Theology

Baccalaureate, Part 3

May 26, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

But you’re thinking (I hope) that those aren’t our greatest needs. They’re just the temporal ones. We have greater needs: forgiveness, relationship, grace, mercy, peace. Love.

What do you know? They’re all free, too.

Everything you need is free.

God is so, so good.

Yes, bad things do happen. Yes, the world is broken. Suffering is real, and injustice is real, and hate is real.

But God has assured us, and the experience of millions of his people has taught us, that these evil things are not senseless or purposeless or permanent. Paul tells us that

tribulation worketh patience; ⁴And patience, experience; and experience, hope: ⁵And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us (Ro 5.3-5).

Every athlete knows that the workouts—the suffering, if you will—are what strengthens you so that you can win. The coach is not a sadist; he is wise, and he is good. Any of the athletes on BJU’s national championship teams can tell us that.

God is good.

Another poet, the American e e cummings, captured that thought artfully, though surprisingly:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

God is indeed good.

So where do we go from here? What’s around the corner at this pivotal point in our graduates’ lives?

Back to the child’s simple prayer:

God is great.
God is good.
Let us thank him.

And, I might add, let us trust him, even in a chaotic and, for some, frightful world.

The British lyricist Michael Perry captured this spirit perfectly, I think, in just one stanza in his great hymn “O God Beyond All Praising”:

Then hear, O gracious Savior,
     accept the love we bring,
that we who know your favor
     may serve you as our king;
and whether our tomorrows
     be filled with good or ill,
we’ll triumph through our sorrows
     and rise to bless you still:
to marvel at your beauty
     and glory in your ways,
and make a joyful duty
     our sacrifice of praise.

May it be so for all of us. Let’s pray.

²⁴The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
²⁵The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
²⁶The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace (Numbers 6.24-26).

Amen.

Baccalaureate, Part 2

May 22, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1

Another, very different perspective:

John Gillespie McGee Jr., a British pilot in WW1, captured this concept more lyrically in his poem High Flight:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air ….

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

A century ago another poet, an American college English teacher named Odell Shepard, in one stanza of a poem he called “Whence Cometh My Help,” wrote of the mountains this way:

All the wisdom, all the beauty I have lived for unaware
Came upon me by the rote of highland rills;
I have seen God walking there
In the solemn soundless air
When the morning wakened wonder in the hills.

The greatness of God is vividly apparent all around us, even to those who deny he exists.

God is indeed great. Insuperably great. Unimaginably great.

Years ago there was a commercial for Sherwin Williams paint. The opening shot was of the space shuttle on the launch pad, with a voiceover counting down: “3 … 2 … 1 … ignition!” And those two solid-rocket boosters kick in, and the screen fills with flame and then white smoke, until all you can see is white. And then, the white subtly changes. A door opens away from you, and you’re looking at a typical American bathroom. The voice says, “We developed the paint for the space shuttle. [Door opens.] Chances are, we can handle your bathroom.”

I say this reverently: Chances are the God who “made the stars also” can handle the challenges of your life.

God Is Good

To his protégé Timothy Paul calls God

the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy (1Ti 6.17b).

Years ago it occurred to me that everything we really need—literally everything—is free. That’s the way God has arranged the universe.

Don’t believe me? Hear me out.

What do you need more than anything else in the world? If you lack it for 30 seconds, it will be literally all you think about until you get some.

Yep, air. Or more specifically, oxygen.

Free.

We’re sitting at the bottom of an ocean of it—an ocean that God has kindly diluted with nitrogen so you won’t burst into flame at the slightest spark. God’s even given you a scoop on the front of your head so you’ll get your share of the stuff. Some of you he gave a larger scoop to, and you have the gall to be upset with him about that. Shame on you.

What’s the second most necessary thing? Water. They say you can last 3 days without it—some maybe as much as 8 to 10 days under certain conditions. But not long.

Most of the globe is covered with it. And that water mass feeds a delivery system that brings it right to your feet, purified, for free. (Unless you live in the Atacama Desert, which hardly anybody does.) And again, many of us complain when it rains. Especially at the beach.

Granted, I pay a water bill, but I’m not really paying for the water; I’m paying for someone to clean it up and bring it to my house. But the water—it’s free.

What’s next? Food. Grows right out of the ground, from plants that are already there. Free. Again, I pay for my food, but only because I don’t feel like growing it myself. So I pay somebody else to grow and harvest and deliver it; and sometimes I go out to a restaurant and pay somebody else to cook it and bring it to my table. But the food? The food’s free.

And then there’s light, and heat, and all the other physical necessities. All free.

God has been remarkably good to us.

We’ll finish this thought—and the rest of the sermon—in the next post.

Baccalaureate, Part 1

May 19, 2025 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

The evening before I retired, I was privileged to be asked to deliver BJU’s Baccalaureate Sermon. I’ll publish the text here, in several parts.

__________

Theological students like to debate the complexities of theology: election and human will; theories and extent of the atonement; Trinity issues; the hypostatic union; the problem of evil.

These are consequential matters, and they should be debated. Such discussions and explorations are an important part of preparing the Christian student for whatever his divine calling may be.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found my appreciation increasing for the simple things, the basic things—the central things.

And it has occurred to me that these central things are perhaps best summed up in the simple child’s prayer:

God is great;
God is good;
Let us thank him.

The Apostle Paul began his magisterial epistle to the Romans by observing,

The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead; so that they are without excuse (Ro 1.20).

As you graduating students learned in your Bible Doctrines class, this concept is what theologians call “general revelation.” It’s most famously expressed in the opening to Psalm 19:

1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament sheweth his handywork.
2 Day unto day uttereth speech,
And night unto night sheweth knowledge.
3 There is no speech nor language,
Where their voice is not heard.
4 Their line is gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.
In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
5 Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
And rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
6 His going forth is from the end of the heaven,
And his circuit unto the ends of it:
And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

This is the concept that Paul used on Mars Hill, in presenting to the Athenians the basic things—the central things.

I’d like to attempt that here this evening.

God Is Great

Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, [that] the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? [there is] no searching of his understanding (Isaiah 40:28).

Evidences of God’s limitless greatness lie all around us in His creation.

The fastest any human has ever traveled is 25,000 mph (Apollo 10’s return from the moon, being accelerated by the earth’s gravity). Now suppose we start at the surface of the sun—some of you are thinking, we shouldn’t do that; it’s way too hot. Well, I’ve solved that problem; we’ll go at night :-)—and we head out toward the planets at that fastest-ever speed. How long will our journey take us?

Mercury: 60 days
Venus: 56 (more) days
Earth: 39 days
Mars: 78 days
Jupiter (assuming we safely navigate the asteroid belt): 567 days
Saturn: 700 days
Uranus: 1500 days
Neptune: 1650 days

We’ve been traveling for a total of 12 years and 9 months, and we’ve just reached the edge of the solar system.

Now, to Boomers like me, we don’t believe that, because we still think Pluto is the outermost planet, because our first-grade teacher, Mrs. Devlin, wouldn’t have lied to us about that.

But at any rate, we find that now we’re headed toward the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, visible from the Southern Hemisphere, just to the left of the Southern Cross. That’ll take us 155,333 years.

Once we get there, we find that we’re on one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy, pretty far out toward the edge. So we head for the nearest edge of the galaxy.

670 million years.

And we find that there are other galaxies. The closest, Andromeda, will take us 53 billion more years.

I hope you brought a book to read.

The astronomers tell us that there are clusters of galaxies out there. I have no idea how they know that, but we’ll take them at their word. Let’s head for the nearest edge of our galaxy cluster.

2.67 trillion years.

How about the edge of the observed universe?

131 trillion years.

After a while these numbers just become meaningless, don’t they? Fee, fi, fo-fillion, trillion.

And it’s not over; I suspect that when we reach the “edge” of the observed universe, we’ll just see more universe. How much farther? No one knows.

Now, these numbers are actually unrealistically low, for a couple of reasons:

They assume that the planets are all lined up perfectly on one side of the sun, which has never happened and is never likely to happen.
They also ignore a basic tactic of interplanetary travel, which involves the physics of sling-shotting the spacecraft around the heavenly bodies so you don’t have to keep the rocket engines firing constantly. In our example, you couldn’t possibly carry enough fuel to make the journey even to the nearest planet.

But the numbers speak for themselves.

God is great.

Now, I’ve said all that to say this.

Do you know how the Bible recounts God’s creation of what we’ve just described?

Genesis 1.16—“He made the stars also.” Five English words; two in Hebrew.

That’s just a side remark, almost a throwaway line: “Oh, yeah, he did that too.”

God is indeed great.

To be continued.

On Silence During Chaos, Part 5: Peace 2

May 12, 2025 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: Personal | Part 2: Political | Part 3: Panic | Part 4: Peace 1

My first biblical theological reason for general reticence about political fights, as I noted in the previous post, is my conviction that God is in charge, and that his good will is being done, despite the pervasive presence of bad actors on the field of battle. That is a powerful incentive to overall peace, to “freak out thou not.” Spending your time in a constant state of rage, frustration, or fear is bad for your mental health and bad for your physical health as well.

My second reason of this sort is a matter of prioritization. God has given us believers a primary mission during our brief time on this earth: the so-called Great Commission, to take the good news about salvation by grace through faith in Christ to the ends of the earth (Mt 28.19-20). That’s more important than everything else.

Now, of course he has given us other commands as well, including stewardship of the earth and its resources and systems, and political stewardship is an important part of that. In God’s providence, in this age we have democratic tools available that those in ancient empires could never have imagined, and we should use those tools as best we can.

I’ve given reasons earlier in this series why I don’t think ranting in social media posts is an effective use of those tools. Here I’d like to add a couple of theologically based insights.

First, I’d like to extend my earlier thought about panic. When I was boy, both my parents were employed at the home office of what was probably the most well-known right-wing political activist organization of that time. I often heard staff there speak derisively of those who said that we should “just preach the gospel”; they would respond, “Well, if the Communists take over, you won’t be allowed to preach the gospel, and what will you do then?! We need to take care of the Commies first!”

I note two things:

It’s God, not this or that activist organization, who raises up earthly powers and sets them down again. The USSR folded in its time through a series of events that no human agent manipulated into happening, or could have.

And when, after Nixon, China finally became more open to Western “outsiders” visiting, early evangelists in those days were astounded to find, against all their expectations, that there were more Christians in China than in the USA. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese grandmothers kept the gospel story alive despite everything Mao could do to prevent that. To put it bluntly, “the Commies” literally didn’t know who they were dealing with. And in a more contemporary context, neither do the MAGA hyperfans or their most “woke” opponents.

My second insight is that prioritizing panicked political warfare over the Great Commission doesn’t just ignore this divine command, but it actually impedes it.

Why do I say that? Again two observations:

What does the non-believer think when he sees those who profess to follow an omniscient, omnipotent God freak out over this or that political appointee? How pitifully weak and inattentive must their “God” be? They resemble more the prophets of Baal, whose god Elijah says must be distracted, off going to the bathroom instead of hearing their prayers (1K 18.27), than they resemble the first generation of apostles, who told the Powers That Be in their day, “We’ll focus on preaching Jesus no matter what you do to us” (Ac 4.18-20). God’s people should act as though they trust him.

What does the non-believer think when professing Christians set themselves up as the political enemies of the very people that God has commanded them to reach with the gospel? Today there’s a multitude that no man can number of self-proclaimed believers who have burned every bridge available to them to be heard by any unbeliever. They have sacrificed the permanent on the altar of the immediate. Who knows how many “political opponents” they have stiffened in their unbelief?

So. For a good number of reasons, I’m disciplining my mouth, in utter contradiction to my natural tendencies, and deciding not to pour gasoline on the flames of current political controversy. You may agree or not, of course.

But one day, we all—every one of us—will give account to the judge of all the earth. And, as I understand the Scripture, we all will be manifest—transparent—before him (2Co 5.10).

Every idle word (Mt 12.36).

Photo by Jonathan Harrison on Unsplash

On Silence During Chaos, Part 4: Peace 1

May 8, 2025 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: Personal | Part 2: Political | Part 3: Panic

I can’t discuss any life application—indeed, any topic at all—without basing my thinking on Scripture. I’ve studied the Scripture professionally all my adult life, and I am more convinced than ever that that was a good choice, informed even in my many ignorant times by the kind providence of God. I’ve written about my reasons for seeing the Scripture as more than an ancient book written by well-meaning but primitive people that has received outsized attention throughout cultural history, so I won’t repeat them here; but they inform all my thinking.

I have a couple of bases in biblical theology for the reticence I’ve been advocating. Maybe two posts can cover them.

The first theological basis is far broader than just politics or social upheaval; it covers literally everything in this world, and everywhere else, throughout all time and forever.

God is in charge.

I have social media connections, whom I care for, who disagree profoundly with that statement. But I’ve never seen them refute it.

Oh, they’ll complain about it—“If there’s a God, why did he …”—but logically that’s not a refutation; it’s just an assertion that they disagree with him.

I’m a lot older than most of them are, and with time I’ve come to recognize the foolish arrogance of a “lifted from the no of all nothing, human merely being” thinking that his disagreement with the Creator of heaven and earth, the covenant-keeping God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, “Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth, who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin, yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations” (Ex 34.6-7)—whew—is in some way the basis for argument, application, or wisdom in life.

God is in charge.

Applying that principle to the current topic is fairly straightforward.

First, history makes sense; it’s not a random sequence of events, but the outworking of a plan that leads to a sensible, rational conclusion—and that plan is from the mind of a great and good God.

Now, that fact raises all kinds of questions. Why does God include in his plan things that make people miserable, that harm them in significant ways? I don’t know the answer to that, and neither does anybody else. But I do know God, and I have decades of experience, in both the lab and the field, that he is in fact great and good. And I expect that a great God, who is by definition infinite, will occasionally (!) go beyond the horizon of my understanding. When he does that, I trust him.

I’ve never been disappointed.

It should be said, of course, that we should do what we can to ease suffering. We ought to feed the hungry; we ought to clothe the needy; we ought to shelter the homeless. There are many ways to do that, including any number of organizations that have been doing those things long enough to have some expertise in the field, and whom we ought to support.

(I’ll note as an aside that human nature these days is to assume that the government should be that default organization—and it’s precisely that kind of thinking that has gotten us into the unsustainable economic crisis we’re in now. The current administration claims to have cut $150 billion in spending—whether they actually have or not, I don’t know—but the naked truth is that the spending cuts are going to have to be an order of magnitude larger than that if the nation is going to be on a sustainable footing.)

So. There is a God in heaven, who raises up kings and sets them down again, and who is so much greater than evil that he uses the greatest evil in all the world to accomplish his good plans (see “Crucifixion”). He knows infinitely better than I do, and I trust him.

There’s a second theological basis for my reticence. More on that next time.

Part 5: Peace 2

Photo by Jonathan Harrison on Unsplash

On Silence During Chaos, Part 1: Personal

April 28, 2025 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

We live in a noisy time. The combination of national polarization, political controversy, and social media—the fact that literally everyone has a public platform now—encourages everyone to have a stake, an opinion, and to express it vociferously, even apocalyptically.

I don’t say much about politics, at least not publicly. I’ve been asked, by people on both sides of the proverbial aisle, why I don’t say more—why I don’t “take a stand” for MAGA, or against it, or on some other hot-button issue.

What am I afraid of? Rejection? Losing my job? (That’s funny, since I’m retiring in 2 weeks. But just for the record, I’ve never been afraid of losing my job. I have confronted people up the chain of command—all the way to the top—when I thought that was called for, and I still have my job. :-) )

So why don’t I speak up more? That’s a good question, and the answer is multi-faceted, touching on personal history, political philosophy, and theology. I think it would be worthwhile, as an exercise in integrating these and other disciplines, to work through an answer.

That means that I’m going to be talking about myself for a few posts. I don’t normally do that, either; I’d much rather lay the Word out there and trust the Holy Spirit’s work in believers, and unbelievers, to make it profitable, even in ways I’m not necessarily intending.

But for better or worse, here goes.

First, personal history.

All my life I’ve had a problem with my mouth. My late parents and my older sisters could bear abundant testimony to that, as could any number of teachers, fellow students, former students, and colleagues. I haven’t typically been driven by malice; usually it’s just an attempt to be funny. But I have had enough of shooting off my mouth and then seeing the hurt on the face of someone I cared about. And I see my friends, on the left and on the right, posting hurtful things, often with actual malice aforethought, and I just don’t want any part of it.

Grace. Mercy. Peace. That’s what I’d like my words to sow.

Shortly after our two daughters were born, I decided to get certified as an EMT, so I’d know what to do in an emergency. A key part of that training was the importance of surveying the scene: you don’t just rush into a situation (hurry! lives are at stake!!!!) without taking some time to see whether there’s ongoing danger, and if so, where it is. If you don’t do that, you’ll likely become just another person who needs medical attention, another person some other responder is going to have to expend the effort to rescue. Just jumping into an emergency situation isn’t helping anybody.

A few years later I got certified as a security guard by the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) so that I would be more reliable as a concealed carrier of a firearm. With that certification I was then approved to carry on school and church property. (South Carolina doesn’t allow carrying there without board approval.) Again, a key part of that training is the importance of staying calm in a chaotic situation; if there’s a shooter in a church sanctuary, and everybody’s running in all directions, and there’s loud noise and the smell of gunpowder in the air, you don’t want to be firing wildly in random directions; you want to observe, determine the threat, determine whether you’re in a position to neutralize the threat (from your angle, is there an innocent person in the line of fire? even beyond the target?), and only then take action. You’re responsible for the final location of every bullet that leaves your weapon, and everything it touches along the way.

We’re responsible, too, for every word we speak. Words can do great damage, often even greater damage than bullets can. We will give account to the one who knows all things (Mt 12.36): Jesus himself said that.

In the current culture, everyone’s encouraged to shoot his mouth off in public forums. Here’s the outrage of the day; what side do you have to be on, based on your vote in the last election? Well, then, assume that position; shoot first, ask questions later. Could the situation be more complicated than it appears at first glance? Who cares? Fire away!

I see that kind of behavior every day—and yes, on both sides.*

I’m not gonna have it.

Next time, we’ll begin looking at the socio-political environment.

* And no, I’m not engaging in “both-sidesism.” That’s saying, “The other side does this bad thing, so my side can do it too.” That’s not what I’m saying; I’m rejecting them both and refusing to do the bad thing.

Part 2: Political | Part 3: Panic | Part 4: Peace 1 | Part 5: Peace 2

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In the Image of God, Part 3: One Last Thought

February 13, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: What It Means | Part 2: So What?

One last thought.

Christ perfectly images God. 

In whom [i.e. the lost] the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them (2Co 4.4).

[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation (Co 1.15).

[Christ] being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high (He 1.3).

Those who have seen him, he said, have seen the Father (Jn 14.9).

And God is making us like Him. We are being sanctified into that image.

²⁸And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. ²⁹For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren (Ro 8.28-29).

We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord (2Co 3.18).

And He will certainly take us all the way there; we will one day be glorified into that image. 

As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly (1Co 15.49).

[Christ] shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself (Php 3.21).

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is (1J 3.2).

As surely as the sun came up this morning, God will finish His work in us. He will conform us to the perfect image of His Son. In this life you will never image God as you should; you will never image Him as He deserves to be displayed. But your Savior, the God-Man, has always imaged Him perfectly and completely, and because of His work for you and in you, the day will come—will certainly come—when you image Him in a way that you can’t today. 

And in that day, with a numberless throng of people who don’t look like you, but with whom all of you radiate the image and glory and mercy and grace of God, you will sing His praise: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” 

Take His hand, and follow Him through the trials and the challenges by which He is sanctifying you. 

He promises you that you will love where He’s taking you. 

Image God today. You’ll be better at it tomorrow. And every tomorrow after that. 

Photo by Ilia Zolas on Unsplash

In the Image of God, Part 2: So What?

February 10, 2025 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: What It Means

We’ve thought about the fact that humans—all of us—are in the image of God, and what that means. We turn now to what difference it makes in how we live on a Monday in February.

For starters, we’re not animals. We’re not just a fortunate combination of mutations that allows us to survive, even prosper, in the place where we find ourselves. God created us by direct action, and in a way distinct from the way he created all the living organisms that preceded us. We are fundamentally different from amoebas, and slugs, and snakes, and trout, and robins, and even chimpanzees. 

You are not an animal. You are not controlled by your impulses. You don’t have to do everything that occurs to you. You can make choices. You can rise above the evil that screams in your ear. You can be a man. You can be a woman. You do not have to be a victim. 

Yes, you’re a sinner, and there are some things—many things—you can’t do without divine enablement. But you are not a brute beast. 

Further, we’re worth something. Humans—all of us—are valuable. Those of us who are “process people” rather than “people people” need to remember that as we wend our way down crowded hallways or sidewalks. Those bodies around us are not simply obstacles to be navigated around as efficiently as possible; they are eternal beings with stories and histories and loves and struggles and cares. They are worth infinitely more than whatever has us in such a hurry to Get Somewhere.

And all of them are valuable in that way. People who are not like you. People who look different. People who act differently. People who think differently. People you know, and people you don’t. People who take the name of God in vain. People who are arrogant. People who voted for Trump, and people who voted for Harris, and people who voted for somebody who didn’t have a chance, and people who didn’t vote at all.

People who have no money. People who have no home. People who live under an overpass. People who smell bad. People who have disabilities. People who are dying of AIDS. Muslim refugees. And Muslim terrorists. People who make you really, really uncomfortable. And yes, people who are still in the womb, and can’t speak for themselves.

All of them are in the image of God, and all of them are worth infinitely more than all the bank accounts of all the rich people in all the world. 

All humans are valuable.

One more thing.

Everything you love about the people you love should move you to praise and worship God, who is the perfect originator of all of it. 

You are surrounded, right now, with thousands of reasons to worship. 

All day, every day, you should be driven to your knees at the glory of this magnificent Creator. 

And you know what? If we were to live that way, the sin that so easily besets us would not seem so appealing. We’d be living for something worth far more than the shiny little trinkets that distract us. We’d start to see victory instead of regular, frustrating defeat. 

Next time, one last thought.

Photo by Ilia Zolas on Unsplash

In the Image of God, Part 1: What It Means

February 6, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

In my previous post I mentioned that God’s Spirit is working in us to conform us, eventually perfectly, to the image of the Son. I’d like to follow that up by thinking more deeply about our standing as in the image of God.

It’s the first thing God tells us about ourselves. After He tells how He made everything else, He describes the last act of the Creation Week: 

²⁶And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. ²⁷So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen 1.26-27). 

You and I are made in the image of God. What does that mean? And what difference does it make?

What is the image of God? Interestingly, the Bible never tells us directly what it is. But there are some clues:

It distinguishes the human from the animals, who immediately precede man in the creation narrative.

It characterizes both male and female (Ge 1.27).

It’s something like the way a son resembles his father (Ge 5.1-3).

 Over the centuries there have been a lot of suggestions. I’ve gone into more details about this in a previous series, but let me summarize the views here:

It’s something we do: Dominion (Ge 1.28)

It’s something we are:

Morality (Ep 4.24)

Relationship (male & female; social health)

Sonship (Lk 3.38; Ge 5.3-5)

It’s something we have:

Creativity (Ge 1.1)

Immortality

Or maybe it’s all of the above. 

You were created to radiate the love and mercy and grace of God. 

 Now, we need to note a critical point:

We’re not the way God made us.

We’re not the same as the Adam that God created. Something significant has happened to us. Adam chose to sin, and now we’re busted. 

The image in us has been marred. But it has not been destroyed.

After the Flood God told Noah,

Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man (Ge 9.6).

Here we’re told that the murder victim, though fallen like everyone else at this time in history, is in the image of God.

Further, James writes,

Therewith [with the tongue] bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God (Jam 3.9). 

 The word similitude here is the word Genesis uses for “likeness.” And it’s spoken of a time when there’s cursing going on—so it’s after the fall.

So we sinners are still in the image and likeness of God.

Toward the beginning of this post I asked two questions: what does it mean that we’re in the image of God? and what difference does it make?

Next time, we’ll get to the second question.

Photo by Ilia Zolas on Unsplash

On Sound Speech, Part 8: Closing Thoughts

February 3, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Well, we’ve covered some ground here. The Bible has a lot to say about sound speech. We have a lot of things to consider before we go shooting our mouths off.

Recall that we began this series by reviewing, briefly, how God speaks, under the assumption that as in other things, we ought to pattern our behavior, as much as possible, after his.

God is slow to wrath; we should be too.

God cannot lie; we should speak the truth.

God is love; we should speak that truth in love.

God has spoken in his Word; we should speak as though imbued with it.

God speaks as one way of his caring for us; we should speak thankfully.

God blesses; we should bless.

God is gentle; we should speak gently.

God speaks in ways that reflect who he is at heart; we should as well. And unlike God, we should conform our hearts to the right, something he has never needed to do.

Let’s cap this series with one more passage:

⁷In all things shewing thyself a pattern of good works: in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, ⁸Sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you (Ti 2.7-8).

I’d suggest that we’re more likely to damage our reputation by our words than by our actions. Of course, we’re susceptible to doing bad things reactively, without much thought, in the heat of the moment; but words—the words come so easily. Good behavior is a laudable goal; but sound speech is the ultimate testimony to a godly heart.

It could go without saying—but it won’t—that we can’t reach this goal without supernatural empowerment. The Spirit of God, indwelling us, works in us day by day, moment by moment, bit by bit, to conform us to the image of God the Son (2Co 3.18). And one day, no matter how far short of perfection we fall, God will bring us to completion, to perfect conformity to Christ:

We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is (1J 3.2).

But sanctification is a synergistic process; God works, but so do we, in cooperation with him. Let’s not just sit back and wait to be whanged in the head with glorification, as if by a faith healer on TV. Let’s take part in the process, seeking aggressively and thoughtfully to follow the biblical injunctions.

What would your world be like if your friends and acquaintances always spoke to you like that? 

What would your world be like if you always spoke to your friends and acquaintances like that? 

Can you imagine the growth? The spiritual strength? The peace? The joy? 

Can you imagine a world where we can speak kindly, yet with conviction, to people with whom we disagree? Where we can come to understandings, even agreements, instead of canceling people, one after another, for as long as time endures? 

Can you imagine? 

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay