The Future of Jesus, 3: Are there earthly blessings to be expected in the future?
--- by Mark Horne
http://www.hornes.org/mark/2009/11/09/the-future-of-jesus-3-are-there-earthly-blessings-to-be-expected-in-the-future/
To recap, I’ve argued that a straightforward reading of the Bible shows us that Jesus wants, expects, and promises the world will be converted to Christ. I’ve also argued that a passage about one generation’s failure to embrace the Gospel is getting mistakenly transferred to our future (in my opinion this is a representative example of a mistake made in many passages; that will require more arguments in the future).
In this post, I argue that there are promises about the future that cannot refer to reality after the Resurrection of the righteous, but have to be fulfilled in our own era. Consider, for example, this passage from Isaiah 65:
For behold, I create new heavens
and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered
or come into mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in that which I create;
for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy,
and her people to be a gladness.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and be glad in my people;
no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping
and the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not fill out his days,
for the young man shall die a hundred years old,
and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain
or bear children for calamity,
for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the LORD,
and their descendants with them.
Before they call I will answer;
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall graze together;
the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
and dust shall be the serpent’s food.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.
People can argue about what in this passage is meant to be taken “literally” and what is not. But it does refer to blessings of some kind. And those blessing cannot be relegated to either a purely “spiritual” state, nor to life after the “Second Coming.”
Why not? This prophecy could have been delivered without any mention of death at all. If these were either blessings describing a “spiritual” reality in Christ or a post-Judgment-Day reality after the general resurrection, then death should not be part of the description at all.
But death is there in the promise that dying at the age of a hundred will be considered dying young. Immortality is not promised, merely increased longevity.
Why? There was no need to bring it up if it wasn’t intended to inform us that there will still be death, just not in the worse form that people have experienced before (or now?).
If we take Genesis 3 seriously, then not only is death a result of the Fall, but so are various aspects of the world that we take for granted: painful labor both in a man’s work and in a mother’s giving birth, for example. And we can extrapolate also disease and all the other bad things that cause unnecessary suffering and scarcity.
As I pointed out, Paul refers to our future resurrection as being the defeat of the last enemy (First Corinthians 15.26). For that reason alone, we should expect God to deliver us from plagues and famines before that time. We should expect that, as the Great Commission is fulfilled, that life expectancies will increase. This prophecy in Isaiah 65 fits well with that expectation.
By the way, how does one “spiritualize” salvation without “spiritualizing” Genesis 3? It seems to me that amillennialism demands afallism too. (No Christian believes that, of course, but I’m just saying it should give us pause.)
I don’t know that everything in Isaiah 65 is intended literally. And even if the promise about animals not eating each other is literal, I’m not sure that represents a return to Eden or a transformation that is even greater than the original state of creation. But what I do know is that the prophecy will be fulfilled when the whole world is converted. A promise made, among other places, in Isaiah 11:
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.
In fact, Habbakuk prophesies that the wicked will not last, not by predicting the coming of Judgment Day, but rather predicting that the rise of worldwide godliness will bring about the destruction of those who attempt to build their kingdoms upon murder. In Chapter 2, which contains the same passage that the Apostle Paul uses to prove justification by faith alone, Habbakuk writes:
Woe to him who builds a town with blood
and founds a city on iniquity!
Behold, is it not from the LORD of hosts
that peoples labor merely for fire,
and nations weary themselves for nothing?
For the earth will be filled
with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
There is our hope: Not only the return of Jesus, but the victory of His Spirit and His Gospel giving the whole world true knowledge of him and of his Word, bringing about the end of wickedness and an end to the weariness of frustrated labor.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Future of Jesus Part 2
Few to be saved throughout (future) human history? --by Mark Horne
http://www.hornes.org/mark/2009/11/06/the-future-of-jesus-2-few-to-be-saved-throughout-future-human-history/
Someone asked why more people don’t see the plain and straightforward claims of the Bible about the future. I doubt I have much more to add to what I have already presented. As far as I can tell it is rarely even admitted that these passages exist. Instead, other passages are used to claim a different teaching.
The rest of my posts on this subject will probably be devoted to removing such obstructions. (In this case, I’m mostly re-using a post from October 16, 2006).
One such passage comes from Luke 13 and is used to support the proposition that only a few will be saved in human history. This is what the text says:
He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last” (Luke 13.22-29)
This is what the text does not say:
He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. And a really small number of people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God.”
Jesus doesn’t say only a few will be saved; he says only a few of his countrymen will be saved. And even here he is only referring to his own generation. He is talking about those who owned the streets on which he preached.
So there is nothing in this passage to make us pessimistic about the future or impute to God a stingy plan for the human race as a whole. In fact, Jesus rhetoric of all those gathering from all compass points indicates the very opposite: that most people will be eventually brought into salvation.
That doesn’t mean I think Luke 13.29 is some sort of absolute proof for “postmillennialism.” No, as I have already written, I give that honor to Isaiah 49.1-7:
Listen to me, O coastlands,
and give attention, you peoples from afar.
The Lord called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow;
in his quiver he hid me away.
And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” [1]
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the Lord,
and my recompense with my God.”
And now the Lord says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
he says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Thus says the Lord,
the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation,
the servant of rulers:
“Kings shall see and arise;
princes, and they shall prostrate themselves;
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
It is too small a thing to God for him to show mercy on and bring salvation to a minority of humanity.
So there is no excuse for us to be stingy about the Great Commission.
http://www.hornes.org/mark/2009/11/06/the-future-of-jesus-2-few-to-be-saved-throughout-future-human-history/
Someone asked why more people don’t see the plain and straightforward claims of the Bible about the future. I doubt I have much more to add to what I have already presented. As far as I can tell it is rarely even admitted that these passages exist. Instead, other passages are used to claim a different teaching.
The rest of my posts on this subject will probably be devoted to removing such obstructions. (In this case, I’m mostly re-using a post from October 16, 2006).
One such passage comes from Luke 13 and is used to support the proposition that only a few will be saved in human history. This is what the text says:
He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last” (Luke 13.22-29)
This is what the text does not say:
He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. And a really small number of people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God.”
Jesus doesn’t say only a few will be saved; he says only a few of his countrymen will be saved. And even here he is only referring to his own generation. He is talking about those who owned the streets on which he preached.
So there is nothing in this passage to make us pessimistic about the future or impute to God a stingy plan for the human race as a whole. In fact, Jesus rhetoric of all those gathering from all compass points indicates the very opposite: that most people will be eventually brought into salvation.
That doesn’t mean I think Luke 13.29 is some sort of absolute proof for “postmillennialism.” No, as I have already written, I give that honor to Isaiah 49.1-7:
Listen to me, O coastlands,
and give attention, you peoples from afar.
The Lord called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow;
in his quiver he hid me away.
And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” [1]
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the Lord,
and my recompense with my God.”
And now the Lord says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
he says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Thus says the Lord,
the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation,
the servant of rulers:
“Kings shall see and arise;
princes, and they shall prostrate themselves;
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
It is too small a thing to God for him to show mercy on and bring salvation to a minority of humanity.
So there is no excuse for us to be stingy about the Great Commission.
Friday, November 13, 2009
The Future of Jesus
This is the first of a series on eschatology
The Future of Jesus, 1--- by Mark Horne
http://www.hornes.org/mark/2009/11/06/the-future-of-jesus-1/
What does Jesus expect to happen in world history? We know what he told his disciples to make happen:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age”(Matthew 28.18-20).
This is quite clear. The disciples are to bring all national/ethnic groups (ethnoi) into submission to Jesus by teaching them everything Jesus commands so that they observe it. This involves not just teaching a moral code, but initiation into a new society through baptism.
With these marching orders come two assurances: First, that Jesus has gained cosmic authority and, second, that he will be with his disciples as they carry out his commands.
The claim to have now gained all authority was and is immediately recognizable as an appeal to a prophecy in Daniel’s visions:
I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.
Daniel is immediately told what his vision of “one like a son of man” being enthroned, means. It means that “the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, forever and ever.” Jesus is claiming that the prophecy has now come true. It is made all the more specific in that the next thing the twelve disciples witness is Jesus ascending into heaven in a cloud.
This kingdom is not intended to stay hidden in heaven with Jesus, nor is it a grand name for a few scattered disciples. This is plain from Jesus’ own orders. It is also clear in Daniel where the prophecy of Daniel 7 is a complement to prophesies given in Daniel 2 in which Nebuchadnezzar sees a vision,
As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
The rock, Daniel explains, is the Kingdom of God. Both in Daniel 7 and in Daniel 2 a timeline is given in which there are four empires until God intervenes. The four empires are the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Macedonian, and the Roman. Jesus came under the Caesars and he was exalted over them. He told his disciples to preach a new king.
The Apostle Paul later refers to the Great Commission of Matthew 28, saying that it is his calling as an Apostle to bring about “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1.5; 16.26). He spells out the future course of world history in 1 Corinthians 15, writing:
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.”
Here in addition to the prophecies of Daniel, we should also mention Psalm 110, the most quoted passage in the “New Testament”:
The LORD says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
This is related to Psalm 2:
Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the LORD holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
“As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”
I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
Paul preached that the LORD’s begetting a son was a prophecy of the resurrection:
And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.”
Paul uses this Psalm and its relation to the resurrection to begin his letter to the Romans, showing Jesus to have been born again by the Spirit to be King of all:
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,…
There is a parallelism here, as many scholars have noticed, between Jesus’ first birth from the line of David and his second by the resurrection of the dead. Thus Jesus royal stature involves the title “Firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1.18; Revelation 1.5). Jesus is now a new king and he is taking possession of what he has won by his death and resurrection. That is the story of world history from his ascension until the resurrection when “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
Of course, Jesus didn’t win this kingdom for his own sake, nor does he call us to work towards its realization for his own sake. Jesus wants to save the world. That was the whole point of Israel, going back to the calling of Abraham in Genesis 12:
Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
And God makes it clear that he hates the idea of only ultimately saving a small remnant out of the world:
Listen to me, O coastlands,
and give attention, you peoples from afar.
The LORD called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow;
in his quiver he hid me away.
And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the Lord,
and my recompense with my God.”
And now the LORD says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
he says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
So amid all the power grabs of world leaders, God’s objective in Jesus is the release of the human race from slavery—not just slavery from death but slavery from every other tyrant as well.
That is the future Jesus wants, expects, and orders us to promote.
The Future of Jesus, 1--- by Mark Horne
http://www.hornes.org/mark/2009/11/06/the-future-of-jesus-1/
What does Jesus expect to happen in world history? We know what he told his disciples to make happen:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age”(Matthew 28.18-20).
This is quite clear. The disciples are to bring all national/ethnic groups (ethnoi) into submission to Jesus by teaching them everything Jesus commands so that they observe it. This involves not just teaching a moral code, but initiation into a new society through baptism.
With these marching orders come two assurances: First, that Jesus has gained cosmic authority and, second, that he will be with his disciples as they carry out his commands.
The claim to have now gained all authority was and is immediately recognizable as an appeal to a prophecy in Daniel’s visions:
I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.
Daniel is immediately told what his vision of “one like a son of man” being enthroned, means. It means that “the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, forever and ever.” Jesus is claiming that the prophecy has now come true. It is made all the more specific in that the next thing the twelve disciples witness is Jesus ascending into heaven in a cloud.
This kingdom is not intended to stay hidden in heaven with Jesus, nor is it a grand name for a few scattered disciples. This is plain from Jesus’ own orders. It is also clear in Daniel where the prophecy of Daniel 7 is a complement to prophesies given in Daniel 2 in which Nebuchadnezzar sees a vision,
As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
The rock, Daniel explains, is the Kingdom of God. Both in Daniel 7 and in Daniel 2 a timeline is given in which there are four empires until God intervenes. The four empires are the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Macedonian, and the Roman. Jesus came under the Caesars and he was exalted over them. He told his disciples to preach a new king.
The Apostle Paul later refers to the Great Commission of Matthew 28, saying that it is his calling as an Apostle to bring about “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1.5; 16.26). He spells out the future course of world history in 1 Corinthians 15, writing:
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.”
Here in addition to the prophecies of Daniel, we should also mention Psalm 110, the most quoted passage in the “New Testament”:
The LORD says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
This is related to Psalm 2:
Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the LORD holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
“As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”
I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
Paul preached that the LORD’s begetting a son was a prophecy of the resurrection:
And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.”
Paul uses this Psalm and its relation to the resurrection to begin his letter to the Romans, showing Jesus to have been born again by the Spirit to be King of all:
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,…
There is a parallelism here, as many scholars have noticed, between Jesus’ first birth from the line of David and his second by the resurrection of the dead. Thus Jesus royal stature involves the title “Firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1.18; Revelation 1.5). Jesus is now a new king and he is taking possession of what he has won by his death and resurrection. That is the story of world history from his ascension until the resurrection when “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
Of course, Jesus didn’t win this kingdom for his own sake, nor does he call us to work towards its realization for his own sake. Jesus wants to save the world. That was the whole point of Israel, going back to the calling of Abraham in Genesis 12:
Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
And God makes it clear that he hates the idea of only ultimately saving a small remnant out of the world:
Listen to me, O coastlands,
and give attention, you peoples from afar.
The LORD called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow;
in his quiver he hid me away.
And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the Lord,
and my recompense with my God.”
And now the LORD says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
he says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
So amid all the power grabs of world leaders, God’s objective in Jesus is the release of the human race from slavery—not just slavery from death but slavery from every other tyrant as well.
That is the future Jesus wants, expects, and orders us to promote.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Veterans
We remember the sacrifices of all of you
who have put on the uniform to serve
in the United States military.
We honor you, our veterans, who have proven your heroism
and love of country time and time again.
You have consistently defended our ideals across the globe;
and you are an inspiration to those who defend America today.
More than a million of you have died in service to America;
and more than a million and a half have been wounded.
Some of you have sustained serious injuries in combat
and now some of you also live with disabilities.
We in the United States of America, will always be grateful
for the noble sacrifices made by you
and we honor and respect you for your service.
We can never adequately repay you.
YOU,
our veterans, are living examples
of the timeless truth that freedom is not free.
Thank you!
Monday, November 2, 2009
The Spiritual Drive Train
by Doug Wilson
from BLOG and MABLOG
This might be the medieval equivalent of an urban legend, I don't know. I read it somewhere, but can't recall the source, but here goes anyhow. Somebody, Thomas Aquinas maybe, was being shown around some opulent palace by the pope. "You see, Thomas, no longer can Peter say 'silver and gold have I none.'" To which Thomas, if it was Thomas, replied in the affirmative, adding only that neither can the Church anymore say, "Rise up and walk."
In my ongoing protestations against dualism, the subsequent discussions make it plain that all of us still need to do some more spadework before the garden is ready for planting. Knowing what we ought not to be doing anymore, which I am pretty clear on, is not the same thing as knowing exactly what we should be doing instead, and what order the steps should be. Reformations are messy.
The reformation of worship is the central issue of our day, but not the only issue. It is the engine, not the car. But an engine without a car is just as immobile as a car without an engine, and we are called to drive to the Celestial City. So we have to know how the reformation of worship might connect with everything else. What is the spiritual drive train?
In order to connect everything properly, I want to argue that we must make a clear and formal distinction between the Church and the Kingdom. The Church is formal worship, the cultus. The Kingdom is the culture that surrounds the Church, having grown out of it. The reformational work of reclaiming education or the fine arts is Kingdom work, done by Christians, to be distinguished from the formal work of the Church, done by ministers, elders, deacons, and congregants. The task of the Church is Word and sacrament, period. Other tasks taken up by the Church should be auxiliary works, subordinate to those central tasks, and directly related to them (e.g. building a facility in which to preach the Word and administer the sacraments, trying diligently to keep that building from looking like your local CostCo warehouse).
Rightly established, the Church equips the saints for works of service, and these works include all the things that men and women are lawfully called to do -- merchandizing and mining, poetry and policework, and education and eggplant farming. The Church's task is to equip and inspire -- not to supplant. When this understanding is gummed up, then an ecclesiocentric vision goes bad, and metasticizes into one where the Church becomes the only real thing that matters, and we are back to Thomas's, if it was Thomas's, bon mot. Rich nobles start leaving all their holdings to monasteries so that monks with their heads bobbing might pray for the soul of Sir Herbert Leslie Throckmorton for the next five hundred years. That's not good. The nucleus is not the cell, and the Church is not the Kingdom. The Church is not supposed to be the Death Star.
So I don't want the Church to be everything, and I don't want the reformation of the Church to be the only item on the agenda -- just the first and most important item on the agenda. When that reformation begins to take shape, and numerous Christians are worshiping in the way Christians ought to be worshiping, those Christians -- who happen to be politicians, auto mechanics, teachers, film directors, news anchors, poets, and cafeteria workers -- will begin to live out the kind of Christian life that they learned about the previous Sunday. That will effect the transformation of society, but not by turning that society into a giant worship service.
from BLOG and MABLOG
This might be the medieval equivalent of an urban legend, I don't know. I read it somewhere, but can't recall the source, but here goes anyhow. Somebody, Thomas Aquinas maybe, was being shown around some opulent palace by the pope. "You see, Thomas, no longer can Peter say 'silver and gold have I none.'" To which Thomas, if it was Thomas, replied in the affirmative, adding only that neither can the Church anymore say, "Rise up and walk."
In my ongoing protestations against dualism, the subsequent discussions make it plain that all of us still need to do some more spadework before the garden is ready for planting. Knowing what we ought not to be doing anymore, which I am pretty clear on, is not the same thing as knowing exactly what we should be doing instead, and what order the steps should be. Reformations are messy.
The reformation of worship is the central issue of our day, but not the only issue. It is the engine, not the car. But an engine without a car is just as immobile as a car without an engine, and we are called to drive to the Celestial City. So we have to know how the reformation of worship might connect with everything else. What is the spiritual drive train?
In order to connect everything properly, I want to argue that we must make a clear and formal distinction between the Church and the Kingdom. The Church is formal worship, the cultus. The Kingdom is the culture that surrounds the Church, having grown out of it. The reformational work of reclaiming education or the fine arts is Kingdom work, done by Christians, to be distinguished from the formal work of the Church, done by ministers, elders, deacons, and congregants. The task of the Church is Word and sacrament, period. Other tasks taken up by the Church should be auxiliary works, subordinate to those central tasks, and directly related to them (e.g. building a facility in which to preach the Word and administer the sacraments, trying diligently to keep that building from looking like your local CostCo warehouse).
Rightly established, the Church equips the saints for works of service, and these works include all the things that men and women are lawfully called to do -- merchandizing and mining, poetry and policework, and education and eggplant farming. The Church's task is to equip and inspire -- not to supplant. When this understanding is gummed up, then an ecclesiocentric vision goes bad, and metasticizes into one where the Church becomes the only real thing that matters, and we are back to Thomas's, if it was Thomas's, bon mot. Rich nobles start leaving all their holdings to monasteries so that monks with their heads bobbing might pray for the soul of Sir Herbert Leslie Throckmorton for the next five hundred years. That's not good. The nucleus is not the cell, and the Church is not the Kingdom. The Church is not supposed to be the Death Star.
So I don't want the Church to be everything, and I don't want the reformation of the Church to be the only item on the agenda -- just the first and most important item on the agenda. When that reformation begins to take shape, and numerous Christians are worshiping in the way Christians ought to be worshiping, those Christians -- who happen to be politicians, auto mechanics, teachers, film directors, news anchors, poets, and cafeteria workers -- will begin to live out the kind of Christian life that they learned about the previous Sunday. That will effect the transformation of society, but not by turning that society into a giant worship service.
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