systematic theology

Jesus Is Jehovah, Part 3: “I Have Seen the LORD”

August 13, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: “Prepare Ye the Way”

The second example of this phenomenon in the Gospels is a little more complicated; it involves following a bit of a logical path, but the logic is solid, and the conclusion is clear.

We begin in John 12:

³⁷But though [Jesus] had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him. ³⁸This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet which he spoke: “Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” ³⁹For this reason they could not believe, for Isaiah said again, ⁴⁰“He has blinded their eyes and He hardened their heart, so that they would not see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and be converted and I heal them.” ⁴¹These things Isaiah said because he saw His glory, and he spoke of Him.

John (the Evangelist this time, not the Baptist) is noting that despite all the sign miracles Jesus has performed, many of the observers (including, as we know, the Jewish leaders) are simply refusing to acknowledge him for who he is. That seems unbelievable; by this time in the account, Jesus has not only changed water to wine, healed the nobleman’s son, fed the 5000, and healed the man born blind, but has just raised Lazarus from the dead!

But John is unperplexed, because he knows the Scripture; this resistance has been foretold. He cites two passages from Isaiah. The first we recognize as from the famous Servant Song in Isaiah 53.1. The second is from Isaiah 6.10. Those who hear won’t believe, because God has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts.

And then John makes a stunning statement.

Isaiah said these things “because he saw his glory, and he spoke of him” (Jn 12.41).

Whose glory?

In the context of John 12, there’s only one possibility. He’s writing about Jesus.

Isaiah wrote these prophecies, John says, because he was seeing Jesus.

So we ought to take a look at the context of these prophecies.

As we’ve already noted, the first citation is from Isaiah 53, the well-known Servant Song. Christians since the very beginning of church history have recognized this chapter as a description of Jesus’ Passion. No surprises there.

But what about Isaiah 6? Most of us are familiar with the scene there too, though we might not recognize it from the portion of the passage that John quotes. This is the passage that begins,

¹In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. ²Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. ³And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory.”

Who is that sitting on the throne, whose train fills the heavenly temple?

Isaiah names him first as “Adonai,” “the Lord.” (Note that the word “Lord” in verse 1 is not in all caps.) But the seraphim call him “the LORD of Hosts”—YHWH Tsebaoth. Jehovah.

And lest there be any doubt about the reference, Isaiah later exclaims, “Mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts!” (Is 6.5).

And John, the inspired Evangelist, says that it’s Jesus.

And this one works in the New World Translation too.

This is not some itinerant Galilean mystic. It’s not even an archangel, the first and greatest of God’s created beings.

He is the thrice-holy God.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Jesus Is Jehovah, Part 2: “Prepare Ye the Way”

August 12, 2021 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Part 1: Introduction

We’re looking at places where the New Testament quotes an Old Testament passage that’s talking about YHWH and then applies it to Jesus. There are two pretty solid examples in the Gospels.

The first one we meet in the entire New Testament occurs in all four Gospels. John the Baptist begins preaching, urging his hearers to repent. John’s Gospel tells us that the Jewish leadership “sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem” (Jn 1.19) to find out what he was up to. He replies, ”I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’ ” (Jn 1.23). The Synoptic writers give a bit more of his answer: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Lk 3.4 // Mt 3.3, Mk 1.3). And all but Mark note what John’s hearers would have known as he spoke: this is a quotation from the Hebrew Scriptures, specifically Isaiah 40:3.

The passage in Isaiah is referring to Judah’s return from captivity in Babylon, when God would “make straight in the desert a highway” (Is 40.3) for God’s people to return to their land. Like many prophecies, however, it has a double meaning. John the Baptist applies it to his task of preparing the way for the Messiah, the one who would come. Isaiah’s phrase “Prepare ye the way of the LORD” uses the name YHWH. John the Baptist claims to be preparing the way of Jesus; later in the same conversation, he says, “Among you stands One whom you do not know. It is He who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie” (Jn 1.26-27). And the next day he removes all doubt regarding the one he’s referring to: “The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is He on behalf of whom I said, “After me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me” ‘ “ (Jn 1.29-30).

Some months later, Jesus himself speaks of John as the fulfillment of a similar Old Testament prophecy:

⁷As these men were going away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John, “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? ⁸But what did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ palaces! ⁹But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and one who is more than a prophet. ¹⁰This is the one about whom it is written,

‘Behold, I send My messenger ahead of You,

Who will prepare Your way before You’ “ (Mt 11, citing Mal 3.1).

Jesus says that John the Baptist is a prophet—indeed, more than a prophet. Throughout the Bible, a prophet’s words are reliable, sourced in God himself, and thus to be heeded.

John says that he’s the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of one who would prepare the way for the LORD, YHWH.

John then says that Jesus is the one for whom he is preparing the way.

And then Jesus says that John prepared the way for him.

What are we to make of this?

The New Testament, “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk 1.1) opens with the clear claim that this Jesus is Jehovah, YHWH, the I AM. And it says that in the New World Translation too.

And we’re just getting started.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Jesus Is Jehovah, Part 1: Introduction

August 5, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Undoubtedly the most astonishing claim of Christianity—one of the many that distinguish it from all other religions of history—is the Incarnation, the claim that one day on the calendar, God himself became a man and walked among us. Or, to view from the other end, that someone who was born here on earth, lived an ordinary life with all its physical limitations, and died the way we all do, was actually the eternal God, creator of heaven and earth. We could have passed him on the street without even noticing anything unusual.

That’s an extraordinary claim. (And that sentence is actually an understatement.) An extraordinary claim calls for extraordinary evidence, and from the earliest days of the Christian church it has been greeted incredulously. During Jesus’ lifetime the Jewish leadership rejected the claim outright—and the claim was clearly made at the time. There were several factors in that rejection, including the obvious political power struggles, but undoubtedly the main reason was that the claim was just, well, unbelievable. Not long after that an early “Christian” sect, Ebionism, rejected Christ’s deity while respecting Jesus as a godly prophet. A century later the bishop Arius found the claim similarly unbelievable, as well as a direct attack on monotheism, and posited that Jesus was an archangel, the first of God’s created beings, exalted and worthy of respect, certainly, but not God.

Arianism survives today in the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’ve written about them before, in a series focusing on one of their key proof texts, Colossians 1.15. Of course, there are other religious groups today that deny Christ’s deity; Judaism, Islam, Unitarianism, and Liberal Protestantism come most immediately to mind. And there’s been an ocean of ink used to print the hundreds of books and thousands of articles that defend the doctrine. There are a great many lines of argument in those publications. But I’d like to focus on just one.

One category of argument is that the New Testament directly calls Jesus God. A specific subset of that category is that the New Testament sometimes cites an Old Testament passage that uses God’s personal, covenant name—YHWH—and then applies the passage to Jesus in the New Testament context. This specific argument is particularly troublesome to Jehovah’s Witnesses, who reserve the name “Jehovah”—which is a misunderstanding of the name YHWH—for only the one true God, who in their teaching is most certainly not Jesus.

It’s interesting to me that their heretical translation, the New World Translation, has caught some of these pairings and twisted the English rendering to make them less noticeable. But it hasn’t caught them all—with the result that if you know what you’re doing, you can show a Jehovah’s Witness, from his Bible, that Jesus is Jehovah.

So I’d like to spend a few posts looking at these citation pairs. And along the way I’ll note those that “work” in the New World Translation.

By the way, it’s not difficult for anyone to create this list. Flip through the New Testament (hard copy or electronic), noting all the quotations from the Old Testament. I like to use the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) or its newer release, the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) for this, because that version prints all the citations in bold-faced type, making them really easy to pick out. The New American Standard Bible similarly prints them in ALL CAPS, but I find the bold-faced type easier to see.

Anyway, find all the quotations that include the word “Lord,” and then note the ones that are referring to Jesus specifically. In the CSB, you can check the letter footnote at the end of the quotation, where it will give you the location of the OT passage. And in the electronic version, you can click and hover over the OT reference to see the OT passage. If the word “Lord” there is in all caps—LORD or LORD—then the underlying Hebrew name is YHWH, and you’ve found what you’re looking for.

Next time we’ll start on the list. It’s substantial.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

On Muddling Through

August 2, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

⁸By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. ⁹By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God (He 11).

I’ve heard a lot of people comment these days on the uncertainty of our lives. It seems unusual, they say, the degree to which things are in general upheaval. They tend to focus on Covid, of course, especially with the Delta variant and the looming return of restrictions of various kinds. But they note that there’s more to this feeling, especially in the significant societal and cultural changes that seem to be accelerating.

There’s a part of me that says there’s nothing new under the sun; I’ve always been skeptical of the constant claim that “young people these days have it harder than ever.” But it does seem that the pace of change is speeding up.

I know a lot of people who are pretty much in Full Bore Linear Panic over all this. At the risk of being accused of insufficient empathy, let me offer a few words of psychical stabilization. (And yes, I know that no one in the history of the world has ever been calmed down by being told to calm down.)

I’ve written before on the societal uncertainty that the pandemic has brought, but I’d like to share some further thoughts along that line.

There is a very real sense in the Scripture that we’re mostly blind and consequently just sort of muddling along through life. We’re constantly reminded that we’re not God—though by nature we’d very much like to be—and that our knowledge and wisdom are infinitesimal in comparison with his. Paul tells us that “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2Co 5.7), and the writer to the Hebrews develops that concept at considerable length in chapter 11, a portion of which appears above. Abraham, we’re told, went out, not knowing where he was going.

We all feel like that sometimes.

Maybe you know people who started life with a plan and executed it perfectly. My life, in contrast, began with making a plan and seeing it crash when I was 16, and then just sort of stumbling along as doors opened. At the time, it wouldn’t have impressed any career coaches. But in retrospect, it’s been a straight line and makes a lot of sense.

Life’s funny that way.

To one degree or another, we’re all Abraham. We come from somewhere else and are just resident aliens here, living in tents (most of us metaphorically).

Some immigrants cling tightly to their ethnic identity. When my people came over from the Rhine Valley in 1741, they settled in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, briefly but soon hiked down to a German colony in Newmarket, Virginia, where they helped start a Lutheran Church—that’s what Germans do, right?—and married other Germans. From my youth in Boston I recall fondly the Italian North End and Irish South Boston, and the clear cultural identity of those places.

But eventually, typically, immigrants blend in, intermarry, and assume the culture to which they’ve come. It happened to Judah in Babylon; it happened to the Olingers in America; and it happens pretty much everywhere.

In a spiritual sense, though, we don’t have that option.

We’re from someplace else, and we’ll always be from someplace else, and we can’t—mustn’t—make this place the determiner of our fortunes, our emotions, our spiritual health. The uncertainties that are part of living in a foreign place must not drive us to fear, because we have a Father who knows all and directs all, even though he often doesn’t clue us in to everything that’s going on. What looks like chaos to us looks like a beautiful fractal to him, and he’s doing something spectacular.

We don’t know what that something is, exactly, but we know whose work it is, and that fact gives us the ability to be calm in the midst of the storm, confident in the midst of uncertainty, joyous with anticipation in the midst of societal panic—not because we don’t care, or because we’re not empathetic, or because we’re just stupid, but because we know where it’s all heading.

In short, because we believe Dad—which, given his record, is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

Christ Is Not His Name, Part 2: Responding to the Evidence

July 29, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Evidence for Messiahship

In the last post we noted the fact that Jesus is the Christ—the Messiah, the Anointed One—and that John’s Gospel narrates a series of miracles through which Jesus provides evidence of his Messiahship. I’d like to extend those thoughts in a couple of ways.

First, John’s use of the word signs for these miracles is precise. The Greeks had three words for miraculous events: “miracle” (or more literally “powerful thing”), which emphasized the power of the miracle worker; “wonder,” which emphasized the effect of the miracle on those who saw it; and “sign,” which emphasized the meaning or significance of the miraculous act. So the three synonyms addressed the three elements of the miraculous event: the one who did it, the act itself, and those who saw it happen.

John chooses to use the word that highlights what the miracles meant; as we noted last time, they demonstrate Jesus’ lordship over matter, time, space, physical and divine law, disease, and even death, and by implication, the evil forces. Anyone who directs the actions and effects of these things must be the recipient of an unprecedented anointing from God.

Second, John reinforces the meaning of these actions by including in the narrative account a record of Jesus’ teaching following the miracle.

After changing the water to wine, bringing life and joy by his creative authority, Jesus teaches about spiritual life and joy in his interaction with Nicodemus (“ye must be born again”) and with the Samaritan woman (“living water”).
After healing the nobleman’s son and the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda, he proclaims that one day all will “honor the Son, even as they honor the Father” (Jn 5.23), and that the Son has “life in himself” (Jn 5.26).
After feeding the 5000 and walking on the water, Jesus presents himself as “the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (Jn 6.35). Here he builds on the earlier teaching of being born unto undying life and drinking water that slakes thirst forever. Later he claims repeatedly that he is “not of this world,” climaxing a series of exchanges with the words, “Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8.58). This is someone for whom walking on water should not really be surprising.
While healing the man born blind, Jesus proclaims, “I am the light of the world” (Jn 9.5)—and later, “I am the door,” opening, in effect, the entrance to what the light reveals.
After Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, John recounts Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet, signifying that Jesus himself is the sacrifice that empowers all of his followers to overcome death through resurrection. Later Christ speaks of himself as a grain of wheat that brings life by being planted underground (Jn 12.24)—and then, “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14.6) by whom his people will receive life eternal, and “the vine” (Jn 15.1), the source of ongoing life to all who trust in him.

So the meaning of the signs is amply reinforced. There’s no doubt about who this person is.

And yet, remarkably, he is opposed at every turn by people who really ought to know better.

After he heals the paralytic, “the Jews sought to kill Him” (Jn 5:18).
After the bread of life discourse, many disciples stopped following Him (Jn 6:66) and again “the Jews sought to kill Him” (Jn 7:1); he was accused of “having a demon” (Jn 7:20). The Pharisees accused Him of lying and having a demon (Jn 8:13, 48, 52); the religious leaders tried to arrest Him (Jn 7:30, 32, 44) and to stone Him (Jn 8:59).
After he healed the blind man, he was accused of having a demon (Jn 10:20), and they tried again to stone him (Jn 10.31) and to arrest him (Jn 10:39).
And after he raised Lazarus from the dead, they finally hatched the plan that led to His execution (Jn 11:48ff).

Will you believe, or not?

In the end, it’s really not about evidence, or the lack thereof.

It’s about whether or not you want to.

Artwork: The Resurrection of Lazarus by Giovanni di Paolo (1403-1482), from the Walters Art Museum

Christ Is Not His Name, Part 1: Evidence for Messiahship

July 26, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

In the US people traditionally have 3 names: a “first name,” which is typically the one we go by; a “middle name,” which might be the one we go by if the first name might be confusing (e.g., for a “Junior”); and a “last name,” which is the family name. So to American Christians, “Lord Jesus Christ” looks like it fits the pattern—but it doesn’t. “Lord” is of course a title, not a name; “Jesus” (actually “Joshua”) is the personal name; and “Christ” is another title, from the Greek word for “Messiah,” or “Anointed One.”

These two titles were central doctrines in the early expansion of Christianity. “Jesus is Lord” was a core confession (Ro 10.9; Php 2.11), probably in contrast to the phrase central to emperor worship in the first-century Roman Empire (“Caesar is Lord!”). “Jesus is the Christ” was a central theme in the early apostolic preaching (Ac 2.36; 9.22; 17.3; 18.5, 28), which was probably based on Christ’s exposition of the Hebrew Scriptures to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24.27).

It’s no surprise, then, when John tells us that he writes his Gospel “that you [readers] might believe that Jesus is the Christ” (Jn 20.31). And how does he do that? He writes, “These are written that you might believe …” (Jn 20.31).

“These” what? We find the antecedent of the demonstrative pronoun these, as we might expect, in the previous verse: “Many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book” (Jn 20.30)—“but these [signs] are written that you might believe.”

John tells us here at the end of his book that he has structured his Gospel around a series of signs that demonstrate that Jesus is Messiah.

What are the signs? Well, John makes it simple enough to find them; you just look through the Gospel for the Greek word translated “signs” (semeion) and see what John is referring to in each use.

Here they are—

Changing water to wine at the wedding in Cana (Jn 2.11). Some commentators note that John may not be saying that this was Jesus’ first miracle ever, but that this is John’s “roman numeral one,” the first sign he’s chosen to demonstrate Jesus’ Messiahship.
Healing the nobleman’s son (Jn 4.54)
Feeding the 5000 (Jn 6.14)
Healing the man born blind (Jn 9.16)
Raising Lazarus (Jn 12.18)
When the Jews ask him for a “sign,” Jesus points obliquely to his own resurrection (Jn 2.18-19).

That’s six miracles that John specifically identifies as “signs.” It’s been common among interpreters to include one more, to make the number seven. Some include the healing of the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda (Jn 5.9), while others include the walking on the water (Jn 6.19). Yet others include both and pass over Jesus’ own resurrection, which, as I’ve noted above, is listed only obliquely.

Think about the significance of these specific miracles. In changing water to wine, Jesus demonstrates lordship over the quality of matter; in feeding the 5000, he demonstrates lordship over its quantity. If he made fermented wine—and I’m inclined to think that he did—he demonstrates lordship over time; in healing the nobleman’s son, he demonstrates lordship over space. (In the first two miracles, then, he’s Lord of time, space, and matter—the entire cosmos.) In healing the paralytic on the Sabbath, and the man born blind on another Sabbath, he demonstrates lordship over divine law; in walking on the water, he demonstrates lordship over physical law. In healing congenital blindness, he acts essentially as Creator, providing functioning eyes where there never had been any. In raising Lazarus from the dead—four days after he died—he demonstrates lordship over our greatest enemy, death. And he exponentiates that in his final sign; it’s quite an accomplishment to raise somebody else from the dead, but raising yourself from the dead (Jn 10.18) is on a different level entirely.

More than once John notes the effect that these signs had on those who saw them. Early on, people believed in him on account of the signs (Jn 2.23; 7.31; 9.16); and even Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin, found them compelling (Jn 3.2), as did others on the Sanhedrin as well (Jn 11.47).

What’s the only reasonable conclusion from these well-attested signs?

Jesus is the Christ, anointed by God as prophet, priest, and king—authorized to speak to us for God, to speak to God for us, and to rule forever on the throne of his father David (2S 7.12-14).

This is the one at whose name every knee shall bow (Php 2.10). I am happily compelled to begin now.

Part 2: Responding to the Evidence

Artwork: The Resurrection of Lazarus by Giovanni di Paolo (1403-1482), from the Walters Art Museum

On Filling Up Our Sins

September 17, 2020 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

They are not pleasing to God, but hostile to all men, ¹⁶hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved; with the result that they always fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them to the utmost (1Th 2.15b-16).

Paul is writing here of his unconverted Jewish opponents, those who followed him around from city to city and tried to undercut his evangelistic and church-planting work. In the process of noting their doom, he uses an odd expression: “they fill up the measure of their sins.”

What does that mean? And is it unique to Paul’s Jewish opponents, or is this something that other cultures should be wary of?

I think it’s easier to answer the first question if we begin by answering the second.

Similar language appears in 3 other places in the Scripture:

In Genesis 15.16, God tells Abram that his descendants will be exiled for 400 years, after which they will return to the Promised Land of Canaan, “for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full.” Here we learn that God is showing mercy to the Canaanites, whose land God has promised to Abram and his descendants, by giving them 400 years to repent (or, as my Dad would have said, “straighten up”). God knows, as he knows all things, that they won’t repent, but rather “fill up” their sins, bringing judgment on themselves.

In his prophecy of the coming world kingdoms, Daniel reveals (Dn 8.23) that an evil ruler (commonly interpreted to be Antiochus IV “Epiphanes”) will arise “when the transgressors have filled up.”* Again, the context is of evil cultures exceeding all moral norms and “maxxing out” their sinfulness.

Finally, in his condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees of his day, Jesus tells them to “fill up … the measure of the guilt of your fathers … from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah … whom you murdered between the Temple and the altar” (Mt 23.32-35). He concludes the outburst by saying, “Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation” (Mt 23.36). That is, the bowl of guilt has been filled to the brim; it’s time for judgment. And what a judgment it was—the city of Jerusalem and the cherished Temple reduced to rubble, and the Jewish people scattered to the four winds for nearly 1900 years.

The picture in all these passages is consistent. Mankind, inclined to evil, rejects God’s will and pursues his own. In kindness and grace, God withholds punishment, giving mankind ample opportunity to come to his senses and repent, righting the wrongs that he has perpetrated. But he sees the apparent lack of punishment as “getting away with it,” and he accelerates down the slope of rebellion without compunction or restraint.

But God is just as well as merciful, and his compassionate mercy does not allow for perpetual unrighted injustice. A day of reckoning will surely come. The vessel of sin will eventually be full, and the time for justice will arrive. Wrong will be righted. The offender will be held to account.

Since God does not change, this principle applies to our culture as certainly as to any in the past. We live in a society that is rapidly filling up the measure of its sins—in its arrogance against God and his people, in its rejection of his wise design for sexual behavior, in its worship of all things temporal, in its love for violence, in its denial of justice to the poor and otherwise powerless and favoritism toward the powerful and favored.

God’s people can take comfort in the surety of coming justice, from a God who can execute it in ways far more just, pervasive, and thorough than anything we can devise for ourselves.

* For the nerds among my readers, I note that the verb “filled up” in 1 Thessalonians is anapleroo, the same verb in the Septuagint (LXX) of Gn 15.16. The verb in Daniel (LXX) and Matthew is pleroo.

Photo by Santiago Lacarta on Unsplash

Believing Prayer

December 19, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

The prophet Isaiah is receiving visions from God that open to him the long corridor of future time.

The message is mixed.

The first 39 chapters of the book contain a lot of really bad news. The current bogeyman on the world stage, Assyria, is going to be replaced by another equally bad one, Babylon. And Babylon is going to be the hammer that brings judgment to Judah for its persistence in the very sins that have already brought God’s judgment on Israel through Assyria—

idolatry
mindless ritualism in worship
social injustice

And there’s no doubt that this judgment will come.

But starting with chapter 40, the tone and message change dramatically. Words of comfort. Promises of restoration and blessing. A Messiah. A Servant of Yahweh.

Near the end of the book there’s a passage that seems to get odder the longer you think about it.

¹For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet,
Until her righteousness goes forth like brightness,
And her salvation like a torch that is burning.
²The nations will see your righteousness,
And all kings your glory;
And you will be called by a new name
Which the mouth of the Lord will designate.
³You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
And a royal diadem in the hand of your God (Is 62.1-3).

There’s the promise of blessing, which will surely come to undeserving Jerusalem. But the part that really catches my eye is the first verse. This blessing, this restoration is so critically important to God that he will not stop talking about it. He will not rest until he brings it to pass.

That sets us up for an even more remarkable statement a bit farther down the passage:

⁶On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen;
All day and all night they will never keep silent.
You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves;
⁷And give Him no rest until He establishes
And makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

God orders his people to hold him to his promise—to badger him, to nag him, to hector him—to “give him no rest” until the promise is fulfilled. And the exclamation point on all this is that he himself has appointed those “watchmen” with the specific task of hectoring him.

God’s really, really serious about keeping his promises.

You’re probably thinking about the implications of this principle for our prayer life, and you’re right to do so; Jesus himself endorses that application.

In Luke 18 Jesus tells a parable about an unjust judge who doesn’t care about the people or the cases they bring before him. But there’s this woman who just won’t quit bothering him about her case. Eventually he rules justly, not because he cares for justice, but because he’s sick and tired of the woman’s hectoring. As he puts it, “by continually coming she will wear me out” (Lk 18.5)—literally, “give me a black eye.” No mas, he says.

Unfortunately, some Christians have assumed from this parable that God is like the unjust judge—that he needs to be convinced to help us, that we have to beat him down and wear him out to extract his begrudging grace. But as my colleague Layton Talbert has wisely and reverently noted, this kind of thinking misses the whole point of the passage.

Jesus is not saying that the Father is like the unjust judge; to the contrary, his point is that the Father is not like the judge. This is an a fortiori argument, one from the weaker to the stronger: if even an unjust judge will do the right thing when asked—enough, and with enough force—how much more will your heavenly Father do the right thing when we ask him? If a judge will do this for someone he doesn’t even know or care about, how much more will our Father, who cares for us as his own children, do for us when we ask? (Lk 18.6-7).

God is the kind of person who listens to his children and responds to them generously. He even appoints people to nag him until he keeps his promises (Is 62.6-7), even though he’s completely focused on their good and doesn’t need to be reminded (Is 62.1).

Go ahead and ask.

Photo by Samuel Martins on Unsplash

Christ. Alone.

December 12, 2019 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

God has made us in his image (Gen 1.27).

Because of that, we’re compelled to know and worship him; we’re driven by our very nature to seek him.

Over the centuries, humans have sought God in lots of places—

In natural revelation, the works of God’s hands. He does reveal himself there, but we know the world is broken by sin (Rom 8.22) and is not designed to be worshiped (Ro 1.25). Pantheism and animism don’t bring us to God.
In good works, the salving of our conscience. Our conscience is indeed a gift of God, and when properly informed it’s a valuable tool, but like nature, our conscience is broken too, and it can’t reveal God to us in any way we can trust. Further, our good works cannot be compared to God’s complete perfection (Is 64.6).
In ourselves, which is where the predominant worldview today seeks meaning. Not surprisingly, since creatures are unworthy of worship, current secular philosophy denies that we are creatures—and in so doing dooms itself by beginning with a false premise.

Where, then, do we find God? As I’ve noted recently, we find him perfectly revealed in Christ (Heb 1.1-2). Norman Geisler notes that in Colossians 1, as in no other passage, are concentrated “many characteristics of Christ and His deity” (Bible Knowledge Commentary). It’s certainly worth our time to think through this rich passage.

Paul describes our ongoing relationship with God as beginning in knowledge (Col 1.9) that expresses itself in a worthy walk (Col 1.10), for which we are strengthened by the Spirit to endure the difficulties that come from walking worthily (Col 1.11). This climaxes in a heart of gratitude for what God has done in Christ (Col 1.12): he has qualified us (Col 1.12) and transferred us to the Son’s kingdom (Col 1.13). As Paul meditates on this work, his focus shines like a laser beam on Christ, whose work has brought our salvation. How pre-eminent is this One Who has taken interest in our helplessness!

Christ manifests himself as pre-eminent in several ways—

In the cross (Col 1.14). He becomes man because no other man can do what needs to be done for our rescue. He redeems us, liberating us from our abusive master (Col 1.14a) and the power of his grip on us, and he forgives us, liberating us from the guilt of our sin (Col 1.14b).

In creation (Col 1.15-17). He is “the firstborn over all creation” (Col 1.15)—I’ve written on that before—because he is the powerful creator (Col 1.16). And he faithfully upholds and directs all that he has created (Col 1.17)—that’s what we call providence. He made it all and runs it all. That’s pre-eminence.

In the church (Col. 1.18-23). He is the head of the body, the church (Col 1.18a) and the source of its life (Col 1.18b). In the end, he is the one who reconciles to God all who are in that body (Col 1.19-22a), upholding us through life’s journey until we dwell in his presence (Col 1.22b-23).

This one God-Man has done it all. He has created and directs the entire cosmos in which we live, move, and have our being; he has solved the infinite problem of our sin; and he enables and empowers us through our life of service to his purpose, finally reconciling us completely and eternally to the God from which we came.

We ought to live for him.

Who is He on yonder tree
Dies in grief and agony?
Who is He that from the grave
Comes to heal and help and save?
Who is He that from His throne
Rules through all the world alone?

’Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
’Tis the Lord! the King of Glory!
At His feet we humbly fall;
Crown Him! Crown Him Lord of all!

– Benjamin Russell Hanby

Photo by Paul Zoetemeijer on Unsplash

On Being Quiet

December 9, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We live in a noisy age. It seems that everywhere we go, noise fills the pauses and even runs constantly in the background. In stores and restaurants, the music is constant and often quite loud. (How do people carry on any kind of meaningful conversation in those places?) In the elevator, there’s music—that’s even an official genre, apparently. Go to a professional sporting event, and every pause in the action is filled with the output of the stadium’s DJ. I’m told that what he’s playing is allegedly music. When you get into your car, you automatically reach over and turn on the radio, to fill your environment with music or, worse, people talking—people who quite clearly don’t know what they’re talking about.

I know I sound cynical. I’m not. But I do want to make a point.

Human beings need quiet as certainly as they need exercise. We need time to think, to reflect, to evaluate. To pray.

I’ve noticed that in many of the students I teach, quiet is disturbing. Too quiet. Distracting. Even our library has loosened up on the stereotypical quiet rules as an accommodation to the students’ professed need for background noise—think Starbucks—in order to study.

Our lives are often noisy in ways other than decibels. Many of us pride ourselves on how busy we are, how little time we have. That means, you see, that we’re important, that we’re making a difference. I’m busier than you.

Nyah, nyah, nyah.

My friends, these things ought not so to be.

Now, I know that sometimes we’re unavoidably busy. Some people have to work 3 jobs in order to pay for school. Some people have bedridden relatives or friends, and there’s nobody to share the burden. For most of us, there are seasons of life when we’re simply busier than normal and we have to just grit our teeth and try to get it all done without dying of exhaustion.

But busyness is not a lifestyle we are meant to choose.

We need quiet. Time to think. Time to meditate.

Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still (Ps 4.4).

Meditation isn’t emptying your mind, after the fashion of the Eastern religions. When you empty your mind, it’s like leaving your wallet sitting on the sidewalk; somebody bent on mischief is likely to show up.

In the Bible, meditation is focusing your mind on something and giving it your investigative consideration, turning it over and savoring it as you would good food. My colleague Jim Berg says that if you can worry, you know how to meditate; meditation is just the process of worrying without the pathological aspects.

So what should you focus your mind on? The Bible gives at least 3 legitimate topics:

Meditate on God himself (Ps 63.6). Who is he? What is he like? What do those attributes say about how you should think, feel, and live?
Meditate on God’s works (Ps 77.12; 143.5). What has God done? What is he doing today? What will he do in the future? What do those actions say about how you should think, feel, and live?
Meditate on God’s Word (Josh 1.8; Ps 1.2; 119.15, 23, 97, 99, 148). What has God said? What do those words say about how you should think, feel, and live?

I note that in order to meditate on God’s Word, you really have to have it in your head. You can’t think about something that isn’t there. I’ve written on that topic before; if you find the prospect of life-changing meditation appealing, that post might be worth reading again.

Recently I’ve been consciously not turning on the radio when I’m alone in the car. It’s a great opportunity to think, to muse, to meditate. I’ve also been cutting out late-night activities so that I can get enough sleep and still get up earlier, when the house is quiet.

There are lots of demands on us, and they deserve our attention and care. But most of us don’t need to be as busy as we are. Maybe we can’t be philosophers sitting on mountaintops or monks chanting in the abbey—in fact, we’re probably a lot more useful as we are—but we can be more thoughtful, more reasoned, more contemplative.

More quiet, to a useful end.

Photo by Wes Grant on Unsplash