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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Our Citizenship is in Heaven Really Means

What Our Citizenship is in Heaven Really Means

Feb 5, 2025 | Eschatology, The Gospel

When I became a Christian in the fall of 1978, born-again as we used to say, it was into the kind of Christianity described by three words: Pietistic Gnostic dualism. It was a campus ministry where I imbibed what I now see as an over spiritualized version of Christianity. I look back at the time fondly, living among a group of young people who took their faith seriously, but eventually I realized they saw the important things in life being the spiritual, like Bible reading, prayer, church, evangelism, and the like, and everything else being less important. It was implicitly a bifurcated take on reality, something divided into two separate spheres, some things are in the sphere of the spiritual and thus important, and other things in the sphere of the material and mundane, and thus not so important. I say implicitly because I’m not sure this was ever overtly taught, but I started to see reality through a Christian lens perfectly described by these three words.

Because of this, I want to consider Philippians 3:20 & 21 and how my young Christian self interpreted this passage, and how most Christians do so today as well.

20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so they will be like his glorious body.

Back then, my citizenship being in heaven obviously meant heaven is my home, where I belong, where I feel most comfortable. I don’t belong to this messed up old fallen world which, after all, belongs to Satan. As we’ll see, it doesn’t mean that at all, but it sure sounded to me like it did. From a Pietistic Gnostic dualism perspective it made perfect sense. The old hymn says it best while getting it exactly wrong:

I’m but a stranger here,
Heav’n is my home;
Earth is a desert drear,
Heav’n is my home;
Danger and sorrow stand
Round me on ev’ry hand;
Heav’n is my Fatherland,
Heav’n is my home.

The hymn was written by Henry Bateman in the mid-19th century when the concepts from these three words were coming to dominate the Evangelical church in light of the Second Great Awaking. As dispensational premillennialism and fundamentalism began to dominate the church in the 19th century, all but taking it over in the 20th, the words of this hymn became axiomatic. Of course heaven is my home! Verse 20 would bring others to mind like I Peter 2:10, where Peter calls Christians foreigners and aliens, or sojourners, the idea being someone residing in a strange country, just passing through. This idea appears to be confirmed in Hebrews 11, the great hall of fame of faith. Speaking of Abraham, the writer says:

10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

Clearly, that’s not the city I now live in on this earth. The writer seems to make it even more clear, using the phrase like Peter that these heroes of faith “were aliens and strangers on earth,” and then telling us:

16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

That settles it! This earth is not our home, which is off somewhere else not here, a spiritual heavenly home, and the point of the Christian faith is that when we die we get to go there. Jesus even told us in John 14:2:

My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?

Clearly, Jesus is telling us this place is off somewhere else, not this earth, and this place is where we’ll go when we die.

Then if we combine all this with passages in the New Testament telling us this world belongs to Satan, it has to be an open and shut case. For example, Paul calls Satan “the god of this age” (2 Cor. 4:4), and “the ruler of the kingdom of the air” (Eph. 2:2). The Apostle John tells us, “the whole world is under the control of the evil one” (I John 5:19), and he also makes a strong contrast between “everything in the world,” and those who do the will of God (I John 2:15-17). As horrible as the world can be, it seems kind of obvious it fulfills the phrase often ascribed to some of it, a hell hole.

Looking back I can see why all of this this would have made sense to me, but I’ve come to realize it’s a distortion of the biblical message of the kingdom, in fact an upside down distortion. Jesus came not that we might escape this world for heaven, but that we might be part of him bringing heaven to this fallen world through us. God in Christ is making this world our home because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son for it. It’s a package deal, us, the people he came to save (Matt. 1:21), and His creation, which as Paul says is “groaning as in the pains of childbirth,” (Rom. 1:22,23) itself to be redeemed with our bodies at the resurrection. This process of making it our home started at Jesus’ first coming, and will ultimately be fulfilled at his second. The big disagreements in the church are about what happens between these comings and what it all means.

The Biblical Orientation of the Christian Life
As we consider the dominant other worldly perspective of most Evangelical Christians today, the question before us becomes one of the proper, biblical orientation of the Christian life, whether our focus is this life or the life to come, and even what these concepts mean. The are two reasons these verses in Philippians are so important to the Christian life in the 21st century. One is the improper interpretation, and the other is the contrasting proper interpretation which completely changes the orientation of the Christian’s life. The contrast is powerful and instructive. In the improper interpretation, it’s like we’re living in a foreign land where we don’t speak the language or know the customs, and we’re constantly longing to go home where we belong, to the familiar, the beloved, the comfortable. In the proper interpretation, we are home in this world, living where we belong, among the people we know and a culture of familiar sights and sounds and feels, even as we seek to improve it and make it a better, more heavenly place to live.

Because of Pietism, these verses tend to be interpreted by most Evangelical Christians in a dualistic way, in effect making us so heavenly minded we become no earthly good. That’s overstated, but it’s imperative we understand the point. In Francis Schaeffer’s image, modern Christians live in a two story reality where upstairs is the important spiritual stuff, that which is related to faith, and downstairs the mundane, material, not so important stuff, and everything not related to faith. I’ve heard this version of Christianity compared to red double decker buses in England, with the spiritual and important stuff on the upper deck, and the not so important mundane and material stuff on the lower deck. Thus we get the term dualism, or the idea of two separate parts or ideas determining how we understand and live our lives. I add the qualifier Gnostic to dualism because we’re seeking a kind of secret knowledge about that other spiritual life apart from this world. Whether we think about any of this consciously or not, it does affect all of us.

The correct orientation gives us an exciting fundamentally transformational and engaging vision for our lives, while rejecting an escapist two-story Christian mentality. Think about it. If we view this life, this world, like a sinking ship eventually going down, or a burning building, our instincts are going to be to get the heck outta here! If we see our efforts to save the ship or the building as futile, how motivated are we going to be to put in the effort to transform it? This is the reason a few years ago I stopped praying for revival. I know what you’re thinking. I’m so earthly minded I’m no heavenly good! Actually, I decided I needed to expand that prayer, so now I pray not just for revival, which Christians tend to view as people being saved so when they die they can go to heaven, but also for renewal, restoration, and reformation as well. I call it praying the four Rs. Notice I don’t pray for revolution because the objective isn’t change into something new and different, but a fulfillment of God’s created order toward its perfect ends. Notice each of the additional Rs don’t seek metamorphosis, a worm into a butterfly, but transformation into fulfillment of what God always intended his creation to be, very good.

This is what God has done in redeeming and reconciling His creation to himself, reversing the effects of the fall “far as the curse is found,” in the words of Isaac Watts’ great Christmas hymn, Joy to the World. The four Rs are a prayer, but it takes more than prayer. We must add our efforts inspired by those prayers to bring to fulfillment God’s grand design in the cultural or dominion mandate given to Adam in Genesis 1:

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.”

We are to fulfill the mandate in the second or last Adam (I Cor. 15:45) where the first failed, which is an exciting vision for the Christian life, especially in contrast to the escapist, we belong somewhere else version of Pietistic Christianity. The question is which vision or version is Paul communicating in these verses.

Citizenship in the Ancient Roman World
The history of the Ancient city of Philippi is central to how we should understand our Christian mission in a fallen sinful world. A city in Macedonia (modern day Greece), Philippi was originally founded in 360 BC and named Krenides which means springs. Shortly thereafter it was conquered by Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, who renamed the city after himself. He saw its potential commercial importance due to neighboring gold mines and its position along the great royal trade route running east to west across Macedonia. The Third Macedonian War (171-168 BC) marked the end of its Hellenistic period when Philippi was conquered by the Romans, and continued to develop its significance in the Roman Empire.

Because of that significance, one of the most important battles of antiquity took place there in 42 BC. Following the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44, his heirs Mark Antony and Octavian, called the Second Triumvirate, confronted the forces of his killers, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, outside the western walls of the city. In effect, it was the end of the Roman Republic, as both Brutus and Cassius committed suicide in a losing cause. The battle was part of a long series of civil wars in the Roman Republic that would eventually turn into the Roman Empire ruled by one man, a Caesar. In the decades following, Octavian and Antony released some of their veteran soldiers to colonize the city, and in 27 BC when Octavian was proclaimed as Emperor Augustus, he reorganized the colony and established more settlers there. Philippi was now developed as a colony of Rome, administratively modeled on the Empire’s capital, governed by two military officers, the duumviri appointed directly from Rome. It can also be seen in the city’s layout and architecture as a colony resembling a “small Rome.” Phillipi is also indicative of how Rome developed regions into the larger Roman Empire to extend its influence.

The military and political history of Philippi is the contextual metaphor for Paul’s words to the Philippian Christians in these verses. The Apostle visited Philippi in 49-50 AD on his second missionary journey. As Paul and his companions were traveling they intended to take a turn and visit Asia, but Paul had a vision of a man begging them to come to Macedonia, so they went left to Europe and forever changed Western history. Luke tells us (Acts 16),

12 From there we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days.

We learn through their visit about the highly valued status of citizenship in the Greco-Roman world, conferring rights, privileges, and responsibilities within a city-state or the Empire itself. Without it, a person had no rights or recourse to abuse by the state. We see this play out in Paul’s experience as the city’s magistrates give him and Silas their version of non-Roman citizenship justice. They are both in fact citizens of Rome, so we can see the stark contrast of how Roman citizenship confers benefits not offered to non-citizens.

Paul became a Roman citizen at birth because his parents were citizens, and he used that to his advantage when he had to, as we see here in Philippi. A slave girl had been following Paul and his companions for many days, harassing them to the point where Paul had finally had enough and exorcised her. She lost her money making power to predict the future, resulting in Paul and Silas being arrested, “severely flogged,” and thrown in prison. As the men were singing hymns to God at midnight, there was an earthquake and the prison doors flew open. Thinking the prisoners escaped, the jailor was ready to kill himself, but Paul told him not to harm himself because none of the prisoners had escaped. He famously asked what he must do to be saved, and he and his family became the second converts in Europe after Lydia and her family.

The next morning Paul and Silas were told they were allowed to leave, and that’s when Paul played the citizenship card:

37 But Paul said to the officers: “They beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens, and threw us into prison. And now do they want to get rid of us quietly? No! Let them come themselves and escort us out.”

The city magistrates got nervous when they heard this because punishing and putting a Roman citizen in prison without a trial could be capital offense. Trying to appease Paul, they escorted them from the prison and asked them, nicely I gather, to leave the city.

Citizenship in Rome and in Heaven
From this story and the history of Philippi, we can see the dynamic at work Paul had in mind when he used the phrase, “our citizenship is heaven.” Here is what he did not mean. You citizens in Philippi, your real home is Rome, Italy, itself, and your goal as a Roman citizen is to go back there. You’re only here in Philippi for a short time, so don’t get used to it because you will only really belong when you get to Rome. Here, in contrast, is what he did mean. As citizens of Rome, you are creating in Asia Minor a little Rome, bringing all the dynamics of Roman civilized society and order to an outpost that knows nothing of the blessings of Roman citizenship. In that way, the Roman Empire and its influence and blessings will flow well beyond the city’s borders.

Notice Paul also says, “we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,” and not we eagerly await going to heaven to meet our Savior there. It would be the same as saying we eagerly await Caesar to come from the capital of the Empire to visit the outpost we’ve been building so he’s just as at home in Philippi as he is in Rome. He will be looking to see how successfully Philippi has been in replicating Rome as an outpost of the First City.

The first thing we need to know and then be continually aware of is Christ is King. In Matthew 4 after his baptism in the wilderness and at his most vulnerable after fasting 40 days and nights, Satan comes to tempt him in various ways.

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, Satan was the king of the world, the earth and its kingdoms belonged to him. The most radical and momentous moment in human history was about to happen, and nothing would ever be the same after. Only without the eyes of faith do we not realize the radical revolution that took place only a few short years after this cosmic confrontation. In Acts 17 when Paul and Silas were in Thessalonica, the words of the Jewish leaders captured well the consequences of what Christ accomplished when they say in exasperation, these men “have turned the world upside down.” More like right-side up!

Christ officially became King, experienced his coronation, at the ascension, something we read about in Acts 1. If you happened to see the coronation of King Charles III of England in May of 2023, you’ll get a small sense of what the coronation of Jesus must have been like when he ascended to heaven. We read about it 500 years before it happened in Daniel 7:

13 “I saw in the night visions,

and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
14 And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.

Many Christians believe this is a future event that will happen at Christ’s second coming, his Second Advent, but Paul in Philippians 1 doesn’t allow us that interpretation:

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.

The conclusion from the plain text of Scripture and supported by the entire history of redemption, is that Christ became King of this world, dethroning Satan, at his first coming. Further, his rule and reign started then, not just over the hearts of Christians, but as both these passages proclaim, over every single thing, every single person, and every single power spiritual and temporal. I’ve always loved how Paul seems to be saying his rule in the present age is so obvious, so accepted by Christians, they have to be reminded his rule is also for the age “to come.”

This absolutely essential aspect of Christian theology is all but ignored in Evangelical Christian churches. For most of my Christian life, the ascension never stood out to me as an indispensable theological foundation of the Christian life. From this foundation we live our lives in confidence, optimism, and the hope of victory both in this life, as well as in the one to come. That age to come will be in a resurrected body on this earth, redeemed, renewed, and reconciled to its Creator. In that hope we “eagerly await a Savior from there” when Jesus not only comes to visit this earthly colony of heaven, but because we have made it a “little heaven,” he will make heaven of the entire earth!

 

 

Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven: Did Jesus Really Mean It?

Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven: Did Jesus Really Mean It?

Jan 2, 2025 | The Gospel

Ever since, shockingly to me, I embraced postmillennialism in August 2022 and learned about these parables of Jesus in Matthew 13 (also Mark 3, Luke 13), I’ve wondered how people can deny the message he was conveying. Or how they can interpret it to be saying something different than what Jesus was clearly saying. For almost 44 years I never gave the parables a thought, nor did any pastor of any church we ever attended address it that I can remember. The reason is because of the eschatological assumptions I used to hold about the kingdom, which are completely different than what I now believe. I’ll deal with that in more detail below, but let’s first take a look at the parables.

 31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

33 He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”

First we notice he is speaking about the kingdom of heaven, which is equivalent in the other gospels to the Kingdom of God. The word kingdom is a key concept in gospels if we’re to understand the meaning of what Jesus is conveying in the parables. The word is used 116 times in the Synoptic gospels, so on frequency alone God has revealed it to us as a critical concept for what he is doing in the world. In fact, when John the Baptist and Jesus are announcing his ministry, they use identical words: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

The key inference from the word kingdom, and everyone would have understood this in the ancient world, is that a kingdom assumed a king who is ruling, who calls the shots. The king who ruled the world prior to Jesus’ coming wasn’t God, but Satan, the god of this fallen world. We learn this when Jesus is tempted by Satan in the wilderness (Matt. 4):

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.”

The kingdoms of the world belonged to Satan, so he was their king and ruler, and the one who had the authority to hand them over to Jesus. By rejecting his offer, Jesus was going to earn his kingship and the power to rule the world, not have it given to him by the deceiver. Post resurrection and ascension, the Lord still allows Satan a measure of influence, in case that’s not clear enough from all the misery and suffering in the world. Paul calls Satan “the god of this age” (2 Cor. 4:4), and “the ruler of the kingdom of the air” (Eph. 2:2). The Apostle John tells us “the whole world is under the control of the evil one” (I John 5:19), and he also makes a strong contrast between “everything in the world,” and those who do the will of God (I John 2:15-17). The difference after Christ is that Satan and his kingdom are now on the defensive, and the gates of his Satanic kingdom are no match for the onslaught of the church, Christ’s body on earth.

The Kingdom and the Church
When God created the world, he appointed man in the person of Adam, and eventually his progeny, to rule it. Man is and would always be God’s vice regent, a person who acts in the place of a ruler, governor, or sovereign. When man rebelled he lost this authority, and it transferred over to Satan, man became his vice regent instead of God’s. Now man had a choice, and as history teaches it would always be the wrong one. As Dylan sang, “You gotta serve somebody. It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.”

Prior to God calling Abram and creating a new people of His own to take back the world, the default choice of man was always the devil. For all intents and purposes, the devil had complete carte blanche in the world. Until, that is, God chose one single solitary man out of every other person on the face of the earth. With Abram He begin the process of creating a people specifically to engage the cosmic battle of these dueling kingdoms on earth. Since God is never in a hurry it would take 2000 years to fully implement the beginning of the plan in the coming of Himself in the person of his Son. As Shakespeare said, past is prologue, or as Jesus put it in Luke 24, the entire old testament is about him.

The big mistake I made until embracing postmillennialism is that I conflated the kingdom with the church. I’ve written about that here so I won’t repeat the argument fully, but my confusion was that I limited God’s kingdom work pretty much to just the church. It seemed clear to me the work of God in the kingdom was a spiritual work, so it clearly couldn’t apply to non-Christians and all they do in this fallen world. The problem with this is dualism, as in there are two, non-intersecting realities, the material/fallen and the spiritual/redeemed. The world is the former and the church is the latter, and never the two shall meet! This, however, is not the perspective of Jesus and the Apostles and New Testament. There is no spiritual/eternal-material/temporal distinction because all things are spiritual and eternal. As Paul says:

Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain (I Cor. 15:58).

Pre post-mill I would have read “labor in the Lord” to mean the “spiritual” work, you know, doing evangelism, church, Bible study, fellowship with other Christians, etc. I would not tend to view my “labor in the Lord” as what I do for a living five days a week, or taking care of my house, or being involved in local politics, etc. That’s this life stuff, not the church, so it’s not kingdom work. As I say in my post about this, there is irony in my conflation because since I was probably 20 and exposed to Francis Shaeffer, I’ve always been a Christian worldview guy, always applying my Christian faith to all of life as best I could, but still the conflation, the bifurcation, the dualism persisted, even if at a subconscious level. I’m sure I could not have made the argument they were the same in any coherent way because I didn’t really think much about it at all. It was an assumption I held without really knowing it, which means it was the default perspective of all the Christianity I’d been exposed to for over four decades.

The Nature of the Kingdom
If the kingdom of God is not the church, then what is it? It is anywhere on earth where Christ rules, and that means in and through and for God’s people, so anything they do unto the Lord is advancing God’s kingdom and extending Christ’s reign. It is Christ’s body and all its parts extending its influence throughout the world. In other words, the kingdom includes the church and anything God’s people do outside of the functions of the church. This opens up the entire world as our field of dreams, every square inch being exposed to Christ’s rule to push back the fall “as far as the curse is found.” Those who are not Christians can then participate in the kingdom of God by experiencing the blessings promised Abraham and the Patriarchs, that through them all the nations of the world would be blessed. There are many passages of Scripture that point forward to God’s kingdom victory, but one that comes to mind is Habakkuk 2:14:

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

That’s a lot of knowledge! Notice the metaphor leaves room for earth, so the prophet is not referring to the consummated state when God redeems the entire world, as I used to assume, but here now in this fallen world among fallen people living in fallen bodies. After the fall, God said to Adam and Eve the seed of the woman, the Messiah, would strike the serpent’s head, while the serpent would strike his heal. While the kingdom brought to earth by Jesus will always be one of conflict, the damage we can do to the serpent is far greater, thus victory in Jesus, the advancing of his kingdom rule, was always part of the plan. The plan was never to save people to go to heaven when they die to escape this horrible fallen world, but to bring heaven to earth. The Lord himself taught us to pray after we hallow God’s name, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” The direction of the Christian life and the church’s mission is all heaven to earth, not earth to heaven. Ever since Pietism and dispensationalism effectively took over the Evangelical church in the 19th century, we’ve gotten this exactly backward. Our hope is Christ conquering the final enemy, death (I Cor. 15:25), and our resurrection from the dead to in inhabit this renewed and redeemed creation, not our souls going to heaven when we die.

The justification for our hope, our confidence, and indeed our optimism, is not us! This is critical to understand because the critics of postmillennialism always get this wrong, claiming we think it is primarily because of our efforts that God’s kingdom is advanced. Yes, without our efforts nothing happens, but the only reason things happen is because of the cosmic authority over God’s creation Christ earned by his death and resurrection. Jesus told the Apostles that “All authority in heaven and earth had been given to him, therefore go.” Paul confirms this in Ephesians 1, telling us Christ was exalted to the right hand of God at his ascension into a position “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that can be named.” We see a prediction of the ascension and its meaning 500 years before Christ in Daniel 7:

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.

For most of my Christian life until just a couple years ago, August of 2022 to be exact, I believed this authority and dominion given to Christ was only for his people and church in this life, and then would be fully realized once he returned to judge the living and the dead and apply his saving work for all of creation. Now I realize this dominion, his kingdom rule, the “new heavens and new earth” promised in Isaiah 65, started at his first coming.  Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 9 beautifully tells us the nature of this kingdom when this child is born and this son is given:

2 The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned.

The Apostle John tells us who this light is in the first chapter of his gospel:

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

Light is the nature of the kingdom, and Jesus came to enable the light to conquer the darkness. Light always pushes away darkness. In fact, his ministry of casting out the demonic was a real world metaphor for his parable of the binding the strong man, i.e., Satan, in Mark 3. This victory he accomplished Paul tells us is “for the church,” which then brings this light and victory over the forces of darkness to this fallen world. That process started 2000 years ago at Pentecost.

The Mustard Seed and Leaven
So, we finally get to the point of this post. If we’re going to correctly understand what Jesus was trying to communicate using parables of a mustard seed and leaven, we first need to appreciate the all encompassing nature of his mission to bring the kingdom of heaven into a fallen world, and most importantly, why. We know from the case I made above, the context of everything in this cosmic war initiated in the garden of Eden is this earth. It is difficult to convey just how important this change of orientation is to the Christian life. We must grasp that the vision and hope Christ came to bring is not heaven! That’s almost a distraction from the real business at hand, which is the transformation of life on this earth.

Thus our proclamation is not the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the dead! And this coming back to a new life in completely transformed and spiritual physical bodies (incomprehensible to us at this moment), is on this very earth on which we now live. I used to not quite get that, had a kind of muddled idea of something completely new replacing this heavens and earth, but that’s not the hope in which the creation groans (Rom. 1). The Apostle John tells us in Revelation (21):

2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death[or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

The direction isn’t from earth up, but from heaven down. Without fully understanding the this-world mission of God in Christ, these parable loses their power, their impact, their very meaning, as it did for me for over four decades as a Christian. Maybe I thought they had to do with my own personal sanctification, or the advancement of the gospel and “populating heaven,” if I thought about them at all. My attitude was likely, praise God, we win in the end! Until then, it’s pretty much hell on earth. That’s not the most inspiring vision, and for 1800 years it wasn’t at all the vision of the church.

Rather, at his first coming, the flag of Christ’s kingdom rule on earth was planted like a warrior in battle planting a flag right in the middle of enemy territory to show there’s a new sheriff in town, a new king on the throne, a new way of doing business now. As Paul says, “the old has gone, the new has come.” And when he writes these words 2 Corinthians 5:17, the context are those in Christ who have become a “new creation.” Prior, I assumed this new creation was mainly about me and other Christians, the kingdom is the church and all that, rather than about the only creation that exists, us and us in it!

So, what Jesus is teaching by these parables? Simply, the growth of the kingdom, Christ’s rule and influence in this fallen world, will be slow, mostly painfully slow, but inevitable. That’s it!

This is not a difficult concept to grasp except our Pietistic Gnostic Dualism makes it so. One tiny seed planted, his kingdom, becomes the largest tree in the garden, and it isn’t a coincidence Jesus used the context of a garden. It was in the garden that the kingdom was taken away from its rightful owner, and now Jesus is saying he’s taking it back, step by step, inch by inch, line by line, until all his enemies have been defeated, the final enemy being death (I Cor. 15:25).

The parable of the leaven (yeast) really brings home the message because of the contrast between the leaven or yeast, and the amount of dough. This doesn’t communicate in the English, but the amount of dough is huge. My old NIV says a “large amount,” while other versions say more literally, three measures. The New NIV is more helpful, saying “about sixty pounds of flour.” That is a lot of flour! And will make a very big loaf! The woman took the yeast and mixed it “until it worked all through the dough.” Slowly but surely, inevitably, that yeast affected every molecule in the dough as it turned into bread.

That is the story of the kingdom initiated at Christ’s birth, death, resurrection, and ascension, slow, steady, inevitable progress, often not apparent to us, but happening all the same. And think about it, we’re only two thousand years into the process!

 

Societal Transformation by the Sword of the Spirit

Societal Transformation by the Sword of the Spirit

Nov 13, 2024 | Eschatology, Politics & Government, The Gospel

When I embraced postmillennialism after four plus decades as a Christian, I encountered ideas I’d never seriously considered before, like theonomy, or what God’s law over a nation would look like. Or what a Christian nation is, or even that a nation should be Christian. Ever since I first read Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who is There around 1980, I’ve always been a worldview Christian who wanted Christianity to influence the culture, but I never considered the nuts and bolts of governing a society from a biblical perspective. Like many Christians I wanted the Christian worldview to influence how our country is governed, but being a post-World War II conservative I was for all intents and purposes secular. I didn’t believe the so called separation of church and state meant the separation of religion and state, yet the idea of our nation or any nation being specifically Christian was never something I considered until postmillennialism.

Like most Evangelical Christians, I read the Great Commission of Matthew 28 through a Pietist lens. We’ll remember Jesus’ charge to the eleven disciples:

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

Even though Jesus distinctly said “nations,” like most others I read it as, “make disciples of all individual people.” I’m sure I thought a corporate body like a nation can’t be discipled, so Jesus must mean individual people, that is if I ever thought about it at all, which I didn’t. Clearly Jesus used the word nation to give us a vision of the worldwide nature of the great commission, that it would be people, as the Apostle John says in Revelation 5, “from every tribe and language and people and nation.” But post post-mill, I now looked more closely at the word nation in Greek, which is ἔθνος-ethnos, which means a race, people, nation, “or people joined by practicing similar customs or common culture.” It is instructive that he didn’t use a comparable Greek word for persons, for individuals. Since God doesn’t use words randomly in Scripture, this choice of wording by Jesus must be significant.

Which brings me to the reason for this post. I’ve found whenever the topic of a Christian nation comes up (let’s stay away from the loaded term Christian nationalism), most Christians, let alone non-Christians, think of force. I wrote about this recently after I heard Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College say, “a Christian nation is an oxymoron.” I yelled at my little MP3 player as I was listening to him say that, “No, Larry, a Christian nation is not a contradiction in terms!” Why would he think such a thing? Why would any Christian think such a thing? Because, as he implied when he continued to explain, if a nation is Christian, that means Christians are forcing the people of the nation to believe and behave a certain way. No, Larry, they are not! That’s not what Christians do, ever, even if some have done it in the past. Mark Rushdoony explains why Arnn and others believe this:

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.

Yes, there was a time in Christendom when Protestants and Catholics killed one another because of their beliefs. It had more to do with geopolitics than faith per se, but nonetheless, Bloody Mary Tudor of England killed some 300 Protestants who refused to repent and become Catholics, burning them at the stake. And Catholics murdered several thousand Huguenots (Calvinists) in France during the infamous St. Bartholmew’s Day Massacre in 1572. As the Reformation grew, Protestants fought back and we got the so called Wars of Religion. You get the picture. That’s not what we’re talking about when we talk about a Christian nation. Nobody can be or should be forced to believe anything.

The Failed Rationale of Secularism
This fratricide among Christians lead to the development of the Enlightenment concept of secularism, the idea that a nation could be irreligious, or secular, and that would obviate the need for Christians to kill one another. Nobody would be forced to believe something against their will. That was the idea anyway. It hasn’t exactly worked out as secularists thought it would. As we can see, secularism hasn’t turned out to be the pluralistic peaceful Utopia its adherents promised. The reason is simple to understand. No government can be morally neutral, and some worldview, some faith commitment, some religion, will always drive the moral framework, i.e., laws, of a nation. In the history of the world, Christianity was the only religion and worldview that gave us liberty and the rule of law, which is critical to understand if we’re to contrast it with secularism, which inevitably leads to tyranny, something modern secularists, both Christian and non-Christian, do not seem to realize.

I need to repeat my claim, strongly, so it’s clear, especially to conservatives who still buy into the myth of neutrality: Secularism will always inevitably lead to tyranny. America and the West circa 2024 is exhibit A. We call this version of tyranny woke, a variant of cultural Marxism. Only a Christian nation, a nation committed to Christ as its ultimate sovereign, and the Bible as its ultimate moral guide, will allow for true freedom of conscience and political liberty. Secularism, by contrast, can give us no rational for liberty because all the competing worldview (moral) claims in a pluralistic “Utopia” have an equal claim upon ultimate authority, and only one can win. The secular state always has the upper hand because it claims to be irreligious, and the people assume it can be too. The referee is not in the game but determines the rules of the game and will enforce those rules, which will always be moral and thus religious in nature. The inevitable totalitarian nature of secularism is well made in the book Classical Apologetics by Sproul, Gerstner, and Lindsley:

The impact of secularism . . . has been pervasive and cataclysmic, shaking the foundations of the value structures of Western civilization. The Judeo-Christian consensus is no more; it has lost its place as the dominant shaping force of cultural ethics. . . . Sooner or later the vacuum (the rejection of theology in the West) will be filled, and if it cannot be filled by the transcendent, then it will be filled by the immanent. The force that floods into such vacuums is statism, the inevitable omega point of secularism.

And this was written in 1984! Secularism has proved to be a jealous God, and if you question that God, the state, you will be made to pay. The delusion of secularism is part of what came to be called the post-World War II “consensus.” The illusion held when the remnant of Christian culture was still the worldview of most Westerners, but in a post-Christian environment secularist statism has turned completely anti-Christian. We’ve had to re-learn something the early church quickly realized. The assertion that “Jesus is Lord” is a political statement, one which means Caesar is not. Our ultimate allegiance is to the Lord Jesus Christ revealed to us in Scripture, and thus it cannot be to the state. The only means for the state to enforce its will is the sword, or violence, because the state is power not persuasion. That is the distinction we must understand if we’re to get it right as we implement Christendom 2.0.

Christianity and Liberty by the Sword
When we speak of the sword in the context of a Christian nation, it has a dual meaning, and both of these meanings are the only foundation for true liberty. The seed of this liberty goes back four thousand years ago. After the flood and the Lord scattering the people from Babel, humanity was heathen, and would have remained so, lost to truth, had not God taken the initiative and called one man, only one, out of Ur of the Chaldeans (southern Iraq) to go to Canaan. This was the bifurcation point of history which created the two branches of humanity, the heathens, whom God did not call, and His people, starting with this one man. Think of it as the proverbial fork in the road. Down one fork, sinful humanity remains benighted, lost in sin and darkness, trying to figure out reality and what it means, but only having the revelation of creation. Down the other are God’s people given verbal revelation directly from the Creator God.

God promised Abram all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him, and the theme of blessing the nations runs throughout Genesis. Most see the word blessing and think of a kind of vague happiness, things going well, circumstances to our liking, something like that. This is not at all what the Bible means by blessing. Christians can be blessed in very bad circumstances because they belong to their God, forever, but God’s blessing extends to every human being. A simple definition is to bestow divine favor. I like to extend this definition from something I heard in a lecture on the book of Genesis by Dr. Mark Futato of Reformed Theological Seminary. He defines blessing as empowerment. When God blesses people He empowers them to do a wide variety of things, as he puts it, “God empowers people to flourish.” I love that! Secularists paint Christianity as repressive and intolerant, but what it represses and doesn’t tolerate is sin! Sin destroys everything it touches and makes true flourishing impossible. It is by definition dis-empowering. Jumping forward two thousand years, Jesus says the same thing (John 10:10):

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

And despite what Satan wants us to believe, that God is a big meanie and he’s parsimonious with his blessings, it’s clear from Genesis and in God’s covenant promises to Abram that these blessings are to touch so many people they literally can’t be counted (sand of the seashore, stars in the sky, and dust of the earth). God is not miserly in spreading his blessings on earth, but this does not mean His blessings do not include adversity or in some cases suffering. Immediately after the fall, we realize all of God’s blessing is done in the face of a cosmic spiritual war to frustrate the devil’s plans. As we’re told, thorns and thistles. This means it will never be easy and we will encounter constant adversity and opposition. As I taught my kids as they were growing up and still as they are adults, life is constant friction, resistance at every step. But as muscles only grow stronger when there is resistance, so does our character and holiness.

Because Christ rose from the dead and was seated at the right hand of God “over all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is named,” (Eph. 1:21) he empowers us through the adversity and friction and resistance to flourish, in fact flourish in the face of and because of it. As I also taught and still teach my kids, we learn nothing from success. This is where the swords come in and how both are required if a nation is to experience true liberty.

The State, The Gospel, and the Sword
The two biblical swords have different purposes in a society, and we must not confuse the two, as many have done in the history of the church. First, Paul describes the sword utilized by the state in Romans 13:

3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

We notice those who abide by the law, doing right, have nothing to fear from the state. Liberty can only be had within the confines of well-defined and just laws people willingly abide by. America was bequeathed the rule of law from almost 900 years of British history, which means in the words of Samuel Rutherford’s 1644 book, Lex Rex, law is king. Rutherford states, “A man commanding unjustly and ruling tyrannically has in that no power from God.” Thus, from Alfred the Great in the ninth century grew the common law, and the idea that even the king was under law, a radically new notion in the history of the world, a power British kings would not easily relinquish.

This was a specifically Christian idea that separated the Christian nation from the pagan nation. It’s one or the other, the law over the ruler, or the ruler over the law. A secular nation is a pagan nation, and thus man’s law not God’s law rules, and the result is tyranny, as we see in America and the West today. The answer is theonomy, however we define it, God’s law not man’s law as the ultimate authority over the state. This is the point at which Christian secularists get terribly confused, thinking theonomy means using the sword of the state to enforce certain beliefs. It does not! Freedom of conscience that came through European, primarily English, history gave us America’s First Amendment, the freedom of religion, and what we’ve come to know as the separation of church and state. The church institute, as Joe Boot calls it, does not exercise any coercive power over individuals, nor does the state outside of enforcing civil and criminal law. 

We must understand this, and teach Christians and non-Christians alike, that we advance the Christian cause in society by words, first God’s words then ours. People and societies are transformed not by force, but by reason; as the Lord says through Isaiah, come let us reason together (Is. 1:18). Greg Bahnsen in his Theonomy in Christian Ethics puts it well:

Christ repudiates the use of the sword in spreading the gospel of the kingdom because this task belongs to His church, and the church and state are sperate (as the Old Testament taught and Christ confirmed). The civil magistrate may use the sword as the proper means of enforcement, but the church may not.

And you do not get more theonomic than the late great Greg Bahnsen. Yet most conservative Christians, like Larry Arnn, believe a Christian nation means using force to advance Christianity. The reason, again, is the persistent myth of secular neutrality. The Book of Revelation is also an excellent source for understanding this critical distinction. We notice in the following verses the sword Jesus uses to advance his kingdom.

In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. (Rev. 1:16)

“To the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. (Rev. 2:12)

Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. (Rev. 2:16)

Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. (Rev. 19:15)

The rest were killed with the sword coming out of the mouth of the rider on the horse. (Rev. 19:21)

From the moment the Apostle John wrote these words in the first century, the sword of the word of God has gone forth to conquer the nations and advance His kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom. 4:17).

 

 

J.I. Packer: Be More Annoying for Jesus!

J.I. Packer: Be More Annoying for Jesus!

May 15, 2024 | The Gospel

Packer didn’t actually say this, but it can be inferred from his amazing little book, The Plan of God. What I took from this book is that the plan of God is so amazing that every human being alive should want to know about it, and how else will they come to know about it than through us.

If you were alive in the 1960s you’ll remember a song by Dionne Warwick called, What the World Needs Now. Even as I child I remember it. If you were, I’m sure the tune will pop right back into your head like it did mine, and it will be hard to get out. Written by Burt Bacharach, the chorus goes like this:

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No, not just for some but for everyone

I recently finished this little book by Packer, and reading the passage below brought this vapid song to mind. As with The Beatles’ All You Need is Love, there is some truth, but that all depends by what we mean by love. The only love the world needs is that displayed by God in Christ for our sins. As the Apostle John says, “we love because he first loved us.” As Christians, we have the answer for what every single person in the world needs: Jesus! Every longing, every need, every frustration, every dream, every hope, the answer to every disappointment, every betrayal, every everything is found in Christ!

Why don’t we share it more? Possibly, if we really believed it, we would. We would become a little more annoying for Jesus.

And that’s all you have to be, just a little more annoying. That can take many different forms, and none of them have to be in the least confrontational. In fact, to do it you just have to get good at dropping hints. There are an infinite variety of ways to do it, and all it takes is practice. Sometimes I just drop God or the Lord in sentences, or say I’m a Christian, and tell them what it means for the circumstance we’re discussing. Ideally, I want them to ask me questions, but sometimes I ask them. I wrote a post a few years back about Greg Koukl’s wonderful book, Tactics. That book is worth its weight in apologetics gold because he teaches us how powerful simple questions are, and we don’t have to know much. As Christians, however, we should know more about not only what we believe but why we believe it. In fact, I’m quite convinced that we ought to know as much about our Christian faith as we do about our occupation of favorite hobby. But back to our heathens.

If there is nothing there, and their heart is currently dead to the things of God, they will either completely ignore me, or blow me off. Then I move on. Koukl in Tactics, though, says what we’re doing regardless is putting a pebble in their shoe. We never know when God might use that little pebble, which to us could have been a throw-away line, to annoy them into curiosity about the faith they’ve thus far rejected even thinking about. Sometimes, though, they want to engage, and we’re off to the races. There is nothing better than talking to someone about Jesus who doesn’t know him, but is curious about him.

Before you ever get there, though, you have to have the motivation to want to do it. If you believe you have the answer to every question of life, chances are you’ll want to share it. I encourage you to contemplate Packer’s eloquent words, and pray for God’s Holy Spirit to convict you of keeping Jesus to yourself.

And now we begin to see what the Bible really has to say to a generation like our own which feels itself lost and bedeviled in an inscrutably hostile order of things. There is a plan, says the Bible. There is a sense of things, but you have missed it. Turn to Christ; seek God; give yourself to the service of His plan, and you will have found the key to living in this world which has hitherto eluded you. “He that followeth me,” Christ promises,” shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). Henceforth you will have a motive: God’s glory. You will have a rule: God’s law. You will have a Friend in life and death: God’s Son. You will have in yourself the answer to the doubting and despair called forth by the apparent meaninglessness, even malice, of circumstances: the knowledge that “the LORD reigneth,” and that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are  the called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). Thus, you will have peace.

How many people in our age are looking for peace, but looking in all the wrong places? Because we live in a secular age, that would be most people.

Circumstances or God in Christ
Even as Christians we are prone to this temptation because instead of seeing God alone as our fulfillment, we look to our circumstances. This is, of course, perfectly natural and nothing in and of itself is wrong with it. Everyone wants pleasant circumstances they like rather than horrible circumstances they hate. Where we get into trouble is thinking it is the circumstances that fulfill us and bring us peace. The problem is that even when we think we have everything we want, and things look just like we think we want them, something is still missing. We feel it, we know it.

A few years ago my son called me into his room to show me a video of an interview by a famous British musician. He had played a venue most musicians dream about, the iconic Wembley Stadium, and was asked in an interview what that felt like. He wasn’t at all excited, just blasé, and said something like it was great, but you know, just another gig.  You could tell the interviewer was perplexed. I imagined him thinking, what? Wembley, and you weren’t excited about it? I had taught my son nothing will fulfill us in any ultimate sense outside of Christ, and he explained this was a perfect example of that. It looks like he got the message.

What exactly is that blasé or empty feeling about things that we think should fulfill us? It is God telling us to not turn the good things he’s given us into ultimate things, blessings into a curse. That’s how idolatry happens, and it can be anything in our lives. Augustine called the correct approach to God’s good gifts right ordered loves. There are certain things we love more, others less, but our number one love is God himself in Christ, our Creator and Redeemer. When we’re feeling that nagging emptiness in spite of everything being great, it is God reminding us not to think anything other than Him will bring us true peace and happiness. Living life in a fallen world in a fallen body among fallen people will always be problematic, and our hope of the Resurrection is our ultimate hope. In the meantime we can learn from the Apostle Paul who knew horrific circumstances for much of his life (Philippians 4):

11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

The Greek word Paul uses for “secret” is interesting: to initiate into the mysteries, to instruct. The word was also used as part of a metaphor in “the initiatory rites of the pagan mysteries” for those having been initiated. This “secret” or mystery is Christ! In him we can be “content in any and every situation.” And Paul knew whereof he spoke.

Whenever anyone is going through hard times, I encourage them to read this passage in 2 Corinthians 11 where Paul gives us a powerful description of his suffering life:

Whatever anyone else dares to boast about—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast about. 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendants? So am I. 23 Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. 27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 28 Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?

30 If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.

Because of the cross and the resurrection of the dead, our eternal destiny relativizes everything on earth. Modern secular people are looking for this eternal perspective that will finally put all the stuff of their life in perspective, only they don’t know it yet unless someone tells them. None of the stuff will ultimately fill the God shaped vacuum in their souls.

The Path to a Life of Meaning
Everyone we encounter is looking for meaning, hope, and purpose that somehow makes sense of this ridiculous thing we call life. If people stop and think about it for even two minutes, they will realize how bizarre it all is. The devil does not want them to ask the big questions, so he does his best to keep them focused on the petty and mundane so they ignore the profound and eternal. They need to be told that everything they are looking for is found in their Creator, the God who made and died for them that they might have a relationship for God’s glory and their ultimate good. Another quote by J.I. Packer says it typically well:

The only man in this world who enjoys a complete contentment is the man who knows for certain that there is no more significant life, than the life that he is living already; and the only man who knows this is the man who has learned that the way to be truly human is to be truly godly, and whose heart desires nothing more—and nothing less—than to be a means, however humble, to God’s chief end—his own glory and praise.

This is the mystery or secret Paul learned that not only allows contentment whatever the circumstances, but also how to live a life of ultimate significance, no matter what it is God has called us to. For most of us, that is a simple, mundane life of making a living, and if we have the blessing of raising a family,  teaching them that the Glory of God is our ultimate good. This is the only place where true meaning, and what comes with it, fulfillment is found.

Upwards of 50,000 people kill themselves in America every year, and many more try. Drugs, legal and illegal, are rampant among those trying to fill the emptiness of their lives. Distraction like sports and entertainment are what other people chase to give their lives meaning. Every one of these people is looking for Jesus, and when they encounter you, they encounter Jesus. Maybe they will meet him through you, so don’t be afraid to be just a little more annoying for Jesus.