Re-reading

Today I spoke with my pastor, Robert Keats, about Genesis 1 and the book of John.  I told him I was re-reading Genesis and John and trying to ask myself questions to get more from the text.  In view of how John presents Christ, as the Light of the World, as the life that is the light of men, and as the incarnate Word of God, I told him I think there is more to the narrative of Genesis than I have been reading.  So my questions of the text were these:  What connection do the first words of creation have with what John tells us about Christ?  How does, "Let there be light" relate to the Christ event?

As I began to re-read and think about Genesis, I then found yet another question that grabbed my attention: why doesn't God say anything was "good" on day two of the creation account?  On the first day we see that God calls the light good.  On day three, God says both the dry land and the plant life created are good.  On days four, five, and six God says that the various acts of creation are each "good."  And finally, on day six, after God has created everything else, he says that all he created is "very good."  But, on day two, there is no statement that anything was good.

There may be nothing to this omission.  It may very well be that there is nothing to be learned from the simple omission of calling anything good on day two.  After all, on day six God calls everything, "very good" thus indicating that creation was exactly according to his plan and purpose.  And if everything was created according to God's purpose, then obviously, what happened on day two had to a good thing.  In any case, Scripture does not give a clear or definitive answer to this question.

If you choose to do a quick search on Google, you can find various answers that people have to why God didn't call the second day of creation good.  Answers range from the idea that the waters above the firmament were set in the sky as a punishment for men (the flood of Noah) and therefore it was not pleasing to God to have this punishment prepared, to the idea that the creation of the firmament and the setting up of the heavens created the realm that Satan would claim as his own.  Unfortunately none of the answers I read really took into account the testimony of Scripture.  For instance there is nothing saying that the waters in the flood came from the water above the "firmament."  Likewise, there is nothing saying that Satan had already taken his domain in the heavens being that as of Genesis 2 he had not yet tempted Eve and Adam had not yet allowed sin into the world.

I have my own theory on why God does not call day two of creation good.  My theory is that day two tells us about God separating creation from himself, setting up the firmament as that which separates creation (the waters below) from the throne room of God (the waters above).  Thus when we see in Revelation 4:6 that there is what appears to be a sea of glass in front of the throne of God, we are taken back to the primordial waters that covered the world, and we are reminded that God is enthroned above the heavens.  God is separated from creation, because of his own design, but he does not intend for things to remain that way.  By the end of Revelation, in chapter 21 we see that God intends to make a new creation, one that will not be separate from himself.  God does not call the second day of creation good because it represents an imperfect idea of what God will one day do, when he will join himself to creation, when there will be nothing that separates him from what his hands have made.  (I do not mean this in a pantheistic or panentheistic sense.)

Obviously, my theory is just that, a theory.  I can't prove my idea is correct.  If I am right, then what that shows us is that God intended, from the very beginning of creation, to bring all things into fellowship with himself.  Thus when we read about the separation of day two we read about an event that was necessary according to God's divine plan, but one which would one day be undone.  This tells us that it should be our aspiration to be brought back to God.  And it tells us that reconciliation with God goes beyond ourselves, it involves all of creation coming into fellowship with God.

But, my point is not to attempt to prove my interpretation of Genesis.  Instead, my point is that it is only through re-reading Scripture that we notice things like the second day not being called good.  We only notice the connections between the waters above and the glassy sea around the throne of God when we read through both Genesis and Revelation enough times that the ideas in each of them take root in our minds.  Yes, reading what others think about Scripture, or hearing someone else point out connections we may not notice in Scripture is useful.  But, we will only begin to see connections ourselves when we become devoted the text of Scripture, in whatever way we have access to that text.

Re-reading Scripture has great value, because it helps us to see connections we might otherwise never notice.  It also encourages us to ask questions, which can be useful to us and help us to get more out of Scripture, even if we cannot definitively answer the questions we ask.  If our goal is to become more like Christ, even as Peter says we are being transformed, and Paul says we ought to live, then there is no better method to becoming like Christ than to dive into his word.  There is no other way to know the mind of God than to give heed to what he has said.  While there may be times we feel as though we are gleaning nothing more from what we are reading, we must remember that God can use those moments to plant something in our minds that will help us later.  Re-reading Scripture is incredibly important to the Christian, and its values cannot be overstated.

Isaiah 6:1-8

Recently (a couple of weeks ago) my pastor asked me to read this section of Scripture and lead the congregation in prayer as part of our worship service.  Reading this passage, and the sermon of that day, both changed the way I have looked at sin since.  I wanted to address this passage of Scripture and share a few of the things that really impacted me.  A couple of the points come from the Hebrew in this passage, so I beg your leave to discuss those, and I ask that you trust what I'm going to say.  Alternatively, I hope that my reading of this passage might encourage you to do some research on the passage yourself, that you may be challenged and transformed by the Word of God.

First, the English of this passage:

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.  Above him stood the seraphim.  Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.  And one called to another and said:

"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!"

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.  And I said: "Woe is me!  For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.  And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for."

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"  Then I said, "Here am I!  Send me."


The first thing that struck me was the declaration made by the Seraphim: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!"  (A better rendition might note that he is called the Lord of armies, but that's a secondary point.)  The reason this declaration struck me is because of the triple repeated, "Holy!"  In the original Hebrew and Greek there was no punctuation.  No exclamation marks, no periods, no commas, no way to separate or accentuate a word other than either its placement in the idea, or a play on its form, or a repetition of the word itself.  Thus, when we see a repeated word or term it is there for one specific reason: emphasis.

For the Seraphim to call God "holy" three times indicates a serious emphatic statement.  It would be like standing in the midst of a courtroom and suddenly the bailiff picks up a bull horn and screams as loud as he can that the judge is honorable and just.  If you miss the implication, it is because you choose to ignore that which has been screamed at you.

God is holy!  He is utterly, indescribably holy!  His holiness is to be shouted, it is declared by those beings which are in his presence day and night.  This is the first and most important descriptor of God.  His holiness defines his other attributes, because it puts them in proper perspective.

God's holiness is his transcendence above and beyond this world.  He is like nothing in this world, utterly distinct and incomparable.  It is for this reason that Scripture says of God, "Who is like the Lord?" (Psalm 40:5; Psalm 89:6; Isaiah 40:18, 25; 46:5)  And here, you have heavenly beings, flying above the throne of God, which is itself a high and loft throne, and they are declaring this holiness, over and over again, yelling it loudly to one another.  That's how important it is that we get that God is holy, the seraphim yell not to creation, but to one another, even though they dwell in the presence of God.

This point only began to really come home to me when I began to consider the rest of God's attributes in relation to this holiness.  Think about it this way: God demonstrates his power so that we can understand that his power is beyond what we can comprehend, it is holy.  God works great and wondrous miracles so that we can understand that if God is able to do things which amaze us, how much greater are his works which we can not fathom!  His holiness, his indescribable nature, is declared by comparison with that which we can understand.  Likewise of any of God's attributes, his anger, his patience, his justice, and particularly his love.  We cannot really comprehend any of these attributes of God, because his holiness puts them beyond our grasp.  We can witness a declaration of his love or justice, but that only gives us a glimpse into the reality that we cannot fully grasp, because God is beyond us.

But, here's what blows me away more than anything else, what made me really begin to consider the beauty of God's holiness: he does not do his great works for himself!  What I mean is that God is holy, by his very nature, and there is nothing that adds to or takes away from this holiness.  Thus, when God shows his glory through his great works, he does not add anything to himself, but simply shows us, mere humans, how wonderful he is, out of a great love for us.  Remember, God has seraphim declaring his holiness, he already knows his holiness, he does not need us to praise him, but he gives us the opportunity to praise him for our good, because he loves us.

God is the only being who deserves this praise, because his beauty is perfect.  So, for us to be able to praise God is a gift to us, because being able to praise God means that we are getting some glimpse of perfection, some participation in the amazing glory of the one who defines everything good and beautiful.  It's like getting an invite into the most amazing art gallery ever.  God is not changed or made more amazing by our worship, but we who witness his holiness are changed, because we experience that which is truly beautiful.  This is the situation Isaiah found himself in: ushered into the presence of glory, confronted with that which left him dumbfounded (literally) because of how wondrous it was.

God is holy, he is awesome, and he shows his holiness to us because of his love for us, but this is only the beginning of this passage.  Add to that the very beings who are declaring this: seraphim.  (In the Hebrew the "im" ending is simply a plural ending, hence some translations read "seraphs" as a valid plural form of the term, since the Hebrew "seraph" is the singular form.)  The word itself means "burning ones".  Thus, here are "burning ones," or beings whose own glory makes them appear to be on fire (or who really are made of fire), who are declaring how holy God is.  His glory is made manifest through comparison with their glory, because they are declaring his holiness, and not their own.

Then, Isaiah gives utterance to words that simply do not translate into the English with the same nuance which they have in Hebrew.  Isaiah looks to the Lord and says, "Woe is me! For I am [compelled to be silent, brought to silence, made silent, or undone, ruined, destroyed]."  (Everything within the brackets could be viable interpretations of this passage.)  Thus, when we read from Isaiah, "I am undone" what he is saying is, "I am brought to silence."  Here the idiom of silence represents the idea of death or total destruction.  This ties the statement in with the rest of what Isaiah says, "For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips."

The idea of unclean lips goes far and beyond simply the words of the people, it goes to their lives, their very being.  Thus, as Christ declared, "For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." (Matthew 12:34)  For Isaiah, for his mouth to be silenced was a condemnation of his very life.  So, likewise, when Isaiah complains of the uncleanness of the lips of the people, he is condemning the way they live.  They are unclean in word and deed.  And he is one of those people, he is not innocent, he is not holy, he is not good.  I realized as I read those words what a condemnation that should be to me: though I might know how to say the right things, though I might appear to be a "good Christian" to the world, my heart ought to be condemned before God because of my sinfulness.  I am in the position of Isaiah, and I need to declare, "Woe is me!  I am compelled to be silent, I should be destroyed before my holy God!"

Yet Isaiah was not left there.  Here the Hebrew again plays on words and imagery: one of the burning ones takes a "glowing coal" and touches Isaiah's mouth with it.  One of those who is on fire takes a coal of fire and touches that which symbolizes Isaiah's wickedness, his lips, and declared Isaiah to be clean.  Imagine that scene for a minute, a flying being of fire holding a burning coal in his hand reaches out to you and touches your lips with a searing fire, and declares you to be clean.

Here the full imagery of the situation is brought out: Isaiah is not simply standing in the temple, he is standing in the middle of a sacrifice.  Remember, the temple was filled with smoke after God's holiness was declared.  Why would the temple be filled with smoke?  Because a sacrifice was taking place.  We know this because the smoke is not merely from the altar of incense, but there is a burning coal, which came from the altar, which means that a sacrifice was burning on the altar of God.

Here we tie into the imagery of Christ, because he is the lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world. (1 Peter 1:19-21)  He is the sacrifice that God accepted to quench his anger, which allows a guilty people to approach a holy God.  Isaiah was standing in the presence of the God who makes redemption for his saints, offering up a sacrifice to himself which we could not offer up.  And Isaiah was made a participant of that sacrifice.  A coal from the fire of God's sacrifice was taken and placed upon Isaiah's lips, so that he became a participant in this symbolic sacrifice that would one day be fulfilled in the death and suffering of the Messiah.

And look what happens to Isaiah because of his exposure to the sacrifice of Christ: the man who was brought to silence, who was compelled to recognize the sinfulness of his life before the holy God of the universe, suddenly has the courage to speak up and say to God, "Here I am, send me!"  Because Isaiah saw the holiness of God, he was brought low, he considered himself already dead.  But, because Christ died on his behalf and he was able to participate in that sacrifice, his words, the actions of his life, were made acceptable before God.  Isaiah was given a boldness to go from laying on his face to standing before the awesome God of all creation, all because of the sacrifice that God prepared for himself.

The more I studied this passage, just in preparation to read it at church, the more I was faced with the reality that I had lost sight of the holiness of God.  I had forgotten his glory, and I had forgotten that when I sin I am transgressing that holiness, that glory, that awesome and amazing attribute of God that cannot be fully understood here on earth, because it is the reflection of how utterly incomprehensible and beyond us God really is.  But, in addition to that, my sins made light of the sacrifice God prepared for himself.  Instead of allowing the coal from the altar of God to touch my lips, I would draw near to it, I would feign to touch it, and then I would go back again into the secret realms of my heart, and I would not let myself be singed by the purifying fire of God.

For this reason, for the last two weeks, I have been continually thinking to myself, "Would it glorify God for me to do that?  Would it glorify God for me to go there?  Would it glorify God for me to watch that, think that, or listen to that?"  The seraphim constantly declare God is holy, so how could I, who have enjoyed the benefits of the death of Christ, do anything less in my own life?  Do I really think God is that holy?  In being confronted with these questions I was forced to reconsider how I was living, so that I could be like Isaiah, transformed by my experience of seeing the holiness of God.

To be honest, for those who have read this far, I can only apologize.  There is something about being exposed to an experience that cannot quite be captured by simply writing about it.  Particularly when it is the Word of God that we are confronted with, there is an intrinsic and personal challenge that is hard to express to others.  I can only hope that you will be challenged by this section of Scripture as I was.  I can only hope that as you have read of my experience of going through this passage, you will be able to appreciate the imagery, the nuances, and the power of this passage more.  I hope you are challenged to think about the awesome holiness of God a little bit more, so that you can too can live a life changed by meeting the God of Isaiah, the God of the universe.

Do You Know What You Believe?

Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, from which I graduated in May, recently got involved in another scuffle regarding his statement that yoga is not Christian.  The complaint has come back, of course, that many devout and well-meaning Christian's practice yoga and do not find it incompatible with Christianity.  Dr. Mohler has, effectively, made two responses to this.  His responses are that the individual is either involved in a form of syncretism, in which yoga is being adapted to Christianity, or that what is being adapted is not yoga at all.  It is worth looking at these two responses further.

Can yoga be adapted to Christianity?  Dr. Mohler contends that yoga is necessarily non-Christian because of the mind emptying meditation involved in it, and the focusing of sexual energies through the body as a means of communing with God.  I think Dr. Mohler makes an excellent point with this statement.  The mind emptying forms of meditation that are common among many Eastern religions are simply not compatible with Christianity.  The reason is because Christians are called to meditate on God's Word, his deeds and actions.  It is impossible to empty the mind when filling it with thoughts of God's law, his holiness, his love, and everything else that a Christian might meditate on.

Scripture never commands Christians to empty our minds, but only to empty our minds of sinful thoughts and selfish desires, which ought to be put far away from us.  Even Paul commands us to think of whatever is good and lovely.  To seek to escape from ourselves or reality is not a form of Christian meditation.  To be reminded of God, to find his holiness and awesomeness surrounding us constantly, that is Christian meditation.

Likewise, Scripture never says that we are able to commune with God in any way other than through his Son, Christ Jesus.  We cannot approach the throne of God through focusing sexual energy, personal energy, or even spiritual energy.  We approach the throne of God through prayer, according to faith in Christ, who died for our sins.  Regardless of whether we feel God's presence more or less, the Holy Spirit is poured out upon us at all times, we are never separated from God.  Therefore, we do not need to enter some specific pose or focus some mystical energy to hear from God and speak to God, we have his Word, written to us to tell us how to live, and we have the right to come before him in prayer to thank him, praise him, and petition him for our needs or wants.

On these two points, making up Dr. Mohler's first reaction to those who claim Christianity and yoga can be harmonized, it would seem that Dr. Mohler has said nothing controversial, what then of the second reason he gives?  If you strip the meditation and other religious elements out of yoga, is it still yoga?  On this point it is purely a matter of convention as to how we answer this question.  What I mean is that words can change meaning over time, and often times the actual meaning of a word is purely a matter of the convention of the society in which it is used.  Therefore, the question is simply, "What is yoga?"

For many people yoga does not involve any spiritual activities whatsoever.  Many people go to yoga lessons and stretch and talk and smile and get a good, low impact, workout.  In fact, if you were to ask most of the people across these United States, "What is yoga?" most of them would not include any discussion of "spirituality" or "religion" in their definition.  (This, of course, is based purely off of my own experience, I did not go out and conduct a survey for the sake of a blog post.)  Therefore, it would seem that when people use the term "yoga" to mean "a form of exercise that involves stretching, flexibility, and holding various positions that place strain on the anatomy" they are correct in saying that yoga can be practiced by Christians without a conflict of faith.

While this may very well be the common use of the term, "yoga" it is not the only use of that term.  A quick search of the web reveals that if you look up the definition of yoga you find that the most relevant websites all recognize either the Hindu origin of yoga, or they discuss yoga as a means of attaining greater spiritual consciousness.  Thus, it seems, that most teachers of yoga and most of those who have done research into yoga agree that it is not best defined as simply a form of exercise.  The best definition of yoga must acknowledge the spiritual aspects that go along with serious yoga practice.

It would seem, therefore, that Dr. Mohler is correct in saying that if what you do when you do yoga is simply a form of exercise, then fine, just don't call it yoga.

My point in bringing all of this up though is that it is interesting to me that Christians would actually complain about Dr. Mohler saying that yoga and Christianity are not compatible.  I really think the issue is simply that most of us simply do not know what we believe, or why we believe it.  When Christians think that the spiritual aspects of yoga can be adapted to Christianity, my thought is they simply do not know what Christianity really teaches about our communion with God.  Why would anyone seek to draw closer to God through physical and mental acts of will, when God has revealed to us that the way to grow closer to him is through his Word and his Son?

When Christians seek to redefine the term "yoga" to mean simply "exercise" then they are guilty of not understanding what the term really means, they are guilty of not understanding that words have meaning.  Even in this Christians are guilty of not really knowing what they believe, because, in redefining a term, they open themselves to adapting more than just a series of poses and an exercise routine into Christianity.  It is always important that we know what a word means, and that we understand that when we say we are doing something like yoga, the word means a lot more than merely sitting on a mat with our legs crossed.  When we understand what we believe, then we understand that changing what we do is not a light matter, because our actions are a reflection of our beliefs.

Where do you stand on this subject?  What do you really believe?  Only once you have figured out what you believe can you really understand why you believe it.  Have you given thought to the terms you use, the things you do, and whether those things are really compatible with your Christian faith?  If you aren't a Christian, have you ever taken the time to think about what you believe?

What Can Wash Away My Sin?

If someone told you they thought George Washington was a good President, not because of what he did or did not really do in history, but because they had experienced the good effects of his presidency in their own lives, what would you say?  Can we make any realistic claims about knowledge, about anyone or anything in history, based purely on our own experiences?  Taken in another way, if someone said to you that he believed in Jesus, not because of anything in the bible, but based purely on the fact that he had experienced some transformative event in his life, would you say that is sufficient?  The question really is, what is sufficient for salvation?  The reason I phrase the question in this way is because I am hoping that none of us would say that it is sufficient for people to say they think they are saved without having a good reason for that claim (and of course the only good reason is because they have hope in Jesus Christ).

I'm going to let the cat out of the bag here and just state upfront that I think that anyone who claims to have a relationship with Christ, not based on what Scripture says but on what they have experienced, has either been deceived, or is deceiving himself.  My reasoning is because no one can know they have a relationship with Christ unless Scripture has told them.  Also, no one can have a relationship with Christ unless they know Christ.  You cannot have a relationship with someone you don't know, after all, how would you know the relationship is real?  Personal feelings are not a sufficient ground for salvation.

The only sure and trustworthy ground for believing one is saved is the gospel of Jesus Christ.  That means that no one is saved apart from the revealed truth of Scripture.  Paul says, "[The gospel] is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." (Romans 1:16)  In John 17:3 Jesus says himself, "And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."  Peter says, "since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God..." (1 Peter 1:23)  In no verse in Scripture do we see that anyone can come to faith in Christ and be saved without a knowledge of the gospel.

Knowledge itself, of course, does not save us.  Faith saves us.  But, faith in what?  We cannot have faith in a Christ we do not know.  "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17)  Unless we have heard the word of God, we cannot have the faith necessary for our salvation.

I bring this up because I think we sometimes all need a reminder of why we should spend time with God's word.  God is powerful, he is able to do abundantly more than we could dream or ask, but he has also stated his divine plan and the means by which he will save his people.  We cannot save anyone if we do not tell them the word of God.  The most powerful tool we can use in evangelism isn't a tract, it isn't a witty opening question or a brilliant segue into "spiritual" things.  The most powerful tool we can have for attempting to save a lost world is a good working knowledge of the word of God.  That doesn't mean we have to become experts, but there is also no reason we ought not attempt to become as expert as we are able, after all, it couldn't hurt to know more about the bible if we intend to witness to others.

But, there is a second caution here too: we cannot be saved apart from belief in the word of God.  When we begin to throw out sections of the bible, or when we begin to say that this or that miracle couldn't have happened, then we begin to enter into truly dangerous ground.  After all, if we reject one miracle, what is the rationale for holding on to any miracles?  If it is impossible that God could have done any specific amazing thing, then why assume he can do anything at all?

As we begin to dismantle the word we also have to necessarily lose passages like the ones above.  After all, if we say that one part of Scripture must be thrown out, where do we stop?  Do we throw out John because we find his references contradictory to Matthew?  Do we accept Matthew but then throw out Mark because different details are listed about Jesus' life?  Do we argue that Acts teaches a different concept of Christ's divinity than the one that is found in Galatians?  If we do any of these things, then which Jesus are we left to accept?  Which gospel have we embraced?

If there is no salvation apart from the gospel of Christ, and the written word of God is the only trustworthy source of information for that gospel (surely we aren't going to say that tradition is more accurate that Scripture?  If we go that route we are really in for some trouble and contradictions!) then we are in serious theological trouble when we start dividing that word into what we find "acceptable" and what we will reject.  When we assume the role of judging the word of God, instead of allowing it to judge us, then we have rejected the authority of Scripture in our lives.  To reject the authority of Scripture is to reject the one who gave Scripture that authority.  When we are the lords of Scripture, then the Lord of Scripture cannot be our Lord.  If that which we have received is faulty, then we have received a flawed gospel, and a flawed gospel does not have the power to save, for only the true gospel of Christ has the power to save.

If we do not have the gospel, then what hope do we have?  Are we so wise that we can reconstruct history as though we were there when all the documents we have are flawed?  Is our knowledge so great that we can correct what claims to be eyewitness testimony from 2000 years ago?  If that is the case, why do we need the bible at all?  We may as well make our own gospel, for in our wisdom we are quite sure to only find the gospel we want when we get to decide what parts of the bible are true and which are false.

Why so Literal?

In modern politics no line is probably more laughable and more revealing than the line spoken by former President Bill Clinton during his grand jury testimony in addressing the question of whether he had sexual relations with Paula Jones.  That infamous and oft quoted line is, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."  The line is revealing because it demonstrated the moral failures of a man who was willingly attempting to avoid honestly answering a question he understood.  The line is laughable because it assumes the very thing it asks: by using the word, "is" directly after saying that it depends upon what "is" means, Clinton reveals he knows what "is" means.  Unfortunately, what may be laughable and of limited political importance and duration can be serious and infinitely destructive in theology.

Let's take a look at a couple of examples and let me see if I can't shed a little light on what I mean.  Starting with Romans 5:12 Paul lays out an argument for the power of Christ's death as a deliverance from sin.  However, Paul's argument only works if there was a literal man, Adam, and if his sin inaugurated all other sin.  Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 15:21 and on, Paul ties the actual historicity of Adam directly to the Gospel.  What Paul makes clear is that if there were no literal man, Adam, and there were no literal single event of sin entering the world, then the death of Christ is meaningless for us as Christians.

Why is the death of Christ meaningless without the existence of Adam?  Because Adam is our progenitor.  Not only physically is Adam the first man, he is also the first representative of man before God.  Adam was a type of Christ, so that if there is no literal Adam, then there is no type to which Christ refers.  What that means is that if Adam is only a literary construct, then we have no corporate representative in him bringing sin upon all men.  But, if we have no corporate representative in Adam, why should we assume we have a corporate representative in Christ?

The fact that Christ serves as a propitiation for the sins of all men is tied up in the fact that Adam serves as a corporate representative before God, a perfect man who sinned and thus introduced a sinful nature to his own.  We see this in 1 Corinthians 15:22 when we read, "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive."  If there is no man, Adam, in whom we have all died, then what hope have we that we shall be made alive in Christ?  Because Adam serves as our corporate representative, and because we have all partaken of a sin nature through Adam and Eve, so also we are able to partake of a spiritual nature because of the life of Christ, who is the spiritual representative before God for those of us who have faith in him.

But, some modern scholars would do away with a literal Adam.  Some scholars argue that Adam is a literary figure, Genesis is not to be taken literally up through chapter 11, everything preceding Abraham is allegorical, or a literary story written to illustrated God's power as the one who organizes and brings order to the world.  This is not a new argument, necessarily.  For instance Origin and Augustine both argued for an allegorical reading of Genesis 1.  Both of these church fathers argued that Genesis 1 could not be read as literal history because the idea of creation in seven days, or the idea of the days as literal periods of time, made no sense to them for different reasons.

My argument is not with those who would argue that Genesis 1 is allegorical, or that Genesis 1 and 2 are meant to be a story discussing how God ordered the earth and made man for the purpose of fellowship with him.  However, those who hold that all of Genesis 1-10 cannot be history, those who reject the literal existence of Adam and Eve, those who deny that there was a unique creation of man that resulted in one couple who sinned in that Garden of Eden and who were cast out by God, those individuals do massive theological harm to the gospel of Christ.  Those who deny the historicity of Adam and the way sin entered the world through a man are forced to do away with passages like Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Timothy 2:13, and Jude 14.  All of these passages refer to a literal Adam, and all of them tie the existence of Adam directly the gospel.

It is here that theologians begin to undertake gymnastics to avoid dealing with the text as it exists.  Scholars argue that we can do away with Adam because it does not have any significant impact on the gospel.  After all, why do we need to have Adam in order for sin to have entered into men and have become part of our nature?  Why do we need to have Adam to recognize the power of the blood of Christ to forgive us our sins?  Adam is only a matter of secondary importance, and doing away with Adam does not effect the death of Christ on our behalf, or the efficacy of his blood for our redemption.

But, doing away with Adam does away with Paul.  For instance, Paul says that all of Scripture is inspired by God, specifically he says it is breathed out by God. (2 Timothy 3:16)  If Paul is wrong about there being a literal Adam then either God did not inspire him, or God got something wrong, or God allowed error on his part in what he inspired.  In any of those conditions we are now left with Scripture that is potentially full of errors, Scripture that we must analyze carefully, dissect and correct, so that we are able to determine what is true and what is false.  If that is the case then nothing in Scripture is safe from this examination, all of Scripture must be parsed and examined lest there be any historical error in it at all.  And, even if we are able to determine some parts are accurate, what do we do with those sections we cannot empirically test?

For instance, if Paul is wrong about there being an Adam, and if Paul is wrong about the importance of Adam to the gospel, then what else is Paul wrong about?  Obviously Paul's understanding of the gospel will no longer suffice, because his understanding relied upon an historical Adam.  So what understanding will we replace Paul with?  Who will become our teacher when we cannot trust Scripture to be accurate in what it teaches?

There are those who, for whatever reason, refuse to embrace the full criticism of Scripture that comes with removing Adam from the Bible.  But, why should any truly rational person who accepts that Adam did not exist stop only there?  Why shouldn't we question Paul?  Why shouldn't we question Chronicles, reject Hosea as a prophet, (he references Adam as a literal man) do away with Luke, and then even question the necessity of the death of Christ himself?

When we engage in biblical criticism that questions the very integrity of Scripture, it is both revealing and laughable to the watching world.  It is revealing to those who look on because they can see that we do not really trust our own holy book.  We think that our holy book, that which claims to be inspired by God, is need of correction, because it is incompatible with a modern world.  Our criticism is laughable because we still want to find some value in a set of stories written thousands of years ago, even though we don't think they are historically true or philosophically sound.  While attempting to defend our bible we make it into a joke, because we are not willing to make the full commitment to treating it either as a sacred text, or a near eastern fable.

We do not need to reject science or reason to be Christians.  Human genetics, modern technology, stem cells, antibiotics, gene therapy, microchips, and so much more has been discovered over the years, and none of these things contradict or contravene Scripture.  But, when we say that there cannot be an Adam because evolutionary theory does not allow it, or when we say that Genesis cannot give a factual account of the creation of the world because geology contradicts it, then we are not simply accepting science, we are worshiping science and reason.  I'm not saying that only those who accept a young earth are Christians, not at all; but those who reject the early chapters of Genesis or who mock Scripture based on what current scientific theory says, those people are a danger to the faith.  They are a danger to the faith because they have placed Scripture under another authority, they have set themselves up as judges over the word of God, and they have found it wanting; and what then is there to act as a corrective if their wisdom leads them to reject the claims of the gospel entirely?  When we accept those people who exalt science or human deliberation above the word of God, and place them in positions of authority, then we ought not be surprised when they dispute every doctrine and ridicule every portion of what we once though was sacred.

I know that what I have said will offend some.  My intent is not to offend, but to point out the logical inconsistency we engage in when we attempt to ignore the plain meaning of Scripture because we think modern history and science trump with Word of God.  Let us be consistent.  Elijah said, "If Yahweh is God, then follow him, but if Baal is God then follow him."  Let us heed those words today: If Yahweh is God, then follow him, but if human science and reason is greater than the God of the bible, then follow it.

Holiness? part 2

Okay, yesterday I began laying out a method by which Christians are able to determine what we should do in any given situation.  Because of the length of the post I decided to divide it into two parts.  The part yesterday discussed how we take a story we find in Scripture and derive a principle from it for the sake of application to our own lives.  I noted that the method I am using is called the analogy of faith, and that it is an old method that has been passed down for hundreds of years.  However, I want to clarify a little bit on the use of that term.

The term, "analogy of faith" most properly understood means that Scripture interprets itself.  What I mean by this is that Scripture does not ever contradict itself.  Therefore, the analogy of faith, in its purest form means that when we read one passage of Scripture we interpret that passage in light of the rest of Scripture, so that there is no contradiction.  So, if there is a passage, such as James, that says you are saved by works, but there is overwhelming evidence throughout the rest of Scripture that works do not save you (as is the case) we are either left with a contradiction, or we are misunderstanding the text.  The normal resolution in the above example is that what James meant when he said you are saved is that your faith is proven true, that is that faith must necessarily lead to works, or it not a true saving faith.  This means that James is using the term "saved" differently than Paul.  Whether or not you find this convincing (and I think it is if you read James' argument in context) will be based on whether you hold that all of Scripture is inspired by God, and therefore cannot be contradictory.

However the term "analogy of faith" has a broader meaning also, meaning that which conforms to the teaching and doctrine of Scripture.  In other words, when we rightly apply Scripture we must use an analogy of faith, so that our practice is not contradictory to the teaching of Scripture.  Because Scripture, rightly understood, cannot contradict Scripture, our lives also ought not contradict what is in Scripture.  This holds true because the same God that inspired Scripture has called us to live like Christ.  Because Christ is the incarnation of the Word of God, the life of Christ conforms to the teaching of Scripture, therefore our lives ought to conform to the teaching of Scripture as well.

As I said initially, for a Christian "holiness" and "morality" are basically interchangeable ideas.  Holiness means living lives set apart to the glory of God.  If we are to be moral we must be holy, because God is the absolute measurement of all that is good.  So, when we seek to be moral we must determine what best reflects the perfect goodness of God, and do that.  Being moral alone may not necessarily lead to holiness, but seeking holiness will require us to live morally.  Therefore, when we come across a principle in Scripture that shows us, "This is what God would have of his people" we need to apply that principle to our own lives and live in light of it.

Previously we discussed how to apply the analogy of faith to what we read in Scripture, specifically looking at a single narrative example, and even then looking at only one part of that narrative example.  We could have asked additional questions of that narrative, like, for instance, if we recognize that adultery is wrong based on the story of David and Bathsheba, what should we do if we are already in an adulterous relationship?  Well, in order to answer that question we could look at the end of the story and see that David repented, and so we should also repent.  But, then we would need to determine what repentance means in our instance.

If we were to ask this question it would be like the second situation I mentioned yesterday, what if you were faced with the option of cheating on your taxes to avoid paying the government some money?  I'm assuming you are in a position where you could get away with the cheating, that you are sure you won't get caught and therefore the question is a purely moral question.  Am I allowed to do this based on Scripture?  In order to answer these kinds of questions we need to have either some familiarity with the Bible, or we need to know how to do a bible search for relevant passages.  After all, if we want to follow the analogy of faith we need to know what Scripture teaches in order to conform our behavior to Scripture.

In all reality, these are likely going to be the more nagging questions than "What does this section of Scripture teach?"  If we come to a section of Scripture we don't understand we can always mark it and come back to it later, but when we are faced with a real moral choice we cannot always postpone the decision to come back to it later.  Thus these questions will be more pressing, and more nagging because we may wonder for some time afterward if we made the right decision.  So, let's address these questions.

First, we need to know what Scripture says.  So, for the tax question, we can turn to Romans 13:6-7 and Matthew 22:15-22.  We can use these two sections of Scripture because they both speak directly the issue of paying taxes.  Paul says that we should pay taxes to whoever taxes are due.  Jesus says we should render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.  Now, in the case of the second example we have to take a small step and move up from "Caesar" to "whatever government is in power."  But, we can see the principle at work in Jesus words, and Paul basically distills that principle down for us, giving it to us directly in Romans 13.  So, Scripture commands us to pay our taxes, therefore we can't cheat on them.

But, what if we are already in an adulterous relationship?  Well, we see that David begs for God's forgiveness, but he doesn't divorce Bathsheba.  Should I continue to sleep with a married woman, or sleep with a woman who isn't my wife as long as I recognize it is sin and ask for forgiveness?  What does Paul say about sin, in general?  If we look to Romans 6:1-2 we see that Paul tells us that if we have died to sin, that is if we are in Christ, then it is abominable that we should continue on in sin.  Likewise James gives us a principle we can apply here in James 4:17, "So, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin."  What we are left with then is that if we know that adultery is a sin, and we know that we are called to stop sinning, it is not enough to simply know it is wrong and ask God to forgive me, I have to stop the relationship.

This principle, that a Christian should not continue on in Sin, but that we should do that which we know to be good is the foundation of our morality.  John says it like so, "but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.  By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked." (1 John 2:5-6)  We are called to walk like Christ, and that means we must conform our lives to Scripture.  To this we may add Christ's words, "So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."  The Christian ethic conforms to the ideal of love.


Indeed this ideal of love is why we should read Scripture.  For if God has written Scripture to instruct us in righteousness, and we are called to love God, shouldn't we desire to be righteous?  Shouldn't we, therefore, make a point of studying Scripture, so we might know how to live in a way that is pleasing to God?  We fulfill thus the law of love in not sinning against our neighbor, in not sinning against God, and in not continuing in any sin in ignorance.  Reading Scripture is part of the way we fulfill our obligation to love God and our neighbor, doing to them what we would have them do to us.


So then, in order to live a holy life, we must understand how to apply Scripture to our lives.  That means we must know how to determine the principles that are in Scripture, and that we must know Scripture and search it out when we are confronted with moral questions.  But, living a holy life also means that we need to be informed about modern issues.  For instance, I have written on stem cell research, homosexual marriage, even politics (though I still have that one pending to post to the blog) and honoring mothers and fathers.  But while most of those things may be discussed in Scripture, there is certainly nothing in the bible about stem cells, rocket fuel, cars, alternative energy, democratic government, or even computers and blogs, does that mean that we cannot make moral statements about any of those things?  No, instead we must know what Scripture says, what principles are in Scripture, and we must understand the issues that face us in the modern day, that way we can know what principles from Scripture to apply to whatever issue we are facing.


For instance, I argued against embryonic stem cell research based on the fact that the only way to generate those cell lines we would use for experimentation come from destroyed embryos.  Thus, I held that because we are destroying a human life (not a potential human life, but an actual human life) we are sinning to do so, and any research that is done must necessarily be tainted by the immorality of that action.  But, my position is only correct if I'm right that embryos are human lives.  Therefore I am making a biological claim based on the scientific information available to me: embryos are human lives because as soon as a sperm and an egg meet the resulting entity is a new human life.  The only way I can make that claim is to first understand the science that is being discussed.


Our obligation to live lives of of holiness means we have to live those lives in the times and places we live.  I cannot live in A.D. 300, because this is A.D. 2010.  I have to live a life of holiness today, and that means I have to engage with my culture as it exists today.  We are obligated to know Scripture, and our own current cultures as much as is reasonable, so that we can know the right thing to do in every situation with which we might be confronted.  Christian morality is hard, because it requires us to be informed, it requires us to use logic, and it requires us to be willing to take positions that might be unpopular, if that is what we are called to by the Word of God.


But remember, James promises us that God will give us wisdom if we ask him, believing that he is good and gives good things to those who seek him.  James also says that if we will humble ourselves God will give more grace.  If we make a mistake we still have Christ as our savior.  The love of God is not limited to saving only those who sin willfully.  But, we need to always be seeking wisdom from God, and asking him to reveal our sin, that we might be holy, no longer continuing in sin, but walking in the light of Christ.

Holiness?

I have, for the last several posts, attempted to be somewhat more conversational and less professorial, however, I want to talk about a subject today that is difficult to address in a purely conversational tone.  I want to address the issue of morality.  From a Christian perspective I think morality and holiness are somewhat interchangeable.  While we certainly teach our children to be moral and holy without using obscure arguments or purely logical argumentation, it is hard to express an overall scheme of morality without the use of logical argumentation.

In defense of the use of logic, I want to note that I don't think logic has to be boring.  In fact logic ought to be compelling and forceful.  Unfortunately many of us do not have extensive exercise in logic.  We have long since moved away from philosophical terms like syllogisms, ultimate causes, and things as means versus things as an end unto themselves.  Moving away from purely academic terms isn't an entirely bad thing, the scholarly and antiseptic logic of a classroom can cause us to miss the moral reality of certain situations.  An example is in the debate over abortion.  If we ask, "Is it morally acceptable to treat a fetus as an entity of secondary importance, utilizing its immediate separation from the primary entity as a means to an end, if the end is the overall increase in general happiness of those primary entities existing at the current time?" then we denude this proposal of its real moral force.  The real moral force of the question becomes evident when asked in this way: "Is it okay to forcibly extract a baby from its mothers womb, killing it and treating it as less than human, if in doing so we placate the desire of the mother?"

Logic, far from being boring, is in fact absolutely essential for a life of holiness, a life to which the Christian is called.  In fact, logic is necessary for any life at all.  You cannot long live if you completely ignore the normal rules of logic, unless you have a very devoted individual seeking to protect you from your own stupidity.  A man who walks out into every street without looking, and walks in the midst of traffic because the road is easier to walk on than a broken sidewalk is an idiot.  Such an individual ignores the basic use of logic: recklessly walking out in the middle of a road with fast moving vehicles without giving those vehicles any heed will likely get you killed.

So, because logic does not have to be boring, I invite you to join me for a quick examination on the use of logic in forming a Christian system of ethics.  I don't intend to lay out a complete system here, but to illustrate the method of logical progression that we can use for any situation in order to determine what would be the best course of action in that situation.  The goal is not so much to create a post where you can look and say, "okay, what did he say about this situation" as it is to show the method of thought that will lead to an answer, even when faced with a difficult problem.  Of course this is not a system that I have developed myself, rather it is the analogy of faith that has been taught and handed down through Christendom for hundreds of years.  It is also the method that pastors often use to examine a text and derive the principles from that text that apply to a congregation, so that every text teaches an applicable truth to which we ought to conform.

Okay, so I used the term, "analogy of faith" what on earth does that mean?  Basically it means that using a "this is like that" comparison for any issue we read about in Scripture, we can derive a principle from Scripture that teaches us how we should live faithfully today.  This can work in two different ways: I can read Scripture and find a situation, like David's adultery with Bathsheba, and attempt to determine what that situation would teach me about how I should live today, or, conversely, I could find myself in a situation today, such as being faced with the option of lying on my taxes, and want to know what Scripture teaches on that subject.  In either case we are faced with one situation and we want to know what the moral thing to do would be, based on that situation.  Which side we start on does not ultimately matter, though starting on the side of Scripture may be somewhat easier if we are unfamiliar with the bible.

So, I gave two examples, but I didn't explain how we might work those out, lets look at one.  In the case of David committing adultery with Bathsheba we have to read the whole story in order to determine what it teaches us about morality and how we should live today.  There is no real moral imperative given in the text, "Let the reader be aware!  This is how you should act..." does not appear in this story.  So what we have to do is look at the situation of David and what he did, and figure out how that situation might apply to us today.  Let's take the time to do that.

1) David did not go out to war with his men.  2) David saw Bathsheba bathing on a rooftop and desired her.  3) David called Bathsheba to himself.  4) David slept with Bathsheba.  5) When Bathsheba reported she was pregnant David sent for her husband.  6) David tried to get Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba, so he could make Uriah think he got Bathsheba pregnant, but failed.  7) David arranged for Uriah to be killed in battle so he could take Bathsheba to himself to hide the fact he got her pregnant.  8) David was confronted by Nathan and chastised, and told that because of his sin his son would die.  9) David repented and begged for God's forgiveness.  10) God forgave David, but his son still died as a result of his sinful behavior.  11) God loved Solomon, born to Bathsheba, and placed him next in the Davidic line.

Okay, so a lot happened.  The basic issue though is what we can learn from the story as far as how we ought to behave currently.  Potentially the following could be moral issues, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9.  I'm excluding 5 because it is simply the report of a fact, we don't normally say reporting something is moral or immoral, it is simply someone telling someone else the truth.  8 is not a directly moral issue, though there is perhaps a secondary moral issue, and we can address that issue later. 10 and 11 are God's determinative actions for David and Solomon; while there may be something going on here, again the moral question would be secondary, at best.

So then, the primary moral flow of the story could go like this: David didn't go to war and lead his men like kings were supposed to in that time, this lead to him seeing Bathsheba bathing and lusting after her, after which he committed adultery with her and attempted to cover it up, leading the murder of Uriah and God punishing David.  If we read on in 2 Samuel 12:26-28 it seems that David should have been at Rabbah with his men, particularly based on what Joab says to him.  So David's first error was in not leading his army.  We would have difficulty making a direct application of that concept to ourselves as few of us are supposed to lead an army.  The whole situation derived from this one error though, so let us look at David's error and see if there is any principle we can derive from it to apply to ourselves.

Let's look at the number of steps we might proceed with to get a full understanding of the moral implications of this story: Direct application- we should not stay home if our job is the lead the army out to war, or we might accidentally see a woman bathing and commit adultery with her, leading to a host of other immoral actions.  Derived application, step one- We should not avoid our responsibilities lest we are lead into temptation and eventually great sin.  Derived application, step two- We should seek to be busy fulfilling our responsibilities, so we do not come into temptation or great sin.  Derived application, step three- We should seek to be busy doing whatever good things we can so that give temptation as little opportunity to occur in our lives as possible, so that we are protected from sin.

Notice that the derived applications seek to determine the principle that is at work in the direct application.  Also notice that the second derived application takes the negative principle at play in the first derived application and turns it into a positive command.  Finally, note that the third derived application take the command of the second derived application and then broadens it, so that it becomes even more applicable to our every day lives.  The derived applications are logical applications of the story to our own lives, but they are not directly stated in the story.

Now a quick comment on the derived applications: you do not have to go through all these steps in each situation.  Sometimes you will already have a positive example, so there is no need to derive a positive command from a negative.  Sometimes the negative will be more applicable to your specific situation.  The goal is to find a principle that can apply to us where we are, so that we can see what Scripture would command us to do, and what it would command us not to do.  In some situations it may be difficult to determine the principle at play in a given section of Scripture (such as the laws of Leviticus or the genealogical records of Nehemiah or Numbers).  In those situations we can either seek out commentaries to help us understand the text, or we ask someone else to help us understand how that section of Scripture should inform us.

According to 2 Timothy 3:16-17 all of Scripture is useful to us.  Sometimes we may have difficulty determining the specific principle for application in a given text, but that does not mean that Scripture does not have application.  We must be familiar with as much of Scripture as we can, living by those areas that are most clear to us and seeking through additional reading and study that other sections would become clear to us over time.  Peter said that some of Paul's writings were hard to understand, and he was an apostle who knew Paul personally!  But, let us not think Scripture is too difficult for us to understand, the fact is that most of it is as simple as the example of David and Bathsheba above, and it contains all the principles we need to be thoroughly trained in righteousness.

This post is already quite long, so I will not go into the second example today, but I will go over that tomorrow.

The Need for a Guide

When I was 17 years old and just really getting back into church, I spoke with one of the men who was going to church with me briefly about the idea of evolution.  I'm not sure how the subject was brought up, but I can remember the gist of the conversation.  I argued that Darwinian evolution and Christianity are perfectly compatible, based on the idea that Scripture was not really giving us a history in Genesis 1, and that Darwinism simply explained the mechanism through which God brought about humans.  The response I received was not an apologetic for Scripture, it was an apologetic for apologetics.  My friend told me that I should sit down and read some Ravi Zacharias, or maybe some other works (which he mentioned).

I had never heard of Ravi Zacharias.  I had never really heard of apologetics.  I had simply attempted to reconcile what I was being taught at school with what I read in Scripture.  Being the typical teenager I certainly wasn't going to start asking my parents.  After all, I did not think it a discussion worth having, I already knew the answer, why bother asking them for the solution to what was not a problem?

Reading Zacharias introduced me to apologetics.  From him I began to read others.  From that starting point I realized that there was a lot that I thought I knew that I simply did not know.  In my own wisdom I had taken to reading Scripture through a lens that demythologized it.  Sure, I still believed in miracles, but when I read about the crossing of the Yom Suf (I blame Dr. Garret for this, if you don't know what it is, I'll explain later) or about any number of other events, I simply assumed that these were not particularly miraculous as much as they were times where God simply used the normal course of events to bring about his will.  (Why that is necessarily less miraculous I am not entirely sure.  The idea of a God who could arrange things so a major event of world history would just happen to coincide with some otherwise naturally occurring event, so that the naturally occurring event would take on momentous meaning is pretty awesome.  Work carefully, I promise that last sentence can be parsed into something sensible.)

Apologetics was my road map back to conservative Christianity.  What I mean is that I had bought into a great number of rather liberal assumptions about Scripture.  For instance I am sure that I thought that the authors could have made mistakes, that errors could have crept in via copying, and that Scripture was just as open to error as any 2000+ year old document.  But, I had never considered what Scripture says about itself, and the logical defenses for that position.

When Paul says, "All Scripture is breathed out by God..." I had not considered that he could here actually mean that God had inspired the writers of Scripture, so that what they said and recorded was actually true and free from error.  Further, I had not considered that God himself, as the ultimate author of Scripture, could also be the one to protect Scripture, so that it could be free from error.  Therefore, my assumption was that the bible should be treated like all other documents, in how we read it and seek to correct it, because it is just like all any other document.  Because I started with a wrong assumption, I came to a wrong conclusion: Scripture, while useful for moral teaching and important as a means of salvation, is not necessarily factually accurate in what it speaks of when it comes to history, anthropology, and every other subject it discusses.

My guide was always my own mind, and what I understood of current science.  Scripture was useful, but not essential.  God could be discovered through purely rational activity, such as philosophy.  Man, while imbued with the unique image of God, was biologically only an evolved primate.  Science was my key to understanding life, and so I pursued science, especially Chemistry and math.

But, in being exposed to apologetics I realized there was another way of looking at the world.  What if Scripture was unique and special?  What if we took it at its word, assumed its accuracy, and then sought to wrap our minds around its implications?  What if we looked to prove how the bible has been correct, and did not assume that we, in our modern wisdom, knew more about the past than those who lived at the time and wrote about it?  These questions required me to re-examine the bible, and to realize that there was a lot I missed.

Thinking about Scripture in this way transformed the way I thought about everything.  Maybe God really did create the world in six day.  Why not?  What evidence was there to be marshaled against the idea?  Could that evidence be explained by the biblical account of creation and fall?

What if everything that Scripture claimed was absolutely true and happened just as it happened?  In that case Scripture became more than just a mere record of history, it was the means by which God communicated himself to men throughout every generation.  Moreover, it did not record mere chance events of nature, but it testified to the awesome and inspiring work of a God who I could never grasp and who I could never put into a box of limitations.

This view of Scripture did not require me to abandon logic, it allowed me to dive deep into logic, to go as far as my mind could carry me into any mystery, into any question, because at the end of all exploration there was God to meet me once again.  God the creator, designer, sustainer, provider, helper, discipliner, and lover.  Every question I asked could point me to God, if I followed it through a biblical worldview.  And so I realized, understanding Scripture does not limit my exploration, I do not find mindless chaos as when I assume a purely Darwinistic view of evolution, instead I find a God who is abundantly more than anything of which I had ever dreamed.

In every situation we need a guide, otherwise we will never know if we are on the right road.  For me, more than anything else I have determined that Scripture is what I want as my guide.  I want my mind guided by Scripture, my morals, my heart, and my imagination too.  Why?  Because, whereas I may vacillate on whether something is right or wrong depending on how I feel, and whereas scientific theory may be overturned tomorrow or in a hundred years, and whereas I may grow confused and make an error in logic, Scripture is God's Word, and it alone can claim to be eternally correct.  Without a guide there is no meaning, but what guide can prove more accurate, or give greater meaning, than that which is inspired by God?

What are we Preaching?

I know I'm not currently preaching in a church.  I'm not a pastor of a church, nor can I claim to have years of preaching experience under my belt.  However, I have been listening to sermons for years.  I have set in the pews, heard men get up and preach, and I have listened to what they said.  In combination with all this, I have also been reading my bible, studying Scripture, and seeking after Christ for probably longer than I have been a regular church attendee.

I note all of the things above, because I would like to talk about preaching.  I want to discuss the right way, and the wrong way.  I can only write from the perspective of someone who has read Scripture, taken classes, and had limited opportunity to, pardon the pun, practice what I preach.  But, I believe I can write about preaching from three perspectives: the preacher, the hearer, and the Word.

The most important aspect of preaching is what the Word has to say about it.  Here is a list of 26 verses that have to do with preaching in the Bible: Ezekiel 20:46, 21:2; Amos 7:16; Micah 2:6, 2:11; Matthew 3:1-2, 4:17, 11:1, 11:5, 12:41, 23:3; Mark 1:7, 1:35, 1:38, 1:39, 2:2, 3:14, 16:20; Luke 3:18, 4:43, 4:44, 7:22, 9:6, 11:32, 16:16, 20:1.  I invite you to take your time and read each of these verses, and then to read the context around those verses to see to what "preaching" the author has in mind.  My conclusion is this: preaching, in every section of Scripture, is proclaiming the word of God as it has been given to the individual proclaiming it.  (Notice that those who "preach wine" are not preaching God's word, but are preaching their own word, a passage to which everyone who would preach would do well to devote their attention.)

For a prophet, preaching would be proclaiming the message God has given him to the people to whom he has been sent.  For a modern day preacher, preaching is proclaiming the word of God as it has been handed to us in our particular formats to the people to whom God has sent us.  This means that no preacher has actually preached until he has spoken the word of God.  And the word of God has not been spoken until the whole counsel of God has been spoken on any subject.  And, because Christ is the one whom God has spoken to us through, in these last times, (Hebrews 1:2) no modern preaching is complete if the hearers of the message are not brought to Christ.

When we stand up and read a section from Genesis, Leviticus, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Isaiah, or any other book of the Old Testament, if we do not show how that passage relates to Christ, we have not preached.  We have not preached because, no matter what we have said, we have not really shared what the Word of God was saying.  Notice that when Christ preached, he preached the good news (go back and re-read the vast majority of the verses listed above from the gospels if you want evidence).  If we preach anything less than the good news of Jesus Christ, then we have not preached.

If we preach from proverbs then, and encourage men to have wisdom, but we do not point that wisdom is offered to us freely through Christ, then what wisdom have we encouraged men to have?  If we preach from the prophets and show that God is a righteous God who judges his enemies, but do not tell them that Christ has suffered that judgment on our behalf, then what judgment are they expecting?  No matter what section of Scripture we preach from, if we fail to show how these Scriptures were fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and that he offers men redemption before a holy and righteous God, then we have not preached.

Likewise, when we hear a sermon that tells us how to live a good life, or tells us about the great love of God, or tells us about the rapture of the church, or how to suffer through the tribulation, (pick any millennial position, for the sake of the example it doesn't matter) if we do not hear about the fact that we are sinners, and we stand separated from God, but that Christ died for us, and he rose again on the third day, and that anyone who places their faith in him can have eternal life, then we have not heard a sermon.  If hearing a sermon means we have heard the preached word of God, then we have not heard a sermon until we have heard the good news proclaimed from the pulpit, because the good news is the Word of God to us today.

Hebrews 4:2 says that the good news has come to us, just as it came to those in the wilderness.  God's message has always been the good news of salvation through faith.  The law did not abrogate his promise.  The law did not conflict with grace, but acted as an instructor to point us to the grace of God that was coming.  And now, the grace of God has come, so it is the message that we need to continually preach and hear.  My challenge to every pastor, and I hope my people will challenge me with this, is to preach the good news of Jesus Christ, because that is the only message that is worth preaching, anything less is just advice.

If your goal is just good advice, then get out of the pulpit.  God has called pastors to be preachers, caretakers of the flock.  Do you think your advice is better than his?  Do you think your wisdom is superior to the good news of Jesus Christ?  Pulpits are places for preachers, and preachers preach the Word of God.

Marriage is Redefined? So What?

C.S. Lewis said, "Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."  Therefore, though I know a thousand others (perhaps a thousand times a thousand, maybe even a million) have posted on the subject of marriage in modern America already, particularly in light of the recent decision out of California, I feel compelled to do so as well.


My question is this: what does it matter if the word, "marriage" is redefined in society?  More precisely my question can be asked in this way: If Christians accept a redefinition of the word "marriage" to allow for homosexuals to get married what does it change?  If it changes things, should we fight the new definition?  If culture at large accepts the new definition, then how do Christians move forward?


Redefining marriage would dramatically change how we read Scripture (hermeneutics).  Allow me to explain.  If we look at verses like Genesis 34:9 (Make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves.) and we accept a redefinition of marriage, then we are obligated to explain that, when the offer was made to Jacob's son to marry with the men of the area, marriage meant something different to them than it does to us.  We are obligated to explain that marriage at that time only meant between a man and a woman, this was not an offer for Jacob's sons to marry the men, but only to give and take their daughters in marriage.  If we fail to explain that point then some might think that the men of the area are hitting on Jacob's sons.  (Then again maybe that would explain the violent reaction of Jacob's sons as found in Genesis 34:25, On the third day, when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and came against the city while it felt secure and killed all the males.  What an insult to offer marriage and then say, "Well I really meant I wanted to marry your daughter, not you.")


Okay, if you don't buy that it would require us to be more clear in the passages above, how about, in 1 Timothy 4:1-5:  "Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer."  If marriage is redefined, couldn't anyone who can marry according to the state definition, claim that churches are sinning by forbidding them to marry?  Couldn't they claim that since marriage was created by God, and they are simply engaging in marriage, their marriage is made holy  through thanksgiving and prayer?  A cultural redefinition of the word would require teachers in the church to make clear that what Paul means by marriage here is only a union between one woman and one man, no other union, regardless of whether called marriage or not, can be made clean.


Further we see that additional teaching would be required for verses such as Hebrews 13:4, "Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous."  What are we to keep pure?  What is marriage?  Is the church sinning by not honoring the civil marriages as granted by the state?  If you doubt for a minute that there would be activists insisting on these readings within the next generation then I would encourage you to study history more closely.  As a word loses meaning, or takes on new meanings, people always have a tendency to anachronistically read that meaning into the original use of the word.


Consider the use of the term "make love."  C. S. Lewis uses that term in The Silver Chair to indicate how Jill acts in a cute and disarming way around the "Gentle Giants".  But, when a modern reader sees a statement about a little girl "making love" to everyone in the room, our minds are not drawn to innocent imagery, but rather a horrible case of child abuse.  While we may certainly be corrected by context, what would we think if we did not have that context?  So likewise, in two generations, or three, or four, what will the average reader of a section like Hebrews 13:4 or 1 Timothy 4:1-5 think?


While it may be generations until there is general confusion stemming from these verses, what are we to do about it now?  This concept is one I look forward to reading your thoughts on, and addressing in a future post.  For now I ask you to simply consider this: If we accept a redefinition of marriage so that it means anything other than the biblical definition, it can lead to radical changes in what we think of as sinful, and thus what we allow within our churches.  If we redefine marriage then we risk becoming those of whom it is said, Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!