New Testament – Page 14

For My Angry Friends, Part 1: Foreword

July 1, 2019 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

As I noted in my
last post here, I’ve taken a 4-week hiatus in order to devote my attention to a daily journal of the BJU Africa Team’s adventures in Tanzania, from which we’ve just returned. It was nice to be there, and it’s nice to be back.

In the interim, I’ve been thinking about the next adventure on this blog. I’d prefer to write about something I care about, of course, and something that might be of some help to people I care about. There are a lot of such things and such people, but I suppose the thing that’s most on my mind these days—at least of the troubling things—is the polarization of our country and the effect of that polarization on my friends.

I see it pretty much every day during my scrolling time on Facebook. I have a number of FB friends—many of them retired folks with long records of Christian service and care for others—whose postings are mostly a concatenation of forwarded stories and memes with recurring themes—

Things that are just not true. I’ve addressed
that here before.
Things designed to stick a finger in the eye of
liberals. Mockery. Disdain. I’ve written
about that, too. “I’m not ashamed to post this MAGA hat. How many of my friends
have the courage to share? Let’s show those stupid liberals!”
Expressions of frustration with the way things
are going. Fear that God’s people are going to lose the battle.

All of these things have a common theme. They read as though there is no God, and if there is, he’s not in his heaven, and all is not right with the world. These dear friends are expressing a godless worldview, one that gives no hope, no offer of grace, no attraction, to those who are actually godless.

That’s a very bad ambassador (2Co 5.18-20) indeed.

I have another group of friends, equally dear to me. I don’t suppose these folks would object to being called “never-Trumpers.” They don’t like President Orange, and they shake their heads at anybody who does, for any reason. “Can’t you people see what you’re doing? You’re destroying evangelical Christianity! You’re undermining our credibility for generations to come!” Tut, tut. The posts of these friends read as though there is no God, and if there is, he’s not in his heaven, and all is not right with the world. These dear friends are expressing a godless worldview, one that is dominated by fear, one that questions the motives and the intelligence—and even the spiritual life—of fellow believers. They, too, fear that God’s people are going to lose the battle.

These two groups of friends have more in common than they might think.

Sometimes they post things that are true and ought to be considered in the political discussion.
But in the main they’re just reflexively forwarding, without checking, anything that confirms their worldview bias.
In being motivated primarily by fear or frustration, they’re demonstrating, as I said earlier, an essentially godless worldview.

God is never inattentive, or hurried, or frustrated, or unconcerned. He’s at work. He raises up kings—both Obama and Trump, most recently—and he sets them down again. All things he does are good and for the ultimate good of his people and, ultimately, his glory.

And if we believe these things—and we must, for they’re true—then we will live in a broken world with a different spirit—a different Spirit—one that brings to the observing enemies of God astonishment and even attraction. One that shouts—yes, that is the right word, as odd as it sounds in context—peace.

Shalom.

Not the peace of the Pollyanna or the Scarlett O’Hara (“I’m not going to think about that right now”), but the peace of the one who knows things that the riotous crowds don’t, who sees the chariots of fire on the hillsides all about, who knows that the chaos is only apparent.

I’d like for all my dear friends to grasp that so firmly that it oozes out of the pores of their every post— not for the sake of my newsfeed, but for the sake of my friends. Calming, conquering peace, way deep down at the core of their souls. And yes, for the sake of the legitimately fearful and frustrated, who have no source of peace, but who know people who do have it, or should have it.

What a difference we could make. What a stark contrast we could demonstrate.

In God’s kind providence, during this hiatus I’ve been studying Paul’s letter to Titus in some depth. I’ve found some things there that have helped clarify what I’ve been thinking about this bunch of troubled hearts. In this series, I’m going to share some of those things.

On to that next time.

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Sometimes We Fight, Part 6

January 24, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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In my last post we worked through the Apostle Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2), looking for doctrinal content. Here’s what we came up with, in systematic theological terms:

Bibliology

The Hebrew scriptures are God’s Word (Ac 2.17) and therefore reliable (Ac 2.16).

Theology Proper

God directs history (Ac 2.23).
God does miracles; history includes some number of supernatural events (Ac 2.22).

Christology

Jesus did miracles (Ac 2.22).
Jesus died by crucifixion and rose again (Ac 2.23-24, 32).
Jesus continues his divine work from heaven (Ac 2.33-34).
Jesus is God (Ac 2.36).
Jesus is Christ, the fulfillment of the Hebrew messianic prophecies (Ac 2.36).

Pneumatology

There is a Holy Spirit (Ac 2.17).

Anthropology

People are sinful (Ac 2.40).

Soteriology

Salvation is available to all peoples (Ac 2.18, 21, 39).
Salvation is available freely (Ac 2.21) through repentance (Ac 2.38).

Eschatology

There is a coming “Day of Yahweh” (Ac 2.20).

When we put all this into our chart, we end up with something like this. (I’ve truncated our data slightly for simplicity’s sake.)

Where do we go from here? Well, we repeat this same process on the other apostolic sermons in Acts, filling in the other columns on our chart. A quick result might look something like this, though a more careful study—which you’ll do, right?—would yield more doctrines in the first column.

And then you see where the overlaps are—which doctrines are most emphasized in this database of sermons. For illustration purposes I’ve simply counted the number of sermons in which each doctrine appears and then sorted the list on that column, with the most common doctrines at the top. You can see that “quick and dirty” result here.

What are the biggest ideas?

The deity of Christ
Forgiveness of sins
The death and resurrection of Christ / witnesses
The reliability of Scripture
Repentance

It’s no surprise that our list includes “the gospel” as defined by Paul in 1Co 15.3-4.

Now, we’re not done yet. As I noted in a previous post in this series, we need to evaluate the other datasets that my friend Tom Wheeler identified in his dissertation, and then we need to compare all the lists we end up with to see if there are patterns there—which there are—as justification for producing a “meta-list,” which should serve as a pretty good indicator of What We’re Going to Fight About.

And then we need to decide where to draw the line. How far down the list do we decide this is a doctrine that isn’t “emphasized”? How far down the list do we go before we decide that we’re not going to fight about that one? I’d suggest that that’s a literary-analysis question: where do you draw the line at emphasis?

Tom’s dissertation has done a good job of that already. But you can do that work yourself, you know. You don’t have to be a scholar like Tom; with the Word and the illuminating work of the indwelling Holy Spirit, you have all the tools you need to do this study for yourself. Maybe you’ll notice something he didn’t. And even if you don’t, you’ll benefit immensely from the study, and you’ll approach doctrinal controversies in this polarized and freaked-out world with a calmness and a confidence that will communicate grace, mercy, and peace to all those around you.

That’s worth the effort, right?

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Application 1 Application 2

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Sometimes We Fight, Part 5

January 21, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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Last time I explained my thinking on why we should evaluate the doctrines taught in the apostles’ preaching as recorded in the book of Acts, as a step toward identifying the essential doctrines of the Christian faith—the things we ought to fight about. And I pause to remind my reader (all 1 of you) that we’re also determining, by their absence from this list, the doctrines that are not worth fighting about.

If you’ve done your homework from the last post—you don’t expect to really learn anything worthwhile by just reading blog posts, do you?—you downloaded my little chart as a working template and read through at least some of the sermons in Acts to list what doctrines they asserted.

How about if I go through the first one, and we can see how your list compares to mine?

The first sermon is Peter’s famous discourse at Pentecost in Acts 2, where he refutes the observers’ initial observations and explains what’s really going on with the sound and the fire and the inexplicable speech.

Let’s scan the text to see what we find.

Ac 2.16—What you’re seeing is a fulfillment of a prophetic scripture from long ago. Peter’s initial statement implies—strongly—that we should expect ancient scriptural prophecies to be fulfilled. And this in turn implies the truthfulness of scripture, even in its predictions. Lest I be accused of bringing my bias to the research, I’ve avoided using the explosive term inerrancy, but I would observe that “truthfulness” means the same thing.
Ac 2.17—In citing his source, Peter includes its claim that Joel’s words are what “God says” (NASB), and he says nothing that would soften the blunt statement. Joel’s words are the words of God, accurately recorded.
Ac 2.17—God has a Spirit that can be “poured forth.” Maybe not enough here to support a distinct person of the Spirit, but wording that is certainly consistent with that concept.
Ac 2.18—God’s empowering work extends to “bondslaves, both men and women.” His work is not limited by our social constructs.
Ac 2.20—There is a coming “Day of Yahweh.” We can’t tell this from just Acts 2, but the prophets gave us a lot of information about this coming day, and again, Peter seems to take it at face value.
Ac 2.21—Salvation comes to those who “call on the name of Yahweh.” This verse alone doesn’t tell us whether “salvation” here is physical rescue from catastrophe or spiritual salvation in the theological sense, but further study can settle this question pretty conclusively in favor of the latter.
Ac 2.22—Jesus did miracles. This has implications about both Jesus and the fact of the supernatural, of miracles.
Ac 2.23—God’s doing what happens, even when it seems disastrous—as the recent execution of Jesus certainly had seemed to Peter and the other disciples.
Ac 2.23—Jesus died as a direct result of the crucifixion. Yes, he was really dead.
Ac 2.24—Jesus rose from the dead. Really.
Ac 2.25—Here’s another fulfilled prophecy. We should expect that.
Ac 2.27—The resurrection was specifically predicted.
Ac 2.30—Like Joel, David was accurately reporting words directly from God himself.
Ac 2.31—David was speaking not of himself (Ac 2.29), but of Christ.
Ac 2.32—The resurrection again, this time with witnesses.
Ac 2.33—The living Jesus is the agent behind what is happening at Pentecost—namely, the coming of the Spirit.
Ac 2.34—Jesus is alive and active in heaven, the presence of God.
Ac 2.36—Jesus is “Lord.” It’s true that the Greek word here (kurios) can mean simply “sir,” similar to Elizabethan English (“Good day, my lord”). But since it often cannot have that meaning (e.g. Jn 20.28), and since the Jews used it to translate the name Yahweh in their Greek scriptures, this statement is much more likely claiming deity for Jesus.
Ac 2.36—Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one—by implication prophet, priest, and king—the fulfillment of the entire Hebrew scriptures.
Ac 2.38—Forgiveness of sins comes from repentance and baptism and brings “the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Note that the presence of sin as part of the human condition is assumed. [Sidebar: here I’m simply listing what Peter is saying; this is what theologians call “biblical theology.” No, I don’t believe that baptism is necessary for the forgiveness of sins; that conviction comes from a comparison of this passage with others, which we call “systematic theology”—and which is not my purpose here.]
Ac 2.39—Again, God’s plan includes both Jews (“you and your children”) and Gentiles (“all who are far off”); God’s plan overwhelms our cultural and social barriers.
Ac 2.40—“This generation” is “perverse.”

How did you do? How did I do? Are there unfounded or biased assumptions in my list? How about yours?

Next time we’ll give some thought to what we’ve found so far and where we go from here.

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Sometimes We Fight, Part 4

January 17, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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So when believers disagree about doctrine—about their interpretations of what the Scripture says—how do we decide whether these disagreements are worth making an issue about?

A friend of mine, Tom Wheeler, wrote his PhD
dissertation on that very question at the same time I was writing mine. For folks who are near Greenville, it’s available in the BJU library; for folks who aren’t, there’s interlibrary loan. :-) Tom looks at a number of ways we can discern which doctrines are most important, and better yet, he does so without killing you with boring dissertationish prose. It’s a valuable piece of work.

I won’t give away all his ideas, but here are a few—

We can look at what the apostles emphasized in
their sermons in the New Testament.
We can look at the context of NT references to
“the faith” or “doctrine” (e.g. 1Ti 6.3).
We can look at NT confessions of faith (e.g. Mt
16.13-16).

There are other places we can look as well. And then we can compare all the doctrines indicated by those different methods and see where the substantial overlaps are.

I’d like to look more closely at the first suggestion: NT apostolic preaching. This idea isn’t original to Tom; earlier in the 20^th century, C. H. Dodd nearly made a whole career out of the study of the NT “kerygma,” or preaching—though I would disagree with a whole bunch of his conclusions. And the concept was studied long before Dodd as well.

Why would the apostolic preaching help us answer the question? Several reasons—

Directed by the Spirit himself, the apostles
were ordained by Jesus himself to relay inerrantly the facts and significance
of his earthly ministry (Jn 14.25-26; Jn 15.26-27; 16.12-15). They’re going to
relate the most important stuff, and they’re going to get it right.
While several apostles—Matthew, John, Peter,
Paul—wrote portions of the New Testament, not everything they wrote was of
primary doctrinal importance, as Paul
himself said.
But there is a record of several sermons, almost
all of them preached to unbelievers with the purpose of defining this new
“religion.” If the sermon is definitional, it’s going to highlight the uniquely
identifying ideas.
All the apostolic sermons are contained in the
book of Acts.
- Peter preaches several—
  - The foundational explanation of Christianity at
    Pentecost (Acts 2.14-36)
  - The popular explanation of the healing of the
    lame man in the temple (Acts 3.12-26)
  - The official explanation before the Sanhedrin
    (Acts 4.8-12)
  - The Sanhedrin defense of the apostles’ continued
    preaching (Acts 5.29-32)
  - The introduction of Christianity to Cornelius,
    the first Gentile inquirer (Acts 10.34-43)
- As does Paul—
  - His first “synagogue homily” in Pisidian Antioch
    (Acts 13.16-41). This is likely very similar to all his later synagogue
    preaching, which is not recorded for us.
  - His sermon to a pagan audience at Mars Hill in
    Athens, which is rhetorically very different from his synagogue sermon but
    evidences similar doctrinal content (Acts 17.22-31).
  - His “farewell address” to the Ephesian elders
    (Acts 20.17-35). This is unique in that the audience consists of believers.
  - His defense of his ministry to the angry Jewish
    mob in Jerusalem (Acts 22.1-21)
  - His defense before Felix, the Judean governor
    (Acts 24.10-21)
  - His report to Festus, the new governor, and
    Agrippa, the figurehead king, after his appeal to Caesar (Acts 26.1-29).

The last two are different in that they are mostly personal reports of his conversion experience, but they do have doctrinal content as well.

There are other sermons in Acts, most notably Stephen’s defense before his execution (ch 7), but since Stephen is not an apostle, we’ll set him aside.

Now. What we can do is list the doctrinal content of each of these sermons and then compare the lists to see whether there’s a pattern. Do the apostles emphasize the same doctrines throughout their recorded preaching? If they do, then we can argue that these are the defining doctrines, without which Christianity is not Christianity at all—and that they are thus worth fighting for.

So here’s your homework. I’ve made a chart for you. Download it and fill it out by reading each of the sermons noted above. Next time we’ll talk about what we’ve found.

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Sometimes We Fight, Part 2

January 7, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1

My previous post noted that sometimes the Bible tells us to fight over things—and sometimes it tells us to keep the peace for the sake of unity. Since both of those responses are directly commanded—and since, obviously, we can’t do both at the same time—we need to know which is which.

When do we fight? When must we not fight?

I mentioned in passing that there are actually two different areas in which we must make that decision: beliefs and behaviors. Sometimes we need to give fellow believers freedom to act in the way they choose, and other times we must seek to change their chosen way of acting. And sometimes we need to give them freedom to believe what they choose, and sometimes we must seek to change their chosen way of believing. And in both of those areas, if they will not change when they need to, then we must go to battle.

So it’s really important that we know when to fight, and when not to.

On the behavioral side, the distinction is pretty clear.

Sin.

If what our brother is doing is sinful, then we are obligated—because the body is one—to intervene and exhort him to stop sinning—to change his behavior. Jesus himself lays out the process for doing that in Matthew 18. It happens in stages, which are probably familiar to most of us. First you go alone and urge the brother to stop the sin. If he won’t listen, you take 2 or 3 witnesses. If he won’t listen to the group, you take it to the whole church.

A few comments about this process are in order.

First, we intervene not out of authoritarianism, but out of love. Whether he realizes it or not, our brother is being harmed by his sin; there’s nothing good down that road, and there’s nothing loving about letting him proceed unimpeded. We put warning signs on highways when there’s danger ahead, and nobody thinks that’s unloving; in fact, it would be unloving not to care enough to put up the signs.

But that’s not the only kind of love involved here. The body of believers can be harmed by his sin as well; sin hurts bystanders, whether by encouraging them to follow him down the road (1Co 5.6) or by damaging their reputation in the community (Rom 2.24). We intervene because we love the rest of the body as well.

Second, the process Jesus lays out is one of grace, not harshness. The steps in the process increase the pressure slowly over time, and each step occurs only if the previous step did not bring repentance. This means that you’re applying the minimum amount of pressure necessary to bring the brother to repentance. You’re not shooting a fly with a cannon; you’re not “lowering the boom” until less forceful measures have been insufficient.

Third, you’re showing grace by keeping the circle of knowledge as narrow as possible. There’s no gossip here. Even bringing in a few witnesses is an act of grace; I know of cases where the witnesses listened to the “defendant’s” story and told the accuser he was out of his mind to initiate the confrontation—that what the brother was doing was something he had a perfect right to do. The witnesses help ensure against overzealous accusers.

So when the issue is behavior, when do we fight? We fight only when the behavior is sinful, and then as graciously and gently as possible to achieve repentance.

We don’t fight when the issue is not sin—for example, when the person is doing something we don’t like but the Word does not condemn. There are all kinds of things that irritate me—clothing styles, hairstyles, popular expressions, lack of situational awareness, slow drivers in the left lane, Yankees fans—but I can’t be in the business of imposing my personal preferences on others. Especially when I know that some things I do irritate them as well. :-) By showing grace in those situations, I’m demonstrating love, grace, and peace that must have been given to me by someone else, because it’s certainly not my nature.

Next time—what about beliefs? Here it gets a little more complicated.

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Sometimes We Fight, Part 1

January 3, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Tucked away in the tiny epistle of 2 John is a remarkable statement.

John is warning his readers (“the elect lady and her children,” 2J 1.1) about some false teachers in the region. He calls them “deceivers … who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh” (2J 1.7). These are harsh words, more reminiscent of the “Son of Thunder” (Mk 3.17) than the “apostle of love” who wrote John 3.16 and 1 John. Hmmm.

And it gets stronger. This is “the antichrist,” he says (2J 1.7), and the lady must “not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works” (2J 1.10-11).

Yikes. Harsh.

There’s an interpretational question over what “receive him into your house” means, but even setting that aside, John’s very dark view of these teachers is clear.

And John is not alone. Paul (Gal 1.6-9), and Peter (2P 3.1-7), and Jude (Jude 1.3-4) all warn against false teachers, and many of those warnings include specific orders to isolate the offenders (e.g. Rom 16.17; Ti 3.9-10). Some evangelicals argue that this kind of isolation is commanded only for immoral lifestyles, and not for doctrinal disagreements; in 1Cor 5, for example, the church member is expelled for “hav[ing] his father’s wife,” and in 2Th 3 another man is expelled for not working to support his family. But I find it interesting that both of those passages include references to doctrinal as well as moral issues; in 1Cor 5 Paul orders the believers “not to associate” with several kinds of people, including not only the sexually immoral, but also the “idolater” (1Co 5.11); and in 2Th 3 Paul broadens the group of offenders to all those who live “not in accord with the tradition that you received from us” (2Th 3.6; cf. 2Th 2.15).

So. Sometimes we fight about doctrinal matters, theological disagreements. Sometimes we gird up our loins and go into battle.

But sometimes we don’t—in fact, we must not. The early churches had all kinds of doctrinal disagreements, many of which led to differing beliefs about practice—in modern language, disagreements over what sorts of things Christians could do and what sorts of things they couldn’t do. And many of those disagreements were heated and severe.

Can Christians eat pork, or should we follow the Mosaic dietary restrictions?
Should we keep the Sabbath? How about the other Jewish holidays?
Can we eat meat that’s been offered in sacrifice to idols?

All of these issues had been addressed directly in the Hebrew Bible. God lays down all kinds of dietary restrictions on his people Israel. He tells them to keep the Sabbath—that’s in the Ten Commandments, for crying out loud—and sometimes he kills them when they don’t (Num 15.32-36). And pagan idolatry was absolutely verboten; the prophets wrote whole books against it.

You can imagine how difficult the early Christians—who thought of themselves as simply Jews, delighting in the arrival of their Messiah—would have found the suggestion that things like this didn’t matter anymore. Sounds like heresy to anyone who’s read his [Hebrew] Bible.

And so we find the apostles stepping in and calling for order. And here, surprisingly, they’re not calling for isolating the “heretics.” This time they say that we need to just get along, to agree to disagree, to treat one another with respect (e.g. Rom 14.1-13; 1Co 10.23-31; Col 2.16-17). Love and church unity trump a good many doctrinal disagreements.

Sometimes we fight. Sometimes we don’t.

Now this raises an obvious question.

Which is which? How do we know which to do? When do we fight, and when must we not fight? God clearly thinks both actions are very important, at the proper times.

What are those times?

Next time, we’ll start down the path toward answering these questions.

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The Names of Christmas, Part 2

December 20, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Part 1

Last time we noted what the name Jesus means—and that enabled us to understand what the angel is saying to Joseph in Matthew 1—this baby is Yahweh himself, the one who saves his people from their sins.

God has become one of us.

Now Matthew’s commentary on the angel’s words follows unavoidably:

²²Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, ²³Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

Matthew is writing to Jews, presenting Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ. One of the most obvious ways he does this is by citing prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, and showing specifically how Jesus fulfills those prophecies. Note how often he says, “All this was done, that it might be fulfilled,” or something similar—

Here, of the incarnation
2.15, of his time in Egypt
2.17, of the slaughter of the innocents
2.23, of his upbringing in Nazareth
4.14, of his preaching in Decapolis
8.17, of his healing ministry
12.17, of the Messianic secret
13.13, of the resistance by the religious leaders
13.35, of his parables
21.4, of the triumphal entry
26.54, 56, of his arrest, trial, and execution
27.9, of his betrayal
27.35, of the soldiers’ casting of lots

The first prophecy he chooses to cite reveals the second name of Christmas.

Emmanuel. God with us.

I suspect that neither Isaiah nor his hearers understood the prophecy. They probably thought, God is with us, as he has been with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and with David and Solomon, and with our people throughout our history.

Yes, it includes that idea, but the prophecy embraces a much more intimate “with” than that.

He is going to join us, to become one of us. He’s going to be not just present, but identified with us.

In theological terms, the person of the Son, eternally existent with a divine nature, is going to add to his person a second nature, a human one. He’s going to get tired, and get hurt, and die.

And he’s going to keep that human nature forever.

It amazes me that when God created the world, he knew that giving humans the ability to have a healthy relationship involved giving them the ability to choose—and that meant the ability to choose wrong. And that meant the possibility—nay, the certainty—of sin. And God knew that he would never allow his image to be permanently disfigured in such a way—that he would respond to our rebellion justly, with a sentence of death, and mercifully, with the opportunity for repentance and forgiveness. He would do whatever was necessary to be just and to justify—to rescue—his image. And he knew that justice would require an infinite sacrifice, which we would be unable to pay, and which he would be unable to pay either, because the penalty is death, and he cannot die.

So from the very beginning he knew that by creating humans, beings in his image, on whom he could bestow the joy of his friendship, he was committing himself to become one of them.

Forever.

What a commitment that was!

What a God he is!

Next time, a meditation on what happens when God becomes man.

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Responding to Persecution, Part 1

October 29, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

There’s been a lot of talk lately about persecution of Christians in America. I suppose it’s true that there’s more than there used to be—there’s been some name-calling and a lawsuit about wedding cakes, though the defendant won that one.

It’s worth noting that this sort of thing is relatively mild compared to what’s going on around the world and what has gone on throughout church history. Just a couple of weeks ago was the anniversary of the death of two famous British martyrs, and there have been thousands of others.

So for Americans, things could be a lot worse than they are now. And there’s no guarantee that they won’t be.

What then?

How should we respond?

As always, we ought to take our cue from the Scripture.

When the first persecution of Christians occurred, shortly after Pentecost, the church responded immediately—with prayer. And what did they pray for? That God would smite their persecutors? That he would send fire from heaven to turn the wicked into a smoking crater and thereby justify and endorse his people? Or that he would lighten their load, lessen their pain?

No, none of these things. They prayed, first, of their confidence in God (Ac 4.24) and of their certainty that such persecution was no surprise to him (Ac 4.25-28). And then, remarkably, they prayed for two things: for boldness to continue to obey in the face of the persecution (Ac 4.29), and for power to carry out their commission (Ac 4.30).

And this was just the beginning.

Since there are lots of examples of persecution in the early church, the letters of the apostles have a lot to say about how God’s people should respond to persecution. Peter’s first epistle is built entirely around that theme, and Hebrews has something to say about it as well. Paul’s epistles, unsurprisingly, bring it up repeatedly.

I find the situation in Thessalonica particularly instructive. Paul arrives in this Macedonian seaside city of hot springs on his second missionary journey, not long after receiving the vision of the man from Macedonia calling, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” (Ac 16.9). After a brief stay in Philippi, which included a beating and a night in jail (Ac 16.12-34), Paul’s entourage worked their way down the Egnatian Highway to the next major city, Thessalonica (today’s Thessaloniki). There they were welcomed into the home of a man named Jason and began preaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath days, as was their practice (Ac 17.2-3). Before long Paul’s theological opponents stirred up a mob who came looking for trouble (Ac 17.5). Unable to find Paul, they seized Jason, his host, and dragged him—literally—into court (Ac 17.6).

Jason was able to get out on bond (Ac 17.9), but with his bond in jeopardy should more trouble ensue, and unable to prevent such trouble, since they hadn’t started it, the believers decided it the better part of valor to get Paul out of town (Ac 17.10).

So he had to leave. Gettin’ the trash out of NYC, and all.

This stuff isn’t new, folks.

Shortly later, Paul, now down in Achaia, the southern part of Greece, writes this little group of beleaguered believers a couple of letters, reviewing their relationship and situation, and instructing and encouraging them for what lies ahead. In 1 Thessalonians in particular he talks to them about persecution and how to deal with it.

If it would work for them, with all they were facing, it will certainly work for us.

Recently I came across a really helpful summary of Paul’s teaching on this point, written by Michael Martin, author of the volume on the Thessalonian epistles in the really excellent New American Commentary series, who at the time of writing was a professor of New Testament at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in San Francisco. (He’s now their academic VP, and the seminary is now called Gateway Seminary.)

I’d like to summarize and extend his remarks in the next post. What are the big ideas we take into battle as we face persecution?

Part 2

Firstborn!: You and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Part 8

April 9, 2018 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

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So where do we end up?

Initially, it really looks like the Jehovah’s Witness is right. The word firstborn most obviously describes someone who has been born, who has come into existence at a point in time. And because that’s the word’s basic meaning, that’s the way it’s usually used—97% of the time, it’s to be taken literally.

But there is a second meaning of the word, and the immediate and broader context of Colossians 1.15 makes it absolutely certain that this admittedly rare use of the word is required here.

The deity of Christ, which has been the tortoise in this little exegetical race, has outrun the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ hare, decisively.

Truth wins.

OK, time to ‘fess up.

This series wasn’t really about the Jehovah’s Witnesses, was it?

Sure, we considered a single verse that the JWs use to allege that Jesus was a created being, but that verse would be worth studying even if there were no Jehovah’s Witnesses involved. And as a survey and refutation of Witness theology, this series is seriously lacking. There’s a lot more that needs to be said; that’s why there are whole books on the subject.

So what was the series really about?

It was about how to study the Bible—about how to find out what a biblical passage means by what it says.

It was a part—an important part—of what we call the exegetical process. It was about figuring out what the key questions are in a given passage and seeking to answer those questions—to the extent that we can answer them by digging further into the meanings of the words the Bible uses.

There’s a lot more to that process. But I’ve included this much of it here for two reasons:

I want to emphasize how important it is that we take the Scripture seriously and handle it carefully. The Scripture contains all that we need to know about God and our relationship with him. (We call that principle the “sufficiency” of Scripture.) And it tells us those things in a way that we can understand. (We call that the “perspicuity” of Scripture.)

But that doesn’t mean that everything’s lying right there on the surface, to be picked up by every casual reader. As with gemstones, so it is with the gems of biblical truth. Sometimes you just need to dig. The good stuff will often call for some effort from us.

I often tell my students that spiritual exercise is like physical exercise: there’s some benefit to almost any intensity of exercise, but if you want to build muscle, you’re going to have to put some weights on the machine. A casual reading of the Scripture will do you some good; the Scripture has a power all its own (Heb 4.12). But there are truths there that will yield themselves only to diligent investigation. You’re going to have to work at it.

Eight blog posts for just part of one short verse. But the effort was worth it, wasn’t it?

Equally important, to my mind, is the fact that you can do this kind of study. You don’t need a seminary education, or a knowledge of Greek or Hebrew or Latin, or Logos Collector’s Edition, to do this kind of work.

Sure, we talked about Greek a bit—I mentioned the Greek word prototokos, but I didn’t use Greek letters, and I used it to make a point about etymology that I had already made clearly (I think) in English. The Greek was just a pleasant diversion. (NB: Sure, there’s benefit to having Greek. But my point is that the truths of the Bible are readily available to people who don’t have that knowledge.)

What you need is the awareness to ask the right questions—and if you’ve read this series of posts, you now should have that—and the willingness to do it.

That means devoting the time, and the energy, to studying the Bible at the depth required to get the answers you need.

And take heart from the fact that you have a powerful helper, a Comforter, one standing alongside you to help you understand. Paul tells us that the believer has the Spirit of God, who of course knows the mind of God perfectly, to reveal God’s truth to us (1Co 2.6-16). We have a powerful advantage over the unbeliever (the “natural person,” 1Co 2.14).

So. There’s a universe of truth waiting to be discovered in this Book. Sit down, focus your mind, and get to work.

God bless.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Firstborn!: You and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Part 7

April 5, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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We’re working through Colossians 1.9ff, trying to determine how Paul wants us to understand the word firstborn in Col 1.15. Is he saying that Jesus is the first created being, or that he’s pre-eminent over all creation? In the previous post we’ve looked at Col 1.9-16. Here we pick up with verse 17.

Col 1.17: He is “before all things.” This could go either way; he could exist briefly earlier than everything else, or he could exist eternally earlier than everything else. Checkmark for both sides.
Col 1.18:
- He is the head of the body. That’s about position, not time. Checkmark for “higher.”
- He is the beginning. See v 17. Checkmark for both.
- He is the firstborn from the dead. Now this one is particularly significant. It’s another use of the same word, by the same author, in the same context. We’re going to assume that Paul is using it the same way as in verse 15, unless we have clear clues to the contrary (as I supplied in the sample “sun set” sentence).

So is Christ the first one to rise from the dead? Clearly not; he raised people from the dead before his own death, and others rose from the dead in the Old Testament.

Is he the most important person to rise from the dead? Yes, certainly; we have that stated directly by Paul himself in 1Co 15.14, 17, and 20. (Compare John 14.19.) Checkmark for “higher.”

He is firstborn so that he might have the pre-eminence in all things. Checkmark for “higher.”
Col 1.19: All fullness of God dwells in him. If all fullness of the Father is in the Son, then he’s eternal. Checkmark for “higher.”

Let’s summarize what we’ve found. In the immediate context, there are 7 clues for “higher,” and 3 that are ambiguous. There are none that point to “earlier” unambiguously. In short, there are 7 evidences that it cannot be “earlier,” and no evidences that it cannot be “higher.”

“Higher” it is. Jesus is Lord over all creation.

That finishes the sentence and the paragraph of immediate context. Now we look further, into the surrounding context. Does Paul say anything in the rest of the epistle that would tell us whether or not Christ is a created being? We can point out a few things:

Col 2.3: All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. Omniscience is a non-communicable divine attribute.
Col 2.9: All the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Christ.
Col 3.4: Christ is our life. Life finds its source in God, not in any creature.
Col 3.11: Christ is all, and in all.
Col 3.24: We serve the Lord Christ.

From here we extend our search further, to the epistles Paul wrote about the same time (Ephesians, Philemon, and, probably a little later, Philippians).

Eph 1.23: Christ is the one “who fills all in all.” Omnipresence is a non-communicable divine attribute.
Eph 3.8: Christ’s riches are unsearchable.
Eph 3.19: The love of Christ passes knowledge, filling us with all the fullness of God.
Eph 4.7-8: Jesus is God (cf Ps 68.17-18).
Eph 4.10: Again, Christ fills all things.
Php 2.9-11: Everyone will worship Christ.

Then we extend it to the rest of Paul’s writings.

1Co 10.9: Christ is Jehovah.
2Co 5.10: Christ is the Judge.
2Co 12.8-9: Christ’s strength is unlimited. Omnipotence is a non-communicable divine attribute.
Rom 9.5: Christ is God.
Rom 10.12-14: Christ is Lord of all.
Titus 2.13: Christ is our great God and Savior.

Then to the rest of the epistles.

Heb 1.8: The Son is God.
2P 1.1: Christ is our God and Savior.

Then to the entire NT.

Mk 1.2: Jesus is Jehovah (cf Isa 40.3).
John 1.1: The Son is God. (And no, it doesn’t say he was “a god.”)
John 12.41: Jesus is Jehovah of Hosts (cf Isa 6.1ff).
John 20.28: Jesus accepts Thomas’s description of him as God. (And no, Thomas wasn’t saying “OMG!”)

And finally to the OT.

Isa 9.6: Christ is the mighty God.
Dan 7.13-14: Christ is worshiped by all nations.

There’s much more; this is just the low-hanging fruit.

Next time, we’ll conclude.

Part 8

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash