Predestination....Apostolic Style

While rifling through some passages on predestination and election the other day, in an attempt to set some thoughts down on paper (ok- on screen), I came across what was, for me, a remarkable realization.   I was never quite sure of how to think about predestination.  I was not comfortable with some deterministic view of everything that happens, including of salvation.  "If it happened, God did it," goes one type of logic.  Not buying that, really.

This is what I discovered. And I'm not sure if this has been written about before (most things have, I guess), but I've never heard this interpretation of this passage.  The passage is Ephesians 1 starting in verse 3:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. 

So yeah, we're talking about having been "chosen," "predestined" for something- adoption, to the praise of his glorious grace. All this "before the foundation of the world."  Then it goes on:

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

So "we" have obtained an inheritance which was predestined for us, according to the purposes of God.  Easy to read as your meat-and-potatoes, predestinarian theology, proving that salvation, or adoption, or hoping in Christ is actually the work of God.  Seems to nicely line up as a proof-text for Reformation soteriology.  But then....

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

 Did you catch that? "In him you also...."  Wait, who's you? Who's he talking about now?  It appears that only when verse 13 begins that Paul begins referring to the Ephesians.  Well who on earth was he talking about before that??  Why, the apostles themselves, of course.  "...we who were the first to hope in Christ..."

He starts the letter by explaining what has happened in Christ through the apostolic witness.  These are the predestined ones, the ones who were chosen before the foundation of the world to bear the news of God's reconciliation through Christ to the nations. To "unite all things in him..." The Ephesians are only the object of his description after he's done describing the apostles, and then he stops using the words like "predestined" and "chosen before the foundation of the world."

This is called high ecclesiology. That the pre-planned purpose of God was to unite all things, that means all peoples - Jew and Gentile - into one new people of God, in Christ.  This is one of those things that gets screened out when every verse in the Bible gets read as a personal salvation passage, and then discombobulated and placed within the architecture of this or that soteriological framework. Of course predestination has to do with salvation- the salvation of the church, through a message that came to them via the apostles. The apostolic office, the importance of a select few people who alone were given the particular task of being vessels for the Gospel to the world after the Ascension, is one of those nasty little details that protestants like to deal with as little as possible, for fear of being called "catholic" or of endangering sola scriptura.

I'm open to correction on this. But if I'm right, then it's entirely unacceptable to use Ephesians 1 as a defense of Calvinism, the predestination of every little thing that happens (not least salvation), or as a principle on which "grace alone" depends.  It refers to the church, through the apostles; the historical inauguration of a new people of God, according to God's eternal purpose, by those who were "eyewitnesses to his majesty." (2 Peter 1:16)

I might add that the use of the word "predestined" in Acts 4:28 seems to be consistent with this.  I'll let you look that one up :)

A sort  of post-script too. I'm no Greek scholar, but I'm told the word "world" can refer to "age." It's a political word. So to the ancient near easterners, the ascension of Caesar Augustus to the imperial throne was the beginning of a "new world."   If that meaning holds true in verse 4, then the choosing that occurs "before the foundation of the world," probably just means the choosing of the apostles, the twelve, by Jesus at the beginning of his ministry. This was indeed before the foundation of God's new age that was inaugurated in Christ's death and resurrection.

I'm going to research this stuff more, probably.  So don't take my word for it...

Library In A Tree

I recently picked up a copy of The Book Thief. It topped some bestseller lists and looks like a fascinating read: a look at the rise of the Third Reich, narrated by Death himself.  The kind of thing a fantasy-reader can't wait to get his hands on.

I got it from a "community library," which is to say, a wooden box sitting in a tree in a public area.  Some enterprising idealist set a box with a door and a latch on it (unlocked) for all passers-by to access, and hopefully to contribute new books to- to grow it until it needs a bigger box, and perhaps someday, a building.

This characteristic of the area in which I live. A town of righteous idealists, forever coming up with new DIY projects and ways of fostering community togetherness...it's really quite festive and beautiful at times. The community library is located right next to the co-op market, yet another enterprise of ideals built on the notion of the goodwill of its patrons. "Sure, this eggplant costs 4 times as much as it would at the supermarket down the street, but I just LOVE the ethics of what they're trying to do here and karma is watching, don't you know..." and so it is with a thousand businesses, backyard projects, and alternative schools in the neighborhood.

This idea of building a society that is fundamentally based on people's goodwill, and takes action that assumes that goodwill will remain stable, is a noble idea. It might even be a good endpoint to hope for as an eventual conclusion- the conclusion to the story written by, and upon, suffering.  The eschatology of the humanist, the political progressive, the Enlightenment rationalist and champion of Man's responsibility and capability casts Man's future as Good, and so it should...

Were it not for the 20th century, I might have become a part of such a movement. The problem is that, with such an eschatology, it is easy to assume its potency as long as things are going relatively swimmingly.  Take for instance, the protagonists of The Book Thief (which I have not begun to read yet).  I will assume they are the victims and opposers of the Third Reich. These people will see the rise of Terror Incarnate- the mechanistic forward progress of Man The Destroyer of Man.  They will watch their cities burn. They will smell the flesh of their comrades, and family members. They will witness huge populations of people moved to collude with unthinkable violence, in the name of making the world a better place, all with the best and most progressive moral and political ideology available, and at a time that preened before the mirror as the zenith of Enlightenment Man.

I'm afraid the starry-eyed ideal of the Community Library will not survive such events. If we know our history, we know that post-modernism's anti-hero and 'suspicion of system' was wrought by the modern era's empowerment of destroyers and mass murderers.  The human spirit, rooting itself in the unshakable goodness of Human Spirit, will never survive such things. No, the Library will only exist as long as conditions allow people to THINK themselves good, but that notion can't survive the trauma of real suffering. No such ideology could ever come forth among a people who have lived through a concentration camp.

For that, a similarly clothed, yet altogether different Power is needed- the power of Resurrection. The power of Human Spirit flags quickly, but we are told that Christ "breathed out the Holy Spirit" upon his disciples, the deliverers of Good News to a sorry, messy world.  In doing so, he riveted their eyes upon himself- irreversibly Raised from the dead.  And thus said, "Go into all the nations, preaching this Good News of the Kingdom of God..."

And the world was never the same. The human spirit must find its home- in Christ and the Holy Spirit, in order to see, and work for, its future. No one can watch their city burn, and then go about rebuilding it. Unless of course, they've been given a Vision of the city already rebuilt.

I will patronize the Community Library, at least when it's more expedient than the established Public Library, which is less than half a mile down the street.  I hope that it survives, for the time being anyway. But I will also hope that people like this- our rational humanistic idealist friend- will find a firmer ground to plant his seed in. Because anything can withstand a happy-go-lucky community of child-rearing peace-lovers who always say 'hi' to each other in public places.  If only the other kind of people didn't exist...even within us all.

Inside, Outside

A common theme you will hear is that Christians are all about "heart change." "Stop trying to change yourself, you can't do it, you need God to change your heart." The idea is that an internal transformation needs to happen before the external, visible fruit does.

In a spectacular missing-of-the-point, however, this principle generally just serves to draw our attention inwards, toward the thing we cannot change- our hearts.  The idea is to get us to "stop being so legalistic" or some permutation of that criticism, but really what it's doing is to make us moreso- it's demanding we dwell on invisible, ineffable internality of the self which, for all its need to be changed, cannot possibly be seen, defined, or manipulated by the human will at all.

This is just another way we have of DIS-incarnating the faith. The Christian faith is not all about what happens inside me, to the ineffable selfhood of my being, or something like that.  It's all about what happened, historically, outside of me. Both outside of my body, my heart, and my intentions, but also completely outside of my lifetime- Christ crucified and risen from the grave.

When tempted to dwell on personal "faith adjustment" via some new internalism we think we've discovered, we ought to bring to mind that our attentions and machinations can't be directed at faith, or our intentions, or our motives, or anything else inside of us, because they're out of reach of the senses. Rather, it should be on the external thing that has been set before us humans; then WE will be able to set ourselves personally before IT, and like the adage goes, we will become like what we spend our time looking at.

Interested in entomology? Stare at a praying mantis for awhile.  After long enough, your mind will begin to think like the  one who designed it. Praying mantis-shaped pathways will form in your brain.  You're now a step closer to "mastering" insects.

So yes, we ought to do certain things at certain times, in order to allow the five senses to take it all in.  This type of external focus is the opposite of salvation via "self-effort" (as I've heard it called).  To doubt this is to doubt that God is at work in Creation, and assume that he has only to do with some extra-creational, super-spiritual mode of being, to which we are supposed to escape, if we are to be sanctified.

Enough super-spiritualism. Behold what is outside of you, with your five senses.  Behold Christ. Behold his work. Behold the good things in Creation, and the glory that it is all headed for.

The Collectivism of Scripture, and De-emphasizing the "Personal" In "Personal Salvation"

There's a somewhat spirited conversation going on over at Cerulean Sanctum. Dan's been posting about the "God of the Group," and I've thrown quite a few cents in over there, so I thought I'd just distill some more thoughts, and say my piece over here now.  It being a topic about which I'm rather passionately convinced: that the Bible's content (and God's purpose) is primarily about "a people" and not a bunch of persons.

The word of the day is "collectivism." As opposed to "individualism."

Now, I actually don't know if "collectivism" is the best word for the paradigm governing the lives of the biblical writers.  To at least a few, this will immediately evoke images of Soviet era communism and totalitarian oppression. This is not an uncommon objection, I've discovered when talking about this matter. So I'm not really stuck on the word "collectivism." Maybe "corporatism" would work better.  Or maybe just "union."  Anyway, the point is, people in the Bible generally aren't running around concerned with their "personal relationship with God" as we're often led to believe. Rather they see themselves as folks who belong to a wider "people" which has a corporate relationship with God, which has been effected by the singular salvation of God. And they're very thankful for the God of Israel's redeeming work in history, and that they get to be a part of this people which he saved and preserved for himself. So let's not make the mistake of thinking this produces a less personal response in the individual. 

But one thing that strikes me as telling, is that one of the most common go-to qualifications, if you will, to the notion that the sweep of Scripture is telling us about a "people of God" dwelling with God (rather than about "my personal salvation") is that we must be careful not to say that one can "be saved" by joining a church.

Now, aside from the fact that what's usually meant by "personal salvation" is the believer's eternal, post-mortem destiny, which is not a good place to start with the word "salvation..."

...aside from that, this objection brings us right back around to the very reason we need to hear the correction in the first place- that we're far too individualistic in our concept of salvation and relationship with God! So if we hear that the overwhelming number of references in the Bible to God's people is in the singular, and our primary objection is that "one must be saved individually," We've slipped right back out of alignment before even hearing the content correctly.  This just betrays how badly this correction is needed. 

Doesn't it? Because "individual salvation" is an imported emphasis.  To my knowledge, nothing in Scripture tells us that the saved individuals of, say the book of Acts, conceive of their salvation as a personal, individual thing.  They conceive of it as God's, and as something that has been effected for his people as a whole (that's how Jews thought, after all).  And they have personally walked into this grand unified sweep of God's salvation. 

Salvation ought to be thought of not in terms of its "individual personalness" but in terms of what God is doing for the world, in the world, and for the people of God.  It's calculated in terms of the the goal of the oneness of the community, in Christ. This doesn't mean people come to salvation by becoming part of some de-humanizing hive-mind.  It means that no one obtains a salvation that is not for the entire group. Imagine that- there is no such thing as "personal salvation!" And here I spent so many years trying to feel grateful, or emotionally responsive, about my personal whatzits that God had given to me individually. But it's simply not enough to conceive of it this way.  The Christian church has not experienced a bazillion personal salvations, which just happen to form a community afterwards. The Christian church has experienced one salvation!

If we're simply trying to ward off some notion that salvation happens by joining a church, let's deal with that when we get there. But if you were planning on leaving membership in the Church out of your definition of salvation, I think you'll find that it's a problematic as well.  You don't "get saved" and then as a result of that, "go to church." You "get saved," and the very definition of that salvation includes membership of a body, the Body of Christ. Church isn't something you do once you're saved, it's something salvation creates.  And conversely salvation doesn't merely concern where an individual is going when they die, it concerns how they relate with God and the people of God now.  So if you're talking about a salvation that doesn't by its nature create a unified body in the present, you're not really talking about Judeo-Christian salvation.

Thus when Paul tells the church in Ephesus:

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Eph 5:18-21 ...we do not hear (no matter how true it is!) "I ought to be filled with the Spirit," but "The church in Ephesus (singular) ought to be filled with the Spirit." And this filling will be marked by the 'one another-ing' of its members that flavors Paul's commands.  That's what a verb followed by "one another" does- it de-emphasizes the individual's standing and self-concept, and looks toward a grand, holy unity under Christ towards which the Spirit is bringing the Church. The individual's unique qualities and personal character traits are perfectly respected and preserved- it's just that they now exist for the church!  That's probably why Western Christians are generally a total mess when any sort of holistic scrutiny is put on their obedience.  Their self-concept is that of someone who thinks they ought to obey every command.  Instead, they should think of themselves as members of a body which ought to obey every command. So what does this do to personal responsibility? Does it simply dry up and disappear? Of course not- it means that the personal responsibility, like salvation, is calculated in terms of the goal of oneness of the community, in Christ.  Not personal progress. Not personal destiny.  That's why there are so many "one another" commands in the New Testament.  That's why Jesus prayed in his final hours for unity, and in almost every discourse he gave, the imperatives concerned how his disciples were to treat one another, and the other humans they would encounter.  That's why the vast majority of commands addressed to Christians are addressed to a church, singular (not Christians, plural).  And that's why so many of the illustrations of God's love involve a reuniting of things that were separated before (lost coin, lost sheep, lost son). John 14-18 might be a good place to start. The heart of Jesus' commands therein is "love one another."  Yet this is lost on most of us unless we have the paradigm shift actively placed before us; sometimes it takes many repetitions. Why? The power of socialized understanding- the power of paradigm.  The fish doesn't see the water it's swimming in. How could it?  Westerners don't hear commands to a community, they hear them as if to individuals. This is all a problem of perspective, methinks. It's perfectly understandable if you've been socialized in a radically individualistic society (like ours) to default to an individualistic understanding of Scripture. It's just that we're not designed to stay in one place with our knowledge of God- let's edify one another. If you've got something, you give it to me; if I've got something, I'll give it to you! (how collectivist of me)

The False Logic of Hierarchy

Dave Fitch on the egalitarian/complementarian debate.

This is really brilliantly said. I found myself thinking along these same lines recently, but wasn't really able to put it into words:

"both egalitarians and complementarians are caught in the same logic: the logic of hierarchy and the difference-sameness binary. To me this logic is an exercise in missing the point... I’m for abolishing the whole thing: the entire logic behind both egalitarians and complimentarians. Allow me to explain. 

The “complementarian” approaches to leadership keep hierarchy (and thereby patriarchy) in place thereby being unfaithful to eschatological reality that is the church. “Egalitarian” approaches to leadership often (unintentionally) become the means to ensconce “male dominant” ways/structures of leadership and then invite women into them. Egalitarians find themselves arguing for “equal” access into a leadership as presently conceived (i.e. in patriarchy/hierarchy) never dealing with the hierarchy in the system. But the NT calls for the abolishment of the entire thing. “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” Mark 10:42-43.

Take It Easy on the Pharisees?

A guy named David Leman, at Jesus Creed, is trying to shed some light on the misconceptions about Pharisees.  This is interesting stuff. Example:

• The Temple did not run according to the wishes of the Pharisees; if it had, this would have been a vast improvement and would have made the Temple much more in keeping with what Yeshua believed.

As long as I can remember, I have seen a knee-jerk tendency to level blanket attacks on the Pharisees in the Gospels, and to call any sort of self-righteous behavior today "Pharisiacal."  Leman seems to be saying we're doing the group an injustice because of the tendencies of a few. And worse, we're tempted to classify all of Judaism according the worst of Pharisaism.  And in doing so, making Jesus opposed  to Judaism instead of a renewing, revitalizing element within it.  This should make us think.  Another of his points concerns Paul:

• Paul continued to say, “I am a Pharisee,” the rest of his life and never repudiated this identity.

Are all of his references to his Pharisaism, or scrupulosity for the Torah, to be considered in a negative light? Or is this part of our modern protestant tendency to divide everything up into the "saved by grace" people vs. the "saved by works" people, with the latter category often enveloping anyone who pays scrupulous attention to behavior. Thus giving us the freedom to assume that grace simply means a more loosy-goosy way of doing things?  Are these kinds of assumptions just missing the point?

To this last point, I learned recently that Jesus' denunciation of the Pharisees in Matthew 23 included the the word often translated "self-indulgence," which literally means "weak-willed." He was accusing them of becoming flabby, morally out-of-shape. Not legalistic, per se, although their scrupulosity in things like tithing was certainly a cover-up for their general moral failure.  Which criticism you level at someone has wider implications for how one is required to respond. 

Interesting things to ponder.

My Question(s) for NT Wright

Well geez, I haven't been here in awhile.

I was wondering when/if I'd get back to this. I'm still wondering, but it might be a good idea to make my presence known, if to no one but the vast, surging, meta-conglomerate of binary information that's sweeping through the primordial aether even as I write this, somewhere just out of sight. (can you tell I've been reading cyber-punk novels?) The interwebs. 


I just posted a comment at Rachel Held Evans' blog for NT Wright. They're going to take the five most popular questions and Wright is going to answer them on the blog.  Wow, what an opportunity! 

Here was my first question: 

What are your spiritual disciplines like? What do you think the church's corporate gathering should look like?

And after some reflection, I decided that while I was interested in knowing his answer to this, I want to dig a little deeper and ask something a little more specific to the content of Wright's work that has fascinated me, so I asked this: 

I live in a place where neo-paganism, new age philosophy, and eastern mysticism are extremely popular. I'm not comfortable with the way the church typically interacts with people in these philosophies when it comes to discussing the Christian faith. The witness usually revolves around trying to convince the New Ager that they are a "legalist" trying to save themselves, or somehow worshipping demons, and that they need to trust Jesus Christ for their salvation, alone, because he is God. It often ends up sounding more like a polemic against universalism than it does FOR Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God. It also seems to reduce Jesus to a mere payment for sin, and neglect the rest of his, and Israel's, story. (I've appreciate where you've addressed this reductionism in your work.) 

My question is, how does the Gospel of the Kingdom address such people, both with compassion and affirmation of their desire for good, and without compromise on Jesus' exclusive claim to the throne of the universe, and his promise of redemption through his own Resurrection life? Should the Gospel's nature as the fulfillment of Israel's hope be reflected in the message to the New Ager, and if so how? And how might the Gospel "complete" or fulfill the New Ager's hope for a better world in the same way it did Israel's? Thanks,

Nate

So if you could ask one question of any saint from history, living or dead, who would it be and what would you ask them? 

I would like to write more, but I'm still trying to figure out how much of my time it should take up.  I've been reading a lot, playing a lot of music, and working a fair amount, so it's something that may have to be added to the periphery. But I would still like to continue writing, here or somewhere else.  A different blog, maybe?  

Oh, one more thing: I noticed that there's another blog out there titled "The Jesus Paradigm." Seems we see things in a similar way.  His URL is a lot more simple and direct, though!  

Some Reading Hopes for the New Year, and the Book of Luke

Well, I'm not one for new year's resolutions, but I have been finding myself assembling some intentions for reading in the next 6 months to a year.  Here's what I've got so far: Frank Viola's Epic Jesus, Tullian Tchividjian's Jesus + Nothing = Everything, N.T. Wright's Simply Jesus, George MacDonald's Phantastes, the Auralia's Colors Series by a guy named Jeffrey Overstreet. I'm deep into the very intriguing Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, the first in the Mars Trilogy, a sci-fi series about the colonization of Red Planet.


As far as the Bible is concerned, I plan on spending most of my time in the book of Luke.  I've spent a long time in the book of John, and then Matthew.  My plan has been to do this with each Gospel- spend a couple of years just getting to know it, learning it like a new job or a best friend.  So this year begins (actually it's begun already) the book of Luke.


My thoughts so far begin at the end.  Though we just had Christmas, what has been on my mind has been the Resurrection narrative.  I'm haunted by the tail end of the earthly ministry of the most interesting Man that ever lived. We get, in these last few pages, a look at what must have been the most startling, unbelievable, eye-opening, paradigm-shattering event in the lives of his young followers.  Jesus of Nazareth lives, though he was killed, executed only days before.


Let me start by saying this.  In the presence of the Risen Lord, it would have been nearly impossible for a disciple to want to talk about their joblessness, or the rising cost of health care.  The text says they stood their gawking, "with joy and amazement."  At a time like that, it would have been patently absurd for Thomas, having touched the hands and side of the Savior to have turned around and said, "you know guys, we really ought to try and think positive, because our thought life is going to affect how we behave."  In fact, Thomas may not have been able to take his eyes off of Jesus, standing their radiant with the New Creation.  If he could say anything after picking his jaw up off the floor, it probably would have been something like "He lives! He LIVES!"  There were the disciples, coming off a couple days of fresh grief, listless, unsure of what to do next, afraid of being hunted down, and probably weighed down by some serious guilt.  And there was Jesus, the world's True Light, untouched by sin and death, opening the Prophets to them, showing them how the Kingdom has come, and telling them that though he was about to leave once again, he would be with them until the end of the age.


Each time he shows up, it is completely surprising.  And each time he shows up, he says a few words, and then vanishes, just as unexpectedly.  I think there's something to be said about this, but I'm not sure I'm qualified to verbalize it yet.  This is Resurrection we're talking about.  This is not normative humanity as we been conditioned to see it, but it's also not transcendence above humanity- it's True Humanity.  He's real, he's eating fish, but he's coming and going as he pleases.  He's showing them their doubts are unfounded.  He's directing the future of the Church.  He is now absorbing all the glory and honor that creation has to give.  He's telling them that he's won. 


In the last portion of Luke we get a portrait of the eschatological Kingdom, coming forth from the tomb, going among the people, and then seeming to disappear, yet staying present.  Jesus rises, Jesus presents a never-before-seen humanity to the disciples, and then Jesus leaves.  Yet he doesn't leave.  He's still in the flesh.  He's still "here." At the end of Luke we get a brilliant picture of  eschatology- that which is so expected and hoped for in the future that it actually becomes real now, only to let us know that the "real" thing is still yet to come.   Like an uncle we dearly love that is coming to visit after a long absence.  Though we know it'll be today, we're not sure of the exact time of his arrival, and so the preparation grips us- the cooking of a meal and the selecting of just the music for the occasion.  And the expectation overwhelms us- the joy of imagining his face at our door, his voice greeting us joyfully.  The remembering of things he said and did in times past.  These things take hold of us so tightly that it's hard to remember that he's still not here yet.  Because he...well, he is here. Isn't he?

Pastors and Presence, and a Bonhoeffer Quote

There's been some good back and forth lately about the nature of pastoring, with different models being proffered, and some discussion over which type of pastor is needed at this moment.  Mark Galli got things rolling with this.  Tod Bolsinger argued against more chaplains, in favor of a new kind of missionary-leader. Then Chaplain Mike wrote in praise of the chaplain pastor.

Certainly not my area of expertise, but my two cents is, this is not like personality types.  Many are going to say that if a guy has the gifts and persona to grow a huge church, then that's what he should do, and the tasks of meeting with everyday people-- to know them and shepherd them-- can be secondary.  This is not going to cut it.  To this idea, in happy contrast for the little people, stands the very word "pastor." A pastor pastors, or else he's not a pastor, it would seem.  Jesus' "big" work was interrupted many times by the "small" work of individual attention, of paradigm shifting for the everyday people.  This can't be over-simplified as one particular task, but one thing it's not is carelessness for the sheep, or de-personalization of the work at hand.  One pastor I know recently said he doesn't want his church to get bigger than will allow him to know everyone personally. This warmed my heart.

I would sum this up as the ministry of presence, and it's central to the yearning of Advent, and the celebration of Christmas.  Being there is the Way of Jesus, of the Incarnation.  The awareness of Jesus' here-ness is what changes us, and this is accomplished by his Coming.  That's what the Kingdom announcement is all about. For myself, this is a very attractive alternative to the subject I've been haunted by in the last few posts.

Bonhoeffer, in no uncertain terms, makes the issue's weight quite clear (can't he ever just lighten up?) through Matthew 9-10.  The last paragraph has much to say about this:

The Savior looks with compassion on his people, the people of God.  he could not rest satisfied with the few who had heard his call and followed. He shrank from the idea of forming an exclusive little coterie with his disciples. Unlike the founders of the great religions, he had no desire to withdraw them from the vulgar crowd and initiate them into an esoteric system of religion and ethics.  He had come, he had worked and suffered for the sake of all his people...  

Where is the good shepherd they needed so badly? What good was it when the scribes herded the people into the schools, when the devotees of the law sternly condemned sinners without lifting a finger to help them? What use were all these orthodox preachers and expounders of the Word, when they were not filled by boundless pity and compassion for God's maltreated and injured people?  What they need is good shepherds, good "pastors."  "Feed my lambs" was the last charge Jesus gave to Peter.  The Good Shepherd protects his sheep against the wolf, and instead of fleeing he gives his life for the sheep.  He knows them all by name and loves them.  He knows their distress and their weakness.  He heals the wounded, gives drink to the thirsty, sets upright the falling, and leads them gently, not sternly, to pasture.  He leads them on the right way.  He seeks the one lost sheep, and brings it back to the fold.... 

No man dare presume to come forward and offer himself [as a laborer for the harvest] on his own initiative, not even the disciples themselves.  Their duty is to pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers at the right moment, for the time is ripe...

They are not left free to choose their own methods or adopt their own conception of their task.  Their work is to be Christ-work, and therefore they are absolutely dependent on the will of Jesus.  Happy are they whose duty is fixed by such a precept, and who are therefore free from the tyranny of their own ideas and calculations. 

This Stuff Needs to Get Out

I was going to write another whole post on the subject of the last two posts, but I'll just throw out some quotations I've run across. From the New Reformation Press, a Lutheran blog:

I can’t imagine being on a never ending treadmill of “maintaining my salvation through my own constant active efforts to be better than the sinful guy I was yesterday”!

You can say that again.

Michael Horton wrote a recent Christianity today article, on why Jesus as a historically separate person from ourselves remains the substance of Christianity, and not some hazy, ill-defined "Jesus-power" inside of the believer, leading us by our own reason and moral conviction.  Jesus as Incarnation, that which we celebrate this season, marginalizes our constant need to resort to inwardly focused spiritual adjustment programs in the service of what we've deemed as sanctification:

Our inner self is not the playground of "spirit," but the haunted plains on which we build our towers of Babel. In other words, our hearts are idol factories, in bondage to sin and spin. 

The mistake we make is that "now that I'm born again, my heart is corrected, so I can go ahead and whip all that sin in my life."  Epic fail.  The heart is still a "haunted plain," and while the Spirit takes ground on it gradually, it's safe to assume that your default position is idolatry, that only death will free you, and that you can't be trusted to "work for your sanctification" as many assume. The end result of this is not some worm theology, it's joy in who Jesus is and what he's done. 

Here's what Gerharde Forde says about this:

Talk about sanctification is dangerous. It is too seductive for the old being... 

The result of this kind of thinking is generally disastrous. We are driven to make an entirely false distinction between justification and sanctification in order to save the investment the old being has in the moral system. Justification is a kind of obligatory religious preliminary which is rendered largely ineffective while we talk about getting on with the truly “serious” business of becoming “sanctified” according to some moral scheme or other. We become the actors in sanctification. This is entirely false. According to Scripture, God is always the acting subject, even in sanctification.

"Holiness hype" is the lemon juice in the eye of a Gospel conversation.  If there's anything that's going to kill joy and awe over the gospel, it's being told that there's a danger that we're going to backslide if we don't tie up all the moral loose ends in our life, and that it won't happen without our devotion and effort.  This can be subtle.  A simple shift in emphasis.  Think about this the next time you're in one of these conversations.  See how quickly it degenerates from Jesus Christ, the Risen and exalted King, into talk about us and our faith or our progress.  What would happen if, every time someone decided to move the subject from "Jesus is amazing" to "how we can fix ourselves and our faith," we pointed it out and brought it back to Jesus.  One could become unpopular very quickly.  But ever since I've begun to notice these subtle, uncalled-for shifts, it's been like sand grating into my eyeball.  Hopefully, this won't be too painful...

Spiritual Progress & The Sanctification Mistake. Aka "Grace is wonderful and all, but what about becoming holy?"

Gotta admit, the Mockingbird blog really has some fine content. 


There's a piece today on The Rhetoric of Progress.  It's a good follow-up to my last quotation from Tullian Tchividjian's book Jesus + Nothing = Everything.   It covers a theme I gravitate towards, partly because it's where I've come to recently, and also because I know several people that are affected by this rhetoric, some pretty seriously. On some level I suppose, it's what affects all of us.  I've certainly made the sanctification mistake a time or two, and will probably make it again, it rings true to me that "rhetoric of Christian progress" is largely based on mythology.  Meaning that when we begin to talk about our "progress in whatever," we are very noticeably talking about...ourselves!  And that's the exact opposite of what sanctified people do, most of the time.  But when we are engulfed in the sanctification mistake, Jesus is a footnote in our lives, and our personal holiness is far more interesting than his.


Here's a section from Mockingbird piece:

The logic underlying the rhetoric is the same across traditions even if the actual words are not.  Evangelicals speak in a progress rhetoric equally well-developed and theologically imprecise.  They talk of “going deeper” and “growing stronger,” of “godly living” and “taking the next step,” of deriding “spectator Christians” and urging people to “get connected.”  Some Reform-minded Christians, guarding against the impression that the disciple’s works contribute to progress, speak of “growing in faith” or “deepening one’s understanding of faith.”  Yet they simultaneously emphasize the importance of intentionality and obedience, which pours an unintended meaning into their phrases of choice.

One way that unintended meaning speaks to us, my friends, is through our conditioning by a consumer culture and the Christian celebrity-mania that drives much of public ministry.  Preachers, speakers, singers, revivalists.  The American Idol complex awaits the progress Christian- "I'm constantly on a stage, and I'm being measured by my performance."  (And naturally, the guys we watch doing this, the guys who make a living onstage, are used to looking pretty good. They're trained to do so.)  "When I 'get there' I'll look and feel just like [insert Christian pop icon here]."  And we have a mind-boggling array of "ministries" that will assist us in the worship of progress, using any means possible.  


But then we do something that Awesome Preacher Guy would never do, and it becomes painfully clear that we haven't made it.  Yeah, God might approve of me and all, but I should still try to put my faith into practice, and people are supposed to be able see the fruit.  Back to square one. 


Those of us who are far more hip than this may word things differently, and present a more nuanced me-centrism, but the principle is the same. I'm the point, God's looking at me, and it's important that I at least try to be good.  Define being good as you please.  Line up all the requisite principles, methods, and imperatives that make it sound "not legalistic."  The ringing voice of the Father that said "This is my Son with whom I am ever delighted," now seeks to say the same thing about me, though he may not if he finds a problem.  Or even if he does, my church friends might not.  The notion is that the "Christian ideal" we're running after is basically characterized as a position or responsibility we fulfill (or ought to) and that part of that responsibility is dwelling on our personal progress.


Take K for instance.  K plays in a Christian band, faithfully attends church, reads his Bible, and seeks to have an edifying presence among his brothers.  And he often does.  He's sharp and witty, but he's nearly always aware that he may be violating someone's standard of how far is too far, of some boundary that must not be transgressed.  He'd like to write a novel, but wonders how he could incorporate themes of his faith into it, as a testimony.  He's smart, but he's aware that one can become "too intellectual" and thus walk in what is simply "head knowledge." Deep down, there's a constant question of whether or not his life, his desires, his actions, are lining up with the Christian ideal. This type of scrutiny is commended by his peers as "sanctification."


But these questions don't lead us anywhere that's creatively honest, or faithful to our own story.  They are, quite honestly, a compromise, in that their destination is perpetual self-involvement.  We stand at the edge of our imagination and see it as a vast chasm into which we dare not leap because someone might object to a cuss-word, or call us lazy or something.  We might justify this as a "concern for our weaker brothers," when what would really make the weaker brother strong is seeing our relentless freedom to be human.  But usually the real reason for not offending another with the human reality of our lives is that we're desperately grabbing for the nearest fig-leaf.  We're self-important, it feels good, and it's justifiable under this banner of progress and holiness.


To be gloriously imaginative without a thought as to whether our work is describably "Christian." Or to how it will be received, what will happen to our reputation. Or to be a mess, if that's what we are- to be a mess in a world for which Jesus was crucified and rose.  That would be honesty.  And it would be the groundn on which it's possible to make more of Jesus than ourselves.  The seasons come, the seasons go.  Yet this "progress theology" asserts that "If I'm truly seeking with all my heart, spring will come a month early."  Foolishness.  Utter folly.  Not only folly, but narcissistic folly.


And that narcissism is labelled, as often as not, sanctification.  


I've often heard it said that those words "this is my Son, with who I am delighted," are for us now that we are in Christ.  And that this is the "big secret" to progress in sanctification. Well, they are true, but they're not the key.  They won't get us where we're headed  because in time, this notion will only feed the narcissism that we never wanted to let go of to begin with.  You see, we're still the center of the picture.  No, I'm afraid we must, like John the Baptist, disappear from sight altogether.


What God the Father does is he still looks at Jesus, and still says of him "I am always delighted in my Son. Isn't he amazing? He is the Man I have been waiting for."  That's what he says about Jesus, and will keep saying about him, forever.  

Quote from Tullian's Book

Thank you Tullian Tchividjian, for this clear picture of a common false dichotomy that is so often presented to us. From Jesus + Nothing = Everything (discovered at Mockingbird): 

It’s part of a common misunderstanding in today’s church, which says there are two equal dangers Christians must avoid. On one side of the road is a ditch called “legalism”; on the other is a ditch called “license” or “lawlessness.” Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law, on rules. Lawlessness, they say, happens when you focus too much on grace… This dichotomy exposes our failure to understand gospel grace as it really is; it betrays our blindness to all the radical depth and beauty of grace. 

I believe it’s more theologically accurate to say that there is one primary enemy of the gospel—legalism—but it comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (I call this “front-door legalism”). Other people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (“back-door legalism”)… Either way, you’re trying to “save” yourself, which means both are legalistic because both are self-salvation projects. 

When we believe, deep down, that God’s blessing depends on how well we’re behaving, we wither and groan under the heavy burden of self-reliance. In this performancism, we eventually figure out that being the star of our own show actually makes life a tragedy. When life is all about us—what we can do, how we perform—our world becomes small and smothering; we shrink. To have everything riding on ourselves leads to despair not deliverance.

I've said this before, though maybe less clearly.  It's a theological stall-out of disastrous proportions to frame this issue with "two possible mistakes" requiring that we do a balancing act between them.  Jesus is all.  The Cross answers every type of sin you can think of.  There is no other way but grace, and everything is riding on it, or else everything burns to the ground.  No matter what problem we're talking about.


Too many people wimp out big-time when it comes to holding forth on this glorious truth as it comes under attack. Tullian doesn't seem to pull the punch in this book, as most are inclined to do when speaking of the grace of God in Jesus.  Reminds me of Brennan Manning.  Nice.


Also here's the story of Tullian's trial by fire at Coral Ridge Presbyterian where he succeeded culture war icon James Kennedy as pastor, in which an all-out slander war was waged against him and his family for things like, you know, not preaching politics.  And not wearing a robe.  Church-wrecking things like that.  A true tale of the triumph of the gospel. That's a storm I wouldn't want to weather, brother.

I find it compelling that the phrase "Jesus + Nothing = Everything" seems to have led his church to eliminate the 2 service "contemporary vs. traditional" split, instead of accommodate people's cultural preferences.  Interesting.

Favorite quote from the interview: "There is a fresh I-don't-care-ness that accompanies belief in the gospel."


Maybe I'll go to this conference in February. 

World's Funniest Blogger Alert

Ok. The "Whatever Happened to..." award of the decade goes to:

Brant Hansen.

So out of nowhere, I stumble upon a Frank Viola link to the blog in my Facebook feed.  It leads to Brant Hansen's NEW BLOG, called "Brant's Blog." (Actually, how new is this? How long have you been hiding from us?)  People, this is like Christmas in October.  Brant Hansen, the world's funniest blogger, formerly thought to be extinct, IS STILL BLOGGING!!

Check out his recent commentary of Christian video games.  Rare form, Brant. Rare form.

Sidebar, you just got a lot awesomer.

The Sweep of the Story

Well Scot McKnight, who I come to admire more the more I read, seems to be getting it right these days.  I haven't read his latest book, King Jesus Gospel, but it's a good bet that I will (aside: a book without airbrushed faces, waves crashing on a beach, or someone with their hands raised on the cover = probably a bit more intelligent than the average reader is going to bother with. Hopefully not, though)  The gist of this recent post is the subject of the book:

Now I want to press this harder: the fundamental orientation of the soterian gospel is about the benefits “I” get if I respond. The fundamental orientation of the Story gospel is not about “my” benefits but about Jesus. Embracing the Story gospel brings benefits, to be sure, but we embrace this Story because we embrace Jesus, not because we get something. The entire soterian approach is shaped by benefits.

If the fundamental proclamation is "personal" salvation-- of any kind (sorry, Calvinism vs. Arminianism has never been the issue here)-- than the life that proceeds from that starting point will be notably and sub-Biblically "personal" in its orientation.  Can you say me-centered? When the Gospel is about Jesus, for Jesus, people will only be found looking at their "saved-ness" when the Story happens to take us there, and even when that does happen, there is no chance that it will leave us there, because it's got a Jesus-saturated conclusion that it's driving towards (listen up, John MacArthur).

What does this mean for the practice of the church? I think, and I'm just being arbitrary here, there could be a lot of things to say about this, but I think it means that Christians will have to (re-)discover an interest in history.  In the unfolding story that includes, for the most part, other people's lives that aren't really dependent on our choices at all, and how they as a whole relate to God in Jesus Christ.  And the slack-jawed wonder that provokes. The Gospel, if it belongs to God (as I think McKnight and others are suggesting) is something that we are not to see as locating itself "in" our lives with us at its center.  IOW, for thousands of years the redemptive, salvation sweep of the Trinity's mission in the world has been surging forward under its own power.  That is, the power of God.  Any time you present people with personal choices to "believe" it, or "make it real for your life," or "get from your head into your heart," you may be effectively suggesting that Moses' deliverance from Egypt for instance, or better yet- Jesus' Incarnation, is dependent on your choice to believe God, or to be good, or to order your spiritual practices correctly, or to walk in the Spirit, or whatever. The absurdity of this thinking is humbling, but it's something a lot of people are going to have to come to terms with.

Stick that in your "apply the Bible to your life" pipe and smoke it!

A Rather Long Post On Love, The Law, Mr. ASP, Jesus the Man, Sin's True Nature, and the Lesson From John the Apostle

Well I just read Craig Bubeck's post entitled No Stinking Up God's Place! at the iMonk blog, and I'd have to say that it's a piece worth blaring from the rooftops.  The iMonk himself would be proud to read words like this on his venerated website.  The thrust of the post could perhaps be summed up this way:

Perhaps most significantly, we tend to want to make sin about performance, rather than relationship—we want to exclusively see sin as a verb... The real evil of sin is far more than falling short of rules and laws—it is that anything should be done on one’s own, independent from God. It’s my independent will, not merely my short-falling actions, that deeply offends God.

In other words, the God who hates sin, as we're told, hates it because it is, ultimately, hatred for Him.

Let me say something that will reveal something about my theological position (or whatever), and possibly be the kind of thing that offends people who fancy we ought to "get the 10 commandments back in schools" and such:  I think it's fantastic that God gave Israel the ten commandments, but he sure didn't give them to me.


You heard me.

Perhaps I should have started with what the Law IS: it's a fascinating portion of the Great Story, it's a crucial part of God's self-revelation to his people at the time, it's a fairly low-res picture of the character of God himself and his will for humanity, and it's an interesting commentary on the nature of morality in human society, particularly the human society through which God planned to bless all nations.  But it is not the thing that is set before me as a moral compass.

What Craig gets at in his post is that the defining factor of sin (and conversely anything we could lump under the label of "holiness") is not the violation of ordinances but in the rejection of a Person.

Now interestingly, I can go to any number of churches and hear a bunch of rhetoric about relationship. That's not rare. I pretty much expect that in the culture of American evangelicalism. What's sadly comical is that I can turn around and the same person who uses the relationship mantra will be found consistently measuring sin using a yardstick other than God in Jesus Christ. Despite that this is the yardstick that he himself used.


Christ crucified. That's right, you knew it was going to come around to this, didn't you? Let's do a case study: Angry Street Preacher at a downtown festival. We have loads of them every year where I live in the Bible belt. They're the talk of the town for the following 2 weeks or so.

The gist of the rant by Mr. A-S-P is that we've  fallen short of God's holiness, and deserve eternal suffering (presumably anyone attending these festivals who is not preaching is summarily going to hell). We deserve hell. We are going there in fact, and quickly, because we've done things like drink too much, or sleep around, or what have you.  The eventual nod is given to Jesus Christ as being the Savior in whom we must trust to escape hell, but more is made of hell than of Jesus. Now, I understand that Jesus saves me from hell. I wouldn't exactly argue that.  Here's where it gets sticky: Mr. ASP has used the Hebrew Law (usually the 10 commandments) to define our sin.  We've coveted, we've committed adultery, we've lied, and therefore we've fallen short of God's requirements-- we're sinners.

What's implicit here is that sin is best described as behaviors.  Bad behaviors, like riding bikes naked through town to protest Republicans and such.  Lustful, idolatrous behaviors that break rules. We were doing just fine, then we sinned, and now we're "sinners." I would submit that this is far beneath what we learn in Scripture.  Break rules we certainly do. But what we learn in Scripture seems to be that God is not really pointing to the violation of his moral code in order to convince us that we're sinners. No, just like everything else we are to be convinced of, he is pointing to his Son, for whom the moral standard is an icon.


That the Son is simply a dispenser of pithy advice or encouraging sound bytes is one of the most devious crimes we commit against him.  Among so many other things, we are convicted of our sin- of its ultimate consequences- by the crucified King.  The passion of Christ has been to bear our sin.  In other words we are, by sinning, extra-temporally hurting him.  This, if we use him as the canonical reference point for every truth in Scripture (as we ought to), is what we truly find when we look at the Law, i.e. the 10 commandments.

The inevitable ASPy outcome of this is a remarkably predictable legalism/gnosticism in which he doesn't go far enough in his condemnation of sin (isn't that interesting?). Christ crucified is not seen as the measure of man's sin...Instead, satisfied with whiny do-right statements and schizophrenic behavior adjustment programs, he will, once given a convert or two, only encourage them to lazily lounge far behind the driving, pulsing drumbeat of the New Testament, that we have crucified God (and that he won anyway), in favor of "what should I do in such-and-such a situation" type questions.

Lets compare the "you broke the 10 commandments" technique with the book of Acts. I'll just hit my observations quickly and let you do any further research if you'd like. In Acts, there is a clear announcement that is going forth from the Apostles. It's something on the order of this:

this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

"This Jesus whom you crucified" it says elsewhere. This is the sin of Israel, and by extension, the world- that God visited us, and we murdered him.  Not only that, but he's so much bigger than our rejection- our murder!-- of him, that the evil we dished out to him didn't really do its job correctly.  (Evil isn't just not good, it's also not very good at being evil!)  And here we come to Mr. ASP's second, perhaps even more serious watering-down of the message. There is no announcement of the triumph of God over the death we delivered to him.  "Amazing! This crucified Christ was raised from the dead? How can this be! A miracle must be afoot!" ...is noticeably not really present, or at least not a major theme, in what we hear at these rantings-into-the-megaphone.  I might suggest something disturbing about this: the implicit effect of refusing airtime to the Resurrection may be that we aren't actually convinced Jesus was crucified...at least not humanly, not in the same sphere of existence as we are.  Not "in our neighborhood" as the Message puts it.

Doubt this?  How often do we come across ideas of the cross that are so epic-ly divinized and spiritualized that they generate a near fairy-tale image of Jesus in the mind?  Jesus the super-human dying to work some sort of magic, or to present us with a cosmic choice, or perhaps to represent the broader theme of human suffering and redemption mythologically, or perhaps literally dying, but only to accomplish some sort of theological feat...Jesus with a strange glow about him and angels flying around.  No wonder Todd Bentley got a footing. What need is there for a resurrection when your image of the Son is that he "theoretically" died on some cosmic plane, as many of these scenes suggest? This is not what happened, folks.  The slaughter of the Lamb was just that, a slaughter.  It was a heinous crime committed by somebody, against somebody.  Somebody who, were you to see a photo of him a few months before, you would not have thought remarkable at all. That's because he was perfectly human. Likewise, the Resurrection was not some sort of ghostly, spiritual, energy reconstitution that we "take part in" when we do as we ought to- it was the body of a dead man that became alive again.  This is the glad announcement of Easter- that God raised Jesus from the dead, vindicating him as the victim of mad injustice, source of forgiveness and salvation, and worshiped King for eternity!  Death has died! Why would I worship anyone else? Unless I never really hear about the Resurrection...

That Jesus is a man, the True Man, may be one of the most implicitly ignored realities we've been given, and to our own peril.  The church has discovered this the hard way a number of times in her history, and it's nothing short of stupidity to remain aloof from it- let gnosticism in the door, and you'll soon be dealing with personality cults, body-spirit dualism, fabricated tales of wild phenomena, super-spiritual narcissism, and the rubric for every kind of indulgence the flesh can dream up.  And all while your street preachers are "preaching against sin."  The irony is so, so thick. 

Now, what does all this have to do with my original point, that I'm really not interested in being measured against the 10 commandments? Or of Craig's declaration that sin is a violation of love, not behavior standards? 

The key is in the Man- that the law is summed up in love, and that Jesus is the embodiment of the one we ought to love, the one we rebelled against. Therefore the conviction, and the reversal, must come from Jesus himself.  He is now the measure of sin, and of obedience.  The effect of faith on the conscience is not really to fix our eating habits or to keep us from making babies when we shouldn't.  At least not until we see these things as decisions driven by the engine of love.  It's to convince us of our complicity in the crucifixion of the One sent to us, and to change our minds, and to provoke thanksgiving that he would submit to such a death in order to reach across the divide and reunite man with God.  In other words, to love Jesus is to obey, and thus to keep the Law. 

Is it really a surprise that John the Apostle is the one who declares this to us in technicolor? That "this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." After all, who was it that stood at the foot of the cross (out of all the apostles) and saw his master die?  Who was it that tore across the field to the tomb where his dearest friend was laid, finding it empty?  Who stood with the Human one, Christ, ate with him, was washed by him, learned from him, was rebuked by him, watched him bleed and suffocate, witnessed him risen, and finally watched him depart to be with the Father? It's no accident that John is the one who was considered Jesus' closest friend, that he is the one who watched him die, the one defending the fledgling church against gnosticism, the one summing up righteousness and obedience in the word love. To future readers of John's story, the cause-effect connections here will be clear as a bell.  God-as-Man provokes a human reaction, and it's by this that our holiness, or unholiness, is measured.  

This revelation is at least three things. It's good news to anyone who has heard that obedience is law-keeping, the meeting of a list of extraneous requirements which endlessly compound themselves on one another like Rabbinic midrash. That diets, datebooks, and debt payoff are the essence of the good life. It completely up-ends the notion of holiness as winning, getting rich, maintaining comfort, garnering approval, becoming more spiritual/religious, "staying pure until marriage," or being more doctrinally informed.  It's good news that the privilege and life of the believer is to know and love the Jesus who bothered to show up. That the only requirement is that which we knew all along was the most satisfying thing we could ever have.  Thank God!

Second, it's devastation for anyone who has built the church's "house" of wood, hay, and stubble. In fact, it's the torch to the pyre of deeds that are designed to do anything but glorify the Risen King.  Glory is not shared, it is all his own, and the works of the law will be reckoned with lawless ones.  Only love will survive.

And may I suggest that, lastly, it's an excuse look once again at Jesus. To discover him afresh, to find that the True Law himself is really as interesting, as gripping, as lovely to behold as all the old hymns tell us he is, and much more.  That the stretch of history lies within him, that the smell of sin is swept away by his fragrance, and that his love is something into which angels long to look.