systematic theology

When You’re Tempted to Hate People, Part 2: How God Describes Himself

September 19, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

As we’ve noted, even Jonah the bigot knew that God had revealed himself as a God of compassion, who extends mercy even to the most wicked, upon their repentance—and who seeks that repentance from them.

When and where did God reveal this?

It begins with Moses.

He had spent more than a month atop Mt. Sinai, in the very presence of Israel’s God (Ex 24.12-18), receiving the stone tablets containing the commandments God had spoken earlier to the people (Ex 20-23; 31.18). At the end of that remarkable experience, God tells him that the people have corrupted themselves by worshiping a golden bull that they believe represents God himself (Ex 32.7-8), and that God intends to wipe them out and start the nation over with Moses (Ex 32.9-10). Moses argues successfully against that policy by countering that God has promised to build the nation on Abraham (Ex 32.11-14). But when he returns to the foot of the mountain (Ex 32.15) and finds the nation in debauchery, he breaks the stone tablets (Ex 32.19), destroys the bull (Ex 32.20), and brings judgment into the camp (Ex 32.25-28).

As the nation prepares to leave Sinai and travel toward the Promised Land (Ex 33), God prepares Moses to receive a second set of tablets to replace the ones Moses has destroyed (Ex 34.1-4). And there, atop the mountain again, Yahweh reveals himself to Moses with characteristics, attributes, that he has not significantly revealed before. He describes himself as

Yahweh, Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; ⁷who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; 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 (Ex 34.6-7).

This is quite a list. As I said, it’s new revelation; there’s almost nothing said about these things before this point in Scripture. (I’ll specify the “almost” in later posts.) And it becomes a refrain throughout the rest of God’s revelation of himself; it’s clear that he takes it seriously and views the list as a centrally significant part of his relationship with his people. Further, it’s clear that his people recognize that significance, for they bring it up again and again:

When Israel reacts in fear to the inhabitants of the Promised Land (Num 13.32-33), disbelieving God’s sure promise to Abraham and to Isaac and to all Isaac’s descendants since, wishing that they had never left Egypt (Num 14.1-4)—saying that bondslavery to the Egyptians was better than serving God!—Moses again intercedes for them (Num 14.11-16) by quoting God’s self-description back to him (Num 14.17-19), thereby rescuing them once again from obliteration (Num 14.20).
David the psalmist rejoices in this self-description of God, 500 years after it was originally spoken, by reciting it and then expanding on it in lyrical meditation (Ps 103.8-14)—more than once (Ps 86.15; 145.8).
More than 500 years after David, the chorus rises again, this time from the Jews who have returned from captivity in Babylon. Under Nehemiah’s leadership, they cleanse themselves and the Levitical priesthood, issuing forth in a psalm of praise to God (Neh 9.5-38) that includes the ancient self-description (Neh 9.17)—again, more than once (Neh 9.31-32).
The prophets too pick up the refrain; between David and Nehemiah, Joel weaves the refrain into his call for Judah’s repentance (Joel 2.13); and as we’ve noted, in far-off Nineveh Jonah recalls the verse, in frustration and anger over God’s willingness to accept the repentance of the deservedly hated Assyrians (Jon 4.2).

So this is a big deal. God takes it seriously, and so do his people, even when, as in the case of Jonah, they wish it weren’t so.

We might say that this is the core biblical view of the person of God. This is the most direct statement of who he is. It is his essence, his character, his personality.

Well, then. If our whole purpose is to know God—which is a necessary prerequisite to the Greatest Commandment, to love him (Mt 22.35-40)—then we’d better understand it.

That’s worth a few posts, don’t you think?

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash

When You’re Tempted to Hate People, Part 1: Introduction

September 16, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We’re polarized.

Yep.

And each side sees the other as the Ultimate Personification of Evil.

They’re bad people, you see. They want to destroy us and all that we hold dear.

No tactic is out of bounds in our desire to destroy them.

It’s war.

Bring it.

There were situations like this in biblical times: existential crises, where God’s people, and all they held dear—or should have held dear—was under assault by those who hated what they stood for, because they hated the God who had chosen them for himself.

The prophets called down God’s judgment on the nation’s enemies, and they didn’t mince words. The list of targets is long. It begins with Israel’s neighbors: Moab (Is 15-16; Jer 48); Edom (Jer 49.7ff; Ezk 25.12-14); Ammon (Jer 49.1-6; Ezk 25); Damascus / Syria (Is 17.1-3; Jer 49.23-27; Amos 1.3-5); Tyre (Is 23). And then it extends to more distant kingdoms that are even more of a threat because of their hegemonous power and reach: Egypt (Is 19; Ezk 29-30); Babylon (Is 13-14, 46; Jer 50-51); and Nineveh / Assyria (Nahum).

Especially Assyria. They’re the worst.

No one in the ancient world, or perhaps since, has exceeded the Assyrians in their gleeful cruelty to their defeated enemies. In Iraq today is the site
of Calah, the capital city chosen by the Assyrian ruler Ashernasirpal II, who reigned in the early 9^th century BC. There in the Temple of Ninurta is inscribed Ashernasirpal’s own official account of his victories:

I stormed the mountain peaks and took them. In the midst of the mighty mountain I slaughtered them; with their blood I dyed the mountain red like wool. … The heads of their warriors I cut off, and I formed them into a pillar over against their city; their young men and their maidens I burned in the fire.

I built a pillar over against the city gate and I flayed all the chiefs who had revolted and I covered the pillar with their skins. Some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes and others I bound to stakes round the pillar. I cut the limbs off the officers who had rebelled. Many captives I burned with fire and many I took as living captives. From some I cut off their noses, their ears, and their fingers, of many I put out their eyes. I made one pillar of the living and another of heads and I bound their heads to tree trunks round about the city. Their young men and maidens I consumed with fire. The rest of their warriors I consumed with thirst in the desert of the Euphrates.

Hulai, their governor, I flayed, and his skin I spread upon the wall of the city.

Scholar Jack Finegan observes that “the quotations just given are typical of many more which can be read in the annals of this king.”

Now those are some seriously evil people. Existentially so.

Why am I telling you all this? What’s the point?

It’s this. It was to this people, this nation, that God sent a prophet to declare judgment.

Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it?

You know the story well. The prophet’s name is Jonah, and after considerable initial reluctance, Jonah finally arrives at Nineveh, the current capital city, and gleefully preaches the announcement of oncoming doom.

And then, in his view, everything goes seriously awry.

Nineveh repents (Jon 3.5). From the king on down (Jon 3.6-8).

Well, this wasn’t the plan. Not in Jonah’s mind, anyway. There’s nothing in Jonah’s message (Jon 3.4), or in God’s instructions to him (Jon 1.1-2; 3.1-2), that offered any hope of repentance. Jonah could easily have argued that repentance was impossible and in any event would not have been accepted.

But the Assyrian king hoped for better things. “Perhaps,” he said, “God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not perish” (Jon 3.9).

And you know what?

Jonah knew that too. “I knew,” he said to God, in frustration and anger, “that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity” (Jon 4.2).

And Jonah was not one bit happy. He hated these people. And he had perfectly good reasons to.

Where did Jonah get the idea that God was gracious and compassionate, even to hated people?

God had told his people that. Repeatedly.

Next time we’ll look at what he had told them, and under what circumstances. And then we’ll spend a few posts learning what it all means, for us, and for all those people we hate.

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash

Living in the Brightest Light, Part 4: Occupy Till He Comes

August 15, 2019 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Thus far in our brief look into 2 Thessalonians, we’ve noted that when Christ returns, God’s going to right all the wrongs, and that he’s going to bring history to an end in his own good time, according to his plan and timetable.

So what to we do in the meantime? In the last post we saw a very brief statement of that, in 2Thess 2.15—we need to continue holding on to what we’ve been taught.

But there’s more to it than that—and Paul has more to say in the next (and final) chapter. He speaks of a couple of general activities first—

We need to have a prayer life. We need to pray specifically for one another. Paul asks for prayer for himself (2Th 3.1-2), and he confidently (2Th3.3-4) prays for them (2Th 3.5).
We need to have a consistent pattern of following Christ. That’s what he prays for them (2Th 3.5), and that’s what he’s so confident about (2Th 3.4).

Those two general activities can keep us plenty busy until he comes. But he gets more specific in the next paragraph.

We all know that Paul’s epistles are “occasional”—that is, they’re written to address specific situations or occasions. In this case, Paul has learned that there are people in the church who aren’t working to support their families. Some interpreters speculate that they’ve quit working because they think Jesus is coming back very soon and they want to be ready—but the passage doesn’t actually say that.

At any rate, they’re sponging off the church’s kindness. And these days we have a term for what the kind church is doing. We call it “enabling.” Sometimes love has to be tough; you can’t smooth the path for someone headed in the wrong direction.

And that’s what Paul calls for here. We’ve told you, he says, that if someone is unwilling to work, he shouldn’t eat (2Th 3.10).

Obviously Paul’s isn’t calling for hard-hearted starvation of the elderly and enfeebled. These were people who could work but were refusing to. And here Paul calls for tough love. He even notes that he had set an example of that when he was with them (2Th 3.7-9).

How should the church deal with the situation?

Don’t give the lazy guy food (2Th 3.10).
Don’t let him wear you down. Don’t cave. You’re doing a good thing (2Th 3.13).
Don’t associate with him (2Th 3.14). Let him feel the sting of social penalty for unacceptable behavior.
But don’t cast him aside (2Th 3.15). He’s your brother. Guide him toward the joy of repentance. That’s the whole point.
Don’t lose your peace (2Th 3.16).

Wise words for all of us these centuries later, in a virtually identical culture. We’re living in the brightest light, the light of Christ’s return. Anticipating that, we get impatient with the brokenness all around us—and within us—and we’re tempted to just find a quiet corner and hunker down waiting for the cavalry.

But God hasn’t called us to do that. He’s called us to live in a broken world, to deal with its brokenness every day, sometimes by doing hard things, things we’d rather not do. He’s called us to persist in those difficult things, and even more, to do them with grace, continuing to spread The Story even as we feel the frustration that long waiting brings.

People who live through that kind of frustration, and who do so with peace, are testimonies to the truth of what they’re persistently believing. Only God could bring peace to a person in that situation. Something supernatural going on here.

And maybe people will want to look into that.

Live on, my friend.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Living in the Brightest Light, Part 3: In God’s Good Time

August 12, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2

As we’ve noted, when Christ returns, God’s going to right all the wrongs, correct all the injustices. That takes care of a lot of anger and frustration for us.

But we need to be careful how we anticipate. When Paul wrote this letter, the readers had apparently received a letter claiming to be from Paul, giving the impression that Christ had already returned, and they’d missed it (2Th 2.2). Paul went to the trouble of signing this current letter himself, so they’d have his signature to compare to any future letters (2Th 3.17).

What does Paul tell them here? He says the Lord won’t return until several things have happened:

a falling away, or “apostasy” (2Th 2.3)
the revealing of a “man of lawlessness” (2Th 2.3)
the removal of a “restrainer” (2Th 2.6-7)

There a lot of stuff to argue about here. :-) As I’ve noted before, prophecy is hard, and we should expect to have our disagreements over the details without viewing one another as spiritually blind or weak on the authority of Scripture. Paul notes that he’s explained all this to the Thessalonians in person (2Th 2.5-6), so he doesn’t need to say any more. Many of us wish he had, but this is where God has left us for now.

Over the centuries people have tried to identify the “man of lawlessness,” which many assume to be the same as the one that John in his epistles calls “the antichrist.” The Reformers thought it was the pope; during World War II both Hitler and Mussolini were suggested; then Henry Kissinger; and even Ronald Reagan (6 letters in each of his three names, you know—666).

And who or what is the “restrainer”? Rome? the Catholic Church? Christians? the Spirit, who indwells Christians?

Nobody knows. Well, nobody but God, for now. And Paul, and apparently his readers, now long dead (2Th 2.6).

But there’s one interpretation of this passage I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t make.

Some people read 2Th 2.8-12 to say that if someone heard the gospel before the Rapture, then afterwards he won’t be able to believe and be saved. God will send him delusion (2Th 2.11).

I don’t think this passage says that. It says that God sends delusion to “those who are perishing” (2Th 2.10). Let’s not read anything more into it than Paul put there. If it’s the Tribulation period, and you want to come to Jesus, you come. He’ll welcome you. That’s what he does (Mt 11.28-30; Jn 6.37).

Paul’s word for his readers is the very opposite of off-putting. He thanks God for choosing his readers for salvation (2Th 2.13). He has every confidence.

And what should we do with that confidence? How do we occupy ourselves as we live in this brightest light?

Stand firm. Hold on resolutely to what the apostles have taught (2Th 2.15).

We don’t focus our efforts on when Christ is coming, or the details of how Christ’s return is all going to work out in the end. We don’t descend into wrestling matches about the details.

What do we do instead?

We live on.

We believe what God has told us, and we live out his plan for each of us individually, day to day.

Loving God (Mt 22.37).

Loving our neighbors (Mt 22.39). All of them.

Being ambassadors for Christ (2Co 5.20).

Taking the story of Jesus and his love to all who haven’t heard, starting right here in our town and extending to the very ends of the earth (Ac 1.8).

And how do you think that’ll turn out?

God’s going to give us the strength to be faithful till he comes (2Th 2.16-17).

And when the time’s right, he’s going to come.

Right on schedule.

Just as he has always planned.

Live on, my friend, this day, and however many more days he’s scheduled for you.

Part 4

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Living in the Brightest Light, Part 2: Justice Wins

August 8, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1

As we live in the light of Christ’s return, in his brief second letter to the Thessalonian church Paul emphasizes three ideas that drive our thinking, attitudes, and choices. The first he gets to right away: when Christ returns, no injustice will be left uncorrected (2Th 1).

Paul begins all his letters with a standard 4-part introduction. First, he names himself (and sometimes others, e.g. 1Co 1.1) as the author(s). Here, Silas and Timothy are with him (2Th 1.1a). Second, he names the recipients (2Th 1.1b). Third, he offers a benediction (2Th 1.2). If you’ll compare his epistles, you’ll find that this third section is the most consistent from letter to letter. And fourth, in most cases he offers a prayer of thanksgiving for something about them.

These prayers are instructive. There isn’t one in Galatians; Paul is taking those folks straight to the woodshed (Gal 1.6ff). But with other churches he always finds something to be thankful for; even in Corinth, where they’re taking each other to court (1Co 6.1) and getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper (1Co 11.20-21), Paul manages to thank God that they have a lot of spiritual gifts (1Co 1.4-8)—even if they’re abusing them (1Co 12-14).

Here in Thessalonica, Paul rejoices that his readers are continuing to grow in Christ, even though they’re being persecuted. The persecution had started right at the very beginning of the church (Ac 17.5-10) and had continued after Paul left (1Th 2.14-16; 3.4). Paul doesn’t speak of this as though it’s a sign that something has gone terribly wrong; he mentions it matter-of-factly, no doubt because he knew of Jesus’ teaching that persecution would surely come to his followers (Jn 16.33).

So how should they respond to the persecution? I find it interesting that there are no calls to imprecatory prayer, no combat techniques, no legal advice. Paul sets forth just two Big Ideas.

Christ’s Coming Is Going to Right All the Wrongs

First, we don’t need to wrestle with our opponents. Those who oppose God’s people are dealing with an Opponent they can never defeat, who will most certainly call them to account for their evil choices, and who will carry out justice for all the injustices done (2Th 1.6-9).

Not our job. God’s better at it anyway.

And Paul points out that in that day, we will have “relief” (2Th 1.7)—but even beyond that, we will “glorify” and “marvel at” him (2Th 1.10). You know what it’s like when your team wins. The place just explodes, and everyone’s screaming and shouting and hugging and pumping their fists in the air. The fireworks go off, and eventually the party moves out into the street and around the block, and everyone’s just beside himself with sheer delight.

It’s going to be all right. Exponentially better than all right.

Some people scoff this off as “pie in the sky.” Bourgeoisie trying to keep the oppressed happy under their thumb. Trying to crush the proletariat.

And there’s no question that that sort of thing has gone on. But to suggest that here is a category error. It is to suggest that persecution is abuse by a hostile master rather than training by a supportive coach. And it assumes, without evidence, its most fundamental premise—that both “the pie” and “the sky” are fiction.

We have every reason to believe the opposite.

We Have More Important Things to Attend To

Since God’s going to take care of the unpleasant business, we can devote our time to more important things. Paul writes,

We pray for you always, that our God will count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power, ¹²so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ (2Th 1.11-12).

We have a calling, you see—one that our heavenly Coach—and I say that reverently—is exercising us toward through the very persecution itself. This calling involves several elements—

Goodness
Faithful (persistent, enduring) work—with power
Glorifying God—and being glorified by him

Wow. That’s a lot more fun than plotting the demise of my theological opponents.

I think I’ll work on that instead.

Part 3 Part 4

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Living in the Brightest Light, Part 1: Introduction

August 5, 2019 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

Christmas. Summer vacation. Birthday.

Marriage. Childbirth.

We love to anticipate things. Can’t wait. It’s gonna be awesome.

And the anticipation is half the fun, isn’t it?

When my wife and I were first married, one of the things I had to learn was that whereas I’m impulsive and like to do things on the spur of the moment, she enjoys the anticipation phase more. Rather than coming home from work and suggesting that we go out for supper tonight, I needed to learn to make the suggestion in the morning so she’d enjoy having time to think about it.

That’s a pretty simple adjustment, and an enjoyable one at that.

As a biblicist, I’m always asking myself, “What’s the biblical perspective on, or approach to, this or that topic?” So what’s the biblical perspective on anticipation?

Does God anticipate things?

Well, he certainly talks a lot about the future, and he seems to enjoy the prospect of what’s coming. Isaiah 11 comes to mind.

Theologians say that God lives beyond time—but then, no one really knows what that means. He certainly knows about time and understands it perfectly—having created it—and he speaks as though he’s thinking in terms of time, though he knows the end from the beginning (Isa 46.10).

Jesus endured the cross “for the joy that was set before him” (Heb 12.2). That sounds like anticipation to me.

Should we anticipate things?

If God’s doing all that anticipating in the Bible, he clearly intends that it should be part of our thinking as well. We ought to look forward to stuff. Excitedly, eagerly, expectantly.

What stuff?

What should we look forward to? Is there any biblical guidance on that?

I’m not asking what our purpose or goal for life is, though that’s an important question too—in fact, I think it includes our question, though it’s broader and more basic than it. The Bible gives us guidance on the larger question of purpose, reason for living:

Clearly the Prime Directive is, as the scholars say, “doxological”—we exist for the purpose of giving glory to God, both in this life (1Co 10.31) and the next (Rev 7.9-12). Even eating and drinking are things we should do for his glory.
- Sidebar: How do you eat and drink to the glory of God? You recognize food and drink as gifts from a generous God, creatively designed for our pleasure (color, texture, flavor, etc.) and given to us freely and abundantly. You delight in his supply and his artistry even as you delight in the food. Eating, properly done, should be an act of worship. But we’re not worshiping the food—that’s gluttony, a form of idolatry. We worship the Creator, not what he has created (Rom 1.25).
Along the way we consider other things. As just one example, Jesus said that he came to give us “abundant” life (Jn 10.10). We exist to live abundantly: joyously, committedly, living out all the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5.22-23) with delight.

Now, as part of that purposeful life, what do we anticipate? What do we look forward to?

The Bible speaks to that as well.

We look forward to the return of Christ; we are “those who look for him” (Heb 9.28); “from [heaven] we look for the Saviour” (Php 3.20); we look “for that blessed hope, even the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ” (Ti 2.13). We’ve been doing that from the moment he left (Ac 1.11). It’s the greatest of our anticipations.

So how do we live in light of that certain coming event? How do we live in light of it—the brightest light?

There’s a little book in the Bible that focuses on that question. It’s in the New Testament, a letter by Paul. We call it 2 Thessalonians—because it’s one of two letters he wrote to a church in Thessalonica (today’s Thessaloniki, or Saloniki), and because it’s the shorter. (Really; they put it after 1 Thessalonians primarily because it was shorter—though most commentators also believe it was written second.)

The book’s 3 chapters address 3 ideas:

Christ’s coming is going to right all the wrongs.
Christ’s coming will happen on God’s timetable.
We should be living as God’s stewards in the meantime.

There’s a lot to talk about here.

We’ll get to it next time.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The Gifts of Salvation, Part 22: Summing It All Up

May 30, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

And so we come to the end of the series on the gifts of salvation. It’s a long series, the longest yet on this blog. The experts discourage long series. Readers need variety, they say. Something fresh. Something that will catch their interest in a new way.

Fair enough.

But I did this long series anyway, because the length, in some ways, is the whole point.

As I said in the opening post, salvation isn’t really “a gift”; it’s a whole pile of gifts, wrapped in bright paper and tied with oversized bows and piled under the tree, where there’s barely room to contain them all.

Salvation is the most extravagant thing in the universe.

It goes on forever. Even longer than this series did. :-)

And yes, that’s the point.

God has designed the shape of the universe and the course of history around his extravagant plan to rescue you from the well-deserved disaster of your own sin and foolishness, and he has done so without your asking for or even wanting it. And he has done this not because of who you are, but because of who he is.

He has crushed your slavery to sin, not just breaking, but obliterating the shackles, and he has instituted an intimate personal relationship with you that will endure for all eternity. He has adorned that relationship with actions that become facets in the jewel of his love, with the result that this relationship is richer and deeper and more complex than any of the relationships that we know with our fellow creatures. It’s more than servanthood; it’s more than friendship; it’s more than brotherhood; it’s more than sonship; it’s even more than marriage. It’s all those things, and much, much more, in a single relationship.

It’s unparalleled. Unique.

Holy.

And that means it’s worth everything.

Jesus said that it’s worth more than father or mother, son or daughter, even husband or wife. It’s worth more than admiration or fame before mere creatures. It’s worth more than barns full of luxuriant wealth. It’s worth more than the whole world—and all the other worlds together.

It makes the greatest evils in this life—and they are great evils—“light afflictions,” according to Paul (2Co 4.17), who knew a little something of what he was talking about (2Co 11). In one of his most frank moments, he compared all of his accomplishments in his earlier life to a giant, steaming pile of excrement (Php 3.8). That’s strong language, because it’s emphasizing the strong and central point of Paul’s entire existence—and ours as well.

What else matters? What else could possibly matter?

Shake off the shackles of life focused in this world. Delight in the extravagant gifts of God’s plan for your salvation. Abandon your dreams to him.

You won’t be sorry.

—–

This will be my last blog post here for a few weeks, while I devote my effort to blogging a mission trip. You’re welcome to follow that story if you find it interesting.

Back soon, d.v.

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

The Gifts of Salvation, Part 21: Breaking the Tape

May 27, 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

Are you a tortoise or a hare?

How’s your pace in the great marathon we call sanctification—that one element of salvation that grows and changes throughout our entire lives?

Making any progress?

Well, biblically, the answer is “yes, of course.” If you’re in the vine, you bear fruit (Jn 15.5), which the Spirit is enabling in all kinds of character development (Gal 5.22-23). You’re making progress, a little bit at a time (2Co 3.19). You’re becoming more like Christ.

But chances are you don’t feel like it.

Maybe you feel like you’re taking two steps backward for every step forward. Up and down, up and down, progress and failure, over and over again.

Or maybe you feel as though the goal is so far away—Christ is infinite and perfect, after all, and you are so filled with flaws and lusts and selfishness and evil inclinations that seem to spring out of nowhere—that you’ll just never get there. You can’t run that far.

Maybe you’re just tired.

Can I encourage you to take heart?

You’re not alone in this struggle. Others are having the same experience.

As a matter of fact, everyone’s having the same experience. Every believer living today is crammed into that tiny boat with you. We might not admit it—we’re embarrassed by our failures, and we keep them as secret as we can—but we’re all struggling, all stumbling, all frustrated that we’re not making better time per mile on this marathon God’s called us to run.

There are no super Christians.

But let’s be frank. The fact that we’re all in the same boat isn’t really much encouragement in itself. Misery may love company, but in the end we don’t want miserable companions—we want victory. We want to win.

Since we’re being frank, let’s admit that having company in the lifeboat isn’t really the solution—though it’s worth noting that in God’s plan of salvation, those walking along beside us do play a role in strengthening us for the battle through their encouragement and the exercise of their spiritual gifts in our behalf. We can help each other out, in innumerable ways. Walking this path alone is exceedingly foolish.

But there’s a much, much bigger reason to take heart. I’ve mentioned it already in this series.

It’s predestination.

You see, God has predestined you to be “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom 8.29). He has guaranteed that you’re going to arrive—successfully—at the destination of perfect Christlikeness:

We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is (1J 3.2b).

You’re going to plod along, with ups and downs, fits and starts, successes and failures. And then in an instant—“in the twinkling of eye,” as Paul says (1Co 15.52), “we shall all be changed!” (1Co 15.51).

Here’s what that means: no matter how inconsistently, erratically, just plain badly you run this race of sanctification—no matter how far you are from the finish line of Christlikeness when your life here comes to an end—if you’re a genuine believer, God is going to pick you up and take you all the way to finish line at the end. And he’s going to do it in an instant.

We call that glorification, and you can read more about it in 1 Corinthians 15.20-57. And thanks to that controversial word, predestination, you can be as certain of that as that the sun will come up tomorrow (Gen 8.22).

So. What do we do in the meantime?

Earlier in this series I mentioned a long bicycle trip I took in seminary. One of my big takeaways from that trip was a change in my regional thinking. I was born in the West, where we would routinely ridicule Easterners for their talk about “mountains.” “Mountains?!” my Dad would say. “Those aren’t mountains; they’re pimples on the prairie. Now out here, we have mountains!”

And then I rode a bicycle through those eastern mountains. The first day out of Boston, the Berkshires like to killed me. Then a bit of the Catskills, then the Blue Ridge, including a bit of the Smokies—a pretty decent survey of the Appalachians, north to south.

I decided those are mountains. And my days were spent head down, dripping sweat, lost in concentration, just pedaling one step at a time, one foot after another.

Just do it.

The Christian life is a lot like that. Except that the prize at the end is a lot better than even Greenville. :-)

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

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.

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

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

May 20, 2019 by Dan Olinger 1 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

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.

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash