Author Archives: Christopher J Wiles

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About Christopher J Wiles

Hey there. My name's Chris. I'm a teaching pastor at Tri-State Fellowship, and a research writer for Docent Research Group. Thanks for stopping by; be sure to stay connected by subscribing to blog updates and more.

Positively Worldly (1 Corinthians 15:12-34)

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There’s an old hymn that goes something like this:

“This world is not my home,
I’m just a-passing through;
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue
The Savior beckons me
From heaven’s open door,
And I can’t feel at home
in this world anymore.”

It’s beautiful. It’s eloquent.

And it’s completely wrong.

If you grew up in traditional church culture, then it might be quite difficult to come to understand that Heaven is not your true home. You and I were made for earth. Christianity has traditionally emphasized that when Christ’s followers die, they join him in heaven, much like Jesus telling the thief crucified next to him that “today you will be with me in paradise.” But the Bible tells us that at the end of all human history, there is a “new heaven and a new earth,” and God’s holy city descends “like a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:1-2). Our truest, lasting destiny is therefore God’s restored earth.

So when Paul writes to the people of Corinth, he emphasizes that the resurrection of Jesus has profound implications for life here and now. See, the people of Corinth might have been willing to accept the fact of Jesus’ resurrection, but the idea that they, too, would be raised from the dead seemed altogether absurd. But Paul says, no; you need to really think through what this means for you—for us—and how resurrection hope saturates every arid place in our lives.

FAITH IN CHRIST (15:12-19)

First, Paul emphasizes that the faith cannot be untangled from the message of the resurrection. If Christ has been raised, then it follows that we, too, will also experience this event:

12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

If Christian faith is based on preference, emotion, or social benefit, then we might be tempted to conceal our faith in the presence of others, or reserve our faith for Sunday mornings or major holidays. But if our faith is anchored in the historical reality of the resurrection, then it means we live for a deeper story—a true story—a story that overturns the lesser stories of pleasure and power that dominate our social landscapes and news cycles.

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE (15:20-28)

Second, Paul emphasizes that this event points us toward a greater future:

20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him.28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

Jesus reverses the curse of Adam, the curse of death that dangles above our heads like a sword waiting to fall. The Christian hope, as we’ve mentioned, is bodily resurrection. Paul therefore seeks to cultivate a sense of anticipation, a waiting sense of wonder, at this future event.

Why would this matter? Because in an era when believers experienced social shame for following Jesus, it was good to cling to the hope of a greater and brighter future ahead of them. The same is true for us. In our own land of death, our eyes ache for a more enchanting vision of what lies ahead.

LOVE FOR THE WORLD (15:29-34)

Finally, Paul suggests that this faith and hope manifests itself in love for the world:

29 Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? 30 Why are we in danger every hour? 31 I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day!32 What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” 34 Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.

Faith. Hope. Love. These three virtues awaken in the presence of the risen Savior.

The historian Jaroslav Pelikan once said that if “the resurrection never happened, then nothing else matters. And if the resurrection is true, then nothing else matters.” If there is nothing to hope for, if there is no future beyond the grave, then this life is all we have. But if there is a future to look toward, then this life takes on renewed significance.

This is what it means to be “positively worldly.” The resurrection challenges us to love the world, or—more accurately—to love the world as it is beginning to be. Our hope is not merely to escape the world, but to be resurrected within it, to see the borders of Eden expand to fill all of creation with restored goodness and beauty.

The seasons provide something of an audiovisual display of this hope-filled promise (perhaps that’s even why Paul will—in tomorrow’s passage—appeal to the image of a seed and a plant). In Spring we see Winter pull back her icy curtain to reveal the abundance of wildflowers that decorate a world of green. Winter isn’t about death, you see, but dormancy. The opening of each flower reminds us that Paradise hasn’t been lost forever. And some day,–someday so achingly soon—we, too, will experience this resurrecting power in our every cell and every limb. Until then we find faith, find hope, find love in the reality of the empty tomb, and the anticipation of the Savior’s return. In the same breath as we sing Christos Anesti, we also say, Maranatha—Christ has risen; come quickly, Lord Jesus.

 

The gospel according to Snopes (1 Corinthians 15:1-11)

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I want you to consider two different stories:

  • In 1793, a meteor struck the area currently known as Chambersburg. The rock fragment—mostly iron—was roughly the size of a Volkswagen, and the impact could be heard from as far as 100 miles away. All official records of the incident have been lost, but we can piece together details based on one or two journals from what appear to be local residents of the time.
  • In 1993, a meteor struck downtown Chambersburg. Well over a hundred witnesses saw it, including many member of our own congregation such as Lyle Geiger, Larry Goldman, and Sherry Libby.

You’ve probably seen through my transparent illustration to know that neither story is true, but if you had to rate their relative believability, which one seems more plausible? Or, maybe we should ask the question a different way: which story would you have an easier time verifying—or discrediting?

Naturally, you’d choose the second as the more “testable” tale. You might first go to the web to search for articles from the time period to confirm the events.  You might chase down the witnesses we’ve named to see if they confirm or deny the details. And if they can’t back it up—or, more significantly, if these “witnesses” are just fictional characters (they’re not, by the way), then you have all the more reason to doubt my story.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SNOPES

logo-snopesOf course, the internet abounds with all sorts of stories and rumors. So many that it’s hard to always know what’s true and what’s not—or what lies in the foggy space between.  Thankfully the internet is self-correcting, at least to a degree. Ever heard of the website “Snopes?”  The folks who write for Snopes.com have done the world a great service in evaluating many of the claims you read about online. So if you ever encounter a rumor you just can’t make up your mind on, you can check with Snopes to see if it’s true.  Cigarettes linked to cancer? True.  Eating bacon regularly gives you six-pack abs? False.  Pastor Chris Wiles irresistible to women? Kind of a grey area.

See how that works?

Here’s what I’m getting at, with both the Chambersburg meteor story and the Snopes reference: Christianity is built not on the basis of human experience, but on the basis of historical fact. This is the basis of what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. (1 Corinthians 15:1-11)

See, many religions base their teachings on some abstract, personal experience. Mohammad, Joseph Smith, Gautama Buddha—these men each formed a religion based on some persona encounter they had with the divine.  Now, who am I to judge whether these men really did or did not have such an experience?

Christianity is way different. In Christianity, we have Paul saying, Look, these things really happened. Jesus came back from the dead. People saw him. Don’t believe me? Ask James. Ask Peter. Sure, they didn’t have Snopes to fall back on, but they could at least name names.

NO LONGER SAFELY SECULAR

Stop and think about this for just a moment. In today’s world, we tend to evaluate religious belief based on its personal or social impact. Some have committed acts of violence in the name of Christianity, we might object, So what makes Christianity any better than any other religion out there?

That’s a whole discussion in itself, but let’s start by saying, We’re asking the wrong question. The greatest measuring stick is not “Is Christianity good?” but “Is Christianity true?” Because we can squabble over what we truly define as “good;” there’s little room for interpretation as to whether Jesus rose from the dead.

Don’t you see what that means? Suddenly the world isn’t as safely secular as we thought it was. The resurrection—the stark, historic reality of the resurrection—shatters my credulity.  If I choose to reject the Christian gospel, it can’t possibly be due to a lack of evidence.

Where does that leave us? It leaves us confronted with the spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally subversive reality of the empty tomb, a barren cross, and a risen Lord. Jesus saves. Paul’s life was changed forever, yours can as well. Join us this week as we explore what this resurrection means for us.

 

“It is Finished”

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The cross of Christ represents the end of earning, the end of seeking God’s approval based on our own “sacrifices.” This is why the writer of Hebrews specifies that one of the crucial differences between Jesus and the system of the past is the finality of the cross:

 11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws on their hearts,
and write them on their minds,”

17 then he adds,

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.  (Hebrews 10:11-18)

In a 2005 interview, Bono—the lead singer for the band U2—talks about how this magnificent picture of grace has led him away from thinking only in terms of “karma,” the law of cause and effect:

“I really believe we’ve moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace…You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…every action is met by an equal or an opposite one….Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff…I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge….It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity…The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That’s the point….It’s not our own good works that get us through the gates of heaven.”

One of the hardest things to fully wrap our minds around is this basic principle of grace. Sure, I love the idea of my slate being cleaned, but I might hate—absolutely hate—that grace robs me of the privilege to “boast” (cf. Ephesians 2:9) of my moral superiority. Don’t I deserve credit, after all?

The problem of this kind of arrogance is that it leads us into a dangerous path, relationally speaking. Because only one of two things can happen. First, my moral system might actually work for me, more or less. I may spend a lifetime devoted to strict moral obedience. Life goes well—I get a good job, raise good kids, and be respected as a pillar of my community. I conclude that I am blessed; my righteousness has earned God’s approval. And I am constantly sneering at my neighbors, who have not achieved my blessing—clearly because they’re just not as morally upright as I am. Secondly, my moral system might not work for me. I might spend a lifetime of trying, only to be routinely confronted by the naked brutality of this fallen world. I obeyed all the rules; why doesn’t God bless me? I become bitter—at myself, at God, at my fellow church-goers who—despite not sharing my strict moral convictions—always seem way happier than I can ever hope to be.

Life is far more messy than all that. But so is spirituality, so is grace. Jesus joins us in our mess and—as we’ve been saying—absorbs the stains of our sin that we might have God’s approval not through any—any!—works of our own, but only through the finished work that he achieved on our behalf.

This is why it’s hard to hear the gospel if you’re a religious person. Because it’s easy to assume that you already know it—when all along you’ve only been learning to cling more tightly to your moral code. And it’s killing you.

Moral character isn’t a disposable part of the Christian life, but if we make transformation a prerequisite to forgiveness we strip grace of its beauty and strip the cross of its power. At the cross we do more than repent of our self-indulgence; we repent quite equally of our self-righteousness. Let it go. Let it all go—your self-righteous moralism, your sense of self-importance and smug religious superiority, your condescending attitude toward the sin of others deemed to be worse than your own. Let it go, and stand in the glorious grace of the once-for-all grace offered by Jesus. We close this week with the words of an old hymn, a hymn whose title comes from the last words of Jesus on the cross: “It Is Finished.”

“Lay your deadly doing down,
down at Jesus’ feet.
Stand in him and him alone,
gloriously complete.”

Crux Sola

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“The cross is the key signature of our theology.” This was the conclusion of one German author, for whom the cross loomed large in his understanding of God’s great story of redemption. He may as well have been quoting from Martin Luther, who years ago famously said that “the cross alone is our theology.” To be a Christian is to be a “soldier of the cross,” to borrow language from the old hymn. Yet when Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ was released, many reviewers were baffled that Gibson would ignore every scrap of Jesus’ ethical teaching in favor of delivering a brutal portrayal of Jesus’ crucifixion. At least one reviewer sneeringly dismissed the film as the “Jesus Chainsaw Massacre,” revolted that a religious film would disproportionately focus on a man’s blood rather than his message.

But don’t you see? For Christianity, Jesus’ blood is the message: the message of love, of justice, of forgiveness all rolled into a singular, defining event.

This is why the writer of Hebrews—among others—sees the cross as fulfilling and replacing the Old Testament sacrificial system entirely:

8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure insacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:8-10)

The cross was no great accident or interruption in God’s plan of redemption. It was the plan all along.

THE CROSS IN ANTIQUITY

We must not underestimate the sheer, shocking brutality of crucifixion in the ancient world. The ancient historians described “being nailed up” as the worst form of death.[1] Latin writers described it as an “infamous stake,”[2] the “barren and criminal wood,” [3] and “a most cruel and disgusting punishment.” [4]

Medical experts tell us that the most likely cause of death was slow, painful asphyxiation—that the lungs could not adequately expand and contract when suspended on the cross. But this might have been one of several causes of death, including death from blood loss, shock, or even being attacked by wild animals.

The practice of crucifixion had been invented as early as the culture of Assyria, though it was the Romans who had perfected it into the form of an art. The methods of crucifixion varied person to person. The Jewish writer Josephus tells us that “The soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different positions…”[5] The Latin writer Seneca lamented: “I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts;  others stretch out their arms on the gibbet.” [6]

This was not done in obscurity; this was done publicly, in the ancient equivalent of the corner parking lot of the local strip mall. The whole purpose, of course, was to shame you, and shame your followers. When Spartacus was defeated after his rebellion against Rome, 6,000 of his most loyal followers were crucified on the 120-mile stretch of road between Capua and Rome. I did the math on this. This means if you left Tri-State Fellowship and drove to Lancaster, roughly 60-70 yards, on either side of you, you’d see a person hanging in agony on the cross. One ancient writer lamented:

“What death is more shameful than to be crucified?  What death is worse than this condemnation is conceivable?  Even now he remains a reproach among all who have not yet received faith in him!”[7]

CRUX SOLA

In the ancient world, when someone was crucified, the public places were chosen so that people would stop and look. And so today, when we speak of the Savior crucified, we must stop and look. We must see the blood. We must see the nails. We must cringe at the (literally) God-forsaken spectacle we see before us, we must see the Savior pushed to the bitter edges of the world that we might be invited to taste in Heaven’s sweetness.

And above all, we must see that here is our shame, lying not on our own shoulders, but on his. On Christ’s. On our behalf.  Here is the sacrifice that lifts away the sin of the world (cf. John 1:29). My shame died there with him. He was broken that I might be made whole again. “The deformity of Christ forms you,” wrote Augustine. “By his wounds,” God said through Isaiah, “we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

If you are not a follower of Jesus, then this is your time to begin. If you’ve been following our devotional writings for the past two weeks, then you’ve been confronted with the inescapable truth of your own wickedness, a stain you can’t clean on your own. The cross sets you free from your guilt and shame, it transfers that debt from you to Jesus. Jesus took the penalty that you deserve so that you could be reunited in relationship to God. All you need to do is pause, bow your head, and tell God two things:

  • I know that I am a sinner in need of your grace,
  • I believe that your Son Jesus died in my place. I ask for your forgiveness.

It’s as simple as that. That’s grace. That’s your first small step toward a larger world. If you have said that prayer—either now or as a result of our recent sermon series, we’d love to hear from you. You may find our contact information through the Church’s website (www.tristatefellowship.org), or you can contact me personally at my email address (chris@tristatefellowship.org).

[1] Demosthenes, Oratio, 21.105.

[2] Anthologia Latina 415.23

[3] Seneca, Epistulae Morales 101.14

[4] Cicero, Contra Verres in The Verrine Orations, 2.5.64.

[5] Josephus, Bellum Judaicum, 5.11.1

[6] Seneca, Dialogue 6, 20.3

[7] Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, 10.9

A True and Better Priest

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I need you to imagine something.

Let’s imagine that you need to go in for surgery. We’ll imagine that it’s an appendectomy—a fairly standard procedure, but in the absence of treatment can become something much more dangerous.

If you’ve ever had surgery, you know there’s a whole pre-flight checklist that everyone goes through. It’s more than just dotting “i’s” and crossing “t’s.” It’s a whole protocol that ensures the absolute safety and integrity of each participant from patient to surgeon. The final step is to wheel you into the operating room where you are put under for the procedure. Now imagine, right as your eyes are about to shut from the anesthesia, that you look over to see the surgeon walk in the room. Instead of wearing the sterile scrubs, mask, and gloves you expect, your surgeon is covered in mud, or wearing those ugly rubber orange gloves she found in the janitor’s closet.

If you caught such a vision, your last thoughts before shutting your eyes would be paralyzing fear. This was the one person you were counting on for what would ultimately be a life-saving procedure. Yet your health had now been compromised by her lack of purity.

A DEFILED PRIEST

In the book of Joshua, we catch a vision of the high priest on what seems to be the great Day of Atonement, the day when the high priest would offer a sacrifice for the provision of the nation:

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” 3 Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. (Zechariah 3:1-3)

at in the Hebrew, we would notice that it doesn’t just say “Satan,” but “the satan,” which might simply mean “the accuser.” Again, this is a vision, not reality, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see such supernatural elements here, but it’s not necessarily clear that Zechariah is referring to the devil himself or merely an enemy of Israel hurling accusations.

What we are meant to see is the defilement of Joshua, the high priest. Customarily, priests like Joshua were sequestered for a week to prevent them from coming into contact with anything unclean so that they could perform the ceremony undefiled.  There was even a set of ritual bathings, after which Joshua would emerge wearing pure white robes.

But in Zechariah 3:3, Joshua is wearing “filthy robes.”  The original Hebrew seems to suggest that he is actually covered in excrement.  He is expected to be clean, to bring purity to the nation.  But in God’s eyes, all the rituals and duties do not truly cleanse the stain.

We find a similar theme in the letter of Hebrews—though here the author focuses not on the priests or the Day of Atonement, but the entire sacrificial system:

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. 2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? 3 But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’” (Hebrews 10:1-7)

There’s no doubt about it: sacrifices ultimately meant nothing.

A TRUE AND BETTER SACRIFICE

Not to keep using such visceral imagery, but we need to truly wrap our minds around the culture of sacrifice in the ancient world. To do this, we can actually look at the history books from the ancient people and catch a glimpse of what their religious system looked like.

The writer Josephus, for example, tells us that major Jewish holidays attracted so many worshippers to the temple that there were over 200,000 sacrifices made for 2.7 million people. [1] Even if you think this is an exaggeration, we might point out that Jewish commentaries describe the need to install drainage systems in their temple system:

 “At the south-western corner [of the Altar] there were two holes like two narrow nostrils by which the blood that was poured over the western base and the southern base used to run down and mingle in the water-channel and flow out into the brook Kidron.”[2]

The Kidron would have looked like the Chicago river on St. Patrick’s Day—only instead of green it would have gradually become a deep red.

In short: the system was bloody.  So when Jesus made a once-for-all sacrifice, it would have stood in sharp contrast to this older style of worship.  Imagine living in a city where once a year, the local river turned red from all the killing.  Where the sounds of thousands upon thousands of animals being slaughtered could be heard above the traffic.

Inadequate, the Bible says. Only a shadow of what’s to come.

See, we need a better high priest—a true and better Joshua. We find this in Jesus. He’s the true and better high priest who offers a true and better sacrifice, so that his once-for-all sacrifice could atone for the sins of God’s people, past, present, and future.

 

 

 

 

[1] Josephus, Bellum Iudaicum, 6:423-427.

[2] Mishnah, 3:2.

Paying the Debt

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Do we need forgiveness?

By now, we’ve already established the sheer magnitude of the problem of sin—both Biblically and psychologically. The question we might be faced with is why we can’t simply overlook it. Move past it. Get over it. After all, if even the Bible emphasizes that we’re all sinners, can’t we just accept this truth and move on?

Thing is, there are some things in life we just can’t move past—nor should we, really. A friend of mine told me the story of why he and his fiancée ended things. He’d been away on business—the ministry, actually—and didn’t see her for a few months. When he returned, he discovered that she’d moved into the apartment of another man. Their relationship was over. He was devastated.

More significantly, though, he was left with something psychologists occasionally call “emotional debt.” He still loved her. The relationship had ended with the abruptness of a car wreck, but the sheer momentum of his love was propelling his heart forward even now, scraped raw against the tarmac. But his fiancée, well…she had already moved on. She wasn’t hurting—at least not as bad as he was. So all—all—of the hurt, all of the betrayal, all of the sudden raw loneliness lay on his shoulders to carry. This was a tremendous debt.

What do we usually do when we experience this? We try and manage that debt by spreading it around. We talk badly about that person. We “warn” others about them—though this is usually just a form of gossip. We let ourselves stew and fester over the past. We fantasize about their downfall—or, alternately, we fantasize about surpassing that person’s success, and inciting their jealousy.

So what happens if we don’t do those things? Then that emotional debt is ours and ours alone to carry.

And that hurts.

Now what if we were the ones who did the offending? And what if the person we offended was not just another sinner like us, but the infinitely good and righteous character of God himself? I’m cautious not to start applying terms like “emotional debt” to an infinite God (as if we God fits into our psychological categories), though there are plenty of places in Scripture when God’s grief comes welling up like a rejected lover thumbing through a tear-stained wedding album.

“I have fond memories of you…how devoted you were to me in your early years.  I remember how you loved me like a new bride; you followed me through the wilderness, through a land that had never been planted.  What fault could your ancestors have possibly found in me that they strayed so far from me?” (Jeremiah 2:2-5, NET)

If there is to be true justice, if there is to be a sense of wrongs being put right, then this debt must be paid.

The Bible describes this in the language of something called “atonement.” Atonement is the finished work of a blood sacrifice. What does it mean to “atone?” Eugene Merrill of Dallas Seminary does a wonderful job of helping us examine the deeply-storied meaning of the Hebrew word kaphar. Merrill says that if we dig through the related words in Akkadian and other ancient languages (similar to how we might look at Latin roots of English words in the dictionary), we find a lot of language that emphasizes not merely covering over sin, but blotting it out entirely. Wiping it clean.

We find this meaning in an unlikely place—the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 32. Though used as part of God’s larger, spectacular plan to fulfill his promise to Abraham and establish his people, Jacob got his start as something of a con man. After cheating his brother out of the family inheritance, he went on the run. Now, he was about to be reunited with Esau, and that was a scary prospect. So he sent a whole series of material gifts ahead of him. Ever the shrewd manipulator, he was trying to “buy off” his brother with material gifts. Here’s what the text of the story says was going through his mind:

For he thought, “I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterward I shall see his face. Perhaps he will accept me.” (Genesis 32:21)

If you were to read that in the Hebrew, you might notice that the text reads something like “I will atone him” or—if we paraphrase—“I may wipe his face clean [of anger].” Atonement, we see, is deeply relational.

God established an elaborate system of sacrifices used to shape his people’s relationship with him—particularly in the area of the cleansing of sin. The writer of the letter of Hebrews says:

Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. (Hebrews 9:22)

Naturally, we hear the echoes of the Old Testament law, here:

11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. Leviticus 17:11

Blood would be the means by which God’s people made atonement for their sins.

Now, if you’ve been in church for a while, you might know that each of the sacrifices meant something very specific. But, as Leon Morris points out in his book The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, if we fast-forward to Jesus’ day, the first-century Jews had blurred the system so that every sacrifice made was thought to remove sin.

Such language must seem shockingly barbaric in the walls of today’s sanitized sanctuaries. Why would animal sacrifice be such a major part of worship for such a long period of human history?

Because it’s gross.

See, I have this theory. You know those awful videos they show you in Driver’s Ed? The ones where they show the bloody aftermath of drinking or texting while driving? They’re almost cliché, really. We’re numb to it. But what if we showed cars running over animals. Dogs. Cats. Pets. That sort of thing. The cuter and fluffier the better. We can watch teens text and drive, then watch puppy guts get splattered along the roadside. I guarantee you this would be infinitely more effective than the footage they show now.

If that horrifies you, that’s the point. Sin is as offensive before a holy God is as blood is before a people who treasure their animals. Granted, a sacrificial lamb would probably not have tugged at the heartstrings as much as a family pet, but the unblemished, male lamb would have been quite valuable to the family. And now the worshippers would watch it bleed to death. It’s as if God is trying to remind us, This is your sin. This is your filth. This is your shame. This is the price of atonement.

As before, we need to let this sink in. We need to let this haunt our imaginations and turn our stomachs. We need to be horrified by a God that is so ferociously holy that he demands blood from the people that have incurred such an impossibly massive debt.  Hear the cries of the lamb. See its blood flow in crimson streaks. And let your own tears flow at the knowledge of God’s plan to remove the debt, to cleanse the stain—to bring healing, to bring relationship.

The Stain of Sin

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In the late 1990’s, a physician by the name of Karl Menninger wrote a book called Whatever Became of Sin? His book focused on the way the modern world took the concept of evil and human wickedness and packed it away in the attic along with all the other religious notions we’d grown out of. What we once explained in spiritual terms, we now could understand through psychology or sociology. This is why when you turn on the evening news, the talking heads on the screen strain to find some explanation behind some recent act of violence—usually attributed to the perpetrator’s childhood trauma or the collective weight of social forces. Even recent terrorist activity in the Middle East has been blamed on poor economic and social conditions. Perhaps all of this is an attempt to deny the radical wickedness that rots and stinks at the core of each of us. “There’s no evil inside of me, no sir.”

But even human psychology reveals that “sin” hasn’t been packed away as tightly as we might have assumed. The field of “moral psychology” deals with what are often called “moral emotions.” While some of these emotions can be quite positive (gratitude, for example, would be called a moral emotion), others are much more negative: guilt, shame, anger, disgust. While Sigmund Freud had identified “moral anxiety” in the late nineteenth century, it really wasn’t until the 1980’s and 90’s that psychologists really started examining these emotions with greater interest.

If you follow Jesus, their findings shouldn’t really shock you. Because while yes, cultures and people vary widely when it comes to ethics and moral questions, there are some things about us that are the same. No culture is neutral on issues such as the perseveration of life, sexual ethics, and respect for the dead. Could this be that yes, we do have some remnant of God’s image still alive within us?

But one of the most fascinating “moral emotions” is disgust. Essentially all cultures have some clear boundary line between what is “clean” and “unclean.” Cross that line and it grosses us out. Psychologist Paul Rozin calls this “core disgust.” It’s what we feel when we imagine ourselves handling a live cockroach, or eating something off the floor of the men’s room.

Now, we might attribute some of our disgust to biological preservation against germs. But we also seem to have a strong reaction of disgust when we think about moral contamination. Rozin’s most famous experiment illustrates this well. He asked a group of participants about their willingness to wear a sweater once owned and worn by Adolf Hitler. And of course the participants said “no.” Even if no one would ever know who it belonged to. Rozin kept changing the parameters: what if the sweater was thoroughly laundered? What if it were sent to Mother Theresa to be worn and sent back? What if the sweater were completely unraveled, re-dyed, and re-knit? The answer was still “no.”

Disgust and morality are closely linked. Hitler’s sweater is only the tip of the iceburg. Paul Bloom summarizes:

“Experimental research shows that feelings of disgust make us judge others more harshly. In the first experiment along these lines, the psychologists Thalia Wheatley and Jonathan Haidt hypnotized participants to feel a flash of disgust whenever they saw an arbitrary word. When the participants later read stories of a mild moral transgression, those who saw the word rated the behavior as more immoral than those who didn’t. In other experiments, participants were asked to make judgments at a messy, disgusting desk, or in a room that had been blasted with [an offensive odor]; or after being shown a [disgusting scene from a movie]. All of these situations made the participants more morally disapproving about the acts of other people. Even eating a bitter food, which evokes a sensation akin to physical disgust, makes people harsher toward moral transgressions…The consensus from the world and from the lab is clear: disgust makes us meaner.” (Paul Bloom, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, p. 140-41)

All this to say that when the writers of the Bible used the language of “clean” and “unclean,” they weren’t merely appealing to cultural standards; they were identifying that “core disgust” within each one of us.

In the book of Proverbs, for example, we read:

There is a kind who is pure in his own eyes, Yet is not washed from his filthiness. (Proverbs 30:12)

King David, after his affair with Bathsheeba, cried out to God:

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me. ( Psalm 51:1-3)

None of us are clean.

There are two great temptations to avoid here. The first is the temptation to become defensive—“I’m not really as bad as all that.” The second is to take too lightly the promise of God’s grace—“God will forgive me anyway.” By that I don’t mean that God’s grace can ever be insufficient, only that sometimes we skip over the sheer awful gravity of our sin to “get to the good stuff.” In either case, there’s a sickness in each of us, a filthiness, a stain. Even in a culture of social media and digital transparency, there are things you and I would never say to family or share with our friends. We are ashamed.

So there is value, I think, in not moving on just yet to the “good news” of the gospel, but taking time to really reflect on—nay, mourn—the appalling truth about who we really are. It’s not for nothing that the Biblical writers spoke of tearing their garments or sitting in sackcloth—or the way Job encounters God and can only “repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). Learn from this. Take some time, this day, to truly sit and consider the dreadful sickness that runs rampant through our hearts and through our towns and, yes, through our sanctuaries. For only in our glorious cringe can we truly find renewed appreciation for the wonderful cure.

 

Living in Anticipation (1 Peter 4:19)

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More than a few writers have observed that anticipation is sometimes its own reward.  Maybe.  It’s certainly true for a few things in life.  If you go to the movie theater, you’ll most likely be subjected to several minutes of “previews” before the film you paid to see.  They’re called “trailers”—longer than a television commercial, each trailer is a work of art unto itself, highlighting the basic contours of an upcoming film without giving away too much. It’s the fine art of building anticipation, making you yearn for the day you plunk down more money to be enveloped in the film’s story.

Eschatology—the study of the so-called “end times”—is like that.  The resurrection of Jesus testifies to a coming reality, and believers actively anticipate the day when we get to experience this glorious event for ourselves.

As we’ve mentioned, God’s future Kingdom is a major theme that runs throughout Peter’s letter.  After addressing the hurts of a persecuted Church, Peter says this:

19 Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. (1 Peter 4:19)

Don’t miss the “therefore.”  Peter had earlier said that those who suffer are sharing in what Christ experienced, and we receive the blessing of God’s presence through it all.  Because of that, Peter says, we can “entrust” or “souls” to God.  The word for “trust” here is an unusual one—the same Greek word that is used of Jesus “entrusting” His spirit to God on the cross (Luke 23:46).  Its meaning is something like “to give to someone for safekeeping.”  Peter assures his readers—and us as well—that God can be counted on for our preservation.  Preservation?  For what?  The answer can only be God’s new heaven and new earth.

I have to confess that I don’t much look forward to heaven—at least not as much as the idea of God making the earth new again.  See, the Christian story of the end times is of God remaking all of creation, and we get to enjoy this new world with Him.  The Bible speaks of Heaven as a very real place, of course—it seems that until this new earth is made that God’s people inhabit Heaven even as they, too, await the day that Christ returns to set things right.

The point is simply this: any Christian focus on the “end times” must be focused on the whole story—and the story must be an emphatically earthly story.  Our final destination is God’s renewed earth.  This is why we must be cautious in how we approach our understanding of the end times.  Too often evangelical Christianity has exhibited a strange preoccupation with an event known as the Rapture.  The Rapture refers to the day that the Church is rescued from the present world prior to a seven-year period of intense tribulation.  Now, the Rapture is an idea worthy of our attention and even our devotion.  But we must be clear about two things.  First, not everyone agrees on the nature and timing of the Rapture.  Second, the Rapture is not the end of the story.  We must be more focused on resurrection than Rapture—and by resurrection I mean the final end of the story when God’s people inhabit a new earth.  Again, it’s hardly wrong to learn about and evaluate the Rapture, but the danger is that we might start to think that our goal is one of escaping the earth instead of caring for it, or that our good deeds are motivated by fear of the Lord’s return rather than loving a created world that groans for completion.  Telling the whole story—a story that ends not with Rapture but a resurrected world—that builds a greater anticipation and care for our earth.

This, then, is what Peter means when he speaks of trusting God “while doing good.”  The gospel, of course, cannot be reduced to good works.  The gospel is the powerful story of God’s plan to renew all of creation—and our immediate response is to come to Jesus’ cross for personal forgiveness and transformation.  Good deeds, then, reflect this inward transformation; they become a means of participating in God’s future kingdom even though it has yet to be fully realized.

In the first few centuries of the Church, this became the key to the Church’s success.  Even a non-Christian historian pauses to remark:

“By 250, Christianity had spread from Palestine across the Roman empire….The impact of Christian faith was palpable in the lives of ordinary men and women, who had embraced sexual continence, willingly set their slaves free, and in martyrdom displayed the highest form of courage.  Again, was this coincidence, or was it a sign that man’s divine nature had finally truly been awakened?”[1]

But, of course, it had nothing to do with “man’s divine nature,” but everything to do with ordinary people who found confidence in knowing that even in the midst of suffering, they could entrust their souls to a faithful God.

And so can we.

Our challenge, then, is to “do good” in the lives of our neighbors, our friends, our co-workers.  We “do good” because—like a movie trailer—we live in anticipation when all things will be made good again.

 

 

[1] Arthur Herman, The Cave and the Light, p. 161-2.

Strength through Defeat (1 Peter 4:12-18)

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In the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises, director Christopher Nolan completes his Batman saga with the villain known as Bane.  In the years since the defeat of the Joker, Gotham City had enjoyed relative peace.  Batman had no longer been necessary.  Now, the threat of Bane called Batman out of retirement, but after so many years away he was off his game.  “Peace has made you weak,” Bane taunts.  “Victory has defeated you.”

For years, Christianity has enjoyed relative peace with regard to the public square.  Sure, America has never had any official religion, but Christianity has historically had tremendous influence over the art and morals of Western society.  Now that’s all changing—but can the character of the Church stand up to these new social pressures?  Could it be that these past years of peace have “made us weak?”

THE PURPOSE OF PAIN

Peter writes that Christ’s followers should “not be surprised” by periods of suffering:

12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.  (1 Peter 4:12-14)

Too often it’s tempting to respond to suffering not with soft hearts but with clenched fists.  We bring to mind faded (and often distorted) memories of the cherished past, which only fuels our desire to “get back to the way things used to be.”  Love and compassion quickly become eclipsed by fear and a lust for power.  We admire those with the passion to speak against the world’s moral decay, and we ourselves mirror their red-faced diatribes about the seeming barbarism of a world without God.

Peter isn’t saying that the world’s moral order (or disorder) shouldn’t sadden us; he’s simply saying it should not surprise us.  When we witness the unvarnished brokenness of the world we harden into anger—but the gospel invites us to soften into tears.

Peter tells us that this suffering—though never positive—can be enriching.  He uses the words “fiery ordeal.”  The phrase can be used to refer to the “way of testing silver and gold” (Proverbs 27:21).  Suffering can be used to purify the Church for God’s glory.

After all, Peter notes, such was the experience of Christ himself.  In verse 13, Peter notes that we follow a Savior who himself endured suffering.  If we follow him, we can expect much of the same.  And it’s this shared experience that seems to be in mind when Peter calls us “blessed.”  In her commentary on 1 Peter, Karen Jobes notes that while Paul sees suffering as an opportunity to build character, Peter sees suffering as “evidence of genuine faith.”  Suffering for Christ unites us with him. [1] The phrase “the Spirit of glory and God rests on you” seems to be an allusion to Isaiah 11:2 which, in turn, points to the promised Savior.  So suffering unites us with Jesus.

The phrasing “the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you” is a likely allusion to Isaiah 11:2—which is itself a Messianic prophecy.  Therefore the same Spirit predicted to rest on the Messiah now rests on his followers.

MAKING “CHRISTIAN” MEANINGFUL

But Peter is aware of the possibility of ethical breaches.  For an unbelieving world, there are few greater barriers to Christianity than hypocrisy.  Peter tells his readers that if you’re going to suffer, at least suffer for the right reasons:

15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. 17 For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And

“If the righteous is scarcely saved,
what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?” (1 Peter 4:15-18)

I’d like to point out that this is one of only three—yes three—uses of the word “Christian” in the entire Bible.  Peter specifically uses it in its classical sense, meaning “Christ follower.”  I think Peter’s instructions here are applicable for today: let the word Christian actually mean something.

The idea of judgment beginning with “the household of God” is consistent with this teaching.  In the Old Testament, God speaks of putting some of his people “ into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’” (Zecharaiah 13:9)  Something similar seems to be happening here, in that God seems to be purifying his own people.  And, as Peter notes in verse 18, Christians can endure suffering because we are confident in our salvation through grace alone—but what if you had no such assurance?  Suffering would come with the added misery of meaninglessness.

These days we use the word Christian far too flippantly.  It’s become an adjective—a word we use to describe Christian music, Christian schools, Christian books, Christian radio, and even Christian breathmints (no, really).  But in the Bible, the word “Christian” isn’t an adjective; it’s a noun. It describes a specific type of person: a follower of Jesus.  In his book When Bad Christians Happen to Good People, Dave Burchett notes that sometimes even brand names get applied too broadly.  For example, if I need to blow my nose, what sort of product do I need?  Though the broad term is “tissue,” you might have replied “Kleenex”—because here’s a case where the brand name gets applied to all forms of the same product (in The South, they do the same thing by using “coke” to refer to all forms of soft drinks…it gets very confusing).  But, Burchett notes, companies technically have the right to sue for using the word “Kleenex” to refer to other brands of the same product.  Why?  Because no one wants their label attached to something inferior.  His analogy may not be perfect, but you see where he’s going with this.  The word “Christian” ought to mean a deep, abiding commitment to Christ and His Kingdom.  Spirituality cannot be as simply as checking a box under “religious affiliation.”

Ultimately, this may be the positive aspect of our post-everything society.  A generation or so ago, you were Christian by default.  That is, you weren’t Buddhist or Muslim or Jewish, so you must be Christian.  And of course that didn’t necessarily mean anything.  Now, it’s far more fashionable to be “unaffiliated,” or a “none.”  Fewer people than ever before label themselves as Christian.  But don’t you see how the refining process is already at work?  Now, Christianity is no longer a default label.  You have to deliberately choose to label yourself a Christian, meaning those who call themselves a Christian in today’s religious climate are more likely to be a genuine disciple of Christ.  So don’t you see how the refining process is already at work?  Persecution—or at least social stigma—can actually be a way of purifying the Church, making her stronger and healthier than she was before.

 

[1] Karen H. Jobes, 1 Peter, p. 287-8.

Love More; Whine Less (1 Peter 4:7-11)

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The human soul craves justice.  Peter tells his readers that God’s justice is coming.  “The end of all things is at hand,” he tells them (1 Peter 4:7).  Throughout his letter, Peter places special focus on God’s promised future—a future that includes both restoration and righteous judgment.  Yesterday we even noted that those who slander God’s people will “give an account” to God (1 Peter 4:5).

If you are unfamiliar with Christianity, I know that this might be hard to swallow.  Speaking of judgment and righteousness starts to sound like the fire-and-brimstone preachers who sweat through their polyester suits in an effort to scare you into joining the church.  But justice is more than that—much more.  Consider the recent popularity of the television series Breaking Bad.  The show centers on Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who pays for his cancer treatments by cooking and selling crystal meth.  The entire series is about his descent from middle class America into total moral depravity.  Why would this become one of the most-watched television series of all time?  In an interview with The New York Times, the show’s writer Vince Gilligan offers us a clue:

“If religion is a reaction of man, and nothing more, it seems to me that it represents a human desire for wrongdoers to be punished…. I feel some sort of need for Biblical atonement, or justice, or something. I like to believe there is some comeuppance, that karma kicks in at some point, even if it takes years or decades to happen. My girlfriend says this great thing that’s become my philosophy as well. ‘I want to believe there’s a heaven. But I can’t not believe there’s a hell.”[1]

For Gilligan, heaven is desirable, but hell is necessary.  Do you want justice?  Do you want wrongs to be set right?  We have this promise in the future return of Christ.

Peter says that this changes the way we respond to one another within the believing community:

7 The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. 8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. 9 Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4:7-11)

If I know that the end is near, this changes my attitude toward others.  My focus is no longer on myself, but on others and—ultimately—God.  Peter lists a whole series of commands, here.  Some of these commands are about our attitudes (“be self-controlled and sober-minded”) while others are about our actions (“use [your gift] to serve one another”).  But in verse 11 Peter says that the higher purpose is that “in everything God may be glorified.”  The word glory most literally means “weighty” or “massive.”  We might use the word “significant.”

If we put the pieces together, what is Peter saying?  Peter is telling a community of marginalized Christians that when suffering comes, they must serve and love one another—so that others may see that the most significant thing in their life is not their comfort, but Christ and His Kingdom. 

Practically, this means that you and I are faced with a similar question regarding our own gifts.  What is a “gift?”  Sometimes I think it’s tempting to think of our “gifts” through the lens of Self. But when it comes to gifts, the issue is not: What makes me special?  the issue is: How can I contribute? 

The gospel promises us that ultimate justice is coming and may come at any moment.  In Peter’s view, this doesn’t promote fear, but provokes Godly character and sacrificial living.  We look for this ultimate justice by practicing justice even in our communities.  We contribute in meaningful ways because we want our present communities to mirror the values of God’s future kingdom.

So what about you?  How might you contribute?  For some of you, it might be something small.  Contributing to our Church community by serving as an usher, a greeter, preparing coffee.  Maybe you step up and serve in our children’s ministry—there’s always an opening.  Maybe it’s about serving outside our walls in your individual workplaces: humbly and graciously doing the tasks no one else seems fond of, engaging with your coworkers in ways that reveal the character and love of the Savior and—if opportunity allows and the Spirit leads—sharing with them the “hope that is within you.”

 

[1] Segal, David (July 6, 2011). “The Dark Art of ‘Breaking Bad'”. The New York Times. July 25, 2011