Bite-Sized: #MindBlown

It took a while to develop the sophisticated theological claims that we take for granted today. One of the most central and also most complicated ones is the affirmation that Jesus Christ is both fully man and fully God. All of us Christians affirm this fact, but have we ever asked why? Or, perhaps even deeper, how?

In the fifth century, this was the main Christological conflict. To somewhat simplify the first 500 years of Christian theological progression, I'll explain it this way. From the New Testament onward, certain facts about the nature of Christ had to be asserted (always based on the testimony of Holy Scripture) to avoid descent into false teaching. It began with a positive affirmation of the divinity of Christ. But that affirmation had to be tempered by an equally positive affirmation of the humanity of Christ. Those two positive affirmations had to be qualified by the fact that his divinity and humanity are, in some way, different, because we have the biblical language of the Word being "made flesh" and taking on a body. But even though the humanity and divinity are different, we still worship and believe in one unified Christ. Do you begin to see the immense amount of work the early church Fathers had to do to reel people in?

The unity of Christ was the main focus of Cyril of Alexandria's work. Some people of his day, most notably Nestorius, made claims about Christ that suggested that there were "two of them", the divine Word of God and some man that the Word decided to "conjoin" himself too. Coming to this conclusion makes sense in a way. Divinity is a pretty big thing. One might say it's an all-consuming thing. If Jesus is truly divine, whatever humanity he has, true or not, must be considered like a drop in the ocean of his divinity...right? I mean, Jesus can't be both completely God and completely human...right?

Wrong. And this is where Cyril gets awesome. He describes Jesus as the burning bush. I'm not even going to add commentary to this one. This interpretation itself is meditation-worthy:

"It was not impossible to God, in his loving-kindness, to make himself capable of bearing the limitations of the manhood. And he foretold this to us in enigmas when he initiated Moses, depicting the manner of the incarnation in types. For he came down in the form of fire onto the bush in the desert, and the fire played upon the shrub but did not consume it. When he saw this, Moses was amazed. Why was there no compatibility here between the wood and the fire? How did this inflammable substance endure the assaults of the flame? Well, as I have already said, this event was a type of a mystery, of how the divine nature of the Word supported the limitations of the manhood; because he chose to. Absolutely nothing is impossible to him (Mk 10:27)." (Cyril of Alexandria, On The Unity of Christ)

Why should you care? Because Christ is "the firstborn among many brothers [and sisters]". Guess who those brothers and sisters are? You. That same fire wants you. And you can shine with His glory. As a matter of fact, that's His will for you. Submit to it. 

Haha, what am I doing, referring to the Creator in the Universe like some kind of irresistible, immense force...He's an irresistibly immense Person. He loves you and He wants you to love Him so that He can be glorified in you.

The Importance of Personal Holiness

It’s been a little while, but I’m back in full force today. I’m going to riff on something that’s serious to me because it’s serious to God. And it’s serious to God because it’s integral to His character. That, dear brothers and sisters, is His (and your) holiness.

He says in Leviticus, “Be holy, for I am holy”(Leviticus 11:44). Jesus says, “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48). If you read these verses and truly understand what the Father and Son are saying, you realize that the Christian life is not a game. At all. It is not a peripheral aspect of your identity. If you love the Lord with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength, you will “keep His commandments” (John 14:15). Who you are is defined by who Christ says you are and who Christ says you should be. So what is that? Well, what He seems to be saying is that you need to be holy like God and perfect in your obedience of God.

“But how?”, you may ask. “How in the world does Jesus expect this from me?” I’ll be the first to say that there’s no scriptural indication that this perfection that we are called to will be manifested in our life on Earth. Rather, sanctification is the process by which we are constantly being pruned so that Christ will "present us blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy" according to Jude. So we will be perfect. Then. But this does not remove the impetus to pursue it now. Don’t think that just because you won’t be perfect before you die, you don’t have the responsibility to obey God right now. You and I do Him an injustice and we spit in the face of the crucified Christ when we live as though He did not call us to a holy and sanctified life. So how do we do it? Quite frankly, we believe, we trust, and we obey.

1^st Step: Faith

Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Such are the words of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Obviously this makes a lot of sense. Do I really think that just because I avoided that sexual temptation, God’s smiling down on me, thinking, “Good one, Malcolm! You’ve been so good that I accept you!”? Nope. Not at all. Nothing I can do apart from God can please him. Jesus would go a step further and say that I can’t “bear any fruit” apart from Him, the true vine. So the first step in my journey towards holiness is faith: trust in Christ and submission to Christ. It is only then that I even have the ability to obey Him. I absolutely must believe that Jesus Christ was God made man (to borrow language from Cyril of Alexandria), was crucified, became sin for me, died, was raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven in order to approach the almighty Father with anything. Without the sacrifice of Christ, I have no hope in approaching a holy God. I am otherwise stuck with the ancient people of Israel and I have once again hung the veil, so to speak. But because of Christ, that veil has been torn and I can freely come to the Father and the Father, Son and Holy Ghost have made their dwelling with me! (John 16)  Hallelujah!

2^nd Step: Works or Obedience

Faith and works are a dialectic, not a dichotomy. A conversation, not a contradiction. Only if I truly trust and truly submit to God, will I realize that any other path of walking is woefully inadequate. When I, through meditation on and contemplation of His Word, come into contact with the living God, His majesty, His power, and His love, it is a reminder that I need to get back on track morally. Your faith in who Christ is and what He has done should provide the impetus toward obedience and good works. After all, He died because of your sin. Doesn’t that perhaps make you not want to sin? This isn’t a guilt tactic, but rather it is merely a statement of truth. Our sin is disgustingly offensive to the character of God, but he still loved us in this specific way: that he gave his unique Son so that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life. In the words of Paul, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure”(Philippians 2:12).  Please God and work for His glory because for you whom He foreknew, “he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And [you] whom he predestined he also called, and [you] whom he called he also justified, and [you] whom he justified, he also glorified.” You have been called according to HIS purpose. ACT LIKE IT.*

*It is all caps for a reason. This is my admonition to myself and to the rest of Christendom heh heh. If we truly will be saved (in the sense that salvation is a future event) and we are now attached to the vine, we will bear fruit and the Father will prune us so that we bear even more fruit. If we're not bearing fruit, we must re-evaluate our priorities and our lives and bring ourselves back in holy communion with our Eternal Source, the Triune God. So act like it.  

Note: If you try to be perfect, you will fail. That's just a fact. And it seems contradictory to what I've been saying. But the Scripture says that it isn't. We don't trust in our own righteousness but rather we count all that we have "gained" rubbish, so that we may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of our own which comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith - that we may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, we may attain the resurrection of the dead (Philippians 3:8-10). Because I don't know about you, but if this life were all that is, the only proper response would be despair. But that's not the world that God created. And that's not the plan He has for you. 

Bite-Sized: Why Hasn't Jesus Returned?

"But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed." - 2 Peter 3:8-10

Some complain that Jesus is taking too long to come back. Some complain that He took too long to come the first time. But Peter's statement gives us some pretty good perspective on why God has done what He's done and is doing what He's doing.

Jesus has not returned yet because he is "patient toward you". He is patient and longsuffering, delaying His return for our sake and for the sake of the unsaved. The fact that Jesus has not returned is an example of His mercy, not some perceived impotence. We, as Christians, are heralds of the coming Lord and every minute that we breathe is a minute given to us to proclaim His glory. There is still more of your life to devote to Him and there are still people in the world who don't know and have not applied the Great News of Jesus Christ. Let us do as He commanded. Let's make disciples who live a life pleasing to God and who love Him with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. Because don't worry. He will come back. And when He does, you and I will be without excuse.

Is the Gospel of John a Gospel of Hate?

This appears to be the week of controversy.

Yes, some would say that the Gospel of John is a gospel of hate. Read the book closely and you may see why. An article that I read in my Greek Exegesis of the Gospel of John[1] class suggested that anti-Jewish sentiment is inherent in the text (through his constant use of “oi ioudaioi” which translates literally to “the Jews” and the negative light that he continually portrays them in). I’m inclined to disagree. I think that this argument about hatred stems from a super-sensitivity that we have towards any level of exclusivity, as well as a lack of appreciation for Jesus’ prophetic context and of course, the larger biblical context.

First, Jesus’ prophetic context. John makes it clear in the famed Prologue that for the remainder of the book, the Jesus you see will not be accepted. “He came to his own and his own did not receive him.” (John 1:11) This aspect of Jesus’ ministry is iterated over and over in this book and with good reason. If a man today traveled around teaching in churches that he himself was the Bread of life and that we needed to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to be saved, we would probably call him a demon-possessed Samaritan too[2]! But it makes the most sense that “the Jews” in John’s narrative would not accept Christ. He doesn’t fit into the traditional system. He complicates any monotheistic faith’s view of God, especially in the Gospel of John where he makes numerous claims to divinity[3]. But if God is One, as the Shema[4] states, how does Jesus fit into that construct? We don’t have time here to go into what ends up being a debate that lasts hundreds of years but you get the point. Jesus’ claims are problematic for his audience, to say the least. But this doesn’t make Jesus a person of hate. Those who have misused this book to justify their racism and prejudice have done just that: misused this book. Anyone who uses the Scripture to oppress and degrade misuses the Gospel. Some may claim that the language of this Gospel goes against the larger construct of God’s love, but where do you get an idea of Christian love if you eschew the Gospel of John? John, in his Gospel and his epistles, has quite a bit to say about love including everybody's favorite misinterpreted verse: "God is love."(1 John 4:8b) That does not mean, "God is the embodiment of my definition of love." Instead, the author is saying, "God and how he interacts and has interacted with the world, specifically through the person of Jesus Christ, IS my definition of love." Your definition of Christian love should stem from the text, not some nebulous feel-good emotion that you call love.

Second, the larger biblical context and our super-sensitivity to exclusivity. Here is a fact in the study of religion: truly monotheistic[5] religions are necessarily exclusive. It’s just a fact. When Jesus claims to be the way, the truth and the life, he means it exclusively. That’s what he says in the next line: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” There’s no room for compromise. Realize what you inevitably claim when you claim to be Christian. People died and continue to die today because of this fact. This is one of the reason why it angers me to see “Christians” soften on this point, suggesting that there are other ways to God without Christ. But it also sheds light on John’s narrative. “The Jews” are not only the Jewish people in the narrative, but they represent the majority of mankind. A lot of people see faith in Christ as ridiculous for these reasons. They see “irreconcilable contradictions” and that, presumably, keeps them from faith. We see similar sentiments in the Jews of John’s narrative. We have people who see Jesus and his claims as contrary to the religious status quo so they seek to, and eventually do, kill him. But that’s not a story of hate. It’s a story of humanity. We seek to destroy what we do not understand. The Jews are not some group of "others" who rejected Christ (which we know we would never do, right?) They are just like us. As a matter of fact, Origen, a great theologian in the early church, would later identify Christians as "Israel according to the Spirit", referring back to Paul's differentiation of "Israel according to the flesh" in 1 Corinthians 10. According to him, the Church is the new, true Israel. When you read "the Jews", think of yourself and your own reactions to Christ's claims.

            So that’s something to think about and a question you’ve got to answer for yourself. Is the Gospel of John a gospel of hate? More importantly, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ a gospel of hate? To me, the Gospel, when read with the guiding of the Holy Spirit, is revealed to be not only a gospel of love, but a gospel of true love. After all the definition of love is in John 3:16: “For God loved the world in this way, that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone believing in him might not perish, but might have eternal life.” That’s the root of our love, brothers and sisters. The root is not a nebulous view of “niceness” and “inclusivity”. It is a powerful, life-changing compound of grace and truth, guided and empowered by the Spirit of God Himself.

Note: To all of my beloved readers, thanks to each of you for taking the time to engage with my thought. It wouldn't be a community without you. Following in Origen and Augustine's footsteps, I'm not a fan of individual Scriptural interpretation but instead the collective literal and spiritual interpretation of the Church. Tell your friends!

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[1] My favorite of all of my classes. The Greek of John is pretty easy, but the book is super rich. And also hilarious because Jesus is just so awesomely hard-core. Any conception of a “soft, hippie Christ” is completely blown out of the water in this book.

[2] My favorite of all of the insults in the book. It shows the social and religious enmity between the two groups (Jews and Samaritans) which goes way back.

[3] His “I am” statements, his forgiveness of sins, his acceptance of worship, his literal claiming that He and the Father are one….If you want a Jesus that plays games, the book of John is not the book to read. Too bad you, as an honest Christian, don’t have that option! Wrestle with it.

[4] Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4)

[5] This is contrasted with henotheism, which is a system of many gods where one is seen as the “king of the gods” or the only one to be truly worshiped, and, of course, pantheism and polytheism. 

A Laughable Question...When You Think About It

“Do you believe in God?”

This is the laughable question. The mere asking of the question assumes some things that, in this day and age, we cannot assume. It assumes a meaning of “believe”, a meaning of “God”, and a meaning of “believe in God”. Let me break it down.

Faith is a much-maligned term in today’s discourse. We see it contrasted with reason, as though faith is just a thing that those of us who are less intellectual have in a God that we’ve constructed. It is purported to be intellectually dishonest to believe in God, much less the triune God of Christianity. Faith is seen as an instrument of the weak. Why resort to it when we can appeal to much stronger evidence? Well, here’s a little illustration to show why:

There was a man who crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope. He did this on a weekly basis. Needless to say, he had quite a following of people who would stand nearby and watch his mind-blowing feat. Each performance was more spectacular than the last. He would carry large barrels across. He would run across. He was a pro and the people could see that. So one day, he stood before his crowd and asked them, “Do you think I’ll be able to cross the falls today?” The crowd answered with a resounding cheer. But then he asked a second question: “Which of you is willing to cross on my back?” The crowd was silent. No one but his manager was willing to take that risk and he crossed, manager on his back, just as he had done many times before.

That’s what faith is. The Greek word translated as “faith” in English Bibles is transliterated “pistis”. This word, in Greek rhetoric and just in general use, means conviction and trust. It is not, as some might suggest, merely intellectual assent. When you say Jesus is your Lord, do you mean Lord as in Master? The New Testament uses slave language (Romans 1:1, 2 Peter 1:1, James 1:1, Romans 6), language that we[1] are uncomfortable with, so we defer to the identity of children of God. But the Bible says both, so if we're honest, we should accept both. Are you willing to say that about your life? True faith is not a quick and easy thing to develop but rather it is conviction and trust, two elements that take time and investment. To say that you “believe in God” does not merely mean that you say, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure some God out there exists”.  This brings us to our definition of God and by extension, the answer to our laughable question.

The definition of God (or god, in most cases) makes the inevitable answer to this question a resounding yes. You do believe in a god. Whether or not it is the true God is the real question. There is something or someone that you trust, seek to impress, seek to attain, or that you place as the driving force behind your actions.

Is your life a continuous sequence of events that you try to orchestrate so that you can live the most comfortable life possible? Do you serve a god of comfort?

Are you caught in a continuous struggle to get ahead? Must you consistently outperform those around you? Do you serve a god of success? Or perhaps the god of human praise?

Is money your first and foremost concern? Must you make more money to become more happy? Is mammon your god?

Is your own concern for what you should be doing, where you should be, and how you should live your life your central concern? Simply, are you the focus of a majority of your own mental energy? Even more simply, are you your own god?

See? You thought you'd escape. But you do believe in a god. And if it is any of these things (or anything related to it. I don’t claim to have exhaustively explicated the extensive pantheon of “gods”,) you are an idolater. Yup. Idolatry. Worship of a false god. We all do it. But we like to explain it away, sometimes using God Himself as our excuse.

“This is what God wants me to do.” Mmmm maybe…but it looks to me like this is what your pride wants you to do. Just saying.

“God’s blessed me with all this. It would be a shame not to use it.” Uh huh…And whose glory are you seeking? God’s? Or your own dim, dim, dim light?

I could use more examples but you get the point. So the question remains. What god do you serve? Is it a weak god who can give you nothing, as it was crafted by human hands and minds? Or is it another God?  In some cases, even saying that you believe in “the God of the Bible” can be complicated, as we (as we are wont to do because of our sinful nature) tend to take the Scriptures apart, selecting what we are comfortable with and ignoring the unified, complicated beauty that the Lord saw fit to give us through the inspired words. So be careful if you ask that question. The answer you receive may not come from the place you think it does. So the real question is not, “Do you believe in God?”, but rather, “Do you trust in Jesus Christ, as He was sent by the Father and revealed by the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures, as the sole purveyor and source of your life and salvation and do you submit to His authority over your life?” Or in other words, “Is Jesus Christ your Lord, Savior, and God?” Yeah, that covers most of it.

And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. (Joshua 24:15)

Note: Serving the true God is literally the most awesome thing ever. Ever. Ever ever. To place your trust in the One who loves you and works all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to His purpose is to live a life of true peace which culminates in a life of continuous worship for the rest of eternity. Like I said, awesome. 

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[1] We, generally as Americans. We, specifically as African Americans. We even more specifically as African American Christians.