Slaves and Masters

In twenty-first century America, the average citizen has more freedom than anyone, anywhere, at any time in history. We have the freedom to go just about anywhere, do just about anything (within certain legal limitations), and to be whatever we have the determination to be. I just completed a 2,000+ mile trip across the country, and there was not one border check, no language barrier, nobody questioning what I was doing. (OK, some of my friends thought it was crazy to drive that distance alone in three days.) I witnessed the freedom others expressed with their disdain for speed limits and simple traffic courtesy; I was exposed to a few music choices at extreme volume in the middle of the night at rest stops; I watched people leave their cars blocking the gas pumps while they dallied in the store. These were people doing what they wanted. Regardless.

Maybe they want to be rude, lawless, inconsiderate boors. There are few people who will stop them in twenty-first century America. Fortunately, there are also people who have decided to do something with their lives to improve the condition of their fellow citizens. I was reminded of this by a random post on my Facebook page. The post noted that President Trump has surrounded himself with an entourage of pretty regular folks. He didn’t choose the usual elite snobs and self-important pooh-bahs that most Presidents have surrounded themselves with in the past. They are everyday folks willing to step in and help a President whom they believe has the best interest of the American people at heart.

I may be more sensitive to this at the moment because of a series of novels I am reading written by Cap Daniels. On the surface the heroes appear to behave like every other shoot-em-up, black ops mercenary team. But Daniels lets his patriotism and Christian belief in giving help to those who cannot help themselves come through loud and clear. Bad guys get dead and good guys get rescued, but Daniels lets the psychological and spiritual struggle come through loud and clear. One of the main characters epitomizes this dichotomy: he is a Baptist preacher when he is not using his sniper rifle to rain judgment on the villains. Daniels writes in his afterward that he detests the evil that is everywhere in our world, but he also lauds the patriots who risk their lives to make our lives a little safer.

Heaven matters most in this because every human being is a slave to something or someone. Paul writes: “Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living.” (Rom. 6:16-18 NLT) We commonly think of this as referring to slaves to drugs, or sex, or money. Sinful things. Think again. Anything we do with our “freedom” that removes God from the center of our lives is sin.

Whenever we choose to fulfill our desires instead of seeking God’s desire for our lives, we become slaves to our desires. It could be a job, a hobby, or just plain laziness that enslaves us to something that is not God’s best for us. Paul says we choose to be enslaved to sin, or by choosing to give our lives to Christ, we become slaves to righteousness. We must not think of that too narrowly. It does not mean we have to give up everything and become a missionary. It does not mean we have to abandon a secular career and join the clergy. It may be those things for some, but for the vast majority of us, it is something far more mundane and, at the same time, more wonderful.

The “slave to righteous living” Paul applauds is someone who makes the effort to live according to God’s righteous principles. Jesus identified the sine qua non of His followers: that they love one another. If you have been a Christian for more than a minute, you know that the love Jesus recommended is a selfless, sacrificial love; it means caring for the other person more than for yourself. If you want to see it demonstrated, look at the Cross of Calvary. You could translate John 3:16 like this: “God loved the world in this way: He gave His Son so that anyone who believed in Him would be free from slavery to sin.”

Paul said slavery to sin leads to death; God said slavery to Christ leads to eternal life. Those of you who are as old as I am might remember a folk singer named Bob Dylan who came to Christ after a long career in secular music. One of my favorite songs of his post-conversion repertoire is “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” His lyrics list about every imaginable lifestyle and circumstance, and in every case, Dylan insists you are going to serve somebody. His theology is right there with the Apostle Paul. You may serve the devil, or you may serve the Lord, but you are going to serve somebody. And the truth is clear: there are only two choices.

The biblical concept of freedom is foreign to our modern way of thinking. N.T. Wright speaks of the paradox of Christian freedom. “We become more truly human, more genuinely free, when we are giving ourselves away. That, I think, is the clue to a whole new way of looking at the world, and perhaps at freedom itself….  Humans are made for a purpose. Only when we find and follow that purpose will we be ‘free’…. The gospel sets us free to love, to live to God’s glory, to be wise stewards of his creation and wise agents of his new creation. And at this point human freedom and divine enabling mysteriously come together.”

That is the truth, and Jesus said that the truth would set us free. He also said, “[God's]Word is truth.” For the last ten years or so I have had the blessing of “free time” every morning to read the Bible and pray. I could almost say I have become enslaved to that devotional time to the point that I am unwilling to start my day without it. Martin Luther famously said, "I have so much to do [each day] that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer." Like Luther, I read to hear God’s will; then I pray for His assistance to accomplish it – whatever it is. He is my Master; I am His slave. And I am free.

 

Want What You Have

Delight thyself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. PS. 37:4 KJV

This verse is often quoted to support the idea that Christians can have whatever they want as long as they “delight in the Lord.” That idea always smacked of selfish materialism to me. It seems to fly in the face of the biblical concept of humble submission and acceptance of whatever God wants for us. I took a deep dive into the Greek translation* of Psalm 37:4 recently and learned that it may not be saying what the King James seems to imply. The result of my study led me to this very different interpretation: “If you chase after God, He will produce longings in your heart that are in line with your relationship to Him.” In other words, He will give you what He wants not necessarily what you want.

Someone wisely said that true peace comes from wanting what you have not having what you want. That sentiment seems to be more in line with what the Bible teaches. It was the Apostle Paul who said that he had learned to be content with what he had. The Hebrew writer said, “Your lifestyle must be free from the love of money, being content with what you have.” The Book of Proverbs is laced with warnings about the dangers of relying on material wealth. Paul called the love of money the root of all kinds of evil. Jesus warned that you cannot love both money and God.

None of this should be taken to mean that money/wealth is evil in itself. It is the attitude towards material possessions that must be guarded. “The wealth of the rich is his strong city, and like a wall, it is high in his imagination. (Pr. 18:11) Relying on wealth implies a displacement of God from the calculation. That is idolatry. Proverbs warns, “There is a way that seems upright to a man, but its end is the way of death.” There is no way to hide your true motivations from God. “A crucible is for the silver, and a furnace is for the gold, but Yahweh will test hearts.” (Pr. 17:3)

But maybe your desires are not for wealth. Maybe you desire some plan to succeed. What does the Bible say about that? “The mind of a person will plan his ways, and Yahweh will direct his steps.” (Pr. 16:9) Planning is a good thing; the Bible recommends it. But the plans must be laid before the Lord. “Commit your work to Yahweh, and your plans will be established.” (Pr. 16:3) This sounds very similar to the promise of Jesus that if we ask anything in His name, the Father will grant it. That too veers from the idea that we can have whatever we want. To ask in Jesus’ name implies aligning the request with the will of the Father.

One wonders what happens when we don’t know what God’s specific will is in a given situation. The wisdom of Proverbs covers that too: “The lot will be cast into the lap,

but all of its decisions are from Yahweh.” (Pr. 16:33) This idea comes from the Old Testament practice of asking for God’s will by casting lots. We don’t know exactly what was used, but it involved something similar to modern dice. Stones, bones, or pottery shards were chosen or painted with different colors. When tossed, the appearance of the items was interpreted as a yes or no answer.

I don’t think God wants us to use physical objects to discern His will today. Our modern phrase, “roll the dice” suggests that one takes a step or a position and waits for the outcome. The advantage we have over the OT Jews is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. When we face a decision that has a go/no go choice to be made, we should bathe it in prayer, search the Scriptures for direction, ask for godly advice, and then proceed unless something leads us to pull up short. In other words, roll the dice knowing the results are in the Lord’s hands.

I must say that this process does not guarantee smooth sailing every time. I can remember many times in my life when I thought I was doing what God would have me do, but the results were far from what I had hoped for. Years ago, I was called to an administration position at a Christian school in California. I detailed that Michigan to California trip in “God’s Little Coincidences.” All I will say here is that we have come to call it “The Ordeal.”

The reason God wanted us in California remains something of a mystery. After only a few weeks, the administrator who hired me as his assistant principal was fired. I was asked to take over the school. I did my best, but it soon became apparent that the board and I had different ideas about what a Christian school should be. They thought I was “too Christian.” I did stop the faculty from leaving in protest over the firing of the former administrator. I did save the school from imminent financial embarrassment. I did handle the day-to-day responsibilities of running a 330-student K-10 school with a faculty and staff of 35 without complaint. Despite all that, the board replaced me with a former public-school administrator after only three months. Needless to say, I did not return for a second year.

My wife and I have asked repeatedly if we were wrong to think the job in California was God’s will for me. Should I have realized sooner that my philosophy of Christian education was not in line with theirs? Or did God get exactly what He wanted from me even though I would never have chosen the experience had I know what was going to happen? With decades of hindsight, the answer seems clear: I didn’t get exactly what I wanted for my first school administration experience, but God got precisely He wanted for the school.

 I believe that anyone who attempts to have a genuine trust in God’s provision will face tough circumstances at some point. If we truly believe in a loving, sovereign God, we can rest peacefully with the knowledge that He will provide what is best for us. The life we live is in Christ, and His Spirit lives in us. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is peace. That’s what I have. That’s all I want.

* Between 250 and 132 BC, a group of 70 devout Jews in Alexandria, Egypt, set about to translate the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek because few people could read Hebrew. This translation gives us a peek into the minds of what those Jewish scholars believed was the true word of God. Their translation has become known as the Septuagint which means “the seventy.”

The Co-opted Rainbow

Everybody loves a rainbow. Young and old alike will stop to revel in the colorful display. There was a time when most people knew that the rainbow was originally assigned meaning by God as the token of His promise to Noah that He would never again destroy the earth with a flood. In that context, the rainbow became a symbol of hope. In ancient Irish folklore that idea was bastardized to mean a hope for wealth: the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That connection is probably more well-known today than its original biblical meaning.

I am writing this in June which has become gay pride month for many. The LGBTQ+ community has also coopted the rainbow and given it a significance of their own. When the gay pride flag was originally designed in 1978, each of the colored stripes was assigned a value. If you ignore the LGBTQ+ context, most of the values are innocuous: sex, life, healing, sunlight, nature, magic/art, serenity, and spirit. Two raise some concern: magic and spirit. Magic is clearly off limits for Christians, and one assumes that “spirit” does not refer to God’s Holy Spirit.

I heard a teaching recently that suggested a more sinister relationship between the rainbow and homosexuality. When Ezekiel saw God’s throne in his vision at the river Chebar, there was a rainbow above it. When Satan’s pride drove him to attack God, he wanted that throne with its rainbow for himself. Look back at the values symbolized in the gay pride rainbow; except for magic, each of them might be employed in a way to glorify God. However, you can also see how each one has been perverted by the enemy of our souls and turned into an idol.

First of all, ever since the Garden of Eden, Satan has taken the good things of God’s creation and twisted them to serve his purposes. Sex is the most obvious one, and perhaps the most odious especially in June. I believe that God created sex to be a bonding agent for a man and a woman in marriage. In that context, it is a beautiful thing. Very early in human history, Satan began enticing men to fulfill their lust in ways that were not only damaging to themselves (AIDS, STD’s, etc.) but destructive to the purpose God had intended. De-sanctifying marriage and its restriction of sexual pleasure to one-man/one-woman for a lifetime has resulted in personal and social tragedy of mammoth proportions.

The other values represented in the gay pride flag have been similarly distorted or perverted. Life is certainly to be valued, but Christians recognize that true life comes from God and returns to Him; true life has a deeply spiritual component. The “life” Satan encourages is selfish and hedonistic. The Psalms teach us to glorify God for His creation of the sun and all nature. Satan leads men to worship creation in defiance of the Creator. Magic is simply the devil’s attempt to mimic God’s miracles; practicing it is plainly forbidden in Scripture. It is sad to see what the enemy has done to art. It was once a way to magnify God with beauty and order. Now, the atonal disturbing modern “music” and the emptiness of modern “art” reflect the hollow men who search for meaning in all the wrong places. Augustine was right when he said that there is restlessness in every man that can only be satisfied by God – a God of beauty and order, not ugliness and chaos.

Serenity is promised in God’s Word. We are counselled to meditate on the Word and recall God’s promises; as a result, we can have peace that passes understanding. The enemy’s brand of meditation encourages either completely emptying the mind or turning inward to focus entirely on oneself ignoring the divine image we bear. Finally, I suspect that the gay flag’s reference to “spirit” may have similarly twisted the truth. Satan, the prince of evil spirits, would have us elevate our own spirit and discount the Holy Spirit who represents the very presence of God in us when we give our lives to Christ.

A rainbow is visible because light is refracted, broken down into its parts. To me, this signifies the many aspects of God’s holy character spread before us in awe and wonder. There are some other physical aspects of light that I think are interesting to consider. God Himself is said to be light and to dwell in unapproachable light. The first thing God is said to have created is light. Throughout Scripture, light symbolizes goodness and knowledge. Darkness, represented by the Prince of Darkness, is evil and deceptive. What we call color is the reflected portion of the light spectrum. God’s creation is bursting with color. If his followers are any indication, Satan’s favorite color is black – the absence of color via light.

The Father sent Jesus to the world because “In him was life, and the life was the light of humanity.  And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Jesus said His followers were to be the light of the world. John said if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another and forgiveness of sin. Paul told the Corinthians that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. It looks to me like that is exactly what he has done with the rainbow he tried to steal from God. Don’t be fooled by him. Jesus said that true life, the true light of humanity, was found in knowing God. Study His Word; meditate on it; get to know God intimately. Then you can take back the rainbow.

Related Posts: More about the nature of light: And the Light was Good; E=mc² in Genesis

I Think I Love Jesus

This is going to be an autobiographical, philosophical ramble. If the thought of poking around inside my head is not a pleasant one for you, you are excused. My wife, Karen, regularly chides me for thinking too much. She is usually correct; when I imagine bad motives for someone’s action, or when I create a dilemma of my own making, I am probably overthinking. It is the latter case that I am going to sort through in this piece.

I want to start by defending philosophy. The word scares or bores some people because they picture dusty classrooms and boring lectures. That’s understandable but not fair. A philosophy is merely a way of seeing things. It is often called a world view. Everyone has one whether they know it or not. We all look at the world through a filter of some kind. If we didn’t, the jumble of unrelated data would drive us crazy. We make sense of things by choosing to see them through our world view – our philosophy. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. I recommend examination. Commenting on James 1:25 John MacArthur says, “If you desire to be like Christ… you must continually examine your life in the light of Scripture.” (Drawing Near—Daily Readings for a Deeper Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993)

I am not going to categorize all the potential philosophies that people choose from. I will simply say that there are worldly world views and biblical world views. I choose the biblical. I attempt to make everything fit into a biblical framework. I hope to operate according to the truth as I understand it from God’s Word. This is how I sometimes stumble into a dilemma of my own making. Some things are easy to sort: murder is wrong, so abortion is wrong; hate is wrong, so homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, and a host of other things are clearly not biblical. Materialism places things above God, so that is idolatry – very wrong. Those are some of the easy ones.

There are many that are not so easy. For the last many months, perhaps years, I have been troubled by my lack of emotion when I consider my love for Jesus. I desire to love Jesus, but I find it difficult. I “feel” I am not worthy to love Jesus. I find it difficult to imagine Jesus wanting my love. If a cockroach expressed love to me, what would it mean? If that sounds outrageous, remember that in God’s Word humans are likened to worms. I love what Jesus did for me culminating in His horrible death on the cross. I understand what that means for me intellectually, but I don’t usually “feel” love when I consider it.

Here then is my dilemma. I put “feel” in quotes because my biblical world view places feelings in my soul. My relationship with Jesus is primarily spiritual, at least in my present state. If I love Jesus only for what He did for me, that is transactional love – love based on an exchange. He did something wonderful for me, so I love Him for it. It’s a trade. There are no feelings involved on my part; that worries me. I sense that something is missing because I believe the Bible teaches that humans consist of body, soul, and spirit. If my love for Jesus is merely transactional, I fear it is not genuine love.

Karen and I were discussing this the other day and she helped me to see that the love the Bible speaks of, agape love, is given to us by the Holy Spirit. It is even called a fruit of the Spirit. Paul says that kind of love is poured out in our hearts by the Spirit. That being the case, biblically, I might have genuine love flowing out of my spirit to Jesus and not necessarily “feel love” in my soul.

While I am comfortable with that thought, I still think I am missing something. I wrote “More Than a Feeling” some time ago to correct myself for thinking that agape love wasn’t supposed to “feel” like love. The Bible is full of examples of God’s pure agape love for His people that are fraught with feeling. Agape may not be primarily a feeling, but in its richest form, it is not devoid of feeling.

I remember reading years ago about Mother Theresa in her final years. She admitted that she had lost the feeling that drove her earlier ministry. Still, she persisted in her calling to the end. John of the Cross speaks of the dark night of the soul when one might wonder if God has abandoned him. What did Jonah feel in the belly of the fish; what did Paul think as his ship was dashed upon the rocks; what did Jesus Himself think in the Garden of Gethsemane or on the cross when He cried, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” I am beginning to think that one of our deepest human frailties is the imperfect interface of soul and spirit within us. One day, after our resurrection to eternal life, they will be perfectly united; until that day, philosophers like me will question the legitimacy of our love.

You don’t have to go there with me. Karen, bless her soul, does not. She is perfectly happy with her experience of loving Jesus without questions. I envy her. Jesus said unless I become like a little child, I will never see the kingdom of heaven. I parsed that through my biblical philosophy and came up with the idea that simplicity is the hallmark of true faith. I have a tendency to complicate things that are really quite simple. That’s the philosopher in me. Perhaps it is just as Karen keeps telling me: I have to stop thinking so much.

However, through this process, I have come up with another word that plays into the concept of loving Jesus: devotion. I believe devotion leans into the side of agape love that requires an act of our human will. Jesus didn’t shy away from it when He declared, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” In the same way that my devotion to my marriage vows demands sacrificial obedience on my part, my devotion to Jesus requires obedience driven by love.

John MacArthur, in his commentary on Jesus’ dismissal of those who claimed to serve Him but were rejected, says, “Matthew 7:21–23 records the tragic results of spiritual delusion…. Jesus made a clear distinction between those who merely claim to be Christians and those who truly are. The difference is, true believers do the will of the Father from a pure heart. In the words of James, they are doers of the Word, not merely hearers who delude themselves.” If my motivation to follow a biblical world view (aka to obey Jesus) is from a pure heart, I think I am safe within the fold. I think I really do love Jesus.

Related Posts: On transactional love: To Love Mercy; More on delusion: Are You Qualified? Also Weak-day Christians

You’re It!

The topic of the election of the saints is prickly to some people. As I have written previously, my view has evolved over the years. (See Related Posts.) Having been raised in the Restoration Movement and having attended one of their Bible colleges, I began my journey with an Arminian view, which is to say that human will plays a substantial role in salvation. Years of Bible study and exposure to other views caused me to gravitate toward a more Calvinistic understanding of election which elevates God’s sovereignty. (See Calvinist or Arminian)

I think part of the reason for people’s resistance to placing God’s will over human will is our innate desire for independence. Even though Paul makes it clear that salvation is a gift of God’s grace, through faith with no work on our own, some of us insist on taking credit. If the elect of God were chosen before the foundation of the world as Scripture declares, it is hard for me to see how my will had much to do with it. In addition, I think many Christians have a lopsided view of what salvation is. Salvation is not about going to Heaven when you die; it is all about bringing Heaven to earth while you live here.

I like the way Carmen Joy Imes put it in her book, Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters. “Too often we think of ‘election’ as a matter of ‘being picked to be saved.’ But in Scripture, election is more like a game of blob tag, where if I’m ‘it,’ and I tag you, then we’re both it. We run around together and try to tag as many others as we can, who join hands with us and continue tagging others until everyone has been tagged. In this game, the essence of ‘it-ness’ is to tag others. So, too, the essence of election, and therefore the essence of the believer’s vocation, is to represent God by mediating his blessing to others. Once we are ‘it’ we don’t lean back in our recliners, glad that someone picked us. No, to be ‘it’ is to tag others. And to be elect – to be His – is to bear His name among the nations, to demonstrate by our lives that He is king and to mediate His blessing to others. That is the whole point of being the elect.”

I said earlier that I have adopted a somewhat Calvinist view of election to salvation. The hardline view speaks of irresistible grace – I cannot not be saved if I am elect by God. I temper that thought with this: as God’s chosen one, I must surrender to His choosing. Like the game analogy Imes uses, many of us were running from God when He “tagged” us. I would like to say that once I was tagged, I joined hands with Jesus and ran with Him consistently. I cannot say that. I run; I fall; I get up to run again. Falling is okay in this analogy. If I trip involuntarily, God is there to give me a hand up.

If I purposely let go and run off on my own, a different set of rules apply. Either I was never really tagged in the first place, and I pretended to join the game. Or, and here is where I depart from pure Calvinism, I was tagged, but something caused me to tire of the game, or something bothered me so much that I rejected the whole idea of the game and walked away of my own “free will.” I don’t see a way to read the admonitions of Paul or Hebrews chapters six and ten without accepting that as a possibility. In the either scenario, going back to Bible language, I must assume that I was not “elect” at all. God will never lose one of His own.

I think the reason it is so hard for us to wrap our minds around this concept is because our minds are finite; God’s mind is infinite. I put “free will” in quotes before because I believe in a totally sovereign God: He numbers my days; He knit me together in my mother’s womb; He knows the end from the beginning. I only know what my five natural senses can tell me plus whatever the Holy Spirit shows me supernaturally. When I get up in the morning (if God grants me another day), I must decide what to wear, where to go, what to do, and that feels like I am exercising my “free will.”

But the Scripture says my steps are “ordered” by God. God allows me to make choices, but everything I “decide” is already programmed into His will for my life. This is how I can harmonize the total free will of humans with the total sovereignty of God. Back to the subject of election. The elect are revealed by their actions. “By their fruits you shall know them,” Jesus once said. The New Testament writers could speak to “the elect” because their fruit was obvious. In his first epistle, John said that some people had appeared to be elect, but their actions ultimately proved that they were not.

This makes being elect a matter of ethics; we reveal our ethos through our behavior. In his book, How Should I Live in This World?, R.C. Sproul reminds us that “The purpose of divine commandments is redemption. The law of the Old Testament and of the New Testament is fundamentally person-oriented. To isolate this law from its basic concern for people is to fall into the abyss of legalism. Christian ethics is built on the obedience of people to a personal God.” The elect will embrace that ethos and willingly choose to obey its demands. Those who are not among the elect will chafe at having anyone tell them what to do. This is how you can know whether or not you’re it.

Related Posts: Election: God’s Choice; God’s Choice or Man’s; More about Calvinism: Understanding the TULIP Doctrine; On sovereignty: Disrespecting God’s Sovereignty

In Light of Grace

The history of the nation of Israel is a record of God’s constant grace toward His people. After He graciously delivered them from slavery in Egypt, they grumbled and rebelled numerous times. While it is true that He exercised His righteous wrath and punished them for their disobedience at times, He brought a remnant to the Promised Land nonetheless. After God empowered Joshua to conquer the land, the people repeatedly fell into disobedience. They were chastised by attacks from their enemies, but God raised up judges to deliver them every time. During the time of the kings, God delivered judgment when they strayed from Him, even removing Israel and sending Judah into captivity for seventy years, but He promised that David’s descendants would remain of the throne of Judah. That is grace.

In his Gospel, John records the coming of the Son of David: “And the Word became flesh and took up residence among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the one and only from the Father, full of grace and truth…. For from his fullness we have all received, and grace after grace.” John also said, “In him was life, and the life was the light of humanity. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” From the beginning of time when God said, “Light be!” the opposing concepts of light and darkness have been woven into the fabric of Scripture. The light, which God called “day” is the symbol of created order, a symbol of grace; the opposite is darkness or night which represents chaos and ignorance.

When John paired grace and light in his introduction of the Messiah, he laid out a pattern that appears throughout the New Testament. In his first epistle, John said that to have fellowship with God, we must walk in the light. If we walk in the light, John says, “We have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” In the light, we experience the gracious forgiveness of our sin. Grace and truth – light and fellowship. Paul says God has “Rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have the redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” He also warned that we will be entering a battle “against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

Jesus came to bring the light, but the John’s sad declaration is that some did not receive it because they loved the darkness. You don’t have to be an evil person to be caught loving the darkness. Just let the rulers of this darkness place something closer to your heart than God Himself. I have recently discovered that my dance with the darkness involves wanting God to bless my dreams instead of waiting for Him to bless me with His dream. If I pray, “Thy will be done” I must not mean “Let Thy will affirm that my will be done.” If I fall into asking God to give me what I want instead of what He knows I need, I have succumbed to the influence of the kingdom of darkness. Why is misunderstanding God’s grace an evil, dark thing? It makes me satisfied (happy) with less than the best God has for me – namely, a deeper relationship with Him.

A dreadful disease has infected the church in America; it is darkness masquerading as light. It is the lie that says because God is a gracious Father, He wants to give us everything we want. It says God wants us to be happy here on earth. That is not biblical; it is a lie. Search the Scriptures from Genesis three to Revelation nineteen. You will find only a few moments when God deliberately allowed His people to be happy. In the Garden, yes; after Christ’s second coming, yes. But in the in-between where we live, not so much. We are promised joy as a fruit of the Holy Spirit in us, but that is not the same thing as happiness. Happiness is an emotion that comes as a result of good happenings. Joy, on the other hand, is a spiritual condition granted to us in spite of circumstances. We are admonished to crucify our fleshly desires (for happiness) and receive joy. (For more on happiness versus joy, see Related Posts.)

Psalm 37:4 is one of the verses popularly quoted to say that God will grant all our desires. The KJV says, “Delight thyself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” That is a fair translation of the Hebrew, but it can be interpreted more than one way. It is interesting to see how the Jewish translators of the Septuagint (LXX) phrased it in Greek. It betrays a different understanding than is popular today. The word they used for “delight” (κατατρύφησον) means to run down or chase after. The word the LXX uses for “give” (δώσει) can be translated cause, command, produce, or put. The Greek for “desires” (αἰτήματα) is described this way: “this noun highlights the content that is laid before a superior…. [It] sheds distinctive light on the dynamic between petitioner and authority.”

It would be perfectly legitimate to translate the LXX version of Psalm 37:4 as “If you chase after God, He will produce longings in your heart that are in line with your relationship to Him.” That is a long way from saying He will give you whatever you want. To expect God to grant all our desires without context is the epitome of self-serving arrogance. He is all about giving us what we need, and what we need more than anything else is to know Him better and to become more like Jesus.

God is too gracious to give us whatever we want. If He did that, we would end up as spoiled brats. Rather, He lovingly causes us to desire what is best for us in His opinion. He graciously prompts us to become more like His Son. His methods are not always pleasant. Read Hebrews: “For the Lord disciplines the one whom he loves and punishes every son whom he accepts.” The writer explains why this is grace: “Now all discipline seems for the moment not to be joyful but painful, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness for those who are trained by it.” Not all happy times! But in light of the rest of Scripture, in light of true grace, that makes perfect sense.

Related Posts: Happiness and Joy Part One; Part Two; More about bad things that are good: Working All Things for Good; also see The Goodness of God in the Bad Times

Solomon’s Temple; David’s Promises

We always call the temple that existed throughout the kingdom years of Israel Solomon’s Temple. I came across an interesting tidbit in 1 Chronicles 28: it says that David was given the plans for the temple directly by Yahweh Himself, and they were passed on to Solomon by David. Curious! God allowed David to see the grand design of the temple, but He died before it was completed as far as we know. That was not David’s first disappointment. Remember that Samuel anointed him as king when Saul was still reigning. David endured sixteen years of running and hiding before he finally ascended to the throne.

Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple shows that he had a clear understanding of Israel’s relationship with Yahweh God, something he doubtless learned from his father. Solomon believed that Yahweh would continue to give provision and protection for His people. It was also clear from his prayer that Solomon understood the conditions under which those promises were made. He knew that Israel had to remain faithful to Yahweh and His commands or the promises would be nullified. He also realized that the nation would undoubtedly fail to fully follow God because his prayer is full of “when” clauses: when your people fail, he said, hear their repentant prayers from this temple. Not if, when.

Obviously, the omniscient God to whom Solomon prayed also knew the people would be disobedient. Regardless of this, He answered Solomon’s prayer by consuming his offering with fire from heaven and filling the temple with His shekinah glory such that even the priests drew back. This is nothing but a demonstration of God’s abundant grace in spite of His people’s repeated rebellion. Christians sometimes mistakenly think that the Old Testament God was a God of law, but the New Testament God is a God of grace. That is not true. Grace was first displayed when Yahweh did not instantly take Adam’s life when he rebelled in the Garden. It is only by God’s grace that the people of Israel ever came into being.

Because all people are prone to failure, God’s plan of redemption had to be founded on grace. The redeeming Seed promised in Genesis three could not have come to earth apart from God’s gracious provision. In the end, God did not just overlook the murderous disobedience of the Jewish leadership in Jesus’ time; He used it to accomplish His gracious purpose. This was Peter’s message on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit made everything clear to him. According to Peter, Joel’s prophecy of the last days came to pass through the “determined plan and foreknowledge of God” who used “lawless men” to execute their Messiah.

The blessing under which Solomon ruled is called the Davidic covenant. Yahweh promised David that one of his descendants would sit on the throne of Israel “forever.” When they became disobedient not only to God but to their Babylonian overseers, the judgment promised through the prophets came to pass and the last Davidic king was taken captive. When Israel returned to the land after seventy years in captivity, Zerubbabel, a descendant of David, was the political leader, but he was never called a king. He was an appointee of the Persian government that released him.

The kings we read about in the New Testament are also appointees, the Romans having taken Judea into their empire. There were a few Jewish kings during the Maccabean period, who took the throne in rebellion against Roman rule, but they were not descendants of David. By the time of the Messiah’s coming, the Herodian dynasty had been granted the right to call themselves kings, but they were puppets of Rome. They were not even fully Jewish, let alone David’s heirs. This may help us understand how significant it was to have the people hail Jesus as “Son of David” when he entered Jerusalem for the final showdown. They were anxious for a rightful heir to take back the throne.

I think it is interesting that the Roman governor, Pilate, called Jesus King of the Jews on the sign he placed upon the cross. He unknowingly announced what the prophets had foretold centuries earlier: David’s true Descendant would be king. We often say that Jesus is at once prophet, priest, and king, and so He is. He came as the Living Word; He ministers in a heavenly temple which no doubt is the pattern that was shown to David; and He reigns forever as King of kings. Although Jesus told Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world, the day is coming when the kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of Our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever.

The old covenant promised a land flowing with milk and honey – flocks, herds, abundant harvests. That covenant also required continual bloody sacrifices to atone for the inevitable sins of the people. The new covenant is built upon better promises according to the Hebrew writer. The atonement for our sins was accomplished once for all when Jesus took His own blood into the true temple in Heaven and offered it to the Father on our behalf. Jesus’ resurrection from the grave is the testimony that the offering was accepted. The torn temple veil testifies to the ending of God’s presence in the temple. That was no real loss, though. The Herodian dynasty had built a magnificent temple, but Jesus called what it truly was: a den of thieves.

The threefold nature of Jesus ministry – prophet, priest, and king – is mirrored spiritually by His body, the Church. His words, which are spirit and life to us, are prophetically passed on to us so we may share His message as ambassadors of the kingdom of Heaven. We become a kingdom of priests under His high-priestly role sharing the good news of redemption through Jesus. We enter the kingdom through His blood and rule at His side as vice-regents of that kingdom. We even share in David’s lineage because we become brothers and sisters of the true Son of David. None of this requires that we wait for the Jews to build another temple for Jesus to come. He has come, and we are His temple. We may still have disappointments as David did, but we need to learn what it means to be living in the light of David’s promises. We rule!

Related Posts: I highly recommend Where is King Jesus? And also Merry Priestly Christmas; For more on the kingdom see Thy Kingdom Come; on trials see Confidence or Craziness

Forget Not His Benefits

Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It has been too long since I last confessed my sin. This is inexcusable because I use the ACTS prayer prompter daily in which the “C” is for confession. (See “Pray Like You Mean It”) My “A” prayers are Adoration, Acclamation, and Affirmation, so I do express my love for Jesus because He gave His life for me; I proclaim Him as Lord; I affirm His worthiness to be my all-in-all. Still, I seldom come right out and admit that I fall short of His perfection on a daily basis. I don’t really confess.

That is unforgiveable. I enjoy the unspeakable benefit of having all my sins washed away by Jesus’ blood, but I don’t often confess the ones I am aware of, let alone all the trespasses committed in ignorance. There is one I have been made aware of recently by reading a book by Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams. Crabb points out how easy it is to imagine we are trusting God with our lives when what we are really doing is trusting God to make our lives pleasant – to make us happy by granting our desires. I have said for years that God is more concerned with our character than our comfort, but when building character makes me uncomfortable, I question God’s intentions. I forget to thank Him for His benefits.

I have yet to achieve Paul’s attitude as expressed in his statement that he had learned to be content in whatever state he was in. Remember that Paul went through some very uncomfortable situations, yet he could say was content with the way God dealt with him. He was stoned but not to death; he was beaten but was able to heal; he was hungry but not to starvation; he was shipwrecked but not drowned. That was the state in which Paul found contentment. I have been discontented because I live in Arizona but wish I was in Michigan.

I have always struggled with contentment. I have a nice car, but I want a different one, or maybe I just need to do a little of this or that to improve the one I have. I have a nice little home with pleasant amenities, but I want to change the door and put up an awning and…. I have a wonderful wife, but if she would just stop bugging me about…. I have a retirement income that keeps me fed and housed, but with a little more…. You get the idea. God has given me physical benefits galore. There is another line from Paul that I don’t follow: “Give thanks in everything.”

Occasionally, I do get a glimpse of a benefit God has been preparing behind my back. I remember Mordechi’s word to Queen Esther when she was about to save the entire Jewish population. “Perhaps you have been brought here for such a time as this.” My wife and I felt strongly that God brought us to our current place in Arizona for a purpose known only to Him at the time. That was five years ago, and we are not sure we know why we are here. This winter I began to substitute at a Christian school. I loved it. They surprised me by asking if I would consider teaching full-time. At first, I declined; then, I relented.

Immediately, I learned that one of their teachers is training to become an educational therapist; she is working with the National Institute for Learning Disabilities (NILD). My wife is a certified therapist through NILD. That alignment is too precise to be a coincidence. For such a time as this? I am not too proud to say that my connection to the school may have been arranged so that Karen could provide her special experience. In any case, I am thanking God this benefit; it’s a two-way blessing: we find out why we are in Arizona, and the school gets the benefit of a highly trained special education veteran.

Before you say, “Pshaw!” I will say I recognize that our discontent was nothing compared to what some Christians are going through. We haven’t been threatened with instant death because of our beliefs as many believers are today. Our physical maladies are paltry compared to what many people are suffering with. We are not on a steak and caviar diet, but we have enough to eat so that overindulgence is the problem. I don’t have a new truck, but God provided a 25-year-old with low mileage that does exactly what we need. I could go on, but my point is one of confession: I don’t thank God daily for all His benefits.

In today’s McArthur devotional, he counsels us to thank God for the good and the bad that happens to us because we must believe it is all from His hand. (See “The Meaning of Sovereignty”) It is as Paul said, “In everything give thanks.” Everything! Job, a true suffering servant, said, “Should we receive the good from God, but not receive the evil?” Whatever you go through, God is using it to advance His plan, to build His kingdom, to make you more like Christ. These are benefits we must not forget.

Related Posts: Can You Praise God?

The Meaning of Sovereignty

To be sovereign means to have ultimate authority over something. The term is typically applied to a monarch who rules over a population in a distinct geographical area. This is easy to understand when applied to our physical world. Most modern examples have evolved into constitutional monarchies with a governing body such as a parliament taking on much of the actual rulership, and the monarch is merely a figurehead. Many modern Christians have adopted that picture of their Monarch, King Jesus. He has become a symbol of rulership with no real authority over their daily lives.

I can think of at least two reasons why modern Christians balk at the idea of a totally sovereign God: Old Testament history and the spirit of independence. To our modern sensibility, the Sovereign of the OT is distasteful. Yahweh slaughtered thousands of His own people as punishment for their disobedience. He ordered the annihilation of entire populations during Israel’s conquest of the Promised Land. It is not enough to say that this was a common practice in ancient times. We know that God ordered it whereas He told His people to abstain from many other things that were common at the time, child sacrifice, for example.

For the last 250 years in America, we have come to think of government authority as granted by the consent of the governed. We become citizens by our own free will. Prior to America’s founding, authority usually rested with a king who declared people to be his subjects. This is precisely what the Founders set out to change. The Declaration of Independence is such an integral part of our consciousness that we allow it to bleed into our understanding of God’s authority. It is true that we “consent” to become His children through our voluntary union with Christ, but we may forget that we are giving our allegiance to a Father/King and not an elected representative. Scripture is clear: we must subject ourselves to King Jesus.

The fact that some people squirm under the sovereign authority of our Creator should not surprise us. Adam and Eve forced us into our rebellious situation when they were cast out of the Garden of Eden. Biblical history reveals that doing “what was right in their own eyes” became the repeated mantra of the children of Adam. We sometimes refer to pride as the original sin, but it has its roots in a desire for independence. That root has rhizomes that creep into every generation of humankind. The only escape from its stranglehold is to die to Adam and be born again in Christ Jesus.

There are people, myself included if I am being honest, who understand the intellectual concept of a Sovereign God, but fail to live fully with its implications. Like all Christian disciplines, it is not enough to understand sovereignty; you must apply it rigorously. Submission to God’s authority is the most obvious application of His absolute sovereignty. Repenting of our innate tendency toward independence and submitting to God’s ultimate authority is essential to genuine Christian faith. Sincere believers will always align themselves with the will of God as found in the Scripture.

I think one of the most common failures of Christians is believing that God is sovereign but not trusting His work on our behalf. I know that is my biggest problem. I have a sincere intellectual commitment to the sovereignty of God, but I am emotionally detached from that truth. I believe that is the source of my occasional worry. It also reveals a streak of independence trying to surface. If things aren’t going according to my plan, I prove that I don’t trust God completely by worrying. If I was fully committed to His total sovereignty, I would trust that His plan will be better for me than my plan. No worries.

In his book, Shattered Dreams, Larry Crabb makes the case that our innate drive for independence often leads us to sinful positions in the most insidious ways. He suggests that even when we think we are succumbing to God’s will, we imagine that His response will be to bring our plans to fruition. Crabb says this displeases God greatly, and He often adds to the discipline He has begun because of our stubbornness. We must be fully broken of our tendency toward independence; God wants us to be exclusively dependent on Him. Until we hit bottom, as it were, we will never fully trust God’s sovereignty.

I know some people struggle like I do because of a misinterpretation of Romans 8:28. There was even a popular song a while ago that encouraged the misunderstanding by saying “God works all things together for my good.” While the ultimate outcome of “all things” will be for our good, we may have to go through some serious “not good” things to get there. There was much good that came from Paul’s God-ordained ministry to the Gentiles. To arrive at the good outcome, he had to endure stoning, beating, near drowning, imprisonment, and more. His understanding of what he told the Romans was that he was privileged to suffer for Christ’s sake. There is not a hint of worry in Paul’s writings that he doubted God’s good plan for his life.

Study the lives of Noah, Job, Moses, Joseph, David, and more. I could mention that our Lord Himself had to endure terrible not-good in His totally human self in order to accomplish the best good imaginable. Yet, like Job, He said, “Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.” Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane proves His humanness. He showed His willingness to fulfill the plan He and His Father had initiated before the world was made, even though it meant suffering the most brutal torture and death man has ever devised. Worse that that, He had to be separated from His Father during the hours he bore the sin of all mankind. That is truly a fate worse than death if you understand what it really entailed.

James implied that if you truly believe, your behavior will show it. I the case of our belief in God’s sovereignty, our unbelief might be hiding behind our protestations of belief. As Crabb says, it is not easy to trust God when a friend dies of cancer, a wife departs a marriage, a job is taken from you, people treat you in horrible ways, or any one of dozens of not-good things that must be a part of God’s plan. They must be; that is what it means to say He is Sovereign.

Related Posts: Necessary Obedience; What Happened in the Fall

The Greatest Miracle of All

When Jacob awoke from the dream where he saw the stairway to heaven, he said, “Surely Yahweh is indeed in this place, and I did not know!” I think many Christians who are sleepwalking through life could say the same thing. To use medical terminology, they are awake and alert times zero – spiritually unconscious. Literally, not conscious of God’s presence or His activity in their lives. This is a sad state of affairs. They are missing the greatest miracle of all: the God who created them is present with them.

It all started with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with God. We read that they walked with Him in the cool of the day. Sadly, God’s arch enemy tricked them into thinking they were missing something by being forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (See Related Posts) The penalty for their indiscretion was banishment from the Garden and the tree of life. They traded the pleasure of tending trees that would yield their fruit naturally for ground that would bear thorns and thistles. They would have to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. Alone.

They didn’t realize it immediately, but perhaps their greatest loss was the presence of God. This is what God meant when He told them that they would surely die if they disobeyed Him. Certainly, losing access to the tree of life meant they would die eventually, but their rebellion caused death of a more disturbing kind: their close relationship with God died the day they chose to defy Him. While God did not totally abandon them – He promised a day of redemption – He would no longer be a friendly presence in their daily lives.

In the centuries that followed, people forgot the God of the Garden and became so wicked that God destroyed all but eight souls in a devastating flood, finding only Noah who truly sought Him. When earth’s population began to swell again, people tried to manufacture a godlike presence by building a tower to reach the heavens. Again, God intervened and confused their language which caused them to disperse into rival clans and nations. None of them sought His presence. He chose one person to be the father of His chosen nation: Abram.

God made Himself known personally to Abram, later changing his name to Abraham, which means father of nations. I already mentioned his grandson, Jacob/Israel, who only recognized the nearness of the God of his grandfather after the wrestling match. Little is written about the presence of God until Jacob’s family was forced by a famine to rely on the wisdom of the brother they tried to murder: Joseph. He recognized God’s hand in his two-decade sojourn in Egypt with his rise to power second only to Pharoah himself. To his repentant brothers he said, “What you meant for evil, God used for good.”

The record is silent for nearly four hundred years until Moses comes on the scene. Having become slaves to the Egyptians, the Israelites were sorely pressed. Like Joseph, Moses was serendipitously propelled to power in Pharoah’s house, only to lose his temper and murder an Egyptian causing him to run for his life. It is in the desert of Midian that he encounters the God of creation who had been mostly forgotten by His people. At the burning bush, God, who announced Himself as Yahweh, chose to present Himself to Moses in order to call him for a monumental task: delivering His people from slavery. (Exodus 3)

Yahweh’s presence with Moses was validated in two ways. First, He spoke directly to Moses and empowered him to do numerous miracles. Second, Yahweh instructed Moses to construct a special tent where Yahweh would make His physical presence known. The pillar of fire and smoke signaled His presence with Israel as they trekked through the desert. It was not a warm fuzzy presence, as we see in the people’s frightened response at Mount Sinai. Nevertheless, the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant became symbols of God’s presence with His people.

Joshua inherited Moses’ mantle and led Israel through the conquest of the promised land. After Joshua died, Israel’s history reveals on again, off again knowledge of the presence of Yahweh among them. Many generations later, when Solomon builds a magnificent temple to replace the tabernacle, he admits that a stone edifice, no matter how great, cannot contain the Creator of the universe. Still, Yahweh deigns to occupy Solomon’s temple as long as the people remain faithful to Him. That doesn’t last very long, sadly.

Yahweh literally withdrew from the temple after countless warnings and allowed His people to be taken as prisoners to Babylon. Ever mindful of His promise, He limited their captivity to seventy years, after which they were allowed to rebuild the temple. Zerubbabel’s temple, a sad reflection of Solomon’s glorious building, never held quite the status of former times. Five hundred years later when Israel’s Messiah came, Herod’s rebuilt temple had size and grandeur, but it didn’t have the shekinah glory of Solomon’s. Nor did the Jews seem to place much stock in it as God’s dwelling place on earth. Rather, it had become a marketing tool; a den of thieves, Jesus called it.

The Jewish leadership did not realize that God’s presence was again in their midst in the form of Yahweh’s incarnate Son. Isaiah had said Immanuel, God with us, would come, but they missed His appearance. The angel had told Matthew to call his son Immanuel. Jesus validated His status through His teachings and miracles. Still, only a few Jews believed He was who He said He was. Then, when the time for His sacrificial death came, He told His disciples that He would be leaving them. They were distraught. Strangely, He told them it would be to their advantage for Him to leave. He promised to send a Comforter in His place, the Holy Spirit of God to be not just with them but in them.

They didn’t really grasp the full meaning of Jesus’ promise until the Day of Pentecost when the Spirit fell upon them in power. (Acts 2) This represents the greatest miracle of our age. Not only does the Creator God dwell with us, He lives in us. It gets even better; the Spirit grants gifts to each believer so that God’s work may be accomplished. Unfortunately, there are too many believers who are awake and alert times zero concerning this. They pay little attention to the notion that God lives in them, and many make no effort to discover what gift He has blessed them with. (See Despising the Downpayment)

Too many Christians are clueless about God’s presence in their lives. The Apostle Paul encourages us to set our minds on things above where Christ sits on the throne, ruling over His kingdom on earth. Paul also says that our true hope of glory rests on the truth that Christ is in us. The miracles of Moses or Elijah or even Jesus pale by comparison with the miracle of God making His dwelling place in believers. If you are joined with Christ, you have resurrection power within you. Why aren’t you doing miracles or at least recognizing them all around you?

Related Posts: The Knowledge of Good and Evil; Spiritual Gifts

Taking the Name of God in Vain

Almost everyone can quote the third of the Ten Commandments in its traditional English form, “Thou shall not take the name of the Lord Thy God in vain.” The majority of those who can quote it think it forbids cussing. Over the years, people have come up with some creative euphemisms for the phrase God damn: gosh darn, golly gee, doggone, dadgum, or just G-D. They think that by substituting a word for “god” that they have met the requirement of the commandment.

Carmen Imes in her book, Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai still matters, says that the word “take” is better understood as “bear,” as in bearing a load or an image. Young’s Literal Translation comes close with “Do not take up the name of Jehovah thy God for a vain thing.” Imes suggests that bearing the name means being identified with the named One. A modern understanding of vain in this context would be empty or useless. In other words, if you are going to bear the Name, call yourself a follower of the Name, you had better be sure the things you do honor the Name you bear.

A quick review of where the Name comes from will be helpful. Several times in the Old Testament, “The Name” appears to people as God in human form. When Moses asked what he was supposed to call the being he encountered in the burning bush, he was told to use the name Yahweh. Numerous divine epiphanies are identified as Yahweh throughout the history of Israel. In her book, Imes asks where we find Yahweh in the New Testament. She frankly states that it isn’t there unless you follow the root of the name the angel told Mary and Joseph to call their miraculous baby boy: Yeshua.

Our Savior’s parents would have spoken Aramaic, a version of Hebrew, in their daily lives. Thus, it is likely that the angel who announced His birth would have told Mary, “You shall call His name Yeshua.” We got “Jesus” from the Greek translation where Yeshua becomes Ἰησοῦς pronounced Yaysous, hence Jesus in English. If you translate directly from the Aramaic to English, you have the name Joshua. Our Saviour’s given name was Joshua. Since God regularly gives descriptive names to His special people, it is no surprise to learn that in Hebrew, Joshua/Yeshua means God saves. He does, indeed!

According to Imes, there are two reasons why the name Yahweh doesn’t easily carry over into the New Testament. First, by the time of Jesus birth, the Jews had over one thousand years of substituting “Lord” for the Hebrew name of God out of reverence for Him. Second, the writings of Moses spelled the name he was given for the God of the burning bush YHWH. In ancient Hebrew, vowels were added later to aid pronunciation; Yahweh is as close a guess as any. Jumping to Greek was difficult because there are no letters that correspond with Y, W, or H. The authors of the New Testament, who were mostly Jews, simply continued the long-standing tradition of referring to God as Lord.

Now we are back to bearing the Name. We know it is the only Name by which we can be saved, thanks to Peter’s defiant assertion. We also have a pretty good idea that many, if not all the appearances of God/Yahweh in the Old Testament were probably the pre-incarnate, eternal Son of God. So, it appears that bearing the name of Jesus in the New Testament means exactly the same thing as bearing the name of Yahweh in the Old Testament. One must take pains not to bear the name without effect. And the effect must be to glorify God.

There is another interesting sidelight to the discussion of important names in the Bible. God’s people were known as Israel because their forefather, Jacob, was given that name after he wrestled with the Angel of Yahweh. Jacob means grabber, overcomer, or usurper in Hebrew. That name is a good description of much of what occurred in Jacob’s life. After his bout with the Angel, Jacob the overcomer was renamed Israel, “He who contends with God.” In retrospect, that properly describes what the nation of Israel did throughout their existence. It has been suggested that, “[Israel] is a reference to the Jewish people's ongoing struggle with God, and the obligation they have to explore their faith.”

I can’t think of a better description of the plight of those of us who have named the name of Jesus. Paul made his own struggle plain in Romans seven. He told the Galatians that there would be a continual battle within them between the Spirit and their flesh. After commending the heroes of the faith, the Hebrew author encourages us to, “run with patient endurance the race that has been set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the originator and perfecter of faith.” That “race” by the way is a marathon not a dash.

Imes says that when Jesus asked His followers to pray hallowed be Thy name, “His is prayer implies a personal commitment to honoring that name through a life of faithful obedience. He fulfills Israel’s vocation to bear Yahweh’s name with honor.” So, in one sense, the church, the Body of Christ, is the Israel of God. Our obligation is to represent His interests on earth; we are encouraged to “contend for the faith.” The church is at once the temple of God and His Israel: His contenders. This lends credence to my belief that physical Israel isn’t getting a second chance to accept their Messiah in the last days. They had their chance, and they blew it royally.

This also explains Paul’s comment to the Ephesians that God’s purpose for the church is to “Display His wisdom to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was His eternal plan, which He carried out in Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 3:10-11 NLT) It is our responsibility to bear the Name with all the best intentions and glorify God in the process. If we do that, we will not bear the Name of the Lord our God in vain. I would still recommend that you avoid cussing.

Related Posts: His Name Shall Be Called; There’s Something Fishy About that Name; In Jesus’ Name

What’s the Power For?

Years ago, when I was first introduced to the idea that our prayers were meant to exert power over circumstances, someone cautioned that we weren’t to use the power indiscriminately. The example he gave was that we should refrain from using it to blow out the tires of the car that just rudely cut us off in traffic. Hah! I should hope not. Yet, some of the prayer requests I remember from that time are equally frivolous. I remember someone praying that her kitchen blender would be miraculously repaired so she wouldn’t have to buy a new one. Another reported laying hands on his car when it refused to start. I don’ t recall if that prayer worked or not.

Let me be clear: I do believe that God is intimately involved in our day-to-day lives. I also believe that He is able to accomplish miraculous things with inanimate objects. Jesus turned water to wine; he stopped the wind and calmed the raging seas. However, when Paul said that the same power that rose Jesus from the grave gives life to our mortal flesh, I think he had something more significant than blenders or automobiles in mind. The word Paul uses to ascribe life to our flesh is zoe (ζωή); its New Testament use is almost always with reference to the life that comes from God: spiritual life. Paul told the Ephesians when they were, “Dead in trespasses, [God] made [them] alive together with Christ.” Same word: zoe.

Jesus said that He had come to provide abundant life to His followers. It’s that word again. There are those who would twist His words to mean Jesus promised an abundance of material possessions. If that were the case, Jesus would not have used zoe. When a man asked Jesus to intervene to provide his material wealth, Jesus remarked, “Not even when someone has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.” Zoe is not about physical life. Nor is the power we are given through Christ about physical reality, though there may be instances of crossover because spiritual life is of a higher order than physical life.

So, what is the power for? The old hymn “Power in the Blood” spells it out nicely. The wonder-working power in the precious blood of the Lamb, according to the hymnist, is so we, “would be free from the burden of sin,” and “Over evil the victory win.” Those two verses summarize what the Christian life is all about. Christ’s atoning death on the Cross of Calvary removed our guilt, the burden of sin. We are freed from the penalty of sin because Jesus paid the price for us. That same sacrifice also allows us to triumph over evil. “God will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able.” “Greater is He that is in you.” “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” That reminds me of another great hymn: “Victory in Jesus.”

Another aspect of our victory over evil is the call to spread the good news of our victory to all the lost souls around us. “Send the light, the blessed gospel light; let it shine from shore to shore.” There was a good measure of sound biblical teaching in those old hymns! They also taught us that our condition would not always be restful. “Onward Christian Soldiers Marching as to War.” The enemy of our souls will do whatever he can to thwart our efforts to announce his defeat at the Cross. We are not at a picnic; we are at war. The power Jesus grants will come in handy when we face the enemy.

There is a more subtle aspect to the power we have through Jesus: our forgiveness rests on His work on our behalf. Although we have the power to overcome temptation, the Bible clearly teaches that we will still sin occasionally. It has always confused me that while Calvary provides forgiveness of all our sin, we are still told to ask for forgiveness. John MacArthur explains that there are two types of forgiveness: judicial and parental. God the judge grants us judicial forgiveness on the basis of our union with Christ. God the Father requires us to ask for forgiveness to restore the parent/child fellowship that is hindered by our sin.

We can see this played out in our human relationships. When my son sins against me, by disobedience for example, he does not cease to be my son. However, our relationship is damaged. By asking my forgiveness, our healthy parent/child bond is restored. If I sin against my wife by failing to honor her as I should, she does not stop being my wife, but I can say from personal experience, she will not be happy with me unless I ask for her forgiveness. The power to forgive is an important part of the image of God’s grace that followers of Christ are called to.

If you are having trouble seeing forgiveness as an aspect of the power we have in Christ, look at what Paul said to the Galatians. He said that the spirit and our flesh are at odds with one another. After contrasting the works of the flesh with the fruit of the spirit, he says, “Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh together with its feelings and its desires.” Our union with Christ in His death, symbolized in our baptism, gives us the power to “follow the Spirit” as Paul advises.

When you sing the contemporary chorus that says, “The same power that rose Jesus from the grave lives in us,” it refers to spiritual power. Far from being less welcome than physical power, it represents the ultimate power in the universe: God’s power. I said before that spiritual power is of a higher order than physical power. That is because our physical universe is a subset of the spiritual “universe.” God stepped down from Heaven to create the world as we know it. Another old song says, “He’s got the whole world in His hands.” As such, He has the ultimate power to accomplish His will here on earth as the Lord’s Prayer seeks.

When Paul wrote repeatedly that we are to live, walk, follow the Spirit, he was inviting us to make use of the power that God provides. Rather than trying to blow out the tires of the guy who crosses you, use your power to calm your own heart and offer forgiveness to the guy who offended you. That’s what the power is for: making us more like Christ.

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