Revealed in Jesus

"Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son..." - Hebrews 1:1-2a

The word 'God' is loaded with baggage. When someone hears it, they instantly recall a set of ideas about God that were handed down to them, or that they read in a book, or that they just conjured up in their own minds; most probably that set of ideas is some concoction of the three. N.T. Wright tells an amusing story related to this 'God confusion' (although I've cut out the amusing part, so now it's merely a story).

When he was chaplain at an Oxford college, he used to make it a goal to briefly meet each of the first year students; it was a sort of "I'm the chaplain, and feel free to come to me at any time" kind of meeting. Of course with many of the students attending the college being learned folk, they used to quip, "I'm afraid you won't be seeing much of me. I don't believe in god, you see." N.T. Wright would then respond with a question: "Which god don't you believe in?" This would take the students by surprise, so they would stutter out a few phrases about the god they didn't believe in: a being up in the sky, looking down on the world disapprovingly, waiting to punish bad people and reward good people, and occasionally intervening for the odd miracle or two. To this Wright would say, "Well, I'm not surprised you don't believe in that god. I don't believe in that god either. Rather, I believe in the God I see revealed in Jesus of Nazareth".

When Christians use the word 'God', who are we talking about? How do we know who God is? I think that too often we bring to the table the "spy in the sky" theology mentioned above, or some other notions of God that we have derived from a book, a television program, or even a misreading of Scripture. We then try and fit Jesus into that theology. The trouble is, He doesn't fit. Jesus of Nazareth simply doesn't conform to many of our ideas about God.

I'm only echoing Wright when I say that this needs correcting. That opening verse in Hebrews, along with numerous others in our New Testament, tells us that Jesus is the definitive revelation of God. If you want to know who God is and what He is about, look at Jesus. Don't try and fit Jesus into some other concept of God that you have developed. Start with the man born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth. Start with the witness of the Gospels.

We will only understand the word "God" as a Christian should when we understand Jesus. The Father has chosen to speak to us through His Son made flesh, and it is to Him that we must listen. Jesus, through His words and through His deeds, reveals the Father to us, and when this is our starting point we are a million miles removed from any "spy in the sky" theology.

When I use the word "God", I need to be clear who I am talking about, because I too easily create a god who is far removed from the One exposed in Jesus. And also, when people like those in Oxford say they don't believe in God, I need to be sure that the God they don't believe in is the God I believe in. I need to be sure that they are not rejecting some abstract notion of God, but that they are rejecting the God revealed in the person of Jesus. I regret that too often, through my words and deeds, I have done the Christian understanding of the word "God" a disservice. I need to get back to basics and affirm with Wright, "I believe in the God I see revealed in Jesus of Nazareth".

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?).

Reading Scripture Faithfully

Here is a piece of wisdom I heard recently that should transform the way you and I read our Bibles. It was Richard Hays's first point on a talk entitled The Art of Reading Scripture Faithfully:

The Bible is about God.

What's that? It's not primarily about me and my salvation? It's not simply about what's relevant to me? It's not a tool I can use to help me accomplish my purposes?

No sir. As much as I want the Bible to be a book about me, it isn't. The first question I usually ask when I approach a text is, how does this apply to me? Or, what is this text saying about me? Now of course those are pertinent question to ask of any passage of Scripture, and they have their place in Bible reading. But the Bible -- as simple as this sounds -- is about God, and approaching it with that thought front and centre will actually be the key to finding out where we fit in to this dramatic story concerning our Creator. After all, God is the one with the plans and purposes, and more importantly, He is the one with the power to achieve them. Therefore reading Scripture with Him as the subject makes sense practically as well as theologically. Think of an orchestral analogy. If I learn only the parts relevant to me and play them on my own, the piece won't sound very impressive. But if I fall in line with the rest of the orchestra and place the supreme value on the collective (as originally envisioned by the composer and guided by the conductor) rather than my own individual part then the music will sound as it is supposed to sound and I will be caught up in something much more brilliant than I had ever imagined when I sat playing the triangle on my own.

Back to the Bible. This book we have is, among other things, a documentation of various revelations of God throughout history. He is Creator, He is the covenant maker, He is the Redeemer of the people of Israel, He is the Law giver, He is the Judge, He is the Holy King whose glory fills the earth, and definitively, He is the man Jesus. The pages in our Bibles are full of these self-revelations of God; revelations of His character and His purposes. And yet all I want to know is what can God do for me? Well, it should please us self-centred people to know that God can do (and has done) something for us individually. But the scope of the Bible is much bigger than my personal relationship with God (though it certainly incorporates that). The Bible is about God, and His relationship with creation. N.T. Wright makes this simple and yet absolutely crucial point in his book on Justification. We are not the centre, with God orbiting around us. God is at the centre, and our lives revolve around Him.

That's the first step to reading Scripture faithfully. It's about God.

The Grand Story

I'm, like, really "into" Richard Hays at the moment. I've quoted him on the blog already here, here, here and here. His book Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul is one of the richest, most eye-opening books I've yet to read, and I'm very much looking forward to tucking into The Conversion of the Imagination as soon as I can. I of course don't agree with everything he writes -- heck, I probably don't even agree with everything I write -- but he writes so well and so persuasively that it's hard not to get caught up in the whirlwind he conjures up.

I mention him again because he has fed my new-found fascination with the grand narrative of the Bible. I mean when all is said and done, what's it all about?

Well, in a lecture entitled The Art of Reading Scripture Faithfully, Hays tells the grand story of the Bible in three sentences. Here they are:

The God of Israel, the Creator of the world, has acted astoundingly to rescue a lost and broken world through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The full extent of that rescue is something we don't yet see, but God has created a community of witnesses to this good news - the Church. While we wait for the final conclusion of the story, the Church, in the power of the Spirit, is called to reenact the pattern of the loving obedience of Jesus, and to be a sign to the world of God's redeeming purpose.

Soft on Scripture

Do you ever think that Evangelical Christians try to turn the Bible into something it never intended for itself? Most Christian's doctrine of the Bible includes the word "inerrancy", but what is actually meant by that, and can the Bible stand up the definition attached to the word?

Wayne Grudem says that "The inerrancy of Scripture means that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact."

I have to admit, I have problems with such a definition. The Bible seems to have problems with it too. Take the events surrounding Holy week for example. According to John 12, Jesus was anointed in Bethany on a Saturday. According to Matthew 26, Jesus was anointed in Bethany on Wednesday. One or both of these witnesses is affirming something contrary to fact.

Now according to Grudem, we can happily say that in the original manuscripts no such discrepancy existed, but to me that just sounds like a cop out; it sounds like someone trying to fit the Bible into a mould that it never intended for itself. You may think I'm opening a can of worms here - If we can't trust the Bible with one piece of information, then why should we trust any of it? If it errs in its witness to the events of Holy Week, then surely nothing else affirmed in the Gospel accounts can be said to be reliable

I don't claim to have sufficient answers to those questions, but one important thing to remember is that our trust is never -- never! -- to be placed in the Bible. Not once does Scripture seek us to put our faith in it. Scripture is always pointing away from itself, and more specifically, towards a person - The Messiah Jesus. The Word of God has indeed become flesh, and our lives should be wrapped up in Christ. Only then will we truly understand what is written on the pages of our Bibles. But make no mistake about it - owning a Bible is not a prerequisite for being a Christian. You don't even have to ever read a Bible in your life in order to be included in God's covenant family. I say this confidently because there are people in the world who simply cannot read for one reason or another. Are they therefore exluded from God's offer of grace? Certainly not! That's not to say that we can all just toss our Bible's into a dustbin. If a year in Scripture School taught me anything, it's the richness and benefit of deep meditation on the Bible. But as soon as your faith gets wrapped up in a book, you're in trouble.

Where then does that leave the Bible as the Word of God? There can be no falsehood in God, so when He speaks, He speaks truth. This is where Grudem's claim of inerrancy is based. Word of God = inerrant, Bible = Word of God, => Bible = Inerrant

I'm not saying I fundamentally disagree with that line of reasoning, but what I wonder is the following: Are John and Matthew's accounts of all of the events surrounding Holy Week part of the Word of God? When Jesus is said to be the Word incarnate, does He embody John's witness of what happened on the Saturday of Holy Week and Matthew's witness of what happened on the Wednesday? What does a dinner in Bethany have to do with anything, and is it of crucial importance to the integrity of Jesus (and the Bible) that John and Matthew's Gospels allign perfectly in all of the details?

As I showed above, they don't, and there are other examples I could cite to strengthen that position. Perhaps Grudem addresses this in Systematic Theology in a more satisfactory way than saying the original manuscripts contained no such discrepancies, but if not then where does that leave us? Do we simply fall in line with Grudem, or are we forced to disregard everything that is written in the Bible and pretty much abandon the Christian faith entirely? Personally, I'm not content to do either. Not because I'm a renegade who's "soft on Scripture", nor because I'm choosing to hold blindly to Jesus and scream "la la la la" at everyone who points out inerrancy in the Bible to me. There must be a third option, right? A position where the integrity of Scripture is highly valued, and where the Bible as God's words to human beings -- Scripture as "God-breathed" -- is rightly understood.

Finally, how are we understand Paul's words in 1 Cor 7? He says that this is him speaking, not the Lord. But then if these words are in our Bibles, shouldn't we understand them as God's words? Paul didn't seem to think so, so where does that leave us?

It leaves me asking too many questions, but perhaps I can address some of them over the coming weeks/months/years.

Increase Faith

What does it mean to have faith? And if you don't have a lot of it, what does it mean/look like to build up your faith? Specifically, what does one do if one finds their faith in Christ lacking to the point where one is unsure if they have any faith at all?

I sometimes find myself faced with these questions, which leave me looking within in order to try and muster up some more "faith" as if it's some kind of power in and of itself, all the while ignoring the reality that faith is nothing without an object. Nobody simply "has faith". We all have faith in something or someone. It's similar to love, in that you don't just have love. Your love must have an object, a person or thing which you can say you love or that you are in love with. And in much the same way that love grows, one of the sure ways to increase faith is intimate knowledge of the trusted object. This is how it should be with regards "faith in Christ". Christ is the object, and faith in Him grows through deep, piercing knowledge of His person, character and work.

This truth is beautifully articulated by Clement Read Vaughen in a letter written to theologian Robert Lewis Dabney (a text I came across in the book Why Johnny Can't Preach). Dabney became blind and weak in his latter years, and knew that death was imminent. He wrote to Vaughen, wondering if he would have faith strong enough to face his end. Vaughen replied with an illustration of a traveller encountering a chasm over which a bridge crossed:

What does he do to breed confidence ion the bridge? He looks at the bridge; he gets down and examines it. He don't stand at the bridge-head and turn his thoughts curiously in on his own mind to see if he has confidence in the bridge. If his examination of the bridge gives him a certain amount of confidence, and yet he wants more, how does he make his faith grow? Why, in the same way; he sill continues to examine the bridge. Now my dear old man, let your faith take care of itself for a while, and you just think of what you are allowed to trust in. Think of the Master's power, think of his love; think how he is interested in the soul that searches for him, and will not be conforted until he finds him. Think of what he has done, his work. That blood of his is mightier than all the sins of all the sinners that ever lived. Don't you think it will master yours?...

Now, dear old friend, I have done to you just what I would want you to do to me if I were lying in your place. The great theologian, after all, is just like any other one of God's children, and the simple gospel talked to him is just as essential to his comfort as it is to a milk-maid or to a plow-boy. May God give you grace , not to lay too much stress on your faith, but to grasp the great ground of confidence, Christ, and all his work and all his personal fitness to be a sinner's refuge. Faith is only an eye to see him I have been praying that God would quiet your pains as you advance, and enable you to see the gladness of the gospel at every step. Good-bye. God be with you as he will. Think of the Bridge!

Your brother,
C.R.V.

Deep-seated knowledge of the Messiah whom Paul claims is in you is a sure way to increase faith in Him, but of course the necessary knowledge is not merely information held in the head. To extend the bridge illustration, it's no good examing the bridge every which way possible, concluding that it is a well built bridge, but then deciding to stay on the same side of the chasm. There must be an experiential knowledge of the bridge's trustworthiness for the knowledge to be incarnated and complete. This is where a cerebral person like me falls down. I want the knowledge without the experience, the reception without the response, but that just won't do.

When encouraging others in faith, we would do well to remember the strategy employed by the author of Hebrews. Relate to others:

Who Jesus is
What Jesus has done
How we should respond - with confidence, but not with complacency

The "Look"

My best Michael Scofield look. Not bad, eh?

The God of the Bible

If the God you serve is a God unwilling to dine with prostitutes and scoundrels, then yours is not the God of the Bible.

And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" And Jesus answered them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." - Luke 5:30-32

Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. - Matt. 21:31

We're Missing Something

The story of Christianity in four words:

Creation, Fall, Jesus, Salvation.

Right?

Wrong! At least according to N.T. Wright. He says we're missing something in that industry-standard list that will actually shape how we read the entire Bible, and thus to ignore it is to miss one of the keys to unlocking who Jesus is and therefore who God is. Wright's list looks like this:

Creation, Fall, Israel, Jesus, Salvation.

Scot McKnight's is something very similar (though aided by its alliteration):

Creation, Cracked Eikons, Covenant Community, Christ, Consummation

This is starting to look like a page from one of Rob Bell's books what with all the gaps, but I just thought it was interesting how quick we as Christians are to ignore Israel when it comes to the gospel of God.

Perhaps we need to introduce the song "Father Abraham" into our corporate worship times. I'll let you know how that goes...