A Hermeneutic of the Cross

Sunday morning I will be preaching on the importance of the Bible.  While writing my sermon I thought a lot about interpretation.  The question arises, “How does one interpret Scripture?”  How do we make sense of the hard stuff we find in the Bible?  Even Peter says some of Paul’s writings are hard to understand and are twisted by those that have bad intentions. When considering interpreting the Bible many turn to understanding the following: learning the grammar of the text from the original languages, the historical background of the passages, the idioms used, and the context of the over passage in question.  I think all of these are excellent tools to use but I would like to propose another method.  I call it the hermeneutic of the Cross.

    I believe one way to look at hard passages is through the lens of the cross.  The cross is one of the single most dramatic ways that God demonstrated His love for us.  As John 3:16 tells us, “for God so loved the world.”  The Son going to the cross is Father’s ultimate display of His love for us.  Philippians 2 tells us that the Son willingly emptied Himself and died on the cross on our behalf.  I would propose that the cross is the template through which we should view God.  We see a trinitarian shape in the cross of Jesus.  We see the Father send the Son, the Son freely offer up Himself as the sacrifice, and the Spirit strengthen the Son in this mission.

So how can the cross help us with interpreting the Bible? 

    First of all, the cross tells us how serious sin really is.  Isaiah 53 tells us that we are healed by His stripes and He was crushed for iniquity.  Sin really is that bad.  When we look at the Exodus and Conquest of the land we can understand a little better why God tries to drill into the head of knotty head Israel that he means business about purity and holiness.  God is a loving Father that knows best.  He knows that sin will destroy us.  It is the darkness of sin that drapes over the cross and drives Jesus to say, “My God, My God why have your forsaken me?”  Jesus is one that knew no sin but became sin on our behalf.  So when we look at the Bible’s prohibition against sexual sin, anger, discord, and impurity we can just look to the cross and see how bad sin really is.

    Lastly, the cross displays the love of God.  The cross cries out that God loves so much that He does the reaching.  God does the saving.  It tells us that grace is the only way we can get out of the pit.  God has stoop down, get in the mud, and draw us out.  God takes us out and cleans us up.  The cross tells us that there is no way a little ‘works righteousness’ is part of God’s plan.  There will be no boot strap saving but a radical grace that sends the Son into the world to be a ransom.  The cross displays to us that God does not want anyone to perish but to come to a knowledge of the truth.

 This love also helps us understand the doctrine of Hell.  So many people have a difficult time with the idea that a loving God would send people to Hell.  We should remember that love is about choice.  God loves us so radically that He gives us a free will to choose Him.  When someone is sentenced to Hell, in essence, God is saying to the sinner, “Your will be done.”  Sinful folks do not want to be in the presence of God for eternity.  Heaven would be miserable for those that do not love God for what He did for them in Christ.  God in his love allows those people to make the final choice to be alienated from Him for eternity. 

So I propose to you a new tool in interpreting the Bible.  I call it he hermeneutic of the Cross of Jesus. 

Interesting Times

There is a Chinese proverb that says something like, “may you live in interesting times.”  I would say that many Christians would agree that we live in interesting times. 

Many have been shook to the core by the ruling on marriage by the Supreme Court.  I am not shocked in the least.  The seeds for this revolution in identity, marriage, and morality have been sown many years ago.  This post is lengthy and it reflects my own struggles.  Realize that these are areas where I fall short so I am preaching to myself also. 

The question we should be asking is, “How did we get here?” and “What is our response?” 

We are at this moment because of apathy and a lack of love.  Now you may think that sounds crazy that a lack of love has lead us to a moral decline in our country.  What I mean by love is Biblical love.  Love means that I care enough about a person to share the truth with them.  If I know that their lifestyle is destructive and that they are not in fellowship with their Creator, I should have enough love to tell them.  Love means that I will tell you the truth in a compassionate way realizing that you may hate me for that.  Love means that I will still be your friend even if my ‘truth telling’ has caused you to be upset with me.  Love means I will pray for my enemies.

Here is the problem with loving our enemies, we are so worried about offending people that we will never have any enemies to love. 

 Apathy is the other great elephant in the room that we must discuss.  Christians have become lazy and really don’t care until they realize Rome is on fire.  It is at that moment that we spring into action.  Here are some signs of the problem; you drive by a ball park on Sunday and it packed full of Christians playing some type of sport and the church parking lot is nearly empty.  We see people’s enthusiasm for a sports team is more fervent than their love for Jesus.  People would rather worship the god of personal peace and affluence instead of the living God of Heaven.  When the early Church wanted to make a difference they worshipped.  Notice in Acts 4:31 that when persecution arose it was worship that brought action.  Worship is an act of spiritual warfare that we take for granted.  But apathy doesn’t end there.  We are apathetic about reading Scripture.  2 Timothy 3:16 says that Scripture is God breathed.  The same breath that brought life to man in Genesis 2:7 brings life to us through the word in Scripture.  The Hebrew writer says that the word of God is living and active.  Many Christians cannot form a response to the gay marriage debate because they don’t even know that the Bible teaches on the subject. 

What is our response?

Of course it would make sense that we should start with Love.  It is the love that Jesus had when he gave His life as a ransom.  He came to serve and not be served.  We must be willing to get in the mud and love people that may disgust us.  We vehemently disagree with people on the issue of gay marriage but we have to engage them and teach them the truth.  We can’t teach them the truth from afar.  We can ‘loft’ Bible verse bombs from some place far off.  We must evangelize by meeting, befriending, and teaching them.  That is true love.  True love is knowing the salvation you have in Jesus and wanting to share it with others.  True love is seeing everyone as being made in the image of God and wanting them to reach the fulness of life. 

We must have courage.  God has given us a spirit of power not of timidity.  Recently, I was studying Revelation 21 and noticed that in verse 8 that those that will go into Hell will be the ‘cowardly’.  I realized that I never considered that an attribute of the ungodly is cowardice.  I then remembered how much the Bible says about courage.  How many times have you read, “be of good courage’?  We must be like the Peter and John before the Sanhedrin and be bold in our proclamation.  We need Christians that understand the Gospel is a proclamation of truth and not something to be apologized for.  I believe the Gospel is like a lion.  What I mean is that no one has to defend a lion but only has to unleash the lion.   It is time for the Gospel to challenge every strata of our society. 

The Christian Roots of Religious Freedom

Most of us remember our Western Civilization courses in college or a World History class in high school. In those situations we learned about the evil of Christians over the ages and how the institutionalized Church persecuted everyone else. Enlightenment thinkers, such as Edward Gibbon, were taken at face value when he asserted that raw power was supported by religious authorities at the expense of the common man. This is a very truncated and dangerous view of history. Protestants and Evangelicals have swallowed this way of thinking ‘hook line and sinker’ and failed to realize that the Enlightenment writers that they take for the gospel truth had an axe to grind against the Christian faith. The truth is much more complex than what we have been taught. I am not defending the atrocities people have committed in the name of Christ against other religious groups at times in history. What I am proposing is a fresh look at the roots and wellspring of our Christian forefathers in their teachings on religious freedom. I am proposing that Christianity is the very root of Christian freedom. This is such a timely subject due to the rise of a type of radical secularism and the intolerance of radical Islam. We must be courageous people and thinking people in these interesting times. It would also do us well to understand the underpinnings of our religious freedom that was birthed at the founding of our country.

       We must turn back to the earliest Christians to see how the ideas of religious freedom trickled down to the founding fathers of our own country. The earliest followers of Christ were persecuted by a pagan empire but the tide was changing by 300 years after the death of the last Apostle. Not long after the fiercest persecution of Diocletian an emperor would come to power named Constantine, and he would issue the Edict of Milan. The Edict of Milan was a turning point in history in that it would be one of the first statements of religious tolerance of its kind. Contrary to popular belief, it did not make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire but made it a tolerated religion. But how did this way of thinking come about? Who shaped this idea of religious freedom? Was it the pagan Romans that so many believe were enlightened versus those backwards Christians?

     Fresh voices of religious toleration can be found in early Christian leaders such as Tertullian. Tetrullian stated in the early 200’s AD that it is a “fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions.” This was a revolutionary concept in the Roman Empire at that time. The Imperial Cult of Rome was fine with you worshipping your own gods or as long as you accepted the Roman pantheon of gods, as well as the Emperor as a living god. What Tertullian was calling for was a much more extreme form of religious freedom. Tertullian would actually be quoted by Thomas Jefferson during the 18th century to defend the right to religious freedom.


      Another shining light of religious freedom from the beginnings of Christianity was Lactantius. Lactantius lived into the early 300’s and acted as an advisor for Constantine. Lantantius stated the following: “Religion is to be defended not by putting to death, but by dying, not by cruelty but by patience, not by an impious act but by faith […] For if you wish to defend religion by bloodshed, and by tortures, and by doing evil, it will not be defended but polluted and profaned. For nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion, for if the mind of the worshipper turns away it is carried off and nothing remains.” One can see the influence of Lactantius on the thinking of Constantine. Constantine in writing to the Eastern Provinces stated the following: “contest for immortality must be undertaken voluntarily and not with compulsion.”


 It was this radical view of religious freedom that was first birthed from the earliest thinkers in the Church. Here is a synopsis of what Christian thinking gave us as a nation as we look at religious freedom:


 1) Faith is a matter of an inward choice and should never be coerced or forced. This would rule out an official state religion that makes all other expressions of faith illegal.


 2) There are two realms in your experience. There is the spiritual dimension and the material world. Now, this is not to be confused as deism or what Francis Schaeffer called the ‘fact value dichotomy’ We know that we are integrated beings of flesh and spirit and what we do in the body matters. The point I am making here is more in line with what Abraham Kuyper called sphere sovereignty. In the sphere sovereignty paradigm one understands that there is the role of the Church and the role of the state. Actually, Kuyper had three spheres of influence that each had sovereignty. He added the family as the third sphere. The church exercises the keys of excommunication, the state wields the sword, and the family has the rod of discipline. One should not bleed into the other. For the state to take on the role of the Church or the Church to take on the role of the state leads to a blurring of lines that God never intended.


 In this time of uncertainty about our own religious freedom in our country we should gladly turn back the pages of time and drink deep from the wisdom of the early Christian thinkers. As Christians we should stand on the solid ground that religious freedom is a non-negotiable. Also, the state has no right to declare secular humanism as the official state religion of America. We need to do the tough work of asking how does the Church inform government and how does the government ensure religious freedom? How do we have an open market place of ideas while not drifting into relativism?

Life Stinks and Then You Die

The book of Ecclesiastes is one that I have always had trouble understanding. As a minister I say that with great humility and embarrassment. I have actually avoided teaching that book and studying it because of my lack of understanding. I recently had the pleasure of reading the book, Life Stinks and Then You Die by Bob Hostetler. Hostetler takes on the book of Ecclesiastes in a way that everyone from the learned scholar to the average member in the pew can understand. I can say that this book has given me a new appreciate for the genius of the book of Ecclesiastes. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed this book, and I believe it has allowed me to reclaim a book of the Bible that has laid dormant in my devotion and teaching. I will have to say that that the title of Hostetler’s book may seem odd, but once you pick up the book it makes perfect sense. He points out that Solomon, by the time he writes Ecclesiastes, has lived a long and full life. Anyone that lives a long life will experience heartache and dispair. The book of Ecclesiastes does not sugar coat the issue of pain in this life with mere moral platitudes, but hits it head on with sobering teaching. Hostetler has organized his book in a masterful way that begins to unpack the main theme of the book of Ecclesiastes which is found in chapter 1 verse 2 that says, “Meaningless!, Meaningless! says the Teacher, Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” Hostetler points out that the word ‘meaningless’ or ‘vanity’ appears 38 times in the book of Ecclesiastes. From that statement one would think that Hostetler’s book is depressing but it sincerely deals the problems that we face today with boldness and provides hope throughout its pages. Hostetler sheds light on the why so many things seem to be meaningless in this life. Hostetler takes the ancient wisdom of Ecclesiastes and makes it relevant for postmoderns. For example, Hostetler pulls into the light the vanity of the fast paced life that pursues money and the fleeting things that will not last. As a matter of fact, after reading “Life Stinks”, it seems like Ecclesiastes speaks perfectly to this current age. The pointless pursuit of just ‘being busy’ to the point that we look back and realize that none of this ‘stuff’ lasts leads one to throw their hands up and cry ‘Vanity!’. I believe the real strength of this book is found in the wisdom that he unpacks from Solomon in that if you live your life for those things that last you are impervious to the things that tend to rock people to their core. The greatest highlights of the book are the following: just because we age and grow older does not mean we mature, we should expect the unexpected, and we should live each moment as it is the last of our life. The title of Hostetler’s, which at first seemed to be odd to me, truly nails the outlook of this amazing book of Ecclesiastes as “Life Stinks and then you Die.” I would highly recommend this book to anyone struggling with life and its many problems as well as anyone that wants to unlock the meaning of the book of Ecclesiastes.

Do Matthew, Mark, and Luke Present Jesus as Divine?

Many blogs and conservative websites have recently posted on old interview of Bart Ehrman by Stephen Colbert. Colbert gets into character during the interview and it is very entertaining. Colbert actually does decently well in his rebuttal of Ehrman, even though it is a bit 'tongue in cheek'. Erhman actually admitted that Colbert was correct in presenting the Gospel of John as holding forth Jesus as God incarnate in flesh. Where Colbert could have taken Ehrman to task was in the assumption that the Synoptic Gospels (Matt, Mark, and Luke) did not present Jesus as God. Ehrman, in his book Jesus Interrupted, proposes that the Synoptics paint a picture of Jesus as the purely human Jewish Messiah. He believes that the Divinity of Jesus is a later 'add on' of the Church. I would like to propose that Ehrman has not considered the Synopics as the original audience would have heard them. For example, if we could go back in a time machine and ask a Second Temple practicing Jew a few questions it may shed light on this issue. If one were to ask a practicing Jews the following questions: Who can forgive sins?, Who is the Lord of the Sabbath?, Who could be worshiped?, and Who could restructure or reconstitute what it means to be and Israelite? The resounding answer would be, "Only the one true God of Israel!" Now take that into consideration when you think about how Jesus claimed all of these roles in the Synoptics. In Mark 2 we read of Jesus' healing of the paralytic man let down through the roof of a home. Mark 2:5-7 reads, "And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” 6Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7“Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (ESV) One can quickly see that Jesus claims to have the authority to forgive sins and the reaction of the scribes says it all, "God ALONE can forgive sins" Here is just one implicit claim to divinity by Jesus of Nazareth. Matthew bookends his gospel with folks worshiping Jesus. We see that he is worshiped as a baby in Matthew 2:11 and worshiped after His resurrection in Matthew 28:9. We know that only to God alone is worship allowed but Matthew is rubbing our nose in the fact that the story of Jesus is bracketed with worship. The question Matthew is asking the reader is, "Will you worship Him too?" Jesus does other provocative things such as claim to be the Lord of the Sabbath and reconstitute what it means to be an Israelite by literally 'making 12' (his disciples) and determining the boundaries of being God's people as those that are with Him. One could just look at the only accusation that stuck to Jesus in his trail before His crucifixion and see that His claim to Divinity was what put Him on the cross. Mark's Gospel records the sham trial of Jesus and how the Council tried to get false witnesses to testify against Jesus. The problem was that the false witnesses had contradictions in their testimony. What finally stuck was that Jesus claimed equality with God. We read in Mark 14:61-63 "Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” 62And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” 63And the high priest tore his garments and said, “What further witnesses do we need? 64You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?” And they all condemned him as deserving death." (ESV) Jesus claimed the right to sit at the right hand of God which clearly means to share in His glory. One can witness the violent reaction of the high priest to see the effect of this claim. The very reason that Jesus was put on the cross was because of His claim to Divinity. To the Romans it was presented as a claim to Kingship but the Sanhedrin wanted Him on the cross because of their perception of blasphemy. In this post I just explored a few of the examples of Jesus' claim to Divinity in the Synoptics. It is a shame that Ehrman and other scholars try to discount the Christian faith using less than honest tactics. In a sound-bite society I am afraid that many people stop short of truly investigating some of the wild claims by a man like Ehrman.

The Intolerance of the Tolerant

Many of you have heard of the controversy surrounding Brendan Eich the former CEO of Mozilla that came to its climax last week. Eich was actually the founder of Mozilla and the board of directors of the company recently decided to name him CEO of the company. This announcement touched off a firestorm in the liberal community. In protest some businesses blocked the Mozilla Firefox search engine from visiting their sites. Their reasoning was to put so much financial pressure on Mozilla that they would have no other recourse but to fire Eich. Eventually, Eich stepped down and is no longer employed by the very company that he helped found. You may ask what had Eich done that was so terrible? Had he committed a heinous crime? Had he stolen some poor person’s last meal? His only fault was that he had given $1,000 to support a California amendment to ban same-sex marriage. It was found that Eich actually endorsed traditional marriage. Can you believe that! The audacity! With all joking beside it is a sobering reminder that we live in interesting times. The irony of this entire pitiful situation is that one of Mozilla’s commitments as a company is to tolerance and equality. I guess that commitment is only extended to people that agree with the country’s current slide into moral oblivion and relativism. What should we do as Christians? 1) Pray for our country. 2) Wake up and decide that we are willing to give up personal comfort so that we can take stand. 3) Realize that we belong to God’s kingdom first and we are just aliens in a world that has turned its back on God.

A Life and Death Struggle

A Life and Death Struggle

                I remember as a teenager seeing a movie about a foreign country invading the United States and a group of high school kids fought a guerilla war against this invading army.  I vividly remember thinking about what I would do if I were in the same situation.  I dreamed about going into the woods and fighting this communist invader just like the kids in the movie did. 

                It was easy after watching that movie thinking about being in a life and death struggle and the excitement of being in that type of situation.  Many Christians today have no idea that they are in a struggle that is much greater than any military conflict.  We are in a struggle that is more important than D-Day, Guadalcanal, or the fiercest battles of our nation’s history.  But this battle is not seen with the physical eye but is seen with the eye of faith. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 that we are in a spiritual struggle.  We are in a spiritual battle with Satan and the stakes are the souls of men and women. 

                If you doubt that you are in a struggle just pick up the most recent newspaper and you will see the reality of this struggle playing out in the public stage.  Disney Channel recently announced that it will have an episode of a popular kids’ show that will introduce children to the idea of a child having two “moms”.  Gay marriage is now supported in popular polls by over half of the American people.  Our national government is turned upside down by multiple scandals that hit at the root of folks just not telling the truth.  In the coming months we will see a call for women to become part of the selective service for possible drafting into the armed forces. 

                It doesn’t take long to see that our country is literally flying upside down and not looking to God’s word for our guidance.  So what are we to do?  I would propose to go back to the model of the first century church.  How did they turn the Roman Empire upside down and basically win over an Empire for Christ?  They were committed to the faithful obedience and teaching of God’s word and they were willing to be fed to the lions in the Coliseum.  Or simply put – radical obedience to the Bible and radical self-sacrifice to Christ.  We must be willing to teach the Bible, implement the Bible in our lives, and offer our lives and ambitions as a sacrifice for Christ. 

 

Study of the Church - The Trinity - A Community of Love

I put this study together for our adult class during VBS and I thought I might share this online for anyone that would be interested.  I will continue to share installments in this series. 

I.                   God as Trinity

One of the basic tenets of the Christian faith is the idea of a triune God that reveals Himself and is characterized as perfect love. 

The Trinitarian nature of God would not be known by man unless it was revealed by God.  One could not just look at the created order around him and determine that God is Triune.  This fact must be revealed by God. 

A.      God the Father, Son, and Spirit

The Old Testament reveals God as ‘Father’ as the creator of the world (Deut 32:6).  Israel is known as God’s firstborn son (Exodus 4:22).  God is also known as the Father of the King of Israel.  God is also revealed in the Old Testament as the Father of the poor, the orphaned, and the widowed (2 Samuel 7:14, Psalms 68:6).

From the Old Testament revelation of God the Father we can learn two things about His nature and they are the following:  He is the origin of all things and He is intimately involved with His creation.

The Son Reveals the Father:  Jesus states in Matthew 11: 27, “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father ; and no one knows the Son except the Father ; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”(NASB)

Jesus states that the Son reveals the Father and one can turn to the pages of the New Testament and find this to be true.  It is in the pages of the New Testament that the doctrine of the Trinity is made clear in the annals of salvation history.  The Father’s relationship to the Son is an eternal relationship in which the Father is eternally the Father and the Son is eternally the Son.  In other words, there was never a time that the Father did not exist or the Son.  The Father –Son relationship revealed in Scripture does not mean that the Father created the Son but just denotes the relationship.

John 1:1-2 states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”

John leaves no doubt that the Word (Son) has always existed through all eternity with the Father.

Jesus, just before His final Passover, mentions another ‘Helper’ (Paraclete) that will be sent to empower the Church (John 14: 17, 26; 16:13).

John 14:16-18, 26

16 "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever ; 17 that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. 18 "I will not leave you as orphans ; I will come to you.   26 "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

John 16: 12-15

12 "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth ; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak ; and He will disclose to you what is to come. 14 "He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. 15 "All things that the Father has are Mine ; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you. (NASB)

 The completion of Christ’s revelation of the Trinity is found in the sending of the Holy Spirit into the world especially after His glorification by the resurrection from the dead and coronation in Heaven (John 7:39)

The Spirit will share in the life of God the Father and the Son to Christ’s followers after His glorious ascension.  

Jesus taught His disciples that it would be better for Him to ascend to the Father because of the gift of the Spirit.  The Spirit would bond the followers of Jesus together but would also reveal God’s truth to them.  This idea of truth and unity go hand and hand.

Spheres of Work in the Trinity:

In the relational names of the persons of the Godhead we can observe the following:  the Father is related to the Son, the Son to the Father, and the Holy Spirit to both.  While they are called three persons in relation to one another we believe that they are one nature or substance (the early Church used the term ‘Consubstantial’ to illustrate this one nature- which literally means of the same substance).

1)       All Things Come from and originate in the Father (Romans 11:36, 1 Corinthians 8:6)

2)      All things are created through the Son- The Son is the instrument of the Father in Creation.

John 1: 1-3 “ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” (NASB)

3)       The Holy Spirit brings life into the world and energizes.  The word Spirit in Hebrew (Ruah) is synonymous with breath or wind.  The word in Greek (Pneuma) is also connected with breath or wind.  The Holy Spirit also brought order from the primordial chaos in the beginning. (Job 26:13; 33:4, Psalms 33: 6; 104: 30, Genesis 1:2; 2:7)

This community of Love found in the Trinity is evidenced in the role of the Trinity in the redemption of man.

One of the earliest evidences of this is found in the baptism of Jesus found in Matthew 3: 13-17.  In this passage we see Jesus go into the waters of the Jordan River and when he comes out of the water we witness the descending of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove and the voice of the Father.  In this one instance we see the confirmation of the Trinity together in the plan of redemption by the ratification of Christ’s mission in His baptism. 

The most obvious place in the New Testament that we witness the role of the Trinity in God’s plan of salvation is in the Great Commission of Matthew 28.  In Matthew 28:19 Jesus instructs His followers to baptize new converts in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit thus tying in the entrance into the Church with calling on the authoritative name of the Triune God. 

The epistles of the New Testament make it clear the Trinitarian shape of our redemption. 

Ephesians 2: 18

18 for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father (NASB)

Ephesians 2: 18 shows that through Jesus we have access to the Father through the Spirit.  Paul tells us that it is the work of Christ on the Cross and the mediating of the Spirit that brings us back into the courts of God the Father and back to the family relationship that God had planned for us from the beginning.

God as Love: 

God’s Love is first revealed in the Creation of the Universe.  God does not need anything but created man to be able to share His love with man.  Pure love is always expressed by wanting to share and that is exactly what the Bible reveals as God’s nature and desire.  God wants to share His love and glory with us. 

One analogy may help us understand why God wanted to create the Universe.  We may ask ourselves, “Why do people have children?”  The purest answer to this question is for the woman and man to be able to share their love with a child.  In marriage we see an example of Trinitarian love (in a very limited and imperfect sense).  A man and woman love one another so much that they become ONE flesh and that unity is so real that in nine months in becomes a tri-unity.  That love that a child shares with their parents was already there in the family before the child arrives.  In the same way God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit already existed in a community of love before we were created.  We were created to share in that divine love and to live in a covenantal family bond with God. 

            One of most revealing passages about the love of God comes from Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer found in John 17. 

John 17:22-26  "The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one ;  I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.  "Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.  "O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me;  and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them." (NASB)

Jesus makes it clear that the ultimate purpose for His ministry is for man to share in the love of God and that love had already existed for eternity between the Father and Son.   The Church is to ‘image’ that love of God by loving one another.  The love that the church has one for another is to be a sign to the world about the unity and love of God. 

1 John 4:8 expounds a spiritual law that is unshakeable and that is God is Agape.  God is Love.  One should consider God’s love as a spiritual gravity that pulls all men to Him.  This is God’s ultimate purpose is to call man back into communion. 

Christ tells us in John 17 and in John 14: 23 that the person that keeps His words will have fellowship with God the Son and the Father.

One can see this displayed in the worship scene before the throne of God in Revelation chapters 4 and 5.  We see in Revelation chapter 4 that the human representatives and the entire created order worships God the Father as Creator and a shift occurs in Revelation chapter 5 when that worship and adoration is shifted to the Lamb (the Son) for redemption.  This worship is all enabled through the Spirit and this worship is all in the Spirit. 

Another way to understand the life of the Trinity is to understand the inner workings of the love reflected in the Godhead.  Christ is the very image of God and God the Father gives love to the Son in the form of the Spirit.  The Son then reflects that love back to the Father through the Spirit.  This love is then offered to man through the victory won on the cross.  That victory on the cross was a victory over sin and death.  When Christ was resurrected and glorified in His heavenly coronation the Spirit was sent into the Creation to enable the communion with God.

We can see this theme over and over again in Scripture.  We can summarize it as follows:

1)      God the Father sends His Son Christ in an act of Love (John 3:16)

2)      Christ the Son submits Himself to God the Father in humility and out of self-sacrificial love gives up His life for man (see Philippians 2)

3)      Because of this sacrifice and victory the Spirit is sent into the world to bring communion between the Father and man.  (John 14, John 16, Acts 1 and 2, et al) 

Through this brief investigation of the Trinity we can see that God’s purpose is to have communion with man and bring His just Kingdom rule to this earth.

In this study, I will propose that the vehicle to bring about this communion is the Church.  The Church is best understood in this light.

The Dividing Wall

The sin that once separated us from God is best illustrated in the architecture of the Jewish Temple.

In the Temple the most central part was the Holy of Holies and this was the most sacred space of all.

It was kept separate from the people to illustrate the point that God is Holy and they are not. Their sin has kept them from fellowship with Him.

Outside of this Holy of Holies was a court in which the Priests performed their priestly duties.

Outside of this court was one in which Jewish men that were not of the priestly class could inhabit.

Outside of that court was the Court of the Women in which the Jewish women were allowed to go.

And outside of this was the Court of the Gentiles. Separating the Court of the Jews and the Court of the Gentiles was a wall of separation.

On this wall hung a sign that explained to the Gentiles that they would be killed if they entered the Court of the Jews.

In this picture of the Temple we see how man is separate from God and segregated in a way that God never wanted to happen.

God has always wanted fellowship and a familial relationship with man.

Paul takes this image of separation in the Jewish Temple and drives home a point about Jesus.


WALL OF SEPARATION

Ephesians 2: 12-19

12 remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

14 For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, 15 by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, 16 and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. 17 AND HE CAME AND PREACHED PEACE TO YOU WHO WERE FAR AWAY, AND PEACE TO THOSE WHO WERE NEAR ; 18 for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household



Through the fleshly body of Jesus and His sacrifice He took on the curse of the Law.


The Scripture tells us that Jesus came to uphold and fulfill the Law.

It is best understood as God’s Law being a consuming fire. Just like the burning bush.

Israel was consumed by this fire of God’s holiness because they could not fulfill the requirements. Jesus stepped into that fire of God’s Law and stood strong and was able to do what Israel could never do. Not only did He fulfill the Law perfectly but He also took on the curses that we could not endure. He bore it perfectly and destroyed that barrier.

New Sermon Series - The Task of the Church

I started a new series of Sermons this week at the congregation that I preach for. In this series of sermons we will look at the life and work of the local Church in God's plan of redemption and rescue for this world. Sunday we began this series with pointing out that God chose the Church as his vehicle for bringing the message of salvation to the world and chose to make his manifold wisdom known to the world through the Church. The first sermon in this series focused on a topic that divides many Christians and that is the topic of baptism. An act that was meant to unify a broken and divided humanity in Christ has become a subject that has divided Christianity. When we say that baptism puts us into the Church it becomes very confusing as to what we mean. Does it mean a local denomination that one is placed in by baptism? Let us define what we mean by the term Church. To understand the Church we must repudiate the reduction that many people have tried by likening it to the Classical Greek Ekklesia. The term Ekklesia is where we get the English term Church. In the Classical Greek world the ekklesia was a body of land owning men that were called to an assembly to make decisions for a particular city state. This assembly was not open to slaves, women, or children. This term is a bad visual picture for the church in the NT because the earliest Christian assemblies were composed by many women, slaves, and people that did not own land. The idea of the Church in the NT is more like the idea of the Assembly of God in the OT known in Hebrew as the Qahal. The Qahal is a term used in the OT in Deut 9:10; 10:4; 18:16, et al, in regards to the Assembly of Israel. This assembly was the people of God that were gathered together to hear the reading the Law and assent to a covenant with God. These were truly God’s people formed by Covenant. If we understand this concept of the Qahal it makes sense of the act of baptism and what it means to be the Church. In the Exodus story the Israelites were lead out of Egypt and the came to the Red Sea. God miraclulously parted the Red Sea and they crossed over on dry land. At that moment on the shores of the Red Sea the people made a decision to be God’s people and never look back. Paul likens the crossing in I Corinthians 10:1-2 to baptism. Paul speaks as to how this going through the sea was like a baptism ‘INTO’ Moses. It was at this point that God lead them to Sinai and they became God’s ‘qahal’ or the Assembly of God. The Hebrew writer nails home this theme in Hebrews 12: 18-24 where he compares the two Mountains of Sinai and Zion. We, as Christians, are the new Assembly but now we assemble at Mount Zion. We are gathered there at this new Mount because of Jesus work on the Cross. We are brought into this assembly of God out of the slavery of sin through baptism. In Romans 6 Paul makes it clear that this is through immersion. That by the very act of baptism we reenact the very dying and rising of Christ. Romans 6 also draws the parallel with that Exodus event by pointing out that we are now free from slavery because of our burial in baptism. Because of our baptism we are now free from the slavery of sin and are now ‘IN CHRIST’. We are identified with Christ and not the old way of slavery. God’s kingdom is open to all that are willing to put down all personal agendas and completely rely on Him. Out of all the themes that Jesus uses in the NT to describe His kingdom one of the most common is the theme of God’s family. To understand this motif we must look at what Jesus said about becoming like a little child. Jesus made it clear in His teachings that one must humble themselves and become like a child to enter the Kingdom.Matthew 18: 1-41 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, "Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" 2 And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, 3 and said, "Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 "Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.Luke 10: 2121 At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, "I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.Children have an attitude of dependence and it is that attitude that Jesus hammers home to his Disciples. One must loose all of the selfish ambition and self reliance if they want to inhabit this Kingdom of God.One way that the Scripture coveys this point is by describing baptism as a type of new birth. In John 3 Nicodemus comes to Jesus and Jesus teaches him this truth about baptism. Nicodemus comes to Jesus and tells him that he knows that Jesus is a teacher that came from God. In this passage we see Jesus response to Nicodemus.John 3: 1-51 Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; 2 this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him." 3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." 4 Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?" 5 Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.Jesus specifically tells Nicodemus that one must be born of water and Spirit before he can enter the Kingdom. He likens this birth of the water and spirit with being ‘born again’ or more specifically in the Greek being ‘born of above’. Many say that this passage is not talking about water baptism in this passage and that He is talking about ones natural birth and then a spiritual birth. They way that the ‘water’ of the passage refers to the amnionic fluid of a birth. The only problem with this proposal is that there is no ancient records that show that people used the expression, of ‘breaking water’ in regards to natural birth. This is a modern anachronism that is propping up a bias against water baptism. The context of this passage most naturally fits water baptism because just previously we learn that John was baptizing in water in John 1 and later in chapter 3 verse 23 we witness that John was baptizing in Aenon near Salim because there was much water there. The immediate context of this passage fits that Jesus conception of water in this passage would be Christian baptism.Also, the earliest Christians interpreted this passage to refer to water baptism. The point that Jesus is making is that one is to become like a child and enter into this kingdom through the new birth of baptism. All human power games, status, money, and selfishness have no place in this kingdom. Baptism becomes the great equalizer in which this fractured human family is grafted and adopted into the true family of God. The greatest example of a union of Heaven and Earth is in the person of Jesus Christ. John 1:14 tells us that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He is the ultimate intersection of Heaven and Earth. But there are glimpses of Heaven and Earth coming together in other places. Baptism is on of those events when the veil between Heaven and Earth is rent. At the event of Jesus Baptism we see an event that is sign post of what is to come for those that baptized into the name of Jesus.Mark 1: 9-109 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him; 11 and a voice came out of the heavens: In this passage we see term in the New Testament that is used in one other place in the NT. The term used for ‘heavens opening’ literally means that the heavens were rent open. It is the same term for the tearing of the veil in the Temple that separated man from the Holy of Holies in the Temple. The message is simple, that in the work of Jesus the dividing wall of Heaven and the blessings of Heaven have been torn open by Jesus.In our baptism we are connected with those blessings from the Heavenly realm. Acts 2:38 calls is forgiveness of sins.I Peter 3:21 calls is salvation.Colossians 2: 1212 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.RAISED UP WITH CHRIST IN BAPTISMThis idea of being raised up with Christ is not emphasized much when people speak of baptism but it is a Biblical concept. Ephesians 2: 4-74 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.Paul points out in this majestic passage that we are ALREADY in a sense raised up with Christ. In the same way the Hebrew writer says that all things are subject to Christ in Hebrews chapter 2 but it doesn’t seem that way at the present. It may not seem like it now but a transaction has taken place between Heaven and Earth in our baptism. We, through the work and grace of God, have been raised up with Christ as a signpost to the world what is to come.