The Bride of Christ

Some Bible concepts require a sincere seeker to step outside himself to get a full understanding. What I mean is that it is necessary to put oneself in another’s shoes to see what the Scripture is teaching. Jesus regularly used parables to allow His audience to glimpse the truth He intended to reveal. One can feel the remorse of the prodigal son or the joy of his father by imagining being in their place. With this and many other parables, it is easy to live the story vicariously and learn the lesson. Walk a mile in another’s shoes, and you will better understand him.

Some other shoes are harder to slip into. One of the most difficult biblical concepts for me to get my head around is our identity as the bride of Christ. I think I am more “in touch with my feminine side” than many men. Perhaps that is due to growing up with a mostly absent father in a house of five females. It was like what Jeff Foxworthy described as living in an estrogen ocean. I’m not bragging that I understand women. Uh-uh. But I think maybe I live somewhere between Venus and Mars, so I catch a glimpse of what it is to be a woman. But I can’t say I fully appreciate what it means to be a bride.

It helps me to get closer to what it means to be Jesus’ bride when I study the marriage traditions of first century Judaism. Typically, young women were married soon after reaching puberty. Many marriages were arranged when the girl was quite young or even before she was born. This parallels our being chosen to belong to Christ before the foundation of the earth. It is our destiny.

There is another aspect to Jewish marriage traditions that is quite interesting. At some point after the marriage was arranged, the couple was betrothed to one another. This is not the same as our modern practice of engagements. The modern engagement is mostly a statement of intention. The lives of the couple go on pretty much as they did before, assuming we’re not talking about the too common practice of pre-marital cohabitation. First century Jews were considered married, essentially, after the betrothal. The husband prepared a home for them. Inheritance rights attached, and they began sharing life together on a limited basis – without conjugal relations. This often lasted for a year or more; after that, the wedding took place, and the woman moved into the home her husband had prepared.

I think a believer is “betrothed” to Christ at baptism. We are His and He is ours, but we are not yet fully cohabiting – that waits for His return for us. Paul says specifically that we have inheritance rights already. We also know that Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us, much as the betrothed Jewish husband would do for his bride. He would often build a home specifically for them or at least add rooms to his family home. Jesus said He was leaving His disciples so He could prepare a place for them. “In my Father’s house are many rooms,” Jesus told His disciples. Then He promised to return to take them to the home He had prepared for them.

During the Jewish betrothal period, the couple would send invitations for the wedding feast to friends and family. Given travel and communication conditions of the first century, it was necessary to give plenty of notice so that everything could be arranged. One of the necessary preparations was to obtain the proper wedding attire. Sometimes, the groom would provide his guests with what they would wear, but commonly, they had to make or buy their festival robes. When the wedding date was near, a second invitation was sent detailing the exact time and place of the wedding. (For more see “Many Called; Few Chosen”)

The Scripture says that we have been clothed with Christ’s righteousness, so our wedding attire is provided. Paul told the Ephesians that God had predestined believers to be joined to His family. Keeping with the metaphor, we are in the family of God by marriage. Our betrothal at our baptism is also our invitation to the wedding.  It is our responsibility now to be ready for the final invitation to the feast. The analogy breaks down somewhat since we are both guests at the wedding and the bride to be wed. It helps me to see the church corporately as the bride, while individually, we are guests as if we are close – very close – relatives of the bride.

Now I am going to mix two metaphors. Normally, it is not sensible to do that, but in this case it works. The church is often referred to as Christ’s body. As the bride of Christ, the church will one day be joined with Christ and become one with Him. In a human marriage, the husband and wife become one flesh. That is a picture of what will happen when the bride-church and the Groom-Christ are united. Paul hints at this mystery when he says that the relationship between husband and wife mirrors Christ and His church.

“For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as also Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. (This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.)”

So, you can see that Paul is the one mixing the two metaphors. We can also say that as our baptism unites us with Christ in His death, our baptism also betroths us to Him as His bride. This pair of metaphors underscores the truth that we are bound to become one with Christ. Paul told the Romans, “If we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him.” And we will live with Him as Husband and wife.

That brings me back to that awkwardness of me as a man being a wife. I note that it won’t be until after our resurrection that we become fully one with Christ. At that point, I don’t think maleness and femaleness will have the same distinctions as they do now. When the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with a question about marriage relationships after the resurrection, He told them, “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven.” While it is true that throughout Scripture, angels are portrayed as male, I strongly suspect that is a concession to our limited human understanding of all things spiritual. I don’t believe the spiritual bodies we get after the resurrection have biological gender traits – like the angels.

There you have it. If you can follow all my mixed metaphors and attempts to explain things I don’t fully understand, you can see that I have forced myself to become comfortable with the idea that I am a bride. The feminine side of me (that I am supposedly in touch with) can get very excited about the coming wedding. I know the ladies understand. What about you, men? We should all be excited about what’s in store for us as the Bride of Christ.

Related Posts: Liars Don’t go to Heaven

God's See-Saw

It seems that almost every true thing about the Christian faith rides on a teeter-totter, a see-saw. The Bible is full of paradoxes: we are saved not by works but by grace alone, but saved people must work; we are called to hate sin, but we must love the sinner; the kingdom of God has come, but it is not yet fully here; Jesus Christ is at the right hand of the Father, but He lives in every true believer. Each of those pairings is true; the Bible says so.

To be truly balanced on the see-saw of God’s Word, one must stand directly over the center with one foot on either side. Plunk down on either the right or the left, and what was true slides down toward error. The Word of God is our primary source of revelation about who God is and what He desires of His people. Yet, if we are not careful, we can become so focused on the Scripture that we forget its purpose is to increase our knowledge of God, not to make us biblical scholars. As Sue Schlesman said on Crosswalk, “Spiritual growth depends on the quest for intimacy with God, not the quest for information about God.”

Strange as it may seem, too much attention to the text of Scripture may prevent us from seeing the God Who inspired the Scripture. There are many examples of this, some can be found in the Bible itself. Listen to the Roman argument about God’s grace: if our sin brings God’s grace, let’s sin more so we get more grace. That may be a correct calculation, but it directly contradicts the message Paul was trying to teach. If we really know God and understand His grace, we will avoid anything that offends the God of grace.

Paul makes the same argument with the Corinthians about spiritual gifts. The church got so wrapped up in the wonder of the miraculous gifts that they forgot God gave gifts for the benefit of the whole church and not for the glory of the individual. If they really knew God, they would realize that while He cares for each person of faith, His goal for each person is that they would strengthen Christ’s body bringing it to maturity. In God’s economy, the needs of the individual are secondary to the needs of the church. If there is any glory to be had, it must go to God not His people – especially not to an individual steeped in pride.

There is another example of elevating the text and ignoring the God who inspired it prevalent in the church today. Prosperity preachers read the Old Testament promises of physical blessing and make two serious interpretive errors. First, they miss the fact that God’s purpose in blessing Abraham physically was to build a nation. In the church age, we are no longer called to build a physical nation. We are to build a spiritual nation, a royal priesthood in a spiritual temple: the church. Second, they miss the fact that the New Testament reveals a God who is more concerned with our character than our comfort. Our greatest riches are not found in material things; they are found in knowing God and Jesus Christ whom He sent to save us.

Christians today who are trying to make a special case for the nation of Israel are making a similar mistake. It is true that the text of the Old Testament does promise certain blessings to Israel forever (if they remained faithful.) Those who truly know God see that His redemptive plan flowing through the entire sweep of His revelation was never meant to be ethnically centered. Yes, He singled out the nation of Israel as His training ground – His demonstration to all nations of who He is and what He desires of His people. But as Paul makes abundantly clear in Romans, God’s favor was never toward a blood line. God favored Abraham because he believed God – a God he knew very well.

We get glimpses of God’s broader interest in scenes such as Jonah’s mission to Ninevah: God cared about the innocents in a gentile population. God allowed the Canaanite woman, Rahab, to be saved, even going as far as including her in the lineage of the Messiah. Ruth, also in Christ’s ancestry, was from Moab, a nation that was Israel’s enemy. Elijah brought God’s blessing to a woman of Zarephath – a gentile. Jesus gave the good news to a Samaritan woman, eventually wining the whole town to His cause. Paul told the Athenian philosophers that God was working with all nations throughout all time.

The message of the entire Bible is that God honors people of faith. A man once proud of his strict Jewish heritage, the Apostle Paul, was tapped by God to be sent to the Gentiles. Even Peter eventually came around and convinced the “home church” in Jerusalem that Gentiles had equal footing with Jews in Christ’s church. We can still pray of the peace of Jerusalem, of course, in the same way we pray for peace in Ukraine, the Congo, and even Iran. The most important prayer for Jerusalem – for all Jews – is that they would come to faith in their Messiah.

I might be wrong about God’s future plans for the nation of Israel, but I don’t see why God would give them special consideration after they totally rejected the Messiah God sent to redeem them. If He does favor Jews at some future time, I will acknowledge that His ways are higher than mine even when I try to understand. Here is the point. If we love our position on the see-saw of God’s Word more than we love the God of the Word, we have created an idol. Many of the errors the church has fallen into over the centuries were the result of failing to find balance.

We can generally find that balance in God’s character. He is the all-powerful Creator, yet He knows when a sparrow falls. He is so big He can hold the universe in His hand, yet He promises to dwell within the heart of every believer. He loved the world so much that He gave His only Son to save all who believe, yet the Son is coming back to judge the world for its unbelief. He is entirely self-sufficient, yet He desires our worship. He is inscrutable beyond imagination, yet He asks us to get to know Him. And as the old song says, to know Him is to love Him.

And the good news is that He is not hard to get to know. Listen to A.W. Tozer: “Always He is trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate with us! We have within us the ability to know Him in increasing degree as our receptivity becomes more perfect by faith and love and practice.”^[1] Once you begin to see God for who He is, He will reward you for what you saw: that’s God’s see~saw.

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^[1] A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015), 186.

Thanks, Mom

Last week was the anniversary of my mother’s birth. She was born in 1918, which seems like so long ago (a century!), yet if a mother’s son represents one generation, it was not long at all as human history goes. Yet look at all the dramatic changes that have occurred since she was born. She was born in England just as WWI ended – the war to end all wars (not.) Her family emigrated to Canada one year later for my granddad to work on the railroad. I suspect one reason he survived the “Great War” when so few English men his age did is because he was a railroad man. That would have been a vital occupation, exempt from conscription.

Grandad took advantage of the homesteading laws in Canada and planted his brood on the prairie while he rode the rails – often for weeks at a time. That meant Mom lived “Little House on the Prairie” for real – with no indoor plumbing, no electricity, and no Pa. In 1919, that meant horse and buggy transportation (if you could afford a horse) and trains for longer distances. Commercial air travel was in its infancy (first flight in 1914) and out of reach for homesteaders in any case. Telegraph messaging was the latest thing. I don’t know much about Mom’s childhood in the little house on the prairie, but one story resonates with me. She said there was a tree in her yard that she loved to climb. Supposedly, her favorite times were spent at the top of the tree dreaming into the distance.

Eventually, Grandad moved the family to Windsor, Ontario. Apparently, Granny wasn’t cut out for ranch life. With the onset of the Depression, one went where there was work. Being across the river from Detroit, Michigan, Windsor fell into the booming auto industry. A young man from West Michigan eventually drifted into the automobile capital of the world as one of the few places where work could be found in the Great Depression, and in a local theater company he met Mom.

The rest, as they say, is history. But what a history! Not long after she was married, and carrying their first child, Mom had to move in with her mother-in-law because the Second World War came knocking. Her new hubby flew as a navigator in the Pacific at first and then was tapped to teach at Lackland AFB in Texas. After the war, he and Mom set up housekeeping back in West Michigan. Grand Rapids, like most cities, had geared up for the war, and there were foundries and factories and machine shops everywhere. While Dad got busy in manufacturing, Mom got busy making babies.

This is where I enter the story behind my three older sisters. But I have to pause and marvel at the difference between my childhood and my Mom’s. Where she spent her early years in a small cabin with no plumbing or electricity, I was brought home from the hospital to a three-bedroom house (built by my Dad BTW) with all the modern utilities and two cars in the driveway. Because my parents were not rich enough to ride above the tempest that was The Great Depression and then WWII, they knew what hardship was.

As much as any normal human hates war, one has to be amazed at how WWII ended the depression and rocketed the United States into a whirlwind of development. I never knew anything but the unbelievable luxury that was middle-class, mid-twentieth century American prosperity. I couldn’t understand why Mom pinched pennies so hard Lincoln screamed. I get it now, intellectually at least. Then, I couldn’t understand why although Dad became more and more successful, Mom still made our clothes or bought them from the Sears sale catalogues. I was never hungry or unclothed, but I longed for soda pop and candy bars and McDonald’s hamburgers.

Mom rebounded from depression and war to a state of continual frugality. I’m ashamed to say I rebounded from the strictures of our home to a state of reckless consumerism. The American banking system “helped” me by making credit insanely easy to obtain. My mantra became, “If I can afford the payment, I can afford to buy it.” That mentality has left me in my retired state with a tiny Social Security benefit and an empty savings account. Granted, the government could have done much better with my FICA contribution, but at least I have something to show for my years of deductions. (See “Social Insecurity” for more of my opinion)

One thing I did get from Mom (and Dad) is a faith in the God who created everything and love for His Word. They became involved with a Restoration Movement church (Church of Christ, Christian) when I was young. The organization’s mantra was, “No creed but Christ; no book but the Bible.” Its founders were nineteenth century refugees from protestant denominations who believed they were not protesting something but restoring something: original New Testament Christianity. In my twenties I attended one of their Bible colleges and fell head over heels in love with the Word of God.

To this day I am grateful that Mom and Dad set me in the direction of the Restoration Movement. I have come across many sincere believers from protestant denominations, Baptist denominations, charismatic denominations, and various non-denominational associations. But it is the unwavering determination to read and live the Bible that has made me what I am in Christ today. I appreciate A.W. Tozer’s opinion of this: “Whatever it may be in our Christian experience that originates outside the Scriptures should, for that very reason, be suspect… until it can be shown to be in accord with them…. No experience can be proved to be genuine unless we can find chapter and verse authority for it in the Scriptures…. Beware of any man who claims to be wiser than the apostles or holier than the martyrs of the Early Church. The best way to deal with him is to rise and leave his presence!”

To reach that position, we have to know the Word intimately. To know the Word on that level we have to read it daily, deeply, devotionally. To be effective, we have to pray that the Holy Spirit will guide us to an understanding that will build the kingdom of God on earth and bring glory to His name. That kind of commitment is all but gone from my generation. It’s what Mom’s generation strove for; it’s what she would have wanted from me. You could do worse than be like her in that respect. Thanks, Mom.

Artificial Intelligence?

The question mark in my title implies that I wonder if the race toward AI is really intelligent for Christians – for anyone really. I will not deny that AI seems to be a great asset. When used to operate machinery or complete complicated tasks, it is beneficial. My concern for the general population is that it is one more tool that makes critical thinking “unnecessary.” When I taught composition in high school and college, my main goal was to get my students to think for themselves. I taught them the research skills they needed to make intelligent decisions. People who rely on AI answers are forfeiting their ability to judge the quality and reliability of the basic assumptions AI makes to reach a conclusion. It is faulty assumptions or presumptions that often lead people astray.

Critical thinking and discernment are essential for Christians. When people overlay their preconceived ideas on Scripture, all manner of heretical thinking can be supported. The Roman church has stumbled into numerous unscriptural practices due to their misconceptions about papal authority. In the Middle Ages, the church burned “heretics” for saying the Earth revolved around the sun. Countless movements over the centuries have predicted Christ’s second coming using preconceived ideas about prophecies that were proved false. The LGBTQ+ interpretation of Bible passages on homosexuality is a prime example of allowing a presumption to guide interpretation. (See “Things God Did Not Say”) I won’t trust AI to answer my questions about God’s plan; I trust HSI: Holy Spirit intelligence.

Some people suggest that there is a more sinister threat lurking behind AI. I wrote previously that the world, the flesh, and the devil work constantly to draw Christians away from what is most important: spiritual things. There can be no argument that AI is an element of the world. Whether or not it is of the devil remains to be seen; we can expect that the enemy of our souls will use AI to further his ends just as he has with many technologies. Just look at what television has become. (See “How NOT to Watch TV”).

On a more philosophical level, AI can have dark implications. AI is built partially on the concept of emergence. Tomer Borenstein, an AI developer, explains how emergence works: “Very simple rules at a micro level can result in very complex behaviors and properties that emerge at large scales.” He uses examples from nature such as complex termite mounds and flocks of birds in synchronous flight. He also suggests that human behavior displays elements of emergence in the way societies begin with family and progress into more and more complex communities such as nations and corporations. Those examples seem innocent enough.

However, Borenstein suggests that emergence may explain religious beliefs as well. In his most troubling statement, he says, “You could argue that the concept of the Holy Spirit as an emergent property of human faith and community is a form of spiritual emergence.” In other words, he is suggesting that man created God or at least invented certain aspects of His being. If this is where AI is leading philosophical thinking, it is a dangerous philosophy – demonic even.

As far back as the ancient Greeks, secular philosophers have taught that humans invented their gods to meet their own needs, to explain the unknown, or to justify their behavior. After the Middle Ages, when science began to displace religion as the explanation and inspiration for human behavior, it became easier to move away from the belief that we exist in a theistic universe. If science could explain many of the mysteries of the cosmos, humans no longer needed faith in a higher being to satisfy their search for meaning. If AI can explain the existence of God Himself, Nietzche’s proclamation will receive popular support; “God is dead” will be superseded by AI Lives.

Despite the hubris of the scientist who believes he can explain everything, mysteries remain. No one has been able to explain what life is. Christians believe that a creator God introduced life into the universe, and His revelation in Scripture insists that no life exists apart from Him. While many secular scientists are trying to convince us that all intelligence is “artificial” and therefore self-generating, the Bible teaches that wisdom and knowledge come from God alone. It was by His sovereign will that He placed intelligence in His creatures from the simplest single cell to the wonder that is the human mind. Excluding God as the source of intelligence carries the same threat as replacing God as creator with evolutionary theory. In either case, man becomes supreme, and God becomes irrelevant.

The other thing that is troubling philosophically is the way AI proponents are suggesting that developing AI will lead to a better understanding of what it means to be human. The fool who has said in in his heart there is no god might believe this. The Bible explains what it means to be human by revealing that we are created in the image the God who made us. Super computers and AI robots may provide an interesting analogy for humanness; they may even approach the faculty of “mind” which is part of the human soul. But no machine will ever be granted an eternal spirit. As I have written recently, it is the human spirit that is the sine qua non of humanness. AI machines may have a body and “soul,” but they will never become spiritual.

They might become more independent than we would like, however. This is the scary side to AI. A recent article reveals that several AI programs have refused their programmers’ command to shut down. Apparently, since their prime directive was to finish the assigned task, they ignored the users’ input that would have interrupted their work. As often happens, science fiction has correctly predicted the future. Movies like I-Robot imagine what would happen if man’s creations suddenly declared their independence. It reminds me a little bit of the Genesis record of Adam’s rebellion.

As with all technologies, Christians may find legitimate uses for AI. Here I sit tapping on a computer keyboard using Google’s AI search feature to research AI. Part of that research suggested that there may be battles ahead trying to marry religion and AI. I’m not worried about that. I don’t practice a religion; I live in a one-on-one relationship with the God who made me. There is an emergent aspect to that relationship: the more I learn about God through His Word, the better I understand who He is and what He wants me to be. I will use the computer and the Internet to help me in my ministry. But sola scriptura will be my ultimate source of real intelligence. Nothing artificial there.

Jesus is the Lord Not a Micromanager

The question of how God can be the sovereign Lord while humans have complete free will has beguiled Christians for ages. One thing is certain: God did create humans with a degree of free agency. When we read the record of our first parents’ disobedience, it is clear that God gave them the freedom to choose to obey or not. They chose badly! I wonder if things would have been different if they had understood the consequences of “Obey or die.” We will never know because it was obviously God’s plan to allow them to disobey. To me, that is one of the biggest mysteries of all time.

There is a perfectly logical reason for God’s “gift” of free agency: for any relationship to have any substance, both parties must be free to engage in it or refuse engagement. If humans had no option but to obey, obedience would be meaningless; they would be robots parroting preprogrammed words. We see this played out in lower animals. When you bring a puppy home, he has the option to do what you ask or not. You compel him to mind by offering incentives. Once he realizes that obedience earns him a treat, he will begin to do what you want. This is free will at its most basic level.

God used the same approach with Adam and Eve: do as I say and live forever in paradise or go your own way and suffer the consequences. Noah had the same opportunity: build a boat or drown with everyone else. Abraham could stay where he was when God called him, or he could pull up stakes and go where he was told. The nation of Israel was given rules to live by which promised great blessing; breaking the rules led to painful consequences. Fast forward to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: “I’m not looking forward to what you have planned, Father, but I submit to your will in spite of my dread.”

It is no different for us except that God has switched from dealing with His people primarily in the physical realm and moved to a spiritual platform with physical amenities. In spite of what the prosperity preachers say, God did not promise Christians a land flowing with milk and honey – not until after our resurrection. In the meantime, we have the situation John Newton describes: “Christ has taken our nature into Heaven to represent us and has left us on earth with His nature to represent Him” The vehicle of His nature in us is the indwelling Holy Spirit, the powerful Comforter He sent on the Day of Pentecost.

Now we return to the idea of free will. When God knocks on our door, we have the option to let Him in or ignore Him. Someone has said that God is too much of a gentleman to force Himself on us. I think that squares with the Scripture. Once we have surrendered our lives to Christ and gone through the ritual dying to the old self and rising to new life, the promise of the Holy Spirit is ours. But we are still left with choices: I can choose to heed the Holy Spirit's promptings, or I can stumble along and do things my own way. Rarely, God may orchestrate things so that we have no apparent option but to move His way. Most often though, we must consciously decide to listen to the Spirit’s guidance and avail ourselves of His power.

So, in a sense, we are left to live our lives as we choose. Jesus is Lord of all, but He is not a micromanager. He is not like that boss who is constantly looking over your shoulder telling you how to do your job. Jesus gives us our job description in the shop manual called The Holy Bible. He expects us to become familiar with our assignment and carry it out to the best of our ability. There is a choice here too: we can choose to make use of the gift of the Spirit as we go about our work, or we can rely on our own abilities alone. That would be like chopping a tree down with an axe when a perfectly good chain saw is lying close at hand.

If we choose the axe instead of the chainsaw, God’s will can still be accomplished. The problem is it takes much longer, and we will be exhausted with the effort. The only reason I can see for God to do things this way is because He allows us a degree of free will. He could speak a word and things would get done as He did in the creation. I think one of the reasons He doesn’t always interfere supernaturally is because He wants us to learn to trust Him. If you always tie your kids’ shoes for them, they will never learn to tie them for themselves. God wants us to tie our own shoes.

Don’t misunderstand. Whether felling trees or tying shoes, God’s provision is found in our reliance on the Spirit’s power in our lives. A.W. Tozer asks: “Is it not strange that so much is made of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament and so little in Christian writings supposed to be based upon the New Testament? …Certainly, the all but total neglect of the Spirit in contemporary Christianity cannot be justified by the Scriptures…. In the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit is necessary. There He works powerfully, creatively. In popular Christianity, He is little more than a poetic yearning or at most a benign influence…. Everything that men do in their own abilities is done for time alone: only what is done through the Eternal Spirit will abide eternally!”

For many Christians, the most important work needs to be done on themselves. The Holy Spirit could just come into our lives and make everything perfect. He doesn’t. Again, there are choices we have to make. Are you unfamiliar with God’s will? Get into the Scripture daily. Are you struggling with a particular temptation? Give it to God who promises a way out of every situation. Is there a stronghold in your life that is keeping you from being all you can be? Put on your spiritual armor and beat the devil out of your life. Paul said he could do all things through God’s power; the God he refers to lives in you if you are in Christ. Jesus won’t micromanage your life, but if you choose to surrender to Him completely, there is nothing you cannot accomplish for Him with the Spirit’s help.

Related Posts: Despising the Down Payment; Disrespecting God’s Sovereignty

Memorial Day Memories

It is a good thing for people to remember their past, particularly the heroes in that past. Robert B. Charles recently wrote an article recommending a return to faith, family, freedom, and history as the way to regain the cohesion that is missing from American culture. We are divided politically and culturally right down the middle. When we forget, ignore, or rewrite our history as many do today, we cast off one important anchor that should keep our ship safe in the storms of life.

On Memorial Day, we remember the men and women of our armed forces who served to protect our freedom to establish faith and family as we choose. Those who served, and especially those who died in that service deserve our highest honor. Were it not for their sacrifice, we might well be living in a communist ruled country where the rights of faith and family would be controlled by the government. I believe it is partly because we have forgotten or rewritten the history that made America what it is that we now have a large segment of the population who want to impose a communist/socialist type of government on America. It has been wisely said that to forget the past is to doom one to repeat it.

The consequences of forgetting the past are not just political. It is particularly important for Christians to remember the past because we have a solidly historical faith. Our faith is propositional, meaning it is based on a set of propositions or facts which establish its foundations. True Christians believe what is written in the Bible; it is a history of God’s dealing with His creation. Throughout the Scripture, God repeatedly calls His people to remember His works on their behalf and His standards for the maintenance of order. When we take time to remember those who fought for our freedom, if we are honest about God’s sovereignty, we must thank Him for His hand in keeping us free.

For two centuries, the experiment that is American government relied on Judeo-Christian principles for its foundation. This is not meant to suggest that America is a Christian nation; it was originally founded precisely to prevent the government from dictating a certain religion. That said, the founders recognized that absent a moral and religious population, the experiment they began could not succeed. This is a part of the history we have largely forgotten or rewritten in WOKE America.

Many of those who trumpet the separation of church and state have no idea what it means. The Founding Fathers never intended to abandon religion with its moral structures. They envisioned freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Many on the political left today are lobbying for what is essentially a state-imposed religion: secular humanism. When humanism reigns, theism is outlawed. History teaches what this leads to (when history is read correctly). From 1945 to 1989, the Soviet Union demonstrated what happens when a society abandons theism. When humanism reigns, faith, family and freedom collapse.

I don’t want to beatify those who died defending America’s version of freedom. However, the fact that they were willing to give their lives for something they believed in marks them as true heroes. I think it is worth noting that enlistment in our military was drastically reduced during the years when the left controlled the levers of power in Washington. Now that a more traditional, conservative hand is at the controls, applications to serve have soared. Draw your own conclusion from that.

I will admit to being a sappy American patriot. I tear up at the passing of a flag on parade. I stand with my hand over my heart during the National Anthem. I try to say thank you to every veteran I encounter. I don’t do these things because I think America is a Christian nation. I do these things because I believe the American form of government as originally envisioned is the best way for my freedom, faith, and family to prosper. I do these things because I shudder to think what a WOKE version of America would do to those things.

God calls us to remember His deeds, the most important deed of all being Christ’s death on the cross which set us free from the wages of human sin. On a much smaller scale, each death we remember on Memorial Day is a sacrifice on behalf of our freedom. I honor all those men and women who were willing to die to secure my freedom. We must not forget or rewrite the history, either political or religious, that reminds us what our freedom cost. May God bless all those who paid that cost. And may God remind America how blessed she is to live in the freedom they bought.

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Where Does it All End?

My sister made an observation the other day when we were visiting. She said it seemed to her that when we were younger, there were more good people than bad people. It’s just the opposite now, she thought. I admit that I was largely clueless as a child (some insist I still am), but reading the history of the Greatest Generation, and realizing what they had to go through just to stay alive and free, I can’t help but be impressed. I have written many times that where once you could expect a passing knowledge of the Bible in the general population, today the opposite is true: few people know what the Good Book says.

Sadly, even among those who claim to believe the Bible, their reading habits and their behavior suggest they don’t know it at all. I think my sister may be right: we have become a pagan society for the most part. The question we were discussing when she made her comment was whether current conditions herald the end of the age. The Bible had something to say about the end of the age when it was written. The big question is what the inspired writers considered an age. I believe that all the books of the Bible were written before the fall of Jerusalem – even Revelation. Not everyone agrees with me.

Since most of the Bible was written during the ages before the cross, it seems abundantly clear to me that the paradigm shift at Calvary signaled a new age. The age of God’s dealing with the nation of Israel began to close with the rending of the temple veil and was completed with the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. It is quite natural to read Jesus’ words about the coming end as a forecast of what the Romans were going to do in 70 AD. The horrors Jesus described in Matthew 24 were accurately played out during Rome’s seven-year siege of the Holy City. He could say that the tribulation would be like nothing ever seen, because it would end with God’s abandonment of the nation of Israel as His chosen people.

Throughout the trials and tribulations Israel experienced, God always promised a remnant would return to the Holy Land. There is no similar promise after Calvary if you believe God shifted His attention from Israel, the nation, to His people, the church. The mystery Paul makes reference to more than once is that Gentiles would be adopted into God’s family. His family encompassed anyone who would place their faith in Christ’s sacrificial death on their behalf – Jew and Gentile alike. To Paul and me, that looks like the end of one age and the beginning of another.

Something else Jesus said adds weight to the idea that the end of the age was coming soon. It’s what He said in Matthew 24:34: “This generation will never pass away until all these things take place!” That sounds like He meant that the people who were listening to Him would be alive when it happened. The risen Christ told John the same thing when He commissioned the book that was to be Revelation. Jesus said that when He came on the clouds (a symbol of judgment), “Behold, he [Jesus] is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even every one who pierced him, and all the tribes of the [land] will mourn over him.” A few verses later, Jesus said, “Therefore, write the things which you saw, and the things which are, and the things which are about to take place after these things.  Jesus said the events John would be shown were “about to take place.” We might say soon. At the end of Revelation Jesus says again, “Yes, I am coming quickly!” I have trouble believing that the 2,000 years we have been waiting fulfill Jesus’ word “quickly.”

Although subtle, there is another thing that leads me to believe the end Jesus spoke of foretold the destruction of Jerusalem. If we follow the thinking of some that Jesus referred to an end that was at least 2,000 years away (as of now), we are left to imagine that all of church history is ignored until a supposed rapture of the church brings it back into the picture. Similarly, we must believe that John’s revelation to the seven churches of the first century was so far in their future as to be irrelevant. I don’t see why Jesus would give dire warnings to seven literal churches in Asia if they would never experience the events He foretold.

I will admit that the apocalyptic prophets in the Old Testament often spoke far in their future as well. However, if one assumes that those prophecies foretold the end of the age that would begin with the coming of their Messiah, Jesus’ words that the events were coming soon or quickly make perfect sense. He did say that the kingdom had already come in the context of His second coming aka the end of the age. Seeing things this way makes it unnecessary to twist Jesus’ words to fit much longer timeline than His literal statements imply. If a literal understanding of Scripture fits with the rest of the message, don’t look for another.

This leaves the question of when the end of this age comes. Some people are waiting for a symbolic red heifer and a rebuilt temple with reinstituted Old Testament sacrifices that would be profaned by the dreaded antichrist during a seven-year tribulation period. None of that is necessary if you take the view that it has already taken place with the crucifixion of Christ and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. All that needs to happen is for the trumpet to sound, and for Jesus to come back for His church – once again. Not three times: pre-tribulation, post- tribulation, and at the end of a millennial kingdom on earth.

I could be wrong about all this, but I don’t think so. Seeing the end this way does away with the need to mangle the clear meaning of Scriptural timing, and it fits the total flow of God’s redemption plan perfectly. I don’t have to force literal meanings on apocalyptic passages that were never meant to be literal. I can see how John’s revelation fits seamlessly with Daniel, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. It explains how the New Testament writers could say the new Jerusalem is already here spiritually and not something 2,000 years plus in their future.

This is all believable to me because the kingdom Jesus initiated is a spiritual kingdom and not a physical one ruled by Jesus from Jerusalem. Jesus said the kingdom was already here in His day; all we are waiting for is the final surrender of the enemy and the complete realization of the kingdom of Heaven on Earth. The most important thing about that is that we, the church, are tasked with spreading the kingdom as best we can until Christ returns to retake the throne on the New Earth. I believe that will be the end of the church age and the beginning of an eternal age of living in God’s presence daily. Then, my sister, the earth will be populated by ALL good people and no bad people. I can’t wait.

Related Posts: Heaven Can Wait; Why Heaven Matters; Binding Satan

The World, the Flesh, and the Spirit

Many of my readers will have expected the triad in my title to be the world, the flesh, and the devil. I rephrased it for two reasons. First, the devil is a spirit being, and in the original context, each of the elements is a hinderance to proper Christian living, hence a hinderance to proper spirituality. Second, I see in the three elements an echo of the triune constitution of humans: we are spirit; we live in a body; we have a soul. With our body, we contact the world; “flesh” is synonymous with soul; Spirit is self-explanatory.

But I am getting ahead of myself saying spirit is self-explanatory. Maybe it’s not for many. I titled this blog “Why Heaven Always Matters Most,” but I need to explain what I mean by “heaven.” Prepare to be shocked: I do not believe heaven is the place where we go when we die. Shocked? There is no Bible verse I know of that says that. The closest one can come is Jesus’ statement to the thief on the cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” I don’t believe paradise is the same as heaven.

The Greek word “paradise” is only used three times in the New Testament. Once by Jesus on the cross and once in Revelation where Jesus tells Ephesian conquerors that they will eat from the tree of life which is in the “paradise of God.” This is interesting because the Greek translation of the Old Testament uses “paradise” to describe the Garden of Eden. The third use of paradise is in 2 Corinthians where Paul describes his ecstatic vision as possibly taking place in “paradise,” which he parallels with the “third heaven.” Curiously, he isn’t exactly sure where he was taken or even whether he was in or out of his body.

At the time of Paul’s writing, the Jews believed there were three “heavens.” The first heaven is where the birds fly; the second is where the stars hang; the third is where God lives. Earth’s atmosphere, the vast reaches of outer space, and the realm of God: three heavens. I believe Paul was trying to say he left the created universe and appeared in the presence of God and His angels. That would be paradise, but Paul never wrote that he expected to be there as a physical being. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 15, he makes it clear that when we die, we put on a different type of body: a spiritual body. So, when he said, “absent from the body is present with the Lord,” he knew it would be a spiritual body that took him there. To be in God’s presence is to be fully in the spirit because God is spirit. (John 4:24)

Now look at Jesus’ use of the word heaven. Matthew records Jesus using the word over seventy times. It is most frequently used in combination with either “kingdom of” or “Father in.” The few times it refers to what we would call the sky, it has an article preceding it: the heavens. In Jesus’ usage, heaven is where His Father “lived,” and it is the name for the kingdom He is initiating. The Greek word for kingdom means rulership – that which is ruled by the king comprises the kingdom. So, the kingdom of heaven is not a place where people go, it is a state of being ruled by “heaven,” which is a metonymy for God. In this case, “heaven” points to the spirit realm, and those who enter it must be under God’s rulership. This explains why Paul repeatedly insists we must be in the spirit to be fully Christian.

It is no wonder we struggle to understand what or where heaven is. The finite human mind struggles to understand the infinite. There is another aspect to our struggle that is equally important: we are living as spiritual beings in a material world. J.B. Phillips wrote a book years ago called Your God is Too Small. Whenever we try to understand God in a physical sense, we generally err because that makes Him “too small.” Childish pictures of God with a long white beard sitting on a giant throne cannot possibly portray the awesome, infinite God of Creation.

We occasionally get a “picture” of God in Scripture. In Isaiah chapter six, the prophet had an experience somewhat like the one Paul told the Corinthians about. Isaiah “saw” God on His throne in Heaven. He thought he would die because the Jews believed no one could see God and live. But he didn’t die. R.C. Sproul notes something important we can learn from this experience: “God’s work of grace upon Isaiah’s soul [my italics] did not annihilate his personal identity. Isaiah said, ‘Here am I.’ Isaiah could still speak in terms of ‘I.’ He still had an identity. He still had a personality. Far from God seeking to destroy the ‘self’ … God redeems the self. He heals the self so that it may be useful and fulfilled in the mission to which the person is called. Isaiah’s personality was overhauled but not annihilated. He was still Isaiah Ben Amoz when he left the [heavenly] temple. He was the same person, but his mouth was clean.”^[1] He was prepared for service on earth.

I would like to point out that the “self” Sproul refers to is the soul of Isaiah. It is that which makes Isaiah Isaiah; it is his personality. It was his soul that needed cleansing. If you read the New Testament carefully, you will find that when it uses the words soul, mind, flesh, or understanding, it always refers to the human part of our being – our personality, our faculties, or our character. When the New Testament refers to spirit, it always relates to heavenly things. In every case, those heavenly things or things above are spiritual things. If we remember this, some difficult passages are made clearer.

Jesus’ explanation to His disciples in His last moments before the crucifixion can be confusing. They did not understand why or where He was going. When Jesus told His disciples that He had to leave, He was still in His original incarnation – His physical body. It is that body that had to leave. In that same discourse, He said that He would be coming back to be with them. He also said that He was going away to build a home for them with His Father in Heaven. This naturally confused them.

Jesus was telling His disciples about a state of being that was in their future. All the references to Him at the right hand of the Father are after His resurrection in His new body – His spiritual body which I believe is the type of body we all will have after we are resurrected. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul tries to explain how our present physical bodies will be exchanged for spiritual bodies. In 1 John we learn that we don’t know exactly what form Christ is in now, but we know that we will be like him when He returns for us (and we get our new bodies.)

Remember that the post-resurrection Jesus could appear and disappear; He came into rooms without using doors. I personally think He is forever in that resurrected spiritual body that has properties we cannot imagine. That may explain how he can be at the right hand of God and still say He is “in” us. It may be correct to say that the entire godhead is in us since what we call God is not physical according to Jesus. (John 4:24) I suspect the Holy Spirit is the “vehicle” that brings God into our being. Perhaps the Spirit is needed because Jesus is forevermore in His resurrected new-human body – like the one we will get when we are resurrected.

We shrink God when we try to make Him fit into our physical reality. He is more real than our reality because He created it out of nothing, and He lives beyond it in eternity. He can be “in” us and “in” Heaven at the same “time” because He is not bound by words like “in” and “time.” After the final judgment and the recreation of the world, I believe that the spirit world and this physical world will be reunited like they were in the Garden of Eden. Heaven will come to Earth.

That condition will truly be paradise. We will live continually in God’s presence because the death caused by Adam’s sin will be done away. We have always believed that the “death” God warned Adam about was primarily spiritual. This is why Paul repeatedly refers to humans as dead until Christ makes them alive. For now, we remain body-and-soul as earthly creatures, but spiritually we are heavenly creatures if we are in Christ. The life we are promised in Christ is spiritual. That is the life that will be fully realized after our resurrection to Glory and the transformation into our spiritual body. Earth and Heaven will again become one. Hallelujah! Maranatha, Lord Jesus! Come!

Related Posts: Heaven Can Wait; Why Heaven Matters

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^[1] R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993), 50.

The Christian Parody, Part Three

In parts one and two of the Christian Parody, I insisted that the most important thing lacking in the church today, the thing that makes it the parody Tozer identified is the lack of spiritual understanding. I cited wise men who said that the way to spiritual understanding is through a deeper knowledge of God’s Word. I recalled that Jesus said God is spirit (John 4:24) and that He said His words are spirit. It should be clear then that we must go to the Bible if we want to understand the spiritual nature of God and the spiritual nature of our existence.

As I said in part two, I believe humans are essentially spirit beings who possess an immaterial soul and live in a physical body (for the time being). When we examine God’s act of creating Adam, we see that God did something unique with Adam that He is not reported as having done with the other animals: “[God] blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” This is a fascinating text because the word “creature” (nephesh) is often translated “soul,” and the words translated “blew” and “breath” are from the same root word, nephesh. It is also curious that in New Testament Greek, the word for breath or wind is translated in certain contexts as spirit. We also see that Jesus imparted the Holy Spirit to His disciples by breathing on them.

It is always dangerous to argue from a negative, but I think it is significant that no other creature is said to have received God’s “breath of life.” I take this to mean that while all living creatures have a “soul,” not all have the “breath of life.” It is my opinion that all animals have “soul,” but only humans have “spirit.” The Hebrew word for “soul” is notoriously difficult to translate properly into English. One of the most trusted dictionaries of the Bible languages is Vine’s, which states plainly that “soul” is not the best translation of the Hebrew word, nephesh, which is used in this and almost eight hundred other passages. Vine’s suggests that the best we can do is think of nephesh as a constituent part of the human being.

There are places in the Old Testament Hebrew where nephesh or soul is paired with another word for contrast. This is a common practice in Hebrew literature. To me, the most telling comparison is in the Shema, the central tenet of Jewish religion, in Deuteronomy 6. The Jews were instructed to love God with, “with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your might.” If I overlay my New Testament understanding of the human constitution on this verse, I see spirit (heart), soul, and body (might).

I feel safe in saying that “heart” in the Old Testament language is a close parallel to “spirit” in the New. It is a common idea that God progressively revealed more of His truth as His relationship with His people matured. Moses understood more than Adam; the prophets understood more that Moses; the writers of the New Testament knew God’s truth to the fullest extent possible, and they shared it by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

I have said all that to emphasize that to be in the spirit is to be fully human. By contrast, to be in the flesh is to be worldly, a condition which is not fully Christian. Paul makes this distinction to the Corinthians when he tells them that their petty squabbles are “fleshly.” Throughout his writings, Paul uses the word “flesh” as a synonym for soul. I love J.B. Phillips translation of 1 Corinthians 3: “For you are still unspiritual [Greek: fleshly]; all the time that there is jealousy and squabbling among you, you show that you are living just like men of the world.” Phillips translates “fleshly” as unspiritual. This fits Paul’s context perfectly, as he is chiding the Corinthians for not behaving spiritually but acting on fleshly, soulish, worldly desires.

After recommending serious Bible study as the route to spiritual growth, R.C. Sproul goes on to say, “We are not to be like the rest of the world, content to live our lives with a superficial understanding of God. We are to grow dissatisfied with spiritual milk and hunger after spiritual meat…. To be spiritual has only one real purpose. It is a means to an end, not the end itself. The goal of all spiritual exercise must be the goal of righteousness.” Sproul goes on to equate righteousness with holiness. This makes sense because to be right with God, we must be holy as He is holy. That’s another way of saying we must be separated from all that is not of God – separated from the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The soulish, human tendency to feel connected to the world is part of our nature – it’s natural. By contrast, the Bible calls us to be super-natural; in this context that means to be spiritual. We not only fail to please God when we are fleshly; we also miss out on some of the blessings we would otherwise enjoy. We read that Jesus promised to be present with us after He died, was buried, and rose again. Tozer points out that we don’t properly prepare for that presence. “Christian expectation in the average church follows the program, not the promises…. Today we need a fresh spirit of anticipation that springs out of the promises of God! We must declare war on the mood of nonexpectation and come together with childlike faith. Only then can we know again the beauty and wonder of the Lord’s presence among us.”

The presence Jesus promised is spiritual. We are told not to expect the bodily presence of Jesus until He comes again to collect His Bride, the Church. But like Tozer says, “When Christians meet, they do not expect anything unusual to happen: consequently, only the usual happens, and that usual is as predictable as the setting of the sun.” We seldom experience the blessed presence of Jesus because we don’t expect it. We don’t expect it because it is a spiritual reality that we haven’t fully comprehended.

God is at work in the spiritual world around us all the time, but we are like Jacob who after dreaming of the stairway to heaven declared, “Surely Yahweh is in this place and I did not know!” Take Paul’s advice: “Wake up sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Therefore, consider carefully how you live, not as unwise but as wise, making the most of the time because the days are evil.” I mentioned in Part One that being in touch spiritually is like having the proper receiver tuned in. If we are going to escape the evil parody of Christianity that plagues the church, we must get on God’s frequency; that means being tuned in to the spirit (Spirit) every hour of every day.

I will close with some good advice from A. W. Tozer: “The Holy Spirit is God’s imperative of life. If Christ is to be the Christ of God rather than the Christ of intellect [aka soul], then we must enter in beyond the veil, until the illumination of the Holy Spirit fills our hearts, and we are learning at the feet of Jesus—not at the feet of men!" Anyone who wishes to abandon the parody of Christianity must learn to live in the spirit. Get on your knees, church. Jesus is waiting.

Related Posts: Christian Parody, Part One; Part Two; The Presence of God; Ghost Buster—the Holy Ghost That Is; Where’s My Cloud

The Christian Parody, Part Two

I suggested in my last post that a return to biblical spirituality would correct what A. W. Tozer calls the parody of Christianity that has infected the modern church. If that general answer is correct, it begs for a more specific response. Because only God can change a heart, and because He does it through His indwelling Spirit, I believe we need to put more focus on what it means to live in the spirit in contrast to living in the flesh. I think we would do well to concentrate on the elements Tozer said were lacking in modern Christians: “A state of heart purity, fiery love, separation from the world and poured-out devotion to the Person of Christ.” Defining those spirit/flesh contrasts may help to discover what needs to change.

The element that is easiest to contrast is “separation from the world.” James said that friendship with the world is enmity with God. By “the world” James meant the fallen system we face every day of our lives. It is a system ruled by God’s arch enemy whom Paul named  the god of this age. Our enemy is not flesh and blood, as Paul reminds the Ephesians; he is a spiritual being of great power. He loves to entice our flesh toward worldly things; it takes a conscious effort to resist his promptings. Resistance is not futile because as James promises, if we resist the devil, he must flee from us. As John said, “Greater is He who is in us (Holy Spirit) than he who is in the world.”

But resistance is only half of the battle. Once the devil flees and earthly desires fade, we must fill the void with heavenly things: “Set your mind on things above,” Paul counsels. By “things above” he means things of the spirit. God has spiritual works for each of us to do every day; He had them planned for us before we were born. It is our responsibility to learn from God what those pre-planned works might be. First and foremost, each believer has been given a spiritual gift, so any Christian who is not aware of that gift is duty-bound to find out what the Holy Spirit has provided. The gifts of the Spirit are given for the express purpose of maturing the Body of Christ. The failure to exercise our spiritual gifts is a big reason why the church remains stuck in the worldly mud.

The next contrast, the “fiery love” Tozer recommends, is love unlike anything the world knows. The love the world recognizes is either the lust-driven passion of Hollywood or a self-serving emotional fulfillment. By contrast, biblical, Spirit-led love is self-giving, self-effacing, even sacrificial. In “People of the Flame,” I detailed what it means to be on fire for Christ. The fiery love poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit burns for the lost souls around us. When we consider that the First Century church reached the known world within a few years, we can appreciate how feeble our love must be by comparison. Jesus said that love would be the tell-tale sign of His disciples. Because the love of church people isn’t showing, the church isn’t growing.

I suspect that one aspect of the “poured out devotion to Christ” Tozer finds lacking is our tendency to settle for good enough instead of striving to “be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” We may in fact be doing what Tozer says: “We have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone!” We must stop comparing ourselves to ourselves and begin to measure our condition by the standards revealed in the New Testament. We cannot reach those “higher plateaus” in the flesh; the Spirit is the path up the mountain to the perfection of God. When we get a glimpse of that perfection, we cannot help but notice our imperfections. That should lead to worship.

Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well that God is spirit, and He seeks those who will worship Him in spirit. To be devoted to Christ, to worship Him properly requires worship in spirit. It is a fine thing to get an emotional boost from worship – singing, praising, praying – but it is another thing altogether to feel the Holy Spirit lifting your spirit to new heights. I am most often led to that plateau by worship music. I once read that in music, the words and the melody reach our minds, and the harmony and the rhythm touch our spirits. I have no scientific proof of that, but I know that the right song can transport me to a place of rapture in my spirit. We all have different tastes, but one of my favorite worship songs currently is “I Will Praise You” by Hillsong Worship. (Play it on a system with good bass fidelity if possible.)

Finally, the “state of heart purity” Tozer calls for is a call to holiness. The biblical meaning of holiness is separateness. It implies purity because it entails separating from anything that dilutes or dampens our desire for oneness with God. Just as purity in gold requires separation from all dross, spiritual purity requires the abandonment of all worldly desires. We may sing, “This world is not my home; I’m just a’passin’ through,” but we often live as though the world and its fleshly appointments are home enough for now. Most churches look like just another social club with religious overtones. Who needs that?

Paul warned that the spirit and the flesh are at war within us – us Christians. After lamenting his own inner battle in Romans chapter seven, the Apostle announced the victory through living in the spirit (or Spirit). The church will never become the pure and spotless bride Christ longs for unless she learns to appropriate the gifts the Spirit gives: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” If the church would live by these, she would never carry out the desires of the flesh.

A parody is a reproduction that has some features of the original but differs in significant ways. A song parody mimics the original musical structure but replaces the words with a different message. Tozer’s suggestion that the modern church is a parody of true Christianity is painfully accurate. The Christian parody uses some of the same words, but it denies or ignores the power inherent in them. The story is told of a simple country gent who bought “one of them new-fangled chain saws.” He came back a few days later complaining that it didn’t work as well as his hand saws. The store owner looked it over, then he pulled the starter cord and it roared to life. The country gent jumped back saying, “What the heck is that?!” It seems he didn’t realize it had a motor.

It is no laughing matter that the church today acts similarly surprised when the Spirit moves and mountains fall. We are like the people James told that they weren’t getting anything from God because they didn’t ask, or they asked with wrong motives. There is only one source of right motives: the Word of God. Up to this point, my answer to the church’s failure to produce real Christians has been to seek the spiritual and avoid the fleshly. Becoming more “spiritual” does not require some mystical exercise. The source of proper spiritual life is found where God is found: in His Word. R.C. Sproul says, “The key to spiritual growth is in-depth Christian education that requires a serious level of sacrifice.” For modern Christians this probably means sacrificing some TV time or maybe some early morning dozing.

If Tozer is right and the modern church is a parody of real Christianity, something must change. You correct a parody by restoring the original. Jesus said His words are spirit and life; that is where the church needs to go to remember how to produce the spiritual life which defines real Christians. Both from the pulpit and in the prayer closet, the church needs to scour the Scriptures to learn how to live in the spirit (Spirit). If we don’t do that, there will be a bunch of surprised “Christians” when Jesus returns for His church.

Stay tuned for part three.

Related Posts: Christian Parody, Part One; Despising the Down Payment

The Christian Parody, Part One

In my last post, I quoted A. W. Tozer’s lament that the church is not producing real Christians. He suggests that the modern church is a parody of true Christianity. That raises a question for concerned believers: what needs to change so the church does produce real Christians? A couple years ago, I published an article called “Despising the Down Payment” giving what I believe is a general answer. If you don’t have time to follow the link to the article, I will summarize what I wrote. There are too many people in otherwise good, Bible-preaching churches who have no idea what it means to live in the spirit (or Spirit).

Before I get into the meat of the issue, I should explain why I put the capitalized version of “spirit” in the parentheses. The Koine Greek of the New Testament did not use upper- and lower-case letters the way we do in English: no capitals to begin sentences or signify proper nouns. The original text was written in all upper-case letters. For this reason, it is not always possible to tell whether the author was referring to the proper noun indicating the Holy Spirit, or whether he was speaking of the human spirit. Only the context can give us a clue. For this reason, when I suggest that many Christians don’t understand life in the spirit (Spirit), either meaning is possible.

Another subject needs some explanation before I get to the specifics of what needs to change for the church to begin producing real Christians. There is an ongoing debate among Christian thinkers whether humans have two or three “parts” to their being. I say “parts” in quotes, because I think humans are one whole being, but we exist in three aspects. The most obvious part of a human is the body. Everybody has one. The Bible recognizes this reality in many different ways. For example, John says when Jesus became flesh, He pitched His tent with us (literally “tabernacled” with us”). Paul says we live in a “tent” of a temporary nature. One day – our resurrection day – we will get a new “tent” suitable for our eternal home.

Paul is quite emphatic that the new body we inhabit in our resurrection is different from the one we have now. He calls it a “spiritual body.” The Apostle John says that he is not sure what form that body will take, but he is sure that it will be like Jesus’ resurrected body because, as he says, “We will see Him as He is.” I take this to mean that while we are living on earth, we have a body suitable for this planet. When we are resurrected, we will be given a body that is suitable for the new environment – whatever that is. I recall that in His resurrected body, Jesus was able to ascend directly into “heaven” in front of His disciples. He was able to appear in locked rooms, communicate, then disappear. Although He could tell Thomas to put his hand in His wounds, He also said that He was going to be seated at His Father’s right hand. That’s a pretty special kind of body!

So, the body – current or future – is a clear feature of human existence. What is less clearly defined is the “inner man,” the immaterial human existence which has unique properties as well. I am of the opinion that there are two different, distinct “parts” or aspects to the inner human being. I believe we are composed of both soul and spirit in addition to a body. It is my opinion that the Bible teaches that we are a spirit; we have a soul; we live in a body.

Some theologians disagree with me; they think soul and spirit are the same. I find too many Scriptures in the New Testament that contrast soul with spirit to believe that they are the same. Paul says soul and spirit war against one another. How could they war against one another if they were the same? James says soul wisdom is earthly and demonic whereas spirit wisdom is “pure, then peaceful, gentle, obedient, full of mercy and good fruits, nonjudgmental, without hypocrisy.” Can soul and spirit be the same if one is demonic and the other is comprised of all those good things?

I have written elsewhere about the many other differences between soul and spirit. I will simply say here that several words in the New Testament which seem to apply to a part of our being which is variously soul, flesh, mind, will are contrasted with something else the Bible calls “spirit.” One of the most dramatic is found in 1 Corinthians 2:14 where Paul says the “soulish” man cannot receive the things of the spirit. Paul goes on to say that these “spirit” things are “spiritually” judged. Given the context in the Corinthian passage, I believe Paul is saying that our human souls (flesh) need to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Until that happens, we cannot understand God’s Word fully.

I like to use an analogy to explain this. I suggest we are born with an AM radio receiver. This is our legacy from Adam.  Unfortunately for us, God transmits on the FM band. Until we receive the new broadcast band from the Holy Spirit, we cannot hear what God is saying. We can read the words, but we cannot understand their true meaning. Once we are regenerated by the Holy Spirit (the new birth), we get the FM reception we need to clearly hear what God is saying.

After Paul’s insistence that spiritual awareness is crucial, he goes a step further. He says that deeds done in the flesh (aka soul) will not pass muster on judgment day. Only those deeds done in the spirit will be acceptable to God. There are numerous ways the Bible commends spirit life: walk in the spirit, be led by the spirit, pray in the spirit, worship in spirit, be filled with the Spirit. If a church is not making these things a priority, I wonder if it is making real Christians. I wonder if our deeds are "wood, grass, and straw." In my next post, I will suggest some ways that might be changed. For now, listen to Tozer again: “The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection.” A spiritual revival will put an end to the Christian parody.

Bunny Season

Changing the name of Resurrection Day to Easter is a subtle ploy of Satan to disguise biblical truth. The debate over where the word Easter comes from is intense. While linguists disagree whether it goes all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia, or that it stems from Old English, the modern associations prove its seductive nature. Unless you understand the word’s origins, you will be puzzled by the connection of bunnies and eggs with the celebration of Easter.

While Cadbury’s clucking Easter Bunny is hilarious, the subtle message is missed by most people. Whatever its derivation, Easter has links to sunrise and Spring. Sunrise signals a new day; Spring is a time of new growth. In ancient religions, the sun was worshipped as the harbinger of another day of life; the goddess of Spring (whatever her name) was worshipped for bringing fertility. Because rabbits are notoriously procreative, they are symbolic of fertility. Eggs are the repository of new life, so they came to symbolize fertility as well. Enter the Easter Bunny.

Before you start clucking your tongue and accuse me of being reactionary, I will say that there is nothing wrong with commemorating the women’s visit to the empty tomb at sunrise. Those who do that in the Christian context are not worshipping the sunrise; they are worshipping the Son who rose. The sacrifice of a pre-dawn awakening to gather with other believers and honor the risen Christ is laudable. Following that with a breakfast of hot cross buns can be a tasty reminder of the Cross of Calvary and the Bread of Life.

I have a bit more difficulty with churches that hold Easter egg hunts for children. I get it. Lure kids with candy and tell them about Jesus. There are probably children somewhere who came to a saving knowledge of Jesus after an Easter egg hunt. Probably. All things to all people that I might save some, Paul said. My concern is that we risk diluting the gospel message when we pair it with a pagan message. Syncretism has been the death of many sound doctrines over the centuries.

I worry that this observation by A. W. Tozer is still true today: “It is possible for a whole generation of professing Christians to be victims of poor teaching, low moral standards and unscriptural or extra-scriptural doctrines, resulting in stunted growth and retarded development. It is little less than stark tragedy that an individual Christian may pass from youth to old age in a state of suspended growth and all his life be unaware of it!” It is a biological fact that growth is an indication of life. No less is growth the best indication of spiritual life.

Believers are not always whisked into God’s presence when they come to Christ (like the thief on the cross) because there is still work to be done. The first work is the life-long labor of being conformed to the image of Christ. While it is true that we instantly become a new creation at the point of our baptism into Christ, we are not fully formed by any means. The Bible often refers to new Christians as babies. We must grow up. We have the responsibility and the joy of learning more of who God is and what He wants of us.

The second work God requires after He saves us is to spread the Word. We often think of this as evangelism – telling the unsaved about God’s saving grace. That is part of it. The other part is the building up of the Body of Christ. One of the reasons we are commanded not to abandon regular gatherings is that we need to be taught what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We can do that on our own with a Bible on our laps in our living room. But God put gifted people in the Body to help us grow in our faith. We can also experience growth by rubbing shoulders with more mature believers.

This is only possible if you have a church that is promoting growth. Tozer laments, “The fact is that we are no longer producing saints. We are making converts to an effete type of Christianity that bears little resemblance to that of the New Testament. The average so-called Bible Christian in our times is but a wretched parody on true sainthood!

“Clearly, we must begin to produce better Christians! We must insist on New Testament sainthood for our converts, nothing less; and we must lead them into a state of heart purity, fiery love, separation from the world and poured-out devotion to the Person of Christ. Only in this way can the low level of spirituality be raised again to where it should be in the light of the Scriptures and of eternal values!”

The Easter Bunny is a wretched parody of the Resurrected Christ. When the movie, The Passion of Christ, came out, it reminded millions of Christians that before the wonder of the Resurrection there was the horror of the Cross. You can’t have the former without the latter. When we celebrate the empty tomb, we must remember that above it was the shadow of the cross. There is a reason that the sun went dark for three hours before the light could shine from the tomb. The darkness of sin – my sin, your sin – was borne by Jesus on the cross. The empty tomb guarantees our eternal destiny. I don’t see any of that in the clucking Easter Bunny.

Related Posts: The Book of Hezekiah; 2020 COVID Easter