We Do Not See Everything in Subjection to Mankind

In my last post, I aimed to show that a chief goal of the Bible is to expose our sinfulness and our own need of rescue--the rescue that was promised throughout the Old Testament and became a manifested reality in Jesus' incarnation--and thereby turn us in repentance to Christ. But I also want to point to the flip side of this fallen world: Yes, there is sin in me, but there's also sin in others as well. How does that point us to Christ?

Now it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, 'What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.' Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. (Hebrews 2:5-9, citing Psalm
8:4-6)

God's original design was for humanity to be stewards of the earth and co-regents over it. Nothing would be outside of man's dominion--not even tectonic plates that cause earthquakes of 8.9 on the Richter scale. But we don't see that glory and honor yet because of man's fall into sin. Now it seems like everything goes wrong. Instead of bearing God's image in "the righteousness and holiness of the truth" (Eph. 4:24), humans worldwide and historywide suffer from ignorance of God and rejection of his revelation (truth). They lack purity of love in relationships with one another and toward God (holiness). And they fail to exercise wisdom, justice, and creative power in work and government (righteousness).* As a curse on our sin, the world doesn't obey us anymore: there was an earthquake of 8.9 in Japan last night. And instead of using things to worship God and serve others, we use things and eachother to serve ourselves. With the Fall comes a really good chance we're going to get stepped on by others, and our lives will seem more often ruled by chaos and uncertainty than by order and peace.

But the author points also through the fallenness of others and of our world to the good news of Christ: "But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor." In his incarnation, Jesus became the true Man and the new Adam, the Head over God's new creation. Thus through him we are being remade in his image (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10) and the world is being transformed under his reign. So we are pointed through the Fall to our new Head, Jesus--our deliverer from the woes of this life.

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*I owe these categories for "God's image" in mankind to Dennis E. Johnson, Him We Proclaim.

Discerning the Thoughts and Intentions of the Heart

In the previous post I wanted to show from the book of Hebrews that the aim of Scripture is to "make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" by exposing our sinful condition in need of redemption and by pointing us to God's gracious provision of a Redeemer, Jesus Christ. In this post I hope to examine the first purpose a little more thoroughly.

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:11-13)

In 3:7-4:10 the author (Barnabas? Apollos? Paul?) provides an exposition of Psalm 95:7-11, which was written to teach Israel not to follow the example of their forefathers who, though they had been led out of Egypt's bondage and had had good news of deliverance and restoration preached to them, nonetheless refused to trust and obey God. As a consequence that whole generation died in the desert and failed to reach the Promised Land. "So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief" (3:19). The author of Hebrews embraces the idea that God the Holy Spirit still speaks today, calling us to turn from the hardening deceitfulness of sin and to embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ "firm to the end" of our pilgrimage on this earth (3:7-15). The ultimate goal of faith is that by it we "share in Christ" and enter and enjoy rest from our works, even an ultimate "Sabbath rest" for the people of God.

But in order to hear the good news that has come to us (4:2), we must constantly know our danger. The deceitfulness of sin continually hides in the shadows, not as an external enemy, but as an enemy within--"an evil, unbelieving heart" (3:12-13). We today in the age of the Second Exodus share in the same fallen condition of those of the First Exodus. Therefore we are urged not to "fall by the same sort of disobedience" (4:11). Temptations to sin are the same today as they were 3400 years ago; they are "common to man" (1 Cor. 10:13*).

Our sobering need, then, is to allow the word of God to do the painful work of a surgeon's scalpel, piercing through our defenses and facades to our innermost places of idolatry and unbelief. As we read the Scriptures, the Scriptures read us, showing us who we really are, "naked and exposed" before the God from whom we cannot hide. The word judges "the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

How do we do this? Using Bryan Chapell's language, we must first identify the "Fallen Condition Focus," the sinful attitudes and behaviors--or general brokenness--that prompted God to speak or act in that passage. This involves identifying both personal or communal sin (wrong belief, idolatry, etc.) or brokenness of our world due to sin (death, disease, pain, injustice, etc.).

It's easy to identify behaviors that contradict God's law and nature. But the real matter is seeing through external behaviors (sins) to the heart attitudes beneath them (sin). Jesus himself taught that wrong living is the overflow of a wrong heart (Mark 7:20-23; Luke 6:43-45). The behavior is the "fruit," whereas the heart is the "root." In order to free a garden of weeds, the roots have to be removed. And because we are susceptible to "the same sort of disobedience" as Israel, we too must examine our own hearts.

So if we see in Scripture Israel trying to shore up security against Assyria by forming an alliance with Egypt (fruit), we have to recognize the root: a desire to exercise tangible control over their circumstances rather than releasing themselves to the hands of the Sovereign Lord. They not only craved control--an exercise of unbelief in their good and powerful Father--but they also were in effect usurping God's role as controller of destiny. They were setting up themselves as gods, a subtle but insidious idolatry. As we read, we need to ask: Where am I doing this same thing? Do I get mad at my kids when they don't follow my orders? Do I slam my fist and curse when yet another Virginia driver putters along in the left lane or merges onto the expressway oblivious to the presence of other cars around him? (Seriously, what is with drivers in this state?) Prohibitions against lust reveal the worship of pleasure as god and a vain quest for satisfaction apart from the living God. Fearing others' judgments and criticism may mean either too high a view of yourself or an inappropriate fear of people rather than a fear of God.

In the end, if we're reading the Bible rightly, we ought at many times to see ourselves as hopeless sinners, knowing that no behavioral regimen or list of dos and don'ts will be enough to save us and set us on the right path in life. We ought to be left craving deliverance from without--and that's exactly what the Bible does, giving us hope by revealing and proclaiming to us Jesus the Savior.

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*In 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 Paul uses the same idea that Israel fell in the desert because of idolatrous hearts set on evil, just as what threatens the church today. He says that the whole of Israel's history was written as examples to train the New Testament church in wise living.

How to Read the Bible, According to the Author of Hebrews

I've been asked to consider leading a teaching time at my church on how to read the Bible. In prepareation I started mulling over passages about God's Word itself for direction. One important passage is Hebrews 4:12, which says that "the word of God is living and active, sharter than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." I've thought about this verse many times, but I never related it to its actual context in the letter. So I went back and read chapters 1-4 of Hebrews, and the following structure emerged:


1. (1:1-7) In the past God spoke through the Law and the prophets, but "in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son." The reference to Jesus' superiority over angels is likely a nod to the Jewish notion that angels were the intermediaries through whom the Torah came to Moses. So in saying Jesus is better than the angels is saying he reveals truth more clearly than angels and that he himself is greater than the Law.


2. (2:1-4:11) The Old Testament and Israel's story is an example intended to point us to the rest and peace that come through the obedience belonging to faith--a "Sabbath-rest" for the people of God greater than of Israel in Canaan. The history and practices of Israel are meant to be shadows of greater things to come, namely, the era of the Messiah and the worship of his new covenant people. The author is explicit to say that, like Israel, "good news has come to us" (4:2)--the news of Jesus the superior head (2:5-9) and priest (2:10-17)--but it must be met with faith and obedience. The gospel is God's very voice speaking to us, and we should not harden our hearts to it (3:7-4:11).


3. (4:12-13) As a gracious warning to us, the word of God serves to discern the wrong beliefs and idolatrous, sinful heart attitudes that lead us astray from clinging to God, receiving the news of his salvation, and obediently trusting him through this life. The Scriptures serve to "leave us naked and exposed" in God's presence.

4. (4:14-16) Rather than leave us laid bare as hard-hearted and dull-eared sinners who are doomed to fail to reach God's rest, the word of rescue comes again, pointing us to Jesus, our great high priest and mediator before God, through whom we can draw near to receive grace and mercy to help us in time of need. Our redemption lies not in a behavioral program, but in a person.

In other words, the aim of the Bible as we read it is twofold: (1) The warnings and examples contained in the Law and in the narrative history of Israel and the nations are meant to expose not only their sin and fallenness, but ours as well. The author to the Hebrews is insistent that historical texts still speak today by the Holy Spirit to all who hear. So it is God's word which also points us to our own need for rescue. (2) The Rescuer and Redeemer pledged in the promises and foreshadowings of the Old Testament has come in Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. As the word expounds, he is the one who perfectly meets our needs, and we are directed to trust and follow him.

In other words, the "sacred writings" are meant to "make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:15). More on this to come.

He Who Is Forgiven Little, Loves Little

If you're a true Christian, you've surely found yourself, like me, wanting for love and enjoyment of God, a love that overflows into selfless service and adoration. We want to be full of love for God and our neighbors, because we know that's what will truly satisfy us. But the moments where such delight and zeal become reality are all too few and fleeting. How, then, can we overcome this conundrum?

One day, Jesus went to dine with Simon, a leader in the religious sect called the Pharisees. Contrary to the normal custom of honoring a guest by greeting him with a kiss and washing his feet, Simon received Jesus with neither. As dinner went on, a woman renowned for her promiscuity interrupted the meal to anoint Jesus' feet with perfume. Even more, she began to wash Jesus' feet with her tears and--gasp!--she let down her hair (a gesture reserved only for lovers and husbands) and wiped his feet and kissed them (Luke 7:36-38). I bet you could hear the handfuls of chickpeas and bread drop to the floor. Simon then sneered at Jesus in his heart, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner" (v. 39).

Jesus responds with a parable pointed at his smug, ingracious host to illustrate the simple fact--so simple that even Simon caught it--that the extent to which our burdens have been relieved and our guilt is pardoned determines how grateful our response is. "I tell you [Simon], her sins--and they are many--have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love" (v. 47, NLT). Then he turned to the woman and assured her, "Your faith [in me as loving Rescuer] has saved you; go in peace."

In other words, the extent to which we love and adore God is determined by the extent to which we appropriate the forgiveness he bestows through Jesus. The praise, adoration, and service that were once drudging obedience are transformed into glad reflex when we experience the God's grace, his free removal of all our stains and shame, and calls us "My beloved child, with whom I am well pleased."

It's true that the believer is freely, fully, and forever released from the condemnation of his sin from the moment he embraces the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ as his Savior (Romans 8:1). But that doesn't mean that the experience of our forgiveness lasts forever, or that we stop sinning and needing God's forgiveness. Accordingly, we must continually and openly bring our need to God. Only to the extent that we open up, get honest, and expose our dirt to the God Who Sees and to some brothers and sisters we trust, will we experience the faithfully-forgiving, never-failing love of our heavenly Father. And when his forgiveness and his Word of justification penetrate our souls and lift them out of despair and out of the deluding fog of self-justification, we will find worshipful, obedient gratitude right there as well.

Seeing People

Last post I showed how Jesus' teaching on prayer in Matthew 6 gives us two instructions about prayer: (1) We can and should seek from God in prayer what he says our true needs are in life. (2) The Lord's Prayer directs our way and teaches us what our needs are as the people of God. But even before reading that passage a last week, God has begun to show me that a real need of mine is to learn how to love others better. "To love one's neighbor as oneself is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices" (Mark 12:33).

With this in mind, I borrowed a copy of Paul Miller's excellent book Love Walked among Us: Learning to Love Like Jesus (NavPress, 2001). In the first several challenging chapters, Miller unpacks several stories of the Gospels to show that love is active compassion.* But compassion cannot be aroused without stopping our own agendas and putting aside our prior values, beliefs, and judgments to consider others' situations. All throughout the Gospels, Jesus is mentioned as "seeing" or "looking at" people in need. "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." (Matt. 9:36) (For a few other examples, see Matt. 9:22; 14:14; Mark 10:21; Luke 7:13; John 19:26-27.)

Seeing someone isn't just collecting aberrant light rays reflected from them. It's taking the time to understand who they are, what their story is, what they're feeling in their situation, and what would make them feel valued and loved in that moment. It's putting yourself in their shoes so that are able to treat them as you yourself would wish to be treated.

I immediately realized how in any given day, I'm generally aloof to a lot of people in my world. A few weeks ago when I went out to lunch with some colleagues, the restaurant manager stopped by our table to ask how our food was and if we needed anything. I paid her little attention, only to later realize she was the mother of one of my students! I felt really stupid.

But God has been good, too, to show me little opportunities to widen my horizon each day, to see that my world's population is more than just one. At Walmart, of all frenzied and God-forsaken places, I actually stopped to watch other people shopping. When babies cried and kids acted up, or people dressed like thugs spoke in some incomprehensible slang, instead of my usual modus operandi of criticizing them I pondered to myself, I wonder what his life is like? What's her story? I bet those parents are just trying to get by and do the best they know how. It was freeing. I took my time at Walmart. I didn't mind waiting in line, even offering a few brief prayers for a few people. I was even blessed to see a few of my old students from last year, who said hi and gave me a hug. And while I am pretty bummed that my wife has had mono for two months, putting myself in her shoes during her illness has made me a lot more cheerful in picking up chores around the house and aware of what she does for us on a daily basis.

Where do you find yourself agenda-driven, self-concerned, and racing through life, unaware of those around you? Who are you quick to judge without first trying to learn why they think and act as they do? If, in starting to see others, do you thank God that right now you might not share in some of their plights? And when you see people with problems in life, do you spend more time thinking about how to fix them, or in talking with them to understand their experiences and perspective? These are all questions I've been forced to reckon with as I do my feeble part to follow Jesus.

* * *

To love one's neighbor may be better than all burnt offerings and sacrifices (Mark 12:33). But sputtering, on-again, off-again neighbors with mixed motives such as I have good news. Jesus himself not only showed how to love, but demonstrated for us the greatest act of love the world has ever seen. The eternally existent Son of God didn't remain in heaven to judge, but himself entered our unloving world to call us his unlikely neighbors and family. He saw the ravages and strain of sin through our own eyes. But because he too saw with God's holy eyes, he was able to enter and bear our own suffering in a way we never could, by giving himself as an offering and sacrifice on the cross to atone for all our self-absorbed lovelessness and to plant a new power for love within the hearts of those who will dare to trust and follow him. "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13; see also 2 Cor. 5:14-15, 21; Heb. 10:1-14). Truly love walked among us.

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*I honestly feel so challenged by subtle ways I shortcut love for others that I think I'm going to have to read this book twice: once to learn from Jesus what love looks like (or doesn't look like), so that I can be humbled and guided, and again to let Jesus look at me and love me, the loveless bum of a sinner that I all too often am.

Your Father Knows What You Need

"And when you pray," taught Jesus, "do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him" (Matthew 6:7-8). Jesus' main point here is that we don't need to instruct our all-knowing, all-good, and generous Father about our needs. We can come to him in trust that he already knows us. We don't have to teach him who we are or persuade him to adopt our point of view.

What then is prayer for? It jumped out to me that prayer is, at least in part, perhaps more to teach us about our needs in life. In prayer we draw near to the One Who Sees (Gen. 6:13), who formed us for his purposes, and who knows our every circumstance. If God "knows what you need before you ask him," we should be asking him to show us what our real needs are. He knows the world, his desires for us, our fears, and the Spirit within us far better than we ourselves. Shouldn't it follow that we should ask him what really matters, where our real needs and deficiencies are? God our Abba always welcomes his children when they cry out to him with their needs and will never turn a deaf ear to our petitions (Matt. 7:7-11). But maybe we need to consider times of prayer with no other agenda than to ask him to teach us what we really need, what is good and best for us, and reorient our values and requests around that.

Jesus continues: "Pray then like this . . ." and teaches his followers how they ought to pray (Matt. 6:9-15). Jesus sets priorities for our prayer--what our needs really are. We need to know God's love as our Father. We need to see God glorified, to live under his reign and to do his will. We need to acknowledge that our lives are in the hands of a trustworthy Provider and be content with what he gives. We need to forgive and to be forgiven--to be filled with and overflow with God's grace. We need awareness of the evil within and without, and to be rescued from it.

We could look at Jesus' other prayers and at other prayers of the saints throughout the Bible to learn our needs, that is, to learn God's view of ourselves and what he values for us. When we hear God's Spirit speaking through his Word what our needs are, what his will is for us, then we can lift those needs back to God with this assurance: "And this is the confidence we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him" (1 John 5:14-15).

"The man who serves you [God] best is the one who is less intent on hearing from you what he wills to hear than on shaping his will according to what he hears from you." (Augustine, Confessions 10:26)

The Kingdom of God

If you're an avid reader of the New Testament, you've probably noticed that "the kingdom of God" is all over the Gospels; it's Jesus' main message: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel" (Mark 1:15). The good news Jesus preached was that the kingdom of God had arrived. But what exactly is God's kingdom? Is it a land or a physical realm? Is it the church? Furthermore, how come Paul and the other apostles didn't preach or write much about it? Is the New Testament in conflict?

In his magisterial New Testament Theology, George Eldon Ladd argues that basileia theou ("kingdom of God") really refers to neither a realm nor to the church, but to the active, dynamic reign of God--his "kingship" which extends to both people and places (cf. John 18:36 RSV). In a similar vein, over at Kevin DeYoung's blog, Russell Moore provides a similarly helpful clarification--one of the best I've heard yet. His explanation is not only in line with the Gospels, but also shows that the kingdom of God was in fact the Pauline and apostolic message.

Sometimes even those who've followed Jesus for a long time find the kingdom message a difficult one to grasp. We sometimes assume "kingdom" is just a metaphor for "getting saved" or for another denominational program or political crusade. We hear chatter all around us about the Prince of Wales or the local school homecoming queen or the advertising slogans of the "King of Beers" or the "Dairy Queen."

Against this kind of potential confusion, the mission of Christ starts and ends not just in the announcement of forgiveness of sins or of the removal of condemnation--although both those things are certainly true. The mission of Christ starts and ends with the announcement that God has made Jesus emperor of the cosmos--and he plans to bend the cosmos to fit Jesus' agenda, not the other way around.

The kingdom of God, then, is the good news that the right rule of God, and the right rule of man--a rule our ancestors Adam and Eve lost--have come together in the right rule of one right God-man: Jesus of Nazareth. In his sin-resisting life, his wisdom-saturated teaching, his demon-exorcising power, his substitutionary, conquering death, and his justifying, victorious resurrection, Christ is king.

That king, through his Spirit, invites all men to believe by faith what they'll someday see by sight--what everyone will someday see by sight: Jesus is Lord. Jesus forgives. Jesus is king. And his reign will extend to every corner of the galaxy, forever.

The Bible for Teenagers

Some of my students have the attention span of a gnat. If you're like them, or if you're a youth pastor swarming with such gnats (just kidding, I love teens), you might relish Dane Ortlund's task of asking 25 pastors how they would summarize the Bible's message in one sentence. Jay Sklar's reply is probably the most simple and effective: "God made it, we broke it, Jesus fixes it!"


One commentor's summary is also really good: "God chose one man (Abraham) in order to make of him one great nation (Israel) so that through it He might bring forth one great Savior (Jesus) and through Him demonstrate God's glory and extend God's grace to all creation." Pretty well said.


My own (rather lengthy) sentence would be something like this: Despite the just curse of death brought through man's sin, God the Father has promised to defeat sin and exalt himself so that those who trust him will enjoy him and live under his blessing forever, and his Son Jesus has lovingly and graciously come in fulfillment of those promises to free us from judgment and bring us home with God--a life we taste even now by the power of his Spirit.

You Can Take a Boy out of the Country . . .

Genesis 18-19 records the account of God's visitation of Sodom and Gomorrah to investigate their wickedness and, if found guilty, to destroy them for it. "Then the LORD said, 'Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know'" (18:20-21; see also 19:13).

Who made this "outcry" to the Lord against Sodom's people? We can infer that there are not even ten righteous persons among the two cities (18:22-33). My guess is that it was Lot, Abraham's nephew. Peter records that "righteous Lot" was "greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked" in Sodom and was tormented within by their daily corruption (2 Pet. 2:6-8).

But that's not the picture that emerges from Genesis 19. Though on account of Abraham and his prayers, Lot is rescued by the angels along with his wife and daughters (19:29). For starters, while he kept up the customary Near Eastern hospitality toward strangers by trying to protect his guests from being gang-raped, he offered instead his two virgin daughters! Then we learn that Lot had allowed unrighteous men to marry his daughters (v. 14). And when the angels urged Lot to flee from Sodom, lest he be swept away, "he lingered" (v.15) and even had to be forcibly dragged out of Sodom. Lot's heart seemed to be with Sodom and its pleasures. Even when he does flee, he argues with the angels to not return to open country but to join a new city instead (cities being associated with the corruption of man in Genesis) (vv. 17-22).

Under such headship, what then did the rest of his family look like? His wife didn't heed the angels' admonition to not look back longingly at Sodom--and she was turned into a pillar of salt. Lot's daughters got their own father drunk and slept with him to become pregnant (with no apparent opposition on their father's behalf).

Apparently it is easier to get the family out of Sodom than it is to get the Sodom out of the family.*

I don't know what Lot's ultimate fate was before the Lord. From this account, everything looks grim. But I think 2 Peter 2:6-8 is the ray of hope. The final word on his life is that he is called "righteous Lot," and he goes down on the record as a man who was vexed within over living among evil people. Lot was simul justus et peccator -- at the same time righteous and yet a sinner--because the only true righteousness anyone can possess is that of Jesus Christ himself. Lot may have been a sinner, and his heart could still have been drawn to the pleasures of Sodom, but new desires had sprung up within that caused him to love the Lord and his law and to hate the wickedness of men around him. He was torn within, just like Paul in Romans 7, because he had been justified and was righteous, and Godward desires had been planted within his heart. "Unbelievers don't have such a struggle," notes Jerry Bridges.

For the most part, they enjoy their sin or rationalize their sinful attitudes. They feel justified in their self-righteousness, their criticial and unforgiving spirits, and their pursuits of pleasure and materialism [note Gen. 19:9]. Occasionally, they regret the
consequences of their attitudes and actions, but they do not see them as sin. . . . They may or may not have conflicts with other people, but there is little conflict within themselves. ("The Discomfort of the Justified Life," Modern Reformation, July/August 2006)

I think the key to figuring this all out is given within Paul's account in Romans 7 of his own struggle to live a new, holy life in Christ. "For I have the desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out" (v. 18). Paul goes on to explain that it is not truly him but residual sin, the "old Adam" within, that hasn't been fully put to death yet (cf. 8:13). What counts is not so much the degree of our progress in holiness--that is, love for God and for our neighbors--but the desire that we progress. Jesus teaches that when there is "good treasure" within our hearts--God-honoring, pure, loving desires--such desires will overflow into our deeds and will prove that we are at our core "good trees" (Luke 6:43-45).

In the meantime, in what do we then hope? Paul gives us two solid anchors: (1) We can be confident that the day will come when, at our death, we will be freed entirely from the realm of sin into a new home where righteousness dwells (Rom. 7:24-25; 2 Pet. 3:13). (2) When we are "wed to Christ" by faith, we can know that we have "died to the law through the body of Christ" (Rom. 7:4). Our old self under the curse and condemnation of the law has died, and now there is no longer any condemnation awaiting us because Jesus has already fully taken our punishment upon himself in his death (8:1-4).
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*I wish I were this witty, but I must give credit where credit's due: This statement is from Leland and Philip Graham Ryken's preface to Genesis 19 in The Literary Study Bible.

Nothing Will Be Impossible for Them

As I've begun reading through Genesis again in my annual trek through the Scriptures, the well-worn story of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9) spoke to me a new word. Wicked men, unified not only in language but also in their desire to exalt in their own accomplishments, abilities, and ingenuity, erect a tower from which to assault heaven and earn for themselves fame, glory, and autonomy from God. I always laugh that God "came down" to see what they were doing; their tower really fell quite short of imposing upon heaven (v. 5). But what God says next has always unsettled me: "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them" (v. 6). Frankly, I hate this verse. Why? Because it doesn't fit with my idea--and a very biblically consistent idea at that--that God is completely sovereign and in control over all of mankind's activities. No one can thwart the God-of-Angel-Armies.


But this time it spoke to me a new word of hope. It's true that this story of origins--the origin of cities--occurs in the very place man tries to erect a kingdom for himself in rebellion against God (see Gen. 10:10-11). But where is it that the apostles first carry the gospel? Cities: Jerusalem, Damascus, Philippi, Corinth, Ephesus, Athens, Rome. These were no doubt major hubs of anti-Christ religion and philosophy. Cities were (and are) Babylon in all its hollow pleasures and prides. But that's also the key. The gospel spreads and the kingdom of God invades those strongholds of darkness, upsetting and transforming them--and the culture along with them--at the very root of worldliness and rebellion. Cut off the cities, and you've made a good way to cutting off the devil nationwide. If cities such as Tokyo, Moscow, Berlin, New York, Sao Paolo, Helsinki, New Delhi, Baghdad, or Cairo were to become predominantly Christian, what was once spoken of men in their evil could be true for the kingdom of light: "nothing will be impossible for them." Now, I'm no postmillenial*, but it's cool to see the power of the gospel to bring liberation to Satan's most entrenched outposts and to imagine the ever-present hope that greets those who labor to reach urban areas for Christ.

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*Postmillenialism is the view that the Lord will return after (post-) the "millenium." In this scheme, the gospel will spread with increasing effectiveness so that eventually whole nations and cultures will be largely converted and Christianized.

Excellent Overview of Biblical Eschatology

I've often thought of Christianity as "living backwards from the future." By his decisive coming to earth in the past, Jesus Christ has secured the future salvation of God's people--and by his Spirit even now we participate in the firstfruits of that deliverance. We're told the end of the story in advance and are then expected to live our way forward into the life that is to come. But the kingdom of God is not only a coming, future reality; the Gospels declare that it has already come in part and is coming presently, active today. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth--and the Holy Spirit says to all churches everywhere--that because Jesus the Messiah has come, "the fulfillment of the ages has come" along with him (1 Cor. 10:11). We are now living in the grandest era of history, when the promises pledged by God for the salvation of his people are coming true. Thus it is fitting that Jurgen Moltman describes the whole message of Christianity as an eschatological message:

Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving. . . . The eschatological is not one element of Christianity, but it is the medium of the Christian faith as such, the key in which everything in it is set.

All that is to say that what Don Garlington has written here is probably the best synopsis of New Testament theology (i.e., eschatology) I've read yet. Even if you don't care about his discussion of Revelation 20:1-6 and the "millenium," the first two sections on eschatology and biblical interpretation are well worth reading.

Adam, Son of God

The third role alluded to in the title Son of God is that of Adam himself, the original and prototypical human. The direct identification of Adam as God's son is most explicitly pointed out in Luke's genealogy of Jesus, who is ". . . the son of Adam, [who is] the son of God" (Luke 3:37). How is Adam the son of God? And what does it mean for Jesus, the Son with a capital "s"?

The very first words about Adam (and Eve, in fact)--that is, Man--give us the answer. "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule . . . .' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:26, 27). This is repeated nearly verbatim in Genesis 5:1-2: "When God created man [Hebrew adam], he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them 'man' [adam]." But then listen to what immediately follows concerning their son Seth: "When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image, and he named him Seth" (v. 3).

Being one's son therefore means bearing the image or likeness of the father. This is not in a mere genetic or phenotypic sense. In Genesis and elsewhere in the Bible, the "image" is what embodies or reflects the personal-spiritual-relational attributes of the father, ruler, or god.* Like God, man was created as vice-regent or steward of the cosmos, who would exercise just and righteous dominion over all things and so live under God's blessing and pass it along to all things (Gen. 1:26-28; 5:2; 9:1-7; cf. Abraham in 12:2-3). In Adam's life and actions--and through all his offspring--all the world would see God in his beauty and worth. We humans were meant to be God-bearers to one another.** But in Adam's transgression we all fell from this glorious role. Adam failed to pass on the wholeness of God's image to his son, but rather diluted it with his own (5:3). And through him, as both the father of mankind as well as our representative head before God, we all inherited his corrupted nature, and the image of God in us is now twisted and dimmed (Rom 5:15-21; 1 Cor. 15:49; Eph. 2:3). "All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23).

But when Jesus the Son of God steps on the scene, all of that is reversed! The New Adam is here, God's true Son (1 Cor. 15:45)! Paul says that "Christ . . . is the image of God" (2 Cor. 4:4) and that "the Son he [God] loves . . . is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation" (Col. 1:13, 15). Note the very Adamic--that is, human--description of Jesus. He is God's image, revealing God to the world. "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being" (Heb. 1:3). Where fellowship with God and knowledge of him were lost, Jesus has come to restore our sight (2 Cor. 3:12 - 4:6). But the good news doesn't stop there. It also means that all who trust and follow Jesus are being remade in God's image as well. "You have taken off your old self . . . and have put on the new self, which is being recreated in knowledge in the image of its Creator" (Col. 3:10). When through the Son we see both our true Father and Example, we too grow to take on his likeness ourselves (Rom. 8:28-30; 2 Cor. 3:18; 4:7-12; 1 John 3:2). The curse is being overturned.

But this is not all the Son of God does as the true Adam. "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation" (Col. 1:15). Jesus is the firstborn, the beginning of a new family of mankind, as Adam once was (see Heb. 2:10-18). And he is over all creation, exercising kingly and priestly dominion as Adam was ordained to do (Heb. 2:5-9). As God's Son, Jesus is the ruling and representative head of God's new creation (Eph. 1:10, 21-22). Where Adam sinned and brought the curse of death and exile from God's presence to all humans, even to the whole created order, Jesus brings justification, bodily resurrection, and eternal life and intimacy with God in Paradise, where all who are in Christ by faith will enjoy God forever (Rom. 5:15-21; 1 Cor. 15:20-28, 44-49). He exercises the dominion Adam was meant to have, restoring peace to the world. Satan has not triumphed over God and his creation; Jesus the Son--and his saints who belong to him--have crushed his head (Gen. 3:15; Rom. 16:20; Col. 2:14-15)!

"He comes to make his blessings flow / Far as the curse is found" is more than a line from a quaint Christmas carol about a babe in a manger. It is the gospel of God's Son Jesus, God's grace and glory dwelling among us again.

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*Dennis Johnson, following Ephesians 4:24 and Colossians 3:10, describes the image of God in man as "characterized by right knowing (truth), right ruling (righteous and loving exercise of authority), and right relationship (holiness in God's presence)" (Him We Proclaim, pp. 246 f.).

**I think in many ways we also do not directly reflect God, as if we embodied all his attributes. God is everlasting, unchanging, all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful in ways we cannot be. In our limited and finite power and wisdom in this life, perhaps we show off God's majesty precisely by what we are not and what we cannot do or know. Even now when we point sinners to God's grace and the Savior's cross, we are images pointing the way to God, showing off who he is.

Israel, Son of God

Several places in the Old Testament the nation of Israel is referred to as God's "son": "Then say to Pharaoh, 'This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, "Let my son go, so he may worship me." But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son'" (Exod. 4:22; cf. Deut. 8:5; Jer. 31:9, 20; Hos. 11:1). But what implication does this have for how we are to understand Jesus as the Son of God?


The gospel at its core says that Jesus has come to fulfill all that was pointed toward in Israel's history and Scriptures, namely, the promise of blessing to Abraham's descendants and to all the world through them. (See Scot McKnight's explanation of this here.) In what is perhaps the most succinct description of the apostolic gospel, Paul writes to the Corinthians that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve" (1 Cor. 15:1-8). Paul and the apostles before him saw all this happening "according to the Scriptures," that is, the "Christ-event" (Barth) was something anticipated in the Old Testament and in the history of Israel (see Rom. 1:1-4). Even Jesus had this view of himself (see, e.g., Matt. 5:17 and Luke 24:25-27).


While there are many ways this can be seen in the NT, it is perhaps most evident in the Gospel of Matthew. When Herod hears of a rival king's birth, the holy family flees to Egypt and seeks refuge until Herod's death. Matthew elucidates the meaning of this event: "And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: 'Out of Egypt I called my son'" (2:15; quoting Hosea 11:1). In Hosea it is Israel who is God's son, and the reference is to their rescue and calling in the exodus (cf. Deut. 8:5). But here the title is applied to Jesus. Stepping back, we can see numerous other parallels to Israel's history in the life of Jesus. For example, the flight to Egypt parallels not only Pharaoh's murder of Hebrew babies and Moses' rescue to become Israel's leader (Exod. 1-2); echoes can also be seen of the incipient family of Israel (Jacob) fleeing for their lives to Egypt (Gen. 42-43).


Additionally, just as Israel was "baptized" in their exodus-passage through the Red Sea (Exod. 14; 1 Cor. 10:4), so Jesus also underwent baptism (Matt. 3:13-17). After the exodus, Israel wandered in the wilderness, undergoing temptation and grumbling against the Lord for forty years. After his baptism, Jesus likewise spent forty days in the wilderness and was tempted by Satan (Matt. 4:1-11). Israel was tempted by hunger and thirst in order to humble them, to expose their hearts, and to teach them that "man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD" (Deut. 8:2-5). But ultimately their discontented hearts were set on idols, and they failed the test (1 Cor. 10:5-10). Yet where Israel failed, Jesus held fast, even wielding Deuteronomy 8:3 against the devil's devices. Whereas God was not pleased with Israel (1 Cor. 10:5), in his baptism and temptation Jesus is marked out as the beloved Son well-pleasing to God his Father (Matt. 3:17).


There are many other places as well in which Jesus is portrayed as fulfilling (that is, filling up, bringing to a climax, or displaying the true meaning of) Israel's history and hopes. (If you want to know more, e-mail me or read Peter Leithart's essay, Jesus as Israel: The Typological Structure of Matthew's Gospel.) Not least among these is that Jesus is the true seed of Abraham who serves as the representative head of God's people and bears upon himself the curse due to Israel for their disobedience to the Law, releasing to God's people (now both Jew and Gentile) the fullness of God's eschatological blessings, received by faith (Gal. 3:10-14, 21-29).


So in calling Jesus the Son of God, Matthew and other NT writers are really saying that Jesus is the true Israel, the one whose story culminates and transforms Israel's. He re-enacts and undergoes all that Israel went through in her travails to bring God's glory and blessing to a fallen world. Only where she failed, he succeeded. He is the true obedient servant of God, who truly understands and lives out the law's demands for trusting love to her Creator-King (Matt. 5:17; Heb. 10:5-10). The implications of this are that all of God's blessings are now no longer seated upon the Jews' obedience to the Law, but upon Jesus the Son's obedience and curse-bearing. As was always promised even to Abraham, covenant righteousness before God--and therefore the covenant promises of abundant life, an eternal home, and dwelling with God--now comes through faith in his Son Jesus.

David, Son of God

"Jesus is the Messiah, [that is,] the Son of God" (John 20:31). As I argued in my previous post, Son of God and Messiah were somewhat interchangeable titles; or at least they were understood to be synonymous for the person God would send to be King over Israel and the whole world and bring Israel's final glory.

Properly understood, the title Messiah (Christ) means "anointed one." To anoint someone with oil in Hebrew culture was to ceremonially set him apart for a special role. While there were many occassions for anointing someone with oil, in the OT there were three particular roles into which someone was baptized by an anointing rite: prophet (Isa. 61:1), priest (Exod. 28:41; 30:30; Lev. 16:32), and king (1 Sam. 9:16; 15:1; 2 Sam. 2:4; 1 Kings 1:34). The majority of OT references to an anointed person, though, refer to King David and his successors on the throne of Israel (or Judah, during the divided kingdom). Thus when the nations hate God's law and rage against his "anointed one," God derides them and proclaims the truth: "I have installed my king on Zion, my holy hill" (Ps. 2:1-6). This king is referred to as God's "son," and upon the day of his coronation, God becomes his "father" (2:7, 12). (Some translations of Psalm 2:12 say that God has "begotten" the king.) In John 5:19-30, Jesus is even explicitly revealed as the Son entrusted by the Father with all judgment, wielding his Father's scepter. There is an intimate connection between divine sonship and regency.

This motif is echoed elsewhere in the Psalms. Psalm 89, which implores God on that basis of his covenant made to David (see 2 Sam. 7), records God as saying, "I have found David my servant; with my sacred oil I have anointed him . . . He will call out to me, 'You are my Father, my God, the Rock my Savior.' I will also appoint him [as] my firstborn, the most exalted of the kings of the earth" (vv. 20, 26-27). It is through the just and righteous reign of God's anointed "son" that God rules his people Israel and subdues the nations (vv. 22-29; cf. 2:8-12; 72; 110; Gen. 49:10). Yet when Israel backslid into the spiritual adultery of idolatry and apostasy and was carried into exile by godless foreign nations, it was made clear that no such exalted king had yet come. The truly righteous King of the house of David awaited a future era for the people of God (see Jer. 23:1-8).

So by saying that Jesus is the Son of God, the Bible is saying that Jesus is the definitive answer to Israel's hope for a king who would save them through his wise and just reign. He ist the ruler who would usher in an era of unparalleled peace and prosperity for God's people--and destruction for those outside of God's kingdom. In Jesus, the promised shepherd-deliverer had come (Ezek. 34). This is good news for those who will gladly and willingly submit to him, but terror for those who refuse him in this life. "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not have eternal life, but the wrath of God remains on him" (John 3:36; see the parallels with Psalm 2).

Jesus, Son of God

If you have read John's Gospel or his letters (1-3 John), you will notice pretty quickly that his preoccupation is that Jesus is the "Son of God." In fact, this was so central to John's view of Jesus that he wrote entirely so that "you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:31). But what exactly does this title mean? To most evangelicals it means that Jesus is fully divine, that he is God incarnate. And the prologue to the Fourth Gospel validates this: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God" (1:1-2). This Word (Greek logos) is perhaps best seen as the ultimate, cohesive, self-expression of who God is in his very essence. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling [lit. "tabernacled," as did the shekinah cloud of God's glory] among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known" (1:14, 18). In the Word the eternal, hidden God is revealing who he is and what he is like. (In his book The Challenge of Jesus, N. T. Wright points out that Jesus as the Son embodies God in five primary modes of God's action in the world and particularly through and for Israel: Word, Wisdom, Spirit, Temple, and Torah. Jesus is being and doing in the world what only God can do.) Elsewhere in John's Gospel, Jesus the Son of God is revealed as the one who knows the Father intimately and lives entirely in concert with his desires (3:35; 5:16-28).

But perhaps this declaration that Jesus is the Son of God, while not divorced at all from his deity, has as much--or even more--to do with his role as the human king who fulfills, rewrites, and redeems the history of Israel and, through her, the whole world. You see, John uses the title Son of God interchangeably with the title Messiah (Christ): "Jesus is the Messiah, [that is,] the Son of God" (20:31). The apostles also understood the Son of God as synonymous with the Messiah: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:10). I have heard the name Jesus Christ explained this way: "Jesus" refers to his humanity as the virgin-born man (Matt. 1:21), while "Christ" refers to his divinity as the virgin-born man. While this is not entirely wrong, are we missing something? I believe we may be, and I hope in the next few posts to flesh out (pun intended) three ways Jesus-as-God's-Son goes beyond "mere" deity and encompasses also his humanity as the true Adam, Israel, and David.

Glory Days

A few weeks ago our pastor Erik announced that, due to rapidly outgrowing our current worship space, we would be moving to a new site just a few blocks away. I immediately felt the cringe of nostalgia. Even though City Church is only four years old, we have always met in the same small, beautiful church building. I will be a little sad to leave. But Erik quickly reminded those of us who long for the "glory days" that for any church, our true glory days lie ahead in the new heavens and the new earth, when Jesus reigns completely and all things are renewed. What a challenging truth! It made me think: Is nostalgia really some sort of misplaced hope, as if we ever lived in some sort of heaven-on-earth? The apostle Peter warns us that we do not yet live in our true homeland "in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13); a later prophet chided nostalgia as "a desire for something which has never actually appeared in our experience" (C. S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory").

A few nights ago I was singing to myself Martin Luther's old Christmas hymn, "From Heaven Above to Earth I Come," in which an angelic host proclaim the good news of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem. In the fourth stanza they bear this news:

He will on you the gifts bestow
Prepared by God for all below,
That in His kingdom, bright and fair,
You may with us His glory share.

"That . . . you may with us His glory share"--that is the gospel! The good news of the redemption Christ has won for us means that we would not only see beauty--the fiery glow of a sunset, the piercing radiance of noonday sun reflecting from a fresh snowfall, the calm drops of dew glistening suspended from a spider's web, the warmth of a loving family gathered around the hearth, the resounding voices of the chorus inside St. Peter's Basilica, the graceful movements of a ballet dancer, the arms of Mother Teresa around a discarded, sickly orphan, the trade of wrinkled smiles between a long-married couple--but that we would become beautiful and glorious ourselves. Only our glory and beauty will far surpass that of any temporal thing of this earth: we will share the very glory of Jesus the eternal Son ourselves.

The good news of the gospel is that through Jesus Christ, God himself and his saving righteousness have been unveiled (Rom. 1:17; 2 Cor. 4:4, 6). And the result--or, perhaps rather, the goal--is that we share in his glory ourselves. "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (2 Cor. 3:18). And one day, we will share the very same glory of body, soul, and spirit as the risen and glorified Son himself, full of the Spirit of Life: "For those whom he [God] foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified" (Rom. 8:28-30*; see also Heb. 2:5-10; 1 John 3:1-2).

I think this is something even the best of us evangelicals can miss as we hold forth the cross. We focus so heavily on forgiveness and justification by faith--the open door into the kingdom and into union with Christ--that we lose sight of the end goal, of God's ultimate purpose for us in this life and the next: participating in Christ's glory and so exercising our true humanity. As we set our lives before God as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1-2) and come to a deeper knowledge of God's excellent promises, we "become partakers of the divine nature" and become freed from corrupting desires (2 Pet. 1:3-4). Our life's goal, both now and in the age to come, is to be so clothed with Christ and filled by the Holy Spirit that we take on, participate in, and share the very glory of our Head and King himself. Eastern theologians say that while we do not share God's essence or nature as Diety, we do share God's "energies," his ways of acting and being in the world (known as theosis). We are meant to become, as it were, little Christs, little sons of God, brothers along with the Firstborn who shares his Father's image (Gen. 1:26, 27; Rom. 8:17-18, 28-30; Col. 3:10; Heb. 2:5-17). Not that we ourselves become deified, but that we become flawless mirrors reflecting the light of God's glory and so shine all the more brightly ourselves with goodness and love and joy and beauty. We will become fully illuminated, luminous as the brightest stars in the heavens (Dan. 12:2-3).

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*Paul employs the past tense to announce that both in God's eternal purposes set before creation and also in the cross and empty tomb in A.D. 29, all of salvation has already been accomplished--even if it is being applied and brought to fruition across time by the Holy Spirit as he unites people to Christ.

Old Advent Posts

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Apparently this maxim applies to my blogging, too. Maybe I just haven't had the time to think though Adventy stuff. Either way, you can check out my previous posts here, since I don't get around to posting much new material anymore. (However, I have spent a long time figuring out how Jesus as the Son of God means he fulfills the roles of David and Israel, and why this is good news. But apparently I can't copy-and-paste text from Word into Blogger.)

A Prayer for Today

Over the past few months, since the beginning of the school year, I've been learning the hard lesson on my continual need to open each day in prayer for God's presence and provision, acknowledging his grace. If I don't do so, it's so easy to lose sight of what each day is really all about--glorifying God in a life of transformation and discipleship after Jesus--and instead fret and falter over my performance and acceptance at work. This morning I sat down and wrote out this prayer. While it was originally inspired by a prayer from Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp's excellent book How People Change, some of you may notice it's largely a reflection on Galatians 2:20-21 and the introduction to the Heidelberg Catechism.



"A Prayer for Today"

Good Father, God Almighty,
I thank You for this day, whatever it may bring.
Today greets me full of hope,
Not because I am successful at what I do
Or because people near me appreciate me
Or because circumstances are easy,
But because I am not my own,
But belong--body and soul, in life and in death--
To my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.
He has freed me from a life of performance-based righteousness;
In Him I am freely accepted and loved by Your grace.
His life, death, and resurrection assure me
Of my forgiveness and eternal life.

By His Spirit within me I am set free from sin and my old self.
Christ now dwells within me,
And I am being transformed daily into His glorious image,
Created anew to live out my highest calling:
To glorify You and enjoy You forever.
Insofar as I do this, I am truly alive.

Instead of the futility of trying to perform for You and others
To win acceptance, love, and value,
Or of exalting myself or worshiping vain idols,
I am set free to serve others,
Who are created in Your image and are valuable to You.
I will therefore gladly and generously use all that You give me
Each day to work wholeheartedly for You,
Knowing that it is better to give than to receive.

Make me today, in all I do, a light to others,
Bearing Christ in truth, humility, compassion, and generosity,
And gladly and boldly sharing His gospel.

When I am anxious, I will not be dismayed,
But will turn to You in prayer with thanksgiving,
For You are near and above all earthly powers.
You promise to do all things for my good,
To enable me always to do Your will and to become like Christ.
To look at it any other way is to live a lie.
But to live in truth brings You glory,
And this is my highest form of worship.

"Every baptism is an infant baptism"

Last weekend the local RUF (Reformed University Fellowship, that is, not a ministry for canines) pastor at Virginia Commonwealth University, Peter Rowan, was ordained at our worship service. It was a beautiful and moving event to see a young man step forward to commit his life to guiding people to their Savior through the Word of the gospel. Then, in his first act as an ordained pastor, Peter baptized his infant nephew. Peter started his brief explanation of baptism with this provocative phrase: "In some sense, every baptism is an infant baptism." The sign of baptism, Peter explained, shows that we, like newborn babes, live entirely dependent lives before God, living entirely on what he gives us by grace alone in Christ.

I think this really is a beautiful picture we miss often by too quickly getting on with the business of responding to our baptisms by following Jesus' call to death-and-discipleship. No matter how zealously we follow Jesus and serve his church, we must recognize that every good and every blessing come to us not on account of our faith or our energy for God, but far prior to that. Baptism reminds us that it was "while we were still weak" and powerless like a little child with no strength or skill or virtue to offer, "Christ died for the ungodly" (Romans 5:6). Brennan Manning points out in his book The Ragamuffin Gospel that children are the model citizens of God's kingdom "because they have no claim on heaven. If they are close to God, it is because they are incompetent, not because they are innocent. If they receive anything, it can only be as a gift" (p. 28).

Happy Reformation Day!

It's finally here: this year's annual Reformation Day post! (You can all exhale now.) In case you haven't been reading this blog for years, every October 31st I celebrate the nailing of Luther's Ninety-Five Theses to the cathedral door in Wittenberg on All Souls' Eve in 1517, ultimately spurring many within the church to return to Scripture and to celebrate Jesus Christ alone as our All in All. This year's quote comes from a sermon of Dietrich Bonhoeffer titled "Justification as the Last Word" (c. 1940).* It's a bit lengthy, but well worth the patience.




All Christian living has its origin and existnece in one single happening which the Reformation called "justification by grace alone." It is not what the individual is in himself or herself, but what he or she has become by this happening which defines a Christian life. Here we have the length and breadth of human life in a nutshell, gathered together at one point; the whole of life is contained in this event. What happens here? An ultimate act of suffering which cannot be grasped by any human being. The darkness, which from within and without takes human life into the abyss of hopelessness is bound, conquered, and destroyed by the power of the Word of God; in the light of this deliverance, we see God and our neighbor for the first time. The bewildering labyrinth of the life we have lived so far is shattered. We are free for God and our neighbor. We begin to know in our heart that there is a God who loves us, accepts us, and that by our side is a brother or sister, whom God loves as he loves us. Also, we know now that there is a future with the triune God, who is present among his people. Now, the human being has faith, love, and hope. Past and future become as one in the presence of God. The whole of the past is gathered up in the word "forgiveness"; the whole of the future is in the safekeeping of the true God. The sins of the past are sunk into the abyss of the love of God in Christ Jesus and overcome. The future will be a life with God, without sin (see 1 John 3:9). Life, then, is revealed as detached from teh temporal and held fast by the eternal, choosing the way of eternal salvation ratherthan the ways of the termporal world, as a member of a community and of creation, which sings praises to the triune God. All this happens with theencounter of Christ with the human soul. All this is truth and reality in Christ. Because it is no dream, it is a dtruly human life, which is lived in the presence of Christ. From now on, it is no longer a lost life, but a justified life, justified by grace alone.



But not only "by grace alone," also "by faith alone." That is what both the Scriptures and the Reformation teach. Not love nor hope, but only faith justifies a life. Faith alone, indeed, sets life upon a new foundation and it is this new foundation alone that justifies it, so that I can live before God. The foundation, however, is the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Without this foundation a life cannot be justified before God. It is left to the mercy of death and damnation. Only by living a life by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ can we be justified before God. But faith means finding and standing firm upon this foundation, to be anchored in it and thereby to be held firm by it. Faith means establishing one's life upon a foundation outside one's own self, upon and eternal and holy foundation, which is Christ. Faith means to be captivated by the glance of Jesus Christ, to see nothing other than him, to be torn out of imprisonment in one's own ego, to be set free by Jesus Christ. Faith is letting this action take place, which is an action in itself, but these two are not enough to explain the mystery. Only faith is certain, all else is doubt. Jesus Christ himself is the certainly of faith. I believe that my life is justified in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no other way to the justification of my life than by faith alone. . . .

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*Bonhoeffer, Werke, Vol. 15, pp. 492-98; as found in Edwin Robertson, ed., tr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christmas Sermons (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), pp. 160-162.