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

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

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On What You Put into Your Head, Part 3: Toto, We’re Not in Eden Anymore

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Part 1: Strategic Exposure | Part 2: All the Trees of the Garden

While there’s great joy in romping through fields of wildflowers, we know that the pastoral scenes in novels and movies aren’t really accurate. There are ants at the picnic and snakes in the woods. The world is a broken place; it’s really not a good idea to follow my recommendation in the previous post—“learn all you can about everything you can”—without putting some sensible limitations in place.

We’re not in Eden anymore.

How do we decide which trees in the garden to sample?

Many Christians like to use the guidance in Philippians 4.8—

“Finally, brothers,

  • whatever is true,
  • whatever is honorable,
  • whatever is just,
  • whatever is pure,
  • whatever is lovely,
  • whatever is commendable,
  • if there is any excellence,
  • if there is anything worthy of praise,

think about these things.”

I don’t doubt that anyone who focuses his mental faculties on these things will be better for it.

But I note a few things about this list. First, it’s not presented as exhaustive; there’s no command to think only about things on this list. Second, there are times when the Bible itself tells us to think about manifestly negative, even sinful things—to consider the way of the fool, for example. Sometimes it tells us stories that are anything but lovely. And third, I would suggest that because everyone’s different, there are probably even some good things that I shouldn’t dwell on—and you’ll have a similar list, though it’ll probably be different from mine in the particulars.

Why do I say that?

Because the Scripture tells us that we need to make individual adjustments to our mental explorations based on our strengths and weaknesses and our personal characteristics, such as our consciences. Let me give some examples.

Paul says, “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient” (1Co 6.12). In fact, he says it twice (1Co 10.23). What does that mean? It means that some things that others can do freely will not get me toward my goal, will not help me fulfill my purposes. I need to stay focused, give primary attention and time to the things that God has called me to do. For example, I’m called to be a teacher. But I’m fluent only in English. When I teach overseas, I often teach through an interpreter, which means I get in only half the content in the same amount of time. Every time I meet a new language, I’m really tempted to learn it so I don’t have to use an interpreter and can cover more material. But the time it would take for me to learn Kiswahili, or Bemba, or Afrikaans, or Xhosa (and those clicks!), or Mandarin, or Chamorro, or even Spanish, would severely limit the time I can spend on my primary calling, which is studying the material and thinking about the most effective ways to present it. It’s not a profitable use of my time, given the time required to gain fluency. It’s not expedient. It’s better to let someone else do that.

In the first verse in the previous paragraph, Paul also says, “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” We’re all prone to give in to the allure of some activity or other—playing video games, watching TV, eating butterscotch sundaes. Most people can handle those activities in a balanced way, but for some it just becomes addictive. I’ve written about my decision to go cold turkey on caffeine. We need to make the firm decision to stay away from otherwise good things that pull us off balance.

In the second verse above, Paul says, “All things are lawful for me, but not all things edify.” Sometimes we have to decide whether something we’re free to do might get in the way of our spiritual growth—or someone else’s. We need to keep our eyes on the prize and set aside weights that keep us from running our best race (He 12.1).

So as we enjoy God’s good gifts, we do so thoughtfully and purposefully, and that means carefully and cautiously.

Be curious! But be careful.

There’s great freedom in that.

Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash

On What You Put into Your Head, Part 2: All the Trees of the Garden

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Part 1: Strategic Exposure

I noted last time that God gave Adam and Eve free access to all the many trees in the garden, except for just one. God is lavish with his gifts, including his gifts for our thoughtful consideration and even our entertainment. There’s evidence for that all through his Word, and all around us as well.

  • There’s much that glorifies God in the world around us—and beyond it. David, perhaps while watching sheep under a night sky, sang, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork” (Ps 19.1). Just as we learn a lot about a creative person, an artist, by studying his art, so we learn about God by studying his creation—its immensity, its precision, its design, its beauty, its reliability. That means that we ought to study science, at whatever depth we’re equipped to do so.
  • Perhaps you’ve never thought about the fact that the universe has a design language. Its dimensions and proportions and relationships constitute what we call math (or maths, if you’re across the pond). I know a lot of people who don’t like math and didn’t do well in it in school. OK, it’s not for everybody. But math has beauty and order and precision just like the visible universe that it describes, and it declares the glory of God just as certainly.
  • The Bible also tells us that God directs the affairs of peoples and nations, and that the heart of the king is in his hand (Pr 21.1). That means that the outworking of history tells us something about God’s mind—and the better we see how God’s mind works, the better we know him. Providence—history—is well worth thinking about as we seek to glorify God.
  • At the end of the creation week we learn that the last creatures God made—Adam and Eve—he made in his image (Ge 1.26-27). Whatever that means specifically—and there’s a fair amount of debate about that—it means that we resemble God in some significant way or ways. And that means that we can learn about God by studying humans—
    • Their languages
    • Their literature
    • Their art
    • Their music
    • Their speech
    • Their dramatic productions

So the humanities and the arts are places we ought to settle down in and think about.

It’s pretty obvious that I’m talking about the elements of a liberal arts education. No surprise there; I teach at a liberal arts university, where I’ve spent my entire adult life.

I have friends who think college is a waste of money. Learn a trade, they say, and you’ll make more money while avoiding debt.

I think that’s reductionistic. College is just right for some people, and not for others. The trades are honorable employments, and we need people in our society who are good at them. But I shiver at logic that makes earning power the sole criterion for a career decision. And I think we’d all do well to remember that glorifying God calls for a wide variety of people, skills, and knowledge sets. The world is a better place because I’m not an electrician just as certainly as it’s a better place because good electricians exist.

So what’s the big idea?

Romp in as many fields as you like; smell the wildflowers, hear the birdsong, bask in the light and warmth of the sun. Eat from all the trees of the garden to which God has graciously given us access. Delight in what they tell you about his power, his wisdom, his grace. Get to know him better. Seek to become more like his attributes that you see in what you study. Gain knowledge and skills that will make you a better servant in his great plan.

Learn everything you can about everything you can.

Relish the abundant freedom he gives.

Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash

On What You Put into Your Head, Part 1: Strategic Exposure

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I get a sense that our culture doesn’t think much about what it consumes mentally. We scroll through social media posts, slowing down for something that suits our fancy. We scroll through the menus of streaming services, looking for something to watch: something we like, something that looks interesting, something with a cool thumbnail graphic.

Whatever.

But we all know better.

We’ve all had the experience of seeing or hearing something that we wish we could forget; the woods is full of people who desperately want to get old pornographic images out of their minds and just can’t. For all the talk about being unable to remember things, we find that our brains often remember things far better than we’d like. If we had any sense, we’d be a lot more careful about what we put in there.

We’d be purposeful, strategic about it.

Let me share some thoughts about that, something I shared in chapel at Bob Jones University way back on November 6, 2006.

Since what we put into our heads is going to be there forever, and potentially available for recall, we ought to direct our thinking, and even our entertainment, to things that are going to help us become what we want to become and accomplish what we want to accomplish.

I decided a long time ago that the wisest goal for my life was to heed the biblical admonition to “do all to the glory of God” (1Co 10.31). I had discovered that I didn’t have enough mass to be the center of the universe, and what I had experienced of God led me to believe that he would make a wiser investment of my life than anyone or anything else.

And what things would most effectively glorify him?

  • Knowing him: “This is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).
  • Being like him: “We all … are changed into the same image [of the glory of the Lord]” (2 Cor. 3:18); “whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Ro 8.29).
  • Serving him: “That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2Ti 3:17).

So what things can we devote our thinking to that will further these goals?

The Scripture answers this question, as it does many others, with both freedom and caution. On the one hand, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (Ps 24.1). God pointed Adam and Eve to a garden full of all different kinds of trees and encouraged them to eat all different kinds of fruit.

Freedom!

But on the other hand, the world is broken and dangerous. There was one tree in the garden that was forbidden to them, and when they violated that prohibition, the whole garden became off limits. There are many things in the world today that we restrict our children from, and if we have any sense, there are things that we restrict ourselves from as well.

Caution.

In the next post I plan to share some observations about thinking with freedom, romping in broad fields of mental wildflowers; in the third post, I’ll have some thoughts about how and when to be cautious.

Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash

Dealing with Doubt, Part 2: The Limits of Logic

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Part 1: The Joy of Doubting

One of the main reasons that Christians wrestle with doubts these days is that they bump into something that doesn’t seem to make sense.

  • Jesus is a human teacher, but he’s also God? How does that work? How can he not know something (Mk 13.32) if he’s omniscient? How do you not know something you know?
  • Why did God have to kill his Son, when his Son didn’t even do anything wrong? Why couldn’t God just forgive us—the way he’s told us to forgive others?
  • If God is great and good, why is there suffering? Isn’t he able to stop the suffering? Doesn’t he want to?

We’re struggling with a simple problem here—none of us is as smart as we think we are.

Come on; you know that’s true. Even if you don’t admit it for yourself, you see it easily in everyone around you. What’s the likelihood that you’re the only exception? 🙂

Our minds are wonderful things, wonderful gifts from God that enable us to discover truth. But they are not ultimate authorities—in fact, they couldn’t possibly be, given that no two human minds come to all the same conclusions. That may be more obvious in the current polarized culture than ever before. Everybody’s wrong about something; and if there were one exception to that rule, we would have no reliable way to determine who it was.

Rationalism, then, is self-defeating.

Reason, like all of God’s other gracious gifts, is great, but it makes a lousy god.

Paul tells us that “The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1Co 1.25). In other words, on his worst day, God is better than the best of us on our best day in both wisdom and strength.

And God doesn’t have any bad days.

This simple fact yields at least three consequences. I’ll note the first two in this post.

First, arguments raised against God are predominantly weak.

I’ve commented before on the weakness of most charges of contradiction in the Scripture. I’ll confess that I find it difficult not to shake my head when I hear yet another young scholar repeat as breaking news the old allegation that the Bible is “filled with contradictions.” Those who can supply an example or two when asked—and that’s a minority—typically raise objections that are just laughable, such as the biblical comments that God is both a God of peace and a God of war (that’s a round character, and the same young scholars love them when they show up in popular movies), or that Leviticus calls bats birds (it doesn’t).

I’m not saying that there aren’t tough questions; there certainly are, and I’ll get to them in a moment. But it’s remarkable to me how many bright people who view logic as the greatest authority don’t see the logical problems in their own charges against the Scripture.

Second, because our minds aren’t good at understanding infinity, which is an essential attribute of God, we’re often going to run into things that puzzle us—things that we’re not mentally equipped to comprehend.

Let me note something simple about this phenomenon.

It’s exactly what we should expect if there’s really an infinite God.

A common critical view is that religion is something that evolving humans developed in an attempt to make sense of the world, and probably to give themselves power over rival tribes. The Bible, like all other holy books, is just folk tales, interesting in the study of the history of religions but not true, and most certainly not authoritative.

But that doesn’t square with the data.

If we had made this god up, would we have included things that we can’t figure out? things that would encourage rationalists to reject such a god altogether? On the other hand, if such a God really exists, wouldn’t we expect that he would regularly step beyond the horizon of our understanding and leave us shaking our heads in puzzlement?

I would submit that the existence of these perplexities is a feature, not a bug. This is a reassuring thing, not something that should lead to apostasy.

There’s more to be said. Next time.

Part 3: Trusting Your Friends

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Dealing with Doubt, Part 1: The Joy of Doubting

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Do you ever doubt your beliefs?

The fact is that we all do. We doubt the little things, and sometimes we doubt the big things. The really, really big things.

I’ve written before about an experience I had while in seminary, when I doubted the Biggest Thing Ever—whether there’s a God, and whether any of this is true.

Doubt is an important part of growing up. There comes a time in our maturation when we have to move beyond “that’s what I’ve always been taught” to “this is what I believe, for myself, with conviction; here I stand; I can do no other.” If you never do this, you essentially remain a child, at the mercy of those who want you to remain a child even though you’re an adult. And that, my friend, is profoundly unhealthy. Such a relationship is inevitably going to become abusive.

I deal with college students all day long. College age—whether you go to college or not—is the time when we transition into adulthood, when we ask hard questions about what we’ve always been taught and come to personal convictions about what we believe and how we will live. It’s the right time to work through those issues. Adulthood awaits.

But asking those questions can be scary. Where will I come out? Is there light at the end of the tunnel? For some people, the tunnel is darker than for others, and it can generate a fair amount of fear. When I was doubting—when I didn’t know how it would all turn out—I was deeply unsettled.

But I can say most assuredly that I am better for having doubted, for having gone through the unsettling experience. One reason is that beliefs that are never tested are never proved. Another reason is that working out your convictions makes them, and you, stronger. Yet another reason is that I have stories to encourage younger brothers and sisters who are now in that growth process. I’m profoundly grateful that I have had, and progressed through, that period of doubt.

Something I learned from the experience is that in thinking through what we’ve been taught, we’re often biased toward rejecting it, for several reasons.

  • Familiarity breeds contempt, even when the contempt is undeserved. Add to that the fact that you know where the bodies are buried in the landscape of your life: you’ve seen sin and failure and hypocrisy in people who participated in your upbringing—parents, siblings, teachers, pastors. That’s the inevitable result of living in a broken world, but it nonetheless inclines you to reject where you came from. The problem is that there may well be a baby in that bathwater.
  • The grass seems greener on the other side of the fence. There’s as much imperfection over there as you experienced in your upbringing—it’s a broken world, remember—but you haven’t experienced that, and everything looks fresh and new and exciting over there.
  • I’ve used trite maxims in the previous two points, so I’ll avoid that on this one. We live in an increasingly unstable culture. The pace of cultural philosophy, like the news cycle, is accelerating, and there’s considerable social pressure to throw out the old and embrace the new. If you toss it all, you’ll get instant affirmation and support from many quarters.

Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t throw out some of the things we were taught. In fact, by saying that we live in a broken world, I’ve implied just the opposite. I was taught things that I haven’t retained as an adult, and undoubtedly we all should have a similar experience. But I am saying that as you make those decisions, good and necessary decisions, you’ll be inclined to throw out things that you shouldn’t. You need to proceed carefully, thoughtfully, intentionally, rather than just chucking everything.

As I walked that path, I learned some principles that I found helpful in evaluating what to keep and what to toss. I’d like to take a few posts to share them with you.

Part 2: The Limits of Logic | Part 3: Trusting Your Friends

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

On the Fruit of the Spirit, Part 10: Self-Control

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Love | Part 3: Joy | Part 4: Peace | Part 5: Patience | Part 6: Kindness | Part 7: Goodness | Part 8: Faithfulness | Part 9: Gentleness

The last fruit on the tree of Spirit-empowered Christian character is self-control. Besides its appearance in this verse, it appears in only two other verses in the New Testament, and they don’t help us much with the meaning in context:

“And as [Paul] reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee” (Ac 24.25).

“And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; 6 And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness” (2P 1.5-6).

All of these occurrences are in lists, which are notoriously unhelpful in providing the kind of context that’s useful for drawing out the meaning of the word.

The adjectival form appears one time, in Titus 1.8, but that’s a list too:

“For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre; 8 But a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate” (Ti 1.8).

But fortunately for us, the verb form appears in two verses in 1 Corinthians, both of which give us some helpful context:

“But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn” (1Co 7.9).

“And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible” (1Co 9.25).

The first is in a context of marriage, specifically as a sexual outlet. Paul says that if a young couple is unable to control themselves with regard to their sexual impulses, then they should get married.

The second is in an athletic context, specifically running a race (1Co 9.24). When an athlete is in training, he needs to exercise self-control over every area of his physical and mental life: he works out even when he doesn’t feel like it, he carefully controls his diet, he visualizes what he’ll need to do to be a winner.

In the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint), the verb form appears once, when Moses tells Pharaoh,

“For if thou refuse to let them go, and wilt hold them still, 3 Behold, the hand of the LORD is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain” (Ex 9.2).

Here it speaks of an external restraint—Pharaoh not “letting my people go.” Similarly Herodotus writes of the Greek generals having an area “under their control” (Histories, 8.49). In a more spiritual sense, an OT apocryphal book speaks of someone who “takes hold of” the Law (Sir 15.1) and of one who “restrains himself” from lust (Sir 18.30)—which reinforces the use in 1Co 7.9 above.

Also in the Septuagint the verb form is used of Joseph “composing himself” before going before his brothers (Ge 43.31).

So “self-control” can include the sexual sense, but it’s broader than that; it speaks of personal discipline in general. So it includes our thoughts and plans, our goals, our words, our actions. It includes our responses to people we don’t like. It includes the way we drive.

In one of many ironies in the Christian life (dying is living, the servant is master, the first are last), our “self-control” emerges not from ourselves, but from the Spirit who empowers us.

Jesus said that we’ll be known by our fruits.

Who are you?

Photo by Gabriele Lässer on Unsplash

On the Fruit of the Spirit, Part 9: Gentleness

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Love | Part 3: Joy | Part 4: Peace | Part 5: Patience | Part 6: Kindness | Part 7: Goodness | Part 8: Faithfulness

The eighth of the nine fruits of the Spirit is gentleness. The KJV uses the term “meekness..” The Greek lexicons include ideas such as meekness, mildness, even-temperedness, even friendliness and humility.

The Greek word is relatively rare in the New Testament—it appears just 11 times—but those few uses give us a fairly robust picture of it by their context—

  • It’s used in parallel with compassion (Co 3.12), humility (Ep 4.2; Co 3.12), kindness (Co 3.12), patience (Ep 4.2; Co 3.12), peaceableness (Titus 3.2), reverence (1P 3.16), tolerance (Ep 4.2), and love (1Co 4.21; Ep 4.2).
  • It’s used to describe the attitude of a believer who is
    • correcting those who have fallen into error, in hopes that they may be restored  (2Ti 2.25);
    • restoring a fellow believer who has fallen into sin (Ga 6.1)—and that word “restoring” is used in secular Greek literature of a doctor setting a broken bone;
    • “receiving” the Scripture (Jam 1.21);
    • doing good deeds (Jam 3.13).
  • It’s contrasted with “boldness” (2Co 10.1) and with the attitude of a person intent on maligning someone (Titus 3.2) or disciplining someone for bad behavior (1Co 4.21).
  • It’s said to be a characteristic of Christ (2Co 10.1).

I’ve been going to dentists since I was a boy. My first dentist practiced in an age when the profession didn’t give a lot of thought to the pain involved; pain was just kind of understood to be a part of the experience. He didn’t use a topical anesthetic before he came at me with that 9-foot-long needle that had the real stuff in it. It never occurred to him during a filling that the patient might like a little break 20 minutes in. I learned to just tough it out or focus my thoughts on my happy place (which was most certainly not the dentist’s chair).

As an adult, in another part of the country, I had to establish a relationship with a new dentist. The one I ended up with was, shall we say, enlightened. His training had included some simple techniques that would significantly lower the pain inflicted. A decade or two later, when he retired and sold his practice to a young guy right out of dental school, I realized that by then the training was focusing even more on techniques to lower or even eliminate the pain.

Just had a crown done last week. Piece of cake.

Good for dentistry.

Now.

Dentists are dealing with tiny fragments of bone in our heads, and their motivation derives from the simple desire to have their patients come back, so the practice can be profitable and therefore stable. (And yes, I’m sure that many dentists, and others in health care, have an altruistic motive as well.)

Most of us, though, are not dealing with tiny bone fragments. We’re dealing with the souls of men and women in the image of God, who are going to live somewhere forever, and in the case of fellow members of the body of Christ, are going to live with us forever—and who, as members of Christ, are deeply treasured by him.

We ought to think seriously, then, about the pain we inflict. Some pain is necessary, no doubt; but much of the pain we inflict with our words and actions, even when confrontation is called for, is unnecessary. Some of the pain we inflict comes from our own impatience, or frustration, or self-focus. I’ve done that, many more times than I’d like to admit. And recently.

That’s not a result of the Spirit’s work in us.

We all—all who follow Christ—have within us an omnipotent  person who is influencing us to be gentle. We can do this.

And we ought to.

Part 10: Self-Control

Photo by Gabriele Lässer on Unsplash

On the Fruit of the Spirit, Part 8: Faithfulness

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Love | Part 3: Joy | Part 4: Peace | Part 5: Patience | Part 6: Kindness | Part 7: Goodness

The seventh fruit is the Greek word for “faith.” This is a common word, with two distinct meanings. The more common, as you might expect, is “faith”—which is simply trust, believing someone or something. The other is “faithfulness,” or trustworthiness, or reliability—someone who can be believed.

In this passage, the KJV has “faith,” while all the modern versions except the HCSB have “faithfulness.”

Why are they so confident? I suspect because it seems odd to say that “faith” is a product of sanctification after you’re saved, if “faith” is the key to how you got saved in the first place. But faithfulness, trustworthiness, as a result of sanctification makes perfect sense; in Ephesians Paul makes it a specific example of how Christ’s followers differ from the kind of people they were before:

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another (Ep 4.25).

So something the Spirit of God works in us is faithfulness:

  • We tell the truth.
  • We keep our promises.
  • Our word is our bond.
  • We show up when we said we would.

Why is that important? Paul gives us one reason in the Ephesians passage: “for we are members one of another.” It wouldn’t make any sense for the hand to lie to the eye, or to ignore its responsibilities to the eye, because they’re parts of the same body, and all the parts want the whole body to prosper. Have you ever noticed that when you get something in your eye, your finger doesn’t hurt? But it knows that because it’s articulated, and pointy, and reinforced at the tip with the backing of a fingernail, it can help your eye out with things that the eye can’t do for itself. I’ve noticed that my mouth, even though there’s nothing it can do, still wants to help—try getting something out of your eye with your mouth closed. 🙂

So how moronic is it to lie to another member of the body of Christ? or to make a promise you don’t intend to keep?

When my older daughter was about 10, I had the opportunity to take her on a two-week fossil-digging trip out West with a friend. At the time, my younger daughter was too young to come along, but since it appeared that such trips would be likely in the future, I told her that when she was 10, I’d take her on a trip too.

You know how it goes. Complications came along, and 4 years later the trip just wasn’t possible. I had to tell my little girl that I had made her a promise I couldn’t keep. I have never felt lower than in that moment. (Fortunately, she seems to have handled it well, avoiding prison time and other evidences of sociopathy.)

Do you recall the biblical story of Joshua and the Gibeonites? The Lord had commanded Israel to exterminate the Canaanite tribes. The Gibeonites tricked Joshua into believing that they were from far away and therefore not included in the decree, and Joshua promised—with an oath on the name of YHWH (Jos 9.18)—that he would not harm them.

Shortly later, of course, he found out that they had lied.

And he still kept his promise (Jos 9.1-27).

In our day, any such fraudulent contract would be legally void. But Joshua didn’t see it that way.

And centuries later, when King Saul went after the Gibeonites, in violation of Joshua’s oath, apparently God didn’t see it that way either (2S 21.1-9).

I don’t know about you, but I notice when people don’t keep their word, and if it happens repeatedly, I remember. And then I don’t count on them. And sometimes that has consequences for them—they don’t get a position of responsibility that they might otherwise have gotten.

Keeping your word matters.

Jesus said that people will know us by our fruit.

Who are you?

Part 9: Gentleness | Part 10: Self-Control

Photo by Gabriele Lässer on Unsplash

On the Fruit of the Spirit, Part 7: Goodness

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Love | Part 3: Joy | Part 4: Peace | Part 5: Patience | Part 6: Kindness

The sixth fruit that the Spirit grows in the developing character of a Christian is “goodness.” Pretty much all the English translations translate the word this way (though NRSV has “generosity”). There are lots of Greek words that involve the idea of goodness, but the two most common generally involve qualitative goodness (“He’s a good musician”—that’s καλος [kalos] for you Greek bodies) and moral goodness (“He’s a good person”—αγαθος [agathos]). (As in all languages, there’s considerable overlap as well.) Here we have the noun form of the latter. Paul is talking about being the sort of person who is prompted by his internal moral character to act morally, to do the good as distinguished from the evil.

This is a tricky business, for a couple of reasons. Most obviously, we’re not only in the image of God, but we’re also corrupted by sin, and that corruption has affected every part of us. So we all have in us a strong tendency to evil, and that tendency never goes away completely; in fact, most of us are dissatisfied that we haven’t made better progress, especially since the standard is “the glory of God” (Ro 3.23). We think of all kinds of things that we shouldn’t do, and often the motivation to go ahead and do those things—disgust, revenge, logistical desperation (as in “how am I going to pay the rent?”) is quite strong.

Most people control their evil inclinations for social reasons, among others; it just wouldn’t be acceptable to kill that guy who cut in front of us in the checkout line at the store, even though he’s acting and speaking rudely and remorselessly, right in front of the children. People would look down on me for doing what I’m thinking, and there might even be more drastic (legal) ramifications, and what would the folks in town think if I got carted off to prison?

We find such social constraints powerful, and they help keep us in line. But we know the evil inclinations are in there. If you’re a Christian, exercising the means of grace and growing thereby, you see progress (sanctification) over time; the inner darkness lifts, and the victories get more frequent. But you still wish you were doing better.

A second complicating factor is our tendency to justify ourselves, to see our situation as an exception. We’re all really good at that. Much of the evil that others see in us, we don’t see as evil, because we have perfectly good reasons for what we did. There’s a reason that the defendant is not allowed to sit on his own jury.

So for this character quality, we’re not very good at evaluating our own progress.

But progress is there, certainly and irrepressibly, if we belong to Christ, because

  • we are in Christ (Ro 8.1), who is perfectly and pervasively good;
  • the Spirit of God is in us (Ro 8.9), bringing this character change to fruition.

Writing to the first church he planted in Europe, Paul assures them of his prayer that God will “fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power” (2Th 1.11). And why is Paul so confident that God will answer this prayer? Because, as he will write later to what is likely the last church he ever visited, God has “predestinated” those he knows “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Ro 8.29)—a determination so certain that Paul speaks of their future glorification as already accomplished: “them he also glorified” (Ro 8.30).

All who belong to Christ are being changed, from the inside out, to think and say and do the right thing, to treat their neighbors, and the people who cut in line in front of them, and the drivers who wave just one of their fingers at them, and the people they didn’t vote for, as genuine image-bearers of the Creator God himself, of infinite value and worthy of their time, care, and respect.

One of my friends posted recently, “Joe Biden wasn’t elected. He was installed. Like a toilet.”

Nope. Wrong fruit.

Jesus said that people will know us by our fruit.

Who are you?

Part 8: Faithfulness | Part 9: Gentleness | Part 10: Self-Control

Photo by Gabriele Lässer on Unsplash

On the Fruit of the Spirit, Part 6: Kindness

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Love | Part 3: Joy | Part 4: Peace | Part 5: Patience

The most popular modern English versions list “kindness” as the fifth fruit. Perhaps you’ve noticed that the KJV has “gentleness.” These two English words focus on our relationships, or at least our interactions; they’re all about how we treat other people.

As to the underlying Greek word, one Greek lexicon (Friberg, for you word nerds) says it has two nuances: “(1) as a gracious attitude … opposite severity; (2) as moral integrity.” So there’s the relational sense implied in the two English renderings, but also a simple moral sense: being good, doing right.

We can get a richer sense of its breadth of meaning (what the linguists call “semantic range”) by running through the 11 times it’s used in the New Testament—

  • In Ro 2.4 it’s used twice, paralleled with “tolerance” and “patience”;
  • In Ro 11.22 it’s used 3 times, contrasted with “severity”;
  • Ep 2.7 uses it to describe God’s gracious treatment of us;
  • Co 3.12 lists it alongside “compassion, humility, gentleness [a different Greek word], and patience”;
  • Titus 3.4 speaks of it in connection with God’s love for mankind.

These 8 uses of the word are all pretty clearly speaking of the first nuance, the relational one—how we treat other people.

  • Ro 3.12 uses it this way: “There is none who does good; there is not even one.” This is a quotation from Psalm 14.3, where the standard Greek translation, the Septuagint, has our Greek word. Paul has chosen to quote that Greek version rather than translating from the Hebrew himself. The Hebrew word there is tob, the standard Hebrew word for “good.” (Remember that song from “Fiddler on the Roof,” Mazel Tov, Mazel Tov? The phrase means “good fortune.”)

So in this one passage, the Septuagint translators used our word to indicate the basic concept of goodness.

That’s 9 of the 11 uses. The mathematical genii among us will realize that there are 2 more:

  • 2Co 6.6—”in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in genuine love.” Is this kindness, or goodness—or something else? It’s hard to say. It’s a list, which often—as here—makes a poor context for discriminating between senses of a word. This list is part of a larger list of the characteristics of Paul’s ministry among the Corinthians (2Co 6.4-10). We might detect a general emphasis on the relationship between Paul and the Corinthians, which pervades the whole letter. But even against that background, it’s hard to rule out the nuance of “goodness,” even if “kindness” fits quite well.

What’s the 1 remaining use? It’s Ga 5.22, our verse on the fruit of the spirit. Again, a list. So it’s ambiguous.

Forgive all the tech talk, but I think it’s worth doing a mildly serious word study in a case where there are multiple possible meanings—or where the word might in fact have multiple intended shades of meaning. We’d like to get everything that’s actually there.

And now we’re ready to talk application. What does this look like in a person in whom the Spirit is working?

Such people are good—they think, speak, and act in good ways, and in particular in their interactions with others.

How are such people thinking? They’re thinking outwardly; they’re focused not on what they want or need, but on what’s in the best interest of the people around them.

Seems to me we’ve talked about that concept recently. Lessee—it was just a few posts ago—in this series, in fact—oh, yeah, here it is, right at the beginning of this list:

Love.

People who are obsessed with what they want—their rights, their wishes, their needs—don’t act with kindness. They make life unpleasant or difficult for other people just to make their point.

They ruin the shift of a 16-year-old store clerk because they think the store’s policy on mask-wearing is unnecessary or stupid—when the clerk didn’t set the policy and is just trying to do her job, get through her shift, and make a little money for college. Have a nice day yourself, mister. I can sense Jesus just oozing out of your pores.

People know who you are by your fruit.

Who are you?

Part 7: Goodness | Part 8: Faithfulness | Part 9: Gentleness | Part 10: Self-Control

Photo by Gabriele Lässer on Unsplash