Window on Wisdom
Wisdom that is consistent with genuine faith comes from God, looks at life from the perspective of God, lives life God’s way and serves God’s ends. Wisdom involves a Godward life. Like the flower that bends toward the light of the sun, so wisdom causes us to incline our faces to our God.
“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.” (James 3:13, ESV)
I live about 20 minutes from Longwood Gardens, a sprawling botanical garden that covers over a thousand acres. Between the Terrace Restaurant and the Conservatory, there’s a lot of construction going on to improve and expand visitor experience. You can hear the roar of the heavy equipment moving the earth out of the way in service to the construction plans. They’ve got a big wall set up around the area to keep the public out and to allow the equipment its space to maneuver. In that wall, they have placed windows so that people can look in and see all that’s going on, and see the project as it takes shape.
That’s what James does in this text. He says our hearts are loud with the sound of activity. The construction crew of wisdom is at work, busy with the building project of our lives. James calls us over to the window to peer in. And what he calls our attention to is not just all the fascination of the heavy equipment rumbling around. He calls our attention to the manufacturer of the machinery, and tells us to take a careful look.
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A Lesson on Running from Failure
In Peter’s unique experience we find a model for facing our deepest failures. His example teaches us that we ought not to run from or ignore our collapses, since they are actually opportunities to repent of self-sufficiency and to depend on God’s grace—to show that we are weak but that He is strong.
From a literary perspective, one of the unique aspects of the New Testament is its frank portrayal of the phenomenal failures of many of its authors and main subjects. This is nowhere more apparent than in the lives of the twelve disciples, and one of the clearest examples is in Peter’s denials of Jesus.
The Bible is not a touched-up document designed to make its human authors look good—and that’s because God is its true Author, its ultimate Subject. And God has a purpose in telling the story the way He did: to reveal Himself as a God of grace. Scripture tells us of the failures of the saints to encourage us—because we will surely fail too. It reminds us that even in our failures, God forgives, and God restores.
As we consider Peter’s failure as recorded in the Gospel accounts, we ought to face our own failures that haven’t yet been dealt with and take the opportunity to bring them before God. If we acknowledge them and repent, God will sanctify us through them and draw us nearer to Him in deeper dependence. There, we’ll have opportunity to realize that if dependence is God’s goal, then weakness is to our advantage.
Peter Follows
Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest’s house, and Peter was following at a distance. And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. (Luke 22:54–55)
In the Gospels, we often see Peter bouncing between faith and failure. He is the type to take one bold step forward and then two steps back. Earlier on, he had stepped onto the waves with Jesus, but then he had sunk when he’d seen the wind (Matt. 14:28–31). He had confessed that Jesus was the Christ (Matt. 16:15–16), but then he had received a severe rebuke for audaciously resisting God’s plan (Matt 16:21–23). It was Peter who had defended Jesus with a sword in the garden of Gethsemane—before Jesus had commanded him to stop (John 18:10–11). Now, though all the other disciples had “left him and fled” (Mark 14:50), Peter stepped forward, setting himself apart from the others by “following at a distance.”
There was a measure of bravery and bravado in this. Peter had told Jesus, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death” (Luke 22:33). Now he was making his effort to do so. Perhaps he was motivated by a measure of curiosity—a need to “see the end” (Matt. 26:58) to which His Master would come. There was likely also a measure of loyalty, as Peter had expressed before: “Even though they all fall away, I will not” (Mark 14:29). And there was almost certainly a measure of love. Peter couldn’t leave Jesus now. He couldn’t desert Him absolutely. He loved Jesus so much that he put himself in a place of considerable risk. He seemed to be the bravest of all of them in that evening hour.
And yet, nevertheless, it is at this point that Peter crumbled.
Peter Fails
Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, “This man also was with him.” But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I do not know him.” And a little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” But Peter said, “Man, I am not.” And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, “Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.” But Peter said, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about.” And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly. (Luke 22:56–62)
Confronted in the courtyard, Peter denied Jesus—not just once but three times. Jesus had predicted this would happen, and Peter had assured the Lord he would never do such a thing (Luke 22:34). How are we to explain such a collapse?
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Confessions and Worship
When Christians publicly confess the truths that the church has always confessed, God is distinguishing between the church and the world—as well as between true and false churches. Historic doctrinal standards help draw a sharp line between orthodox teaching and false teaching in the articulation of “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
Some of my earliest childhood memories center on being with my family in worship on the Lord’s Day. In the Reformed and Presbyterian churches that we attended, expository preaching, hymn-singing, and prayer were fixed elements of worship, as were the historic creeds and confessions of the Christian church. We regularly confessed the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed—or some particular doctrinal statement out of the Westminster Confession of Faith, Westminster Shorter Catechism, or Heidelberg Catechism. Our pastors cited doctrinal statements from the Westminster Shorter Catechism in their sermons. Though I was unaware of it at the time, these historic doctrinal formulations were shaping my young mind in regard to biblical doctrine, worship, and the Christian life. Over a decade ago, I had the privilege of planting a Reformed and Presbyterian church. I enthusiastically incorporated many of the historic creeds and confessions into our worship service for the express purpose of instruction—as well as for the preservation of the core truths of the Christian faith and the worship of God.
In his 1973 article “Towards a Confession for Tomorrow’s Church,” J.I. Packer insisted that historic creeds and confessions assist the church in carrying out four principal responsibilities—its doxological, declarative, didactic, and disciplinary tasks. Accordingly, churches should make use of these historical doctrinal statements in their worship (doxological), witness (declarative), teaching (didactic), and conservation (disciplinary). Packer proceeded to define how they function in each task:
Their doxological function is to glorify God by setting forth his works of love and putting into words a responsive commitment. Their declarative function is to announce what the communities that espouse them stand for, and so to identify those communities as belonging to Christ’s church, the worldwide fellowship of faith.Read More
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A Biblical Theology of Peace
Written by Justin E. Estrada |
Monday, January 16, 2023
Representatives from “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9), will open the door so that Jesus might come in to them and eat with them, and they with Him (Revelation 3:20), anticipating that final meal of covenantal peace at the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6–8), when Jesus will usher in the new heavens and the new earth, void of brokenness, curse, and want, full of shalom, forevermore.It was a blustery English day, and—a little late, a lot wet—I hurried into my professor’s office for my Hebrew tutorial. Embarrassed, I offered a cordial but rushed Hebrew greeting, “Shalom.” He watched quietly as I took out materials for our lesson, and then responded: “Justin, shalom is more than a simple hello; it declares the health of our relationship. Draw out the vowels, give the word weight, because we have peace, and that’s no small thing.” It was a kind method of restoration and instruction: we could proceed in peace—he even offered tea and biscuits.
In a world racked with strife, it may seem obvious to declare peace “no small thing”; but the biblical understanding of peace—the word shalom in Hebrew, translated into Greek as eirn—involves much more than the absence of conflict. Shalom expresses wholeness, blessing, and completeness, exemplified by the perfection of God’s creation and the unimpaired, harmonious relationships of God with His creatures and His creatures among themselves. God speaks shalom into existence (Isa. 45:7), and the entirety of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, chronicles His intention to restore it to fallen humanity, that the word issued from His mouth—shalom—might not return to Him empty but accomplish His purpose of peace, blessing, and wholeness.
In the beginning, the God of shalom, perfect in wholeness, blessing, and completeness among His three persons, creates all things in six days, all very good. Creation resembles its Creator, and He invites it to share in His peace—particularly man, whom He makes in His image. He gives Adam a helpmate to complete him, a garden with every good thing to eat, and a purpose to multiply and take dominion of creation so that he might be whole. It is a state of shalom, and you can almost hear the jubilant greetings of “peace be with you” as the Lord descends from His cosmic throne to walk in peace with Adam and Eve through the garden.
Unexpectedly, a frightening scene transpires one day: God’s arrival in the garden for fellowship goes ungreeted. Shalom has been broken through man’s transgression. Adam now fears nakedness as incompleteness; he accuses his wife of harming him rather than making him whole; and he finds the fruit a curse rather than a blessing. Adam and Eve flee and hide, trembling at the expectation of judgment rather than peace (Gen. 3:8–11).
In the face of this misery, God speaks remarkable words of shalom to them. Little wonder that Paul describes the peace of God as passing all understanding (Phil. 4:7); in the midst of judgment against rebellion, God comforts His children with the promise of peace through One who would crush the head of the lying, murderous serpent (Gen. 3:14–15). Man’s sin has turned them away, their fallen condition corrupting harmony into hostility—vividly represented in the exile—but God is determined to bless them through this Seed of the woman and to restore to Himself a remnant—vividly represented by the sacrifice that produces garments to cover nakedness.
God’s pronouncements at the sudden shattering of shalom portend a slow, costly restoration—but nothing will overturn His irenic purposes. Fallen humanity undermines creation’s harmony, but God intervenes (against all reasonable expectation), and His judgments carry forward His program of peace. The flood cleanses a world ailing under a decaying moral order (Gen. 6–9), and the scattering from the Tower of Babel reignites the creation mandate (Gen. 11:1–9). In an aimless world, God plucks up a displaced wanderer, Abraham—bereft of family and home—and gifts him with wholeness: divine fellowship and a son to his barren wife. This restoration of shalom in Abraham is not an end in itself, but an illustration and a means by which God will restore shalom to all the nations through his offspring—the Seed of the woman who will descend from the great nation of Abraham’s descendants (see Gen. 12:1–3; Gal. 3:15–18).
This great nation, Israel, emerges only after a long travail in virtual death in Egypt, for like father Abraham, they will serve as an example and means toward shalom. Their slavery results from the unwholesome curse, their deliverance from God’s power: through Israel all nations will know this. On eagles’ wings He brings them to Mount Sinai, formalizing with them a covenantal relationship of and unto peace, expressed by an invitation for the representatives of Israel to “see” Him and feast with Him without fear (Ex. 24:9–11). He sets a blessed precedent rehearsed regularly in Israel through the peace offering—a sacrifice and feast of covenantal solidarity (Lev. 3:1–17)—as well as through the Aaronic congregational benediction of shalom (Num. 6:24–26).
On the whole, God’s covenantal people fail to live under and testify to His program of shalom. He instructs them with His peacemaking characteristics through the Mosaic law, and the sacrificial system illuminates His plan to overcome death, but the Old Testament church time and again shatters shalom by preferring fellowship with false gods and peace with the enemies of God (see Num. 25:1–2). Even David, inheritor of God’s covenantal promises, flees from God into the arms of sin (2 Sam. 11), and his son Solomon—whose name means “peace”—leads all Israel in apostasy and establishes a pattern of sin that ultimately provokes God’s judgment against His people. As the crescendo of sin rises to mute God’s warnings against this Edenesque cycle of destruction, the false prophets preach “ ‘peace,’ when there is no peace” (Ezek. 13:10), and God again sends His people—first Israel, then Judah—into exilic judgment.
By this point, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that even at the exilic breaking of shalom, God speaks words of comfort. Israel has broken shalom and misled the nations, raising the question, When will the Messiah, the Seed of the woman, come and finally establish true shalom? When will the Prince of shalom usher in a new covenant era (Isa. 9), instituting a permanent realm of peace (Isa. 11)? When will God’s people “seek peace and pursue it” (Ps. 34:14) and all the nations come together in this glorious place of rest (Isa. 11:10)?
All spheres of creation give answer to this question at the birth of the incarnated Son of God, Jesus. Zechariah declares that He will “guide our feet into the way of peace”; the angels extol His arrival as “peace among those with whom [God] is pleased!” (Luke 1:79; 2:14). Expectations of the Seed of the woman are not disappointed: what a kingdom of shalom! Jesus addresses physical and spiritual malady alike, proclaiming “liberty to the captives . . . blind . . . [and] oppressed” (Isa. 61:1; Luke 4:18). Perhaps nothing identifies Jesus as Prince of Peace more than when He establishes His new covenant of peace with representatives of the New Testament church—the Apostles. He offers food and drink in everlasting fellowship, the bread and wine representing His very body and blood, the means by which His words will take effect: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14:27). At the crucifixion, God speaks shalom in its final utterance, for Jesus “was pierced for our transgressions; . . . upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isa. 53:5). This pouring out of God’s wrath against sin becomes another flood of cleansing: a river of shalom pouring out from Jesus’ side, the atoning blood of the cross reconciling those for whom He died to their Father in heaven, restoring to them wholeness, completeness, and blessing (see Isa. 66:12; Col. 1:20).
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