Theology – Page 18

Even Though, Part 4: Responding with Praise

October 24, 2022 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

Part 1: Getting Started | Part 2: Personal Transcendence | Part 3: Transcendence in Action

Ethan the Ezrahite has outlined the ways that God’s revelation of himself in creation has proclaimed both his personal characteristics and his powerful works. As he meditates on these things, he sees only one appropriate response, and he calls us to it.

That response is praise.

The psalmist writes,

¹⁵Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O LORD, in the light of thy countenance. ¹⁶In thy name shall they rejoice all the day: and in thy righteousness shall they be exalted. ¹⁷For thou art the glory of their strength: and in thy favour our horn shall be exalted. ¹⁸For the LORD is our defence; and the Holy One of Israel is our king (Ps 89.15-18).

God’s people, those created in his image and protected by his mighty arm, those who see his power projected over all creation, his ability to protect and defend them in any way needed, those people respond instinctively, exuberantly, with praise, with a “joyful sound” (KJV NASB), with a “festal shout” (ESV). The psalmist speaks implicitly of the celebration at Israel’s great feasts—

Passover, which celebrates Israel’s deliverance from Egypt;
Pentecost, which celebrates the early summer harvest;
Tabernacles, which celebrates God’s provision for the Israelites during the wilderness wanderings, and which, because of its seasonal timing, became a celebration of the year’s final harvest, a kind of Israelite Thanksgiving.

Of particular interest is the Feast of Trumpets, which began with a blast on the ram’s horns (Lev 23.23-25).

God’s people would respond to his goodness, his power, his provision, his appointed times of rest and celebration, with a joyful sound, a festal shout, as they walked in the light of his face turned toward them in grace.

They rejoice in his name (Ps 89.16)—in names that tell

of his might as a soldier defending them (El Gibbor and El Shaddai, the Mighty God);
of his exaltation above all their enemies (El Elyon, the Most High God);
of his everlasting life and presence (El Olam, the Everlasting God);
and most especially of his personal, living covenant relationship with his beloved people (Yahweh, “I Am”).

And they are exalted by his righteousness, which he graciously imparts to them through the sacrificial intervention of a substitute (Ex 12.27). Their strength—in battles, in difficulties, in daily life—are based in his strength (Ps 89.17), given freely to them.

Because he is gracious, generous, and good to them, they can be strong in battle, both offensively (KJV “our horn shall be exalted,” Ps 89.17) and defensively (NASB ESV NIV “our shield belongs to the LORD,” Ps 89.18). Their king, who leads them into battle, belongs to the Holy (unique, unparalleled) One of Israel (Ps 89.18b NASB ESV CSB NIV).

What other response to such a God can be imagined? What praise can possibly meet the appropriate standard for such unmeasured grace?

As a species we are too slow to recognize grace, too quick to embrace dissatisfaction or injustice—real or imagined—and too shallow and begrudging in our offering of thanksgiving. The old gospel song urges us to “count [our] blessings, name them one by one,” but we often cast aside that census as easily as we have cast aside the song.

Many years ago, when I was in college, someone encouraged me to devote a session of prayer just to thanksgiving, without asking for anything. I went down to a prayer room that the university provided in my dorm, got down on my knees and began to recall and recount the many ways God had been good to me. I kept thinking of more things, and more things, and when I wrapped up the session, I was astonished to see that I’d been at it for an hour. I don’t think I’d ever prayed for an hour before.

That experience made an impression on me—not least because I kept thinking of things I’d left out.

To this day I keep a list of God’s graces in my life—physical, circumstantial, providential, spiritual—and I recall a few of them every day during my prayer time. My life hasn’t been a bed of roses by any means—though a lot of my friends are facing deeper waters than I ever have—but I’ve found that a daily routine of gratitude makes a huge difference in my attitude, my joy, my approach to the day’s challenges, and, as many are talking about these days, my mental health.

Know the joyful sound. Walk in the light of his countenance.

Shalom.

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

Even Though, Part 3: Transcendence in Action

October 20, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Getting Started | Part 2: Personal Transcendence

The psalmist has shown in verses 5-8 that God is transcendent in his person and attributes; now he pivots to consider God’s works.

⁹Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them. ¹⁰Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm. ¹¹The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them. ¹²The north and the south thou hast created them: Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name. ¹³Thou hast a mighty arm: strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand. ¹⁴Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face (Ps 89.9-14).

God is powerful enough to rule over the sea (Ps 89.9). This is no paean to some Israelite version of Neptune with his trident; the psalmist will show shortly that God is not just a “sea god.” So why does he start with the sea?

To someone in the ancient world, nothing on earth was stronger than the sea; it does as it wishes, whether in a few inches of tidal shift or in a 30-foot wave crashing over a hapless boat. Israel is a coastal nation, and all who have seen the sea have been awed by its immenseness and its power.

And Yahweh, God of Hosts (Ps 89.8), rules over it.

It’s hard to know where Ethan the Ezrahite conceived the idea of God’s stilling the raging sea. We think of Jesus on the Sea of Galilee, of course, or of Jonah being protected from the raging storm by a great fish. But neither of those events had occurred by Ethan’s time. He did know, however, about God’s use of the Red Sea to crush the armies of Egypt (cf Is 51.9-10).

He then speaks of “[breaking] Rahab in pieces” (Ps 89.10). This is puzzling to Bible readers who think only of the Jerichoan prostitute (Jos 2.1) when they hear the name. This is actually a completely different name; in Hebrew this name is Rahab, while the prostitute’s name is Rachab. This Rahab was a mythical sea monster, often spoken of among Canaanite peoples (Job 9.13, 26.12; Is 51.9 [note the use of the name here in connection with the Red Sea account]). The psalmist’s mention of it need not be taken as a sign that he believed it was real, though he may have. (Biblical authors almost certainly were wrong about various things—as all humans are—but the Spirit prevented them from saying anything untrue in their canonical writings [2P 1.21].) His point, clearly, is that God is greater than the most fearsome creatures imaginable—even those whose rampages might make the raging sea even more violent.

And now he moves beyond even the immensity of the sea to the exponentially vaster earth, and even the heavens—and I’m reasonably sure that this Israelite psalmist had no idea how really vast the heavens are, since light years hadn’t been invented yet.

He mentions one of the most impressive structures on earth, the mountains—specifically Hermon and Tabor. Hermon is the largest mountain in the region—tall enough to be snow-capped—and Tabor is a major landmark within the tribal allotments of Israel, rising over the plain of Jezreel. Living where he does, Ethan has chosen the most impressive topographical features he knows.

And God rules over them. In fact, he created them, brought them into being (Ps 89.11). A creator can do what he wishes with the products of his hands. The sea, the earth, the sky—it’s all his product and his servant.

Someone with this kind of power could be terrifying—a Godzilla, rampaging through the cities and destroying all in his path (Ps 89.13). But the psalmist reminds us that the Creator and Lord of all these powerful forces is not like that. He’s righteous and just, a reliable maintainer rather than a blind destroyer (Ps 89.14). Preceding him in his path through his creation are lovingkindess (hesed) and truth (emeth, a sister word to emunah). His enemies should be afraid of him, but we his people need not fear.

How do we respond to such a God? Our psalmist friend will get to that next.

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Even Though, Part 2: Personal Transcendence

October 17, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Getting Started

The writer continues Psalm 89 with a hymn, listing reasons to praise God. The hymn is extensive; it runs 33 verses—which implies that we should expect a lot of reasons.

He begins, as many Palms do, with what the theologians call “general revelation,” so called because, unlike “special revelation” (the Scripture), it is given to all people. It’s as plain as the sun during the day, the stars at night, the air you breathe, and yes, the nose on your face.

The most obvious element of general revelation is God’s transcendence, his status as above and beyond his creatures. Most people have experienced that revelation when they have looked at the star-filled sky on a clear night and sensed something bigger, greater than they are—and perhaps they’ve even thought, “Whoever is out there, I want to know you.”

General revelation will do that.

The psalmist expresses this transcendence by asking, “Who in the heaven can be compared unto the LORD? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the LORD?” (Ps 89.6). The question is of course rhetorical; the expected answer is “no one.” No one can be compared to him; he is unlike all his creatures.

The biblical name for that incomparability is holiness. It is God’s foundational attribute, for in all his other attributes he is incomparable to anyone or anything else.

The structure of vv 6-7 is chiastic, or X-shaped. Verse 6, the question, addresses first the heavenly beings and then humans (“sons of the mighty”), while verse 7, the response, works its way back out in reverse order by concluding that “God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints,” and then “to be had in reverence [by] all them that are about him” (Ps 89.6-7). This structure reinforces the strength of the comparison and gives it a sense of roundness or completeness: the end addresses all the elements raised in the beginning.

The psalmist lists two specific attributes of God that set him apart as incomparable. First, he is faithful (Ps 89.5, 8). He has mentioned this attribute in the Psalm’s opening (Ps 89.1, 2), alongside hesed, which we noted in the previous post. The Hebrew word for “faithfulness” is emunah, which is where we get our word “Amen”; when we say the word, we’re saying, “May it be so!” or “That’s right! That’s true!”

God is like that. He keeps all his promises; he does not change; he is not frustrated by circumstances or other external forces. He is faithful.

The second attribute that the Psalmist specifies is might: “Who is a strong LORD like unto thee?” (Ps 89.8). This is the word for the kind of strength that impresses onlookers, that provokes awe. God never meets his match; his purpose is never delayed or diverted. If God is long in keeping his promises, it is because his purposes are best served by the length of time. There is no force that can affect his will or his accomplishment.

These verses call to mind Isaiah’s famous vision of the heavenly court (Is 6.1-4).God is “high and lifted up,” surrounded by flaming seraphs, with the doorposts shaking at their cries and the room “filled with smoke.”

The Psalmist specifies our appropriate response to these attributes of personal transcendence: we his saints (“holy ones,” because he is holy) should fear him, and those heavenly beings in Isaiah’s vision should hold him in reverence (Ps 89.7)—which, Isaiah shows us, they do.

I know that the “fear of the LORD” is not properly viewed as terror or dread; pretty much every Bible teacher makes that point when he’s defining the term. But you know, if we were to see the scene that Isaiah saw, we’d be scared. We’d know that we were in the presence of someone far greater than we are. I would hope that in that moment I would remember that this great God is my loving Father, but still, my eyes would be wide, my breath would be fast, and my pulse would be racing. I would fear him, and not just in a theoretical way.

The Psalmist starts here, because a vision of this great and incomparable God will profoundly affect the way we think about all the crises we face and all the evil we see.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Psalmist has more points to make first.

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Even Though, Part 1: Getting Started

October 13, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

What do you do when you see evidence around you that God is not who or what he says he is?

This is not a hypothetical question. There is much not to like about the world we live in—and I’m a happier, more optimistic guy than a lot of people I interact with. Plenty of people are having a really rough time. If you talk to people who say they used to believe in God but don’t anymore, many of them will say that the reason they don’t believe is that they don’t see how a great and good God would allow the hurtful things they see all around them. And a disturbing percentage of them would say that those hurtful things came to them from churches or individual Christians.

So what do you do?

I’ve found that the Bible, though it doesn’t give pat, easy answers, does handle hard questions well, if you read it accurately and thoughtfully. As I sometimes say to a person asking me about this problem, “It’s a big-boy question, and it calls for a big-boy answer; if you want a 2-minute answer, you’re going to be disappointed. You’re going to need to read some books.”

And the first book, of course, is the Bible. Accurately and thoughtfully, as I’ve said.

One of several good places to start in the Bible is Psalm 89. I’d like to take a few posts to consider what it says.

__________

Like many Psalms, this one has a superscription. There’s a debate about the value of those; traditionally scholars have viewed them as later editorial additions to the Psalms, but there’s been discussion recently that suggests they might be part of the inspired text.

Whether they are or not, there’s certainly no harm in learning what we can from them.

This superscription says that the Psalm is a “Maskil,” or teaching Psalm. It’s intended to be didactic, to improve our understanding of its topic.

Well, we could all use some of that.

It says further that it’s by “Ethan the Ezrahite.” Some commentators say that the term should be “Zerahite,” which would make this Ethan the same as the one named in the long genealogy in 1 Chronicles (1Ch 2.6, 8). Maybe, maybe not. We know there was a Temple musician named Ethan (1Ch 15.17, 19), but he doesn’t appear to have any ancestors named Ezra—if that’s what “Ezrahite” means.

This Ethan does appear in 1 Kings 4.31, alongside a Heman, whose name also appears as a Temple musician in the Chronicles passage. The point of this verse is that Solomon was wiser than either of them—so apparently they were considered eminently wise in their day. (By the way, this verse doesn’t mean that Solomon must have lived after Ethan; since Kings was probably written during the Babylonian Exile, its author could have compared Solomon with those who came after him.)

All this may be a bit off in the weeds, but I love this stuff. And it’s my blog. :-)

The first stanza of the Psalm serves as an introduction that sets the tone for all that follows. It opens with words familiar and nostalgic to those of a certain age; those of us who were in evangelical youth groups 50 or so years ago often sang a chorus based on the KJV of verse 1. (You know who you are; you have the tune in your head right now.)

The Psalmist declares his intent to praise God, and specifically to focus on his “mercies” (KJV; “lovingkindness” NASB; “steadfast love” ESV; “faithful love” CSB; “great love” NIV). This is the rich and complex Hebrew word hesed, which I’ve written on before. It’s a commitment to a loving relationship, no matter what.

God is faithful to his people—and to those who are not his people, although no one, in or out of the relationship, is faithful to him.

That’s worth praising.

Next time we’ll dig a little deeper.

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The Myth of the Super Christian, Part 6: Pray. Hard.

October 10, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: No Such Thing | Part 2: Eternal Values | Part 3: Healthy Distrust of Self | Part 4: A Clear and Uncontested Goal | Part 5: All In. Every Day.

There’s one more element in Paul’s description of his spiritual walk that tells us volumes about his success as a believer.

In the last letter he wrote that’s been preserved, Paul is in prison in Rome. This is the second time for him. Last time, he was upbeat about his prospects—

In his letter to Philemon, likely written early in that 2-year imprisonment, he expects to prevail in his appeal to Caesar (Ac 25.10-11) and thus to be released; he tells Philemon to prepare him a place to stay when he comes to visit (Phm 1.22).
When he writes to the Philippians, likely toward the end of the imprisonment, he still expects to visit the church there in Philippi (Php 1.25; 2.24).

But this time is different. Rather than being under house arrest in rented, and relatively comfortable, residential quarters (Ac 28.30), Paul is now in a prison—traditionally the Mamartine prison, a dungeon—and is clearly not expecting to be released (2Ti 4.6-8). He is largely alone (2Ti 4.9-11) and in need of supplies (2Ti 4.13). He is settling his affairs (2Ti 4.14-15).

But he is not discouraged or depressed. He expects the Lord’s work on his behalf (2Ti 4.18) and eventual eternal reward, in the Lord’s timing (2Ti 4.8).

Victorious to the end, regardless of the challenging circumstances.

And in this context, in this epistle, in these circumstances, we find one more clue.

I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day (2Ti 1.3).

He prays.

He communes with his Father, drawing spiritual strength to thrive in all those challenging circumstances, ones that would very likely do us in.

He’s really serious about this; he prays “without ceasing … night and day.”

I’d have trouble with that—especially the night part. In those times, I fall asleep.

I’m not the only one—right?

And I note something further here, something that sheds more light on his outlook.

He doesn’t speak of praying for himself; he asks others to do that (Co 4.3; 1Th 5.25; 2Th 3.1). He prays for others, for Timothy, his “dearly beloved son” in the faith (2Ti 1.2). Even in extremity, his thoughts, his concerns, are for others.

He follows his Lord’s example in this. Jesus prayed for long sessions (Mt 14.23), sometimes all night (Lk 6.12); and in his greatest extremity, he prayed for others, for those who believed in him (Jn 17.6-26).

This kind of prayer is hard work, both because it is lengthy and because it is on behalf of others. Paul describes such prayer—in this case the prayer offered by his coworker Epaphras—as “labor”—

Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God (Co 4.12).

The Greek word rendered “laboring” here is agonizomai, which we all recognize as the etymological origin of our word agonize. It’s used of athletes in competition, on Game Day, who are leaving it all on the field (1Co 9.25). Specifically it’s used of boxers (1Ti 6.12, 2Ti 4.7). And more significantly, it’s used of soldiers (Jn 18.36), who are fighting for their lives.

We’re not often called up to fight like that. And we don’t often pray like that.

Paul prayed “without ceasing … night and day.”

This was not formal prayer, grace before dinner, after which someone at the table asks, “Did we pray?” It’s constant, mindful, effortful communication with God.

The Christian life is not easy for anyone; there are no “naturally gifted athletes” in the Christian race. It means rejecting your natural self and renewing the battle every day. It means staying in constant communication with “headquarters.” It’s a tough battle.

There are no Super Christians. There are just people who fight the battle every day.

Re-enlist.

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The Myth of the Super Christian, Part 5: All In. Every Day.

October 6, 2022 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: No Such Thing | Part 2: Eternal Values | Part 3: Healthy Distrust of Self | Part 4: A Clear and Uncontested Goal

There’s another element in Paul’s spiritual life that we non-super Christians should seek to emulate.

Paul was into his relationship with Christ for the long haul, and he knew that reaching the end of that road meant staying on it every day, every mile.

He was all in.

That shouldn’t surprise us. Jesus made it clear that following him is no casual commitment. After he had fed the 5000 men and their families—something that brought out of the woodwork a whole lot of uncommitted hangers-on (Jn 6.22-66)—Jesus warned his disciples that hard times were coming, including official rejection and even execution (Lk 9.22), things that were not for the faint of heart. It was at this moment that he told them,

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me (Lk 9.23).

Following Jesus means dying to self—that’s what “taking up a cross” means—and doing that every day. Commitment. Discipline. Reliability. Without fail.

This daily faithfulness is hard.

I teach an undergraduate systematic theology class that requires a lot of Bible memorization. I tell my students on the first day that I know they’re intimidated, but that pretty much anybody can do the memorization—but there’s only one way to do it, and cramming is not it.

Memorization requires Regular. Spaced. Repetition.

You go over the material every day. Doesn’t have to take long—just a few minutes—but it has to be every day. Over time, as you pull the material out of your brain at constant intervals, it becomes yours. In the end, it’s not really an intellectual or intelligence problem; it’s a character problem.

Every day.

When a student is doing significantly worse on his verse quizzes than the other material, I ask him to tell me how he’s studying for those quizzes. Are you doing what I told you on day one? Well, no, but I’m really busy.

Well, this is how cramming turns out. You have the time—just 5 minutes a day. But every day. It works.

Right now I’m memorizing lines for a play. I was hesitant to accept the role, frankly, because I’m 68, and the old brain ain’t what it used to be, and I’ve blanked out on stage before, and that’s a really unpleasant experience for me and all the other actors trying to work with me to present something intelligible and esthetically pleasing.

So I know I need to go over the lines. Every day. If I miss a day, I’ve set myself back more than just a day.

Thinking about that feeling of blanking out in front of an audience is a powerful incentive to be faithful.

Now, this play is a farce, and its long-term value is negligible.

How much more seriously should my students take the task of memorizing God’s Word in a way that will plant that theological database in their heads for the rest of their lives?

And how much more seriously even than that should Christ’s followers, all of them, take the daily task of taking up our cross and following him?

Jesus didn’t say this just once.

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. ²⁷And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple (Lk 14.26-27).

Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple (Lk 14.33).

No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God (Lk 9.62).

Nor did Paul.

For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward [man] is renewed day by day (2Co 4.16).

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me (Ga 2.20).

Reenter the battle. Every day. All in.

Follow Jesus.

Part 6: Pray. Hard.

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The Myth of the Super Christian, Part 4: A Clear and Uncontested Goal

October 3, 2022 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: No Such Thing | Part 2: Eternal Values | Part 3: Healthy Distrust of Self

We’ve seen two characteristics of the spiritual life of Paul, who was not a super Christian, that led to his spiritual success. As we read his personal reflections, we find another, one that shouldn’t surprise us: he was going somewhere, and he knew where that was.

In his brief autobiography in Philippians 3, we find that Paul had accomplishments that many people would be proud of:

He had observant Jewish parents, who had him circumcised on the 8^th day after his birth, in accordance with the Mosaic Law (Php 3.5; cf Le 12.1-3). He was “an eighth-day one,” as the Greek literally says. He was no late-blooming proselyte with wasted early years. From his very birth, he was in a God-fearing home, with both parents cooperating for his spiritual benefit. He had the most auspicious of beginnings.
He was “of the stock of Israel” (Php 3.5)—no Gentile blood in him. His people were God’s chosen, the ones God held close to his heart.
He was of the tribe of Benjamin (Php 3.5). He knew his ancestry, all the way back to the patriarchs. And he was related to Israel’s first king, the tall one, the one God’s people had chosen from among all their people. Indeed, he was most likely named for him. During the civil war following the death of King David, Benjamin was the only tribe to join with Judah on Rehoboam’s side (2Ch 11.1). He had an enviable pedigree.
He was “a Hebrew of the Hebrews” (Php 3.5). Commentators suggest a couple of things that this phrase might mean:
- He was not a Hellenist, one open to the customs of the Greek culture that surrounded Israel; he was no compromiser. (I’m not inclined to this view; Paul seems familiar with Hellenistic thinking in his writing.)
- He was able to read the Hebrew Scriptures in the original Hebrew—without vowels, which meant essentially memorizing the text—and to speak the related language of Aramaic; he didn’t need to read it in the Greek of the Septuagint. He had access to all the sources available, including the original Hebrew words of God himself.
He was a Pharisee (Php 3.5), the strictest of the Jewish sects, absolutely devoted to the keeping of the Law in the minutest detail. The Pharisees even tithed their herbs (Mt 23.23; Lk 11.42). No one was more pious than Saul and his friends. Indeed he was so zealous a Pharisee that he set out to arrest and kill the followers of the lunatic heretic Jesus, who had been executed as a criminal.
He was, by his own testimony, blameless before the Law (Php 3.6). That’s an astonishing claim; it had to involve endless washings, endless sacrifices, endless arduous journeys from Tarsus to Jerusalem, endless climbing to the Temple Mount to present his offering to the priest whose course was on duty that month. He was focused like a laser on the endless picayune requirements.

And then, in blinding flash of heavenly light, he abandoned it all (Php 3.7). He viewed it as sewage, reeking of corruption (Php 3.8).

What could possibly cause that kind of turnaround? What would it take for you, or me, to toss aside our most cherished goals and accomplishments?

For Paul, it was a vision of Christ (Ac 9.1-9).

Decades later, writing to the Philippian church, he speaks of “the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord” (Php 3.8)—that’s the same sentence where he speaks of his former accomplishments as sewage. A sentence or two later he says, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death” (Php 3.10).

Paul’s goal was to know Jesus. It drove everything else out of his mind and off his radar.

As he meditated on this idea, he realized that knowing Christ came with other infinitely valuable benefits—

Unity with Christ, being “in Him” (Php 3.9)
The righteousness that comes from God through faith (Php 3.9)
Having the kind of power that Christ displayed in his resurrection (Php 3.10)
Being like him (Php 3.10)
Being resurrected when the time comes (Php 3.11)
And the prize: the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Php 3.14).

We live in a day when some of those who profess to follow Christ have much lower goals: personal recognition, or temporary political power, or rhetorical victory over those who disagree with them—who are, incidentally, the very people that their professed Master has sent them to reach.

What sewage.

We can know Christ.

Nothing else matters.

Part 5: All In. Every Day. | Part 6: Pray. Hard.

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The Myth of the Super Christian, Part 3: Healthy Distrust of Self

September 29, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: No Such Thing | Part 2: Eternal Values

So Paul begins his walk with God by reorienting his values away from those of the world—what we might call his culture—and toward things of eternal value, specifically the kingdom of God and his own calling to devote himself to it.

What’s next?

I began the previous post with a list of passages in which Paul confesses his own sinfulness. Bible students have often noted that these statements span almost the entire length of Paul’s ministry: 1 Corinthians is written relatively early during his traveling ministry, while Ephesians is written from prison, and 1 Timothy is written after his release from prison, during his later travels. The same students have noted that these statements seem to crescendo—that Paul’s estimation of himself early in his ministry (“I am the least of the apostles”) is less severe an indictment than his estimation years later (“I am chief of sinners”).

Paul began his ministry with a distrustful view of himself, informed by the kind of person he had been before he met Christ; and as he served, he seems to have grown increasingly distrustful of himself, despite the fact that the Spirit of God was working in him, through time, to conform him more and more to the image of Christ (2Co 3.18).

Someone has said that the closer the Christian comes to Christ, the more he is illuminated by Christ’s glory, and consequently the more easily and clearly he can see his own sins. If you think you’re doing pretty well, then you probably need to turn on the light.

I’m amused when I hear someone on the news say that their friend simply isn’t capable of whatever disgusting thing he’s been accused of. Of course it’s appropriate to consider evidence of a person’s good character and reputation when deciding whether an accusation is credible or not, but the fact is that under the right set of circumstances, pretty much anybody is capable of pretty much anything. I’ve found myself surprised—shocked—by my own reaction to various kinds of stress, and I suspect you have too. This human condition is the stuff of all sorts of literary plots. As the prophet Jeremiah observed more than 2500 years ago,

The heart [is] deceitful above all [things], and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jer 17.9).

Paul was not self-focused; he didn’t spend his days beating himself up mentally for his failures and shortcomings. But he did have a healthy distrust of his own inclinations, and he saw to it that the circumstantial doors to those inclinations were kept closed.

If you think about it, this kind of healthy distrust is liberating. It destroys frustration, for we realize that any expectations we have of ourselves are overblown. We’re no longer puzzled by our failure.

And more importantly, we’re driven by this distrust to the things that lead to our prospering. When we stumble into sin, we seek forgiveness, cleansing, restoration, and empowerment from the One who loves to give it, thereby restoring and refreshing our relationship with a loving heavenly Father. And when we face ministry challenges, we don’t waste time trying to proceed on the strength of our own ability and wisdom; we take time to seek strength and wisdom from the Father, who pours it out abundantly, thereby delivering ourselves of the wasted time and effort that would yield, at best, only mediocrity.

Paul describes times in his life when he was under the burden of his own mediocrity. He tells the Corinthian church of a time during his ministry that “we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life” (2Co 1.8). His response? “But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead” (2Co 1.9). Another time he pleaded with God to remove a “thorn in the flesh” from him, and heard Jesus say, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2Co 12.9).

We’re broken and unreliable. We don’t solve that problem by patting ourselves on the back and repeating positive affirmations about how good and strong we are. We solve it by recognizing the truth and then going to the One who is unbroken and infinitely reliable, relying on his wisdom, strength, and grace to bring us through to ministry success.

Part 4: A Clear and Uncontested Goal | Part 5: All In. Every Day. | Part 6: Pray. Hard.

Photo by James on Unsplash

The Myth of the Super Christian, Part 2: Eternal Values

September 26, 2022 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: No Such Thing

Paul was no super Christian; that’s obvious from his descriptions of himself:

For I am the least of the apostles, that am not [fit] to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God (1Co 15.9).

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Ro 7.24).

[I am] less than the least of all saints (Ep 3.8).

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief (1Ti 1.15).

But throughout his epistles he scatters observations about his heart, his thinking, and his spiritual life—observations that help us understand how a person with a sinful nature can be as successful spiritually as he was. It’s worth taking a few posts to thumb through them and consider how they might help us even as they helped him.

I think it makes sense to begin with Paul’s autobiographical words in Philippians 3. He describes his spiritual condition before he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, and the picture is complicated. There’s a veneer of accomplishment and respectability, but there’s emptiness and corruption at the very core:

⁵Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; ⁶Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; [as to] the righteousness which is in the law, blameless (Php 3.5-6).

By ordinary standards—and by that I mean according to the values of the average joe—Paul was highly successful. He was a local boy with a pedigree and respectable parents, who had followed the local customs at his birth, doing everything the right way. And as a young man he had excelled in his keeping of the Jewish traditions and Law, to the point where as an adult he was a member of an exclusive boys’ club, highly respected in the community.

He had it made.

But in the middle of that we find a problem: he was a persecutor of God’s people. Now according to the standards of the day, this only increased his respectability: he was so devoted to God that he set out to eradicate heretics, those who believed that the One True God had a Son, who had become man and—what absurdity!—actually died as a criminal.

These are people who ought to be persecuted.

But then, as we all know, Paul (Saul) met Jesus. Or rather, Jesus confronted him, identified himself with the very people he was persecuting, in the process both blinding him with his glory and opening his spiritual eyes to see Truth as the corrective to his twisted tradition.

Saul spent several days in physical darkness, with nothing to do but to think—to think about all the ways he had been wrong, about how everything he thought he knew was entirely backwards from the way things actually were.

A worldview upheaval.

And when Saul emerged from his darkness, he was a new man, with new values.

All those accomplishments? All that respectability?

“Those I counted loss,” he writes, “for Christ.” Indeed, “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ” (Php 3.8).

“Dung” is the King James word. It means what it says. That’s how he thought of the culture’s values, its standards, its respect.

Waste.

Flush it.

In short, he got his priorities straight.

Like Moses, he reckoned the things this world values most deeply as essentially worthless, transitory, trivial.

He stopped devoting time to such things—which freed up a whole lot of time to devote to things of eternal worth, things like worship and ministry and mission and evangelism.

Like us, he didn’t stop sinning. But like Paul, we can excel at the things we devote ourselves to. And if we devote ourselves to the right things, we can make a difference and enjoy victory, even though we’re not super.

Part 3: Healthy Distrust of Self | Part 4: A Clear and Uncontested Goal | Part 5: All In. Every Day. | Part 6: Pray. Hard.

Photo by James on Unsplash

The Myth of the Super Christian, Part 1: No Such Thing

September 22, 2022 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Most of us think that other Christians are having a better go of it than we are. We think that we are alone in our secret temptations—that other Christians don’t find the same difficulty resisting temptation that we do. In particular, we hold a few people in particularly high esteem; we think that they enjoy consistent and daily victory and fellowship with Christ at a level higher than we’re able to maintain.

Maybe it’s a pastor or youth pastor, or a teacher, or a coach. I thought of someone that way (he’s now with the Lord), and some years later he and I were members of the same church. Working more closely with him, I never found that he had feet of clay, but I also came to realize that if he had known that I thought of him as a “super Christian,” he’d have laughed incredulously.

Some theological positions promote the idea of super Christians. The holiness movement, for example, posits a “second blessing” in which the old nature is eradicated. Wesleyans prefer to call this concept “entire sanctification.” Charles Wesley was thinking of this when he wrote,

Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heav’n, to earth come down;
Fix in us thy humble dwelling; all thy faithful mercies crown.
Jesus, thou art all compassion; pure, unbounded love thou art.
Visit us with thy salvation; enter ev’ry trembling heart.

Breathe, O breathe thy loving Spirit into ev’ry troubled breast.
Let us all in thee inherit; let us find the second rest.
Take away our bent to sinning; Alpha and Omega be.
End of faith, as its beginning, set our hearts at liberty.

Come, Almighty, to deliver; let us all thy life receive.
Suddenly return, and never, nevermore thy temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing, serve thee as thy hosts above,
Pray, and praise thee without ceasing, glory in thy perfect love.

Finish, then, thy new creation; pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in thee.
Changed from glory into glory, till in heav’n we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love and praise.

Interestingly, John Wesley never believed that he had attained “that second rest,” though he did think that a younger friend, John Fletcher, had. I’m not aware of any historical record of Fletcher telling anyone what he thought about that.

In Scripture, however, you don’t find that God’s people have experienced this. There are only two significant people in Scripture of whom God records no evil (Samuel and Daniel)—yet we know that they were sinners, for all of Adam’s descendants are (but One). And the greatest of God’s leaders, we find, had great struggles with their own sinfulness. Moses, for example, was kept from the promised land for disobedience. David lost his family and his kingdom because of his sexual sin. And even Paul recorded the darkness of his own heart:

¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ²¹So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²²For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, ²³but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Ro 7).

There are no super Christians. There are only wicked people who, by the grace of God, are regenerated through faith and then find and fulfill God’s plan for them. Interestingly, the Bible tells us enough about Paul’s spiritual life that we can learn how he did it, however imperfectly.

To be continued.

Part 2: Eternal Values | Part 3: Healthy Distrust of Self | Part 4: A Clear and Uncontested Goal | Part 5: All In. Every Day. | Part 6: Pray. Hard.

Photo by James on Unsplash