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Evangelical defeatism is a failure of Biblical perspective. After all, the risen Lord Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth and has been made head over all things for the Church; he is the ruler of the kings of the earth and he is currently putting his enemies beneath his feet; he has presumably asked the Father for the nations as his inheritance and the ends of the earth as his possession – and so he will receive them. All nations will bow to Jesus and all kings will serve him and his kingdom will grow to become the largest plant in the garden with the nation-birds finding rest in its branches. His kingdom is the stone which crushed the kingdoms of men in Daniel 2 and which is growing to become a mountain-empire which fills the whole earth. He is the firstborn from among the dead and therefore it is right that in all things he has the first place. He has been highly exalted and not only will every knee bow to him but every knee should bow to him.

Evangelical defeatism is a failure of historical perspective. After all, the statistics are out there. It took 1400 years for 1% of the world’s population to become Christians and then another 360 years for that to double to 2%. Another 170 years saw that grow from 2% to 4% and then, between 1960 and 1990 the proportion of the world’s population made up of Bible-believing Christians rose from 4% to 8%. Now, in 2007, one third of the world’s population confesses that Jesus is Lord and 11% of the world’s population are “evangelical” Christians. The evangelical church is growing twice as fast as Islam and three times as fast as the world’s population. South America is turning Protestant faster than Continental Europe did in the sixteenth century. South Koreans reckon that they can evangelize the whole of North Korea within five years once that country opens up. And then there’s the Chinese church consisting of tens of millions of Christians who have learned to pray, who have confidence in Scripture, who know about spiritual warfare, have been schooled in suffering and are qualified to rule. One day in the next century that Church – tens of millions of Christians trained to die – will be released into global mission and our prayers for the fall of Islam will be answered.

David Field, “Samuel Rutherford and the Confessionally Christian State”

Just a note that a small Brazilian publisher has requested to translate Feed My Lambs into Portuguese and publish it.

The arrangement has not yet been finalized. Stay tuned.

Hays definitely lies to my left theologically, but I have often found him spot-on, and he has some excellent insights here. I would especially draw attention to the matter of seeking to “get at” a story “behind” the text rather than dealing with how the material actually comes to us in the biblical canon, e.g. The Prodigal Son. (Pay special attention about 60% of the way through, where Hays deals with the unique and harmonizing voices of the Gospel writers.)

At long last, my extensive essay on Paul and the law, These Are Two Covenants: Reconsidering Paul on the Mosaic Law, is available!

I was sort of commissioned to write this piece back in 2004, but the book in which it was to appear fell on hard times and was not published. I later had a contract with another publisher to have it released on its own, but it fell victim to cutbacks. Knowing that I do not have present resources to publish in paperback as I did with Feed My Lambs, I decided on my first ebook-only (PDF) release.

You can get more information and learn how to purchase by going to my Pactum Reformanda Publishing web site.

life had just begun
death came in the door
walkin in the sun
why’d you eat that for?

we may be tryin here
but we are cryin tears
mmm… we’re dyin here

finally had a son
from his barren wife
are we really done
cause now he takes a knife

we may be tryin here….

kingdom’s just begun
so began to seem
then all the soldiers come
and the disciples leave

we may be tryin here….

then in our fears
behind these walls
Life appears
the Lord of all

see His wounded side
those familiar eyes
yes it’s Him all right
now glorified

so here’s our death and sin
but we live in Him
mmm… and we’ll rise again

mmm… we’re livin here….

[Written Good Friday, 2010]

It’s interesting that a lot of evangelical churches do stress participation in worship. But usually they don’t mean participation which everyone can engage in (and certainly not all at once, i.e. together). They mean “doing something at the front” – e.g. a skit, playing an instrument etc. It’s not said directly, but to be part of the congregation is not considered participatory.

What therefore happens is that the congregation becomes an audience, and inclusion in “the action” requires getting up on stage (and yes, that is actually what the platform is frequently referred to as, which I think is telling). But all this means is that (1) people are performing, many of whom aren’t really qualified to lead worship in a meaningful way; and (2) those not semi-skilled enough to do that are essentially non-participants; they are “outside the action.”

But worship is something that the whole congregation actively does, and giving bit parts “at the front” is a poor substitute for understanding that “the action” doesn’t happen on stage. The action occurs within the dialogue between God and all His people. When the proclamation of forgiveness, the sermon, and the benediction are given, that is God’s time to speak, and we all engage in hearing Him; when we pray, sing, and confess our faith, it is our time to speak, and He hears us. And when we commune, we eat together with one another and with God. In short, biblically speaking, we are all involved in the action, and for the whole properly-ordered service.

Just an observation triggered by a blog comment by my friend Rogers, as well as by a discussion we had last night in Bible study.

New post on the Biblical Horizons blog on 2 Corinthians 5.21.

In looking again at Leviticus 8, I noticed that in the baptism>anointing sequence, only Aaron gets anointed at first. Then, after the sin offering and ascension offerings are completed, not only Aaron but also his sons are anointed.

That fascinates me in connection with the sequence of things in the Gospels and Acts. Jesus is baptized by John and immediately anointed by the Spirit. But while many others are baptized, both by John and by Jesus’ disciples, no one else gets anointed.

Jesus becomes the sin offering on the cross and completes His role of ascension offering when He ascends to heaven. It is only then, after the completion of the sin and ascension offerings, that He pours out the Spirit and the “sons” are anointed.

One of Peter Leithart’s chief insights is that a priest is a palace servant.

In preparing a sermon on Lord’s Day 12 for this Sunday (by way of Revelation 1 – which, by the way, focuses upon God’s people as servants in 1.1 and as a priesthood in 1.7), this got me reflecting on the question of how the high priest relates to this. If a priest is a palace servant, what is a “high” palace servant?

This in turn led me to think about the predominant Servant theme in Isaiah, a rabbit trail that turned out to be helpful, although I’m not entirely sure yet where to go with it. Read the rest of this entry »

I suggest a moratorium on new Christmas hymns, until we all learn the Magnificat and the Benedictus and the Nunc Dimittis so much by heart that they seep out our fingers at the keyboard, until we instinctively sing of Jesus’ birth like Mary, like Zecharias, like Simeon.

Another gem from Leithart.

The links between David and Christmas are clear enough on the surface of the various texts. It is after all an event that happens in Bethlehem, the city of David, and Joseph and Mary are there precisely because Joseph is of David’s lineage (Lk 2.4).

But as well as what is quite explicit, there are also other undertones and overtones from the David story.

For overtones, we can simply note that just as God passed over the “obvious” choices among Jesse’s sons in favour of the shepherd boy, so too God passes over the “obvious” choices regarding whom will receive the proclamation of the birth of the Messiah, and sends His army to make the royal announcement to… a bunch of shepherds.

Undertones: In Matthew 2, we find Herod making the mothers of Bethlehem childless; in the few verses immediately preceding the record of David’s anointing, we find Samuel hacking Agag of Amalek to pieces with the words, “As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women” (1 Sam 15.33). The connection gives us a pretty good idea what is going to happen to Herod very shortly, and so we are not surprised to learn of his death not far down the road.

For a couple weeks, I’ve had a few friends helping me beta test a new web site for Grande Prairie believers (adults 20 and up). Now it seems ready to go live:

http://grandeprairiechristian.com/

The idea here is to help local believers expand their social circles and get to know fellow Christians from the neighbourhood. Introduce yourself online with a profile, get to know one another by participating in forums and chatrooms – but don’t leave it there; once you’ve made new friends, since the whole constituency will be local, you can make arrangements to get together in real life.

So if you’re (1) a Grande Prairie area resident; (2) at least 20 years old; and (3) a Christian – please join up and join in!

New article at the Biblical Studies Center. Nothing very original, but hopefully, helpful.

In our co-ed Bible study, we’re currently listening to the audio set by James Jordan, “How to Read the Bible.” Tonight we heard the second session, entitled “Beware of Rules;” Jordan also covered his third point, “Read the Bible in the Church.”

Jordan often says very striking things and leaves you to chew on things. One of the things that he noted from Romans 1 is that “people are crazy” – professing to be wise, they became fools, because they suppressed the truth in unrighteousness and failed to respond to God’s revelation with pistis (faith, faithfulness). He also noted that Jesus is the alpha and omega - i.e. the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. And he stressed that we must let the Bible teach us how to read itself. We learn to read the Bible, not by approaching it with a set of autonomous rules, but by reading it over and over again. (Rules are spectacles, paradigm-providers. If Scripture does not provide these spectacles, our reading is in fact tending to stand over it, rather than in submission to it.)

Putting all of this together, it strikes me that what we’re really talking about is learning a new language. Jesus is the Word of God by whom all things were made and are sustained; He is the divine language, and in the Scriptures the Holy Spirit speaks Him.

When you have a baby and start to talk to him or her, the sounds you make are not very significant to that child. The slate is too blank; the child has not yet been enculturated into the language you’re speaking.

In our case, as we’ve noted, we are crazy. We’re not merely dealing with a blank slate; we’re unlearning all sorts of things that we “know” which in fact are not true.

But in both cases, it is constant exposure to the language by which the child or disciple is taught the language. Read the rest of this entry »

I have recently been engaging in a discussion regarding the importance of recovering the biblical meaning of terms like “law” and “gospel.” We Protestants have inherited a rather dominant tradition of using these terms in a rather abstract sense something along the lines of “law = any requirement God lays upon man.” “Gospel” has become virtually a technical term for forgiveness of sins apart from works. (Just as an aside: just as there is a typical Protestant use of these terms, there are also Roman Catholic uses that no doubt could be criticized. My aim here is not to say we Protestants are wrong, and Rome is right, after all; it is rather to engage in critique from within, so that we can correct things we ought to correct.)

Now, of course, God does lay requirements upon man, and God does grant forgiveness of sins apart from works. But the Bible’s use of the terms “gospel” and “law,” particularly in Paul’s writings, where Protestant discussion on these subjects tends to centre around, is very different from these definitions.

Paul always uses nomos (“law”) to refer to Torah, whether in the sense of “the Mosaic covenant” (by far his most frequent usage) or in the more general sense of “the five books of Moses.” In the second sense, his focus is on Torah as Scripture, as e.g. the Genesis narratives concerning Abraham are referred to as nomos in Galatians 4.24 and, given the immediately following context, likely in Romans 3.31 as well.

Similarly – and not surprisingly, given the content of the books we call Gospels – the term “gospel” is a very concrete term with definite historical connections (after all, it means “good news“). While free forgiveness of sins has always been God’s way of dealing with sinners, the term “gospel” is tied to God’s concrete and dateable historical actions related to what some scholars call “the Christ event,” with Christ’s death and resurrection at the center (see e.g. 1 Cor 15.1-4).

I have become increasingly convinced of the importance of abandoning the abstract usage of these terms, not because the general theological point is wrong; it is not. God saved us, out of His own sovereign mercy, not because of works of righteousness which we have done (Titus 3.5). But the problem with using the specific terms law and gospel in the way that we do means that inevitably those “synthetic” meanings get read into all the biblical texts where the terms appear. And that is not a good thing.

What follows is a lightly modified version of a private post I made on this subject. I have tried to clean up the style slightly, as well as eliminate points that were really germane only to a narrower discussion. To aid clarity, I have also added a couple of brief statements that distill thoughts I had made in the more extended discussion.  I trust making this public will prove somewhat helpful in terms of clarifying the importance of the fight for biblical language. Read the rest of this entry »

As we’ve seen, Israel was ignorant of God’s righteousness and did not submit to it. Meaning: they did not acknowledge the Messiah as their Lord, as God’s embodied righteousness for their salvation.

“For,” Paul adds, “Christ is the telos of the law.” Actually, he says more than that, but we need to sort out several things, so let’s deal with telos first.

So, what does telos mean? Its field of meaning revolves around the idea of “end,” but there are nuances. It can of course simply mean “end.” (E.g. Mt 10.22, “The one who endures to the end will be saved; Mt 24.6: “The end is not yet.”) This is the most common usage in the Gospels; and it appears frequently in Paul.

Read the rest of this entry »

In Romans 9.30ff, Paul explains that the Gentiles, who were not in fact pursuing righteousness, have attained (katalambano - apprehended, come upon, obtained, overtake)  it. Is Paul talking about “the righteousness of God,” or the right standing of human beings before God (justification)? Well, if we’ve been following Romans from the get-go, we would realize that these two sides meet together: the righteousness of God is revealed ek pisteos eis pistin – from faith unto faith (1.17). That is, from the faithfulness of God to the righteous response of faith which God requires. When God’s pistis and our pistis meet, the righteousness of God is revealed, and our righteousness is adjudicated, i.e. we are justified. (Romans 4 deals with this at length.) Read the rest of this entry »

A while back, I had a few posts on the Biblical Horizons blog discussing Romans 3. Much of the focus was upon the phrase, “the righteousness of God.” One thing I noted is that in the overwhelming majority of passages Paul cites in Romans 3, something is said about Yahweh’s righteousness. Given the fact that Romans 3 is by far the tightest cluster of the phrase “the righteousness of God” (dikaiosune theou), this can hardly be accidental.

Now, I think that what this means is that Paul doesn’t invent the meaning of the term. Throughout the Old Testament, wherever the divine righteousness is referred to, it has to do with God’s verity, His faithfulness. Usually, this centers upon promises of salvation, although the flip side of judgment of those who would harm His faithful ones is bound up with that.

This explains why in Romans 3.1-8, Paul (1) speaks about the oracles of God – and given 1.2, his central view is on the prophetic Word concerning God’s Son; and (2) veers between language of faithfulness, righteousness, and truth. In Hebrew, we are looking at ‘emunah, which captures all of these. God’s righteousness is His faithfulness, trustworthiness, verity with His commitments.

I guess you could say, then, that I am one of those people who takes the term to mean something like “covenant faithfulness.” Read the rest of this entry »

(If you’re wondering about my recent posting method, I’m simply putting into words the reflections I’ve been having while reading through the Greek New Testament during breaks at work (occasionally concrete work does have its perks). It’s a habit I’m trying to get back into.)

I noted earlier that the principle of election articulated in Rom 9 can cut two ways. On the one hand, it can be used to defend a “narrowing of the field”: God is still faithful even if He saves only a remnant of Israel. On the other, since consideration of works, willing or running are all excluded, God is free to save “all Israel” even if they are marked by prolonged hardness and rebellion.

This silent undercurrent also works with Paul’s quotation of Hosea later in the chapter: “I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ and those who were not beloved, ‘Beloved’” (9.25). In chapter 9, Paul is making this point regarding the Gentiles, over against the mass of Israel that has fallen.

But the careful reader cannot fail to note that the original Hosea quotation is referring to lost Israelites. If God can call Gentiles “My people,” much more can He recover Israel; and the telling word here is beloved, which recurs again in 11.28: though presently hardened, the mass of Israel is “beloved for the sake of the fathers.”

Something similar can be said of the next verse: “and it shall be in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ there they shall be called the sons of the living God’” (9.26).

I think this is the answer to those who simply displace unbelieving Israel and say: “Well, Jesus Himself says they are not sons of Abraham, but children of their father the devil. There are no promises to them.” Not so. It is true, in a very real and direct sense, He has said: “You are not My people.” But there is a promise beyond that, and the disenfranchised will once again be called sons of the living God.

I hope to post further on Romans tonight, but the subject matter is going to shift somewhat, so I’ll leave the rest for another post.

Since I felt forced by the text of Romans 11 to adopt the future-conversion view (i.e. that it prophesies the conversion of the people prior to the return of Christ), I have frequently come across those who attempt to counter that reading by appealing to Romans 9. The earlier chapter, after all, says that not all Israel is Israel, and thus narrows down the recipients of the promises.

There are numerous problems with this way of dealing with Romans 11, however.

1) Romans 9 has at least as many obscurities and difficulties as does Romans 11. So why is it that the latter chapter is treated like it must be subjected to Romans 9, but not vice-versa?

2) The principle of election articulated in Romans 9 is in fact a double-edged sword that can cut two ways.

3) While Romans 9 makes a comparison between the hardness of the Pharaoh of the exodus and that of Israel contemporary to Paul, careful reading of the two passages reveals an explicit disanalogy at a very critical point.

I’m not going to argue for (1) here, but I do want to reflect a bit on (2) and (3).
Read the rest of this entry »