What Does “the gates of hell” Mean?

What Does “the gates of hell” Mean?

Mar 20, 2024 | Eschatology

All my Christian life, now north of 45 years, I misunderstood the phrase “gates of hell.” What comes into your mind when you read Jesus’ resounding declaration:

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades (hell) will not prevail against it.

You’ll remember the scene from Matthew 16. Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” After they tell him what others think, he asks the most important question in the history of the world: “But what about you? Who do you say I am?” And Peter gives the right answer: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replies that it is not flesh and blood that has revealed this to him, but his Father in heaven, and declares to them (and us) this immortal phrase about the gates of hell.

Catholics and Protestants disagree on what Jesus intended when he used the word rock, and specifically what this rock is. For Catholics the answer is who, Peter himself. They argue that when Jesus changed his name from Simon to Cephas, which in Aramaic means rock (the Greek translation being Peter), so the rock is Peter. We Protestants, by contrast, do not believe Christ’s church (his called out ones in Greek) would ever be built on a sinful human being. Rather, believing God’s word inscripturated in our Bibles as our ultimate authority, Sola Scripture in the Reformation phrase, we take Jesus to mean the rock is Peter’s declaration itself, that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

On the gates of hell, however, almost all Christians of whatever theological persuasion agree. Down here in this fallen world, Satan is on the offensive, and we Christians and the church are on the defensive. I know I always believed this without ever giving it a second thought. Of course Satan is on the offense and we’re on defense. I mean look around you. Isn’t it obvious? Satan clearly has the upper hand in this spiritual war on earth. Well, that depends on what our eyes see. But before I get there, last year I read a book about postmillennialism, and the author pointed out something that seems so obvious to me now that it shocks me I never thought about it, or ever heard anyone else in over four decades as a Christian mention it. And what is that?

In the ancient world gates were defensive mechanisms.

It’s that simple. Because the divine Son of God came to redeem the world from sin, and accomplished it, Satan is the one now on the defensive. As we’ll see, he is bound. We no longer have to assume he has the upper hand and he is winning. Christ won, and He is now exercising that victory through his body, the church. The problem is, it doesn’t seem we are victorious, sometimes in our personal lives, but most definitely not on a societal level. Our misunderstanding is primarily a theological one.

Christology, The Key to Understanding Eschatology
I consistently make the following point, and it will determine whether you can ever embrace postmillennialism, an eschatology of victory and hope. I’ll put it in the form of a question: Why did Jesus come to earth? I used to believe, like most Christians, that Jesus came to save my soul so that when I die I go to heaven. That was his primary mission, along with my personal holiness. We also believe because of Scripture that God so loved the world that he came to save it, but any real and substantive change in this fallen world of sin would have to wait until Jesus returns and completes redemption in a new heavens and earth. This will happen at the resurrection of the dead and the end of time as we know it. I believed our hope is primarily in the future, and not for the here and now. Sin is a force that can be incrementally defeated in our personal lives, and even somewhat further out, but on a societal level we are powerless to defeat it.

When I was younger and naïve, I thought it could “change the world.” In fact, it was not too many years ago, in 2010 to be exact, the year of my 50th birthday when I was obviously still naïve, that I read a book by sociologist James Davison Hunter called, To Change the World. I got something I wasn’t expecting, frustration; I should have taken seriously his subtitle. The dude clearly didn’t believe we could change the world. How dare he! Now I understand why, which I’ll get to shortly. Over time as I saw the world clearly not changing, or so I thought, I realized thinking I could change the world was ridiculous, a fool’s errand. I could and did, as all Christians do, push back against “the dark force,” but it was clear to me we are powerless to change the basic direction of the sinful fallenness all around us.

What Hunter, and I at the time, didn’t have was the theological categories to believe we could in fact change the world. Which brings me back to the question of why Jesus came to earth, and the topic of Christology, or the doctrine of the person of Christ, his being and mission. Did he come so we could go to heaven when we die, and work on personal holiness while putting up with the tragedy of this fallen world? I would suggest it’s far more than this, and much grander in its implications. It isn’t for nothing that God’s promises to Abraham and the Patriarchs are to the nations and not just individuals. When we learn from Scripture that Christ came to save the world, that says something about who he is as Savior and Redeemer. He came, as we’re told, to reconcile to himself all things, not just some things. Paul tells us this in Colossians 1:

15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. 

All of this is mediated through individuals, then families, then communities, then nations. This reconciliation touches all things human beings do, and while the ultimate fulfillment will happen at his second advent, it started at his first. He specifically said he came to bring the kingdom of God or heaven to earth. As he was fully God and fully man, he had absolute authority over his creation. He indicated this during his earthly ministry in his power over his creation in healing and nature, but fully brought its reality through his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God to the position of ultimate authority in the universe. It is in these last days that he is exercising this authority through his people, his church, his body. We see how this is done in a parable of how this spiritual power is lived out among Christians every day.

The Binding the Strong Man
Jesus and the Pharisees had a problematic relationship. Jesus always seemed to be picking fights with them because their conceptions of Judaism were diametrically opposed to his. This wouldn’t become fully apparent until Jesus rose from the dead, and his followers learned the entire Old Testament and history of Israel were about him, their Messiah as God himself come in human flesh to save them from their sins. As I argue in Uninvented, first century Jews do not make up a Messiah like Jesus because he was completely unexpected. As I call him in the book, the conundrum that was Jesus. Nobody expected a divine, healing Messiah. In fact, one of the few Old Testament prophets who did miracles, Elijah, was supposed to introduce the Messiah (Malachi 4) who would conquer their enemies, specifically the Romans. But all Jesus seemed to do was heal people and preach, then get himself killed.

Which brings us to the parable of the binding of the strong man. I didn’t realize the episode in which Jesus tells it had far more to do with his kingdom rule than just casting out demons during his ministry. The kingdom of God or heaven is a debated topic in eschatology. When John was introducing Jesus’ ministry to the Jews, he declared:

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near! (Matt. 3)

Matthew then quotes Isaiah saying John was one crying out in the wilderness to make way for the Lord. Nobody could conceive the Messiah being Yahweh himself, Israel’s God. In other words, the bringing of the Kingdom wouldn’t be just a messenger for Yahweh, as everyone thought, but the eternal Creator God Himself personally bringing his kingdom reign and influence into the fallen earth. John was saying, literally, everything was about to change. Jesus in Matthew 4 after having endured the temptations in the desert of the then current king, Satan, echoed the Baptist:

17 From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!”

Both say, “come near,” because the kingdom won’t arrive until Jesus completes his mission and is seated at the right hand of God after his ascension. He isn’t until he sends his Holy Spirit at Pentecost that the King through his church, his body, will reign and destroy the works of the devil. When Christ completed his mission, Satan was no longer king of this world; he lost his authority to call the shots over the nations. Remember, prior to the gospel there was only one tiny obscure nation in the world that worshiped the true God, and even they were slaves to Roman power. After Christ the nations as nations could now be discipled.

The reason this could happen is that Satan was bound and his power limited by the authority Christ had been given because of the success of his mission. We read of this binding in the Synoptic gospels. In Matthew 12, Jesus had been casting out demons, and the Pharisees said it was because of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that he was able to do this. He basically says it would be absurd for Satan to drive out Satan because a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Then he tells them:

28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

And then addresses the strong man:

29 Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house.

Satan is the strong man, and he has now been bound because the kingdom of God has come. Since the resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost, we are in the plundering phase of history. John tells us as much in Revelation 20 when he says:

2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.

Those who are amillennial and postmillennial believe the thousand years is not a literal number of years, as premillennialists do, but the period of time known as the last days, the period between Jesus’ first and second coming. It is the time, as Jesus taught us to pray that the kingdom of God would come and His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Do We Live by Faith or by Sight?
For most of my Christian life when it came to how I interpreted life in this fallen world, I lived by sight. It sure seemed like Satan wasn’t bound at all. Yet Scripture told me he was. So I had to decide, was I going to believe God or my lyin’ eyes. Going back to the gates of hell, if I believe God, then Satan’s kingdom is the kingdom on the defensive. Prior to embracing postmillennialism that was impossible for me to believe. In fact, it never even occurred to me! What’s so exciting about my new optimistic eschatology is that it is rooted in reality. We’re in a war! A spiritual war to be exact, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:12.  But the context of the war is Ephesians 1:18-23, and Christ having all authority over every power that exists in the spiritual and material realms, in this life as well as the life to come.

As in any war, people have different roles, privates, sergeants, Lieutenants, generals; there is also army, navy, Airforce, marines; there are victories, there are defeats. As in any war there are strategies and tactics. But one thing is certain: the superior force is primarily on the offensive, and the weaker on the defensive. Over time it becomes apparent which is which. Sometimes the grunts just have to trust the generals even when it looks really bad. The superior force will always win in the end, and we as followers of the King of the universe are the superior force! We win, and not just in the end, at Christ’s second coming, but here, now. We are part of the King’s army establishing his rule on earth, daily assaulting the gates of hell with the fruit of the Spirit against which the gates of hell don’t have a chance.

 

 

 

The Civilizational Implications of The Fruit of the Spirit vs. The Acts of the Flesh

The Civilizational Implications of The Fruit of the Spirit vs. The Acts of the Flesh

Mar 13, 2024 | Eschatology, Uncategorized

One of the great contributions, of many, of the Apostle Paul to Christian Western civilization is laying out in Galatians 5 the juxtaposition between those who live by the Spirit and those who live by the flesh. Paul calls it the fruit of the Spirit and the acts of the flesh. The reason I extend the comparison to a civilizational level is because the consequences of these two kind of lives go well beyond the merely personal; nothing we do is merely personal or interpersonal. The modern libertarian mindset is tragically mistaken because it makes personal choice a sacred right as if our choices only affected us, or at most a few people around us—they do not.

Paul uses a word in this context that is also tragically misunderstood, freedom. Because of the poison of secularism, people intuitively think of freedom as “doing whatever we want.” No, that’s not freedom, that’s slavery! Here is what Paul says freedom is actually for: 

13 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.

Salvation from sin allows us to no longer be curved in on ourselves so we are now free to fulfill the law in serving others. Just think about Paul’s assertion about the entire law being fulfilled in that one command. Even as I’m thinking and trying to write about it at this moment, I’m mesmerized by the implications. Everything I do in relation to God is done in relation to loving other human beings. We are fundamentally relational because the Triune God, our Creator is. And just as John says He is love, so we are called to love. 

This has massive societal implications most Christians today are unfortunately unaware of or ignore. Because of two isms, Pietism and secularism, we have a bifurcated sense of reality. That word simply means to cause to divide into two branches or parts. Because of those isms, in our minds those parts are isolated, the branches don’t touch. One is our personal life and all that entails, and the other is “out there,” public life and all that entails. We tend to think the former has no bearing on the latter, when in fact the relationship is unavoidable and symbiotic; each depends on and influences the other, personal affects societal, societal affects personal. 

Because of the first Great Awakening and the profound influence of Calvinism in that era, America’s founding generation understood freedom as responsibility. Liberty would never be an excuse for license, or doing whatever we want. True freedom is the ability to do what we ought, to fulfill our responsibility to others. In this sense, Jesus says losing our life means we will find it.

The Implications of Two Ways of Life
We might think there are infinite shades of gray in how people choose to live, but that’s not the case. Certain ways of acting cause harmony, and other ways cause chaos. The line between those two is actually very thin. Let’s look at how Paul describes these two kinds of life: 

19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 

Over the years when I would read this passage I would think how lefties and liberals despise Christianity, but what is it about the fruit of the Spirit they have a problem with? Imagine a society in which everyone exhibited such fruit. What’s not to like? In fact, as you can see from Paul’s statement about law, the fruit of the Spirit is the foundation of political liberty. The more self-governing a people are, the less need there is for law. Where the acts of the flesh reign, law is required to keep some semblance of peace. As we can see all around us, the further we get away from being a Christian nation, the further we get away from peace. The big cities in blue states make the case.

These implications are why America’s founders believed the American experiment would have been impossible without Christianity and the Bible. We could quote them all day long to prove that, but John Adams, not an orthodox Christian, is a good example. One of his more famous quotations makes this clear:

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

This was affirmed by Congress six months before the Constitution was passed in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. In Article 3 it states:

Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

The Founders believed it was the Christian religion and Christian morality of a providentially ordaining God that made the American experiment possible. They knew the “acts of the flesh” would destroy it, and they were right.

Why America Must be a Christian Nation
Because of Pietism and secularism, Christians look at this passage and only see the implications for themselves and those they know personally, family and friends. Since World War II it’s gotten so bad that many Christians mock the very idea of a Christian nation; they’ll often use the supposed epithet, Christian nationalism. But what, dear reader, is the option? If a nation isn’t Christian what is it? I’ll tell you: it’s a pagan nation. We might call America (and Western countries in general) “secular,” but that is just another word for pagan. Since the progressive movement got under way in America in the early 20th century, the illusion grew that a secular society would mean freedom from the conflict religion creates in a society. America was supposedly going to be a pluralistic nirvana where all faiths and worldviews would be equal and have a seat at the secular public table. Secularism, however, is also a faith, and it refuses to allow Christianity any say in the public square. When Christians try, secularists scream, separation of church and state!  

This is evidence that there are in fact only two societal realities. We learn this from God’s call of Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans:

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

Then the Lord promises to bless him, and through him all the nations of the earth. This is how God started to make a people for Himself, a people set apart from the pagan nations. For the next 2,000 years God slowly built an alternative culture and view of reality to paganism, and in Christ that was fulfilled. Now God’s promise to Abram to bless the nations through His people to the entire earth would begin, taking His God-Heaven life and spreading through the entire earth. How does this happen and what does it look like?

When the fall happened in Genesis 3, God told the serpent:

15 I will put hostility between you and the woman,
and between your seed and her seed.
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.

This told us life in a fallen world would be hostility between two forces, one represented by the serpent, paganism, the other represented by the seed of the woman, Jesus. There is no in between; we are on one side or the other. The serpent could do some damage, as we’ve seen for thousands of years, but the seed of the woman has the upper hand because he will strike the serpent’s head. In a word, God was promising victory to His people in the battle for reality in a fallen world. Unfortunately, most Christians don’t believe that because they live by sight and not faith in God’s promised victory, one reiterated throughout both Testaments.

On a practical level this looks like the fruit of the Spirit, and government exists to create the environment where that fruit can flourish. We call that liberty and justice. This requires government to be limited but also strong with very specific tasks toward public justice and peace. It very much looks like the United States of America as founded. This doesn’t mean other forms of government cannot fulfill these tasks, but only as Christ is acknowledged as King and ultimate authority can that happen. 

Isaiah 2, Fruit of the Spirit, and Christ’s Body
This chapter is a Messianic declaration of the victory God promised to Adam and Eve in the garden. It starts thus:

2 In the last days

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
    as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
    and all nations will stream to it.

3 Many peoples will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
    so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
    the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He will judge between the nations
    and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
    nor will they train for war anymore.

Not too long ago I saw this as a prophecy of the consummated heavens and earth when Christ returns in his glory at the resurrection to judge the living and the dead, but that is not accurate. Rather, this is a declaration of the power of the gospel to transform not only people but nations. We are in the last days which started when Jesus rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and sent His Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Clearly this mountain Isaiah speaks of is metaphorical, and the temple is not a literal temple (the temple that did exist was destroyed in 70 AD); Jesus is the temple. God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit by His word now teaches us his ways that we might “walk in his paths.” In other words, that we might exhibit the fruit of the Spirit.

Zion and Jerusalem are also metaphors; God’s law mediated through the gospel will go out from his eternal throne to the entire earth. Verse 4, however, is a problem for many Christians because they can’t see this happening in our fallen world because there are still disputes and wars. Isaiah is clearly saying, though, that judgment between nations and disputes of many people will still exist, meaning this prophecy is for the fallen world now after the Messiah came and accomplished redemption. We learn here that these are the implications of the gospel on an international level between nations. Unfortunately, because of those isms I mentioned above, most Christians can’t conceive Christianity could be applicable to anything beyond our personal lives. God begs to differ.

Let’s ask some questions. Why does war and conflict exist? Sin. And what did the gospel come to remedy? Sin. And how does the gospel do that? Through people, specifically Christian people who have been redeemed and live in obedience to God reflecting the fruit of the Spirit. If you look back at that passage in Genesis 3, the seed is Christ, and we are his body, his church, striking the serpent’s head. It isn’t we ourselves who claim victory over the devil and his works, the “acts of the flesh,” but Christ working through us as his body on earth.

I recently read a beautiful example of Christ’s body working in The Voice of the Martyrs magazine. A North Korean defector to South Korea was staying at a resettlement center and was encouraged to explore different religions. He went to meet people, and eventually went to a Christian worship service. In his words:

At first I just went to the church because I was lonely, but through the serving and love of the Christian people, then I became curious about the Jesus they believed in. As I learned more about Jesus, then I met Jesus.

That is how it works! How God’s kingdom spreads on earth and permeates the nations. In due course not only will there be an absence of war, but the instruments of war will be transformed into instruments of peace and production for flourishing in God’s created order. Prior to Christ and the gospel, the nations such as they were only knew one value: the will to power. The stronger survived, the weaker were conquered in a never ending cycle of war and conquest. That slowly changed with the coming of Christendom, but much of the world rejected Christianity and suffered for it. The 20th century is evidence of that. We have a long way to go as we continue to fight the fall and pray and work for God’s kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

 

Paul Ends Romans with a Postmillennial Exhortation

Paul Ends Romans with a Postmillennial Exhortation

Mar 6, 2024 | Eschatology, Uncategorized

It had been quite a while since I read through Romans, and whenever that was, I was most definitely not a postmillennialist. For much of my Christian life I was a “pan-millennialist,” because eschatology all seemed like worthless speculation and the Bible was all too confusing about it. I concluded it will all pan out in the end, so why bother. Then in 2014 I was presented with an in depth biblical case for amillennialism, or so it seemed, and I embraced it. Then in August of 2022 something completely unexpected happened; I embraced postmillennialism. Unexpected as in earthquake unexpected; you find it hard to believe the earth is moving under your feet, but you can see it and feel it. My “conversion” to postmillennialism was like that.

Other than knowing absolutely nothing about it, I had never had any kind of coherent presentation of exactly what it means. When I finally did, and it was not something I was looking for, I was shocked that it seemed to make biblical sense. What most impressed me was that the case being made for it was primarily exegetical, meaning coming out of the text of Scripture. It wasn’t relying on speculation of any kind. The other thing that impressed me, and quickly won me over, was that unlike the other two options, a-mill and pre-mill, it was an optimistic eschatology, an eschatology of hope for the here and now, not just for the eternal by and by, the next life. Christ came to push back the fall, as the Christmas hymn says, as far as the curse is found. That means the blessings promised to us by God through Abraham, are not just for our personal or interpersonal lives, but for our lives lived in community, including the communities of cities and counties and states and nations, wherever the curse of sin rears its ugly head.

The Gospel to the Nations
For our discussion, we can view the gospel primarily two ways. The way most Christians view it is solely or mostly in personal terms; it’s about going to heaven when we die, and personal holiness on earth. At best its influence extends to our closest interpersonal relationships. By contrast, the way postmillennialists view the gospel is that the personal effects are like ripples in a glass still lake; once the gospel rock hits the surface of our lives, it transforms everything we touch, literally; ripples that never end. The gospel’s purpose in the world is fundamentally transformational. This transformation happens the instant we are saved, brought from spiritual death to glorious spiritual life in Christ. The veil is lifted, and like the man born blind Jesus healed in John 9, we cry out, “I was blind but now I see!” Think of it like gospel glasses we put on and everything comes into focus. And when I say everything I mean every single thing. We go from secular blindness thinking we’re lucky dirt, to a God drenched reality where each molecule is His, every tree and rock, every apple and egg, every word, thought, and idea, all brought captive “to make it obedient to Christ.”     

This means that when God told Abram nations would be blessed through him, he meant it. Here are some of those declarations. In Genesis 12 God tells Abram that he will bless him and that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him. The Hebrew word used for peoples means clan, an ancient way to say nation. In Genesis 18 as the Lord is considering destroying Sodom he again mentions blessing:

17 Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? 18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. 19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

Here a different word is used meaning nation or people. This passage in Genesis 22 is especially powerful. After God tested Abraham with Isaac and he passed the test by trusting the Lord in obedience, the Lord says:

16 “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

Here the blessing is again to Abraham. His descendants will literally be innumerable, but it isn’t just the numbers that are important, but what these people do and where they do it.

Not Just Testifying but Transforming
This is a critical point in the never ending debate about eschatology. In the a-mill and pre-mill understanding, the Great Commission (Matt. 28) is focused on individuals, and ignores the nations part, but the gospel is transformational of everything it touches, including nations. The following quotations are from Lorraine Boettner’s book, Millennialism. The first is about this transformational character of the gospel:

The changed character of individuals will be reflected in an uplifted social, economic, political, and cultural life of mankind.

My response is, how can it not! Unfortunately, most Christians retreat behind a Pietism that doesn’t see the purpose of the gospel as transformational of all things. It isn’t so much that secularism took over the once Christian West, as it was Christians surrendered it to them.

The other is about Jesus using the word “disciples” in the Great Commission:

Christ Himself assures us He is present and is even now with us in our work . . . To reduce this great commission to the premillenarian program to preach the gospel as a witness to a world that is to grow worse and worse until it plunges into its doom in destruction is to emasculate the gospel of Christ and wither it into pitiful impotency. This is to send the gospel out into the world as a futile thing, foreordained to failure from the start. No, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and Jesus Christ, marching in the greatness of his strength, sends us on no empty errand of uttering a message that will die away in the air on an unheeding and hostile world, gathering only a few out of its innumerable multitudes and consigning the fast majority to destruction, but He sends us to “make disciples of all nations” and thereby win the world itself.

I don’t see how you read that paragraph and not become postmillennial on the spot! It gives me chills.

The last thing I will address before I get to Paul’s post-mill passage, is Ephesians 2 and Revelation 5 about Christians reigning with Christ. In Ephesians, Paul is speaking about our God making us alive in Christ “when we were dead in transgressions.” Then he blows our minds with this:

6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

Do you know where Christ is seated this very moment? At the right hand of the Father, as Paul says in chapter 1, “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be named, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” This is happening in the present age! Now, today, at this moment. The reason Jesus could give us the Great Commission was because “All authority in heaven and on earth” had been given to him, therefore, he says go. And we can tie together the Ephesians passage about where we are seated, and what we are doing there, with this passage in Revelation 5:

9 And they sang a new song, saying:

“You are worthy to take the scroll
    and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
    and with your blood you purchased for God
    people from every tribe and language and people and nation.
10 You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
    and they will reign on the earth.”

We are saved to reign on earth, not in heaven! We are reigning with Christ on this fallen earth to bring the kingdom of heaven to overcome the works and the wiles of the devil.

The Gospel: The Obedience of Faith
Which brings me to Paul’s declaration in the final words of Romans and how we do this:

 25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages 26 but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— 27 to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.

Our gospel job is not only to preach personal salvation to the nations, but to preach and teach Christ as Lord and king not only over our own lives and the lives of our families, but over the nations. The objective of every Christian is to bring “all nations” to “the obedience of faith.” This was Jesus’ command in the Great Commission:

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

The command is specifically given to what we now consider nations, not merely to individuals, but to individuals in every position in society and culture. The obedience of faith means taking seriously what Jesus said about obeying “everything” he commanded them, whether that applies to business, economics, law, governing, family life, art, architecture, science, all aspects of culture; it is complete all encompassing.

What happened in what we used to call Christendom was the disaster of Pietism, a 17th century German Lutheran movement that turned Christianity from a centrifugal movement, something that moves away from a central point or axis, to a centripetal one, a force that brings things toward the center. Over time, through the First and Second Great Awakening in the 18th and 19th centuries, to fundamentalism in the 20th, secularism took over Western culture because Christians narrowed the focus of Christianity to going to heaven when we die and personal holiness. What that did was completely enervate the gospel for any kind of cultural influence, and we are now living with the consequences. That must change if we are to bring ourselves and the nations “to the obedience of faith.”

That means we begin to learn about Christianity as a profoundly powerful centrifugal force. Fortunately, we live in incredibly exciting times because there is a revival not just of postmillennialism, but of Christians whatever their eschatology realizing that their faith applies to all of life, including politics and culture. The beauty and power of postmillennialism, though, is that it gives us the theological framework for optimism, or in the title of a book I’m currently reading, it is “An Eschatology of Victory.” Christ did not become a man, suffer and die and rise again, then ascend to the right hand of God to lose! We can count on his words in our prayers and actions, that His kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.

 

The Astonishing Goodness of God

The Astonishing Goodness of God

Feb 28, 2024 | Epistemology - Trust

I was struck by this phrase written by John Calvin as I’m very slowly making my way through his commentary on Isaiah. Satan is a master of deceit; he is the father of lies because lies are his native language. It doesn’t surprise us, then, that lying is how he got the freight train of misery that is life in a fallen world out of the station. The very first lie he told on earth to a human being (Gen. 3) caused the disaster we call the fall, and came in the form of a rhetorical question: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Even though Eve answered the question because it was so obviously untrue, it really wasn’t meant to be answered. It was an assault on God’s character, and most especially his goodness. By asking it just this way, Satan was implying God was in fact not good, that he wants to keep good things from us. He could have just as easily said, God is a big old meanie, and he doesn’t want you to be happy.

Eve replied with the truth, that it was only one tree in the middle of the garden of which God commanded they should not eat, or they would die. Then Satan brought out the shotgun of lies and let her have it with both barrels:

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

He could have easily said, God is horrible and he hates you. He just doesn’t want you to have what he has. He’s keeping this incredible thing, this “knowing good and evil” from you, and that’s just not fair!

Down through the ages since that day, a very lot of people believe Satan. It’s only in the very next chapter when everything starts going to hell, and Cain kills his brother Abel. When God rejected Cain’s offering we’re told, “Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.” He was probably thinking, God is a big meanie and it’s just not fair! Thus we see the beginning of the ever present temptation of sinners to believe it is God who is the liar, and that he is not good.

How many people reject Christianity because life has handed them a raw deal, and it’s just not fair? A lot. That’s why since the time of Voltaire it’s been called “the problem of evil” because supposedly it’s a problem for Christianity, and by extension, God. Evil is a problem, all right, but it’s a problem for every person whatever their faith or worldview. Throwing God under the bus doesn’t make evil any more palatable or understandable. I would argue it makes it far worse. At least if God’s there you can blame someone. Chance and matter doesn’t offer much solace that way. Evil is then just a brute fact and exists for no reason at all. Other religions have to deal with it too, but not very well. Outside of the Abrahamic religions, not one even explains why evil exists or where it comes from; it just is. And none have any kind of satisfying answer other than, just deal with it. Christianity, by contrast, has a plausible if not completely satisfying answer. At least satisfying enough to be on a continual growth track for 2,000 years because a lot of people think it is plausible enough.

Believing God is Good is Necessary for a Flourishing Life
The longer I’ve been on this journey with Jesus, now north of 45 years, the more I realize my number one sin, the worst of the worst: lack of trust in Almighty God. It requires daily repentance, and is why pretty much every morning I repent for worry, anxiety, doubt, and fear. All such attitudes reflect a lack of trust in the basic goodness and power of God. Living by faith, which means trust in God’s word found in the Bible, and not sight, is incredibly hard. We’re always tempted by Satan’s lie, and it’s amazing to me how easy it is for me to do, thus the repentance. My daily aspiration and lifelong goal is found in Isaiah 26:

3 You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.

Perfect peace is the standard; an equanimity that cannot be shaken by mere circumstances. As I said, it’s incredibly hard, if not impossible. Verse 4 puts this in perfect biblical context:

4 Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

We can trust him! And not just for now, for every minute of every day of every week and month and year, but forever! A rock is something in biblical terms that is solid, something we can count on, that doesn’t move with every passing wind or storm. In the parable of the wise and foolish builders, Jesus compares building a house on a rock with building one on sand. When the storms of life come, guess which one stands? And how do we build on rock? We put God’s words into practice. Obedience to God is the “secret” to a flourishing life, whatever that might end up looking like. But it really doesn’t matter because perfect peace is available regardless of the circumstances, as hard as that is to believe when circumstances get really hard.

You will notice this is the case as you contemplate the rest of Isaiah 26. This is a wonderful picture of a rock life, a life that cannot be moved by whims and fancies, or by the pressures and vicissitudes of life. Here is an example:

7 The path of the righteous is level;
you, the Upright One, make the way of the righteous smooth.
8 Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws,
we wait for you;
your name and renown
are the desire of our hearts.

To be righteous is to live rightly. It’s the kind of life that is not bumpy, not a flight with so much turbulence the captain says over the speakers to stay in your seats and make sure your seatbelts are tightly fastened. Of course all lives in a fallen world like all flights have some turbulence, but a life lived in obedience to God means we get to our destination without worrying about going down in flames.

I learned the word flourish when I was exposed to classical education in 2010, which is used a lot in that context. I found this wonderful definition:

Flourish is a verb meaning to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as the result of a particularly favorable environment. It refers to a thriving state or condition, such as a plant that is flourishing due to ample sunlight and water.

The only quibble I have with this is related to “a particularly favorable environment.” Because Christianity is true, and God is God, the Almighty Creator and ruler of all things that exist, we don’t need a “favorable environment” to flourish. It’s built into the covenantal cake of His promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 that all the peoples of the earth would be blessed through him, the first of numerous promises to Abraham and the Patriarchs to bless the nations. So because we live in a fallen world, God often enables us to flourish in spite of the environment, not because of it. Our trusting Him in obedience is what allows circumstances to not determine us, but to transform circumstances for our good and His glory.

Obedience Left or Right
As those who understand and embrace the gospel, we know we can’t earn God’s favor by our obedience. That kind of righteousness is given to us because of Christ, and we are accepted only because of him. Once we know we’re accepted and no longer condemned, we can realistically walk rightly, be righteous. We have to believe, me and God, we’re good; no guilt allowed. The beauty of the gospel from an Evangelical perspective is that not only are we forgiven of our sin because Christ took the punishment we deserve, but he also lived a life of perfect obedience to the Father, and in faith Jesus’ righteousness is granted to us.

That in theological terms is known as double imputation, an extremely important concept to understand. When we are saved our sin is imputed to Jesus, and His righteousness is imputed to us. Once you believe that, and fully buy into it, you can begin to “walk rightly” without falling off either side of the balance beam. As we all know walking with God in obedience to His law is a challenge, to say the least. It’s made all the more challenging because as sinners we live in constant temptation to Satanic delusion. On one side of that balance beam, we’ll call that the left side, is the delusion of self-righteousness that leads to legalism, and on the other side, the right, is guilt and despair because no matter how hard we try we’re just not very good at this obedience thing, if we’re honest with ourselves.

In my life, I was always falling off the right side of the beam, wallowing in guilt and shame. Satan really likes those on that side because he can act like his name which means accuser. He’s great at finger pointing and making you feel like you’re a miserable worthless wretch. Almost everybody who’s had any experience with Christianity knows the great hymn Amazing Grace by John Newton. The very famous first verse goes like this:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

Until I decided to reference that verse, I had never looked up the definition of wretch until now. It means a miserable person, one who is profoundly unhappy or in great misfortune, or a base, despicable, or vile person. That is who we are as sinners before we were saved, not after. We can now hold our heads high as children of the King, walk without shame and guilt because Jesus paid it all, and all to him I owe, in the words of the chorus of that wonderful hymn.

Falling off the right side of the beam has the benefit of building into us a right humility, that we are indeed unworthy sinners saved by God’s unmerited favor, and our only boast in life is Christ. At the end of I Corinthians Paul writes these words that have been a life raft for me:

 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, sanctification and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

I’ve never been able to relate to the self-righteous side of the beam, but I am sure I’ve been guilty of it throughout my Christian life. If we’re ever tempted to think we’re better or superior to anyone else, that’s a sure sign we’re tilting left. Repent!

Internalizing all of this sets the stage for obedience, and the blessing by God associated with it.

Obedience and Flourishing
Because Satan is very good at his diabolical job, we Christians have a hard time believing God wants to bless us. The title of a post I wrote not too long ago indicates this, “Believe It or Not, God Wants to Bless Us.” Or, that He wants us to flourish. Life is hard, and having the habit of living by sight, we tend to think flourishing is a fluke, almost mere luck of the draw. But it is not. God promises blessing for obedience. I made some of the case for this in my post, but that deserves a book-length study. Flourishing can often include material circumstances, but God’s blessing can reach us in any circumstances, and thus true flourishing is always possible.

The morning of the day in which I write these words, I read Galatians 5 and Paul’s description of the “acts of the flesh” and the “fruit of the spirit.” The juxtaposition of two lives driven from either hell or Heaven gives a perfect description of what a flourishing life looks like or not, either heaven or hell on earth. What Paul says is inheriting “the kingdom of God” in that passage is the Jewish concept of shalom. It is that sense of peace coming from the Prince of Peace, reconciliation to our Creator God, that is the fulfillment of the live lived, however imperfectly, by the fruit of the Spirit.

Isaiah saying, “we wait for you,” is a fascinating phrase. None of this is going to be easy, nor should it be. Going against the grain, swimming upstream, is always hard, as it should be. Knowing this, we no longer whine and moan about how hard it is. Rather, we embrace the challenge because He who is in us doing the work enables us to live out righteousness. Our responsibility is to live in obedience as best we can. The result is that our affections, who we are and what we want will become focused on God’s glory, and will all be oriented toward pleasing God. Our inner being will be so transformed by God’s Holy Spirit that what Isaiah says in verse 8 will be true of us, present tense: His “name and renown are the desire of our hearts.” How that is done is how that sentence begins, “walking in the way of your laws.” It is obedience that allows us to wait for him, to have shalom despite not because of the circumstances. Only then will we be able to marvel with Calvin and the saints throughout the ages at God’s astonishing goodness.

 

Love and Reigning in Life Through Jesus Christ

Love and Reigning in Life Through Jesus Christ

Feb 21, 2024 | The Gospel

From April of 2014 to June of 2022 I slowly wrote my way through the entire Bible. It was one of the best things I ever did to show me the inexhaustible riches of God’s word found in our Bibles, what the Apostles and New Testament church called the Writings, or graphé- γραφή in Greek. The word is used over 50 times in the New Testament, always of holy Scripture, i.e., the inspired, inerrant writings of the Bible. These writings, or Scripture, are authoritative because while written by and through men, they are the very words of God. The Apostle Paul tells us how this works and the value contained in these writings:

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3)

The Scripture Paul is speaking about is the Old Testament because that was the New Testament church’s Bible. There was no New Testament yet. It is from this verse that we get the biblical doctrine of Inspiration. It is phrased that way because the King James version translated these words as, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God…” The Greek word Paul uses there, however, is breathed out, so the writings are literally God’s breath coming through men in the form of words. Thus we call it the word of God. As Jesus said in reply to the devil suffering his temptations in the wilderness, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Or, on every word breathed out by God. What happens to us without food? Eventually we die. As Christians we must ask ourselves, is the word of God as important to us as food? Jesus says it should be.

The Bible’s Power to Change People
Biblical inspiration is powerful and profound, but what is more powerful and profound to me, is the effect the Writings have on the lives of the people who encounter them. Over the last few years as I’ve listened to hundreds of Christians share their testimonies, one thing every person has in common is feeling compelled to read the Bible. Even if they were reluctant initially, soon they were taken in by its unique power, realizing, often quickly, there is something divine about this book. To Paul it is this divine nature of the Writings that gives them the capacity, the dynamic aliveness, to create righteousness in God’s people. It has the power to change the way we live, from lost sinners in rebellion to God and for ourselves, to saved sinners living in obedience to God. In theology this is called sanctification, God’s work in us and through us to make us holy, those set apart for his kingdom purposes. Of course, nobody could say this better than Paul:

 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. (2 Cor. 5:15)

In addition to witnessing this dynamic in my own life, and the lives of many loved ones and friends, hearing so many people testify to seeing this play out in their journey to faith in Christ is to me magnificent. Every time I hear or witness it again, I marvel that this Christianity thing I believe in and have staked my life on, is actually true; it’s real! Mere human words on a page cannot do that.

Paul’s point about the purpose of the word of God in our lives is that it is there to change us in fundamental ways, change our being, who we are, that we may be able (thoroughly equipped) to do good works. Here in Jesus’ words is why we want to do these works:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it (abundantly) to the full (John 10:10).

This abundant and full life comes directly from the blessings that flow into our lives from obedience to God. If the devil can convince us that what we want is more important than what God wants for us, the thief will steal from us the only life that is truly life. God by contrast wants us to reign in life through Christ. How is that done? It’s done through Christ! Romans 5:17 is one of Paul’s declarations of why we can live the abundant life:

For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

How much more . . . . By being given the gift of righteousness by faith (i.e., not depending on our own) because of God’s grace, we can now reign in life by performing righteousness. We now are able to obey God, albeit very imperfectly, because our lives are no longer solely about us, our wants, our needs, our desires, but about Him! I heard a very simple phrase recently that packed a profound meaning in what at first blush seems so obvious:

There is a connection between what we believe and how we behave.

Well, duh! No kidding. But if we don’t behave like we say we believe, then we either don’t know what we believe, or don’t really believe it. I remember hearing a saying decades ago along these lines:

To know and not to do, is not to know.

Biblically, this is known as fruit. As Jesus says in the gospels, you will know the tree by its fruit. Good fruit good tree, rotten fruit rotten tree.

But is it really possible to change who we are, our fundamental being? Yes and no. God has no desire to make us Stepford Christians, little Christian robots who do and say all the same things. In fact, the complete opposite is the truth. God wants to make each one of us the most Jesus-like person we can be so we can become more fully who he uniquely meant us to be.

The Secret of Reigning in Life
Speaking of reigning in life through Christ, what exactly does that look like? How does that work? When I was reading through that passage in Romans recently, I wondered how many Christians feel like they are “reigning in life.” I would guess probably not many, and I think the reason is that we don’t know what it means, or we think we know what it means and our lives certainly don’t reflect that!

In my early years as a Christians I heard about something called the victorious higher life, or victorious Christian living. It seemed no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t very good at that victorious life. Defeat seemed a far more common companion than victory, and the guilt that accompanied it. Then when I was introduced to Reformed theology at twenty-four, I learned there was a theology called perfectionism. I came across a book by the great Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield called Studies in Perfectionism that was revelatory for me. I learned this theology or understanding of the Christian life went back to John Wesley in the 18th century. He believed Christians could achieve perfect holiness, and a popular movement grew out of his teaching in the 19thcentury. By the time I’d become a Christian in 1978, few Christians promoted the idea that we could have complete victory over sin, but the echoes of that Wesleyan theology still reverberated in the Evangelical church. It became apparent over time that Christians could not in fact achieve perfection, and those who thought they had achieved it were insufferably self-righteous. Which is ironically funny if you think about it.

So back to our question. If we can’t be perfectly holy, how can we reign in life through Christ? To say we will reign has the ring of perfection to it. And Paul not only says it, but he also grandly declares it! Yet very few of us feel like the kings or queens of our own Christian life; more like paupers than princes or princesses.

The problem with knowing we can’t be perfect in holiness can easily lead to us to thinking we have the license to sin, misusing grace to think we can do whatever we want (read Paul’s horror at such a notion in Romans 6). The other end of the distortion is the irony I referred to. Thinking we are capable of pulling off the Christian life to a degree that leads to pride and arrogance, and thinking we are better than others. Jesus warned us about that in a parable to those “who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else” (Luke 18:9-14). We need to be like the tax collector, not the Pharisee, knowing we are unworthy in ourselves to even look up to heaven, and daily beat our breast and say, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That, my friends, is the means to reigning in life through Christ! What? Debasing ourselves is a way to reign in life? Yes, through Christ! And it is not debasing, but an accurate assessment of who we as sinners before a holy God. As I often say, I should be a smoldering pile of ashes on the ground; everything else is gravy!

The secret to unlocking the reign in our lives is daily repentance. Naming our sins before God, accepting that we are utterly unworthy of the favor he bestows upon us in Christ. It’s called grace, or unmerited favor. We cannot earn it, and unlike Catholic theology, we cannot earn it by penance, by being really, really sorry, and remorseful for our sins. We are simply agreeing with God that we are wretched sinners worthy of his just judgment, condemnation and death, the wages of sin. But since Jesus the Messiah paid the price, we don’t have to! We get life eternal, and we get to start living that life in the here and now. A mystery of the Christian life is living eternal life, living in obedience to God, being completely up to us in the moment by moment choices we make, but only possible because of God’s work in us.

John gives us a promise of how we can make this work, that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9). The Greek word for confess means to agree. I like to say, pardon the slight vulgarity, embrace the suck. But the next step is even more important. It is God alone who can change us; we can’t do it by mere will power. As God says to Cain, sin is crouching at our door; it desires to have us. The promise is that if we agree with God about our sin, He will purify us, cleans us, and do a supernatural work in us to make us more like Christ. Transforming ourselves is not our job, it’s His!

It’s All About Love
The key to making this a reality in our lives, the reigning part, is love reflected in service to others. If we’re going to truly great, and God wants us to be great, Jesus tells us we must be servants. And that can only be done in love. To get a handle on what this means, it’s good to remember a definition of sin made famous by Augustine then Luther: homo incurvatus in se. In English, man curved in on himself. The very essence of sin is self-centeredness. If my life is all about me, even if I’m those must upstanding moral person on earth, I am a quintessential sinner. The Pharisees are great examples of such self-righteousness. Being moral is of course crucial for Christians, meaning doing right not wrong, obeying God’s law starting with the Ten Commandments.

Jesus amplified the profoundly transformational nature of God’s law when he said it can all be summed up in love, for God, us, and others. If we’re really good law-keepers but don’t love, Paul says we’re no better than clanging symbols, all noise; basically like a two-year-old, look at me, look at me, look at me! Love is relational because the Triune God is fundamentally love and so relational. I contend, when we really work on loving others, we can learn what it means to reign with Christ because our focus then must be off of ourselves to do it. In taking up our cross, Jesus tell us we are denying ourselves. And Jesus adds, the only way to find our life is to lose it. If we grasp on to our life like a greedy beggar, we will lose it. The great irony of Christianity is that if we give our lives away, we will find the life that is truly life and reign in life through Christ.