Category: Jesus

Advent Peace: Like a River

Shalom.

We often settle for a simple definition of that common Hebrew word taking its definition of peace. Peace for many would be the absence of conflict. For our persecuted brothers and sisters, peace would be not just the absence of conflict but also the cessation of hostility toward them, the restoration of their livelihood, their residence, their ability to worship without threat, or even, their lives. Peace takes many forms and numerous connotations and שָׁלוֹם encompasses them all. Shalom is not simply the absence of strife, it is an expression of being complete in your well being. There is peace in our physical and psychological security and then there is the shalom of God in which we are at peace spiritually.

Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other. (Ps 85:10)

This week of our joyful season of advent is a reminder of the peace that we through our binding faith in Jesus. He is our promised restoration of the shalom, the Prince of Peace. Though we may continue to sense the un-peace of the world, our faith lies not in this place but in the new Heavens and Earth over which our Lord will reign and once again, all will be righted.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27)

God promises peace like a river, a shalom like the crashing waves:

For this is what the Lord says: I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream; you will nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; (Isaiah 66:12-13)

river The anticipation of this Peace is the center of our prayers this week. We shall pray for it to wash over us, to crash mightily on top of us and to carry us toward the promise of the kingdom of God.

Maranatha!

Advent Hope: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

Just seeing the words in the title triggers an immediate, visceral response in follower of Christ who has been around the church for more than a single Advent. It immediately brings to mind the carol in all of its brooding minor keys. Singing that difficult song produces a unique feeling; the melody and notes take you instantly to a high church-ancient reverence as you intone the plea of so many before you – Come Immanuel – Come God With Us!

In many churches this week, the Scripture readings included this well known verse from Isaiah:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isa 7:14)

The promise of the Prince of Peace and the Everlasting Father  as the righting of the world. How we long for that.

The hope that arrives in the newborn baby.

Advent is a season of anticipation with weekly or daily reminders of what is to come. Our eyes and hearts rarely turn backward during this period; we are focused in hope on the birth of the Savior. His coming into the world restores our sometimes shaky faith and dispels the feeling that God might have left us to our self-created rewards here in the world. To know that the Wonderful Counselor will walk with us once again, as the Father walked with Adam, is to be given the greatest gift of all. Our hopes for the shoring up of the crumbling walls of the city, the banishment of our enemies, the restoration of vision that Bartimaeus, all will be made right with the One who created and sustains it:

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. (John 1:3-5)

Advent reminds us that our hope lies in one thing, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Maranatha!

Janet Weiss – Louise – Bull Durham’s Jesus

Actress Susan Sarandon recently spoke about the Jesus that she knows. It appears from here statements regarding the divinity of all humankind that she perceives, that this Jesus was just another guy like you and me, divine but also an activist. Forgive my naivete, but isn’t an activist one who protests and campaigns to achieve a change in the order of things? Jesus was not trying to get the rest of the divines around him to help him change the order, HE CHANGED IT. Perhaps a closer reading of the Bible would help Miss Sarandon [and her partner Mr. Robbins] with an understanding of how Jesus engage the world. (You can read the interview from which this comes here.)

You and Tim [Robbins, Sarandon’s longtime partner] are so well known for being peace activists. What are some ways that regular people can help bring peace into the world?
I think it really starts with your neighbors. I think it starts with your everyday life and living as Christ did, in a loving way and a respectful way. That, then, leads to questioning other things. And you find in your heart what resonates with you. And then you have to take action, whether it’s in the street, or licking envelopes, or writing to your congresspeople, or taking care of veterans when they come home. I think that you have to not be result-oriented in order to look back on your life and think it was a life well lived. I think that it’s every single day, the choices that you make in the presence of how you go towards truth and justice. And it’s an individual decision how that manifests itself.
There is certainly so much need in the world for compassion. Every action is a political action. The only thing I’m completely sure of is that inaction is not acceptable.
I think that Christ was an activist. Christ wasn’t afraid. His life is an example of activism. I think that the gap between the rich and the poor contributes to the pain of the world. I think that that anything you can do that helps to alleviate this huge gaping gap between the rich and the poor will eventually make the world a more peaceful place.

‘Louise’ lost me in the second sentence. Jesus did live in a loving way but often, those on the receiving end of His tough love were anything but immediately enamored with Him and He certainly did not travel around the Holy Land and engage others in a respectful way. Read Galli’s book Jesus Mean and Wild to get a better idea of the way that the Lord confronted those who ran opposite to the ideals of His Father’s kingdom. ‘Janet’ then goes on to say that she envisions Jesus as an activist, that He was not afraid. Well, He certainly had nothing to fear, knowing full well that God had everything well in hand. On the other hand, he held a special contempt for those who had it in their power to relieve the suffering of others and yet did not act; for example, saying that everyone should do what they can in order to alleviate poverty but continuing to store up riches of their own here on earth.

Miss Sarandon, what would your Jesus say about the lifestyle that you and Mr. Robbins openly promote?

The Narrow Theological View of Red-Letter Christians

Dr. Stackhouse has penned this reasoned opinion on the new RLC movement fronted by Bro’s Campolo, Wallis, etc. While the idea of directly applying the words of the Lord appears to create a sound foundation, God’s revelation provides a much wider perspective that Christians must consider. Read it here “Red-Letter Christians”: A Bad Idea with a Bad Name, Alas  and see what you think.

The Mark of the Christian by Francis Schaeffer

Required Reading for Every Single Follower of Christ

shaeffer

Go to your library. Right now, this very moment. Scan the titles and covers. Do you find the book shown at the right? Look carefully as, at 59 pages, this slim volume could easily be hidden by larger, more ponderous volumes attempting to convey similar messages. Did you find a book by the same author entitled The Church at the End of the 20th Century? If the answer is no, you must obtain a copy of The Mark of the Christian as quickly as possible. Don’t tarry, for each moment the Body continues headlong into history without absorbing this message we move further away from one of the Lord’s most important messages,

 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  John 13:34-35

Love is to be our mark. Love within the Body is to be a light that illuminates the world showing that there is a different way, a better way. Each and every action that the world sees, both within and without of the Body, is to marked by this Love. Shaeffer turns our eyes toward the evangelistic purpose of this bond of love in John 17:20-21,

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”

And if our actions toward other Christians fall short of this ideal of love? Shaeffer indicates that we should interpret this as a dire warning; the world has every right to judge US as not being true Christians. We cannot expect the world to believe in the truth of the Lord Jesus if they do not see the mark, the distinctive imprint of oneness within the Body. Read this book. Monthly if necessary until your mark is so indelible that the world will not mistake it for anything else.

Reformed Jesus, Merely a Prop?

A key verse often cited as evidence of the Calvinist interpretation of the concept of election and predestination is the berakah in Ephesians 1:3-6. It reads like this:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will– to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

Given the supralapsarian metrics of this passage, as we align it with the the petals of the TULIP some questions arise. The notion of some being chosen (elected) before the creation of the world while others are simultaneously selected for reprobation via God’s sovereign decision forms the very center of Calvin’s theological framework. It is important to note that the order of the selection chooses from among humans who have yet to be stung by the poison of sin, since the Fall has yet to be authored by the Father. In other words, they are yet to become totally or even partially depraved when their unconditional election occurs.They are already Saints, consecrated and set apart according to Sproul (Ephesians, 24.) When the Lord is cruelly and viciously sacrificed on the tree, it is an already foregone conclusion that the expiation (atonement) will apply only to those selected pre-creation. It logically follows then that the eternal status of these blessed few does not require their assent, nor can it be denied except by the Sovereign who decided it.

Calvinist W.J. Seaton (The Five Points of Calvinism) comments on the limited application of the sacrifice of Christ.

Christ died positively and effectually to save a certain number of hell-deserving sinners on whom the Father had already set His free electing love.

Note again that these “hell-deserving sinners” were created by God for the express purpose of being such. Why then is the sacrifice of Jesus necessary? If the Elect are holy and blameless from and for all of eternity then, it stands to reason, the Fall was orchestrated simply to provide the means to condemn those not selected for sanctification. It becomes merely a symbolic act in the predestined history of the World, necessary to further the story for which the conclusion is already known. If the Elect are claimed holy and blameless, why does God allow them to be stained by sin (Rom 5:14)? Because sin is in the world (at His permission and only eternally affecting those who are elected to perdition), God demands propitiation. His Holiness requires that atonement comes only from an equally holy sacrifice. Thus, the Christ must be the sacrifice. But the righteousness that He imputes, (cf Rom 5:17) is it needed by those already considered from eternity past to be holy and blameless? Does this doctrine not belittle the cross?

Why then was the Cross necessary? To show His love to those he has already given His eternal promise to? To demonstrate His sovereignty or power to all the rest whom He has left powerless to affect their eternal condemnation in Hell? In light of the order of elements above, Jesus become just a prop in the play, not really necessary but used to further the plot. Or, as Robert Reymond suggests, God does not see the men He creates as men but as sinners because His decretal system is not sequential but, simultaneous. However this process is enumerated, does it not hold true that God creates humankind knowing that they are a) going to sin because he created them that way with the ability (will) to walk counter to His commands and b) that some of them are created specifically for the purpose of being destroyed?

There are so many questions…does Calvin offer any answers?

Jesus Mean and Wild by Mark Galli

God loves you and has a difficult plan for your life.

There’s a phrase almost guaranteed NOT to make an appearance at the next revival or evangelism event in your church. When introducing Jesus to others, we more often than not default to the meek and mild savior who rolls his eyes at our follies, who is our buddy when we want Him near and who conveniently walks the other way in situations where He is really not welcome. The attractive Jesus of the blue eyes and curly blond hair and piercing stare is the one who adorns our church walls and literature.

image But what of the Jesus who makes a whip of cords to clear the temple, who expresses his anger and frustration at the blindness of his disciples, and who will leave us alone at just the wrong moment? What do we do with this Jesus, author Mark Galli asks in his superb book  Jesus Mean and Wild. I’ve been wanting to read this book for about a year now and after finally sitting down for a couple of days to do so, I was not disappointed. Galli leads us to look at Jesus in a way different from how we usually encounter him, as the militant whose love for us sometimes takes the form of tough love. As he walks us through different passages in the Gospel of Mark, we run into a Jesus whose idea of comforting our wounds is to salt them – painful in the short term but healing in the long run.

The Jesus that we are reminded of in the pages of Galli’s book is a portrait that the modern Church often reads quickly past. This is the Jesus that loves us enough to speak harshly to us in order to encourage our repentance. He is the savior that is willing to heal but rebukes the receiver of the miracle as He pushes him away. The Rabbi we encounter is disrespectful of authority other than those truly devoted to the Father. In a reminder that is needed by the churches today that strive for relevance above all else, Jesus appears to us (Mark 8:31-33) as the ultimate measure of irrelevance. In a chapter that points out that following Jesus faithfully is far and beyond more important than being culturally relevant [that is also excerpted in Christianity Today July 2006], Galli offers a cutting warning to Church and pastors of vision.

Coming to the final chapters of the book makes you want to return to page one and soak in this portrait of Jesus all over again, slowly savoring the words and illustrations that help us to see a more well rounded Jesus than we are often tempted to preach or talk about. With just a few pages remaining, Galli gives us the starkest reminder of the way of the Savior when he says “Just when we need him most, God forsakes us.” We certainly do not want to admit this about our Lord, but he leaves us alone just at those moments that we most desperately think that we need Him. Why? So that we can share in the grief that Jesus knew at that bleak moment on the cross when he cried out to the silent heavens and know the indescribable joy of reuniting with God when He chooses to break the silence. We are shaken but stronger, mute in His glory but far more merciful than we could ever imagine.