The Weight and Wound of the Word
We must learn to sit with the weight and wound of a Bible passage. If we are shocked, offended, or rebuked by its obvious implications, that may be exactly the point.
The Bible is miraculously cohesive, but it is not uniform. Different portions were given for different purposes; distinct authors at distinct moments to distinct audiences.
While many today look to the Bible for comfort or inspiration, an honest look at the Scriptures reveals that not all of it was given for these purposes. If we randomly dip a ladle into the depths of Ezekiel, the brew that emerges is more likely to be sharp than sweet.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
Some—perhaps much—of the Bible was given not for our comfort but for our discomfort. The Scriptures are profitable for reproof and correction, after all; they provoke, unsettle, and rebuke us. Far from harsh, this is a sign of God’s love. It is damaging for our souls—indeed, for our humanity—to turn against God in rebellion. The fact that he steers us away from sin and back to himself is evidence of his care.
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God’s Word Is Living and Active (Even Genealogies)
Written by Ian J. Vaillancourt |
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
The Old Testament is bookended with genealogy-heavy books, and these books take their interpretive cues from Genesis 3:15. As we move to the New Testament, we discover that it begins with…a genealogy.The Lineage of Redemption
The scene is familiar to many of us: we wake up in the morning with an awareness of our need for the word of God. We want to see the world through the lens of the word, and we want to be led into prayer by the word. We are also conscious of the limited time we have before the demands of our day creep in, so we roll over, grab our Bible, and open to the place we left off the day before. And we read:
This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. (Gen. 5:1–5)
Okay, we tell ourselves, that first bit felt about as edifying as reading the phone book, but let’s keep reading: “When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died” (Gen. 5:6–8). At this point we begin to panic, and our fears are confirmed as our eyes scan down the page. This is an entire chapter of genealogy, of births and deaths and really long lifespans. We had wanted the voice of Scripture to be crisp and clear, an encounter with the living God at the beginning of our day. But instead we are experiencing a muted voice that is easy to ignore.1 As we survey the book of Genesis, we find three chapters devoted entirely to genealogies (Gen. 5; 10; 36). That is a lot of “phone book” reading!In this common scene from our personal Bible reading, it is possible that our understanding of Scripture led us to anticipate an encounter with God. After all, we know that “the word of God is living and active” (Heb. 4:12). And we also know that “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man [or woman, or boy, or girl] of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). As our approach to every passage of Scripture is informed by the Bible’s own teaching about itself, we realize that any time we fail to encounter God in the Bible, the problem is with us, not the Bible.
In light of this, is there any hope that reading a biblical genealogy can lead us to encounter God? The (perhaps surprising) answer is yes, but first we need to learn about the purpose of these passages. The Bible tells the grand story of redemption, and genealogies (or general statements of family lineage) in Genesis sketch the lineage of redemption. To help us get a handle on these surprisingly important passages, we are going to unpack four truths about the genealogies in Genesis before looking forward to Christ in light of them.
1. Genesis 3:15 is the key to understanding the family lineage passages in the rest of the book.
As a part of his curse on the serpent, YHWH God said: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). Not only is this the first glimmer of gospel hope in the entire Bible, but in the context of this discussion of genealogies, notice that it also points to two lineages.2
It is understandable that the horrible scene from Genesis 3 would produce conflict between the serpent (the deceiver) and the woman (the deceived). However, YHWH God took it a step further by extending the conflict to the “offspring” (or seed) of the serpent and the “offspring” (or seed) of the woman. In other words, there will be a lineage for the serpent and a lineage for the woman, and they will be in conflict with one another. Ultimately, the offspring of the woman will “bruise” (or crush) the head of the offspring of the serpent, and the offspring of the serpent will “bruise” (or crush) the heel of the offspring of the woman.
When we understand Genesis 3:15, we can turn back to the book of Genesis and notice that the verse begins to get “filled out” in this fifty-chapter book. As the first glimmer of gospel hope, Genesis 3:15 teaches us that when we read through Genesis, we ought to be looking for the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman. Now we can see how statements of family lineage in Genesis may be significant! Before we explain this further, it is important to understand the structure of Genesis.
2. Genesis is framed around ten statements of family lineage.
In our Bibles, chapters and verses are helpful. But chapters and verses were not a part of the original Bible manuscripts. They were added later as a helpful way of “getting on the same page,” but they were not inspired. As we approach the book of Genesis, we find that its original author (Moses) framed it around two halves and ten sections. This is a part of the original shape of the book.
As we look at the big picture of Genesis, we find that its first “half” is found in Genesis 1:1–11:26. These chapters record what biblical scholars refer to as “primordial history.” The term primordial refers to the beginning of time, so primordial history refers to all of history from creation to the fall to the flood to the Tower of Babel.
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Paul on Christian Liberty in Galatians 5:1
Jesus came to set us free, not enslave us to the law. All of the Protestant Reformers agreed upon this point and spoke of its importance. This is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. If Christian liberty is not the defining characteristic of the Christian life, then the doctrine of justification is not properly understood.
If anything is worth defending it is Christian freedom. In the face of the threat to such liberty posed by the Judaizers, Paul issues a stern warning to the Galatians– “for freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). Anyone who seeks to be justified by obedience to the law of Moses, through receiving circumcision, through the keeping of Jewish dietary laws, or in observing the Jewish religious calendar, will fall from grace and come under God’s curse (Galatians 5:4).[1]
Paul has already pointed out that those who seek to be justified on the basis of works of law (Galatians 2:16), or who place their confidence in what Paul identifies as the basic principles of the world (stoichiea) will find themselves in eternal danger. In Galatians 5:1-12, Paul contrasts the Judaizing campaign of enslavement to the law with Christian liberty in Christ. This is yet another important plank in his case against the Judaizers.
In the first four chapters of Galatians, Paul issues several responses to Judaizing legalism. In chapter 5, we move into what some identify as the “practical section” of Paul’s Galatian letter, when the apostle takes up the practice of Christian liberty and exhorts the Galatians to defend it.[2] While Paul does change focus a bit from those redemptive historical events which culminate in the death of Jesus and justification through faith, here he describes the Christian life in light of the gospel revealed to him by Jesus Christ.[3] The apostle continues to set out sharp contrasts between opposing positions. Readers of Galatians are now well aware that Paul is fond of antithesis (contrast) as a rhetorical critique and he uses it repeatedly.
Following up his analogy between Hagar and Sarah in Galatians 4:21-4:31, when Paul turned the Jewish understanding of redemptive history on its head, in Galatians 5:1-12, he contrasts faith and works yet again, proving that they are diametrically opposed to the other when it comes to the justification of sinners. To seek to be justified by works of law or through observing of dietary laws, feast days, or circumcision, is to return to slavery to sin and bondage to the basic principles which characterize this present evil age. This is a very serious misstep since Jesus Christ came for the purpose of setting us free from bondage to sin and the law. The gravity of this misstep is identified in verse 1 of chapter 5, when Paul challenges the Galatians with the uncompromising declaration, “for freedom Christ has set us free.”
This is where the Christian life begins for the Galatians and the readers of this epistle–with freedom from the guilt of sin and its enslaving power. Christian freedom is a central concept in terms of our standing before God, as well as a major theme in the Galatian letter.[4] The agitators in Antioch and Galatia deplore Paul’s stress on Christian freedom and see it as the chief sign of a low bar of entrance for Gentiles and an affront to the traditions of their fathers.
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The Current Cultural Craziness
According to wisdom from below, people can transform God’s creation into a paradise by correcting some basic flaws in the world as God made it. The proposed solution is always some simplistic reduction of reality. There are crusades to get rid of private property, crusades to get rid of certain classes of people or certain races of people, crusades to get rid of fossil fuels, and so on and so on. Some people really believe in these efforts. What all of these causes have in common is that they are irrational leaps of faith. There is no objective evidence that these efforts would do anything other than harm if they were successful.
There are multiple examples of the current woke craziness, but I think that there are three that stand out from the rest. The first is the new legal definition of marriage to include not only the union of a man and a woman but also the union of a man and a man or of a woman and a woman. The second is the recent allowance for certain biological men to access women’s locker rooms and to dominate women’s sports. The third is the recent rejection of many of the virtues of western civilization as systemic forms of white supremacy. Why are such things happening in our culture, and why are they happening now? I think that a key to answering these questions is understanding what James 3:17 calls wisdom from above and the alternate wisdom which is wisdom from below.
In a nutshell, wisdom from above is a wisdom rooted in the fear of God, and wisdom from below is a wisdom rooted in rebellion against God. From the perspective of wisdom from above, wisdom from below is foolish. From the perspective of wisdom from below, wisdom from above is foolish. Everyone today is living a life that is some combination of these two contradictory forms of wisdom.
For those who do not know Jesus, wisdom from below dominates their lives, but not absolutely. Wisdom from below saturates and taints the totality of their experience, but wisdom from below does not dominate them absolutely. A total domination by wisdom from below would be fatal. No one could live a life absolutely dominated by wisdom from below. Wisdom from below leads to deadly lifestyles and actions. God restrains wisdom from below in the lost, and uses wisdom from above to exercise a moderating influence over them. That is the only reason why the lost are able to survive in this world. That is also why no one is as evil as he could be. The worst of people could always be worse than they are.
For those who know Jesus, wisdom from above dominates their lives, but not absolutely, at least not in this life. Their souls will not be made perfect in holiness until the time of their physical death. Wisdom from above saturates and elevates the totality of their experience, but they still have to struggle in this life with a continuing influence of wisdom from below. That is why no one in this life is perfect, and why even the best people may fail us at times.
So all who are now alive, both those who know Jesus and those who don’t, are living a life that is some combination of these two contradictory forms of wisdom. Our culture also, at any particular time in its history, is a manifestation of both wisdom from above and wisdom from below. What differs from time to time is the relative degree of influence that these two forms of wisdom have upon our culture. There have been times in the past when wisdom from above was the predominating influence in our culture. For several generations, there has been in our culture a gradual weakening of wisdom from above and a gradual strengthening of wisdom from below. What we have seen in recent years is a volcanic eruption of wisdom from below with a new consistency and capacity and range of influence. We have seen the flow of this destructive movement wreaking havoc and destruction in its wake. We hope and pray that this destructive force will not come our way, and we hope and pray that this destructive force will weaken before it destroys our culture.
According to the book of Proverbs, the beginning of true wisdom is the fear of God. The fear of God here refers not to abject terror but to a proper respect and regard for God based on a recognition of who God truly is and what God has actually done. Let’s consider who God is and what God has done. What is the original and ultimate reality? Does the original and ultimate reality consist of the dimensions of time and space? No, God created the dimensions of time and space as part of His work of creation. Does the original and ultimate reality consist of abstract qualities that God first possessed from eternity and then we began to possess at our creation? No, abstract qualities such as goodness, truth and beauty are not qualities that God possesses. They are abstractions of realities which God is. God is not merely good; God is goodness. God is not merely true; God is truth. God is not merely beautiful; God is beauty.
The original and ultimate reality is God Himself, and God alone. We know that God created the creation out of nothing, but sometimes we underestimate the radical emptiness of that original nothingness. The ultimate and original reality is not an impersonal background consisting of dimensions and qualities. God is the ultimate and original reality. That means that we live in a world that is thoroughly personal. Not everything created is a person, but everything created is God’s creation and God is a personal being. Creation is not an impersonal world where we are free to define and use things however we might want.
This personal God has no personal needs. He is not lonely. From eternity past, God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit have had a completely satisfying personal communion with each other in the oneness of God’s being. God did not create us because He was lonely and in need of companionship. God created the world and us as a completely free act of His divine will. He was under no necessity to do so, but God freely chose to do so. God created the world not to get more glory because God was already all glorious. God does not derive any glory from the creation but rather uses the creation to manifest His glory, to make His glory known.
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