(To readers who would like to consider this criticism of JEDP further I will recommend the excellent scholarly work of Gary A. Rendsburg, PhD.)
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I will be approaching Genesis as a unified piece of literature.
Before I go further I must briefly acknowledge that there has been a prevailing theory since the 1800s that Genesis was written by four different sources over hundreds of years and later compiled by a redactor before being accepted in the form it has today.
Having considered this theory, and studied its origins, I have decided that I agree with the most recent and contemporary of liberal biblical scholarship, and conclude that this theory is bunk. Hogwash. Malarkey.
In brief, the theory called the documentary hypothesis suggests that when the text of the Torah refers to Yahweh, it was written by an old source (called J). More recently another source (called E) wrote a history of origins that refers to God as Elohim. Even more recently (possibly during or after the Babylonian exile), another source wrote a history as well as the entire book of Deuteronomy. Finally, a very recent source (since the Babylonian exile) wrote another history, along with the book of Leviticus.
The theory was originally postulated (or at least popularized) by a German Lutheran Theologian named Julius Wellhausen. It was suggested and accepted based on the recognition of the need for a rational explanation for the apparent contradictions in Genesis in the light of the rise of reason and the modern age. In this lies the problem.
I believe that Wellhausen was the first example of the misunderstanding of Genesis as ancient literature that has led to the Science-versus-Genesis debate that rages on today. In my recent article about Genesis and science, I explained what has become a common consensus amongst literary scholars; the logic of the narrative of Genesis need not confine itself to our understandings of a rational narrative. For the ancient readers of Genesis, there would be no problem with Joseph’s brothers being shocked to discover silver in their bags twice, or the sun going down on Abram as he looked at the stars, or genealogies that skip or rearrange generations to send a message. Such are the differences of a genre that has experienced thousands of years of evolution. They do not pose a problem.
Wellhousen’s theory in practice no longer works. The book of Genesis has been chopped up further and further and further to such a degree that we now must consider every individual sentence in order to continue to prop up this outdated theory. It is now easier to believe in a single source than to believe in a redactor that would go to the kind of trouble necessary to make this theory true.
This theory also doesn’t work when the language of Genesis is considered. The Hebrew of the Old Testament shows maturity over time, as we would expect any language to change. Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther all carry obvious and frequent evidences of Persian influence in their Hebrew. We conclude that these books were written after the Babylonian exile, when these language changes happened within Hebrew. The Torah, however, gives absolutely no indication of Persian influence in its Hebrew. There is no part of the Torah that could have been written during or after the Babylonian exile. I should note that Persian cultural influence is very, very prevalent within Genesis. This of course is to be expected, as it was written during a time in Israel’s history deeply influenced by Babylonian culture. This still does not suggest any evidence that it was written after Israel was conquered by Babylon.
Also, the history of Wellhousen’s theory is made dubious by the dubious nature of Wellhousen himself. Like many German Lutherans of the 1800s, Wellhousen was staunchly anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic. With his theory he had an opportunity to cast doubt on the passages of Genesis that he found supported these religions that he believed were perverted and heretical. He conveniently included in his original theory that the last pieces of Genesis written were the ones that best supported Judaism and Catholicism. By placing those texts in the “recently written” category, he could support his own worldview that his theology was original and superior to Catholics and Jews.
Besides all of this, it is only when Genesis is taken as a whole, with a unified intention and story, that the elements within it make any sense. The motifs run throughout the narrative unbroken between stories and through ages. As soon as we begin to pull a single story out of the entire book, the tapestry falls apart and the single threads lose all meaning. At best, we are left with a collection of fables which we are forced to read as general moralisms, at worst the very theological themes that Genesis espouses are fictionalized or removed, most notably the sovereignty of God, or even his very existence.
Finally, as an issue of faith, I believe that the entire Bible, and not just Genesis or the Torah can be taken as a whole. Jesus is reported in the New Testament as calling Moses the writer of Genesis. I believe this is entirely possible, and it is in Moses’ voice that I read Genesis.
I do believe that Genesis contains many voices. But I believe that those voices were spoken together. It was not unusual in the ancient Near East for cultures to have several different epics of creation, each one written to teach a different aspect of their theology. These stories would not have been seen as contradictory, but complementary. The first eleven chapters of Genesis especially were likely passed down orally for many generations before the final author wrote them down. I have no problem believing that this author could have been Moses himself. Later editors could have also been a part of the final text, including the death of Moses. Such additions were also not unusual for ancient cultures.
So, it is with an understanding of a unified text, a unified intention with main themes and major purposes that I will explore the pages of Genesis.
Genesis in Brief:
Genesis 1-11 - Ancient Cosmology and Origins
We have been corrupted by sin, which has perverted our relationships, our communities, our religion, our society, the human race, and all of creation.
The consequences of humanity's sin are shown in episodes of progressively worse offenses.
In each case, God responds with both judgment and mercy, patiently describing both the consequences of sin, and his gracious remedy.
Genesis 12-50 - History of God’s Covenant Community
God establishes a covenant with humanity that will redeem the earth from the curse of sin. God patiently reveals himself to a humanity that has forgotten him, wooing them back and promising a return to the blessings of his original intention for all of Creation.
After reading and studying the book of Genesis, certain themes and motifs became apparent throughout the entire narrative.
1. God Creates Purpose from Formlessness
This is, I believe, the main thesis of the entire book. From Genesis 1 when God takes a formless and void earth and creates a world of purpose through his words to the calling of Abraham out of obscurity in chapter 12, to the last chapter when Joseph tells his brothers that God intended his unjust enslavement and incarceration for good, we see in Genesis a God that over and over again takes the castoffs and wasted and makes from them intentional elements in his beautiful work of art. He is the original dumpster diver, finding and creating treasure and beauty from wasted matter, wasted life, and wasted relationships. God slowly reveals his character to the characters and the readers throughout the entire narrative. His love, patience and beauty are true in the pages of Genesis.
2. God is Sovereign, the Ultimate Authority
God is the protagonist of Genesis, the author of Genesis, and the subject of Genesis. Genesis sees a divine plan unfold through centuries of history, generations of family, and the expanse of entire lives. No creature exists that can defy God’s intention to create in the first two chapters of Genesis. Sun, Moon, Saturn (Sabbath is called “seventh day”) and Sea do not receive names (sea is pluralized), giving no credit whatsoever to the gods that represent them. Through accident, unfortunate circumstance, seemingly impossible difficulties, human error, and outright rebellion, God’s rule and purpose remains. No human or divine authority in the pages of Genesis is able to have any affect outside of the only true authority found in Yahweh Elohim, the Creator.
3. Authority Perverted
From the men of renown oppressing the daughters of men in Genesis 6, to the religious leaders building the ziggurat of Babel in Genesis 11, to Abram’s refusal of the riches of the king of Sodom, we see a very cautious view of authority in Genesis. Even in the genealogies, kings are conspicuously absent, the backbone of genealogical history in other societies contemporary to this writing. Our best example of human authority in Genesis is Joseph, who creates from his authority an oppressive totalitarian state, and lays the foundation for future enslavement of the Israelites (Genesis 47:13-26). Though I was able to see this theme frequently in the text, I am cautious to see it as foundational to the understanding of Genesis. I believe that this is best understood as part of the last point. God is the ultimate authority, and faith in any other authority outside of or instead of his will ultimately lead to ruin.
4. God’s Progressive Revelation and Patience with Mankind’s Process of Maturity
For each of the human characters that God engages, he does so in their personal cultural language and understanding, and according to their faith. He uses images and ways of speaking that are unique and personal to each individual, both those who are or become his people, and those who remain strangers to him. For those characters who have a significant arc through the pages of Genesis, we see their faith in and understanding of God grow and develop during their lifetime with him. God is shown as very patient with even the most unlikely and rebellious of characters in Genesis.
5. Fruitfulness as a Blessing
Be fruitful and multiply – spoken to the animals on Day 5 and 6 of Creation, and to humans on day 6 (Gen 1)
This command is repeated to Noah after he leaves the ark (Gen 8:17)
This command is repeated to Jacob at Bethel (Gen 35:11)
(This command is repeated outside of Genesis when God's covenant people are in exile in Jeremiah 29:5-7)
Genealogies remind us that the people of Genesis are indeed being quite fruitful and multiplying nicely.
God’s covenants and prophesies with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, and others, all include an element of fruitfulness and family.
6. Covenant
Whenever God enters the life of a primary character of Genesis, he establishes his relationship through covenant. This is foundational to the understanding of Genesis as a whole, and Genesis within the rest of scripture.
7. Barren Women and Second Sons
This motif that runs through all of Genesis brings us back to the first two themes in this list, God’s Sovereignty and God’s Purpose. It also serves to illuminate God’s Covenant. Even in impossible or unlikely situations, even through impossible or unlikely people, God’s will accomplish his sovereign plan. No matter the obstacle, God will fulfill his covenant.
As you read the stories in the book of Genesis, consider the larger picture, and the image of God that is carefully constructed through the entire narrative.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Genesis and the New Testament
In the last two entries, I began exploring three of the common interpretive frameworks used when reading Genesis. I began by suggesting that we avoid reading Genesis as a collection of morality tales. In the second entry (the one before this one), I discuss our modern prevailing scientific origin myths and how they affect our readings of these ancient scriptures. In this entry, I will discuss interpretation of Genesis, the first book of the ancient Jewish Torah, as interpreted through our modern New Testament and Christian theology. I retain the introduction of the previous entries to allow this entry to be read more independently.
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Welcome to Genesis, an ancient and beautiful epic book of creation, rebellion, judgment, restoration, forgiveness, lust, power, poverty, and wealth. In my recent enriching exploration of Genesis, I have discovered and rediscovered a beautiful story that has for much of my life remained hidden. This book in the eyes and hands of many has collected a great deal of baggage, paintings and repaintings that obscure it’s delicate and detailed forms.
In my study, I have concluded that there are three common frameworks that people (especially us evangelicals) place Genesis in that serve to confuse or outright blind its theologically robust message. These frameworks are (1) the popular Sunday School method of reading Genesis as a collection of morality tales, (2) pressuring Genesis (especially chapters 1-11) into a modern scientific or historical understanding that did not exist in the ancient world of this book, and (3) reading Genesis only through a New Testament understanding and theology that had not yet formed when the book was written.
I will briefly touch on each of these frameworks in turn. If interest in further study or conversation is communicated in the comments, I will explore or explain these ideas further. If not, consider these to be an introduction to my own framework, what it is and what it isn’t. Whether you agree with me or not does not matter. My intention is to be forthright regarding my own paradigm from which I consider the text.
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Genesis and the New Testament
I must begin by making one thing very clear: as a Christian, I believe that the Bible, both the Jewish and Christian Canon, is Holy Scripture. In a macro interpretation, there is an incredibly beautiful and radical story of grace, freedom, salvation and redemption woven through the entire thing. The theological harmony of a book written through so many pens over such a long period of time is astounding. Even for those who do not share this faith, the Bible taken as a whole is a message worth hearing.
I believe that the Bible taken as a whole reveals a beautiful singular tapestry when it comes to theology, instruction in faith and worship, teleology, or moral instruction. At its heart, I believe the Bible reveals to us the story of Jesus, the God-Man, who redeems the world for God’s glory. However, when we place our microscope closer to the text, we can find many intricate details that create this whole story. For many generations, theologians have wisely used the word “harmony” when describing the unity of scripture.
For well initiated and experienced Christians, the New Testament and its’ basic teachings are quite familiar. Most evangelical churches spend most of their time in this last third of the Bible. The writers of the New Testament are intimately acquainted with the Hebrew Scriptures. Through these more recent, post-Jesus Greek texts we are frequently exposed to the ancient stories of the Hebrew Canon, and most frequently the book of Genesis.
Here is one list of New Testament passages that reference or interpret the narratives, lives, and teachings of Genesis:
Genesis 1 and 2
Matthew 19:4;
John 1:136;
John 8:12
Romans 6:23
1 Corinthians 11:8-9;
Colossians 1:15-17; 3:10
1 Timothy 2:13-14;
Hebrews 1:2-3;
James 3:7
Revelation 2:7; 22:14
Genesis 3
Romans 5:12-14; 8:20;
1 Corinthians 15:22
2 Corinthians 11:3;
James 1:15;
Revelation 12:2, 8-9, 17
Genesis 4
Luke 3:38
Hebrews 11:4; 12:24;
1 John 3:12
Genesis 5 -7
(5) Hebrews 11:5
(6) Hebrews 11:7
Matthew 24:39;
Luke 17:27;
2 Peter 2:5; 3:18-21;
Genesis 8 and 9
Ephesians 5:2;
Hebrews 9:18-28
Genesis 10-12
(10) Luke 3:35-36
(11) John 11:51-52
Matthew 1:1-2;
Luke 3:34
Genesis 14
Hebrews 5:5-10; 7:1-5
Genesis 15 and 17
Acts 3:25; 7:8-9;
Galatians 3:15-18;
Hebrews 11:8-19
Genesis 22
Hebrews 11:17;
James 2:21-22
Abraham’s Justification by Faith - Genesis 12, 15, and 22
Romans 4:3;
James 2:18-24;
Sarah - Genesis 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 25
Romans 4:19; 9:9;
Galatians 4:21-31;
1 Peter 3:6
Ishmael - Genesis 16, 17, 21
Galatians 4:21-31
Isaac - Genesis 21, 22, 24-28, 31, 35, 46, 48, 49, 50
Matthew 1:2; 8:11; 22:32;
Mark 12:26;
Luke 3:34; 13:28; 20:37;
Acts 3:13; 7:9-10, 32;
Romans 9:7, 10;
Galatians 4:28;
Hebrews 11:9-20
Offering of Isaac - Genesis 22
Hebrews 11:17-18;
James 2:21
Hagar - Genesis 16, 21, 25
Galatians 4:21-31
Lot and Sodom - Genesis 18-19
Luke 17:28-29;
2 Peter 2:7
Covenant with Isaac and Jacob/Israel - Genesis 26, 35
Hebrews 8:8
Esau son sells his birthright - Genesis 25
Hebrews 11:16
Joseph's trials - Genesis 37-41
Acts 7:9-16
Jacob/Israel's prophecy concerning Judah - Genesis 49
Matthew 21:1-9;
Hebrews 7:14;
Revelation 7:14; 19:13
Here are a few of the ways that New Testament theology has been used to interpret and understand the story of Jesus in just the first ten chapters of Genesis:
(I present these only as examples. I do not intend to affirm or deny these interpretations.)
The Word of God
Let there be Light (John 1)
Let us...(Trinity)
God's promise of redemption to Adam and Eve (crush serpent's head - seed)
Sacrifice of an animal (clothing)
Abel's animal sacrifice accepted (blood for sin).
God hears Abel's blood cry out - mercy, just like for Ishmael, for Israel in Egypt, and for us.
The mark of Cain is an act of mercy that rescues him from judgment and death. Christ's mark on us does the same.
Jesus said his return would be during a time like the time of Noah.
Noah built the ark in obedience to God. His obedience was an act of faith in God's promise. God rescued Noah. Our faith in Jesus rescues us.
God establishes COVENANT with Noah.
By no means do I deny the value and importance of New Testament interpretations of these old scriptures. I believe that they are true, and they form the foundation for my Christian faith. However, we must consider when we read Genesis that though the theology of the Christian scripture had the benefit of many hundreds of years of Jewish thought, tradition, and doctrine, Genesis and the rest of the Torah had no such rich tradition to draw from. Genesis is the oldest book of the entire Bible after Job. The Torah’s original readers would have read and understood its theology from their own ancient cultural milieu, without the benefit of any other post-Torah scripture or extrabiblical commentary at all.
I would like to suggest that our modern Christian could be greatly enriched by considering how Job, Genesis, and the rest of the Torah were understood and interpreted for the scores of generations who read them before these New Testament scriptures were written. How does an ancient Hebrew person still waiting for his or her Messiah understand the Torah? How do they read or understand the Messianic prophesies? Are they as easily recognized by this person as they are by us?
As an example, the ancient Hebrew world had no understanding or teaching regarding a personification of evil such as Satan when the Torah was written. Neither did they yet believe in or describe angels as they are later described in the more recently written Hebrew Scriptures. In fact, the Torah does not even go as far as to explicitly teach that Yahweh is the only god in existence. Genesis lays a foundation for the clear Torah command that Israel is to worship only one God, but denying the existence of other gods is a later development. Of course, the uniquely Christian teachings like the Trinity were completely unknown before the time of Christ.
With this in mind, how do we read the story of Job, when the accuser (often translated “Satan”) challenges God? How would the original readers of Genesis have understood the serpent, and how does that affect their understanding of the curse in Genesis 3? How would an ancient Israelite have understood God’s use of the plural form when speaking of himself in Genesis 1? I would like to suggest that considering these questions can give us a fuller and clearer understanding of Genesis AND of these New Testament passages that interpret Genesis.
I believe that the caution I stated in the previous entries regarding isogesis, or reading our cultural paradigm into the text, also applies to insisting on a purely New Testament or Christian interpretation for Genesis, at the exclusion of its’ original meanings. This is an incorrect hermeneutic (interpretation theory) when reading for theology in any passage of scripture. If Romans 5, or 9, or 1 Corinthians 15 (or countless other passages) give us another understanding of what we’re reading, we should exegete those passages in the light of Genesis, not isogete those passages into the text of Genesis, written thousands of years before those other books were ever understood. Just like when we read Genesis for morality or science, we risk reading animal shapes into the clouds of scripture.
Let us consider Old Testament interpretations of Genesis in the light of the New Testament without contradicting either, and enriching both.
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To be clear, I do intend to approach Genesis with reverence and prayer. I do believe that Genesis and the rest of the Bible is scripture, and I read it as such. I believe that God speaks to us through the words of Genesis. I believe that Genesis is true, more true than anything outside of scripture.
However, I believe that Genesis and all scripture is only as true as it intends to be, and only true in the way it intends to be true. I do not believe that a faithful reading of Genesis means that we need to disengage our God created mental faculties. I also believe that we can gain much from the scholarship of many others in the church or outside of it, whether we agree with them or not. The consequences of our readings and conclusions can affect our views of God and others deeply, so let us be humble and considerate as we interpret God’s Word, or share our interpretations with others.
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Welcome to Genesis, an ancient and beautiful epic book of creation, rebellion, judgment, restoration, forgiveness, lust, power, poverty, and wealth. In my recent enriching exploration of Genesis, I have discovered and rediscovered a beautiful story that has for much of my life remained hidden. This book in the eyes and hands of many has collected a great deal of baggage, paintings and repaintings that obscure it’s delicate and detailed forms.
In my study, I have concluded that there are three common frameworks that people (especially us evangelicals) place Genesis in that serve to confuse or outright blind its theologically robust message. These frameworks are (1) the popular Sunday School method of reading Genesis as a collection of morality tales, (2) pressuring Genesis (especially chapters 1-11) into a modern scientific or historical understanding that did not exist in the ancient world of this book, and (3) reading Genesis only through a New Testament understanding and theology that had not yet formed when the book was written.
I will briefly touch on each of these frameworks in turn. If interest in further study or conversation is communicated in the comments, I will explore or explain these ideas further. If not, consider these to be an introduction to my own framework, what it is and what it isn’t. Whether you agree with me or not does not matter. My intention is to be forthright regarding my own paradigm from which I consider the text.
+
Genesis and the New Testament
I must begin by making one thing very clear: as a Christian, I believe that the Bible, both the Jewish and Christian Canon, is Holy Scripture. In a macro interpretation, there is an incredibly beautiful and radical story of grace, freedom, salvation and redemption woven through the entire thing. The theological harmony of a book written through so many pens over such a long period of time is astounding. Even for those who do not share this faith, the Bible taken as a whole is a message worth hearing.
I believe that the Bible taken as a whole reveals a beautiful singular tapestry when it comes to theology, instruction in faith and worship, teleology, or moral instruction. At its heart, I believe the Bible reveals to us the story of Jesus, the God-Man, who redeems the world for God’s glory. However, when we place our microscope closer to the text, we can find many intricate details that create this whole story. For many generations, theologians have wisely used the word “harmony” when describing the unity of scripture.
For well initiated and experienced Christians, the New Testament and its’ basic teachings are quite familiar. Most evangelical churches spend most of their time in this last third of the Bible. The writers of the New Testament are intimately acquainted with the Hebrew Scriptures. Through these more recent, post-Jesus Greek texts we are frequently exposed to the ancient stories of the Hebrew Canon, and most frequently the book of Genesis.
Here is one list of New Testament passages that reference or interpret the narratives, lives, and teachings of Genesis:
Genesis 1 and 2
Matthew 19:4;
John 1:136;
John 8:12
Romans 6:23
1 Corinthians 11:8-9;
Colossians 1:15-17; 3:10
1 Timothy 2:13-14;
Hebrews 1:2-3;
James 3:7
Revelation 2:7; 22:14
Genesis 3
Romans 5:12-14; 8:20;
1 Corinthians 15:22
2 Corinthians 11:3;
James 1:15;
Revelation 12:2, 8-9, 17
Genesis 4
Luke 3:38
Hebrews 11:4; 12:24;
1 John 3:12
Genesis 5 -7
(5) Hebrews 11:5
(6) Hebrews 11:7
Matthew 24:39;
Luke 17:27;
2 Peter 2:5; 3:18-21;
Genesis 8 and 9
Ephesians 5:2;
Hebrews 9:18-28
Genesis 10-12
(10) Luke 3:35-36
(11) John 11:51-52
Matthew 1:1-2;
Luke 3:34
Genesis 14
Hebrews 5:5-10; 7:1-5
Genesis 15 and 17
Acts 3:25; 7:8-9;
Galatians 3:15-18;
Hebrews 11:8-19
Genesis 22
Hebrews 11:17;
James 2:21-22
Abraham’s Justification by Faith - Genesis 12, 15, and 22
Romans 4:3;
James 2:18-24;
Sarah - Genesis 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 25
Romans 4:19; 9:9;
Galatians 4:21-31;
1 Peter 3:6
Ishmael - Genesis 16, 17, 21
Galatians 4:21-31
Isaac - Genesis 21, 22, 24-28, 31, 35, 46, 48, 49, 50
Matthew 1:2; 8:11; 22:32;
Mark 12:26;
Luke 3:34; 13:28; 20:37;
Acts 3:13; 7:9-10, 32;
Romans 9:7, 10;
Galatians 4:28;
Hebrews 11:9-20
Offering of Isaac - Genesis 22
Hebrews 11:17-18;
James 2:21
Hagar - Genesis 16, 21, 25
Galatians 4:21-31
Lot and Sodom - Genesis 18-19
Luke 17:28-29;
2 Peter 2:7
Covenant with Isaac and Jacob/Israel - Genesis 26, 35
Hebrews 8:8
Esau son sells his birthright - Genesis 25
Hebrews 11:16
Joseph's trials - Genesis 37-41
Acts 7:9-16
Jacob/Israel's prophecy concerning Judah - Genesis 49
Matthew 21:1-9;
Hebrews 7:14;
Revelation 7:14; 19:13
Here are a few of the ways that New Testament theology has been used to interpret and understand the story of Jesus in just the first ten chapters of Genesis:
(I present these only as examples. I do not intend to affirm or deny these interpretations.)
The Word of God
Let there be Light (John 1)
Let us...(Trinity)
God's promise of redemption to Adam and Eve (crush serpent's head - seed)
Sacrifice of an animal (clothing)
Abel's animal sacrifice accepted (blood for sin).
God hears Abel's blood cry out - mercy, just like for Ishmael, for Israel in Egypt, and for us.
The mark of Cain is an act of mercy that rescues him from judgment and death. Christ's mark on us does the same.
Jesus said his return would be during a time like the time of Noah.
Noah built the ark in obedience to God. His obedience was an act of faith in God's promise. God rescued Noah. Our faith in Jesus rescues us.
God establishes COVENANT with Noah.
By no means do I deny the value and importance of New Testament interpretations of these old scriptures. I believe that they are true, and they form the foundation for my Christian faith. However, we must consider when we read Genesis that though the theology of the Christian scripture had the benefit of many hundreds of years of Jewish thought, tradition, and doctrine, Genesis and the rest of the Torah had no such rich tradition to draw from. Genesis is the oldest book of the entire Bible after Job. The Torah’s original readers would have read and understood its theology from their own ancient cultural milieu, without the benefit of any other post-Torah scripture or extrabiblical commentary at all.
I would like to suggest that our modern Christian could be greatly enriched by considering how Job, Genesis, and the rest of the Torah were understood and interpreted for the scores of generations who read them before these New Testament scriptures were written. How does an ancient Hebrew person still waiting for his or her Messiah understand the Torah? How do they read or understand the Messianic prophesies? Are they as easily recognized by this person as they are by us?
As an example, the ancient Hebrew world had no understanding or teaching regarding a personification of evil such as Satan when the Torah was written. Neither did they yet believe in or describe angels as they are later described in the more recently written Hebrew Scriptures. In fact, the Torah does not even go as far as to explicitly teach that Yahweh is the only god in existence. Genesis lays a foundation for the clear Torah command that Israel is to worship only one God, but denying the existence of other gods is a later development. Of course, the uniquely Christian teachings like the Trinity were completely unknown before the time of Christ.
With this in mind, how do we read the story of Job, when the accuser (often translated “Satan”) challenges God? How would the original readers of Genesis have understood the serpent, and how does that affect their understanding of the curse in Genesis 3? How would an ancient Israelite have understood God’s use of the plural form when speaking of himself in Genesis 1? I would like to suggest that considering these questions can give us a fuller and clearer understanding of Genesis AND of these New Testament passages that interpret Genesis.
I believe that the caution I stated in the previous entries regarding isogesis, or reading our cultural paradigm into the text, also applies to insisting on a purely New Testament or Christian interpretation for Genesis, at the exclusion of its’ original meanings. This is an incorrect hermeneutic (interpretation theory) when reading for theology in any passage of scripture. If Romans 5, or 9, or 1 Corinthians 15 (or countless other passages) give us another understanding of what we’re reading, we should exegete those passages in the light of Genesis, not isogete those passages into the text of Genesis, written thousands of years before those other books were ever understood. Just like when we read Genesis for morality or science, we risk reading animal shapes into the clouds of scripture.
Let us consider Old Testament interpretations of Genesis in the light of the New Testament without contradicting either, and enriching both.
+
To be clear, I do intend to approach Genesis with reverence and prayer. I do believe that Genesis and the rest of the Bible is scripture, and I read it as such. I believe that God speaks to us through the words of Genesis. I believe that Genesis is true, more true than anything outside of scripture.
However, I believe that Genesis and all scripture is only as true as it intends to be, and only true in the way it intends to be true. I do not believe that a faithful reading of Genesis means that we need to disengage our God created mental faculties. I also believe that we can gain much from the scholarship of many others in the church or outside of it, whether we agree with them or not. The consequences of our readings and conclusions can affect our views of God and others deeply, so let us be humble and considerate as we interpret God’s Word, or share our interpretations with others.
Genesis, Creation, Myth, Science, and History (Genesis as Ancient Cosmology)
In the last entry, I began exploring three of the common interpretive frameworks used when reading Genesis. I began by suggesting that we avoid reading Genesis as a collection of morality tales. In this entry, I will discuss Genesis as interpreted by science or history. I retain the introduction of the previous entry to allow this entry to be read more independently.
+
Welcome to Genesis, an ancient and beautiful epic book of creation, rebellion, judgment, restoration, forgiveness, lust, power, poverty, and wealth. In my recent enriching exploration of Genesis, I have discovered and rediscovered a beautiful story that has for much of my life remained hidden. This book in the eyes and hands of many has collected a great deal of baggage, paintings and repaintings that obscure it’s delicate and detailed forms.
In my study, I have concluded that there are three common frameworks that people (especially us evangelicals) place Genesis in that serve to confuse or outright blind its theologically robust message. These frameworks are (1) the popular Sunday School method of reading Genesis as a collection of morality tales, (2) pressuring Genesis (especially chapters 1-11) into a modern scientific or historical understanding that did not exist in the ancient world of this book, and (3) reading Genesis only through a New Testament understanding and theology that had not yet formed when the book was written.
I will briefly touch on each of these frameworks in turn. If interest in further study or conversation is communicated in the comments, I will explore or explain these ideas further. If not, consider these to be an introduction to my own framework, what it is and what it isn’t. Whether you agree with me or not does not matter. My intention is to be forthright regarding my own paradigm from which I consider the text.
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Genesis, Science, and History
As Christians, it’s important when we read Genesis or any scripture that though we may believe that it was written for us, it was not written to us.* Genesis is an ancient book, written to a people many degrees removed from us in culture, worldview, language, and even (by at least one degree, but probably more) religion. Our understanding of science and history, though ours, is not even close to the only paradigm by which humanity has always discovered or explained truth. Indeed, it is not the only way that all of humanity understands truth even today.
As Christians, we may believe that all truth is indeed God’s truth. As such, we need not abandon or despise the modern scientific method, nor reason, nor art. However, we should understand that each of these realms of understanding truth does exist within its own paradigm. Science is a great tool for discovering the nature of the created world. However, empirical natural science is by definition limited to the physical realm, and therefore it is not equipped to explore the metaphysical, or answer questions of purpose. These are in the realm of theology. Science has its place, but in its place it must remain. Questions of purpose, or teleology, are science interpreted, which is philosophy. Pure science must remain teleologically neutral.
To put it another way, science may explore and describe the natural realms and theories of embryology, biology, and evolution, but it may not draw conclusions of human purpose or divine existence from that study or it ceases to be science.
Also, to put science in its proper perspective, we should remember that the scientific method is new on the scene of human understanding. Before a portion of humanity began using science for the last four hundred years, humanity engaged (and still engages) the world and each other through storytelling, art, and legend as they grappled with both origins AND purpose. I suggest that a reading of Genesis that seeks to pressure its interpretation into our understanding of a scientific framework is both arrogant and blind. We are arrogant to assume that Genesis should speak to us alone in our language, a small minority of the human race in both the present and in history. We are blind because our intellectual colonialism makes us unable to see the text as the original readers would, who had no understanding or value for science as we have today.
Whether we disregard Genesis because of modern science, or seek to force it into a scientific paradigm to support our faith, we do violence to the text by insisting on a scientific understanding that it never intended.
In our zeal to support our faith, we should be careful not to elevate too highly our secular modern myths of truth finding in our interpretation of a sacred and ancient text. Genesis need not match our modern understandings of science or history in order to be true. Though Genesis intends to be a history, the historical accuracy is not the intention of the message of the text. Both science and history are always open to revision. The message of Genesis remains true. Genesis need not be exhaustive in order to be true. It does not matter how Cain found a wife. Any plausible explanation is enough, but does not matter to the story. We should be careful as we fill in details that we do not place our interpretations on those details.
In Genesis fifteen, God shows Abram all the stars. As Abram looked up, he did not see a vast expanse filled with innumerable gigantic balls of flaming gas. In Abram’s understanding, he saw the firmament, a solid dome that stretched over the flat earth. Within the firmament, he saw distant lights that lit the night, directed travellers, and showed the seasons. Beneath the firmament, the earth held up this dome by the furthest mountains, the edges of the world. Beneath this flat earth was the underworld, the land of the dead where the sun went each night. Beyond the firmament was the waters of heaven, from which came the rain.
It shouldn’t shock us that the story does not include God’s correction of Abram’s understanding of the ways of the natural world. In the story, God speaks to Abram according to his own worldview, in his own understanding. If we read further, we see this even more explicitly in the way that God communicates his promise to Abram. The ceremony of broken animals was a contemporary Canaanite ritual of oath taking that Abram would have known well. God sealed his promise to Abram in Abram’s own language and culture.
We should also notice that a few verses after God shows Abram the stars in the sky, the story tells us that the sun went down. A modern literal interpretation of this must conclude that these details are impossible. This is only one of many examples in Genesis and the Torah of details that do not correspond with our understanding of a true and literal narrative. When we explore the questions of the ethnicity of Joseph’s slave traders, the names of Esau’s wives, conflicting genealogical records, or the circumstances of Joseph’s brother’s discovery of their returned silver, the evidence piles up that we and the original readers of Genesis do not understand truth in the same way.
Genesis is written as narrative history, and intends to be taken as truth. As Christians, we approach Genesis and all scripture as God’s Word, and as our authority for religious doctrine, worship, and practice of faith. We believe that Genesis is true, and true in a sense far greater than any other truth.
Let us approach the text with humility, with the willingness to consider the ancient worldviews and understandings of these ancient writers and readers. Let us read to discover a fuller and more robust theology, as God speaks to us his wisdom through their ancient understandings and stories.
+
To be clear, I do intend to approach Genesis with reverence and prayer. I do believe that Genesis and the rest of the Bible is scripture, and I read it as such. I believe that God speaks to us through the words of Genesis. I believe that Genesis is true, more true than anything outside of scripture.
However, I believe that Genesis and all scripture is only as true as it intends to be, and only true in the way it intends to be true. I do not believe that a faithful reading of Genesis means that we need to disengage our God created mental faculties. I also believe that we can gain much from the scholarship of many others in the church or outside of it, whether we agree with them or not. The consequences of our readings and conclusions can affect our views of God and others deeply, so let us be humble and considerate as we interpret God’s Word, or share our interpretations with others.
+
I believe that the caution I stated in the previous entry regarding isogesis, or reading our cultural paradigm into the text, also applies to insisting on a scientific framework for Genesis. Though I find the writings of some thoughtful Old Earth Creationists like Hugh Ross to be interesting and engaging, I believe that these interpretations can do as much damage to the text as Young Earth Creationists. Either way, we search the text to support our current understandings of the material world. This is an incorrect hermeneutic (interpretation theory) when reading for theology, and just as incorrect when reading for science. Just like when we read Genesis for morality, we risk reading animal shapes into the clouds of scripture.
+
*John Walton said something like this first in his great book, The Lost World of Genesis One
I owe a great debt to this book for much of this article, as well as John Walton’s other excellent book, Genesis – The NIV Application Commentary
(next entry – Genesis and the New Testament)
+
Welcome to Genesis, an ancient and beautiful epic book of creation, rebellion, judgment, restoration, forgiveness, lust, power, poverty, and wealth. In my recent enriching exploration of Genesis, I have discovered and rediscovered a beautiful story that has for much of my life remained hidden. This book in the eyes and hands of many has collected a great deal of baggage, paintings and repaintings that obscure it’s delicate and detailed forms.
In my study, I have concluded that there are three common frameworks that people (especially us evangelicals) place Genesis in that serve to confuse or outright blind its theologically robust message. These frameworks are (1) the popular Sunday School method of reading Genesis as a collection of morality tales, (2) pressuring Genesis (especially chapters 1-11) into a modern scientific or historical understanding that did not exist in the ancient world of this book, and (3) reading Genesis only through a New Testament understanding and theology that had not yet formed when the book was written.
I will briefly touch on each of these frameworks in turn. If interest in further study or conversation is communicated in the comments, I will explore or explain these ideas further. If not, consider these to be an introduction to my own framework, what it is and what it isn’t. Whether you agree with me or not does not matter. My intention is to be forthright regarding my own paradigm from which I consider the text.
+
Genesis, Science, and History
As Christians, it’s important when we read Genesis or any scripture that though we may believe that it was written for us, it was not written to us.* Genesis is an ancient book, written to a people many degrees removed from us in culture, worldview, language, and even (by at least one degree, but probably more) religion. Our understanding of science and history, though ours, is not even close to the only paradigm by which humanity has always discovered or explained truth. Indeed, it is not the only way that all of humanity understands truth even today.
As Christians, we may believe that all truth is indeed God’s truth. As such, we need not abandon or despise the modern scientific method, nor reason, nor art. However, we should understand that each of these realms of understanding truth does exist within its own paradigm. Science is a great tool for discovering the nature of the created world. However, empirical natural science is by definition limited to the physical realm, and therefore it is not equipped to explore the metaphysical, or answer questions of purpose. These are in the realm of theology. Science has its place, but in its place it must remain. Questions of purpose, or teleology, are science interpreted, which is philosophy. Pure science must remain teleologically neutral.
To put it another way, science may explore and describe the natural realms and theories of embryology, biology, and evolution, but it may not draw conclusions of human purpose or divine existence from that study or it ceases to be science.
Also, to put science in its proper perspective, we should remember that the scientific method is new on the scene of human understanding. Before a portion of humanity began using science for the last four hundred years, humanity engaged (and still engages) the world and each other through storytelling, art, and legend as they grappled with both origins AND purpose. I suggest that a reading of Genesis that seeks to pressure its interpretation into our understanding of a scientific framework is both arrogant and blind. We are arrogant to assume that Genesis should speak to us alone in our language, a small minority of the human race in both the present and in history. We are blind because our intellectual colonialism makes us unable to see the text as the original readers would, who had no understanding or value for science as we have today.
Whether we disregard Genesis because of modern science, or seek to force it into a scientific paradigm to support our faith, we do violence to the text by insisting on a scientific understanding that it never intended.
In our zeal to support our faith, we should be careful not to elevate too highly our secular modern myths of truth finding in our interpretation of a sacred and ancient text. Genesis need not match our modern understandings of science or history in order to be true. Though Genesis intends to be a history, the historical accuracy is not the intention of the message of the text. Both science and history are always open to revision. The message of Genesis remains true. Genesis need not be exhaustive in order to be true. It does not matter how Cain found a wife. Any plausible explanation is enough, but does not matter to the story. We should be careful as we fill in details that we do not place our interpretations on those details.
In Genesis fifteen, God shows Abram all the stars. As Abram looked up, he did not see a vast expanse filled with innumerable gigantic balls of flaming gas. In Abram’s understanding, he saw the firmament, a solid dome that stretched over the flat earth. Within the firmament, he saw distant lights that lit the night, directed travellers, and showed the seasons. Beneath the firmament, the earth held up this dome by the furthest mountains, the edges of the world. Beneath this flat earth was the underworld, the land of the dead where the sun went each night. Beyond the firmament was the waters of heaven, from which came the rain.
It shouldn’t shock us that the story does not include God’s correction of Abram’s understanding of the ways of the natural world. In the story, God speaks to Abram according to his own worldview, in his own understanding. If we read further, we see this even more explicitly in the way that God communicates his promise to Abram. The ceremony of broken animals was a contemporary Canaanite ritual of oath taking that Abram would have known well. God sealed his promise to Abram in Abram’s own language and culture.
We should also notice that a few verses after God shows Abram the stars in the sky, the story tells us that the sun went down. A modern literal interpretation of this must conclude that these details are impossible. This is only one of many examples in Genesis and the Torah of details that do not correspond with our understanding of a true and literal narrative. When we explore the questions of the ethnicity of Joseph’s slave traders, the names of Esau’s wives, conflicting genealogical records, or the circumstances of Joseph’s brother’s discovery of their returned silver, the evidence piles up that we and the original readers of Genesis do not understand truth in the same way.
Genesis is written as narrative history, and intends to be taken as truth. As Christians, we approach Genesis and all scripture as God’s Word, and as our authority for religious doctrine, worship, and practice of faith. We believe that Genesis is true, and true in a sense far greater than any other truth.
Let us approach the text with humility, with the willingness to consider the ancient worldviews and understandings of these ancient writers and readers. Let us read to discover a fuller and more robust theology, as God speaks to us his wisdom through their ancient understandings and stories.
+
To be clear, I do intend to approach Genesis with reverence and prayer. I do believe that Genesis and the rest of the Bible is scripture, and I read it as such. I believe that God speaks to us through the words of Genesis. I believe that Genesis is true, more true than anything outside of scripture.
However, I believe that Genesis and all scripture is only as true as it intends to be, and only true in the way it intends to be true. I do not believe that a faithful reading of Genesis means that we need to disengage our God created mental faculties. I also believe that we can gain much from the scholarship of many others in the church or outside of it, whether we agree with them or not. The consequences of our readings and conclusions can affect our views of God and others deeply, so let us be humble and considerate as we interpret God’s Word, or share our interpretations with others.
+
I believe that the caution I stated in the previous entry regarding isogesis, or reading our cultural paradigm into the text, also applies to insisting on a scientific framework for Genesis. Though I find the writings of some thoughtful Old Earth Creationists like Hugh Ross to be interesting and engaging, I believe that these interpretations can do as much damage to the text as Young Earth Creationists. Either way, we search the text to support our current understandings of the material world. This is an incorrect hermeneutic (interpretation theory) when reading for theology, and just as incorrect when reading for science. Just like when we read Genesis for morality, we risk reading animal shapes into the clouds of scripture.
+
*John Walton said something like this first in his great book, The Lost World of Genesis One
I owe a great debt to this book for much of this article, as well as John Walton’s other excellent book, Genesis – The NIV Application Commentary
(next entry – Genesis and the New Testament)
Reading Genesis as Moral Instruction (Sunday School was wrong)
Welcome to Genesis, an ancient and beautiful epic book of creation, rebellion, judgment, restoration, forgiveness, lust, power, poverty, and wealth. In my recent enriching exploration of Genesis, I have discovered and rediscovered a beautiful story that has for much of my life remained hidden. This book in the eyes and hands of many has collected a great deal of baggage, paintings and repaintings that obscure it’s delicate and detailed forms.
In my study, I have concluded that there are three common frameworks that people (especially us evangelicals) place Genesis in that serve to confuse or outright blind its theologically robust message. These frameworks are (1) the popular Sunday School method of reading Genesis as a collection of morality tales, (2) pressuring Genesis (especially chapters 1-11) into a modern scientific or historical understanding that did not exist in the ancient world of this book, and (3) reading Genesis only through a New Testament understanding and theology that had not yet formed when the book was written.
I will briefly touch on each of these frameworks in turn. If interest in further study or conversation is communicated in the comments, I will explore or explain these ideas further. If not, consider these to be an introduction to my own framework, what it is and what it isn’t. Whether you agree with me or not does not matter. My intention is to be forthright regarding my own paradigm from which I consider the text.
Genesis as Moral Instruction
First, I no longer believe that Genesis is intended to be a collection of morality tales. If it were so, it would be a bad one. No moral explanation or direction is given regarding Abraham lying about his wife Sarah being his sister (or any other of the many deceptions in Genesis), Lot choosing the plains, Isaac's preference of Esau, or Joseph's imprisonment of his brother, Simeon. Were these right or wrong things for the characters to do? The text is unclear.
In the case of Abraham’s deception regarding his wife, if Genesis were moral instruction we could easily interpret the story as God’s approval of Abram’s prostitution of his own wife. She enters the king’s harem, and he likely sleeps with her. Upon discovery of Abram and Sarah’s real relationship, the king sends them away with animals and great wealth. This is, in fact, the beginning of Abram’s wealth in scripture. Was God blessing Abram through the king? Why? Was he right in what he did? The text is not clear.
Genesis does not display heroes whose lives we are to emulate or simple stories of their mistakes and what came of them. Sometimes the patriarchs did things that are clearly prohibited in scripture, without the text necessarily explicitly or even implicitly pointing out their error. Immoral behaviour by the characters in this book may lead to Godly ends. By no means should we follow their example.
In a text as old as Genesis, written and read by an ancient people in another part of the world, the gap between its cultural understanding of ethics and ours is vast. In the thousands of years that Genesis has been read, every new culture in every new age has an opportunity to read into the text its current understandings and teachings about right and wrong. This can easily amount to isogesis, a sort of reading animal shapes into the clouds of scripture. We should be very careful not to interpret scripture according to our own whims and worldviews. At best, this obscures or muddies the intended meaning of the book, at worst this leads to outright unbiblical interpretations and heresy. Let us respect the ancient cultures and the Word enough to leap past this cultural boundary.
The Bible does often teach morality, both explicitly and implicitly. If we find moral instruction elsewhere in scripture, we should teach that morality from that same scripture, and allow Genesis to stand alone to teach us what its author actually intends.
Moral lessons are not the primary purpose of the text, and a most correct interpretation of Genesis should reflect this. When Genesis does not clearly and explicitly teach a moral, we should not assign one. If we are to understand Genesis, we should look elsewhere.
+
To be clear, I do intend to approach Genesis with reverence and prayer. I do believe that Genesis and the rest of the Bible is scripture, and I read it as such. I believe that God speaks to us through the words of Genesis. I believe that Genesis is true, more true than anything outside of scripture.
However, I believe that Genesis and all scripture is only as true as it intends to be, and only true in the way it intends to be true. I do not believe that a faithful reading of Genesis means that we need to disengage our God created mental faculties. I also believe that we can gain much from the scholarship of many others in the church or outside of it, whether we agree with them or not. The consequences of our readings and conclusions can affect our views of God and others deeply, so let us be humble and considerate as we interpret God’s Word, or share our interpretations with others.
(next - Genesis, Myth, Science, and History)
In my study, I have concluded that there are three common frameworks that people (especially us evangelicals) place Genesis in that serve to confuse or outright blind its theologically robust message. These frameworks are (1) the popular Sunday School method of reading Genesis as a collection of morality tales, (2) pressuring Genesis (especially chapters 1-11) into a modern scientific or historical understanding that did not exist in the ancient world of this book, and (3) reading Genesis only through a New Testament understanding and theology that had not yet formed when the book was written.
I will briefly touch on each of these frameworks in turn. If interest in further study or conversation is communicated in the comments, I will explore or explain these ideas further. If not, consider these to be an introduction to my own framework, what it is and what it isn’t. Whether you agree with me or not does not matter. My intention is to be forthright regarding my own paradigm from which I consider the text.
Genesis as Moral Instruction
First, I no longer believe that Genesis is intended to be a collection of morality tales. If it were so, it would be a bad one. No moral explanation or direction is given regarding Abraham lying about his wife Sarah being his sister (or any other of the many deceptions in Genesis), Lot choosing the plains, Isaac's preference of Esau, or Joseph's imprisonment of his brother, Simeon. Were these right or wrong things for the characters to do? The text is unclear.
In the case of Abraham’s deception regarding his wife, if Genesis were moral instruction we could easily interpret the story as God’s approval of Abram’s prostitution of his own wife. She enters the king’s harem, and he likely sleeps with her. Upon discovery of Abram and Sarah’s real relationship, the king sends them away with animals and great wealth. This is, in fact, the beginning of Abram’s wealth in scripture. Was God blessing Abram through the king? Why? Was he right in what he did? The text is not clear.
Genesis does not display heroes whose lives we are to emulate or simple stories of their mistakes and what came of them. Sometimes the patriarchs did things that are clearly prohibited in scripture, without the text necessarily explicitly or even implicitly pointing out their error. Immoral behaviour by the characters in this book may lead to Godly ends. By no means should we follow their example.
In a text as old as Genesis, written and read by an ancient people in another part of the world, the gap between its cultural understanding of ethics and ours is vast. In the thousands of years that Genesis has been read, every new culture in every new age has an opportunity to read into the text its current understandings and teachings about right and wrong. This can easily amount to isogesis, a sort of reading animal shapes into the clouds of scripture. We should be very careful not to interpret scripture according to our own whims and worldviews. At best, this obscures or muddies the intended meaning of the book, at worst this leads to outright unbiblical interpretations and heresy. Let us respect the ancient cultures and the Word enough to leap past this cultural boundary.
The Bible does often teach morality, both explicitly and implicitly. If we find moral instruction elsewhere in scripture, we should teach that morality from that same scripture, and allow Genesis to stand alone to teach us what its author actually intends.
Moral lessons are not the primary purpose of the text, and a most correct interpretation of Genesis should reflect this. When Genesis does not clearly and explicitly teach a moral, we should not assign one. If we are to understand Genesis, we should look elsewhere.
+
To be clear, I do intend to approach Genesis with reverence and prayer. I do believe that Genesis and the rest of the Bible is scripture, and I read it as such. I believe that God speaks to us through the words of Genesis. I believe that Genesis is true, more true than anything outside of scripture.
However, I believe that Genesis and all scripture is only as true as it intends to be, and only true in the way it intends to be true. I do not believe that a faithful reading of Genesis means that we need to disengage our God created mental faculties. I also believe that we can gain much from the scholarship of many others in the church or outside of it, whether we agree with them or not. The consequences of our readings and conclusions can affect our views of God and others deeply, so let us be humble and considerate as we interpret God’s Word, or share our interpretations with others.
(next - Genesis, Myth, Science, and History)
Monday, August 29, 2011
God said. It was so. Be fruitful and multiply. - Genesis Week 1
Occasionally during this reading plan, we'll take a day off from Genesis to read other passages from the Bible. Before we begin with the creation stories of Genesis 1 and 2 this week, there four other chapters we'll consider that also talk about Creation and the Creator.
Since I have not studied these extra-Genesis chapters as I have Genesis, I will present my entries more as reflections instead of study notes.
Notes on Genesis 1 will be posted by Thursday, and notes on Genesis 2 will be posted by Friday.
Day 1 - Revelation 4
God is Creator and Sustainer and King over all things. All things in heaven and earth exist by his will and for his pleasure.
God is holy.
Day 1 - Job 38
God is Sovereign Lord over all he has created. He is alone in power and authority. No one was present with his when Creation began. He has made all things that have been made. By his power they are sustained. For his glory they are created. By his will they are given purpose. By his word they are given life. It is nothing but pure foolishness and arrogance to suggest to judge him. Only he is judge. Only he is king.
+++++
Day 2 - Hebrews 11
Our faith and action is placed on God, Creator and Sustainer of all things. The faithful actions of the ancients were made in obedience to the commands of Sovereign God, whatever the consequences, and without natural confirmation of their results.
Some ruled. Some were killed. All were commended for their faith in the eternal God instead of their temporary circumstances.
+++++
Day 3 - John 1
Jesus existed with God and as God before the Creation. All things were made by and through him.
Jesus entered the world that he created, and offered life to everyone through his incarnation.
Jesus is God, the Son of God, who reveals his Father to all who would have faith in him.
Jesus ministry was preceded by testimony by others.
Jesus called followers to him.
Jesus’ followers introduced him to others.
Since I have not studied these extra-Genesis chapters as I have Genesis, I will present my entries more as reflections instead of study notes.
Notes on Genesis 1 will be posted by Thursday, and notes on Genesis 2 will be posted by Friday.
Day 1 - Revelation 4
God is Creator and Sustainer and King over all things. All things in heaven and earth exist by his will and for his pleasure.
God is holy.
Day 1 - Job 38
God is Sovereign Lord over all he has created. He is alone in power and authority. No one was present with his when Creation began. He has made all things that have been made. By his power they are sustained. For his glory they are created. By his will they are given purpose. By his word they are given life. It is nothing but pure foolishness and arrogance to suggest to judge him. Only he is judge. Only he is king.
+++++
Day 2 - Hebrews 11
Our faith and action is placed on God, Creator and Sustainer of all things. The faithful actions of the ancients were made in obedience to the commands of Sovereign God, whatever the consequences, and without natural confirmation of their results.
Some ruled. Some were killed. All were commended for their faith in the eternal God instead of their temporary circumstances.
+++++
Day 3 - John 1
Jesus existed with God and as God before the Creation. All things were made by and through him.
Jesus entered the world that he created, and offered life to everyone through his incarnation.
Jesus is God, the Son of God, who reveals his Father to all who would have faith in him.
Jesus ministry was preceded by testimony by others.
Jesus called followers to him.
Jesus’ followers introduced him to others.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Genesis Introduction
Genesis
September-November 2011
Look to the Cross for Victory
Dear Church and friends of LTTX,
I love September. It’s a new season. Students return to school. I turn one year older. Everything old is new again!
In that same spirit, I’m really looking forward to engaging Genesis together as a community. As I’ve explored the pages of this very old book for the last month or so, I’ve been surprised again and again by how unfamiliar so many of these old stories are to me now. I had expected to breeze through old and frequently told narratives of Creation, Noah’s Flood, and Joseph’s Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Instead, I was pleased again and again to find new stories I’d forgotten, old and colourful details that breathed new life into old tales, or shocking discoveries of stories or passages that had been entirely misrepresented or I’d entirely misunderstood for my whole life. Everything old really is new again.
My challenge as I read, and my challenge for you, is to consider or reconsider this ancient text as it is. As I read, I’ve noticed three prejudices that have often hindered or confused my reading of the text; My prejudices are
(1) perceived over-familiarity with “Sunday School” stories,
(2) attempting to pressure Genesis into a historical or scientific framework that it does not intend and did not exist when it was written, and
(3) New Testament theologies and teachings that, though perhaps true, were not part of the understanding of Genesis’ original author or audience. You may find that you carry similar baggage as you approach the text. Try to set these frameworks aside for the next twelve weeks, and see if Genesis shines something bright and new for you.
Genesis really is a beautiful book, an earthy and messy book of flawed and tragic humans and families and their patient and faithful God. The Creator is seen artistically forming function, beauty, and purpose from the darkest and most wasted of back alley castoffs. He is the original dumpster diver, finding and creating treasure and beauty from wasted matter, wasted life, and wasted relationships. God slowly reveals his character to the characters and the readers throughout the entire narrative. His love, patience and beauty are true in the pages of Genesis.
We’ll be exploring Genesis together in three arenas. First, we are all reading these chapters and considering them at the same time. Secondly, we’ll bring our thoughts, writings, drawings, and questions to each other in our small groups. Thirdly, every week we will engage the passages we read together on Sunday morning in readings, teachings, discussion, and worship.
It starts with you, prayerfully and thoughtfully reading these passages every day, and writing or drawing what you can share with the community for all of us to learn and grow together. I’m already looking forward to the journey.
-Shawn
September-November 2011
Look to the Cross for Victory
Dear Church and friends of LTTX,
I love September. It’s a new season. Students return to school. I turn one year older. Everything old is new again!
In that same spirit, I’m really looking forward to engaging Genesis together as a community. As I’ve explored the pages of this very old book for the last month or so, I’ve been surprised again and again by how unfamiliar so many of these old stories are to me now. I had expected to breeze through old and frequently told narratives of Creation, Noah’s Flood, and Joseph’s Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Instead, I was pleased again and again to find new stories I’d forgotten, old and colourful details that breathed new life into old tales, or shocking discoveries of stories or passages that had been entirely misrepresented or I’d entirely misunderstood for my whole life. Everything old really is new again.
My challenge as I read, and my challenge for you, is to consider or reconsider this ancient text as it is. As I read, I’ve noticed three prejudices that have often hindered or confused my reading of the text; My prejudices are
(1) perceived over-familiarity with “Sunday School” stories,
(2) attempting to pressure Genesis into a historical or scientific framework that it does not intend and did not exist when it was written, and
(3) New Testament theologies and teachings that, though perhaps true, were not part of the understanding of Genesis’ original author or audience. You may find that you carry similar baggage as you approach the text. Try to set these frameworks aside for the next twelve weeks, and see if Genesis shines something bright and new for you.
Genesis really is a beautiful book, an earthy and messy book of flawed and tragic humans and families and their patient and faithful God. The Creator is seen artistically forming function, beauty, and purpose from the darkest and most wasted of back alley castoffs. He is the original dumpster diver, finding and creating treasure and beauty from wasted matter, wasted life, and wasted relationships. God slowly reveals his character to the characters and the readers throughout the entire narrative. His love, patience and beauty are true in the pages of Genesis.
We’ll be exploring Genesis together in three arenas. First, we are all reading these chapters and considering them at the same time. Secondly, we’ll bring our thoughts, writings, drawings, and questions to each other in our small groups. Thirdly, every week we will engage the passages we read together on Sunday morning in readings, teachings, discussion, and worship.
It starts with you, prayerfully and thoughtfully reading these passages every day, and writing or drawing what you can share with the community for all of us to learn and grow together. I’m already looking forward to the journey.
-Shawn
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Community 9 - Conclusion
Living as God’s Covenant Community
“Christian community means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. There is no Christian community that is more than this, and none less than this. Whether it is a brief, single encounter or the daily community of years, Christian community is solely this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
1. HISTORY OF COVENANT COMMUNITY
All community begins with God before time.
In Jesus Christ, we were chosen by the eternal community of the Trinity before time began, reconciled to Christ in time by his grace, and united to the church for all eternity past the end of time.
(Eph 1:4, 18, 22-23; 2:14-15; 3:21)
In the beginning, God. (Gen 1:1)
All community began with the perfect community of the Father, Jesus the Son, and Holy Spirit since before the beginning of time. (Gen 1, Eph 1, Jn 1, Col 1)
In love, humanity was formed for community in the image of God. (Jn 1:1-3, Gen 1:26-28)
God wants to reveal His character and nature to the entire world through his community.
(Gen 12:1-3, Ex 19:3-6, Dt 4:1-8)
Jesus was born into God’s community, and is the perfect, exact reflection of the character and nature of God. (Jn 1:14-18, Jn 5:19-23, Col 1:15-20)
Everything that Godly community expresses, everything that God intends for Godly community to do in the world, Jesus has fulfilled. He was with God in the beginning, in perfect community. He came to us as God as man and fulfilled perfect community with us. His life and death as us seals the covenant of God so we can be freed from sin.
God plants his eternal community in us through faith in Jesus. We receive it by faith.
Jesus Redeems Community - Colossians 1:19-20 – For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Jesus Models Community - 1 John 2:6 - Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
God’s covenant community follows Jesus, as Jesus follows the Father. God’s community prays as radically as Jesus, gives as generously as Jesus, and speaks as boldly for truth and justice as Jesus. Through his redeemed covenant community, God continues to reveal his goodness to the entire world.
2. COMMUNITY IN PRACTICE
In Christ, by the power of Holy Spirit, God’s community reflects the nature of his eternal community.
a - Joyful Love
(Trinity - God is Love – 1 John 4(esp. vv.7-8), Psalm 16:11)
Godly community is a community of love.
b - Humble Unity
(Trinity - Mutual, Humble, Willful Submission – Phil 2)
Members of Godly community are humble, considering others before themselves, submitting to the authority of scripture, and respecting the diversity of gifts in the community.
c - Mutual Generosity
(Trinity - Common Ownership - Matt 11:27 – Father handed everything over to Jesus - John 16:15 – Jesus and God share everything.)
Godly community is generous and shares together.
d - Honesty and Understanding
(Trinity - 1 Corinthians 2:11 – Only the Holy Spirit fully understands the thoughts of God.)
Members of Godly community are honest, seek to know each other better, and live in understanding.
e - Fruitfulness
(Trinity - Co-Creating, and co-redeeming – Genesis 1:26, John 1:1-5)
Like a family, the love within a community only grows in fullness as the community grows. As a parent’s love grows with each new child that their love produced, so also does Godly love in community seek to share that love with others, and see the community grow. God’s love (and therefore our community’s love) is an outward focused love, a love that includes anyone who would receive it.
3. COMMUNITY ON PURPOSE
God blesses the entire world by revealing himself through his covenant community by their INTERCESSION, MERCY, and JUSTICE.
John 17:3-5, 20-23
3 Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4 I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Jesus is God incarnate, and the perfect fulfillment of all God intends for his covenant community. Because of his death and resurrection, by grace and through faith in him God’s community is able to sit in the righteousness of Jesus, and walk as he did on earth.
a - Revelation by Demonstration
1 John 2:6 – Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. - INTERCESSION, MERCY, and JUSTICE.
The world sees the community in practice, and is blessed as the community lives out God’s purpose.
b - Revelation by Proclamation
Romans 1:14-17 (esp 16) – The preaching of the gospel of Jesus is the power of God unto salvation.
Romans 1:14-17
14 I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. 15 That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.
16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
Acts 1:8
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Our community of Jesus followers, the Body of Christ, dwells in the eternal community of God, and God dwells in us by the Holy Spirit. His Kingdom is growing on earth as we plant our lives in him.
Through the demonstrated and proclaimed gospel of Jesus Christ by God’s community, the world comes to know and believe in who God is, and the Kingdom of Heaven is planted on earth.
“Christian community means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. There is no Christian community that is more than this, and none less than this. Whether it is a brief, single encounter or the daily community of years, Christian community is solely this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
1. HISTORY OF COVENANT COMMUNITY
All community begins with God before time.
In Jesus Christ, we were chosen by the eternal community of the Trinity before time began, reconciled to Christ in time by his grace, and united to the church for all eternity past the end of time.
(Eph 1:4, 18, 22-23; 2:14-15; 3:21)
In the beginning, God. (Gen 1:1)
All community began with the perfect community of the Father, Jesus the Son, and Holy Spirit since before the beginning of time. (Gen 1, Eph 1, Jn 1, Col 1)
In love, humanity was formed for community in the image of God. (Jn 1:1-3, Gen 1:26-28)
God wants to reveal His character and nature to the entire world through his community.
(Gen 12:1-3, Ex 19:3-6, Dt 4:1-8)
Jesus was born into God’s community, and is the perfect, exact reflection of the character and nature of God. (Jn 1:14-18, Jn 5:19-23, Col 1:15-20)
Everything that Godly community expresses, everything that God intends for Godly community to do in the world, Jesus has fulfilled. He was with God in the beginning, in perfect community. He came to us as God as man and fulfilled perfect community with us. His life and death as us seals the covenant of God so we can be freed from sin.
God plants his eternal community in us through faith in Jesus. We receive it by faith.
Jesus Redeems Community - Colossians 1:19-20 – For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Jesus Models Community - 1 John 2:6 - Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
God’s covenant community follows Jesus, as Jesus follows the Father. God’s community prays as radically as Jesus, gives as generously as Jesus, and speaks as boldly for truth and justice as Jesus. Through his redeemed covenant community, God continues to reveal his goodness to the entire world.
2. COMMUNITY IN PRACTICE
In Christ, by the power of Holy Spirit, God’s community reflects the nature of his eternal community.
a - Joyful Love
(Trinity - God is Love – 1 John 4(esp. vv.7-8), Psalm 16:11)
Godly community is a community of love.
b - Humble Unity
(Trinity - Mutual, Humble, Willful Submission – Phil 2)
Members of Godly community are humble, considering others before themselves, submitting to the authority of scripture, and respecting the diversity of gifts in the community.
c - Mutual Generosity
(Trinity - Common Ownership - Matt 11:27 – Father handed everything over to Jesus - John 16:15 – Jesus and God share everything.)
Godly community is generous and shares together.
d - Honesty and Understanding
(Trinity - 1 Corinthians 2:11 – Only the Holy Spirit fully understands the thoughts of God.)
Members of Godly community are honest, seek to know each other better, and live in understanding.
e - Fruitfulness
(Trinity - Co-Creating, and co-redeeming – Genesis 1:26, John 1:1-5)
Like a family, the love within a community only grows in fullness as the community grows. As a parent’s love grows with each new child that their love produced, so also does Godly love in community seek to share that love with others, and see the community grow. God’s love (and therefore our community’s love) is an outward focused love, a love that includes anyone who would receive it.
3. COMMUNITY ON PURPOSE
God blesses the entire world by revealing himself through his covenant community by their INTERCESSION, MERCY, and JUSTICE.
John 17:3-5, 20-23
3 Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4 I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Jesus is God incarnate, and the perfect fulfillment of all God intends for his covenant community. Because of his death and resurrection, by grace and through faith in him God’s community is able to sit in the righteousness of Jesus, and walk as he did on earth.
a - Revelation by Demonstration
1 John 2:6 – Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. - INTERCESSION, MERCY, and JUSTICE.
The world sees the community in practice, and is blessed as the community lives out God’s purpose.
b - Revelation by Proclamation
Romans 1:14-17 (esp 16) – The preaching of the gospel of Jesus is the power of God unto salvation.
Romans 1:14-17
14 I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. 15 That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.
16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
Acts 1:8
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Our community of Jesus followers, the Body of Christ, dwells in the eternal community of God, and God dwells in us by the Holy Spirit. His Kingdom is growing on earth as we plant our lives in him.
Through the demonstrated and proclaimed gospel of Jesus Christ by God’s community, the world comes to know and believe in who God is, and the Kingdom of Heaven is planted on earth.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
I'm posting somewhere different now . . .
Interested readers can now find new posts scratched into paint on the walls of the isolation cells of the prison in Fort Saskatchewan.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Philemon, Revelation 19-22
Through the New Testament Reading - Revelation 19-22
The Book of Philemon (It's only one chapter)
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click the image below to read the series.
Philemon verses 8-12:
Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, 9 yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— 10 I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.
12 I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you.
Philemon verses 15-18:
Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me.
Philemon verse 22:
And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.
The Book of Philemon (It's only one chapter)
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click the image below to read the series.
Philemon verses 8-12:
Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, 9 yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— 10 I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.
12 I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you.
Philemon verses 15-18:
Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me.
Philemon verse 22:
And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Philemon verses 8-12, 15-18, 22, Revelation 15-18
Through the New Testament Reading - Revelation 15-18
The Book of Philemon (It's only one chapter)
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click the image below to read the series.
Philemon verses 8-12:
Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, 9 yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— 10 I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.
12 I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you.
Philemon verses 15-18:
Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me.
Philemon verse 22:
And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.
Day 4 – Key Verses Engaged
The Book of Philemon (It's only one chapter)
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click the image below to read the series.
Philemon verses 8-12:
Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, 9 yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— 10 I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.
12 I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you.
Philemon verses 15-18:
Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me.
Philemon verse 22:
And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.
Day 4 – Key Verses Engaged
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Philemon verses 8-12, 15-18, 22, Revelation 10-14
Through the New Testament Reading - Revelation 10-14
The Book of Philemon (It's only one chapter)
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click the image below to read the series.
Philemon verses 8-12:
Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, 9 yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— 10 I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.
12 I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you.
Philemon verses 15-18:
Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me.
Philemon verse 22:
And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.
The Book of Philemon (It's only one chapter)
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click the image below to read the series.
Philemon verses 8-12:
Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, 9 yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— 10 I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.
12 I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you.
Philemon verses 15-18:
Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me.
Philemon verse 22:
And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Philemon - Key Verses, Revelation 4-9
Through the New Testament Reading - Revelation 4-9
The Book of Philemon (It's only one chapter)
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click the image below to read the series.
Philemon verses 8-12:
Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, 9 yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— 10 I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.
12 I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you.
Philemon verses 15-18:
Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me.
Philemon verse 22:
And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.
The Book of Philemon (It's only one chapter)
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click the image below to read the series.
Philemon verses 8-12:
Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, 9 yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— 10 I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.
12 I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you.
Philemon verses 15-18:
Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me.
Philemon verse 22:
And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Philemon, Revelation 1-3
Through the New Testament Reading - Revelation 1-3
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click the image below to read the series.
Philemon (NIV 1984)
1 Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,
To Philemon our dear friend and fellow worker, 2 to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier and to the church that meets in your home:
3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, 5 because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints. 6 I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. 7 Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints.
8 Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, 9 yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— 10 I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.
12 I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you. 13 I would have liked to keep him with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains for the gospel. 14 But I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do will be spontaneous and not forced. 15 Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me. 19 I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand. I will pay it back—not to mention that you owe me your very self. 20 I do wish, brother, that I may have some benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ. 21 Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask.
22 And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.
23 Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends you greetings. 24 And so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke, my fellow workers.
25 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
+++++
My Reflection:
This is a book of profound freedom and radical equality.
Paul writes with an appeal not to his own authority, but as a brother to Philemon.
He calls Onesimus, a slave, both a brother and a son.
He imparts his own value and identity to Onesimus, the slave.
Paul is gone from Onesimus, and will never return. In his place, Onesimus will have Philemon, his former slave, redeemed as an equal brother in the Lord.
Paul, however, is lost to chains and martyrdom.
Paul incurs Onesimus’ debt on his behalf.
The entire affair is a fantastic representation of our relationship to God, his grace offered to us, forgiveness, justification, and reconciliation. It also reinforces the reality that reconciliation and redemption in Jesus restores us to himself, but also to one another in love and unity.
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click the image below to read the series.
Philemon (NIV 1984)
1 Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,
To Philemon our dear friend and fellow worker, 2 to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier and to the church that meets in your home:
3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, 5 because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints. 6 I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. 7 Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints.
8 Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, 9 yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— 10 I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.
12 I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you. 13 I would have liked to keep him with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains for the gospel. 14 But I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do will be spontaneous and not forced. 15 Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me. 19 I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand. I will pay it back—not to mention that you owe me your very self. 20 I do wish, brother, that I may have some benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ. 21 Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask.
22 And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.
23 Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends you greetings. 24 And so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke, my fellow workers.
25 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
+++++
My Reflection:
This is a book of profound freedom and radical equality.
Paul writes with an appeal not to his own authority, but as a brother to Philemon.
He calls Onesimus, a slave, both a brother and a son.
He imparts his own value and identity to Onesimus, the slave.
Paul is gone from Onesimus, and will never return. In his place, Onesimus will have Philemon, his former slave, redeemed as an equal brother in the Lord.
Paul, however, is lost to chains and martyrdom.
Paul incurs Onesimus’ debt on his behalf.
The entire affair is a fantastic representation of our relationship to God, his grace offered to us, forgiveness, justification, and reconciliation. It also reinforces the reality that reconciliation and redemption in Jesus restores us to himself, but also to one another in love and unity.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
I'm posting somewhere different now . . .
Interested readers can now follow my audio blog, with up to the moment narration from the recorder I now carry on my hip at all times.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Colossians 4, 1 John 5, 2 John, 3 John
Through the New Testament Reading - 1 John 5, 2 John, 3 John
Colossians 4
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click below to see read the series.
Colossians 4
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click below to see read the series.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Colossians 4:2-6, 7-9, 14-18, 1 John 1-4
Through the New Testament Reading - 1 John 1-4
Colossians 4
Colossians 4:2-6
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
Colossians 4:7-9
Tychicus will tell you all the news about me. He is a dear brother, a faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. 8 I am sending him to you for the express purpose that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts. 9 He is coming with Onesimus, our faithful and dear brother, who is one of you. They will tell you everything that is happening here.
Colossians 4:14-18
Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings. 15 Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house.
16 After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.
17 Tell Archippus: “See to it that you complete the work you have received in the Lord.”
18 I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.
Day 4 – Key Verses Engaged
I am personally challenged by the vulnerability and warmth of Paul, one of the most highly respected of all the early church leaders. He truly does model the life of Jesus as he leads not in strength, but in weakness, allowing his humanity to be clearly seen, and Jesus' authority alone to be the power of his ministry.
Colossians 4
Colossians 4:2-6
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
Colossians 4:7-9
Tychicus will tell you all the news about me. He is a dear brother, a faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. 8 I am sending him to you for the express purpose that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts. 9 He is coming with Onesimus, our faithful and dear brother, who is one of you. They will tell you everything that is happening here.
Colossians 4:14-18
Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings. 15 Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house.
16 After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.
17 Tell Archippus: “See to it that you complete the work you have received in the Lord.”
18 I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.
Day 4 – Key Verses Engaged
I am personally challenged by the vulnerability and warmth of Paul, one of the most highly respected of all the early church leaders. He truly does model the life of Jesus as he leads not in strength, but in weakness, allowing his humanity to be clearly seen, and Jesus' authority alone to be the power of his ministry.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Colossians 4:2-6, 7-9, 14-18, John 19-21
Through the New Testament Reading - John 19-21
Colossians 4
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click below to see read the series.
Colossians 4
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click below to see read the series.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Colossians 4 - Key Verses, John 16-18
Through the New Testament Reading - John 16-18
Colossians 4
Day 2 – Key Verses
Colossians 4:2-6
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
Colossians 4:7-9
Tychicus will tell you all the news about me. He is a dear brother, a faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. 8 I am sending him to you for the express purpose that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts. 9 He is coming with Onesimus, our faithful and dear brother, who is one of you. They will tell you everything that is happening here.
Colossians 4:14-18
Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings. 15 Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house.
16 After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.
17 Tell Archippus: “See to it that you complete the work you have received in the Lord.”
18 I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.
Colossians 4
Day 2 – Key Verses
Colossians 4:2-6
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
Colossians 4:7-9
Tychicus will tell you all the news about me. He is a dear brother, a faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. 8 I am sending him to you for the express purpose that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts. 9 He is coming with Onesimus, our faithful and dear brother, who is one of you. They will tell you everything that is happening here.
Colossians 4:14-18
Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings. 15 Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house.
16 After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.
17 Tell Archippus: “See to it that you complete the work you have received in the Lord.”
18 I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Colossians 4, John 13-15
Through the New Testament Reading - John 13-15
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click below to see read the series.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Community 8 - The Church on Purpose - Romans 12
I have a friend who likes to go street preaching for fun. The amazing thing is that he’s good at it. When he’s in a good mood, or he’s having a bad day and wants to make the devil angry, or he just doesn’t have anything to do on some afternoon, he goes and talks to strangers about Jesus. He calls it soul-winning.
Just about every time my friend goes out soul-winning, he ends up leading a weeping stranger in the sinner’s prayer. It’s amazing. I went with him a few times. Not one time did I fail to see some unlikely person I had never met crumble at the story of Jesus, and sincerely ask what they must do to be saved.
They’d pray, they’d cry, they’d laugh, they’d dance.
And then we never saw them again.
My friend wasn’t in a church. He used to be in a church, but he was kicked out. He’d grown the church youth group from ten reluctant churched teenagers into over 100 brand new messy, enthusiastic, uncultured, excited new Jesus Followers. There were more brand new Jesus People coming to church on Sunday morning than regular church folk. People complained. My friend had to leave. Before long, the unwelcome newbies left as well. Now my friend was offended at church. He was content to continue making converts, but he sure wasn’t interested in introducing them to any other Christians.
This story is a tragic one. The solution is God’s humble community. The gospel is a story of community. We are reached by a community, invited into community, grow in community, and minister from community. God takes the lonely and puts them into families. God gives gifts, like my friend’s gift of evangelism, to be developed and used in the church, by the church, for the benefit of the whole church.
Matthew 28:16-20 - 16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
We often think of this commission in terms of the lone missionary out preaching on a street corner or in a hut in the jungles of Africa. We think of people like my friend, and those he led in a prayer to convert to a new religion. But Jesus’ words say that we are to go and make disciples, not converts.
If we want an example of what Jesus means by making disciples, we should look at the people to whom he’s speaking. These are Jesus’ disciples. They were not made in a moment, with a single prayer, or a moment’s decision. These disciples spent time with Jesus and each other for three years. They ate together. They knew one another’s families. They watched Jesus minister. They ministered together. They learned to pray together. They abandoned Jesus together. They were forgiven together.
It takes a community, God’s local church, to make a disciple.
It takes a community to teach everything that Jesus said.
God established his community on earth for a purpose. He has a mission to bless the entire world through his covenant community through their prayers, their mercy, their justice, and their bold proclamation of the gospel. When Jesus began his ministry, he called for people to “Repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is here” (Matthew 4:17). We get to participate in the kingdom here and now.
This is good news! The gospel allows us to live in the full satisfaction of the community of God while here on Earth. While the rest of the world is busy trying to find satisfaction in temporary things, we are already satisfied in the joy of our salvation.
But in that satisfaction, we do not rest. We are on mission. We have been commissioned. And it is a joy to participate in God’s work in the world.
Like children, those outside of the kingdom endlessly organize the stuff of earth into sandcastles and dirty themselves digging through dirt and manure and dead rot for a treasure they will never find. But those of us who are in the kingdom have been given seeds from heaven. We spend our lives tilling the manure and rot, pulling weeds, planting seeds, and harvesting new life for the kingdom to come.
We live for something greater than the temporary life we now live. All of this will give birth to a new life, a new kingdom. Most of us will never see the completion of our work in our lifetime. Until Jesus returns, his mission of mercy and grace and love continues, through us. We are participating in a mission much greater than ourselves. God is bringing redemption to the world. We each get to do our part in the short time we are here.
ROMANS 12
The book of Romans tells us the story of God’s redemptive work on earth through Jesus Christ. The first eleven chapters are a theology of salvation and regeneration, everything God does in each of us because of his gift of Jesus, and our faith in him. In chapter twelve, the writer takes us past the theology and to the application.
We’re saved, so what do we do now? Romans 12 begins to describe how we as Christians live out God’s mission on Earth.
.........................../
..........................| vv 1-2 – Relationship to God in our contrary culture
Inner Life . . . . . . |
..........................| vv 3-5 - Relationship to God in Christian community
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..........................| vv 6-8 – Personal relationships within the church
Active Expression|
..........................| vv 9-21 – The community’s relationship to everyone
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(Romans 12 is strongly paralleled in 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4:4-16)
1. LIVING SACRIFICES IN A CONTRARY CULTURE (vv1-2)
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
We are living sacrifices.
Our lives are given entirely over.
In view of God’s mercy, this is entirely reasonable to expect.
In Christ, we are legally dead to sin, and better than that, we are alive to God (Romans 6:5-7, 8-10). Through faith, we have experienced Jesus’ cross and resurrection (Rom 6:11).
Our old life, with all its’ ungodly passions and desires, died on the cross with Jesus, and with Jesus, we were raised in new life, God’s life, Holy Spirit filled life.
Therefore, the life we live now should be lived in that freedom, not continuing in slavery to our old lusts (Rom 6:12-13 – a parallel of 12:1-2).
We are not under the law, bound by outside rules that try and fail to stop us from indulging our flesh (Colossians 2:23). We are under grace, the power of God that renews us from the inside out (Romans 6:14).
Our offering of our lives is an active response of faith to an inner supernatural reality.
Because of this inner spiritual reality, we are l i v i n g sacrifices in both a natural and spiritual sense.
Renewing our Mind: A change in our thoughts, attitudes, and will when it comes to life and morality.
This is a counter-cultural reality.
CONFORMITY indicates a change of the outward actions and practical life based on an outward influence.
TRANSFORMATION is a change on the outside that comes from a manifestation of what is happening inside.
We live differently than the world. This is m o r e than just “regular Canadian, but nicer”.
It is good and right that we learn to preach the gospel in the language of the culture around us. BUT, let us not deceive ourselves that true gospel following, Holy Spirit filled life will fit nicely into the culture around us.
The gospel blows the mind of our culture, and all cultures. It is entirely different.
2. SOBER HUMILITY IN INTERDEPENDENT COMMUNITY (vv3-5)
3For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. 4Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
Four verses into the practical description of Spirit-filled life, the writer is applying the gospel to life in community. Life shared and even submitted (vv4,5) to others is an assumed application of the life changed by the gospel and filled with the Spirit.
In Christ: This is the basis for our unity. No matter how different we may be, every one of us is part of the same resurrection life of Jesus, together.
Sober Humility (as we see ourselves in Christ)
If we realize what we have received IN CHRIST and remember always that it is entirely by grace that we live legally and practically free from sin, we will be humble.
The gifts of the Spirit are manifested by faith (vv3,6). They are gifts (v6), so they come from God. They are gifts of grace (v6).
Ephesians 2:8,9 - For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.
Just as our salvation is a gift, and God’s work in our life daily to make us like him is a gift, so also are these gifts given by God as he wills. We cannot boast in them as though we perform them in our own strength or ability.
Also, because these are supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit inside us, they may not necessarily be as apparent as a natural talent. They are manifested in faith, not in our own strength.
Interdependent Community
Each person in the body belongs to all the others (v5). Now that’s a countercultural reality.
God chose to build his church with a diverse people with a diversity of gifts, and it is together that we truly reflect him as he is. He didn’t n e e d to do this, but it is right and good that he did. It reflects the gospel message that we should go from a place of independent self-sufficiency to complete dependent faith in Christ to interdependent unity in Christ’s body, the church.
From the very beginning of creation, God has shared his community with us both relationally and practically. Genesis 2:15 says that God put Adam in the garden, and then told him to work and keep it. In verse 19, he parades all the animals before Adam to see what Adam will name them. God didn’t need a gardener! God was sharing the responsibility of creation with humanity. When he sees that man is alone, he recognizes that he needs a helper.
It is a miracle of the gospel that God should condescend to invite his creation to participate in his work on earth. He made a covenant with Abram. He gave his people directions for justice and peace in the earth. He gave us the Bible through the hands and minds of imperfect people. He gave us the local church through which he continues his work of making us more like Jesus through discipleship and teaching of the word when we submit to one another in faith.
(1 Corinthians 12:14-27
14Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.
25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. 27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.)
God continues to share his work on earth with humanity in the church. We still need helpers.
God has given us pastors and evangelists, administrators and missionaries, helpers and deacons and church planters, dishwashers and miracle workers, through which his mission is accomplished on earth. Not one of us can do it alone. Neither can we do it in an unbalanced community. A church of deacons would be only a mission with no gospel. A church of elders would be a cloistered seminary. We submit to the diverse structure of the local church, respecting and enabling and submitting to every part.
We need each other. We share together. We live together. We laugh and cry together. We submit to each other. We correct each other. We share each other’s burdens. We grow in Christ together.
I need you and you need me.
This goes even further than “Love your neighbour as yourself”.
This reflects Philippians 2:3 that encourages believers to “consider others more important than yourself”. (COMITY)
ONLY a community of people who have been transformed by the Holy Spirit and are living by faith in Christ could ever truly live this way.
3. FAITH FILLED EXPRESSION OF GOD’S DIVERSITY OF GIFTS (vv6-8)
6We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. 7If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
PROPHESY
This list of God’s gifts begins with prophesy. Our examination of New Testament prophesy in scripture as a gift will help us understand all the others.
Prophesy is a supernatural revelation from the Holy Spirit given to a person to be spoken to someone else.
We would never foolishly assume that someone is able to prophesy because of some natural born talent or ability. (ie – wizards and elves in the Lord of the Rings are able to do magic because of a natural ability built into their DNA).
If someone prophesies, they can only do so by faith, because of a gift given to them by the Holy Spirit. They can’t boast in it, and we can’t give them credit for it.
This applies exactly the same way to every other gift on the list. Even though leadership or teaching may (unlike prophesy) be something that people can be naturally gifted in, or develop in a natural sense, these gifts are supernatural, and manifested by faith.
So the gift of leadership (v8) may be given by God to someone unlikely (ie. Moses stuttered, David, Gideon, and many others were not necessarily people’s first choice for leaders), and the manifestation of the leadership gift in the church may look very different to leadership in the world. (1 Peter 5:2-4)
The gift of giving generously (v8) may be given to a poor person, supernaturally graced to give in faith.
If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it . . .(v6)
It is not unusual for prophesy to be treated with a great deal of hesitancy and even fear by many churches. There are so many questions attached to prophesy, most notably what the consequences could be of someone acting in faith and being wrong.
In many ways, it may be easier just to stick with the gifts that look and sound like things more familiar to our natural minds.
1 Thess 5:20-21- Do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good.
In Acts 17 (right before Paul’s sermon at Mars Hill in Athens), we see an example of the Bereans, who search the scripture diligently to see if what Paul preached to them is true.
We don’t need less prophesy. We need more scripture. We need to learn how to test prophesy according to scripture. If our minds are renewed, and we are living in humility and faith, we will allow prophesy to be practiced, and we will allow prophesy to be tested, according to scripture. We will not be afraid. In the same way, we should not have contempt for any gift, like evangelism, whatever the consequences.
Prophesy is necessary for the health and the life of the church. It is as essential to the body of Christ as your eyes are to you, and we are similarly disabled without it.
1 Corinthians 14:3 - But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort.
v4b - he who prophesies edifies the church.
Another test - Is it strengthening? encouraging? comforting? edifying the church?
1 Corinthians 14:5, as well as many other places in the NT show that we should value prophesy and it’s essential role in the church very highly. (see 1Cor11:2-5; 12:28-29; 13:2, 8-9; 14:1-40; Ax2:17-18; 11:27-28; 19:6; 21:9-11; Rom12:6; 1Th5:19-21; 1Ti1:18; 4:14; 1Jn4:1)
We should humbly value, allow, and encourage the expression of every one of Holy Spirit’s gifts as the essential gifts to the body that they are.
Prophesy, serving, teaching, correcting, giving, leadership, and mercy ministries are all gifts given to the church by the Holy Spirit through individuals. They are received by faith by those individuals, whether they seem like likely candidates or not. Every single one is essential. God has invited us to participate in his mission on earth. It is in and through local churches that humbly submit and live together in faithful community that he accomplishes this.
4. THE CHURCH IN LOVE SHARING CHRIST IN THE WORLD (vv9-21)
God’s mission is to bless the world through his covenant community through INTERCESSION, MERCY, AND JUSTICE.
As his church demonstrates his love, the world is drawn to Jesus, and his kingdom grows on earth.
God’s mission for his church on earth is a mission of love. We carry seeds of God’s kingdom in the world.
Verses 9 to 13 show how as the church, we live our lives honestly together, and we let the world see us sharing in faith as God intends. Our radical and humble submission to one another looks like Jesus. When we are persecuted, we turn our cheek, as Jesus taught. When someone needs a home, we take them in among us, serving them as though they are Jesus. This is how we are salt and light in the world. 1 John 2:6 says that anyone who lives in Jesus walks as he did. When the world sees us, they see Jesus.
In the verses beyond this, we enter the world and live among them as transformed people, counterculturally, loving as radically as Jesus does. We pray for and bless those who curse us for living so differently and proclaiming the gospel.
INTERCESSION - Verse 14 shows us that like Abraham, or Moses, or Jesus forgiving his tormentors from the cross, Christians pray and intercede on behalf of the lost and hurting in the world.
MERCY - Verses 15 to 18 tell us that God’s community is generous and merciful. We are a city on a hill, and we will not be hidden. Though, like Jesus we will find ourselves among the least of the whole world, the despised and the rejected, the darkest corners of our culture, the light of the gospel will still shine brightly.
JUSTICE – The last verses of chapter 12 show the church living justly and promoting God’s justice in the world. The church boldly proclaims the judgment and grace of the gospel in the world. The church trusts God for the final judgment, radically forgiving even those who oppress and persecute them. When given the opportunity, God’s community feeds and clothes those who need it, even those who have persecuted them.
God loved us while we were his enemies. We have our best opportunity to demonstrate God’s kingdom and the nature of Jesus when we forgive and serve our enemies.
v16 - Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
In John 3 Jesus shares the gospel of the kingdom with a Pharisee, clandestinely by night. In John 4 Jesus shares the gospel of the kingdom with an immoral Samaritan woman, drawing water during the middle of the heat of the day. In both cases, Jesus found himself in an unlikely place and unlikely time, speaking to someone very unlike himself.
You don’t need to be homeless to share Jesus with a homeless person. You don’t need to be rich to share Jesus with the rich. You don’t need to be German to share Jesus in Germany, or Vietnamese to share Jesus in Vietnam.
You don’t need to be a punk to share Jesus with punks, or an anarchist to share with anarchists. The gospel was spread because people like you were willing to go and share Jesus with other people who were entirely strange to them. If you are only willing to share Jesus with people just like you, you are looking to your own strength, and not obedient to God’s commission. Don’t be conceited.
Acts 1:8 - But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
God’s love for us brought him from heaven to earth to die and rise again so we can be forgiven and walk in the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s love in us will bring us to the farthest reaches of the world, even the most unlikely corners and loneliest streets. You aren’t alone. We minister together, and with the power of God. It is his transforming power in us that causes us to live the life on mission in the world as he intends. And the world will never be the same.
Romans 9:12-21
9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honour one another above yourselves. 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Just about every time my friend goes out soul-winning, he ends up leading a weeping stranger in the sinner’s prayer. It’s amazing. I went with him a few times. Not one time did I fail to see some unlikely person I had never met crumble at the story of Jesus, and sincerely ask what they must do to be saved.
They’d pray, they’d cry, they’d laugh, they’d dance.
And then we never saw them again.
My friend wasn’t in a church. He used to be in a church, but he was kicked out. He’d grown the church youth group from ten reluctant churched teenagers into over 100 brand new messy, enthusiastic, uncultured, excited new Jesus Followers. There were more brand new Jesus People coming to church on Sunday morning than regular church folk. People complained. My friend had to leave. Before long, the unwelcome newbies left as well. Now my friend was offended at church. He was content to continue making converts, but he sure wasn’t interested in introducing them to any other Christians.
This story is a tragic one. The solution is God’s humble community. The gospel is a story of community. We are reached by a community, invited into community, grow in community, and minister from community. God takes the lonely and puts them into families. God gives gifts, like my friend’s gift of evangelism, to be developed and used in the church, by the church, for the benefit of the whole church.
Matthew 28:16-20 - 16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
We often think of this commission in terms of the lone missionary out preaching on a street corner or in a hut in the jungles of Africa. We think of people like my friend, and those he led in a prayer to convert to a new religion. But Jesus’ words say that we are to go and make disciples, not converts.
If we want an example of what Jesus means by making disciples, we should look at the people to whom he’s speaking. These are Jesus’ disciples. They were not made in a moment, with a single prayer, or a moment’s decision. These disciples spent time with Jesus and each other for three years. They ate together. They knew one another’s families. They watched Jesus minister. They ministered together. They learned to pray together. They abandoned Jesus together. They were forgiven together.
It takes a community, God’s local church, to make a disciple.
It takes a community to teach everything that Jesus said.
God established his community on earth for a purpose. He has a mission to bless the entire world through his covenant community through their prayers, their mercy, their justice, and their bold proclamation of the gospel. When Jesus began his ministry, he called for people to “Repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is here” (Matthew 4:17). We get to participate in the kingdom here and now.
This is good news! The gospel allows us to live in the full satisfaction of the community of God while here on Earth. While the rest of the world is busy trying to find satisfaction in temporary things, we are already satisfied in the joy of our salvation.
But in that satisfaction, we do not rest. We are on mission. We have been commissioned. And it is a joy to participate in God’s work in the world.
Like children, those outside of the kingdom endlessly organize the stuff of earth into sandcastles and dirty themselves digging through dirt and manure and dead rot for a treasure they will never find. But those of us who are in the kingdom have been given seeds from heaven. We spend our lives tilling the manure and rot, pulling weeds, planting seeds, and harvesting new life for the kingdom to come.
We live for something greater than the temporary life we now live. All of this will give birth to a new life, a new kingdom. Most of us will never see the completion of our work in our lifetime. Until Jesus returns, his mission of mercy and grace and love continues, through us. We are participating in a mission much greater than ourselves. God is bringing redemption to the world. We each get to do our part in the short time we are here.
ROMANS 12
The book of Romans tells us the story of God’s redemptive work on earth through Jesus Christ. The first eleven chapters are a theology of salvation and regeneration, everything God does in each of us because of his gift of Jesus, and our faith in him. In chapter twelve, the writer takes us past the theology and to the application.
We’re saved, so what do we do now? Romans 12 begins to describe how we as Christians live out God’s mission on Earth.
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..........................| vv 1-2 – Relationship to God in our contrary culture
Inner Life . . . . . . |
..........................| vv 3-5 - Relationship to God in Christian community
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..........................| vv 6-8 – Personal relationships within the church
Active Expression|
..........................| vv 9-21 – The community’s relationship to everyone
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(Romans 12 is strongly paralleled in 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4:4-16)
1. LIVING SACRIFICES IN A CONTRARY CULTURE (vv1-2)
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
We are living sacrifices.
Our lives are given entirely over.
In view of God’s mercy, this is entirely reasonable to expect.
In Christ, we are legally dead to sin, and better than that, we are alive to God (Romans 6:5-7, 8-10). Through faith, we have experienced Jesus’ cross and resurrection (Rom 6:11).
Our old life, with all its’ ungodly passions and desires, died on the cross with Jesus, and with Jesus, we were raised in new life, God’s life, Holy Spirit filled life.
Therefore, the life we live now should be lived in that freedom, not continuing in slavery to our old lusts (Rom 6:12-13 – a parallel of 12:1-2).
We are not under the law, bound by outside rules that try and fail to stop us from indulging our flesh (Colossians 2:23). We are under grace, the power of God that renews us from the inside out (Romans 6:14).
Our offering of our lives is an active response of faith to an inner supernatural reality.
Because of this inner spiritual reality, we are l i v i n g sacrifices in both a natural and spiritual sense.
Renewing our Mind: A change in our thoughts, attitudes, and will when it comes to life and morality.
This is a counter-cultural reality.
CONFORMITY indicates a change of the outward actions and practical life based on an outward influence.
TRANSFORMATION is a change on the outside that comes from a manifestation of what is happening inside.
We live differently than the world. This is m o r e than just “regular Canadian, but nicer”.
It is good and right that we learn to preach the gospel in the language of the culture around us. BUT, let us not deceive ourselves that true gospel following, Holy Spirit filled life will fit nicely into the culture around us.
The gospel blows the mind of our culture, and all cultures. It is entirely different.
2. SOBER HUMILITY IN INTERDEPENDENT COMMUNITY (vv3-5)
3For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. 4Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
Four verses into the practical description of Spirit-filled life, the writer is applying the gospel to life in community. Life shared and even submitted (vv4,5) to others is an assumed application of the life changed by the gospel and filled with the Spirit.
In Christ: This is the basis for our unity. No matter how different we may be, every one of us is part of the same resurrection life of Jesus, together.
Sober Humility (as we see ourselves in Christ)
If we realize what we have received IN CHRIST and remember always that it is entirely by grace that we live legally and practically free from sin, we will be humble.
The gifts of the Spirit are manifested by faith (vv3,6). They are gifts (v6), so they come from God. They are gifts of grace (v6).
Ephesians 2:8,9 - For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.
Just as our salvation is a gift, and God’s work in our life daily to make us like him is a gift, so also are these gifts given by God as he wills. We cannot boast in them as though we perform them in our own strength or ability.
Also, because these are supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit inside us, they may not necessarily be as apparent as a natural talent. They are manifested in faith, not in our own strength.
Interdependent Community
Each person in the body belongs to all the others (v5). Now that’s a countercultural reality.
God chose to build his church with a diverse people with a diversity of gifts, and it is together that we truly reflect him as he is. He didn’t n e e d to do this, but it is right and good that he did. It reflects the gospel message that we should go from a place of independent self-sufficiency to complete dependent faith in Christ to interdependent unity in Christ’s body, the church.
From the very beginning of creation, God has shared his community with us both relationally and practically. Genesis 2:15 says that God put Adam in the garden, and then told him to work and keep it. In verse 19, he parades all the animals before Adam to see what Adam will name them. God didn’t need a gardener! God was sharing the responsibility of creation with humanity. When he sees that man is alone, he recognizes that he needs a helper.
It is a miracle of the gospel that God should condescend to invite his creation to participate in his work on earth. He made a covenant with Abram. He gave his people directions for justice and peace in the earth. He gave us the Bible through the hands and minds of imperfect people. He gave us the local church through which he continues his work of making us more like Jesus through discipleship and teaching of the word when we submit to one another in faith.
(1 Corinthians 12:14-27
14Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.
25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. 27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.)
God continues to share his work on earth with humanity in the church. We still need helpers.
God has given us pastors and evangelists, administrators and missionaries, helpers and deacons and church planters, dishwashers and miracle workers, through which his mission is accomplished on earth. Not one of us can do it alone. Neither can we do it in an unbalanced community. A church of deacons would be only a mission with no gospel. A church of elders would be a cloistered seminary. We submit to the diverse structure of the local church, respecting and enabling and submitting to every part.
We need each other. We share together. We live together. We laugh and cry together. We submit to each other. We correct each other. We share each other’s burdens. We grow in Christ together.
I need you and you need me.
This goes even further than “Love your neighbour as yourself”.
This reflects Philippians 2:3 that encourages believers to “consider others more important than yourself”. (COMITY)
ONLY a community of people who have been transformed by the Holy Spirit and are living by faith in Christ could ever truly live this way.
3. FAITH FILLED EXPRESSION OF GOD’S DIVERSITY OF GIFTS (vv6-8)
6We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. 7If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
PROPHESY
This list of God’s gifts begins with prophesy. Our examination of New Testament prophesy in scripture as a gift will help us understand all the others.
Prophesy is a supernatural revelation from the Holy Spirit given to a person to be spoken to someone else.
We would never foolishly assume that someone is able to prophesy because of some natural born talent or ability. (ie – wizards and elves in the Lord of the Rings are able to do magic because of a natural ability built into their DNA).
If someone prophesies, they can only do so by faith, because of a gift given to them by the Holy Spirit. They can’t boast in it, and we can’t give them credit for it.
This applies exactly the same way to every other gift on the list. Even though leadership or teaching may (unlike prophesy) be something that people can be naturally gifted in, or develop in a natural sense, these gifts are supernatural, and manifested by faith.
So the gift of leadership (v8) may be given by God to someone unlikely (ie. Moses stuttered, David, Gideon, and many others were not necessarily people’s first choice for leaders), and the manifestation of the leadership gift in the church may look very different to leadership in the world. (1 Peter 5:2-4)
The gift of giving generously (v8) may be given to a poor person, supernaturally graced to give in faith.
If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it . . .(v6)
It is not unusual for prophesy to be treated with a great deal of hesitancy and even fear by many churches. There are so many questions attached to prophesy, most notably what the consequences could be of someone acting in faith and being wrong.
In many ways, it may be easier just to stick with the gifts that look and sound like things more familiar to our natural minds.
1 Thess 5:20-21- Do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good.
In Acts 17 (right before Paul’s sermon at Mars Hill in Athens), we see an example of the Bereans, who search the scripture diligently to see if what Paul preached to them is true.
We don’t need less prophesy. We need more scripture. We need to learn how to test prophesy according to scripture. If our minds are renewed, and we are living in humility and faith, we will allow prophesy to be practiced, and we will allow prophesy to be tested, according to scripture. We will not be afraid. In the same way, we should not have contempt for any gift, like evangelism, whatever the consequences.
Prophesy is necessary for the health and the life of the church. It is as essential to the body of Christ as your eyes are to you, and we are similarly disabled without it.
1 Corinthians 14:3 - But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort.
v4b - he who prophesies edifies the church.
Another test - Is it strengthening? encouraging? comforting? edifying the church?
1 Corinthians 14:5, as well as many other places in the NT show that we should value prophesy and it’s essential role in the church very highly. (see 1Cor11:2-5; 12:28-29; 13:2, 8-9; 14:1-40; Ax2:17-18; 11:27-28; 19:6; 21:9-11; Rom12:6; 1Th5:19-21; 1Ti1:18; 4:14; 1Jn4:1)
We should humbly value, allow, and encourage the expression of every one of Holy Spirit’s gifts as the essential gifts to the body that they are.
Prophesy, serving, teaching, correcting, giving, leadership, and mercy ministries are all gifts given to the church by the Holy Spirit through individuals. They are received by faith by those individuals, whether they seem like likely candidates or not. Every single one is essential. God has invited us to participate in his mission on earth. It is in and through local churches that humbly submit and live together in faithful community that he accomplishes this.
4. THE CHURCH IN LOVE SHARING CHRIST IN THE WORLD (vv9-21)
God’s mission is to bless the world through his covenant community through INTERCESSION, MERCY, AND JUSTICE.
As his church demonstrates his love, the world is drawn to Jesus, and his kingdom grows on earth.
God’s mission for his church on earth is a mission of love. We carry seeds of God’s kingdom in the world.
Verses 9 to 13 show how as the church, we live our lives honestly together, and we let the world see us sharing in faith as God intends. Our radical and humble submission to one another looks like Jesus. When we are persecuted, we turn our cheek, as Jesus taught. When someone needs a home, we take them in among us, serving them as though they are Jesus. This is how we are salt and light in the world. 1 John 2:6 says that anyone who lives in Jesus walks as he did. When the world sees us, they see Jesus.
In the verses beyond this, we enter the world and live among them as transformed people, counterculturally, loving as radically as Jesus does. We pray for and bless those who curse us for living so differently and proclaiming the gospel.
INTERCESSION - Verse 14 shows us that like Abraham, or Moses, or Jesus forgiving his tormentors from the cross, Christians pray and intercede on behalf of the lost and hurting in the world.
MERCY - Verses 15 to 18 tell us that God’s community is generous and merciful. We are a city on a hill, and we will not be hidden. Though, like Jesus we will find ourselves among the least of the whole world, the despised and the rejected, the darkest corners of our culture, the light of the gospel will still shine brightly.
JUSTICE – The last verses of chapter 12 show the church living justly and promoting God’s justice in the world. The church boldly proclaims the judgment and grace of the gospel in the world. The church trusts God for the final judgment, radically forgiving even those who oppress and persecute them. When given the opportunity, God’s community feeds and clothes those who need it, even those who have persecuted them.
God loved us while we were his enemies. We have our best opportunity to demonstrate God’s kingdom and the nature of Jesus when we forgive and serve our enemies.
v16 - Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
In John 3 Jesus shares the gospel of the kingdom with a Pharisee, clandestinely by night. In John 4 Jesus shares the gospel of the kingdom with an immoral Samaritan woman, drawing water during the middle of the heat of the day. In both cases, Jesus found himself in an unlikely place and unlikely time, speaking to someone very unlike himself.
You don’t need to be homeless to share Jesus with a homeless person. You don’t need to be rich to share Jesus with the rich. You don’t need to be German to share Jesus in Germany, or Vietnamese to share Jesus in Vietnam.
You don’t need to be a punk to share Jesus with punks, or an anarchist to share with anarchists. The gospel was spread because people like you were willing to go and share Jesus with other people who were entirely strange to them. If you are only willing to share Jesus with people just like you, you are looking to your own strength, and not obedient to God’s commission. Don’t be conceited.
Acts 1:8 - But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
God’s love for us brought him from heaven to earth to die and rise again so we can be forgiven and walk in the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s love in us will bring us to the farthest reaches of the world, even the most unlikely corners and loneliest streets. You aren’t alone. We minister together, and with the power of God. It is his transforming power in us that causes us to live the life on mission in the world as he intends. And the world will never be the same.
Romans 9:12-21
9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honour one another above yourselves. 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
I'm posting somewhere different now . . .
Interested readers can now find new posts written in tiny script on little needles and tossed into the world's biggest haystack.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Colossians 3, John 10-12
Through the New Testament Reading - John 10-12
Colossians 3
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click below to see read the series.
Colossians 3
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click below to see read the series.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Colossians 3:1, 12-14, 16-17, John 7-9
Through the New Testament Reading - John 7-9
Colossians 3
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click below to see read the series.
Colossians 3
I have rewritten and expanded all my entries about Colossians and Philemon into a complete series on my new blog. The entries are ordered by chapter, as they were on this blog. Click below to see read the series.
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