systematic theology

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

How God Speaks, Part 3

December 5, 2019 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1 | Part 2

In Part 1 we noted that in biblical times God spoke a lot—as Hebrews 1.1 puts it, in different times, in different ways, to different people. But the same passage also says that with the incarnation there’s come a change; now things are different, and radically different. Part 2 lays out my reasons for saying that.

Some people find that sad. How great would it be to hear Isaiah preach, or David sing, or Moses thunder! And how much greater would it be to hear the Son himself teach, and see him heal, and watch him work! And wouldn’t it be great if God spoke to us, directly, in our heads? Isn’t it sad that we can’t do any of these things today? Don’t we feel a little bit … well, deprived?

No, we’re not deprived, regardless of how we feel. How do I know that? Because it isn’t in God’s character to deprive his people. He sometimes chastens us (Heb 12.6), but he doesn’t hold back from us anything we need (Php 4.19), or anything good (Ps 84.11). Jesus told his disciples that it was better for them that he go away (Jn 16.7). The same book that tells us about this change in the way God speaks also has as its primary point the great superiority of the New Way over the Old.

We may not feel like it’s better not to have prophets among us, but it is.

What’s better about it?

Let’s begin by making the obvious point. God still speaks to us today, but he does so in very specific ways. He speaks through his created works (Ps 19.1; Rom 1.20), but that medium is tainted by sin (Rom 8.22) and therefore unreliable as revelation. He spoke fully and perfectly by revealing himself in the person of his Son, as Hebrews 1.2 says. And as the Son told his disciples, after he left them he would send the Spirit, who would do certain things in and through them—most specifically, he would “bring all things to [their] remembrance” (Jn 14.26) and “guide [them] into all truth” (Jn 16.13). When did he do that? When they wrote the New Testament, completing the Scriptures.

So how does he speak authoritatively today? In the written Word, which is the Spirit-given record of the living Word, the incarnation, “the express image of [God’s] person” (Heb 1.3), “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1.15), the one “in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col 2.9). And that’s much better than the old way.

How?

Let me suggest three ways; I’m confident there are more.

The Word is objective. It’s written down, for all the world to see. The words are on the page; there’s a permanent record. It’s not a fleeting impression in your mind. There’s no question of whether it’s from God or just the product of your own imagination. It’s there.

The Word is firsthand. The Spirit of God directly guided the biblical authors so that they wrote what he intended (2P 1.21), down to the letter (Mt 5.18). We don’t have to depend on somebody else’s account of a dream he had once.

The Word can’t be faked. About that guy and his dream—how do you know if God really told him that? How do you know he’s not a crook? These days we have a pretty lousy record of discerning the spirits of preachers. Elmer Gantry is not entirely fiction, is he? We’re really good at being duped, because our flesh wants us to be. Jesus calls us sheep for a reason, no?

Back in the late 1970s I went to a healing service in Greenville featuring Ernest Angley. I decided to see what would happen if I asked to be healed. I got there about 10 minutes before show time and headed for the front row on the left side, from where I knew he called up the people he was going to heal. About 10 rows from the front an usher stopped me and asked if he could help. I told him I wanted to be healed. He told me that if God told Brother Angley to heal me, he’d call me out of the crowd regardless of where I was sitting. And he told me to go sit further back.

Which I did, about the middle of the house. And over the next 10 minutes I saw people trickle out, one by one, from behind the curtain and take their seats in the front row on the left. Those were the people he healed.

I don’t really need to tell you what was going on there, do I?

The written Word, my friends. The New Covenant. It’s better. It’s all we need.

Hear it.

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How God Speaks, Part 2

December 2, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1

A slight change of plans.

In Part 1 of this series, I said that in Part 2 I’d write about how God speaks today, and how the current way is better than the old way. But in the meantime I’ve gotten some really good questions from a friend, and I’d like to insert a longer-than-usual post here to respond to them.

My friend had three questions—

“Is it possible that the contrast [described in Heb 1.1-2] is not exclusive, but the change is that God didn’t speak through his son in the past (though some would posit he did through Christophanies), and now he has?”
Or could “the focus of the change could have been on salvation–previously presented by prophets and the law, later presented by the incarnation and work of Jesus”?
“Also, what about the many passages predicting prophecy, dreams, and visions as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit? I’m curious how you account for God speaking in those? (Acts 2:33, 10:45; Rom. 5:5)”

Good questions, all.

I’ll observe that this takes us to a full-scale discussion of the disagreement between continuationists and cessationists, which I can’t possibly address sufficiently in a blog post or two. But I hope to lay down the seeds of my thought process enough that they can sprout in your mind if you’d like to seek a harvest in the topic.

So, to be brief, I find the options in the first and second questions above insufficient with regard to all the major disciplines of theology—

Exegetical Theology
- I note that all the major English versions follow the KJV in rendering the main verb here as a perfect tense, “God has spoken,” implying completed action in the past. I also note, however, that the Greek tense is not perfect, but aorist—and the Greek bodies among us know that the aorist usually has little to no temporal significance in Koine; it’s the default tense, the tense you use when you’re not emphasizing tense. Yet all the major English versions render it as perfect. Why is that? I suspect that like me they see the strongly constrastive structure of the passage and conclude that the contrast is between speaking partially through mediators and speaking completely and directly in the divine Son.
- I also note that larger context (the book of Hebrews) is all about the qualitative difference between the Old Covenant and the New—because Jesus is superior as to his person (Heb 1-4) and his work (Heb 5-10). This is all-encompassing and should not be restricted to just a part of God’s plan or providential activity.
Biblical Theology
- The Bible tells many stories, but through them it is telling just one Big Story, or metanarrative—and that story is about Christ as the perfect and complete revelation of the Father. I’ve written on that before, how the Old Testament purposely creates in us a longing for the very offices that Christ perfectly fills—one of which is Prophet.
- Hebrews 1.1-2 is the climax of that larger story—Christ, in permanently uniting the divine nature and the human nature in a single person, unites his people with God. So John tells us that the Son is the “Word” (logos) (Jn 1.1) who perfectly “exegetes” the Father (Jn 1.18). We should not seek to minimize this climax by making it anything less than the center of the story.
Systematic Theology:
- I’ve gotten a little ahead of myself in the previous paragraphs, noting the “person” and “natures” and “work” of the divine Son. Those terms more properly belong to systematic theology.
- And what does Christology tell us? That Christ is perfect and complete in every way, and that he thereby perfectly reveals the Father. I ask, what part of God’s revelation of himself in Christ may we find insufficient? What remains to be said? I’m not trying to sound like the fabled head of the US Patent Office who allegedly suggested in 1889 that the office should be shut down because everything had already been invented. We’re not talking about human inventors here; we’re talking about the Son, one of whose offices is to reveal the Father perfectly. I’d suggest that there are Christological implications of continuationism, at least in the form promoted by most Pentecostals and Charismatics.
Historical Theology
- I think it’s noteworthy that until the 20^th century, every orthodox church leader that I’m aware of agreed that the Canon was closed because special revelation had ceased. The gift of prophecy, and the concomitant gifts of tongues and interpretation of tongues, disappeared from the practice of the church except in a few cases, which were unanimously accompanied by doctrinal deviancies (Montanism, Paulicianism) that rendered those particular practices suspect even to modern continuationists.
Practical Theology
- It’s no secret that the last few decades have seen continuationism move from Pentecostal and Charismatic groups to what we might call mainstream conservative evangelicalism. But that change has come with its own set of inconsistencies. Both John Piper and Wayne Grudem, for example, have had to argue that the very nature of prophecy has changed since biblical times and that modern “prophets” can be mistaken. I would argue that what Grudem has done is to find a modern phenomenon that isn’t prophecy, redefine prophecy so as to call the modern phenomenon prophecy, and then claim that the gift of prophecy therefore continues.

Which brings me to my friend’s third question.

What about Joel’s prediction, cited by Peter at Pentecost, that “in the last days” God would “pour out” his Spirit, and there would be a renewed outbreak of prophesying? I suspect that this passage has played a significant part in the continuationist thinking of Piper, Grudem, and their fellow travelers.

As I’ve noted before, I understand Scripture to say that God does not intend our interpretations of prophetic material to be reliable until the prophecy has been fulfilled, so I don’t think anybody—cessationist or continuationist—can be dogmatic on this point.
Some interpreters (e.g. E. J. Young) think that Joel’s entire prophecy was fulfilled at Pentecost, and others would say it was fulfilled at or before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. I don’t find those approaches convincing, especially in light of Joel 2.30-31 // Ac 2.19-21.
So I hold out the possibility that in the runup to the Second Coming, there will be a new outpouring of the prophetic gift.
But as a pretribulationist, I also (tentatively) understand the Bible to teach that the church will have been removed by the time those gifts appear. Maybe I’m wrong about that.

In the meantime, we all should agree that the Scripture is the overriding authority, and that all of our mental impressions must be subordinated to it. We all should further agree that the Scripture we have is sufficient to direct and inform our relationship with God and our service for him in the days he’s given us. And if that is the case, then the expression “the Lord told me” should mean precisely nothing to the hearer.

Tip o’ the hat to my friend, whose insightful questions prompted all this.

Next time, we’ll consider some ramifications.

Part 3

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How God Speaks, Part 1

November 25, 2019 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

We’ve all heard people say that God “told them” something.

Most of the time, they’re wrong.

I’m not saying that God can’t interact with our thought processes or, as some folks say, “lay [something] on my heart.” The Spirit who indwells us interacts with us all the time, convicting, teaching, directing, influencing our thinking and our actions.

But that’s very different from saying that God speaks to you, in your head.

I’d like to spend a post or two examining why I hit the off switch when someone tells me that God spoke to him.

As always, to evaluate this claim we have to go to the Scripture—which is replete with cases of God speaking to people.

God speaks all the time—

He speaks throughout the biblical timeline, from the very First Day—“Let there be light!” (Gen 1.3) to the very end of the very last biblical book to be written, 60 or more years after the death of Christ—“Surely I am coming soon!” (Rev 22.20).
He speaks on all sorts of occasions—
- Both formal (in his throne room, Is 6.8) and informal (while Gideon was threshing wheat, Judg 6.14)
- Both happy (the baptism of Jesus, Mt 3.17) and unhappy (Elijah in the wilderness, 1K 19.9)
- Both to encourage (to Paul in prison, Ac 18.10) and to condemn (to the king of Babylon, Isa 14.4-23)
He speaks in all different sorts of ways—
- In one-on-one conversations
  - With Adam (Gen 2.16-17)
  - With Noah (Gen 6.13ff)
  - With Abram, in the door of his tent (Gen 18.20ff)
- To people who are sleeping, in their dreams
  - To Jacob, of the staircase (Gen 28.12ff)
  - To Joseph, of his brothers bowing down to him (Gen 37.5ff)
  - To Pharaoh, of the coming famine (Gen 41.1ff)
  - To Nebuchadnezzar, of the coming kingdoms (Dan 2.1ff)
  - To Joseph the carpenter, of Mary’s pregnancy (Mt 1.20)
- To people who are awake, in visions
  - To Abram, concerning his offspring (Gen 15.1)
  - To the boy Samuel, concerning the death of Eli (1S 3.1-15)
  - To Nathan the prophet, about David’s future son (2S 7.4-17)
  - To Ezekiel, about the judgment and restoration of Judah (Ezk 1.1)
  - To Paul, about heaven (2Co 12.1ff)
- In an audible voice
  - A loud one, from Sinai, to the people of Israel (Ex 19.16-20)
  - A normal one, to Hagar, when she ran away from Sarai (Gen 16.11-13)
  - A quiet one, to Elijah, alone in the wilderness (1K 19.12)
- Through representations of his presence
  - A burning bush (Ex 3.1ff)
  - A pillar of fire (Ex 13.21)
  - A glory cloud—which may have been the same as the pillar of fire (Ex 40.34)
  - Urim and Thummim—whatever they were (Ex 28.30)
  - A whirlwind (Job 38.1ff)
  - An asterism (Mt 2.2)
He speaks to all different sorts of people—
- Prophets, throughout both Testaments
- Wise men, such as Solomon, as in Proverbs
- Rulers, such as Nebuchadnezzar, as noted above
- Ordinary people
  - A little boy sleeping in the Tabernacle (1S 3.2ff)
  - A peasant woman in a nondescript village (Lk 1.26ff)
  - A shepherd on the west side of the desert (Ex 3.1ff)
- And even a donkey! (Num 22.23ff)

So why am I suspicious of people who claim that he has spoken to them today?

Because the same Bible that tells us of all these past revelatory acts of God has also told us that things have changed:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, ²but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son (Heb 1.1-2).

The writer of Hebrews, whoever she was ( :-) ), first notes what I’ve delineated extensively above: that God has spoken in many times, in many ways, through many different people.

But, the author says, things are different now.

Now God has spoken through his Son.

This passage is structured as a contrast: God’s revelation used to happen a certain way, but it doesn’t happen that way anymore. Today, God has spoken in Christ.

In Part 2, we’ll talk about how we’re supposed to hear today what he has spoken, and I’m going to try to convince you that the new way is better than the old way—by a lot.

See you then.

Part 2 | Part 3

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How Gossip Ruins Everything

November 4, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Gossip runs deep in our culture. There are TV shows and magazines and websites completely dedicated to talk about what famous person is doing this or that, and we all know the story gets more reads if the news is bad. Nothing gets clicks like a nice juicy scandal. And it doesn’t stop with famous people; if a scandal strikes the ordinary joe, it likely won’t be long until he’s famous too.

This isn’t new; even in the Victorian era there were society columns in the newspaper, and long before that there was a graffito in Rome depicting a crucified man with a donkey’s head and proclaiming that “Alexamenos worships his god.”

Gossip is deeply rooted in our natures. We like to tell stories, and we like to be the one with the latest Information, so everyone will look up to us. My story’s better than yours, you see. I win.

No, actually, you don’t. Nobody does. And here’s why.

All of us who believe are members of a body, the church (1Co 12.13). Just as your finger wants to help your eye when there’s a foreign body in there irritating it—and the finger’s not irritated at all—just so, when one member of the body suffers, the whole body suffers (1Co 12.26).

That’s true in the universal body of Christ; if some Christian does something outstandingly stupid, then the social value of my standing as a believer is going to be reduced, even if I had nothing to do with it. But it’s especially so in the local assembly; if a member of your church goes to prison, his church membership may well be published on the local news, and the reputation of every member of that church is damaged, whether rightfully or not. Perhaps you’ve seen that happen; I have.

So far, I haven’t really been talking about gossip; news reports of a local crime are in the public interest. I’m simply making the point that believers are all connected and interdependent.

So now let’s bring gossip into the picture.

A key purpose of the assembly, the local body, is for believers to gather, look one another in the face, and exercise their gifts on behalf of the others in the assembly. In a healthy church, you’ll have the kind of relationship with a few other members that allows you to share your struggles, to hear of the struggles of others, and to be of help as you are gifted to do so. When a church member is struggling with a particular sin, he’s not designed to struggle alone; he needs brethren to come alongside to pray for and encourage him (Ga 6.1-2)—and perhaps to rebuke and exhort him as well (2Ti 4.2).

Now, suppose you’re struggling with pornography, and you need help, badly. What kind of person are you going to seek help from? Well, obviously, somebody who’s going to keep your confidence.

Somebody who’s not a gossip.

Now, suppose your church is a hotbed of gossip. Every juicy little bit of news spreads like wildfire; everybody knows, but nobody’s going to tell anybody else, except “just this once.”

Who’s going to seek help in an environment like that?

Not me. And not you, either. We’re going to struggle on in silence and desperation, and we’re never going to get the help we need. And consequently, victory will never come, and the whole body spirals downward to defeat, frustration, and collapse.

Gossip kills ministry. It kills the church. It makes a mockery of Christianity.

I came to realize this many years ago when as a young and foolish man I made a disparaging comment to a friend about a mutual acquaintance. He replied that I was destroying opportunities for ministry—because now he knew that I talked out of school, and as a result he would never come to me for help with anything he was struggling with.

He hit me with both barrels, and I will always be grateful to him for it. He changed my way of thinking and consequently, I’m confident, he changed the course of my life and ministry.

You’re not here to promote yourself; you’re here to serve God’s people.

So shut up and serve.

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When You’re Tempted to Hate People, Part 10: Relenting

October 17, 2019 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

As we’ve noted earlier, this list of God’s core attributes is repeated throughout the Old Testament, all the way through the age of the prophets and to the return from Babylon. Interestingly, the prophets add a line to the description: “relenting of evil” (Joel 2.13) or “one who relents concerning calamity” (Jonah 4.2).

As the NASB makes clear in the Jonah passage, the word translated “evil” refers here not to moral evil, but to calamity or disaster. God had warned Israel that if they departed from him, he would send calamity their way (Dt 30.15-20). He warned of specific calamities: drought, famine, war, disease (Dt 28.15ff). And Israel played that script out multiple times.

But when his people repent, God relents. He restores the relationship, despite the offense.

Now, when we talk about God relenting, or repenting, or changing his mind, that raises all kinds of logical and theological questions. I plan to deal with that issue in a future post. For now, let’s just grant that the Scripture uses that kind of language about God, as astonishing as it is.

I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t forgive people until they repent, because God doesn’t. Fair enough. But there are some further considerations to the point.

Since God is omniscient, he knows whether our repentance is sincere. Can we know that for certain?

No, we can’t. And interestingly, Jesus tells us to forgive people whenever they ask, with no reference to “sincerity” (Mt 18.22)—and frankly, if my brother asked me to forgive him 490 times for the same thing, I’d start to wonder whether he meant it. But Jesus says to forgive him anyway.

And, come to think of it, when we repent, God knows whether we’re going to fail again (and usually, the answer is yes). And he forgives us anyway.

If God, whose plans are perfect, who is never surprised, can forgive and relent of planned disaster, what about us? We’re not omniscient, and our plans aren’t perfect, and we are often surprised. If God can relent, shouldn’t we?

Why not go to your enemy, and offer him your hand, your arms, your friendship? Why not take back the things you said, the threats you made?

Why not make the first move?

__________

The premise of this series is that we ought to treat others—all others—as God has treated us. Mockery, disdain, sarcasm, dismissal, ranting, vilification—God has never done that to us, although we have repeatedly deserved it for the way we’ve treated him.

No, God’s character won’t allow that. Just as he can’t lie, so also he can’t treat us in the ways we so naturally treat people we disagree with, or people we dislike, or people who lie about us or trivialize our concerns.

We need to be like him.

Pick somebody you really dislike—maybe a public figure, maybe a personal acquaintance.

And then think about how God would treat—indeed, has treated—him:

Compassion
Grace
Patience
Loyal love
Faithfulness
Forgiveness
Justice with mercy
Relenting of calamity

And do those things.

And to get really serious, pray that God would do those things for him too.

Maybe, one relationship at a time, we can be agents of peace rather than strife—lights in the world, instead of darkness.

If your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Mt 6.23).

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash

When You’re Tempted to Hate People, Part 9: Justice and Mercy

October 14, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We’re exploring God’s foundational description of himself, on the assumption—well founded in Scripture—that we ought to treat others the way he does. We’re getting to the end of the list, where there’s a cluster of attributes that we really need to discuss together.

Exodus 34.7 puts it this way:

yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.

We’re tempted to find this troubling. God’s a hard master, demanding perfection and beating us when we fall short, and even bringing our grandkids into it.

Oh, that’s not what this passage is saying at all. Like all of God’s other attributes, this is a good one, one to delight in.

To begin with, let’s observe that he brings justice to the guilty. There’s no reason we ought to look askance on that. In fact, if you’ll think about it, we all want justice, when people have wronged us. The only situation in which we don’t want justice is when we’re the guilty one—or when of one our friends is.

Test yourself. Suppose someone committed a heinous crime against your family, and at his trial the judge said, “Look, I know you’re basically a good person. If you’ll promise not to do anything like this again, we’ll just forget it ever happened.”

How happy would you be?

Not at all. We want justice.

The world’s an unjust place. There’s abuse, and fraud, and falsehood, and violence, and murder. We have justice systems, but we often don’t get it right. We ought to do better. And it’s good—a delight—to know that there’s someone keeping records, who has the power to right all these wrongs, and who will certainly do so.

So the first clause is a good thing. God will right all the wrongs.

But what about the rest of it? What about visiting the sins of the fathers on the children? How is that just?

Well, God has designed the universe so that if you do right, things generally turn out better than if you don’t. (Yes, in a sin-broken universe it doesn’t always turn out that way, but that’s still very much the pattern.)

Now, suppose I kill somebody. I’m not the only one in my family who’s going to be affected by that. I’ll go to prison or even be executed, sure. But my wife will have to carry on without my help, and my children won’t have a Dad—and if they’re school age, they’ll face the reproach of classmates, and on it will go. Because of that trauma, there may well be ongoing effects in their children, and even in their grandchildren. Three or four generations.

God has designed the system that way, and the design encourages us to do the right thing. That’s a good thing.

But maybe there’s still a little itch inside you that wonders if he couldn’t have designed things better than this.

OK, it’s time to broaden the context.

The first time this principle is stated in the Bible is just a few chapters earlier, in the Ten Commandments. Here’s the specific wording:

I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, ⁶but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments (Ex 20.5b-6).

“To thousands” of what? The context is clear: to thousands of generations.

How long is a thousand generations? 20,000 years? 25,000 years?

I’m a young-earth creationist. I don’t think the earth has even been here that long.

Yes, sin carries consequences that involve more than the sinner himself. But grace—that goes on forever. Where sin abounds, grace superabounds (Rom 5.20).

So here in Exodus 34, I think we can tie several clauses together—

who keeps lovingkindness for thousands [of generations], …
yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished,
visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.

This is all one attribute: he maintains justice while extending mercy far beyond the reach of the most heinous sin. He does all things well.

And what of us, and the way we treat our enemies?

Justice. But superabounding mercy.

Part 10: Relenting

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash

When You’re Tempted to Hate People, Part 8: Forgiveness

October 10, 2019 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

So far we’ve seen that God is compassionate, and gracious, and slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness, and abounding in truth. The next item in our list in Exodus 34.6-7 is “keeping lovingkindness for thousands,” but with your kind permission I’m going to skip that one and come back to it later, when we look into “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.”

So we’ll move to the next clause, which states that God “forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.” The statement seems clear enough, but there are things to note here that will enrich our understanding of its meaning.

I’d like to start with the end. Why doesn’t God just say that he “forgives sin”? Why does he pile on the synonyms? I think he does this for at least two reasons.

First, repetition in most languages is a means
of emphasis, and in Hebrew particularly. A common Hebraism is to repeat a word
so as to say simply “very” or “surely.” There’s an example of this right at the
beginning of Scripture, where God tells Adam that if he eats of the fruit from
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ”dying you shall die” (Gen 2.17).
Most English translations render that construction “You shall surely die” (KJV
NKJV NASB ESV) or “You will certainly die” (NIV GW CSB). So perhaps here God is
emphasizing the sinfulness of sin and the certainty of his willingness to
forgive.
But further, I think God is making the point
that his forgiveness is as broad and deep and extensive as the very nature of
sin itself. Cultures have lots of synonyms for words referring to concepts that
they encounter a lot. There’s an old observation that
Eskimos (Inuit) have lots of words for snow. As Nahum demonstrates, ancient
Near Eastern languages had lots of words for locusts (Nah 3.15-17). And in both
Hebrew and Greek, there are lots of words for
sin. We humans have found that sin manifests itself in multiple forms and works
with multiple methods and appeals to multiple human weaknesses. It’s a
deep-seated, complex, exceedingly difficult problem.

The words God lists here are just 3 of many Hebrew words for sin. Each of these tells us a little more about the problem.

“Iniquity” is ‘awon, used 232 times in
the OT. It speaks specifically of being twisted, bent, or perverse, and it
includes the guilt that comes from such perversity. Sin is brokenness, the kind
that should be disgusting to us but sadly isn’t. It interferes with our
designed function, much as a broken arm keeps the patient from writing or
throwing or hugging in the way he was designed to.
“Transgression” is pesha`. It speaks of
crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed, of transgressing a boundary, and
thus of rebellion, acting willfully, brazenly, and obstinately against the
rules (Is 57.4). This is the kind of behavior in children that makes the
grownups really angry.
“Sin” is chatta’, a word that emphasizes
that the act is an offense, a violation, and deserves to be punished.

Working backwards through the phrase, we come to the verb. God “forgives” all these things. The root means to lift (2K 4.36) or to carry (Josh 3.6), and thus to carry away (Gen 27.3), to dispose of (Ex 28.38)—of sin, to forgive (Gen 50.17; 1S 25.28). This is a burden the forgiver bears; he is the one who takes action to remove the offense.

God forgives—carries away—our sins, in all their complexity and multiplicity and pervasive rottenness. He throws them behind his back (Is 38.17), to the bottom of the sea (Mic 7.19), as far as the east is from the west (Ps 103.12). He knows all about them, and he can remember them, but he will not (Jer 31.34). “Omniscient, all-knowing, he counts not their sum.”

We should do that too. We should move toward those who disgust us, who revulse us, inexorably drawn to the image of God in them—as God himself is—and act for their benefit in seeking to liberate them from the overwhelming burden of the complex sinful condition they bear.

Doing that is an act of worship.

Hating them isn’t.

Part 9: Justice & Mercy | Part 10: Relenting

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash