Zach’s Theological Musings

“God Loves You and Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life”?

* A Christian missionary to North Africa is on furlough visiting his home in America. While backing his car out of the driveway he accidentally runs over his own son and kills him.

* A famous Christian singer adopts three children from China and starts a charity organization to help others adopt both domestically and from abroad. His eldest son accidentally hits the youngest adopted daughter in the driveway and she dies.

* A Christian woman leaves America to bring a message of God’s love to the Middle East. One morning as she opens the very clinic where she has given herself to serve those in need, she is fatally shot at close range in the head.

* A man leaves Islam to follow Christ, is ostracized by his family and community, and flees to a another country where he continues spreading the gospel. While in “exile” in this second country, a bomb set outside his house explodes just as he is running past it and his body is blasted to pieces.

* Countless professing Christians in the “free world” have (just like the rest of society) their houses foreclosed, earthly investments plummet in value, loved ones die of cancer, paralyzing car accidents, unrelenting emotional/relational/spiritual struggles, prolonged unemployment, spouses leave them, etc., etc.

* Countless Christians around the world are thrown in jail, betrayed, tortured, killed, have their churches burnt down, their houses searched, and their reputations slandered.

  Does reconciliation with God through the blood of Christ open the doors to experiencing God’s wonderfully comfortable plan for your earthly life? NO! NO, NO, NO, NO! Reconciliation with God through the blood of Christ *IS* God’s wonderful plan for your life!!!! Jesus is not only the golden key that opens the hidden treasure chest, He is Himself the full content of what is inside!!!!!!! Not promises of good grades or good jobs or good health or good relationships, but JESUS, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief whose triumphal kingdom is in some sense “already” but also “not yet”! That is what (actually whom) you get in the gospel!

  By way of contrast, a statement from a book on (supposedly) evangelizing Muslims in which the author gets the gospel dreadfully WRONG:

  “[F]ollowing Christ should not–—and need not–—bring on persecution and blame from other Muslims. … It is incredibly good news [i.e. the gospel?] to a conscientious Muslim who has put his trust in Christ as Redeemer that he can know that his sins are forgiven, that he will assuredly go to heaven, and that he can have nothing to fear on Judgment Day–—AND STILL be a part of his community [emphasis added]!”

  To which I respond: DOG CRAP! Scholars say the Greek “skubalon”, which appears only in Phil 3:8, derives from the word “dog” together with the word “cast out”, “that which is cast out from a dog”, i.e. feces. (Alternately, some think the etymological meaning is “that which is cast out TO the dogs”, i.e. scraps of rubbish; but in any case I would contend that the two ultimately turn out to be the same thing!) The incredibly good news is that everything you used to think was incredibly good news apart from Christ is in fact dog excrement compared to knowing Him. Your greatest earthly desires—remaining part of your kinship community for a Muslim or living the free and prosperous American Dream for a Westerner—smell like feces to those who have experienced the aroma of life in Jesus Christ. To wedge an imaginary promise of abiding earthly community with non-believers into the gospel as if that were on par with “forgiveness of sins” is nothing short of heresy!

  Does God have a wonderful plan for your life? Yes! Not to spare you from tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword, but even better to reveal the all-surpassingly satisfying greatness of His love which is able to sustain you WHILE YOU ARE BEING SLAUGHTERED as sheep all day long (Romans 8:35-36). The abundant life in Christ (John 10:10) is the life of abundant joy amidst abundant trials and abundant earthly sacrifice that JESUS HIMSELF experienced; the abundant life is:

That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead (Phil 3:10).

  I thought this was interesting in light of Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46):

He who oppresses the poor taunts his Maker,
         But he who is gracious to the needy honors Him. - Proverbs 14:31 (NASB)

  On a related note, when reading the Old Testament, I so often hear echoes of things Jesus said, even in bits and pieces of “obscure” (i.e. not well known or recognized today) phrases from the Prophets, the Writings, or sections of the Law. Specifically, much of the wisdom in the Sermon on the Mount can be found in Proverbs. I realize more and more how His speech is saturated with the Jewish Scriptures, whether in the form of direct quotes, paraphrases, or simply continuity with its imagery and ideas. Indeed, I have a suspicion that a person could do a careful study and find Old Testament roots for every word recorded from our Savior in the gospels. Perhaps someone has. (Tell me if you know of such a work!) I’m not saying that Jesus incarnate didn’t say or add anything new (though perhaps in some limited sense you could say that). He definely is the fullness and completion of God’s revelation. But I am saying that you could find at least clear seeds for everything that came from His mouth.

  I added an appendix entitled Categorized New Testament references to the Old Testament to my article New Testament Principles for Old Testament Interpretation. Here is the summary:

In particular, what comes through most clearly is the fact that [the authors of the New Testament] saw (or at least talked about) Jesus Christ, the gospel, the New Covenant, and other hints of distinctively Christian doctrine first and foremost, and only secondarily did they apply Old Testament moral lessons to their hearers/readers. In other words, they most frequently took an indirect course from OT through the fuller revelation in Christ and then to their readers, and less frequently took a course of application from OT direct to their readers. This shows there is validity to both uses of the OT (as also employed today), but that the emphasis of the apostles is perhaps the opposite of most Christian approaches to the OT in modern times.

Also, I added a link to a very helpful reference: the New Testament use of the Old Testament entry at theopedia.com.

  There is a bumper sticker that says, “Obey gravity. It’s the law!” It is a great bumper sticker to get you thinking. We use the word “law” in two distinct senses. In the context of science, laws (”of nature”) describe things which occur so consistently that we theorize that they must always occur according to the same fixed pattern. In the context of human societies, and generally in the context of theology, when we speak of laws we mean a rule issued by an authority which (at least in the eyes of the authority) should be obeyed, even though it is possible for people to disobey the law. [It is also interesting to consider the relationship between these two senses of law in light of God’s absolute power and authority. But that is not the direction we are going in this post.]

  My friend Bruce has pointed out that when Jesus says (or when other portions of the Bible say), “You can not… ,” that He is often speaking of ability rather than permission. In other words, the meaning is, “You are not able to…. ,” rather than, “You are not allowed to… .” A case in point is Matthew 6:24:

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

To support the claim that Jesus is talking about a “gravity type” of law here we could refer to the Greek and see that “No one can” is “Oudeis dunatai” which we could render as “No one has the power to”. Or we could stick to the English and point out the logic implicit in the word “for”. Jesus doesn’t say, “You shall not serve two masters; for God disapproves of such double-mindedness.” Instead He says that the reason you cannot serve two masters is because if you love one master you will, inevitably, despise the other. Jump off a cliff, you will come crashing down. Love money or serve wealth and you will hate God. It is a statement of fact which quite suitably belongs in scientific textbooks.

  One implication is that this observation crushes any thought our sinful nature might have along the lines of, “Well, maybe God will let me slide on this one. Maybe I can get away with serving two masters for a while, and at some indeterminate point in the future I’ll give Him more and more of my allegiance.” Nope, it’s not going to happen. The fact is, you ALWAYS ARE serving only one master. If, on some level, we think, “Hey, this is the best of both worlds. I’m serving God and wealth and I seem to be getting away with it,” then we are self-deceived because in fact we hate God without realizing it.

  Does God let the law of gravity slide sometimes? Yes, it is called a miracle. Is God going to perform a miracle to give you the supernatural ability to serve another master alongside Him? Nope. No sir. No ma’am. No way. No how.

  In particular, the “Can’t vs. Shan’t” paradigm sheds much light onto Jesus’ “cost of discipleship” message.

In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. - Luke 14:33

To be a disciple (learner) of Christ is to be a follower of Christ. And Christ is on the move. During the years of His ministry on earth, He literally moved frequently from place to place with no possessions and no place to lay His head. If you had to carry around a whole chariot full of luggage, you wouldn’t have been able to keep up with Him. You literally, physically, COULD NOT be a follower of Christ and cling to your possessions any more than you could flap your arms and fly in the sky like a bird.

  The same it true for us both on a metaphorical and on a literal physical level. Christ is on the move. And it is not infrequent that He says to His disciples, “Leave those things behind and come, follow Me.” Anything apart from Him, be it tangible possessions and property, or less tangible dreams, hopes, memories, relationships,… becomes a choice between Christ and no Christ. Being with Christ or apart from Christ.

  We often wish that there wasn’t such a choice. “Jesus, I want to be with you. But I also want this other thing. Can’t you just divert your plans and stay here with me and this other thing that I love for a while?” How would Jesus answer? I don’t think we need to speculate:

And as they were going along the road, someone said to Him, “I will follow You wherever You go.” And Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” And He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Permit me first to go and bury my father.” But He said to him, “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.” And another also said, “I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.” But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. - Luke 9:57-62

  Was my last post too negative? Well, on the one hand I would say no. I don’t hesitate to say that the American church has left her first love. Sure we still have some love for God, and we still believe the gospel to a large extent. And so did the Ephesians. But the preeminence of love for Christ has waned in the American church just as surely as it did in Ephesus. If God threatened to remove the lampstand of His presence from the church in Ephesus, then we need to stop and take the implications for us very, very seriously.

  But as needed as a sharp-cutting diagnosis is, it is not enough. How can hearts be ignited, or reignited, with zeal for Jesus? One answer is found on the Emmaus road:

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. … They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” - Luke 24:27, 32

The hearts of the disciples burned when they listened to Jesus interpreting to them the ultimate subject and focus of all the (Old Testament) Scriptures — “the things concerning Himself.”

  Therefore it is my hope and prayer that teachings like those at http://onelord.cn/Jesus/ will be a positive encouragement to help persuade my heart and yours that Jesus really is better. He is better than national security and financial security. Deep and genuine fellowship with Jesus is worth losing that multi-million dollar church building, that home in the suburbs, that summer vacation, and everything else.

  Lord Jesus, open our eyes to see more of you in the Scriptures. Cause our hearts to burn like the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Lead us to repentance, and take away any competing loves until we hate this life and everything in it compared to You.