Antiochus.
• Later, Herod the Great rebuilt the temple.
• Later still, the Romans destroyed it for the last time.

The ark could have been lost or destroyed at any one of those moments, and a lot of speculation exists out there.

The most popular speculative idea is that the Jews hid the ark before Nebuchadnezzar breached the walls of Jerusalem and before the temple was ransacked, and that it is now either lost or that some secret society has been guarding the ark for all these years ready to bring it back out if/when the temple is rebuilt again. Personally, I don’t buy it. If the Jewish people knew the ark had been spared either by them or by Nebuchadnezzar in some Babylonian storehouse, then 70 years later when they rebuilt the temple, they would certainly have returned the ark to its rightful place. I think the ark was destroyed in Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest. Either he left it in the temple when he burned the temple down, or he took it back to Babylon with him and dismantled it there.

Whatever happened, Jeremiah’s prophecy came true. Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest led to the destruction of the ark and the people didn’t miss it. They never mentioned it again either in the time of Ezra when the temple was rebuilt or in the time of Jesus when the curtain in the temple was torn in two.

Who replaced or followed Samuel?

It depends.

Regarding Samuel as the leader of Israel like the judges in the book of Judges, no one. Samuel is the last person who fits that category. After Samuel, the nation transitioned from “judges” to kings.

Regarding Samuel as a prophet/seer who represented God to people, many people came after him. David had encounters with a prophet named Gad and a prophet named Nathan. Many other prophets are also described in the Bible: Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.

Regarding Samuel as a priestly figure, even though Samuel wasn’t actually a priest, he performed some priestly duties like doing sacrifices. That’s probably because Eli wasn’t a good priest and his sons weren’t good either, and God killed them all. It might have taken time for another priest to rise up, but by the time of David, we know there were other priests like Ahimelech, Abiathar and others.

What is your favorite letter of the alphabet and why is it E?

Jessica, our keyboardist loves the letter “E” and a couple weeks ago, I was kinda teasing her about it, so she asked this great question and a number of you voted for it. I don’t think my favorite letter would be E. I mean, E is totally the most useful of all the letters, but I don’t think I can call it my favorite. I’m a pretty big fan of the alphabet, and I’m a fan of alphabets in other languages too. But I think perhaps my favorite letter of all time is ?.

Have you had a Crumbl Cookie? If so what’s your favorite flavor?

I have not had a crumble cookie yet. (Doing a Google now…) Based on their menu, I’d order the Brownie Batter or the Peanut Butter Cookies and Cream. However, I’ll be honest, none of them really appeal to me. I’m a fan of trying new things, so I’ll totally eat any of them, but none of them meet my personal criteria:

• My Chocolate Chip Cookie: crispy on the outside, fully cooked all the way through, semi-sweet (not milk) chocolate chips and walnut pieces.
• My Oatmeal Cookie: just a hint of cinnamon and YES RAISINS.
• My Peanut Butter Cookie: should be made with chunky or crunchy peanut butter and should hold together when dipped in milk
• And, while I’m on the topic, brownies should not be gooey in the middle, nor should cookies.
• And, while I’m on the topic, I will still eat any cookie or brownie whether it meets my criteria or not.

What’s your favorite Starbuck’s order?

Americano is the only black coffee I appreciate from Starbucks.

Flat White is my favorite milk drink.

Never syrup.

In the past, I’ve been known to order a cup of steamed milk and a tea bag whereupon I would make my own chai tea for half as much as their Chai Latte.

What’s your favorite board game?

It’s not a board game per se, but I really like Munchkin. My second favorite is called Pente.

Who is your favorite person in 1 and 2 Samuel?

Personally, I think Samuel is a spiritual behemoth, but I relate more to David. From the time I was a child, it was always my ambition to be known as a person after God’s own heart. Also, I’m a huge fan of Abigail and Jonathan.

If somebody gives you Playdoh, do you first make a ball, a snake, or something else?

Squoosh it first between the fingers, then ball it up again because you feel guilty for the squoosh, then flatten it into a circle, then roll it up like a cinnamon roll, and keep rolling until it becomes a snake.

LCC Questions

What is your vision for the church this year?

Ahh… you’ll have to come to our January series to get the vision for next year! But for real, those who have been part of LCC for years know that I don’t talk a lot about “vision” for the church because I think a lot of churches do “vision” wrong. A lot of churches set goals for attendance and offerings and all that, but my hope and my prayer has always been and always will be that we would help people follow Jesus. It’s simple. It doesn’t have the flash of a take-the-hills kind of vision statement, but it’s what Jesus told us to do. My vision is that each member of the church would love Jesus and follow him so authentically in the world that the world takes notice. My vision is that each member of the church would so reflect the life of Jesus that when they ask their friend to come to church, their friend is eager to say yes.

Can the congregation request songs for the band to play?

Yes, feel free to send me any ideas you have, old or new. I can be reached most easily right from the left menu of our church app.

Any news on what is going on with the buildings next door?

We sold them last Spring! We simply didn’t have enough money to renovate them, and they were becoming a financial burden on us, so we just sold them in the springtime.

On Sunday, we had another Live Q&A session, and this time I think I got more deep doctrinal questions than ever before. Because of the depth of the questions and also because many questions came in that never made it to the screen, I decided to address them all here on my blog.

Here are all the questions I’ll be addressing in the next few blog posts (Note, some of them are ones I also addressed live, but I’m including them here because I want to give an answer with a bit more precision):

Questions From Sunday

Personal / Silly Questions

• What is your favorite letter of the alphabet and why is it E?
• Have you had a crumble cookie? If so what’s your favorite flavor?
• What’s your favorite Starbuck’s order?
• What’s your favorite board game?
• Who is your favorite person in 1 and 2 Samuel?
• If somebody gives you Playdoh, do you first make a ball, a snake, or something else?

LCC Questions

• What is your vision for the church this year?
• Can the congregation request songs for the band to play?
• Any news on what is going on with the buildings next door?

Practical Questions

• How can we engage in evangelism without judgment and hypocrisy?
• When pursuing God, what are the key practices to pursuit? Is there a difference between pursuit and rote obedience?
• Why do many churches not offer an alter call—an invitation to come pray, leave burdens, respond if the Holy Spirit has prompted and allow the lost to come when convicted to further learn or step into salvation?
• In the Great Commission, Jesus commands the disciples to teach the Nations to obey Jesus’ commands. Are there any examples of what it looks like to do this practically without coming across as self-righteous and judgmental?

Historical Questions

• How old was David when he struck down the giant?
• How old was David when he was anointed king?
• How many years was Saul king?
• Can we trust apocryphal books like the Book of Enoch?
• What happened to the Ark of the Covenant?
• Who replaced or followed Samuel?
• Where do Neanderthals fit in a Biblical context?

Doctrinal Questions

• Do pets go to heaven?
• What does purgatory mean?
• What does it mean “to bind and loose”?
• Truly, what does it take to go to heaven?
• The Bible talks about both predestination and free will but those two are paradoxical in a way. Do you think that people really have free will in relation to salvation or have God’s people been chosen and set in stone since the beginning?
• What does it mean for the Holy Spirit to be upon someone?
• Is being angry with God a sin? What about being angry yet humble?
• The world today is do broken and events are aligning to set the stage for fulfillment of Bible prophecy. The next event is the rapture why are so many churches not responding with urgency to reach the lost?
• Who/what is the antichrist?
• Does LCC believe Hell is a literal place and is there a spirit of urgency to tell His truth to those that are lost?
• 1 Samuel 15:35 says God regretted making Saul king over Israel. If God is perfect and His choices are best, then how can God have regret?
  If it’s a sin to kill, then why is there so much killing in the Bible?
• Is believers baptism necessary to receive complete salvation and receive your spiritual gifts?

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1-2 Samuel

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 2 Samuel 22:1-23:7

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 2 Samuel 21:1-14 & 24

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 2 Samuel 21 & 23

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 2 Samuel 15-20

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 2 Samuel 13-14

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 2 Samuel 11-12

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 2 Samuel 8-10

Let’s recall our four governing questions:

Which values are central to the Christian life and which are peripheral?

Which central values are internal to the Church only and which should Christians promote in the society at large?

How should individuals and churches promote them?

Where is there room for disagreement?

So far, I have addressed the first three. Then, in the previous chapter, I took a bit of a detour to lay some groundwork for the final question. That groundwork was a more detailed and more personal assessment of the ways my white evangelical Christian community has turned peripheral issues into central issues. I called them idols, and by calling them idols, I have most certainly raised the ire of many evangelicals. Many of my brothers and sisters in evangelicalism consider one or more of them central issues. They are hot-button topics and have already divided me from many people in my own tradition. But if Christians are supposed to be united as the one Body of Christ, should we allow these issues to divide us? Was it proper for me to bring up such divisive issues in such a divisive way? Isn’t the mission of the church to get people saved and not deal with all these politics and matters of opinion? This is our final question:

Where is there room for disagreement?

I think it will help us to understand the difference between the Church’s overall mission and an individual church’s strategy. In my view, there is no room for disagreement over the mission of the Church, but there is a great deal of room for differences over any specific church’s strategy.

Mission

Now, it’s understandable that every church will have different words in whatever it calls its mission statement or a slightly different understanding of its mission in the world, but no authentically New Testament church would disagree that essential mission of the church can be encompassed by the two passages we call “The Great Commandment” and “The Great Commission.”

In Matthew’s account, these two concepts are recorded like this:

The Great Commandment

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:37-40 NIV

The Great Commission

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:19-20 NIV

The central components of the mission of the church are loving God, loving people, sharing the gospel, and developing disciples (followers) to do the same. All the other instructions Jesus gave—to live in purity, to be salt and light in the world, to care for the weak, to speak out against hypocrisy, and more—fall under the umbrella of these two. However, it would be wrong of any church or any Christian to accept these two basic statements only in principle without ever letting them form the core of their actual behavior. A church cannot embrace a mission that says, “Love your neighbor as yourself” if that church isn’t actually doing anything to love their neighbors. A church that isn’t being salt and light is failing in its calling to make disciples who look like Jesus. Therefore, even though these two passages form the foundation of any Christian’s and any church’s understanding of its mission, the mission of that church cannot stop with a doctrinal understanding of those passages. Each church must adopt a strategy regarding these statements of mission, and that strategy must encompass all that I have covered so far—a gospel that is both accurate and transformative, an activism that properly represents Christ to the world, and a discipleship that tears down earthly idols and all allegiances that fight against our allegiance to Christ. Because strategy is intrinsically contextual, it will be different for different churches and different individual Christians, but strategy that doesn’t address our mission or its intrinsic components is bad strategy. What we need is a thorough way of assessing our strategy in light of our mission with guidance on how to apply it differently in different contexts.

Strategy

Early on in the book of Acts it becomes clear that certain aspects of the life of the church were open to the judgment of the early leaders. They developed practical strategies regarding the selection of new leaders, caring for the poor in their congregations, responding to persecution, welcoming Gentiles and more.

Consider the problem of selecting a replacement for Judas:

Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”

Acts 1:21-22 NIV

Nothing in Jesus’ teaching gave any guidelines regarding how to replace Judas. They simply came up with their own strategy and acted on it.

We see it again in Acts 6:

In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”

Acts 6:1-4 NIV

Again, there was no guidance given by Jesus regarding how they should make sure Jewish widows and Grecian widows were treated equitably. They knew that equity was important, and that was based on all they had been taught, but they had to come up with their own implementation strategy to make it happen.

Then, as we already have seen in Acts 15, the leaders of the church collectively developed a strategy for how to welcome Gentiles into the faith even though doing so was violating the existing value system (circumcision) of many Christians. Their strategy for the Gentiles discarded circumcision, but included a recommendation against eating food sacrificed to idols. That was a sensible strategy for the time, but it clearly wasn’t universal because much later Paul taught people that eating food sacrificed to idols was no big deal!

Furthermore, at the end of Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas have a disagreement not about the need to disciple people or to spread the gospel but about which of those two things they would do next—which strategy they should employ. Paul wanted to get back on the road, spreading the gospel far and wide, but Barnabas wanted to get back to discipling one specific person. They both had the same mission to make disciples who looked like Jesus, but the strategies were incompatible. As a result, they went in different directions, and we now praise God for Barnabas’ transformative work in the life of John Mark as well as the amazing work he did through the subsequent missions work of Paul. Without the different strategies, one of those two things might never have happened.

The early church is filled with examples like this where strategies are developed for the context and different contexts result in different strategies. Therefore, strategies and emphases can be different for different people and different churches in different contexts. Nevertheless, all of the strategies in the book of Acts are still trying to balance the fundamental values and principles of following Jesus, and therefore, we should keep some guiding principles in mind as we attempt to develop our own strategies in our context today.

STRATEGY GUIDELINES

First, and most obviously, Christians and churches should employ strategies that recognize and live out the key values taught in Scripture and identified above. A strategy that attempts to advocate for environmental concerns while not addressing human dignity is not a good strategy. Likewise, a strategy that allows a Christian to avoid personal holiness while pursuing an activism goal is not a good strategy.

Second, Christians and churches should be clear about which values are internal and which values should be promoted in the wider world. Any strategy that knowingly or unknowingly attempts to press an internal value upon the broader society is a bad strategy. On the flip side, any strategy that prevents an individual Christian or any church from embracing proper Christian Activism is a bad strategy.

Third, regardless of all other strategic choices, Christians and churches should categorically reject false idols and their doctrines and never allow them to influence their strategy or infect their mission. It’s desperately important that Christians remove the idols and temples from their lives, and therefore, it’s additionally important that we remove them from our strategies. Any infiltration of an idol into our strategy will simultaneously reinforce it to ourselves and our fellow believers while also misrepresent our God to the watching world! Not only do the idols lead us astray from the true God but they also dilute or dissolve our witness to the world of the one true God.

That still leaves a broad swath of room for disagreement over strategic decisions like how to do children’s ministry, how to do music, how to handle staff payments, how to handle building issues and more, but these are all mostly internal strategic decisions. What the evangelical church has been afraid to truly address is the strategy regarding the world around us and our interaction with that world. If our mission is a calling to a uniquely Christian Activism, then we must develop strategies around that calling.

These strategies will also be different for each and every Christian and each and every church. And that’s OK! So long as a church or Christian is striving to live out the mission, honor the key values of Scripture, keep lines of demarcation between what is internal to the church and what is external, and reject the temptation toward idolatry, that church has employed an acceptable strategy. It might not be the most effective or the most desirable, but that doesn’t invalidate it as a God-honoring strategy!

One of the most important realizations about strategy is that strategies are not only contextual to the church but they are also contextual to the moment. In other words, the strategy for today doesn’t need to match the strategy for tomorrow. Specifically, it can be helpful to indicate that in the formation of the strategy itself.

For example, rather than asking the big, bold, and probably impossible to answer question, “What is the best way for our society to elevate human dignity and justice?” consider asking this question: “What is the next way for our society to elevate human dignity and justice?” or even “What is the next way for our church to get involved in the advocacy for human dignity and justice?” In other words, rather than asking a question about what is best, simply ask the question of what could or should be next for you.

This gives individual Christians and the larger church community incredible freedom to intersect with society over politically charged issues.

• What is the next way for our society to address the inequalities of racism as they are displayed in police-inflicted injury?
• What is the next way for our society to advocate for the cause of the unborn and the life of the living?
• What is the next way in our society to elevate truth and beauty and work against the tide of misinformation and vitriol?
• What is the next way for our society to address climate change?
• Who is the next person we should trust in leadership regarding these and other issues?

These questions are not uniquely Christian. They might be asked by anyone and they might be answered by anyone. Nevertheless, we ask them because these are the questions that Christians are uniquely motivated to ask. The world of economic and political power has no reason to ask questions about human dignity, moral integrity, or environmental concern, but as we have seen, these issues have always been fundamentally Christian concerns and therefore, if no one else in the society asks these questions, Christians still must.

Additionally, these questions illustrate by their very wording that they are impermanent. A Christian might answer the question one way this year and a different way next year, and that’s perfectly fine. Two churches or two Christians might disagree over their answers to these questions this year, but next year, they might find alignment. Strategy is fluid and time-bound, and therefore asking the question with that in mind helps us greatly in determining our answers. Christians will disagree over the answers. Again, that’s OK. When it comes to answering these questions, there is a huge space for disagreement, and it need not divide Christians. We can be united over the cause of human dignity and justice in our world even if we disagree over the next course of action to be taken.

But let us continue to ask the questions.

Sometimes, Christians will find large consensus over one of these questions, and when we are so united, we will have significant political power. But we need to remember that political power is not our goal. Our goal should be to answer questions such as these in a way that honors our Savior and then to live out our answers to the best of our ability. And “living them out” in a society that promotes freedom of expression and the democratic process just might involve Christians and churches exercising those freedoms. Running for office or embracing activism just might be the correct strategic decision for a Christian to make even if other Christians would employ different strategies. Each individual Christian and each individual church must ask the question about strategy and come to a decision about it, but we also need to give each other the space to come up with different answers.

Acceptable Strategies

We might say there is space for different strategies, but we still feel like ours is the only way or the best way, so let’s be specific and recognize at least three general strategies a Christian or church might take.

The Edification Strategy

Taking their cue from passages like this:

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Ephesians 4:29-32 NIV

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Colossians 4:5-6 NIV

Some churches and some Christians will decide to stay fully silent on these issues nearly all of the time in order to focus on encouragement. They will realize that certain issues are so fraught and so loaded with prejudices and connotations that they will avoid these issues almost always unless the context for addressing them is maximally conducive to “building people up.” In general, they will ignore these issues and use their limited resources to proclaim the most encouraging and winsome aspects of Christianity. They might not directly talk about the Christian idols, but they will avoid any expression of those idols. They might not talk about the problems with political allegiances, but they will avoid any talk that encourages political allegiances. They might not discuss the societal ills of the day, but they will do work that addresses them somehow. Still, when the time is right and the context is one of edification, and the opportunity is at hand, they will make the most of that moment to address issues of human dignity and justice, elevate truth and beauty, address environmental issues, and even discuss the qualifications of potential political leaders.

The Education Strategy

Recognizing that sometimes the truth is hard to hear, and taking their cue from passages like this:

Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses….

Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice….

The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.

Proverbs 27:5-6, 9, 12 NIV

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work…. Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

Ephesians 4:14-16, 25 NIV

Some churches and some Christians will decide to take the approach of honest and open internal discipleship and public non-activism. They will recognize that sometimes truth hurts, but it is always good. They will openly discuss controversial matters, sharing their honest answers and welcoming contrary opinions. However, they will not go silent when truth is under attack. They will be unafraid to call sin sin even when that sin is coming from within their own ranks or from their brothers and sisters in the larger body of Christ. They will not shy away from opportunities to speak about the moral issues God desires for all people of all time even in the public sphere and even when it is unpopular. They will in fact encourage people to pursue the truth wherever it may be found, but recognizing their own propensity to error, they will only rarely and cautiously ever advocate any specific action in the public sphere. They will talk about Christian values, both those for the church and those for the world, but they will focus on individual transformation, not any specific public activism.

The Prophetic Strategy

The goal of the prophets of old was never to give information, but to provide a voice of warning and a call for social transformation. Taking their cue from passages like these:

Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.

Isaiah 58:9-10 NIV

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

Matthew 3:7-10 NIV

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Matthew 25:40 NIV

Some churches and some Christians will decide to take the approach of fluid activism. They will expose the failings of themselves and their Christian brothers and sisters to the light of Scripture calling them to repentance. They will personally and corporately embrace a stance of activism in this world that represents the heart of God for his people and for the wider world. They will answer the preceding questions definitively and promote specific and concrete action. They will promote certain actions for fellow believers and other actions for the wider world, but maintaining humility, they will continually reevaluate their approach in light of the values of Scripture and never lock themselves into a specific political platform or framework.

Conclusion

Any of these strategies or even others might be God’s desire for a particular Christian or particular church, and we should all extend the freedom to each other to adopt the strategy that makes the most sense to them in the context where God has placed them. There is a lot of room for disagreement regarding how we answer the various “political” questions and how we act in response to those answers, but the answers need not divide Christians or make us antagonistic toward each other.

However, as I bring this to a close, I want to point out that two strategic extremes are inappropriate for any Christian or church that has taken the previous lessons to heart.

• On the one hand, churches and Christians that never address these questions in any public way are hiding their light under a bowl and failing to fulfill their mission in the modern world.
• On the other hand, churches and Christians that align themselves fully with a specific political framework and adopt an activist mentality from that perspective are extinguishing the unique light of Christ in them in favor of the whims of the current societal moment.

Our calling in this world is to embrace the gospel deeply into our own personal lives and in the Christian community where we worship, to pursue the Great Commission and the Great Commandment in full view of the world, to live out our Christian values with integrity and authenticity, and to call the world higher to the fundamental principles of God’s Kingdom that always and forever transcend our human differences.

May we, as followers of Jesus, the only true Savior of the world, discard our idols, embrace our mission, and be creatively strategic, using whatever means we can to display the glorious light of our God before a desperately dark world!

I ended the previous chapter with this phrase:

“As Christians, we rise above such petty, temporary, earthly allegiances because we have a higher calling for a higher purpose from a higher authority.”

That’s a strong statement, and it’s biblically true, but I’m not seeing many Christians actually living it out especially in the political climate of the current day. Do we actually recognize God is the highest authority, or have we allowed other authorities to take over? I’m convinced a lot of the disagreement Christians face these days regarding social or political issues arises simply because we have given too much authority to voices outside the clear teaching of Scripture. By listening to the wrong voices or by giving them too much authority in our lives, we have allowed peripheral matters to be treated as if they were central. Over the past few chapters, I have explored this a bit as I attempted to unpack the difference between what is truly central to the Christian faith in contrast to what is merely peripheral. So far, I have considered the central moral principles in Scripture, and I have mentioned briefly a few of the more obviously peripheral issues in our world today; but I haven’t yet touched on any of the really hot-button issues among Christians yet because in my experience, they are too deeply ingrained in the hearts of too many people, and I thought it would be better to ease into this discussion more slowly. However, I think the groundwork has been done, and it’s time to press on.

In this chapter, I’m going to address the seriously destructive misalignments between the moral opinions of modern evangelicals and the actual teaching of Scripture. I’ll frame everything from the perspective of my own experience in the evangelical church tradition, so there is no guarantee that you have personally experienced all these things I’ll discuss, but I assure you they are real and should be confronted by those who love Scripture more than the whims of modern society. Additionally, the criticism I’m about to offer my own tradition is not based on things expressly taught in evangelical churches (in most cases), but on the values that arise from the way central doctrines have been explained and illustrated. Not many churches in my tradition teach these issues as central but in practice, they are treated as central, so central and so deceptive in fact that I believe they are rightly called “idols.”

Let me be clear about that word. Recall that an idol is not necessarily another God. An idol is a representation of a god or even of the one true God. When Aaron made the Golden Calf, he didn’t call it “The Calf” or “Baal” or any other name. He called it Yahweh, rendered “LORD” in this translation.

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD.”

Exodus 32:5 NIV

The idol wasn’t the representation of another god, it was a false representation of the true God. I’m using the word “idol” in the same way here. I’m not asserting that Christians have begun to worship these other things as replacements for God; I’m asserting that the evangelical Christianity of my upbringing has latched on to certain things as representative of God and his will even though they are demonstrably not. For many Christians in my tradition, the things I will address are considered obvious and essential components of God’s will, but I’m calling them out here as false representations, idols that have distracted us away from the true God.

To begin with, I want to start by being even more clear about the nature of my background in what is called the evangelical church tradition. I will be describing my own experience in my own personal church tradition based on my years of church attendance, academic study, and personal ministry, but my understanding of my tradition is also deeply informed by conversations I have had with people outside my tradition. Furthermore, intense Scripture study has led me to see my own tradition with new eyes. I hope you will be able to see your own story in some of what I share.

My Church Tradition: Evangelical

The overall word used to describe my tradition is “evangelical”, but to be more specific, I was raised in, educated in, and am employed in the world of middle-class, white, evangelical, conservative North American Christianity, and all those words are important.

• Middle-class, or even more accurately, upper middle-class. I went to private schools. The church I was raised in owned buildings, operated a school, and paid multiple full-time staff. The congregations in which I move are predominately populated by people who own their own homes, have full-time jobs with benefits like vacations and health insurance, drive multiple cars, and never question where their next meal will come from.
• White. The church circles in which I move are overabundantly populated by white people. Black people and people of any ethnicity other than what passes for “white” are a rarity in my church circles. There are cultural and historical reasons for that, and I don’t have time to dig into those reasons, but it remains a simple fact that my church experience is disproportionately white.
• Evangelical. The churches in my circle have a commitment to the proclamation of the gospel which in Greek is the word euangelion and is the source-word for our self-identification. The word was used for hundreds of years to refer to a gospel-focused Protestantism; however, our modern use of the word can be traced directly to a movement in the early 20th century that was known first as “Neo-Evangelical” and that later merged with the “Fundamentalists” to form a broader movement called simply “Evangelical.” (Sadly, I only recently learned of the massive racial and political motivations behind that merger.)
• Conservative. The churches in my circle have a commitment to the integrity, authority, and infallibility of Scripture. According to this viewpoint, since the Bible is the only true authority and since its truth is already written, true believers should be focused on conserving the truth. In this context, progressive and liberal are often considered bad words. Also, for my tradition, the words “conservative” and “liberal” are supposed to communicate something specific to biblical interpretation and Christian doctrine, but far too often, they carry their political meanings as well. As a result, for churches in my tradition, political conservatism is generally approved of while political liberalism is disdained.

I don’t have a problem implicitly with any of these words in bold. It’s not wrong to be middle-class. It’s not wrong to be white or to have been raised in a predominately white environment. It’s not wrong to have a high esteem for the message of the gospel or the authority of Scripture. Nevertheless, as you can already tell by the way I have described the terms above, I have come to realize that each of those concepts is pregnant with one or more implicit, insidious idols and that my church tradition in birthing and nurturing those idols uncritically has given birth to others as well. Some arise directly from the doctrines of evangelicalism but even more grow out of the overall culture of evangelicalism. This idolatry is unacceptable, and it’s time for us to identify these idols by name, so we can repent of our collective sin. Now, since I am still in the process of learning, I imagine that I am also still blind to some of my own, but God has given me the grace to at least identify those that follow.

Naming the Idols

Individual Responsibility

One of the core doctrines of evangelicalism is that each individual is accountable directly to God for his or her own spiritual condition. No one is saved on the basis of their community or their family. Each individual must respond as an individual to the call of God on their life to receive Jesus as their Lord and personal savior. Consider Jesus’ own words on the topic:

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. “… For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

John 3:3, 16-18 NIV

Jesus taught that individual people have personal accountability before God and a personal responsibility to respond to the Son with faith, repentance, and conversion. Many other verses in the New Testament reaffirm this; however, evangelicals take it further than Jesus did.

The notion of individual accountability mixes perfectly with the middle-class individualism of the American Dream. From a middle-class or especially upper middle-class upbringing, one can easily adopt the belief that in this country, effort and commitment lead to prosperity. Prosperity, the dream says, is available to all so long as they are willing to put in the work. Once combined with the evangelical emphasis on personal accountability, this develops into an idol I call Individual Responsibility. Put another way, this belief says that people are responsible for their circumstances, they get what they deserve, societal forces play a minimal role, and programs like welfare and affirmative action exist in violation of this principle.

However, Individual Responsibility is an idol because it sounds like it represents God when it really doesn’t. Individual Responsibility is an unbiblical concept and actually distorts the teaching of Scripture. Responsibility is not the same as accountability. Even though Scripture teaches us that we are accountable to God for our lives, it never claims that everything in our lives is our responsibility. In fact, Jesus proves the opposite. There’s this famous story of Jesus healing a blind man when before the man was healed, the disciples asked Jesus whether it was his own sin or the sin of his parents that led to his blindness, and Jesus said it was neither.

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

John 9:1-3 NIV

According to Jesus, neither the man nor his parents were responsible for his blindness. Some things, even negative things, just are the way they are. Maybe it’s because God has a plan in mind to bring some miraculous healing, but maybe it’s because the world is broken. Scripture affirms that people will be held accountable for their choices, but they are not always responsible for their circumstances or outcomes. In a moment, we will see how destructive this idol can be.

Color Blindness

Another fundamental evangelical doctrine is that every single person is equally accountable to an objective God. Since each of us has choices to make, and since each of us will be accountable for those choices, evangelicals presuppose that circumstances do not change our moral or spiritual obligations. Therefore, since all people have equal standing before God, and since circumstances do not modify our moral obligations, the natural conclusion is that earthly attributes like hair color, skin color, economic standing, family of origin, and more are irrelevant to your spiritual condition, and since they are irrelevant to your spiritual condition, they should be treated as irrelevant by you and by the people around you. Evangelicals therefore tend to reject the significance of these earthly attributes and promote the idol of Color Blindness, pretending to be racially enlightened by adopting Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words that people should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the “content of their character” while rejecting nearly everything else he said or stood for. I want to be clear that the idea of Color Blindness comes out of a self-righteous response to racism and that’s why “Color” is the operative word, but I also want to be clear that evangelicals apply this concept liberally to all attributes of all people. Evangelicals advocate Color Blindness when it comes to race, gender, (dis)ability, or any other external thing. To support it, they even quote verses like the following:

for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:27-28 NIV

The pious evangelical response to this verse is that race, gender, and other “external” attributes of a person are spiritually insignificant and therefore should be considered socially insignificant. The practical outflow is that these “external” attributes are ignored or dismissed. Additionally, by dismissing these attributes of people, evangelicals build for themselves a self-righteous monoculture that looks indistinguishable from the majority culture.

Let me illustrate how this worked in my life. From my overly white upbringing, I accepted the belief that racism was only a problem when Black people made it a problem. In my church context, if a Black person showed up, they were welcomed into the church family and treated just like everyone else. Therefore, I took it as proof that my church context wasn’t racist. Black people chose to join us (rarely, but they did), so clearly they didn’t have a problem with us, and of course, we didn’t have a problem with a new family joining our church.  We loved it when people chose to join our church, but we were also clear that by choosing us, any family was affirming us and declaring a desire to assimilate with us. Basically, as long as a family was willing to become like the rest of us, we were eager to receive them! On top of that, if a Black family chose to join us, they were expressing their approval of us, and so I became convinced that racism wasn’t a problem for us. Additionally, I thought these same principles applied to the broader world around me. I believed that if people in our society could just “get past race,” we would all find harmony! The idol of Color Blindness whispered into my ears that if Black people could just get over the past and choose to assimilate into the wider (white) culture and take on some Individual Responsibility, they would come to see that racism doesn’t exist here.

Color Blindness empowers prejudice by giving the majority a “moral” reason for discriminating against the minority.

However, I have since learned that Color Blindness is actually itself an expression of racism. Color Blindness is expecting the minority to assimilate and accommodate itself to the majority. Color Blindness disregards the experience of the minority and is dehumanizing to them by ignoring a core component of their identity. Color Blindness then judges the minority for failing to assimilate or for celebrating their uniqueness, and therefore Color Blindness empowers prejudice by giving the majority a “moral” reason for discriminating against the minority.

But more than all that, for a Christian, Color Blindness is an idol because it misrepresents God’s love for the people he has made. People who aren’t like me have experiences that are unlike mine, and I will never understand them until I recognize that my perspective is limited. Any attempt at Color Blindness will always result in me viewing their experience through my perspective, and that is intrinsically dehumanizing and delegitimizing to them. By nature, this attitude rejects the image of God in them and it prevents me from loving them as myself. Furthermore, Color Blindness does not represent the character of God or his will for humanity. God created the diversity of human biology and sympathizes with us in the diversity of human experience. The Incarnation of Christ proves that God accommodates himself to us and enters into our experience. Therefore, rather than ignoring or disregarding a person’s racial experience, love calls me to enter it as much as I can so that I can develop sympathy, compassion, and a Christlike incarnational relationship with them.

Spiritual First

This idea might be new to you, but it’s core to the white evangelical experience. From my evangelical upbringing, I adopted a belief that what matters most of all is the salvation of souls by proclaiming the message of Jesus and teaching people they must make a personal and individual decision to embrace it. When I would hear another church (usually Black or “liberal”) talk about something political or mention a politician by name, I would feel disgust over their apparent rejection of the centrality of the gospel. They were watering down the gospel or getting distracted from the gospel by getting involved in merely political issues. In my context, this manifests as an idol I now call Spiritual First. The Spiritual First idol tells us that spiritual issues matter so much more than other issues we can effectively ignore all the other issues until the spiritual issues are resolved. In practice, it says worshipping God, getting people saved and motivating them to get other people saved is the only real concern. Everything else is merely “political” and not worth our time.

As before, this is an idol because it misrepresents God. As important as the salvation of a soul may be, it is not the only thing on the heart of God. Throughout the gospels, Jesus talks about forgiveness, salvation and eternal life quite a bit, but it is not his exclusive message. He also talks about the moral obligations his followers have to the wider world. One of the most important passages on this topic shows up in Matthew 25 where Jesus explicitly tells people that their lack of tangible action on behalf of the the poor and oppressed is what invalidates them for salvation.

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Matthew 25:44-46 NIV

In that chapter, people are kept out of heaven not because they failed to pray the right prayer or understand the right doctrine. They are kept out of heaven because they failed to feed and clothe the poor! A Christian or church that focuses on what is “spiritual” to the exclusion of what is “practical” is a church that has embraced a false idol.

Anointed Intellect

My evangelical upbringing contributed to me an oddly contradictory arrogance. I call it the idol of the Anointed Intellect but an equally accurate moniker would be Christian Superiority. Even though much of evangelicalism talks about the importance of humility, all that humility goes out the window when a “secular” truth claim comes into conflict with a truth claim held by some evangelical. This is an idol that is ever present in evangelical thinking even though it is never directly mentioned.

According to evangelical doctrine, all people are sinners by nature and separated from relationship with God. Because of that separation, the human being’s spiritual condition is “dead” and their fleshly condition is “corrupt.”  The doctrinal word for this is “depravity.” Without the spiritual renewal and mental cleansing work of Christ, everything in that person’s life (thoughts, attitudes, opinions, behaviors) is tainted by their sin. However, those who make a personal commitment to Christ, have their sins washed away, are granted a spiritual awakening by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, and are further given a renewed mind that they might understand God’s Word and the truth in it. Here are two passages that powerfully illustrate the doctrine:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

Ephesians 2:1-2 NIV

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2:14-16 NIV

It’s a somewhat logical conclusion that only true Christians, cleansed of sin, with a regenerated spiritual life, have the clarity of mind and heart to actually understand truth, and therefore, evangelicals tend to believe that true Christians have an Anointed Intellect, a superior mind.

This is exacerbated with misapplications of verses like this:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:2 NIV

This verse indicates that there is the “pattern of this world” and there is “God’s will” and that the two are in conflict with each other. Of course, Scripture reaffirms this all the time, but Christians who believe they have an Anointed Intellect take this concept a step further. They define “this world” to mean everyone who isn’t a believer, and since non-Christians don’t have a “renewed mind,” all intellectual pursuits by unbelievers are untrustworthy. Unbelievers can’t help but operate from the “pattern of this world” and therefore must be actively working against “God’s will.” No matter what kind of truth we are talking about, be it journalism, science, or art, if the source is not a Christian, the result cannot be accepted as truth. More than that, if the source is not a Christian, the so-called truth at hand should be vigorously opposed by the Christian community. After all, if the world is opposed to the will of God, then the world must be at core demonic. What Christian would ever want to endorse something that’s literally satanic!

Although these last points sound extreme, they are actually quite common in evangelicalism. As one example, consider how evangelicals treated Dr. Anthony Fauci during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 and beyond. Early on in the pandemic, Fauci said that universal mask-wearing was not advised because there was a shortage of masks among the healthcare workers in our country, and we needed to direct our masks to them. Evangelical Christians accepted that advice. However, less than a month later, after the virus was demonstrating a rapid and deadly spread throughout various parts of the US, and after the hospitals were stocked up on protective equipment, Fauci began to recommend that normal people avoid crowds and wear masks. Soon, local municipalities began to implement lockdowns that specifically targeted poorly-ventilated, potentially crowded environments, a description that fits many church buildings. From a health and safety standpoint and from a science standpoint, it made sense. From a biblical standpoint, it made sense (after all, the biblical church has never been about the building, the size of the crowd, or the meeting time), but since the new recommendation impinged on something Christians were used to doing (going to church), evangelicals began to do the “investigative work” of identifying all the ways Fauci was not a reliable source of information. The attacks on him continue to this day. Even this morning, I had a conversation with some evangelical pastors who as soon as Fauci’s name came up reacted as if I had said Joseph Smith (founder of the Mormons), Buddha, or Muhammad! Fauci was considered evil but more than that, he was considered a part of a broader evil establishment that should be opposed by Christians. Regardless of his credentials, he was from the world and should be rejected forcefully.

The fundamental conviction is basically that Christians, that is, true Christians, proper Christians, other evangelical Christians, evangelical Christians who share my perspective, and only Christians like that have the ability to discern truth. If a truth claim doesn’t come from an evangelical Christian like me, then it can’t be trusted. Science loses. History loses. Cultural analysis loses. Journalism loses. Academic rigor loses. However, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, anecdotes and gut feelings win because the only thing that matters is whether the idea in question is coming from another Christian or confirms an idea that came from another Christian or confirms the way I already think. Genetic fallacies and confirmation bias breed happily among evangelicals because they worship the idol of Anointed Intellect.

This is an idol as much as any other because it misrepresents God, and it misrepresents the image of God he placed in every single human being. Scripture claims that the mind of a believer is better equipped to understand spiritual matters or the will of God, but nowhere does it claim that Christians understand math, medicine or literature better than unbelievers! God, who wired all humans with the ability to represent him in stewardship of this world and in relationship with each other infused basic rationality in every single one of us (to greater or lesser extent). Whether Christian or not, each individual person bears the image of God as a fundamental component of his or her being. On top of that, the idea of an Anointed Intellect misrepresents the way God works in this world. God has never given his gifts only to his followers. God gives to every single individual what theological scholars call “common grace.” It is the idea that God gives a measure of grace to each person regardless of their spiritual condition. This is how Jesus talked about it:

[God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Matthew 5:45 NIV

God does not reserve his gifts for the believer alone, and the image of God has not been utterly destroyed in the natural man. A person’s intellectual condition is not directly linked to their spiritual condition.

There was a time in the past when evangelicals used to advance the idea that “All truth is God’s truth.” That time is long gone. Christians surely do not have a monopoly on truth, but the modern evangelical church is inclined to believe otherwise.

Cultural Conservatism

And finally, from my conservative upbringing, I adopted a whole range of beliefs that centered around “keeping the Word,” that is, obeying the Bible. Now evangelicals have a strange relationship with the concept of obedience. If you aren’t familiar with evangelicals and the concepts of works and grace according to evangelicals, I’ll need to explain some things.

To begin with, evangelicals are on high alert for something they call Legalism. Legalism is the belief that God cares more about our behavior than he does about our doctrine, and nearly every evangelical is convinced that God cares more about our doctrine than our behavior. Evangelicals will use the word “faith” more often than doctrine, but when asked what they mean by faith, they usually define it in terms of personal commitment to specific doctrines. Evangelicals believe that correct doctrine can get us a place in heaven while correct behavior is almost pointless. That is, “faith” can save you, but “works” can’t. There is biblical support for this, of course, and I’ve discussed it earlier in the chapter about the gospel, but I’m explaining it again here because its the rationale behind an insidious idol. The words are that “faith” matters more than “works,” the implication is that doctrine matters more than behavior, but the application is that some behaviors are considered pointless and others are considered important. Every evangelical Christian and every evangelical church has a different set of convictions regarding which behaviors are which.

In truth no evangelical actually believes behavior is pointless. All evangelicals are legalists in one way or another because all evangelicals believe there are some behaviors that matter so much they should be treated as spiritual laws. There are religious behaviors like going to church, getting baptized, praying a salvation prayer, but there are also social behaviors like abstaining from alcohol, reading a specific translation of the Bible, or voting conservatively. See, the strange thing about evangelical legalism is that every individual evangelical has a different definition regarding which behaviors are essential to the faith and which behaviors cross the line into legalism, and therefore evangelicals often use “legalism” as an accusation against other Christians and members of other church traditions for supposedly focusing on the wrong things. At heart, legalism is really just an emphasis on something external like behaviors so we can identify who the real Christians are. I can’t see your doctrine, but I can see your behavior. We point fingers at each other for the styles of music we embrace, the quantity of alcohol we allow, the translations of the Bible we use, the standards of modesty we promote and more. As a result, each individual church even within the evangelical tradition, will develop its own unique moral code empowering it to accuse different churches of legalism.

Why all this talk about legalism? Well, because with so many churches embracing so many different variations of a Christian moral code, there is no universal sense of Christian morality, but we want one. So what evangelicals did was to blend and soften of all the different legalisms into one big package: an idol called Cultural Conservatism, a doctrine that allows us to apply our basic legalistic thinking to the world around us.

My upbringing reminded me regularly that I was to be “salt and light” in this world, and it went to great lengths to tell me what kind of salt and what kind of light I was supposed to be. Specifically, it said that salt meant I was to be about preserving the world from the forces of corruption and that light meant I was supposed to shine a light on the places of darkness (evil) in the world. From this perspective, practically speaking, the only way to be salt and light is to enforce Christian culture on the world around us using whatever means we can. Christian culture and Christian morality would slow down the societal rot just like salt preserves food. Shining a Christian spotlight on social sins would bring them to everyone’s attention shaming those who would commit such sin and hopefully bring about repentance. Additionally, many evangelicals believe a myth that this nation was founded to be a Christian nation and that Christian culture is this nation’s original culture. Therefore, being salt and light means evangelicals view themselves as “conservers” of a Christian national heritage and culture. In practice, though, this work of “conservation” is little different from simply pushing our legalisms on the broader society around us.

Cultural Conservatism is an idol because it misrepresents God’s will for his people in the world. In fact, when Jesus first used the metaphors of salt and light, he wasn’t talking about revealing evil or preserving culture, he was talking about bringing flavor and life to the world.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5:13-16 NIV

Turning salt into a preservative and light into a spotlight might accurately represent the physics of salt and light, but it misrepresents Jesus’ intent by the metaphor and leads directly to the misunderstanding that Christians are supposed to shame the culture and restrain the culture. Getting the metaphor wrong is at the heart of Cultural Conservatism. No Scripture ever instructs Christians to create or promote Christian behaviors in the broader society or to leverage political power to do so. Of course, as I have previously shown, there are a few values that Christians should promote in the broader society, but those values do not include specific Christian behaviors. Furthermore, there are behaviors that should be part of a Christian’s life, but Scripture never tells us to enforce or even promote those behaviors outside the context of the Christian community.

Temples

While the aforementioned idols are ones that grow directly out of evangelical doctrines, they are not the only idols that have been adopted by the evangelical church. You see, the human tendency is not to simply build an idol but to build temples to house the idol and systems to support its worship. Then, once the temple is built, we give it the same level of importance as the idol it contains, sometimes worshipping the temple itself.

Pro-Life

To promote Individual Responsibility and Cultural Conservatism, we built a temple called Pro-Life. A more accurate name for this position would be “Anti Abortion” because many things that favor life are missing from the Pro-Life agenda. Pro-Life sounds like it might imply the elimination of the death penalty, stronger public health measures, a universal provision for medical care, or broader restrictions on deadly weapons, but none of those align with the idol of Individual Responsibility, and therefore only the portion opposing abortion remains. Individual Responsibility says that people are responsible for the consequences of their actions and also responsible in large part for the circumstances in which they live. As a result, a woman who finds herself pregnant is fully responsible for that pregnancy (in almost every case) and is therefore fully responsible to take care of that infant. Being anti-abortion is partially about the preservation of the life of the child, but it is also about holding the woman (and sometimes the man) accountable for her situation. This also draws from Cultural Conservatism because Christian morality says sex should only happen in the confines of marriage, and therefore, all children should be conceived inside a marriage. If a child is conceived outside a marriage, the couple involved has committed a sin and should rectify it not by killing the child but by becoming responsible married parents. Individual Responsibility and Cultural Conservatism combine to blame the parents for their actions in the name of protecting the infant.

In many ways, I agree with that perspective. Although I’m attempting to extricate myself from the worship of Individual Responsibility and Cultural Conservatism, I still see it as the responsibility of parents to take care of their children whether born or unborn, and I see it as the responsibility of the government to preserve the life of those within its borders, but where Pro-Life turns idolatrous is in its demand for total allegiance from evangelicals even in the face of its anti-life omissions. Consider the strange fact that many pro-life policies don’t get included in the Pro-Life agenda. If they don’t also support Individual Responsibility or Cultural Conservatism, they get left out of the Pro-Life temple. As I said above, Pro-Life sounds like it would be against the death penalty, but the other idols say criminals should pay for their actions even with their lives. Pro-Life sounds like it might be in favor of universal medical care, but Individual Responsibility says people should be responsible for their own expenses and that parents alone should bear the responsibility for the expenses of their children. Pro-Life sounds like it might be in favor of stronger restrictions on deadly weapons, but Individual Responsibility says people are responsible to protect themselves and the people around them. Pro-Life is a temple that serves the aims of the other idols and therefore, regardless of the term chosen to represent it, it can only ever be about abortion restrictions. All other life-affirming actions a government might take infringe on some Individual Responsibility and therefore are removed from this temple. Pro-Life remains the term, though, because it is more marketable than Anti-Abortion.

This is an especially attractive temple for evangelical Christians because it seems to have strong biblical support. The Bible affirms infants are designed by and known by God even in the womb (Psalm 139); it affirms that the death of an unborn infant is equivalent to murder in the same passage where the principle “life for life” is mentioned (Exodus 21:22-25); it frequently supports the death penalty as a universal principle that extends beyond ancient Israel (Genesis 9:6, Leviticus 24:17-23); and as mentioned above, there is ample evidence that people bear responsibility to take care of their family and their own financial needs. In other words, being against abortion is touted as biblical, but considering reforms in any other life-affirming way is construed as unbiblical.

Therefore, Pro-Life as an agenda that focuses only on abortion policy is idolatrous because it misrepresents the teaching of the Bible and the will of God for all of human life. Consider the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount where he explicitly undoes the “eye for eye” principle while also rejecting the concepts of Personal Freedom and self-defense:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.

Matthew 5:38-39 NIV

Consider the account in John 8 where Jesus unravels the death penalty  while also taking up the cause of the adulterous woman:

When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

John 8:7-11 NIV

There is ample evidence in Scripture that God opposes the practice of abortion, but there is ample evidence that a God-honoring approach would embrace many more life-affirming policies than are allowed in the Pro-Life temple. God calls his people to be advocates for human dignity and justice and those efforts should include all the ways we can care about and support the lives of others. Certainly our efforts to aid the weak and vulnerable should include the cause of the unborn, but advocacy for the unborn without equal advocacy for the pregnant mom is not being an advocate for the weak and vulnerable. Rather, it is a prejudicial advocacy prioritizing one specific life over all the concerns of other lives. I’m not saying it’s easy to compare the life of the mother with the life of the unborn child. I’m saying Christians should be equal advocates for both! God in heaven loves both the mother and the child, and therefore a false priority of one over the other misrepresents the heart of the one who made them both.

This temple is idolatrous also because it misrepresents the will of God for the activism of his followers. By prioritizing the Pro-Life agenda as we have, in a climate where only one political party accepts a Pro-Life perspective, evangelical Christians have locked ourselves into allegiance with the Republican Party and are therefore complicit in all the other policy agendas of that party including the ones that disadvantage the poor, perpetuate gun violence, encourage police violence, and dehumanize immigrants and refugees. To be sure, Christians should advocate for the life of the unborn, but if doing so makes us allies with those who dehumanize others, we are misrepresenting God and following a misrepresentation of God. By prioritizing the Pro-Life agenda as we have, we have embraced an activism that can’t be supported by Scripture and have begun to worship in an unbiblical temple.

Sexual Ethics

To promote Individual Responsibility and Cultural Conservatism and to obviate the need to address the more complicated issues of abortion, we also built the temple called Sexual Ethics. This tells us that even secular marriage should be between a man and a woman, that health classes in public schools should teach only abstinence, that the LGBTQ+ community should be met with ridicule, scorn or discrimination, that adultery is wrong, and that those who find themselves pregnant or with an STD are getting what they deserve. To be sure, there is biblical doctrine behind these statements, but the way evangelicals apply Sexual Ethics is anything but biblical. There are at least two ways evangelicals misapply God’s will on the matter of human sexuality.

First, evangelical Christians conveniently apply these ethical commitments selectively. Although evangelicals sometimes address cohabitation and divorce among church members, and although evangelicals are increasingly starting to speak out against pornography and the other exploitative practices of the sex and entertainment industries, evangelicals still broadly ignore adultery committed by their allies, look the other way regarding sexual abuse within marriage, and are more opposed to the “cancel culture” of the #MeToo movement than to the hidden sexual harassment that caused so many women to suffer in silence for so long even under respected church leaders. For evangelicals, Sexual Ethics is where we worship only when it doesn’t impact ourselves. This is a hypocritical application of God’s will regarding human sexuality.

Secondly, a true understanding of biblical sexuality begins with the recognition that the sexual commands in Scripture are only for the people of God. To be blunt, they are laws, not ethics. Laws only apply to the people who live under that law, within that kingdom. Romans 1 gives us a picture of how God handles the sexuality of the people who live outside his kingdom. In short, he gives them over to it.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.

Romans 1:24 NIV

That means God is doing nothing to hinder or prevent unbelievers from expressing their sexual desires and engaging in whatever sexual behaviors they wish. Reading further in Romans 1 informs us that sexual behaviors bear their own consequences implying that we don’t need to build any social or legal consequences for them. What’s even more important for the people of God, though, is what Paul says in the first verse of the following chapter, a verse that Christians rarely quote. Romans 2:1 says this:

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.

Romans 2:1 NIV

Add this to something Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount:

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Matthew 5:28 NIV

The point is clear. Guilt for sexual immorality is upon the head of every single individual, and yet God has decided not to curtail or restrict this behavior except among those who dwell within his kingdom.

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.

Ephesians 5:3 NIV

Therefore, Sexual Ethics is a false temple because of the hypocritical ways we hold it, the level of importance we have given to it, and the ways we try to force it on others beyond the scope of its actual biblical context.

Personal / Religious Freedom

To further promote Individual Responsibility, we built the temple of Personal Freedom. It promotes a doctrine that each individual should be unhindered by external forces, taxes should be low, government should be small, etc. Anything that limits a person’s ability to express his or her autonomy is not allowed entrance in this temple. However, like the other idols we have seen, evangelical Christians are hypocritical when it comes to applying this principle.

Sometimes, evangelicals apply it to Christians and unbelievers equally. Here are just a few examples. We say all people should give money to churches and Christian non-profits so Christians can care for the poor and so the government can stay out of it. Sometimes we say all parents should be able to choose their schools, choose their vaccination schedules, and make their own decisions regarding public health measures. Many even say all people should be able to arm themselves to defend their freedoms against the government.

However, in other areas, evangelical Christians want Personal Freedom to apply differently to them. In this case, the idol/temple gets renamed to Religious Freedom. Here are some examples of that. Christians (and only Christians) should be able to discriminate against others for their beliefs.  Christian businesspeople should be exempt from federal requirements concerning healthcare for employees. Christians should be able to worship when and how they want. Christians should be able to say whatever they want in whatever forum they choose because Christians are the ones “speaking the truth.”

These principles are illogical in their fundamental inconsistency, and they represent a level of individual arrogance that should be anathema to the people of God. They are idols that once again misrepresent God and his will for his people. Neither Personal Freedom nor Religious Freedom is ever described as a value in Scripture. Dignity and justice are biblical values, but freedom and independence are not. Moreover, both testaments promote the idea of people using their own power and authority to defend the dignity of other people even when upholding the dignity of another results in injustice or indignity to themselves. The whole idea of defending one’s own Personal or Religious Freedom is antithetical to the teaching of Jesus. We’ve seen this instruction before, but it bears repeating. In Matthew 5, he commands his followers to lay down their own freedoms even to the point of exploitation by others!

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Matthew 5:39-42 NIV

An important Christian value is human dignity, and the related Christian behavior is to promote the dignity of others. Personal Freedom sounds similar, but it is a false representation of the true Christian value.

Blessing

To promote and protect all of our other idols, we built an ornate temple that I call simply Blessing. The doctrine of this temple says that if people do the right thing, God will bless them, but if they don’t do the right thing, they will get what they deserve. This sounds exactly like the popular idol of Individual Responsibility, but in this form, it’s much more insidious. In this form, we apply the doctrine in reverse, and we use it to justify even terrible behaviors. Here’s how it works. If a person is blessed (usually identified by some American metric of success like financial wealth, or in the case of a church, attendance) then that blessing proves they must have done the right thing or are doing the right thing. The blessing proves they have God’s approval. If someone is rich, their wealth is a blessing proving that God is pleased with them. Because of this, evangelical Christians value rich people more than poor people, we value businessmen more than the working class, and we are justified in our disdain for poor people, because their poverty proves they are under God’s judgment. Who are we to intervene in God’s judgment!?

Very few evangelical Christians will admit to this line of thinking, but it shows up often and repeatedly in the context of churches, individual relationships, and even politics too. Christians will talk about how God is blessing a church when the attendance is on the rise even if the church is doing something otherwise outside of God’s will. Perhaps the pastor is an abusive person and perhaps the sermons are likewise aggressive and abusive, but if the church is growing, the people in the congregation will say, “Look at the fruit.” Perhaps the pastor is loving and caring and the sermons are biblical but boring. The church might decline in attendance or funding, and the people leaving the church will do so assuming it is no longer under God’s blessing because, “There is no fruit.” Regardless any other metric, decreasing attendance then becomes the is the reason for people to leave; which of course decreases attendance even more. Outside the church, perhaps a politician is evil in nearly every sense of the word, but if he is wealthy (and conservative), evangelical Christians will point to the wealth as an example of God’s Blessing in spite of the moral failings. Strangely, though, if the politician is wealthy and liberal, evangelicals will point to the wealth as an example of worldly corruption. This Blessing rhetoric is not applied equally in all circumstances.

Worst of all, this rhetoric is often used to justify the inequities and atrocities of the United States itself. Evangelical Christians embrace a strange kind of nationalism that is based upon viewing our national prosperity as God’s Blessing on this nation. Because we are the richest nation, the conclusion is that we are incredibly Blessed by God, proving God is incredibly pleased with us. However, this next part is truly insidious. Evangelicals believe that whatever the country is now, Christians must work to conserve because our current state is the state God is blessing. If we move toward greater equity or if we attempt to resolve racism or poverty we will have to make changes and changes will break what God is obviously pleased with today. If we make progress we will lose God’s Blessing. If we change at all, we should only move backward to previous times of greater Blessing!

Very few evangelicals would admit to worshipping the idol of Blessing as I have described it, but ask any evangelical on the National Day of Prayer what they are praying for, and you’ll hear the coded answer:

…if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7:14 NIV

The unspoken (and sometimes spoken) belief of nearly every evangelical who reads that verse is that our nation needs to repent and “turn” (back) to God so God will return his Blessings to us.

This is all explicitly non-Christian! First of all, it isn’t even biblical from the Old Testament viewpoint. God never says that prosperity is proof of his favor even if he sometimes promises it as a reward. Before the people of Israel entered the promised land, the land was already quite prosperous but the people living in the land were definitely not under the umbrella of God’s approval. David was the least favored of all his brothers from an earthly “blessing” perspective, but he was the one God chose as king.

More than that, this idea of wealth being an indication of God’s favor is directly countermanded in the book of James. See how James separates the idea of blessing from human wealth and castigates both rich people and those who show favoritism to the rich over the poor:

But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business …

If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

James 1:10-11, 2:3-4 NIV

The focus on earthly blessings, prosperity, success and wealth is terribly dangerous. Not only is wealth a false method of seeing God’s favor on a person, it also encourages us to excuse immoral behaviors whether by a leader or by the country as a whole. If the economy is going up, we view it as God’s blessing even if the economic growth resulted from social or environmental exploitation.

Political Conservatism

And finally, to promote all these other idols, we built the idol of Political Conservatism or to just be frank, Republicanism. This is different from Cultural Conservatism because it is bound not to a set of doctrines, but to a political party that has for decades promised Christians it would serve their other idols and support their other temples. Cultural Conservatism is the idea that our whole culture needs to move back to a previous morality centered on Christian ethics, one that favors the Christian worldview. Political Conservatism is the temple that says we can accomplish the Christian goals by aligning ourselves with powerful non-Christians who also want to restrict social progress or even move it backwards. Political Conservatism is the temple where we embrace the politicians and the political party that promises to support our favorite idols too.

Over the past 40 or 50 years especially, white evangelicals in the US have banded together to leverage political power to promote these idols and temples in their various forms, and though there isn’t anything wrong with using our voice collectively as the church to promote things that are truly on God’s heart, there is something terribly wrong with forming an uncritical alliance with a platform that only supports the idols of evangelicalism. The evangelical allegiance to the Republican Party and to the Political Conservative platform is itself idolatrous. We have embraced an allegiance to whichever party promises to promote the worship of Personal Freedom, Individual Responsibility, Pro-Life, and Cultural Conservatism, and that party is currently the Republican Party. Evangelicals have seen Republicanism as our only path to the preservation of these idols and temples and so we have bought in. We put up with fiscal irresponsibility, out of control governmental debt, incessant wars, mistreatment of immigrants, and unethical leaders simply because we have decided that we need the particular political power that the Republican Party promises us. In my circles, identifying oneself as a Democrat is akin to coming out as an atheist and is likely to initiate an intervention from friends.

Political Conservatism is an idol. The entire notion of Political Power might be an idol in itself, but the alliance with Political Conservatism and specifically the Republican Party is most certainly an idolatrous one. No earthly allegiance to any earthly group other than the Body of Christ itself is proper for a Christian. We might choose to cooperate at times with earthly groups, but allegiances to those groups are idolatrous because at best they will only represent a small portion of God’s will for his people.

Now Liberated!

All of this false worship I have mentioned used to be my own. These things used to be obvious Christian ideals to me, and I can still see why other evangelicals view them as obvious Christian values, but every idol that has ever been erected made sense to the people who built it. Every temple ever built made sense to the builders. Still, the time is long overdue for Christians to step out of these false temples and turn their backs on these false idols. None of these false doctrines are endorsed by Scripture and none of them represents the heart of God. It’s time for us to grind these idols to bits and get back to what Jesus has actually called us to be and to do in this world.

Jesus proclaims the gospel, obviously, but he does not endorse the system we call Evangelicalism. Jesus affirms the authority of God’s Divine Word but he does not promote Cultural Conservatism. Jesus proclaims individual accountability before God, and it’s everywhere in Scripture, but total Individual Responsibility for earthly outcomes is absent. These are doctrines that evangelical Christians have adopted as sacrosanct hallmarks of authentic Christianity, but say it with me: They are not.

The time is long overdue for Christians to step out of these false temples.

For modern evangelicals, a life without these idols and temples seems scary. What will we do if the world “goes to hell in a hand basket”? What will we do if the persecution of the church gets stronger? What will we do if socialism erases individual prosperity in this country? What will we do if open immigration or affirmative action means my son can’t get a good job? (The list of fears is long, I think, because the lack of faith is real.) However, if you and I rid ourselves of these idols, we will be liberated to be fully engaged Christian citizens in a world that needs our salt and light, a world that is desperate for a uniquely Christian form of social engagement, even if that engagement involves activism!

Once we manage to tear down our high places, temples, and the idols therein, we will be able to see clearly what an authentic Christian response to our current world might be! Consider these potential benefits:

• If a politician claims to be a follower of Christ but fails to display Christlikeness in their actions or decision making, we are liberated to vote against them regardless of their political associations.
• If a politician supports policies we don’t like but nevertheless has an overall position of elevating the dignity of individuals and is committed to working for justice for all, we are liberated to vote for that person regardless of their few disagreeable policies.
• If a politician we voted for is embracing a policy or position that is outside the parameters of our key values, we are liberated to speak out against that policy or position even if we still intend to vote for them in the next election for other reasons.
• If a new study (Climate Science, Evolution, Critical Race Theory) arises and challenges our previous understanding of the world, say that racial forces are stronger than individual choices in certain contexts, we are liberated to accept the conclusions of that study and to grow from it.
• If it’s Black History Month, we are free to attend events and read things about Black History without feeling that we are violating principles of Color Blindness.
• If the government puts forth a particular public health measure or anti-discrimination law, we are liberated to go along with it, because protecting Personal Freedom and the enforcement of Cultural Conservatism are no longer our guiding principles.
• If the world around us falls into rampant sexual promiscuity, we are free to let it happen. We can and will focus on our own sexual integrity, we can and will speak with our brothers and sisters in Christ about theirs, and we can and will speak out against the exploitation that so often accompanies sexual promiscuity in the society, even coming to the aid of the exploited, but we are free of the burden to police the Sexual Ethics of our society.
• If the world around us begins to act in ways that appear detrimental to the mission of the church, we are liberated to not worry about it! We don’t need to worry about Cancel Culture or “Anti-Discrimination” Laws because we are liberated to join the culture in promoting human dignity and equity wherever we can! And if our authentic Christian behavior ever incites the ire of the world, we are free to embrace persecution without feeling the need to fight for Religious Freedom. We are free to keep shining our light trusting that the world around us will eventually “see our good deeds and glorify our Father in Heaven”!

I could go on, but I hope the point is clear. The recognition and rejection of the idols associated with evangelical Christianity is the key step in liberating evangelicals like me to be authentically Christian, even politically engaged ones, in this current world.

If you are with me, if you too agree that the time is ripe for Christians to discard our false idols and move into a brand new world of moral accuracy and social engagement that brings glory to our Father in heaven, then let’s press on. In the next chapter, I’ll address the practical matters of what we need to be doing about it, calling us to embrace a new kind of mission.

In the last chapter, I addressed the first two questions of the church’s moral dilemma:

Which values are central to the Christian life and which are peripheral?

Which central values are internal to the Church only and which should Christians promote in the society at large?

But now, it is time to take up the third:

How should individuals and churches promote them?

How It Has Been Done

In the last 100 years, my tradition, the (mostly white) evangelical church tradition, has worked hard to promote some uniquely Christian values to the broader society through the implementation of laws and public policies. Here’s a brief summary of but four successes evangelical Christians have had in the creation of public policies.

First, one Christian value is “personal holiness,” and promoting this value to the broader society was the backbone of the temperance movement that led to Prohibition, but that’s only one time when issues of “personal holiness” were codified into law. Prohibition and the broader temperance movement became the spiritual father for a significant amount of evangelical activism to this day against mind-altering or mood-altering substances. The political peak of that activism was the evangelical support of what was called “The War on Drugs” in the 70’s. With the encouragement and activism of the evangelical church in partnership with the Republican party, laws were enacted to inflict serious penalties for the use, abuse, possession and distribution of addictive substances like marijuana and cocaine. Strangely, the evangelical church promoted these laws and strict punishments for their violation, but didn’t advocate similar laws over the use and abuse of other substances like nicotine, caffeine, alcohol or even sugar. Additionally, the evangelical church didn’t raise a voice when the punishments were applied inconsistently leading to harsher sentences for certain forms of cocaine over others and harsher sentences for people of color over white people. Although the Bible never delineates a difference between various addictive substances, evangelical Christians leveraged significant political influence to outlaw addictive substances inconsistently. A deeper look into these things is certainly warranted, but my point here is just to illustrate the prior successes of Christian activism, so I’ll move on.

Secondly, Christians in my tradition have been and continue to be activists for individual responsibility specifically as it relates to what is called the social safety net—welfare, unemployment, medicaid, medicare, and social security. Abusing the value of sacrifice to enforce sacrifice on others, and ignoring the values of grace and economic equity, evangelical Christians continue to be at the forefront of efforts to reduce the social safety net and put the greater burden of responsibility on individuals to help themselves. This is easily illustrated from the strong partnership between the Reagan administration and the evangelical churchgoers in America. Before Reagan, evangelicals often voted for Democrats. Jimmy Carter was an evangelical Christian himself! However, Reagan’s rhetoric against the so-called “Welfare Queen” and others who might take too much advantage of the social safety net systems resonated with evangelical Christians, and their votes were a major reason he won each of his two elections to the Presidency. Evangelical Christians have the power to elect presidents!

Thirdly, evangelical Christians took personal and religious freedom so seriously that they became activists for greater freedom in many areas of life. With the support of evangelical Christians in partnership with the Republican party, individual (and corporate) freedoms have been regularly strengthened through the reduction of taxes and regulations. Furthermore, despite Jesus’ instruction that his followers “turn the other cheek” in response to violence, evangelical Christians have become strong proponents for the expansion of gun freedoms as another aspect of personal freedom. This activism has produced significant results. Christian activism has been able to produce laws that strengthen their own freedom even if that freedom conflicted with someone else’s personal or religious freedom. In 1993, Bill Clinton signed a law known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that was designed to protect religious liberty in all its forms. Its original motivation was to protect the rights of participants in the Native American Church to smoke peyote in their ceremonies. However, evangelical Christian groups have since pressed their states to enact similar laws with the primary aim of protecting Christians from anti-discrimination lawsuits. Because of Christian activism, many states have done so.

And finally, I’ll mention one more way the activism of evangelical Christians has been successful. Evangelical Christians were instrumental (and perhaps the deciding voting bloc) in the election of Donald Trump. There were many reasons for this support, but for many evangelicals, it hinged on their desire for an anti-abortion President. Trump promised to put justices on the Supreme Court who were committed to overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing states to make abortion illegal, and that one promise was enough to gain the support of many evangelicals. The activism of evangelical Christians in the fight against abortion resulted in Trump’s election and a complete transformation of the Supreme Court. Today, in 2022, the court is heavily conservative and has already made significant changes to the way abortion laws are handled in our country.

These are but four examples of how the evangelical church has been active and successful in the political / social arena. I could go on for a while simply sharing from my own experience in my own church tradition the policy platforms I have been encouraged to support over the years. However, what’s fascinating to me these days is the realization that most of the things I have been encouraged to support in the public arena are actually things that Scripture tells me I should hold personally and in the context of a church, but not in the context of the public arena.

I’ll say that again. Most of the things I have been encouraged to support in the public arena are actually things Scripture tells me to keep inside the church. Neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament tells me to work toward the creation of a society that values “Individual Responsibility.” Nothing outside the laws governing Israelites tells me to advocate for a society of “Personal Holiness.” And when it comes to personal (or corporate) freedom, Jesus actually tells us to embrace persecution rather than trying to achieve or maintain our own freedom.

In other words, in the last decade or so, I have come to realize that the things Christians are actually supposed to be promoting in the public arena according to the values of Scripture are actually the things Christians in my tradition have been ignoring in the public arena, and the things Christians in my tradition have been trying to legislate in the broader society are the very things they should be promoting only among themselves!

It appears to me that in many ways, the evangelical Christian tradition has gotten its political involvement exactly backward with regard to the teaching of Scripture on the topic. So let’s dig deeper into Proper Christian Activism by considering a few examples of how our activism principles might be applied.

Applying Proper Christian Activism

CHRISTIANS SHOULD ADVOCATE FOR DIGNITY AND JUSTICE

Christians should use whatever voice or influence they have to take up the cause of the weak, marginalized, disregarded, or oppressed in their society to ensure all people are treated with dignity and justice without regard to the moral condition of those people.

Dignity and Justice… as applied to same-sex marriage

A recent hot-button issue directly related to this value was the legalization of same-sex marriage. The way most Christian churches in my tradition addressed the issue at the time was to talk about how same-sex unions were not endorsed by God and that God, who created marriage, should have the final say about what gets called a “marriage.” This was moderately hypocritical because for decades, those churches had required couples to receive governmental endorsement of their marriage before the church would recognize it as a marriage. Those churches had made a big deal of telling couples they shouldn’t be living together until they were married and when they said “married” they always meant legally recognized marriage—the process of getting their union endorsed and validated by the government. In other words, the churches wouldn’t recognize a marriage as a marriage until the state recognized it as such. Inconsistently, evangelical churches looked to the state to define and endorse marriage but then got upset when the state chose to define and endorse marriages that didn’t fit the biblical mold. Their activism then shifted to convincing the government to follow the Bible or at least tradition and to withhold the rights of marriage from same-sex couples.

The logical inconsistency of that position is only part of the problem, though. The more significant problem is that the church opposition to secular same-sex marriage was actually a violation of two biblical principles: (1) that Christians are not to judge people outside the church, and (2) that Christians should be in favor of justice and human dignity for all regardless of their moral or spiritual condition. Now, if you are an evangelical, you are probably starting to get nervous wondering what I’m about to say. I understand your hesitation, and I invite you to read the rest of this section slowly. I think it will help. Start with the principle I just labeled #1. You might be starting to accept that idea. You might be growing comfortable with the idea that Christian morality should be kept inside the church and not legislated in the broader society. However, you might have a problem with the #2 principle in this context. That principle sounds like I’m about to say same-sex marriage is an issue of justice and human dignity. It probably sounds to you like I’m about to say Christians should support secular same-sex marriage, doesn’t it? Well, let me walk you through a simple line of reasoning, and you can draw your own conclusions.

If the government maintains a social contract it calls “marriage” for the benefit and protection of its people, the government has the right to extend that contract to whomever it wishes, but for the sake of human dignity and justice, it should apply that social contract equally to all people regardless of their religious perspective or spiritual condition. If the government doesn’t apply this beneficial protection to all people regardless of their religious perspective or spiritual condition then that government has become a government of preferential treatment for some and is no longer promoting human dignity and justice for all. If one religion or worldview thinks that marriage should be limited to only heterosexual monogamous couples, and another religion or worldview thinks differently, the government should not offer preferential treatment to one worldview or religion over another. The government should make its decision purely on the question of human dignity and justice. Likewise, Christians, following our translatable Christian values, should use whatever influence we have to advocate for universal human dignity and justice and for the universal application of government benefits and protections.

That seems to imply that Christians should support the government endorsement of same-sex unions, but that puts us in strange and uncomfortable moral waters. Can a Christian support a governmental policy that allows or even endorses immoral behavior? I still personally believe the Bible presents a sexual ethic limiting sexual behavior to the context of monogamous heterosexual lifelong marriage. I still teach that ethic as a central moral value for Christians, but a commitment to universal human dignity in the secular world seems to require that I support the government’s endorsement of same-sex marriage! How should a Christian handle it when the translatable value seems to lead to conclusions that violate an internal value? More generally, what voice (if any) should the church have in a culture where a concern for “dignity” and “justice” leads to conclusions that are outside the boundaries of Christian morality? Should Christians support “dignity” if unbelievers link their “dignity” to their sin? Should Christians ever actually advocate for sinners to have the opportunity to sin more fully? Although it is sure to be controversial, I think the answer should be “Yes.”

Don’t run away just yet. I think I have a good reason for this position.

The easy answer is to remember that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was put in the garden by God himself. Giving people the freedom or opportunity to sin is not itself sinful, but let’s keep our focus specifically on the issue of marriage.

When we consider the issue of marriage, we should recognize that marriage in this country comes with a number of benefits that no other contract has. Married couples experience numerous financial benefits including the elimination of gift taxes and estate taxes between spouses. Married couples automatically have power of attorney over each other in many areas of life including medical and financial decisions. Married couples also have a number of social benefits both tangible and intangible. In other words, the social contract our government calls marriage provides a kind of dignity to people that is only available to those within such a contract. When the government decides who is allowed that privilege and who is not, it becomes a question of justice. Therefore, this truly is an issue of dignity and justice, and from the perspective of this value, it is right for Christians to support the expansion of the government’s social contract even if the name of that contract is “marriage.”

Now, I’m a pastor, and I perform weddings. I have not and will not officiate over a same-sex wedding because I don’t see any Scriptural endorsement of such unions, and therefore, as an agent of the Kingdom of God and not an agent of the state, I don’t have the authority to officiate over such a union. In other words, my own conviction of what marriages I will endorse fails to line up with the government’s idea of what marriages could be endorsed. It was nice when the secular social contract of marriage appeared to line up with the one Jesus gave, but in truth, the secular social contract of marriage never actually did. Jesus’ definition of marriage was always more restrictive than the government’s, and our country has never governmentally upheld “Christian” marriage.

That doesn’t mean Christians should give up the notion of “Christian” marriage or endorse the morality of homosexual behavior or the unions arising from it. Even though some modern churches embrace homosexual behavior as a fully viable lifestyle, I maintain that the biblical limits on sexuality are incompatible with homosexual behavior. Additionally, the Bible speaks repeatedly about the problems a person faces when they engage in sexual sin, and the church shouldn’t keep silent about it, but as we have seen, the church is supposed to live that morality in the public arena and speak of it internally without wasting energy pointing fingers at the broader society. In this way, it is completely reasonable for a church or a pastor to support a governmental expansion of marriage while maintaining a more limited, narrow, independent and internal definition of marriage.

Dignity and Justice… as applied to social welfare programs

I want consider another area where the church should advocate for “dignity” and “justice” in the broader society even when doing so appears to conflict with some internal values of the church. Let’s consider social welfare programs. One of the most important verses to evangelicals when it comes to social welfare programs is this one:

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us…. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”

We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat.

2 Thessalonians 3:6,10-12 NIV

Christians in my tradition have adopted this verse and a few others like it from the Apostle Paul to conclude that social welfare programs are evil or that they at least enable people to be lazy “busybodies” who leech off of others. There may be some actual reasons to think that social welfare programs enable laziness, but the thing my church tradition frequently forgets is that here too, in the teaching of Paul, the instruction is for inside the church family and not a statement about what a secular government should do for its people or how the church should approach the needs of the world around it. In fact, there are many reasons why a secular government might want to provide social welfare programs even if some people might take undue advantage of those programs. To offer one example, every child in every family lives under a parental welfare program until they move out of the home, and many of those children take undue advantage of the generosity of the parents. No child offers to the parents equitable compensation for the services they receive. And that’s okay. Moreover, we consider that proper. It is the responsibility of the responsible parent to meet the needs of the irresponsible child while attempting to nurture that child toward responsibility.

There are good reasons why a government might choose to provide social welfare even when people will take advantage of it, and therefore, there are good reasons why Christians should support it too. Remembering that Christians are not supposed to judge the unbeliever, we can set aside moral judgment regarding those who might take undue advantage of those programs. Then, we can begin to think about what a society would look like that elevates the dignity of those who live within its borders even if some take advantage of it. In fact, we should go further. If a society can elevate the dignity of those who live within its borders, then Christians in that society should promote actions that result in such elevation.

To be sure, there are caveats upon caveats here since we never know what a change to one part of our economy might do to another part of the economy and whether elevating one group of people might work to the detriment of another group of people, and whether too many will just take advantage of it without ever becoming responsible citizens, but Christians should not be overly concerned by such worries or fears. If Christians can help their society become more aware of and attuned to issues of dignity and justice, then whenever one action creates a problem, the society will already be primed to see and address the new disparity as well. With Christians as a consistent voice for dignity and justice, the entire society will grow more dignified and just.

CHRISTIANS SHOULD ADVOCATE FOR WHAT IS TRUE AND GOOD

Christians should use whatever voice or influence they have to promote what is true, noble, right, pure, excellent, or praiseworthy, including art, science, journalism, and social policies even if it includes promoting something unfamiliar or unpleasant.

There was a time when Christians were at the forefront of science and art. Christians like Rembrandt, Bach and Handel produced the most beautiful works of artistry in their day, and they did it because of and for the glory of God. Isaac Newton developed calculus and an entire system of physics because he wanted to understand God and the order he wired into Creation. Additionally, Christians today, motivated by love for their neighbors, are pursuing the sciences of biology and medicine to bring relief to millions around the world. Christians are employing this science to eradicate polio, HIV, malaria and more through education, vaccination, medication, and other public health measures.

However, in the past century or so, despite the long tradition of compatibility between intellectual pursuits and Christian faith, an antagonism has developed from members of the evangelical Christian community against the broader world of science and art. As artistic endeavors were taken up by more and more people unmotivated by Christianity, more and more artistic works became repulsive to Christians, and more and more Christians rejected those artistic enterprises entirely, abandoning the mainstream world of artistic endeavor and isolating themselves into Christian enclaves. A similar thing happened in the sciences compounded by doctrines like Young Earth Creationism and its problems with geology, anthropology, and evolutionary science. Today, there are many in the evangelical Christian tradition for whom “art” and “science” are words spoken with disdain or at least skepticism. Furthermore, the pursuit of “truth” among evangelical Christians has dwindled into an exclusive focus on “biblical truth.” Attention is given only to the truth of God’s Word to the rejection of truths found in God’s world. Truths obtained through journalistic or scientific methods are rejected unless they confirm previous biases built up through sermons heard or passages taken out of context.

It’s time for evangelicals to reclaim what their institutions of higher learning have claimed to believe for decades: “All truth is God’s truth.” It means we can give God credit for truth wherever we find it. No longer should we wage war against scientific or humanistic pursuits. It’s time for evangelicals to embrace everything in God’s world that is true, noble, right, pure, excellent, or praiseworthy even when those things are unfamiliar or uncomfortable. Let’s get more specific. There are at least two ways modern evangelical Christians need to rediscover and embrace truth and beauty.

Christians need to be competent with truth.

Christians should be comfortable with and competent in understanding the principles and methodologies of science. Christians need to know how the scientific method actually works along with the profoundly important conclusions that method has produced and why they can be trusted. Christians should understand the mountains of evidence and detailed work that has gone into our current scientific knowledge, but more than that, Christians should joyfully accept the discoveries of science: our universe is unimaginably old, the history of life on this planet is hugely diverse, and the mechanism God employed for the creation and evolution of species is beautiful in its simplicity. Christians should praise God for the development of medicines and medical technologies including psycho-therapeutics, vaccines, and public health measures that protect, prolong, and preserve life.

I’m not saying Christians should blindly accept all the conclusions of science, because blind acceptance is actually anti-science. Scientists themselves don’t blindly accept all the conclusions of other scientists. The whole point of the scientific method is to test and retest assumptions and to evaluate and re-evaluate conclusions. But the scientific method also depends on the willingness to rely on the expertise of others when that expertise has been well-established. No biologist will have the time to reproduce all the physics experiments that led to the development of the electron microscope they use in biology every day. There is a baseline in science for what things can be trusted and which things need to be skeptically re-tested, and that’s exactly why Christians need to understand the procedures of science as it actually works. If scientists say the universe 13.5 billion years old one year and then change it to 13.7 the next year, Christians shouldn’t use that as “proof” that cosmology is wrong and disdain its conclusions as being “only a theory.” Rather, Christians should rejoice over the process of increasing knowledge. As people who are supposed to love the truth, Christians need to be competent in the topics they discuss, and they should understand the real meaning of terms they use (ie. “theory”). If Christian activism requires us to be advocates for the truth, our first point of application is to become knowledgeable of the truth and the methods employed for its discovery!

Scientific truth is not the only truth Christians need to embrace. Christians should also be comfortable with and competent in understanding the basic principles of journalistic practice and historical study. Our very Scriptures are given to us by journalists and historians, and it behooves us to understand how to decipher legitimacy in the writings and testimonies of other people. For decades, Christian apologists have been appealing to principles of journalism, historical study, and even archaeology to verify the legitimacy of the Scripture texts we value, but those same principles should also be employed in our efforts to understand truth in journalism today. Furthermore, we should not feel threatened when a new academic paper arises challenging some preconception we had about the world. Absolute Truth is our bedrock, but that doesn’t mean we already know all the absolute truths or that our current truths aren’t actually falsehoods. Therefore, Christians should not be afraid to encounter and interact with difficult academic methods or challenging historical analyses including methodologies like Critical Race Theory or others that may arise in the future.

Thirdly, there is truth that isn’t objective, truth to be found in artistic expression. It’s a truth that touches us differently and is more properly called beauty. Sometimes a work of art is visually beautiful, but sometimes it is mentally beautiful because of what it represents or what preconception it challenges. One of my favorite artists is Piet Mondrian who is mostly known by his paintings of colored squares. I remember when I first saw one of his paintings, I consciously thought that I could do just as well, and I disdained him for it. However, the subtleties of his paintings captivated my curiosity enough for me to learn more about him. It didn’t take long before I discovered that his paintings of grids and rectangles grew directly from his incredibly beautiful but increasingly abstract drawings of trees. I understand that there is a vast difference between Mondrian’s Tableau I and Van Gogh’s Starry Night, but I find each of them compelling for their own reasons and each of them beautiful in different ways. Furthermore, I found myself repulsed by the vulgarity and violence of rap music in the 90’s, but as I have continued to learn more about the cultural environment out of which it grew, I have gained a greater respect for it. I still don’t endorse the lyrics, but I have learned to see beauty and truth in them nonetheless.

As Christians, our goal should not be to preserve some form of art we find palatable, some form of history we find comfortable, or some ideas in science that we learned long ago. Christians should be those who rejoice in the truth wherever it may be found. Our faith is based on a truth claim that Jesus rose from the dead, delivered to us by journalists and historians, verified to us by archaeologists, and preserved and translated for us by scholars, linguists and other scientists! If we are people who don’t appreciate and understand the work of scientists, linguists, scholars, archaeologists, historians, and journalists, then we are people who don’t understand how to find and evaluate truth claims. And if our faith is not based on truth, then as Paul said (emphasis mine):

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

1 Corinthians 15:17-19 NIV

Christians should speak up for truth.

Once we have established a competence in the disciplines of truth, we then must embrace our responsibility to be advocates of truth in the broader society. This is especially true today. We are living in a world where misinformation is spreading like wildfire, and research shows that misinformation always spreads farther and faster than truth. Christians should not participate in that, and furthermore, the Christian voice should advocate against the spread of false information. Sadly, as I write this in 2022, I am in a world where evangelical Christians are among the leading voices spreading false information. In the ongoing COVID pandemic, evangelical Christians are still among the leading voices opposing restrictions on public gatherings because misinformation says such restrictions are just government overreach, opposing masks because misinformation says masking is dangerous, and opposing vaccines because misinformation says they contain microchips, will make your blood magnetic, are ineffective, or are otherwise harmful! As I write this, Christian parents are showing up at school board meetings and writing letters to governors in opposition to mask requirements for schools, churches are eschewing public mask guidelines, and politicians are working for religious exemptions to vaccine mandates.

All of this demonstrates a severe lack of concern for the truth among evangelical Christians when we should be a group committed to advocating for truth. Christians should be openly talking about and sharing the truth about vaccines in general and the current crop of well-tested COVID vaccines available. Sure, there are unknowns with any medical treatment, but the questions about the unknowns shouldn’t outweigh the verifiable truths that have already been discovered. To be blunt, in the context of a public health emergency, Christians should stand with the scientists who invest their lives studying public health issues and not the social media posts written with anecdotal evidence only.

Medical truth is just one area where Christians should speak up. There are of course others, but I will only mention one more. Even as Christians  need to understand principles of journalism and historical study, they should speak up for those principles too. Christians should be proponents for truth in journalism, rejoicing equally when the journalists uncover a mistaken drone strike in Kabul under President Biden’s tenure as when the journalists uncover a plot to withhold financial aid from Ukraine under President Trump. Both are evidence of journalistic practices uncovering the truth, and both are causes for Christian affirmation even if one story negatively impacts the person or party you support. Whether journalism uncovers unjust police practices against minorities, inhumane family separations at the border, or repulsive practices at Planned Parenthood, Christians should rejoice equally at the discovery of truth. Even when new historical analysis leads us to rethink the origins of our nation or the racist underpinnings of our legal system, Christians should rejoice in truth even when it is newly discovered or disagrees with previous assumptions. We rejoice in the truth, and we should use our voice to promote the truth.

CHRISTIANS SHOULD ADVOCATE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

Christians should use whatever voice or influence they have to address the environmental concerns that reflect our stewardship of this planet and unjustly impact the weakest members of our world both now and in the future.

On the heels of the evangelical rejection of mainstream science lies the evangelical rejection of mainstream climate science. The reasons for this are many. Some Christians, embracing the Young Earth doctrine, deny the reality of large-scale climate change and presuppose all geological processes are short-term, brief processes. The Young Earth believers additionally reject all modern geological science and therefore distrust all climate science. However, not all evangelicals are Young Earth Creationists. Perhaps the majority of them are, but regardless, even when evangelicals are willing to accept geological science, they often still reject climate science! In some cases, it is because climate science has become synonymous with liberal politics. In other cases, it is because environmentalism is linked in their minds with pagan earth-worship. And in other cases, it is because conspiracy theorists portray climate science as a hoax perpetuated by the elite so they can have more economic control over us.

Whatever the reasons, evangelicals have a presupposition that climate science is somehow flawed morally and therefore somehow flawed scientifically too. Then, this skepticism spreads because scientific literacy is so poor for so many Christians. Well-meaning Christians doubt climate science not because they have read any of the papers on climate change but because they have heard too many other Christians say the science is “debated” or “still out” on the matter.

I want to address this directly. Contrary to the evangelical rhetoric about climate science, the actual scientific community shares overwhelming consensus. According to the statistics compiled by The Consensus Project,

97% of published climate papers with a position on human-caused global warming agree: Global warming is happening—and we are the cause.

theconsensusproject.com (9/24/2021)

The consensus among scientists is strong that climate change is real, that human activity is the main contributor, that the effects are accelerating to the point of soon being irreversible, and that major economic investments must be made now to prevent extreme damage to sensitive ecosystems and impoverished communities. Christians who have embraced the previous point of loving the truth even when it’s difficult should likewise accept the undeniable scientific consensus that our world is currently in the midst of a growing climate catastrophe.

Then, once the climate science is understood and accepted, the Christian responsibility becomes clear. Because Christians believe that all humans bear the image of God and that our first job on the planet as humans is to represent Him (not ourselves) in exercising dominion over the Earth, we should be the lead advocates for greater environmental concern.

Finally, when we consider that species, ecosystems, and even groups of indigenous or impoverished of people are in danger of extinction from climate change, the passion of Christians to make a difference should increase. When we consider that a changing climate will disproportionately impact the weakest members of our world, it becomes even more clear that Christians should embrace climate advocacy as an issue of human dignity. Though some environmentalists hold to a pagan kind of rationale, Christians need not discard environmentalism because of that. Christians have better reasons than they. We have a mission given us by the Creator God Himself to act on His behalf in guiding and shaping this planet for the good of the planet itself, for the good of the people on it, and for the glory of Him who made it!

What should we do about it? Well, even though climate data is clear about the causes of climate change, no one can predict what is needed to truly change things. Mitigation protocols are going to be changing constantly as we get more information and as we take actions and see their results. Nevertheless, Christians can begin to behave with more conscious thought to the implications of their choices, Christians should inform themselves regarding the various mitigations that are currently being proposed, Christians should be willing to talk about the matter with other Christians, Christians should be willing to make personal changes to reduce their environmental impact, and Christians should be willing to support public policies that address these environmental concerns.

CHRISTIANS SHOULD NOT ADVOCATE FOR WHAT’S TEMPORARY

Christians should not waste their influence to advocate for or against any cultural trends, social groups, political worldviews, or public personalities unless such advocacy is required by one or more of the previous points.

Finally, it is abundantly important that Christians recognize the total impermanence of all earthly ways of thinking and living. Nothing on this Earth deserves our perpetual, unquestioned allegiance, and since our calling is to neither judge the world around us nor fall in love with it, we should not overly concern ourselves with the temporary and transitory aspects of our society.

Against the popular thoughts in modern evangelicalism, I want to say again that it is not our calling to fight a culture war. It is not our calling to oppose transgenderism, anti-discrimination laws, so-called “cancel culture,” or the mainstream media. It is not our calling to align ourselves with or verbally attack any political party, platform, or individual. It is not our calling to defend our rights. It is not our calling to fight against Critical Race Theory, Evolution, or even Socialism. In fact, in some of these cases, it might be our calling to embrace the so-called “progressive” moves in our society.

To be sure, in our advocacy for Christian environmentalism, for the dignity of individuals, or for the solid truth, we may take positions that sound like they are for or against a specific political system or party, but do not mistake that position as alignment with or allegiance to that political system, party, or person. For example, Christians may oppose a tax increase because of the undue burden it would place on impoverished people, but that doesn’t make us Republicans. On the other hand, Christians may support rules limiting corporate carbon emissions, but that doesn’t make us Democrats. As Christians, we rise above such petty, temporary, earthly allegiances because we have a higher calling for a higher purpose from a higher authority.

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 2 Samuel 7

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 2 Samuel 4-5

What are you like when you get a little power? In this message, we get challenged with that question in light of how king David acted once he came into power.

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 2 Samuel 2-4

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 2 Samuel 1

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 28, 31

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 25-26

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 23-24

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 21-22

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 21:1-9

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 18-20

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 17

Now the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him.
1 Samuel 16:14 NIV

This has been an incredibly uncomfortable passage for me. I have studied this passage a number of times in a number of different contexts, and each time, I still feel a bit weird about it because it sounds like God caused an evil spirit to torment Saul, and I don’t like the idea that God would ever cause evil, because that seems very close to God doing evil, and that sounds very close to God being evil! How do we deal with a passage like this?

Solution 1: It’s a Mistranslation

Most of the times I studied this passage, the solution I was given was that “evil” doesn’t always mean morally evil. Instead, the word can refer to something that is difficult or unpleasant. Consider the way it is translated in these other translations (emphasis mine):

At that very moment the Spirit of GOD left Saul and in its place a black mood sent by GOD settled on him. He was terrified. – 1 Samuel 16:14 MSG

Now the Spirit of the LORD had left Saul, and the LORD sent a tormenting spirit that filled him with depression and fear. – 1 Samuel 16:14 NLT

Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and a harmful spirit from the LORD tormented him. – 1 Samuel 16:14 ESV (Note: older versions of the ESV used the word “evil” instead of “harmful”)

I’ll admit, all of those translations sound more pleasant. I’m inclined to just accept them and move on, but that reveals more about me than it does about the text. Why do I think “evil” is somehow worse than “tormenting”? Well, it’s because I think of “evil” as a moral judgment, but I think of “tormenting” as a behavior that may or may not be morally justified. However, that means I think “tormenting” someone might be morally justifiable, and I find that uncomfortable too.
On top of that, we can’t dismiss an uncomfortable translation that easily. Consider this verse:

The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. – Genesis 6:5 NIV

The root of the word translated “evil” in 1 Samuel 16 is used twice in Genesis 6:5 as God’s justification for the flood he brought to judge the world during Noah’s time!

Solution 2: It’s About Perspective

The other explanation given to me about this passage was that “evil” described Saul’s perspective not an absolute moral reality. As an example, when I stub my toe, I can think of my coffee table as “evil” or I can think of the moment as being “evil” because the moment was bad for me or the coffee table was bad for me, but of course there isn’t anything morally evil about my coffee table or that moment.
When applied to this passage, the implication is that God (who is good), sent one of his angels (which are good) to go and do the work of torment (as a punishment that is morally good) against Saul. However, Saul and his associates would have perceived the torment as a bad thing and therefore would have concluded that God had sent an evil spirit.
Therefore, this option says that the spirit was actually a good spirit doing the good work of judgment, but the human writer used the word “evil” because that’s the way it seemed to the people involved.
The problem with this approach is that it downplays the authority of the author of this text. The author of this text claims to have intimate knowledge of God and his motivations. The author of this text claims to know what God directly said to Samuel, and the author of this text uses the word “evil” to describe the spirit sent by God.

Solution 3: God is Bigger than we Thought

This is the solution I briefly mentioned in my most recent Sunday message and it is the solution I find to reflect the biblical teaching the best even though it is a solution that is less comfortable than either of the others. Simply put, God is bigger than we thought.
Let’s go back to why the verse makes us uncomfortable in the first place. The verse makes us uncomfortable because it implies that God commanded an evil spirit to do something and it obeyed which then implies God caused something evil to happen which then implies that God is also somehow evil.
That cannot be! The Bible is abundantly clear that God is only good all the time!

The Box We Built for God

We are so repulsed by the idea of God ever being responsible for “evil” that we have created for ourselves a more comfortable mythology that is partially supported by Scripture, but not entirely so. Our mythology is that there are two opposing forces in the world—God and Satan—and these two forces are constantly in battle with each other. Satan is responsible for the evil and God is responsible for the good. Secondarily, this mythology extends to a group of spiritual beings we call angels and demons. Satan is responsible for all the activity of demons and God is responsible for all the activity of angels.
We even have some biblical reasons for this mythology. In Matthew 25, Jesus says this about the future day of judgment:

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. – Matthew 25:41 NIV

Clearly, Jesus is leaning into the idea that there is a “devil” who has his own “angels” (demons).
In Revelation 12, John describes a vision using these words:

Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. – Revelation 12:7-10 NIV

Again, this indicates that “the devil” or “Satan” has his own angels and has been leading the world astray, but pay special attention to the second paragraph. It says, “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God…” This is a passage that is talking about a future moment in time when the kingdom of God has fully taken hold. This is a future battle not some past moment when Satan rebelled against God and then was sent to earth with a bunch of demons. This is talking about a future moment when Satan is defeated handily by an angel called Michael. God doesn’t even need to get directly involved in this battle!
Still, there is one line in there we need to note: talking about Satan, it said “who leads the whole world astray.” Take note of that; I’ll come back to it in a bit, but before I do, I want to point out one more passage from Jesus. In Matthew 12:24-28, we read this:

But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.”
Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. – Matthew 12:24-28 NIV

During Jesus’ earthly ministry, the religious leaders of the day had taken to referring to the leader of the demons as “Beelzebul” (sometimes written as Beelzebub) a word that might mean “Prince Baal” or “Lord of Flies” or something else, but Jesus immediately re-identifies him with the word “Satan.” Also, Jesus uses the word kingdom to refer to Satan’s sphere of influence and implies that the demons are part of Satan’s “kingdom.” Finally, Jesus speaks of the kingdom of God as a separate kingdom in opposition to the kingdom of Satan.
All these things put together can leave us with the impression that God and Satan are forever antagonists until the future day when God finally wins. We can get the impression that there are two independent kingdoms, two independent armies of spiritual beings. However, that mythology misses a few details. Let me reiterate:

• In Revelation, it’s not God v. Satan, it’s Michael against Satan.
• In Matthew, Jesus absolutely dominates the demons, his power utterly surpasses any power of Satan, and Jesus claims it as proof that the Kingdom of God is higher than whatever kingdom Satan thinks he has.

On top of that, I want to re-surface something from the ancient book of Job:

One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”
Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”
Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”
Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.
Job 1:6-12 NIV

The story of Job makes this clear. Satan has the freedom to roam the earth, has the attitude of an “accuser” aimed at pitting God against people, and has “power” to do things against people, but all of that is still under the authority of God himself. Satan can’t act as the accuser unless God gives him the opportunity to speak, and Satan can’t do anything to Job unless God gives specific approval for that.
Even back in the Garden of Eden when Satan takes the form of a serpent to deceive Adam and Eve into eating from the forbidden tree, we need to remember that the tree was put there by God! The only thing Satan can do is to act within the parameters God sets up.
Remember how John’s vision in Revelation referred to Satan as the one who leads the whole world astray? Clearly, Satan’s whole deal is to try to pit God and people against each other, but he still can’t do anything unless God gives him space to do it.
Here’s the point: God is not in conflict with Satan. God is WAY BIGGER than Satan, and Satan can only operate within the sliver of authority that God gives him. Satan has some kind of “kingdom” and some group of “angels” (demons) to lead, but God has the real Kingdom, God commands the Host of Heaven, and God governs literally everything in the universe.
Talking about Jesus, Paul says this:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. – Colossians 1:15-17 NIV

All powers throughout the universe were created through Jesus and for Jesus, and he himself is the one who sustains all things including those powers and authorities!
It’s a misunderstanding to think that somehow God is struggling in a fight against Satan. Satan might think he’s fighting against God, but it’s basically like a six-year-old child having an arm wrestling match against the Incredible Hulk. The modern Hulk is nice and all, and might let the naive little child think it’s an equal competition, but it’s not.

So is God in charge of evil?

Going back to the beginning, I’ll say that our problem is in our own naive understanding of “good” and “evil.” We are too tempted to think of “good” as whatever is pleasant to us and to think of “evil” as whatever conflicts with my sense of morality, but both concepts are far too weak to be able to tell us anything about God.
Keeping our terms biblical, God is literally in charge of everything. He has authority over all powers in the universe. He could have made people to be unfree robots, but he gave us the power to choose and therefore the power to do things that lead to our own destruction. He could have kept the forbidden fruit out of the garden, but he put it right in the middle, AND allowed Satan to have words with the first people even though those words were lies about God himself. God certainly knew the outcome of his decision to put the tree in the middle of the garden, but he did it anyway. God made a decision that opened the door to all the evil in our world today because God made decisions that allowed us to make decisions that can lead to our own destruction.
And we actually think it’s great. As human beings, we continually make choices for ourselves that are simultaneously great and destructive, and we keep making them. We love Doritos even though they destroy our cardiovascular system. We love technology even though it leads to climate catastrophe and nuclear bombs.
So should we blame people for the bad choices or the bad consequences of good choices? Should we blame Satan for the problems we see?After all, God’s the one who set it all up? Should we blame him?
It’s actually such a naive way of thinking. What if instead of asking who is to blame for the evil in the world we asked a different question? What if we asked about the purpose of evil in the world?
The question we should ask is “Why?” and the answer we should give is, “Keep reading.”
Scripture is a consistent story of God bringing light from darkness, order out of chaos, beauty out of ashes, even life from death. From beginning to end, it’s a story of beautiful redemption. Even the greatest “evil” in human history, the moment when human beings torture and execute the divine Son of God, a moment that we mourn, is a moment smack-dab in the center of God’s plan. The greatest evil happened on a day we call Good Friday!

God is the God of Beauty from Ashes

Even the passage we studied on Sunday demonstrates this truth. Let’s go back to it:

So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the LORD came powerfully upon David. Samuel then went to Ramah.
Now the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him.
Saul’s attendants said to him, “See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the lyre. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you, and you will feel better.”
So Saul said to his attendants, “Find someone who plays well and bring him to me.”
One of the servants answered, “I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the lyre. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the LORD is with him.”
Then Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, “Send me your son David, who is with the sheep.” So Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine and a young goat and sent them with his son David to Saul.
David came to Saul and entered his service. Saul liked him very much, and David became one of his armor-bearers. Then Saul sent word to Jesse, saying, “Allow David to remain in my service, for I am pleased with him.”
Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him. – 1 Samuel 16:13-23 NIV

Don’t let the significance of this moment pass you by. It’s super important, and it’s super beautiful:

• God punishes Saul by removing the Holy Spirit from him.
• God punishes Saul by removing the kingship from him.
• God punishes Saul by sending an evil spirit to him.
• God blesses David by giving the kingship to him.
• God blesses David by placing the Holy Spirit on him
• God blesses Saul by sending David to him.
• When David serves Saul, the evil spirit leaves.

God took everything away from Saul, gave everything to David, but then sent David right back to Saul!
God sent an evil spirit to torment Saul, but God also sent David who through his ministry, causes the evil spirit to leave.
For all of Saul’s time as king, he only really looked after himself and his own interests. Now, through this, God has made Saul dependent on someone else, specifically dependent on the one who would be the next king.
This is beautiful in so many ways, and I just can’t get over it. The Holy Spirit leaves Saul, but through David comes right back. The kingdom leaves Saul, but the next king is Saul’s servant. The evil spirit comes on Saul when he’s by himself, but when David comes, the evil spirit leaves. God is dealing with the arrogant independent Saul in exactly the most perfect way possible, not by mere punishment, but by making Saul find relief and blessing through dependence on his humble rival!
The spirit might have been fully evil, but God sent it to accomplish something incredibly beautiful and it obeyed.

God is Bigger than we Think!

Are you frustrated with something you see in the world?
Remind yourself that God is up to something, and it’s going to be beautiful, but remind yourself also that in order for something evil to become something beautiful someone has to be a servant. Wherever you find a moment of beautiful redemption, you also find a moment of sacrifice.
The hinge point in the story of Saul and the evil spirit is David, the person who is the new rightful king who is willing to humble himself and serve the current king, the person who has the Spirit of God who is willing to humble himself and serve someone no longer worthy of the Spirit of God.
Yes, there is evil in the world, but in the midst of it, God is giving his Spirit to human beings who will step into dark places through sacrifice and service and expel the influence of evil from them.
May we be people who trust the overall plan of God enough to step into sacrifice and bring the Spirit of God into places of darkness!

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 15-16

Scripture’s Moral Truths

In Chapter 1, I described the overall dilemma facing the church as this:

How much of the “not yet” is it the responsibility of the church to advance in our real world today?

And then I analyzed the biblical presentation of the gospel to split the question into four clarifying questions. In this chapter, I’ll attempt to address the first two of those subordinate questions:

Which values are central to the Christian life and which are peripheral?

Which central values are internal to the Church only and which should Christians promote in the society at large?

Now, any attempt of mine to address these questions will necessarily flow from my own biases and presuppositions, and anything I say about them will interface with your biases and presuppositions, so if for some reason you skipped over the previous chapter, you should go back to it now.

Nevertheless, I will attempt to humbly offer my perspective here by doing a brief survey of the values I see repeatedly emphasized throughout Scripture, and I will do my best to give biblical justification for why any value should be considered of central importance and morally binding on Christians. Along the way, I will also attempt to divide the values into their appropriate contexts whether they apply to individuals, to the general Christian community, or to the broader society. Afterward, I will briefly comment on a few peripheral issues that masquerade too often as central issues even though they are not. The point of all this will be to clarify which values are central, which values are peripheral, and which values should be promoted by Christians for society at large.

Values Central to All Christians

Let’s begin by creating a list of those values which should be central to the life of any individual Christian. We will start with the words of Jesus.

The Teaching of Jesus

There’s no better place to start than Jesus’ declaration of the Greatest Commandment. Notice, he mentions two of them.

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:37-40 NIV

Jesus gives us a great starting point to help us identify our central Christian values. According to him, these are the most fundamental of all:

• Christians demonstrate a life-consuming love for God, placing him above all other things in every aspect of their lives.
• Christians demonstrate a practical love for the people around us, whether like us or not, near or far.

In the statement of the first value, I say our love for God should be “life-consuming.” By that, I mean it should flow through our heart, soul, and mind. It should be emotional, spiritual, and intellectual. Then, in the second value, I used the word “practical” and the phrase “whether near or far” because when Jesus defines “neighbor” in the parable of the Good Samaritan he demonstrates it with a cross-cultural interaction. Furthermore, when he commands followers to “go into all the world” he confirms the culture-crossing, border-crossing nature of our calling to love. Note also from the parable of the Good Samaritan that when Jesus spoke about love, he never meant we should feel love toward other people while doing nothing about their needs. Even as loving God is more than mere emotion, love for our neighbors must to be more than cordiality or a positive attitude. It needs to be pragmatic and practical. The love Jesus calls us to needs to cross lines of both category, culture and geography.

Since Jesus says that these two commands summarize everything God ever wanted, we could just leave it at that and say we only have two central values, but our problem as sinful humans is that we don’t think like God, and therefore our understanding and application of love are weak and insignificant. Thankfully, God’s Word has a lot to say about what it means to love God and what it means to love others, so let’s continue our exploration by considering more of Jesus’ words. There’s no better place to continue than The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). I’d love to expand on all the moral teaching within this beautifully challenging message, but I’m trying to keep this book short and accessible, and a synopsis must suffice for now. Were we to do a thorough examination of the Sermon on the Mount, we would see four basic themes that together encompass all the rest:

• Christians live in humility before God, realizing our spiritual poverty, our need for forgiveness and our need for spiritual rebirth.
• Christians live in holiness, keeping God’s Word in thought and deed, neither adding to it nor working around it, and not for earthly recognition but for eternal rewards.
• Christians live as agents of Christ and his Kingdom, sprinkling the salt and shining the light of God’s goodness into a dark and tasteless world for the sake of others and the glory of God.
• Christians embrace service, sacrifice and forgiveness, deferring to those around us even if they accuse us, strike us, ask of us, steal from us, hold something against us, or otherwise sin against us.

If we were making a detailed and exhaustive list, I would also mention the importance of having faith, how to give to charity, how to pray, etc. Furthermore, if we listed everything Jesus taught throughout his earthly ministry, we would add something about the need for endurance until the final judgment, the need for spiritually “abiding” in him, and more. Then, because I have my own favorite parables, miracles, and lessons from the teaching of Jesus, I’m tempted to add additional detailed items. In fact, because we all have our own perspectives, it’s likely my few bullet points above seem insufficient on first glance. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that everything Jesus taught can fit within one or more of the above values taken from the Great Commandment and the Sermon on the Mount with two lingering exceptions.

The first exception is actually the one many evangelicals would consider the most important teaching Jesus ever gave.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 14:6 NIV

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

John 6:29 NIV

For evangelicals, nothing is as important as the value of “putting your faith in Jesus” because nothing can get a person saved or put a person in a right relationship with God other than that. Although I think true faith is an act of surrender in line with the value of humility above, it’s worth making this a separate value statement simply to acknowledge its fundamental importance for anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus.

• Christians embrace exclusive allegiance to Jesus himself as our only Savior, true Lord, and ultimate authority.

The second thing I need to add comes from the passage we call the Great Commission. Thematically, it falls under the “agents of the Kingdom” statement above, but since Jesus made it his parting words to his followers, I think it deserves special recognition:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20 NIV

Our Great Commission, stated as a value statement is this:

• Christians spread the influence of Jesus around the world by sharing the gospel and leading others to follow his life and words.

Not only does Jesus call us to live lives of love for God and others, lives that are marked by holiness, humility, service, sacrifice, and forgiveness, lives that reflect the Kingdom of God, lives of dedication to him alone above all other authorities, he also calls us to spread his message and to multiply his representatives around the world.

With this list of values, I think we have adequately covered everything Jesus said regarding the moral obligations of his followers. There are certainly other ways of phrasing them or other details we could include, but these are the umbrella values. These values encompass the others and yet are specific enough that we can grasp their practical significance. But again, let’s remember we are sinful people, prone to look at these commands through lenses that benefit us. So let’s keep digging. How did the earliest followers of Jesus actually live out these values and what did they say about them? By examining the examples and teaching of the first century believers as recorded in the rest of the New Testament, we will discover a few more values that will clarify and intensify those we have already seen.

The Example of the Early Church

From the early chapters of the book of Acts we see the first Christians liquidating assets to prevent poverty in their midst, and we see the crowd of Christians not fighting back in the face of persecution even when that meant Peter was put in prison or that James and Stephen were killed. From this example and from teaching reaffirmed elsewhere in the New Testament we have two more values to consider, sacrifice and submission. Early Christians didn’t invent these values. They had seen Jesus live them. They saw Jesus submit to authorities even when it cost him his life. They saw Jesus live a life of sacrifice. They heard Jesus teach about sacrificial service. But for the early Christians, living according to those values was painfully difficult and it cost many their lives. Honoring their example, we add the following two statements to our list of values:

• Christians sacrifice their own resources to care for the poor… especially those in the family of God.
• Christians submit to earthly authorities in everything that doesn’t conflict with a command of Christ.

Additionally, the early Christians had to blaze new ground in certain doctrines and practices. For example, Jesus never taught directly about circumcision or how to include Gentiles in the life of the church, so when the issue came up, the early church had to use the Old Testament together with the teaching of Jesus to find their answers. Acts 15 is the record of the first church counsel, and the issue of welcoming uncircumcised Gentiles was the main topic. During that counsel, the early church leaders identified two guiding principles for applying Old Testament teaching to the community of Christ, and we can use those principles to formulate two more values for ourselves:

• Christians discard Old Testament commands that were specific to ancient Israel (circumcision) or that were superseded by Christ’s direct teaching or his example (capital punishment, kosher laws, the temple, and the sacrificial system) but do so in ways that respect the sensibilities of others (like not eating blood).
• Christians retain Old Testament commands that were confirmed by Jesus as expressing the heart of God for his people (like avoiding idolatry and sexual immorality).

Through their example, the early church helps to clarify for us even today what should be central, but their writings do even more. To be sure, there are values to be gleaned from James, Jude, Peter, John, and the writer of Hebrews, and I would love to spend chapters on each of their contributions, but the capstone of didactic teaching in the New Testament has to be the writings of Paul.

The Teaching of Paul

As the most prolific and most comprehensive writer from the early church, Paul’s letters bring clarity to these principles while also emphasizing a few new values we should add to our list. Also, because he specialized in applying the message of Jesus to various cultural contexts, and because he was committed to viewing the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus, the Apostle Paul helps us greatly in figuring out which Christian values are central for all time and how they should be contextualized. Previously, I said it was inappropriate that evangelicals have embraced Pauline morality as they have, but now I want to clarify that the problem isn’t in accepting his morality, but in accepting only his morality and only certain parts of his morality. Kept in context with the teaching of Jesus, and taken in context with how Paul lived and all that he wrote, the values we glean from Paul are wonderfully instructive. Here are a few passages from Paul that summarize his moral teaching for the church and augment what we have already mentioned.

Walking in Humility

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace…. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Ephesians 4:1-3, 29-32 NIV

Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.

Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters.

Romans 13:13-14:1 NIV

Clearly in line with Jesus’ teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, Paul identifies practical ways Christians live out the value of humility, and we can restate his instructions like this:

• Christians reject selfishness and pride and everything arising from them—greed, sexual immorality (including divorce), un-edifying speech, foolish arguments, defending one’s own rights, flaunting one’s own liberties, and more.

The Christian Community

Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.

Colossians 3:16 NIV

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.

1 Corinthians 12:7 NIV

So it is with you. Since you are eager for gifts of the Spirit, try to excel in those that build up the church.

1 Corinthians 14:12 NIV

From these verses, we see how the Christian family should operate when it gathers together as a corporate body, and how individuals should view themselves in light of that family. It’s directly in line with Jesus’ command that his followers should love one another, but as before, Paul makes it practical. As a value statement, we have this:

• Christians embrace each other through worship, teaching, fellowship, mutual edification, and mutual sacrifice in the family of believers.

Christians and the Surrounding World

Few Christians debate the earlier two values from Paul’s teaching, but when it comes to his teaching about our relationship with the world around us, there are a number of misunderstandings. As a result, our exploration of what he really had to say will take a bit more time. To start with, let me take you to a passage that is widely known but rarely applied.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Philippians 4:8-9 NIV

This admonition is unlike any other admonition in Paul’s writings. In most cases, Paul spoke of spiritual fruit, or deeds of the flesh, or acts of the church, but in this one verse, he expands his moral code into something far bigger than any spiritual ritual. Perhaps it’s not right to base a central moral value statement on this one verse, but Paul clearly stated that this is the way he lived and it’s the way he wants his readers to live. It’s an overall ethic that we can express like this:

• Christians rejoice in what is true, noble, right, pure, excellent, and praiseworthy seeing all of Creation through the lens of the Creator.

I’m pretty sure you don’t have any problem with how I’ve stated that value. I made it pretty generic there, but I won’t leave it there. As I said before, this verse is widely understood but rarely applied, and so I think it’s important to take some time to discuss what applying it really looks like.

In this passage, Paul gave a truly expansive command that he said was the overall way he lived his life (Whatever… you have seen in me…). It was an ethic that encompassed his entire life. But if it encompassed his entire life, it must be an ethic that reaches even beyond the confines of Christian tradition or doctrine. Allow me to be blunt. Christians and the Christian faith are not the only sources of what is true, noble, right, pure, excellent, or praiseworthy. These things can be found inside and outside the context of what is religiously significant, and therefore, things like beauty, truth, and justice have historically been a part of the Christian value system. It has always been godly to rejoice over a scientific discovery that is true or a work of art that’s excellent regardless of where or how it originated. Here are just three examples.

Psalm 19 rejoices in the regularity of nature’s laws:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands….

[The sun] rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.

Psalm 19:1, 6 NIV

Proverbs extols the wisdom of ants:

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.

Proverbs 6:6-8 NIV

And Paul quotes secular philosophers to teach Christian doctrine:

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands…. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill.

Acts 17:24, 28-29 NIV

The Psalmist had spent time gazing at the stars and noticing the regularity of the path of the sun. Solomon had spent time studying (considering the ways) of the ant closely enough to know that ants store food in the summer to get them through the winter. Paul had literally memorized lines from secular Greek philosophers and was able to quote at will specific lines from Stoic and Epicurean philosophers! The testimony of Scripture, and the explicit instruction of Paul is that wherever truth, excellence, or right-ness can be found, it is worth treating with value, and therefore it should compose a central value for Christians. Therefore, when I say we should rejoice in what is true, noble, right, pure, excellent, and praiseworthy seeing all of Creation through the lens of the Creator, that means we should embrace things like artistic expressions, scientific discovery, and even philosophical reasoning whenever they are true, noble, right, pure, excellent or praiseworthy!

On the other hand, not everything in the world is true, excellent, or praiseworthy. In fact, there are plenty of things in the world around us that we should reject and avoid. Paul had to say a lot about that too:

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial ? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” And, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”

Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.

2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1 NIV

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:1-2 NIV

A number of Christian groups throughout the centuries have used passages like these to claim the true nature of the Christian church is to be completely separate from the world, completely separate from the surrounding culture, but doing so ignores the way Paul himself lived out these principles:

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

1 Corinthians 9:19-23 NIV

Somehow, Paul holds these two principles in tension. On the one hand, he passionately desires to fit himself into his cultural context so to minimize the hindrances to the message of the gospel to those who need to hear it. On the other hand, he declares the utter difference between the mentality of the people of the world and the proper mentality of the people of God. This is not a contradiction, though. Paul actually describes a single value that undergirds both principles. Paul is all about the gospel. He doesn’t want anything to get in the way of the gospel. He doesn’t want anything to hinder the advance of the gospel. He doesn’t want anything to distort the view of the gospel. Therefore, the Christian needs to keep proper distance from the world lest the world think the gospel lines up with the principles of the world. However, the Christian needs to keep him or herself embedded in the world so as to make sure people who need the gospel have a chance to hear it authentically. Here’s one way to phrase this value.

• Christians must be culturally astute so they can engage the culture around them with an authentic expression of the gospel without adopting, absorbing, or aligning themselves with that culture.

Finally, one of the greatest temptations that Christians have is to view their own Christianity and their pursuit of purity as somehow empowering them to be agents of judgment against the people of the world rather than agents of grace. Therefore, before we leave the New Testament and the teaching of Paul, there is one final value so important and so often misunderstood that it requires special attention.

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”

1 Corinthians 5:9-13 NIV

I already mentioned the opposition to sexual immorality as a component of Christian humility to the authority of Jesus, but this passage outlines a new value. It’s a value about how Christians judge other Christians and also how Christians judge the morality of non-Christians. In this passage Paul strongly commanded the Corinthians to exercise firm moral judgment regarding people inside the church but to intentionally refrain from using that same judgment with people outside the church. A Christian can share a meal with a sexually immoral unbeliever, but not a sexually immoral believer. To fellowship with one who claims to be a believer while living in unrepentant sin is to tacitly endorse the sin and will taint the gospel with license. To eat with a sinner who doesn’t claim to be a believer is to tangibly offer grace and forgiveness along with a subsequent call to holiness. We are to judge believers, but not unbelievers even over the same exact behavior. Still, whether believer or not, anyone who repents of their sin and turns to the family of believers is to be welcomed with open arms. It’s possible that the immoral brother the church should expel in 1 Corinthians 5 is the same person who later repented and Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians 2, but regardless, when it comes to a repentant person, Paul says this:

Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.

2 Corinthians 2:7-8 NIV

Putting these concepts together as a value statement, we have this:

• Christians should not judge outsiders, but should reserve moral judgments for only those who claim to be believers, and should always offer forgiveness and reconciliation to any sinner who repents.

At this point, we have pretty well summarized all the moral teaching for Christians recorded in the New Testament. To be sure, there are details we are leaving out like some specifics regarding mutual submission in the life of a church or how to exercise charismatic gifts. However, all those details whenever they show up in the New Testament are given in the larger context of another value we have already listed, so I’ll move on to the Old Testament.

Old Testament Principles

There are at least two values expressed in the Old Testament that we haven’t seen yet because they aren’t explicitly mentioned in the New Testament. However, in light of Acts 15, we need to recognize that some Old Testament commands will remain in force even if not explicitly re-affirmed in the New Testament. The principle from Acts 15 was this: we disregard Old Testament commands that were specific to ancient Israel or that were superseded by Christ, and we retain Old Testament commands that were confirmed by Jesus as expressing the heart of God for his people. However, in between, we have the values that were neither specific only to Israel nor were they specifically re-affirmed by Jesus. What should we do with them? Well, I think there are two values in the Old Testament that fall into this middle ground, but are also obviously foundational to the will of God, are fully in line with the rest of the New Testament, and also bring something new to the table. Because these values exist in harmony with everything else we have seen, and because they contribute something new and unique to our understanding, I consider them ongoing central values as well. Nevertheless, because they fall into that middle ground, they each need additional justification.

Regarding Nature

First, on two separate occasions, Jesus confirmed the importance of the first chapters of Genesis. When asked about divorce, he quoted from Genesis 1 and 2:

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ ? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Matthew 19:4-6 NIV

Elsewhere, he made a shrewd reference to the image of God present in humans by saying this:

“Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

He said to them, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

Luke 20:24-25 NIV

These are two explicit references by Jesus to the first and second chapters of Genesis, and by making these references, Jesus confirmed the importance of those early chapters in understanding the moral obligations of humans in this world. Therefore, we should consider what else the Creation account has to say about humans. Looking at one of the verses Jesus quoted with the context, we find this:

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Genesis 1:27-28 NIV

God created human beings to bear his image, to represent him on the Earth, and even to have massive authority over the Earth. Now, environmentalism didn’t exist as a concept in Jesus’ day because no one back then could have conceived of the immense power human beings would be able to exert over the entire planet. However, God is the one who specifically gave us that power, he commanded us to have that power when he used the word “subdue.” In ages before, we had the potential to significantly influence the Earth, but in this age, we are finally achieving our original God-given potential to completely control the planet. But if we are now able to achieve our potential, we must remember the purpose of this potential, the purpose of this power. God created us to bear his image in the way we subdue the Earth. Therefore, even though the Bible doesn’t give any explicit commands regarding how to care for the Earth, the command we had from the beginning, to subdue it in His image, is still in force. We need to add it as a value:

• Christians exercise dominion over the Earth not for our own benefit but as those who bear God’s image and value both what and whom he has made.

Yes, I am claiming that environmentalism should find a central place in Christian morality. No earthly agency can explain why we should care for the planet or why we have such power, but Christians know both answers.

Regarding Justice

Finally, there is a second value present in the Old Testament and heavily implied by the words and the life of Jesus. It has to do with something we often call social justice, and it arises as a combination of us being image-bearers, other people also being image-bearers, and the direct teaching of Jesus himself. Remember Jesus launched his ministry quoting Isaiah 61.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Luke 4:18-21 NIV

Not only is that a passage promising a Messianic answer to the condition of the oppressed and the poor, it is also an endorsement of the work of the ancient prophets and their efforts as activists for the cause of justice. Here are a few of those prophetic statements:

Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.

Isaiah 58:9-10 NIV

“So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.

Malachi 3:5 NIV

According to Jesus, his Messianic work includes bringing fulfillment to these proclamations of the prophets, and whether the fulfillment ever gets fully realized on this earth, the endorsement of the message is abundantly clear. The life and words of the prophets express a righteous activism that Christians should still embrace regarding the needy and oppressed among them. Let’s state the value like this:

• Christians bear the burden and take up the cause of the needy within our sphere of influence especially orphans, widows, foreigners, and others who are impoverished or oppressed, whether like us or not, near or far.

This is a good and mostly safe way of phrasing the value, and it is fully in line with the direct teaching of the Bible, but I think it’s important for us to realize there are categories of oppressed people in our society today who are not mentioned explicitly by the prophets mostly because those categories didn’t exist back then. When we speak of the cause of the needy today, we also need to include the unborn, the unjustly incarcerated, the elderly, refugees, people of color and more. Plus, because our society today is a global one, we should extend this principle to include people around the world, not just in our own city, state, or country.

Caveats

Again, I’m sure I have missed a specific command that is important to someone. I didn’t say much about the evils of divorce, the problems with deception or violence, and I have spoken often in general terms, but for the most part, I’m convinced these values adequately encompass all the relevant teaching from Jesus, the New Testament writers and even key portions of Old Testament teaching that are still applicable to Christians through today.

I also want to affirm that in making this list, I have tried my best to be governed only by clear biblical teaching and not by any modern political perspective. Although shreds of modern political positions might overlap with these values, these values themselves as outlined above are first and foremost biblical, and more specifically, Christian. I also want to reiterate that what we have considered so far is really only about the morality God desires for his own people and not what he desires for a society at large. To that, I turn next.

Values Translatable to Our Society

Christians frequently attempt to translate our values directly from the people of God to the wider society because if God is the same God over all people then his moral code should apply equally to all people too, right? It’s an attractive thought; however, it fails to account for many things. We need to realize that many of the Christian values we’ve mentioned only make sense within the sacrificial framework of a Jesus-follower. We also need to remember Paul’s prohibition against judging outsiders according to standards of Christian morality. Therefore, we have to acknowledge that perhaps only a few of the above values can be directly translated from the church to the society.

Complicating matters, all the values mentioned above were given in contexts very different from today. These values were initially given in contexts where the recipients of the command had very little social power to affect a broader secular society. In fact, in the days of the Old Testament, there was no such thing as a secular society. The commands to Israel were given to “God’s people” who were forming an entirely new theocratic society—a “holy nation.” The Israelites and their national structure belonged to God. The other nations belonged to other gods. At that point, all societies were religious societies. The idea of a secular society just didn’t exist, and therefore, applying the teaching of the Old Testament uncritically to the experience of modern day living is a project doomed to fail. Understanding the commands of the Old Testament requires us to remember God’s commands were for God’s people in the specific society where God was directly in charge and where he was specifically attempting to distinguish his people from those in the wider world.

In the New Testament, however, the relationship between God’s people and the surrounding society was dramatically different. From one perspective it was an antagonistic relationship similar to that of the Old Testament—the Romans were antagonistic toward the Jews, the Jewish people were antagonistic toward Gentiles, and the Roman society was often antagonistic to Christians as well. However, Jesus never spoke of the surrounding society as if it were an enemy to be fought or opposed. When Jesus talked to his followers about their role in the broader society, he taught them to be salt and light—sources of flavor and illumination. Jesus gave his commands to his followers regarding how they were supposed to behave but said nothing about controlling the behavior of others. They were supposed to have influence in their society as agents of a different Kingdom, but he never told them to wield control over that society. Jesus wouldn’t even allow Peter to defend him with a sword in the Garden of Gethsemane. For the first followers, all of this made sense because they had no societal power anyway. In fact, all of the New Testament commands were given to people who were essentially powerless to directly influence the workings of their society, i.e. the Roman government.

However, Christians today hold a much different position in society, especially in the United States of America. This world is unlike the Old Testament because we have a secular, pluralistic society. This world is unlike the New Testament because in our society individual people, both Christians and not, have immense social and political power. Therefore, translating biblical values from the original context to ours is a difficult challenge. Making matters worse, neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament give instructions about how one should use political and social power because none of the people of God in either Testament ever had secular political or social power. But all is not lost. The Christian values themselves give us clues. In them, we get a very clear picture of how God wants people to treat each other in general, at all times, and without regard to religious perspective. So it isn’t that much of a stretch to also conclude how he wants a society to operate. We just need to remember the distinction between what God expects of all people and what God expects of his people.

A quick aside: I have spoken to many Christians who firmly believe there is no distinction between what God wants for his people and what God wants for society at large. I have spoken to Christians who firmly believe that the exact same value system should be employed inside and outside the church. It should be obvious so far that I do not share that sentiment nor do I think it can be supported biblically, but I will delay addressing it until a future chapter when I discuss the false idol of Cultural Conservatism.

For now, I’m going to revisit the value statements from above to identify which statements apply beyond the confines of the Christian community. I’ll list them and do some exploratory work with them, but I’ll save the work of application to the next chapter.

The Oldest Value

Let’s return to the list of values mentioned above. Scanning through them, you should see that some were given in contexts that predate the nation of Israel or in contexts that specifically cross contextual lines. Recall that the first command God gave to any person was the command to steward the Earth, and that command was not tied to nationality or faith but to the mere fact all humans were created in the image of God. Therefore, this responsibility exists for all humans of all time, not just believers, and we can state it as a universal value:

• All people should value the care of the Earth.

The First Cross-Cultural Value

Let’s keep going. Again, staying with the Old Testament, God commanded that his people should care for the poor and oppressed, as we have seen, but this was actually the first cross-cultural value for the ancient Israelites.  I say that because the law was given by God to the people of God for the sake of the foreigners living in the land. In Israel, foreigners (even if legally enslaved at times) were to be treated with as much dignity and concern as other Israelites, and in most cases, whatever economic benefits were provided to needy Israelites should likewise be provided to needy foreigners.  Therefore, not only were these commands for meeting humanitarian concerns, they were also explicitly cross-cultural and should be considered applicable to us today.

Earlier in the chapter, I quoted from the prophets, but here, I’ll quote from Moses himself:

” ‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 19:33-34 NIV

Do not eat anything you find already dead. You may give it to the foreigner residing in any of your towns, and they may eat it, or you may sell it to any other foreigner. But you are a people holy to the LORD your God …

Deuteronomy 14:21 NIV

Notice from these two passages, that the benefits were to be applied equally to both Jews and foreigners, but the requirements were often not. Many of the moral requirements God issued for Israelites were supposed to be also upheld by foreigners, but ceremonial commands like dietary restrictions were not. In similar passages, we see foreigners were to reap the benefits of living among the Israelites even though they didn’t have to maintain all the same standards of the Israelites. That is, social benefits should cross social lines even when responsibilities do not. This, plus the prophets’ call to aid the poor and oppressed, yields two concepts summarized in the modern world by the words dignity and equity, specifically, economic (the power to fully participate in a society) equity. As a universal value, then, we have:

• All people should value human dignity and economic equity.

The Most Compatible Value

By “compatible” I’m saying that there is one value Jesus taught us to embrace that is literally compatible with the value system of the world. In fact, Jesus tells his followers that they are to behave in such a way that the world around them judges their behavior to be good. It comes in the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus tells us we are salt and light.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5:13-16 NIV

Now, there are many ways Christians have misunderstood or misapplied this passage. For my part, there was a time when I thought the job of a Christian was to be a “preserving” agent in the world because salt can be a preservative against rot. In other words, the world has a tendency to rot, and Christians were the salt that the world needed to slow down that process of rotting. Likewise, I used to think that being light involved acting like a spotlight pointing out all the ways the world was failing to live up to God’s standards. However, even though both of those ideas can be drawn from the metaphors Jesus used, neither of those things fall in line with the actual application Jesus gave for his own metaphor.

When Jesus told us we were the salt of the world, he referred to our “saltiness” as the indicator of good salt. He didn’t make any reference to anything preservative or preventative. When Jesus told us to let our light shine, he wanted the people of the surrounding society to see and rejoice over our “good deeds.” Now, this should be obvious, but the only way a society can rejoice over our good deeds is if our deeds somehow line up with something the society considers worthy of praise, something the society considers “good.” In other words, according to Jesus, sometimes and somehow the activity of Christians should coincide with the world’s existing perception of “good deeds.” Being salt and light isn’t about restraining the progress of the world or being a spotlight on sin; it must be about being tasty and pleasant in this world.

This concept is so often ignored that I want to say it again: The only way our society can rejoice over our good deeds is if our good deeds somehow line up with something our society will rejoice over. There must be some compatibility between at least a portion of the Christian ethic and the ethics of the world, and Jesus isn’t the only one who taught this. Paul did too.

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Colossians 4:5-6 NIV

…and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 NIV

Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,… He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.

1 Timothy 3:2,7 NIV

According to both Jesus and Paul, the Christian ethic includes having a good reputation with unbelievers, but according to many Christians these days, that doesn’t seem possible. Christians have so often focused on the verses that draw lines of division between us and the world that we completely ignore this deep compatibility between the Christian value system and the value system of the world. Where does that compatibility lie? Well, I think something from Paul really helps. It’s a passage we looked at before, but it’s even better to look at it now.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Philippians 4:8 NIV

Paul never isolates those words to Christian values only. The Christian idea of truth, nobility, excellence, etc. should often if not always line up with the world’s idea. And therefore, there should be many times where the values of good, noble, true, right, pure, etc. translate from the Christian world to the secular world. Put into a value statement, we have this:

• All people should value what is true, good and noble, and Christians should often find common ground with the world on these matters.

What About…

What about the others? Our list of values translatable to the world is far shorter at this point than our list of Christian values. But this is the way it should be. Review the list of Christian values above, and we have the value of winning people to faith in Jesus, but that’s a value about helping people translate from the secular society into the family of God, not a value for the secular society itself. There is a value of holding allegiance to Jesus himself above all other things, but that’s a value that can only apply to people who have declared allegiance to Jesus. There are the values of submission and sacrifice, living in holiness, and loving God, but again, these values can only apply to a person who is standing under the authority of Jesus who lived and taught these things. No, the list of values to translate from the Christian world to the broader society must end with these three: caring for the Earth, promoting human dignity and equity, and valuing truth, goodness, and beauty. To reinforce this, let’s consider two ways that Christian values definitely can not translate to the surrounding secular society.

Two Limits on Christian Influence

First, as we have noted already, Christians are commanded to avoid passing judgment on those outside the church, but it’s also important to note the context in which Paul gave the instruction. When Paul tells us not to pass judgment on the world, he specifically mentioned the sins of sexual immorality, greed, swindling, and idolatry! Why is it, then, that Christians today frequently bring up the sexual ethics of the world around us? Why is it, then, that Christians regularly pass judgment on the world for the sexual ethics in the world? We are quite willing to obey Paul’s guidance when it comes to overlooking greed and idolatry in our society, but when it comes to sexual ethics, we somehow feel the need to stand up and be the voice of truth against the evils of the world.

But we should never let our failures become our standards. Despite our failure to abide by Paul’s instructions here, we must remember the principle. Christians are not to judge the sexual ethics of the people in the world. In fact, I think we can say that sexual ethics as well as many other core Christian ethics are not translatable to the broader secular society, and therefore, in light of Paul’s clear teaching, it is absolutely not part of the Christian mandate to enforce sexual ethics and other aspects of Christian morality on the broader world.

Paul doesn’t stop there. In one of the most misunderstood and therefore disregarded passages in the New Testament, Paul encouraged the Corinthian Christians to embrace certain aspects of their surrounding culture even in their worship gatherings. Specifically, he actually commanded Christian men in Corinth to cut their hair and keep it short. I’ll tell you why that’s so interesting in a moment, but first, let’s take a look at his words on the matter.

Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering. If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God.

1 Corinthians 11:13-16 NIV

This passage has confused Christians for centuries especially because it is part of a section in 1 Corinthians that discusses other gender norms in the Christian church. Now is not the time for me to discuss all those gender norms. If you are curious about the practice of veiling in the ancient world and why Paul would encourage women to cover their heads, others have done a better job than I could (e.g. Paul and Gender, Cynthia Long Westfall). However, in simplest terms, according to the NIV translation of this passage, Paul is claiming that “the very nature of things” teaches us how glorious it is that women have long hair and that long hair is itself a kind of covering for her. Paul also says that long hair is disgraceful for men, but where did he get that idea? What does Paul mean when he talks about “the very nature of things”? The answer comes in understanding three very important cultural realities.

First, Paul was extensively trained as a Pharisee in Jerusalem, and in the Jewish religious context, only men did public praying, and when they did so, they would often cover their heads with a scarf or shawl of some kind. In other words, Paul’s command to the people in Corinth goes directly against the Jewish tradition he had practiced for most of his life. Against tradition, he was allowing women to pray in public worship, and against tradition, he was also saying they should cover their heads while the men should not. Therefore, Paul’s command is not coming from the background of any Jewish religious practice, nor is it coming from anything in Jewish Scripture.

Secondly, in the Jewish culture, it was actually quite common for men to grow their hair long. In fact, the story of Samson reminds us that long hair for men could be a symbol of their dedication to God! I bet some Jewish men would have allowed their hair to grow long even when they weren’t in the midst of a vow just to get the social capital that would come from it. Therefore, once again, we have clear proof that Paul’s command in 1 Corinthians 11 is not based on any Jewish cultural norms either.

These first two points let us know that Paul’s statement about hair length for men and women has nothing to do with his own Jewish context, but there is a third cultural reality that helps us see what Paul was really getting at. It is not a coincidence that Corinth was a city steeped in Greek history but thoroughly eager to represent Roman cultural values and Roman society was perhaps the first society in the ancient world to have clear norms regarding hair length for men and women. Consider Roman statues of men and women from the time, especially compare the representations of the Roman emperors to the Greek gods and the differences are readily apparent. Greek gods, male and female alike, have long flowing hair. Statues of Roman emperors, on the other hand, have tightly trimmed, short hair while Roman sculptures of women retain the long flowing hair. The people of Corinth, receiving this letter from Paul, were living in one of the first societies to really associate hair length with gender norms, and this is the only time Paul ever wrote about hair length. Again, it is not a coincidence that his only letter to mention hair length went to this very Roman city. Paul gave the people of Corinth the instruction to accommodate their public worship to key cultural norms of their society. Even though Paul himself was a Jew, he encouraged Christians in Corinth to willingly adopt (even during worship) cultural norms that didn’t violate Christian faith. Rather than telling the church to spread its norms to the surrounding society, Paul encouraged the opposite (at least sometimes).

Therefore, in light of Paul’s command to Christians to accommodate their worship to the cultural norms of their society, we have to conclude that it is absolutely not part of the Christian mandate to prescribe our cultural norms on the surrounding society, nor is it part of our mandate to preserve cultural norms that are beginning to fade from society. So long as the cultural norms are outside the aforementioned translatable values, they are effectively outside the Christian mandate altogether.

Proper Christian Activism

I want to conclude this chapter by laying the foundation for future application. As we have seen, very few Christian values are translatable to the surrounding society. Christians are supposed to stay hands off when it comes to judging the morality of the world outside those translatable values, and the role of Christians in the world is to accept (some) expressions of culture and not to control them. But as we have seen, some Christian values are translatable to the society, and all Christians are called to be transformative agents for the sake of the gospel and the Kingdom of God in the world around us. Therefore, great care must be taken as we consider what it means to be transformative in this world. To disengage from the world, to live disconnected from the world, or to interact with the world only in the effort to get people saved, would be to miss out on our call to be transformative agents of reconciliation. However, to embrace full-throated activism promoting all things Christian to the broader society and working toward the development of a Christian Kingdom in the here and now would be to reject our biblical limitations.

The calling of Christians is to live in this world as agents of a different world, a different Kingdom. Some of our values are translatable and some are not. We are called to be transformative, but not to establish an earthly kingdom. Therefore, the extremes of disengagement and Christian Nationalism are equally erroneous and we must find a middle way. This middle path I call Proper Christian Activism, and we can begin to define it by reminding ourselves what our translatable values are. Here they are again, rearranged not in chronological order but in order of Biblical prominence:

• All people should value human dignity and economic equity.
• All people should value what is true, good and noble, and Christians should often find common ground with the world on these matters.
• All people should value the care of the Earth.

Wherever Christianity has spread throughout history, these values have followed, and because the modern western world was built largely in tandem with the growth and spread of Christianity, each of these values already broadly exists in our society. These values began with people who followed Jesus, but they continued even when people divorced them from their original motivations. The world largely holds these values without any of the original motivation, but Christians still have the original motivation intact, and therefore, Christians should be overjoyed to join the broader society in promoting these values. This is what I mean by Proper Christian Activism, but giving it a name is not enough. The Christian Church in America has a chaotic and stained history when it comes to social engagement, frequently falling to the errors of disengagement or awkward nationalism, and so we need to be much more specific about what Proper Christian Activism really is. We do that by turning each of our translatable value statements into a call to action for Christians in their engagement with the world.

The Activism for Human Dignity

Because all people should value human dignity and its related economic equity, and because Christians have the strongest motivation for it:

Christians should use whatever voice or influence they have to take up the cause of the weak, marginalized, disregarded, or oppressed in their society to ensure all people are treated with dignity and justice without regard to the moral condition of those people.

The Activism for Truth and Beauty

Because all people should value what is true and beautiful, and because Christians have the strongest motivation for it:

Christians should use whatever voice or influence they have to promote what is true, noble, right, pure, excellent, or praiseworthy, including art, science, journalism, and social policies even if it includes promoting something unfamiliar or unpleasant.

The Activism for Environmental Stewardship

Because all people should value the care of the Earth, and because Christians have the strongest motivation for honoring God in this way:

Christians should use whatever voice or influence they have to address the environmental concerns that reflect our stewardship of this planet and unjustly impact the weakest members of our world both now and in the future.

The Boundaries to Our Activism

Finally, because Christians are tempted to use our influence to go beyond these values, we need to remember our boundaries:

Christians should not waste their influence to advocate for or against any cultural trends, social groups, political worldviews, or public personalities unless such advocacy is required by one or more of the previous points.

What About Proclaiming the Gospel?

In my description of Proper Christian Activism, I haven’t said anything about witnessing or proselytizing. I haven’t mentioned the need for Christians to live out the Great Commission and make disciples, but there’s a reason I haven’t. Sharing the gospel doesn’t fall in line with what I’m calling Christian Activism. To be sure, some Christians think that the job of a Christian in the public sphere is to promote the name of Jesus and the salvation in his name at any and every opportunity, but that has been a constant tension among Christians throughout the centuries. As just one example, take the issue of a starving person, should the Christian share Jesus first or food first? Most Christians will agree in principle that sharing food is sharing Jesus by living out the principles of the Kingdom, living out the life of Jesus himself, and that living the life of Jesus is of equal priority with teaching the words of Jesus. This same principle can apply much more broadly than when dealing with starvation.

So, is there ever a time when Christians should be activists for the gospel message? Should Christians use their political and social power to promote a uniquely Christian worldview knowing that it is the right worldview and the worldview most likely to get people saved? My perspective is informed by the teaching and example of Jesus. In nearly every story of healing, Jesus offers healing before offering any call to spiritual or moral transformation. In one case (the paralytic lowered from the roof) he actually offered forgiveness before the healing and never addressed repentance at all. My perspective is that Christians should definitely use whatever voice or influence they have to share the message of the good news of Jesus, but such proclamation should come after Christians have earned the right to speak such words, after Christians have demonstrated the good news of the Kingdom. That is, before advocating for Christian morality, Christians should be demonstrating the exceptional goodness of that morality!

“Activism is too Political”

As I talk about Christian Activism in light of environmental concerns, social equity, and the pursuit of truth and goodness, I am frequently misunderstood by people to be talking about politics, or that I have decided to be a political activist. By labelling me “political” they give themselves permission to disregard my perspective. This is because for many evangelicals, “political” is a pejorative term. If you were not raised in the North American white evangelical tradition from which I come, you might not know this connotation of the word “political,” but for many evangelicals, “politics” is the label used to dismiss any divisive topic that hasn’t become accepted evangelical dogma. It was the word used by antebellum Christians to dismiss the abolitionists. It was the word used by Christians all over the country in the 60s to dismiss civil rights efforts. Simply put, politics is the label for anything potentially divisive that we don’t want to talk about right now. Still, it’s worth noting that the word “politics” is employed with great hypocrisy among North American white evangelicals. For example, among evangelicals, talking about welfare expansion is political, but talking about reducing government spending is just being moral. Talking about granting immigrants a pathway to citizenship is political, but talking about “enforcing the laws” at the border is a moral issue. Talking about government sponsored healthcare is political, but talking about government prohibited abortion is moral. The line between political and moral is drawn wherever the evangelical culture deems it convenient even though each of these issues is obviously both. The process of convincing a wider society to live by your morality is intrinsically political, and the decisions made by politicians always have truly moral implications.

I highlight this issue now because it is the primary evangelical accusation against my line of reasoning throughout this chapter, and it is based on an evangelical double-speak when it comes to the word “politics.” Even as the word “love” has many different meanings, so too does the word “political” and the evangelicals who use it as a pejorative term (as I myself used to do) are empowered to do so because they are mixing categories. On the one hand, “political” is a narrow word that applies only to the machinations around getting elected, staying elected, or getting your way in the assembly of the other elected people. From this perspective, the power-brokering of political activity is irrelevant to the Christian church. However, “political” can also be a broad word that applies to the overall way a society operates and the way changes take place in that society. From that perspective, the process of politics is absolutely relevant to the Christian church. The evangelical church has been happy to leverage political power to achieve their “moral” aims while accusing efforts they don’t like as being “political.” It’s time for Christians to recognize this hypocrisy and simply call everything both. All issues that affect groups of people are simultaneously political and moral. The process of accomplishing moral goals for a group of people is a political process, and the political processes governing society are themselves moral or immoral and have moral or immoral implications.

Therefore, I claim that the activism I propose is not political in the narrow, insignificant, and easily dismissed meaning of the word, but this activism is definitely political in the broad sense of the word, the sense where Christian morality intersects with the broader society, and the sense where being moral involves taking into consideration how the actions of the society affects the people in that society. The concern for a Christian shouldn’t be whether something is “political” or not but whether something needs to be informed by Christian morality. For example, although my activism about stewardship of the Earth might sound the same as a non-Christian politician who uses the language of climate-concern to win votes, there is a category difference between what the two of us are attempting to do morally.

Still, because I have heard so often that I am being too political, I want to take the time to highlight just a few ways white American evangelicalism is guilty of hypocrisy when opposing those who, like me, are attempting to embrace a more biblical activism. In fact, it’s more than hypocrisy. It’s a form of syncretism, absorbing certain aspects of the current political landscape into the faith as if they are central tenets of the faith. This awkward syncretism leads to the rejection of clearly biblical moral responsibilities by simply calling them “political.” Here are three examples of that syncretism, that hypocrisy, in the form of three evangelical thoughts commonly expressed as moral values that are nothing more than narrow political opinions with no direct relevance to Christian morality.

“Capitalism is Good & Socialism is Bad”

Capitalism, socialism, and any other economic system are purely political perspectives that are peripheral to the Christian faith. Inasmuch as capitalism champions individual freedom, responsibility, and the potential for advancement, capitalism can be a tool to promote the dignity of individual people, but the same can also be said about other economic systems. Inasmuch as socialism champions the cause of the many, it can be a tool to promote the equity of people. Christian morality requires us to be champions of both dignity and equity, and therefore neither economic system can be considered purely Christian. Furthermore, like all systems of power, any economic system can be used as a tool by the advantaged to take advantage of the disadvantaged. Christians must remember that we advocate for the human dignity derived from the image of God and not for the systems that may or may not at times protect that dignity.

“Secularization is Bad”

Although the United States of America enjoyed nearly 200 years where Christianity was the assumed worldview held by nearly everyone and where Christian quotes, principles, and behaviors were displayed in the public square, it should never be assumed that the nation was ever a Christian nation. The perpetuation of slavery and segregation, the massacres and forced relocations of indigenous peoples, the internment of the Japanese during World War II, and our continued systems of racial injustice prove that the country as a whole has never been “Christian” in any way Jesus would endorse. Even the First Amendment, by guaranteeing freedom of religion to all people, proves that the USA has never been a specifically Christian nation. Furthermore, no New Testament writer ever encouraged Christians to create such a Christian nation or even to advocate that the broader society embrace uniquely Christian morals or behaviors. The apparent secularization of our society is entirely not our concern as Christians. Even if the surrounding society were to become overtly hostile to Christianity, we are still not instructed by anything in Scripture to ever “fight” against such a turn. Christians must remember that we are called to make disciples not nations.

“The Political Parties are Morally Distinct”

The specific interests of political parties and their platforms are completely peripheral to the Christian faith, and the idea that one party is more righteous than another is simple naïveté. The proper amount of taxation, the size of the government, the amount of freedom afforded to states, the existence of or height of a border wall, the number of immigrant visas granted in a year, the level of regulation regarding guns, etc. are all political issues adopted by parties for their own aims and are, in their details, peripheral to the church. Each of these issues may touch on an issue of concern to Christians because each of them may touch on an aspect of a central value like defending the cause of the weak or embracing truth over falsehood, but the issues themselves as phrased by political parties are peripheral to the church. Furthermore, even if one party has a platform that violates a principle of Christian morality, such a violation doesn’t make the entire party platform evil nor does it make rival parties righteous. No political party deserves Christian loyalty.

As one example, let’s consider the issue of immigration. In the United States, our political parties are relatively strongly divided on the issue. One side argues for better enforcement of the laws to protect the rights of citizens while the other side argues for more humanitarian treatment of the immigrant. Christians should find themselves in the middle. Proper Christian activism says we should concern ourselves with the issues of human dignity and equity on both sides, both the plight of those fleeing hardship or oppression in their own country and also the plight of those who might lose jobs because of expanded immigration in this country. Simply put, neither party is entirely morally right about this issue. Now, policies proposed by the parties will have varying degrees of compatibility with Christian morality, and each Christian has the right to advocate for or against a specific policy according to that morality, but we must remember that the policy details and especially the party platforms are peripheral to Christianity. Christians should bear no loyalty to any party, platform, or politician.

Sometimes, Political Issues ARE Moral Issues

Finally, some public policies do directly conflict with a central translatable value and should therefore be addressed by Christians using their voice and whatever influence they have. I have just commented on the moral implications of immigration policies, but for a more stark example, consider slavery. The chattel slave industry in this country was a legal public policy that was an affront to human dignity and therefore deeply immoral. It should never have been accepted by or even ignored by Christians. Also, the dehumanizing policies of the Jim Crow South or the economic disenfranchisement of Black people throughout the nation should never have been considered acceptable or even peripheral. These are but two examples, and there are many more. The line between peripheral and not peripheral when it comes to specific policies is often blurry, but Christians should not be afraid to label unjust public policies for what they are even if it means other Christians accuse them of being political.

There are a few other issues Christians should consider peripheral, but I will revisit them later in my discussion of idols in the church. Before then, let’s take a chapter to further apply these concepts.

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 13-14

I ended the previous chapter with four questions Christians need to answer as we consider our responsibility to be agents of the gospel in the world today. However, before I can address any of those questions directly, it’s important for me to openly address the biases from which I am coming. All of us have our biases, and biases that I used to have might be biases that you still have and vice versa. It’s important to lay them all out on the table.

I used to have two overarching and simplistic perspectives concerning Christianity in the modern world. First, until recently, I adopted a firmly evangelical point of view on just about everything. In a moment, I’ll share what I mean when I use the word evangelical. Secondly, until recently, I thought of gospel as a word that indicated only a specific doctrine and the responsibility of an individual to respond to that doctrine. I never considered the social and societal implications of that doctrine or even if the word gospel meant anything more than just a doctrine.

I now consider those to perspectives to be insufficient, and I am beginning to move past their limitations, but I still need to acknowledge them and the other biases flowing from them because I can’t claim to have changed entirely, nor can I claim to have perfectly transitioned to something better. Part of my growth is an evolution of my previous perspective, part of my growth is a reaction to my previous perspective, and part of my growth is a rejection of my previous perspective.

Therefore, I offer this chapter as a slight detour from the overall content of this book because I need to be open with myself and with you regarding the perspectives I once held but now reject. I recognize that in my journey of faith over the past few years, I may have accidentally retained portions of a too narrow view that should be tossed aside, or perhaps I have allowed the pendulum to swing too far away from my origins and have tossed out something that should be retained. By putting these thoughts out there, I’m willingly opening myself up to the criticism and evaluation of others, but I do so for another reason too. I want you to know that I’m thinking through the implications of my own origin story, and I want you to join me in thinking through your own. We all have to address our biases. Some values we believe to be central actually aren’t. Some things we think of as peripheral need to be brought closer to center. But until we see our biases clearly, we won’t be able to see the difference between what is truly central and what is just peripheral. Since I can’t speak for you, I’ll just speak for me, but perhaps you will see a bit of yourself in my story too.

Pauline Doctrine — Gospel & Morality

In my church tradition, the evangelical tradition which I’ll address in a later chapter, I was taught and I fully accepted that only one thing was truly central to the Christian faith: the gospel. More specifically, though, my tradition used gospel to refer to the specific doctrine of salvation from sin through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and our individual response to that sacrifice through faith. Even more specifically, my tradition focused on the gospel as expressed by Paul in verses like these:

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:6-8 NIV

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:23 NIV

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9 NIV

For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

1 Corinthians 2:2 NIV

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV

From that perspective, the gospel is almost exclusively a message of individual, personal salvation—forgiveness of sins, and the gift of eternal life—that we obtain through placing our faith in the person and work of Jesus. According to that perspective, nothing matters nearly as much as a proper understanding of the gospel. In fact, the understanding of the gospel often takes practical precedence over everything else. Consider what Paul said in Galatians.

I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

Galatians 2:21 NIV

This comes in the context of Paul accusing the Galatians of leaving “faith” behind and focusing too much on “observing the law,” but the implied threat for all evangelicals is that certain attitudes and behaviors of Christians can lead them to diminish the significance of Christ’s death. This is a real fear evangelicals have. This is a real fear I was raised to have. It’s the fear that if I have believed an incorrect gospel, I will be invalidating the death of Christ in my life and will therefore be disqualifying myself for salvation. One more passage will drive this home.

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.”

Galatians 3:10-11 NIV

As a result of verses like this, read from within the framework that the gospel is primarily a doctrine to understand and respond to, I believed with the majority of my evangelical brothers and sisters that faith is the important thing, that faith meant mental acceptance of a set of doctrinal claims about Jesus, and that if your faith was somehow not perfectly formed, your salvation was probably not real either. For most evangelicals, how a person lives is far and away less important than the set of doctrines that person believes.

However, if you spend any time in any church with such a perspective, you will quickly hear a practical inconsistency in the teaching of the church. Specifically, if you listen to just a few sermons from a middle-of-the-road evangelical preacher, you will hear the strong implication that certain behaviors really do matter, and they matter so much they can invalidate the spiritual effect of correct doctrine! This is because Paul didn’t only teach doctrinal accuracy. He also gave strong and clear moral instructions too. Now, if you push evangelicals on whether the moral code is as central to the faith as the gospel, they will likely deny it, but if you listen to how they talk about their faith and what it means to be a believer, the strength of Paul’s moral statements will be clearly evident in their words. Passages like the following are deeply important to evangelicals.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21 NIV

I highlighted the last phrase to indicate the emphasis evangelicals place on this passage. Passages like this allow evangelicals to talk about a gospel that saves you by grace while also talking about behaviors that invalidate you for salvation. Moreover, passages like this allow evangelicals to make lists of which behaviors are the most damaging to one’s spiritual condition—which behaviors are the least compatible with Christianity. Passages like this blur the lines between a message of grace by faith and a message of behavior as proof of sincerity.

For many church traditions, the apparent incongruity between Paul’s words don’t create a problem. For many church traditions, gospel has always been a message of behavior. The gospel is the news of what God has done for us (behavior) through the obedience of Christ (behavior) and an invitation for us to join in the work (behavior) and receive the blessings of that good news. For those church traditions, understanding what Christ has done is not a mental magic bullet that turns you into a Christian, understanding what Christ has done and following him is what turns you into a Christian.

However, evangelicals are trained to reject that understanding of the gospel. Evangelicals are trained specifically to think of salvation as something brought about through faith and to think of faith as the mental acceptance of doctrinal statements about Jesus plus specific behavioral changes that result from accepting the authority of Jesus. But evangelicals are also trained to use specific key words to describe the dividing line between what is doctrinal acceptance and what is behavior transformation.

The well-trained evangelical will carefully use words like law and grace or justification and sanctification in an attempt to separate the doctrines of the gospel from the behaviors of morality. When a person accepts / believes the doctrine of the gospel, that person is justified by the grace of God meaning that their sins are forgiven and if they were to die right then, they would obtain eternal life. When a justified person continues to live, though, the Spirit takes up residence in that person’s life to progressively sanctify them over time into being more and more holy / righteous. Through the use of terms like these, evangelicals try to create a very distinct line between the gospel that saves by grace and the morality that flows from a transformed life, and the lines work well enough whenever someone is actually obeying the morality of Paul, but not so much when someone is failing to obey that morality.

Whether the person is trying to follow the Pauline morality and failing or rejecting Pauline morality entirely, the person who believes the doctrine of the gospel but doesn’t live the life Paul proclaims is a person who serves as a counter-example to the structure of justification and sanctification evangelicals believe so firmly in. The only way to reconcile the incongruity is to claim that since Paul’s morality is the expected outcome of Paul’s gospel true Christians will behave themselves. Therefore, any person who violates the moral code without subsequent repentance and successfully doing-better-next-time, must not be a real Christian. As a result, for many evangelicals, Paul’s moral code is the de facto litmus test of true Christianity.

More than that, for most evangelicals, Paul’s moral code is the only viable test of true Christianity. Because Paul so vehemently rails against “The Law” in his writings, evangelicals have taken to using the term “Legalism” to refer to any emphasis on any behavior that is taught in Scripture but is outside Paul’s specific moral formulations. If a person talks about keeping the Sabbath (10 Commandments #4) or tithing (throughout Leviticus and Deuteronomy), he or she will often be labeled a legalist who has added something to the gospel. If a person talks about allowing secular same-sex marriage, that person will be labeled a “liberal” who has watered down the gospel. In evangelical circles, adherence to Paul’s formulation of the gospel and Paul’s specific depictions of morality to the exclusion of all others is the test for true Christianity.

For most of my life, I felt exactly this way. Although I was convinced that I was saved by God’s grace and my faith in the message of Jesus, I was also convinced that adherence to Paul’s moral code was just as important, not as a means of getting me to heaven, but as a means of proving my adoption into the family of God. In many ways I am still convinced of that, but I am now beginning to see the inconsistencies inherent to this approach. Specifically, I was trained to focus on the specific behaviors of Paul’s moral code but not the social and societal implications of his code or the source (OT) morality from which his code was formed. Since he often mentioned sexual immorality, improper speech, drunkenness, greed, and church governance, my moral code and the moral code of my upbringing focused almost exclusively on those specific vice. Rather than seeing sexual immorality in the context of one person exploiting or oppressing someone else, I saw it only as a comment about sexual behavior itself. Rather than seeing the instructions about greed in the context of a community of people who need to trust each other, I saw it as an internal attitude toward money visible only to God. Fearing legalism and liberalism equally, evangelicals focus on the specific vices mentioned by Paul in the narrowest possible terms.

As a result of all this, evangelicals have a strange relationship with the things Paul never addressed at all. Paul said nothing about tax brackets, public health measures, public schools, climate change, vaccinations, systemic racism etc. but these issues have become and continue to be important issues for our modern society. Still, evangelicals consider them peripheral largely because of Paul’s silence on the matters. Few sermons in my church tradition ever address any of those issues at all regardless of their moral implications. Mention any of these issues to an evangelical today and you are likely to hear them labelled as private matters, matters of personal freedom, or “political” and therefore irrelevant. No matter their label, in the context of the life of the evangelical church, these issues are largely ignored. It isn’t because the church is consciously taking a side in the matter. It’s simply because Paul never said anything specifically about those issues, and so the issues are rejected as viable topics for conversation. Since these moral concerns are not part of Paul’s explicit moral teaching, they aren’t central to evangelical doctrine.

But as you probably know, that isn’t the whole story when it comes to things Paul never said. Even though evangelicalism has firmly adopted the Pauline formulation of the gospel and the attendant Pauline morality as forming the center of our faith, and even though evangelicalism has rejected taking a stance on certain moral issues never addressed by Paul, there are other moral issues never addressed by Paul that do find a place in the center of evangelical morality. Paul never said anything about immigration, abortion, capital punishment, capitalism, or the proper size of government, and yet many evangelicals have taken great pains to teach me the “Christian” way I should think about those issues. No evangelical will admit that capitalism is a central component of their faith, but if you question capitalism in front of an evangelical, you will quickly discover how important it really is to them.

I have only recently been able to see the hypocrisy in my own church tradition and in myself. To limit my understanding of morality to what Paul explicitly said is too narrow, to only consider Paul’s morality and not that of Jesus or James is likewise narrow, and yet this narrow understanding is predominant in the circles in which my faith and ministry have been formed. What follows is a confession of the ways I (and my fellow evangelicals with me) have been guilty of embracing certain issues as if they are central while ignoring other issues that should have been more central. This list will not be exhaustive. It is a precursor to the extended discussion I plan to have in Chapter 6, but this list is the more personal of the two.

Evolution & Racism

Let’s talk about evolution first.

Years ago, as atheism was on the rise in academic circles, Christians in my church tradition decided it was important to oppose the teaching of evolution in public schools. Christians went to court to oppose the teaching of evolution, and they built organizations to specifically promote what’s called Young Earth Creationism. Furthermore, evangelical Christians took great pains to equip children with the tools they needed to reject evolutionary ideas taught in schools. I was a beneficiary of that education. Having been raised in an evangelical church and having attended an evangelical Christian school from Kindergarten through High School, I was taught repeatedly that the Earth (and the universe as well) was a maximum of 10,000 years old, more likely only 6,000, and Christians had the science to prove it no matter what the secular scientific community wanted you to think. I remember the day in 6th grade when my teacher taught me about the shrinking of the sun. Paraphrased, the lesson went like this:

The Sun is shrinking by X feet every year. Scientists have done the math. At the current rate of shrinking, if we extrapolate back in time, at about 10,000 years ago, the Sun would have been so large that the Earth would have been on fire. Therefore, there is no scientific way the Earth can be older than 10,000 years!

Not only was I taught that, I believed it. I accepted the claim that “scientists” had proven a young earth by extrapolating current measurements of the sun into the past. The hypocrisy of the argument was beyond me at the time, but I see it now. All of evolutionary science is based on extrapolating current measurements into the past to give us the age of the universe, the age of the Grand Canyon, and even the age of the sun, but I, according to what I was taught, accepted this one anecdotal extrapolation and rejected all the extrapolations done by the “secular” scientific community. I accepted the statement of the sun shrinking as definitive proof all the way until I learned how stars actually work, how fuel, temperature, and gravity are always in a state of equilibrium and how “shrinkage” of the sun doesn’t work the way I was told. Lest you think it’s an out-of-date claim, my children were taught this very same sun-shrinkage proof in their Christian school not 5 years ago!

That’s not the only “proof” I was given for a young earth. Here’s another one. Paraphrased, it goes like this:

Carbon 14, and other forms of radiometric dating are unreliable methods for determining how old something is. Not long ago, a seal was found dead on the beach and when scientists did Carbon 14 dating on it, the numbers said it was thousands of years old! Clearly, Carbon 14 dating methods are flawed, and therefore, we can’t trust any radiometric methods for determining the age of fossils or the age of the Earth.

Anecdotes like that were frequently given to me, but they were all given to me without sources. Who were the scientists? Why did they decide to date a recently dead animal? Did they even do it properly? How does one bad result from one group of scientists using one method of dating (and coming from a biased perspective) prove all radiometric dating wrong? Over and over, I was given similar bits of logic that pretended to be science even though none of them were published in a scientific journal or recognized by the scientific community. In fact, I was taught that the whole secular science establishment was just a godless hoax propped up by Satan to get Christians to toss out Genesis. Why would Satan want us to toss out Genesis? Well, according to these Creationists, if we got rid of Genesis, we would have to toss out the whole rest of the Bible, and if we got rid of the rest of the Bible, we’d also have to toss out Jesus. It was as if the age of the Earth was the reason we should believe in the resurrection of Christ!

For a good long time, I bought into it all too. I rejected the science about evolution. Then, since I doubted the scientists about evolution, I also rejected the science of climate change, biology, anthropology, paleontology, geology, cosmology, and anything else that seemed to imply anything in contrast to this one narrow view of the Genesis creation account.

I confess that such thinking was arrogant.

Far from being thoughts in submission to God’s Word, these were beliefs built upon the assumption that I and my Christian brothers and sisters were simply more noble and more intelligent than the entire scientific community. Darwin was an evil man with an evil agenda, not a brilliant scientific mind who discovered a simple yet beautiful, natural principle for all the biodiversity of the world. I and my Christian friends could see the truth through all the nonsense. The rest of the world was hopelessly duped. Such thinking was and is arrogant and wrong. I am casting it aside.

Now, let’s talk about racism.

When I recently began to think deeply through the arguments of the Young Earth Creationists and the history of the movement, I also learned something truly interesting and truly disturbing. Young Earth Creationism was a new doctrine formulated in the 20th century. Throughout most of church history scholars had taken Genesis metaphorically and had taught that the age of the Earth was unknown. In fact, when Darwin published his seminal work, some Christians hailed it as a glorious exploration of how God’s wisdom was wired into the natural world! Here’s the kicker: in the 1920s religiously motivated people moved states to outlaw the teaching of evolution, and in 1925 William Jennings Bryan attempted to defend Creationism in a trial known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, but those same religiously motivated people, including Bryan, also believed that the Earth was old! Even in opposition to evolution, Christians were not promoting a Young Earth. In fact, the true start of Young Earth Creationism came when John C Whitcomb and Henry Morris published a book called The Genesis Flood in 1961.

Why did Young Earth Creationism take hold of American Christianity in 1961? At least one reason Young Earth Creationism rose to prominence when it did was that it specifically empowered Christians to oppose a different societal change that was also brewing in the early 60’s—civil rights. Before, you think I’ve gone crazy, there are real reasons for the connection between opposing evolution and opposing civil rights. There are doctrinal reasons why many conservative white Christians actually opposed the civil rights movement of the 60s. Even in the 70s and 80s, I was still being taught the reasons why. Those reasons still connected to Young Earth Creationism, and I believed them.

Young Earth Creationism taught me that God made the Earth and all the biodiversity on it in a short period of time. Likewise, the biodiversity of humanity was created by God’s guiding hand through a very short period of time. Because everything happened by God’s divine choice and over a short period of time, I was taught and believed that after Noah’s flood, God made three basic races of humans by intentional choice. Noah’s son Shem was the father of all the Hebrews and all the Asian (olive- or yellow-skinned) people. I was taught that Japheth was the father of all the white-skinned people who ended up in Europe, and that Ham was the father of all the dark-skinned people who ended up in Africa. No one in evangelical circles could ever tried to explain to me where the native Americans (red-skinned) came from.

Since these different races were directly created by God there was a moral reason to keep them “separate.” Moreover, I was also taught that these different races were not actually equal. In fact, I was taught (never explicitly, but through many layers of implication) that dark-skinned people were under God’s judgment somehow. You see, Ham, the supposed father of all dark-skinned people, was the son who saw his father Noah naked and laughed at him, and was the son Noah cursed to be subservient to his brothers. I wasn’t personally raised to think of black people as slaves, but Young Earth Creationism as a whole is directly connected to a much older belief that black people bear a generational curse. Young Earth Creationism required me to reject the idea that human variations were the result of very long and slow natural processes of genetic diversification. Young Earth Creationism required me to believe that the “races” were made that way by God, and that his will was to have them be separate. It’s a central doctrine of Young Earth Creationism to say that race was created specifically by God for his purposes over a relatively short span of time. It’s a secondary component of Young Earth Creationism to say that God values the “diversity” of the “separate” races; so therefore, Christians in my tradition used the doctrine of Creation to justify the “separate but equal” forms of racism that have been and are still persistent in the United States.

Again, no one explicitly taught me that apartheid was God’s will, but no one ever encouraged me to think of interracial marriage as normal either. The separation of races dribbled into my own subconscious not by direct teaching but by implications of the Young Earth Creation doctrine. Sometimes someone would refer to something in the New Testament about unity in the body of Christ and how the old divisions were now over, but the ongoing implication was always that the white people were living a culture that was “normal” or “preferred” and that other people needed to join in (assimilate). I was never taught separate but equal, but I adopted a strong belief in separate or same. There was only one proper culture, and it was the one into which I was born. For other people, the door was open, but they had to join. I now confess that such attitudes are racist.

Young Earth Creationism is a subconscious engine driving the perpetuation of certain forms of racism in this country. That’s why I don’t think it is a coincidence that in the 60s, 70s, and beyond, Christians were busy talking about Young Earth Creationism and creating organizations like the Institute for Creation Research but were not also talking about the Jim Crow south, the redlining in the north, or any other expressions of systemic racism. In retrospect, I wish we had built an Institute for Racism Research or an Institute for Racial Justice! Instead, evangelicals chose to use their energy to oppose science but chose to ignore racial injustice. Opposing mainstream science became foundational to evangelicals, but opposing racism never did. To this day, evangelicals regularly exercise activism against evolution or other mainstream scientific concepts, but the white evangelical voice is almost never used to address racial injustice. In fact, evangelicals today usually just deny that racism even exists.

These beliefs are expressions of arrogance and racism, and I confess that my participation in them was also arrogant and racist.

Religious Freedom (For Us)

In 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public schools should no longer practice the daily ritual of Christian prayer. To this day, Christians in evangelical circles point to that moment as a hallmark tragedy in the history of our country. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard pastors and other Christians lament the “ban on prayer in schools” even though prayer is frequently expressed by students before school, after school, in club meetings, and individually at lunch tables. Still, for evangelical Christians, the issue of prayer in schools is one of today’s fundamental issues. “If only we could get prayer back in schools…” they say wistfully, as if the reintroduction of ritual corporate prayer in public schools will somehow solve society’s problems.

This same basic idea expresses itself in the evangelical desire to have monuments to the Ten Commandments, Christian nativity scenes, and the use of phrases like “Happy Easter” and “Merry Christmas” prominently displayed in public places and on the lips of public officials. However, just as before, even though evangelicals have embraced large-scale activism to reintroduce prayer and other expressions of Christianity in the public square, they still have yet to employ any large-scale activism to address any issues of social justice. I could once again point out the sinfulness of that moral imbalance, but instead, I’ll confess to a different kind of discrimination borne out of this religious activism. In our efforts to promote Christian religious freedom, evangelicals have largely disregarded and in fact opposed all public religious expression that is not Christian in nature.

Those who want prayer to come back to school are adamant that it’s Christian prayer they want back in the schools. They don’t want Muslim prayers or Baha’i prayers in the graduation ceremonies, in the morning school announcements, or over the loudspeakers at sporting events, but they definitely want prayers in Jesus’ name in all those places. Likewise, those who want the Ten Commandments in front of courthouses only want the Christian concept of adultery and marriage to be reflected by the practices of those courthouses. Specifically, they want the courts to oppose same-sex marriages and to defend Christian discrimination against those who identify as LGBTQ+. This is hypocrisy. It speaks like a desire for religious freedom when it’s really a desire for religious favoritism. Islam, Baha’i, secularism, and even homosexuality are each a worldview. They are belief systems, whether they identify themselves as religions or not. Of course, they compete with the Bible in many ways, but they are alternate worldviews nonetheless and therefore fall under the same establishment clause from the Bill of Rights. Evangelicals benefit greatly from the protections offered us in the Constitution, but based on our activism, we only desire those protections for ourselves, not others. Evangelicals claim religious freedom is a foundational concern, but we actively oppose extra-biblical worldviews not only through personal apologetics, but also through political activism.

Let’s be honest. This is not the advocacy of religious freedom, this is the advocacy of Christian Nationalism, and I confess that I have been a participant in it. Inasmuch as I have supported religious exemptions or special treatment for Christians while opposing or remaining silent about similar exemptions or similar special treatment for other religious groups, I am guilty of a hypocritical Christian Nationalism that says Christianity, further, my version of Christianity, should be the national religion or at least the predominant and controlling worldview and morality for this country regardless of how that affects those of other faiths, worldviews, or no faith at all. We should admit this is un-Constitutional, but more than that, it is un-Christian, arrogant, and sinful, and I confess I have been guilty of it.

I need to explain this confession a bit more to prevent misunderstanding. I have had a number of conversations with evangelical believers who literally do want this country to embrace Christian Nationalism. They will ask me questions like this: “Don’t you want more and more people to turn toward God, to receive Jesus, and to walk as his followers in this world? Don’t you want people to turn away from religious error and false doctrine and turn toward Jesus? Don’t you want God’s will to be represented in our country in the way people live their lives?” My answer to all these questions is “Of course, Yes!” but I firmly disagree that the Christian way to achieve these goals is through the leveraging of secular political power. No one can read anything Jesus said and conclude that he wanted us to use secular political power to get people to obey God, to learn correct doctrine, or to follow him. Do I want people to become Muslims or to embrace the LGBTQ worldview? I’ll be honest, no. But do I think people will become true followers of Jesus if the government outlaws Islam? Also no! And do I want to live in a country where one worldview is favored at the government level to the exclusion of others? Definitely no!

However, for much of my life, I have lived in the midst of this hypocrisy. I have lived and labored with the idea that Christians should be activists whenever the issue in question is something that supports Christians and the Christian worldview. But I have opposed or ignored all issues that relate to the benefit of other people. Though I still want to promote Christian morality and the Christian worldview in this world, and though I still want people to find and follow Jesus, I no longer think that political activism to defend Christianity is the right way to operate. In fact, I think it is sinful, and I repent of my involvement in it.

Anti-Abortionism & More Racism

In 1971, before Roe v. Wade, the Southern Baptist Church adopted a resolution stating the following:

Be it further RESOLVED, That we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother

Resolution On Abortion, adopted at the SBC convention, June 1971

The emphasis in this quotation is mine, because I think it’s important to see the activism of the SBC in 1971 included the creation of laws to legalize abortion in specific cases including where the mother’s mental health was at risk! This one paragraph illustrates how in the early 70s, conservative Christians saw the technology of abortion through the lens of the needs of the mother and the quality of life of the infant so clearly that the Southern Baptists, a huge and incredibly conservative denomination, saw the importance of being activists in the promotion of abortion rights! However, something changed, and by the late 70s, regulating, limiting, and outlawing abortion became the foundational position of conservative Christians. What happened?

Learning the history of that transformation has been revolutionary for me.

During the mid 20th century, segregation and racism had divided the world of conservative Christianity into two camps. The Fundamentalists had formed in response to the growing “modernist” movement in the mainline Christian denominations and had become the predominant form of conservative Christianity early in the 20th century, but Fundamentalists, particularly in the south continued to embrace either vocally or tacitly the segregation of the times. A number of Christians split off from the Fundamentalists largely because of that. Adopting their name from the abolitionist “evangelicals” of England from a century before, these “Neo-Evangelicals” embraced the same basic doctrine as the Fundamentalists, but rejected their racism.

Nevertheless, a reunification event happened in the late 70’s when the two groups found common ground over anti-abortion activism. Embracing the name “Evangelicals” as their new identity, they simply ignored the racist background of the Fundamentalist schools and churches and pushed headlong into a political agenda now known as “Pro-Life.” From the 80s into today, opposing abortion and being “Pro-Life” has been de-facto political foundational for evangelical churches. No pastor would equate it to the centrality of the gospel, but nearly every evangelical pastor I know spends a Sunday or two each year on the “sanctity of human life” and the need to oppose the evil of abortion by changing the laws. I did it too. However, I have never heard an evangelical pastor address systemic racism or the legacy of segregation from his pulpit on a Sunday. Until recently, neither did I. The Pro-Life agenda served as an incredibly effective way for white Christians to ignore and even deny our own complicity in this countries racism.

Additionally, the so-called Pro-Life agenda bears an intrinsic hypocrisy and inconsistency that I have only recently been able to see. Not only is it hypocrisy to claim you are Pro-Life while denying the “Life” concerns of oppressed people, many other apparently pro-life or anti-abortion issues are also ignored, treated as peripheral or unimportant. For example, increasing access to adoptions, providing contraceptives to women, or providing healthcare and daycare services to young mothers are all proven to reduce abortions and favor the life of the unborn, but they are regularly ignored in Pro-Life Christian activism. The clear message of my tradition has been that getting babies born is a foundational concern but helping them live or caring for their mothers is not. In evangelical circles, sermons against abortion are foundational, but talking about universal health-care, free contraception, expanding adoption, or subsidizing daycare will be labeled political and is likely to get an evangelical pastor fired. God forbid he also mention systemic racism and the way Pro-Life policies actually make life more difficult for inner city moms!

For some reason, evangelicals are comfortable with activism that opposes abortion rights because that has been sanctified as “Pro-Life.” But any activism related to racial equity, the elimination of the death penalty, the expansion of healthcare, adoption, or financial assistance to moms is disallowed. Being anti-abortion is being biblical. Being for any of these other life-affirming policies is being political. This is logically inconsistent and it is practically hypocritical, and I confess that I have been guilty of it too.

I confess that I am complicit in promoting an anti-abortion Christian activism that still fails to recognize or address any of the other issues that should be included in a Pro-Life stance. I confess that in making the opposition to abortion seem like a central issue, I have been ignorant of and complicit in the perpetuation of other societal ills that are equally immoral.

And More…

The previous items I just mentioned combine to make other tangentially related issues foundational. Here are a few more ways I have been guilty.

I confess that I have allowed “Christian religious freedom” to lead to “personal freedom,” and therefore, I have been part of normalizing the promotion of individual rights and freedom of speech to the point that Christians feel free to discriminate against or treat people poorly whenever we have a religious excuse to do so.

I confess that I have been a participant in a Christian culture so in love with this personal freedom that I have blamed victims for being “oversensitive” when I say something offensive.

I confess I have been a participant in a culture that so values personal freedom that it claims the right to oppose vaccinations and other public health measures even when they are proven to save or improve lives. I didn’t myself oppose vaccinations, but I have contributed in my own way to the culture that has empowered those who do.

I confess I have participated in a culture that embraces limited government and emphasizes “personal responsibility” over social welfare.

I confess I have participated in a culture that makes opposing science foundational and therefore elevates as a religious discipline the rejection of climate change, COVID warnings, and anything else that comes from the general (secular) scientific community.

I confess I have participated in a culture that makes the opposition to abortion foundational and therefore rejects out of hand any and all Democratic policies and politicians. I have participated in communicating explicitly or implicitly that if a person was willing to preserve abortion as a right, that person can be written off entirely and treated with disdain along with everything they say.

I confess I have participated in a culture that makes being Republican a foundational aspect of the Christian faith.

I’m sure I have more to confess as well.

Time to See Clearly

I have no doubt that these “foundational” things arose gradually from the good intentions of those who went before me in my church tradition, but I am also convinced that they are the result of an uncritical application of certain portions of the gospel in ignorance of others.

Let me reiterate that no one specifically taught me to think of these issues on par with the gospel. No one in my circles would ever admit to thinking these things were central to the Christian faith. However, they are there, just under the surface, falsely supported and perpetuated by many proof-texts in Scripture, and that’s the deception I’m attempting to leave. I never thought of abortion or Christian religious freedom as being central issues to my faith either. It took me a long time start seeing how central they actually were in practice, how important they had become to me and to others in my tradition, and how effective they had been at blinding me to other important issues of the faith.

My journey to become aware of these biases borne of my upbringing has not been an easy one. I have faced opposition from many, but I have become convinced that just because my tradition says something is peripheral doesn’t mean it is and just because evangelicals practically consider something foundational doesn’t mean it is either. I’m grateful that God has led me down a path of seeing these things for what they are: misapplications of an overly narrow gospel. I’m sure many aspects of my upbringing are continuing to blind me, but I’m on a new journey that I don’t intend to leave.

I invite you to join me. Perhaps you see a similarity between your story and mine. Perhaps you have been on a journey of discovery and are encouraged by what I have said. But perhaps you feel that some of the items I just mentioned are supposed to be foundational and you are a bit offended by my assertions that they aren’t. Perhaps you were put off by my mention of racism or the way I spoke about Creationism or climate change or anything else. If that’s you, I just invite you to hang in there with me. If these things truly are essential parts of the Christian faith, and your heart is committed to the things of God and His Word, then what I have to say here won’t change your mind, but it’s worth reading anyway because if by chance you have misunderstood God’s Word or if by chance a bias of yours is preventing you from seeing it clearly, you owe it to yourself to get clarity. More than that, you have an obligation to your Lord and Savior to understand his Word clearly.

I’ll be clear with you. I’m writing these words because I think you might have a speck in your eye.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:3-5 NIV

I understand it is a dangerous thing for me to point out a speck in your eye if I have a plank in my own, and that’s one of the main reasons I have spent so much time in prayerful self-reflection considering my own biases and perspectives. I understand that as long as a plank is in my eye, I won’t see the world clearly and I won’t see the Word clearly let alone your part in it. But dear reader, I assure you that to the best of my ability, I am working on the planks I find. And here is the beauty of what Jesus taught in the parable, as I find the planks and remove the planks from my eyes, I gain a better handle on identifying what the wood looks like even when it’s small. As I work on removing these planks from my life, I gain better insight in identifying them and helping others to remove even the specks they have. Moreover, according to Jesus, it is my responsibility to help others remove the speck once I have removed the plank. So join me in this process of seeing clearly. Join me in the process of identifying what is central and what is not, what is part of following Christ and what is a distraction.

It’s time that we strip away all our “good intentions” and the legacy priorities of misguided predecessors to get back to what the gospel actually calls us to in the context of this modern world.

Let’s get to the hard work now.

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 11-12

Some traditions refer to the transformative work of the gospel as “progressive sanctification,” but the application of that concept is almost exclusively individual and “spiritual.” For those traditions, the gospel begins a spiritual work in the heart of a person to make that person increasingly less likely to sin, less likely to think sinful thoughts, and more likely to see the world the way God does. There are biblical reasons for the choice of the word “sanctification,” but I prefer a different term for the work of the gospel in a person’s life: “gospel integration.”

I use gospel integration because it clarifies for me that the real issue is how deeply and how thoroughly the gospel has made an impact in a person’s life. Furthermore, although progressive sanctification is a term appropriate only in reference to an individual, gospel integration can refer to the condition of a single person, a group of people, or even society as a whole. Finally, gospel integration remembers that the power of transformation is in the gospel itself. The work of a human is not necessarily to do the transformation but to more fully integrate the gospel into his or her life. The calling Paul had was not specifically to get people to believe a doctrine or even specifically to get them to obey. The calling he had was to the advancement of a transformative gospel—a gospel that had power to transform both individuals and communities spiritually and socially.

Therefore, in the spirit of the Apostle Paul, the job of any individual Christian and the job of any church is to work toward deeper gospel integration, integrating the truth and the implications of the gospel more deeply and more fully into ourselves, into each other, and even into our society at large where appropriate. Let’s start by considering what it means for the gospel to move deeply into an individual person.

The Gospel In Us

Recall the definition of the gospel I gave at the end of the last chapter:

The Gospel

Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world to demonstrate the Kingdom in power, to sacrifice himself for our salvation, and to call people to follow him in repentance, faithfulness, obedience, imitation, and the work of reconciliation.

It should be obvious that any true recipient of this gospel will be an individual who is overwhelmed by the identity of Jesus as the Son of God, the immensity of his power and his sacrifice, the promise of the Kingdom, and the abject atrocity of human sinfulness. As this awareness sinks more deeply into a person’s life, the first result we should see is a deep humility followed by an ever-increasing sense of awe. These two things are summarized by the foundational Christian words of repentance and worship. They go hand in hand. Repentance is the momentary decision to relinquish your own authority over yourself followed by the ongoing, lived-out reaffirmation of that decision. Worship is the continual recognition that you don’t deserve authority over your own life because there is one whose power, wisdom, and glory so overshadows your own that any thought of self-determination becomes unthinkable. Every recipient of grace begins the journey with repentance and continually re-expresses that repentance through ongoing worship.

Secondly, the work of the gospel in a person’s life always leads into a life of faithfulness, not mere belief. True faithfulness, as understood in the way of Paul, James, and Jesus, is not about assenting to specific statements of doctrine. Faithfulness is not about developing increasing confidence in statements of theological understanding. Rather, as the gospel becomes more integrated in a person’s life, that person becomes more consistent in the expressions of gospel life. Faith may start like a mustard seed, but good seeds are those that endure, and good seeds that endure bear fruit. This endurance is not to be understood merely as regular church attendance or an ongoing affirmation that you are still a Christian or even success at converting others. No, faithful endurance, according to our definition of the gospel above, expects a person to bear at least three specific kinds of fruit: the imitation of Jesus, obedience to his teaching, and participation in his work of reconciliation.

Thirdly, the work of the gospel in a person’s life will always produce these various things in balance. An integrated gospel, deeply integrated into a person’s life will not produce unbalanced fruit. A person cannot imitate Jesus while failing to obey the words of Jesus. A person can’t truly recognize Jesus as the Son of God without joining him in is work of reconciliation. Nevertheless, we must recognize our own propensity to display an out-of-balance gospel. Without diligence, we can get ourselves misaligned from the true gospel by focusing too much on one or another of its aspects. Our human sinfulness is inclined to make us prioritize one fruit over the others. We might emphasize obedience to Jesus’ teaching to the neglect of any imitation of his character. We might work toward some form of reconciliation without any emphasis on his actual teaching. On top of that, there will still be those voices in the church telling us to forget about all the behaviors and just focus on the belief itself. That voice will accuse us of living by Law instead of Grace. But this tension is merely the tension of the gospel finding deeper integration in our collective lives. Without the different voices pushing on each other, we might find ourselves, because we are sinful and selfish, losing one part of the gospel for the sake of another, but with the different voices, we become a family where iron sharpens iron and wounds from a friend can be trusted, a family where the gospel retains its doctrinal accuracy and its transformative potency; that is, if we are committed to remaining in dialogue with each other.

The Gospel In Dialogue

Throughout church history, churches have disagreed over the doctrinal mechanics of repentance and forgiveness or over the specific methods of worship, but our biggest divisions have always been over the fruits of the gospel. That is, our divisions flow from how we understand the implications of the gospel and how we understand how the gospel is supposed to affect a person’s life. What does it mean for an individual to imitate Jesus? What does it mean for individuals and churches to obey his teaching? What does it mean for followers to participate in his work of reconciliation? What does it mean to “proclaim” the gospel to the world? How should we prioritize these different efforts when they seem to conflict?

Asking the question of “when they conflict” never occurred to me before recently. Based on my upbringing, I thought I had a good handle on what it meant to bear gospel fruit. It was always my conviction that the imitation of Jesus, obedience to his teaching, and participating in the work of reconciliation were all basically the same thing. Collectively, they meant living lives of personal holiness, living in fellowship (reconciled relationships) with other believers, telling other people how to be saved, and then teaching them also to live lives of holiness, fellowship, and saving others. But as I grew, I began to learn that other church traditions have different convictions that are just as biblical as my own. To some, it’s obvious that imitating Jesus includes promoting societal holiness. To others, imitating Jesus includes promoting societal wholeness. Some think it means working for social justice or racial reconciliation. Some think it means performing miraculous healings. Interaction with others challenged my thinking and helped me realize that my understanding of Jesus was too narrow. I needed their input to help me see Jesus more clearly. Even though my church tradition found a way to understand and prioritize the fruit of the gospel, others did it differently, and I increasingly realized my need to learn from them.

The gospel is more than doctrine, and it’s more than behavior. The gospel is a union of spiritual, personal, and social. Even as Jesus is God in flesh, so too the gospel is more than one thing. It’s even more than any one human person can fully comprehend. Knowing what I mean by the gospel is helpful, but without the dialogue with the larger body of Christ as informed by both Scripture and lived experience, my knowledge of the gospel will always be weak, and its integration in my life will always be shallow. If I want the gospel to be deeply integrated in my life and ministry, if I want it to bear the fruit in me it should bear, then I need to be in conversation with other Christians who will challenge me.

There are questions I will never be able to answer on my own from my own narrow perspective. Should we help people find spiritual reconciliation first, or should we first work toward various kinds of societal reconciliations? Is it enough for us to encourage Christians to embrace personal holiness, or should we also use our influence to promote holiness in the society at large? I should not attempt to answer these questions on my own. I need other Christians to help me keep in balance a gospel that I am inclined to shape according to my own whims.

Without Dialogue…

Sadly, the history of the church is filled with stories of dialogue ended rather than engaged, and the American church follows firmly in that flow of history. We have not taken advantage of our opportunities for conversation. Instead of using a gospel foundation to drive us closer to each other in addressing the overall church dilemma, we Christians have chosen to avoid the problem by keeping things vague. Nearly every church of every background would agree that the role of the gospel-centered community is to do a few things well: Worship God, Disciple People (help them grow spiritually), Fellowship (express mutual love and support to the family of God), and Minister to the World. But by keeping the words vague, we can pretend we are in agreement when we are not, and we can redefine the words whenever we want to strengthen the lines of division. Even when we put together clear definitions, they usually involve only the first three, and if we are honest, we don’t have a clue what to really do with the last one. What does it mean to minister to the world? What does individual ministry look like? What does corporate ministry look like? What does it mean to imitate Jesus and work for reconciliation as individuals and as churches in this world? What would multi-church cooperation even mean?

To prevent these questions from getting too uncomfortable, we just stay isolated. In our siloed Christian enclaves, we congregate with others who see the gospel the way we do and we come up with specific strategic answers to our own specific questions. Some churches decide to focus on individual spiritual conversion—helping individuals become followers of Jesus, building them up in the gospel, and deploying them to reach other individuals. Some churches decide to focus on the work of societal conversion—creating a society that increasingly looks like the Kingdom of Heaven, embraces its values and morals, and promotes Jesus directly. Other churches and individuals attempt a middle path—helping individual Christians embrace some aspects of the gospel and working to advance some Christian values in some areas of the broader society. However, in most cases, whichever path a church takes, even one of the middle ones, only leads to cooperation with other churches that share the same kind of path. In truth, this kind of cooperation is just a form of isolation.

We further isolate ourselves by playing the “everyone is entitled to their own opinion” game. Now, as I will discuss later, every church has its own calling when it comes to how to do its part of the Great Commission, but the work of the gospel, the unity of the Body of Christ, and the mission to reach the world are too important to leave to chance. The gospel intends to be integrated deeply in our lives and to result in much fruit being borne from our lives both individually and globally, and it behooves the Christian church to cooperate in that effort! The gospel calls Christians and churches to bear our fruit together in unity. Even if we do not agree on all strategies, should we not at least agree on the gospel and its overall application?

Finally, the division among Christians based on echo chambers and vague speech has resulted in a new animosity. We might not agree on the specific applications of the gospel, but should we not stay engaged in the conversation with one another as iron sharpening iron? We have not done that. One perspective demonizes the other as watering down the gospel while the latter accuses the former of having a dead faith. One perspective embraces an uncritical activism while the other accuses them of being too “political” and shuts down further conversation. But the conversation, contentious as it may be, must happen because the integration of the gospel is too important a thing to be misunderstood and the unity of the church is too important a thing to be lost.

The Acts 15 Path

As I see it, Christians today are in a similar place to where we were back in the earliest days of the church.

In Acts 15, we learn of a dispute that arose when some Christians from Jerusalem arrived in Antioch and began to teach the church that before a person could be a real Christian, that person needed to become a Jew. Specifically, the men needed to be circumcised. It was a dispute about how deeply the gospel changed things or should change things, and it was such a problem that Antioch sent a delegation including Barnabas and Paul south to Jerusalem where a counsel was convened to address the issue. After much conversation, after strong words from Peter and Paul, and I’m sure after many words from those promoting circumcision, James, the brother of Jesus, summarized the conclusion of the council this way:

“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”

Acts 15:19-21 NIV

Applying the gospel to the new reality of Gentiles coming to faith led to a conflict of opinions. Some thought that circumcision and living by the Laws of Moses were central components of faithfulness to God. Others saw Jewish laws as peripheral or even canceled. What should the early church do? One option of course is to let everyone have his own opinion. There could be some churches that ask everyone to be circumcised, there could be other churches that don’t. There could be some churches that say, “make your own decision if circumcision is right for your own family,” and other churches that say, “here’s what the Scripture says on the topic.”

Is it really worth all the potential division to try to come up with one approach? Isn’t it better to “keep the unity of the Spirit” by letting everyone just do their own thing? Or is it possible that some deeply practical issues, unaddressed by existing Scripture, should be deeply addressed by deeply concerned people?

After a great amount of dialogue (arguing, I’m sure) and prayer, James gave a summary of three behaviors all Christians were encouraged to embrace:

• Christians should abstain from food sacrificed to idols.
• Christians should abstain from sexual immorality.
• Christians should abstain from eating blood.

It’s notable that they came to an agreement that left out circumcision but did embrace other specific items from Jewish Law. Why would they choose these specific behaviors? Thankfully, these early leaders actually gave their reasoning. Their stated reason for these recommendations was that people everywhere (especially the Jewish Christians) already had consciences formed by the Law of Moses and these three behaviors were a minimal concession toward people of that conscience.

These three guidelines didn’t last forever, though. Years later, as the gospel continued to progress throughout the ancient world, Paul reached areas that were not so dominated by a Mosaic conscience, and in those contexts, he said completely different things about the Jewish dietary restrictions. In fact, he actually claimed they were bad rules—merely human rules:

Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

1 Timothy 4:2-5 NIV

Paul was claiming that God’s new word (probably through the teaching of Jesus and the vision given to Peter on the roof) had consecrated all food and therefore had undone the dietary restrictions of the Jewish law. In this statement, Paul eliminated two of the original three guidelines, and reduced them to one. In fact, Paul often rejected or reinterpreted the dietary commands, but he never stopped vigorously defending the prohibition against sexual immorality. Therefore, our takeaway from Acts 15 must be something that goes beyond the three specific injunctions. Our lesson is not to be found in the three guidelines but in the values undergirding those guidelines. Those values are informative to us today as we try to formulate a foundation for a united, gospel-focused church. I’ll mention four.

First, the early church recognized that some issues are central and others are peripheral. Remember the motivating issue was circumcision, but the counsel didn’t even mention it in the letter they sent out to the new Gentile Christians. Instead, they mentioned other issues that were more important, issues that were more central. Clearly, they had an idea that some things were central to the Christian life (e.g. making it easy for people who are ”turning to God”) and other things were peripheral.

Secondly, the early church leaders were unafraid to call some things sin while also realizing that some things are contextual. They never said eating meat sacrificed to an idol was a sin, only that it violated the widespread context of people who understood the Law of Moses. That means even they considered those commands to be contextual, and Paul reaffirmed the contextual status of those dietary commands. Eating meat sacrificed to an idol might be sinful, but it depended on the context (see Romans 14:22-23). However, when it came to sexual immorality, there was no equivocation. Every New Testament writer agreed and reaffirmed that sexual behavior outside of a proper marriage (see 1 Corinthians 5 & 7) is sinful every time in every context, and Paul was especially unafraid to be quite blunt about it.

Thirdly, the early Christians were part of a long heritage of proclaiming God’s will to the wider world. Note that James didn’t specifically refer to the consciences of Jewish people when he mentioned the guidelines. Instead, he mentioned the broad knowledge of the Mosaic Law even in the broader society. In other words, one reason Christians should not eat meat with blood in it is that the unbelievers might be offended! The Jewish Law had been proclaimed to the wider world for generations, but Christianity was only at the beginning of that journey. Eventually, the world would come to learn more about God’s will through Jesus, but that hadn’t happened yet. The Jewish law had been proclaimed all over, and therefore, even unbelievers had their consciences marked by that Law. The same thing was about to happen again. Through the witness of the Christian church, the message of Jesus and the work of his followers would transform the broader culture. Together, by teaching and living this authentic message they would turn the world upside down.

Fourth, the early church understood the value of dialogue, consensus, and diversity. Even though Paul is sometimes quite feisty in his approach, and even though he sometimes aggressively opposes his opponents, he nevertheless endorsed a restriction in Acts 15 that he would later minimize in his ministry. In Acts 15, he accepted the dietary restrictions even though he knew they wouldn’t apply for all people at all times. He, along with the other leaders, demonstrated a willingness to hold fast to the message of Christ’s death and resurrection but to be flexible over the ways different groups of Christians lived out their faith. Even the early church knew that not every church would look the same and not every city would have the same kind of ministry. Those first Christian leaders understood that finding common ground was more important than moral uniformity.

These four principles show us how those closest to Christ chose to live out their Christianity when cultures and values came into conflict. These four principles illustrate how a doctrine can remain the same while implementations and community morals can be more fluid. In our modern world, we are facing a similar clash of cultures, and therefore, we should employ a similar set of principles.

The Questions We Must Answer

The early church, faced with its very first dilemma over how the message of the gospel interacted with the realities of the world around them, gathered together and decided to find common ground in the midst of their normal divisions. Through their efforts at dialogue, they chose to prioritize what was central and allow the peripheral to fall away. They chose to clearly label sin as sin when sin was sin but to also recognize that sometimes sin depends on the context. And finally, they realized that their message was part of a long tradition of bringing the truth of God to the people of the world. The early church decided these values would govern the interfacing of Church and society. These values should equally govern us today.

I’m sure the conference in Acts 15 wasn’t always the most pleasant to experience. I imagine that Paul and Peter were each boisterous individuals in their own right, and I bet the Jewish believers were just as set in their ways. Nevertheless, they were convinced that they had a transformative message that made deep changes to both individual and society, so they did the hard work of dialogue, and God honored their decision. I believe the church in America today—and I’m specifically singling out the evangelical camp here—needs to do this work again, but today it’s not about circumcision and dietary restrictions. Today, our work involves a complex web of questions over the church and its relationship to morality, spirituality, psychology, politics, social justice, racial reconciliation, environmental concerns, and even evangelism! The church didn’t suddenly get more complex, but the world around us is vastly more complex, and our dilemma remains the same: How should followers of Jesus interact with the world around us? Thankfully, the values expressed in Acts 15 can govern our response just as well as they did back then. All we have to do to begin is to convert the values expressed in Acts 15 into some specific questions for us today. I propose four of them.

First, because some things are central and some things are peripheral…

Which values are central to the Christian life and which are peripheral?

Secondly, because there is a difference between what is actual sin and what is a contextual concern, and because there is a difference between the expectations of a Christian and an unbeliever…

Which central values are internal to the Church only and which should Christians promote in the society at large?

Thirdly, because the calling of the church is to be engaged in the world through the work of discipleship and reconciliation, but also because methods carry their own moral force and spiritual implication…

How should we, individuals and churches, promote those values?

Fourthly, because individuals and churches each have their own calling before God…

Where is there room for disagreement?

These four questions will shape the remainder of this book.

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 8-10

Not long ago, I was in a meeting with a variety of pastors from a variety of traditions and we were talking about something scholars call “Liberation Theology.” Before long, we found ourselves in the midst of a heated debate over the true meaning of the word gospel.

For the unfamiliar, gospel is the English word we use to translate the Greek word euangelion (the same word behind both evangelism and evangelical). Literally, the Greek word means “good message.” However, gospel is also a technical term in the church world, and it can have very different meanings depending on which part of the Bible you are emphasizing at the time. For example, just compare English translations of the word when Jesus uses it compared to when it is used by the Apostle Paul. Many English translations actually use “good news” to translate the word when Jesus says it, and “gospel” to translate the word when Paul says it. However, for us, it’s important to remember that only one Greek word is the source for both translations, and it’s also important to remember that whatever Paul thought of the concept, Jesus was his source. Still, the differences in interpretation and translation cause us to have differences of opinion and doctrine in our churches. Additionally, these differences of opinion about the word “gospel” sit at the core of the biggest church divisions of our time. This division is at the core of the Protestant / Catholic divide, and this division is at the core of what we could call the conservative / progressive divide as well. Let me outline the heart of this division by comparing the words of Jesus and the words of Paul.

As we have already seen, in Jesus’ core affirmation of his ministry, he quoted Isaiah 61 saying he came to “proclaim good news.” Also, Matthew, Mark, and Luke repeatedly tell us that Jesus was “preaching the good news of the Kingdom.” Therefore, most New Testament Christians and churches agree that the foundation of our faith, and the foundation of our responsibility in the world, is summed up by the idea that we have and we proclaim “good news.” But the good news according to Jesus can’t be limited to a message. Jesus didn’t just say good things and then move on from town to town, he accompanied his message of good news with real actions that people could report to others as good! More than a message, Jesus himself and the entirety of his ministry on earth—showing love to sinners, healing the sick and casting out demons—was a literal expression of “good news” to the world. That is, the gospel is partially message, and partially ministry, and with Jesus and his followers, it was always both. From the books we call “The Gospels” we see these concepts repeated:

After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Mark 1:14-15 NIV

But he said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.” And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

Luke 4:43-44 NIV

When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick…. So they set out and went from village to village, proclaiming the good news and healing people everywhere.

Luke 9:1-2, 6 NIV

From the Gospels, the good news is a message that the Kingdom of God has come near, a message that has to be believed/received, and a message that is often accompanied by works of miraculous liberation.

However, in the decades after Jesus’ resurrection, beginning in the book of Acts and continuing through the epistles of the early church, the idea of the gospel began to take on a more doctrinal tone. Increasingly, the emphasis was placed on the specifics of the message that must be believed and the accompanying works of liberation received less attention.

Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.

Acts 5:42 NIV

In the book of Acts, the good news is a historical claim, a claim that something had happened in history, a claim that the Messiah (Anointed, Promised King) has come and that Jesus is he. Then, when Paul took the gospel of Jesus into contexts that didn’t care about a Jewish King or Jewish prophecies, he needed to highlight how the gospel was more than a mere historical claim, it was a universal principle for all people of all time.

While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.

Acts 17:16-18 NIV

In Athens, the main point of the gospel is the declaration that because of Jesus, resurrection is now a reality. It’s still a statement of history, but it’s also a statement of universal truth and a doctrinal promise. If you believe in Jesus, you can also experience the resurrection he makes available. Then, near the end of his life, Paul made a final expansion on the gospel, writing a treatise on the true nature of this good news in the form of a letter to Christians in Rome, Christians he had never met, where he says things like this:

That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

Romans 1:15-17 NIV

In Romans, the translators now exclusively use “gospel” because by this point, Paul is using the word to highlight a doctrine that’s more than a statement of historical events, or their significance for the future. The gospel is a doctrine that contains power all by itself. It’s a truth that God leverages to bring salvation to people by connecting his righteousness to those who believe it. It’s a doctrine of spiritual empowerment.

This passage, and the book of Romans as a whole, has been especially important in the history of the church because of the work of a famous pastor named Martin Luther. During his younger years, he wrestled with the passage I just quoted, and had great difficulty understanding the phrase “righteousness of God.” From his understanding, God was righteous, and that made him wrathful against the sinner. For much of Luther’s life, he thought that righteousness and wrath were effectively synonymous. But in this passage Paul was talking about the righteousness of God as if it were good news for the sinner! Luther was deeply troubled by the passage, but one day, he had the sudden realization that Paul meant God was giving his righteousness to people who believe this gospel. This became one of the fundamental concepts of the Protestant Reformation, and it is a key doctrine underpinning the divide between Catholics and Protestants and between Progressives and Conservatives even today. In general terms:

Catholics and “progressives” tend to see the gospel as a message of the way God is at work in the world and an invitation to join him in it.

Protestants and “conservatives” see the gospel as a doctrine that when believed results in immediate, present righteousness before God and the promise of future salvation.

This forms the most fundamental divide among Christians when it comes to our relationships in the world. For those who embrace the Reformers understanding of the gospel, our primary responsibility is to preach the gospel and to let God’s righteousness take hold in a person’s life according to God’s own methods and timing. In other words, for most Christians in the tradition of the Reformers, Christianity is focused on getting people to understand and believe a specific set of truths about Jesus and then to leave the rest to God. Church ministries are focused on education and doctrinal accuracy more than character or behavior, and when character or behavior flaws arise, the solution is often assumed to be better education.

However, for Christians in the Catholic tradition (and in many “progressive” Protestant traditions), the gospel has always been a message that combines the promise of God with the cooperation of human beings. This view holds to the doctrine of God’s grace and forgiveness being available to humans because of Jesus, but it also includes a call to cooperate with God in the work of the “good news,” a work that includes proclamation, individual transformation, and collective social engagement.

This division has done extreme damage to both camps because the division has tended to push Christians away from each other into the extremes of their respective positions. At one extreme, there are Christians who say all we should focus on is preaching a specific doctrine called the gospel. At the other extreme, there are Christians who say all we should focus on is living out a specific lifestyle that represents the gospel. Of course, as is usually the case, both extremes are inadequate. Why, even Paul in the book of Romans referred to the gospel in ways that reject both extremes!

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake.

Romans 1:1-5 NIV

For Paul, the gospel was definitely a doctrine to believe, but also a calling to obedience flowing from that belief. I’m convinced that Paul would have personally affirmed both the Catholic and the Protestant perspectives. If Jesus proclaimed a gospel that was both doctrinal and social, and if Paul proclaimed a gospel that was both doctrinal and social, our gospel should be so too.

Rediscovering A United Gospel

In this book, I will not attempt to reconcile all the doctrinal differences between Protestants and Catholics. My background and my knowledge are firmly situated in the Protestant camp, specifically the evangelical tent of the Protestant camp, and therefore, all I can do is address the weaknesses of the evangelical viewpoint and its tendency to live near the doctrinal extreme. This book is primarily a call for my fellow Protestants, specifically my fellow evangelicals to embrace a gospel that is more than doctrine alone, a gospel that includes social action and bringing the good news of the Kingdom into present-day living. For too long, evangelicals have allowed a narrow view of the gospel to govern their social engagement. To be sure, a good case can be made for the specific doctrines of the Protestant Reformation (imputed righteousness, salvation by grace alone, etc.) but evangelicals have for too long lived as if doctrinal accuracy and doctrinal communication are all that matters. Any Christianity that embraces the gospel as taught by both Paul and Jesus must also live it the way James taught:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world…. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

James 1:27, 2:14-17 NIV

It’s time for the evangelical church to expand its idea of the gospel beyond merely something to proclaim and something for people to believe. It’s time for us to realize that the gospel is a proclamation of a powerfully good message and a lifestyle altered by that good message enough that even the unbeliever can see it as good news! In other words, it’s time for us to understand a bigger view of the good news, to live from and for that good news, and to promote its goodness to the wider world. This isn’t new. It’s the gospel Jesus demonstrated, and it really is the heart of the gospel Paul proclaimed as well.

In the next few pages, I’ll take you through some of the most important passages in the New Testament about this good news and we will attempt to summarize and define the good news in a way that fully reflects the entirety of the New Testament teaching.

The Good News According to Jesus

After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Mark 1:14-15 NIV

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

Matthew 4:23 NIV

So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.

Luke 7:22 NIV

The Good News for Jesus was always tied to the now and future Kingdom of God. It offered healing and demanded transformation.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

John 3:16-18 NIV

The message of Jesus includes the message of universal condemnation for sin, the sacrificial love of God, and eternal salvation made available through Jesus alone.

“The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.”

Luke 6:40 NIV

Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

John 14:23-24 NIV

The behavior of Jesus’ followers is to be the actual imitation of Jesus and obedience to his teaching.

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:19-20 NIV

The mission of Jesus’ followers is to reproduce other disciples who identify with Christ and obey his words.

Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:37-40 NIV

Obedience to Jesus includes loving God and loving people.

This is how Jesus presented the good news. Although he never gave us a rigid formulation of a doctrine he called the gospel, his teaching included a recognition of something spiritual (we need to get right with God through faith in the Son) and something social (we need to imitate Jesus, love others, and train others to do the same).

On the other hand, the Apostle Paul did go to great lengths to clarify and explain the doctrine and the implications of the gospel. Here are some of his most important contributions to the topic.

The Good News According to Paul

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake. And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ…. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

Romans 1:1-6, 16-17 NIV

At the beginning of his letter to Rome, Paul wanted to make sure he was as clear as possible regarding his ministry and the gospel he was attempting to represent. He wasn’t personally known to the believers in Rome, so his explanation of the gospel had to be as clear and explicit as possible. No wonder it took on a very doctrinal tone.

The gospel involves the message that by Jesus’ death and resurrection, God graciously gives righteousness and salvation to any person who receives it by faith and lives it out through an obedience that invites others to receive it as well.

Paul’s explanations are certainly more complicated and detailed than anything we find in the words of Jesus, but he is nonetheless clear that the gospel is a doctrine about how Jesus’ death and resurrection resolves a spiritual problem, and an assumption that it would deeply affect the life of the believer to produce a winsome obedience. The gospel begins as something we learn, then it is something we believe, and finally, it is something that transforms us.

Here’s one more from Paul:

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21 NIV

The gospel involves the message that God is making people new in Christ, reconciling them to himself and to others as well, and deploying them as agents of reconciliation in the world.

In this passage, Paul added a deeply social / relational component to the gospel by claiming that reconciliation is core to the gospel’s work. Not only does it reconcile the believer to God (spiritual) it also reconciles us to each other (social) and gives us the job of working for the cause of reconciliation (also social).

I would be happy to continue these quotations and summaries for pages and pages, but I hope the overall picture is clear. Any honest reading of the New Testament should lead to the conclusion that Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world to demonstrate the Kingdom in power, to sacrifice himself for our salvation, and to call people to follow him in repentance, faithfulness, obedience, imitation, and the work of reconciliation. There are always spiritual and social components to the life of following Jesus, and a proper understanding of the writings of Paul confirms it.

This is what the New Testament writers mean by gospel. It is the entirety of the message of Jesus—who he is, what he has taught, what he has done for us, and what he requires of us. More than that, the gospel not only brings about an eternal, future salvation, it also brings about a temporal here-and-now salvation, a real-and-true righteousness in this present moment that increasingly compels people to move away from their own sinfulness and toward an obedience that flows from and results in reconciliation. Then, as the gospel takes hold deeply in the life of a person, it compels him or her to become an agent of that same transformative good news. The gospel is more than a message. It is a message that transforms individuals. It transforms us spiritually, but it also transforms us socially, making us collective agents of transformation in the world around us.

A United Formulation of the Gospel

Although evangelicals have largely followed the Protestant tradition of narrowing the gospel focus to the doctrine of salvation through faith in Christ, it’s time for us to rediscover the broader understanding of the gospel as taught by Jesus and the New Testament writers. It’s time that we embrace a re-unified understanding of the gospel that isn’t satisfied with the extremes of doctrinal accuracy or social engagement but that embraces both. A gospel that has doctrinal truth, spiritual transformation and social engagement all at its core:

The Gospel

Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world to demonstrate the Kingdom in power, to sacrifice himself for our salvation, and to call people to follow him in repentance, faithfulness, obedience, imitation, and the work of reconciliation.

It’s time for us to fully receive this gospel, to let it do its work of transformation in our lives and to embrace our role as agents of gospel-based reconciliation and transformation in the world around us. This is the journey of all who claim to be followers of Jesus, and it is a journey that we should wholeheartedly embrace.

To that end, let’s consider what it means to integrate a gospel like this more deeply and more fully into our lives, our churches, and our world.

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 4-7

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: 1 Samuel 1-3

Incongruity

From the earliest days of Jesus’ ministry with them, the disciples faced a difficult dilemma. Borne largely out of the incongruity between what they thought the Messiah was supposed to do and what Jesus was actually doing, they constantly and repeatedly were faced with this one question:

To what extent does following Jesus intersect with the realities of this world?

On the one hand, Jesus did miraculous works that directly improved the lives of people. He also taught people a new way to see themselves, and a new way of living their lives. In many ways, his teaching was practical and everyday. He obviously wanted to impact the everyday realities of life. However, his actions repeatedly fell short of the expectations of the Messianic hopes of those first century Jews. He said the Kingdom was coming, but when they tried to make him the king, he ran off. He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey in fulfillment of Messianic prophecy, but when he entered the city, he went after the Jewish people in the Temple rather than the puppet king in the palace.

Nowhere is this incongruity more stark than in the story of John the Baptist in prison. Considering accounts by both Matthew and Luke, we see clearly how Jesus ministry is supposed to intersect the current world, but how it doesn’t or perhaps shouldn’t intersect the modern world in the way we would expect or want it to. Let’s start with the question John sent to Jesus by way of his disciples.

When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” – Matthew 11:2-3 NIV

You might be wondering why John is experiencing such doubt in this moment, and perhaps you are feeling a bit antagonistic to him for being so “weak” in his faith, but you need to remember that John had every reason for his doubt. John’s ministry was steeped with words from the ancient prophets, but no ancient prophet was as prominent in his message than was Isaiah. John knew Isaiah, and Isaiah had said some very important things about the Messiah, what he would be like, and what he would do. And one of those things the Messiah was supposed to do was to proclaim freedom for prisoners. How could Jesus be the Messiah promised by Isaiah if John, a faithful servant of God, was literally in prison? Furthermore, Jesus had claimed that ancient prophecy as his mission statement:

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Luke 4:16-21 NIV

Despite the clear and obvious claim that Jesus was going to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, John was in prison. This is the perpetual dilemma of all followers of Jesus. How much of Jesus’ ministry is supposed to intersect with the real world we inhabit? Was Jesus speaking in metaphors only or was he talking about practical reality?

No wonder John feels his doubt, and no wonder he asks his question, but the answer Jesus gives to John tells us a lot about how we also need to answer the question:

Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

Matthew 11:4-6 NIV

I have to admit that the first time I heard those words, I thought they were insensitive. John asked simple question based on Jesus’ aforementioned mission statement and the inconsistency of its application, but Jesus answered by saying, “I’m doing the work I’m doing, and people who don’t get it don’t get it.” At least, that’s what I used to think. More recently, I have been able to see this answer in a new light, and I love it now. I can now see the compassion and the brilliance of Jesus’ words, because Jesus was sending a specific message coded just for John’s encouragement.

You see, Isaiah had a couple todo lists for the Messiah. Isaiah 61 was only one of them. Another one was in chapter 35.

…”Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.” Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

Isaiah 35:4-6 NIV

Notice all the statements in Isaiah 35 that Jesus echoed in his message to John. The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear (and were given speech too). Jesus ticked all the boxes of Isaiah 35, except for a few differences. First, Jesus mentioned three things that aren’t found in Isaiah 35. Jesus mentioned healing lepers, raising the dead, and proclaiming good news to the poor. It’s easy to figure out why he mentioned good news to the poor. That was the primary central component of the Isaiah 61 prophecy Jesus quoted earlier. Here’s what the prophecy in Isaiah 61 says in full:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn,

Isaiah 61:1-2 NIV

So Jesus referred to two different Isaiah prophecies in his answer to John, and by doing so, he was saying, “John, I am the Messiah Isaiah spoke of, and I am doing what the Messiah was supposed to do.”

Still, there are a number of things Isaiah had on his todo lists that Jesus left out. Did you see them? Both prophecies talk about the vengeance of God, but Jesus left that part out every time. Additionally, he specifically left out the “freedom for the captives” section when responding to John’s question. John had started his ministry warning people of the coming judgment and he was now one of the brokenhearted experiencing incarceration in prison, and by leaving out those very specific items from Isaiah, Jesus was telling John, “John, I am the Messiah, but not everything prophesied by Isaiah is happening now. Some of it is now, but some of it will happen later. Trust me on this.”

But wait, there’s more. I want you to see something brilliant Jesus did in his answer to John. Remember those additional comments about healing lepers and raising the dead? That was code; for John’s encouragement.

Consider the statement about healing lepers. No messianic prophecy said that lepers would be healed, but there are only a few stories in the Old Testament about lepers being healed, and only one of those stories includes a prophet. In that specific story, the leper was a foreigner named Naaman, and he is eventually healed by the prophet Elisha who told him to bathe himself in the Jordan river. A leper who was healed by being immersed in the Jordan river. A leper who was healed by the word of Elisha. Do you think John would have heard the reference to himself and his ministry of baptizing people in the Jordan? Do you think John would have been encouraged by the reminder? I think so. I think so especially when I remember who Elisha was—the successor to Elijah.

More than the reference to baptism in the Jordan, Elisha is the reason this is coded language for John. John thought of himself as the one who would prepare the way for the Messiah according to the prophecies:

John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ “

John 1:23 NIV

And according to Malachi, the one who would come to prepare the way was called “Elijah.”

“See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.

Malachi 4:5 NIV

Certainly, John saw himself as this Elijah figure, and Jesus referred to John as the fulfillment of this Elijah prophecy (Matthew 11:14), but Elijah of old never healed leprosy. Leprosy was healed by the one who came after Elijah. Jesus was telling John,”Yes, John, you served in the role of Elijah, and I am the one who comes after Elijah.”

I’m certain that would have been encouraging to John, but we aren’t done decoding Jesus’ words to John, and this last part would have been bittersweet. You see, the final thing Jesus added to his answer would have been simultaneously encouraging and frightening to John. As John is languishing in prison, facing the possibility of execution at any moment, Jesus said, “I can raise the dead.” Of course, the coded implication is that John himself will face death, but Jesus has the power to overcome it. This would have been such a bittersweet promise to John. Decoded, Jesus was saying, “John, I am the Messiah, but I will let you die there in prison. Still, hold onto your faith, because I have the power to raise the dead.”

What does all this have to say to us today? Well, John’s dilemma is quite similar to our own. He believed that the Savior was presently at work in the world, but he himself was also going through incredible hardship. Was he wrong about the Savior, or was he wrong about how the Savior’s ministry would intersect with the lived experience of real people? Is the Savior’s message merely “spiritual” or does it have “real world” effects?

Jesus’ answer to John is the same answer we need to hear today. His ministry is a combination of now and not yet. Some parts of the Messianic Kingdom play out in every day living while other parts of the Messianic Kingdom are for the future. Furthermore, the parts of the Messianic Kingdom that were most important to John and those that are most important to us just might be the parts left to the future.

Understanding which parts are now and which parts are not yet is at the core of our church dilemma, and the events in the first century church muddy the waters considerably. Shortly after this scenario with John, after Jesus had died, risen, and ascended, the early Christian church experienced moments of literal liberation from prison. Peter, Paul, and Silas each were imprisoned but were later miraculously released, but others like James the Apostle, Stephen, and countless other martyrs, were not so fortunate. Between the now and the not yet lies a vast expanse of the Kingdom only classified as “sometimes.”

Acceptance or Activism

Much of my upbringing was focused on training me to accept this uncertainty. I was taught that there are some things about the kingdom that are certainly now. Forgiveness is extended to all through the death and resurrection of Christ. The presence of the Holy Spirit is available to all who receive the message of Christ. I was taught that there are some things that are definitely in the future. The day of vengeance and judgment are still to come. The resurrection of the faithful and the joy of eternity are still to come. I was taught that the “middle” is the place of hope and faith mixed with resignation. I can pray for what I want, I can ask God to apply the Kingdom to my present circumstances, but I need to just resign myself to whatever answer God chooses to give. I was raised to understand that sometimes God answers prayers in ways we desire and sometimes he doesn’t. I was raised to understand that sometimes this world looks like the Kingdom is advancing and sometimes it doesn’t. I was raised to think that if I just “let go and let God” then the parts of the Kingdom that are supposed to show up on earth will, and the parts that are for later will show up later.

In short, I was raised to accept the incongruity of a now-but-not-yet Kingdom and to resign myself to a mindset of patience. A mindset that says, “I’ll endure; I won’t fall away.”

But I’m growing, and I now understand that there’s more to Christianity than just silent, patient endurance. There has always been more to Christianity than silent, patient endurance. John’s story actually teaches this lesson too. Remember, he was in prison because he spoke against the immorality of King Herod (the governmental authority). He was in prison because he acted as if the principles of the coming Kingdom were supposed to be active in the world today. John was in prison because he called out the leaders of his day to live out those principles, and while Jesus never echoed John’s statements, he also didn’t walk them back. In fact, Jesus claimed that no prophet, indeed no human, had ever been greater than John.

I was raised to live with resignation and endurance that some parts of the Kingdom are future-only, not present reality, and that’s just the way things are supposed to be; but I now realize that some parts of the future Kingdom are to be advanced in our present world by the activity of its citizens. The evidence of John regarding Herod and the evidence of Jesus standing with a whip in the Temple courts are proof enough that Christ-followers are called to a unique kind activism. The question is not how much we should expect God to do eventually but how much we should join God in doing now. The dilemma we thought we had was one of how much was now and how much was not yet, but the testimony of the first century church pushes us to a new understanding of the central dilemma facing the church. The central question is now this: To what extent is the intersection of Jesus’ ministry and the real world to be activated or advanced by his followers?

This is the better way to understand the dilemma faced by those who follow Jesus, those who are citizens of his Kingdom. It is not about understanding that some things are now and some things are not yet. It is not even about deciphering which things are now and which things are not yet.

It is the question of activism:

How much of the “not yet” is it the responsibility of the church to advance in our real world today?

I used to be happy and content to say, “God will do what God wants to do in the world, and I just need to live my own life with integrity and purity.” But John wasn’t interested in “living his own life” or “minding his own business.” John spoke the words of an activist against the religious and governmental authorities of his day, and Jesus called him “the greatest” person who ever lived.

Let’s make this more specific by breaking it down into some secondary questions:

• When should the people of God raise a voice against the broken parts of our world that do not yet represent the coming Kingdom?
• When should the people of God take action to bring healing into the midst of that brokenness?
• When should the people of God simply endure the brokenness while we wait for the Heavenly Kingdom?

Modern Christian Power

Even though for most of my life, I adopted the practice of silent, patient endurance, waiting for the Kingdom to come, other Christians have been wrestling with the questions of activism for centuries. In the first century, members of the church sold property so there would be no needy persons among them, and as a result, economic equity became a hallmark inside the church. Then, their activism quickly spread beyond the boundaries of the church itself. The early church took action against the practice of infanticide by going to the outskirts of towns and adopting discarded babies. Their activism played out in verbal opposition to the practice and also in the actual work of caring for abandoned babies. Through the centuries, that same activism grew as the early church responded to pandemics by remaining in towns overrun by plague and caring for the sick when others fled. This kind of activism, the activism of personally living out the principles of the future Kingdom was the main form of activism of the church through the centuries, but the last two or three hundred years have changed the dynamic considerably.

For the past few hundred years, democracy, industrialization, capitalism, and the Information Age have complicated Christian activism by giving Christians greater power to influence the society. In modern 21st Century America, all individuals and organizations can have immense influence through books, blogs, podcasts, social media, financial decisions, political activism, and the basic exercise of voting. All these powers exist for individual Christians, individual churches, and the wider Body of Christ too. Christians today in the United States hold as much potential for influence as any other individual or organization, and because the United States is still the most influential society on a global scale, the power of American Christians has never been greater.

Our dilemma is not merely academic. It is not a thought experiment about how much is now and how much is not yet. Our dilemma is all about how individuals and churches in America should steward their immense influence. The way we answer this dilemma changes nearly everything about how we do ministry as the Body of Christ in this world.

Sadly, answering this dilemma has always been divisive among Christians and churches. Instead of being a unified Body of Christ, we have split ourselves up according to policy opinions and political tribes, and ours is not the first generation to do so. Christians through the centuries have been aware of their influence, aware of their responsibility to influence, aware of the incongruity between the promised Kingdom and the present world, but staunchly divided over what we should do about it. Now, with Christians having more influence than ever before, the question becomes more important and therefore more strongly divisive than ever before.

Why is this the case? Well, one fundamental reason is that Christians have always been divided over the meaning of a core word in our faith: gospel. We know it means, “Good News.” We know it is our calling to proclaim the “Good News.” But what is the gospel really? Is it a message of eternity? Is it a message for the present? Is it a message of forgiveness or a message of activism? Calling us to a unified understanding of the gospel will be the aim of the next chapter.

Speaker: Jeff Mikels :: Passage: Various

The videos are called “The Days of Noah” and they are a series of four documentaries claiming to teach the principles of the end times in light of the way things were during Noah’s day.

If you don’t want to read the rest of this long post, that’s fine with me. I’ll just give you the quick and the dirty. These videos are put out by Seventh Day Adventists to scare people into thinking that they are in danger of God’s judgment for not being Seventh Day Adventists.

Please don’t believe it.

I won’t take the time to unpack all that is wrong with Seventh Day Adventist doctrine, but I will highlight one claim that is made in one tiny part of the video to show you how deeply wrong even that one tiny bit is.

I watched 10 minutes of episode 3, from the 38 to 48 minute mark, and during those 10 minutes, they make the following argument (in my words):

Revelation 14:9 and following talk about the mark of the beast and the judgment which will be poured out on those who get it. However, Revelation 7 talks about the people of God being marked with a “seal.” Therefore, the “mark” of the beast and the “seal” of God must be opposite concepts, and the key difference between people with God’s favor and those without God’s favor is whether they have the “seal” of God’s covenant or whether they have the “mark” of the worship of the beast. Since “Seals” in the ancient world always had the inscription of the Name, Title, and Jurisdiction of the authority figure, and the only command in the Ten Commandments to mention God with his Name, Title, and Jurisdiction was the Sabbath command, we must conclude that the Sabbath command is the “seal” of God and the mark of the beast must be something opposite… like worship on Sunday.

Now, it’s obvious that worship on Sunday is not the opposite of worship on Saturday, but they claim that Satan doesn’t really work in “opposites” but in “counterfeits.” Sunday worship is counterfeit worship, but it’s still the mark of the beast. They are saying, if you worship God on any day other than Saturday, you have embraced the Mark of the Beast.

I want to address that specific claim, but first, I also want to acknowledge why the claim is compelling. The idea of the Mark of the Beast is scary. Revelation tells us God will judge the people who get it, so we live in a little fear constantly that we might accidentally get it without knowing about it. It’s a scary thing to think that God might punish you for eternity for something you didn’t even know you were doing!

If the Mark of the Beast scares you, I want to help you out. First, let’s spend a bit of time talking about worship, Sunday worship, and what the Bible really has to say about the Sabbath.

New Testament Evidence for Sunday Worship

Jesus rose again on a Sunday, and on that day, people worshipped him.

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. — Luke 24:1 NIV

Immediately after Jesus’ death, the disciples began meeting on Sunday.

Consider the very first two Sundays following Jesus’ crucifixion:

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. — John 20:19-20 NIV

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” – John 20:26-28 NIV

On each of the first two Sundays after the crucifixion, the disciples gathered, Jesus met them there, they worshipped him with joy!
Gathering on the first day bears the mark of Jesus, not the mark of the Beast!

The early Christians continued the practice of gathering on the first day of the week.

On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. — Acts 20:7 NIV

Actually, the early Christians met ALL THE TIME!

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. — Acts 2:46-47 NIV

Paul specifically teaches against the idea of holy days.

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces ? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you. – Galatians 4:8-11 NIV

Paul encourages expressing grace regarding other people’s convictions regarding holy days.

One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. – Romans 14:5-8 NIV

Old Testament Considerations

The Old Testament cares way less about Sabbath meaning Saturday than people think it does.

Let’s consider the Old Testament. What about it? What about the covenant? Is it possible that worship on the Sabbath was a sign of the covenant with God? Shouldn’t we worship God according to his covenant? Actually, having a conversation about the covenant is something I’d love to do, but I’ll limit myself right now to the idea that Sabbath worship was the sign or seal of God on a person’s life.

The Sabbath was a sign of faithfulness.

Now, I will grant that during Old Testament times, keeping the Sabbath was a sign of a person’s commitment to God. Take these verses for example:

“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,
then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Isaiah 58:13-14 NIV

Seventh Day Adventists will claim that the important part of that passage is that we keep the seventh day as the holy day, and that if we move our worship to another day, we have moved away from the covenant. However, a closer look at the passage in context will clearly indicate that God doesn’t care about which day they called the Sabbath. He cared about whether the people were “honoring” the Sabbath or doing their own thing. God doesn’t care when you pretend to worship; he cares whether your life reflects your overall commitment to him. The Sabbath is a symbol of their allegiance to God, but it literally means nothing if it isn’t accompanied by good behavior every day.

Consider this:

“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! – Amos 5:21-24 NIV

Again, God’s heart has never been for the method or timing of the worship, but whether the worship was actually a recognition of our allegiance to him. Justice and righteousness are about something far more than which day of the week we go to church.

Look at every Old Testament passage about the Sabbath in its context, and you’ll see that their point is not to make sure people worship on the right day. The point is always that people worship the holy God with innocent hands. In fact, there are so many places in the Old Testament where the day of the week is completely irrelevant.

“First” days were just as important.

Just do a Bible word search for the phrase “first day” and see what comes up. Here are some interesting things I found.

First, searching for “first day,” you’ll see many, many times when God initiates his relationship with a prophet on the “first day” of a month, a season, or a king’s reign. Most of the time, it is the first day of the month, but here’s the interesting thing, unlike our calendar, Jewish people started every month with a Sunday (most likely).

Now, this is actually really important. The ancient Jewish people based their months on the phases of the moon. That means every month would have been 28 days long and every month would have had four weeks exactly. In other words, their months and weeks were always in sync. The first day of the month was the first day of the week. The first day of the month was therefore always a Sunday, and so, you can see how important Sundays were to God with all these statements about the “first day.”

Consecrating the Temple

When they had assembled their fellow Levites and consecrated themselves, they went in to purify the temple of the LORD, as the king had ordered, following the word of the LORD…. They began the consecration on the first day of the first month, and by the eighth day of the month they reached the portico of the LORD. For eight more days they consecrated the temple of the LORD itself, finishing on the sixteenth day of the first month. — 2 Chronicles 29:15, 17 NIV

Based on a lunar month, days 1 & 8 are Sundays, and day 16 is a Monday. Even if we are wrong about whether their months were lunar or not (there actually isn’t much evidence for how the Israelites counted their months and years), at maximum, only two of those special days could have been Saturdays.

Teaching the Law after Returning from Exile

So on the first day of the seventh month Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law.…

Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them; and as he opened it, the people all stood up. Ezra praised the LORD, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, “Amen! Amen!” Then they bowed down and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground. – Nehemiah 8:2-3, 5-6 NIV

Day after day, from the first day to the last, Ezra read from the Book of the Law of God. They celebrated the festival for seven days, and on the eighth day, in accordance with the regulation, there was an assembly. – Nehemiah 8:18 NIV

Again, this account requires that they were gathering and worshiping on days that weren’t Saturday.

• If the festival started on a Saturday, the final assembly was on a Sunday.
• If the final assembly was on a Saturday, the festival had to have started on a Friday.

Ezekiel’s Commands about the Passover

“ ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: In the first month on the first day you are to take a young bull without defect and purify the sanctuary. The priest is to take some of the blood of the sin offering and put it on the doorposts of the temple, on the four corners of the upper ledge of the altar and on the gateposts of the inner court. You are to do the same on the seventh day of the month for anyone who sins unintentionally or through ignorance; so you are to make atonement for the temple.

“ ‘In the first month on the fourteenth day you are to observe the Passover, a festival lasting seven days, during which you shall eat bread made without yeast. On that day the prince is to provide a bull as a sin offering for himself and for all the people of the land. Every day during the seven days of the festival he is to provide seven bulls and seven rams without defect as a burnt offering to the LORD, and a male goat for a sin offering. He is to provide as a grain offering an ephah for each bull and an ephah for each ram, along with a hin of olive oil for each ephah.

“ ‘During the seven days of the festival, which begins in the seventh month on the fifteenth day, he is to make the same provision for sin offerings, burnt offerings, grain offerings and oil. — Ezekiel 45:18-25 NIV

Consider all the things that happen and which day of the week they most likely took place:

• Day 1 – Sunday – purify the sanctuary
• Day 7 – Saturday – purify again
• Day 14 – Saturday – Passover Day
• Day 15 – Sunday – Festival begins
• Day 21 – Saturday – End the Festival

If we aren’t using a lunar month, the days get even less focused on Saturdays. If Day 1 were a Saturday, then none of the others were Saturdays. However, this passage is important for another reason. Did you notice that even though 21 specific days are mentioned in the course of this month, there is not one single use of the word “Sabbath” in the passage. In fact, the Sabbath is almost never mentioned during any description of any festival. Read through the laws about the festivals, and nothing is ever mentioned about a Sabbath happening in the middle of a festival. Why is that?

Well, the simple reason is that the Sabbath was supposed to be a break in your normal week. The festivals were supposed to be a break in your normal season. God also commanded years of Sabbath and years of Jubilee to be breaks in your normal life. But when you are in the middle of a festival, there’s no need for a Sabbath because the entire festival is a break from the normal. During a festival, everything gets suspended, even the Sabbath regulations.

Simply put, there is nothing permanently special about day #7. There has never been anything permanently special about day #7 other than the reason God himself gave for it.

“Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. — Deuteronomy 5:12-15 NIV

Something very few people ever notice is that the Sabbath command was not a command for people to stop working because God wanted people to stop working. The Sabbath was a command for people to stop working because some people lived like slaves all week long and God wanted everyone to remember that with him as their God, they were all no longer slaves anymore. And the people you have working for you? Yes, you need to give them the day off too because you used to be a slave, but God freed you, so don’t you treat them like your slaves.

Dare I say the Sabbath command is only partially for worship. The Sabbath command is equally about justice.

And therefore, let’s go back to what we read in Isaiah 58. Here is the whole chapter:

“Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.

For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.

‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?’

“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.

Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.

The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.

Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,
then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”

The mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Isaiah 58 NIV

Yes, the Sabbath shows up in the passage, but the judgment against the people is that even though they were seeking God “day after day” God saw through their “seeking” because they were also living lives of injustice. They were exploiting their workers. They were breaking the Sabbath because they were doing “as they pleased” but were ignoring the issues of injustice in their midst. Perhaps they were celebrating the Sabbath but making their servants cook meals for them. Who knows? The point is that God cared more about the heart of the Sabbath than he did about their observance of the Sabbath.

We have to always remember that the Sabbath isn’t about which day. The Sabbath isn’t about what religious traditions you follow. The Sabbath is about whether you embrace and follow the one true God who made all people in his image and demands that we join him in the work of justice in this world.

That’s why Jesus said:

Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. — Mark 2:27 NIV

Was Saturday the Sabbath Anyway?

Before I end this post, there are two things left I want to address. First, for a moment, let’s go back to the idea that the Jewish people based their calendar on the phases of the moon. Many other cultures did that, but not every culture, and even those cultures that followed the phases of the moon weren’t guaranteed to number their days the same way. As a result, after Israel was conquered by Assyria and later Babylon and then Persia and then the Greeks and later the Romans, whose to say their weeks weren’t messed up too? Just because the Romans considered Sunday the first day of the week doesn’t mean the Saturday of Jesus’ day was the same Saturday of Moses’ Day.

In fact, in today’s society, most people consider Monday to be the first day of the week, and therefore, these days, if you want to worship on day #7, you should be doing your worship on a … wait for it … SUNDAY!

Back to the Mark of the Beast

Of course, this whole thing came about because some video claimed that Sunday worship was the mark of the beast, so I probably need to address that too.

I understand that the words of the video can be scary to anyone who is afraid they are somehow going to accidentally disappoint God by getting the mark of the beast and therefore disqualify themselves for heaven or otherwise make God mad at them. As far as I’m concerned, this is the biggest problem with the video. I honestly don’t care when a church decides to meet for worship. Paul even told me in Romans that I shouldn’t judge someone else who wants to consider one day more special than another day. But what really burns me up is anytime a church or religious sounding person uses fear to try to manipulate and control people or when they misrepresent God and his Word to do so.

Let’s be clear. No human being on the planet will ever accidentally get the mark of the beast.

How do I know?

Because God actually had John write it down in Revelation. Here’s the passage they didn’t mention in the video clip I saw:

Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. — Revelation 13:11-17 NIV

Some important points:

• The mark of the beast will be accompanied by someone performing amazing miraculous signs including calling fire from heaven.
• The mark of the beast will be accompanied by someone who will kill all who refuse to worship the beast.
• The mark of the beast will be forced upon literally everyone (no one will get it accidentally)

Therefore:

• If the mark is a literal mark, you will know whether you have it or not.
• If the mark is a metaphorical mark, then it will be all about your willingness to worship something or be killed.
• In either case, it will be obvious who has the “mark” and who is dead.

What about more passages from Revelation? Here’s another passage about the mark.

I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. — Revelation 20:4-5 NIV

Once again, according to the book of Revelation, there are only two categories of people regarding the mark of the beast. There are those who receive the mark and embrace the worship of the beast, and there are those who lose their heads.

I want to give you some comfort regarding the mark of the beast. For literal centuries, Christians have been making up marks of the beast and scaring each other with their made up ideas. The Seventh Day Adventists say worship on Sunday is the mark of the beast, Martin Luther (back in the 1500s) thought the Roman Catholic Church was the mark of the beast, in the early 20th century, people thought the social security cards were the mark of the beast, in the mid 20th century, people thought credit cards were the mark of the beast, then NFC chips, then DNA matching, then vaccines, yada, yada, yada,

You have nothing to worry about when it comes to the mark of the beast. What you have to worry about is whether you are worshipping the God who made heaven and earth, who made people in his image, who commands us to walk in humility and mercy, and who sent his Son to live, die, and rise again as our example, our Lord, and our Savior. Worship him, follow him, live to honor him, and you have nothing to worry about.

Introduction

In 2006, when Jennifer and I moved to Lafayette to start a church, we had a number of different motivations. God had made it clear that our time in our previous ministry had come to a close and that not only was church planting our next calling, but Lafayette, Indiana was his new direction for us. No matter what this new effort turned out to be, we were motivated because we knew God was leading us into it. He had affirmed it through our own times of prayer, through affirmation from trusted leaders, and through the financial and prayerful support of many in our lives who made sacrifices toward this effort.

We were passionate to do something fresh without the encumbrances of traditional church ministry. We were convinced that God was leading us to do a different kind of church that was not beholden to any sort of that’s-how-we-always-do-it thinking. The fresh start was highly motivating.

We were prepared to fall in love with the city and the people of Lafayette and the greater county. Both of us had an affinity for this area, and Jen was a graduate of Purdue, so we believed Lafayette would be as much of a blessing to us as we believed we could be for the people of Lafayette.

We wanted to leverage modern technologies and marketing techniques to connect with people that other churches weren’t reaching and to inspire people with hope that maybe this church could be their spiritual home.

Also, our hearts were burdened by the statistic that only 20% of people in this county could really be claimed by any church. For an area as Christian as the middle of Indiana, Lafayette had a terribly low level of commitment to church participation. We believed the time was right for a new expression of the church in this city, a new style of teaching, a new style of worship, a new kind of authenticity, and a new openness to cultural and economic diversity within a church body.

Nevertheless, we never saw ourselves in competition with the other churches. We were excited about leading a new kind of ministry that was cooperative and collaborative with the other Christian ministries in the area. The formation of strong Christian unity through the entire Body of Christ was another major motivation for us in those early days of ministry.