The Motherhood of God

One aspect of God that you don’t often read about is his motherhood, probably because “his motherhood” sounds ridiculous. But it must be remembered that much talk of God is freighted with analogy, including his gender. God is neither male nor female (which may be why Paul can say that “in Christ there is neither male nor female”). Of course that’s not to say that masculinity and femininity have no relation to God. God created human beings in his image, so our maleness and femaleness reflect the image of a God who subsumes both, or even brings both into perfect union.

In the book of Isaiah, the motherhood of God is a word of promise spoken to exiled Israel. YHWH says to his people,

You will be like a child that is nursed by its mother, carried in her arms, and treated with love. I will comfort you in Jerusalem, as a mother comforts her child.

This unique role of women -- that of “nurse” to a hungry, dependent child uncomfortable in their new surroundings -- offers an insight into the character of God, and thus the actions he is prone to undertake. God nurses, God comforts, God carries, God treats with love. Picture a mother holding her newborn baby in her arms, feeding him when he is hungry, singing to him when he is upset, loving every little detail about this new creation; picture this, and you begin to get a fuller picture of who God is.

Jesus also creates a snapshot image of motherhood, but applies the image to himself. Lamenting over impenitent Jerusalem, he says,

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!

The picture here is one of a mother’s protection for her own. This echoes some passages in the Psalms, which speak of abiding “in the shadow of [YHWH’s] wings”. There the children find refuge in times of trouble, the strength of a devoted mother in times of weakness and vulnerability.

One of the interesting things about Jesus’s application of this maternal image to himself is how blurred it makes the lines between “gender roles”; how close it brings the “complementary” nature of “biblical manhood” and “biblical womanhood” together. Jesus as image of God brought the two into one. His maleness didn’t preclude him from embodying the characteristics associated with motherhood. In fact, for Jesus to really be the image of God -- “the exact imprint of His nature” as Priscilla writes in Hebrews (oh no he didn’t!) -- male and female had to become one in him, for God is one. And so they did.

None of this is to say that father’s should start breast feeding their children, of course. Nevertheless, the image of a child being nursed at its mother’s breast is one that God is not hesitant to apply to himself in order to reveal the kind of God he is and the kind of things he desires to do (nurture, sustain, love, etc). The man Jesus fully revealed this maternal instinct, and whether male or female we too are called to embody the motherhood of God, displaying all the compassion, care and comfort that a mother has for her beloved child.

Metaphorically speaking, you can milk anything with nipples.

It Was The One-Armed Man

I find it amusing when people today say that they want to be a “New Testament church”. I know what they mean to some degree, but I like to pretend that they’re hankering for the good ol’ days when church members were getting drunk on communion wine and sleeping with temple prostitutes. Oh to be a New Testament church like the one in Corinth, eh!?

Speaking of temple prostitutes (there’s a segue you don’t hear too often), one of the Bible verses that has long-bewildered me is found in Paul’s response to the Corinthians’ liaisons with some women of the night. Having explained that sex with a prostitute creates a bond that is not easily broken -- “the two will become one flesh” -- Paul goes on to write,

Flee fornication. Every sin which a man may do is outside the body, but he doing fornication sins against his own body.

Flee fornication. That much is understandable. This is no arbitrary law to be kept for law-keeping’s sake, but a way of life that promotes our own good and that of others when we abide by it and causes us and others harm when we turn away from it.

But what about the next sentence? The belief that “Every sin which a man may do is outside the body” does not fit easily into the overall context of 1 Corinthians, nor into the theology/ethics of Scripture in general. Our bodies are either instruments of righteousness or instruments of sin. The univocal witness of Scripture is that what we do with our bodies matters, so how do we explain this verse?

The way I have usually heard it explained is that sexual sin is of a different class to all other sins. When we misuse our sexuality we are harming our own bodies in a deeper way than when we commit a more run-of-the-mill sin. Sex is an intimate thing, and so its abuse has intimate consequences.

I don’t necessarily question this diagnosis of sexual sin, but it has always seemed to me to set up a false contrast. After all, Paul usually groups sexual sin in with others like greed, envy, and bitterness, without marking it out as being “internal” as opposed to “external”. And besides, what does it even mean for greed or envy to be committed “outside the body”? That doesn’t make any good sense.

O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this exegetical conundrum? Thanks be to God through Richard B. Hays our scholar.

This particular section in 1 Corinthians starts with the much-loved phrase, “All things are lawful for me”. This is not a phrase of Paul’s creation, however, but a Corinthian slogan used to justify certain sinful actions. So the exchange between the Corinthians and Paul goes like this:

Corinthians: All things are lawful to me.

Paul: But not all things are beneficial.

Corinthians: All things are lawful to me.

Paul: But I will not be enslaved by anything.

The next Corinthian slogan is more long-winded than most (if not all) translations allow for. As Hays argues, however, we must include all of the following lest we end up with a Platonic dualism of bad matter and good spirit:

Corinthians: Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other.

Paul: The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

Here (and at the end of the section) the body is affirmed as God’s good creation to be used for His glory. It is not something to be destroyed, but something to be redeemed. That is its raison d’etre.

And so we come to the most pertinent Corinthian--Paul exchange. How do you solve a problem like sins outside the body? Just assume that Paul never said it. Assume this, as Hays does rather convincingly, and you end up with the following back-and-forth:

Corinthians: Every sin man does is outside the body.

Paul: But the man guilty of sexual immorality sins against his own body.

Paul isn’t contrasting sexual sin with all other sins (and he's certainly not making it sound worse or more grievous, which is a possible and lamentable result of the usual interpretation). He’s simply exposing the fallacy of the Corinthians’ argument. To paraphrase Paul's intention:

You Corinthians say that what we do with our bodies is of no consequence. You say that sin is not a bodily matter. I say that it is.

The coup de grace comes in the next verse, where Paul makes the astounding claim that our bodies are the dwellings places of the Holy Spirit. But let’s not go there just yet.

For now, all you need to know is that if there is a verse you find difficult to swallow, just assume that the church in Corinth came up with it. You wouldn’t believe how liberating it is to think that “Love your neighbour as yourself” is a Corinthian slogan, for example.

Sex, Money, and Power

Reading the book of Jeremiah, Counterfeit Gods, and The Screwtape Letters simultaneously has created a wonderful confluence of thought that I never foresaw. Idolatry is named and shamed (or in Screwtape's case, praised) in each text, with a similar cure offered to those who desire to stop turning something good into something ultimate.

Keller's diagnosis is simple and direct:

The human heart is indeed a factory that mass-produces idols.

The Big 3 -- sex, money and power -- get separate treatment in his book, with each idol shown to dehumanise the human that creates and worships it. But Keller does not end on a note of despair:

Is there any hope? Yes, if we begin to realise that idols cannot simply be removed. They must be replaced. If you only try to uproot them, they grow back; but they can be supplanted. By what? By God himself, of course. But by God we do not mean a general belief in his existence. Most people have that, yet their souls are riddled with idols. What we need is a living encounter with God.

C.S. Lewis says things as only C.S. Lewis can. At the end of The Screwtape Letters, the demon Screwtape is resenting the loss of a human to the Enemy's (God's) camp. He had instructed his protege Wormwood to create a continual flow of idols in the life of this new Christian, but the game is up. The young demon's efforts will be futile, for the Christian has discovered what Keller was talking about. So Screwtape laments:

All the delights of sense, or heart, or intellect, with which you could once have tempted him, even the delights of virtue itself, now seem to him in comparison but as the half nauseous attractions of a raddled harlot would seem to a man who hears that his true beloved whom he has loved all his life and whom he had believed to be dead is alive and even now at his door.

Such words of conviction and promise as found in Counterfeit Gods and The Screwtape Letters can only be uttered because of the primary utterances of God. Speaking to his beloved Israel, through the weeping prophet Jeremiah, YHWH says,

...my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. - Jer. 2:13

These are no shallow evils with a silver bullet solution. The problem, as YHWH goes on to say, is deep-seated:

The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron; with a point of diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their heart... - Jer. 17:1

What an image. The heart bears the marks of idolatry as if it were irrevocably engraved into the human constitution. The desire for counterfeit gods, the need to fashion our broken cisterns, is burned onto our innermost being. But YHWH would not let such engravings have the last word. He would do something new:

Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. - Jer. 31:31-33

Only the presence of God is powerful enough to remove words engraved with the tip of a diamond and to replace them with words of life. The lie of idolatry is that joy can be obtained when people create their own gods. The truth of the gospel is that joy abounds when God creates his own people. The vocation and privilege of the church is to be that people; people who, says Paul,

...are a letter from Christ...written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

Deus Ex Machina

Cain and Abel are the first children of Adam and Eve. Cain murders Abel, and receives judgement from God. He responds by saying,

My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.

Simply put, Cain is afraid of the big, bad world; afraid that "the others" will kill him when they find him.

This begs the question, who are the others? Who are these people that Cain is afraid of? His own brothers and sisters that Genesis fails to mention? Does he then go on to marry one of them in the land of Nod? Most theological schemes would demand positive answers to these last two questions. This I find troubling.

Is there a way out of this conundrum? More specifically, a way that doesn't involve secret siblings prone to incest? I just hate it when I have to solve conundrums by introducing incestuous children to the plot.

The Gospel in the Gospels

All four gospels devote ample space to the crucifixion of Jesus, yet ‘atonement theology’ does not appear to be the major focus. There are hints and allusions, of course, but nothing quite as explicit or as universal as some passages from Paul’s epistles. And this in spite of the four gospels being written after Paul’s most robust letters.

One would expect Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to have engaged in a little historical revisionism. After all, they were probably writing for people who had heard Paul’s teaching either directly or indirectly, so a theological-heavy interpretation of Jesus’s death would have been well understood by the earliest gospel readers. What was the gospel, after all, if it was not a theology of Christ crucified that was good news?

Yet as I said already, this we don’t get. What we get instead are stories aimed not at merely shaping our theology, but at shaping our lives.

It seems the earliest churches had a particular focus, a telos they were headed towards - conformity to the image of Christ. To become a Christian was to start on this "process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others" (Mulholland).

No doubt the following question haunted the early church just as it haunts us today: What does it look like to look like Jesus? The value system of the 1st century was probably very similar to our own, with power, wealth, and prestige all being sought after religiously. A passage contained in all three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) illustrates this.

A dispute breaks out amongst the disciples as regards who is the greatest. Who will wield the most power in the kingdom? Who will have the authority and the prestige? Jesus answers them in an earth-shattering way. He knows the value system of the present regime, but this value system is to be turned on its head. “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant,” says Jesus, “and whoever would be first among you must be slave to all”. We then get a statement which in isolation looks like straight-up atonement theology, but in the context of the gospel narrative is nothing less than a call to Christlikeness, which is a call to cruciformity: “For the son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.

This is not only an example of Jesus’s understanding of his own death, but it is his understanding of the life to which his followers are called. “Imitate me”, says Jesus. The lengthy passion narratives give a paradigm for what such imitation entails - non-retaliation in the face of abuse, silence in the face of mockery, forgiveness in the face of sin.

The call to Christlikeness does not take the form of an exhaustive list of dos and don’ts. Most of the time we are not told what the right thing to do is in a given scenario. If you think the Christian life consists of following a set list of abstract rules, you are mistaken. In Christ, the law became a story. The word became a fleshly narrative, and dwelt among us. But it dwelt among us not as one to be served, but as one who serves. All four gospels tell this story in great detail. Why? Because it makes for nice bedtime reading? Because we need to know the correct information if we are to be saved? No. The story is told because the community of faith has been called to continue the narrative begun in Christ. The goal of the Christian life is for Jesus’s story to become our story. This doesn’t happen by dutifully obeying a list of commands in our own power, but by creatively incarnating Jesus’s story in our daily lives by the power of the Spirit. The details will look different in each of our lives, but the form will always be the same: it will be the form of a cross.

The four gospel writers knew well the significance of the cross not just as salvation history, but as salvation present and future. A closer look at Paul might yield a similar conclusion. This, after all, is the same Paul who could earnestly desire

…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…

Answered Prayer

What does it take for God to answer prayer? What does his answer look like?

There is no single template of course. We do not have a god in a box, but a free God who acts as he best sees fit. When we think we have him pegged, he surprises us with still more grace. His mercies are new each morning; never dull or expected, but always fresh and invigorating.

Nevertheless, reflecting on answered prayer has led me to the following conclusion: More often than we might like to think, what it takes for God to answer prayer is human obedience. Border-line heretical as it sounds, we have a role to play in prayer that requires us not only to ask, but to be part of the answer.

Consider Moses.

God confronts Moses at a burning bush. He tells Moses not only of what is happening in the lives of the Israelites, but of what is happening in the life of God Himself. Israel is crying out to God because of her suffering, and God has heard their cries and been moved to initiate a mighty act of deliverance.

As far as the children of Israel are concerned, this is a story with three characters: God (soon to be introduced as YHWH), Israel and Egypt. Israel prays to God in the hope that he delivers them from the tyrannical hand of the Egyptians. God, however, transports a fourth character into the drama. YHWH's answer to prayer takes the form of him commissioning Moses to be His agent of deliverance.

Moses now has a choice: to obey or not to obey. He can be God's sent one, or he can ignore the call on his life. After some powerful persuasion from YHWH, Moses chooses obedience and goes on to lead the Israelites out of slavery.

The Israelites prayed to God for freedom; God's answer came in the form of human obedience. This paradigm reached its zenith in Jesus of Nazareth. Our need for freedom was answered in the form of a man obedient to God to the point of death, even death on a cross.

There is much more to be said on this topic, but I'll finish with this: Those who don't believe God answers prayer don't take seriously enough the (witting or unwitting) obedience of their fellow human beings to the will of God. When the naked are clothed, when the thirsty are given water to drink, when words of comfort are spoken to a broken heart, God is at work and prayers are being answered. What a privilege for us to be involved in the answers, but what a responsibility. We can take comfort and courage, however, from the words of YHWH to Moses (and the words of Jesus to his own sent ones): I will be with you.

The Way We Know Things

We can show God's existence to be reasonable and rational through persuasive argument. Christian apologists have several at their disposal: the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the moral argument to name four. We can demonstrate that it makes historical sense that Jesus rose from the dead. We can have some of the most learned scholars championing the faith, and have some of the most intelligent and witty preachers delivering sermons each Sunday. We can have all of these sound reasons for accepting the truth of the Christian message, and yet...

the word of the cross is foolishness.

It is moria, which can be faithfully translated as "moronic".

Much as we might wish otherwise, our preaching of the gospel of Christ crucified is an act of lunacy (or "loon-a-she"). It does not and will not fit with the dominant wisdom of our day. Paul makes this clear in the latter half of 1 Corinthians 1, which (learned scholar) Richard Hays says is the apostle's attempt to show that "prideful confidence in human wisdom is antithetical to the deepest logic of the gospel".

Conventional human thinking will not lead one to the cross. This was true of the first Christians, who found the mere idea of Christ crucified unfathomable. Though Jesus predicted his own death, his disciples were having none of it. Their minds could not conceive of such nonsense. This was still truer of the apostle Paul, who initially found the proclamation of a crucified Messiah so repulsive that those who spread such foolishness were seen by him to be deserving of imprisonment or even death.

Yet this same apostle experienced a conversion of his imagination which led him to write that "the cross...is the power of God". As Hays comments,

God has chosen to save the world through the cross, through the shameful and powerless death of the crucified Messiah. If that shocking event is the revelation of the deepest truth about the character of God, then our whole way of seeing the world is turned upside down. Everything has to be reevaluated in light of the cross.

The cross impinges on our epistemology, on the way we know things. Believing in the death of Jesus is not to believe one thing among many; it is to believe something that shapes how we see everything else. To quote Hays one last time,

Paul has taken the central event at the heart of the Christian story -- the death of Jesus -- and used it as the lens through which all human experience must be projected and thereby seen afresh. The cross becomes the starting point for an epistemological revolution.

This is why it's vital for the church to both proclaim the message of the cross and to incarnate the story it tells. We are God's way of making known his surprising wisdom. We are an epistole (a letter) from Christ, the means through which this "epistemological revolution" bears fruit and the place where it is manifested.

A God in Relation

It’s not about religion; it’s about relationship.

If you’ve ever spoken to a Christian about their faith (or spoken to a non-Christian about your faith) I am quite confident you’ve heard (or said) something not unlike this. We Christians throw out the “relationship with God” line as if it makes perfect sense; as if it’s the verbal coup de grace to any argument against the Christian religion relationship.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the line, or at least the thought behind it. It brings any discussion into the sphere in which it belongs. The God worshipped by Christians is -- as Walter Brueggemann says -- a God in relation. To talk about such a God as if he is a static object to be prodded and poked from a safe distance is to miss his essence. And since this God in relation lies at the heart of Christianity, it makes sense to talk about being a Christian in terms of a relationship.

Of course this reality makes many uncomfortable, Christians and non-Christians alike. Relationships are hard to quantify, they cannot be looked at under a microscope, they cannot be really known by someone outside of the relationship. I’ve known my parents for 24 years, but I do not know what it is like to be married to either one of them. I have some good information, but I have no experience.

It can therefore be easy to dismiss relationship as a load of gibberish when discussion about God arises. The tired, old “imaginary friend” jibe comes to mind. Talk of “relationship with God” can sound so esoteric, so private, that it’s pointless going down that road. It is the Christian’s get-out-of-jail-free card, played when science has (apparently) ridiculed the idea of God.

I often feel like this too. Is it all in my head? What does it even mean to have a relationship with God? What does it mean to say that God loves me? Is that just a nice thought to get me through the banality of life, or is it something real, concrete, tangible, incarnate, present? (Excuse the Alan Hansen-ism)

After reading John’s first letter, I think some answers might be contained within. The beloved disciple who walked and talked with Jesus seems to have an insight into what it means to know this God in relation. It is chapter 17 of his gospel that presents to us the crux of life: to know the Father and to know the Son.

It is indeed about relationship. After all, life itself is the product of an intimate relationship between man and woman. Relationship is the fundamental structure of the universe. This we know, however unquantifiable that knowledge might be. The question is, what does it mean to know God and be in relationship with him?

I won’t pretend to provide answers, but do a couple of muddled posts on 1 John sound good to you? Okay then.

The True Exodus

“Out of Egypt I called My son”.

These are words familiar to many of us from Matthew’s gospel (clinging on as they do to the coattails of the nativity scenes), but their significance is often missed.

After informing us of Joseph, Mary and Jesus’ flight to Egypt to escape the wrath of a jealous and threatened King Herod the Great, Matthew says this getaway occurred in order to fulfill what was written by the prophet Hosea, or, more accurately, what Yahweh has spoken through the prophet Hosea. That is, the phrase “Out of Egypt I called My son” was, in some shape or form, fulfilled in Jesus’ exile to Egypt and return to the Holy Land.

The rather shallow (and unfortunately quite common) way of reading this is as a sort of Nostradamus-esque prediction which miraculously comes true in the life of Jesus. In this case, Hosea made the prediction, and Jesus’ flight to Egypt made it come to pass. Then we’re supposed to go, “Look! See! He is the Son of God! He made an 800 year old prediction come true!”

But, as appropriate as that way of reading certain prophetic passages might be, I don’t that is what Matthew intended. After all, the text in Hosea speaks not of what god will do, but what he has already done.

Therefore instead of being a mere prediction about some event in the early life of Jesus, by drawing on the prophecy of Hosea Matthew is making an important identification; an identification between Jesus and Israel, who, collectively, is the original “my son” of Hosea 11. Through this identification Israel’s history is becoming Jesus’ story in a symbolic way, which is really Matthew’s gospel in a nutshell. And though of course there are similarities between the two stories -- or the two sons -- it is the differences that make all the difference.

Israel was called out of Egypt to be Yahweh’s kingdom of priests. The god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob delivered the nation as part of his plan to deliver the world and thus uphold his promises of universal blessing to Abraham. Israel, however, failed to live up to the vocation of Yahweh’s chosen son.

But god did not give up, neither on Israel nor the world. In Jesus of Nazareth, he was once again calling his son out of a foreign land -- out of exile -- and setting him up to be a light to the world. Jesus would be Israel’s representative, and play to perfection its role as manifestation and herald of the kingdom of god. And so Matthew, through his quotation of Hosea 11:1, is in effect saying, “This is the deliverance out of Egypt, take two. Lights, camera, action!” The remainder of the gospel fleshes out this plotline - in familiar ways but also in fresh, surprising ways.

It is notable where Matthew stops his quotation (remember, he wasn’t reading Hosea 11:1; he was simply reading Hosea). The next part of Hosea goes on to describe Israel’s idolatry, and their unfaithfulness to the call. This is where Jesus’ story parts ways with Israel’s tainted history. Or perhaps, it is where Jesus’ story rights the wrongs of Israel’s history. At his baptism Jesus is affirmed as Yahweh’s chosen son, the one he is well pleased with. During the 40 days of wilderness trials he -- unlike Israel during their 40 years of wandering -- stays faithful to his sonship, and refuses to bow down to another for his own selfish ends.

There is one other interesting thing to take from the subsequent passage in Hosea that Matthew perhaps intended to echo, if only faintly. That Jesus is to be identified with Israel is quite clear, given their respective roles as Yahweh’s chosen son. But if we read the rest of Hosea in the light of Matthew’s gospel, there is also an identification between Jesus and the god of that passage.

In Hosea 11 Yahweh speaks of teaching Israel to walk, taking him by the arms, and healing him - all parental activities. Though Jesus doesn’t echo the words exactly, he certainly echoes the sentiment in Matthew 23, where he speaks longingly about wanting to gather the children of Israel as a mother-hen gathers her brood under her wing. But like the Israel of Hosea’s time, the children “would not return” to their father. Repentance -- a significant theme in Hosea as well as the ministry of Jesus -- was not forthcoming.

Another particularly striking catch word is “yoke”. In Hosea 11:4 Yahweh says he “came to them [i.e. Israel] as one who eases the yoke on their jaws”. In Matthew 11:29-30 Jesus bids all who would come to him to take his yoke which is easy, and so once again the “chosen son” is actually assuming the role of “father”.

But as with his identification with the Israel of Hosea, Jesus’ identification with the god of Hosea also diverges away from perfect similarity. As Yahweh struggles within himself between compassion and judgement (a struggle embodied by Jesus throughout his own ministry), he finally gives in to his compassion, affirming that “I am god and not man”. Here is where something new has occurred, for Jesus is both.

This is the wonder of Christmas - the fullest revelation of god is found in the form of a man. Jesus came not simply to make questionable predictions come true, but (in the inimitable words of my former teacher) to “reveal deity and heal humanity”. To reveal deity he had to identify with god; to heal humanity he had to identify with us. He did so from the very beginning, and took this identification right to the depths of human depravity as he hung on a cross, giving his life as a ransom for many.

God called his son Jesus out of Egypt so that the true exodus could come to pass; the deliverance from a life of sin and the deliverance to a life of Christlikeness, where god and neighbour become truly loved. The message of Christmas is that god’s son Jesus is the suffering servant, and this suffering servant is the Israel’s messiah and lord of the world. This is the good news that Matthew wanted his original readers to know, and it is the good news that continues to be made known to this day, with profound effects on all who receive it freely and obediently.

Echoes of Psalms in the Sermon

YHWH, who shall dwell in Your tabernacle? Who shall dwell on Your holy hill?

He who walks uprightly,
And works righteousness,
And speaks the truth in his heart;
He who does not backbite with his tongue,
Nor does evil to his neighbour,
Nor takes up a reproach against his neighbour;
In whose eyes a vile person is despised,
But he honours those who fear Jehovah;
He who swears to his hurt, and does not change;
He who has not put out his money at interest,
Nor does he take a bribe against the innocent.

He who does these things shall never be moved.

- Psalm 15

Having read this Psalm of David in the midst of re-reading Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul and Richard Hays’s interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, a wonderful convergence seemed to appear right before my eyes: Is this Psalm not echoed in Jesus’ teaching on that now famous mount?

I won’t profess to be the first to draw such a parallel, but allow me to act as if I am.

First of all, it shouldn’t surprise us if this is the case. Jesus was well versed in Scripture, and we know of him both quizzing the Pharisees on an interpretation of Psalm 110, and also uttering those haunting opening words of the 22nd Psalm from the cross - “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

What then of the relationship between Psalm 15 and the Sermon on the Mount? I think there are two important things to be said about this: There are striking similarities of thought, but also striking differences.

The question being dealt with in Psalm 15 is the following:

YHWH, who shall dwell in Your tabernacle? Who shall dwell in Your holy hill?

Allow me to phrase the question like this: Who is at home in God’s house? This, I think, is a markedly similar question to the one Jesus addresses in his discourse, which might be worded as follows: Who is at home in the kingdom of God, and what does life in that kingdom look like?

The differences between these questions lie in the respective meanings of “tabernacle” and “holy hill”. For the Psalmist, these were specific places, geographic locations. Jesus, however, redefines what it means for God to dwell with man. He is the Word who became flesh and “tabernacled” amongst us, as a literal translation of John 1:14 might put it. Abiding in God’s tabernacle is no longer to abide in this temple or that temple, nor is worshiping God something done on this hill or that hill. At the centre of God’s kingdom is not a place or a building, but a person, and all who dwell in that kingdom must first abide in Jesus.

Moving onto the character and behaviour of the one who lives life in the presence of God, the similarities between psalm and sermon are obvious. Both speak of “righteousness” (Psa. 15:2; Matt. 5:6, 10, 20; 6:33) as foundational to kingdom life. Where the psalmist talks of not “backbiting with the tongue”, Jesus warns against insulting a brother/calling him a “fool”. Both also speak about what can generally be called “neighbourly love”.

But it is the differences that are most telling. For the psalmist, the person who dwells with God is one “in whose eyes a vile person is despised”. Compare this with the following words of Jesus:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your friends, hate your enemies.'
But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…"

Surely there can be no getting away from these contradictory descriptions of one who is at home in God’s kingdom. In the psalm, the enemy is despised; in the sermon, the enemy is loved. Jesus has exposed the shortcomings of the psalmist’s ethic, just as he exposed the divorce laws as being short of God’s true intentions for his people (Matt. 19:3-9). God’s children are shown to be those whose actions are permeated with love for friend and foe alike, for this is the kind of all-encompassing love that the Father has shown by sending His Son to die for the sake of the whole world.

There are also modifications of the psalmist’s “oath taking” and “lending” ethics, but I won’t go into those.

One final comparison. The last line of Psalm 15 is as follows:

He who does these things shall never be moved.

Now listen to the closing words of Jesus in Matthew 7:

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them…”

Anyone who "does these things", Jesus (in effect) says, will be like a house built on a rock - unmovable, unshakable.

I don’t pretend to have answered the “So what?” question in terms of the relationship between Psalm 15 and the Sermon on the Mount, but that one exists seems very likely to me. There are a few things worth noting, though:

- Jesus was not a decontextualised moral teacher. He was a Jew, grappling with and interpreting Israel’s Scriptures.

- Jesus was not afraid to contradict Israel’s Scriptures. Where the psalmist praises those who despise a vile person, Jesus turns this ethic on its head by claiming that children of YHWH must learn to love not only neighbours, but enemies especially. This is the true fulfilment of God’s law, His way of life.

- Kingdom ethics cannot be divorced from God’s presence, but there is a specific order to things. Abiding in Christ is not a consequence of living righteously; living righteously is a consequence of abiding in Christ, who came not to call the righteous, but sinners.

Set Apart for the Sake of Others

“…you will be for me…a holy nation.”

These are the words of Israel’s god Yahweh, spoken to the Israelites after he brought them out of slavery in Egypt. In another place the LORD calls his chosen people to “Be holy as I am holy”. Clearly “holiness” was high on God’s list of priorities for his newly redeemed people, but why?

To be holy means to be set apart. Out of all the nations on the earth, God chose Israel to be his own special, distinctive people. They were to stand out from those around them, not only because of the unique god they worshiped but also because of their moral character (though the two can hardly be separated - we become what we worship, it has been said).

This all sounds a bit…exclusive, right? It sounds like Israel was called to be a nation permanently riding around on a gigantic high horse, scoffing at others who aren’t as “holy” as they are. This seems like holiness for the sake of self-righteousness, or perhaps holiness for the sake of exclusivity and nationalist pride.

David Peterson, in his book Engaging With God, paints an altogether different picture of Israel’s vocation to be holy. He says of the Israelites (quoting W.J. Dumbrell along the way) that,

They were chosen to demonstrate what it meant to live under the direct rule of God, which is actually ‘the biblical aim for the whole world’.

Go back to Israel’s roots, and this reality becomes apparent. YHWH promised that through Abraham’s descendants, all the nations of the world would be blessed. Israel was to be a “light to the nations”, a manifestation of the kingdom of God here on earth. Yes, they were to be set apart from others, but they were to be set apart for the sake of others. It was distinction with a view to inclusion. Transformative holiness, you might call it.

Fast forward a couple of millennia, and we find a Jew, Peter, writing to Jews and Gentiles in Eastern Europe and calling them “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation”. The church -- consisting of men and women from every tribe, tongue and nation -- is Yahweh’s “called out ones”; she is simultaneously the recipient of the blessing promised to Abraham and the means of passing on that blessing to those in need of it. Like Israel, she is called to be holy, just as the god she worships is holy. But once again, this is not to be an exclusive holiness. The church is called to be set apart from others for the sake of others; a manifestation of the kingdom of God, drawing in those who remain outside of the Messiah Jesus, who did for the world what Israel could not do.

If whatever we call holiness is not something which engages with the needs of those around us, if our holiness doesn’t get our hands dirty (as it certainly did Jesus), then we have missed it. The history of Israel is a history of “missing it”. What will be the history of the church of this generation?

Love That Lasts

If I...have not love, I am nothing.

- Paul

I’ve been stealing other people’s thoughts can calling them my own thinking. The resurrection was not only the raising of Jesus’ body from death to life. For example, the raising of a cat from death to eternal life would not be the equivalent. The resurrection was a vindication of Jesus, and more to my point, a vindication of his kind of love.

One of the clear messages we get from the cross and resurrection is that love triumphs. The love that costs is the love that lasts; the love that leads to death is the love that leads to life.

Perhaps we spend too much time trying to find a way to "love" that keeps our hearts intact and our lives in order, when all the while it is the love which causes us to lose ourselves that helps us experience life to the full, and brings the kingdom of God to earth.

The resurrection of Jesus enfleshes those oft-quoted words of the apostle Paul:

Love never ends.

The death of Jesus forms the shape of that never-ending love; it is eternally cruciform.

Defining Moments

One of the most defining moments in Scripture is when the Angel of the LORD tells Abraham not to lay a hand on Isaac. The story is familiar to most: God tells Abraham to go to Mount Moriah and offer his only son Isaac as a sacrifice. Abraham obeys to the point of having a knife dangling over Issac's body, only for the Angel to intervene.

Many burning questions arise from this passage in Genesis 22, but they all boil down to one - Why did God bring this episode about? After all, without God's initial command, none of this would have happened. Abraham didn't just decide to offer his precious son Isaac to God one day. He heard a call from God to do so. The question is, why this call? What were God's motives?

The Bible gives us clear answers on one level, and yet these answers are far from clear as they inevitably leaves us scrambling for "deeper truths". The clearest answer of all is that God did this to test (or prove) Abraham. That is what verse 1 affirms matter-of-factly. The blessing promised to the world hinged on God's dealings with Abraham, and so this man from Ur of the Chaldeans needed to be put through a climactic trial and to come out the other end trusting in God. After all, tests are assigned so that the taker of the test's capabilities at a given topic are made known. The topic in this instance was Faith in God. Had Abraham failed the test, what would have happened? I think it's reasonable to say that God is a God of repeat exams. He is also a God who is faithful even when we are faithless, so had Abraham failed to carry through with God's almost impossible command, I don't think the promises God made to him would have come to nothing. After all, the promises God made to Abraham depended on God Himself, which is actually a part of what this test was all about.

A second clear answer to why this scenario came about is given when the Angel interrupts Abraham's obedience. He says to his test subject,

Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.

First of all, note that the Angel and God are mentioned almost interchangeably. Earlier, God told Abraham to sacrifice his son. Here, the Angel of the LORD says that Abraham didn't withhold his son "from me". But more to the point, another plain reason for this event is stated in the above verse - the need for knowledge. The Angel says that in light of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, it is now known that Abraham is one who fears God. Known to whom? Well, taking Scripture at face value, it is the Angel of the LORD who now knows that Abraham is a God-fearer.

Coupled with the "test" motive, this makes sense. When a teacher sets a test, she does so in order to find out where her students stand in relation to the subject being taught. Do they know their Geography or do they not? A test will find that out. Here, God is testing Abraham's faith, and He finds out that Abraham is indeed one who fears God. Therefore, God says to Abraham,

because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.

This is all rather straightforward, until we examine just who is setting the test. Human test setters need to find out information, but does God? After all, we affirm that God knows everything, and so before any of this took place God knew whether or not Abraham had genuine faith. Why then does the Angel of the LORD say that "now I know you fear God"? He knew that already, right? Doesn't God's omniscience make this test rather pointless, and thus only add to the seeming cruelty of the initial command?

The explanation often given is that what is really going on here is that God is testing Abraham so that Abraham knows where he stands. However, I'm not so sure I can sign up to this, chiefly for the simple reason that the Angel doesn't say "now you know that you fear God." If that is what is really meant, then why didn't he really say it?

Perhaps the key lies in the word "know". We think of coming to "know" something almost purely in informational terms. I don't know what the capital of Mali is, I search Wikipedia, and now I know. (It's Bamako, in case you're wondering.) The Old Testament, however, appears to attach deeper significance to this little word. For example, Genesis talks about Adam "knowing" his wife, which is a euphemism for sexual intercourse. Of course that's not to imply that every time we read the word "know" in the Bible we take it to mean "have sex". But it does mean that we shouldn't just think of it as "acquiring information".

Look also at the New Testament and what Paul says to those troubled folk in Galatia. He talks about them coming to be known by God (chapter 4). Were they not already known by their Almighty Creator who knows everything? In one way they were, but in a deeper, relational way they were not. I don't think I'm pushing the boat out to far in saying that there is is a knowledge of us that God doesn't have, but which He gains in some deep, intimate way. Paul also says in 1 Corinthians that,

If anyone loves God, he is known by God.

This language is extremely relational. It is knowledge between two persons, not knowledge between a person and a piece of information. Relating this back to Abraham, can we say that this ex idol-worshiper became known by God in some deeper way as a result of this character trial? Rather than simply saying that God already knows everything, I think we can posit some kind of increase in God's knowledge with regards Abraham, but not knowledge as we know it. Something more profound. And something which caused God to re-affirm His promises of blessing to Abraham, so thrilled He must have been with His chosen one.

Any thoughts on the matter?

Some Sermons

The following is a link to some sermons given by my former Scripture School teacher, Dr Arden Autry. The title of the sermon series is The Most Dangerous Book in the Bible, and you can listen to Dr Autry speak on the 5th, 12th and 19th of July. Believe me when I say that it is worth it.

The Most Dangerous Book in the Bible

The Sermon on the Mount Problem

You may have heard of the Synoptic Problem, you may have read The Problem of Pain, and you may have seen the Problem Child trilogy. I mention these as a lead in to one of the biggest problems I've had in all my years of reading the Bible. I'll simply call it the Sermon on the Mount Problem.

I first encountered it as a young teenage Christian when I read the following words of Jesus found in Matthew 5 verse 20:

Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

I didn't know much about scribes and Pharisees, but I knew they were the stringent law-keepers of their day. As far as righteousness was concerned, they were the trend setters; the ones who set the bar, and who set it almost unattainably high.

But more importantly than that, I knew that I was not up to that level of righteousness, and that bothered me, for unless I exceeded the Pharasaic righteousness I could not enter the kingdom of heaven. These were the plain words of Jesus, to be taken with full seriousness. What to do?

There are numerous ways to interpret and apply the Sermon on the Mount. One approach is to simply do your best to follow its regulations and hope you "pass the exam" so to speak. Jesus says don't be angry, so I'll try not to be angry. Jesus says don't lust, so I'll try my best to avoid women.

A second approach is to merely ignore it, which is perhaps an approach too often utilised by Christians.

Another approach is to read it as Jesus being the bearer of "New Law". This is perhaps the most popular approach in many evangelical circles. We read the Sermon on the Mount through Pauline eyes, where this Law that Jesus brings is a method of highlighting our need for the gospel. To use the language of Galatians, the Sermon on the Mount is our tutor which drives us to Christ.

There are a couple of fundamental problems with this popular approach however. The first is an obvious one: the apostle Paul didn't write the book of Matthew, and so to read this book through Pauline eyes is to do a disservice to the text, something which Richard Hays makes clear in his Moral vision of the New Testament. The second problem with this (dare I say Reformed) approach is the context the Sermon finds itself in. The Sermon on the Mount occupies Matthew 5-7. In chapter 4, right before launching into this extended discourse, Matthew gives us a summary of what Jesus is up to. He is preaching, teaching, and healing. What is He preaching about, what is He teaching about, what is He manifesting through healings? In short, the gospel of the kingdom. He's proclaiming, explaining and manifesting good news. Lets not forget that the Sermon on the Mount is found in the Gospel of Matthew. To slap a "Law" tag on what Jesus is saying and put it at odds with the gospel is a mistake in my opinion.

So where does that leave us? If we don't find here laws that we have to try our best to live up to or laws that are intended to weigh heavy on our conscience, what do we find? In a word, we find fulfillment. Fulfillment in what sense? I think there is dual fulfillment going on here: The primary fulfillment is Jesus as the Law incarnate. He says Himself that He did not come to do away with the Law but to fulfill it. Jesus is the embodiment of the Law. Where Israel failed, He succeeded. This is part of the reason why the crowds marveled once the sermon was finished. Jesus exhibited the authority which the scribes and Pharisees could only dream of: the authority to live out the Law. He spoke as one who knew the beauty of it, who knew the heart of it, and who knew the Law Giver, someone He could call 'Father'. Through word and deed, Jesus demonstrated the goodness of the Law.

The second fulfillment accomplished by Jesus is found (somewhat hidden) in the text following on from the Sermon on the Mount. That word "authority" mentioned at the end of chapter 7 plays a crucial function in the entire Gospel of Matthew, and so it should not surprise us to find it has a large role to play in how we interpret and apply the teachings of Jesus.

In chapters 8 and 9 especially we read of Jesus' authority extending to the lives of those around Him. A leper says to Jesus, "You can make me clean", and Jesus does so. A centurion urges Him to "only speak a word, and my servant will be healed", realising that Jesus is a man with the authority to accomplish what He says. We see this authority in action again when wind and waves are stilled by His voice.

In the light of this authority, the message of the Sermon on the Mount is shockingly good news. Jesus has the power to fulfill the Law in us. Having died and rose again, He says at the end of Matthew's account, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me". He doesn't say this in a merely commanding way, but in a relational way, promising to be with us always. The wonderful news is that the authority of Jesus is something which is for our benefit. It is an authority which authorises, an authority which empowers.

The Sermon on the Mount is the description of a life lived under the empowering authority of Jesus. In the middle of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus says to the Pharisees,"If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God then the kingdom of God has come upon you". He could say something similar with regards the Sermon on the Mount: "If I transform the unrighteous into the righteous by the Spirit of God then the kingdom of God has come upon you".

Father and Son

There is so much to be digested from the first twenty verses of Colossians - the grace of God, the spreading of the gospel, the love of the saints, the prayer of Paul, the christological hymn - that one of the threads running right through the passage almost escaped me and my less-than-practiced eye. It's a thread found predominantly in the Gospel of John, but which finds a prominent place here in a Pauline prison epistle - the relationship between the Father and the Son, between Theos and Kyrios, between God and Jesus, between...well, you get the point. It would take a whole book to plumb the depths of this relationship as delineated in Colossians, but here are the pertinent verses which I may come back to over the coming weeks:

"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother..." - 1:1

In other words, God has charged Paul with the task of proclaiming Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. What does God want to do? Well, He wants to make Jesus known.

"We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you..." - 1:3

Paul understood God as being the Father of Jesus (though in what sense will have to remain unexplored here and now), but he uses a title for Jesus that is quite shocking in the context of monotheistic Judaism. In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), the word Kyrios is used for the Hebrew name Yahweh (or YHWH), which is God's personal name; the name given to Moses at the burning bush; the name which means "I AM". In most of our Bibles this name is translated as LORD, all capital letters. Well, here Paul uses that same word -- the word Kyrios -- to denote Jesus. This is the name above all other names that we find in Philippians 2. There Paul says that at the sight of Jesus all people will bow down and confess Jesus as Kyrios, as Yahweh, as Lord, and it will be to the glory of God the Father.

Already in the opening verses we see the selfless love of the Godhead in action: The Father charges Paul to make His Son known, and (admittedly with help from Philippians) the Son's goal is to give the glory to the Father.

"And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him*, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God..." - 1:9-10

Again it is God's will that is at the forefront, and what's more, knowing this will is linked to living the kind of life Jesus lives. The other side of this coin is that looking at the kind of life Jesus lived on earth is to look at the will of God incarnated. Why did Jesus do what He did? Because it was the will of His Father. His life was the enfleshment of God's character, and so it is little wonder that such a life is fully pleasing to God. Note also the word "spiritual" in this passage, which as Gordon Fee points out, should be translated as "Spiritual", i.e. "of the Spirit/pertaining to the Spirit". Here we have Father, Son, and Spirit in intimate connection with one another.

"...giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." - 1:12-14

The Father qualifies people and takes them out of the rule of a broken, corrupt world. What is interesting is where He puts these people - He puts them into the Kingdom of His Beloved Son. The term "Kingdom of God" is familiar to us from the Gospels, but the term "Kingdom of Jesus" is not so common. I think I like the latter term better. As I said in a previous post, the word "God" evokes much that is theologically false, but when we think of Jesus we think of compassion, grace, and self-giving love amongst other things. The kingdom God has already brought Christians into is a kingdom where the risen crucified Jesus is King. As the Disney Song says, "The Lamb becomes our Shepherd King; We'll reign with Him".

Of course I'm not pitting God and Jesus against each other. The Kingdom of Jesus is the Kingdom of God. The compassion, grace and self-giving love of Jesus is the compassion, grace and self-giving love of God. This fact is said most clearly in the following verses...

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation." - 1:15

"For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross." - 1:19-20

These are weighty passages of Scripture, especially vv. 19-20. In these words we hear echoes of Paul's earlier statement to the church at Corinth - "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself". The Jesus who went to the cross in obedience to the Father and out of love for sinners was not the "good cop" in the Trinity. The "bad cop" Father didn't leave Jesus alone to do the redemptive work on the cross while He sat on the clouds self-righteously. All God's fullness was in Christ as He took the judgement of the world upon Himself; as had been quoted on this blog before, the Judge took the Judgement on Himself. Father and Son were in on this redemptive work together in a big way.

To Borrow a Term

In Him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised Him from the dead. - Colossians 2:11-12

I've been thinking about the significance of this passage since last Sunday. Not all the time obviously. There is a limit to how much a man can think about circumcision. Anyway, the fairly straightforward indicative remark made by Paul is that when you are joined to Christ by faith (i.e. "in Him"), you are considered circumcised.

Circum-what? As a male "Gentile" this is a slightly odd thing to think about, so I can only imagine how strange it must be for a woman "in Christ" to consider herself circumcised. Truth be told, none of us probably think of it very much. But while we're of course not called to consider (nor indeed undergo) circumcision in the physical way, Paul appears to place a lot of significance on the "circumcision without hands" that has been performed on our hearts on account of our union with Christ.

In fact -- and here is crux of my week-long musings -- this circumcision without hands seems for Paul to have always been the true meaning of circumcision. Forget about having a fraction of Mr Knish snipped. That was never the sign of who truly belonged to God. Paul affirms this loud and clear in Romans 2:

"For circumcision [of the flesh] indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God."

No wonder Jews didn't take too kindly to Paul's teaching - "No one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly..." Had Paul asked you to show that you were a Jew, and had you the cajones to show him your circumcision of the flesh, he would have probably said, "So what? That means nothing to me, and more importantly, it means nothing to God. Also, please never do that again. It's just weird". For God, and thus for Paul, circumcision is not nor has it ever been merely outward and physical.

Finally, and this is what I have been pondering: Had Paul asked you to show that you were a Jew, and had you never been circumcised nor gone through any of the other external rigamorole, yet you demonstrated a life lived by the power of the Spirit through faith (which looks like a life in harmony with God's law), then he would have proclaimed you a "Jew". What a role reversal! "Jews" are not actually Jews, whereas Gentiles can be true Jews, who get their praise (where the word "Jew" originates from) from God. Later on in Romans Paul declares that Gentiles have been engrafted to the "olive tree" (11:17ff.) which began with Abraham and the other patriarchs, thus giving extra credence to what he swiftly mentions in chapter 2.

To tie all of this together, the circumcision discussed in Colossians is not some rite of passage to become part of a new religion which finds its origins in Jesus, or even Paul. Jews (based on Paul's definition of a Jew in Romans 2) didn't have one circumcision while we Christians now have another. To be sure, in Christ we are new creations, and members of a new covenant. However, this covenant isn't new in the sense of separate from the one established with Abraham. It is new in the sense of being the definitive fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant; we now live in the age of the Climax of the Covenant, to borrow Tom Wright's term. Our "circumcision of Christ" means that we are in fact true sons of Abraham and heirs to all of the blessing that were promised to him. (As an aside, is there any greater motivation to get immersed in the Hebrew Scriptures than this?) We are true Jews, and yet we are not Jews at all. Nor are we Gentiles. For there is neither Jew nor Gentile in the family joined with the Messiah Jesus, but we are all one in Him.

What is the fruit of this sonship, this belonging? What does it look like to be a covenant member? Is the proof in the penis? By no means! It looks like a heart moved by the Spirit of God and enabled to fulfill the law by loving God and loving others; it looks like a life characterised by The Jesus Creed, to borrow Scot McKnight's term (I'm just borrowing terms all over the shop, amn't I?).

All Things New

"He is the image of the invisible God..." - Colossians 1.15 (not referring to the above Pegasus)

Remember that catchy song One of us? Well, the quite startling claim of Christianity is that God became one of us. Just a slob like one of us. The earliest of Christians believed nothing less than Jesus being God. "My Lord and my God" said doubting Thomas after seeing the nail-pierced hands and wounded sides of Jesus. It seems to have taken the resurrection for the disciples to get Jesus' own confession that if you have seen Him then you have seen the invisible God, but once they got it there was no turning back. And rightly so. If I were to meet a man who claimed to be equal with God, and then proved to me that He was equal with God, by, say, coming back to life after a few days of deadness, I'd probably want to be a part of whatever He was up to.

And what is this image of the Invisible up to? In short, He is creating other images to be part of a world-wide community which is a reflection of the glory of God. That's the why of creation, and specifically, the why of the creation of human beings. "Let us make man in our image", declared the Triune God. The man from dust, Adam, corrupted that image. The man from heaven, Jesus, restored it to be something even greater than it originally was.

This is the good news of Christianity: the man Jesus is God, and He is once again making man in that image. The pivot which this re-creation turns on is the cross, a subject Paul briefly touches on in Colossians 1 having declared Jesus to be the image of God:

For in Him [Jesus] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.

The Passion of the Christ, while flawed in numerous ways, has a couple of awe-inspiring scenes. One of those is courtesy of Mel Gibson's artistic license, where he films Jesus staggering along the Via Dolorosa with Mary too traumatised to look on. However, having recalled a moment from Jesus' childhood where He falls over and she rushes to aid Him, her maternal instincts take over in the present and she flings herself towards the blood-soaked Messiah and embraces His torn body. Here Gibson inserts the words of the risen Christ from the book of Revelation: I am making all things new. This way of suffering is what the image of God had to endure in order to restore His broken images, and make us new.

The problem many have is that they can somewhat grasp the image of God sitting on a throne displaying all manner of supernatural powers which wow the world into submission. What they can't grasp at all is the image of God dying in obscurity on a cross.

"God became man to turn creatures into sons; not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature." - C.S. Lewis

God in Christ

"God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself..." - 2 Corinthians 5:19

This is perhaps one of the most significant verses in all of Scripture. This is how Jesus viewed the historical event of His crucifixion, and it's how His followers viewed it shortly after (give or take three days). John Stott has this to say about God in Christ:

"...in order to save us in such a way as to satisfy Himself, God through Christ substituted Himself for us. Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice. The cross was an act simultaneously of punishment and amnesty, severity and grace, justice and mercy."

Karl Barth says it more succinctly:

"The passion of Jesus Christ is the judgment of God, in which the Judge Himself was the judged"

A friend of Dr Autry phrases it like this: The Judge took the judgment on Himself.

If the resurrection is the news that many of us hope is true, the cross is the news that many of us wish to be untrue. Paul calls it a "stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks". For those today looking for a reason to reject Christianity, here it is: God on a cross. The cross of Christ can antagonizes us, or it can reveal the truest love mankind has ever experienced. The paradox and the beauty is when it does both; when it is seen that "severity and grace" meet at the cross.

Personally Corporate

In surveying the books of Ephesians and Colossians (especially Ephesians) I have been convicted about how individualistic my Christian life is. ‘As long as I’m doing alright then that’s all that matters’ is the mentality I have adopted. Personal maturity (whatever that looks like) in Christ is my goal, and yet the irony of it all is that maturity in Christ will not be accomplished if it remains an individual, personal thing; it is corporate maturity which Christ seeks, and nothing less.

“No man is an island”, wrote the poet John Dunne. If this is true of the human race, then it is most certainly true of the Church. We are all connected together in the body of Christ, whether I like it or not! And as a result, how my fellow members are doing should matter to me. My job isn’t just to use other people as a gauge for how I’m doing spiritually, and either despair or take pride in myself, depending on who it is I’m comparing myself to. Perhaps the phrase “You’re only as strong as your weakest link” also applies to the Church as much as to other groups of people. We as a Church are in one sense only as mature as our most immature member. Is that to say there is no such thing as personal maturity and holiness? Of course not, but the point Paul makes in his ecclesial passages is that we are in this together. I am not a lone ranger, but am part of something so much bigger than myself. I am to use whatever grace has been given to me to build up those who are perhaps struggling, and I am to take encouragement and instruction from those are further along in the journey than I am.

Such a corporate mindset goes right against the grain of my natural way thinking, and so I must seek the mind of Christ if I am to look beyond myself and start looking at the Church from His point of view - that is, a body of believers to sacrificially give yourself for in order that they be made whole.

As Mulholland Jr. writes, our goal is to be "conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others". Yikes.