Theology – Page 34

“What Do You want from Me, God?” Part 2: Justice

September 6, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God? (Mic 6.8)

Do justice.

Justice is one of those things that’s hard to define. I suspect that’s because there are lots of situations where we have trouble coming up with the right response, but we know instinctively when the right thing hasn’t been done.

Can we right the deep wrong of the American practice of slavery by doing something today? Well-intentioned people will argue all day about how to do that.

But the family that poured their life savings and sweat equity into a small business only to have it burned to the ground by rioters? That’s just not right.

The core of our problem in defining justice is that we are broken people living in a broken world. Human culture is indeed systemically defective, and our evaluations of the resulting problems, as well as our proposed solutions, are broken as well because our moral compasses don’t point north, and our logical processes can’t be trusted as authoritative.

How then are we to do justice?

In the mists of the past some old saint once observed that “what God orders, he pays for.” The words aren’t directly biblical, but the thought surely is. In the broadest sense, an omnipotent God will certainly accomplish all his holy will, or his Son wouldn’t have instructed us to pray, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6.10; Lk 11.2). As to the specific issue of justice, Peter assures us that God’s “divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness” (2P 1.3)—an astonishing truth indeed. On the individual level, certainly, the believer can expect that God will enlighten and enable him to do whatever God has commanded. Including Justice.

But how?

Peter’s sentence continues: “through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.”

The better we know God, the more clearly we’ll understand justice, and the more accurately we’ll be able to apply it.

How do we get to know God?

Through his Word.

We dive into its deep waters, and we spend time there, soaking, swimming, observing, immersed in truth and seeking the pearls that are certainly there. Over time, we begin to think the way God teaches us to think, to love what he loves and to hate what he hates. We begin not only to see with clarity that a given situation “just isn’t right,” but to see how it can best be remedied in ways consistent with God’s.

The longer I live, the more I’m inclined to think that justice is not most effectively imposed from the top down, or the outside in. You can tell people that racial discrimination, for example, is wrong, and you can make laws against it, but people inclined to engage in racial discrimination will find ways to do it out of public view, ways that can’t be effectively prosecuted. And what do you call it when lots of people like that live together?

You call that systemic racism.

Laws can’t fix that. Of course societies should seek to make injustice difficult, and laws are a part of that. But they can’t fix the underlying problem.

This old guy has come to believe that justice—real, lasting justice—has to come from the inside out. It has to come from the heart, from individual people who are determined to want justice and to act within their sphere of influence to do justly and to encourage others to do the same.

In other words, to follow the biblical pattern: regenerated sinners, indwelt by the Spirit of God, illuminated to understand His Word, and imbued with that Word by long hours of study and meditation, begin to think about justice as God thinks, consequently seeing the wrong and seeing the path to making it right.

Doing justly, one person, one home, one block, one neighborhood at a time.

Until the day when “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream” (Am 5.24).

Part 3: Mercy | Part 4: A Humble Walk

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash

“What Do You Want from Me, God?” Part 1

September 3, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

One of the most well-known passages in the Old Testament springs from an argument between God and his people. The prophet Micah writes to the people of Israel—there’s some in there for the Northern Kingdom, but primarily he focuses on Jerusalem—and brings a word of judgment: “the mountains will melt,” he says (Mic 1.4).

And why?

For rebellion—and specifically, for idolatry (Mic 1.5) and for abuse of fellow Israelites through fraud (Mic 2.1-2).

For three chapters the warning continues, alternating between a catalog of Israel’s sins and a catalog of the judgments that are coming.

Then, suddenly, the tone shifts. God’s looks beyond the judgment to the days that will follow. God will establish his kingdom in Jerusalem for a time of peace, prosperity, unity, and true worship (Mic 4.1-8). Even in the face of judgment, God’s people can look forward to his mercy (Mic 4.9-13). He will send a deliverer, born in Bethlehem (Mic 5.2), who “will arise and shepherd his flock” (Mic 5.4). The rest of chapter 5 eagerly anticipates the day of blessing.

But with chapter 6 the tone returns to the earlier chastisement. God has an indictment against Israel (Mic 6.2), and justice must be done.

You would think that God’s people would respond to all this with repentance, either out of fear or out of eagerness for the blessing. On the contrary, though, their response is shocking.*

What do you want from me?! Do you want all my animals, my entire flock, in sacrifice? Would that make you happy? How about if I slaughter my firstborn son for you? Will that be enough?!

What do you want, anyway?!

You can practically see the veins popping out on Israel’s neck.

If you and I were God, there would be a smoking crater where Israel was standing.

But we’re not God—and all the universe is infinitely better for that. God’s response to his insolent children is as shocking as their insolence. In calm, measured tones, he surprisingly de-escalates the confrontation with words of invitation and reconciliation.

You know what I want; I’ve told you before. I don’t want anything unreasonable or destructive or confiscatory.

I want you to do justice. I want you to love mercy. And I want you to walk humbly with me, your God.

In Jesus’ time, the rabbis argued about which of the 635 commandments in the Scripture was the greatest. One of the favorite candidates was this passage. (As we know, Jesus chose another, Deuteronomy 6.4.) It’s easy to understand why some of the rabbis argued for this one. It’s theologically, logically, and rhetorically deep, and brilliant, and pleasant to the soul.

I think it’s worth spending a little time on. I plan to spend the next 3 posts meditating on the 3 things that God kindly and patiently requested from his estranged people.

* Scholars disagree on the tone of Micah 6.6-7. I think the context justifies the tone I’ve ascribed to it here.

Part 2: Justice | Part 3: Mercy | Part 4: A Humble Walk

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash

Silent, but Working

August 27, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Why doesn’t God do something? Why doesn’t he show himself? Why is he silent?

Over the centuries God’s people have asked that question often. We want help. We want vindication. We want solutions.

But the question “Why doesn’t God do something?!” is deeply misguided.

There are many places in the Bible where we could demonstrate that, but I’m going to suggest the book of Esther.

When my daughters were small, this was their favorite Bible story—I suppose because it involves a strong, smart woman, and plenty of suspense, and rich irony. They would often ask me to tell it, and if I left out a line, they would interrupt and remind me—“No, Daddy, you forgot to say that the Jews don’t bow to anyone but God!”

We all know the story; I don’t need to recount it all here. But perhaps you’ve never noticed that throughout this ancient classic, God’s name is never mentioned.

It’s as though he doesn’t exist.

The closest the writer comes to mentioning God is when Mordecai—who’s apparently named for the Babylonian god Marduk—tells his cousin that perhaps she has come to be queen “for such a time as this” (Est 4.14)—implying some kind of guiding hand in history.

No, God is not mentioned. But throughout the story there’s evidence of his hand at every turn—

The evil king Xerxes (that’s the Greek form of the name Ahasuerus) deposes his queen because she won’t degrade herself before his drunken friends.
This evil king decides to replace her by a holding a sexual tryout among the most beautiful women of the land, appointing his favorite as queen and relegating the rest to his harem. This is not exactly a godly activity, though culturally allowed. Esther’s beauty gets her into the trial, and eventually he appoints her queen.
Her cousin happens to overhear two members of the court plotting to assassinate the king. He reports the plot, saving the king’s life, and a cuneiform tablet recording the deed is added to the voluminous court archives.
A proud member of the court, one who clearly has designs on the throne, is enraged by Mordecai’s refusal to bow to him and evidences his racism by planning to kill Mordecai and all his people. He builds an execution stake and goes to ask the king’s permission to execute Mordecai.
At the climax of the story, the king has insomnia. Of all things. He asks a servant to bring something from the archives to read; surely that will put him to sleep.
The servant, probably rubbing the sleep from his eyes, wanders into the warehouse, yawns, and grabs any old cuneiform tablet from Section 427Q—or whatever—and returns to the king to begin reading.
We all know which tablet he grabbed, probably without looking. The king learns, apparently for the first time, that an assassination plot has been foiled by a low-level government functionary.
He wants to reward the fellow, so he asks for ideas. “Is anybody in the court?” And there stands Haman the proud, waiting for morning—he wants to be the first in line—to get approval for Mordecai’s execution. The very Mordecai that the king wants to reward.
And the story goes on.

Too many coincidences. Too many unifying events in the plot development.

Somebody thought up this plot. Somebody wrote this story. And everybody who reads it, from my little daughters to the most aged saint, knows that. Now what would you think if somebody wandered into this narrative and asked, “Why doesn’t God do something?!”

We’d say he’s clueless. We’d say he needs to sit up and pay attention.

Throughout biblical history—by the most conservative estimates, maybe 4000 years—miracles are quite rare. They occur in spurts, during the lifetimes of Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, and Christ and the apostles. About 5 or 6% of the time. (If you think the earth is older than that, the percentage is even lower.)

Even in the Bible, at least 94% of the time, God’s not doing miracles. He’s doing ordinary things, directing the affairs of people and nations.

We call that providence.

And he continues that work today, in your life and mine, ordinarily, unspectacularly, beneficially, lovingly, wisely.

We need to sit up and pay attention.

Photo by Wes Grant on Unsplash

A Further Thought on Unity

August 24, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

In my last post I briefly mentioned a biblical principle regarding the purpose of the church, one that I didn’t develop. Although I’ve written on it before, some 3 years ago now, I think it’s worth taking a little deeper dive on it, first, because it’s a central biblical teaching, and second, because hardly anybody seems to know about it.

Its clearest expression is in Ephesians 3. We’ll get there in a bit, but first the big picture.

God has always had high plans for mankind.

He created the first man and woman in his own image, gave them dominion over the world (Ge 1.26-27) and made them capable of reproduction. It’s become obvious since then that their DNA was remarkably robust, containing information that has resulted in all kinds of different people—different melanin levels, different ethnic features, different heights, different body types, different hair color—and different hair quantity—different personalities, different abilities, different interests, different perspectives. These differences speak most expressly of the power and brilliance of the Creator, who placed all that potentiality into the first two people and gave them the ability to pass it on down the line.

From the beginning God’s people rebelled against him—as he knew they would—and from the beginning he had a plan to restore the relationship justly and powerfully and graciously (Ge 3.15). That plan included becoming one of us himself (Jn 1.14) and doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

As the plan proceeds, God’s intention to extend it around the globe becomes obvious early. When God identifies the specific ethnic group into which the Deliverer will come, he tells its patriarch, “in your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Gen 22.18). This is a big plan, and it’s going to bring together a very diverse group of people—in fact, representatives from every type.

We have to read a long time before we get a clearer picture of how it will work. Israel, a single ethnic group, isn’t the end of the story; it’s not the mechanism for bringing everyone together. Only after the Word becomes flesh (Jn 1.14), and after he crushes the serpent’s head (Ge 3.15), does God reveal the mechanism.

It’s the church. On its founding day, Pentecost, it embraces people from all over the known world (Ac 2.9-11)—and then it expands to include Gentiles from Asia (Ac 10.1-2) and Gentiles from Africa (Ac 13.1) and Gentiles from Europe (Ac 16.14).

Think of it. Within just 20 years of Pentecost, the reach of the church has expanded to every known continent—the Americas and Australia, though populated, being unknown at the time.

And God is not going to be satisfied until his people include those “from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Re 5.9).

It will happen.

And the mechanism is the church.

Now we’re ready for Ephesians 3.

Paul’s major point in this letter is that under the headship of Christ (Ep 1.22-23), the church unites Jews and Gentiles (Ep 2.11-22) in one body, breaking down “the barrier of the dividing wall” (Ep 2.14).

That statement doesn’t hit us very hard, because we don’t understand what the feelings were between Jews and Gentiles in those days. It was like the relationship between Jews and Palestinians today—or the Armenians and the Turks, or the Serbs and the Croats, or the Hutu and the Tutsi.

These people are never going to be friends.

And yet Paul says matter-of-factly that Jews and Gentiles are now one in Christ, with nothing able to keep them apart. The centripetal force of unity in Christ counteracts—no, overwhelms—the centrifugal forces that normally, routinely, drive people apart. No social force can stand before the power of Christ to carry out his Father’s plan to unite all peoples in him.

At the climax of Ephesians 3, Paul writes that even the heavenly powers will be astonished at the power of God demonstrated by the unearthly unity of God’s people in the church (Ep 3.10).

What does it take to astonish somebody who goes to work in heaven every day?

By the grace of God, through the power of God, we the people of God can overcome barriers to unity that the world cannot—in ways that seize the attention and wonder of all who see.

There’s work to be done.

Photo by Wylly Suhendra on Unsplash

On Unity

August 20, 2020 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

I think this is a good time to post a few thoughts on the theological and biblical basis for unity.

In the Bible, everything starts with God—not just chronologically (Ge 1.1), but essentially, ontologically; he is the grounding, as well as the beginning, of all things (Ro 11.36).

One of the most basic biblical teachings about God is that he is One (Dt 6.4). That implies a couple of ideas: first, that he is not divided; he is one in essence and thus is internally consistent. A second implication is that he is unique; there is no one like him and thus there are no other gods competing for his position (Dt 4.35, 39; Isa 44.6; Jn 17.3).

Now, those of us whose Bibles include the New Testament recognize that God exists in three persons, called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I don’t intend to go into a defense or explication of the Trinity here, but just to note that the existence of three persons in the Godhead in no way compromises the essential unity of God. Jesus himself, who is God (Jn 1.1), calls the Father “the only true God” while distinguishing him from himself (Jn 17.3) even as he notes that “I and my Father are one” (Jn 10.30).

God is united in plan, purpose, and work as well as in essence. As just one example, all three members of the Godhead unite in the work of founding and preserving the church, the expression of the people of God from the New Testament period through today:

Founding (Ac 2.33, 38)
Baptismal formula (Mt. 28.19-20)
Salvation (2Co 1.21-22; 1P 1.1-2)
Sonship (Ga 4.6)
Inclusion of Gentiles (Ro 15.16)
Gifts (1Co 12.4-6)
Perseverance (Jude 20-21)
Benediction (2Co 13.14)

The fact that God acts in unity with himself means that our actions as well should be driven by his Oneness. As early as when Israel was constituted as a nation, God based his people’s behavior and interaction on his own unity. The Ten Commandments, which were the core of Israel’s “Constitution,” are presented twice in the Scripture, in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy (“second Law”) 6. In both places, God begins by reminding his people that He is One (Ex 20.2-3; Dt 6.4-5).

He sees his Oneness as the basis for all we do.

In our age, as I’ve noted, we as God’s people don’t find our identity primarily in national terms the way Israel did; the church consists of people “from every nation, tribe, people, and tongue” (Re 7.9; cf Mt 28.19). What is it that unites us?

Two things. Or one, depending on how you define them. Or him.

The Scripture says repeatedly that we are one “in Christ” (Jn 15.5-6; Ep 1.3-6; 10; 22-23), who in turn is “in the Father” (Jn 10.28-30; 1Co 3.23). Our unity as God’s people, then, depends entirely on God’s unity (Ep 4.4-6; Jn 17.21-23).

The Scripture also notes that we are one “in [the] truth” (2Th 2.13; 1Ti 4.6; 2P 1.12; 2J 4; 3J 1-4)—and it’s worth noting that Christ called himself “the truth” (Jn 14.6).

When division comes to the body—something that is deeply unnatural, though not unforeseen—it is generated by falsehood:

False teaching (2J 9-11; Re 2.14-16)
False living (Mt 18.15-17; 1Co 5.1ff; 2Th 3.6, 14-15)

In those cases the church is called to isolate those introducing falsehood, thereby protecting the unity and purity of the Body of Christ (1Co 5.1ff).

So.

Being one is part of the essence of who we are as God’s people. Though falsehood can drive us apart, it should be dealt with biblically so that unity—in the truth—can be restored. And that unity, in spite of physical and cultural divisions that ordinarily drive people apart, is designed to demonstrate to others, both earthly and heavenly, that there’s something supernaturally unique in the power that keeps us together (Ep 3.1-10).

That’s a lot to chew on.

These days we ought to be chewing more thoughtfully.

Photo by Wylly Suhendra on Unsplash

On the Unruffled Passivity of Modern Evangelicalism

August 13, 2020 by Dan Olinger 4 Comments

I’ve lived pretty much my whole life in evangelicalism. My parents weren’t believers when I was born, the youngest of their children, but when I was about 5 they heard the gospel and began attending an evangelical church, where eventually all of us made professions of faith. I’ve written about that before.

That church was mainstream evangelical; I can recall a citywide crusade featuring Torrey Johnson, the founder of Youth for Christ, that our church and several others participated in. A few years later we moved across the country, where my pastor was the young Chuck Swindoll, fresh out of seminary, and my Christian high school had been founded by such evangelical lights as George Eldon Ladd, Gleason Archer, and Harold Ockenga. Then I came to Bob Jones University, which was, well, a little further to the right on the theological spectrum, you might say, and I ended up staying there the rest of my life, so far.

So my evangelical bona fides are pretty solid. Been hanging around Christians since I was just a little tyke.

Many years later—maaaany years later—I was walking down Main Street in Greenville when a young man walked up to me, handed me a tract, and started to present the gospel to me. He was a student at Tabernacle Baptist Bible College in Greenville, out seeking to share the gospel with strangers on the street.

Why do I remember that so clearly?

Because it was the first time.

It was the first time anybody had ever told me about Jesus outside of a church building or event.

I was in my mid-40s.

I’d lived in the Bible Belt for a quarter of a century, and nobody had ever told me about Jesus, unless I went to their church and asked.

And it gets worse.

Since that afternoon 20 years ago, it hasn’t ever happened again.

For all the Christians I’m around, nobody reaches out to introduce me to the gospel.

What would account for that?

Well, you might say, I’ve been at BJU for almost 50 years now, and these people all know me, and they know I’m a professor of Bible, and they know I’m already a believer.

Fair enough.

But I don’t know every Christian in this town, not by a long shot, and that was even more true back in Boston and, before that, in Spokane. And I must have interacted with any number of Christians in daily commerce, where they wouldn’t have known me.

I crossed paths every day with Christians who didn’t know if I was a believer or not.

Nobody ever told me, except for that one kid from Tabernacle—God bless him.

Am I the only person? Is this just a case of hasty generalization based on a woefully insufficient evidentiary sample?

How many people have witnessed to you outside of a church?

How does that happen to someone in my shoes? Is the church not evangelizing, or is the evangelism just going on in places where I don’t hang out?

Are we afraid? What’s an ambassador for Christ got to be afraid of?

Are we distracted? What could possibly be more important?

Have we subcontracted the job to the professionals? Where is that in the Bible?

Do we just not care? Are you kidding me?

Do we assume somebody else is picking up the slack? Well, if my experience is any measure, nobody else is picking up the slack.

The King has left us very specific instructions, with all the resources necessary to carry them out:

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mt 28.18b-20).

Are we just going to sit in our churches and wait for them to come to us? I don’t find that in Jesus’ little word “Go.”

What would our world be like if we all got serious?

Photo by Hernan Sanchez on Unsplash

On Civil Disobedience

August 10, 2020 by Dan Olinger 6 Comments

There’s been a lot of talk about civil disobedience lately, across the political spectrum. Since it seems to me that much of the discussion among my fellow Christians has been out of focus, I thought it might be the time to reconsider basic biblical principles.

To begin with, one of the key distinctives of evangelical Christians is biblicism, or the recognition of Scripture as the ultimate authority for faith and practice (and for everything else); back in 1989, David Bebbington defined evangelicalism with the “Bebbington quadrilateral” of biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. For me and my house, then, the directives for addressing the question of civil disobedience are the same as for every other question: we’re going to take our orders not from Thoreau but from Scripture.

Undoubtedly the most well-known biblical statement on the question comes from Romans 13.1-7, where Paul lays down the foundational principle:

Civil authority is put in place by God. Obey it.

Other lesser-known passages repeat the principle (1P 2.13-14; Ti 3.1).

But that’s clearly not the whole story, for the Bible contains examples of civil disobedience and presents those examples as, well, examples for us to follow. Two of the three most well-known examples are in the OT book of Daniel; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego refuse Nebuchadnezzar’s order to bow to an idol (Da 3.9-12), and Daniel himself openly disobeys the king’s order forbidding prayer (Da 6.7-10). In the NT, Peter faces down the Sanhedrin and refuses to obey its order not to preach about Jesus (Ac 4.18-20). Perhaps less well-known is the Hebrew midwives’ refusal to kill the male Jewish babies (Ex 1.15-17).

So there’s a mitigating principle:

Sometimes refusing to obey civil authority is the right thing to do.

Now we have another question to ask: when should we disobey?

In the four cases mentioned above, the defied order is clearly a violation of the direct commandments of God: idol worship is clearly forbidden; prayer and gospel preaching are clearly commanded; and killing babies, of any ethnicity or sex, is a direct attack on the image of God in mankind. So we can edit our first two principles into a single comprehensive one:

Civil authority is put in place by God. Obey it, unless doing so is to disobey God.

So far, pretty much all Christians would agree. But here is where it gets sticky. I’d like to start into the key area of disagreement by observing further on the biblical material.

Many times in the Scripture you have evil rulers—both Israelite and Gentile—who rule godlessly. I find it surprising that you find relatively few occasions where those rulers are openly disobeyed, and the disobedient subject (we’re dealing exclusively with monarchies here) is commended. As just one example, we find Paul coming into conflict with unbelieving Jewish authorities and their Roman overlords across the empire, and Paul seems to use cleverness rather than direct disobedience. He’ll leave town—once, over the Damascus city wall (2Co 11.33), and another time leaving Thessalonica in the middle of the night (Ac 17.10). On one occasion he’ll prevent a beating by claiming Roman citizenship (Ac 22.25), and on another he’ll take the beating and then use it essentially for blackmail (Ac 16.37).

I’d like to suggest that civil disobedience in the Scripture is a last resort. Recognizing that God has intentionally and purposefully given us the authorities we have, we should seek to respect the wisdom of his providence and use all our creativity to find a way to obey evil authorities while obeying God. Only when all possibilities—all possibilities—have been exhausted are we forced to disobey earthly authorities.

Do we do that secretly or publicly? Well, Peter defied the Sanhedrin to its face; Paul sneaked over the wall at midnight. Study your Bible and make the wisest choice you can.

But I would suggest that we can’t disobey a law or mandate just because we disagree with it, or it won’t work, or it’s stupid, or it’s an abuse of authority, or it’s applied selectively, or even because it’s unconstitutional. The US system provides legal ways to address stupid or abusive or unconstitutional laws, and disobedience doesn’t seem to be a biblical option in those cases. Seek an injunction, or sue, or protest, but obey the mandate while doing so.

Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash

On Being Like Jesus, Part 8: Closing Thoughts

July 16, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

You’re not going to be called on, like Christ, to die for the sins of the world. But wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, God has called you to be like Christ, to represent him well (2Co 5.20) by serving others rather than being fixated on yourself.

How can you live that out in your ordinary life?

You can notice when someone around you could use a hand. Hold a door; pick up what someone’s dropped; tell a friend there’s ink on his face.

You can decide to spend less time thinking about your own happiness, or success, or popularity, or grooviness,* and think instead about how you can help other people get those things. Pass the ball. Redirect the spotlight. Make somebody else look good.

You can think about the effect of your actions on people you don’t see right now. Clean up after yourself; pick up trash off the sidewalk. Don’t say every clever thing that pops into your head. Leave a loose end on the roll of toilet paper.

You can choose to obey regulations and laws you think—or know—you don’t need, because that helps everybody, in more ways than you can imagine.

You can take responsibility for your own actions instead of blaming your misfortunes on someone else. You got the grade you got because you didn’t study, not because the test was stupid. You got a speeding ticket because you violated a policy that you already knew about, not because the cop hates you.

You can think about the things you’re good at—everyone’s good at something—and figure out who you know that could use your help with that. Did you do well in school? How about tutoring someone who’s struggling? Are you tall? How about getting stuff off the high shelves for the rest of us?

You can walk circumspectly—looking around—watching for situations that could use your help, and do what you can, even if it’s not something you’re particularly good at. You can go out of your way, inconvenience yourself, be late to something, miss a bus, because somebody just needed a little help.

You can look for ways to be kind to someone you don’t like. He’s voting for that other guy. He advocates positions that are stupid. He’s a jerk. He’s nasty to you. Rather than unfriending him :-), how about watching his posts to see if there’s something he needs or wants that you can provide? How about encouraging him privately when he’s angry or afraid or sad? How about praying for him—grace, mercy, peace?

You can notice when other people are kind to you, or help you, or do things that benefit you, and you can thank them for it, specifically.

You may never be at the homecoming dance at Richmond High. You may never need to be a hero. But you can live every day in a way that benefits the people around you.

By God’s grace and with His help, you can be like Christ.

* I use a word that’s hopelessly outdated to make a point. Whatever the term for “popular” or “admired” is in the current culture, it will be outdated in a few years—so outdated that people will laugh when you use it, taking it as an indication that you are hopelessly behind the times and thus the very opposite of what the word used to mean. Public admiration is a transient and ethereal thing. We seek it as if it were a thing of value, and it isn’t.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

On Being Like Jesus, Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself

July 13, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Let’s start with a quick review.

Being Christlike begins by changing the way you think—specifically, what you value (Php 2.3) and where you focus (Php 2.4). That change in outlook will then issue in changing the way you act—divesting yourself (Php 2.6), humbling yourself (Php 2.7), and now—and finally—sacrificing yourself (Php 2.8).

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Christ, who is equal with the Father, as we’ve learned earlier (Php 2.6), submitted himself to the Father in obedience.

That is a mark of remarkable humility—and confidence, as we’ve discussed earlier. He obeyed someone who was not his superior.

We’re not like that. We don’t like to obey anybody, ever. As 4-year-olds, we thought we were smarter than our parents, and as 14-year-olds, we thought we were smarter than our teachers. (Actually, I recall acting that way openly in class when I was just 11. I was a precocious little snot, I was.) Today I have all kinds of friends who think they’re smarter than the government.

OK, maybe that was a flawed example. :-)

But the point stands. We don’t want to obey anybody, even—and most especially—those whom God himself has placed in authority over us.

Romans 13? Well, that says the government is a terror to evil and a praise to those who do good, and my government isn’t like that, so I don’t have to obey them.

By that standard, no one has ever had to obey any government that has ever existed, and God wrote Romans 13 as a gigantic joke.

That’s not a conclusion I can come to.

Obey the government? Well, in the US the government is the Constitution, and our elected officials don’t follow it, so I don’t have to obey them and their stupid laws.

There’s a fancy term for that governmental philosophy; it’s called anarchy, when every man does what’s right in his own eyes. And it doesn’t turn out well.

Jesus obeyed. He is God, and he obeyed.

That’s remarkable.

The passage goes further.

Not only did he obey, but he obeyed at infinite cost—to death, and even the death of the cross.

Crucifixion was designed specifically to be the slowest, most painful death possible. The Father’s will was not to send Jesus to die during the French Revolution, when the guillotine was the execution device of choice.

Drop, lop, plop. Done.

He didn’t send him to die in Hiroshima in August of 1945, when his life would have ended in a brilliant flash of light and instant vaporization.

He sent him to the Roman Empire in the first century.

There has never been a worse time to die.

Obedience really cost him something. And this something went far beyond the merely physical pain.

Obedient unto death—even the death of the cross.

I’ve heard a lot of talk from Christians recently about persecution.

For the most part, I find it embarrassing.

What persecution? Against this background—the death of the cross—what persecution?

What have I sacrificed?

I’ll tell you about the worse I’ve ever suffered for Jesus.

In college, I was standing on a sidewalk in St. Matthews, SC, next to a friend who was preaching across the street from a bar during the Purple Martin Day Festival, the town’s annual street party. Some men came out of the bar to see what was going on. One of them had a large paper cup of beer, and he threw it at my friend. Missed him and hit me. Beer all over me.

That’s the worst I’ve ever suffered.

And to tell the truth, it was a hot night, and the cold beer actually fell pretty refreshing running down my front.

Serving Jesus has cost me nothing of any consequence.

I know that not everyone can say that. I have friends who have lost much to follow Christ, and I have friends of friends who have died violently specifically because they were Christian.

They would say that it has all been worth it.

Next time, we’ll share some closing thoughts.

Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

On Being Like Jesus, Part 6: Getting Low

July 9, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Why It’s Important | Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time | Part 3: Aligning Your Values | Part 4: Aligning Your Focus | Part 5: Letting Go

If the first exemplary action Christ took was to divest himself of something valuable (more on that in a moment), the second action was to humble himself (Php 2.7); as the NASB puts it, he “emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.”

As I noted last time, the theology gets a little complicated here. Paul says that Christ “emptied himself.” Emptied himself of what? What did he throw overboard on the way from heaven to earth?

Did he give up his equality with God—his deity?

Well, we know that can’t be right, for several reasons. As a visible, corporeal human being, he said, “Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8.58). He perfectly revealed the Father (Jn 14.9; Col 1.15; Heb 1.3). The fullness of the Godhead was in him bodily (Col 2.9). He was God with us (Mt 1.23). One of his disciples called him God, and he didn’t correct him (Jn 20.28). He forgave sins (Mk 2.7). He offered an infinite sacrifice, sufficient for all the sins of all the humans who have ever lived.

Only God could do those things.

So how did he empty himself? What did he throw overboard?

Our passage doesn’t actually say that he threw anything overboard; it says that “he emptied himself” by “taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men” (Php. 2.7). He didn’t lose anything he had; he added something burdensome.

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of running a three-legged race. (I’ll bet it was at a church picnic, wasn’t it?).

How was your time in the 40 in that race? Better or worse than usual?

Worse?! How could that be? You had an extra leg, didn’t you?

In this case, having an extra leg doesn’t make you faster. It’s an added burden.

I said last time that no metaphors about God work perfectly, and the three-legged race is deficient as well—Jesus’ act of bearing both human and divine natures simultaneously was (and is) not clumsy or comical—but it serves well enough for our purpose. He took on a human nature, and that weighed him down in some sense. As Darrell Bock has observed, the incarnation “was subtraction by humble addition”; and as we learned in elementary school, subtraction is simply the addition of a negative number.

So Christ, valuing our need more than himself, refused to view his equality with God as something he had to hold and protect, but took the drastic step of becoming a man, becoming in form like a slave. That step had eternal ramifications for him as well as us. He is still a man, with a body, apparently forever bearing the scars (Jn 20.27) of his corporeal humiliation. That move did not cost him his equality with God, but it did cost him a lifetime of humiliation, disgust, and pain.

If you’re a believer, sacrificing yourself for others is not going to cost you anything eternal; you’ll still be God’s child, and you’ll still be secure in his love. But it will cost you other things, including your own will and your own way. It’ll probably cost you some respect, and it may even cost you some money. For some, it has even cost them their life. But if you take Jesus’ view, you won’t value those things, certainly not more than following his example.

Get low. Humble yourself. Set aside things you care too much about. Rest in the confidence of God’s plan and care for you, and take some risks.

Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself | Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash