sanctification

On the Fruit of the Spirit, Part 3: Joy

May 3, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

As the Spirit of God works on the character of his people, it should come as no surprise that right on the heels of love comes joy. Or maybe it might be surprising after all, if you consider the biblical definition of love rather than the common cultural one.

We all know that when people “fall in love,” there’s a lot of joy involved. But as we noted last time, love isn’t really about serendipity; it’s about a focus away from oneself and on others. And these days our culture takes it as axiomatic that you can’t love others until you first love yourself; that there’s nothing more joyous than “being true to yourself.”

Au contraire.

I’m not suggesting that we should be doormats or hypocrites, or that we should be obsessed with self-loathing. But I am confident that making yourself the center of the universe is no path to joy.

If we devote ourselves to acting in the best interests of those around us, though, the roadway is blossoming with joy.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We should start with definitions.

The word translated “joy” here occurs 60 times in the New Testament. It’s used to describe

How a man feels when he learns that he’s finally, after decades of trying, going to be a father (Lk 1.14)
How the wise men felt when the star they had seen back home reappeared just as they needed help finding the newborn king (Mt 2.10)
How a man feels when he finds a hidden treasure (Mt 13.44)
How a woman feels after she gives birth (Jn 16.21)
How Jesus’ disciples felt when they found that they could cast out demons (Lk 10.17)
How the women at the tomb felt when the angel told them that Jesus was risen (Mt 28.8)
How the disciples felt when the risen Jesus appeared in the room with them (Lk 24.41)
How Rhoda felt when she realized that the imprisoned Peter, for whom the church was praying, was free and standing at the gate (Ac 12.14)
How a teacher feels when his students excel (Php 2.2; 4.1; 1Th 2.19-20; Heb 13.17; 1J 1.4; 3J 4)

I really get that last one.

If you scan through the uses of this word in the NT, you can’t help noticing something that you may find surprising—the frequent connection of joy with trials.

When Paul and Barnabas were opposed and then thrown out of the first major city they visited in Asia Minor on their first missionary journey, “the disciples were continually filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit” (Ac 13.52).
To the church in Corinth Paul writes, “I am overflowing with joy in all our affliction” (2Co 7.4).
To the same church he writes that for the churches of northern Greece, “in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality” (2Co 8.2).
He tells the Thessalonians that they had “received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit” (1Th 1.6).
The author of Hebrews writes that his audience “accepted joyfully the seizure of your property” (Heb 10.34).
James writes, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials” (Jam 1.2).

So joy is how we feel when we get really good news—but it’s possible to feel the same way when the news is not at all good. It’s delight that isn’t based on our circumstances.

How does the Spirit work this in us? The “trials” passages give us a clue.

God “comforts the depressed” (2Co 7.6). And, as Paul makes clear in this instance, the causes of sorrow are not permanent, and God brings good things out of hard times.
In the case of the Hebrews, they accepted persecution “knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one” (Heb 10.34).
And James, writing earlier than all the others—and before his execution by being thrown off “the pinnacle of the Temple” in Jerusalem, where his half-brother had refused Satan’s invitation to jump—notes that “the testing of your faith produces endurance” (Jam 1.3).

What’s the takeaway here?

When your perspective changes from the mud in the road to the eternal outcome of the beneficent divine plan—when we live “with eternity’s values in view,” as the gospel chorus says—we deal more joyously—more realistically!—with the instabilities of life. Like an experienced driver, who takes in the whole road and not just what’s happening right in front of his bumper, we’re much less likely to crash.

Joy.

It’s how we live.

Photo by Gabriele Lässer on Unsplash

On the Fruit of the Spirit, Part 2: Love

April 29, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction

Paul begins his list of Christ’s character qualities with love.

We all think we know what love is—it’s that tingling sensation we get when we “fall” for someone.

One of my seminary roommates used to call that “zing.”

Let me state for the record that zing is good. May we all experience zing, and may we rejoice in it.

But zing is not all there is to love.

If we study the word as it’s used in the New Testament, we find that while it certainly includes an emotional component, it’s much bigger than that. I think the best definition I’ve come across is from my friend and colleague Randy Leedy: “a disposition to sacrifice oneself in order to secure the benefit of the loved one.” (For a considerably deeper discussion of the complexities of the term, try this dissertation by a former student of mine, the kind webmaster of this blog.)

Love is more than just an emotion, or a choice, or an understanding. Love is a perspective and its consequences; love is the way you look at something or someone, and the decision to elevate the worth of that object above your own interests.

Once you realize this, you realize how toxic much of our culture’s view of love is. Many people, informed by the artistic expressions of the age, love people for what they can do for them—you make me feel good, you “complete” me, you make my life worth living. “I can’t live without you,” after all.

But that’s upside down and backwards. Love, genuine love, impels me to give, not to take. It impels me to think of someone else, not my own joy or pleasure or desire.

Sure, it’s complicated; there are lots of facets to genuine love. But if there’s not at its core a greater valuation of the object than of the self, then it’s not love.

What can we learn about love from the Bible? Perhaps it was J.R. Fausset who first observed that Paul is the apostle of faith; Peter is the apostle of hope; and John is the apostle of love.

In that case, let’s see what John says.

In his brief first epistle, he talks a lot about love—

God is love (1J 4.8, 16).
He expresses that love toward us (1J 3.1) by sending his Son (1J 4.9-10) to lay down his life for us (1J 3.16) even before we loved him (1J 4.9-10).
We should love God in return (1J 4.19) and show that love by obeying him (1J 2.5; 5.2-3).
We should love our brothers, because that’s one way we obey him (1J 3.23; 4.21). And we should love them genuinely, in action, not merely in words (1J 3.18).
When we love our brothers, we demonstrate that we have passed from death to life (1J 3.14); that we know God (1J 4.7-8); that God is in us (1J 4.16-17); that we’re growing in our understanding of his love (1J 4.12); and that we’re walking in his light (1J 2.10).
We should not love “the world” (1J 2.15), defined as desires that are fundamentally self-focused (“the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” 1J 2.16).
And we learn that mature love “casts out fear” (1J 4.18).

There’s a lot of fear these days. And a lot of that fear is being expressed by Christians.

That doesn’t make any sense. If we’re in God, we exist—“abide in”—a state of love. And if we’re living with an external, loving focus, we have no business being afraid.

Perhaps you’ve seen the meme that says, “No one, in the history of ever, has ever calmed down after being told to calm down.”

Granted.

But calm down.

In this case, there’s supernatural power involved, which ought to make the impossible possible.

How do we walk in love?

We think about others. First.
- How will what I’m about to say affect this person? Will it build him up or tear him down? Will it draw him to Christ or push him away?
We devalue our own rights and needs and wants.
- Does the fact that I have a right to free speech mean that I have to exercise it at this moment? Is my winning this argument—or even just getting in a zinger as I walk away—more important to me than the value of my opponent—who is, by the way, in the image of God (Ge 1.27), and deeply loved by him (Jn 3.16)?

Jesus observed that in nature, you identify a tree by its fruit (Mt 7.16).

Who are you?

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On the Fruit of the Spirit, Part 1: Introduction

April 26, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

In the current societal turmoil, there’s a lot of suspicion toward people we disagree with, and consequently there are a lot of charges being lobbed casually back and forth between opposing camps. Any historian will tell you that you should be suspicious of one group’s descriptions of a group they oppose—that principle has come into play notably in current skepticism about descriptions of historical people groups as cannibalistic, and it even played a role in our understanding of the Ecuadorian Huaorani (not “Auca”) who killed the 5 missionaries back in 1956.

So it shouldn’t surprise us when people on the other side of an issue from us describe us inaccurately. I see broad characterizations of Christians, for example, that are demonstrably, objectively inaccurate. No, Christians are not characterized by “hate”—an all too facile accusation these days—simply because they disagree with a policy decision or a view of morality. No, they’re not “phobic”—irrationally motivated by fear, another all too facile accusation that conveniently liberates the accuser from having to answer their rational statements rationally—when they allege that a given lifestyle will carry significant negative consequences, both culturally and individually. And no, they don’t believe—and this is my favorite—that they should read the Bible “literally”—they’re not knuckle-dragging troglodytes who wouldn’t recognize a metaphor or a synecdoche if it bit ‘em on the, um, kiester.

But.

On the other hand, I see many of my Christian fellow-travelers saying and doing things that make these accusations, well, credible.

My brethren, these things ought not so to be.

Christianity is not at root a cultural position (“this is just the way I was brought up!”), a pragmatic political position (“they’re destroying our country!”), or even a change of worldview (“I see it all so clearly now!”), whether due to significant rational, emotional, or circumstantial experiences.

Christianity—personal salvation—is a work of God in the heart of a human that spiritually resurrects him from the dead and sets him on a radically different course of life, empowering him to instantiate that lifestyle consistently and progressively. A Christian—a real one—should be significantly different from the kind of person he was before, and he should get progressively better over time at resembling the character qualities of Christ.

Now, we all start out life broken morally and in many other ways, and that brokenness is never perfectly mended in this life. But we ought to have something in the way of character improvement as an unavoidable consequence of our new birth, and we ought to be making progress.

Paul speaks of this contrast in Ephesians 4, where he exhorts believers to “walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called” (Ep 4.1). Earlier in the epistle he has spoken of having been “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ep 2.1) but then “resurrected together with Christ” (Ep 2.5) and “created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ep 2.10).

Radical change.

For much of chapter 4, Paul contrasts the old way of life (“being alienated from the life of God,” Ep 4.18), characterized by “all uncleanness” (Ep 4.19), with the new way, “which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ep 4.24). He lists several specific examples of this new way:

We quit lying and tell the truth (Ep 4.25).
We control our anger (Ep 4.26).
We fight temptation (Ep 4.27).
We give instead of taking (Ep 4.28).
We use our words to build up rather than tear down (Ep 4.29).

And the list goes on (Ep 4.30-32), ending with kindness, tenderness, and forgiveness (Ep 4.32).

That last verse is the first one I ever memorized, in Sunday school back in 1960. After 6 decades, I’ve still got work to do, and I suspect you do too.

Paul makes the same point in an earlier epistle, contrasting the “works of the flesh” (Ga 5.19-21) with the “fruit of the Spirit” (Ga 5.22-23). The latter list amounts to a description of the character of Jesus, to whom God is conforming our character over time (Ro 8.29).

Christians are different from their fellow citizens. We’re always going to be seen as different, strange (1P 4.4), odd, even contemptible, even dangerous. It’s happened before, and it will happen again.

But as Paul’s apostolic predecessor and colleague Peter reminds us, we shouldn’t be giving them legitimate reasons to think that way about us (1P 3.14-17; 4.14-16). Suffering for Jesus is one thing; suffering because you’re not like Jesus is another thing entirely.

So it will be helpful to spend some time thinking about the fruit of the Spirit and assessing our own needs in these areas.

Next time.

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Simple Faith. Simple Grace, Part 5: Keeping It Going

March 15, 2021 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: The Basics | Part 2: The Way | Part 3: Keeping It Simple | Part 4: Working It Out

We’ve spent some time considering the simple truths of the gospel and the importance of keeping them simple—that is, promoting what the Bible actually says without adding any ideas of our own.

That shouldn’t be difficult to do, but historically it seems to be. In our walk with God, we’ve all had differing experiences—

Our culture brings us to the text with different presuppositions, many of them unrecognized, which flavor our understanding of it.
Our experience of God’s grace is not exactly like anyone else’s; we have a unique set of experiences, including high and low points, that give us sometimes unique insights into what a given passage has come to mean to us experientially.
Our personalities bias us to understand a given text differently from someone with a different set of biases.

Add to this the fact, recently considered here, that everybody is at least a little bit right and a little bit wrong, and you have a recipe for theological disagreement about very simple, but very important, biblical teaching.

A case in point—

More than 30 years ago now John MacArthur published The Gospel According to Jesus, arguing against “easy believism,” fruitless Christianity. Sounds as though there wouldn’t be anything controversial about that. But the book took the evangelical world by storm, eliciting multiple responses and counter-responses. MacArthur was arguing not merely that a convert’s life should change, but that if the “convert” hadn’t knowingly embraced the complete lordship of Jesus Christ at the time of his conversion, he wasn’t really a convert.

MacArthur wasn’t the first to argue this position. Walter Chantry had argued similarly nearly 20 years earlier in his book Today’s Gospel: Authentic or Synthetic?, and Arthur W. Pink had discussed a similar concept back in the late 1940s.

Anyway, books started flying. In his 1989 work Absolutely Free!, Zane Hodges argued against MacArthur’s position, as did his Dallas Seminary colleague Charles Ryrie the same year (So Great Salvation). In an even more provocative book, Charles Swindoll, soon to become the president of Dallas Seminary, added to the fire with Grace Awakening in 1990. Don’t add to the list, they argued; keep it simple.

MacArthur doubled down with The Gospel According to the Apostles and then The Gospel According to Paul.

And evangelical seminary classes around the world went to battle. Lots of discussions about the conflicting views, in classes, in the hallways, over meals, and in what few coffee shops there were at time.

I’d like to suggest that the views are both a little bit right, and they’re both a little bit wrong.

I think MacArthur did what a lot of us do—he read some sanctification back into justification, as exemplified by our point about believing the virgin birth. In that narrow sense, he added to the list.

On the other hand, he’s obviously right that Christ’s followers don’t deny or ignore his lordship. They know his voice, and they follow him—not perfectly, of course, but aspirationally.

So no, the little child doesn’t need to “sign on” to the absolute lordship of Christ when he expresses sorrow for his sins and believes that Jesus, strong and kind, will save him. But if that child comes to me as a college student, whose life has not changed, and asks me for help with assurance of salvation, I’m not going to give him list of verses on assurance; I’m going to point him to the warning passages in Scripture—Hebrews would be a great place to start—and I’m going to challenge the authenticity of his faith. If you’re not hearing his voice, what basis do you have for thinking that you’re his sheep?

Simple faith. Simple grace.

And then, certain growth in Christ, by that same grace, to the glory of God.

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Simple Faith. Simple Grace. Part 4: Working It Out

March 11, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The Basics | Part 2: The Way | Part 3: Keeping It Simple

The good news, the gospel, is that salvation is simple. Anyone can understand it, and anyone can do it, by simply turning—turning their heart away from their sin and toward Christ in faith.

Simple faith.

And as we’ve seen, Paul does not tolerate adding anything—even a good and important thing like baptism—to the list.

Jesus said that you come to him like a child, in simple trust (Mk 10.14-15). Children don’t know much, but they do know whom they can trust, who will receive and protect them. Salvation is like that.

But we humans are prone to polarism—to reacting against a bad thing by going to the opposite pole and thinking or doing the opposite bad thing. We often do that in our thinking about salvation.

Salvation is indeed simple and free, but it’s not just a single event at one point in time.

It begins a lifelong process of walking with God and growing in him—learning from the indwelling Spirit, through the Word, and getting better at obeying God by reflecting more accurately the character of his Son. We call this process sanctification, and I’ve written about it before.

As we proceed down that path, the Spirit changes every part of us—

Our minds—we learn things from the Bible, and from experience. We come to understand theology—what there is to know about God and his ways—better.
Our emotions—we learn about Christ’s compassion, and we begin to feel that compassion toward others; we begin to love the brethren, and our neighbors, more as he does.
Our wills—we get better at making the right choices, even under contrary pressure, because we’re thinking more clearly, and because we want to.

The Bible makes it clear that it’s not healthy just to “get saved” and then just remain as we are; there needs to be growth and change—

Paul tells us to “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Php 2.12), and he describes that process in his own life (Php 3.8ff).
The author of Hebrews tells his readers that they need to move on beyond the basics and, frankly, just grow up spiritually (Heb 5.11-6.3).
Jesus told his disciples that those who genuinely follow him will unavoidably bear fruit (Jn 15.1.8).

The list could go on and on.

I’ve been a believer for 60 years now, and I’m still amazed every day at how much spiritual growth still lies ahead of me—at often I tell myself, “Dan, after all this time, you really ought to be better at this.”

So let’s press toward the mark (Php 3.14).

But as we do, let’s keep the gospel true—clean, simple, clear.

Let’s not add anything to it.

Let me close with an illustration that might make you uncomfortable.

Question: Do you have to believe in the virgin birth of Christ to be saved?
Answer: No.

Now, hear me out.

Most of my students were saved as children, perhaps age 5 or 6.

When they were saved, they didn’t even know what a virgin birth was. They were children.

But they were genuinely saved.

Now, later, as sanctification progressed, they were introduced to the doctrine of the virgin birth, and when they heard it, they believed it—because “the Bible tells me so,” and because they were Jesus’ sheep, and his sheep hear his voice, and he knows them, and they follow him (Jn 10.27).

Christ’s people will not deny his virgin birth.

It’s a good and important and true thing.

But they didn’t have to have any intellectual understanding of it whatsoever in order to turn to him.

They just had to turn.

Simple faith. Simple grace. Trusting in an unimaginably exalted God, who in time will take them places they could never imagine. But starting simply, by grace.

Part 5: Keeping It Going

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How Not to Have a Civil War, Part 12: Gratitude

November 5, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father (Col 3.17).

It’s no accident that we come to the end of this relatively lengthy series two days after the US presidential election. Now, regardless of the election’s eventual outcome, it falls to us to decide how to respond to its results—to decide whether we’re going to live in peace with our so-recent political opponents, whether we’re the “winners” or the “losers.”

Paul concludes the passage we’ve been studying with a call to thankfulness, or gratitude. Everything we do, he says, should be done for Christ and in gratitude through him to the Father.

I’ve written on this idea before. And so has Paul. Have you noticed that three of his four admonitions in this paragraph include thanksgiving?

We live out peace in connection with thankfulness (Col 3.15).
We encourage one another with thankfulness (Col 3.16).
We do all things with thankfulness (Col 3.17).

This is a pervasive concept in biblical thinking. God has been unimaginably good to us—so good, in fact, that literally everything evil about the world pales in comparison.

What do you have to be thankful for?

No matter who is president of the US, or which party controls the Senate or the House of Representatives or the Governor’s Mansion or the County Council or the Mayor’s Office,

You’re living far better, in measurable ways, than 90% of the people in the history of the world.
There’s plenty of air to breathe—even if you have difficulty breathing.
Purified, drinkable water still falls from the sky—even if it falls at inopportune times.
Food still grows right out of the dirt.
The sun gives us light and warmth every day, without fail.
There is beauty to be seen and heard and appreciated all around us—in birds, in flowers, in rocks, in waterfalls. Even in morning glories, the bane of my childhood weed-pulling experience.
God is alive, and great, and good, and engaged in our world, and directing all things to a certain conclusion that is, he assures us, good (Ro 8.28).
If you’re a believer, you are regenerate (doubly alive), and forgiven, and befriended, and cared for, and loved, and escorted to that good end.
And you are endowed with a mission, a purpose to live, one that you are well equipped to carry out, one that will certainly succeed, and one that will eventuate in perfect relationships and perfect glory.

There’s not a government or official in all the history of all the universe who can negate or even endanger any of that, or who can compete with that for any of my confidence or my fear.

God is great. God is good.

Let us thank him.

And let us live out that gratitude with a confidence and joy and grace that makes even our “enemies”—who are, when all is said and done, our fellow images of God and the ordered objects of our grace—to be at peace with us (Pr 16.7).

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How Not to Have a Civil War, Part 11: Encouragement

November 2, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God (Col 3.16).

We live in the light by living out love (Col 3.14) and peace (Col 3.15).

But we need to go a step further.

I suspect that a lot of people would prefer to keep to themselves and mind their own business. Especially these days, we see a lot of confrontation and shouting and volleys of snarkitude—what we used to call “flame wars” back in the early days of the internet—and some people say, “You know what? I am so done with that.”

Someone I know often says, “People are the worst.” And theologically, that’s true (Rom 3.10-18).

But that’s only half the story.

People are also in the image of God (Gn 1.26-27; 9.6; James 3.9). And like God, they are not solitary persons; as God is in eternal fellowship among the persons of the Godhead, so we are designed as fundamentally social creatures; one of the first things God said about the first human is that it was not good that he should be alone (Gn 2.18). And following his eternal plan, God is in the process of gathering, from every ethnicity and nation, a people for his name—a large assembly that no one can number, united in corporate praise to God.

Sure, there are introverts, and they’re not inherently less godly than extroverts.

But a solitary life is not in our genes, or in our cards. We’re designed for relationships.

And the “friends” or “followers” we see on social media are not often healthy patterns for those relationships.

Paul says in our passage that as we grow individually in our relationship with God—which we do initially through the “Word of Christ”—we necessarily move outward, interpersonally, with what we’re learning. It’s not enough to hold our relationship with God close to the vest, as “a very private matter”; part of our growth is interacting with other believers about what we’re learning.

There are at least two reasons for that.

First, as a long-time teacher, I know that the best way to learn something is to teach it. As a simple example, I minored in Greek in college, and I’ve used it repeatedly in the years since: in my work in publishing back in the last century, and in my private study, and in my teaching at BJU since 2000. This year I volunteered to teach a section of Greek 101 to meet a scheduling need—the first time I’ve ever taught Greek.

Boy, am I learning a lot.

I’ve been capable in Greek for many years. But now I’m realizing how many details I’ve lost over the years because I just didn’t have any reason to recall them.

Leaps and bounds. Just by teaching 101.

You’ll understand your relationship with God significantly better if you’ll describe it to others. I promise.

There’s a second reason to share your faith with other believers: they’ll reciprocate. That may involve telling you what they’ve learned, thereby adding to your storehouse of understanding. It may involve encouraging you in the difficult times, cheering you through the rough spots. It may be as simple as listening to you and really hearing you. There’s a benefit in that.

And so Paul says we should be “teaching and admonishing one another”—and he specifically names our worship together as one of the ways we do that. We’re not just “friends” on some social media platform, trying to impress others with how delightful our lives are, or to shame them into thinking—and voting—the way we do. We’re partners, colleagues, in the great work of God in gathering and developing a people for his name.

We seek to achieve that goal before any other.

Part 12: Gratitude

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How Not to Have a Civil War, Part 9: Love

October 26, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Paul has begun laying out a lifestyle that brings unity and comity. It begins, he says, when we recognize that everyone, even our “enemy,” is in the image of God. We build on that recognition by exercising forgiveness, even as Christ has forgiven us. Now, in the longest section of our passage, Paul lays down a series of four attitudes that will drive our actions toward unifying the body of Christ and peacemaking in our social circle.

¹⁴Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. ¹⁵Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. ¹⁶Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. ¹⁷Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father (Col 3).

He begins with love.

Love gets a lot of talk, but not much actual doing. And in fact, it’s as much about doing as it is about feeling. My longtime friend and colleague Randy Leedy has defined agape love as “a disposition of the will, a self-sacrificing commitment to secure the highest interests of its object, independent of the object’s attractiveness or the prospect of repayment.”

Notice a couple of things.

First, love is not just a feeling. It is a feeling, an emotion, of course. It is far from sterile.

We all know this. Those of us who are married know how ridiculous our union would be if there were no feeling—what an old roommate of mine used to call “zing.” We men don’t do things for our wives simply because it’s our duty—and our wives would not be pleased if we did. There is certainly an emotional component.

But there is action. None of us wants to hear “You say you love me, but … “ Love goes beyond the feeling; it takes action on behalf of the loved one.

When you love someone, you do something about it.

A second thing to notice is that love is fundamentally not self-centered. You’re not in the relationship just for what you can get out of it. We’ve looked at that idea earlier in this series with reference to sexual ethics. But it goes far beyond our sexual desire and expression. The one who loves is focused on the needs of the loved one, and he is oriented toward satisfying those needs to the extent that he can, with no limit to the sacrifice he is willing to make.

Jesus himself emphasized that idea when he said, “When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you” (Lk 14.13-14a).

You’re not living out love because your life will be better if you do. You’re living out love because life will be better for everybody else if you do.

Does this principle have implications for how we live during an election season? during a pandemic? during a period of racial strife?

You bet it does.

We are impelled to care lovingly for fellow believers who vote for Biden, or for Trump, or for Jorgensen, or even for nobody at all.

For those who protest in the streets, or for those who think that’s a sin.

For those who wear masks, or for those who refuse to.

Even for those who say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

Yes, even for Yankees fans.

The biblical lifestyle is one of serving, caring for those we find repulsive or those who mash all our buttons.

It’s not about winning.

Winning comes, eventually.

But not because we sought for it.

Part 10: Peace | Part 11: Encouragement | Part 12: Gratitude

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How Not to Have a Civil War, Part 8: Beyond Tolerance

October 22, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

¹²So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; ¹³bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you (Col 3.12-13).

Having established a basis in who we are in Christ, Paul turns now to how we live that out. Because we’re chosen by God, because he has made us his treasured possession (“holy”), because he loves us (“beloved”), we respond to his grace toward us by extending grace toward others. Just as we “took off” the old, worn-out clothing of “the old self,” now we “put on” a “self” that lives in grace.

This grace, like a diamond, is multi-faceted:

“Compassion” is pity or mercy. Paul spends 11 chapters of Romans detailing how God saw our deep sin, and even though enraged, he responded with a plan to rescue us, making right what we never could, so he could “be just, and the justifier of him who believes in Jesus” (Ro 3.26). He accepted the sacrifice of Christ in our place, then sent the Spirit to indwell and teach us, and even to pray for us when we don’t know how to pray for ourselves. And Paul summarizes all 11 chapters as “the mercies [compassions] of God” (Ro 12.1). We’re called to treat fellow believers like that, even though they don’t deserve it. (That’s what mercy means.) And we’re to do that from our “heart”—in the Greek, our “guts.” We’re to feel this compassion from the very depths of our insides. That’s what God did for us.
“Kindness” is simply “goodness”—being good to people, treating them as we would wish to be treated. God has shown us kindness (Ro 2.4; Ep 2.7; Ti 3.4) when we had shown none to him (Ro 3.12).
“Humility” is valuing the welfare of others above our own, and serving them. We’re called to do that because, shockingly, even Jesus did the same for us (Php 2.3ff). God gives grace to such people while resisting the proud (1P 5.5).
“Gentleness” used to be called “meekness.” It means not using force even though you could. We’ve all see the way a large but loving father cradles his newborn child. We’re supposed to treat one another that way (Ep 4.2), even those who are at fault (Ga 6.1)—and even those who are not believers (Ti 3.2). Why? The not-so-surprising answer: because that’s how Christ has treated us (2Co 10.1).
“Patience” is bearing up under trials; it’s the endurance of the athlete, who knows that there is a trophy at the end of the competition. God is patient not only with us, but even with those who he knows will eventually and finally reject him (Ro 9.22).
“Bearing with” someone is to put up with him. It’s what we today call “tolerance”—you don’t like it, but you put up with it, for the sake of a greater good.
“Forgiving” is literally “extending grace to” someone, treating him graciously, marking the bill as “Paid” (Lk 7.42-43).

We talk a lot about “tolerance” today. I’ve heard some comment that “tolerance” really isn’t good enough, because it’s putting up with something that you don’t like, rather than accepting the person despite his problems. As we’ve noted above, our treatment of one another should include “putting up with” them, but this passage clearly calls for much more than that. In the end, not only must we not reject the brother who votes for the Other Guy—not only must we “tolerate” him—but we must receive him, care for him, embrace him as a treasured part of our Father’s great collection of images of himself.

Grace.

Freely we have received; freely give.

Part 9: Love | Part 10: Peace | Part 11: Encouragement | Part 12: Gratitude

Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash

How Not to Have a Civil War, Part 7: Breaking Down the Walls

October 19, 2020 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

¹⁰and [since you] have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him— ¹¹a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all (Col 3.10-11).

Paul bases his journey into the light not on what we do, or even what we should do, but in who we are. If you’re a believer, you’re not who you were born to be. That’s the old self, or what Paul consistently calls “the old man,” or “the natural man” (1Co 2.14). The old man is not who we want to be:

He’s been crucified, put to death (Ro 6.6).
We’re to “put off” that guy, like old, worn-out clothes (Co 3.9; Ep 4.22).

Now, “since Jesus came into [your] heart,” you’re not that guy anymore. You’re a new self, a “new man,” which “is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ep 4.24)—“created,” because it didn’t exist before Christ gave you spiritual life.

And what’s this “new man” all about? What kind of person is he? What’s he like?

Put bluntly, he’s like God. Our passage says he is “renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him”; God, the Creator, is the pattern, and we, the creatures, are in his image. That image has been marred by our sin, and God is in the process of restoring it, renewing it. Paul here mentions the specific part of the image that he’s focused on: knowledge, or accurate recognition based on personal experience, the way you “know” the face of your spouse or your children or a lifelong friend. In Christ, we know things as they really are.

And how are they? In Christ, “things” are completely changed. We “know” one another primarily as in Christ—as brothers and sisters in the most important family ever envisioned or formed. The ways we normally categorize people—ethnicity (“Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised”), cultural practice (“barbarian, Scythian”), socioeconomic status (“slave and freeman”)—fade into irrelevance in the blinding light of our common glory in Christ.

We’re family. We’re in Christ. That’s all that matters.

Christ is in me. He’s in you. He’s in her, and him, and those over there. And we are in him.

What can possibly drive us apart?

Disagreements over cultural differences? Over life experiences? Over politics? Over denominational distinctives?

Pssssshhhhhh. Trivia. Let’s not be ridiculous. Christ is a stronger adhesive than that.

I have friends who are going to vote to place in the most powerful human position in the world someone that I will never vote for, under any circumstances.

The most powerful human position in the world!!!!

Someone I would never vote for!!!!

Under ANY circumstances!!!!

We are in Christ. Together. And forever.

One election, or two, or a thousand, will never drive us apart.

No matter the temporary, earthly consequences of that election.

We’re in Christ.

Nothing else even comes close.

In the parallel epistle to this one, Paul writes that the “new self” is “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ep 4.24).

There’s the image of God again. And this time Paul speaks not of knowledge, but of righteousness—which, thanks to Christ’s sacrificial death, has been restored to us, as it was In the Beginning (2Co 5.21)—and of holiness.

My Christian brothers who vote badly—very badly—are righteous. They are bathed in the righteousness of Christ. That makes how they vote insignificant to my regard for them, relatively speaking.

My Christian brothers who vote badly—very badly—are holy; that is, they are the special possession and treasure of Almighty God—which puts them literally in a class by themselves. Their vote is not going to change that.

I’d better take care how I treat God’s treasured collection. And since I’m part of that collection myself—through no fault of my own—I’m going to treat them with the kind of delighted care that’s only appropriate.

What kind of church do you suppose we’d have if we lived that way?

And what kind of society do you suppose we’d have if its ragingly angry members saw the contrast between how they’re treated by their peers and how we treat our brothers and sisters?

Part 8: Beyond Tolerance | Part 9: Love | Part 10: Peace | Part 11: Encouragement | Part 12: Gratitude

Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash

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