Subdued Celebration
Love involves recognizing the state of others, being sensitive to their lot, and drawing near to walk with them. With those who weep, we weep. With those who rejoice, we rejoice. Like celebrating the promotion of a coworker to a position we desired, we feel the hurt but we revel in the blessing of others. And if that promotion comes to us, we would want others to join in rejoicing with us.
Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. (Romans 12:15, NKJV)
The holiday season is underway. Thanksgiving this month, Christmas the next. Soon the new year will be upon us and Mother’s Day and Father’s Day will roll around.
Surely, causes for celebration. Maybe, but there are those who will tell us to keep it down. Thanksgiving is a family celebration. There are those without families. Christmas might be full of festivity but there are those who find the season utterly depressing for one reason or another.
And when it comes to Mother’s Day, what about those who have never been able to conceive or those who have had a child die through miscarriage? Perhaps we need to make every woman an honorary mother for the day or not celebrate the day at all lest we offend or alienate or stigmatize someone.
What happened to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice (Rom. 12:15)?
It’s all reminiscent of King David and Absalom. Absalom had maneuvered to usurp the throne of Israel from his father David. He masterfully won the hearts of the people and David chose to flee in the face of the threat. David reasoned: “If I find favor in the eyes of the LORD, He will bring me back…. But if He says thus: ‘I have no delight in you,’ here I am, let Him do to me as seems good to Him” (2 Sam. 15:25–26).
Absalom established himself in Jerusalem in David’s place. By God’s providence the army of David would prevail over the army of Absalom. But David, upon hearing the news of his son’s death, fell into deep despondency. His words betray his anguish: “O my son Absalom—my son, my son Absalom—if only I had died in your place! O Absalom my son, my son!” (2 Sam. 18:33).
Even victorious, David’s army dared not enter Jerusalem with their heads held high to shouts of exaltation.
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Our Great Guarantee
The advance of major religions across the globe at the point of a sword, the secularization of society under the sharp edges of sophisticated educators, the totalitarian persecution of faith under communism – all of these threats never have, and never will, thwart the spread of the Gospel. Mark 4 guarantees it.
We have to be careful when we make guarantees from the Bible. Sometimes it is better to speak of general principles because people may experience exceptions to an apparent scriptural guarantee that has been misunderstood. For example, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). That is wise advice, but it is not a guarantee. However, there is a guarantee at the end of Mark 4.
Jesus was coaching his disciples. His process of discipleship involved both taught content and practical experience. When I was a child, my Dad explained how to ride a bicycle without training wheels (keep looking ahead and pedalling, etc.). But then he also ran behind me, holding me steady as I pedalled. Then when I spoke to him and got no reply, I realized he had let go, and I started to panic but remembered his words and kept looking forward and pedalling. They did not ride bicycles, but Jesus was a master teacher.
One evening, Jesus invited his disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee in a boat. They set out. Others did too. It must have seemed like a good evening for sailing. But then, a violent windstorm arose, and the boat began filling with water. It was a desperate situation. So the disciples woke Jesus, who was sleeping in the stern. They rebuked him for not caring about their impending doom. And then Jesus turned a storm into a famous story. He rebuked the wind and the waves precisely as he had previously rebuked demons speaking out of turn. (Some think the storm was a demonic attack on the boat.) Immediately, calm was restored. Then Jesus rebuked the disciples for their lack of faith, and they feared even more. (Mark 4:35-41)
We must be careful not to offer guarantees that the text does not yield. For instance, the common idea is that if Jesus is in the boat of your life, you can smile at the storm. Why? Because whatever storm you are facing, Jesus’ presence guarantees a good outcome. In an ultimate sense, this may be true. But we must be careful with this line of thought. Doctors do diagnose fatal diseases that end the lives of Christians. Wars do take a terrifying toll on entire populations, including faithful followers of Jesus. Actual storms hit land and devastate the homes of believers and unbelievers.
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The Heart of Biblical Cosmology
The Father has the Son in his heart, and he has chosen to place the Son at the heart of his plan for the entire universe. In other words, biblical cosmology is really a love story, a story of God diligently seeking to exalt his dear Son by making him the glorious and beloved creator, sustainer, redeemer, ruler, judge, and re-creator of all things.
. . . that all should honor the Son, just as they honor the Father.(John 5:23)
Cosmology is the study of the origin, structure, purpose, and destiny of our universe. Now that’s a topic to wrap your head around!
I’m guessing that most folks today doubt we can ever be sure about such lofty and complex matters. But here’s a thought to consider: Doesn’t the very fact that we’re able to ponder these questions imply that our minds were actually created to find the answers? Cosmological skeptics may moan and groan, but surely it is not without significance that nearly all of us remain incurably curious about cosmology!
Could it be, then, that we we were meant to behold and enjoy the one true cosmology—and that any religion or philosophy that hopes to win the allegiance of thoughtful people must offer us one?
No doubt. But if that cosmology is to prevail in the war of the worldviews, it will have to be a good one: clear, comprehensive, logical, well-supported by good evidence, and full of hope for a suffering humanity that knows there’s a Supreme Being, but is having difficulty discovering his truth about the world he created.
Having studied naturalistic, pantheistic, and theistic cosmologies for many years, I have concluded that biblical cosmology meets all these criteria, and that it does so far better than any other contestant in the ring. Indeed, I’m convinced that here we reach the spiritual and philosophical home our hearts were made for.
Yes, its teachings run hard against the grain of the cosmological “wisdom” of modern man. And yes, because of this, many Christians are reluctant to study, formulate, embrace, and defend a deeply biblical cosmology.
However, such cosmological conflict should not surprise or demoralize intellectually hungry believers. Has not God said that the wisdom of this world is foolishness to him, and that the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men? In such a world, does it make sense for the lovers of truth to let the majority rule?!
If, then, Christians would only dig a little deeper into these matters, and let the Spirit of Truth perform His wonderful work of illumination, I believe they would find, to their amazement and joy, that in his Word God really has graciously granted us the full spectrum of cosmological truth for which we, by our very nature as creatures in his image an likeness, are ever hungering!
In this post I’d like to tackle first things first by looking at the heart of Biblical Cosmology: the One who dwells in the heart of God the Father, and whom the Father has placed at the heart of all things: the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Christ-Centered Cosmology of the New Testament
In order to understand the full-blown apostolic cosmology—which caps and completes biblical cosmology as a whole—we must begin at the beginning: the glory of God.
As we know from many passages in Scripture, one of God’s great purposes in creation was that the universe should be a theater for the display and enhancement of his glory. Even a cursory look at the apostles writings reveals that they fully understood, embraced, and proclaimed this sublime truth.
Thus, in a doxology that appears in his letter to the Roman Christians, Paul writes, “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36)!
Clearly, the expression “all things” is comprehensive, taking in the universe as a whole, and viewed from every conceivable angle: its framework, furniture, inhabitants, and entire history. By divine decree, all are meant to redound to the glory of God (Eph. 3:21, Phil. 4:20, 1 Peter 4:11, 2 Peter 3:18, Jude 25, Rev. 5:13, 7:12).
While this theme does indeed pervade the Old Testament (see Ex. 14:4, Psalms 19:1f, Isaiah 24:15-16, 66:18f), the New Testament takes it to an entirely new level, opening it up like a flower in full bloom.
With Jesus leading the way, his apostles henceforth spoke of the glory of God in terms of the tri-unity of God. In particular, they revealed that it belongs essentially to the very nature and activity of the triune God that each of the three Persons should seek the glory and honor of the other.
Scriptural evidence for this amazing tendency abounds. Jesus said that the Father loves the Son, and has bestowed upon him any number of divine prerogatives “…so that all should honor the Son, just as they honor the Father” (John 5:23).
Similarly, concerning his own life and ministry, he said, “He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but he who seeks the glory of the One who sent him is true, and no unrighteousness is in him” (John 7:18, 17:1).
As for the work of the Holy Spirit, Jesus taught that, “He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14; Matt. 12:32).
These few citations supply but a tiny glimpse into a pervasive NT motif: In all their work before men and angels in the great theater of the cosmos, each Person of the Holy Trinity seeks the pleasure, glory, and honor of the others (Matt. 12:32, John 5:19-23, 8:29, 14:31, 16:13-15, Phil. 2:1-11). Through the active, mutual, other-oriented love of each member of “the Holy Family,” God is ever seeking the glory of God!
Christ, the Firstborn Over All
Keeping these ideas in mind, let us turn now to the theme at hand: the Christ-centered cosmology of the NT. We will begin by looking at two passages of great cosmological importance.
The first is found in Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Seeking to clarify for them the nature and work of Christ, he writes:
He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born over all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together (Col. 1:15-17).
Clearly, the primary thrust of this rich text is to exalt the deity of Christ, which Paul accomplishes simply by enumerating some of his divine prerogatives. To this end he identifies Christ as “the image of the invisible God,”the one in whom we finite humans can best behold the glorious face of the infinite and invisible Father (John 14:9, 2 Cor. 4:6).
Similarly, he identifies Christ, along with the Father, as the eternal Creator, through whom not only the heavens and the Earth, but also the angelic hosts, were made (John 1:1-3, 1 Cor. 8:6).
Finally, he identifies Christ as the cosmic Sustainer; the one who holds all things together in their appointed form and structure, and the one who also guides them to their appointed ends (Heb. 1:1f, Rev. 6:1f).
We must, however, take special note of a subtle yet central aspect of Paul’s teaching here. Almost as if in passing, he states that God not only created the universe through Christ, but also for Christ. What might this cryptic remark mean?
In part, Paul has already supplied the answer, having identified God’s Son as “the first-born over (literally, “of”) all creation.” As commentators have often pointed out, this expression cannot mean that the pre-incarnate Son was the Father’s first creation, for the context itself (along with many other NT passages) declares that the Son existed before all things, and that all things were created through him. Such things would include, of course, the angels, with whom some of the Colossians were apparently confusing Christ.
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Pagan Hamas
Our duty right now isn’t just to fight the pagans in courtrooms and voting booths and anyplace else where we can make a difference in civic life. We have a higher calling, that of obedience to God’s will. This obedience allows us to consecrate all that has been desecrated.
Addressing senior SS officers in Poznań on October 4, 1943, Heinrich Himmler was in a cheerful mood. The total extermination of the Jews, he told his minions, was going swimmingly; how unfortunate, though, that Nazism’s biggest triumph must be forever concealed. The mass murder, he said, was “an unwritten and never-to-be-written page of glory in our history,” doomed to be denied and obscured because, well, most people just felt icky when confronted with the sight of naked, starved corpses piled high.
A committed pagan who had his SS erect several memorials to the Germanic tribes and warlords who had fought Christianity throughout the ages, Himmler held the idolator’s primitive belief that to become God, a man must show utter indifference to human life. Smash a child’s skull, and you’ve moved beyond good and evil, to a place of sovereignty reserved only for deities—and demons. But never let the world catch you red-handed, Himmler knew, lest humanity’s irritating insistence on human dignity drive folks to rise up and resist.
I’ve been thinking about Himmler’s dark path to transcendence a lot this past month, especially after viewing many of the atrocities committed on October 7, captured by the Hamas terrorists themselves on their GoPro body cameras. The marauders breached an internationally recognized border to rape women, behead babies, and bind parents to children before burning them alive. These acts would have thrilled Himmler and his men. But Hamas went a step further. They had no patience for the arch-Nazi’s bashfulness. They wanted the world to see their atrocities, in close-up and real time. Because the intolerable desecration of the human body was precisely the point.
At the end of October, Carl R. Trueman reminded the participants of a seminar that followed his Erasmus Lecture that the decades that separate Himmler from Hamas are marked by the effort to sever the ties between personhood and embodiment. A fetus is undeniably embodied but, according to abortion advocates, not yet a person. And transgender ideologues insist that a person may also decide that he was born into the wrong body, and choose to mutilate his body at will, a practice doctors and educators call “gender-affirming care.” These convictions are of a piece. The sexual revolution makes little sense unless you adhere to the potent pagan principle that flesh and self are separable.
Which, if you reject that whole bit about being created in the image of God, is easy enough to believe! After all, what is a human body, if it possesses not a divinely ordained soul but some kind of operating system, one that is entirely earthly? Believe that materialist account of what it means to be human, and the body becomes not a shrine but a battlefield, each mutilation a triumph and a testament to our godlike ability to shape our future as we, and only we, see fit.
The devils who slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 240 were merely taking this logic to its conclusion. They’re neither nihilists nor serious believers in Islam, a religion that, even in its more rigid forms, does not recognize such atrocities as acceptable. They are, simply and terrifyingly, pagans, fighting the very same war described so lucidly in Leviticus, the war against God and those who believe in his mercy.
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