Uninvented: John 13 and Jesus Washing the Disciples Feet

Uninvented: John 13 and Jesus Washing the Disciples Feet

Dec 18, 2023 | Uninvented

Of the many unexpected things Jesus did in his life, washing his disciples feet has to be up there among the most astonishing. I would add the most uninvented as well. Almost everything Jesus taught and did upended cultural and religious norms. The kingdom he came to bring to earth would be nothing like the kingdoms of this world built on power and force, but because of that it would have the power to transform those kingdoms. That is the point of the prayer he taught us, “Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” No longer would kingdoms be established and maintained solely by force and violence, but transformed by peaceful means of persuasion and service. This applies not only to geopolitical kingdoms, but anywhere rule is necessary for order and direction, be it a family or business or school, any organization. Direction, leadership, authority, and yes sometimes power displayed as force (e.g., government, military) are required for anything to run in harmony and symmetry, or else there is anarchy and dysfunction.

Jesus’ Foot Washing Object Lesson
Foot washing was not uncommon in the ancient world because people walked on dirt roads in sandals everywhere they went. Often it was used as a sign of hospitality when coming into someone’s home, but it was servants or slaves who did the foot washing. Never would someone of superior social status ever wash an inferior’s feet. That would have been, literally, inconceivable, as in nobody could imagine such a thing—Until Jesus did it. You can see this in the response of impetuous Peter when he sees Jesus begin to prepare the basin of water and start washing the other disciples feet. He is incredulous: 

6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

8 “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

You gotta love Peter, so honest, and so wrong. Jesus gently rebukes him, and typical of Peter, he goes to the other extreme. Jesus replies that those who have had a bath, only need their feet washed. That meant something in the ancient context when baths and water were hard to come by, but in redemptive-historical context it is positively elegant. I read it as those belonging to Christ are justified, and as we walk along the sinfully dusty streets in a fallen world, we just need our feet cleansed with the water of sanctification. As Paul tells us in I Corinthians 1:30, Jesus is for us both our justification and sanctification.

Jesus, as he often did, is teaching through object lessons. He asks them if they understand what he’s done for them. It was a rhetorical question because he knew they were clueless, as they always seemed to be. Then he tells them:

13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

We’ll remember how the disciples argued among themselves who was the greatest, so Jesus figured they needed one final lesson in humility, and one they could never forget.

Why We Can Serve Others
What prompted me to write about this event was how Jesus prefaced his lesson. John tells us:

3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

It struck me that the reason Jesus was willing to act and be viewed as a lowly servant was because he knew who he was. Not only was he equal with God, what his enemies accused him of, he was God! And here he is doing something only a servant or slave would do. Jesus was giving us a glimpse into what it means to bring the kingdom of God or heaven into this fallen world. I will explore that more below. The point isn’t washing feet, although in the ancient world serving others may have taken that form, but serving others in general, and why we can do it. It is not just because we saw Jesus do it as our example—it’s much deeper than that.

This passage has profound theological meaning if we understand the radical nature of the gospel, what it says about us, and what it means for us. The gospel first transforms our heart from God-hating stone to God-loving flesh. Then by the power of the Holy Spirit transforms us so we can in turn transform our world. Jesus accomplished redemption for his people and the world, and at Pentecost the Holy Spirit began to apply it. The beginning of redemption starts in Genesis 3. Because of the fall, the serpent, Satan, the devil, will strike the heel of the woman’s seed (Christ and his church, his people), but Christ will strike the serpent’s head where real damage can take place. As we see the history of redemption wind its way through the Bible, we begin to understand the utterly tragic nature of sin, and the horrific consequences it leaves in its wake. We are sinners, guilty, justifiably condemned sinners. We are by nature enemies of God, in fact God haters. He died for us, so we can and must die for others—as I said, radical. But as Jesus said, only in dying to ourselves for him will we find true life.

How the Gospel Helps us Serve Others
What has this to do with serving others? Until we know that we are truly dreadful sinners, and that there is nothing good in us worthy of God’s acceptance, will we be able to love others in our service to them. But first we must understand who we are in Christ as saved sinners. Probably the most important and consequential verse in my Christian life relates directly to this discussion, and I referenced it above. It is in the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians where he is discussing the foolishness of the cross and the wisdom of God. Toward the end he says:

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. 

The Him is God, and it is He that chooses us and puts us “in Christ Jesus.” It is God’s wisdom that in His presence He sees us as if we are Christ himself, positionally, justified (righteousness), and becoming in obedience more like Christ (sanctification). The reason this can all happen is because He purchased us in Christ to be forever HIs (redemption). The operative word in all this is obedience. What makes the gospel dynamic is obedience to the greatest commandment, love, which is the fulfillment of the law. As Jesus says, you will know the tree by its fruit. In this case, serving others is not an option, but done in obedience to God, and it is only in obedience to God that he can bless us. Notice how Jesus ends his object lesson: If you follow his example, you will be blessed. The lesson is a key that unlocks the door for Christians to bring the kingdom of God into this fallen world.

Serving Others Changes the World
I am convinced most Christians don’t understand the implications of the Lord’s prayer for the world. We tend to see the spiritual stuff for the church, and the fallen world beyond the scope of redemption, outside of God’s kingdom. I believe that is exactly wrong, but it was something I believed for over four decades of my Christian life. Now I see the entire world, literally, as the object of God’s saving work, not just individuals and their religious lives. The reason Jesus came to earth wasn’t just to save people’s souls, but through the process of transforming them he would bring his kingdom to earth as it is done in heaven, and thus transform the earth as well. That’s how radical the gospel is. When Jesus gave the charge to the eleven to make disciples of all nations, he was serious. And God the Father granted him “all authority in heaven and on earth” to accomplish specifically that. We are not doing this ourselves, brothers and sisters, God in Christ is doing it through us!

That means though the world is fallen, it is not irreparably so. Damaged and broken, it is not beyond repair. The darkness, the sin, the suffering are real, but not the end of the story. The kingdom comes slowly, often imperceptibly, like a mustard seed and leaven, but inevitably because Christ’s righteousness is more powerful than Adam’s sin. The victory of the cross and resurrection is a this world victory first, and only then a next world one. The ultimate transformation will take place when Christ returns, defeats death, and brings heaven down to earth to complete the transformation of his creation. I could write a book on this, and God willing I will, but one passage shows definitively that Christ’s reign and kingdom is not limited to a spiritual other worldly kingdom. In Ephesians 1:15-23, Paul is describing God’s “incomparably great power for us who believe.” This power is so great there is nothing to which it can be compared. I will quote a portion of verse 19 in Greek, the transliteration, and the modern English translation, because only in Greek can the incomparable be conveyed so well:

καὶ τί τὸ ὑπερβάλλον μέγεθος τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ εἰς ἡμᾶς τοὺς πιστεύοντας

Kai ti to hyperballon megethos tēs dynameōs autou eis hēmas tous pisteuontas

And what is the surpassing greatness of the power of Him toward us those believing

You’ll probably notice three English words we are familiar with that come from the three Greek words in the sentence: hyperbole, mega, and dynamite. The power, the dynamite of what God accomplished in Christ’s resurrection is hyperbolically mega. Words fail in conveying such power, but that’s as close as you’re going to get. Then Paul tells us what this power did:

Which he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 

God’s incomparable power did two things: raise Christ and seat him at his right hand, the position of ultimate power and authority in the universe. We rarely mention that it is both of these, or that the present age comes first in Paul’s thinking. And the word Paul uses for exerted is where we get our word energy, in Greek, energeó-ἐνεργέω. This exertion, this energy is done by the same God who created everything out of nothing. That, my friends, is power! It is this same power that transforms us and our world, not us! And what does it take to turn on this energy through us? Washing feet!

Serving others is the magic that makes gospel love flow and compels sinful darkness to flee, and there are infinite numbers of opportunities to serve others every day of our lives. What keeps us from doing this? Augustine and Luther rightly said it is homo incurvatus in se, or sinful man being curved in on himself. Sinful us thinks what we want, what we think, what we do, what we have, what we accomplish, and just plain old we is more important than others. If we really believed others were more important than us, I suggest we would treat them not better than we would treat ourselves, but treat them as we would want to be treated. It’s called the golden rule, and Christ’s resurrection and ascension power is what enables us to do it. Give it a try and you’ll see how it can change your world.

 

 

Strunk and White: God Revealed in Words

Strunk and White: God Revealed in Words

Dec 14, 2023 | Culture

It’s amazing how easy it is for us to not see God in everything. The reason is because secularization has squeezed the divine out of life. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor describes our secular age as disenchanted, or the loss of the transcendent, what is over and above and beyond this material world. Life in the secular age becomes entirely horizontal. All that matters to secular man is the immanent, what he can see and hear and taste and touch. Described differently, we tend to see life as atoms and events colliding willy nilly, sometimes benefiting us, most times annoying and often harming us. These purposeless (secular) circumstances mostly get in our way and keep us from getting what we want. This focus on the here and the now, the mundane, the every day, primarily focused on us, strips the wonder we should have in the magical mystery tour that is life. And unlike with the Beatles, we don’t need a reservation. The magic is laid out on a platter for us every day right before our eyes. We merely have to break through the secular and learn how to see the divine. As the Apostle Paul says, it is everywhere (Rom. 1):

20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so they are without excuse.

The “they” Paul is referring to are those “who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” In other words, they have no incentive to see God’s invisible qualities in the visible because they prefer their sin. They like being their own god, thank you very much.  We are all given to this temptation, but we can learn to see God’s creation in the material world, His “eternal power and divine nature,” thus see God in everything. We can start the process learning from the ancient pagan Greeks, Plato and Aristotle, who said philosophy, or the love of wisdom, begins in wonder. We have to be taught to wonder, to learn how not to be secular, which is a challenge in a secular age. But we can be encouraged knowing it gets easier, that it is matter of obedience. If we want to please God and be blessed by him, we will see his invisible qualities in everything.

How Not to Be Secular
How exactly do we do this? First, we must realize how secularism blinds us to the truth of God, and in all the ways it happens. It’s rarely a brick in the face; the subtle ways we are programmed into secularism are often difficult to spot. As we develop our skills and a wary eye, in due course we will see the secular “agenda” everywhere. I put the quotation marks around agenda because this is not planned by a cabal of nefarious God haters to suck us into their illusions of a God-less universe. Rather, it is simply people’s secular worldview expressed culturally in all they do, be it in their art, or scholarship, or news, or how they see and do law and government, architecture, everything. An obviously not obvious example is TV and movies. Again, this is mostly subtle by treating God as persona non grata, i.e., a person who is unacceptable, unwelcome, or ignored, mostly ignored. God haters don’t sell well to Americans, but an invisible God doesn’t have to be sold.

Any show or movie that isn’t obviously Christian could be given as an example. One we recently watched and enjoyed very much was a documentary series on Netflix about British soccer star David Beckam. The only time the divine makes a showing is when Beckam utters the name and title Jesus Christ in frustration, and the word God makes an appearance or two. Like most art through film, there is no anti-God animas—He’s simply irrelevant. I realized some years ago as I became aware of the insidious nature of secularism that the irrelevant God is probably the most powerful weapon against faith (i.e., trust) in God in the modern world. This secular mindset can easily develop in us if we’re not careful, and a certain kind of God unawareness becomes how we start viewing the world. Almost in a moment, a world of a missing God seems more plausible than one with an omnipresent God.

The Power of Plausibility Structures
I learned about this sociological concept a long time ago, but was reintroduced to its power when I wrote my first book, The Persuasive Christian Parent. Put simply, societies develop the mechanisms (i.e., structures like a building we live in) that make certain things seem true and other things not true. Whether they are true or not isn’t the point, only if they seem true, or seem plausible, to us. This concept is why Taylor wrote his book with the title, A Secular Age. In the Western world today, secularism is the dominant, and often oppressive, plausibility structure, and it appears to many people Fort Knox strong. For example, most people who do not think critically or carefully about things, and from a very specifically intentional Christian worldview (i.e., seeing God in everything) will look at a show like the Beckham documentary and never ask, “Where is God?” God is just as irrelevant to their lives as he is to the Beckham’s.

The easiest way to grasp this concept is to think of it in regard to a movie or TV show or a novel. If they are done well, the story will grip you with its realness, its verisimilitude. You won’t be distracted knowing there is a camera following the character, and likely dozens of people in the room doing the work to make the scene seem plausible. If you yourself were in the room watching it being shot, it would appear to you exactly like what it is, one scene being shot in a movie or TV show. If you’re reading a good novel you won’t think about the person who wrote it making this all up; it will have the plausibility structure to move you; it will seem real. This brings me to the reason I wrote this post.

The Elements of Style and The Revelation of God
I recently read a book called, The Elements of Style. For that past eight years I’ve been on a journey to become a “writer.” Like everything else in my life, I was not naturally good at it, and for a while insecure and doubtful I could master the skills necessary to communicate clearly through written words. I have improved considerably, I think, and continue my journey to improve my craft daily. I had read Elements years ago and thought a re-read of this classic was in order. I was pleasantly surprised I’ve adopted many of the rules laid out as necessary for effective writing, but it was the last chapter on the intangible thing called style that made me shout out, God! I’ve always known words are spiritually profound because our Savior is called the Word, or logos-λόγος in Greek. Also, God created the heavens and the earth using words; God said, and it was. That is power! And we are made in God’s image, so our words have power as well, although in our case for good and ill. Words are primarily and ultimately spiritual in nature, and in some sense communicate He who is the Word.

As I read the following passage introducing the concept of style, I could not help thinking of Romans 1, and God’s invisible qualities:

Here we leave solid ground. Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind? Who knows why certain notes in music are capable of stirring the listener deeply, though the same notes slightly rearranged are impotent? These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story, thinly disguised. There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to write clearly, no key that unlocks the door, no inflexible rule by which writers may shape their course. Writers will often find themselves steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.

What the author is trying to describe can only be known when we see or hear it. It is magic, or more accurately, the divine, be it in music or words. What these do to us goes beyond sound waves and ink on a page, and he gives a wonderfully simple example. In the darkest days of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Paine penned these immortal words to start a series of essays called, The American Crisis:

These are the times that try men’s souls.

He then gives the same or similar words rearranged to show how it is only these eight simple words arranged exactly this way that exhibit the “high mysteries” of language:

  • Times like these try men’s souls.
  • How trying it is to live in these times!
  • These are trying times for men’s souls.
  • Soulwise, these are trying times.

These are all grammatically correct and the meaning is clear and the same as Paine’s, but they would have been “marked for oblivion” the moment they were written. We can all see the power and superiority of Paine’s version, but none of us could say why exactly it has that quality. We just know that it does, that it moves us, and says something profound we cannot forget.

Music is the same way. I often think of this with my favorite bands and artists of the ‘60s and ‘70s. What was it, for example, about the four young men who made up the Beatles that made their music so magical to so many millions of people all over the world? Listening to their catalog it seemed almost impossible for them to make a bad song. For me, Led Zeppelin was the same. The 1970s version of Stevie Wonder as well. Or take Frank Sinatra. He could sing a song and bring out the magic in the notes and words, while other singers of the same song make me yawn. Nat King Cole had that magic too. Everyone’s taste is different, but this extends beyond taste. I’ll never forget at a function my wife and I attended in the 1990s where I experienced this. I heard a group perform the song Crazy by Patsy Cline, and even though the music wasn’t my “style,” I couldn’t get over how heavy the song was. It had that undefinable magic, and we became Patsy Cline fans instantly. The same happened for me when I learned about singer-songwriter Martin Sexton and his album, The American. In fact, when I first played the CD for my family, my daughter said, “Dad, this is not your kind of music.” I knew there was magic in a bottle in that album, and my family soon agreed with me.

The question is what explains the magic. What is it that gives one combination of notes or words appealing and enduring staying power? That thing we can’t really explain or put our finger on, but everyone knows it when they see or hear it. The other question is does it even require an explanation. The unequivocal answer is that it compels us to ask the question because we know that something like this doesn’t explain itself, any more than does the beauty of a sunset or full moon. Every work of art speaks to the nature of the one who created or performs it, and creation is God’s canvas.

One of my favorite apologetics concepts gets us to the answer. It is worth remembering because it will help you see God in everything: Explanatory power. It simply means what is the best, most plausible, reasonable, rational explanation for something. That which explains something better than any alternative has explanatory power, and we must always consider the alternative. When I read the pages explaining the mystery of style, I got chills because I was clearly seeing “God’s eternal power and divine nature.” I knew the only explanation for it is God, and He became even more real for me in that moment. His fingerprints are powerfully obvious in every square inch of reality for those with eyes to see. The alternative is atheistic materialism, which explains absolutely nothing as I argued in a recent post. We all know matter plus time plus chance cannot explain the “high mysteries” and the magic. We are encountering something deep, something profound, which are “God’s invisible qualities.”

 

 

 

 

 

Does God Do Miracles Today? He Most Certainly Does!

Does God Do Miracles Today? He Most Certainly Does!

Dec 11, 2023 | The Gospel

That’s kind of a trick question because the moment you see or hear the word miracles you think of, well, miracles! You know, the stuff Jesus did in the gospels and the Apostles in Acts, mostly having to do with physical healing. This post, however, is not about those kind of miracles. I have something much more profound in mind. Do I have your curiosity yet? Well, keep reading.

The reason for this post, and it’s been brewing for a while, is a conversation I had earlier this year with some family members. They asked me if I believed God still did miracles today, and so the discussion went down the physical healing rabbit hole. In one way it’s a silly question. If God is God, then of course he can and does heal, and he does things out of the ordinary from what would happen in the regular course of events. I don’t remember exactly the way the conversation went, but any talk of miracles of a physical kind must start with a biblical, redemptive-historical perspective.

The Nature and Purpose of Biblical Miracles
Biblical miracles are not magic. Their purpose is never to display raw power but to move forward God’s redemptive purposes in history. That’s why they are so rare in biblical history, which might surprise those who’ve never read the Bible. Miracles cluster around three significant redemptive periods, each affirming the message that God works in history to save His people. The first is the Exodus, and the events surrounding it. Another six or seven hundred years would pass before miracles occur again in Israel with the rise of the first prophets, Elijah and Elisha in the 9th century BC. One might think the prophets who follow performed miracles as well, but that was not the case. Even John the Baptist, the great forerunner of the Messiah who is compared to Elijah, did not perform miracles. It seems he would be the perfect person to utilize miracles to support his message, and an invented John the Baptist likely would have, but what we read in the gospels is real history of the real Baptist—no miracles. The third cluster of miracles would surround the greatest miracle worker in biblical history, Jesus of Nazareth, and his first followers.

There was nothing in Israel’s history close to the voluminous miracles performed by Jesus and the Apostles, so we are compelled to ask why. Remember that no Jew in the first century expected anything but a super-human Messiah, but human, nonetheless. They were looking for a king like David to overthrow their latest oppressors, the Romans. Their self-conception going back to the Exodus was that Jews are not slaves or servants of any earthly power, and the indignity of their Roman conquerors was unbearable. They had no choice but to suffer, until, that is, the long-awaited Messiah came to liberate them. They weren’t interested in some itinerant Jewish preacher healing people. As popular as that made Jesus in a time before the healing arts and knowledge of our day, it wasn’t enough to prove he who he said he was. Yet, ironically, it was the miracles that gave him credibility, and most importantly authority. The latter word is critical for a discussion of miracles. We’re not discussing whether God can perform miracles or not. That is not relevant to the discussion because we all know that that’s part of God’s job description. The question given miracles were so rare in redemptive history is, what were they for, what was their purpose, and do miracles today have the same purpose.

The ultimate miracle, Jesus coming back to life after being brutally tortured and killed on a Roman cross, was what earned him the ultimate authority in the universe. He himself tells us so in the Great Commission, that “all authority in heaven and earth” had been given to him. He ascended to sit at the right hand of God to exercise that authority, but he gave that authority in his name and power to the Apostles and prophets to build the foundation of the church. As Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

The purpose of the miracles was to establish the foundation, and once it was established there was no need to continue the miracles. After the Apostles died there is no record of individuals performing such miracles in the church in the following centuries. That miracles were unique to the Apostles is also clear from reading through Acts and seeing specifically how God used Peter and Paul’s miracles to give authority to the messengers and the message. Once that authority was inscripturated there was no longer a need for specific individuals to display God’s healing power in such a way.

The purpose of this post, however, isn’t to fully argue this case but to explore miracles far greater than physical healing.

Love is the Drug I’m Thinking Of
I hope that title makes you laugh because you can hear the song in your mind as soon as you read it. That most definitely is not the love I’m thinking of. The greatest miracle, and to me one that proves without a doubt God exists, is when two sinners love one another. That is miraculous! One definition of a miracle is doing the impossible, and there is nothing more impossible than when a self-centered sinner loves another self-centered sinner. But what exactly makes this love so seemingly impossible? Well, that depends on what we mean by love.

The love of God in Christ has nothing to do with what our secular world means by love because that love is driven by feelings, and biblical love is not. Worldly love is easy because it is oriented to the fulfillment of self, while biblical love is self-sacrificial. And to add biblical insult to injury, biblical love is a command and we love others in obedience to God like it or not. As Christians we don’t have a choice. In Romans 13 , Paul says it is a debt we owe, and that to God. We can see the difference in the Greek word most often used for love in the New Testament, agape-ἀγάπη, or love which centers in moral preference. That simply means right action for the good of the other. Because it is fundamentally a choice, biblical love is a verb, a word that expresses an action, an occurrence, or a state of being. The feeling is ultimately irrelevant. In fact, true love happens when we don’t feel like it and don’t want to do it. I have a couple stories from my past about how I learned that the hard way.

When I was in college I was involved in a Christian campus ministry. One Saturday we went to a swap meet to try to sell stuff and share the gospel. When I was ready to go back to school at the end of the day, the head of the ministry, an older guy probably in his thirties at the time, said he wanted to go back with me. I didn’t realize he had an ulterior motive—my sanctification. Mike was a guy who could be blunt and had eyes that looked right through you. He could be intimidating. Pulling no punches he comes right out and says, “You’re not a very nice person to be around. You always want people to think like you, and you make them feel bad if they don’t.” And words so related. I was devastated. That night back in the dorm I experienced what is called a dark night of the soul. I told God not only can I not love people; I also don’t want to! At that moment this Christianity thing felt impossible, and I didn’t think I could do it. Thankfully, that was a Saturday, and the next morning I went to church. Whether it was in the sermon or a verse I read, God said something along the lines of, Of course, you can’t do it, but I can do it through you! I remember an instant change from despair to hope.

The next lesson came after I’d graduated from seminary and was working at a small Christian liberal arts college in their communications department. I was 28 at the time, and worked with a young lady who was terribly annoying. At some point I started complaining to God, well, it was more like whining. I’d had several jobs previously where I worked with women who were annoying, and I asked God why yet again I have to work with another person who is so annoying. As the saying goes, if you don’t want to know, don’t ask. And I could swear I heard a voice say out loud, “To teach you how to love her, ya moron!” Well, maybe not the last part, but it would have been fitting. Of course that is what love is for. It doesn’t have much value when we love people who are easy to love. I’m not sure those people exist, but you get the idea.

I’ve used this story many times over the years telling friends and family what they don’t want to hear. Not one ever said, thank you for sharing that. I can’t wait to love! One especially precious moment happened when I told this to a young family member as he was dealing with another difficult relative. He was lying on the floor on his back, and he started shaking his head saying over and over, no, no, no! Basically just like me, I don’t want to! Well, I told him, if you’re a follower of Christ you don’t have a choice. It is important to understand, though, that this kind of divine love is not demeaning; we don’t become doormats, but it allows us to have relationships that flourish in a way they never could when self is the central focus of our lives. It is impossible love made possible, and it transforms lives wherever it goes.

The Radical Death-Life in Christ
The main reason I wrote this post now was because of recently reading Romans 8. Paul explains how there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life has set us free from the law of sin and death. He goes on to explain what it means to share in Christ’s death to sin because we no longer live according to the flesh but to the Spirit. Here is how this works:

5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.

In the past I related passages like this to morality, but never connected it to love. If you think about it, though, what our flesh desires, the sin principle that lives in us, desires our self-fulfillment. It’s all about me! That is why it always leads to death, and not life and peace. When Jesus commanded us to love our enemies, he showed us what that meant by dying for we who were his enemies. He also said following him in his example would be equally as difficult:

23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

I want to suggest for your consideration that this has far more to do with loving other sinners than it has to do with being a good moral person, as important as that is. Sin is ultimately relational, first with God, then us, then others.  In Romans 12:1 Paul tells us because of God’s mercy to us, we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, which is holy and pleasing to God. And he adds something amazing. Doing this is our reasonable, rational, logical service or worship of God. It makes total sense logically in light of everything He has done for us in Christ. We are then compelled to love others. And when you read verse 2 you will see he will tell us how we are to do it, even if much of the time we’re not quite sure. Paul tells us, though, we can “test and approve” what that is.

So, when we interact with someone who absolutely drives us up the wall, that is when the loving rubber meets the road. It applies to the mildly annoying people as well. That’s when we must take up our cross die to our flesh and ask ourselves, or better the Lord, how in the world do I love this person! And also repent that we just don’t want to. Then get on with it. Just remember it will not be easy. That is how you know it is true love.

 

Notable Quotation-J. Gresham Machen

Notable Quotation-J. Gresham Machen

Dec 9, 2023 | Notable Quotations

We have provided technical education (but) . . . . is also the moral interests of mankind; and without cultivation of these moral interests a technically trained man is only given more power to do harm. By this purely secular, non-moral, and non-religious training we produce not a real human being but a horrible Frankenstein.

 —J. Gresham Machen, Education, Christianity, and the State

 Twenty years later after an Austrian Frankenstein started a global conflagration, C.S. Lewis would call them men without chests, and the end result, The Abolution of Man. After a hundred years of progressive secular education our colleges and universities are filled with these Frankensteins today.

 

Calvin and the Three Uses of the Law

Calvin and the Three Uses of the Law

Dec 7, 2023 | Theology, Uncategorized

In the last year I’ve come into a new understanding and appreciation of God’s law, and it’s been a thrilling journey. Up until August of last year when I had what I call an eschatological awakening, I looked at God’s law much the way almost all Evangelical Christians do. It was kind of an Old Testament thing, whereas Jesus came in a sense to supersede the law so we would no longer be condemned by not fulfilling it. It’s not that I thought God’s law was irrelevant, but I didn’t think of it much at all. It did its job bringing me to Christ, and now I live by grace and the Holy Spirit guided by God’s word. This, however, is only one aspect or use of the law as I’ll explore below. For example, one passage among many that gave me this impression is in Romans 3. Paul seems to imply God’s law is no longer necessary, although I would never have said that:

21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

Reformed theology had given me an appreciation of God’s law. I knew it reflected God’s character, who he is, and it is as perfect as he is. I’d read Psalm 119 many times in my Christian life, the longest chapter in the Bible, and every verse but two mentions some variation of the greatness of God’s law. I believed it all, but nonetheless, God’s law was never a focus for me. Now it is—all the time.

I was prompted to write this because I recently went to the Baptist church my son attended (he’s since gotten married and now lives across the state), and the pastor made a statement that made me cringe. He said, “The Ten Commandments are not your friend.” I screamed out in my mind, you are wrong! He then went on to contrast the law with being under grace, as if they are mutually exclusive. He doesn’t seem to realize that God’s law has more than the one use of condemning sinners and driving them to Christ. We might think this is some esoteric theological debate like scholastic theologians in the Middle Ages arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but for me it changed my perspective on everything. It was like watching food coloring drop into a glass of water—soon it changed the color of everything.

Calvin and The Three Uses of The Law
Not long ago I learned this idea came from John Calvin, and I recently came across his explanation of it in the preface to his commentary on the book of Isaiah:

Now, the law consists of chiefly three parts: first, the doctrine of life; secondly threatening and promises; thirdly, the covenant of grace, which, being founded on Christ, contains within itself all the special promises.

The three are numbered differently and described in various ways, which I will do below, but all three are relevant for all time until Christ returns. Here is how Calvin describes the perpetual relevance of God’s law:

To make this matter still more clear, we must go a little farther back, to the law itself, which the Lord prescribed as a perpetual rule for the Church, to be always in the hands of men, and to be observed in every succeeding age.

So contrary to the pastor mentioned above, the Ten Commandments (the law) is indeed our friend, and our guide for life. We’ll go through each use and see what the implications are for us and our world.

Instead of the narrow view I used to have, I now realized Christ’s mission affects not only how we live, but how we see the church’s mission in this fallen world. Negatively, the purpose of the gospel is not only to go to heaven when we die and achieve personal holiness. That is an entirely too constricted understanding of the Christian faith, as if it’s implications were solely personal. Not only are the implications societal, impacting every area of life in which people interact, but that is the purpose for which Jesus came when he accomplished redemption. He came to save and transform the entire world, not just us! Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” for a reason. He gave the Apostles the Great Commission to disciple the nations because he expected that to get done. An accurate understanding of God’s law will help us to obediently contribute to Christ’s mission.

The Three Uses of The Law Distinguished
Since they come in no particular order, let’s start with the use we’re most familiar with:

1. The Law Condemns Us – One of the purposes of the law is to condemn sinners. Some have called this the law as a mirror because when we see ourselves in it, it is not a pretty sight. In fact, the closer and longer we gaze into this mirror, the worse we look. Most of us don’t feel so bad about ourselves when we compare ourselves to other sinners, and we often feel quite superior to those wretches. When we look at God’s perfect law, by contrast, we can’t feel superior to anyone. That’s the point. Paul’s two great letters regarding the essence of salvation, Romans and Galatians, have over 50 and almost 30 references to the law in them, and most are in reference to this first use. The law is meant to show us our inadequacy, and highlight our need for a Savior who fulfilled the law in our place. The danger, as Paul indicates more than once, is thinking that if we obey the law we will gain acceptance before God, that the law becomes a means to save ourselves. I won’t spend anymore time on this use because it’s one all Evangelical Christians are familiar with. Unfortunately, we tend to think it’s the only use.

2. The Law Restrains Evil – This is the civil use of the law necessary for civilizations to exist, and where I will spend the most time because it’s the most contentious. The law in the civil realm has no power to make bad people good, but keeps them from fulfilling their evil desires on innocent people. This use is where we Reformed types get into a bit of a tussle. It gets bloody sometimes, and I’m in the distinctly minority position, for now (that’s called positive thinkin’!). Those who are not Reformed tend to think we are absolutely nuts, even dangerous.

Natural Law/Common Grace verses God’s Revealed Law-Word
The primary distinction in our understanding of the law comes between Old Testament Israel and the New Covenant Church. Most Christians believe that God’s civil law to Isarel was abrogated when Israel ceased to exist and Jesus ushered in a new kingdom. I do not believe that because God’s law and the gospel are not in any way at odds. It is always and everywhere for all time a reflection of His being, and He calls all to obedience to it if they are to experience His blessing and true human flourishing. If they don’t, the results will always be bad. On societal law we keep the badness to a minimum through the common law, which developed over a thousand years going back to King Alfred the Great of England in the 9th century. King Alfred based his law on the Ten Commandments.

Most Christians and conservatives, by contrast, believe we can have a basically secular society, and natural law or common grace is enough to keep society’s dark impulses in check. This doesn’t work because God’s revelation, and thus the knowledge of how fallen human beings are to live in harmony with other sinners, is not limited to creation. God has also revealed His will in his word, the Bible, and in Christ. Jesus commanded discipling the nations to include, “teaching them to obey everything” he commanded them. This means a nation if it is to be obedient to God and experience his blessings, it must be affirmingly a Christian nation. America was founded as a Christian nation, and that is how Americans saw themselves until well into the 20th century. The Supreme Court affirmed as much in 1892 in a case providentially titled, Church of the Holy Trinity v. The United States:

These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.

Today, most Christians, let alone non-Christians, would accuse me of trying to make America into a theocracy, apparently a scary proposition. In their minds when they see or use that word, they don’t see what it means, a society ruled by God, but the Christendom of Medieval Roman Catholicism and the Spanish Inquisition, or the Salem witch-trials, or in a modern fictional horror story, The Handmaiden’s Tale. In other words theocracy equals tyranny. R.J. Rushdoony counters these spurious claims:

Theocracy is falsely assumed to be a take-over of government, imposing biblical law on an unwilling society. This presupposes statism which is the opposite of theocracy. Because modern people only understand power as government, they assume that’s what we want.

Those who misunderstand theocracy think secularism is the only means to liberty, except the evidence doesn’t back that up. All we need is to open our eyes. Secular societies inevitably lead to tyranny exactly because of what Rushdoony said. Modern people think government is sovereign, and the individual and the family is limited. Christianity and God’s law, by contrast, sees government as limited, and the individual and family as sovereign. We either bow down to power, or we bow down to Christ. There are no other options on a societal level.

The key words Rushdoony uses are “imposing” and “unwilling.” All secularists, be they religious or not, believe if we bring Christianity and God’s law into the public square, we will be “imposing” our faith and it’s moral values on others. Believing this, skeptics of an ignorant type make the statement, “You can’t legislate morality,” which is like saying, you can’t cook food; food is what you cook, as morality is what you legislate. The only issue is whose morality, and from whence it comes. As we see clearly, the secular leftist state is tyrannically imposing its morality, the latest example being transgenderism enforced by the state. Talk about “imposing” law on an “unwilling” society! Few people in Western societies are secular progressive absolutist woke leftists who believe sex is merely a social construct changeable at will, yet the woke have no problem imposing their policies on an unwilling society. That’s the way it works—no neutrality, God’s law, or man’s.

The difference is God’s law is the “law of liberty” (James 1:25, 2:12). When Jesus proclaimed “liberty to the captives” in Luke 4:18 quoting Isaiah 61:1, he wasn’t proclaiming liberty from the law of God, but the liberty coming from obedience to it. As the Apostle Paul states in I Timothy 1, “the law is good if used properly,” and it “conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God.” It will be either God’s law or the will to power of paganism. Liberty was established in Christian Western civilization because Christians affirmed God’s laws as normative for the nations. It’s either God and liberty, or secularism and tyranny or anarchy, the logical conclusion of man’s law without God.

Secularism is a jealous god, and it will have no other gods before it which is why a proper understanding of theocracy is so important. Christians must understand something the Christians of the first three centuries of the church understood all too well: “Jesus Christ is Lord” is a political statement. If they refused to confess Caesar as Lord they were seen by the Roman state as a threat to its absolute power. This is exactly where we are in the twenty-first century West. It is Jesus as Lord, or the state as Lord. My goal is to persuade Christians to simply be open to the concept of the law of God in Christ as the only Christian option against secular totalitarianism.

3. The Law is our Moral Guide – Finally, because we are saved by grace doesn’t mean we become antinomians, or against law. We do not use our liberty in Christ, as Paul argues in Romans 6, to go against God’s law, i.e., sin; the reality is exactly the opposite. When our hearts are transformed from spiritual stone to flesh ( Ezk. 36:26), we go from being God’s enemies (Rom. 5:10, Col. 1:21), his implacable foes, to his beloved children. The transformation includes our affections. We now want to obey and please him, and are distressed when we don’t. His law is our delight, holiness our aspiration, and our chief desire in life is to please Him. What ties God’s law together is the beautiful bow of love, as Jesus taught us, the greatest commandment.