Author Archives: mark

Faith, Hope, Love, all three

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So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

One idea one gets from some notable Reformed theologians is that only faith justifies because only faith is passive and outward looking (or worse, “extraspective“). Hope and Love are active, would imply works and merit, while faith is not and does not.

But it seems to me that all three could easily be understood as outward oriented. “Hope” can be used as virtually a synonym for trust or faith.

Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach.

As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

And likewise, Paul does not portray loving God as some kind of moral heroism but as nothing more than caring and hoping in one’s own well-being with the recognition that it is bound up in the other:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

There is no great credit in loving your wife because you are insane and self-hating not to love her. How much more is there no credit or merit in loving Jesus and God when one recognizes that they are the key to one’s own purpose and provision!

So when taking “love” and “hope” in the abstract, I don’t think that it would be difficult to produce credible descriptions from the Biblical data that are just as passive and outward looking.

It seems to me that the reason that faith is singled out as the means by which we are counted righteous before God needs to be sought elsewhere. Sociologically, I think the point is that all those who confess the true God (confess their faith or belief) belong to Jesus whether or not the are circumcised. All are righteous before God, belong to his covenant people, without any other condition.

On a more personal level, I suspect the key issue is the promissory nature of salvation. While one could easily also put hope in this place, the more fundamental reality is one has hope because one trusts God to keep His promises. So faith is the human response to God’s faithfulness that He has kept and keeps His promises:

By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

This last I take as a word play that is stating from God’s faithfulness to our faith. That, I believe, matches the appeal to Habakkuk which is all about God’s faithfulness in adversity and how those who trust Him, count him faithful, are righteous in His sight.

The Real Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper — Why it matters

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Why it matters will depend on a host of inferences. Not everyone makes the same inferences from the same principles. Systems can go in different directions. I can say everything at once in this brief post. Not going to try. But this is why I think if matters so much.

Are we saved by ideas or by Christ? We are justified by faith, but how? The answer that many have given from Scripture (John Calvin being one of the most influential with me) is that we are united to the person of Jesus Christ by faith. We are deeply and really, by the power of the Holy Spirit, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone.

So, assuming a certain kind of relationship between how we worship and how we are saved (see above re: inferences), eating and drinking at the Lord’s Supper is not simply about ideas or remembering what took place. It is a true renewal and participation in Christ’s risen, transfigured, human life. Christ has been vindicated, so in Christ is our justification.

That is the fundamental issue with me. It is the basic rationale for insisting on the point as important and worth arguing about against a “Zwinglian” position.

Monopoly & censorship in your food and environment! (Here’s something that might be worth discussing at Occupy Wall Street)

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Most of my career as an environmental consultant has been involved in helping commercial and industrial clients comply with the various regulations in a way that allowed them to still be profitable. About 15 years ago we were working on a nationwide study for a trade association. In our research for that study, we came upon a process that was used during WWI that could possibly benefit many of our clients. We performed some laboratory studies and confirmed that this procedure would indeed be beneficial to our clients and reduce the potential for certain pollutants leaching from a waste material. We published the results of our investigation in a report distributed nationwide (which places the procedure in the public domain). After our report was public, a large corporation filed for a patent for this process. The U. S. Patent Office granted the patent in spite of the fact that the process had been placed in the public domain and was, in fact, merely a different application of a process used during WWI.

We contacted a patent attorney and learned that it would cost us between $250,000 and $500,000 to contest the patent. Our intention was to put this process in the public domain so that people could use it without paying our company, or anyone else, any license fee. We obviously could not afford to contest the patent and so many of our clients are paying an outrageous license fee every year for a process a high school chemistry student could assemble in his back yard. This is similar in principle to what Monsanto has done with the genetically altered soybean seeds. Monsanto now controls over 90% of the soybean seed market. These seeds are patented and it is illegal for the farmers who grow the crops to collect and clean the seed for next year’s crop. We should pause and consider this a moment. Farmers purchase seed with their money; plant the seed on their land; work the fields with their equipment using fuel they have purchased; and, at the end of the season they harvest their crop but are forbidden to use a part of the harvest (seeds) to continue the process next year. What a travesty our government and its legal system have created. Shame on us for allowing this to happen.

The thing in the movie that sent me over the edge was the realization that more than a few states have enacted laws forbidding people to publically criticize the food suppliers. In the movie a mother who lost her toddler son to E Coli won’t mention the names of the fast food outlets where her son ate because she has been threatened with lawsuits that would bankrupt the family. In the state of Colorado it is a felony (with prison time attached) to criticize the beef or pork producers for their animal management practices. Is this not unbelievable? Yes, maybe it is time for another revolution if we are going to save what is left of the American way of life. The government corruption that has lead to this situation transcends parties.

Read the whole post at: Reluc Tant.

COMMENT:

I know the writer and can vouch for his integrity and honesty. I don’t always agree with him, however (nor does he agree with everything in Food, Inc, the movie he is writing about). He goes on to talk about electing “trust-busters” but I don’t see how that could ever work. People who directly profit from lobbying are always going to have more resources to do so then the rest of the plundered and exploited population. The entire concept of “intellectual property” (the only kind of private property the modern state seems to respect) needs to be declared a fiction and a rationalization for robbery and serfdom. The entire situation is Feudal, with lives being destroyed to protect “the king’s deer.”

I’m pretty much an unapologetic abolitionist on the entire arrangement. Even though I’d love to make money as an author.

But notice how corporations now work. There are companies that work honorably. The author works for one that came up with a way to benefit everyone. But those companies are in a system designed to make them the losers and pirates the winners. Corporations are the antithesis of freedom and a market economy. They are the Iron Curtain. And the system is government coercion with Corporations as the Feudal barons.

God grant us an end to these horrors and mercifully release our planet to the freedom of trade and respect for real property rather than tyranny in the name of fake property.

Does God still speak? Does God still act?

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Evangelicalism is roughly (very roughly) divided into two camps: those who believe in “continuing revelation” in the form of supernatural prophecies, utterances, and divinely-given knowledge. Others insist that, since “the canon is closed,”  all prophecy must have ceased.

Personally, I believe that all prophecy, utterances, and divinely-given knowledge of the self-attesting type is now over. My main reason for this belief is what I think is the obvious fact that it does not happen anymore. I don’t see any direct instruction in the Bible that explains that it was all going to cease at a certain point in time, but it did (again, I take this as obvious). Given that the kind of stuff we read about in Acts and First Corinthians doesn’t happen anymore, I have deduced that once the canon of the Word of God, the Bible, was complete, that God wanted us to make our way in the world without such specific communications from Him.

So doe this mean God never speaks anymore?

I don’t think so.

The Reformation tradition gives us a way that God continues to communicate in specific ways to his Church in specific times and places. While this communication is not an addition to the inerrant word of God, it is nevertheless truly a communication from God. It is best set out in the Second Helvetic Confession:

THE PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD IS THE WORD OF GOD. Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed, and received by the faithful; and that neither any other Word of God is to be invented nor is to be expected from heaven: and that now the Word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; for even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God remains still true and good.

Neither do we think that therefore the outward preaching is to be thought as fruitless because the instruction in true religion depends on the inward illumination of the Spirit, or because it is written “And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor…, for they shall all know me” (Jer. 31:34), And “Neither he who plants nor he that waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (I Cor. 3:7). For although “No one can come to Christ unless he be drawn by the Father” (John 6:44), And unless the Holy Spirit inwardly illumines him, yet we know that it is surely the will of God that his Word should be preached outwardly also. God could indeed, by his Holy Spirit, or by the ministry of an angel, without the ministry of St. Peter, have taught Cornelius in the Acts; but, nevertheless, he refers him to Peter, of whom the angel speaking says, “He shall tell you what you ought to do.”

So notice the identity. The preaching of God’s Word is God’s Word. Is there Biblical backing for this? I believe so. In Ephesians 2 Paul writes that,

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off [Gentiles] have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

So Christ not only died and rose again but he then went and preached to the Ephesians. How did he do this since we know he ascended into Heaven and never traveled to Ephesus? The answer seems to be that he preached through authorized intermediaries. Paul later elaborates on his list so that it includes more than just “apostles and prophets.” In Ephesians 4 we read that, as a result of Jesus’ ascension

he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds [pastors] and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Through these people, Jesus preaches peace in this age. Thus Paul goes on to write

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Notice that I have re-literalized the ESV. It does not say we have heard about Christ but that we have heard Christ ourselves. We learned Christ this way. How? By the preaching of the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Christ Himself speaks for them.

And if this is so, we must also recognize that God himself acts through his servants. Jesus gave the Great Commission which not only commanded that He be taught (“to observe all that I have commanded you”) but that he induct disciples (“baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”). When a pastor fulfills the Great Commission by baptizing a person, he is not acting on his own. He is acting as an authorized and empowered agent of Jesus Christ. Christ himself is publicly and officially receiving the person baptized into his own household and kingdom. “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (First Corinthians 12.13).

So when we are tempted to doubt that God has named and claimed us as his own, we need to remember the act in which He did so. A mere mortal may have baptized you, perhaps one who has subsequently fallen from the faith. It does not matter. He was acting as God’s agent at the time under the direction of God’s providence and God’s Spirit. You were not merely baptized by man but by God.

Does God still speak? Does God still act?

God has received you into His Son and, has thus declared over you, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3.21). As it is written:

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s family, heirs according to promise. I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

 

Justification is a verdict; justification is a deliverance

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When Paul speaks of justification in his letter to the Romans, he clearly builds a judicial or forensic context for the meaning of the word. Specifically, to be justified means to be declared righteous before God on the Judgment day that is coming:

For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus (Romans 2.12-16).

So everyone will be judged and, at that judgment, some will be justified, officially found righteous before God. Thus, we find that to be justified is the antonym of being condemned:

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? (Romans 8.33-34)

So justification is a courtroom act. The judge declares a person to be righteous. But does God justify or condemn only on the Last Day?

Let’s expand a bit on Romans 8.33ff:

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us (Romans 8.33-35).

While God will justify and condemn on the Last Day, there is a sense (and an important one!) in which he has already declared his verdict. Jesus suffered condemnation in history on the first “Good Friday.” And likewise, Jesus experienced God’s verdict over him on Easter Sunday.

No unbelief made him [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification (Romans 4.20-25).

Jesus was justified by the Spirit (Romans 8.11; c.f. First Timothy 3.16). God declared Jesus righteous by a public vindication. Jesus was justified by being raised from the dead.

So it would be  improper infer that we are not justified until we too are raised from the dead. The justification has already been made in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But to whom does this justification apply? Who shares in the vindication of Jesus? Paul makes it clear that our belief is our vindication even now. God declares us right with him by delivering us from unbelief and all the sins that follow from it.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been justified from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace (from Romans 6).

So Jesus’ justification, which was his resurrection, is now ours. He received a condemnation he did not deserve in order to share with us a vindication we do not deserve. But even though we have not been raised from the dead yet, we are still, in common with Jesus new life, raised to a new way of living by the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.

This new life is not perfect. We still daily rely on God’s forgiveness, but it is a real break with the state of death and enslavement to sin with which we were cursed. And the most fundamental aspect of this new obedience is faith itself. As goes on to write in Romans 6:

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness (Romans 6.16-18).

Paul is referring to the Romans having come to saving faith. He describes this new faith as having “become obedient fromt he hear to the standard of teaching.” This lines up with the what Paul writes and the opening and closing of Romans:

we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of Jesus’ name among all the nations

For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ… Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.

There are a couple of things you need to keep in mind:

1. Sin is not only the reason for condemnation but is the penalty of unbelief

Paul makes this clear:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Thus Paul presents the world of downwardly spiraling sin as a prison world for sinners. They are not only punished for sin, but they are sinners as a punishment for sin. To be given a declarative verdict is, thus, a declaration of freedom from sin. That is why Paul can say so readily in Romans 6 of being “justified from sin.”

2. The primal sin is unbelief so that the gift of faith is also the primal beginning of sanctification.

Faith fundamentally receives God’s grace; unbelief fundamentally spurns God’s blessing in ingratitude: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Romans 1.21). Paul draws this out by portraying Abraham’s faith in Romans 4 in a way that contrasts with the unbelief of Romans 1.

That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness” (Romans 4.16-22).

Unbelievers turn from the true God to creation for their life and blessedness. Abraham saw nothing in creation that could help him but trusted in the living God for new life. Unbelievers give glory to created idols; Abraham gave glory to the true God. This is all described as Abraham’s faith. God counted that faith as his righteousness, a righteousness delivered to him in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

So justification is a verdict and, as a verdict, a deliverance from the curse of unbelief. While the verdict was declared in the resurrection of Jesus, and will be declared at the final judgment, God also declares it when, by his mercy alone, he turns sinners away from unbelief and grants them true faith in Himself through His Son.

Tolkien’s monarchic anarchism (or anarchic monarchism?)

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The only thing I know that J.R.R. Tolkien and Salvador Dalí had in common—or rather, I suppose I should say, the only significant or unexpected thing, since they obviously had all sorts of other things in common: they were male, bipedal, human, rough contemporaries, celebrities, and so on—was that each man on at least one occasion said he was drawn simultaneously towards anarchism and monarchism.

via Anarcho-Monarchism | First Things.

This is well worth reading! Readers of my biography will be familiar with Tolkien’s “politics” as it stands out in this article.

I may want to interact with (and perhaps disagree with) some things in this article, but for the moment, I’ll just commend it as worth reading.

One way in which Tolkien can transform the political imagination, by the way, is to inspire a study of history that reveals the line between “public sector” and “private sector” was not as obvious or self-evident to our ancestors as we seem to think it should be. Royal dynasties inherited political rights and duties as their private possessions.

But more later.

Day and Bird, or not, give thanks!

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The Apostle Paul from Romans 14:

One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

The Apostle Paul from First Corinthians 8:

Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience—I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else’s conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.

The basic stance of monotheism is faith and thankfulness. God is grace and faithfulness so our attitude must be trust and grattitude.

So no matter what anyone tells you about civil religion or the questionable roots of any holiday, I hope the Spirit enables you to give thanks to the true and living God and his Son Jesus–today and every day, whether a bird is involved or not.

He influences 40-year-olds too! (N. T. Wright)

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Author and theologian N.T. (Tom) Wright was the guest teacher at Willow Creek Community Church’s weekend services on November 5 and 6. Author of the recently released Simply Jesus, Wright expounded on who Jesus is, what He did, and why He matters.

One of foremost professors and theologians of New Testament and early Christianity in the world, Wright taught New Testament studies at both Cambridge and Oxford Universities, has served as the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, and is currently the Chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Andrews’s School of Divinity in Scotland. Newsweek calls him “the world’s leading New Testament scholar.”

via Willow News » Blog Archive » Theologian N.T. Wright Speaks at Willow Creek.

I’m watching the video now. Really appreciated the introduction.

Go here to download the audio.

Justification is for the visible Church

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One thing that is very clear in Paul’s letter to the Romans is that God’s justification of sinners is an objective and public fact, not a secret. He exults in the confident hope that “we,” professing Christians have:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (from Romans 5).

Professing believers don’t wonder if their right with God. They boast in it! They know God loves them and is working all things for their good. They know that all their trials are designed to perfect them.

And they are supposed to know it for their fellow believers as well:

As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written,

“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall confess to God.”

So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.

God has justified your brother and sister so you need to not pass judgment on them. God is working in their lives to make them stand on the Last Day so you need to stop harassing them! Notice how the reasoning here presupposes that we know our fellow professing Christians are justified before God.

See? That Christian who annoys you is right with God. How can he not be right with you?

Christians are the elect and the Church is the chosen “nation”

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Peter writes that Christians are elect just as Christ was elect and just as once Israel was the elect nation:

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God elect and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone elect and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone,”

and

“A stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offense.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

But you are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

This last paragraph is an appropriation of Exodus 19. Peter is applying what was once the status of a nation to a trans-national institution:

Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.

Of course, Peter has already told the recipients of his letter that they are elect, in his greeting: “To those who are elect” (1 Peter 1.2). So just as Israel was a chosen nation and thus a nation of elect members, so now the Church is an elect institution and a body made up of elect members.

They have been chosen by God to be part of his family and kingdom.