systematic theology

The Gifts of Salvation, Part 20: Filled with the Spirit

May 23, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Introduction
Our relationship to sin: Conviction / Repentance / Regeneration / Forgiveness / Redemption / Justification
Our relationship to God:
Before conversion: Election / Drawing / Faith
At conversion: Reconciliation / Positional sanctification / Adoption / Union with Christ / Spirit Baptism / Sealing / Indwelling / Assurance
After conversion: Progressive sanctification / Filling / Glorification
Conclusion

Everything we’ve talked about so far happens to every believer. No exceptions.

But there’s one gift in this collection that’s optional. Oh, it’s under the tree for every one of us: it’s available to all. But not everybody chooses to open it.

How do we know that?

Paul tells us that we ought to be filled with the Spirit (Eph 5.18). It’s an imperative, a command.

And that implies that not everybody is doing it, and they need to be told. Paul never commands us as believers to be forgiven, or adopted, or Spirit baptized. But he does tell us to be Spirit filled.

So we ought to be. How does that happen? What does it look like?

Let’s survey the biblical data.

Just one person was said to be filled with the Spirit in the Old Testament. He was the craftsman, Bezalel, who build the Tabernacle and its contents (Ex 31.3). The Bible says that Joshua was “filled with the spirit of wisdom” (Dt 34.9), but that’s ambiguous; many English versions spell “spirit” as lowercase, which I’ve done here.

But there’s clearly a change in the New Testament. The term shows up a lot, and it happens to a lot of people. And, as we’ve seen, it’s commanded of all believers.

John the Baptist is filled with Spirit from the womb (Lk 1.15), and that seems to be connected to the power of his ministry. Both of his parents are filled with the Spirit before his birth (Lk 1.41, 67). Unsurprisingly, Jesus is filled with the Spirit after John baptizes him (Lk 4.1). Peter is filled with the Spirit when he speaks to the Sanhedrin (Ac 4.8). Stephen is filled with the Spirit when he faces martyrdom (Ac 7.55). Paul is filled with the Spirit when Ananias visits him after his conversion (Ac 9.17), and later when he rebukes Elymas the sorcerer (Ac 13.9).

But what about regular people like us? At Pentecost, all the believers are filled with the Spirit at the time of the first Spirit baptism (Ac 2.4). But as we’ve noted, the condition is apparently temporary, since later all believers are commanded to undergo it.

So how do we get it?

Surprisingly, the Bible doesn’t say. In all the references we’ve seen so far, there seems to be an element of divine sovereignty involved; believers are filled, at God’s choice, when they need to be. John the Baptist certainly didn’t pray to be filled with the Spirit from his mother’s womb.

Yet we are told to be filled. It’s something we should seek, something we should desire. The filling seems to be connected to prayer in several references (e.g. Ac 4.31). So I think it’s reasonable to pray for the Spirit to fill us, and I think it’s reasonable to expect that God will answer that prayer when we need it.

What happens then?

The Scripture says a lot more about that.

The early disciples were filled with boldness to speak the word (Ac 4.31); the men chosen to serve the early church (whom we traditionally have taken to be the first deacons) were “full of the Spirit,” and the next scene has one of them, Stephen, boldly delivering the sermon that got him martyred (Ac 6.3, 5); Barnabas was full of the Spirit “and of faith” (Ac 11.24), and his next recorded action is to seek out the new convert Saul and confidently endorse him before the church; the new believers in Antioch of Pisidia were “filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit” as they faced persecution (Ac 13.52). So boldness to do the hard thing seems to be one result.

Did you notice that in several of these instances (Ac 4.8, 31; 13.9-10) the result of boldness is speaking? Maybe one reason so many Christians are afraid to speak of Jesus is because they haven’t chosen to be filled with the Spirit. And further, that one command (Eph 5.18) is followed immediately by the command to speak to one another in edifying ways. Maybe one reason why we’re afraid to speak even to fellow believers about Christ is that we’re missing this vital option.

And we’ve seen the fullness linked to faith (Ac 6.5) and joy (Ac 13.52).

Maybe—

Well, maybe you can write that last sentence yourself.

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 19: And So It Begins

May 20, 2019 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 19? And so it begins?!

Yep.

So far we’ve looked at what God has done for us, and to us, to move us away from our slavery to sin. I’ve identified 6 stages or facets of that process.

And now we’re 13 stages or steps into the process by which God makes us his own. Even before we knew him, he was 3 stages into that process. And then came the Earthquake, that moment when we were converted, and a whole bunch of things—I’ve identified 8 of them—happened simultaneously, in a glorious instant.

But all of that is prologue. Now that we belong to God and are no longer slaves to sin, we have a life to live, one that Jesus spoke of as “abundant” (Jn 10.10). The instant is over, and the long process of life in Christ has begun.

What does that look like? How does it happen?

Where do we go from here?

And so it begins.

You may recall a term we used earlier, in Part 12, which I called “Ownership.” At conversion, God makes us his own, and he sets us apart as his special property. I compared that to my wife’s “fine china” collection, which is kept in a special place and used only for special occasions—because it’s, well, special.

The biblical word for that “specialness” is holiness—being set apart. And another form of that same word, though it doesn’t look related in English, is sanctification. When we were converted, God “sanctified” us by setting us apart as his treasured possession. Back in Part 12 I called that “positional sanctification.”

But there’s a second, and much more complex, stage of sanctification.

Why?

Well, you don’t put cheap dishes in the china cabinet. You upgrade them.

God has indeed put his stamp on us, and we do belong to him. But he’s not content with leaving us as he found us; he’s not only going to clean us up—in fact, he’s already done that—but he’s going to change who we are, down to the very core of our being. He’s going to change us from cheap china to fine china, made from the very best clay, sculpted to perfection, painted and glazed with the artistry of the very finest technicians.

What does that look like for us, who are not in fact dishes, but human beings?

He’s going to make us like his Son. Like Christ.

You may recall that that’s one of the things he says he’s “predestined” in us. We are predestined, Paul says, to be “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom 8.29). God has committed himself to seeing us through to the point where we are as much like Jesus as it is possible for people—who aren’t God—to be.

Interestingly, God has chosen to take his time doing that.

We know that he can do anything, and if he wants to, he can do it in an instant. He made fermented wine in an instant* (Jn 3), and thereby demonstrated (among other things) that he’s the Lord of time. He made the entire cosmos in just 6 days.

And yet he conforms us to Christ’s likeness slowly, over a long process—as Paul puts it, “from glory to glory” (2Co 3.18), one step at a time.

Why?

I dunno. But thanks for reading. :-)

Maybe because we’ll appreciate it more or understand it better that way. Maybe because he’s designed some kinds of healthy growth to take place slowly.

But becoming sanctified is a process that takes us the rest of our lives. Every day, in a series of kind providences, God is chipping away at you, polishing you, upgrading your thinking and your feeling and your doing to make it a little tiny bit more Christlike. We call that “progressive sanctification.”

And as Peter notes, one of the main ways he does that is through trials (1P 1.3-9). Like athletes in training, we improve by facing hardships and enduring them, overcoming them, and doing so a little more effectively every time we work out.

Now, there’s a purpose in life that’s worth something. There’s a goal that gives meaning to the most inexplicable things that happen to us.

There’s real hope.

* I know, I know. That’s an argument for another post. When I feel like it.

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 18: Assurance

May 16, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

There’s one more thing that happens at the instant you’re converted. It seems to be a result of the Spirit’s taking up residence in us. He gives us assurance—he “bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God” (Rom 8.16).

We should begin with a clarification. There are really two kinds of confidence. One is objective—for example, you’re safe because you’re strapped in to the roller coaster, and the track has been carefully engineered and was inspected just moments ago, and the operator is trained, and you’re following instructions. You’re safe, whether you feel like it or not. We call that “security.”

But “assurance” is different. It’s subjective; it has to do with how we feel. On the roller coaster, you can be perfectly safe and not feel like it at all—security without assurance. On the other hand, you might be in a different situation and be in great peril but be completely unaware of that fact, like the passengers on the Titanic. Assurance without security.

In salvation, we have security. God has made promises, and he unfailingly keeps them. You can take that to the bank.

I should insert a word here about a theological dispute. As you know, there’s disagreement among Christians about what is often referred to as “eternal security.” Can a Christian “lose” his salvation? Or is it “once saved, always saved”?

I have an opinion on that, and I’m pretty sure I’m right. :-)

But for now I’ll just point out that Arminians, who hold that a genuinely converted person can, under certain circumstances, end up in hell, would not say that they don’t believe in “security.” One Arminian friend of mine says that he’s as secure as the promises of God. But he believes that a Christian can harden his heart against the promptings of the Spirit to the point where the Spirit will give him up to the desires of his own hardened heart. The result would not be a surprise to the Christian, and it’s not something that happens while he’s not paying attention; it’s something he deliberately chooses. So, my friend would say, if you’re concerned about your spiritual state—if you’re worried that you’ve “lost” your salvation—then you obviously have not chosen to harden your heart, so stop worrying. You can reject your salvation, he would say, but you can’t “lose” it.

So regardless of your position on “eternal security”—Arminian or Calvinist—you’re secure. God’s going to keep his promises to you. He’s not going to send anyone to hell who hasn’t chosen to go there.

But what about assurance, the subjective side?

It really comes down to a matter of trust, doesn’t it?

Do you believe God, or don’t you?

When a man comes up to me offering a fancy watch at a very low price, I’m not going to buy it. Why not? It’s a good deal, right? Well, not if it’s a knockoff, a counterfeit, it isn’t. And that depends on whether this guy has any morals or not. And if he’s a stranger, my instinct is going to be to assume the worst. I’m not going to trust him.

But if someone I know well comes to me with a great deal—and I’ve known him for a loooong time, and he’s demonstrated unbroken faithfulness to me, and at great personal sacrifice, in situations that cost him significantly—well, I’m going to trust him.

I trust my wife. It would be wrong not to.

So where are we with God?

He created us, knowing we would disappoint him, and has given us everything we really need for free and in abundance. And when we disappointed him, he pursued us, first by stepping into our world, at permanent and infinite cost, and then, astonishingly, by dying in our place. And then he offered us rescue, freely, despite everything we’ve done.

Is he going to cut you loose?

Don’t be ridiculous. What nonsense.

Today, in your heart, the Spirit of God has taken up residence, and he is constantly whispering in your ear words of love, of faithfulness, of commitment, of assurance.

Listen to him.

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 17: Indwelling

May 13, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

In addition to Spirit baptism and sealing, there’s a third gift that brings us into more intimate relationship with the Spirit. And this one appears to be the most intimate of all.

He moves in. He takes up residence.

We call that “indwelling.”

In the Old Testament, God speaks often of dwelling with his people. He does so visibly in the Tabernacle, the “tent of meeting,” where the cloud of his glory hovers over the Holy of Holies and where, “between the cherubim” on the covering of the Ark of the Covenant (Ps 99.1), he says that he dwells. When Solomon dedicates the Temple in Jerusalem, the glory cloud appears there, “fill[ing] the house” (2Chr 7.1).

But the presence is not intimate; it speaks more of transcendence than immanence. You have to go to the Tabernacle, or the Temple, to experience it; and even then hardly anybody can actually get to it; the women have to stop approaching first, then the men, and even the priests can go only so far. And the high priest? Just once a year, with lots of special preparation (Lev 16).

Now, sometimes the Spirit would “come upon” people in the Old Testament, but those times were relatively rare, and the people were few—an occasional prophet (2Chr 15.1; Ezek 11.5), or warrior (Judg 3.10; 11.29), who needed an infusion of strength or insight for a specific occasion. David appears to have had what may be the only example of indwelling in the OT; at his anointing, the Spirit “came upon” him “from that day forward” (1Sam 16.13), and after his great sin with Bathsheba, he pleaded with God not to remove his Holy Spirit from him (Ps 51.11). But he was apparently the exception.

No, it’s not intimate.

But it’s also not all there is.

In that era God speaks of a time when real intimacy will come. In the great New Covenant passage of Jeremiah 31, God describes a day when his law will be written not on tables of stone, but on tender hearts—when he will dwell with his people in a new and intimate way. In Ezekiel 37 he describes the dry bones of Judah coming to life again, and rejoining the Northern Kingdom of Israel, “and they will be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezek 37.23).

How does the New Testament understand these prophecies? God gave them to Judah in captivity in Babylon, but they were not completely fulfilled in the return to Jerusalem. There is a new, more complete fulfillment in the church, where God dwells with his people by dwelling inside them, intimately, personally, with direct fellowship (2Co 6.14-20). Jesus says to his disciples that the Spirit has been with them, but one day will be in them (Jn 14.17). This is a new level of intimacy.

It’s remarkable that the Spirit is “at home” with us. We are where he resides.

I love to travel. But pretty much anyone who travels will say that there’s no place like home. It’s a delight, after a long absence, to enter the door of your own house, smell the familiar smells, taste the familiar foods, raid your own refrigerator, sleep in your own bed, step into your own shower—the one with the high water pressure and the hot, hot water.

Home.

Can it be that that’s how the Spirit views us? We are his temple? With all the dust in the corners, cracked windows, drafty rooms, bug infestations, closets full of who knows what? He calls us “home”?

Yes, he does.

He moves in, cleans the place up, and settles in for the long term.

“Aaaaahhhhhhh,” he says. “It’s nice to be home!”

Fixing up the place is a never-ending task. But he stays, and he fixes up the place for as long as we breathe. And when we stop breathing, he …

But wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ll talk about glorification later.

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 16: Sealing

May 9, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

The second gift that specifically defines our relationship with the Spirit is sealing. This idea comes up just three times in Scripture, in two of Paul’s epistles.

Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge (2Co 1.21-22).

In [Christ], you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory (Ep 1.13-14).

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption (Ep 4.30).

To understand this concept, we need to know a little bit about the culture of New Testament times. Sealing involved rolling up a document, tying it with string, and pressing a lump of clay into the string so that the document couldn’t be opened without breaking the seal. For important documents, the sender would use a “signet ring” to press his mark into the clay, making forgery more difficult.

The practice has continued over the years. The (fictional) Scarlet
Pimpernel used the technique during the French Revolution, and some people continue the practice today, using wax instead of clay.

With this information, we can see several implications of the seal.

It speaks of authenticity. With the ring’s impression, we’re certain that it really came from the named sender. It’s the real thing.
It speaks of authority. If it’s really from the king, then you’d better open it, read it, and do what it says. When I turned 18, my friends and I all knew that if we received an envelope from the Selective Service Administration, we’d better not toss it in the trash without reading it.
It speaks of security. The document has not been opened; the secret is safe; the plan can proceed.

Something about the wording in the verses listed above I find intriguing.

In both of Paul’s epistles, he describes the seal as a “pledge” (NASB; KJV “earnest,” NIV “deposit”). This carries the idea of a down payment, a partial delivery that indicates that the “pledger” is serious and will be forthcoming with even more.

We still use the term earnest today when we buy a house. The buyer puts down “earnest money” to demonstrate that he’s made a serious offer. If he doesn’t show up for the closing, he loses his deposit. The amount is enough to discourage frivolous offers and no-shows at closings.

For God to use this language is surprising, for a couple of reasons.

First, God is faithful and trustworthy (Dt 7.9; 1Co 1.9); he is by nature Yes and Amen (2Co 1.20), and he doesn’t need to give us any guarantee that he will do what he says. To call for a down payment from him is an insult, on the order of—no, infinitely worse than—hiring a chaperone for my wife when I’m at work. Yet he reassures our faithless hearts by demonstrating that he will do what he has promised (cf Heb 6.16-18).

Second, the whole idea that the Spirit of God is a “down payment” is jarring. The Spirit is a member of the Godhead, infinite, eternal, boundless. If we have the Spirit, how can that situation be enlarged, or improved, or augmented? What “more” can there be yet to come? Isn’t that language insulting too?

I sometimes evaluate student sermons. If I were to hear a student use this kind of language about the Spirit, and if these verses weren’t in the Bible, I’d take him aside afterwards and say, “Now son, it’s really not appropriate to use that kind of language about a person of the Godhead. He’s not a ‘partial payment’ of any kind, for anything.”

And I would be wrong.

This language is used of the Spirit, and it is the Spirit himself, the agent of inspiration (2P 1.21), who uses that language to describe himself.

What condescension. What astonishing revelation—humility expressed by the God of the ages.

We’re sealed by the Spirit as a promise of even more to come.

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 15: Spirit Baptism

May 6, 2019 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

With our conversion, our relationship with all three members of the Godhead is transformed. In adoption, we have a specific relationship with the Father; in union, we have a specific relationship with the Son. And among this pile of gifts there are several that have to do with our specific relationship with the Spirit.

The first of these (and yes, they’re all simultaneous in our experience) is Spirit baptism, by which we are joined with the body of Christ, the church (1Co 12.13).

There’s not a lot of material in the Scripture on this event, and we need to be careful not to ascribe things to it that the Scripture doesn’t (::cough:: like the Wikipedia article ::cough::). It’s predicted a couple of times (once by John the Baptist [Mt 3.11; Mk 1.8; Lk 3.16; Jn 1.33], and once by Jesus, just before the Ascension [Ac 1.5, recalled by Peter in Ac 11.16]). Then there’s the 1 Corinthians verse noted above, and that’s it. In that passage Paul seems to compare it to “being made to drink into one Spirit,” which is an interesting expression, but still doesn’t tell us much.

I conclude, then, that Spirit baptism includes a couple of benefits for us—

We’re united with Christ’s body, the church. And that makes sense in the light of our union with Christ.
We’re united in some way with the Spirit; we’re “drinking him in.” That seems to imply spiritual power for following and serving Christ.

There are a couple of questions that come up with this event. The first is the terminology itself, which varies among Christians. You’ll see “baptism in the Spirit,” “baptism with the Spirit,” “baptism by the Spirit,” “baptism of the Spirit,” and just “Spirit baptism.” The difference comes from the fact that Greek prepositions, like English ones, can mean a lot of different things. Think about the following statements:

I eat ice cream with a spoon.
I eat ice cream with hot fudge sauce.
I eat ice cream with my wife.
I eat ice cream with great joy.

Wait—come back! Get away from that freezer!

I apologize for the distraction.

Each of the listed statements means something very different from the others, but the little word with is doing all the work.

In Greek it’s the same way. We are baptized “en” the Spirit. And that word can speak of agency—“by”—or of instrumentality—“with”—or of sphere—“in.” If you’re baptized “in” the Spirit, then the Spirit is the water in which you’re being immersed (yes, my baptistic bias is showing here, but it doesn’t make much sense to use “in” of pouring or sprinkling). If you’re baptized “by” the Spirit, then the Spirit is the pastor, and he’s putting you in the water.

So which is correct?

I dunno. Most English versions, from the KJV to the NIV, say “by.” I prefer “Spirit baptism,” which admittedly isn’t a literal rendering of the Greek but avoids the ambiguity altogether.

The second question is between some Pentecostals / Charismatics and mainstream Protestants. It’s typical of the former to use the term of a “Pentecostal experience”—“I got the baptism of the Spirit, and I spoke in tongues!” Setting aside for a moment the issue of the genuineness of the experience, the term itself doesn’t match the biblical use; it appears to me that Pentecostalists are confusing Spirit baptism with “filling,” which is a different phenomenon, and which we’ll get to several posts down the road. If Spirit baptism is the event by which we’re placed into the body of Christ (1Co 12.13), and if all believers are members of the body (same verse; note “all”), then by definition every believer has received the baptism, whether he realizes it or not. It’s not a later experience after conversion; it’s simultaneous with it.

So you’re one with the body of Christ, the church. That has all sorts of ramifications. Plunge in.

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 14: Union with Christ

May 2, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Our conversion brings us into personal relationship with God; we are reconciled to him and set apart as his special treasure. But Scripture makes it clear that the relationship is rich and multifaceted; it is described in ways that are relative to each of the three persons of the Godhead specifically. The Father adopts us, so that we become his sons and heirs. And now we come to the fact that he places us “in Christ”; we become one with the Son.

Most Christians would be surprised, I think, to realize that the most common term for salvation in the Scripture is the little prepositional phrase “in Christ” or “in him.” Christ introduces his disciples to the concept right at the end of his earthly ministry when he speaks of “abiding in me” (Jn 15.4-7). It’s a favorite expression of Paul; he first uses it in his remarkable statement in Romans 8.1—

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

John speaks of it too—

And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming (1J 2.28).

It’s interesting to me that despite the common usage of the phrase in Scripture, the doctrine of union with Christ seems to have gotten relatively little attention in the Christian community in comparison with the other gifts of salvation that are the subject of this series. Fortunately, there has been renewed interest in the idea recently; a former student of mine has put together a very nice list of resources.

Have you ever thought about all the ways we are said to have participated with Christ in his work? Paul says that we died and were buried with him—

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death … (Rom 6.3-4a)

–and, as it must certainly follow, we rose from the dead with him—

… in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life (Rom 6.4b).

You were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead (Col 2.12).

Since then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Col 3.1).

God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him … (Eph 2.4-6a).

And it gets better. At this moment, being in Christ, we are seated with him at the Father’s right hand:

… and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2.6b).

Do you feel as though you’re already in heaven?

Me neither.

Well, take heart. You are in Christ, and your place with him in heaven is as certain as if you were already there.

We are united with Christ, and that fact changes everything about our standing before God and our ability to live out a life of walking with him.

As you would expect, union with Christ is a mutual relationship—really, what relationship worthy of the name isn’t mutual?

We are in Christ, yes. The Scripture says so repeatedly.

But Christ is also in us—

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me (Gal 2.20b).

Do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? (2Co 13.5).

Since Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness (Rom 8.10).

Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col 1.27).

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith (Ep 3.14-17a).

We are in Christ. He is in us. Complete and eternal union. This changes everything.

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 13: Adoption

April 29, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

As we proceed through the salvation experience, we’re now summarizing the whole pile of gifts that come to us as an immediate result of our conversion. We’ve been reconciled to God; we’ve been set apart for his special ownership and care; and now we find that we’ve been adopted.

Sometimes we see a familiar word and think we know what it means—because it’s familiar. But occasionally in biblical studies the word had a different meaning in ancient times, and we don’t realize that simply because the word is familiar. The past, it’s been observed, is a foreign country; they do things differently there. And that’s the case with adoption.

In our culture, adoption is usually something that happens to a little baby. His parents have died, or they are unable to care for him, so he’s “put up for adoption,” and someone goes through the complicated legal process of adopting him into his family, his “forever home.”

In biblical times, if two parents died, the extended family would likely just take the child in, and on they went. The legal process, if there was one at all, wasn’t nearly as complicated as it is in our culture.

But there’s another important type of adoption in the ancient world, one we know about from archaeological finds. At the ancient site of Nuzi, for example, archaeologists found a tablet recording the adoption of a grown man by an older, childless couple. The arrangement was simple: the adopted son would care for the aging couple as if he were their natural son, and when they died, he would inherit the estate.

The contract may shed some light on the relationship between Abraham and “Eliezer of Damascus” (Gen 15.2), whom Abraham describes as “the heir of my house” (NASB ESV). It might well be that Abraham had adopted him after the cultural tradition of his day. (The Nuzi tablets are from about Abraham’s time.)

What’s the point?

In those days, adoption was at least sometimes the legal equivalent of our “power of attorney.” It conferred legal rights on the person adopted, who was typically an adult with extraordinary privileges.

So with adoption we find that we have entered the family of God in a second and uniquely significant way. In regeneration, or the new birth, we entered the family as an infant, “mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms,” vulnerable and in need of attention, care, and discipleship, of milk rather than solid food (Heb 5.12-14). But with adoption, we enter with all the privileges of adulthood, as full participants, seated not at the “kid’s table” but with the adults, with the fine china and fancy crystal and grown-up food.

Adoption gives us all the rights and privileges available to the lifelong saint. It’s all there for us, the moment we come to Christ.

It’s worth noting as well that adoption is one of three elements of salvation for which we are said to be “predestined.” Paul, the only biblical writer to use the word, speaks of our being predestined to conformity to the image of Christ (Rom 8.29-30; more on that later in the series), of being predestined to an inheritance guaranteed by the Spirit’s sealing (Eph 1.11-14; more on that too), and of being predestined to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself (Eph 1.5), with the result that we are heirs of God (Gal 4.7) and joint-heirs with Christ (Rom 8.17); the Son is “the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom 8.29).

I’ve used masculine terminology here; but just for the record, Peter says explicitly that both men and women are “heirs together of the grace of life” (1P 3.7).

The idea of predestination bothers a lot of people—there’s that recurring fear that maybe we didn’t actually have a meaningful choice in all this—but I think we should not insist on more than the Bible actually says about predestination. What it says is that God has guaranteed the outcome of our relationship in 3 specific ways. We his people are going to be like Jesus; we’re going to receive our promised inheritance; and we’re going to be God’s sons and daughters for as long as life endures.

I don’t see anything scary about any of that.

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 12: Ownership

April 25, 2019 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

The first step in our new relationship with God is simply ownership—that is, he takes possession of us. We become his. I’ve characterized this as a gift, because it is.

We hesitate at the idea because it’s been so often abused in human relationships. Our culture has come to realize that no human being has the right to own another, and we’re horrified at slavery, both past and present instances.

We should be. The Bible condemns the way we humans have practiced slavery by making it permanent (Lev 25.10), by making it abusive (Eph 6.9), and by making it commercial (1Ti 1.10). When humans own other humans, nothing good ensues.

But God is not fallen and abusive like us. He does own us—twice, because he is our Maker, and he is our Redeemer—and he treats his people with grace and generosity and care and love and fierce devotion.

There’s a particular word the Bible uses of the fact that at salvation we become God’s property. It’s the word sanctification. It simply means “holiness”; sanct- is the Latin word for it, and holy is the Anglo-Saxon word for the same thing. At its most basic, the word just means “apart.” When we say that God is holy, we mean that he is in a class by himself, or unique. When God says that we are holy, he means that he has set us apart for himself—that we belong to him.

Let me illustrate.

When my wife and I got engaged, it was the practice for couples to acquire two sets of china, one for everyday use, and another (much more expensive) set for special occasions. This second set we called “fine china.” (I’ve noticed that many couples these days aren’t doing that. Good for them.) Following the expectations of the day, we set that up. My wife bought a set of everyday china on sale somewhere, and we registered at a department store for her chosen fine-china pattern (Noritake Cumberland, for those who care about such things). We got a bunch of it as wedding gifts and then filled in the missing pieces ourselves later.

The everyday china went in the cupboard in the kitchen. The fine china went in a dedicated “china cabinet” out in the dining room.

And then I learned the thing that puzzles every newlywed husband.

You can’t use the fine china.

If I want a muffin before I go to bed, I’m allowed to use the everyday china from the cupboard. But if I open the china cabinet? Nope. Not allowed to get in there. And if I put a piece of fine china in the microwave? Or the dishwasher?

I shudder even to think about it.

Why is that?

Because the fine china is special. It’s set aside for special use.

And that is a secular illustration of what holiness is.

When you came to Christ and were regenerated. God moved you—I say this reverently—from the cupboard over his sink out to the cabinet in the dining room, and he made you his special possession. You belong to him. And just as my dear wife would sometimes stand in front of the china cabinet and just take pleasure in what she had there, so he delights over us as his special people (Zeph 3.17).

There’s more to sanctification—lots more—than just this concept. We’re going to come back to it again in a few posts. But what we’ve been talking about here is what we call “positional sanctification.” That’s where God makes us special—holy—by setting us apart for himself. He has a special place for us, and a special regard for us, and a special use for us. We’re not like other people—not because of who we are, but because of what he has made us. (Fine china is made out of dirt, just like the everyday stuff. The difference is what the artist has done with what he has.)

And that’s why Paul (Rom 1.1), and even Jesus’ half-brothers James (Jam 1.1) and Judas (Jude 1.1), take such delight in referring to themselves as “bondslaves” of Jesus Christ. We were designed to belong to this delightful Master.

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The Gifts of Salvation, Part 11: Reconciliation

April 22, 2019 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Our conversion—our turning from our sin in repentance and to Christ in faith—is the blasting cap that sets off an explosion of divine gifts. A whole list of things happen all at once, preparing us to set off down the road of a life in relationship with God. And at the head of that list is the 180-degree change in that relationship. As the songwriter so delightfully puts it, we were “once your enemy, now seated at your table!”

To say that we started out as enemies of God is no exaggeration. In his magnum opus on salvation, the book of Romans, Paul spends almost 3 chapters detailing how far from God, and how adamantly opposed to God, we were, whether we began as Gentile pagans (Rom 1.18-32), as Gentile moralists (Rom 2.1-16), or as Jews (Rom 2.17-29)—and in a blazing volley of condemnation, Paul characterizes everyone, of every time, place, and ethnicity, as completely given over to evil (Rom 3.1-19).

But with conversion, with repentance and faith, everything changes (Rom 3.21-30). In God’s great plan, he can justify the guilty—something no human judge worthy of the office would ever do—and yet remain just (Rom 3.26) because he himself has paid the penalty in the person of his Son (Rom 3.24-25). Justice has been fully satisfied.

And with that, the righteous Judge has been “propitiated” (Rom 3.25). What’s that mean? Simply, that he used to be angry at us, but he’s not anymore.

Some people have a problem with the idea that God could be angry or wrathful. But I don’t think they’re thinking very deeply about the situation. Sometimes wrath is to be expected—in fact, sometimes wrath is the only right response; it would be wrong not to be angry.

Do you remember the scene in the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, when Belle is surrounded by wolves in the forest, and the beast suddenly appears? I first saw that scene while holding my daughter in my lap, seated in the midst of hundreds of college students, and when the raging beast began throwing wolves in all directions, the students cheered. Long and loud. They wanted the beast to be angry. They wanted him to unleash his fury in support of justice.

Sometimes wrath is precisely the right response.

And God, who always responds rightly, was angry at our sin.

But with justice done, the wrath is gone. He’s propitiated. We’re at peace.

And beyond that, we are now in relationship. God doesn’t just walk away angerless and say, “Don’t do that anymore, OK?” We are now “at one” (that’s where the word atonement comes from). We’re friends. More than friends. The word the Bible uses for that is reconciliation (Rom 5.10-11; 2Co 5.18-19; Eph 2.16; Col 1.21-22; Heb 2.17).

Typically, when you become friends with someone, the relationship blossoms in many directions. A healthy relationship has depth and breadth; you discover all sorts of things that connect you and thereby enrich your understanding of one another. It’s common for a husband and wife to realize after a time that while they thought they were “best friends” when they got married, they really didn’t know each other very well at all, relatively speaking. They develop a relationship that’s so intertwined that being apart seems strange and unnatural. When one of them dies, the remaining spouse often casts about trying to figure out where to go from there. “We were one. Who am I without her?”

And so it is with our relationship with God. The relationship is rich and deep and robust. He makes us his own, in a general sense, and then each of the three members of the Godhead embraces his relationship with us in specific ways. We’ll look more thoroughly at all of this over the next few posts.

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