What Does It Mean to Baptize Nations?

What Does It Mean to Baptize Nations?

Mar 11, 2026 | The Gospel

That’s a good question! At first I didn’t think so. I recently put up a post about Sphere Sovereignty, and someone responded on Twitter asking how nations are baptized. I gave a bit of a snarky answer. Then thinking about it I realized it’s actually a great question, and I apologized to the commentor for my snark. What am I taking about? It’s a passage in Matthew 28 every Evangelical Christian is familiar with, what we’ve come to call the Great Commission:

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

For most of my Christian life, and that’s not a few years, I assumed like most Christians that when Jesus said to disciple nations he meant to disciple individuals in those nations. It would have never occurred to me that a nation as a nation, or nation qua nation as the scholars would put it, could be discipled. We don’t disciple America, Germany, or Lithuania, we disciple Mary, Bob, and Joe. Then a few years back I had an eschatological awakening, a red pill regarding how I think about “end times,” and it affected how I see the entire scope of redemptive history, past, present, and future. Now I realize discipling entire nations is exactly what Jesus had in mind, in addition to individuals within those nations. According to Matthew, he used the word that in Greek means nations, not individuals. Christians out not to try to explain that away, but rather try to figure out what Jesus meant, and then how to do it.

One way to do this is to see nations as corporate entities. Jesus speaks of “his church” which means both the individuals in it, and his church “body” corporately. Nations are made up of individuals, of course, but they also have corporate identities. The Lord repeatedly declares judgments or blessings on nations, and even towns like Jesus does in the gospels, which would affect every person in those nations even if each individual is not personally guilty or worthy of blessing.  So merely equating nations with individuals doesn’t work. It took my awakening about the study of the end of things to make me realize when Jesus said nations and not individuals he really meant nations.

Speaking of eschatology, the word means the study of end things, and we think that’s what it’s about, what happens at the end of history, the end of time. It is about that, but it’s much more about bringing the end into the present, and how we see the end influencing how we read history. I love the phrase a uses for this: “inaugurated eschatology.” To inaugurate means “to make a formal beginning of; initiate; commence; begin.” What Jesus accomplished in his first mission to earth, redemption accomplished, was then after his ascension applied to his church and this world at Pentecost.

In other words, eschatology is a comprehensive worldview that affects how we see everything. Other than that, it’s not really important. That’s a bit of sarcasm for you who tend to the literal. It’s massively important, although most don’t realize it. I didn’t for most of my Christian life; I was an eschatological agnostic. I didn’t believe how we viewed the end mattered at all, one way or the other. Eschatology was something people argued and speculated about, and I had no interest in it. Then the red pill, postmillennialism, dropped out of the sky and crashed my eschatological indifference into a million little pieces, and down the rabbit hole I wen              t!

I learned eschatology isn’t really about “end times” at all. That phrase I always put in quotes comes out of dispensationalism, a broadly Pietistic perspective that sees this world as evil, and the goal of the Christian life as getting away from it as much as one can, and also becoming more “spiritual” and less worldly in the process. I’m all for the latter, but eschatology is about bringing Christ’s fulfilled mission, how eventually everything will be in God’s kingdom, to earth. That means, according to Jesus, teaching them, the nations, “to observe all that” he had commanded. That doesn’t just mean the Sermon on the Mount, or other teaching we find in the gospels, but the entire word of God, all of it. Which brings us back to the question about baptizing nations and what that means.

Teaching Nations All that Jesus Commanded
When we ask a question about what something means, it’s often good to start with what it doesn’t mean. Depending on your baptistic convictions, Jesus wasn’t telling us to either sprinkle water over an entire country, or cover the entire nation in water. I think we can look at this both from a Presbyterian and Baptist perspective. For the former, baptism is a sign and seal of the covenant, of God’s promise to His people to save them from their sins (Matt. 2:21). In other words, baptism is a sacrament primarily about God’s faithfulness to which we are responding. For Baptists, it’s primarily about our confession of faith, a sign proclaiming to the world our trust in Christ as our savior. Let’s see how we can apply these to nations.

Both kinds of baptism require a confession, although Presbyterians believe the covenant community includes infants and children whose parents act as covenantal representatives for their children. They primarily confess God’s covenant faithfulness, while Baptists confess their faith in God’s saving work in Christ. Nations cannot be sprinkled or immersed in water, but the people in those nations can be, and the primary ethos of those nations, both culturally and in their governance, can confess God’s covenant faithfulness, and Christ as Savior and Lord. Even in complete heresy now, Great Britian confessed exactly these things when King Charles was coronated in 2023. The British Isles have been confessedly Christian for over a thousand years until the god of secularism seduced them after World War II. Now it’s just words, traditions.

So nations are baptized when the nation, it’s worldview and value system, reflects Christianity as the aspirational guiding system of the country. America was seen by its people for most of its history as a baptized confessionally Christian nation, even if the founders did not expressly state that in our founding document, the Constitution; they should have. Unfortunately, the secular strain of the Enlightenment had infected the thinking of many of the founders, and we got almost as good as it could have been. Of course, a baptized Christian nation must have a lot of baptized Christians, although it does not have to be a majority. I’ll explain why in a moment, but this quote from a book I’m currently reading, The Cousin’s War by Kevin Phillips, tells us just how religious, i.e., Christian, the colonies were in the run-up to the Revolution:

More material was printed in mid-eighteenth-century America about religion than about political science, history, and law combined, and even as the Revolution approached, devotional books outnumbered any single group.

Robert Curry in his book, Common Sense Nation says, “the Great Awakening prepared the way for the American Revolution in too many ways to be counted.” America was a Christian nation because it had many Christians who gook their faith seriously. And it wasn’t just laymen. I have a book called, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730-1805, and it clocks in at 1596 pages! Pietism had yet to fully infect American Christianity as it would in the later 19th and 20th century, and Christians from every walk of life, including church leaders, believed their faith applied to every square inch of reality, including how they were governed. This affected not only Christians, but nominal Christians and those who didn’t embrace the Christian faith at all.

The Christian Plausibility Structure of a Nation
I used the word ethos above, that a society to be Christian, baptized as Christian, needs to have a Christian ethos. The technical definition of that word is, “the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period.” The ethos informs the basic plausibility framework or structure of a nation. For something to be plausible it must be believable, credible, and the plausibility structure of a nation is that ethos that makes things seem a certain way, or just the way things are. We currently live in a secular nation with a secular ethos and plausibility structure, so most people think a woman killing her offspring is something that should be her “choice.” Sex outside of marriage is normal. Homosexuality is as natural and good as heterosexuality, and I could go on.

To be a Christian nation, that society must have a solid Christian plausibility structure. Even the non-Christians need to buy into and fully accept a Christian view of reality. Even today, without knowing it, most Christians adopt the secular plausibility structure of our dominant secular culture. How can they not! It’s everywhere, all pervasive, in every screen, coming through every message in our education, news, law, government, advertisements, all of it is indoctrinating us into the secular worldview, the secular plausibility structure that this is just the way things are, the way their supposed to be. Watch pretty much any TV show and movie, and God isn’t the enemy, for the most part, he’s just irrelevant, persona non grata, doesn’t much matter at all. Making God invisible and irrelevant to life is some of the most powerful indoctrination of all. In most screen entertainment, God or Jesus only shows up in some kind of expletive. Or take government schools, what we call “public schools,” where over 50 million kids go five days a week. They are an anti-Constitutional establishment of religion, the secular religion. The indoctrination is the same, all the more powerful because God is a non-entity.

So, what’s the answer to the suffocating secularism that inundates us at every point of our lives? How could the culture ever change and become once again a culture that affirms God and Christianity as the driving force of the nation? First, that has to be a goal and determined project of every Christian, but must start first in the pulpits and among Christian leaders who need to teach cultural transformation as a biblical imperative. When we look at the bleak cultural landscape, it might appear like we’re trying to leap over the Grand Canyon; even with a running start we’re not getting very far. But Peter tells us we have everything we need to make it to other side:

3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:3, 4).

We immediately tend to read this as if it only applies to us personally, but it applies to nations as well because Jesus told us to teach them everything he commanded, and this comes directly from his word. Even as we plan and work and execute to the best of our abilities, the transformation of the culture as is the transformation of our lives, a supernatural work of God. That’s why we pray as we work. What might that work look like?

The Culture Project
That was the name of a non-profit I started in 2008 after I realized that almost 20 years of conservative and Christian futility was because we had ignored the importance of culture in the transformation of our nation. We were so focused on politics figuring the culture would take care of itself. It most certainly will not! In the early days of my conservative political journey, which happened with Reagan’s first election, I learned about conservative activist Mortan Blackwell who started an organization called The Leadership Institute. According to Wikipedia, its mission is to “increase the number and effectiveness of conservative activists” and to “identify, train, recruit and place conservatives in politics, government, and media.” I believed we needed to do this for the culture because until we win back the culture, nothing is going to change. As the late great Andrew Breitbart said, “politics is downstream from culture.” I believe that is true, to a degree.

I’ve learned since my early realization about the importance of culture, that culture can also be downstream from politics. Law shapes culture as well as reflects it, so if Christians want a godly society, being involved in politics is not an option either. It is politicians who pass laws that we are compelled to live by, and righteous laws will only ultimately be passed by righteous people, by those who fear God and obey his word. I’ll just give one example. In the 1970s California passed the first no-fault divorce law, which communicated to Americans that getting out of a marriage is no big deal, just a choice among many other choices. Soon no-fault divorce was normal throughout America, which led to broken families, and the misery and suffering that comes along with those; lives ruined for convenience.

But without the culture long term political effectiveness, which means governance from a conservative and Christian perspective, is like trying to run on ice with tennis shoes; you won’t get very far, and the harder you run, the more futile the effort.

I had a vision of The Culture Project as a kind of recruiting and mentoring enterprise that would identify young Christians and conservatives, and help them make careers in what I called “the cultural influence professions.” These are obvious—Hollywood and entertainment, media and journalism, education, law, etc. It never went anywhere because I’m not Charlie Kirk, but it is in fact what has to happen if we’re to really push back against the relentless assault of secularism. We can’t create a Christian plausibility structure or ethos, a Christian culture, by complaining or wishing upon a star. It also won’t happen automatically if more people become Christians, as if that will somehow turn into Christian cultural influence. It requires intention, planning, and execution, or focus and a lot of work. Not to mention, determination, resilience, and grit. It won’t be easy because secularists won’t just roll over and embrace the Christian message. We’re also fighting Christian secularists and Pietists who think cultural transformation is a waste of time. To them, we just need to preach the gospel and wait for Jesus to return.

The biggest obstacle to cultural transformation is this Pietism of a personalized Christianity that doesn’t see cultural influence as a biblical imperative. Like I said, it has to start from the top, but unfortunately most church leaders are Pietists, and Christianity for them is primarily personal not societal. Over the decades I’ve heard many prayers for cultural and political change, but few calls for Christians to actually do something about that. If we’re to obey Christ’s Great Commission mandate we have to change it from being just about leading individuals to Christ and discipling them, to discipling entire nations, and teaching nations to obey everything he commanded.

The Power of the Gospel Revealed in Zechariah

The Power of the Gospel Revealed in Zechariah

Feb 25, 2026 | The Gospel

My last post was my perspective on the Catholic faith from my Protestant perspective, and how much over the years I’ve come to appreciate it and see the nature of my faith in some ways more in line with theirs. This post, however, will highlight the significant differences in our understanding of the gospel. I’m not going to compare and contrast, but this will come from my Reformed perspective, which Rome at the Council of Trent declared heretical and anathema. Catholics aren’t so hard core today, for the most part, and they believe we Protestants are Christians too. There are, however, fundamental differences between the Reformed and Protestant understanding of how God saves His people from their sins, and I believe Zechariah highlights these differences.

There are numerous passages in Zechariah that reveal the gospel in the Reformed tradition of salvation being a monergistic work of God in the soul of man. First we’ll define monergism:

The word monergism comes from a combination of the Greek terms for “one” and “energy.” Combined, they mean “a single force.” When applied to salvation, monergism implies that God is entirely, completely, and solely responsible for any person’s salvation. This view contrasts with synergism (“a combined force”). Synergism suggests salvation is accomplished through a cooperative act of God and man.

I learned the phrase above from reading Charle Hodge’s Systematic Theology back when I was 24 and 25 years old and brand new to Reformed theology. He explained this most profound truth in the simplest statement: “Salvation is the work of God in the soul of man.” God does the work, we respond. By His almighty power, he calls us out of the grave spiritually as Jesus called Lazarus out of his grave physically, and guides us through life in holiness, service, and love. We call the former justification, and the latter sanctification, although having lived almost five decades as a Christian, I now call it the pain of sanctification.

Both of these, justification and sanctification, are the work of God to save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). He initiates and completes it all, and even our cooperation, our “working out our salvation with fear and trembling,” as Paul puts it, is the sovereign work of God. That eventually became apparent to me a bit later in this journey with Christ when the truth I Corinthians 1:30 hit me in a way I had previously not appreciated. Paul says:

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.

First we are only in Christ Jesus because of God, because He sovereignly put us there. He chose us and put us “in him,” one of Paul’s favorite salvation phrases, “in Christ.” Jesus tells us the nature of our salvation in John 6:

44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.

Jesus is confirming here all of Paul’s descriptions of our salvation, from God choosing us in Christ, to our justification, declared righteous because of Christ’s sacrifice, God’s making us holy, sanctifying us, setting us apart increasingly to Him, and our redemption, the resurrection of our bodies. It’s a package deal! All of it includes us, every part of what makes us human, emotionally, psychologically, our choosing, our failures, our wills, but none of it is ultimately up to us. I didn’t quote what Paul says in verse 31 right after he affirms the monergistic nature of our salvation:

31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

Paul is quoting from a passage in Jeremiah 9 in which the Lord is talking about boasting of our wisdom, strength, and riches, and now Paul is adding to that our very salvation.

Related to our salvation is another area where Hodge is helpful. He said that we tend to equate God’s “control” with human control, which requires coercion and destroys our free will. God, however, can “control” human beings without destroying or in any way distorting their humanity or agency. He is sovereign and God, almighty in every way, and how he does it we have no idea; we simply trust him that once he chooses us He will never let us go. As Paul says in Philippians 1, that God who began a good work in us “will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Monergism in Zechariah 3 & 4
Zechariah is given visions that point forward to a day when this salvation Paul declares will be fulfilled in Christ. It’s an amazing testimony to the power of God to save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). It is the most Messianic of the 12 minor prophets, and in that it is not unlike Isaiah. He lived not long after the Israelites had returned to Judah after their exile in Babylon in the early 500s BC into the early decades of the 400s prior to Ezra and Nehemiah rebuilding of the temple. It is a book of encouragement to give the Israelites strength to endure the troubles to come. Nothing they are planning to do will be easy, as is living a Christian life in a fallen world in a fallen body among fallen people always will be. We are always working against the gravity of sin, trudging up a mountain with that heavy backpack of sin, and we get a picture of that in chapter 3 as the scene is set up.

Joshua is the high priest at the time, not a coincidence the same name the Lord would give our Savior five centuries into the future. In Zechariah’s vision he is standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan himself. The devil is living up to his name, accusing Joshua, of what we’re not told. Then we see the Lord defend his high priest as he will one day the final high priest:

2 The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?”

As Jesus says in John 10:10, the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, and the accuser does it by accusing, by rubbing our sin in our faces as if God is incapable of saving us from our sins. To make the point, we’re told that Zechariah is dressed in “filthy clothes.” The word in Hebrew doesn’t just mean dirty, as if your toddler was out playing in the mud, but something much more disgusting. It means, “soiled (as if excrementitious).” To keep this family friendly, he is covered in crap, smelly, disgusting. That is what sin does to us. What does the Lord do with this “burning stick snatched from the fire”? Then we get a beautiful picture of the monergistic nature of our salvation from sin:

4 The angel said to those who were standing before him, “Take off his filthy clothes.”

Then he said to Joshua, “See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.”

5 Then I said, “Put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him, while the angel of the Lord stood by.

Of ourselves, we can’t do anything about our filthy clothes. Only God Himself can have those taken off. And it’s not just that our sin is taken away like those clothes, but God Himself has us dressed in fine garments, the righteousness of Christ himself, enabled by the active and passive obedience of Christ in life, even unto death. As I heard Tim Keller say many times, Christ lived the life we should have lived, and died the death we should have died. Unlike Catholics, we believe that not only did Christ die for our sins, but his righteousness was given to us as well. We are as Luther put it in Latin, simul iustus et peccator, or simultaneously righteous and sinner. We are declared righteous before God, legally, yet we are still sinners. It is a forensic declaration because of the transaction, that actual ransom paid for us, on the cross. This is justification.

Then we see that this is only the start. The Lord charges Joshua to walk in obedience and keep his requirements. There is no room for antinomianism, or being lawless, in the Christian faith or life. We don’t continue to sin because we figure we’re forgiven. As Paul says in Romans 6, God forbid! We are saved from the slavery of sin, like the Hebrews were saved from slavery in Egypt, to live like them in obedience to the law, to righteousness. There are also material implications to a full orbed gospel, as we learn next:

10 “‘In that day each of you will invite your neighbor to sit under your vine and fig tree,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”

The phrase, “that day,” is a critical part of Zechariah’s prophetic power, which I’ll get to below, but we see here, and throughout the Old Testament prophetic declarations of salvation, that the blessings coming as a result are not only “spiritual,” but material as well. This is something Evangelicals either ignore or think has nothing to do with the gospel. God in his revelation, however, says differently. The Old Testament is an incredibly earthy document, focused on blessings in this life more than on the life to come. With Christianity we get both!

The Importance of “That Day” in our Salvation
This phrase is used 20 times in Zechariah to indicate the time in which salvation will come to God’s people, and it will be in one day, as we know in hindsight. Let’s look at some of the hopeful declarations the prophet gives to us.

Chapter 2:  
10 “Shout and be glad, Daughter Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you,” declares the Lord. 11 “Many nations will be joined with the Lord in that day and will become my people. I will live among you and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you.

Chapter 9:
16 The Lord their God will save his people on that day
as a shepherd saves his flock.
They will sparkle in his land
like jewels in a crown.
17 How attractive and beautiful they will be!
Grain will make the young men thrive,
and new wine the young women.

Chapter 13:
“On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity. 2 “On that day, I will banish the names of the idols from the land, and they will be remembered no more,” declares the Lord Almighty. “I will remove both the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land.

9 The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name.

And it ends in chapter 14 with the final references:
20 On that day holy to the Lord will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, and the cooking pots in the Lord’s house will be like the sacred bowls in front of the altar. 21 Every pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to the Lord Almighty, and all who come to sacrifice will take some of the pots and cook in them. And on that day there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord Almighty.

The Old Testament is a powerful testimony of the sovereignty of God in salvation. The plan of redemption, of God saving His people from their sins since the fall has always been the work of God. He says to Adam and Even in Genesis 3:15:

And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

In Hebrew crush and strike are the same word, but I like the NIV’s rendering because while Satan can do some damage, symbolically the heel, the seed of the woman, Christ, defeats and renders powerless the devil, symbolically the head. From that moment, history is a very slow beeline to the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, redemption accomplished, to Pentecost, redemption applied.

The Gospel Fulfilled in Zechariah
There are two passages in the book that are amazingly specific about how this salvation to come is to be accomplished. In chapter 3 where we read about the Lord taking off Joshua’s filthy clothes and putting on fine garments:

8 “‘Listen, High Priest Joshua, you and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant, the Branch. 9 See, the stone I have set in front of Joshua! There are seven eyes on that one stone, and I will engrave an inscription on it,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day.

Those reading Zechariah’s words for the next 400 years must have wondered how sin could be removed in only a single day. Mixing metaphors, the Lord tells us the servant will be a branch and a stone, and Jesus tells us (Matt.21 and Mark 12) quoting Psalm 118,

‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’

Who did this? The Lord. We also learn something about the identity of this branch in Isaiah 11, one of the most glorious salvation chapters in the Bible. It starts with the Branch:

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
3 and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

This eventually leads to the suffering of the Lord’s servant in Isiah 52 and 53, where we read the gospel

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

Several hundred years later Zechariah echoes Isaiah in chapter 12:

10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.

In perfect biblical hindsight it becomes apparent just how true it was when Jesus said to his disciples after his resurrection: “Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Or the two on the road to Emmaus, telling them, “what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” The Bible has one author, Almighty God, and every bit of it points to Christ. In the immortal words of the Hallelujah Chorus which proclaim Christ sitting at the right hand of the Almighty:

The kingdom of this world is become
the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ,
and of His Christ;
And He shall reign for ever and ever,
King of kings, and Lord of lords.

Hallelujah!

God’s Provision in Jonah’s Life, and Ours

God’s Provision in Jonah’s Life, and Ours

Feb 11, 2026 | The Gospel

I recently read through Jonah in one sitting, and yet again it reminds me why it’s one of my favorite books in the Bible. It’s got a kind of honesty about it that makes it endearing. You think, this guy is not unlike all of us! And the Bible makes no apologies for telling his story.

Speaking of the Bible, we call the different writings in our Bibles books, and the word bible, τὰ βιβλία in Greek, means a collection of books, but many of the “books” in our Bibles are very short. Jonah has only four chapters and is a quick but compelling read. It starts right away with action. God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, and he runs away in the opposite direction! He doesn’t just walk, or saunter, or slither away, he runs! I love how honest the Bible is about human rebellion and sin amongst God’s own people. The portrayal of those people is not flattering to say the least, which is one reason the Bible has such verisimilitude and credibility. It reads real and seems real because it is in fact the accurate story of this people whom God has called to bring salvation to the world. Only, it doesn’t quite work out the way they envisioned it, Jonah being a prime example. To use a semi-vulgar word to express this, Jonah is pissed about God planning to have mercy on this pagan nation who are the sworn enemies of his people. 

What stood out to me this time through was the word “provided” in my NIV, used four times as the story rushes along. Some other translations use appointed. The Hebrew word has these meanings:

  1. (properly) to weigh out
    2. (by implication) to allot or constitute officially
    3. also to enumerate or enroll

In other words, God is calling the shots here. I like the word provided because it implies what is being supplied or made available is meant to help that person. It’s not just God telling us to do something because He said so. God commands us for our Good and His glory. As I was reading, Romans 8:28 leapt to mind:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

And Paul is making sure we understand this isn’t speculation, isn’t something we wonder about or should have any doubt about, but something we know.

God’s Provision for Jonah
Jonah in his rebellion decides to run away from God’s express command, hitching a ride on a ship specifically to run “away from the presence of the Lord.” We’re familiar with the story, but it’s the little details that make it so powerful.

Not long into the journey a violent storm arises and threatens to wipe out the ship. As the crew is throwing things overboard to try to save the ship, Jonah goes down into the hold and of all things, falls asleep! The man was depressed. And why not. He knows this is God rebuking him for his choice. The men go down to get him and see he’s asleep and they are shocked. How in the world can this guy be sleeping at a time like this? Being ancient people they cast lots to see who’s to blame for the storm, and of course it falls to Jonah. When they ask who he is, and where he comes from:

9 And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.

He’s almost blasé. He obviously doesn’t fear this God enough. After he tells the men what he did, they are terrified. So when they ask what they must do to mollify this Creator God, he says to throw him into the sea. I’m sure they think this will only make this Creator God angrier, so they try harder to save the ship which makes the storm worse. Then despite their inclinations, they throw him overboard, and of course the storm calms immediately. Chapter 1 ends with telling us what happened to Jonah next:

17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Ah the big fish. These is where the skeptics sign off. Surely this is metaphorical because nobody could live three days in the belly of a big fish like a whale. Impossible! As if anything is impossible with Almighty God, He who created everything out of nothing and controls every molecule by his infinite wisdom and power. Yet, the text doesn’t say Jonah was alive in the belly of the fish. I’ve always assumed he was until I came across this short video which lays out the argument that Jonah died. I always assumed he was alive because the text says that “Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish,” and if he prayed he was alive. But when Jonah prays he says, “out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.” Sheol is the realm of the dead. Also, Jesus affirms Jonah’s ordeal in the big fish as a symbol of his death (Matt. 12:40) and implicitly of his resurrection. If Jesus was dead while he was “in the heart of the earth,” so Jonah was dead in the belly of the great fish. As Jesus was brought back to life, so was Jonah. Either way, the story works as a picture of God’s ultimate redemptive plans in Christ.

God’s provision of a big fish for Jonah is meant to get his attention, something we sinners always seem to need if we’re going to finally quit running away. It works. Chapter 2 is Jonah’s prayer of lament and repentance after which the fish vomits him on to dry land. It seems kind of extreme that the Lord would have to put one of his own people through this, but as the great 19th century poem by Francis Thompson declares, He is The Hound of Heaven. The first stanza fits perfectly:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
   I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
   Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
             Up vistaed hopes I sped;
             And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
   From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
             But with unhurrying chase,
             And unperturbèd pace,
     Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
             They beat—and a Voice beat
             More instant than the Feet—
     ‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me’.

To one degree or another, this is every Christian’s experience. Jesus was given his name because he came to save his people from their sins (Matt.1:21), and God’s plan of redemption would never be left up to his creatures. Somehow, some way, he will always “get his man,” or woman. But God’s “provision” for Jonah wasn’t done yet because Jonah was a reluctant convert. Chapter 3 starts with, “Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.” God is willing to give Jonah a second chance, and he’d best listen this time lest the big fish swallows him for good.

Jonah was reluctant because God was calling him to preach to Israel’s hated enemies, the Assyrians. It would only be a generation later that the Assyrians would wipe out the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. That wouldn’t have surprised Jonah. So we can imagine him thinking, “Why in the world would the Lord want to have mercy on this people, on Israel’s enemies?” Jonah goes through the city for three days, as he was in the belly of the big fish, preaching God’s judgment to come, and to his horror they repent so God relents and doesn’t bring judgment upon them. I love to read Jonah’s response because it reads so real (4:1):

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 

God, how dare you have mercy on these people! They aren’t supposed to get a second chance. I read some time ago the kind of evil and horror the Assyrians were capable of, and Jonah’s response is not unreasonable, but his job isn’t to think, only to obey. Jonah tells us exactly what he feels:

2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

Just kill me now! Then God’s provision kicks in again to try to get His message across to Jonah, that he has no right to be angry (4:4). Jonah goes outside of the city to see what’s going to happen to it, hoping God decides to bring calamity after all. As he’s there, God provides three things: a plant to grow and provide shade for Jonah which makes him “very happy”; a worm to eat the plant, no more shade; then a scorching east wind and hot sun so Jonah grows faint. Unhappy again, he hopes God would just take him out of his misery and kill him. As the king of the universe He should for his rank insubordination, but He is the gracious and compassionate God Jonah so despises.     

God asks him if he’s justified in being angry about the plant, one he had nothing to do with growing, and he says he is. Then he tells the Lord:

“And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

There’s no resolution in this little book, and the story ends with God asking him a rhetorical question. Jonah had nothing to do with the plant growing, nor did he with the great city of Ninevah. The Lord asks why He shouldn’t have concern for the people and even the animals of such a city. That’s it. Story over. 

God’s Provision in Christ
It’s fascinating that Jesus would use the story of Jonah to point to God’s ultimate sacrifice for the sins of His people, and his own brutal death and burial. As is the crucifixion, the story of Jonah is one of God’s mercy, something we find hard to comprehend exactly because it’s God’s mercy. Why would God have to do something so horrible just to have a relationship with His people? His judgment and ultimate justice requires it, but he decided to do it because of His mercy. As Paul says of the crucifixion, and Jonah could relate (I Cor. 1:23):

We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.

All Christians believe God is sovereign, the king and ruler of the entire universe, of all things visible and invisible, but most Christians have a hard time believing He is sovereign over the salvation of His people. God choosing whom He will save doesn’t sit well with them, and that the Hound of Heaven never fails.

God, however, is a choosing God, not a God who waits for the choosing of his creatures to accomplish his redemptive plans. He chooses Noah, then Abram, then Jacob, Moses, and eventually David through whom He will bring about a Messiah who will be prophet, priest, and king. We see this choosing God in the story of Moses asking God to show him His glory (Ex. 33):

19 And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 

God is the one who decides who will get his mercy, and as with Jonah, to us it can often appear unfair. God’s nature is to be the one who initiates the relationship to save, and at that moment in history God chose to have mercy on the people of Ninevah.

None of us can conceive of why God would create a world in which he would allow a fall to happen, and thus have sin and death enter his perfect created world, but here it is. He told Adam, the day you eat of the tree I told you not to eat of it, you shall surely die. The moment he listened to his wife and took and ate some of the fruit, everything changed. In my study of philosophy and world religions, I discovered that the only plausible explanation for evil and suffering and sin is found in Judaism and Christianity, and this is it. God never had to create anything. Unlike Islam where God is a solitary monad, alone, in Scripture a Triune God is revealed who can have existed perfectly content without other beings, but he decided otherwise.

When He did create these beings, both angels and humans, they had to be genuinely free and able to chose obedience or rebellion. Any real relationship that isn’t robotic requires such choosing and the free will to choose. God being God knew the risk, and what would happen, but there was clearly no other way. The devil chose rebellion and treason first, then when God made man the devil was allowed to take man down with him. However God already had a plan for that, a provision if you will, and that was He Himself in the person of His Son becoming a man and being the required sacrifice for that rebellion and treason. It’s so bizarre yet strangely plausible enough to enable us to believe it with integrity. The evidence, historical, philosophical, textual, archaeological, personal is so overwhelming that after 2000 years over two billion people believe it. They agree with me and the argument of my book, Uninvented, that there is absolutely no way it could be made up, mere invention of the human imagination.

That’s where Jonah and the crucifixion and God’s provision in our salvation come in. Who could ever make up such stuff? The ancient pagan gods were not known for their mercy, to say the least. They had to be placated in all kinds of silly and horrific ways. Read the prophets. A big fish swallowing a man for three days who vomits him out so he can go preach repentance and mercy to his bloodthirsty enemies? Really? If you want someone to believe your story, you don’t make this one up. Then this same God coming Himself, becoming one of his creatures to take their place so justice could be done and the relationship restored? Seriously? No wonder Paul calls the cross foolishness to the Gentiles, the pagans, and a stumbling block to the Jews. It’s absurd! But true.

When Jesus said we are to love our enemies, he provided the first example by loving us, even unto death on a cross. I’m sure to Jonah that would have “seemed very wrong.” In the ancient world you didn’t love your enemies, you killed them! Who would say something so stupid? Jesus! Again, nobody in the ancient world makes up something like that. The concept of sacrificial love was unknown among ancient pagans, Greek or Roman or any other peoples. Jews alone among ancient peoples knew about “loving your neighbor as yourselves” (Lev. 19:18), but nobody could comprehend the Creator God becoming a man to love us! He Himself is our provision. Out of that provision flows true human flourishing and ultimate fulfillment, flows the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, material blessings in this life, and spiritual blessings forever more.

My Kingdom is Not of This World

My Kingdom is Not of This World

Dec 3, 2025 | Eschatology, The Gospel

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read and heard this statement of Jesus as a reason for Christians to not engage in “the culture wars.” Doing this is in the old saying, like polishing the brass on a sinking ship. The implication, sometimes stated, sometimes assumed, is that this world belongs to Satan. For them, apparently, Satan is the king of this world. I’ll state my conclusion plainly up front: No he is not! As we’ll see, Satan was handed a kingdom he did not earn by Adam, and Christ came to take it back. We call this the gospel. For too long as a Christian when I heard or used the word “gospel,” I equated it with the salvation of souls, full stop. Sure, it has peripheral influences on the culture, but that was only a spillover from people being saved from their sins, as the theologians call it, soteriology.

Now, I see the gospel as a proclamation of salvation for the entire created order, starting with those who’ve embraced Christ as Lord and Savior, and God starting his reclamation and restoration project at his first coming. By contrast, the typical Pietist, fundamentalist, dispensational, Evangelical understanding of the state of this fallen world is that Christ will only fully clean it up at his second coming. Until then, Satan is more or less in control of this world, and the primary purpose of the gospel is to save people out of this world so they can go to heaven when they die. The world will get increasingly worse until Jesus finally comes back to save the day and set all things right. I used to believe this, more or less, but my embrace of postmillennialism a few years ago changed that. Let’s see how.

Satan Handed an Earth and a Kingdom
As we read in Genesis, God created the earth and everything in it “very good,” but something happened to ruin it. We’re all familiar with the story of the fall. God told Adam everything on earth belonged to him, but there was one tree from which he must not eat because when he does, he will “surely die.” We all know what death is on this side of the fall, but I always wonder what Adam made of those words. He had not yet seen or experienced death in any way, so I imagine it was an abstraction to him. Yet, he knew it must not be good. Maybe not fully understanding the implications of death is why Adam failed to protect the woman from the serpent, and Satan deceived her. We read in Genesis 3:

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Notice what happens when the woman eats—nothing. Then she gives some of the fruit to Adam and when he eats what happens? Only then were the eyes of both opened, not before. Paul confirms it wasn’t what the woman did that caused the fall, but what the man did:

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned. . . . 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. (Rom. 5)

22 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (I Cor. 15)

Paul also tells us in Timothy (2:14) that it was the woman who was deceived, but in Adam’s tending of the garden and protecting his wife, he was a colossal failure. Where was Adam when the serpent was allowed to deceive the woman? Why was he not there to protect and defend her? Why was the serpent there in the first place? We can’t know the answers to these questions, but we do know from Genesis 2 that prior to Eve being created, man was given the charge to work and care for the Garden:

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

He failed to “take care of it.”

Interestingly, the Lord says to Adam he would curse the ground, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded, ‘You must not eat from it’” He clearly had the option not to listen to her, and if he hadn’t there would have been no fall. The choice was his, and he blew it, big time. In the created order of things, God made it so that man has ultimate authority, and therefore ultimate accountability. It’s called federal headship, the basic idea being how one person represents and acts on behalf of a larger group, with the consequences of their actions being imputed (credited or charged) to those they represent. Our salvation from sin depends on this concept. Adam was the federal head for the human race through which sin came, and Christ was the federal head for his people he came to save from their sins (Matt. 1:21). Sin was imputed through Adam, and righteousness through Christ. Without the federal headship of Christ, we would die in our sins.

Thankfully, Christ was given a task from the Father, and he fulfilled it. We read in John 6:

37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” 

Another idea we get from the theologians captures what we read about here, the covenant of redemption. In the internal Triune purposes of God, the Father gave Jesus a task, “to save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). Jesus didn’t come to save everybody, or to make salvation possible for all people, he came to make salvation actual for all those the Father has given him. This salvation accomplished by Jesus during his life of obedience unto death, his crucifixion, burial, resurrection, and ascension, started to be applied at Pentecost. His kingdom was now established on earth, his having been given “All authority in heaven and on earth,” (Matt. 28). The flag of the kingdom, like a warrior in battle, had been planted right in the midst of the enemy’s territory, and he would now commence through the power of the Holy Spirit among his people to establish the new creation (2 Cor. 5:17).

A Ruined Kingdom Restored in Christ
The NIV translation of the verse in 2 Corinthians is the most literal of the translations, and to me the most accurate. It says, “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.” Other translations infer that the new creation Paul is referring to is the anyone, so it says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” That is true, but that gives people the impression this new creation is limited to saved, redeemed people. I used to think that. In fact, it is God’s eschatological kingdom (the final fulfillment happening at his second coming) breaking into this dark fallen world that previously belonged to Satan—it does so no longer. The Apostle Paul tells us that salvation is a package deal, us and the rest of creation together (Rom. 8):

18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

Noticed how Paul connects “the glory that will be revealed in us” to the entire creation. Most Christians think we only got a very small down payment on this new creation at Christ’s first coming, and a wholesale change can only happen at his second coming. They believe this fallen ruined kingdom belongs to the devil and use the evidence of evil and suffering to claim it. So, when Christ tells Pilot his kingdom is not of this world it confirms what they believe. However, Christ did not say His kingdom is not in the world, but that it is not of the world—not that the kingdom is “not here,” but that it is not “from here.” The word “of” is a primary preposition denoting origin. This means the origin of Christ’s redeemed kingdom is not of this world because he came to redeem and transform it!  Once his mission was accomplished and fully realized in his ascension and Pentecost, his kingdom was officially in this fallen world, like a mustard seed and leaven (Matt. 13) taking it back from the devil.

We always read the text based on our assumptions, so when we read, “Who hopes for what they already have?” we assume we’re not going to get it until Christ returns at the consummation of all things at the end of time. But Paul wrote these words in the 50s AD, so Christianity and its influence in the world had been limited to parts of the Middle East and some of Europe, that’s it. Even there on a societal and cultural level, Christianity’s impact was minimal, but since then the gospel has gone throughout the entire earth and been utterly transformed by it. I do not limit the gospel’s reach just to human interaction, but to the imprint our actions and ideas and effort put on creation. Remember the dominion and cultural mandate given to Adam in Genesis 1:

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. 

27 So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

As the second or last Adam, Christ came to fulfill this mandate, and at his Ascension and Pentecost he began to fulfill it through us, his church. Human interaction on a societal level has been transformed by the gospel, and this includes science and technology and knowledge of every sort that has had an impact on how we live. Trust me, none of us would want to live in the ancient world, and the kingdom Christ came to establish is the reason we no longer have to live in such a world.

The Practical Consequences of the Ascension
Lastly, because Jesus is now king with all authority in heaven and on earth dwelling with his people by the power of the Spirit of God, the gospel has gone forth to the nations and God’s kingdom is advancing. As a result, the devil is on the defensive. Until I embraced postmillennialism, I thought it was the church and Christians who were on the defensive, and I thought this because I effectively ignored the ascension for God’s redemptive plans on earth. We are living in the fulfillment of God’s promise to Adam and Eve to strike or crush the serpent’s head, his defeat fully realized at Christ’s ascension to the right hand of God. The world now belongs to Christ!

Many Christians living by sight and not faith see how horrible the world can be and conclude the devil is “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4). The Greek often translated world is not cosmos, but aión or age. So Paul’s reference isn’t to the earth or God’s created order, but to the fallen world, the age of the devil’s reign on earth. Now, the devil is only the god of lost sinners, and God’s kingdom and Christ’s reign have been slowly taking over territory for the last two thousand years. That’s what the ascension means, the extension of Christ’s reign on earth and the advance of God’s kingdom. Our job as his body is to heavenize earth! When Jesus prayed to the Father, and taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” I imagine the Father was inclined to answer Jesus’ prayer in the affirmative. The point of Jesus’s coming was to establish his kingdom on earth, not wait for thousands of years to establish it. The parables of the mustard seed and leaven tell us the advance and extent of the kingdom will slowly but surely extend to the entire earth and everything in it.

The problem most Christians have with that assertion is how seemingly inconsistent the advance is. But, as I always say, God is never in a hurry. When God promised Abram 4,000 years ago(!) that all the peoples on earth would be blessed through him, for 2,000 years(!) the promise seemed hollow. This is why a common refrain of Jews prior to Jesus’ coming was, “How long O Lord!” David seemed like the fulfillment, then it all fell apart. Then Israel ceased to exist, and when they came back to the land, they were oppressed for most of the next several hundred years. Then Jesus! This little band of men and women in an obscure outpost of the Roman Empire literally turned the world upside down! As the men in Thessalonica exclaimed, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also!” More like right side up, and I’m inclined to think we’re just getting started.

 

 

The Danger of Intentions and Love’s Answer

The Danger of Intentions and Love’s Answer

Oct 15, 2025 | The Gospel

Early in my Christian life, my fundamentalist phase as I call it, introspection was encouraged. Part of this examination was questioning my motives and intentions to make certain they were not sinful but pure. The problem was that I’m pretty sure I’ve never had a perfectly pure motive in my entire life. I know my sinful heart all too well, and it’s not given to purity of motive. I also realized I was given to morbid introspection where I would try to pick apart what I was thinking, and guilt was a constant companion because it was anything but pure. Instead of looking to the cross and trusting God the Holy Spirit to do the inner transformation I needed, I thought I could figure me out. Good luck with that! I may as well dive into the vortex of a black hole. God through the prophet Jeremiah tells us why:

9 The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?

Over time I realized that if I had a hard time understanding my own intentions, how much more impossible it would be to figure out the intentions of other people. Yet I realized how easy it was for me to presume that not only could I figure out what they were, but I was certain about it! Whatever they said or did, I could perfectly infer their intentions, what they meant by what they said or did. If they weren’t certain what their intentions were, I could help them out.

At some point along the way I learned some things, and God had been dealing with me and my own issues, so I decided I wouldn’t do this anymore. If I wanted to know what someone’s motives or intentions were, I would do something shocking to most people—I would ask them. Until then I had no right to assume I knew. As we learned when we were kids, or should have, what happens when you assume something? You make an ass out of u and me. Don’t do that! Yet we do it all the time, especially about other people. So, don’t do that either!

God had obviously been working on me along the way, or more likely working me over, and because of his great mercy, for some reason I even decided I would give other people the benefit of the doubt and not assume the worst about them and what they intended. I know, that’s crazy! Isn’t it a rule of life or something that we must assume the worst about people? In fact it isn’t, but our sinful human tendency is to do just that. Unfortunately, this mentality God has ingrained in me through the pain of sanctification, is not common among sinful human beings. If it were there would be much more peace and harmony. Sinful human beings will always incline to reading intentions and motives into people’s actions or words, and then determine those are in fact their actual intentions and motives without ever asking.

How Do We Escape Intentions?
Well, first of all, that’s impossible. We are intending beings. When we do or say something, we have a purpose or plan in saying it, our intention. The reason we do or say it is our motive, the thing that is compelling us to act. These two dynamics are integral to human psychology, which means my question to start this section is senseless; we can’t escape our intentions. What we can do, however, is better understand them, learn to read them, so we can better figure out why we do or say what we do, and maybe not do or say it. Or do or say it differently.

This process is called sanctification, and it’s not easy, to say the least. It’s like being the anvil, and life is the hammer. Often we think it’s God wielding it, and it hurts! He is, of course, but not quite the way we think. That’s why I used the phrase “pain of sanctification” previously. It’s like a forging process. As metal is not easily molded without extreme heat and force so we are not either, sadly. Diamonds are also created in the earth through extremes of heat and pressure, and because they are so rare they are of great value. The process of sanctification is difficult, but the fruit is sweet, for us and everyone else in our lives.

So, if we can’t escape intentions, ours or anyone else’s, what are we supposed to do? Simple, learn to understand them. Of course that’s easier said than done, but it’s not impossible. As in politics, all it really takes is the will to want to do it. In the Christian life that’s simple: we don’t have a choice. Let me ask a question which has flummoxed friends and relatives for years. Why does God put other people, especially difficult people, in our lives. The answer is really simple, if seemingly impossible at times: to teach us how to love them! Ugh! I told this to a nephew of mine once, and he happened to be lying on the ground. He started wiggling and screaming Noooooo!!!! Then he said the magic words we all naturally feel—I don’t want to! Of course you don’t! That’s why God didn’t give us the choice. And lest you think I learned this in a book or theoretically, I didn’t. I was young, probably around 30, and this co-worker was terribly annoying. One day I was praying, more like complaining, to God and asked him the question: Why did you put this person in my life? And I could swear I heard him tell me out loud, “To teach you how to love her, you moron!” Well, maybe not he moron part, but the message was clear, and I never asked that question again.

So, how are we to go about doing what we just don’t want to do? A miracle, of course. This is in a way to answer the question at the top of this section. It might be better stated; how do we escape the tyranny of intentions? By what Charles Hodge explained as Christianity: the work of God in the soul of man. In other words, it’s a supernatural work of the power of God’s Holy Spirit in us that will get us to do what is impossible for us to do on our own, and which we don’t want to do anyway. It’s not just a matter of the will, of deciding, by golly, I’m going to love that poor slob! I really despise the person, but since I’m so magnanimous, I’ll cut them some slack. Leave it to a sinner to turn loving someone else into something about themselves. We’re hilarious, we sinners.

Love is the Drug I’m Thinking Of
That phrase might sound familiar to you if you’re a boomer or gen X’er. It’s a catchy 1975 tune from the band Roxy Music, and has nothing to do with the love I’m thinking of. That love is only from above, the love that comes from He who is love. This is when it gets kind of tricky, so if you want to escape and not bother with dealing with other people in this way, it’s best to stop reading (or listening) now. Before I get to the nitty gritty, I want to share a story of my having to deal with the beast in me, and how I learned my need for such love.

When I was in college I was involved in a Christian campus ministry called the Navigators. 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 piercing eyes. 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. I can be intense, but am I really that horrible? I didn’t ask. 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.

If you ask me if God can still do miracles, I say of course he can. I know he still heals people of various maladies, but what’s far more profound to me is enabling two self-absorbed sinners to truly love one another. Now that’s a miracle! Such a miracle can only be found in one place, the cross. One of the reasons Christianity is historically verifiable is because of the many crazy things Jesus said, and this is one of them:

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

As modern people who’ve never actually seen a crucifixion, or a bunch of them at once, something common in the Roman Empire, we’ll have no idea what a horror it was. For Jesus to try to build a following on a metaphor of the cross is beyond absurd. Nobody makes that up. It had to come from the real Jesus of Nazareth, the real Son of God and Savior of the world. That’s the deal, though. In order to love others you have to die to yourself, and as the metaphor implies, it’s likely not going to be pleasant. Get used to it. But as Jesus also says (John 12:4)

24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

That’s the deal, there can’t be spiritual life without death to self, but in death is fruit and abundance, life and flourishing. Everyone knows selfish kids are insufferable, but so are selfish adults. When it’s all about me it’s about nobody else but me.

Sin is ultimately relational, first with God, then ourselves, then others. In Romans 12:1 Paul tells us because of  God’s mercy, we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, which is holy and pleasing to God. Those two words don’t normally go together, living and sacrifice, but dying to self is the path to true life. Then Paul adds something amazing. Doing this, he says, is our reasonable, rational, logical service or worship of God. In other words, it makes total sense logically in light of everything He has done for us in Christ. We are then compelled to love others. And in verse 2 he tells us how we are to do it, even if much of the time we’re not quite sure. Paul tells us, though, that we can “test and approve” what that is, what is God’s “good, pleasing and perfect will.” And there is nothing more God wills than that we should love others.

Loving Others is Not a Choice
That’s the thing about Christianity, it’s a take it or leave it proposition, as can be seen from Jesus using the cross as a recruiting tool. I’ve already said it, but it’s necessary to repeat: we have to love others whether we want to or not, whether it’s easy or not. Most of the time it isn’t. But what makes me compelled to do what can be so distasteful to me, is that I am commanded to do it by the very words of Jesus. From the Sermon on the Mount he commands us:

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

When Jesus told us to love our enemies he was practicing what he preaches. Paul tells us in Romans 5:

10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

We were God’s enemies, and Christ died for us! Paul also tells us in Colossians:

21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.

The Greek word for enemies implies a hateful, odious, hostility. That is how we thought of God in our rebellion, and he still literally loved us to death, his own, in the person of His Son. That’s why we don’t have a choice. In fact, the more sanctified we become and the better we get at it, we’ll ask ourselves, how am I to love this person. Better yet, we’ll pray for God to help us figure out how to love this person, and give us the willingness to do it. You’ll know you’re on the right track as you pray about it when you start giving thanks for this person, and actually mean it. Paul tells is in I Thessalonians 5:

18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

All, not some. That includes people. And the thanksgiving is specifically in Christ Jesus. Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” or this variation over 70 times in his letters, so to him Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension have implications for every aspect and every moment of our lives. Everything we do is “in Christ,” thus we can’t see our relationships with others apart from Christ. The reason we can love others is because, as John says, God first love us, and that in Christ. That is I John 4:19, and John follows it up with the message of Jesus:

20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen. 21 And we have this command from Him: The one who loves God must also love his brother.

Lastly, since we’re talking about intentions and motives, we need to be careful that we’re not hoping this person will change just so they don’t annoy us so much. As shocking as it often is for us to hear, it’s not all about us. We’re supposed to love others for their good, which is why Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love our neighbors then adds, as we love ourselves. Only when we love others will we really be loving ourselves. When we do that, it will always be for our good in the end. And even if we’re not successful for whatever reason, God is glorified in our obedience. And what is the chief end of man, in the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. In that case, love is the drug I’m thinking of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Primary Importance of the Ascension: Why Do Evangelicals Ignore It?

The Primary Importance of the Ascension: Why Do Evangelicals Ignore It?

Jul 30, 2025 | The Gospel

That’s a good question. I was reminded of it when I was in Jacksonville, Florida, for my father-in-law’s 90th birthday. He goes to a Lutheran church, and we decided to go with him that Sunday. It so happened that was Ascension Sunday, June 1. What is Ascension Sunday, you ask? You are likely an Evangelical if you ask that question. The reason is that as Evangelicals we seem to all but ignore the ascension of Jesus Christ to the right hand of God. I didn’t realize how blind most of us were to one of the most important events of redemptive history until one day on a walk I heard someone say on my little trusty MP3 player, “Evangelicals basically ignore the ascension.” I remember stopping the player and thinking, “He’s right!” I wondered why we do that, and I had no ready answer, only that having been a churchgoer for over 40 years by that point, I don’t ever remember a sermon on the ascension. If there was one, it wasn’t memorable. I aimed to rectify that in my life.

Christ ascending to heaven is revealed to us in Act 1, which might give us a clue as to its importance. Before the church could be established and grow to advance God’s kingdom on earth, King Jesus needed to be enthroned at the right hand of the Almighty where he reigns to make that happen through his church. The ascension was his coronation. If you saw King Charles’ coronation on May 6, 2023, multiply that by infinity and you’ll have some sense of the momentousness of that day. Yet we all but ignore it. First, let’s look at that passage in Acts:

6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

That’s it. What did it mean? What did those who witnessed it think it meant? Where did Jesus go? And why? We use the word ascension to describe it, which simply means to go up. We’ll take a look at what it means and why we shouldn’t ignore it like we have.

Biblical Clues to What the Ascension Means
There are many, but two passages stand out. One is from the Old Testament in Daniel 7. Written over 500 years before the ascension, the Prophet is given a dream of four beasts, and one of the angels told him the meaning of his dream:

17 ‘The four great beasts are four kings that will rise from the earth. 18 But the holy people of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever—yes, for ever and ever.’

The last beast is the most terrifying and terrible, and we know that represents the Roman Empire, the greatest most fearful empire the world had ever known. It’s during that empire when God’s people will receive this forever kingdom, and we’re told in this chapter how that will happen. The Ancient of Days takes his seat on His thrown, the court is seated, and Daniel says, “the books were open.” Judgment upon the nations is about to begin, and then we’re given a picture of the Ascension:

13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Given my eschatological assumptions for most of my Christian life, I assumed this referred to Christ’s second coming when all things would be consummated in him. But we need to note carefully what happened at this coming. This son of man was specifically given “authority, glory and sovereign power.” I assumed that the “all” referring to nations and peoples meant each and every single human being, and clearly there are quite a few people in the world who currently do not worship Jesus. But we do see that people in all nations from among all peoples do worship him, which prior to Christ, the gospel, and the Holy Spirit coming could not have happened. But what clinches this understanding of the passage is Paul’s description of Christ’s ascension in Ephesians 1. Speaking of God’s “incomparably great power for us who believe,” Paul says:

That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 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. 22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

We see that Christ’s resurrection is directly connected to his being seated at God’s right hand and receiving the authority and power Daniel saw being given the son of man in his dream. These two passages are describing the same event, and this happened at Christ’s first coming. The implications of this are profound and all encompassing.

For most of my Christian life, specifically from the fall of 1978 until August of 2022 when I embraced postmillennialism in one day, I believed Christ’s rule and authority was primarily over the church and Christians. Most of the world was a Wild, Wild West where outlaws ruled because the fallen world belonged to the devil. As a Calvinist who strongly believes in God’s sovereign reign over all things, I knew God’s rule over all things was absolute, but thought the devil had some legitimate authority over everything outside of the church. The Ephesians passage can seem to say that because Christ is given that authority and power “for the church,” but that doesn’t mean it’s only inside the church, or inside the heart of Christians, and the devil gets to have his way everywhere else. I would have said at the time that God allows this to happen, as I still believe he does, but now I know the world no longer belongs to the devil.

This dynamic completely changed when Jesus was confronted by the devil in the desert with three temptations, the third of which was the turning point in redemptive history:

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” 10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”

Prior to Christ accomplishing his mission, the devil owned “all the kingdoms of the world.” They were his to dispose of as he pleased. God promised, however, that the woman’s seed would strike the serpent’s head, and his defeat was fully realized at Christ’s ascension to the right hand of God. The world now belongs to Christ! I’m not even sure how this is debatable, but people read a few verses, use their sight, not faith, see how horrible the world can be, and conclude the devil is “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4). The Greek often translated world is not cosmos, but aión or age. So Paul’s reference isn’t to the earth or God’s created order, but to the fallen world, the age when he reigned on earth. Now the devil is only the god of lost sinners, and God’s kingdom and Christ’s reign have been slowly taking over territory for the last two thousand years. That’s what the ascension means, the extension of Christ’s reign on earth. This is why Jesus’ reference to the gates of hell in Matthew 16 tells us the devil and his minions are on the defensive, and the church on the offensive. Gates in the ancient world were meant to keep invaders out, and Christians are the invaders in this fallen world. The devil doesn’t stand a chance.

Christus Victor and Christ’s Reign
Prior to the reformation, the concept of Christ’s substitutionary atonement, Christ suffering the punishment for humanity’s sins, and satisfying God’s wrath, was not a central doctrine of the church. From the Apostle Paul on it was always there in varying degrees, but not in the way it would become as a legal theological formulation in and after the Reformation. Two other models of the atonement were prominent prior, moral formation, Christ’s death as example, and Christus Victor, or Christ’s victory over sin, death, and the devil. With the three together we get a fuller picture of what Christ accomplished in his mission to earth. Christus Victor, however, got a bit lost in the Reformation shuffle, coming back into prominence with the publication of a book in 1931 by Swedish Lutheran theologian Gustaf Aulén called, you guessed it, Christus Victor. Reviewing the three main ideas of the atonement, he argued that the idea of a divine act of liberation was its primary meaning. As a good Protestant in the Reformed tradition I would disagree with him, but divine liberation is a significant consequence of the atonement. The primary passage used to justify this is Colossians 2:15:

13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the record of debt which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

The record of debt literally means a written legal document, and this was cancelled by Christ’s death, our sins washed away, but Aulén focused on verse 15 and Christ’s victory over these “powers and authorities.” Another passage is from Hebrews 2:

14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

Christ’s death and resurrection broke the power the devil had over God’s people. Another verse is in I John 3:

8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

Christus Victor is directly tied to the ascension because Christ is at the right hand of God. The big argument in modern Christianity is the extent and scope of Christ’s disarming and destroying of the devil’s work. I use the word modern because prior to the 19th century, Christians believed all of reality, every square inch of it, and every person and thing in it, was the domain of Christ’s rule. Evil was only allowed because it advanced God’s kingdom in some way.

The giving of the devil so much perceived power only developed in the church in Ireland with the Plymouth Brethren and J.N. Darby in the 1830s. They came up with a novel idea called at the time the new premillennialism, which in the 1920s started to be called dispensationalism because of the influence of C.I. Scofield’s Reference Bible which was published in 1909. The idea of various “dispensations” in which God dealt with His people differently in different ages or dispensations became popular because of Scofield’s Bible. In this version of Christianity, the devil had the upper hand down here in this fallen world, and things would inevitably get continually worse until Jesus came back to save the day. The goal of Christianity was to save as many sinners as possible because the ship was sinking fast. It’s an interesting quirk of history that dispensationalism and revivalism developed around the same time in the middle of the 19th century. Darby, in fact, came over to America in the 1860s and hung out with evangelist D.L. Moody. The messages were a perfect fit. In this take, Satan was on the offensive and the church was playing defense. This perspective is in fact so deeply rooted in the modern church that for over four decades I wasn’t aware that the gates of hell meant the devil was on the defensive! It took my unlikely conversion to postmillennialism for me to discover that.

Up until Darby and the last two hundred years, Christians understood it was Christ who was the ascended king over all of reality, and because of that Satan didn’t have a chance no matter what it might have looked like at the moment. Christians used to be long-term thinkers, builders of cathedrals they knew they wouldn’t worship in. While the expected immanent return of Jesus wasn’t unknown in church history, the dominant theme was that even though individual lives were extremely short, God was advancing his kingdom over the long course of history. Christians believed they were playing some small part in that cosmic drama. The goal was never to escape, but living faithfully in an uncertain world worshiping a certain God.

The Binding of the Strong Man
Almost all Christians believe Satan is a defeated foe, but they also believe his ultimate defeat has to wait until the end of time. Until then he’s pretty much given carte blanche on earth to wreak all kinds of havoc. But that isn’t quite the biblical take. When something especially heinous happened, a friend told me the world belongs to the devil, and I replied, “But he’s a puppet on a string.” Why God allows the devil any latitude at all, I have no idea, other than it’s for his glory and our ultimate good. Romans 8:28 says you can take that to the biblical bank. We know Satan is a puppet on a string, and to mix metaphors, on a very short leash because Jesus taught us so in his ministry of exorcism. Nothing like the extent of it had ever happened in Israel’s history. Jesus was bringing the kingdom of God into enemy territory; his eschatological mission was set into motion and would reach its final fulfillment in his ascension. He began taking back territory at Pentecost.

Which brings us to this parable of the binding of the strong man. We read the story in Matthew 12. Jesus had healed a demon-possessed man, and the people are astonished thinking he could be the Messiah, the Son of David. But the Pharisees don’t like it one bit, and are likely jealous. They accuse Jesus of driving out demons by the prince of demons. How in the world does that work? Jesus, being the creator of logic, obviously needed to teach them a lesson. He tells them a kingdom divided against itself will not endure. That’s politics 101. Then he gives them and us the punch line:

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

The kingdom of God broke into the devil’s world at Christ’s first coming, and Jesus in binding the strong man, i.e., Satan, has opened up the entire fallen world to the advance of the kingdom. The spiritual dynamic of reality between BC and AD had completely changed. Revelation 20 gives us a fuller picture of what happened when Jesus bound the strong man:

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. 2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, 3 and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while.

Since dispensationalism came on the scene, many Christian interpret the thousand years literally, but given the symbolic nature of Revelation, we can be confident John meant the long period of time between Christ’s first and second coming. Prior to Satan being bound and thrown into the pit, God’s revelation was limited to Israel, a small point of light in a dark world. God had given the Hebrews the mission to be a blessing to the Gentiles, and they could barely be a blessing to themselves. The futility endured for 1,500 years because the devil did have full carte blanche over the entire world. Adam had given up ownership of it when he rebelled against God. After Christ accomplished his mission, that little point of light has permeated to the four corners of the earth!

Our confidence is not in us, nor our efforts, but in “one like a Son of Man,” sitting at God’s right hand with “all authority in heaven and on earth” to enable his church to fulfill its mission to disciple the nations. The ascension gives us the confidence and optimism that not only just some people within all nations will be saved, as many Christians believe, but that entire nations will embrace Christ. They will be able to experience true human flourishing because blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.