Here’s my annual Thanksgiving post.
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On Thinking Like Christ, Part 1: The Most Important Thing
Here we are at another New Year. And as is the routine, we’re thinking about resolutions, bettering ourselves. And that task has us thinking about priorities: what’s most important? What’s the best use of our limited time and resources?
It’s good to do this kind of thinking.
For Christians, the Most Important Thing is to be on God’s side, to be devoted to his plan(s) for us. And that involves a lot of things.
But most especially it involves God’s work of sanctifying us, making us to be more like His Son.
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren (Ro 8.29).
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit (2Co 3.18).
In the process called sanctification, God is changing us, over time, to be more like his Son.
That ought to be our Most Important Thing.
New Year or not.
In light of that, I’d like to spend a few posts meditating on that classic Christological passage in Philippians 2:
5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Php 2.5-11).
The passage begins by telling us—that’s who Paul is addressing—that we ought to be thinking the way Jesus is thinking here. And that thought pattern, as we shall see, ought to be surprising, given who he is.
The paragraph has a very clear two-part structure. Verses 5 through 8 describe the way Jesus thought, and how he acted as a result. We can call that his humbling, or his humility, or perhaps his humiliation.
The rest of the passage, verses 9 through 11, describes the Father’s action in response to Jesus’ humble way of thinking: his exaltation.
It’s worth noting at the outset that Jesus did not humble himself in order to be exalted; he was already exalted, as verse 6 makes clear. He humbled himself, first, in obedience to the Father’s plan, and second, to rescue those he loved as his creatures in his image. The exaltation unavoidably followed.
So when Paul tells us that we ought to think like Jesus, he’s not saying that we should be all about the exaltation; the command is focused on verses 5 through 8.
We’ll spend several posts considering this passage. Perhaps these thoughts can inform and animate your resolutions, whatever they may be.
Part 2: Moving to the Dump | Part 3: It Gets Worse | Part 4: And Worse | Part 5: Reversal | Part 6: Risen | Part 7: Ascended | Part 8: Enthroned | Part 9: Coming Again | Part 10: Final Thoughts
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
On Christmas
I usually write a new post every Christmas, but this year I’d like to direct you to a brief series on the topic that I wrote in 2018.
Merry Christmas!
On Thanksgiving
On Valentine’s Day
This a time for romance. For love. For commitment. For loyalty.
Interestingly, God describes his relationship with his people in those terms.
We know that “God is love” (1Jn 4.8, 16)—that he has always been in relationship among the persons of the Godhead; he has never been alone. Love is natural for him; it’s part of who he is.
We know that “we love him because he first loved us” (1Jn 4.19)—that he initiated the relationship with us, even though we had wronged him (Ro 3.23). In fact, he lovingly anticipated that relationship before we even existed—before the earth itself existed (Ep 1.4).
We know that his most oft-repeated description of himself includes “lovingkindness” (Heb hesed), a far-reaching word not captured by any single English word, but including loving loyalty to a covenant relationship. It’s the attribute that keeps 60-year marriages together in spite of everything.
That’s the kind of relationship God wants with us.
We can imagine, then, how our sin must grieve his heart. In fact, he describes the sin of his people as adultery, violation of the marriage relationship.
I’ve been a believer for more than 60 years. Every day of those 60 years, I have fallen short of the glory of God. I’ve been unfaithful to the relationship.
That’s over 22,000 days of adultery.
How many would it take for you to give up on your spouse?
Yet God continues to welcome us back, to forgive our unfaithfulness, to restore the relationship.
Hesed.
God illustrates his love for us in a couple of stories he tells his people. One is in the book of Hosea, where he tells the prophet to marry a woman who will be unfaithful to him—as Israel has been unfaithful to their God.
It’s heartbreaking.
There’s another story, a less-well-known one, in Ezekiel 16.
Ezekiel is writing long after Hosea—so long, in fact, that Judah has now gone into captivity in Babylon, and Ezekiel is prophesying to them in the Jewish community there. He speaks God’s words to the community—
- One day God found an abandoned baby by the side of the road, newborn, unwashed, unwanted. He took her home and cleaned her up, and then he began to provide for her needs: food, clothing, shelter. For years he raised her—lavishly—as his own daughter.
- When she became an adult, a beautiful woman, his love for her led him to take her as his wife.
- But she was unfaithful. She went after other lovers, not merely being seduced by them but seducing them, and aggressively. She pressured them; she even paid them. She made Sodom seem mild by comparison. She broke his heart.
What a horrifying account.
But it doesn’t end in divorce, or retaliation, or expulsion, or murder, or any of the things we would expect from a human relationship of this sort.
It ends in restoration, reunification, love.
And not because the unfaithful wife pleads for forgiveness.
Because the maltreated Husband remembers and is faithful to the marriage covenant, to the permanence of the relationship:
60 Nevertheless, I will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. 61 … . 62 Thus I will establish My covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord (Ezk 16.60, 62).
O wondrous love that will not let me go,
I cling to You with all my strength and soul;
Yet if my hold should ever fail
This wondrous love will never let me go!
(Steve and Vikki Cook)
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
On Christmas
This Christmas season I’d like to engage in a thought experiment by telling a story that I’m pretty sure never happened.
__________
An angel walks into the Executive Office Wing of heaven and steps up to the receptionist.
“I’d like to see the Son, please.”
The receptionist replies, “I’m sorry, but you can’t see the Son right now.”
Now, this is the first time those words have ever been uttered. The angel is taken aback.
“I can’t?! Why not?!”
“Well, he’s not in.”
“He’s not in?! What do you mean, ‘He’s not in’?! He’s omnipresent; how can he be ‘not in’?!”
“Well, he’s not here.”
The angel sputters.
“OK, you’re not making any sense, but I’ll play your little game. ‘Where’ is he? If you’ll tell me ‘where’ he is, I’ll go ‘there’ and talk to him.”
“Well, I could tell you where he is, but even if you go there, you won’t be able to talk to him.”
“Why not?”
“Well …”
The receptionist pauses for an awkwardly long time.
“Um, he can’t talk.”
The angel is apoplectic.
“He can’t talk?! What kind of nonsense is this?!”
“Well, … he’s a fetus.”
__________
There are several reasons that I’m fairly sure this scene never happened.
For one thing, while I suppose it’s possible that the executive offices of heaven have a receptionist, there don’t seem to be any of the usual reasons why one would be needed, and there’s no biblical indication of such a position.
Second, my story has a logical problem. Why is the angel bamboozled by the concept of “going there” to talk to the Son, if he’s come to the Executive Office Wing to talk to him?
For another, I’m quite doubtful that any unfallen angel was surprised by the incarnation. This event had been predicted in the Garden of Eden—possibly by the Son himself—and angels seem to be the kinds of persons who pay attention.
So it almost certainly never happened.
But it illustrates a few of the complexities that we celebrate at this time of year—complexities that we often gloss over because we’re just so familiar with the whole concept that God became man.
What an incomprehensible thing.
What happened when a member of the Godhead became germinal (pre-embryonic)? Did he, unlike other germinals, know what was happening? If his knowledge was limited in some ways during his season on earth (Mk 13.32), how extensive was that limitation, and did it change over time? If he is fully human, did he have to grow a brain during his embryonic stage? And if so, did he have any human consciousness before his brain developed?
The Bible tells us that the Son is the agent of providence; by him all things hold together (Col 1.17). Was he maintaining the universe and directing the affairs of people and nations while he was a fetus? Or is there some sort of 25th Amendment in heaven, whereby the Son hands over those responsibilities to the Father or the Spirit while he’s temporarily intellectually incapacitated?
We have no idea what we’re talking about.
He learned, right? How did that work?
Did the 12-month-old Jesus walk the first time he tried, or did he “fall down and go boom” while learning? Did Joseph ever say to him, “Now, Son, if you hold the hammer that way, one of these days you’re going to hurt yourself”? Did Mary ever say the Aramaic equivalent of “No, Jesus, it’s not ‘Can me and Simeon go out and play,’ but ‘Can Simeon and I go out and play’ “?
The Bible doesn’t speak to these things. It does tell us that he developed “in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Lk 2.52). How did he grow in favor with God?!
I’ve studied the Son at a serious level for five decades. And the more I think and read, the more convinced I am that there is more to this person than we will ever know. And there is more to the Incarnation—to Christmas—than we can possibly conceive.
At some point, we simply have to thank the Almighty.
And worship.
On Thanksgiving
On Memorial Day
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae
Photo by Terence Burke on Unsplash
On Aspirations in the New Year
In my previous post I noted the importance of paying attention to the little opportunities for compromise that our culture routinely sets before us. As Solomon noted, even the little foxes can plunder the vines (SS 2.15).
I’d like to extend that thought to the positive side.
With the New Year, most of us—for completely illogical reasons, since calendrically speaking there’s nothing particularly historically significant about the annual day we call “January 1”—give some thought to turning over a page of self-improvement, sometimes including resolutions for change in the new year.
We ought to do that continuously, but whatever. :-)
I recently came across an essay by the old Keswick pastor and devotional writer F. B. Meyer (incidentally, the man who introduced D. L. Moody to Great Britain), called “The Common Task,” that we might consider as we seek self-improvement.
Meyer notes that lots of people are convinced—and some of them rightly—that their station in life is beneath their abilities—as he put it, that one’s “life afford[s] no outlet for the adequate exercise of his powers.” He offers some mollifying and sharpening thoughts to those in that situation.
I should note that Meyer is clearly not suggesting apathy or lack of aspiration; his biography demonstrates the kind of productivity that evidences devotion, effort, and energy. By all means, take a survey of your gifts and abilities, and seek ways to steward them for the greatest good in the world.
Be all that you can be.
But most of us know that we can aspire to things that we will never reach. Only 45 people in history have ever been POTUS; millions of others haven’t, but not for lack of thinking about it. You’re probably not going to be a star athlete, and I’m most certainly never going to be a fighter pilot, thanks to a bum ear—and the grace of God.
What do you do with the Now, even as you aspire to the Then?
Meyer offers several observations, from which I’ve selected and reworded for the current century.
- God has a plan for you, and it will happen. God is attentive to your situation, committed to your fulfillment, and able to bring it to pass. You are where and what you are by his benevolent plan, which includes an eternal future.
- No matter what your circumstances are right now, you can fulfill your most important goal—Christlikeness—in the midst of them. In Meyer’s words, “We ought … to be very careful how we fulfill the common tasks of daily life. We are making the character in which we have to spend eternity.”
- Doing anything well—even trivial things—makes a difference.
- The excellence you develop prepares you for doing greater things later. “You cannot be brave in a crisis if you are habitually a coward. You cannot be generous with a fortune if you are a miser with a limited income.”
- The way you handle small responsibilities is evidence of who you truly are. And God notices.
“There are great tasks to be fulfilled in eternity: angels to be judged; cities to be ruled; perhaps worlds to be evangelized. For these, suitable agents will be required: those who can rule, because they have served; those who can command, because they have obeyed; those who can save others, because they never saved themselves. Perhaps even now, our Heavenly Father is engaged in seeking those among us who can fill these posts. And he is seeking them, not amongst such as are filling high positions in the eyes of men, but in the ranks of such as are treading the trivial round and fulfilling the common task.”
In this New Year,
- aspire;
- plan;
- steward your abilities;
- and serve, with diligence and energy, wherever the Master places you.
Happy new year.
Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash
On Joseph
Christmas is tomorrow. Since my Christmas post for last year was about Mary, it makes sense that this year I should say something about Joseph.
We know precious little about him. If, as most scholars believe, the genealogy in Matthew 1 is that of Joseph, then he was the royal descendant of David in his generation—the heir to the throne of Israel. I suspect he knew that; the Jews kept track of such things, as is evidenced by the simple fact that the genealogy is produced in Matthew 1. If he was the heir, he certainly knew that he was.
But he also knew that he would never be king. First, because Rome. Caesar Augustus would never tolerate such a thing; he had installed a puppet, Herod, and called him “king,” but Herod wasn’t even really Jewish—he was Idumaean—and the Jews hated him as an interloper and collaborator with the hated Romans.
There was another reason Joseph knew he would never be king. God had cursed his ancestor, Jehoiachin (Jeconiah, or just Coniah), the last Davidic king of Judah (Jer 22.30), saying that none of his offspring would ever rule. Some scholars think that God reversed that curse with Zerubbabel (Hag 2.23), but Zerubbabel never ruled, nor did any of his offspring clear up to Joseph’s day.
So Joseph is a carpenter (Mt 13.55), or perhaps a mason. He works with his hands, in the village of Nazareth, in Israel’s backwater (Jn 1.46).
And that’s that.
Under circumstances we’re not told, he becomes engaged to a Jewish girl. She gives evidence of true godliness. He’ll be able to support her and their eventual children. This will be good.
And then.
She’s pregnant.
He didn’t do it.
It all comes crashing down. Yet another curse.
He can’t sensibly give his life to a woman who has so deeply and thoroughly deceived him. The Law gives him an out, however; he can “divorce” her for fornication. The legal penalty is stoning, but he doesn’t want a big scene, or even personal vengeance. We’ll just handle this quietly and move on.
Like Mary, as it turns out, Joseph doesn’t understand either. It’s not what he thinks.
After 400 years of silence, God steps in to ensure the success of the hinge point of all history.
Joseph is asleep—that’s surprising in itself—and God sends a messenger in his dreams.
It’s not what you think, Joseph. Mary is not unfaithful. God is doing a work, a great work, an epochal work. Her child will save his people from their sins.
You need to adopt him.
Like Mary, Joseph knows what the social consequences of that will be. There will be a community wink and nod—we thought that’s who the culprit was. Joseph’s reputation will be ruined. What of his business? How will he support his family?
Adopt the child.
Why is that so important?
Remember the curse?
No biological son of Jehoiachin—or of Joseph—will ever sit on David’s throne. But only a descendant of David—through Solomon—can sit there.
Mary, too, is descended from David, but through his son Nathan, not Solomon (Lk 3). Her son has no claim to the throne by bloodline.
But if Joseph … adopts … the boy …
everything changes.
And there, sitting on his mat, in the dark of night, in a backwater village, a carpenter makes his decision.
He’ll trust, and obey.
Like millions of others before and since.
But unlike any of those others, at the key hinge point of all salvation history.
Next to the obedience of the Son Himself, the most important act of obedience ever.
And hardly anybody even noticed.
Joseph shows up one more time in the Bible, when Jesus is twelve. But after that, he disappears. No one knows what else this critically important man did or how or where he died.
_____
I’m not much for statements about what I’ll do when I get to heaven. I think the Lamb will be the focus of all of it.
But I hope I’ll have a chance to find Joseph and say thanks.