sanctification

On Discipline, Part 1: Perspective

July 22, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

No, I’m not referring to child-rearing, but to how we discipline ourselves. It’s a truism that if you aim at nothing, you’ll certainly hit it. Pretty much everybody understands that you have to set goals, and then persist in pursuing them, in order to accomplish anything worthwhile.

There’s a whole industry of advisors, people who are happy to coach you on making the best of life—whether on the secular side or on the spiritual. Reading these works discerningly and thoughtfully can be highly profitable.

More reliably, though, the Scripture addresses this topic extensively. A series of blog posts is not the place for a comprehensive survey of the biblical theology of personal discipline, but it’s reasonable to focus on a single passage that concentrates on the idea.

I find such a passage in Philippians 4. It’s a concise presentation, and a familiar one; many Christians have memorized the passage, or at least parts of it. In verses 4-9, I find a list of five aspects of our lifestyle—what the King James translators called “conversation”—that we ought to discipline in certain ways. Lord willing, I’ll devote a post to each of the five.

The section opens with Paul’s goal for his (and our) perspective:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice (Php 4.4).

Our view of things, he says, should be consistently joyful.

Several things to note about that.

First, this is Paul writing. He has not had an easy life; as he has already noted in this short epistle, he has sacrificed early professional success to follow Jesus (Php 3.4-11), and a few years earlier he has listed for the church in Corinth a litany of hardship (2Co 11.23-29). Even as he writes these words, he is under house arrest in Rome, waiting for a hearing before Caesar that threatens capital punishment. He is not speaking platitudes.

Second, he is writing to Philippi, a church founded out of a night in prison, an earthquake, and government opposition (Ac 16.13-40). He is about to say that this church has already given sacrificially to support his ministry from a distance (Php 4.16). There is nothing flippant or casual about what he is asking them to do.

Rejoice, he says. No, I really mean it, he repeats.

And furthermore, rejoice all the time.

Rejoice in the good times; rejoice in the bad. Rejoice in success; rejoice in failure.

Rejoice in house arrest. Rejoice in the inner prison.

Interestingly, Paul lives that out. He has already written here that his arrest has yielded good things (Php 1.12-14), and he will go on to say that there are now saints in Caesar’s household (Php 4.22)—though we don’t know whether they became saints as a direct result of his appeal to Caesar.

Now for the fifty-dollar question—how does he do it? How does Paul rejoice in the midst of suffering and injustice greater than you (probably) or I have ever experienced? And by extension, how are we to “rejoice … always”?

The ellipsis provides the answer: “rejoice in the Lord always.”

There’s a lot packed into that tiny prepositional phrase.

What does it mean to “rejoice in the Lord”?

At its purest, it means simply to rejoice in God himself—who he is, and what he does. Meditation on him brings great delight.

But God knows that we are dust, and he understands that we are consistently motivated by self-interest. He graciously works benefits to us, in which we can then rejoice. The blessings of salvation are profitable topics for meditation, as are answers to prayer. (Sidebar: if you don’t pray much, or at all, you’re depriving yourself of the joy that comes from seeing prayers answered.) The confidence that comes from following his will, even through valleys (Ps 23.4), is reason to rejoice. It’s a great gift to know that, really, everything’s going to be OK, and the hard times will eventuate in great good.

So our first step of discipline, according to this passage, is in our perspective: we discipline ourselves to see all things as causes for rejoicing.

This is life-changing.

More next time.

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Continuous Improvement, Part 2: Inch by Inch

January 18, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: No Fear

Deming’s fourteen principles included a second one that has greatly influenced my thinking: being satisfied with slow, iterative change, so long as it is constant because it is built into the system. That, too, reflects something in God’s relationship with us.

During Jesus’ earthly ministry, he has three years to save the world. We would certainly feel a lot of pressure in that situation. And that pressure would be compounded if we had to set up a system that would perpetuate itself for thousands of years—particularly if we found that our disciples unanimously and continuously Just Didn’t Get It.

A remarkable thing about Jesus’ ministry is that he never seems to be in a hurry. As he’s traveling through Galilee, he sees a funeral and stops to raise the lone widow’s only son back to life again (Lk 7.11-17). As he’s walking to a village to heal Jairus’s daughter (Lk 8.41-42), he pauses and asks, “Who touched me?” (Lk 8.45). And he takes time to talk to the woman, to comfort and encourage her. Though he sometimes expresses frustration over the thickheadedness of his disciples, he doesn’t fire them and look for someone else. At the end of his earthly ministry, though they are still essentially numbskulls, he instructs them patiently and at length about what’s coming next and what their responsibilities will be.

A little improvement here, a little improvement there. That’s good. We’re moving in the right direction.

It should be no surprise, then, that he works with us in the same way. At our conversion, a lot happens from the divine side, but we’re still just babies, dependent on constant care, feeding on milk and not solid food (He 5.12; 1P 2.2). Yet God has committed himself to us for the long term, uniting our efforts with his in the lifelong process called sanctification (Php 2.12-13). With our active participation, he begins to conform us to the character of his Son, a process that will take our entire lifetimes, even with the Spirit’s empowerment. And even at the end, we still won’t be there, and God will have to take us the rest of the way to perfect Christ-likeness—and he certainly will (1J 3.2).

He knows, of course, that all along that lifelong pathway we’ll stumble, sometimes from weakness, sometimes from inattention, sometimes from sheer bone-headedness. Even Paul didn’t do any better than that (Ro 7.14-25).

But our Father is utterly committed to our long-term reclamation, and he is in this with us for the long haul. He knows our dusty frame (Ps 103.14), and he knows that we’re going to progress in tiny steps, and that sometimes we’ll take steps backward. Though we are frustrated by the fickleness of our love for God and by the consequent inconsistency of our spiritual growth, he is not.

Why not?

Because God’s plans are never frustrated.

And because he loves us.

We’re going to get there, by God’s grace and with his empowerment. You can take that to the bank.

So, every day, we seek continuous improvement. As my pastor said recently, we just take the next step. What that next step is, is different for each of us, but by God’s grace we can see that far, and we can take the step in confidence that he will empower it.

I hope you don’t take this brief series to imply that God is following Deming’s fourteen principles; God is what he is timelessly, and Deming, through common grace, is following God’s principles rather than vice versa.

It shouldn’t surprise us that God is the perfect Father, the perfect Master, the perfect Director and Accomplisher of his good and eternal plans—that he has delivered us from all fear and empowered us to become like Christ, no matter how long it takes or how slow and inconsistent the process.

Take the next step, with confidence.

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Continuous Improvement, Part 1: No Fear

January 15, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Thirty years or so ago, when I was working for BJU Press, my boss assigned me the task of researching what was then commonly called “Japanese-style management,” to see whether we could apply some of its principles to our production processes. For several years the Japanese car companies had been cleaning the clocks of the American manufacturers, and companies of all kinds were beginning to take notice.

So I did some research. Interestingly, the Japanese companies were following the advice of an American statistician named W. Edwards Deming, who argued that companies, particularly in manufacturing, should evaluate their processes statistically and make changes to their processes that were called for by the hard numbers, rather than just acting on hunches. Deming composed a list of fourteen principles to guide company management in this process of continuous improvement.

I was particularly influenced by two of these principles. The first was the absolute necessity of removing fear from the workplace. Every employee must consider himself an equal member of the team, whose input is valued. (In many cases, the line worker’s input is more valuable than the boss’s, because he’s closer to the details of the process and more likely to see where the problems lie.)

The second was the idea of continuous improvement. A company often tries to roll out a new process or organization or morale campaign, with lots of horn-blowing and pom-pom shaking and fancy new slogans, but nothing about the process and the team dynamics really changes; it’s all just pomp and circumstance. Work harder! Try more! Rah rah rah!

Deming says you can’t become a perfect organization just like that. There’s no program or reorganization that is the magic solution to your problems. Instead, you must empower everybody in the organization to notice imperfections and to speak up about them. In the case of the Japanese automakers, they empowered every worker on the assembly line to pull the chain and stop the line if he saw a problem. Yes, it costs money to stop the line; but if you see a problem, stop the line.

Because management has removed fear from the workplace (see previous principle), the employee knows he won’t get cut off at the knees when he notices and immediately reports a problem.

And quality goes up, just a little bit.

And day after day, it goes up just a little bit more.

These days that approach to management is called continuous improvement, or total quality management.

And it works.

It’s interesting to me that God’s treatment of his people reflects both of these principles.

First, God removes fear from the relationship. He does this in a couple of ways. First, he begins the relationship by assuring the believer that although he was angry at his sin before salvation, that is no longer true. He is propitiated: the enmity has been removed, and he will never be angry at the believer again.

A friend of mine, a pastor, heard me say that in class once and challenged me on that. Isn’t God angry at us when we sin? Doesn’t he chastise his people (He 12.5-9)? Yes, he chastises us, but as a perfect father, out of restorative and corrective love, not out of anger. Christ’s sacrifice propitiated the Father, and he is no longer angry. For him to become angry at us, I would suggest, would devalue the sacrifice of his Son. Was Christ’s work effective, or not? Has he propitiated the Father, or not? I said to my friend, there are Christological implications in seeing the Father as ever angry at his children.

A lot of Christians continue to live under the fear of their Father. They know that their sin continues, despite all their efforts to eradicate it. Paul admits this of himself (Ro 7.14-24). But Paul ends that confession with a shout of triumph:

I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. … There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Ro 7.25a, 8.1).

And he has already said, “We have peace with God” (Ro 5.1).

The second way he has removed fear is by assuring us of a good, and eternal, outcome. We will persevere (Jn 10.27-29); God’s enemies will be defeated (Re 20.10); and we will have abundant life eternally (Re 21.1-7), as well as in the present (Jn 10.10). Confidence, like love, casts out fear.

We’ll address the second principle next time.

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Part 2: Inch by Inch

What Peter Learned in the High Priest’s Palace, Part 5: Witness

April 20, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Growth | Part 3: Sacrifice | Part 4: Praise

Peter has one more principle to share from his painful failure in the high priest’s palace.

¹¹Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; ¹²Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation (1P 2.11-12).

If we’ve been altered so radically by God’s selection of us, it ought to make a difference in our thinking, our outlook (and thus even our facial expressions!), our decisions, our day-to-day behavior. Peter has already stated as much in verse 9. Moving from darkness to light certainly changes the way you see things.

But here he restates the contrast between the old and new life, and then he draws yet another consequence of that change.

His emphasis here turns from what God has done to and for us, to what we ought to do in response. Here comes an imperative: abstain. The object he chooses is “fleshly lusts,” which includes a lot more things than we typically envision. When we hear the word lusts, we immediately think of sexual lusts—which this term definitely includes—but really it envelops any of our inclinations that are primarily for our own benefit; fleshly doesn’t have to mean physical. Paul uses the word flesh frequently for anything related to “the old man,” the former way of life. I don’t think it unlikely that Peter might have picked up that use of the word as well.

In the old days, he says, we used to make our choices based simply on our own self-interest. (And here his mind could well have gone back to that fateful night in the high priest’s palace.) Now, he says, we act in God’s best interest.

And that means acting in the interest of others as well: we “have our conversation honest” (“conduct honorable” ESV) or live honestly in our interaction with others. We don’t take advantage of them; we don’t deceive them; we don’t speak critically of them; we don’t take actions that lower their value or interfere with their progress toward worthy goals. (Yeah, after I finish writing this post, I really, really need to go mow my lawn. It’s lowering the property values of the whole neighborhood.)

And what happens when we live out among our neighbors the changes that God has made in us?

They “behold.” They see. They notice. This word see is the word for an eyewitness in a legal case. The eyewitness reports what he has seen; he testifies to the validity of the evidence. Just as DNA evidence is proof positive of identification, so also God has placed in us his DNA, if I may say so, and the evidence of his work in us should be indisputable. We are evidence in the court of history. Are we convincing?

Note that others do notice, despite their predisposition to reject us; though “they speak evil against you as unbelievers,” they still notice. And Peter says that they will respond to the genuineness they see: they will “glorify God.”

Does this mean that they will come to Christ because of what they have seen? or merely that they will be forced, despite their unbelief, to bow the knee to him at the end of it all? I’m not sure; it could involve either. I would certainly prefer the former, but we know that final submission will come to all (Ro 14.11; Php 2.10-11).

Peter says that our observers will glorify God “in the day of visitation.” When is that? Well, the phrase literally means “the day of oversight [or overseeing],” and that could mean a lot of things. Maybe it’s the day when they come to conversion—that’s certainly a day when they would glorify God. Or maybe it’s the day of judgment, when every knee shall bow.

But in any case, God will be glorified, and some of that glorification will be the direct result of the good work he has done in us.

Peter learned a lot in that palace. He was changed, painfully, from someone who was interested only in promoting his own agenda and benefit to someone who called himself a “servant” of Jesus Christ (2P 1.1), the very one he had betrayed. May we be changed as well.

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What Peter Learned in the High Priest’s Palace, Part 4: Praise

April 17, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Growth | Part 3: Sacrifice

Peter turns now to a deeper meditation on what God has done to us, and for us. He writes,

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light (1P 2.9).

There’s a lot to consider here.

Peter has listed 4 different labels, we might say, delineating 4 statuses that God has bestowed on his people. Each one of them is worth a look.

We’re a chosen generation.
- Some modern translations ues the word race or people. I don’t much use the word race anymore, because it doesn’t have any agreed-upon meaning among sociologists and thus doesn’t typically contribute any clarity to a conversation. The Greek word here is genos, which speaks essentially of a group of relatives, large or small, or of beings with a shared characteristic or interest. It’s the word Moses uses in Genesis (in the Greek translation, at least) that’s translated “kind” in the creation account.
- So what’s Peter saying? God has chosen us, His people, to be of a certain kind, distinct from others, but united by his choice. We know from elsewhere in Scripture that he didn’t choose us because we were inherently different from others; it is our relationship to him that has now distinguished us.
We’re a royal priesthood.
- We should note here that in Israel it was impossible for one person to be both a king and a priest. The king had to be from the tribe of Judah, and the priests had to be from Levi, and specifically from Aaron. Even Jesus was not qualified to be an Aaronic priest—and so the author of Hebrews notes that he was appointed by the Father to be a priest in a different order, that of Melchizedek—which, as the author notes, is a superior order to that of Levi (He 7.1-17).
- So it is a special privilege for us, like our elder brother Christ, to be both kings and priests.
We’re a peculiar people.
- I’m using the familiar wording of the KJV here, but we all know that with the changes in the English language since 1611, peculiar doesn’t mean what it once did, with the result that this expression is, well, peculiar. The modern versions have mostly settled on the expression “a people for his own possession”; we might say “his own private property.”
- So we belong especially to God. We are set aside for his enjoyment and use. He delights in us the way someone delights in his boat, say, or in his coin collection—but in fact far more than that, because his delights are greater than ours, and perfect.
We’re a holy nation.
- This phrase combines a couple of earlier concepts. Holy speaks of the same kind of setting-apart that peculiar does, while nation speaks of the same kind of common identity that generation does.
- But I think nation (ethnos) might carry a connotation a little different from genos. For one thing, I note that in Israel, the term was used for “the nations”—that is to say, the Gentiles. To Peter’s Jewish readers—and probably to Peter himself—this would have been a little uncomfortable at least. Is Peter saying that God is making a new nation, distinct from Israel? It would seem so. The ramifications of that concept have led to a good many theological arguments, which we won’t take time for here.

God has changed our status in all these ways—for what? Peter isolates a single purpose: “that we should show forth the praises of him.” NASB and ESV say “proclaim the excellencies.” Now, this isn’t saying that we ourselves should praise him, so much as that we should speak and live in such a way that others are moved to praise him. The excellencies of how he has changed us should incite wonder and worship in those who see us.

That’s a complete turnaround from the way Peter was thinking in the high priest’s palace. And it’s a radical change for us as well.

Part 5: Witness

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What Peter Learned in the High Priest’s Palace, Part 3: Sacrifice

April 13, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Growth

Peter learned something else the night he betrayed his Master. He writes,

You also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ (1P 2.5).

The Scripture uses several metaphors for God’s people. We’re a body (Ro 12.4-5); we’re a kingdom (Re 1.6); we’re a bride (2Co 11.2). Here Peter says that we’re a temple. And individual believers are living stones who make up the temple, as well as being the priests who work in the temple. Peter’s point here isn’t that the stones are beautiful and that together they compose a beautiful building—though that is certainly true. His emphasis is more practical, purposeful, utilitarian than aesthetic. We are a temple, and priests in that temple, for the purpose of offering up sacrifices to God.

So, it turns out, following Jesus isn’t really about us.

Oh, there are benefits to us, of course: forgiveness, eternal life, love, joy, peace, fellowship—and on and on it goes. But it’s primarily about making sacrifices to the one who is ultimately great and good, to the one who planned and accomplished all those benefits that we have reaped. Our focus is on him, not our benefits.

Peter had bragged about his devotion and assured faithfulness. But when faced by public pressure—from a couple of servant girls—he collapsed. He was thinking entirely of his own felt needs—reputation and self-preservation, mostly—and abandoned “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16.16) in his Master’s time of much greater need.

The way someone acts in a crisis tells him what his most primal needs are. Peter demonstrated that he cared more about himself than anyone else.

As do we all.

But with this new birth, this discarding of the old life for the new, this utter reversal of focus, we are called to count “but dung” (Php 3.8) our former fascination with ourselves, our needs, and our desires, and to give what we have, to sacrifice, to God.

That raises a question.

What can we give him? Why should he want our junky stuff? Of what use to him is rifling through our yard sales?

Good question.

Peter speaks to that. Our sacrifices, he says, “are acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1P 2.5).

How about that.

Our new life isn’t just a chance to start the same kind of life over again; it’s a different kind of life, and it’s a change of both nature and location.

We are, as Paul repeatedly says, “in Christ” (Ro 8.1; 12.5; 1Co 1.30; 2Co 5.17; Ga 3.28; Ep 2.13; Php 1.1; Co 1.2; 1Th 2.14; and elsewhere). And in Christ, the Father is well pleased (Mt 3.17). When we offer sacrifices to God, he sees them as coming from his Son, and he is delighted with them. When we “present [our] bodies a living sacrifice” (Ro 12.1), God accepts and treasures them.

The key here is not what is offered; Peter says we offer sacrifices (1P 2.5), but he doesn’t seem to have any interest in specifying what it is that we offer. The key, I think, is that we offer at all. In the high priest’s palace, Peter wasn’t thinking about Jesus’ benefit; he was thinking merely of himself. That night he learned that our decisions, because we are followers of Christ, need to be focused on him. What will please him? What will advance his kingdom? What will further his purposes? What will enhance his reputation?

In human relationships, we know that the real value of a gift is not in the gift itself; it’s in the fact that it’s given. It indicates that we were thinking about the person to whom we gave it. Our thinking is oriented toward that person.

There you have it. In this new life, Peter says, we live as oriented toward God and not toward ourselves.

So, unlike Peter, we make sacrifices. In the face of public scorn, we point to heaven and say, “I’m with Him.” We take a stand.

No waffling. No hesitation. No regrets.

Part 4: Praise | Part 5: Witness

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What Peter Learned in the High Priest’s Palace, Part 2: Growth

April 10, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction

Peter begins his second chapter by describing his audience as babies (1P 2.2).

That’s not normally a compliment; nowadays, when you call somebody a baby, you’re saying that he’s acting immaturely, selfishly. You’re saying he needs to grow up.

In some places, them’s fightin’ words.

Peter’s point, however, is not at all hostile or demeaning. He’s telling us something he learned through his failure.

When you come to Christ, you’re not just getting your sins forgiven and escaping from judgment; you’re starting a whole new life. This is happening in the spiritual sphere rather than the physical, but there are significant points of comparison between the two. When you first come to Jesus, you’re a spiritual baby, and like a physical baby, you desperately need to grow up spiritually. This isn’t an accusation; it’s a fact. We don’t denigrate babies for being babies; we nurture and protect them—and we feed them like crazy: all they want, whenever they want. We rearrange our lives around the baby’s hunger pangs.

If babies don’t grow, they die.

That’s true in botany as well as human development. Some people—we say they have a “green thumb”—can make plants grow seemingly without effort. Others—including yours truly—kill everything they touch. I once killed a barrel cactus.

Do you know how hard it is to kill a barrel cactus?

The growth principle is true in business too. You can’t just create a system and cash checks while the system hums along smoothly; you need to grow, constantly adapting to new market conditions. If you don’t, your competitors will eat you alive. (See under “Howard Johnson’s Restaurants.”)

Children know that they need to grow. They follow their advancing age a half a year at a time: “I’m not five; I’m five and a half.” They mark their advancing height on the closet door frame. They talk about what they’re going to do when they’re whatever age.

I recall when my daughter turned 6 and was allowed to go to the stage productions on campus. Her first one was an opera—Barber of Seville if I remember correctly—and when the overture started, she slid forward in her seat and hardly moved for the rest of the night. What a delight it was for her to experience growing up.

Children talk about it all the time: “When I grow up, I’m gonna … “ I’ve never gotten over that; I’ve enjoyed every year more than the one before.

We love to grow, to mature, to get better at things we enjoy. Growth is good.

One dark night Peter learned that in his life in Christ, he was a baby; he had a lot of growing to do.

What makes a baby grow?

Nutrition. Lots of it. He eats and eats and eats, and eats some more.

That’s how we grow spiritually as well; we need to eat spiritual food, as much as we can hold. So Peter says, “As newborn babies, crave the unadulterated milk of the Word” (1P 2.2). He has just observed that “the Word of the Lord endures forever” (1P 1.25); there’s no better or more powerful source of spiritual nutrition than that.

We need to feed hungrily on the Word, filling our minds and hearts with it, building spiritual muscle, gaining wisdom and experience, so we’re not likely to do the spiritual equivalent of running out into the street and getting hit by a car.

That’s pretty much what Peter did in the high priest’s palace.

But by the power of the Word, and the Spirit, Peter began a new life. Not a perfect one, by any means (see Galatians 2), but a generally healthy and productive one.

So how’s your growth going? How do those little pencil marks on the closet door frame look?

Part 3: Sacrifice | Part 4: Praise | Part 5: Witness

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What Peter Learned in the High Priest’s Palace, Part 1: Introduction

April 6, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Among Bible students, Peter has become almost a stereotype of himself. We all feel like we know him: outspoken, impetuous, the bull in the china shop, lots of braggadocio with comparatively little accomplishment.

Some would say that’s the early Peter, before the Lord changed him at Pentecost. He famously went from “the fear of the Jews” (Jn 20.19) to facing down the Sanhedrin’s threats (Ac 4.5-20) and even to being soundly asleep in prison the night before his scheduled execution (Ac 12.1-7). That’s an astonishing change, not one to be sniffed at.

But then he disappoints us again, allowing the presence of Judaizers in Antioch to intimidate him into withdrawing fellowship from Gentile believers and apparently returning to Mosaic dietary restrictions (Ga 2.11-12)—and this after a vision from God (Ac 10.9-16) affirming what Jesus had taught during his earthly ministry: that all foods were now clean (Mk 7.19).

We can say confidently at least that during Jesus’ earthly ministry, Peter the coarse, tough fisherman indeed fit the stereotype. He was brimming with confidence, speaking out of turn (Mt 17.4), boasting of what he would accomplish (Mt 26.35), even rebuking his Master for a solemn pronouncement (Mt 16.22), and earning a greater rebuke in return (Mt 16.23)—and that shortly after proclaiming him “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Mt 16.16).

But as we know, his world came crashing down one dark night in Jerusalem. Despite his boasting (Mt 26.35), he did indeed deny his Master, not once, but three times (Mt 26.69-74)—and a threefold cord, the Preacher tells us, is not quickly broken (Ec 4.12). His denial of Jesus came from fear of a couple of servant girls (Mt 26.69-71). Crashing down, indeed; “he went out,” Matthew tells us, “and wept bitterly” (Mt 26.75).

A hard lesson in the high priest’s palace.

But the Lord has plans for Peter. After the resurrection the angel at the tomb makes special mention of Peter to the women: “Go your way, tell his disciples—and Peter—that he’s going before you into Galilee” (Mk 16.7). And in Galilee, while several of the disciples are fishing on the lake, the resurrected Jesus invites them to come join him for breakfast on the beach (Jn 21.12). After they eat, he invites Peter, and apparently only Peter (Jn 21.20), to go for a walk on the beach. In a tender conversation, he gently reminds Peter of his threefold failure of love (Jn 21.15-17), each time calling his failed disciple to return to service: “Feed my sheep.” And with a stronger threefold cord, not breakable at all, he binds up Peter’s spiritual wounds.

And then he tells him the greatest news of all: Peter is going to serve Jesus until the day he dies (Jn 21.18-19).

And he does. That service lasts a long time, more than three decades according to well-attested tradition. He stays in Jerusalem for some time, during which he faces down the Sanhedrin, as we’ve noted already (Ac 4.8ff); he miraculously establishes order in the Jerusalem church by exposing a lie (Ac 5.1-9); he exposes a false convert in Samaria, while also serving as the vehicle by which the Holy Spirit is given to the Samaritans (Ac 8.14-25); he raises a saint from the dead at Lydda (Ac 9.32-43); he brings the gospel to the first Gentile to believe (Ac 10.44-48); he survives an attempted execution (Ac 12.1-16); and he helps lay a solid foundation for the unification of Jews and Gentiles in the body of Christ by his biblical and theological contribution at the Council of Jerusalem (Ac 15.7ff). According to tradition, he helps start the church at Rome and ministers there.[1]

And later yet, after long service, he writes two letters to believers in what is today Turkey, to encourage them during persecution and to urge them to be faithful until the return of Christ.

In those letters, he leaves a written record of what he learned in the high priest’s palace.

For a few posts we’ll look at just a portion of one of those letters.

[1] Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.1.1, 3.3.2, and 3.3.3), as well as several citations in Eusebius’s Church History, report this, along with others.

Part 2: Growth | Part 3: Sacrifice | Part 4: Praise | Part 5: Witness

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On Thinking Like Christ, Part 1: The Most Important Thing

January 2, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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:

⁵Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. ⁸Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹and 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.

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The Myth of the Super Christian, Part 6: Pray. Hard.

October 10, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: No Such Thing | Part 2: Eternal Values | Part 3: Healthy Distrust of Self | Part 4: A Clear and Uncontested Goal | Part 5: All In. Every Day.

There’s one more element in Paul’s description of his spiritual walk that tells us volumes about his success as a believer.

In the last letter he wrote that’s been preserved, Paul is in prison in Rome. This is the second time for him. Last time, he was upbeat about his prospects—

In his letter to Philemon, likely written early in that 2-year imprisonment, he expects to prevail in his appeal to Caesar (Ac 25.10-11) and thus to be released; he tells Philemon to prepare him a place to stay when he comes to visit (Phm 1.22).
When he writes to the Philippians, likely toward the end of the imprisonment, he still expects to visit the church there in Philippi (Php 1.25; 2.24).

But this time is different. Rather than being under house arrest in rented, and relatively comfortable, residential quarters (Ac 28.30), Paul is now in a prison—traditionally the Mamartine prison, a dungeon—and is clearly not expecting to be released (2Ti 4.6-8). He is largely alone (2Ti 4.9-11) and in need of supplies (2Ti 4.13). He is settling his affairs (2Ti 4.14-15).

But he is not discouraged or depressed. He expects the Lord’s work on his behalf (2Ti 4.18) and eventual eternal reward, in the Lord’s timing (2Ti 4.8).

Victorious to the end, regardless of the challenging circumstances.

And in this context, in this epistle, in these circumstances, we find one more clue.

I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day (2Ti 1.3).

He prays.

He communes with his Father, drawing spiritual strength to thrive in all those challenging circumstances, ones that would very likely do us in.

He’s really serious about this; he prays “without ceasing … night and day.”

I’d have trouble with that—especially the night part. In those times, I fall asleep.

I’m not the only one—right?

And I note something further here, something that sheds more light on his outlook.

He doesn’t speak of praying for himself; he asks others to do that (Co 4.3; 1Th 5.25; 2Th 3.1). He prays for others, for Timothy, his “dearly beloved son” in the faith (2Ti 1.2). Even in extremity, his thoughts, his concerns, are for others.

He follows his Lord’s example in this. Jesus prayed for long sessions (Mt 14.23), sometimes all night (Lk 6.12); and in his greatest extremity, he prayed for others, for those who believed in him (Jn 17.6-26).

This kind of prayer is hard work, both because it is lengthy and because it is on behalf of others. Paul describes such prayer—in this case the prayer offered by his coworker Epaphras—as “labor”—

Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God (Co 4.12).

The Greek word rendered “laboring” here is agonizomai, which we all recognize as the etymological origin of our word agonize. It’s used of athletes in competition, on Game Day, who are leaving it all on the field (1Co 9.25). Specifically it’s used of boxers (1Ti 6.12, 2Ti 4.7). And more significantly, it’s used of soldiers (Jn 18.36), who are fighting for their lives.

We’re not often called up to fight like that. And we don’t often pray like that.

Paul prayed “without ceasing … night and day.”

This was not formal prayer, grace before dinner, after which someone at the table asks, “Did we pray?” It’s constant, mindful, effortful communication with God.

The Christian life is not easy for anyone; there are no “naturally gifted athletes” in the Christian race. It means rejecting your natural self and renewing the battle every day. It means staying in constant communication with “headquarters.” It’s a tough battle.

There are no Super Christians. There are just people who fight the battle every day.

Re-enlist.

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