I Did It My Way

Honesty compels us to admit that at times, it is difficult to construct genuine enthusiasm over reading through the Law.  Sometimes, there comes a still, small voice from inside (decidedly not the voice of God, especially since the canon is closed) which whispers with wistful apathy that the stickier regions of the Pentateuch do not apply to the Christian soldier, fighting on this side of Calvary. 

Of course, this is far from true, and so we tell ourselves, but that voice responds with cloying plaintiveness that perhaps we would care to name a reason these books are so useful.  Rest assured, I am not about to enumerate all of the reasons - the limitations of both my understanding and my blog space preclude this.  However, I would like to make mention of one.

The Law shows us that we must do things God's way, if He has established one.

Consider this for a moment.  On one hand, there is much hue and cry regarding how works can by no means save us.  This is indisputable; however, it has given some people undue cause to move toward the opposite pole and suggest that obedience is a matter solely of the heart.  In other words, what we do is not important; only the spirit in which we do it matters.  So we speak of someone's "heart being in the right place," or we suggest that they have a "good heart," even if they are flagrantly disregarding some clear principle laid down in 1 Corinthians or Philippians or Matthew. 

What we see in the Law is a picture of our unchanging God, who delivered a very specific and lengthy prescription for all manner of ceremonial happenings and national government.  These commands were issued by God with the full desire that His people be obedient in those specific ways, or else He would not have troubled to give them.  This is how you must worship Me.  This is how My people are to be ruled.  This is how you are to conduct yourself toward foreigners.  And yes, this is how many, exactly how many, loops you are to sew into each curtain of My tabernacle. 

Nobody would have dared to say, "I believe the tabernacle curtains would be better with 40 loops instead of 50.  It is more inviting somehow."  And even if someone had, his or her friends would not have answered, "We believe your heart is in the right place, and that you are seeking to honor God, so let us do as you say with the tabernacle loops."  They would have said, "This is in such obvious contradiction to God's delivered command that we beg you would not speak of this thing again."  The heart, you see, has no bearing in it at all.

However, have we not done this very thing in the church age?  "I could not bear to hurt him when he asked me that question, so I hid the truth from him."  "Amen; you have a true heart of compassion."  Or, "I know I was using profanity, but with some unbelievers, this is the only way to really connect with them."  "You have such a heart for the lost."  Indeed.

The sort of God who would share this optimistic indifference to His own commands is nowhere found in the Old Testament.  The biblical God is insistent that His law be kept; He is neither pleased nor amused by alterations of any sort.  The Israelites understood this (Ex. 24:7), and God was careful to command this (Deut. 4:2). 

The Old Testament God is not a whit different than the New Testament God.  His expectations have not diminished; His morality has not altered.  Though we do not, as the church, live under the ceremonial or national laws laid down in the Pentateuch, yet we understand from these books that God was, and therefore is, specific in His commands and desires, and we must fall in line with Him.  Here are a couple principles:

1.  Worship and seek God as He desires to be worshipped and sought.  We do not have sacrifices or priestly garments or a tent of meeting, but we see from the Law that God is very concerned with how His people gather and approach Him.  We therefore dare not forsake the construct which He has established for believers in light of the completed gospel:  the church.  We are designed, and indeed commanded (cf. Heb. 10:25), to fit within a body of believers, to worship Him and to serve Him as an active part of His bride.  This does not negate the personal disciplines that must incubate in our souls, or the need for godliness throughout our week, but we understand that the church is a gift from the Father to Christ His Son.  We cannot seek our Lord on different terms and expect blessing or recognition for it, just as the Jews could not scorn the tabernacle and the sacrifices.

2.  Find contentment where you have been placed.  God desires quality.  He commands skillful work repeatedly as He relates the details of the tabernacle and the garments in Exodus, and later Moses carefully recounts that skillful work.  It is axiomatic that God desires and deserves quality in all areas of devotion, so we must function within His church in those areas in which we can contribute quality.  The temptation here, of course, is to conclude that we could be of greater service if only we were allowed to work in a different ministry, or to head up the ministry in which we currently work, but we must question our own hearts.  Are we simply looking to avoid the work that we feel is trivial?  Are we looking for recognition?  What is our actual (not perceived) skill set?  Someone says, "God qualifies the called, and not vice versa."  This is true, but we must be careful how we mean by "called" in this case.  A burning desire to do a certain ministry does not necessarily mean one is called to it.  Take care with your ministerial discontentment, and do not trust your own heart alone in these matters.

In a nutshell, do it God's way, whenever applicable.  He has never been silent on the matters that are dear to Him.

A Painless Pointer on the Greek

WARNING:  If you have a stack of blank flash cards at the ready, please put them aside.  Conversely, if you are pushing away your laptop in disgust, pull it back in.  I did say "painless." 

English sentences are constructed fairly rigidly.  I could say, "Fairly rigidly are constructed sentences English," and you might understand me, but, once you got past the fact that I was speaking like Master Yoda, you would admit that I simply am not being very clear.  It is either confusing or unintelligible, since we derive the meaning of our sentences, in part, from the order in which we arrange the words within them.  For instance, if I say, "He made his friend the captain," it means something completely different than, "He made the captain his friend."  Only the order dictates the meaning here; it determines (for you grammar geeks) what the direct object and indirect object are.

This is not the case nearly so often in the Greek, where nouns and verbs are modified to demonstrate their function in a sentence.  This means they can be moved about within the sentence without impeding clarity. 

Yes, Josh, but what is the point of this?  Why does it matter?  It matters because the syntactical flexibility afforded by Greek grammar effectively emancipates word order from its enslavement to sentence meaning.  The word order does not help to define what the sentence means, so Greek authors used word order for something else entirely:  emphasis.¹  If there were a word or phrase they sought to stress, they would put it at the beginning of a sentence or clause.  Thus word order can be an additional clue as to the author's focus or intent.

The issue we must confront is that in our English Bibles, these emphases are not always elucidated.  Sometimes they do not survive translation, because the English equivalent either would not make sense, or would sound, once again, like Frank Oz's diminutive Jedi creation.  It can be well worth the effort, though, to discover the word order from the Greek.

Consider a few examples which I will quote from both the 2001 English Standard Version and the 1898 Revised Young's Literal Translation (which generally seems to reflect a rather stringent adherence to original word order - I did verify both of my examples in the original Greek, but cannot speak regarding the entire translation.  And of course I do not recommend it as a primary Bible, as it does not account for the legitimate archaeological or lexical advances made by conservative biblical scholarship over the past century or so).

1.  Matthew 7:22

• ESV:  "On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?'"
• RYLT:  "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, lord, have we not in your name prophesied? And in your name cast out demons? And in your name done many mighty things?"

This is familiar - Christ describes how some unbelievers will attempt to convince Him of their sincere deservedness of heaven.  Two major word order differences are evident.  First, the ESV recounts the actions these people supposedly carried out, each followed by "in your name."  However, the original word order has the phrase "in your name" moved out to the beginning of each clause, as seen with the RYLT.  The ESV, then, would suggest that these unbelievers will point to what they did as proof of their deservedness of eternal blessing (prophesying, casting out demons, and mighty works); however, the original Greek indicates that they hang their hopes more on how they did these presumed works (in Christ's name).  This adds a sobering layer of tragedy of their foolish assertions:  not only do they believe they have worked their own way into heaven, but they believe that it was all carried out for the Lord. 

Second, the ESV begins the verse with, "On that day," while the RYLT starts out, as the Greek does, with "many [people]."  It would seem, then, that Christ's concern is not to emphasize that people will voice their own desperate deception on the day of judgment, bur rather that there will in fact be many such people who are deceived.  This is in keeping with verse 21, where Christ begins by saying, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven." (ESV) Not everyone will enter; in fact, many will prove to be hypocrites.  These are nuances, perhaps, but sobering ones that enrich the text; no?

2.  Colossians 2:6

• ESV:  "Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him."
• RYLT:  "As, then, you did receive Christ Jesus the Lord, in him walk." 

This one is a simpler example.  There is a subtle shift in the final clause of the sentence; the original Greek, reflected in the RYLT, draws out an emphasis upon Christ:  "in him walk."  There is, once again, a stress not upon the what, but the how.  Everyone walks in some manner or another (cf. Phil. 3:17-19), but our receiving of Christ should prompt us to walk in him.  Don't just walk; walk in him, brothers and sisters! 


As I said, it is often worth the effort to find out the original word order in the Greek as a part of our New Testament studies.  Tools like the more literal Bible translations, or even some online interlinear Bible tools (like this), can help us in this task without requiring us to be fluent in Koine Greek.  However we do it, though, it can help us to get into the minds, and into the hearts, of the biblical authors, and capture just a bit more of the Lord's revelation.

And there's nothing wrong with that at all.


¹ Mounce, William D.  Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar.  2nd Edition.  Grand Rapids, MI:  Zondervan. 2003.  pp. 31-32.

God Bless the Child (Who Gives Us Peace)

This, believe it or not, is a post about Christ, and though it may not appear as such for a while, I must importune your patience and indulgence.  Sometimes the sobering realities of humanity's deserved lot are the best way to illuminate Christ's glory; amen?

Imagine for a moment that you have died in your sins, and that the time of your judgment has come upon you. (You will remind me, of course, that these are events very likely to be separated in time for most of us, which is true, but we will skip to the judgment here.) You find yourself, eyes to the ground, before the Lord Jesus Christ, unmistakable in power and incontrovertible in holiness.  This is no dying Savior upon the cross, not anymore.  This is the risen, exalted King.  Perhaps those words once caused no more than a shrug or a smirk with you, but now you see what they mean, in their fullest, most wondrous, most terrifying sense:  Christ, the risen, exalted King.

You feel the hope and the confidence bleeding out from your heart - a flow not to be stanched, a death wound.  Your legs are stone, and you make no doubt that this God - the only God there is, you now see - will know all about you, more than you know yourself, and far, far more than you would care to remember, if you could help it.  Your life is laid bare, though, and the sum total of what you are overwhelms the simple objections you used to make in defense of your supposed goodness of character.

You are a sinner.  God is holy.  He justly delivers your sentence of condemnation.

Perhaps you meet this sobering moment with quiet.  Perhaps, though, you are familiar with Jesus, and so feel as though your long hypocrisy gives you cause to speak, to say something before all is lost.  So words erupt from your lips and hang as a conspicuous intrusion into the reverence demanded by divine holiness.  You have just spoken the only words you will ever speak in the presence of God, and they are blasphemous:  "‘Lord, Lord, did I not do many things in your name?" (cf. Matt. 7:22) You have questioned the recollection of the Omniscient, and the judgment of the Omnisapient (the All-Wise); He is not moved; this latest sin augments your considerable tally, and you go down to the lake of fire.

As you find yourself in the suffocating maw of that blackness, the punishment will begin.  Whether you have a brief instant to anticipate and to dread the arrival of God's wrath or not, I cannot say.  However, when the fullness of divine, just, holy fury explodes upon you in that lonely place, it will exceed the meager limitations of any of your experiences or imaginings.  You will feel, in that first instant, that there is no possibility of your surviving even this preliminary fragment, this barest sliver, of God's fury.  How indeed could it not destroy you, and all of the universe with you, in a truncated flash of agony?  It is as though every conceivable pain which mankind has ever endured, or ever could endure, through every millennium of our world, has been compressed and concentrated into one divine blow - except a thousand times stronger.

The intensity of this fury is not the amazing part - the truly astonishing thing is that you find yourself quite whole and intact; indeed, the next wave of torment is already upon you.  You find even that your mental faculties are similarly preserved, although such complete agony should drive one mad.  It is then that it drives home in your perfectly clear intellect - the same God who visits such omnipotent fury upon you is the God who has omnipotently fitted you for that fury.  It will never consume you completely.

This is a pain beyond reckoning, a sharp, hot, complete misery that would annihilate a normal human body in a heartbeat.  Ten thousand white-hot bands of iron wrapped about your frame and searing into your flesh would be a welcome, even laughable alternative to what you now endure.  How I wish it could be described!  It crowds out and banishes hope.  You may clench your fists; you may double over until your knees touch your cheeks, but no such measures will bring relief.  Your tricks from your previous life can do nothing here.  Neither is there a friend whose hands you may grip, whose shoulder you could embrace.  You are utterly alone; your only companions are your own cries.  There is also nothing to distract your mind from your torment; the once-pleasant recollections of your former life now simply herald your sinfulness.

In fact, in the basest sense, this is probably the complete and ultimate focus of all your thoughts:  God and my sin.  God and my sin.  God and my sin.  Every wave of agony brings a fresh remembrance of your absolute deservedness of hell.  You cannot argue against the justness, but as you never learned to love God when you labored under His grace, you certainly cannot do so now.  You find yourself cursing Him with the appallingly blasphemous self-destruction of unrestrained sinfulness.  And for this, your miseries are now doubled, but still you live. 

As this indescribable maelstrom of inescapable agony continues, you realize that you are not growing accustomed to it at all.  It is in no way like those pains back on earth that afflict people until they simply learn to deal with them on a continual basis.  Every stab, every bite, every hot needle is exquisite in its novelty and relentless upon your person.  If there are two things which you begin to learn after the first thousand years of unbroken torment (that first drop in that infinite, incomprehensible bucket), they are simply that you will never grow even the slightest bit acclimated to your situation (if anything, the contrary), and that you will never, ever get out of hell.  Could you see that great ocean that is God's holy wrath against you, your heart would break to see that it has not lowered even a thousandth of an inch.  Your shrieks of pain, of frustration, of hopelessness, and of black, impotent rage, will never cease to pour from your parched and writhing lips. 

This is what it is to have enmity with God - a battle which we can never win, and which will rob us of every glory, every prize, every grace, and every hope.  Of course, we have no choice but to be the enemies of the Lord, having been born into the family of sin.  Romans 3 teaches us that we never could and never would love God, so it seems a hopeless matter from a human standpoint.  We are doomed, in and of ourselves, to run straight into the teeth of hell.

I speak specifically to you here, Christian.  Walk your mind as profoundly as you can through the horrific marches of hell, which, for all these words, I have not even begun to describe here - this is how the enemies of God meet eternity.  It is sure, unavoidable, and deserved. 

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6

These are familiar words, but does your heart not bound for gladness at them?  Read the last phrase once more:  Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace.  This is a far, far greater thing than the dubious fraternity that the world pretends around Christmas - this is peace with God Himself!  This is a complete reversal from the devastating certainty of eternal despair at the hand of a just God to the heartening certainty of eternal delight at the hand of that same God!  "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Rom. 5:1)

Let us never commit the sin of naming Christ the Prince of Peace without reverent remembrance of what that means - the incredible magnitude of the hell which He suffered on the cross, and the immeasurable gift of peace with God.  Our esteem for Christ the peace-giver should be seeping more and more, if not outright flooding, into every element of our lives - certainly into our interaction with others and into our faithfulness to kingdom work, but let it start where it should, with a heart of humble and grateful worship toward the Prince of Peace.

I Have Some Things Say About Your Attitude (...Young Man)

I can say with unique authority that I know nothing of psychology - I would like to see someone argue with me on that.  As such, the ground upon which I venture today may seem tenuous, but I believe it can be supported from scripture nonetheless. 

Effectively, there is a link between the mind and the will, and that link is one's attitude.  The mind informs the will, and the will in turn directs the mind.  I perceive a situation with my mind, my attitude is formed, and that attitude dictates what I will do, or where my mind will go next.  We may say, then, that attitude influences the will, draws from the mind, and can even recast the emotions.  Attitude is not a trifling force.

One thing needs to be said, though - attitude is not a ring through my nose, by which I am led about by the various situations of life.  It can be, if I allow it; that is, if my attitude about my attitude is so defined, but attitude is essentially an active pursuit.  For proof of this, we can turn to the book of the Bible that uses the Greek verb pertaining to attitude, phroneo, most heavily - Paul's letter to the Philippians.  Let us examine each instance of phroneo individually:

• Phil. 2:5 - "Have this attitude [that of humility] in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus."  This is an imperative to make our attitude one of humility, based upon the perfect example of our Lord.  God would not command an action that could not be controlled.
• Phil. 3:15a - "Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude [of actively pursuing the goal of holiness]."  We must fashion our attitudes as believers around growth in righteousness. 
• Phil. 3:19b - "[the enemies of the cross of Christ] set their minds on earthly things."  The ungodly, in contrast, fix their attitudes on the temporal, the fading, the selfish.
• Phil. 1:7 - "For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me."  Paul has formed his attitude about the Philippians based upon their support of him, as well as their gospel work.
• Phil. 4:10a - "But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at last you have revived your concern for me."  Paul is gladdened by their renewed attention toward him, which manifests itself practically in their financial support of his kingdom work.
• Phil. 2:2a - "Make my joy complete by being of the same mind."  A sameness of attitude is essential in the church, if there is to be true unity.
• Phil. 4:2 - "I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord."  Divisive attitudes bring about division in the church, such that Paul must appeal to the rest of the church in verse 3 to lend their aid in this situation.

In none of these verses does Paul even breathe the suggestion that attitude is passive, that we are helplessly tossed about, and sometimes capsized, upon an imperious ocean of impulses and effects.  Attitude is something that needs to be wrested, with an often constant spiritual vitality, back to a proper focus upon the things of the Lord.  We are not, then, victims of our attitudes as much as we have hobbled ourselves with our poor choices regarding our attitudes.  We need to keep our attitudes in check.

Of course, we see here in Philippians the sort of attitudes that we are to nurture.  We are to strive after humility and righteousness (and we cannot have just one or the other of these - it is simply impossible).  We must give esteem and support to the work of God's kingdom.  It is essential that we press toward a harmonious attitude in our churches, in order that unity might flourish (of course, this is God's kind of unity, not ours, as Paul makes clear throughout Philippians). 

Note that attitude gives way to action.  Attitudes predict actions, and actions illuminate attitudes.  The Philippians, in renewing their concern for Paul, begin once more to support his ministry.  Paul's attitude toward the Philippians prompts his glad and continual prayer.  His attitude about his own imperfections leads him to press on toward righteousness.  And this is the crucial and sometimes devastating truth about attitude:  it is never content to be cloistered within the quiet confines of one's heart and mind.  It must birth action appropriate to its own nature.  Attitude sparks joy, and selfless love, and endurance, or else it incubates the plagues of pessimism, discontent, and apathy. 

The implications are clear, and the stakes high.  Could they indeed be higher?  Attitudes make a church rise or fall; attitudes spurn or invite temptation.  Attitudes build either an indestructible joy or a rickety happiness, a centered, godly, love or a listless, circumstantial preference. 

How is your attitude, Christian?  And how is mine?

Forget the Bad - Fear the Good!

God's self-understanding is beyond questioning.  Thus His descriptions of His many counterfeits, those would-be comers in the sealed arena of deity, are always crushingly perceptive.  For instance, when He warns His people in Jeremiah 10 not to trifle with idols, He says this of them in verse 5:

Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot walk!
Do not fear them,
For they can do no harm,
Nor can they do any good.

In other words, idols do not possess even the vigor needed simply to move or to speak.  Where, then, is the logical basis for fearing acts of judgment or vengeance from such as these, when they have no more strength or volition than a head of cabbage?  (Though, to be sure, there are those who do fear cabbage.)  God renders this crystal clear when He explains that idols cannot do evil (a better translation than "harm," it appears), and certainly they can do no good either.

A god who can act evilly is surely one to be feared:  what sort of tragedies, calamities, or injustices might be visited upon us, without warning, cause, or explanation?  What promise could be made that we could trust?  What assurance could we enjoy, even of our continued existence?  How could such a god be appeased beyond doubt?

However, all the terrors that would attend a god capable of evil are nothing compared to the very real terrors of our living, holy God, who can do only good.  A perfectly good and holy God is a God of integrity, a God of preserved promises, and a God of faithful, fulfilling action.  While this means that we may trust His salvation with a grip that even death's cold fingers are helpless to loosen, it also means that we must trust His condemnation in the same way.  His holiness is relentless, and it will be satisfied and avenged. 

This should devastate our glib, cavalier hearts.  An evil god may tire of punishing a certain enemy, or else this god may feel that the punishment has at last become equal to the crime.  A perfectly holy God, on the other hand, knows that any offense against Himself is immeasurable, and must be punished immeasurably.  His integrity will see His work done, and His justice does not permit Him to parole His enemies.  His honesty cannot overlook the treachery of a sin, so every one must be accounted for, either on the cross of Christ, or in an eternity of hot, dark, agony.

To die, unrepentant and prideful, and thus to fall into the hands of a holy and offended God, is a prospect overwhelming in its hopelessness.  To live, unrepentant and prideful, in the knowledge that you are actively offending a holy God should provoke an urgency of fear sufficient to dwarf and obscure any other concern of life.  Even to live as believers in the throes of unrepentant sin should cause our hearts to quail, for if we look at ourselves in this dreary light, we will find all of our former assurance unceremoniously stripped away (1 John 2:3-6, 2 Peter 1:3-9).

To summarize, then, God uses the nature of idols to reveal something about Himself.  He says, in essence, "Do not fear idols; they can do nothing.  Do not fear evil gods, for these are not real.  Fear Me, because I am real, and because I am holy."  There is no hope found in the folly of defiance; the only real hope is the hope that God extends to us in the blood of His Son, spilled for the punishment of the sins of those who would believe in Him and turn from those sins.  To the believer and the unbeliever alike, I say simply this - do not harden your heart to this.  Believe in His justice, and then live in His grace.  He extends certainty of that eternal salvation which alone can deliver us from the certainty of eternal destruction.  Repentantly seek this with all your heart, and when God has blessed your humble frame with this salvation, do not fritter away the blessed assurance of that salvation through persistent disobedience!  Take fullest advantage of His unspeakable kindness, friend.

We will let Jeremiah's fittingly humble response ring in our ears as we close:

There is none like You, O Lord;
You are great, and great is Your name in might.
Who would not fear You, O King of the nations?
Indeed it is Your due!
For among all the wise men of the nations
And in all their kingdoms,
There is none like You.
- Jeremiah 10:6-7