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

 

Retired Bible Professor,

Bob Jones University

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It’s Not Martyrdom If You’re Being Obnoxious

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There’s a lot of talk about Christians being persecuted these days.

I’d suggest a couple of moderating thoughts.

First, if you’re talking about in the US, then, no, they’re not being persecuted, relatively speaking. There are some instances of their being harassed, and that’s wrong. I think the well-known case of the Colorado baker is a pretty clear instance of that. But harassment, while condemnable on both ethical and legal grounds, is nothing like the persecution faced by the early church, or by the modern church in many places of the world. I’ve been in some of those places, and when American Christians cry “persecution,” it strikes me as just as inappropriate as calling an ID requirement for voting “voter suppression.”

Second, there’s some biblical wisdom that we can apply profitably to the matter of either harassment or persecution. To begin with the really big picture, God has designed the universe so that in general it rewards wise behavior and punishes foolishness. If you respect physical laws by not putting your hand into a flame or stepping in front of a city bus, you’ll live more comfortably—and probably longer. If you acknowledge the fact that your fellow humans are created in the image of God and therefore worthy of respect, courtesy, and care, you’ll have fewer interpersonal problems. Even in its pre-fallen state, the world may well have carried the potential of causing you pain if you didn’t pay attention. I suspect that if pre-fallen Adam had beat his head against an Edenic tree trunk for a while, he’d have decided not to do that anymore.

And in its post-fallen state, the potential rises exponentially. Now the world is broken. Creation groans (Ro 8.22), giving us earthquakes and tornados and tsunamis and pandemics. And we, as part of the broken world, engage in thinking and behavior that rejects the good God and denies his image in those around us. That kind of mistreatment and perversion of the designed order causes unfathomable pain. As Jesus’ half-brother James noted, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel” (Jam 4.1-2a).

All of this means that when Christians suffer, there are more possible reasons than just “suffering for Jesus.” Christians, individually or corporately, might be suffering because they’ve said or done stupid things, placing themselves under the divinely designed cosmic order, whereby life is tougher if you’re stupid (as John Wayne allegedly said). Or they might be suffering because they’ve engaged in sinful thinking or practices that have social or legal consequences.

I’m not making this up; the Bible actually warns God’s people against this very thing. Perhaps the most concentrated biblical teaching on Christian suffering is 1 Peter, which lays out the fact and causes of suffering and then applies it in the three major institutions of life: the home (1P 3.1-12), the state (1P 2.13-20), and the church (1P 4.7-5.11). As part of that instruction, Peter says,

14 If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. 15 Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer, or thief, or evildoer, or a troublesome meddler; 16 but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name (1P 4.14-16).

If you’re going to suffer—which is likely, he says—then suffer for a good reason. There’s no spiritual profit in suffering in itself—everybody suffers for one reason or another. So don’t suffer for stupid reasons.

Peter lists four behaviors here. Two of them are the specific sins—crimes, in fact—of murder and theft. The third item is a general term for evildoing. The fourth is a bit of a puzzle, what New Testament scholar Thomas Schreiner calls “one of the most difficult interpretive problems in the New Testament.” Because it’s a rare word, we don’t have much basis from usage for assigning it a meaning. Etymologically it’s “overseeing the affairs of others,” but what that means in a negative context isn’t clear. I’m inclined to read it as “being meddlesome,” “sticking your nose into other people’s business.”

Big sins will bring you trouble. So will little ones. I’d suggest that commenting on every passing social media post, whether or not you have any idea what you’re talking about, will bring you trouble. I’d also suggest that approaching people with a hostile attitude and confrontational speech will bring you trouble. And I’d suggest, finally, that blaming Jesus for your trouble in those cases is just wrong.

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On Prayer As Relationship

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Back in 2003 my family and I went to China for a month. While we were there, we took a weekend to visit Wuyi Shan, or Wuyi Mountain. It’s a popular tourist site, with the biggest attraction being hiking up the mountain itself. I was amused by the fact that bottled water cost 2 yuan at the bottom of the mountain, and 10 yuan at the top. Looks like capitalism to me. :-)

We hired a local guide while we were there, and one of the many places she took us was a Buddhist monastery in the area. She showed us the various sections of the place, and the highlight of course was the room with a large statue of the Buddha. Unsurprisingly, there was a small shrine there, with some incense sticks that devotees could light for a small payment. Our guide lit one, placed it in the sandbox that served as a container, and paused for a few moments to fold her hands, bow her head, close her eyes, and offer a prayer. We stood quietly as she did so.

As we continued our tour, I asked her what she prayed for when she prayed to the Buddha. She seemed surprised at the question, as if there were only one possible answer. “We pray for luck,” she said. “What do you Christians pray for?”

“We pray for one another,” I said.

I know my answer was simplistic. And that’s the point of today’s post.

Prayer involves a lot of things. In a post awhile back I noted that like many other Christians I usually follow the prayer pattern ACTS, for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. There are other patterns as well, and it’s perfectly fine to follow no pattern at all.

Which brings me to my point.

I think we often miss the whole point of prayer.

I’ve seen sermons and books about “how to get your prayers answered.” A colleague of mine and I were talking about prayer once, and she satirically referred to prayer chains as “adding your vote to the luck bucket.”

Prayer is not an election. (Election in theology is a different thing entirely. :-) ) It’s not a democratic process in which we all get together and try to talk an inattentive or uninterested or skeptical God into being convinced that this particular thing is really, really important to us, and would he please, please do the thing so we’ll be happier, or more comfortable, or less anxious?

Prayer includes requests, things we want “answered,” of course. In fact, God himself tells us to come boldly into his presence in prayer (He 4.16) and to let our “requests be made known to” him (Php 4.6). As a father—even a deeply imperfect one—I know how much more I would have given my children if they had just asked.

Ask. Yes.

But seeing prayer as primarily or essentially a shopping list is to miss the whole point of the thing.

Prayer is not a sacrament or a rite. It’s a natural consequence of being in a relationship.

For 37 years this month I’ve been in a formal, legal relationship with my wife. But it’s far more than just formal or legal. It’s personal. And because it’s personal, we communicate. We communicate because we like to, but more essentially we communicate because that’s what people in a relationship do; you can’t have a relationship without communicating, and communicating is pretty much the central way in which you conduct a relationship.

God and I have a relationship. So we talk. As you’ve often heard, he talks to us through his word, and we talk to him through prayer.

What do we talk about?

Whatever; whatever we have to say. I talk to him about what he’s said to me in his word. I talk to him about our relationship; what I’ve experienced since the last time we talked; how I feel about those experiences; what questions I have (and there are many).

We just talk.

And that’s why prayer is more than just asking for stuff, putting my vote in the luck bucket. It will include adoration—love talk, if you will—and confession and thanksgiving and yes, supplication.

And anything else.

That’s how relationships work.

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On Abundance, Part 4: We’re Richer!

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Part 1: Needs and Wants | Part 2: Definition | Part 3: We’re Rich!

We’re rich in grace to save and grace to sanctify. We’re rich in love for one another. But there’s more.

Comfort

The Christian life isn’t all peace and light. There are difficulties, trials, whether the trials of temptation to sin or the trials of distancing and opposition from people we love. In these times we find that our Father, who is “the God of all comfort” (2Co 1.3), pours out that comfort on us without restraint: “our comfort abounds through Christ” (2Co 1.5).

If you’ve face deep waters, you know what that means. The brokenness of our world is a constant source of sorrow and exasperation to us, even as it wreaks sin and disease and death. In those valleys we find a comfort that is from beyond us; even as our friends tell us how strong we are, we realize that the strength to endure these things is not ours at all, except by transfer of deed; we’re strong because he comforts, strengthens, carries.

Hope

Just as the God of all comfort comforts us abundantly, so the God of hope enables us to abound in hope (Rο 15.13). Whenever we come across the word hope in the Bible, we need to remind ourselves that we don’t use the word anymore in the biblical sense; what we mean when we say “hope” today is hopelessly weak in comparison to the biblical concept. We “hope”—often forlornly—that something good will happen, but we’re pretty much left to hope that it’s in our stars.

Not so in Scripture. Hope is confident expectation of a promised future state. It’s what’s in the minds of the engaged couple as they plan their wedding. They’re not “hoping” to be married; they’re going to be married, and they’re making arrangements to be ready when the big day comes. Biblical hope is not wishing; it’s anticipating.

It’s walking onto the field knowing that your team is going to win, and eager to experience all the fun it’s going to be.

We “abound in hope,” Paul says, “in the power of the Holy Spirit.” If an omnipotent God stands behind his promises to us, then there’s no uncertainty about the outcome; there’s just eager anticipation of an absolutely certain future event.

And God pours that confidence all over us until we’re soaked in it.

Gratitude

What’s the only reasonable response to all this? Paul tells the Colossians,

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving (Co 2.6-7).

I have a prayer list that attempts to list all the ways that God has been good to me—physically, providentially, spiritually. I pray thanksgiving for one or two of those every day. It takes weeks to get through the list. And these are just the big things; what about all the ways God supplies, directs, protects every day? What if we were to keep a diary of such things and pray exhaustively? We’d be praying all the time and falling further behind every minute. God’s abundant grace should stimulate our abundant gratitude, a never-ending sense of joy and peace and well-being that comes from having a perfect heavenly Father.

In Conclusion

Jesus famously said that he had come so that his people “might have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10.10). I’ve restricted this brief series to specific things that the Bible says God gives abundantly, but we’d be foolish to think that his abundance is restricted to these few things. Given his character, even his abundance is abundant; he pours out blessings of every kind on all of his people through all of their lives. He is a good, good God.

May you and I live today, and every day, as in the words of the Apostle Paul,

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen (Ep 3.20-21).

Amen, indeed. May it be so.

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

On Abundance, Part 3: We’re Rich!

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Part 1: Needs and Wants | Part 2: Definition

So what does God give us in abundance? What does he pour out on us lavishly, without restraint?

The Scripture names several things, but one much more than the others.

Grace

Pail tells the Ephesians that God has lavished on us “the riches of his grace” (Ep 1.7-8). Since this context is specifically about forgiveness of sins, we can safely conclude here that “grace” is the gift of salvation and specifically forgiveness; God has lavished his forgiveness on us, without regard to the enormity of both the quantity and the quality of our sins. This idea is borne out in Romans 5, where Paul writes that the abundance of “grace and the free gift of righteousness” (Ro 5.17) far outweighs the effect, as deep and pervasive and intense as it is, of Adam’s sin and our acquiescence to it. Down in verse 20, he intensifies the verb by saying that where sin abounds, grace “hyperabounds.”

You can’t out-sin God’s grace. His grace floods and eradicates the stain of the darkest of your sin. No one is beyond the reach and power of that grace.

Good news.

But there’s even more to this grace. We’ve been looking at the grace that forgives; but it doesn’t stop there. God gives abundant grace to sanctify—to change us from sinners into saints, to empower us to live in a way that reflects his forgiveness. Paul says that “God is able to make all grace abound toward you” (2Co 9.8). Now, this is in the context of his urging the Corinthians to be generous in their offering for the poor saints in Jerusalem, so he may be saying simply that since God has given them much, they should be generous with others. But he doesn’t seem to limit the application in that way; he says that his readers “may abound to every good work.” Sure, by being generous in the offering; but if we have “all sufficiency in all things,” surely this extends to more than throwing a Hamilton into the offering plate, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t God’s people “abound” in good works? (1Th 4.1).

Throughout the centuries God’s people have found that their abilities to endure temptation and trial, to love the unlovable, to do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God, far exceed what they thought they were capable of doing. They stand in wonder at what God does through them.

Ample grace to save, and ample grace to sanctify.

Love

Twice Paul speaks of abounding love—and not, as we might expect, God’s love for us, but our love for one another. He speaks of the Philippians’ love for him “overflow[ing] more and more” (Php 1.9); and he prays that the Thessalonians may “increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all” (1Th 3.12). In a day when Christians are finding themselves divided by politics—and by ecclesiastical politics—we find that we can do better; we can abound in love for one another, the kind of love that brings such natural enemies as Jews and Gentiles together into one body, who worship God together (Ep 3.10). Overflowing love can do this.

There are more things that God gives us in abundance. We’ll look at them next time.

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On Abundance, Part 2: Definition

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Part 1: Needs and Wants

As we noted last time, a key word in the Bible for the generosity of God is the word abundance. It’s a fairly straightforward concept: an abundance is more than you need, a surplus. In the extreme, it’s an overflowing, even an effective lack of limitation—there’s always more, like bananas or mangoes or papayas in the tropics.

When I was a boy, we lived on a 2-acre farm in Greenacres (now part of Spokane Valley), Washington. We grew our own beef and vegetables, and a little fruit, and in retrospect I realize that we had a good supply of food, but we didn’t have much money. (As I recall, Dad made $75 a week in his job at the time.) I learned early on that when I poured syrup on the pancakes, Dad would intervene—forcefully—if I overdid it. “What, do you think we’re made of money?” As I watched the little dribble of syrup disappear into the pancake, I felt really, really poor. (Pun absolutely intended.)

A bit later we moved back East, and with Dad making a little more money, we would occasionally eat out in a restaurant. There was an International House of Pancakes nearby (they call it IHOP now, of course), and I noticed something when we ate there.

On the table they had not just a single bottle of syrup, but a whole rack of eight little pitchers, each of them a different flavor. And I noticed something else. Dad didn’t care how much syrup I used.

The reason is obvious—the syrup came with the meal, and you didn’t pay by the ounce, the way you did at home.

To a kid, being able to use all the syrup you want is the Millennium.

And you know what? If you like one flavor of syrup in particular, and you used up all that was in the little pitcher, you could just ask the waitress, and she’d fill the thing up again, all the way to the top!

The thing is bottomless!

No need to conserve. Use all you want. If you run out, there’s plenty more where that came from.

Abundance.

That’s how God gives to his people. He’s the kind of person who loves to pour out good things on his people, with complete abandon.

Now, while we’re defining the concept, we should recognize an abuse.

While God gives us lots of good things, he’s not primarily interested in the trivial stuff.

Sure, he knows about every sparrow that falls, and he’ll see to our tiniest needs (Mt 10.29-31). But his primary interest isn’t to make us rich, or powerful, or popular in temporal ways, and he doesn’t want that to be our primary interest either. Prosperity preachers claim to find support in biblical passages—Jos 1.7; Ps 1.3; Pr 10.22; Lk 6.38; 2Co 9.6; 3J 1.2—but in doing so they demonstrate that they’re focused on the temporal, the earthly, the comparatively trivial, and not on the heavenly treasure that God’s people are to be storing away (Mt 6.19-21). One can’t use such texts to encourage the very greed that the Scripture so roundly condemns (1S 2.29; Lk 12.15; Ep 4.19; 1Th 2.5; 1Ti 3.3). And it’s not difficult to see fruit in the lives of such preachers that undercuts the alleged biblical basis of their theology.

[Side note: there’s a lot of this kind of preaching in poor areas of the world, as you might expect. I see a lot of it in Africa. And I’m puzzled why it doesn’t seem to occur to all the thousands of people at those outdoor meetings that after all these years, they’re not getting any richer.]

In the Scripture, wealth is not proof of God’s blessing (Ps 73.12), nor is it a significant vehicle for God’s blessing (Lk 12.15). But Scripture says repeatedly that God gives abundantly (Jn 10.10).

Well then. If it’s not Bitcoin, what is it that God pours out so lavishly, so generously, so limitlessly and extravagantly, on his people?

Well, you’re going to have to wait a few days to find out. :-)

Next time.

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

On Abundance, Part 1: Needs and Wants

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We humans need stuff. We need food, and clothing, and shelter, and we need a way to get those things. The past year has made us aware of how much we need other things, too: love, companionship, interaction, variety.

We also want stuff. We want money—always just a bit more than we have. We want better health—even if we live in ways that seem to contradict that. We want recognition, which these days comes most commonly by way of likes and shares and congratulatory comments.

In Western culture, our natural tendency to want what we don’t have is exacerbated by the advertisements that bombard us pretty much constantly, especially if we’re the kind of person who permanently stores his phone in his hand rather than his pocket. You need this app; you need these shoes; you need that car; you need a vacation in Cozumel.

We’re a needy bunch.

I’ve noticed that my students’ generation, while still inclined to neediness—or wantiness—is trending away from stuff. Minimalism is cool (see under “Marie Kondo”). Newlyweds don’t want fine china anymore.

Good for them. It’s easier to pick up and go when you don’t have to think about tons (literally) of stuff that will be worthless in the long run.

Similarly, my wife and I have reached a stage in life where we really don’t want more stuff for Christmas, or birthdays, or anniversaries. We have what we need, and, apart from the occasional jar of cashews or tub of ice cream, we have pretty much what we want in terms of physical things.

But for a great many people, the wish list on Amazon is still a Very Big Deal. I need. I want. I wish I had.

Now, you’re expecting a blog post excoriating acquisitiveness. There’s a place for that, but my thoughts are running in a different direction.

I’m thinking about wealth.

The Bible says that God is endlessly rich. The old chorus said that “he owns the cattle on a thousand hills,” a concept drawn from Psalm 50.10:

Every beast of the forest is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills.

When the returnees from exile in Babylon are doing their best to rebuild Solomon’s Temple, and producing a recognizably inferior product (Hag 2.3), God encourages these faithful laborers by telling him that this temple isn’t going to be about the silver and gold; “If you needed silver and gold, I have plenty,” he says (Hag 2.8), but he’s going to make this temple great in other, more substantive and infinitely valuable ways (Hag 2.6-9). And indeed, it was this temple—specifically Herod’s renovation of it—that saw the baby Jesus presented for circumcision, and the boy Jesus astonish the rabbis, and the man Jesus clear out the merchants—and the veil torn open by the Father himself as his Son paid the price for the separation between God and his people.

God is rich in the earthly stuff, and he’s rich in the heavenly stuff as well.

And, as we wish for from the rich, he’s generous too. Over the years he’s blessed a lot of his people financially, starting with Job and continuing to Abraham and many, many others, down to this day. While I’m not rich in American statistical terms, I’m wildly wealthy in comparison with most of the rest of the world, and it’s pretty likely that you are too. I have all I need, as well as a lot of stuff I don’t need.

There’s a word in the Bible that embraces this concept. It’s the word abundance. I’d like to spend a few posts meditating on it—contrasting it with some of the nonsense being proposed by religious shysters these days, and laying out some specifics about the Father’s abundant blessing of his people.

Next time we’ll set out a definition.

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The Other Beatitudes, Part 4: Discipline

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Believing God | Part 3: Serving God

OK, it’s time now for the surprising part. Of the 90 or so places in the Bible that speak of someone as being “blessed” (Greek makarios), there are two that stop us in our tracks.

  • How happy is the one whom God reproves; therefore do not despise the discipline of the Almighty (Job 5.17).
  • Happy are those whom you discipline, O Lord, and whom you teach out of your law (Ps 94.12).

Wait, what? Blessed to be reproved by God? to be disciplined by him?

As always, we need to start by figuring out what these verses actually say, to ensure that we’re not getting a misimpression.

We notice immediately that the first of these verses is from Job, and if we check the context, we find that these are the words of Eliphaz the Temanite, one of Job’s friends (Jb 4.1). As I’ve noted elsewhere, we need to take these speeches with a grain of salt, because by the end of the book we find God rebuking all of Job’s friends for missing the truth (Jb 42.7-9). Indeed, even Job himself, though God calls him “right” (Jb 42.7), comes in for rebuke for missing the larger point of his experience (Jb 38.1ff).

The key word in the second passage is discipline, which in English calls to mind being taken out to the woodshed. The Hebrew word, yasar, can indeed mean to chasten or to punish, but it can also mean to admonish or warn, and even less threatening, to teach. (Teaching is, after all, the etymological root for discipline; we still use the word disciple to mean “student.”)

Now, we all know that a word doesn’t mean all of its meanings every time we use it; when I say “the sun set last night,” nobody thinks, “He’s saying that the sun is a collection of objects, like a chess set.” We decide which meaning of the word to apply by looking at the context; a “sunset” is very different from a “chess set,” which in turn is very different from “set concrete.”

So what’s the context here? This is Hebrew poetry, one key feature of which is parallelism; here, “those whom you discipline” is in parallel with “[those] whom you teach out of your law.” So I’m inclined to read this as saying simply that those whom the Lord teaches are blessed, by the simple virtue of divine instruction and care. This verse, then, should be included in Part 2 of this series, as an example of the many ways God’s people are described. And, for what it’s worth, I’m inclined to see the Job passage as truthful, based on the Psalms passage and other biblical context.

But it’s worth noting here that the Bible does speak of trials and even suffering in a positive sense. Paul compares such struggles to athletic training, noting that regular exertion builds stamina, and stamina brings the experience of success, which in turn builds confidence, which then extends our success (Ro 5.3-5). Paul even says that we “boast” in our suffering (Ro 5.3).

The author of Hebrews presents a different positive perspective on trials, noting that parental discipline is evidence that we have a Father who loves us (He 12.3-13).

When I was a boy, and inclined toward energetic distraction, my father would occasionally place his hand on the back of my head and turn it in the direction he wanted me to go.

I hated that.

I would shake my head out of his hand and seek to go my own way. But when it mattered, Dad would persist. He may have saved my life a time or two with that really irritating practice.

Our loving Heavenly Father disciplines us as well. He doesn’t “punish” us—the well-deserved punishment for our monstrous sins was inflicted not on us, the deserving, but on his blameless Son, by the Son’s own request. For the believer, hard times of testing are not punishment for anything, because all the punishment has been borne and exhausted.

But he disciplines, teaches us. He directs us through hard things to teach us the right way and to build our strength and fit us for greater victories. And he does it non-destructively, carefully, tenderly, lovingly.

It is indeed blessed to be disciplined, taught, by such a Father.

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The Other Beatitudes, Part 3: Serving God

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Believing God

The first pattern we noticed in the Bible’s statements of blessing (Greek makarios) is that God’s people, as described in any number of ways, are blessed. This is a matter of identity; whether or not you’re blessed depends on who you are. (And of course, that identity is in God, not in ourselves as deserving.)

The rest of the biblical beatitudes have to do with activity—what the person in question does.

Those who do righteousness are blessed: How blessed are those who keep justice, Who practice righteousness at all times! (Ps 106.3; cf Ps 112.1; 119.1-2; 128.1-2; Is 56.2; Jn 13.17; Rv 22.14). As in the previous section, this idea of good behavior is described in a variety of ways—

  • Those who hear and keep God’s Word (Lk 11.28; Jm 1.25; Rv 1.3; 22.7)
  • Those who delight in his commandments (Ps 112.1)
  • Those who have righteous parents—and presumably follow their upbringing  (Pr 20.7)
  • Those who consider the poor (Ps 41.1-2; Lk 14.14)
  • Those who give (Ac 20.35)

A specific type of commended behavior is perseverance or persistence. It’s not enough to be good just every so often; the key is having a pattern of good behavior.

  • Those who persevere in stewardship (Mt 24.46 // Lk 12.37-38, 43; Rv 16.15)
  • Those who are not offended in Jesus—that is, they don’t fall away from him (Mt 11.6 // Lk 7.23)
  • Those who endure trials / temptation / suffering (Jm 1.12; 1P 3.14; 4.14)

And finally, good behavior of course involves rejecting sin: How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!  (Ps 1.1; cf Ps 32.2; 40.4; Is 56.2)—and that in turn involves keeping a good conscience (Ro 14.22), stopping when and where your conscience tells you to stop.

Obviously we need to deal with the elephant in the room—do we keep our noses clean so that God will bless us? A few observations—

  • Scripture is very clear that we can’t be good enough to please God or to earn salvation (Is 64.6; Ti 3.5).
  • Similarly, God can’t be bribed, since he is no respecter of persons (Ro 2.11; Ep 6.9; Co 3.25).

So what’s going on in these verses? I’d suggest that there are two principles being asserted and illustrated here—

  • Many of these passages are from wisdom literature (Psalms, Proverbs, and James in particular). A common theme in such literature is that the world is designed so that things turn out better if you don’t do stupid things (as pretty much every teenaged boy, including yours truly back in the day, has demonstrated at one time or another). As John Wayne is reputed to have said, “Life is tough; it’s tougher if you’re stupid.” This isn’t about salvation; it’s about living in such a way that you minimize your risks in the here and now.
  • But there’s another principle here as well. Many of these passages are addressed to believers, those who have repented of their sin and placed their faith in Christ. Because such people are enlivened spiritually (Jn 3.5) and empowered by the indwelling Spirit of God (Ga 5.16; Ti 3.5), they are now capable of doing good, and in a persistent way; in fact, “good works” are a certain and unavoidable consequence of the change that God has worked in them (Ep 2.10; Ti 2.7, 3.8). So yes, people who do good works are blessed—not because God is unusually impressed with or bribed by them, but because they are living as they were designed to live, and such harmony with the will and plan of God brings blessing, the state that the Hebrew Scriptures call shalom, “peace,” when things are as they should be.

I said at the beginning of the series that there was a surprise in the biblical data. I don’t think we’ve seen anything surprising yet. That’s coming next time.

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The Other Beatitudes, Part 2: Believing God

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Part 1: Introduction

Now that we’ve dealt with special uses of the Greek word for “blessed” (makarios), we can turn our attention to the passages that are true “beatitudes,” general blessings on various groups of people. There’s a fair amount of depth to the uses of the word, including a few surprises.

We should begin, I suppose, with an unsurprising group. Several passages speak of those whom God has chosen as blessed.

  • In his final blessing of the tribes of Israel just before his death, Moses sums up his prophecy with a general blessing on all Israel: Blessed are you, O Israel; Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, Who is the shield of your help And the sword of your majesty! So your enemies will cringe before you, And you will tread upon their high places (Dt 33.29).
  • In a familiar passage the Psalmist writes, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, The people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance (Ps 33.12; cf 144.15).
  • And in a focus on the individual, David writes, How blessed is the one whom You choose and bring near to You To dwell in Your courts. We will be satisfied with the goodness of Your house, Your holy temple (Ps 65.4).

Sometimes God’s (chosen) people are described in slightly different ways:

  • Those whose help is God: How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, Whose hope is in the Lord his God (Ps 146.5).
  • Those who are invited to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb: Then he said to me, “Write, ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ ” And he said to me, “These are true words of God” (Re 19.9).
  • The one who has a part in the first resurrection: Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years (Re 20.6).

And often God’s people are identified in ways having to do with their trust or faith in him:

  • Those who trust in the Lord: How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust, And has not turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood (Ps 40.4; cf 84.12).
  • Those who take refuge in him: Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, For His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him! (Ps 2.12).
  • Those whose hope is in God: How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, Whose hope is in the Lord his God (Ps 146.5)
  • Those who long for God: Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him! (Is 30.18).
  • Those who dwell in God’s house: How blessed are those who dwell in Your house! They are ever praising You (Ps 84.4).
  • Those whose strength is in God: How blessed is the man whose strength is in You, In whose heart are the highways to Zion! (Ps 84.5).
  • Those who find wisdom: How blessed is the man who finds wisdom And the man who gains understanding (Pr 3.13; cf 8.34).
  • Those who fear the Lord: Praise the Lord! How blessed is the man who fears the Lord, Who greatly delights in His commandments (Ps 112.1; cf 128.1; Pr 28.14).
  • Those who know the joyful sound: How blessed are the people who know the joyful sound! O Lord, they walk in the light of Your countenance (Ps 89.15).
  • Those whose sin is forgiven: How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit! (Ps 32.1-2).
  • Those whom God enables to understand: But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear (Mt 13.16 // Lk 10.23).
  • Those who believe without seeing: Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed” (Jn 20.29).

Next time: there’s more!

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

The Other Beatitudes, Part 1: Introduction

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We all know about the Beatitudes, the 9 statements at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5.3-11) in which Jesus identifies various kinds of people as “blessed.” That series of verses has inspired endless devotionals, sermons, articles, and books. It occurred to me recently that the Greek word translated blessed in the Beatitudes (makarios) is fairly common, occurring in lots of other places in the Bible—in all, 50 times in the New Testament, and 42 times in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Thus there must be lots of other biblical statements that are essentially “other Beatitudes.”

So why not go looking for them? Why not add to the list of attitudes and behaviors that put people into a condition of blessing?

I suppose we should start the way most of those sermons and books do, by defining the key term. What does it mean to be “blessed”?

The concept is really quite simple. The “blessed” person has received something that advantages him, and as a result, he’s happy. That’s pretty much the way we use the word today.

Now to take all these occurrences of the word, organize them, and draw some guiding principles about God’s blessing and our happiness.

To begin with, we should notice the “oddities” in a few uses.

First, there’s one “secular” use of the word: that is, it’s not speaking of spiritual blessing or God’s blessing. That’s in Acts 26.2, where Paul says that he’s “blessed” to have an opportunity to defend himself before Agrippa.

Second, there’s one instance where the word describes something impersonal. In Titus 2.13, Paul speaks of our “blessed hope,” which is Christ’s return. (There’s one other use that appears to be impersonal: “Blessed are you, O land, whose king is of nobility and whose princes eat at the appropriate time—for strength and not for drunkenness” (Ec 10.17). But as the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament notes (4.365), it’s really the people of the land, not the dirt itself, who benefit from a good ruler.)

Third, there are several uses that are limited in their application, that we shouldn’t consider as applying to us specifically—

  • Individuals: Leah, at Asher’s birth (Gn 30.13); Peter at his confession (Mt 16.17); and God (Is 31.9 LXX; 1Ti 1.11; 6.15) (who technically can’t be “advantaged” by something he receives; here the word means someone whom we praise as worthy)
  • Estimations: Solomon’s wives and servants, in the estimation of the Queen of Sheba (1K 10.8 // 2Ch 9.7); Mary, in the estimation of Elizabeth (Lk 1.45) and of “a certain woman” (Lk 11.27); he who eats bread in the kingdom of God, in the estimation of a man who was dining with Jesus (Lk 14.15)
  • Historical situations: those returning from exile in Babylon (Is 32.20); the childless during the fall of Jerusalem (Lk 23.29); those who endure (Dn 12.12) or die (Rv 14.13) during the Tribulation
  • Social situations: one who has a “quiver full” of children (Ps 127.5); those who carry out judgment on evildoers (Ps 137.8-9); people who have a good king (Ec 10.17); and, comparatively, the widow who does not remarry (1Co 7.40)

The rest of the uses of this word blessed or happy refer generally to certain kinds of people, particularly the people of God, and we can safely take them as applying to us. Since I’ve called this series “The Other Beatitudes,” I won’t be addressing the two passages in the Gospels (Mt 5.3-11; Lk 6.21-22) where the Sermon on the Mount is presented.

Next time, we’ll look at the remaining passages, telling us who is blessed, and why.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash