http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/16552835/knowing-god-as-father
Part 2 Episode 211
Knowing that God is our Father is one thing; understanding how we should relate to him as such is another. In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Malachi 1:6–14 to demonstrate how knowing God as Father should lead us to honor him.
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An Apostle’s Failure to Live the Gospel: Galatians 2:11–14
Knowing God as Father
Knowing that God is our Father is one thing; understanding how we should relate to him as such is another. In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Malachi 1:6–14 to demonstrate how knowing God as Father should lead us to honor him. -
How Human Is the Mind of Christ?
Christ is the heart of Christianity. It is hardly surprising, then, that from the beginning of church history his own person has been the target of foes from without and heretics from within. Early on, some attacked the doctrine of his eternal deity, others the belief that he had a real physical body, and yet others that he had a real human mind.
This last attack is particularly fascinating because it was driven by a bishop, Apollinarius (310–390), who had previously distinguished himself as a defender of the deity of Christ. Most likely, he hesitated to acknowledge Jesus’s full humanity because he feared compromising the Lord’s deity. He took John 1:14, “The Word became flesh,” to mean only that the eternal Word took a human body: he did not take a rational human soul. The incarnation thus involved a union between the Son of God and only part of human nature. Jesus did not have a human mind.
Apollinarius’s doctrine eventually was condemned as heresy, but only after a keen debate. A key figure in this debate was Gregory, bishop of Nazianzen (in what is modern-day Turkey). Gregory (329–390) famously summed up his argument in the statement, “The unassumed is the unhealed” (Letter to Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius). His logic was simple: a rational soul is as essential to human nature as a human body; if Christ didn’t take such a soul, he didn’t take the whole of human nature; and if he didn’t take it, he didn’t redeem it. Without a human mind, Jesus would have saved only a part of man, and not the most important part.
Side by side with Gregory in this debate stood his friend, Gregory of Nyssa (about 335–395), who also bequeathed to us a memorable image. Starting from the premise that it was not the body only, but the whole man that was lost, he proclaimed that the Good Shepherd, who came to seek and to save the lost, “carries home on his shoulders the whole sheep, not its skin only” (Against Eunomius, 2.13). Thus did the Good Shepherd make the man of God complete, redeemed in both body and soul.
Tempted Yet Triumphant
We shouldn’t overlook how tempting it is for those who are sensitive about the deity of Christ to follow the path taken by Apollinarius and to shrink from giving the humanity of our Lord its due place. Indeed, we already see the temptation confronted in the epistle to the Hebrews, where some in the early church found it hard to believe that the Son of God could sympathize with us in our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15). This is likely why the writer has to stress that Christ was “made like his brothers in every respect” (Hebrews 2:17).
“Jesus endured temptation to a degree that we shall never know because, unlike us, he never gave in.”
Before we go any further, however, we have to remind ourselves there is one exception to this: Christ was without sin. This fact is all the more remarkable when we recall that he not only shared our nature: he also shared our temptations (Hebrews 4:15). Indeed, he endured temptation to a degree that we shall never know because, unlike us, he never gave in. Though the devil pursued him relentlessly — through family, friend, and foe — Jesus would not yield, even when faced with the cursed death of the cross.
These temptations were real and protracted, sometimes cunning, sometimes violent, but from them all Christ emerges with his integrity inviolate. But the very fact that he was tempted is fatal to the idea that he had no human mind. A mere body cannot be tempted. The divine Logos cannot be tempted. Omniscience cannot be tempted. We are tempted by what we know, by what we shrink from, by what we fear, and by what we love. So it was with Jesus, as we see from his experience in Gethsemane. He knew something (but not all) of what the cup involved, he shrank from it, and he wished, as man, there could be some other way. But in the end, he prayed, “Not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). This was not mere submission. It was the keynote of his life.
Real Human Mind
When we turn to Jesus in the Gospel accounts, we are immediately aware that here is someone who not only lived in a human body but one who also had a real human mind. This is made plain at the beginning, when Luke tells us that Jesus grew not only in physical stature but in wisdom (Luke 2:52). God doesn’t grow in wisdom. He is eternally all-knowing, but the child Jesus was not.
His physical development was accompanied by a normal human intellectual development. His mother would have taught him what every human mother teaches her child, but she would have shared with him, too, what she had been told by the angel who had been sent to announce his birth. He learned from the Scriptures, which he clearly read for himself and which he cherished as a font of wisdom all his life. He learned by attending the synagogue, and by questioning the rabbis at the temple (Luke 2:46). He learned from his father, Joseph, to whom he was apprenticed. And he learned by observing the world around him and the ways of his own people.
Yet this human mind, acute and probing as it was, was also aware that it didn’t know everything, and couldn’t answer every question that might be put to him. The prime example of this is his confession of ignorance about the time of his own second coming (Mark 13:32). He was never ignorant of anything he ought to have known, or of anything his people needed to know. From that point of view, the Father had delivered to the Son everything that would be helpful to the “babes” (Matthew 11:25 KJV). But on such a detail as the date of the end, all that Jesus could say was that the Father had set it by his own authority (Acts 1:7).
The fact that Jesus had a real human mind and confessed himself ignorant on certain matters doesn’t mean, however, that his knowledge was never more than ordinary. He clearly had supernatural knowledge, as appears, for example, in his conversation with the woman of Samaria. He has never seen or heard of her before, yet he knows all that she ever did (John 4:29). Yet supernatural knowledge is not omniscience. It was a normal adjunct of the prophetic office, as we can see clearly in the ministries of men like Elijah and Elisha.
Deep Affections
If we see in Jesus a man possessed of a real human mind, we also see in him a deeply affectionate human being. Above all, of course, this affection is directed toward his heavenly Father, whom he now loves according to his two natures, human and divine. But alongside this affection, the Gospels highlight Jesus’s love for his fellow humans.
Perhaps the most fascinating instance of this is Jesus’s love for the rich young man who approached him to ask what he had to do to inherit eternal life (Mark 10:17–23). The man went away sad, we are told, because he was unwilling to part with his possessions. We have no reason to believe that he ever chose eternal life, but we have very good reason to believe that Jesus loved him (Mark 10:21). Jesus was drawn to him, it seems, as one human to another.
It is clear, too, that Jesus loved company, and in this respect he was a marked contrast to his cousin, John the Baptist. John was a solitary who preferred life in the desert to life in the city and was happy to live on his diet of locusts and wild honey. Jesus never found fault with John’s lifestyle, nor did John with his, but they were men of different temperaments (Matthew 11:18–19). Jesus readily accepted invitations to enjoy the hospitality of others, even when they came from tax collectors and sinners.
But he also had his own circle of intimate friends. Its nucleus was the original band of twelve disciples, whom he called apostles “so that they might be with him” (Mark 3:14), but within this band there was another even more intimate circle consisting of Peter, James, and John; and even within the inner three there seems to have been one who was special: John, “the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2). This also bears the mark of humanity. Some were close to him, others were even closer, and one was closest of all. But they were all his friends (John 15:14). He loved them as the Father loved him (John 15:9), and his love for them was to be the paradigm for the way they were to love one another (John 13:14, 34).
There was another group, too, to which Jesus was especially close: the Bethany household of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Jesus, we are told explicitly, loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus; and in the sisters’ message to Jesus informing him of Lazarus’s illness, they refer to their brother as “he whom you love” (John 11:3).
There was clearly a close bond here: a bond that embraced the sisters as well as their brother, and a love so deep that when Jesus saw Mary stricken with grief, he was profoundly moved in his spirit, and wept (John 11:33–35), even though he knew that Lazarus’s illness would ultimately lead not to his death, but to the glory of God. The sight of human heartbreak convulsed his soul.
Human Emotions
Then we see, too, that Jesus experienced ordinary human emotions.
He was moved to anger, for example, by the hardness of the human heart, by the hypocrisy of the religious, and by the desecration of his Father’s house. More typically, however, the emotion we see in Jesus is compassion. He feels pity for the crowds, living aimlessly like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36), and it is pity that moves him to raise the widow’s son (Luke 7:13) and to heal the leper who approaches him imploring, “If you will, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40).
In fact, as B.B. Warfield points out in his splendid essay “The Emotional Life of Our Lord,” compassion is the emotion most frequently attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, and it was no shallow feeling. The Greek verb used to express the Lord’s pity (splanchnizomai) is closely related to the word for the inward parts (“bowels,” in the older English versions) and underlines the fact that Jesus’s compassion was visceral. He was deeply upset, stirred to his depths, by the misery he saw around him, whether in the state of society in general or in the plight of individuals, and his distress was frequently accompanied by clear physical symptoms such as, for example, his weeping at Lazarus’s tomb and his tears over the doomed city of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41). Jesus felt, and felt deeply.
Nor is compassion something that Jesus, now that he has risen, has left behind as not fit to be taken back to heaven. After all, compassion is an emotion clearly ascribed to God himself (Psalm 103:13). Indeed, it is a key attribute in the name revealed to Moses when he hid in the cleft of the rock and the glory of God passed him by (Exodus 34:6). Pity is a part of the glory, and it is perfectly consistent, then, with the exaltation of Christ that he still sympathizes with his people in their weakness (Hebrews 4:15). He knows how they feel, he feels with them, and he feels for them, because he has stood where they stand.
Yet the fact that he can follow our experiences doesn’t mean that we can always follow his, because he has plumbed emotional depths that none of his brothers or sisters has ever known. The supreme example of this is Gethsemane. The cross had long occupied Jesus’s mind, but in Gethsemane, “Today is the day,” and the full horror of the cup he has to drink is well-nigh overwhelming. He cannot hide his anguish. “My soul,” he declares (speaking of his human soul), “is very sorrowful, even to death” (Mark 14:34); and he prays, not once but thrice. He wanted the cup removed. Could there not, he asked, be some other way?
These, as John Calvin put it, are the feelings of a condemned and ruined man (Institutes, 2.16.11), and when what he dreaded in Gethsemane became a reality on Calvary, they found expression in the dreadful cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). What did they mean? That is between himself and the Father. Only they know what our salvation cost them each. But let’s never forget that while we have all, at one time or another, cried from the depths (Psalm 130:1), we have never cried from such depths as these: the depths of the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13).
Does the Whole Sheep Matter?
Back, then, to the two Gregorys. Why was it important that the shepherd should carry the whole sheep — or, more prosaically, that the Redeemer of the human race should take to himself the whole of human nature, and not just a human body?
“The sins of the human soul need to be atoned for as well as the sins of the body.”
First, because the sins of the human soul need to be atoned for as well as the sins of the body. This becomes clear the moment we look at such a passage as Galatians 5:19–21, where Paul lists the sins of the “flesh.” It is doubtful that any of these is exclusively a sin of the body, but some — such as enmity, jealousy, envy, and fits of anger — are clearly sins of the mind; and the bearer of the sins of the world had to bear these sins of the mind as surely as he bore the sins of the body.
Second, the human mind had to consent to the sacrifice offered on Calvary. It was not merely a physical act, but a voluntary act; otherwise it would have had no moral value. The power of the cross lies not in the degree or quantity of the pain it involved, but in the fact that Christ offered himself in love. In the very act of delivering himself up, Christ loved the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind. Like Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, the cross was an act of worship (Genesis 22:5).
Third, the soul, no less than the body, had to bear the cost of redemption. This is the great truth highlighted by the Puritan theologians: “The suffering of his soul was the soul of sufferings” (Christ’s Famous Titles, 124). And just how real these soul-sufferings were, we have already seen. The cry “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” came from the depths of Immanuel’s soul.
Fourth, the soul, no less than the body, needs a full salvation. It needs renewal and cleansing as well as forgiveness. But just as the resurrection of the body presupposes our union with Christ, so does the transformation of the soul. We are sanctified in him, our souls united to his soul, and drawing on one and the same Spirit.
Full Propitiation
It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the two Gregorys provide a complete understanding of the atonement. There was a tendency among the great Greek theologians to see the union of the two natures in the person of Christ as itself the defining atoning act.
But the incarnation, magnificent as it was, was not an end in itself, as the writer to the Hebrews makes clear when he tells us that Christ took flesh and blood “that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). Or, as he puts it a moment later, the reason that Christ became like his brothers and sisters in every respect was that he might make propitiation for his people’s sins. The propitiatory act was not his incarnation, but his death. He is a propitiation by his blood (Romans 3:35).
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Twelve Ways of Christmas: How to Share Jesus During Advent
According to recent surveys, over 90 percent of your neighbors plan to celebrate Christmas this year (at least if you live in America). They’re not likely to observe the Muslim Ramadan, the Hindu Diwali festival, or Buddhism’s holiest day of Vesak. But every year, 300 million Americans still choose to celebrate Christmas, despite 75% of them not being able to accurately explain what Christmas even means.
They will gather with friends and family. They will enjoy large meals and fancy parties. They will decorate trees, string lights, give generous gifts, and maybe join in for a carol or two. They might even be among the 50 percent of Americans who say they plan to attend a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day service (Pew). But for three out of every four Americans, it will be a hollow holiday, a Christless Christmas. Unless, of course, the other one of those four chooses to introduce them to the One who can make them whole and fill them with hope, peace, and joy.
At Christmas, Jesus “came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Will you join him and use one of the most useable times of the year to be part of Christ’s mission? The harvest is still plentiful, but are fewer and fewer Christians willing to work the Christmas fields and enjoy the Christmas harvest? Christ said, “Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest” (John 4:35).
Consider twelve ways we might sow and reap this Christmas.
1. Host
The holidays offer a myriad of opportunities to have people over to your home. You can invite others over for family meals, dinner parties, work parties, dessert gatherings, neighborhood functions, or school holiday celebrations. Christmas affords you the opportunity to gather for anything, whether secret Santa, ugly Christmas sweaters, or a good Christmas movie.
A Christian’s presence is powerful; our aroma is noticeable (2 Corinthians 2:14–16). God can spread the knowledge of himself to others through your marriage, your family culture, your decorations, your bookshelf, your artwork, your language, your countenance, your kindness, and most explicitly, your words.
2. Say Grace
As you host, consider how you might carry out some normal rhythms of your household, such as prayer before meals. Whether before a crowd or at your table, you could say something like, “Well, thank you for joining us and being our guests. Before the evening gets away from us (or before we start to eat), let me give thanks to God for you, this food, and this Christmas season.”
I cannot imagine a person balking at a prayer that asks for hope in life, requests help in sickness, and thanks God for the joy and love that come through Christ. Take opportunities to share the good news of the gospel through a Christmas prayer. And as you pray specifically for them, expect God to answer!
3. Personally Invite
Many of us have asked a friend or neighbor, “Would you like to come to our Christmas Eve service?” The emphasis of this question is on the event itself and their desire to attend. Consider asking instead, “Would you come with me to our Christmas Eve service?” The accent of this latter question is on the relationship, not the event, and their availability, not their desire.
Personally invite them — not text them — face-to-face with a card in hand to a Christmas Eve service with you, or to a Christmas dinner with you and other Christians, or to attend your child’s Christmas play with you. Connect the invite to you, not the event. Jesus invites us into relationship. When we say, “Would you come with me?” we use much of the same tone that Jesus did when he said, “Come and you will see” (John 1:39) and “Follow me” (Matthew 4:19).
4. Ask with Interest
One of the ways we display the mind of Christ is by taking notice of others (Philippians 2:3–8). Our questions, our genuine care, and our offer to pray with others in moments of fear, uncertainty, hurt, or joy destroy distant and lifeless views of God and help to communicate a warm, welcoming, safe, and intimately acquainted heavenly Father.
Ask someone if the Christmas season is one of pleasure or pain, or a mix of both. Are the holidays an easy time for them, or more difficult? Ask them what their childhood Christmas was like or if they have any lasting Christmas memories — good or bad. Christmas is a time to show how much God cares for them and about them.
5. Give Meaningfully
Can you think of a gift you might give to a neighbor or coworker or family member that communicates thoughtfulness because you remembered something this person said or did? Explain why you thought of him. Most often, the best gifts are personal. God gives that kind of gift. Consider giving an ornament, framing a picture, buying some artwork, purchasing a book, signing a Bible, or printing out a poem. Include a handwritten note with it. They may never forget it or ever part with it.
6. Respond Thoughtfully
Sometimes, asking thoughtful questions means we will get questions in return. “What are you doing for Christmas?” “What are your Christmas traditions?” “What will Christmas Eve or morning look like?” “How do you celebrate Christmas?” Be prepared to respond in turn or answer their questions too.
How will you talk about reading the Christmas story from the Bible? How will you speak of attending a Christmas service? How can you explain Jesse trees, advent wreaths, or Christmas nativities? Your responses can cut through the shallow cultural conceptions of Christmas and replace the hollowness with real, heavenly hope. Be ready to give the “reason for the hope that is in you” this Christmas (1 Peter 3:15).
7. Pray Faithfully
Consider praying every day between now and Christmas for one neighbor, coworker, family member, child, sibling, or parent. What might God do in you and in others during three weeks of concerted prayer? Prayer keeps friends and loved ones before God, but it also keeps them in your mind and then in your plans, as God establishes them (Proverbs 16:9). May this Christmas not become prayerless.
8. Share the Story
Christmas is often a particularly inviting time to share the gospel story. Tell others that God made us for relationship, our distrust and disobedience broke that relationship, Christ was born and died to restore that relationship for all who trust in him, and one day God’s people will be reunited with him in heaven and the new earth. Share the gospel story of the bad news, good news, and future news. It’s the best news!
9. Forgive Fully
You will inevitably be wronged or disrespected this Christmas by your spouse, kids, friends, coworkers, neighbors, or even strangers. When you are, you have two options: hold them hostage in your bitterness, or forgive them as you have been forgiven (Matthew 6:12). Every time you pray through the Lord’s Prayer, you ask to be forgiven as you have forgiven others. Don’t be a Christian Scrooge, but release all resentment into the loving hands of Jesus. Don’t just speak of forgiveness, but show it. When you do, others may see that they need it too.
10. Ask for Forgiveness
Apologizing and asking for forgiveness can point ahead to the gospel. The three sentences “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Will you forgive me?” are powerful and rare. When uttered to another, we admit sinfulness and a need for grace. At Christmas, when you see your sin, own it, admit it, apologize for it, and ask for forgiveness. Those who ask may have never heard anyone apologize so sincerely. God may use our words as a model for them to pray, “Be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13).
11. Serve Selflessly
The Christmas story reminds us that Jesus “came not to be served but to serve” (Mark 10:45). If Jesus has served you so sacrificially, are you not freed from self and free to serve others? Serve by doing dishes, throwing away wrapping paper, baking goods, volunteering at a soup kitchen, or serving a family in need. Jesus came as a suffering servant, and we can reflect him by serving and alleviating suffering of all kinds.
12. Visit the Emergency Room on Christmas Eve
Jesus spent time with the suffering. He healed the bleeding woman, raised the dead, gave sight to the blind, offered assurance to the sinner, and restored ableness to the disabled. He reversed the effects of the curse wherever he traveled. No one wants to be in an emergency room on Christmas Eve. But what if caring believers went to provide a hand, hug, or prayer to see them through it?
Christmas is one of the most celebrated times of the year. May these twelve ways of Christmas give you ample opportunity to invite others into your celebration.