Dan Olinger

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

Dan Olinger

 

Retired Bible Professor,

Bob Jones University

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On Retreating

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I’ve just returned from the annual BJU Seminary retreat at The WILDS in North Carolina. The event made several impressions on me, all of them positive:

  • I drove one of the vans up, carrying 7 students, both graduate and undergrad. As it happened, mine was the “late van,” leaving well after the main vehicle surge, to enable students with late commitments to attend. The van was filled with chatter and laughter as the students interacted as friends and colleagues in this adventure called school. They know they’re having a good time, but they probably don’t realize to what extent these experiences, and especially the relationships and interactions, are formative, changing them in ways that will endure for decades. We have serious conversations as well, about doctrine and ministry and the questions that most young people in this stage of life wrestle with. If Jesus tarries, I’m confident that this generation will carry well the load that their times place on them. I’m especially sure of that when I recall that my generation grew up in the 60s, when our parents had every reason to despair of the future—the times, they were indeed a-changin’—and by God’s grace we carried our load as well.
  • The WILDS is a remarkable resource. It’s designed for its purpose—to enable fellowship with one another and with God—and it’s run by people who are committed to that purpose, who are competent, and who are as selfless as any I’ve ever met. Every time I go there I see some other activity or facility set up, ready to increase the overall strength of the program and reinforce the mission. I have lots of memories there—the record for terminal velocity hitting the post at the bottom of the land trolley is one that I’m particularly proud of—and all of them tied directly to experiences with God and with his people in ways that have influenced my thinking and direction in life. They have been an unmitigated blessing to me.
  • The Seminary is a grace-filled institution, with faculty who combine solid biblical scholarship with whole-hearted devotion. It’s good to see that balance maintained in the fifth decade after I studied there.
  • General revelation is indeed revelation. Every camp ministry knows that when you get people out into nature, their thoughts tend to turn Godward. All our senses are bombarded with evidence of the Creator’s greatness and goodness—the sights, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the textures all draw us back to our roots in him, to his ample and rich provision for us as inhabitants of this planet, and to the wonder of what he has done in creating a world at once complex, beautiful, and calming. In the artful words of Odell Shepard,

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.

  • But these beauties are not gods. They are rather gifts from the One True God, to be delighted in, but not to satisfy apart from him. As we were reminded in the sessions by our former colleague Dr. Robert Vincent, Christ is all, and he is more than enough. To delight in his gifts, but to have no meaningful relationship with him, is to miss the whole point. To delight in him is to be fulfilled in the only ways that matter. By a kind providence, my personal Bible study during August and September is in Colossians, where Bob’s point this past weekend is precisely Paul’s point. We are offered many substitutes for Christ—the Colossians were offered angels—but he is before all, above all, over all, and he is Enough.

What a gift of 26 hours filled with reminders of God’s goodness and greatness. The surroundings, the people, the shared experiences, the worship, the time with God, all serve together to draw us to him, to extract our thanks, to strengthen us for the tasks that lie ahead.

God is great, and God is good.

Let us thank him.

Photo by Wes Grant on Unsplash

On Filling Up Our Sins

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They are not pleasing to God, but hostile to all men, 16 hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved; with the result that they always fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them to the utmost (1Th 2.15b-16).

Paul is writing here of his unconverted Jewish opponents, those who followed him around from city to city and tried to undercut his evangelistic and church-planting work. In the process of noting their doom, he uses an odd expression: “they fill up the measure of their sins.”

What does that mean? And is it unique to Paul’s Jewish opponents, or is this something that other cultures should be wary of?

I think it’s easier to answer the first question if we begin by answering the second.

Similar language appears in 3 other places in the Scripture:

  • In Genesis 15.16, God tells Abram that his descendants will be exiled for 400 years, after which they will return to the Promised Land of Canaan, “for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full.” Here we learn that God is showing mercy to the Canaanites, whose land God has promised to Abram and his descendants, by giving them 400 years to repent (or, as my Dad would have said, “straighten up”). God knows, as he knows all things, that they won’t repent, but rather “fill up” their sins, bringing judgment on themselves.
  • In his prophecy of the coming world kingdoms, Daniel reveals (Dn 8.23) that an evil ruler (commonly interpreted to be Antiochus IV “Epiphanes”) will arise “when the transgressors have filled up.”* Again, the context is of evil cultures exceeding all moral norms and “maxxing out” their sinfulness.
  • Finally, in his condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees of his day, Jesus tells them to “fill up … the measure of the guilt of your fathers … from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah … whom you murdered between the Temple and the altar” (Mt 23.32-35). He concludes the outburst by saying, “Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation” (Mt 23.36). That is, the bowl of guilt has been filled to the brim; it’s time for judgment. And what a judgment it was—the city of Jerusalem and the cherished Temple reduced to rubble, and the Jewish people scattered to the four winds for nearly 1900 years.

The picture in all these passages is consistent. Mankind, inclined to evil, rejects God’s will and pursues his own. In kindness and grace, God withholds punishment, giving mankind ample opportunity to come to his senses and repent, righting the wrongs that he has perpetrated. But he sees the apparent lack of punishment as “getting away with it,” and he accelerates down the slope of rebellion without compunction or restraint.

But God is just as well as merciful, and his compassionate mercy does not allow for perpetual unrighted injustice. A day of reckoning will surely come. The vessel of sin will eventually be full, and the time for justice will arrive. Wrong will be righted. The offender will be held to account.

Since God does not change, this principle applies to our culture as certainly as to any in the past. We live in a society that is rapidly filling up the measure of its sins—in its arrogance against God and his people, in its rejection of his wise design for sexual behavior, in its worship of all things temporal, in its love for violence, in its denial of justice to the poor and otherwise powerless and favoritism toward the powerful and favored.

God’s people can take comfort in the surety of coming justice, from a God who can execute it in ways far more just, pervasive, and thorough than anything we can devise for ourselves.

* For the nerds among my readers, I note that the verb “filled up” in 1 Thessalonians is anapleroo, the same verb in the Septuagint (LXX) of Gn 15.16. The verb in Daniel (LXX) and Matthew is pleroo.

Photo by Santiago Lacarta on Unsplash

“What Do You want from Me, God?” Part 4: A Humble Walk

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Justice | Part 3: Mercy

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)

Walk humbly.

Unlike the previous two, this one has two parts: there’s humility, and there’s walking with God.

First, the humility.

Frankly, God shouldn’t have to say this.

Have you ever interacted personally with somebody famous? For most of us, buzzing in the back of our head the whole time is the realization that we shouldn’t even be there, talking with this famous person. He’s famous, and rich, and powerful, and here he is talking to little old us. Plus, he’s famous.

We can hardly believe it’s happening.

Even being in the presence of certain people humbles us.

How much more—how much more—should we be humbled to walk with our heavenly Father?

And in that state, how can we possibly be arrogant or unfeeling toward our fellow believers—or toward an unbeliever, in whose shoes we so recently and unhappily walked, only to be rescued by this Father through no merit of our own?

Humbly is the way we should walk.

And that is the second part—walking with our God.

It’s often been observed that salvation—conversion—is not a fire escape; it’s just the beginning of a lifetime of growing in Christ and an eternity of walking with God. That’s the structural theme of Ephesians, and Colossians, and Galatians, and Romans, and Hebrews, all of which move from a doctrinal section, filled with indicative verbs, to an application section, filled with imperatives.

And so we are designed to spend our earthly lives walking with an invisible God.

There are two kinds of walking, of going on a journey.

The first kind is typified by an elevator ride.

You get on, and if there’s another person there, you both become completely enraptured by the little row of numbered lights above the door.

1 … 2 … 3 …

You stare at them like you’ve never seen anything so interesting.

4 … 5 … oh, look! There’s a 6!

How can we explain this odd behavior?

You don’t talk to people on elevators. It’s just not done.

Because the experience is all about getting where you’re going. It’s not about the journey.

But there’s another kind of journey. It’s best typified by lovers going for a walk.

Man: Do you want to go for a walk?
Woman: Why? Where are we going?

That’s not how the conversation goes. “Going for a walk” isn’t about the destination; it’s about the fellowship along the way. Nobody cares where we’re going; we’re just going for a walk.

We just want to be together.

“Walk humbly with thy God.”

Isn’t it remarkable that the God of the universe, the One who is perfectly satisfied in himself, to whom we cannot possibly be intellectually stimulating, comes to us every morning and asks,

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

And isn’t it even more remarkable how often we respond with

“I don’t know. Where are we going? Is this going to hurt?”

“Is this going to hurt?” indeed. How much do you suppose our response hurts the God who comes to us just seeking to spend some time together, to fellowship, to relish the relationship?

How much?

We are an infinitely privileged people, we people of the living God. The Creator of heaven and earth, the King of kings and Lord of lords, seeks to spend time with us, to walk together by appointment. This is for our benefit, not his. We are the privileged ones.

This is what the Lord seeks from us.

To walk humbly with our God.

Let’s not treat it like an elevator ride.

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash

“What Do You want from Me, God?” Part 3: Mercy

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Justice

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)

Love mercy.

This is a big word.

You can tell that because the English versions translate it with different English words:

  • Mercy (KJV, NKJV, GW, NLT)
  • Kindness (ASV, NASB95, ESV, NIV, LEB, RSV)
  • Compassion (AMP)
  • Faithfulness (CSB, NET)
  • Love (GNT)
  • “Be compassionate and loyal in your love” (MSG)

In the OT, it’s a significant character trait of God, which the KJV translates multiple ways in its 231 occurrences:

  • Favor
  • Goodliness
  • Goodness
  • Kindness
  • Lovingkindness
  • Marvellous
  • Mercy
  • Pity

In fact, it’s the most common biblical statement about God: “His mercy endures forever.” 

One scholar defined the Hebrew word this way:

“A beneficent action performed, in the context of a deep and enduring commitment between two persons or parties, by one who is able to render assistance to the needy party who in the circumstances is unable to help him—or herself.”

One of my theology professors put it more concisely:

“Steadfast, loving loyalty.”

Several concepts going on here:

  • There’s a relationship between the two parties.
  • This relationship is grounded in love.
  • The person showing “mercy” is fiercely devoted to being loyal to the relationship, no matter what.
  • This loyalty issues in action that benefits the person in need.

Looks like the way The Message renders it, as noted above, is the best of the bunch: “Be compassionate and loyal in your love.”

I suppose that you could say, then, that “mercy” is the opposite of apathy.

  • It’s the opposite of saying, “Sorry, but I have other things to do right now.”
  • It’s the opposite of saying, “It’s your own fault.”
  • It’s the opposite of saying, “I told you so.”

It’s living out James 2:15-17—

15  If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? 17 Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.

We’re to love mercy.

We’re to look for problems that others are facing, and to commit ourselves to helping them solve those problems, no matter how much time and energy and money it takes, because we love them.

I’m not naturally like that, and I suspect you aren’t either.

I find it helpful to meditate on the ways God has shown this kind of loving commitment to me.

Someone has said that the fact that God has forgiven us obligates us to forgive others—for how could anyone have sinned against us more grievously than we have sinned against God?

Indeed.

How could we possibly show “mercy” to someone else more purely and deeply and intensely and completely than God has shown mercy to us?

May we all pay attention—on the prowl, searching, seeking for people who need help—and render help in ways that are sacrificial and truly effective.

And may we love it.

Part 4: A Humble Walk

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash

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

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Part 1: Introduction

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

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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

Crushed.

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We all love the underdog. We cheer for David against Goliath. We love it when the cocky athletic novice gets a whoopin’ from the aging veteran of the sport.

But we don’t like it when the roles are reversed, when we’re the one who’s humiliated.

The Bible gives examples of people getting humiliated. We can learn from them.

Pharaoh

We all know the story of Moses before Pharaoh. Moses appears in his court and delivers the message from God: “Let my people go” (Ex 5.1). Pharaoh’s reply is terse and pointed:

“Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and besides, I will not let Israel go.”

We’ve always known how the story turns out—Pharaoh is The Bad Guy. But just as a thought experiment, put yourself in Pharaoh’s sandals. You’re the most powerful man in the world. If you say someone dies, he dies. You tell neighboring kings you want their treasures, and they give them to you. Maybe you know that this Moses was raised in the court 40 years ago; maybe you don’t. But even if you do, you know he’s been keeping sheep in the desert ever since. He’s a has-been, a one-hit wonder who’s now eking out a living playing at county fairs and trying to relive the old glory. And his god? Why should you be impressed with him? What has he done?

But as I say, we all know how the story turns out.

God takes on the gods of Egypt, one by one—starting with the Nile—and in 9 plagues demonstrates that he is greater than them all. And then he turns toward Pharaoh himself and kills his firstborn, the heir, at midnight. And the families of the kingdom are too busy mourning their own loss to mourn his.

He lets God’s people go.

Nebuchadnezzar

There’s another example.

Eventually, as they all do, Pharaoh and his kingdom wane, and another kingdom rises. Babylon defeats Egypt at Carchemish, and Nebuchadnezzar becomes the most powerful man in the world. He builds a capital city on the Euphrates, including an artificial mountain—reportedly for his wife, who missed the mountains of her homeland—with water pumped to the top to supply a waterfall. He stands on the 300-foot-tall wall of the city (that’s what Herodotus says, anyway) highly impressed with himself:

“Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?” (Dan 4.30).

Again, put yourself in his shoes. He’s telling the truth; no one can dispute it.

But God faces no one mightier than himself. “While the word was in the king’s mouth” (Dan 4.31) Nebuchadnezzar lost his mind, spending the next seven years as the crazy guy down the street, sleeping in the woods and eating grass off the lawn of the county courthouse.

It’s a tribute to Nebuchadnezzar’s personal power that seven years later, when he walked into the palace and said, “I’m back,” everybody apparently agreed. This only increases the contrast between Nebuchadnezzar’s power and that of God, who brought him down in an instant.

Uzziah

One more example, perhaps less well known.

Judah’s king Azariah, or Uzziah, is one of the most successful. He becomes king at 16 and reigns for 52 years (2Ch 26.3)—a veritable Queen Elizabeth (either one). He’s successful in war, and in economy, and in foreign affairs. He’s good at what he does.

One day he decides that if he’s the king, he can be a priest as well.

Now, in God’s design, only two people could be both priest and king. The first was Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the Most High God (Ge 14.18); the second is the One for whom Melchizedek’s order was created, the Son of God, king of kings, Jesus Christ (Ps 110.4).

Uzziah’s very badly out of line.

As he had done with Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar before him, God reaches out and takes Uzziah down. Leprosy breaks out on his forehead—where everyone can see it—and Uzziah lives as an isolate and outcaste for the rest of his life (2Ch 26.19-21).

Would you like to get crushed? There’s a way to do that.

Promote yourself. Rejoice in yourself. Live for yourself.

And God will bring you down.

Pride goes before destruction,
And a haughty spirit before stumbling (Pr 16.18).

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God,
that He may exalt you at the proper time,
casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you
(1P 5.6-7).

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Silent, but Working

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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

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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

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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