Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

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On Thinking Like Christ, Part 3: It Gets Worse 

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Part 1: The Most Important Thing | Part 2: Moving to the Dump 

So now Christ has left the “ivory palaces” and moved to the dump. Let’s talk more specifically about what that was like.

Paul describes this change as taking on “the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men” (Php 2.7). That word form, by the way, is the same Greek word as form in the previous verse; you may recall from the previous post that Greek scholar J.B. Lightfoot defined it as “that which is intrinsic and essential to a thing.”

That means that he became just as much a servant as he was God before the incarnation. He became a human being, with all of the limitations that human beings have—with the one exception, as the author of Hebrews tells us, of being “without sin” (He 4.15).

So, to start with, he became embodied; he lived “here.” And “hereness” is not something he had known before, being spirit, and being omnipresent. Now, this is puzzling to us, because we’re not good at wrapping our finite minds around the concept of infinity. I said in the previous post that Jesus remained fully God throughout his incarnation—and that means, logically, that he retained all the attributes of God, which would include omnipresence. How does that work after he assumes a human body?

I dunno.

I’ve written before of the heaven-shaking nature of the (verbally, anyway) simple statement that God became man. How does Jesus experience omnipresence when he’s in a body that his disciples, who are pretty much always with him, can see is right there? Does he move with super speed? That’s not omnipresence. Does he just not go anywhere outside his body for 33 years? Well, “going” isn’t omnipresence either. Is he present bodily in Palestine, and everywhere else spiritually?

I dunno.

There’s a verse that seems to imply that his presence is not limited to his body. At one point he speaks of himself to Nicodemus as “the Son of man, who is in heaven” (Jn 3.13; note the present tense). But as it happens, there’s a significant question as to whether that final phrase is in the original text, so the case isn’t closed.

At any rate, the Son is now “placed”; he is located “here” or “there.” It appears to me that that’s a significant restriction. Even as he heals the sick, calms the storm, and raises the dead, He works from within a prison that He has constructed for Himself.

Second, he experiences, as Shakespeare put it in the mouth of Hamlet, “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” If he doesn’t eat, he gets hungry (Lk 4.2); if he doesn’t drink, he gets thirsty (Jn 19.28); and if he’s active, he gets tired.

Arriving at the community well in Samaria, he’s too exhausted to draw enough water for a personal drink, so he has to wait for someone to come along—in the hottest part of the day, when people didn’t go out to draw water, and traffic there would be sparse (Jn 4.6). When the boat he’s in enters a storm so violent that the professional fishermen among his disciples believe they’re doomed, he’s sound asleep in the bottom of the boat (Mt 8.24). Have you ever been tired enough to sleep through something like that?

Theologian Millard Erickson compares the incarnation to a three-legged race. The racers have three legs instead of two, but that doesn’t make them faster; it slows them down. When the Son added to his divine nature a human one, he ran, so to speak, more slowly. He who had never experienced difficulty at all found everything more difficult.

In his prayer to the Father the night before his death, Jesus refers to “the glory that I had with you before” (Jn 17.5).

“I had.” Past tense. That’s poignant. He was remembering the way it “used to be.” The everlasting, unchangeable God speaks of “used to be.”

This is a humiliation.

But Paul is not done yet.

Next time.

Part 4: And Worse | Part 5: Reversal | Part 6: Risen | Part 7: Ascended | Part 8: Enthroned | Part 9: Coming Again | Part 10: Final Thoughts

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

On Thinking Like Christ, Part 2: Moving to the Dump

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Part 1: The Most Important Thing

I have an exciting offer for you. I’m going to give you an opportunity to live at the dump. You’ll have your very own personal mound of trash, with all the rags you can wear and all the garbage you can eat. You’ll have lots of little companions—rats and cockroaches, mostly—to spend the night with. And best of all, you’ll be freed from the pesky necessities of bathing and brushing your teeth.

How many would like to take me up on this offer?

Hmm. Don’t see any takers.

I thought so. Surely no one would do such a thing.

But someone has. For you.

In our passage in Philippians 2, Paul writes that Jesus “emptied himself” and joined the human race. Have you thought about how great a step that was?

The passage begins (Php 2.6) by noting that the Son gave up a long, comfortable life.

That last sentence is an intentional understatement. His life was infinitely long, and it was infinitely beyond comfortable.

He existed in the form of God.

Now, that English has an unhealthy, even heretical implication. It sounds like he looked like God, but he wasn’t.

That’s most definitely not what Paul was saying, first, because the Greek in which he was writing doesn’t carry that implication, and second, because Paul is not an absent-minded sort of person who’s going to contradict both himself—

In Him [Christ, v 8] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form (Co 2.9)

And the Apostle John—

The Word was God (Jn 1.1).

No, Paul is saying is that Jesus was in the same “shape” (morphe) as God—that is, he was just like him. New Testament scholar J.B. Lightfoot wrote on this passage that morphe is “that which is intrinsic and essential to a thing.”

Jesus didn’t “resemble” God; he was God.

Next Paul tells us that Jesus, incredibly, counted his heavenly abode and divine status as not “a thing to be grasped”—that is, not something he had to hold onto for dear life.

Picture a purse snatcher trying to seize a woman’s purse. This woman is a fighter; she hangs on. (A friend of mine did that once. I wasn’t surprised when she described her instinctive response.) This guy is not going to get my purse.

Jesus was so essentially God, so comfortable with his standing as God, that he didn’t need to be defensive; he didn’t need to hang onto it. He was fine with letting it go.

Now, that’s dangerous talk; I need to specify what I mean. I do not mean that he gave up his deity; he was still fully God for every minute he walked the earth. I do mean that it cost him something to join us here; he left “ivory palaces” (Ps 45.8) and perfect shalom (Is 6.1-3) to take up residence in a place that was anything but comfortable.

How uncomfortable?

Well, how uncomfortable would you be living in a garbage dump?

Does it bother you when you see sin all around you? How intensely do you suppose that sight discomfited the perfect Son of God, the one whose conscience, unlike yours and mine, was never hardened by the slightest sin?

Does it bother you when you’re rejected by people you care about? How much did it bother Jesus when he came to his own, and his own rejected him (Jn 1.11)? when a disciple of three years betrayed him with a kiss? when his own brothers didn’t believe in him (Jn 7.5)?

If sin is a stench in God’s nostrils, how repulsive was the human condition to Jesus every single day of his earthly life?

Next time we’ll look at the pain of the incarnation in a little more depth.

Part 3: It Gets Worse | Part 4: And Worse | Part 5: Reversal | Part 6: Risen | Part 7: Ascended | Part 8: Enthroned | Part 9: Coming Again | Part 10: Final Thoughts

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

On Thinking Like Christ, Part 1: The Most Important Thing

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Here we are at another New Year. And as is the routine, we’re thinking about resolutions, bettering ourselves. And that task has us thinking about priorities: what’s most important? What’s the best use of our limited time and resources?

It’s good to do this kind of thinking.

For Christians, the Most Important Thing is to be on God’s side, to be devoted to his plan(s) for us. And that involves a lot of things.

But most especially it involves God’s work of sanctifying us, making us to be more like His Son.

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren (Ro 8.29).

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit (2Co 3.18).

In the process called sanctification, God is changing us, over time, to be more like his Son.

That ought to be our Most Important Thing.

New Year or not.

In light of that, I’d like to spend a few posts meditating on that classic Christological passage in Philippians 2:

5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Php 2.5-11).

The passage begins by telling us—that’s who Paul is addressing—that we ought to be thinking the way Jesus is thinking here. And that thought pattern, as we shall see, ought to be surprising, given who he is.

The paragraph has a very clear two-part structure. Verses 5 through 8 describe the way Jesus thought, and how he acted as a result. We can call that his humbling, or his humility, or perhaps his humiliation.

The rest of the passage, verses 9 through 11, describes the Father’s action in response to Jesus’ humble way of thinking: his exaltation.

It’s worth noting at the outset that Jesus did not humble himself in order to be exalted; he was already exalted, as verse 6 makes clear. He humbled himself, first, in obedience to the Father’s plan, and second, to rescue those he loved as his creatures in his image. The exaltation unavoidably followed.

So when Paul tells us that we ought to think like Jesus, he’s not saying that we should be all about the exaltation; the command is focused on verses 5 through 8.

We’ll spend several posts considering this passage. Perhaps these thoughts can inform and animate your resolutions, whatever they may be.

Part 2: Moving to the Dump | Part 3: It Gets Worse | Part 4: And Worse | Part 5: Reversal | Part 6: Risen | Part 7: Ascended | Part 8: Enthroned | Part 9: Coming Again | Part 10: Final Thoughts

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Favorite Posts 

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I’ve noted before that popular posts tend to be ones that incite. There’s a place for pushing people’s buttons if you want to encourage them to change their thinking or behavior, but I don’t think muckraking or demagoguery is healthy for either the writer or the reader, and there’s no shortage of bloggers these days eager to do that sort of thing for the clicks. That’s not me. 

But I’ve found the personal discipline of writing 2 posts every week to be good for me—for my thinking processes, for my communication skills, for my character, for my soul. And I’ll confess that there have been some posts along the way that were good for me, and, I hope, good for the readers. Occasionally writers have the delightful experience of writing something that seemed to turn out better than they intended, or even better than they felt capable of. 

Here are 10 of mine that I like, for various reasons, in no particular order. 

Photo by HENCE THE BOOM on Unsplash

Top 10 Posts for 2022 

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Here at year’s end, it’s customary to list the year’s top ten blog posts. Here are mine: 

  1. On Bible Conference (at BJU)
  2. The World’s Most Unusual Trip (a farce in three parts)
  3. A Small Thought on What We Pray For
  4. Dealing with Doubt (3-post series) 
  5. On What You Put into Your Head (3-post series) 
  6. Unstable World, Stable God (10-post series)
  7. On Valentine’s Day
  8. Church Has a Purpose (5-post series)
  9. The Myth of the Super Christian (6-post series) 
  10. Second King (10-post series)

And here are the top ten for all time (since July 20, 2017): 

  1. The Great Sin of the Evangelical Right 
  2. Are We Doing Church Wrong? 
  3. On Calling God by His First Name
  4. On Deconversion 
  5. On How You’re Remembered (Strategery) 
  6. I Was Born That Way 
  7. Pants on Fire 
  8. Freak Out Thou Not. This Means You. 
  9. What Jury Duty Taught Me about Comment Threads 
  10. On Civil Disobedience 

In my final post of the year, I’ll list my favorites. My readers and I, it seems, have divergent tastes. 

Photo by HENCE THE BOOM on Unsplash

Unstable World, Stable God, Part 10: Victory

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Part 1: It’s True | Part 2: Jesus Included | Part 3: No Need to Grow | Part 4: No Need to Aspire  | Part 5: No Greater Force | Part 6: No Decay | Part 7: Trustworthiness | Part 8: Mercy | Part 9: Confidence

Some final thoughts.

Because God never changes, he will never go away. His enemies will never be able to defeat him or even diminish his power and presence in the world.

He wins.

That’s good news. Assuming, of course, you’re on his side.

So let me muse on that a bit.

God does have enemies. Even aside from the evil supernatural powers, there are people who reject him. They disagree with how he runs the world; they refuse his word; they deny his power. I know some people who find that the Almighty falls short of their supposedly high moral standards.

They have a right to do that, of course—a right they have, ironically, because they were endowed with it by their Creator. For the life of me, though, I can’t figure out why they should think that way. Maybe it makes no sense to me because God has been unfailingly kind and gracious to me for nearly
seven decades. Or maybe because I managed to make a convoluted mess of my life in just a few months at the age of merely 17. But I’ve noticed that God has been gracious to them, too, and many of them seem not to realize it. Many of them are awash in messy lives, as I was, but they illogically and absurdly blame God for the mess, even though it’s traceable directly to decisions they
have made.

The Scripture says that “the way of transgressors is hard” (Pr 13.15). Even that fact is an act of God’s grace; he has designed the universe so that if you choose a path for which you were not designed, circumstances will tend to point you to a better one. Nature is not kind to foolishness. God is good that way, among many, many others.

Solomon, who made that comment, made another one as well:

Whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him (Ec 3.14).

The unchangeableness of God’s person and work are not good news to those who choose to oppose him. They have good reason to be afraid.

But here’s the thing.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

No one needs to be God’s enemy. No one needs to be afraid. No one needs to find himself in the vortex, the maelstrom, of his life’s being dragged down into the abyss.

God doesn’t want to be the enemy of anyone in his image. He takes no pleasure in their destruction. In fact, he has done all that is necessary for those who reject him to be delivered from their frustration, their confusion, their peril. Every person whom he has delivered was his declared enemy when the delivery was planned and then accomplished.

And it’s free—to us, at least. It’s a simple turn—a turning of the back toward sin and the face toward the Son, the Deliverer. “I don’t want that anymore; I want you instead.”

The technical terms for that change are repentance and faith. Together they constitute conversion.

And for those of us who have trusted and made that turn to the unchanging God, everything has changed. There’s no reason for fear anymore—fear of God’s wrath, fear of life circumstances, fear of the unknown. The fear has been driven out by love (1J 4.18), and the result has been joy.

God’s purposes stand (Pr 19.21). God wins. His promises are fulfilled, to the last one, and forever.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Re 1.8).

Everything in this world is unstable, shakable, unreliable.

Come rest in the almighty, unchangeable God.

Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash

Unstable World, Stable God, Part 9: Confidence

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Part 1: It’s True | Part 2: Jesus Included | Part 3: No Need to Grow | Part 4: No Need to Aspire  | Part 5: No Greater Force | Part 6: No Decay | Part 7: Trustworthiness | Part 8: Mercy

There’s another way we benefit because God doesn’t change.

Back before my Dad was saved—even before he was a Dad—a door-to-door salesman came by. When Dad answered his knock, the salesman had a large glass kitchen mixing bowl in each hand, and, without saying a word, he bashed them together vigorously. They didn’t break.

Dad bought a set.

That evening a bunch of his siblings came over, and they were playing cards and drinking beer, and generally behaving as they did in those days. As the evening went on, and Dad—in his own estimation—began thinking more creatively, he remembered those unbreakable bowls and thought he’d entertain the group with a demonstration. Without saying anything to anyone, he got up, went into the kitchen, grabbed a bowl in each hand, swept into the doorway, and cried, “Hey, everybody! Look at this!”

He bashed the two bowls together, and they shattered into a million pieces.

The fact that none of the spectators knew that the bowls weren’t supposed to break just adds to the magnificence of the scene.

Do you think my Dad got a refund for those bowls?

That salesman was long gone.

Years later, my Dad told me, “Buy from Sears. They’ll always be there if you have a problem with what you bought.”

Well, as it turns out, Dad was wrong about Sears too, but the principle is sound.

Deal with people who won’t disappear when you need them.

Now, the story’s ridiculous, and I considered not using it in this context. But I think it makes the point in a memorable way.

The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
the plans of his heart to all generations (Ps 33.11).

God doesn’t change.

And because he doesn’t change,

  • he will always be there;
  • his attitude toward you will always be steady;
  • his promises will always be kept;
  • his Word will always be true;
  • and his plans for you will certainly be fulfilled.

Now, what’s the only natural response to that kind of faithfulness?

Confidence.

It’s the infinite, perfect analog to the confidence of a man who’s worked for the same people at the same company for 40 years, or a man who’s been married to the same woman for 50.

It’s the settled state of knowing that this relationship is good, and that it will last—that things will be as they should be, now and forever.

The Hebrew Bible calls that concept shalom—“peace.”

In his first epistle, the Apostle John talks a lot about confidence, or knowing, or having assurance. Many commentators have noted that he bases our confidence on a tripod of factors:

  • obedience (1J 2.3)
  • love (1J 3.14)
  • the witness of the Spirit (1J 3.24).

All of those are things that God works in us—and he works those things in us because he is unchanging in his love for us, his forgiveness of us, and his promises to us.

In June 1944, the Allied armies began their assault on Hitler’s “Fortress Europe” by getting boots on the ground at the beaches of Normandy. “D-Day,” they called it.

From that moment, the outcome of the war was never in doubt. Oh, there was a lot of fighting yet to be done—another year in Europe—and some of the fiercest fighting of the war, including the infamous Battle of the Bulge. But with Allied soldiers, and their equipment, on European soil, Hitler could hold out only so long. It was just a matter of time.

In the person of his Son, God has entered enemy territory and declared his intentions. His plans will never change, and his power—unlike that of the Allied armies—is unlimited.

Your circumstances may be dark, even terrifying. But God is directing your steps according to his perfect plan, and nothing will deflect or deter him. You can endure in the confidence that comes from an unchanging God.

Part 10: Victory

Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash

Unstable World, Stable God, Part 8: Mercy

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Part 1: It’s True | Part 2: Jesus Included | Part 3: No Need to Grow | Part 4: No Need to Aspire  | Part 5: No Greater Force | Part 6: No Decay | Part 7: Trustworthiness

There’s another way we benefit because God doesn’t change.

We noted last time that God keeps his promises to us, because (among other things) he’s never surprised by circumstances that prevent him from keeping them.

There’s another side to that principle, one that has benefited us infinitely and continues to benefit us every day.

Sometimes other people surprise us. We do nice things to them, and they take no notice—or worse, they begin to expect those things. They don’t respond in kind. And they leave us wondering, “What is wrong with people like that? How can they return evil for good? Well, see if I ever do anything for them …”

That’s a typical human response. Tit for tat. Eye for an eye. Don’t cry for people who won’t cry for you.

And in a way, there’s a certain kind of justice in that. He mistreated me; he gets what he deserves. What goes around comes around.

Karma.

We excuse ourselves by calling it justice, but in fact we’ve changed. We were inclined to do the right thing, to be kind, to be generous, to be caring. And a circumstance—the way we were treated—changed us. Now we’re not so inclined.

That change of attitude and inclination tells us something. It tells us that our original motives weren’t philanthropic or altruistic at all. We were expecting payback.

We were motivated not by love for our neighbor, but by love for ourselves.

God’s not that way. At all.

He is motivated, as always, by his own nature—in this case, his nature to be perfectly, consistently, eternally, selflessly loving.

He treats us well. And by “us,” I mean all of us. He placed our first parents into a world perfectly designed for them. And thousands of years later, he sends rain to the just and also to the unjust (Mt 5.45). He gives us—all—everything we need, for free.

How did we respond to his kindness? We turned on him like utter ingrates, rebelling against him, rejecting his offer of relationship, denying his goodness, insisting that we were wiser than he.

If you and I were God—I speak as a fool—how would we have responded in that situation?

Ah, but that’s the difference, you see. We are changed by our circumstances, slaves to our own limited knowledge, victims of surprise.

God is not. He is not surprised; he is not changed.

He knew, when he made us, how we would turn out. He loved us before we rebelled, and he loves us after. On the day he made our first father, he committed to an eternal relationship with us—committed, in fact, to becoming one of us, forever, offering himself in mortal flesh as the infinite and morally perfect sacrifice for our sin.

We would strike out at those who mistreat us, and do it in the name of Justice.

He withholds that judgment, taking it upon himself, so that Justice is done, but not at our expense.

He withholds from us the evil consequences that we justly deserve.

The technical term for that is Mercy.

And he offers that gift to anyone who wants it. For free.

It comes to us, because our God does not change, even in the
face of our rebellion.

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow (Jam 1.17).

The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (Ro 11.29).

God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. 19 This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, 20 where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek (He 6.17-20).

Part 9: Confidence | Part 10: Victory

Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash

Unstable World, Stable God, Part 7: Trustworthiness

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Part 1: It’s True | Part 2: Jesus Included | Part 3: No Need to Grow | Part 4: No Need to Aspire  | Part 5: No Greater Force | Part 6: No Decay 

Because God doesn’t change, certain benefits accrue to his people.

I’d like to begin with the obvious observation that an unchanging God is trustworthy, or reliable. He tells the truth. He doesn’t lie, or even change his mind. And his word comes true; he never fails in a promise or a prediction.

God is not a man, that He should lie,
Nor a son of man, that He should repent;
Has He said, and will He not do it?
Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? (Nu 23.19).

The Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind (1S 15.29).

The Lord of hosts has sworn saying, “Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand” (Is 14.24).

“I, the Lord, have spoken; it is coming and I will act. I will not relent, and I will not pity and I will not be sorry; according to your ways and according to your deeds I will judge you,” declares the Lord God (Ezk 24.14).

Sceptics have often observed that the Scripture seems to contradict itself on this point. Sometimes it says that God doesn’t change his mind (“repent”) and sometimes it says that he does.

I won’t dispute that. That’s what the various verses say. But I note something else: three of the allegedly contradictory verses occur in the same passage, 1 Samuel 15. Specifically, in verse 11 God himself says that he has repented; then in verse 29 Samuel says that God (“the Glory of Israel”) will not change his mind; then in verse 35 the author says that God (Yahweh) repented.

Now, what are the odds that the author of Samuel was so incompetent, so inattentive, so stupid, that he made a boneheaded mistake like that, yet produced overall a book of such high historical and literary quality?

I can only conclude that he interplayed these terms intentionally—similarly to what Solomon did in Proverbs 26.4-5, placing two directly contradictory statements right next to each other, to make the reader stop and think: “When should I answer a fool? And when should I not?”

So what is the author of Samuel doing here? In what sense has a God who cannot change or lie or be surprised “changed his mind” with reference to Saul? What is the author communicating to us by this literary device?

This post isn’t about 1 Samuel 15; we can work through that application another time. My only point here is that God is not the sort of person whose thoughts, plans, and promises are unreliable. He doesn’t change; he keeps his promises, and you can trust him with your life on this earth and your life into eternity. You may not understand his purposes during the difficult times, or his reasons for choosing this tactic or that outcome, but you can be sure that he won’t say one thing and do another, or make a promise he cannot or will not keep.

Our most practical response to this truth is to make a point of hearing and remembering his promises. As you read your Bible, highlight the promises, particularly the ones that are given to God’s people in general. (When the ascended Jesus tells Saul in Acts 9.6 that someone will tell him what he’s to do, that’s a promise, all right, but not one made to us.)

Think through these promises, carefully considering how they can be fulfilled in your life, praying for God’s wisdom in discerning when the fulfillments come, and living in gratitude for those fulfillments. God’s people don’t simply rejoice at occasions of “good luck”; they recognize the personal source of those blessings, and they consciously allow their gratitude to strengthen and deepen their love for, and trust in, the Giver of all good gifts—and Keeper of all his promises.

Part 8: Mercy | Part 9: Confidence | Part 10: Victory

Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash