Matthew 5 and the Gospel of Grace

Ever read Matthew 5 and get angry/discouraged? That’s the natural response when you read it right. Jesus says some incredibly difficult things: Not only is murder a sin, but anger too?! And insults?! Sure, I know adultery’s a sin, but lust is the same as adultery? You’re telling me that not only do my actions have to be completely pure, but also my “motives, aspirations, and the deep recesses of the thoughts of my mind” have to be completely pure? Yes. That’s exactly what Jesus is saying when he says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

We can’t water that down. The Pharisees were some pretty serious men. But Jesus’ issue with them was that while they followed the Law presumably to the letter, their heart was not oriented toward God.  God does not desire just our begrudging obedience, but rather He desires our entire self. This is the message that Jesus conveys in his Sermon on the Mount and it’s the sentiment of the Beatitudes. Usually, the “Blessed are…” phrases are taken to be general principles for living a Christian life. The Christian reads them and thinks, “All right, I need to try to be humble and merciful and pure and a peacemaker and all that other stuff. Then I’ll be a faithful Christian.” That sounds to me like we’re still trying to earn our salvation. Paul’s clear about the source of that salvation: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” In other words, you’ve got nothing. That’s what Jesus says in His sermon. You think you’re following the rules? Unless you can do it perfectly with no slip-ups at all, hell is your ultimate destination. Discouraging? Initially yes. And that’s where the fullness of the Gospel comes in.

Because of Christ’s death and resurrection, He was able to send the Holy Spirit. So when we read the Beatitudes, we don’t read a bunch of “principles for Christian life.” We see the person of Jesus Christ. When we truly understand that it is purely by grace we have been saved, and that the Holy Spirit that has been given to us continually conforms us to the image of Christ, the true meaning of this sermon becomes clear. As Oswald Chambers says, “The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of rules and regulations – it is a picture of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is having His unhindered way with us.” The list of Beatitudes is not a set of different rules, but rather a package deal that points to the person of Christ, and therefore the image that we are being conformed to. The same principle applies to the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22. Have you ever noticed that that verse seems completely grammatically out of whack? “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.” There’s no “and” in the Greek. In Greek and English (both Indo-European, making translation much easier) , that’s not a proper sentence. Come on, Paul, don’t you know that you just listed 9 different things? Don’t you mean “fruits” of the Spirit? Paul’s response is, “Nope. Those aren’t different at all.” You see, the singular fruit of the Spirit is each of those things and all of those things, intermingled with one another. It is not enough to love, but that love must be a good, faithful, gentle, self-controlled, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, love. That’s not something that you work for. That’s only given as a gift from the Holy Spirit. The same goes for our justification, our sanctification, and our glorification. The message of Scripture is not “This is what you do to be saved.” The message is, “This is who God is. He sent his Son to die to save you. You, His enemy. You, who spit on His bloodied face when you sin. The faithful Triune, covenantal God loved you despite all of that. Throw yourself upon His mercy and His grace and He will bear you up. Hold nothing back. He sure didn’t.”

We are, by grace, the children of God, people! Christ perfectly obeyed. Christ perfectly submitted to the will of the Father. Christ fulfilled the Law, did everything we could not do, and perfectly satisfied the wrath of God that we deserved. By grace through faith, that awesomeness is imputed to us! Thus, “As many as received Him, to them, He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”(John 1:12-13) So when God sees us, he sees the perfect sacrifice of His Son! That’s amazing! Praises be to our God! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his Holy name.

Let’s please our Father. Let us continually depend on, look to and worship Him every day of our lives as His Holy Spirit shapes us into the image of His Son. Only then can our view of the Law change from that of a difficult, impossible taskmaster to a delicacy sweeter than honey. Then, “Do not covet” becomes not an angry God wagging his finger, but a loving, holy God who says, “Why do you want their stuff when you can have Me?” Admonitions against lust are not the raving, nit-picky statements of a micromanaging tyrant, but rather a loving, righteous God who says, “Don’t you know that I am the source of your joy, hope, faith, and love? Turn to Me.” Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. 

I Would Read My Bible Every Day, But...

Note: If you can read, this post applies to you. I’m not bashing you for making this excuse. This is as much a reminder to me as it is to you. God consistently reveals this fact to me as I seek him and it’s the ultimate answer that He gives Job: namely, “I’m awesome.” And He is. We just forget it because we consciously and unconsciously distract ourselves. But it’s time to blow away the fog and live the abundant, vibrant spiritual lives that are indicative of the work of the Spirit of God.

“I would read my Bible every day but I don’t have time.”

Really?

Really??!!

Let me defer to Christ in the wilderness, quoting from Deuteronomy: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, is telling us that our life is not dependent on food, drink, or any other material possession/consumable. In contrast, he says with Moses that we derive our sustenance from the Word of God. Every breath that we breathe is a gift from God provided by His Word, Jesus Christ. But we Christians (Protestants specifically) believe there is another Word of God[1], one that we have easy access to and the only source of learning about the incarnate Word of God. We call that the Scriptures, following the examples of the disciples and Christ himself.  So what we can infer from Christ’s own statements about the authority and necessity of Scripture along with Paul’s statement in 2 Timothy that “all Scripture is God-breathed” is that for us to grow spiritually…well, not just grow spiritually. For us to truly LIVE, we must spend time in conscious submission to the incarnate Word of God as He chose to reveal himself in the written Word of God.

The gist of that introduction is that if your excuse for not reading the Bible is “I just don’t have enough time in the day,” ask yourself what you DO have time in the day for. Because in making time for all of those other things you do at the expense of the life-giving Word, you, in essence, tell God: “I can live without you.” You tell Him, “Eh…the Bible’s great and all, but I’ve got a job and kids and I’ve got to handle my business.” You tell Him, “Meh…I’m not a morning person, but I’m sure I’ll get to it later in the day,” but you never do and you know it. Deep down, we truly do not understand and have not truly internalized the centrality of God to our very existence. Our pride, teamed up with Satan, is extremely crafty, deceiving us into thinking that we perform on our own, that we are sanctified on our own, that we are justified on our own, when Scripture adamantly denies ALL of those things. When Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”, we need to take Him seriously. He is The Way – as in the only way to the Father. He is The Truth – as in the truth of God, both in who He is and what He says. And He is The Life – as in your only life is the life that you have in Him. There is no other life. Apart from Him, there is nothing but sin and condemnation. But in Him, the life you have is not only true but it is more abundant and vibrant because the very Spirit of God energizes it. It's not a "better" life. It's a new life. And its the definition of the best life because it's eternal. This is literally too good to pass up…but we do pass it up because we’re tired. Or we don't have time. Or we have...other things to do. Are you starting to see how ridiculous that is? You don’t have time to sit at the feet of the God of the universe? You must think you're pretty important…

When you reach valleys of stress, depression, discouragement and stagnation, is your first reaction “Woe is me!” or is your first reaction, as Scripture tells us it should be, “Great is God!”? What Christ, along with the writers of Scripture, seems to tell us is that apart from Him and His Word, there is no growth, there is no joy, there is no faith, there is no hope, and there is no love. In other words, do you lack any of those things? Don’t look to behavior modification. Do not say, “Well, I’m too lustful. I need to stop that.” Instead, say, “What makes me lust is the fact that my highest desire is not God Himself. Lord, please change my desires so that they all find their end in You.” Look to the source of those good things: God. And look to Him in the way that He has prescribed you to do it: through Scripture, which He illuminates by His Holy Spirit. Read it daily. Memorize it. Meditate on it.  The goal is to be like the man in Psalm 1, whose delight is in the law of the LORD and in His law, he meditates day and night. We are to delight in our time in Scripture because through it, we delight ourselves in the God that it reveals. We delight ourselves in Christ and his saving work on the cross but we only know of it by reading about it!

But it doesn’t just stop at delight. “He will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither, and in whatever he does, he prospers.” The first part of that verse is crucial: when the psalmist refers to a tree that has been planted by streams of water, the word for “planted” in Hebrew truly means “transplanted”. So what the Psalmist is drawing attention to is the fact that the man in question was not originally planted near these life-giving streams (which we might interpret, with our New Testament understanding, as the water of life…wonder who that is…). The sense of the verse is that by meditating and delighting in the Torah of the LORD, he has been moved to a place near life-giving streams of water. One can tell that the agent of this movement seems to be none other than the LORD through His teaching. This is what we pursue. We seek to be literally moved by God to a place where we can drink Him in as often as humanly possible, and therefore, live. This is the Jesus we preach. This is the Jesus we worship. Now please, for the good of the Church, for the good of your soul, and for the good of everyone that you will meet today and for the rest of your life, stop reading this and get into your Word, so that you may know the God who saved you and so that you may worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.

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[1] Not in the same sense as Jesus is, but the Word of God nonetheless.

Concerning the Application of Scripture

 Note: I may seem a bit harsh in this post. I only do so in order that we might understand how deeply pervasive this line of thought is and so that instead we approach the text with a spirit of humility rather than pride. After all, Scripture is a gift of revelation. It’s not like we’re so great that we deserve to know who God is.

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“That’s all well and good, but what does it mean for me? How do I apply it to my life?”

I hear this in many of the Bible studies that I take part in and, I admit, at times, I think it myself. But I’ve recently interrogated that view and I’ve found it seriously lacking. To suggest that I come to Scripture merely to learn “how to live my life” is, sadly, a woefully deficient hermeneutic. But there are a few crucial assumptions that this view reveals.

1. Scripture’s subject

The assumption that every word of Scripture should have a “concrete, practical” application in my life is an assumption that I am the true subject of Scripture and that it was written expressly for the enrichment of my life. Now, the latter is true (without the term, “expressly”) but it is true peripherally. Scripture’s subject is not me and it is not you. According to it, its subject, from Genesis to Revelation, is the person of Jesus Christ. As John 1:18 states, no one has ever seen God but the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. We get the same idea in Colossians 1, where Paul says that in Christ, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and that He is the image of the invisible God. Not to mention the infamous scene on the road to Emmaus recorded by Luke where Jesus, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” The overall message of this is that Jesus is a much bigger deal than you and I, mainly because he is God Himself. As such, we submit ourselves to the authority of Scripture, not mainly to learn about ourselves and what we should do, but instead to learn about HIM.

2. An exaltation of “doing”

But the problem with a primary emphasis on “how I should apply this to my life” is not only selfish, but it is also naïve. We are also told in Scripture that without faith, it is impossible to please God. We all know[1] that we are saved not by works but by grace and we know that we are justified by faith alone, but what is faith? Surely obedience is a part of it, but it is not the only part. Faith, as expressed in Scripture, is threefold: intellectual assent, obedience, and trust. And how do we gain access to this faith? By entering into the family of God. Now it is interesting that John repeatedly uses the image of being “born again” or “born from above” while Paul continually refers to us as “adopted children of God”. The important similarity between these two images is the primary agent in our family. No one facilitates his or her own birth. No one facilitates his or her own adoption. As the earthly parents facilitate these events, so also the Divine Parent facilitates the birth/adoption of His children by the Holy Spirit (John 3) and the Son gives them the authority (John 1:12). All of this is to say that the primary emphasis when we look at ourselves with the light of the Word should not be “What am I doing wrong?”, though the Lord will surely reveal that to us. The emphasis should be rather, “Who am I and what should I become?” Christianity is not a religion of behavioral modification but rather it is a religion of serving, being shaped by, and being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. Obviously, a change in your personal identity will inevitably change your behavior, but there are many cases where your attitudes and your self-perception need to be held up to the light of the Holy Word and submitted to the work of the Holy Spirit.

3. Implicitly, a diminution of “being” and a diminution of the Resurrection

Now that’s harsh. You’re thinking, “Now, Malcolm, how can you accuse me of diminishing the Resurrection?  That’s a tall, insulting implication to make! I’m just trying to submit myself to Scripture to figure what I should do on a day-to-day basis. That’s a noble pursuit, is it not?” Well, then this question must be asked: which is more important? What Jesus did (in his ministry) or who Jesus was? In a sense, they are both very, very, very important. But in another sense, they’re a little different. Let me explain.

Jesus’s ethical teachings are largely derivative, as they should be. He’s expounding on the Law which His Father gave, which the Jewish people of the day were familiar with. The classification of lust as adultery and anger as murder are understandable as they can be seen as the attitudes that lead to such sin, so Jesus says that sin is not only a matter of action but also a matter of thought and will. Cool. Most people can live with that. The love ethic is also something that a lot of people can get behind and it's stated in Leviticus. But the really, really offensive part of Jesus is who he is. Read the Gospel of John and you’ll get that offense. This is a man claiming to be Creator of the Universe. This is a man claiming a relationship with God the Father that is unprecedented and claiming power that no man should have. Then he dies and (this is the best part) is RESURRECTED. This solitary event is the vindication of his message and the center of our hope, nay, the center of our very existence. Paul centers the entirety of his preaching on this simple fact. For Paul, if Christ was not resurrected, our preaching is in vain, our faith is in vain and futile, we misrepresent God, we’re still in our sins, and we are of all people most to be pitied. That sounds like a pretty big deal…because it is. The reason why we worship Jesus as the Son of God is because of his identity, not his ethical teachings. So when we try to distill his ministry to “What can this teach me about what I should do?”, we do a massive injustice to Him. When John writes his Gospel, his purpose is not “so that you might learn what is the right thing to do and live every day in absolute surety of your moral rectitude.” Rather, “these things are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His name.” This is the same will I have for myself and for you, brothers and sisters. Jesus is the only way, the only truth, and the only life and we gain access to this life by consistently seeking and depending on Him by the Holy Spirit. We are called to be different and when we rest in the fact that we are different, we will inevitably act differently. That is what holiness is. 

So what does this mean for your life? Let’s take an example: John 1:1. I’ve got a few options. I can wrack my brain for an ethical application of this verse or I can fall on my knees and thank God that he saw fit to reveal himself fully in the Person of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God. I think that second option sounds a little better. Sometimes, we won't walk away from Scripture with the thought, "Now I know specifically what do in Situation X." But we can consistently approach and leave Scripture daily with a deep sense of gratitude and worship. Rejoice at all times, pray unceasingly, and give thanks for everything, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thess. 5:16-18)

Note: I attempted to maintain the balance between faith and works in this post, but I focused more on the faith part because most of us recognize the tendency to want to “do the right thing”. But it’s not enough just to do the right thing. We must do the right thing with the right motives and attitudes. After all there will be many who “did the right thing” and even worked mighty miracles and cried out to Jesus, “Lord, Lord!” and He will turn them away and tell them that He never knew them.[2] Let us not only act in a holy manner, but let us BE holy.

[1] And by we, I mean Protestants.

[2] Matthew 6:21-23

What is Love? (Baby, Don't Hurt Me)

It seems that the hot topic in the church and in the world today is love. We read in 1 John 4:8 that he who does not love does not know God because God is love. This has led many to believe that, through an interpretation of this verse and perhaps other passages[1], that love (as they conceive of it) is the definition of God. Now I will go on record and make the theological statement (in agreement especially with John and Christ himself) that we can know God and know Him truly, though only in part.[2] But I will also encourage you to examine what you mean (and what John means) when you say that God is love.

We see God exhibit his love in manifold ways through the lens of Scripture. The Father loves the Son in a unique, intra-Trinitarian way. The Son is ultimately lovely and the love between the Father and Son is, in some systems, personalized into the Holy Spirit. God also shows his love by disciplining his people and pruning their sin. He shows his love through common grace, bringing rain down on the just and the unjust[3]. He showed his love by the specific act of sending Christ[4]. He shows a specific love toward his elect that he does not show toward those outside the fold[5]. I note these different manifestations of His love to complicate our definition. Love is not a sentimental, “Do what makes you happy”, emotion. In Luke 13, some people come to Jesus and tell him a story about Galileans who were murdered by Pilate during a religious service. Such a story is comparable to you being told about a number of Christians massacred by government-sanctioned terrorists during the Eucharist. How does Jesus respond? “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Does that sound cold and callous to you? As a good Christian concerned with justice, don't you want to see the wicked punished and the righteous vindicated? That’s because you haven’t truly grasped Christ’s hatred of sin. You haven’t come into contact with the agonizing, excruciating pain that He experiences in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross. My challenge to you, as it is to myself, is to pray that God shows you the pain that sin causes and breaks your heart. Christ's commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor, but without the proper mobilization of the former, the latter is anemic. Our love has to be properly rooted in Truth, and we all know who the Truth is.

All of this is to encourage us, the Church, to love God and one another. And one clear manifestation of this is the church’s acknowledgement of the perniciousness and ubiquity of sin, both within and outside its “walls”. We must not tolerate it within our walls or within ourselves*. If we truly love our neighbors in the Church, we must be willing to confront them in their sin, whether it is adultery, lying or some other offense. At its core, if we are the people of God and therefore the body of Christ, we cannot allow a wound to fester. We have to be willing to treat it with salve, which will be initially painful but ultimately healing, or if the wound does not respond to treatment, the limb must be amputated.[6] Love does not delight in unrighteousness but it delights in the Truth. Let us delight in the Truth so that the world may know that we are His and that the love that the Father had for the Son in the beginning is now in us.

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[1] Lest I assume a biblical framework that is not holistic.

[2] 1 Corinthians 13:12

[3] Matthew 5:45

[4] John 3:16

[5] Exemplified in the privilege of Israel and the statement Paul quotes in Romans 9:13

[6] If you think this is harsh, read Matthew 18:15-17. Church discipline is a good, real thing. 
*Obviously the Church's authority is not binding for those outside, which Paul speaks on. But if someone is in severe, unrepentant sin and claiming to be a believer, Paul's got some stuff to say about that. 

Give Us This Day Our What Bread?

The Greek word, “epiousion”, only appears once in the Greek language: the fourth petition in the Lord’s prayer. You may know it translated as “daily” in “Give us this day our daily bread.” As you understand, it’s kinda difficult to translate a word that only appears once in a language. Confusion about how to understand this word goes all the way back to the Early Church Fathers. Does it mean my bread for today? Does it mean my bread for tomorrow? Does it mean just barely enough for me to make it through the day? Over the centuries, branches of the Church has taken each of these meanings to be authoritative. Must we choose one? Or is there another way?

The Old Syriac Bible is probably our oldest record of the New Testament. It is also important to note that Syriac as a language is much closer to the Aramaic that Jesus most likely spoke. This opens up some interesting possibilities for untranslatable Greek words, of which we have many. If one looks at the Lord's prayer in this Bible, the word that “epiousion” turns into is a word that means “lasting, never-ceasing, never-ending, or perpetual”. So in the Syriac interpretation, it’s Jesus telling us to pray that the Lord gives us today lasting bread. Bread that doesn’t run out. That’s sustenance for today and tomorrow. That’s deliverance from the fear and anxiety of not having enough to eat. It is from Him that we get our food today and it is from Him that we get the confidence that we’ll have enough tomorrow. I don't know about you, but that is an interpretation that encompasses each and every one of the church's many interpretations. 

The phrase, “Give us this day our bread that doesn’t run out”, is much richer than we might think. First, it is an acknowledgement that our survival and sustenance is a gift from God. It is only by the grace of God that we live, breathe, and eat. Not only is this life a gift, but it is one that we pray for daily to remind us of the fact. It is also distinctly communal. I don’t pray for “my” bread, but rather “our” bread. It is not enough just that I survive, but that I pray for the continued sustenance of the Church and my fellow pilgrims. Lastly, it is, as I said before, bread that doesn’t run out. We pray to the Father that He might give us eternal bread. That includes food to eat, strength of faith…you know. Everything you need. Take another look at the Lord’s Prayer. Who knows? Deeper contemplation might change some stuff.
This is what I love about our Scripture. There are paradoxes and ambiguities galore, but when we investigate them, they always lead to deeper truth and ultimately, to the love and knowledge of an awesome God.