In retrospect

One of my favorite features of Scripture is the internal commentary. I love the parts that comment on other (usually earlier) passages. Sometimes those commentaries add a bit of color to the earlier passages. Sometimes they seem to change the whole story.

Deuteronomy is a good example. Moses' commentary on the events from Exodus through Numbers adds nuance on some places, clarifies what the take-home message is in others, and sometimes seems to change the entire story.

For example, Numbers 13:1–16 tells us about the spies that Moses sends into the land from Kadesh-barnea. In the Numbers account, the Lord commands Moses to send the spies into the land. But Deuteronomy 1:22–25 tells us that sending the spies was the people's idea, and Moses agreed to it. In light of the commentary in Deuteronomy, it seems like the Lord's command in Numbers 13 was not to choose spies, but to send them into the land.

Another example might be Deuteronomy 10:1–5. Here Moses tells us about receiving the second set of tablets at Sinai, which is also told in Exodus 34:1–9. In both accounts, Moses is to bring stone tablets up the mountain; but in the account in Deuteronomy, he was told to build an ark for them first. I suppose that could be the Ark of the Covenant, but the description in Deuteronomy suggests it was something else. As far as I know, only Deuteronomy 10 mentions this ark.

We might also mention the relationships between 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles. There are several accounts in 1 and 2 Kings that read very differently in light of the accounts in Chronicles. As an example, the story of Manasseh in 2 Kings 21:1–18 reads very differently than the same story in 2 Chronicles 33:1–20. It seems from both books that Manasseh is the worst king Judah had (2 Kings 24:3, 2 Chronicles 33:9, Jeremiah 15:1–4). But the account in 2 Chronicles tells us that Manasseh repented, the account in 2 Kings doesn't mention that.

As an aside, Manasseh's reign was the longest of any king of either Israel or Judah: 55 years (1 Kings 21:1). I think it's significant that the Lord allows the worst king to reign the longest, eventually bringing him to repentance. There are hints of Romans 2:4 in that.

Our favorite passage is Romans 4:1–8. Notice how that seems to turn the Old Testament on its head: Abraham is God's friend (James 2:23),  but it's not because he was a particularly good person. Abraham was God's friend because he believed what God said. 

Or we might notice how Romans 3:20 sums up the entire Old Testament in one sentence: "by law comes the knowledge of sin." We'll follow J. N. Darby here to point out that it's "sin," not "sins." Romans isn't claiming that the Mosaic Law told us that specific acts are sins, as though we hadn't already known.  Rather, it reveals to us our own indwelling sin. It demonstrates that fallen men and women are incapable of submitting to God. And we might notice that Moses' commentary of the exodus says the same thing (Deuteronomy 29:4).

Romans 9:6ff is another commentary on Scripture that turns the Old Testament accounts on their heads. We might read about Isaac and Ishmael (Romans 9:7ff), Jacob and Esau (Romans 9:11ff), or the children of Israel at Sinai (Romans 9:15-16) from the Pentatuech and not see what the Spirit of God brings out in Romans. But if we take Romans 9 to heart and look back at those stories, they read very differently.

I've probably read too much Darby, but I really think Romans 9:15–16 (quoting Exodus 33:19) is the crux of Christianity. God can either condemn us, or He can "hide in His sovereignty" and show us grace. There's not a third option. God would be entirely righteous simply to condemn us all. In fact, His righteous nature would drive Him to do exactly that. He can only act in grace towards us – any of us – by claiming His right to sovereignty as our Creator.

Now, I really don't like using words like "sovereignty" because Scripture does not. Or at least, it doesn't use it much, I guess we might claim 1 Timothy 6:15 (NASB) as justification. But in the end, the idea is there, even if the word isn't. "I will have mercy upon whom I have mercy" shows exactly on what ground God can show mercy to us. 

And that ties into our earlier thoughts about Manasseh and his 55-year reign. God chose to have mercy on Manasseh and He did. He gave the worst king the longest time to repent.

That's worth mulling over.

 

Losing Sight

I've been thinking a lot about Francis Schaeffer's admonitions that Christ should be Lord over all the areas of my life. I keep going back to Colossians 3:17, everything we do needs to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus. There's nothing really exempt from that: the most trivial thing I do is included, as is the most complex thing. "Everything" includes it all.

It seems to me like this has been missing in my life: I've tended to separate the "mundane" from the "spiritual". The "spiritual" is examined in the light of Scripture, but the "mundane" is just sort of allowed to go its own way. And I know I'm not alone.

Francis Schaeffer warns that when we allow that to happen, the "mundane" will eventually overtake, overshadow, choke out, and consume the "spiritual" parts of our lives.

So it's of tremendous interest to me that Colossians 3 starts with the admonition to "seek the things which are above" (Colossians 3:1), and then moves on to say that everything we do – all things, whether word or deed – need to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus. That seems almost like a contradiction: if I'm to seek the things that are above, then aren't the things "down here" really of no importance? Well... the Scripture doesn't actually say that. I agree that so many Christians I have met seem to think and act that way, but it's not what Scripture actually says.

And so I've spent the last six months or so grappling with this question: if Christ is to be Lord over all of my life, if I am to do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus – then what does it mean to seek those things above?

I'll be the first to say that worldliness is rampant in the Church. It's all too easy to find examples of Christians living for this life, with no thought for the next. And I've done an awful lot of that myself. I'm not blind to that. But at the same time, it seems that many, many Christians I have known have fallen into what we might call the opposite error.

It seems to me that a lot of "brethren" have a puritanical streak buried not too deep below the surface. And that seems to produce an almost Gnostic tendency to see "this world" things as unimportant, or perhaps even evil. So we have this strangely detached view of the world where we're called to live. And, of course, it's impossible to do "all things" in the name of the Lord Jesus when we think (deep down) that many of those "all things" don't matter.

And, in fact, I have seen over and over again that this sort of detached pseudo-Gnosticism leads right back into worldliness. Because we end up in this place where we think Scripture has nothing to say to our everyday lives. And I've fallen into that: I've been so wrapped up in trying to be heavenly minded that I've just sort of let "this life" go on autopilot. And eventually, it's the "mundane" that pushes out the "spiritual".

Oddly, it was contemplating 1 Corinthians 15 that led me to question myself here. Resurrection must mean that God is concerned with my physical body. And when we realize that, we begin to see that the physical world must be important to Him.

So I've wrestled a lot with this, and I've come to very few conclusions. But I have come to two, and I want to share them.

First, I notice that Colossians 3:17 tells us the first step to doing all things in the name of the Lord Jesus – giving thanks to the Father by Him. And so I've been thinking a lot about giving thanks. And I'm specifically talking about "this world" here. There is a sort of self-righteousness we can fall into: when we start talking about how God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ, we can take that and turn it into looking down on the other blessings God has given.

I don't mean that we shouldn't bless God and thank Him for all the spiritual blessings we have in Christ. I mean the attitude that dismisses physical blessings in this life is wrong. There's no other word for it: it's sin. Colossians 3:17 tells us first that everything needs to be under the Lordship of Christ, then that we need to thank the Father.

I am tremendously blessed in this life. God has been open-handed with me, and for many years I was mired in a self-righteousness that led to me to dismiss those blessings as somehow "lesser", so that I could focus on the "greater" spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. Let me say again, that is sin. Gratitude for spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus cannot lead me to ingratitude for blessings from the Father in this life. That's merely using Scripture to mask our fleshly ungratefulness.

Second, I've come to understand that it's possible to enjoy blessings along the way, and thank God for them, without losing sight of the goal.

Don't get me wrong: it's very common for the flesh to turn a blessing into an idol. But it's not to turn us to idolatry that God blesses us. It's possible to thank God for the blessings along the way without losing sight of the end that He has promised.

So when He takes us to a place where there are twelve wells and seventy palm trees, that's not so we can settle down and forget the promised land. But... to insist on staying in the desert, to think that sitting under the palm trees or drinking from the wells is a sign of decline: that's not being spiritual, it's being ungrateful. It's sin.

After what seems like a very long time, I'm starting to see that it's possible to seek the things that are above and do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus at the same time. Colossians 3:1 isn't an excuse for neglecting Colossians 3:17, or vice-versa.

Hardening

We've been studying Exodus in the Bible readings. We've spent a while discussing the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. People have been saying the same things I've heard for years: some think God hardened Pharaoh's heart first, others think Pharaoh hardened his own heart first.

I'm starting to think the bigger point is that when God hardened Pharaoh's heart, He got exactly the same results as when Pharaoh hardened his own heart. That is, man of his own will puts himself into the same hardness of heart that God brought to Pharaoh.

Occasionally God offers a divine commentary on Scripture, where one passage is a commentary on another. The story of Pharaoh's heart is one of those stories: Romans 9:14–22 is a divine commentary on the story of Pharaoh's destruction, and it really doesn't help very much. If anything, Romans 9 makes it more difficult.

Exodus 4:21 and Romans 9:14–20 are difficult passages. But the problem isn't that they're difficult to understand, it's that they're difficult to accept. What God actually tells Moses in Exodus 4:21–23 is something like this: "I want you to command Pharaoh to let My people go; and I will harden his heart so that he won't let them go, and then I will punish him for not listening." That's not very hard to understand, but it's really, really hard to accept, because it seems so unfair.

Romans 9 addresses this specific objection:

You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” (Romans 9:19, NASB).

And what is the scriptural reply to this question? It's very simple: who are you to judge God? (v. 20). That's not a very satisfying answer, but it is a deeply searching answer. It doesn't help us at all to understand Exodus 4, or even Romans 9:19. But it reveals our own hearts. And I have come to the conclusion that until we accept Romans 9:20, we can't really go on to the verses following. It's only after we accept the answer in that verse – that we have no right to judge God – that we can understand the following verses. And what do they say? That God has every right to take one man and show him mercy, while refusing to show mercy to someone else.

So let's go back to Pharaoh. Exodus tells us that before Moses ever spoke to Pharaoh, God had declared His intention to harden Pharaoh's heart "so that he will not let the people go" (v. 21). So yes, it was according to God's "determinate counsel" that Pharaoh did not listen: God was determined to destroy Pharaoh. But before there is any record at all of the state of Pharaoh's heart, the Scripture records his condemnation from his own lips: "Who is Jehovah that I should obey him?" (Exodus 5:2).

And this, I think, is a point we so often overlook in the story of Pharaoh. People who tend towards a "freewill" viewpoint spend a lot of time pointing out that Pharaoh hardened his own heart several times before God hardened it. People who tend towards an "election" viewpoint point out that God had already declared His intention to harden Pharaoh's heart before Moses ever spoke to him. (And as a point of fact, they're both correct.) But this is the bigger point, I think: whether it was God who hardened Pharaoh's heart, or Pharaoh himself (and Scripture teaches both), the result was the same. Fallen men and women may not be capable of coming to Christ on their own, but they are experts hardening their own hearts.

Which takes us back to this: Men and women – sons and daughters of Adam – are not only guilty sinners, they are lost, guilty sinners. I listened to a sermon several times over the last month or so on "The Dangers of Calvinism and Arminianism". It was really more of a long rant about "calvinists" than anything else. What I found interesting was that the speaker kept insisting the Scripture teaches a "whosoever will Gospel". This preacher would doubtless classify me as a "calvinist"; but I, too, believe Scripture teaches a "whosoever will Gospel". The problem isn't that the Gospel is limited, the problem is that men and women in and of themselves won't. The problem is that "whosoever will" is an empty set. No one wills. That's what Romans 3:10–18 teaches, right? None seeks after God. It's not so much that God prevents sinners from believing (although Matthew 13:13–16 seem to indicate He sometimes does), it's that there is no chance anyone would seek after God without His active interference. Which is, after all, what the Lord Jesus explicitly taught in John 6:37–44, but perhaps we'll save those verses for another time.

Root cause

I was interested to read through 1 Corinthians 8–10 a few months ago in the Bible Readings and see that Scripture differentiates between idols and idolatry. Idols are "nothing" in this world (1 Corinthians 8:4), but idolatry is very real (1 Corinthians 10:6–10, 14).

It's sort of cliche to say it, but really almost anything can become an idol. A lot of Christians have idols. It's probably safe to say that all Christians have idols. But 1 Corinthians 8–10 makes the point that really, the issue isn't the idol, the issue is idolatry. Consider the connection with Colossians 3:1–7. In Colossians, believers have died with Christ, we have been buried with Him, and we have been raised with Him (Colossians 2:9–12). But when we get to Colossians 3, we find to our surprise that we have "members on the earth" (Colossians 3:5). And notice, the final of those members that Colossians lists, is "unbridled desire, which is idolatry".

Let's think about idols for a moment. One of the hot-button topics today is pornography. There seems to be a lot of concern among Christians about it, so let's talk about it for a few minutes. No doubt pornography is a real idol for a lot of believers. Their bondage to it is real and the pain is real . But there is an obvious fact that doesn't seem to occur to a lot of people: pornography has basically no power over people who don't look at it.

I know people are going to object that there are secondary effects on all of us, and I'm sure there are. But that's not really the point I'm trying to make. The point I'm making is that when a person is looking at pornography, the problem isn't the image on the page (or the computer screen); the problem is in the heart.

Many believers find themselves with some sort of besetting sin: some sin or vice or habit over which they have no apparent victory. And as much as they abhor that sin or vice or habit, they find themselves entangled in it again and again. What's the real problem here? It's not that they don't despise the sin, but they are missing the point. The key to victory over sin isn't to despise the sin, but to despise the self.

It has taken me many years (and a considerable amount of pain) to see this. It's not enough to despise some particular sin. It's not enough even to recognize the presence of sin in my own flesh (Romans 7:17–18, 23). It's not even enough to recognize my own powerlessness over sin, although that's absolutely necessary. There is a deeper truth even than that,the truth of Colossians 3: we all have members on the earth, and there is no remedy for them except death (Colossians 3:5). When I find myself tempted to sin, it's proof that there is some unmortified and unjudged flesh in me.

(I've mentioned before that I have come around to Darby's view that Romans 7 actually discusses a man who is born again, but not sealed with the Holy Spirit. But Romans 8:12–14 shows there is a practical sense where a believer who has been sealed with the Holy Spirit may find him or herself in a very similar experience.)

We have a tendency to think that temptation is not sin. It's all right to be tempted, as long as we don't give in to that temptation and actually sin. But that's not really what Scripture teaches (James 1:13–15). Johnny D. says,

Temptation is used in two senses in scripture. We are tempted when we are drawn away of our own lusts and enticed, and we are tempted from without by the enemy. The latter the Lord underwent, the former of course never. All this is confounded by Mr. S. He says temptation is not sin... Does it come from the life and Spirit of Christ in us? – 'Review of R. Pearsall Smith on "Holiness through Faith."', Collected Writings, Volume 23, p. 190

Temptation might not be the same as sinning, but it is proof that there is sin in me. And this is really the point, isn't it? I couldn't be tempted if I hadn't lusts.

Ultimately, fornication, lust, and uncleanness aren't produced by temptation. They were there all along. It's that we haven't obeyed Colossians 3:5 – we haven't mortified our members on the earth. The real problem is that we have not been willing to judge the flesh in God's presence. It's proof that we haven't judged ourselves.

Perhaps Job illustrates this best. At the start of the story of Job, we're told, "this man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God and abstained from evil" (Job 1:1). Would that the same could be said of me! But the end of the story, we have a somewhat different Job, "I abhor [myself], and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6). At the start of the book, we have a man who doesn't sin. But at the end of the book, we have a repentant man. Why is he repentant? Because he started sinning? Not at all, because he learned that he was lost. It's one thing to recognize I am guilty, it's quite another to recognize I am lost.

So what should we do when we are tempted? Temptation is proof that there is a need for self-judgment. It's proof that one of those "members on the earth" has gone unjudged. It's proof that I have not accepted what God has said of me.

For years I have known Colossians 3. I memorized that chapter back when I [foolishly] thought that memorizing Scripture would somehow earn me favor with God. I memorized it again later, with much better motives, when I was part of a Bible study working through the epistle. But I have been freshly convicted by this passage in the last months. Probably at some point in my life, I thought Colossians 3:5 was a command to self-denial and spiritual discipline. Now I'm convinced it's teaching something quite different: it's self-judgment in God's presence. It's what Scripture calls "repentance".