The View from the West Mesa

He Remembers We Are But Flesh

2026-10-05T20:15:18.501-06:00

In Job, often considered the first book written in the Bible, we are introduced to the accuser. In the introduction to the book, it is the accuser who accuses Job of being righteous and faithful to God only because of the blessings that God has given Job. We find the accuser again in Zechariah 3. The High Priest Joshua is standing in front of the Lord in filthy clothes, and the accuser is making accusations. The Lord rebukes the accuser and then says that he will cleanse Joshua.

Then in the New Testament, we see the appearance of the Advocate. The Spirit, we are told, is sent to walk beside us, to be a witness, to be an advocate for us. The accuser challenges us, questions our faithfulness, and questions our integrity as people who are supposed to follow God as His people, His disciples. This is an entre for being blamed and shamed. But God comes alongside us and advocates for us. We are told too that Jesus is our mediator with God. Jesus defends us and explains us to God so that we are granted mercy out of the graciousness of God.

We have another hint of the goodness and grace of God in the Psalms. In the 78th Psalm, we are presented with a rehearsal of how bad un-Godlike Israel has been. In the middle of this litany, we read this phrase: "He remembered they were but flesh." The God of the universe, the Creator of all that is, He who could wipe out all of creation in a moment and then create it all over again. This God who is rehearsing His frustration with Israel stops and seemingly takes a breath, remembering that they are but flesh. They're just humans, creatures He has made. In this phrase we see an attitude of advocacy. The Father becomes our advocate with Himself.

And so we find one accuser, but each member of the Godhead—and them all together—is our advocate. The accuser is hoping we fall, hoping we fail, hoping that instead of blessing, God delivers wrath on us. He does this—now get this—to shame God. The accuser tells God that the only reason Job is faithful is because God pays him to be. Can you see the attempt at shame here?

The accuser wants us to give up, and he uses shame to achieve our defeat. Shame for God and shame for us in our mercenary and unstable faithfulness. But God remembers that we are but flesh.

In discussing the double sacrifice on Yom Kippur, Jonathan Sacks makes this observation: One sheep is sacrificed to atone for guilt. Guilt, Sacks says, must be atoned, and so the sheep is killed. The second sheep is not killed outright. Instead, the high priest puts the sin of the people on the sheep's head and sends the sheep outside the camp. The application Sacks makes at this point is this second sheep, which is a cleansing. The first sheep is an atonement for guilt. The second is a cleansing of shame. When we are guilty of something, we can't change the guilt, and so it must be atoned. Shame, though, is something assigned to us either by others or ourselves. Our guilt is part of us; our shame is not. Shame is like dirt or a stain or a sticky mess that weighs us down, makes our legs and feet drag, and makes us avoid others' eyes. This stain, this shame, is cleansed from the people so they can be lifted up—He lifts our face and tells us to look into His. God takes our shame from us so that we can fully live into the life he offers us.

When we are told that the blood of Jesus cleanses us, it means that our shame is taken from us. Yes, His death atones our guilt. But His blood cleanses us white as snow as it removes our shame as He turns His face toward ours as He lifts our eyes to see Him. He is not ashamed to look at us, to see us as we are, and He invites us to let the shame that is no longer there drop away from us. We can approach God with full faces as His beloved children. We don't need to worry about what the accuser says about us because the entire Godhead advocates for us, takes us by the hand, and lifts our face toward their own.

Rest in peace that both your guilt and your shame have been removed, and God is pleased to look into your face and draw you close.

Remember You Were Slaves

2026-05-19T09:20:16.184-06:00

In his essay "Mishpatim: Healing the Heart of Darkness*," Jonathan Sacks makes the argument that tribalism can, and usually does, give rise to acceptance, compassion, and social bonding but also to fear, hate, and demeaning others. Those in our group give and receive the former from us, those outside our group receive and often give the latter. We humans have the capacity of empathy toward those like us but we also, being finite beings, suffer from fear and that fear too often translates to hate of those not like us.

Sacks then reminds us that Israel was told not to hate the outsider, the one who isn't in our group. He quotes two passages from Exodus:

"You must not mistreat or oppress the stranger in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt." (22.21)

"You must not oppress strangers. You know what it feels like to be a stranger, for you yourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt." (23.9)

Sacks then tells us "Care for the stranger is why the Israelites had to experience exile and slavery before they could enter the Promised Land and build their own society and state. You will not succeed in caring for the stranger, implies God, until you yourselves know in your very bones and sinews what it feels like to be a stranger. And lest you forget, I have already commanded you to remind yourselves and your children of the taste of affliction and bitterness every year on Passover. Those who forget what it feels like to be a stranger eventually come to oppress stranger, and if the children of Abraham oppress strangers, why did I make them My covenantal partner?"

Remember, he says, what you have suffered, the bad things that have happened to you. Why? So you can be on guard, so you can know who to fear, so you can be prepared to strike the first blow? No. Why do we remember what we have suffered? So that we will avoid doing the same thing to others, to those outside our group, however that group is defined in this moment. There is another Jewish concept, Tikkun Olam**, to heal or repair the world, often by social improvement or acts of kindness. There is only one way to repair the world and that is to give up the fear that leads to hate and dismissive views of others. To heal the world requires that we remember what we have experienced and instead of letting that experience turn us into bitter and vindictive people, to let it open our eyes to humanity and remember what it feels like to be oppressed, harmed, and made invisible.

We remember what we have suffered not so we can make surer it doesn't happen again to us, but to ensure that we don't do the same to others. Israel is told to remember her subjugation not so that she can do the same to Egypt, but so that she can guard herself from doing the same to others. In this way we extend the boundaries of the people included in the sphere of those who are loved by God and who are cared for by us.

When I was growing up, our mother would recite a poem by JHL Hunt, Abou ben Adhem. It reads,

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

And saw, within the moonlight in his room,

Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,

An angel writing in a book of gold:—

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

And to the Presence in the room he said

"What writest thou?"—The vision raised its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered "The names of those who love the Lord."

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerly still, and said "I pray thee, then,

Write me as one that loves his fellow men."

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,

And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

This poem emphasizes a central theme in Western religion in that those who care for others receive the blessing of God. There is another poem, or actually a prayer that merges the two themes we have developed: remember suffering in order to not perpetrate suffering on others and in working to heal the world, become people who seek to improve the lot of outsiders by bringing them into our ever-increasing group. The following poem is reported to have been found at Ravensbruck concentration camp following World War II. It was, it is said, found near the body of a child victim of that camp. As you read it, appreciate the recognition of the suffering but then the turn of emphasis to blessing even those who caused the suffering.

O Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will

but also those of evil will.

But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted upon us;

remember the fruits we have borne thanks to this suffering –

our comradeship,

our loyalty,

our humility,

our courage,

our generosity,

the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this;

and when they come to the judgement,

let all the fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness.

Amen.

This prayer, while merging the themes together, adds yet another nuance. It asks that the evil that has been perpetrated not be remembered by God. Instead, as a nation of people who were themselves oppressed before, God should remember the good that has come of the evil. Just as in Egypt, the slavery resulted in a nation capable of remembering their own oppression so that they could learn to not oppress others but to bless them. And in exchanging blessing for suffering, heal the world.

*Sacks, Jonathan (2016). Mishpatim: Healing the Heart of Darkness in Essays on Ethics: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible. New Milford, CT: Magid.

**Tikun Olam is associated with both Jewish mystical tradition and has moved into the social world as concern for the poor, those on the edges, and is addressed as changes in social policies and programs. Regardless of which emphasis one uses, the underlying concept is humanity's responsibility and effort in setting the creation aright.

Passover, The First Born, Abraham, and You

2025-10-20T14:49:00.001-06:00

Israel has been in captivity in Egypt, Moses has completed his contests with Pharaoh, and the People of Israel have been expelled from Egypt. The death of Egyptian firstborn children and livestock has compelled their removal into the wilderness. At the end of Exodus 12, God institutes the Passover in remembrance of the Angel of Death passing by the homes of Jews on the night the Egyptian firstborn children were killed. Notably, they were spared if in a house with blood around the door.

The Passover is established for Israel herself, including their slaves who have been circumcised. If a sojourner wants to celebrate the Passover with you, he can after he circumcises all males with him. I suspect that pretty much eliminated any visitors participating.

In chapter 13, the protocols include redeeming Israel's firstborn. In this discussion, God says your firstborn belongs to God, and you must redeem your firstborn or you must kill it. God has redeemed Israel's firstborn by the blood of a lamb, and Israel must now remember that in perpetuity. The redemption cost is an unblemished lamb, goat, or sheep. A life for a life. Something valuable for your child's life. This feast marks not only the survival of Israel's firstborn, but of her delivery from captivity and oppression. Jesus will explain the particulars to his disciples.

Those particulars are that Jesus is the lamb and the Passover meal includes images of his body and blood. Jesus, the Lamb of God, His firstborn, whose blood cleanses and saves first the Jew and then the Gentile. This feast is not to remember the massacre of a nation of Pagans, but what wrought by that massacre: Israel's salvation from oppression and into life with her God. Jesus wants his disciples to grasp the connection. It is not that a lamb is killed; it is that a nation is redeemed, set right, given life.

We do not hear of this redemption price first in chapter 13. We have seen it before. This is the same act that Abraham experienced, the same price Abraham had to pay. The life of His firstborn (of promise) is required of him. Abraham has not been instructed in redemption and so he takes Isaac and is in the process of killing him when God stops him and provides the sheep as Isaac's redemption.

Humans no longer need sacrifice their firstborn or redeem them with a valuable asset. The price, it turns out, is both easier and steeper. No longer must we redeem our children. We have all been redeemed in some sense by the life given by Jesus. Not as a payment per se, but as a faithful human follower of God. Jesus has set things right, cosmically, between God and humanity.

And yet, there is a sense too in which the life we give for our redemption is ourselves. Baptism images the death of the disciple and her rising to life with God. The death she experiences, the life she gives in baptism is her own. Her own ego, her own prerogatives, her own life focus. There is no blood involved and she need not offer her child, but she must become a little Christ, giving herself to God for the world. She must die to herself.

When we read the stories of lamb sacrifices, realize they are not just Jewish stories. No, they are human stories that God has orchestrated to prepare us to give ourselves for the world, as disciples of Jesus.

Job Prays for His Friends

2025-10-20T10:35:00.003-06:00

Overheard in class: God blesses Job after Job prays for his friends. This is an interesting observation about this text:

And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. (Job 42.10a, ESV)

Job has just revealed his contrition regarding why God would cause him such sorrow and God had lectured Job's friends for their misunderstandings about God and Job's situation. God then tells the friends to ask Job to pray for them, and they do. They bring sacrifices and they ask for Job's intercession on their behalf.

Get this picture. Job is, presumably, still sitting in ashes, covered with sores that he scrapes with a potsherd. He has suffered the loss of his children and his physical wealth, and his wife has suggested that he should just curse God and die. He has just sat through 40-ish chapters of being lectured by these same friends and finally, challenged by God.

...and his friends show up with sacrifices for themselves, asking Job to pray for them.

Put yourself in Job's place. Ashes, sores, bereaved. Still wondering why all this has happened to him and having been given no answers. And now - did his friends tell him that God had sent them to him - he is expected to bless these three guys by praying for them. I can almost hear Job asking, "Should not someone be praying for me?! I am the one sitting in ashes-for no apparent reason!"

I wonder if Job would have felt better if God's response would have been, "You are right, Job, you have not sinned. I am doing this to you for no reason other than to cause you pain." At least Job would have known something about why he was in his condition. But God does not say even that. God simply asks, who are you to wonder? Who are you to blame Me? No answers. No closure. Just more drifting. Alone.

Now that we have abused you to this extent, Job, your task - still sitting in those ashes without answers - is to intercede for these three guys. In the midst of your pain and confusion, bless others.

Others who have blamed you for your circumstances; accused you of sinning.

It is only after Job intercedes for these three people that God restores the fortunes of Job. Only after blessing others in the midst of his own pain and lostness, does God bless him.

How often do you and I reach out to bless others when in the midst of our own pain? Do we focus on ourselves, asking 'why me,' and ignoring the needs of those around us, or do we accept our condition as our current reality and look out of ourselves for the good of others?

This is what God expects of Job.

This sort of idea is echoed in the New Testament in passages such as

When we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself.

Forgive them because they do not know what they are doing.

Job reveals God. For us.

No One is Righteous

2025-10-18T13:04:00.002-06:00

We have all heard the phrase “None is righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” Many, including most Protestants, take this to be a universal, divine description of humanity.

Well, it isn’t; at least not as either Paul or the writer he's quoting meant it.

In our chapter 3 of Romans, Paul is speaking to Jewish disciples in Rome. He has recently eliminated any claim to the priority they might have presumed based on having the Law or circumcision as signs of being ‘in.’ Then he moves to a rhetorical question, ‘If we are God’s people, is he unjust to punish us?’ Paul’s answer is that God is not unjust to punish Israel or Jews. He even has to address a silly assertion that we will have seen multiple times. It is this, should we sin more so that God can show even more grace? Paul’s answer is an understandable ‘Nope!”

Then we get the next question, ‘Are we Jews any better off – because we are Jews?’ Again the answer is ‘nope.’ Why is that? Paul is going to justify his statement by using Israel’s own Scriptures against her. He now quotes nine texts to demonstrate that Israel has been and is just as bad as anyone else they might want to compare themselves to. This is where we get our opening text. It is a quotation from Psalm 14. He uses it not to make a universal statement of mankind, but to include Israel – supported by her own Scripture – as corrupt. She isn’t pristine; she isn’t in a special place; she is guilty.

But doesn’t the psalm say that no one is righteous nor does anyone seek God? Well, it does use those words, but let’s look closer at the Psalm. The first clue we have is that it is being written by David. David will declare of himself or will associate himself with, the righteous; someone who does the will of God and keeps the Law. So we know right from the start that this poem is not a universal statement of mankind or even of Israel because it does not include David.

But what else do we find in this devotional poem? We find this: ‘Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers (Israelites who do not follow God) who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call on the Lord?’ We see here that there are two groups of people – the evildoers and the people of God. The emphasis here is the evildoers as those who don’t seek God. The people of God are not in that category.

‘They (the evildoers) are in great terror because God is with the righteous.’ Wait, what? David acknowledges in this Psalm that there are righteous people. The righteous people do seek God and because they are righteous, we know they 'do good.' That is, after all, what 'righteous' means.

The psalmist is bemoaning the condition inside Israel. The evildoers seem to have the upper hand and the poet is describing this condition. The last part of the poem is a plea for the rescue of the people of God from the evildoers. The righteous to be rescued from the unrighteous.

So what do we find? We find that the poem – the text that is quoted by Paul – does not intend to be a universal indictment of humanity. We find that there are righteous people of God.

We find in Romans where Paul quotes this poem, he means to indict Israel, not all of humanity by using her own Scripture against her.

When using proof texts without understanding the context or purpose, we open ourselves to ridiculous statements and create realities that don’t exist. It simply is not true that either Psalm 14 or Romans 3 is arguing that all of humanity is corrupt or that absolutely no one seeks God.

The Psalter is a collection of someone else’s devotional poetry and must be read in that light. To read it flat, to pick out preferred statements disconnected from the poet’s situation or even the rest of the poem, is to do violence to Scripture. The Psalter is not a legal text nor is it a prose discussion of anything. It is devotional poetry written in a specific situation to a specific audience – often God.

Faith to Faith

2025-10-17T19:05:00.000-06:00

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." (Romans 1.16-17, ESV)

There are various renderings and understandings of the phrase as it is used here, "faith for faith." Both words for faith derive from pistis, with the first being pisteos (genitive) and the second, pistin (accusative). Faith, we are told, begins in faith and leads to faith. The import of this origin and fulfillment is found in the next sentence above, the righteous shall live by faith (genitive). We might word this as "already held or possessed faith will result in or lead to faith. As it is written, the one who has faith will parlay that faith into a salvific faith. Faith held by the believer will lead the believer to greater or more complete faith, resulting in her salvation.

Faith here may be understood as faithfulness, or as a follower of God, or in the case of Pagan Gentiles, those who have discerned the universal moral aspects reflected in the Mosaic Law and who live by them. In this latter category, we might include Cornelius and Lydia.

This echoes in my ear as a reprise of John's telling us that there are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who, when exposed to the Light of Jesus, move toward Him, and there are those who avoid the Light because their deeds are evil (John 3.19-21). According to John, people's responses to Jesus originated in their value systems. Jesus makes no sense to those who love darkness. Here in Romans 1, Paul has just told us that the gospel is the power of God for salvation, to the Jew and the Greek. Paul says this because this letter is intended to set the Romans straight regarding who's in and who's out (or loved better by God, or who has the right to run the church in Rome). Paul's gospel specifically is that Gentiles are acceptable to God and so he includes both groups. Certainly the gospel comes (came) first to the Jews but it is also applicable to Gentiles. Paul is telling us that those within whom Truth and Light resonate will have that faith (about what is right) unfold into salvific faith as they are exposed to the reality of Jesus. For Paul, it is important that his readers understand that God is open to not only Jews but Gentiles - anyone who acknowledges what they see and hear about Jesus and comes to follow Him as His disciple.

We can appeal for support of this Johannine echo to the next sentence, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." (Romans 1.18, ESV) These are the people who avoid the Light, who love works of darkness. These cannot progress from faith to faith because they do not want to - whether they are Jew or Gentile. Paul goes on, "For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires,...They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts...." (Romans 2.14-15, ESV).

We might go further and acknowledge that a similar dynamic is illustrated in the Psalms. In Psalm 92, a contrast is drawn between the stupid evildoers who do not acknowledge God and the righteous who are promised deliverance and blessing because they are planted (grounded, have their foundation) in the courts of God. The Psalmist agrees with John that there are those who love evil and those who do good. It is the latter, in John and Paul, who move toward the Light and so have their faith unfold into greater, deeper, truly salvific faith in Jesus.

Of a truth, this is Abram who, when summoned by God, followed Him. His faith developed into a faith that would find him as a blessing for the world, the father of all disciples, and someone who entertained God at his tent.

The gospel is given to the world; it is up to us to do something with it.

----

Other renderings of the phrase include Faith to faith (KJV, NASB), A righteousness that is by faith from first to last (NIV), Faith leads to faith (NJB)

Paul's Themes in Romans - Not What You Think

2025-10-13T08:32:00.000-06:00

Introduction: Paul's letter to the Roman house churches has become so 'specialized' that many understandings of it are severely limited to only a few options. Perhaps the most popular understanding of the letter is as Paul's magnum opus of grace/faith versus works. A close second is the Reformed use of the letter to emphasize Divine sovereignty in salvation, specifically, unconditional election. Leaving aside whether these themes appear in the letter and in what forms, they tend to overly simplify the letter. As a result, our understanding of the letter is anemic and at least slightly wrong-headed.

Situation: Paul has never been to Rome; he did not establish the church there. He does know some of the people in Rome, however, and has heard of their situation. The Jews had been evicted from Rome (AD 40-51?) but were now returning to the city (AD 54?) after their exile. During the Jewish disciples’ absence from Rome, Gentile disciples had led the house churches, and they had apparently done things differently than had the Jewish disciples. As a result, there is conflict and tension between Jewish and Gentile disciples in the house churches. A common challenge for the church in the first century was whether new disciples – including Gentile ones – had to keep, or how much they had to keep, of the Jewish or Mosaic Law and ritual? The Jewish disciples’ argument included the idea that they were the ‘people of God’ and that God’s law is everlasting. Therefore, not only should the Jewish disciples be accepted as the legitimate leaders of the church, but the application of at least parts of the Law to the Gentile converts was to be expected. The Gentile disciples, having successfully led the house churches while the Jewish disciples had been absent, took exception to the Jewish claims. In fact, they would argue (echoing Paul) that the Law did not apply to them, and they should not be expected to keep it. They would say that the Jewish disciples were too backward or ill-informed and did not know what they were talking about.

Paul is writing to the house churches in Rome to forestall this argument and get the two groups to modify their attitudes and change their behaviors toward one another. He also wants to exercise his commission in Rome, the Imperial Capital, and gain some direct converts as part of his mission. Thirdly, Paul wants to visit Rome and have them support his intended trip to Spain.

Themes. During his discussion, Paul discusses four themes:

Reconciliation between God and humanity. Paul has been specifically selected as the Apostle to the Gentiles, which he calls the ministry or reconciliation. Paul's calling was to extend the People of God, until now limited to Israel, to the nations. He tells us that it was in Christ that God was reconciling the world to himself. The point of the Christ event is reversing the breach between God and humanity, making it possible for humans to come to God.

Release from the Jewish or Mosaic Covenant. Reconciling the nations to God, extending the People of God in a broader sense than Israel only, called for the removal of national identity barriers for the Gentiles. Gentiles, Paul argues, are not required to become Jewish. He removes the three primary national identity markers of Israel as necessary for Gentiles. Paul argues that Gentiles do not need to be circumcised, accept the Mosaic Law, or be descendants of Abraham. In doing so, Paul replaces each of these with circumcision of the heart, the law of Christ, and defines descendants of Abraham as everyone who follows Jesus in faith. All persons have been released from the national identity markers of Israel and are acceptable to God.

Reorientation of our lives as disciples of Jesus. Jesus and John preached a gospel of repentance in preparation for the coming Messiah, and Paul carried that theme through his letter. A more precise understanding of repentance and Paul's expectation in this letter is a reorientation of our thinking, desires, and actions. We are encouraged to focus our minds on things of God, not things of this earth. Yes, it looks like the world works in certain ways related to power, wealth, and status, but the disciple of Jesus focuses not on those, but on the things of God. These things of God, in juxtaposition to the former power understanding, include humility, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, brotherly affection, and love. There is no room in the things of God for the world's standard of ego-centric views and behaviors.

Righteousness as a disciple. To be a disciple of Jesus is to live a life of righteousness; to be righteous. In this letter, Paul describes the righteousness of God in various ways and at the same time calls his readers to that same sort of righteousness. Paul says that obedience leads to righteousness. We are to offer ourselves, become bond servants of righteousness. We become righteous when we live in accordance with the Spirit, having rejected the standards of the world, and live in and into the attributes of Divine love.

Grace, Faith, and Works. Much has been said about Paul’s discussion of grace, faith, and works in Romans and in other places. The context of Paul’s statements is the removal of the Mosaic Law and Covenant as operative in the lives of disciples. Rather, Paul argues that Jesus’s New Covenant has come into being. The new Covenant is one of faith in and life as disciples of Jesus. The Law’s purpose, according to Paul, was to keep Israel on the path of faithfulness to God and life as His followers or disciples, leading them to recognize and begin preparing for the coming of their promised Messiah. Now that Messiah has come, the purpose of the Law has been fulfilled, and it is no longer applicable to anyone. When Paul talks about ‘works,’ he is talking about the legal keeping of the Mosaic Law as a salvific endeavor. The Law could not save you because it tells you what not to do and tells you when you have messed something up. On the flip side, if you had managed to keep the Law perfectly, you have only done what you had been expected to do, so you did not ‘earn’ anything. Boasting about keeping the Law, or expecting to be saved by keeping the finer details of it, only indicates that you have done the absolute minimum expected of a Jew. Here’s the rub for Paul: keeping the finer details of the Law and yet pillaging ‘widows’ houses’ is a damning enterprise. Any trained monkey, Paul seems to be saying, could tithe min and cummin. The expectation of the Law was a transformation of the person into someone who would not ‘step over’ a man covered with sores. In Paul’s rhetoric, faith carries nuances we often overlook. It is important for Paul that disciples acknowledge Jesus as Messiah, Son of God, Savior as matters of mental assent, but it is not a complete understanding of what he or the rest of Scripture means by faith. Biblical saving faith is better understood as faithfulness to God/Jesus as their disciple. This faithfulness to Jesus is the equivalent of becoming a mature disciple, transformed into the likeness of God. It is not primarily found in performing discreet actions in response to the Law, but in living lives that reflect the values, desires, and intent of God. There is not a checklist of things to do, there is a person to become. Grace in Paul is the recognition that God was not compelled by an external force to offer salvation to humanity. God did not have to make a way for humanity to return to Him, but He did. “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself” “while we were yet sinners.” Grace is a stance that allows space for goodness to be expressed.

We are saved by grace (God’s good and benevolent stance toward us) through faith(fullness) as disciples of Jesus, not by works (abstract religious ritual or behaviors) per se.

The Discussion Arc. We can sketch the arc of the letter like this:

The goodness and power of the gospel.

The evil and God-less condition of humanity.

The inclusion of Israel in the same problems as the rest of humanity.

The deconstruction of the Jewish ethnic claims to special standing.

Warnings to Gentile disciples not to be arrogant.

Practical application of what he has said.

Expressions of familiarity.

Wineskins II

2023-04-22T16:02:00.004-06:00

In chapter 16 of Matthew, Peter ‘makes the great confession’ - Jesus he says is the Son of the Living God. At Covenant, when someone wants to become a member or to be baptized, we ask them who Jesus is and we expect this response. Peter is correct when he says this, but it is not clear that Peter (or the other disciples) understood the ramifications of his statement. Following Peter’s statement we find a series of incidents that make us wonder just how much Peters actually believed what he had said.

In the first instance, Jesus compares Peter to Satan. Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem and there he will die. Peter exclaims that he will not let that happen; Jesus will not be killed. Peter is expecting great things from Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God on behalf of Israel and he cannot fit Jesus dying into his hope for a greater Israel under this Messiah. This cannot happen, he reasons. Jesus’s response is a harsh rebuke—” Get behind me, Satan!” Peter is trying to make all this work within his own frame but Jesus has been trying to show them that what they think needs to happen does not and will not happen. This is more of the new wine in old wineskins—it just does not work well.

The next incident is at the Transfiguration. Jesus has taken Peter, James, and John with him up a mountain and what they see is Jesus, Moses, and Elijah speaking together. In response, Peter wants to build three shelters for them. This is understandable from a human perspective. Here we have Moses, the great prophet, the deliverer of the nation, and Elijah, the one who must come before Messiah and who was translated without dying. If Abraham is the father of Israel, these two are her greatest prophets in her history. I have always wondered why David was not included in this group. I suspect that his exclusion was to make a point-the Kingdom of God is not about and will not be about a physical kingdom, a great nation in the sense of political power. No, that old wineskin will not work either.

The third instance is the Temple Tax story. Peter has been accosted by a Jewish interlocutor who has challenged Peter with an accusation in the form of a question—Does your rabbi pay the Temple Tax or not? Peter is likely caught a bit off guard but in any case, he quickly responds with a version of “Of course he does!” This gives Jesus another opportunity to open Peter’s eyes and so he asks, “Who do the kings of the earth collect their tax—from their own children or from other people?” Peter again answers correctly, “From the other people, of course.” Jesus responds to this with another, “Yep, you are right and that means the sons are free.” We cannot tell whether Peter gets the import of this statement because Jesus sends him out to find a coin so as “not to cause offense.” What Jesus does not say out loud here is that Peter’s response to his interlocutor was a bit misplaced. Jesus doesn’t have to pay the tax. Jesus is the Son of the Living God, the incarnated God, the Temple himself. He does not need to pay tax and by extension, neither does Peter. Peter too is a Son of God. Temple Tax, like the old wine skin, is not compatible with the new wine.

Between the Transfiguration and the Temple Tax episode, we have another deliverance story. A man comes up to Jesus so he can have his child healed. Part of his story is that he had asked the disciples to heal him, but they failed; Jesus does not. After the child is healed, the disciples ask Jesus to explain why they could not heal the child. Jesus’s response, after Peter’s confession, is “Because you do not have enough faith.” Their faith does not even reach the size of a mustard seed. They may agree with Peter that Jesus is the Son of the Living God, but they do not know what that means. They all still think the ministry of Jesus is about the liberation of Israel as a nation. Their thinking, their mental schemas will not hold the new wine of the kingdom Jesus is bringing.

When we ask whether someone believes that Jesus is the Son of God, we expect an affirmative response and we would like for that response to be pregnant with the idea that Jesus has brought the Kingdom of God into the world and into our lives. The kingdom is so radical so as to ruin our presuppositions because it includes freedom. This freedom is not freedom into self-aggrandizement but freedom to die. This dying is what Peter objects to—how can the Kingdom of God be manifest if the disciples of Jesus are called to deny themselves and give themselves for others—for the world? It makes as much sense to us as it did to Peter and that is why the wineskin illustration is as much for us as it was for those first disciples. Our expectations will be ruined by the new wine offered by God if we too think that we should be benefiting in the way the world understands benefit. We are called to be new wineskins into and within which the new wine of the kingdom of God can grow.

Wineskins

2023-03-25T19:20:00.000-06:00

Jesus comes from the Wilderness where the Spirit has driven him for testing, announcing the imminent coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. His message to the crowds calls them to repent because the “Kingdom is at hand.” The kingdom or the effective rule of God has come upon Israel and Israel’s expected response is to return to her God. A number of passages tell us the sorts of things God has against Israel or at least her leaders. They have the form of the People of God, but not the substance. He will call those opposed to him “white-washed tombs” to describe their religious and moral corruption. They look good but are dead. He calls these people to repentance, to return to “their first love,” to actually live as though they are the People of God. In another place, he will tell them that while they do well to tithe mint and cumin, they have missed the larger point of caring for people. In the judgment scene, he describes sending into a place of gnashing of teeth those who failed to give a cup of water. He says this to people who no doubt were keeping the larger sacrificial system well.

In chapter nine of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus uses new wine in old wineskins to illustrate the almost complete incompatibility of how they were living and the way God had called them to live. Paul will tell some of his readers that he cannot address them as adults because they are not ready to hear it; to understand it.

Jesus is saying something similar with his wineskins allusion. What he had to tell them—what he was telling them—was so foreign to them, that they would never be able to fit it into their current system. Something new was happening and it was not going to be possible to cobble it onto their current religious system. It cannot even be a corrective to it. It is something new. We might hear if we listen well, the details of the new covenant that had been promised. A covenant that would be starkly different than what they thought they knew.

Paul again will tell us that their religious system was an addendum to the promise made to Abraham. It is the promise, Paul tells his readers that is being fulfilled through Jesus—the innumerable descendants of Abraham as faithful disciples of God. Paul will go on to say that while the Law was good, it could never have saved anyone because Law serves to condemn behavior rather than reward the righteous. In an odd and ironic turn of events, the new wineskins that Jesus speaks about actually hearken back to pre-Law times when the Patriarchs lived with God, following his lead. While largely overshadowed by the Law, Micah reminds Israel and us that what God has been after are those who would love mercy, act justly, and walk humbly with God. These are themes similar to what we can discern in the Gospel. Trust God, follow his lead, and live as his disciple. This is so simple, it really cannot be combined with the Law. What is needed are new wineskins to hold the new wine.

We are on this side of Jesus’s earthly ministry and the recipients of this new wine. We are called to the same sort of life as Micah described. We, both Israel and the Gentiles who have been grafted in are called to be disciples of Jesus and dispensers of grace for the sake of the world.

How are we doing?

Photo by Apolo Photographer on Unsplash

Forgiveness

2023-03-25T19:03:00.000-06:00

“So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (Matt 18:35, ESV)

This phrase, this warning, this admonition comes as the conclusion or the point of the parable about the unforgiving servant. This servant has been forgiven a huge debt rather than being put in jail and having his family given in payment. This servant then goes out and finds someone who owes him a smaller amount and assaults him to gain the payment owed and has that person thrown in jail.

Jesus explains this parable by the statement we began with—if you don’t forgive other people, you cannot expect God’s forgiveness for you. But there’s more here. Look at the last phrase: “from your heart.” Throughout Scripture and even though God provides a number of rules, we find that what God is after is not first of all, a keeping of the rules. So we have a wrinkle here. Sometimes we will hear something like, “I forgive you ‘because God’ forgives you.” For immature disciples, this is an acceptable reason; while we are learning, we act in accordance with the rules because they are the rules. Rather, God is after people who he can trust to live as he would live because that is who they are. A parallel could be found in love. God has some rules that require or expect that his followers will love other people. A short reflection would tell us that love, to be love, must arise from the lover. “Love” expressed because it must be may look like love, but it is not love nor is the lover actually a lover. We can see this by asking, what would your spouse or romantic partner think if you said, “I love you because I have to?” We might rephrase it with “I love you because God wants me to.” That latter sounds better but it does not change the meaning. It means, that I don’t really love you; I’m being made or commanded to love you. It is clear that love that is forced is not love. Your partner does not love you; God loves you. And God is making your partner ‘love you.’

In the same way, forgiveness offered ‘because I have to,’ is not really forgiveness. It is a grudge that cannot be expressed under pain of punishment. Forgiveness like love, arises from the one forgiving. It cannot be forced. Every parent has likely told a guilty child “to apologize to your sibling” and every child knows that when they uttered that apology, they didn’t mean it. God isn’t looking for checkbox behavior; he’s looking for people who behave from the character that animates them.

This parable illustrates the only point that is expounded upon in the Lord’s Prayer. That prayer has a petition that God ‘forgive us our trespasses as we have forgiven those who trespass against us.’ Jesus then expands the application of that phrase with a parallel statement to that with which we began this discussion. If we don’t forgive others, God will not forgive us. This isn’t a quid pro quo or a checkbox exercise. It is rather an illustration that tells the kind of people he expects his disciples to be. In these two instances, we learn that God expects us to be forgiving people, ready to extend mercy, and gracious even when wronged. Just like Jesus who when reviled did not respond, who while we were yet sinners, died for us; who on the cross asked that his executioners be forgiven.

The character God expects from his people is the character revealed in and by Jesus of Nazareth while he walked the earth. That is why we have this admonition—not because we must forgive but because we are becoming people with the character of Jesus. How are we doing?

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Humility and Mercy

2023-03-25T18:49:00.000-06:00

In Matthew 23:11-12 Jesus says for at least the fifth time, “The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (ESV) Sometimes the phrasing is a bit different with masters and servants taking the place of exalting and humbling but the point is the same. We have heard echoes of these ideas from the beginning of the Gospel too. Jesus’s responses to his temptations in the wilderness require that he set his pride aside, reject the power and the wealth offered him, submitting himself to the Father. The Beatitudes reflect one who is humble and who seeks the things of the Kingdom even in the face of power and oppression. We see it when we are told to be righteous but not to practice righteousness to be seen doing it. We can feel it a bit in the statement “I desire mercy and not sacrifice” and how that flows from the teachings on forgiveness. Forgiveness requires humility because, without it, our egos would not let us forgive the wrongs done to us. Finally, we hear it from the cross in the words “forgive them.”

Mercy arises from humility and we see it in Micah 6:8 where we are told what God requires from people, “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” This week’s text includes the verses at the beginning of this essay. Verses 11 and 12 follow a short distance from the discussion of the greatest command. Jesus tells us that the greatest command is to love God with your entire being. That is not sufficient for Jesus’s purpose though. He goes on to say that there is a second command that is like the first one—love your neighbor as yourself. Apparently, everything we are supposed to learn about the Law and the Prophets stems from those two ideas—loving God and your neighbor with your whole being. Mercy when it is rightly understood arises from and demonstrates love.

Immediately before these two verses, Jesus tells his disciples to listen to the Pharisees because they sit on Moses’s seat, but while listening to them, the disciples should not use the Pharisees as their examples about how to live righteously. The Pharisees have positional authority but not moral or spiritual authority. Jesus then tells his disciples that they should not have rabbis, or teachers, or call each other Father. Coming where these restrictions come, we can see that they are about humility. We have somewhat recently seen some disciples trying to secure the seats on Jesus’s right and left and this discussion here can be understood as part of that discussion. Do not seek to set up hierarchies among yourselves as though some one of you is in charge. The Gentiles have leaders who lord their power over their brothers; this should not be so among the followers of Jesus. Humility and mercy, exemplifying care for one another is the mark of disciples.

Photo by Michaela Murphy on Unsplash

Saging

2022-12-01T20:26:00.001-07:00

I have mentioned Lauren Winner’s Mudhouse Sabbath before. The book has a number of poignant and insightful observations. The following is appropriate for our community because many of us share the reality of being older than the average American. In the chapter on aging, Winner writes this:

The elderly are asked to age well, and the communities that support them are asked to help them do just that. (Rabbi Zalman Schecter-Shalomi has dispensed with the gerund “aging.” He speaks instead of “eldering.” I’ll admit a certain squeamishness with the term—it strikes me as a little twee, and every time I think of it, I have to adjust. But there is something vigorous about it too. To age is to be passive, to sit like a bottle of wine—you just sit there and time passes and age happens over you. To elder—or, in another of Reb Zalman’s clever infinitives, “to sage”—is to try to shape the last years of one’s life with intention.)

Aging is not just a process of physical decline. It can also be a time of the kind of stripping away that fosters spiritual depth, spiritual incline. The Hebrew word sayvah, gray—as in gray hair—is etymologically connected to the word for repentance, teshuva. The process of aging, then, is the process of setting wrong things right.” (p.98-99)

As we together age, do we also help each other sage? When you and I spend some reflection time, are there things that we might set right through the lens of maturity and increasing Christlikeness? Similarly, are there things that you and I need to let go of, relinquish, to forgive?

Are there, conversely, some directions, some areas of life--of real Life--that you and I can begin to step into, to accept, to allow to wash over us?

This week of peace, what reverberations of forgiveness, reconciliation, of grace might we individually and collectively set in motion in our lives, our families, and our communities? What areas of growth, open doors, of opportunity might we enter with new vigor and intentionality?

Winner, Lauren. Mudhouse Sabbath (2007). Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press.

Just Ask

2022-08-01T23:01:00.003-06:00

Jesus meets the woman while the disciples are off getting something to eat. She is there to get some water for the day and stumbles over him. You know the story from here most likely. They have a conversation, and we learn that she has had several husbands and was currently living with someone to whom she was not married. As his part of the conversation, Jesus tells her (and us) that if she would just ask, he would give her refreshment, springing perpetually in her. Then she goes to tell her community what has happened, and they come out to see who this man is. These are Samaritans which underscores a bit the significance that Jesus spends days with them.

Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash

One thing we do not see in this story is Jesus telling this woman to clean up her act before he will talk with her. The woman caught in adultery he tells to go “and sin no more,” but this woman he does not. He simply offers her this spring of perpetual refreshment. We often want people to go clean up their act before they can come to God through us. We want them to repent and stop doing what they are doing and then come to God. God does not require that of her.

Jesus simply says, “ask.”

The job of the church is to as Peter says, proclaim the excellencies of God who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. We invite people to ask – before they clean up their lives, before they have fully grappled with their situations, even as they are aware that their situations may not be the most honorable – we urge with God, “just ask.”

Just come home; come to the God who desires to flood your being with refreshment that will both fill you and overflow to others.

Just ask.

They Had Been With Jesus

2022-03-26T16:18:00.000-06:00

“And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.”[1]

Peter and John have been arrested and are being interrogated by the Jewish leaders. They have healed a lame man and have drawn the attention of the crowd. The commotion eventually gained the attention of the authorities. During their interrogation, Peter replies with one of his speeches which apparently was pretty well done. He rehearses the recent history of Jesus and Israel in these words:

8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, 9 if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, 10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. 11 This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. 12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”[2]

Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash

Pete and John are uneducated, and this apparently should have prevented Pete from being so articulate and skilled to speak in front of the power brokers of Israel – who were upset with him. Their level of education is specifically mentioned as something that was noted by the council. Following his speech is when the council notices that they have been with Jesus. What does that mean to you? Maybe it just means that after these couple of months, some of the Jewish leaders recognized them as part of the problem-making crowd. That may well be what is meant – nothing special, just physical recognition.

But what if that recognizing was connected to an uneducated man being articulate and forceful in this one-down position he was in? What if the character of Jesus had rubbed off on Peter and John? These two were in the inner circle for three years. Maybe having been so close to Jesus, something about Jesus had become part of these two disciples.

What might it mean if the people you know could recognize you as someone who had been with Jesus? How might that impact them? What would they see in and about you that would tip them off to that reality? Maybe they could see a handful of the fruit of the Spirit, or your maturity having added all the virtues to your developing faith. Maybe they see in you Paul’s discussion of Love and its characteristics. Having recognized that you had been with Jesus, what would they do – would they be attracted or repelled?

If we are Jesus’s disciples and we know that a disciple matures to be like their master, we should look like him. Our lives should reflect the values, demeanor, humility, and love of Jesus. Jesus tells us that the way people will know we are his disciples – get this – is that we would love one another. He doesn’t say that they will know his disciples because we claim to, because we quote Scripture, because we preach or teach, or because we know how to act in public. None of those. People will know us as his disciples by the way we love other people.

So how are you doing? Can people tell that you have been with Jesus?

[1] Acts 4:13, ESV.

[2] Acts 4:8-12, ESV.

Denying Christ

2022-03-11T16:41:00.001-07:00

In a disturbing turn of events, after declaring his fidelity and wielding a sword in defense of Jesus, Peter denies even knowing Jesus not once, but three times. It is curious that Peter will attack a member of a mob with a sword, but when confronted by a servant girl, he nearly swears his denial. I guess in the heat of the moment, brave (even if ill-advised) action is easier than after we’ve had a chance to cool off and seemingly face the reality of defeat.

But I digress. This thrice denial by Peter is one of the most famous stories from Sunday School and it is somewhat confusing because Jesus says that whoever denies him, he will deny before the Father. But Jesus welcomes Peter back and commissions him with a teaching position for the people of God. What’s going on? Is this just an example of forgiveness for a guy who we all know was a little rash in his behavior?

Peter’s denial was a denial under pressure and resulted from a concern for his personal safety. If he hadn’t felt sorrow for his denial; if he hadn’t come back to Jesus, perhaps this simple verbal denial would have kept him from continuing as a disciple or even entering Heaven. Maybe because the sort of denial we are warned against by Jesus, is deeper and greater than a mere verbal recanting of friendship.

The denial that we are warned against isn’t in response to “do you know Jesus?” No, the sort of denial that can be damning is one that denies the message of Jesus, revealed in the Man who is Jesus. To believe in Jesus isn’t a simple mental exercise or assent to a proposition. The answer to the question, “who do you say that I am,” isn’t a vacuous “Son of God” as though we have remembered the correct rubric.

No, to deny Jesus is to deny both who he was and what he taught. In Mark 8, Jesus says,

34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life[d] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Rather than deny, here we read ashamed but the idea is the same. Jesus here ties who he is “of me” and what he taught, “my words.” The type of teaching we should understand is revealed in the characterization of the current generation as “adulterous and sinful.” The teachings of Jesus are the antithesis of adulterous and sinful.

Writing to Titus, Paul gives some insight when he writes,

¹⁵To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. ¹⁶They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.

These who deny Christ can be known because they are defiled and unbelieving. They say the right words but their lives reveal them to be unfit in their denial of him by how they live.

This is the denial from which we cannot recover – the denying of the call of Jesus on our lives. When we reject the call to a change in the trajectory of our lives, to transformation into the likeness of Jesus, there is no hope for us.

But I think this denial reaches even deeper into who we are. We are made in the image of God and called to become most fully his likeness. We are called to that because that is who we are – the likeness of Jesus is not foreign to us. When we deny Jesus and his call on our lives, we in truth deny ourselves. We proclaim that we have an existence and a purpose separate from who Jesus is and from becoming his likeness.

Denying Jesus ultimately has us
denying the Father, Jesus, the Spirit, and even our own being. When we live lives not worthy of Jesus, we deny him. If we are not becoming lovers, we rob God of the glory he should receive from us. When we resist our transformation into the likeness of Jesus, we deny the Spirit who works within us to that end. When we reject Jesus in this way, we become like men who look into a mirror and then when they walk away, forget what they saw. We deny ourselves and we descend into a broken, hurting, and ego-centric existence.

When we realize the scope and depth of the impact of denying Jesus, we can better understand why he would deny us before the Father.

When you look in the mirror and then walk away from it, do you remember what you saw? How does that impact your life from day to day? Have you become more like Jesus over time, or not so much?

Becoming a Disciple

2021-12-04T19:08:00.001-07:00

The Great Commission in Matthew’s Gospel charges the Apostles and the church to make disciples. Have you ever wondered why the Commission is worded this way? Often I think we equate “disciple” with “Christian” and then equate “Christian” with “churchgoer.” We think we have “made a disciple” when we have made a convert. This often passes as making a disciple in the modern world, but it isn’t what Jesus meant.

Jesus told his disciples that he is the way, the truth, the life - not just for them but for the whole world. If any would come to the Father, they would do so by the way which is Jesus. The idea of the Way apparently gained traction outside the Bible as a name for the Christian movement. Paul in his defense in Acts 24:14 refers to his beliefs and teachings as the Way. Luke then uses the term as though it is a normative title in verse 22 when he tells us that Felix had “a rather accurate knowledge of the Way….” There are definitely critical doctrinal points that Paul and the early Christians taught. Jesus as Messiah, his death and resurrection, that it is through Jesus that salvation has come are all distinguishing marks of the early teaching and we need to hold them close and proclaim them. They form part of what is referred to as the kerygma of the Christian message—the core or key concepts and ideas of the message.

The kerygma though is contained in a broader mission, a higher focus for Jesus and the writers of the New Testament. It can be found as well throughout the Old Testament. It is this: that the call of God is for mankind to return to the Father as people who live as God made them to live. That is what is important about these two mentions of the name of that early movement. “The Way” emphasizes a path, a direction, a life focus more than a settled decision. Conversion isn’t the end of making disciples, it is only the beginning. The hard work of being a disciple of Jesus comes after the rush of excitement of conversion when the realities of just how out of sync we are with the ways of Jesus become evident. To be a disciple requires that we reorient not just what we do but how we think. We change what matters to us, our desires, our wants, and being transformed in this way, our behaviors change and our lives begin to be holy. We begin to be holy.

When Jesus tells us all the things we need to release, to give up, to not value, he isn’t listing things that aren’t important per se. He isn’t saying that we shouldn’t love our parents or bury our dead. He is illustrating the importance of following him as his disciple—taking up our cross and following him in the way he lived. This reorientation of our lives so that we can truly be the images of God that we are intended to be is a critical aspect of life with God. God wants us to set our minds and eyes on Jesus and live as he did. The sayings of Jesus, the writings of the New Testament, the Decalogue, and the Prophets all tell us the same thing. Disciples are those who follow the Way as they seek to live as Jesus did, in whom the fullness of Deity dwelt.

If the Wicked Turns

2021-10-18T20:42:00.000-06:00

12 “And you, son of man, say to your people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses, and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness, and the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness when he sins. 13 Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but in his injustice that he has done he shall die. 14 Again, though I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ yet if he turns from his sin and does what is just and right, 15 if the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has taken by robbery, and walks in the statutes of life, not doing injustice, he shall surely live; he shall not die. 16 None of the sins that he has committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he shall surely live.”

The above is from Ezekiel 33 and it tells us a couple realities that have echoes in the New Testament. We see the righteous—those who observe the Law and live by it. Their problem isn’t that they keep the Law but that in keeping the Law they think they are living within the will of God. They become arrogant as they work injustice and oppression against even their brothers. This is repeated between Jesus and the Jewish leaders who thought that because they were particular about keeping the Law, that they had met the expectations of God. Paul tells us that he felt this way too. He tells us that he was a Pharisee of Pharisees who kept the Law blamelessly. He tells us that he considers that all dung. Jesus will say that they had indeed kept the Law, tithing mint and cumin. Even so, they had ignored the weightier matters. The righteous cannot claim righteousness as sufficient for their being in a relationship with God if they aren’t people of correct hearts toward others. But there is more.

The wicked are given hope in this same
passage. The warning to the righteous may have provoked the question, “Then who can be saved?!” The answer is that the wicked themselves can be saved if they will turn from their ways. If they begin to live righteously and work justice toward others. Here in the midst of Ezekiel, we see what God is actually after for his people. It is justice or lives that reflect care about others. Justice here isn’t “enforce the Law.” What is pictured here is to know the weightier matters and to live as though we know what those are. Micah tells us much the same when he tells us to love mercy, act justly, and walk humbly with God. Here in Ezekiel, this is exactly what will save the wicked.

These truths remain today. What does God require of us but to love mercy, act justly, and walk humbly with God? Even the wicked if they will turn from their way and begin to work justice toward others will be accepted by God.

Reconciliation and Recapitulation

2021-03-02T19:57:00.001-07:00

Christianity has over the centuries often been distracted by various things, different aspects of the supposed life with God, that we have repeatedly lost track of just what God is doing in the world—in the Creation. In the tradition I was raised in, we spent a lot of time arguing against “the denominations,” and “returning to the old paths.” The idea was that God wanted us to worship and conduct our assemblies just like the first-century church and we spent a lot of time ferreting out the divine rules for “church.” The result for many of us was a sort of catechesis of Bible passages on various topics, normally focused on those things that made us different and others wrong. One of our proclamations toward those who didn’t “do church” the way we did was that they were “worshiping in error.” This was such a convenient phrase that we could use it about denominations and even those of our own groups if they did something in their assemblies or even structured themselves differently as a church than we did. The implication of course was that those who dared to worship in error were on the high road straight to Hell. Our eschatology had two poles, Heaven and Hell and you didn’t want to end up in that second one. Our focus was pretty much limited to that—get people into the Sweet By and By because here we are nothing more than Straying Pilgrims. We focused intentionally or not, on “church” as the concern of Scripture and therefore of God. Get church right and all will be well.

Other groups had and have similar views but the details were different. The central ideas though all seemed to align with the idea that the real purpose of God in the world was to get you to Heaven and in some cases, bless you beyond measure with cars, cash, and condos in this world. Just act right, have enough faith, and the storehouses of Heaven will pour down upon you. We know that to be true because the Bible says so. At least the passages that those who taught and teach this choose to focus on.

There are probably aspects of every group’s central focus which are true. We are told, aren’t we that God seeks to bless His people? There are some things that God wants his disciples to do when they are together, isn’t there? Well yes, to both of those. The challenge here though is to understand just how those desires of God fit within the overall work of God in the Creation.

Jesus says that those who believe in Him will live like he did; they will have views and behaviors that reflect His own views and behaviors. This is what ‘belief” actually means in Scripture. If we believe something, we act as though it is true, according to Dallas Willard. If we “believe in Jesus,” we will come to live like Jesus.

God’s work in Creation—the example of Jesus is reconciliation and recapitulation. The goal is to set the Creation right by reconciling first, God and Man, and then people to people with an end result that there will be eventually a new Heaven and a new Earth. A cleansed Creation as it were. Our call, our purpose is to be part of that work. Ours is not to hope to get to Heaven because “this world is not our home,” but to bring Heaven here; to live the kingdom of God on Earth. In doing that, our focus is on becoming ourselves and inviting and encouraging others to be the embodiment of Jesus, as His disciples. Our drive isn’t to do church correctly or gain wealth, but to use the blessings we have to bless others, to join with Jesus in relieving the hurting, feeding the hungry, releasing the oppressed. Our goal is to bring the kingdom of God, of love to the world. When we forget that, when we focus on how we can benefit from our faith and lose sight of bringing the kingdom here for the benefit of all, we become less than we are and in that, we betray our calling and purpose.

Glorifying God

2021-02-01T13:46:00.000-07:00

"We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as though it is true." D.Willard, Renovation of the Heart

"A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him. It “consents,” so to speak, to His creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree….Therefore each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what He wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by His love and His infinite art." T. Merton, Silence, Joy

"The correct perspective is to see following Christ not only as the necessity it is, but as the fulfillment of the highest human possibilities and as life on the highest plane. It is to see, in Helmut Thielicke’s words, that “the Christian stands, not under the dictatorship of a legalistic “you ought,” but in the magnetic field of Christian freedom, under the empowering of the “you may.”" D.Willard, The Great Omission

These quotes illustrate in various ways the truth that people are both made in the image of God—they are the image of God, and are called to be, to mature into the most complete likeness possible. It is in becoming and being most fully that image that we bring glory to God in the same way Merton’s tree does.

In the Christian church, our desire is to encourage and help one another become and live into the image of God we already are. Granted we have a long way to go as we are transformed into the likeness of Jesus as his disciples, but nevertheless, this we believe is our calling.

The idea of being a disciple is reflected again in the Great Commission, “go...and make disciples.” What Jesus told the Apostles He wanted, was disciples. John, in 3.36 combines belief and “obeying” into one idea when he writes “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (ESV). The idea here is that to believe in Jesus is to become His disciple, living as Jesus would live if He were you. The word used here for “doesn't obey” is apeitheo and is found in Romans 2.8 and 10.21, and 1 Peter 3.20. John is telling us that just like Merton’s tree, we glorify God the most when we live as the image of God. As Dallas Willard says, we are invited into the empowering freedom of you may. As disciples mature in Christ, we leave behind the "you musts," and embody the freedom Jesus promises. If we believe in Jesus, we will be His disciples and the church will carry the presence of God into the world.

Each of us then, and all of us together are to take on the character of Jesus and live as He lived with compassion, goodness, and self-giving love for one another and for the world. In this kind of life we most fully reflect our God as people and as a people - the people of God for the sake of the world. In being the image we are made to be, we most fully glorify God.

Baptism As Commissioning

2021-01-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

Beginning a new job often involves receiving a license or some other official indication that the practitioner has official permission and authority to engage in the profession. Doctors, lawyers, nurses, various sorts of therapists, and even many clerics receive a piece of paper that grants them authority to do their jobs, and attests that they are qualified.

Scripture gives us a lot of information about Jesus’s birth but then there is very little about his childhood other than a trip to the Temple. The next time we see Him, he’s meeting John the Baptist at the Jordon. John has told us that Jesus is the One who is greater than himself and he wants people to pay attention to Jesus.

Before the two of them leave the Jordan that day, Jesus will ask John to baptize him and after an initial balking, John agrees. So they go into the river and John baptizes Jesus. While they’re in the river after the baptism, an amazing thing happens—the heavens open like they did when the angels announced Jesus’s birth. This time though, there are no trumpets, but the voice of God Himself speaks.

Depending on which of the synoptic Gospels we’re reading, God says “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” The Spirit of God then descends on Jesus. In this scene, we have all three persons of the Godhead—the voice of the Father, the presence of the Spirit, and the Son in the center of this vignette.

This event, his baptism and the declaration of the Father and the “anointing” of the Spirit is often referred to as Jesus’s commissioning for His ministry. If there had been any doubt, if the antics of a twelve-year-old boy among the religious leaders hadn’t given us a clue, this rather powerful display of affirmation leaves no question about who Jesus is and God’s endorsement of what He will do.

Following this, Jesus begins His ministry “officially,” by being driven into the wilderness by the very Spirit that had descended on Him in the river.

Many have wondered why Jesus had to be baptized to “fulfill all righteousness.” If he was sinless, why be baptized—isn’t He already righteous? If we take a broader view of the scene and what baptism images in Scripture, we might gain a bit of insight. Jesus and John aren’t the only ones at the river. There are others being baptized too and John has told them that this is a baptism of repentance—only those who are prepared to repent and follow God are eligible for this baptism. Jesus wants to be baptized for this reason; to publicly declare His intent to follow YHWH.

Paul will tell us eventually that baptism displays our denial of ourselves—our death to ourselves —and our returning to life to follow God. Our baptisms are also baptisms of repentance. In a similar sense they are also our commissioning and involve our anointing with the Spirit. Our baptism is remarkably similar to Jesus’s and it serves also as our commissioning as children of God.

What are we doing with our commissioning?

Love Never Fails

2021-01-12T21:27:00.014-07:00

God says through Paul in the first Corinthian letter that love never fails. We can all agree when things are going well that love never fails, but Paul’s admonition is most critical when the world isn’t going well.

Here is what we are told, “love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”

Paul wrote this to a congregation or set of congregations of the people of God, folks attempting to live as disciples of Jesus. They were failing at the very core of their practice, love for one another. It didn’t look that way to them. They thought they were OK in their cliques, their ignoring and abusing of each other, of their picking sides aligned with their favorite preacher.

What they were doing every day seemed rational, normal, and even pious. They may even have uttered derision and condemnation toward those who were in the Paul group instead of their group. It’s easy for those of us learning to walk the Way of Jesus to get lost in our everyday lives, to risk being soil that is overcome by the cares of the world.

Paul says this to another group of disciples in slightly different language, “but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…” He had to say that for much of the same reasons as he had to tell the Corinthians what love is. If we are disciples of Jesus, if we are living in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit is with us and guiding us, then our lives Paul says, should reflect these sorts of things. We should be patient people, we should be kind people.

Peter will tell us much the same. In his first letter, “...make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”

Pete’s reason for writing those words is slightly different than Paul's. Paul was correcting the ongoing behavior of disciples toward each other and perhaps even outsiders. Pete is writing to forestall apostasy, the abandonment of Jesus as savior—being that soil overcome with those cares. Pete is writing so that his readers can come to know God most fully and in that way he says, “there will be richly provided for them an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

When Paul tells us that love never fails, he doesn’t mean that love always achieves what it wants What he means is that disciples of Jesus don’t stop loving. Fail here is best understood as end, love never stops.

But Paul isn’t talking about love as his central theme. He’s talking about you and me and his expectation—God’s expectation of our lives. That is where we pick up Pete’s concern, that we come to know God and in that knowing live like God as true disciples of Jesus. Lives like that—born from so intimate knowledge of God—His character, values, and desires—are those lives that live with God now and will live with God in the end. Those disciples have Life with God now and will have that same Life with God when the world is set right.

As we continue into the new year, as we mark the appearance of our God to the world, let us take the admonishments of Paul and Pete to heart, reflect and discern how closely our lives reflect the love and knowledge of God, and to set our minds and hearts on becoming true disciples and fully images of our God.

Advent 2020 Are We Anticipating, and What?

2020-11-29T16:30:00.002-07:00

As early as Genesis the narrator tells us that God told the serpent that eventually - sooner or later - a descendant of the woman would crush his head.

And then the story continues with rather little reference to this statement of future reality. The descendants of Adam seem to carry on their lives as people would. Eventually, being far enough removed from Adam's experience, the knowledge of God and his expectations for human life becomes muddled at best. Our next major player is Abram a son in a Mesopotamian family that worshiped their local gods. The story is told with anticipation but the major player is a Pagan, selected by God to bring blessing to the world.

This Abrahamic story has its own ups and downs and while God makes appearances, those appearances seem to not have the impact they might have had. Abraham and Sarah for instance, think that the promise might need a bit of help and so they decide that maybe Hagar could jump-start the fulfillment of the promise of an heir and an ongoing progeny. After all, the couple had been told that their descendants would be a vast people and well, old people don't have kids. Turns out these two acted as humans would, who are beginning to doubt this promise.

Eventually, Isaac is born and fathers Jacob, a second-born cheater who is assisted in subterfuge by Isaac's wife. This displacing of Esau we are told is the design, the intent of God. Throughout the story, we find that God has a penchant for picking the least likely, the second dog to accomplish what He wants. As we read the story the narrator provides us some asides about relation and history, but the storyline seems to be a standard human one, reflecting an over-time forgetting of God and how He wants His people to live.

We find in the prophets not only the terrible ways the nations around Israel behaved but we are also told that Israel herself had become completely corrupt from head to foot; from the king to the most distant and poor Hebrew. Obviously, these sorts of characterizations are general statements because the prophets are in Israel at this time. Even so, the nation as a whole could be described as corrupt, putrid, exactly the opposite of who they were to be. They had in fact completed the absolute forgetting of who their God was - and who they were. Her third king - the wisest man on earth we are told, granted with wisdom by God Himself and allowed to build the house of YHWH, married foreign wives, and supported the establishment and worshiping of their gods.

The story provided by the prophets is one that looks a lot like today. "Where is this God? Does He see anything? Why does He not act?" Politicians, clerics, and rich folk of all types lived and did whatever they wanted. Were there some moral expectations of God? Yeah, maybe but there's not any real reason to modify our own behaviors according to them because really, has anyone seen this God recently?

With her return from Exile, Israel has completed her Scriptures and has become much more a monotheistic nation than she had been. She never however actually achieves the position, the power she once had in the world, and her corporate behavior doesn't seem to improve much at all. Monotheistic yes, but who cares? The last book in the Protestant Canon of the Hebrew Scriptures tells us that the day of the Lord is coming and it will be hard for any man to stand before it. Even after return, after redemption, after reconciliation, Israel never experiences the promises of renewal.

We have an estimated four hundred year intermission from the writing of this last entry in the Hebrew Scriptures before the birth of a child in Bethlehem. But before we get there, we need to acknowledge that Israel did exist in fits and starts as a separate nation with the most famous period under the Maccabees. Their revolt and short-lived state make an appearance in the life of Jesus when he attends the Feast of Lights. When the next installment of the story opens we have the birth of this child and even here there is great intrigue with the political and eventually the religious leaders of Israel refusing to accept this birth as the promised Head-Crusher, coming to redeem their own nation, their own lives, their own futures.

This child we will eventually be told is the Great One, the Redeemer, the Messiah that the nation should have been waiting for but she wasn't. The nation's leaders have to be told by travelers from the East who have been waiting and watching - maybe as long as two years since the birth. Israel though was not waiting for the coming of her king. There were some groups in Israel who were chafing under Roman rule and wanting an independent theocracy established, but these were looking for political and military solutions that they could effect like the brothers Maccabee had done. This time though, they'd do it right. Others had withdrawn to more remote areas and established what seems to have been ascetic communities of true believers, as they considered themselves. These would read the Scriptures and try to re-establish at least some modicum of a true community.

When Jesus comes, he comes to an Israel much like any other country. There were some looking for a fight or a setting of things right, but most people were going about their days and lives as most people on this planet have always done. He builds a following based on healings, feedings, and popular teachings that seemed to draw on underlying moral and religious teachings that resonated with the run of the mill Jew who still had some conscience of their religion and how their current situation didn't match what they had been told about who they were or how they were to live. Their religious leaders aligned themselves in schools and while they seemed to know the Law, the common person didn't accrue any of the benefits of the nation while being expected to toe the religious line given to them.

Jesus's reputation grows and he seems to have had multitudes follow him around the countryside. So many people and so often that he has to look for times and places to be alone. Surely, feeding, healing, and working signs would draw a crowd, especially if what he was saying was making the distinction between the haves and have nots favor the have nots from a moral view. Not that they were morally righteous but they were on the receiving end of rulers and leaders who certainly weren't. This would have sounded like humanistic and popular rhetoric and as such, it drew a crowd - and created enemies.

Jesus's disciples and His close associates weren't any more clued in than was anyone else. More than once, Jesus seems to be frustrated with their failure to have picked up on what the underlying message and just who He was. They may have thought He was Messiah, even the Son of God, but these were all couched in social and political expectations. Two of them for example will want to be selected to be the Big Cheese next to Jesus, and Peter will deny Him three times in the face of political failure. Not only was Israel not waiting for Messiah but those who should have known better were still figuring out how this could pay off for them.

During this season of Advent, we often tell ourselves that Israel was awaiting her Messiah and celebrated when He arrived. That story really cannot be established from the narrative we have. Yes, there are some glimpses of this - more of surprise than anything else though. Anna and Simeon are two primary examples who rejoice and celebrate when the child is presented in the Temple and dedicated to God. Other than them though, we have those travelers from the East. These "wise men" have been watching the stars for an expected sign. Maybe they've been reading ancient Hebrew documents predicting the coming of a Messiah. However they managed it, they were able to discern the import of what they had seen and intended to find this One, to bring treasure, to pay obeyance, and to worship this Coming One in a country and of a nation completely separated from their own.

Was Israel actually awaiting the coming of Messiah, her King, her Savior? No. The day of the Lord had come and Israel was not ready. When He does come, He is lauded as savior, as king, as a political, military, and social fixer, but He is not received as Savior, King, Messiah. When we practice Advent as a season of anticipation, we place ourselves into a story that didn't exist. Jews did not sit at home with candles lit, in excited anticipation of the birth of Jesus. The vast majority of Israel missed the birth and for the most part, missed her Messiah for the remainder of His life among her. When He dies, the hopes they had are crushed because even in the midst of miraculous signs and popular teaching and welcomed insights into what their Scripture said, they had missed the advent of the One Who Was Promised, the Head-Crusher, the Redeemer, the Messiah who was anointed by YHWH Himself.

Whatever the Hebrew Scriptures predicted, whatever those from the East expected, it wasn't the incarnated God of the universe. Not only did Israel miss the more mundane coming, but she missed the very presence of God on her streets.

How about us? Are we any better? Yes, we have the completed narrative, we have the story told to us and a description of this Jesus as that incarnated God, but do we believe it? Looking around today, it seems that we continue to live our lives just as any common person does. Our politicians and religious leaders continue to espouse moral beliefs but their lives reveal greater interest in self-promotion, in abuse of power, in disdain for the hoi polloi. Political intrigue is played out in front of us not just in Washington and state capitals, but even in national conventions of churches. Not a single (major) Christian denomination has been free of such intrigue and maneuvering for even ten years. The situation in the halls of Congress and even city administrations has been no better - despite the profession of various faiths by those in power.

Advent refers mostly to the coming birth of Jesus, but in the history of the church, Advent has taken on a current-day focus; a focus that looks to the Second Coming, the final Day of the Lord before which no person will be able to stand. The first coming has come and gone and we either acknowledge, remember, and live in light of it or we confess that our lives are not shaped by it; that we have missed it just as surely as if we had lived in Jerusalem in AD 30. The second is coming just as quietly, just as unannounced, just as miss-able as the first. Oh yes, we have stories of horses on clouds, of trumpets blaring, of judgment scenes. But these arrive too late for those who aren't waiting, who aren't prepared, who just live our lives as though the world sets the rules. We are told to keep watch, to remain alert for a reason.

While we remind ourselves to be expectant, have we in fact missed the coming and the presence of God on our streets, just as Israel missed Messiah. As we light our Advent candles in our churches and in our homes, are we going through the motions, or are we actively looking to see Jesus, the Son of God, the Incarnate One who truly brings life through death, resurrection through dying? Do we see Him well enough to be Him?

In anticipation of the second coming; of the final coming of the Redeeming Judge, are we His people or do we just go about our days as if they will never end?

The Purpose of Being Saved

2020-11-28T15:38:00.005-07:00

I have written in one of my ordinary books this statement: “The purpose of “being saved” isn’t being saved. Rather, it is to be set aside, consecrated, sanctified, set apart and marked for the work of God.”

Let’s break that down a bit, and get “behind the story” as it were. When Abram’s family was told to get up and move to a new land, they were anything but monotheists—they had and worshiped household idols of various gods. They weren’t originally devoted followers of YHWH.

And yet God chose Abram and had him move to a completely different land; from what many have said is the cradle of humanity to a coastal hill country. As the story develops, God makes a promise to Abram. That promise included both a long and an extensive lineage for Abram—something of considerable value and prestige in ancient cultures. But that wasn't all. Those descendants we are told and Abraham is promised will bless the world. I suspect that Abraham didn’t know what that meant and neither do we if we read the story as it was written.

That burgeoning family of descendants eventually came to be called Israel, taking the name of Isaac’s son Jacob who would be the carrier of the promise in his generation. The twelve tribes of Jacob eventually become, despite their own intrigues, detours, and failures, a nation incubated in Egypt and eventually settled in the land first promised to Abram when he moved from Haran. But and let's not read too quickly past this - Joseph's presence in Egypt eventually saves the kingdom by planning for future famine. Egypt lives because of the presence of Abraham's family.

Throughout this early story, we have hints of God’s presence and working among Israel despite what God will eventually call their “stiff-necked and obstinate” way of living with Him. Almost inexplicably, Abram and eventually Israel will be blessed by others. Israel ends up taking much of the wealth of Egypt with her into the wilderness.

The Law of Moses delivered amidst lightning, thunder and clouds, is rather intricate, covering most parts of a society’s needs to regulate itself. What we see in this Law though are moral precepts that were and are somewhat—and sometimes considerably—different than the accepted behavioral norms found in the ancient world and even today in parts of the world. Fairness, justice, mercy, and consideration make their appearances within the Mosaic Law, reflecting the values of God. Israel was chosen not because she was great or for her own benefit. She was intended to be the “light for the Gentiles” in the ancient world—the economy of God on earth. If Israel and other nations had been able to live within the boundaries of this Law’s principles, they would all have lived as God had intended and would have lived in peace and prosperity. But neither Israel or the other nations were consistently interested in doing so.

Eventually, Jesus comes and lives among us showing us how to live, and gives Himself to “save” us. This saving is actually a redemption, a reconciliation of Man to God. This saving isn’t only for the benefit of the “saved,” but for the world—the promise made to Abraham is being fulfilled. The descendants of Israel and of Abraham continue to be those who live in the promise and who live as the people of God on the earth. But saved are saved for the benefit of the world. Our being saved isn’t for us entirely, but for the world. Just as Israel was supposed to be the light to the Gentiles, so is the church. We are supposed to model the economy of God, the community of God's images on the earth.

When the world sees the church, do they see the promise of God, the economy of God, the people who live as God lived? When the world sees me, when the world sees you, do they see someone who embodies the character of God?

The purpose of being saved isn’t to be saved. It is to have been consecrated for the work of God in the world. Not only are we the image of God, called to be most fully that image, but in becoming that image, we bless the world and point her toward God—simply by being who we are.

How are we doing as saved people?

Your Individual Sins

2020-11-14T21:05:00.002-07:00

It occurs to me that the reason we're told that God doesn't remember our sins is that He never really took note of them as specific events anyway. What He looks at - what He has always looked at is your heart, your direction, your desire. All he needs to know is what sort of person you are; not your specific litany of wrongs.

Now don’t get me wrong, God is capable of listing our sins if that’s what He wants to do. Clearly, he has done that on a number of occasions when addressing Israel and her seemingly persistent intractability. A short perusal of the prophets and God’s complaints contained within them will quickly reveal that if God wants to recall what we’ve done, He is no slouch in that ability.

What is interesting though is that God sent Israel into exile not because one or two—or several Jews stole some bread or cheated their neighbor. As long as the behaviors were not characteristic of the nation as a whole, making the correct sacrifices and worshiping YHWH was seemingly sufficient. It wasn’t until Israel became corrupt “from head to foot” that God decided that exile was what was needed. It wasn’t that the Israelites couldn’t sin—they did. Rather, it was when their national character had become such that God could characterize her as corrupt, putrid, dead from the king on down to the lowest farmer or craftsman that exile became the option.

At that point, the specific sins that may have been committed were lost in the great mass of sinfulness that had come to characterize Israel and as Joshua had warned, God would upend the nation to the same extent that he had blessed her; that He would remove her from the verdant land that He had given to her.

I think a similar reality applies to you and me. No doubt you and I have managed to miss the mark on more than one occasion and yet we don’t anticipate that God is going to send us away from His presence on that basis. Oh yes, He could; He would be justified in doing so in His holiness. But we don’t expect that He will. We often remind ourselves that we are in Christ, that we are co-heirs and children of God and that brings us reassurance and well-grounded expectation.

But what might we think if it were true that individual, discrete sins weren’t really the deal-breaker we often think it is? What if God knows we are human and we are going to mess something up sooner or later—or multiple somethings? What if God is willing to treat us as the human beings we are, looking into our hearts to see if we are people who desire to be like He is, to be the images of God He made us to be?

Yes, this wouldn’t excuse our sins but it would allow God to accept us as imperfect people who are not putrid with fully corrupt beings. Just as God called Israel back to Himself repeatedly, He does the same for us without worrying about what that specific sin may have been last week or yesterday or this morning. What God wants to know is Whose are we? Who do we seek to follow? How are we attempting to live and the character of our lives? If our lives are aligned with God’s, then He has no reason to remember our discrete sins because they don’t paint the primary picture of our lives. God wants people He can trust to do what He would do. If we are those people, the blood of Jesus cleanses us.

Praise God for His wonderful grace and patience with us!

Peace As A Response To Violence

2020-06-12T16:42:00.001-06:00

The past couple or three weeks have been interesting; for some scary; and for others, devastating. The world carries on as the world has always carried on, with callous disregard for others in a variety of ways. Whether it is the negligent death of a man in Minneapolis or the spreading of the anger and frustration-fueled killing of others, burning buildings, and general destruction, we see the results of a society and people who know God less, and less.

Violence and greater power are used to control, to frighten, to coerce others so that we can express ourselves and achieve what we think we want. We end up with neighborhoods destroyed in the name of justice and we end up with wounded and dead innocent people in protest of abuse and brutality.

Christianity at its core values humanity and human life. Because of that, the Christian is called to live a life that is giving, open, and compassionate. Sometimes that may move us to protest, to campaign, to pressure our representatives in government for change. Those are all legitimate activities of followers of Jesus, although there are some who would even proscribe those behaviors for Christians because “we are citizens of Heaven” rather than of any country or community.

In all of our activities against injustice, against inhumanity to man, against violence, anger, and strife, we cannot ourselves become perpetrators of those things. If we are Christian policemen, we don’t neglect the welfare of those in our custody and if we are outraged at the treatment of others, we do not join in the chaos and violence toward others. We are called to work for peace, to find common ground with the hurting, the destitute, and the oppressed—however they are oppressed.

Peacekeepers will be called children of God because they live with a focus on the things of God. We are called to love as God loves even those who crucified Him; even those—like us—who made his coming to forgive sin necessary. As we have witnessed the events of the past weeks, it’s easy to pick a side, to choose a champion for our views, and to cheer or at least explain away their behavior towards others. We are to be careful of this tendency because in doing so, we contribute to division, to strife, to evil.

The challenge for followers of Jesus is how to work for peace, for reconciliation, for healing in the midst of high emotions and a seemingly endless stream of atrocities.

As you and I discern our calling and our direction in these times, let us ask that God will direct our thoughts and our minds so that rather than polarizing our world further, we can work for and example the presence of God in the world for people on all sides of these recent events.

May the Lord of peace walk with you this week.