Which Is Better?

 

When reading Scripture, when preaching and teaching, which is better? To ask, “Is this passage true?” Or to ask, “How is this truth manifested? How do we see this truth working out in our lives? How do we see Jesus Christ? How do we respond in obedience to this passage?”

 

The disciple of Jesus Christ receives the testimony of God, and the Holy Spirit bears witness to God’s testimony, God’s Word. We are the sons and daughters of God our Father, Jesus Christ is our brother, the Holy Spirit lives within us – the Trinity lives within us and we live within the Trinity; ought we not to learn to speak and listen and respond to the Word as partakers of the Divine Nature?

 

Do I sit in judgment on the Word of God, or do I bow before His Word?

 

If I sit in judgment on one aspect of God’s Word, then do I not sit in judgment on all aspects of His Word…and do I not teach others to do so?

 

If I seek validation of His Word from the wisdom of man, even from the wisdom of “Christian man,” in one aspect of His Testimony (such as the Resurrection), do I not seek validation from the wisdom of man for all aspects of His Testimony? Am I not modeling this way of validation for others?

 

This is not to say that we do not share our testimonies regarding our pilgrimage in His Word, our voyages of discovery, our challenges, and the transforming work of the Spirit within us; but this is not the same as asking the Church, “Is this Scripture passage true?” and then looking to testimony outside the Bible for validation.

 

To accept God’s Testimony as our ground of being is to live in the koinonia of the Holy Trinity. Accepting His Testimony we can then query, “How do we see His Word manifesting itself in our lives, in the Body of Christ, in history?” Accepting His Word, we can then teach and demonstrate how His Word is expressed within us, the Church, the world, and creation.

 

This goes to the heart of epistemology, and the essence of Biblical epistemology is supernatural (1 Cor. 1:17 – 2:16), with its ground in the Trinity (John chapters 13 – 17).

 

Do we teach our people to sit in judgment on the Word, or to sit under the Word and to respond in obedience to the Word? Do we teach our people to seek validation from the wisdom of men, whether regenerate or unregenerate men? (1 Cor. 2:5).

 

There is a vital difference between asking, “Is this Bible passage true?” and then seeking the answer outside the Testimony of God (the Bible); and receiving the Bible passage as True, as God’s Testimony, and then acknowledging the witness of others to the Truth, demonstrating how the Living Word works within others to the glory of Christ.

 

For the Christian, seeking validation of the Bible outside the Bible may be akin to, “Having begun in the Spirit, are you now seeking perfection through the flesh, the natural?”

 

 

What Do We See and How Do We See It?

 

Augustin’s Psalms is the third book I’d take with me on a desert island, the Bible and Chronicles of Narnia being the other two.

 

“Therefore here also let us perceive the Lord’s Passion, and let there speak to us Christ, Head and Body. So always, or nearly always, let us hear the words of Christ from the Psalm, as that we look not only upon that Head, the one mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus…But let us think of Christ, Head and whole Body, a sort of entire Man. For to us it is said, “But you are the Body of Christ and members,” by the Apostle Paul. If therefore He is Head, we Body; whole Christ is Head and Body. For sometimes you find words which do not suit the Head, and unless you shall have attached them to the Body, your understanding will waver; again you find words which are proper for the Body, and Christ nevertheless is speaking. In that place we must have no fear lest a man be mistaken; for quickly he proceeds to adapt to the Head, that which he sees is not proper for the Body….” Augustin, Psalm 59 (2). NPNF (Hendrickson).

 

If our epistemology is wrong, our interpretation will be be wrong or limited – we will not see the fulness of Christ. (1 Cor. 1:17 – 2:16; John 16:12 – 15).

 

The exegesis of Jesus (if we can use such a term with regard to Him) is that of seeing Himself and His Body in the Scriptures (Luke 24:25 – 27; 44 – 46; John 5:39).

 

The Old Testament exegesis of the writers of the New Testament befuddle us when we apply our natural interpretive methods to their vision of Christ and His Body, the Church, the Temple, and the Eschaton – for they are looking for Christ and doing so in the koinonia of the Trinity. Their koinonia with God is inextricably linked with understanding Scripture, and so it must be with us (1 John 1:3). To teach exegesis and Biblical interpretation apart from holy living and devotion to Christ and His People is a thing to be avoided. Who may ascend in Biblical interpretation, in seeing Christ? See Psalm 15.

 

Patristic exegesis is Christological – always looking for Christ.

 

New Testament exegesis is Christological – always looking for Christ.

 

Jesus’s exegesis (if we can speak this way) is Christological – always seeing Himself and His Body.

 

How might this challenge us?

 

What A Difference A Week Makes

 

 

“The crowds going ahead of Him, and those who followed, were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!” When He had entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying, “Who is this?” And the crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.”” (Matthew 21:9 – 11).

 

“But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to put Jesus to death. But the governor said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Crucify Him!” And he said, “Why, what evil has He done?” But they kept shouting all the more, saying, “Crucify Him!”” (Matthew 27:20 – 23).

 

What a difference a week makes; the crowds shouting “Hosanna!” on Palm Sunday are shouting “Crucify Him!” on Good Friday.

 

Early in Jesus’ ministry we read, “Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.” (John 2:23 – 25).

 

After all these years, when I hear people talk about how the people of the United States turned to God after 9/11, I still wonder that we don’t see the superficiality of it all – I wondered when it was happening, and I continue to wonder. At best we are like ancient Israel and Judah who cry out to God for help while we continue to worship idols and reject His commandments.

 

The crowd is seldom right; even when the crowd is right it is usually wrong. The same crowd that was praising Jesus early in His ministry during Passover in John Chapter 2, and the same crowd which was praising Him on the Palm Sunday leading up to Passover in Matthew chapter 21, is the same crowd shouting “Crucify Him!” It is the same crowd that cries for Barabbas the insurrectionist and murderer.

 

Is it any wonder that so many professing Christians justify insurrection, including the insurrection of January 6? Are they not Christians of the crowd? Christians who functionally cry out, “Give us political leaders but crucify Jesus!” Just as the Jewish leaders feared for their own positions, just as they feared how the Romans might respond should Jesus continue to proclaim the Kingdom of God; so professing Christian leaders fear the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they fear a Gospel in which God’s love and mercy embrace the world, in which we are taught to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness first, in which Christ’s disciples are citizens of heaven first, and in which there are no borders to us serving mankind – no political, no national, no ethnic or racial, not cultural or social or educational or economic.

 

We may cry “Hosanna!” for an hour or two on Sunday, but the rest of the week we are conservatives, or liberals, or moderates, or a number of other different flavors and primary identities in various contexts. We bring our hammers and nails out into the world, including the religious world, and when we find a Jesus who doesn’t look like us (see Matthew 25:31 – 46) we crown Him with thorns of hatred and we crucify Him.

 

We crucify Him in prisons, in our “justice” system, in education (in is inequity and in its teaching our students to reject the image of God, to desecrate it both within themselves and within others), in our political system, in economics, at our borders, in entertainment and sports (which instead of being about re-creation is about destroying our souls which God created), in economics (if you want to see God’s economic plan for His People, read 2 Corinthians chapters 8 – 9, a plan that transcends borders and ethnicity; do we have the courage to teach obedience to these chapters? Of course not, we will take verses of out context to teach “giving” and “stewardship,” but we will not teach these chapters – too many pastors would find themselves crucified with Jesus, on His left and His right).

 

When we read about cleansing the Temple it is always “those other people” that we think about, do we ever see our own hearts and minds as needing cleansing? Do we ever visualize our own agendas needing cleansing? Do we really want the blind and lame coming to us? Do we really want the untidy reality of humanity to interfere with our comfortable religion?

 

As for the children shouting in the Temple (Matthew 21:14 – 16), we will quiet them down and soon make them into our image, we’ll make them little conservatives, little liberals, little humanists, little Pharisees, little insurrectionists – we will humor them and then control them and if we can’t control them then we’ll cast them out. (Consider the Jesus People of the 1960s and early 70s; they are now either part of the Babylonian system or they have been cast out – we will not tolerate new wine in new wineskins).

 

God has not chosen us to choose the lesser of two or more evils, He has called us to be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:13ff). How can we stand the hypocrisy of celebrating Palm Sunday and “Holy Week” when, should we pass through a metal detector during the week, we will be found carrying a hammer and nails?  

 

O Holy God, make us like Jesus!

 

 

 

The Chapter 30 Diner (14)

 

“Every word of God is tested; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words or He will reprove you, and you will be proved a liar.” Proverbs 30:5 – 6.

 

During the past few weeks my heart has been arrested by a prayer found in the Valley of Vision, published by Banner of Truth and edited by Arthur Bennett. It is titled The Deeps and is on pages 134 – 135. Here is how it begins:

 

“LORD JESUS,

Give me a deeper repentance,

      a horror of sin,

      a dread of its approach;

Help me chastely to flee it,

  and jealously to resolve that my heart

    shall be thine alone.

Give me a deeper trust,

  that I may lose myself to find myself in thee,

    the ground of my rest,

    the spring of my being.”

 

I am sharing this because the last post in this series was about knowing God as our refuge and it seems to me that this prayer is a living example of what knowing God in Christ as our refuge can look like. (I hope to share more of this prayer in forthcoming posts).

 

In the previous post I pointed out that we need a refuge when we are fleeing danger, and sin is certainly an ever-present danger to the saints of God. Do we have “a horror of sin, a dread of its approach”? Do we desire to chastely flee it?

 

What does it mean to chastely flee sin? I take it to mean that we flee with pure hearts, not with hearts that are divided between sin and holiness, not as Lot’s wife who looks back on that which she is leaving, rather than looking ahead to the salvation that God is working.

 

Do our hearts belong to God alone? Can we hear Jesus saying, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”? Can we hear Him saying that we are to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength?

 

Are we losing ourselves that we might find ourselves in Jesus? Or are we foolishly adhering to the ways of this world – system, which is passing away?

 

Is the Holy Trinity the ground of our rest, the very spring of our being? That is, do we utterly and completely live in the Vine, drawing our life from Him?

 

That is, is God our Refuge?

The Chapter 30 Diner (13)

 

“Every word of God is tested; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words or He will reprove you, and you will be proved a liar.” Proverbs 30:5 – 6.

 

What is it to take refuge in God? What is it for Him to be our shield?

 

Is it fair to say that we only seek refuge when we perceive danger? If this is so, then how often do we make God our refuge? Why, it must be that we make Him our refuge as often as we perceive danger. But then, how often do we perceive danger?

 

If we think of danger in physical terms, in terms of health or physical safety, then how likely is it that, at least in the West, we make God our refuge? On the other hand, if we consider temptation and sin, and the world-system which is God’s enemy and which seeks to destroy the image and People of God; how often might we make God our refuge?

 

Better yet, are we making God our refuge as our Way of life? That is, are we living in God as our Refuge? Is not a refuge a place of safety, of comfort, of rest, of provision, of protection?

 

The world offers us refuge in its lies and vanities, vanities and lies that take many forms. There is money for example; we think that if we have saved and invested enough, and that if we have a certain level of income, that our money is a refuge – of course “enough” is never “enough” and this serves as a substitute for God as our Provider.

 

We may seek the refuge of control; that is, the more we are able to control our lives the greater our refuge from people and events that may harm us. We may seek refuge in food, in alcohol, in drugs (legal or illegal), in where we live, in what we do, in what we own, in sensual pleasure. We may even seek refuge in being religious, or educated, or in our social connections. Many in the professing church today think they can find refuge in nationalism and politics and in particular worldviews. The world markets many types of refuge, but there is only one true refuge, and that is the True and Living God.

 

When all things are stripped away, the question remains, “Is God my refuge? Is God your refuge?” At the core of my being, am I living in God and is God in Christ living in me?

 

The disciple of Jesus Christ needs a refuge and a shield from the thinking of the world, from its values, from its politics, from its lust for money, pleasure, and power. We need a refuge from the worldliness of the church which has imported substitutes for the Person of Jesus Christ and His all – sufficiency (do we really believe 1 Corinthians 1:17 – 2:5?).

 

And lest you should misunderstand me, I am thinking not of the “church” which makes little or no pretense of honoring the Bible, but rather of us who say we believe the Bible is the Word of God. The problem is always with us, it is never really with others; the problem is in my heart and soul and mind. Have we not made God into a Great Therapist who is in charge of a practice of little therapists? Is not God our political consultant? Our economics guru? Our entertainment director?

 

Do we make God into what we want Him to be, or do we surrender to God and allow Him to make us into the men and women that He wants us to be?

 

If God is our refuge, then He will envelop us in His Presence; if God is not our refuge then the world-system with its rebellion, sin, and evil will envelop us. Let us not be deceived, evil can look good as well as bad, and it is more often than not socially acceptable…and sadly often religiously acceptable.

 

The world is driven by anxiety, fear, and worry; when God is our refuge we will know His peace. The world is driven by false hope on the one hand, and by hopelessness on the other; when God is our refuge we will know a sure and certain hope in Jesus Christ. The world is fueled by selfishness and hate; when God is our refuge we learn to put others before ourselves and to love those who are unlovable and untouchable. The world teaches us to love things and use people; when God is our refuge we learn to love people and use things. The world wants to imbue us with its values and measures; when God is our refuge we learn to evaluate life based on the Holy Scriptures and the Person of Jesus Christ, we learn the folly of the vanities of the world.

 

When God is our refuge we live as strangers in a strange land, as aliens on this earth, as pilgrims on a journey to a glorious eternity.  When God is our refuge we can give to others, we can be God’s Presence to others, God’s redemptive Word and hope to others in Christ; we can be the incarnation of the Incarnation…because our refuge is continuously and eternally in the Trinity.

 

When God is our refuge, we breathe the Presence of God with each inhale and exhale; our source of Life transcends the wickedness, evil, and spiritual death of the world system.

 

When God is our refuge, the Vine is forever our source of Life (John 15:1ff).