Is reality outside the church a common realm that is unrelated to the kingdom of Christ? No, the moral division in this life is not between the kingdom of Christ and a common realm considered as two static domains with diverse locations. The moral division in this life is between the kingdom of Christ and Satan’s kingdom considered as two dynamic domains that can penetrate any sphere of life. Both these kingdoms are defined by moral orientation and ultimate allegiance.

I was at a Presbytery meeting listening to the examination of a candidate for ordination. When asked, “What is the kingdom?” the candidate simply answered, “The church.” I was surprised by the brevity of the accepted answer. I wondered at the time if the candidate was implying that there are no senses in which the kingdom is a broader concept than the church. I was later told that the question and answer were based on Westminster Confession of Faith 25.2:
“The visible church … consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ…”
The examination was thorough overall, and I am grateful for those who do this work. I am also grateful that this exchange motivated me to examine this subject more thoroughly.
As a general rule, the current members of the visible church and the citizens of the kingdom now alive are the same people. There is this degree of identity within this limited context. That doesn’t mean that the kingdom and the church are identical in every way and in every context. There are different nuances to being under Christ’s royal reign and being part of the gathered assembly of the saints. There are also contexts in which the kingdom is a broader concept than the church because Christ’s royal authority extends beyond the assembly of the saints.
In its commentary on the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come,” the Westminster Shorter Catechism refers to the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of glory. We are to pray “that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it, and kept in it” and “that the kingdom of glory may be hastened” (WSC 102). The kingdom of grace is here a reference to the visible church in this age, and the kingdom of glory, a reference to the invisible church in the full glory of a new creation after the second advent. The Westminster Confession of Faith mentions a related concept, the keys of the kingdom, which refer to the power to open and close access to gospel benefits and church privileges through administering the Word and through church discipline. This is a power wielded by church officers and not by civil magistrates (WCF 30.2; 23.5).
In their commentaries on the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come,” the Westminster catechisms mention a third kingdom: Satan’s kingdom, or the kingdom of sin and Satan (WSC 102; WLC 191). We are to pray for Satan’s kingdom to be destroyed. Jesus three times referred to Satan as the ruler of this world (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), and the Apostle John said that “the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19). What are we praying to be destroyed, the world as a place or the sway of Satan over the world? I believe the latter, and this implies that the domain of Satan’s kingdom is not a static domain limited to any specific place but a dynamic domain defined by its moral orientation and ultimate allegiance. This understanding is further confirmed in that we are to pray the second petition “acknowledging ourselves and all mankind to be by nature under the dominion of sin and Satan…” (WLC 191). This is a reference not to humanity’s created nature but to humanity’s “corrupted nature, conveyed to all [our fallen first parents’] posterity descending from them by ordinary generation” (WCF 6.3). “This corruption of nature, during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated; and although it be, through Christ, pardoned, and mortified…” (WCF 6.5).
The Westminster Larger Catechsim mentions one other kingdom in its commentary on the second petition, the kingdom of Christ’s power. We are to pray that Christ “would be pleased so to exercise the kingdom of his power in all the world, as may best conduce to these ends” (WLC 191). “These ends” include the destruction of Satan’s kingdom, the fulfillment of certain duties of the civil magistrate and the rule of Christ in Christian hearts. These are objectives that are not totally confined within the boundaries of the church. The effective range is “all the world.” The power in play here includes God’s providential control within history. The Triune God who created the world preserves and governs all His creatures and all their actions (WSC 11). The question is whether God the Son now exercises this providential power as part of the power that was entrusted to Him as the God-Man when He was seated at the right hand of God the Father.
Some answer yes to this question. This means that the kingdom of grace, the kingdom of glory and the kingdom of Christ’s power are all complementary aspects of a unified kingdom under the royal authority of the resurrected, glorified and ascended Christ seated at the right hand of God the Father. This understanding is found in Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology:
“Christ has what theologians are accustomed to call his kingdom of power. As Theanthropos and as Mediator, all power in heaven and upon earth has been committed to his hands. … This universal authority is exercised in a providential control, and for the benefit of his Church. … Under the present dispensation, therefore, Christ is the God of providence. It is in and through and by Him that the universe is governed. This dominion or kingdom is to last until its object is accomplished, i.e., until all his enemies, all forms of evil, and even death itself is subdued. Then this kingdom, this mediatorial government of the universe, is to be given up. (1 Cor. xv.24.) (2.600-601; cf. 2.635-638)
The kingdom of Christ’s power is here defined as one of the temporary elements of Christ’s mediatorial kingdom. There are other temporary elements as well. “Christ executeth the office of a king in subduing us to Himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all His and our enemies” (WSC 26). The only element in this list that is not temporary and thus lasts into the kingdom of glory is Christ’s ruling His people as their King.
The positive answer to our question does not limit the power given to Jesus as the exalted God-Man to His power and authority over the church. This is consistent with the statement of the Westminster Larger Catechism that “Christ is exalted in his sitting at the right hand of God, in that as God-man he is advanced to the highest favor with God the Father, with all fulness of joy, glory, and power over all things in heaven and earth” (WLC 54). In addition, Jesus’ execution of His office as a king includes His “restraining and overcoming all [His people’s] enemies, and powerfully ordering all things for his own glory, and their good; and also in taking vengeance on the rest, who know not God, and obey not the gospel” (WLC 45). The Scriptural evidence also points in this direction. Hebrews 2:8 says, “For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him.” Ephesians 1:22 says, “And He put all things under His feet…” In Matthew 28:18, Jesus said, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” 1 Corinthians 15:27 implies that all has been put under the rule of the exalted God-Man except God Himself:
27 For “He has put all things under His feet.” But when He says “all things are put under Him,” it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted.
This understanding is also consistent with the Bible’s teaching that Jesus is not only the Head of the church but also the ruler of the kings of the earth (Revelation 1:5; cf. 2:27).
This understanding does not require a Lutheran explanation of Jesus’ exaltation. Many are familiar with the Lutheran teaching that the physical body of the exalted Christ experiences some form of omnipresence. Such thinking is not necessary to explain how Jesus administers the kingdom of His power as the exalted God-Man. One can explain the ministries of the exalted God-Man “without conversion, composition, or confusion” of the two natures (WCF 8.2). No one questions that Jesus exercises His priestly ministry as the exalted God-Man. Yet His priestly ministry also has challenges that are beyond finite human capabilities. As our heavenly high priest, Jesus hears untold numbers of prayers every minute of every day. This does not mean that the human mind of the exalted God-Man now possesses some form of omniscience. Similarly the exalted God-Man exercises His kingly ministry without His human nature possessing some form of omnipotence. The Westminster Larger Catechism explains how this is possible without confusing the two natures:
Q.40. Why was it requisite that the Mediator should be God and man in one person ?
A. It was requisite that the Mediator, who was to reconcile God and man, should himself be both God and man, and this in one person, that the proper works of each nature might be accepted of God for us, and relied on by us, as the works of the whole person.
Returning to our question as to whether God the Son now exercises this providential power as part of the power that was entrusted to Him as the God-Man when He was seated at the right hand of God the Father, some answer in the negative. This means that the kingdom of Christ’s power is not related to Christ’s current heavenly session and thus is in a different category from the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of glory. With this understanding, God the Son exercises His providential power apart from His exalted humanity even as He did before His incarnation and exaltation.
In summary, Westminster kingdom theology includes two antithetical kingdoms, the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of Satan. Within the kingdom of Christ are three divisions: the kingdom of grace, the kingdom of glory and the kingdom of Christ’s power. Some hold that all three of these are part of the mediatorial kingdom of the exalted God-Man. Others separate the kingdom of Christ’s power as a providential rule apart from the mediatorial kingdom. In any case, the exercise of the kingdom of Christ’s power “in all the world” implies that the concept of the kingdom is broader than the concept of the church, even though there are also senses in which the kingdom and the church can be identified.
This broader understanding of the kingdom is taught by others as well.
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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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In Revelation chapter seven, the saints are sealed with the seal of the living God. In Revelation chapter nine, the locusts from the abyss with the power of scorpions are commanded to harm only those people who do not have the seal of God on their forehead. Dr. Jeremiah says that God has to remove the saints from the earth in order to protect them from the divine wrath which God pours out upon the earth in the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation says that God protects His saints while they are living on earth by sealing them with His protective seal. In the book of Revelation, the saints are persecuted by the world unto martyrdom, but they are protected from the wrath of God by God’s seal.

This past week I read the newly published book, The Great Disappearance by David Jeremiah. This book is about the rapture of the saints, and it teaches the same understanding of the rapture that is found in the book The Late, Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, and in the Left Behind prophetic novels by Tim LaHaye. Dr. Jeremiah mentions in his book that both he and Hal Lindsey studied biblical prophecy at Dallas Theological Seminary under professors Drs. Walvoord, Pentecost and Ryrie. I also studied at Dallas Theological Seminary just a few years after Dr. Jeremiah. A difference between me and Dr. Jeremiah is that I came to disagree with what I was taught at Dallas Theological Seminary about the rapture.
The rapture of the saints is a biblical doctrine that is taught in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. That passage says that when Jesus descends from heaven, those Christians who are then alive together with the resurrected dead in Christ will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. The Greek verb in verse 17 which is translated “we … shall be caught up” is translated in the Latin Vulgate with the Latin verb from which we get the English word “rapture.” The rapture is the catching up of the saints at the return of Jesus in order to meet Him in the air. Those alive at the time will be transformed into a glorified state, just as if they had experienced the resurrection unto life, without their ever having experienced physical death. At that moment, the living saints who have been translated or transformed and the dead saints who have been resurrected will be together raptured or caught up.
The basic message of Dr. Jeremiah’s new book is that the rapture of the saints will occur seven years before the second coming of Jesus to earth. Certain departed saints will be resurrected at the time of the rapture, and others will be resurrected later. This is a relatively new teaching in the history of doctrine. Someone first proposed it in the early nineteenth century, and it didn’t become popular until the twentieth century. It became popular through means such as the notes in the Scofield Reference Bible, Hal Lindsey’s book The Late, Great Planet Earth and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind prophetic novels.
The historic teaching of the church is that the rapture will occur not seven years before the second coming but at the time of the second coming. This is the teaching found in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which was written in the seventeenth century. Here is what we read in Chapter Thirty-Two:
At the last day, such as are found alive shall not die, but be changed: and all the dead shall be raised up … The bodies of the unjust shall, by the power of Christ, be raised to dishonor: the bodies of the just, by his Spirit, unto honor; and be made conformable to his own glorious body.
This teaches that all the dead, both the just and the unjust, both New Testament saints and Old Testament saints, will be resurrected at the time of the rapture.
You may wonder what difference it makes which is true, the modern teaching or the historic teaching. Every scriptural truth is important, and we should try to get them all correct so that we may be workers who need not be ashamed. Yet admittedly some doctrines are more important than other doctrines. Is there any great harm in getting wrong the relationship of the rapture to the second coming? Let me tell you about an experience that I had while attending seminary, and then you can decide for yourself if any harm was done.
When I was in seminary, I taught a high school Sunday school class. One Sunday, a teenage boy and his girlfriend visited the class. After the class, the young man stayed behind to talk with me, and he shared with me his philosophy of life. He knew that the rapture of the saints would occur really soon. He was living a life of sin, and he planned on continuing to live a life of sin until sometime after the rapture. He would be left behind, and that would give him a few more years for sinful living. His plan was to become a Christian shortly before the seven years were up so that he could avoid eternal punishment. He thought that he had figured out a way to get what he considered the best of both worlds. For some reason, he wanted me to know about it.
There wasn’t much that I could say in response because at that time I agreed with his understanding of the rapture. All I could think of to say was that his plan was risky because he might die at any moment. His response was that that was a risk that he was willing to take. He was convinced that the rapture was going to happen really soon, and he didn’t expect to die anytime soon. He was a young man, and the odds were on his side in that regard. At that point, I didn’t know anything more that I could say.
I sometimes wonder whatever became of that young man. Our conversation was over forty-five years ago. At that time, he believed the preachers who were then saying that the rapture was coming really soon. When those preachers proved to be so very wrong on the timing of the rapture, did this young man dismiss everything else that they had said as well? Did he continue sowing his wild oats without worrying any longer about a future in hell? If the preachers had been so very wrong about the timing of the rapture, then they could be wrong about the reality of hell as well.
If I had known then what I know now, I would have responded to this young man differently. I would have told him that he had been misled about the coming rapture. When the rapture of the saints happens, the day of gospel opportunity will be over. Those who are left behind won’t have a continuing opportunity for conversion. The day of the rapture will also be their judgment day. There won’t be a seven year delay during which they can come to Jesus for deliverance from eternal punishment.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 is the classic Scripture on the subject of the rapture of the saints. The Christians at Thessalonica were concerned about the Christians who had already died and thus would not be alive when Jesus returned. They wanted to know if these Christians who died before Jesus returned were at any real disadvantage. In response to that concern, the Apostle Paul assured the Thessalonicans that the dead in Christ were with Jesus in heaven and that their disembodied spirits would accompany Jesus at His bodily return to earth. When Jesus returns, what will happen first is that the bodies of those who are dead in the Lord will be reunited with their souls and raised to life. As our passage says, the dead in Christ will rise first. Only then, after that resurrection, will the saints be caught up to meet Jesus in the air. The resurrected saints and the living saints will be raptured or caught up together. The saints who are alive when Jesus returns won’t have any advantage over the saints who are dead when Jesus returns. There was no reason to worry that those who die in the Lord will be at any disadvantage when Jesus returns to earth.
Where I disagree with Dr. Jeremiah is on the relationship of this passage to the second coming. According to Dr. Jeremiah, this passage is not talking about the second coming. In the second coming, Jesus will return all the way to earth in His glorified resurrection body. Dr. Jeremiah interprets the rapture as an event at which Jesus does not come all the way to the ground, all the way to the earth’s solid surface, all the way to terra firma. Dr. Jeremiah says that what is here being described is not Jesus’ second coming to earth but Jesus’ rescue mission in the sky. Jesus is descending only as far down into the atmosphere as He needs to go in order to meet the raptured saints as they ascend up into the atmosphere. After Jesus and the raptured saints meet in the sky, Jesus will reverse course and take the raptured saints with Him back to heaven from whence Jesus came. According to Dr. Jeremiah, the purpose of the rapture is to rescue the saints from the earth so that they can escape a coming seven years of tribulation on earth. The second coming, according to Dr. Jeremiah, will not be until seven years later when Jesus will descend all the way to earth and end the time of tribulation.
I have shared with you my understanding of the rapture’s relationship to the second coming, and I have shared with you Dr. Jeremiah’s understanding as well. Next I want to share with you some of the reasons for my understanding. One reason for my understanding is my study of the Greek word translated “meet” in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 where it says that we will meet Jesus in the air. Dr. Jeremiah does not discuss his understanding of this Greek word, even though the Kindle version of his book is over two hundred fifty pages long.
According to the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, the Greek word here translated “meet” “is to be understood as a technical term for a civic custom of antiquity whereby a public welcome was accorded by a city to important visitors” (I.380). According to The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, the Greek word here translated “meet” was “the ancient expression for the civic welcome of an important visitor or the triumphal entry of a new ruler into the capital city and thus to his reign” (I.325). In other words, when a king of antiquity approached his capital city to begin his reign from that location, citizens of the city went out to meet him in order to escort him into the city. It was the ancient equivalent of rolling out the red carpet. I believe that this meaning of the word best fits the context of 1 Thessalonians four. The raptured saints will rush forth to meet Jesus at His return as earth’s conquering king. Then the raptured saints will reverse course and accompany Jesus down to earth.
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An understanding of these particular perspectives will help clarify the division over the current crisis in the Middle East. Christians who oppose Marxist ideology and who agree on the root essentials of the faith should maintain their Christian fellowship even if they have different approaches to this particular question.

On October 7, 2023, terrorists from the Palestinian organization Hamas in Gaza invaded the nation Israel and killed more than thirteen hundred Israelis, mostly civilians. The terrorists also engaged in rapes, mutilations and kidnappings. In response, the nation of Israel declared war against Hamas. In America, the reaction to these events has been quite diverse. On one extreme have been those who openly side with Hamas. On the other extreme have been those who promote unconditional support for the nation Israel as a religious obligation. In the middle are two other views which have had less exposure. I believe that a brief explanation of these four perspectives would bring needed clarity to this issue.
Let’s begin with those who openly side with Hamas. This group would include those who are themselves radical Islamists, but the group is broader than that. The larger group also includes many who are committed to wokeism or cultural Marxism.
Classical Marxism believes in a dialectical struggle between workers and the capitalist owners of the means of production. According to Karl Marx, this struggle between these two antithetical economic classes should naturally develop into the synthesis of a communist society. This prediction failed to materialize because the wealth gap between workers and owners of the means of production decreased over time in capitalist countries rather than increased. Workers who share in a growing material prosperity are not inclined toward Marxist revolution.
Some Marxists reacted to this failure by looking for potential areas of dialectical struggle other than economic class. The result was critical theory, which categorizes people as members of identity groups and labels these groups as either the oppressed or oppressors. Critical theory largely negates the concept of individual responsibility by emphasizing the guilt or innocence of the identity group. If one is a member of an oppressed identity group, then whatever he does is justified as a form of resistance to oppression. If one is a member of an oppressor identity group, then whatever he does is condemned as an effort to maintain the power to oppress. The most that a member of an oppressor identity group can do to redeem himself is to become an ally of the appropriate oppressed identity group. This involves confessing his own guilt due to a group identity that he cannot change, condemning his own identity group and championing the cause of the oppressed identity group. Critical theory has identified as oppressed identity groups people of color, indigenous people, the LGBTQ community, the handicapped, the obese and others. Many advocates of critical theory have decided to categorize Hamas as an oppressed identity group and Jews as an oppressor identity group. This means that even if Hamas engages in murder, mutilations, rape and kidnappings, these are accepted as justified means of resistance to oppression. This means that even if the nation Israel engages in self-defense through a traditional just war, this is condemned as a means to maintain its power to oppress. Hopefully the inclusion of a terrorist group such as Hamas in the big tent of cultural Marxism will accelerate the growing backlash against wokeism and cultural Marxism.
The above perspective is probably the one with the most public exposure through news reporting. A second perspective has received a lot of public exposure through advertising. This second perspective unconditionally supports the nation Israel as a religious obligation. This perspective is a relatively recent variation of the prosperity gospel.
In general, the prosperity gospel teaches that anyone can through faith obtain health and wealth. There is some truth in this message in that God does at times reward obedience in this life, not because God has any obligation to do so but because God freely chooses to do so. God rewards a Christian’s obedience in this life only as far as it serves for God’s glory and the Christian’s good (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 66). As demonstrated in the book of Job, God sometimes has reasons for allowing the faithful to suffer. The prosperity gospel contradicts this biblical balance through a one sided emphasis on divine blessings in this life.
In the past, preachers of the prosperity gospel challenged people to exercise faith by sending money in support of their ministry. This was presented as fulfilling a vow or sowing a seed that would ensure divine blessings. In recent years, some prosperity proponents have adjusted their message by presenting faith as sending money in support of their ministry to the nation Israel or needy Jews. One favorite proof text has been God’s promise to Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you…” (Genesis 12:3a). This is presented as a divine promise that any individual or nation that blesses the nation Israel or a needy Jewish individual will receive divine blessings. Another favored proof text has been “‘Comfort, yes, comfort My people!’ says your God” (Isaiah 40:1). This is presented as a command from God for people to help the nation Israel or needy Jewish individuals. There has developed in recent years an international coalition of groups with this perspective. They are now the strongest Christian advocates for unconditional support for the nation Israel and for needy individual Jews. They tend to prioritize support for Israel over evangelistic missions to Israel.
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A generation ago, the world called Christians fools because they believed in Jesus as He is revealed in the Bible. Today the world calls Christians bigots because they believe what Jesus teaches in the Bible about right and wrong. We are in a time when being faithful to Jesus is becoming more costly. The cost may continue to increase, but we must resolve to overcome and to remain faithful. 

I believe that the book of Revelation is especially relevant today but maybe not for the reason that many might expect. The church always finds special comfort in the book of Revelation when the church is experiencing persecution. We are today experiencing what may prove to be the early stages of a time of persecution. Some Christians have experienced various forms of persecution because they could not in good conscience provide certain services upon request for a same sex “wedding.” Some Christians in the medical profession may have been excluded from certain positions because they could not in good conscience take the life of a criminally innocent person either in the womb or in old age. Some Christian teachers may not be welcome in certain schools because they will not teach young children racial prejudices or sexual perversions. These are just a few examples, but I think that they are sufficient to give a sense of the times in which we are living. We don’t know if this persecution is going to intensify and expand, and we don’t know to what degree it will affect our own lives. We pray for a coming spiritual awakening that will radically change the direction in which our culture has been heading. Yet as long as persecution is on our horizon, the book of Revelation will have a special relevance for us. What was comforting to those seven churches in the closing years of the apostolic age can also provide comfort for persecuted Christians from then onwards down to the end of the age.
We find some insights on enduring persecution in Jesus’ letter to the church at Smyrna, found in Revelation 2:8-11. We learn here that Jesus is well aware of the church’s difficulties in a hostile world. In verse nine, Jesus said to the church at Smyrna, “I know your works, tribulation, and poverty (but you are rich) …” When we first read this, we might assume that this church existed in an impoverished area where jobs were scarce and resources were limited. But no, Smyrna was a large and prosperous city. The Christians there were poor because of prejudice against Christians. One could not there openly confess Christ and also get ahead socially and financially.
Like every pagan Greek city, Smyrna had its own patron deity. In addition, each trade guild would also have a patron deity. There were occasions when and situations where everyone was expected to give a certain token worship to a particular pagan deity, whether the patron deity of the city or the patron deity of a trade guild. Many would not take kindly to Christians who in principle refused to participate. Many would quickly blame such Christians for offending the gods whenever anything bad happened in the city.
Yet what was perhaps an even greater challenge in Smyrna was the rising cult of Caesar worship. The city of Smyrna had been loyal to Rome long before Rome became the dominant power in Asia Minor. About 195 B.C., Smyrna became the first city in the world to build a temple dedicated to the worship of the goddess Rome. In A.D. 26, all the major cities of Asia Minor petitioned Rome to be the site of a new temple dedicated to the worship of the Roman Emperor Tiberius while he was still alive and ruling. Smyrna was chosen for this honor and became a temple warden for the imperial cult. Cicero, the Roman orator, called the city of Smyrna Rome’s most faithful and ancient ally. We can only imagine what it would have been like to have been a Christian in the city of Smyrna during Roman times and to have refused to offer a pinch of incense to the goddess Rome or to the Roman Emperor Tiberius.
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1) Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, 2) let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, and 3) whatever you do, do all in the name of Jesus. I believe that obedience to these commands is the soil in which the spirit of thanksgiving flourishes. Obedience to these commands is the lifestyle which is most conducive to the thankful spirit.

This coming Thursday is Thanksgiving, that uniquely American holiday on which we take off from work and school, eat turkey and dressing, and watch parades and bowl games on television. But we need to remember that Thanksgiving should be more than a day off and a special meal and seasonal TV programs. Thanksgiving was instituted as a day which our culture sets aside to count our blessings and to give God thanks. Yet we must acknowledge that Thanksgiving as originally instituted is becoming more and more foreign to much of our culture. A radical form of ingratitude has come to characterize the culture that today dominates in certain spheres of our society. The philosophy behind this radical ingratitude is neo-Marxism, a new embodiment of the failed economic theories of Karl Marx.
The original version of Marxism tried to promote revolution through conflict between factory workers and the capitalist owners of the means of production. In the twentieth century, economic versions of Marxism were tried in numerous places and without exception proved to be economically disastrous. At the same time, the economic status of workers continued to improve in societies with a free market. In the closing decades of the twentieth century, socialism and communism were abandoned in many nations as failed economic experiments.
Sadly the ghost of Marxism has risen from the grave in the twenty-first century. The newer version of Marxism tries to promote revolution through conflict not between economic classes but between social classes referred to as the victims of oppression and the oppressors. Instead of promoting gratitude for the real blessings that people experience, neo-Marxism encourages people to view themselves as oppressed victims even when they are not. Neo-Marxism tries to convince people to view truly good things about our culture as sinister means used by the powerful to maintain power and to oppress their victims. To give some examples, free speech is opposed as a form of hateful violence, police protection for high crime neighborhoods is opposed as racial profiling, private ownership of defensive weapons is opposed as the cause of criminal violence, constitutional limits on government are opposed as barriers to radical social change, the traditional family is opposed as a barrier to new sexual liberties, and so on. In today’s world, things for which we should be grateful are labeled as means of oppression.
Perhaps the most tragic consequence of neo-Marxism is the current trend for young people to be dissatisfied with the biological sexual identity that God has encoded into every gene in their physical bodies. It is a sign of our times that instead of saying with the psalmist David, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” many young people resent the physical bodies which God has given them.
In contrast to much of our culture today, the biblically defined Christian is characterized not by an embittered ingratitude but by thanksgiving. To use the language of the hundredth Psalm, we enter into God’s gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Giving thanks to God is the Christian’s duty. In 1 Thessalonians 5:18, Paul exhorts us, “In everything, give thanks.” And consider Ephesians 5:3-4:
3 But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints;
4 neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.
Worldly people may be known for their dirty jokes and filthy language and coarse jesting, but the Christian should be known for giving thanks to God.
I chose Colossians 3:15-17 as our passage for today because it mentions the concept of thanksgiving three times, once in each verse. This is very obvious is verses 15 and 17. Verse 15 says, “be thankful,” and verse 17 says, “giving thanks to God the Father.” The reference to thanksgiving is not as obvious in verse 16, at least not in the New King James Version, which reads, “singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” The reference to thanksgiving in verse 16 is obvious in some other translations. For example, the New American Standard and the English Standard Version both translate verse 16 as referring to singing “with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
The Greek word here is usually translated “grace.” Yet like most words, this Greek word has more than one possible meaning. The meaning of this word which we are probably most familiar with is the goodwill which motivates a giver to give a gift as an undeserved and unearned favor. This is the meaning that this word has, for example, in Ephesians 2:8, which says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” This is a reference to grace as the goodwill which motivated God to give us the unmerited and undeserved gift of salvation. Yet this Greek word also has other related meanings. It can refer to the gift itself. It can also refer to the gratitude of the person who received the gift, to the gratitude motivated by the reception of the gift.
In verse 16 of our text, the Apostle Paul is here using the Greek word often translated “grace” to refer to the gratitude of someone on the receiving end of God’s undeserved favor. This is the possible meaning that makes the best sense of verse 16 and is also the meaning that is most consistent with verses 15 and 17, both of which mention thanksgiving.
I believe our passage for today gives us some insight into how we as Christians can maintain the spirit of thanksgiving in spite of the ingratitude that dominates so much of our culture. Our passage today consists of three verses, and each verse contains a command. The three commands are 1) let the peace of God rule in your hearts, 2) let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, and 3) whatever you do, do all in the name of Jesus. I believe that obedience to these commands is the soil in which the spirit of thanksgiving flourishes. Obedience to these commands is the lifestyle which is most conducive to the thankful spirit.
I want to look at these commands and through them exhort us to give thanks to the Lord our God.
Paul’s first command is, Let the peace of God rule in your hearts. Now notice at the onset that Paul is not talking about just any old inner peace. There are plenty of people who are at peace with themselves who should not be. Many people have hearts like the false prophets of old who cried out, “Peace, peace,” when there was no peace. The Bible describes the unregenerate heart as calloused and stony, which is a metaphorical way of saying unfeeling. Their lives are burdened with sin and with guilt and yet they feel no inner grief. They have the peace of spiritual indifference, the peace of spiritual ignorance, the peace of spiritual death. Their hearts have the peace and quiet of the graveyard.
Paul is not referring to just any old inner peace. He is referring to the peace of God. This is the peace which Jesus promised as His legacy to His people in John 14:27, where He said,
27 “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
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The opposing law that can overcome the law of sin and death is the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit is able to overcome the law of sin and death with life by working faith in the sinner’s heart and thus uniting the sinner to Christ as the source of the sinner’s salvation. By working faith in the sinner’s heart, the Spirit applies to the sinner the redemption accomplished by Jesus.The hymn “Rock of Ages” says, “Be of sin the double cure: save from wrath and make me pure.” Another version of the same hymn says, “Be of sin the double cure: save me from its guilt and power.” Both versions are expressing the same thought. Lost sinners have a double problem. Sinners have broken God’s law and therefore have a bad legal record before God. They are guilty of sin and are under God’s condemnation and are subject to God’s judicial wrath. Their second problem is that they have a bad heart, a heart that is in rebellion against God, a heart that is inclined toward disobeying God’s law. This is the double problem, and Jesus through His saving work is the double cure. Our salvation through our saving union with Jesus saves us from the condemning guilt of sin and from the enslaving power of sin. In Christ Jesus, we have a new legal record and a new heart.
Now these two cures are two distinct cures that address two distinct problems. We mustn’t confuse them or mix them together. At the same time, we mustn’t separate them. These two cures always occur together because they are both based on our saving union with Jesus. Jesus never gives someone a new legal record without giving them at the same time a new heart, and Jesus never gives someone a new heart without at the same time giving them a new legal record. Someone may say that he wants Jesus to forgive his sins but not to deliver him from his sinful lifestyle. This sort of thinking is not uncommon today. Someone more religious might say that he wants Jesus to deliver him from sinful living but that he does not want Jesus to forgive his sins outright because as a matter of pride, he wants to help earn his own forgiveness, as if that were possible. Jesus says no to both these requests. Salvation is always a double cure. Saving faith is trusting Jesus and Jesus alone for salvation, and that salvation consists in both forgiveness of sins and deliverance from sin.
I want to examine this double cure as it is found in the first four verses of Romans chapter eight:
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.
For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,
that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (NKJ)
In Romans chapter eight, the Apostle Paul first said, “There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” The key word here is “condemnation.” That is a legal term, and that tells us that the Apostle Paul is here referring to the legal aspect of salvation. When a judge condemns someone, he declares him guilty. That is the opposite of justification. When a judge justifies someone, he declares him innocent or righteous. When the Apostle Paul said that there is no condemnation to the person who is in Christ Jesus, that was just a negative, backdoor way of saying that a person who is in Christ Jesus is justified.
The second thing to notice here is the use of the word “now.” The word “now” indicates that this new legal status is immediate. It is a complete reality at this very moment. A person doesn’t have to wait until the end of this life to see if he is justified because his good works outweigh his bad works or if he is condemned because his bad works outweigh his good works. That is the way that many people think about salvation. They think that they won’t know and can’t know if they will spend eternity as a justified person or as a condemned person until after this life is over. That is not what the Apostle Paul said. The Apostle Paul said that “there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”
The third thing to notice here is the use of the little word “no.” The word “no” as in “no condemnation” indicates that the legal status of justification is perfectly complete. The Apostle Paul didn’t say that the person who is in Christ Jesus is mostly justified or has only a smidgen of remaining condemnation or has been washed almost as white as snow. The Apostle Paul said that there is absolutely no condemnation, not one iota, not one molecule, not one single scrap, to those who are in Christ Jesus. All of a Christian’s guilt, one hundred percent of it, has been erased, removed and buried in the depths of the sea.
The fourth thing to notice here is that this is true of all those who are in a saving union with Jesus Christ, a saving union that we experience as our faith in Jesus alone for our salvation. The Apostle Paul was here describing the legal status that gets a person into heaven, the legal ticket that gains admission to heaven, the legal key that opens the door to heaven. This is the perfect and complete righteousness that only Jesus can provide for us based on His saving work in our place and on our behalf.
Jesus accomplished this through what some call the great exchange. Jesus accepted responsibility for the guilt of the Christian’s sins and then suffered the punishment for that guilt through His suffering and death on the cross.
But He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.Isaiah 53:5-6
Jesus accepted the responsibility for the guilt of our sin. Jesus then bore the punishment for that sin and paid the penalty in full. On the cross Jesus said, “It is finished!” or “It is paid in full!” Jesus then gives those who believe in Him forgiveness based on His atoning work in their place. That is one half of the great exchange.
The other half of the great exchange has to do with Jesus’ legal record of perfect obedience. Jesus never once sinned in thought, word or deed. Though tempted by the devil with the full force of his diabolical ability, Jesus never once sinned. Though obeying the will of His heavenly Father meant submitting to the painful and shameful death of the cross, Jesus never once sinned. Jesus has a perfect legal record before God, and Jesus imputes this perfect legal record to all who believe in Him. Jesus reckons this perfect legal standing of righteousness to all who believe in Him. Jesus is our righteousness.
For [God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.2 Corinthians 5:21
This is the great exchange: Jesus receives our guilt, and we receive His righteousness.
So the Apostle Paul begins chapter eight with this wonderful statement about the Christian’s justification. The Christian’s legal status before God is right now, at this very moment, perfect and complete based on the Christian’s saving union with Jesus and Jesus’ saving work.

Jesus there on the cross felt in His human soul a disruption of His fellowship with God. The disruption was real, and the agony which Jesus experienced as a result of it in His totally pure and uncalloused human soul is beyond our ability to comprehend. In His question from the cross, Jesus was talking about His experiencing through His human nature the wrath of God against sin.
We are today going to consider the middle of the seven sayings of the cross. The fourth word from the cross is “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Of all the seven, this is both the most mysterious and the most revealing. Of all the seven, it is the clearest expression of the suffering which Jesus experienced in our place as the payment for our sins. Yet of all the seven, it is also the most difficult for us to understand. Thinking about this cry of abandonment reminds us that God’s ways are past our finding out. We can know God, but we can never fully comprehend Him with our creaturely minds. As we come to the essence of our Lord’s atoning suffering, even Jesus in His humanity cries out “why.” Jesus in His divinity understands all mysteries, but Jesus in His humanity on this occasion cried out, “why.”
As we consider today’s text, we will be approaching the limits of what we can understand. We must prayerfully seek to understand more and more of God’s truth. Yet we must also be prepared to acknowledge in humility when we have reached those truths which are beyond even the grasp of an angel’s mind.
In order to provide some context for the fourth saying, I want to look today also at two other sayings, the second and the sixth. The second saying from the cross, found in the gospel according to Luke, is “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). The fourth statement is in our text for today in the gospel according to Mark. It is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The sixth statement is found in the gospel according to John. It is, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
We will look at these three sayings from the cross under the headings, Confidence, the Cry and Completion.
We will now consider the second saying from the cross under the heading Confidence. Jesus has been officially condemned as guilty by the Roman governor Pilate, even though Pilate also unofficially admitted that Jesus had done nothing worthy of death and was an innocent man. In God’s providence, that course of events fit perfectly with the spiritual reality. Jesus was indeed innocent of any crime, even sinless of any sin. Yet He was legally condemned for sins, not sins that He had committed, but our sins for which He voluntarily took responsibility. The Roman soldiers carried out the Roman sentence that resulted from the Roman condemnation. They nailed Jesus to a wooden cross, a tree of sorts. This also fit perfectly with the spiritual reality. According to the law of Moses, being hung on a tree is a sign of God’s curse. And Jesus was under God’s curse so that all who believe in Him might receive God’s blessing. So here we have Jesus condemned and cursed. Yet the second saying from the cross reveals to us that Jesus was optimistic even in these circumstances. He was optimistic because He was living by faith, faith in God’s revealed will, faith in the message of the Bible. That is why the writer to the Hebrews wrote in chapter twelve of his inspired letter that Jesus, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame. What joy? The joy of obeying His Heavenly Father. The joy of doing that work which was necessary for the salvation of those sinners whom the Father had sent Jesus to save. The joy of the anticipated exaltation with which Jesus knew that the Father would exalt Him after His work of humiliation was completed. Jesus had all these assurances because Jesus knew the Old Testament, the extent of the Scriptures in His day.
When the resurrected Jesus appeared to His twelve disciples in a closed room on the evening of the Sunday when Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus explained to them the Old Testament predictions of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection.
And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day…Luke 24:45-46
This message of Scripture is the basis for the confidence that Jesus had when He said to the believing thief on the cross: “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Speaking from the place of condemnation and curse, Jesus said with confidence that He would be in Paradise later that very day. Paradise is here a reference to heaven, the location of the New Jerusalem, that celestial holding place where the spirits of departed saints go to await the coming day of bodily resurrection. Jesus was not resurrected from the dead until Sunday, the third day after His death, but on Friday, the very day of His physical death, Jesus’ human spirit went to be with His Father in heaven. Jesus also spoke with confidence that the believing thief on the cross would also go to heaven that very day. Jesus died first, and Jesus’ human spirit was in heaven to greet the soul of the believing thief upon his arrival. Jesus knew when He spoke to the believing thief that He would complete His saving work upon the cross, the work which would be the basis for the thief’s salvation by grace through faith in Jesus.
Notice that Jesus said to the believing thief, “Assuredly, I say to you …” Some translations say, “Verily” and others say, “Truly.” The Greek word is a Greek spelling of the Hebrew word “Amen,” the same word that we say at the end of our prayers to express our confidence in the Lord to whom we are praying. As our Shorter Catechism says, “in testimony of our desire and assurance to be heard, we say, ‘Amen.’” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you,” or “Verily, I say to you,” or “Amen, I say to you,” because Jesus was confident in the outcome of His ordeal of suffering because of the witness of Scripture.
Let’s now consider the fourth saying of the cross under the heading, the Cry. Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” When Jesus cried out those words, He was quoting the first verse of the twenty-second Psalm, which we call the Psalm of the Cross. This is one of the passages from which Jesus in His humanity had learned that the Messiah must suffer and die and that God would deliver the Messiah from death.
This question taken from the first verse of the twenty-second Psalm is such a mysterious question as it applies to Jesus. Jesus is fully divine, and surely God cannot forsake God. And also, Jesus here addressed God as His God. How could Jesus here say, “My God, My God,” if God had forsaken Jesus? Those are good questions about Jesus’ question, and I am going to begin by stating what Jesus’ question does not mean.
This question about being forsaken does not mean that there was ever any disruption in the sweet eternal fellowship of the Godhead, in the perfect communion between the three members of the Godhead: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The Great “I AM” does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. No member of the Godhead is ever forsaken by any other member of the Godhead. That would be a most radical change in the very essence of God’s eternal being. Such is unthinkable.
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When the angel stirred the waters, the only person healed was the first person to enter the water. And the sicker a person was, the less likely he would be able to enter the water first. These limitations point to the fact that the ministries of the Old Testament were shadows pointing to a coming greater ministry, the ministry of Jesus Christ.

The passage John 5:1-16 is one of those rare instances where some translations include and some translations omit an extended portion of a passage. The words at issue are the last phrase in verse 3 and the entirety of verse 4, where we read, “waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had.” This text is included in the Geneva Bible, the King James Bible and the New King James Version. Most modern translations, however, omit these words, and most people just accept this omission. The reason commonly given is that the latter half of verse 3 and all of verse 4 are missing in the oldest and best manuscripts. In my opinion, that statement is not totally correct. Some early manuscripts do omit the latter half of verse 3 and all of verse 4, but I don’t think that they are all among the better manuscripts. On the contrary, let me share with you what Bruce Metzger, perhaps the foremost authority on ancient New Testament manuscripts, says about one of these early manuscripts that omit verse 4 of our passage for today (D, Codex Bezae). He says, “No known manuscript has so many and such remarkable variations from what is usually taken to be the normal New Testament text. [This manuscript’s] special characteristic is the free addition (and occasional omission) of words, sentences, and even incidents.”[i] Some of the other “oldest and best” manuscripts that omit verse 4 have some serious irregularities as well.
Now what is at issue here? As to our understanding of the event recorded in the text, even those who omit verse 4 tend to recognize the verse as an uninspired record of an ancient tradition. They tend to acknowledge that they can’t understand verse 7 without the information that is found in verse 4. In verse 7, the lame man talks about the stirring of the water and about others stepping into the stirred water before he is able to do so. Verse 7 doesn’t make any sense apart from the information that we find in verse 4 about the occasional supernatural angelic activity at the pool. Everyone needs verse 4 in order to understand what verse 7 is talking about. Those who accept verse 4 as part of the inspired text believe that an angel actually did on occasion stir up the waters and heal someone at that pool. Those who regard verse 4 as merely an uninspired ancient tradition often agree with this, but not always. They may regard the ancient tradition as merely a superstitious myth that drew people to this pool. If verse 4 is only an uninspired record of an ancient tradition, then they are free to regard the account of the angel that way as well.
What is of greater concern is that this dispute about the reliability of the latter half of verse 3 and all of verse 4 of our text might cause some to question the reliability of the New Testament in general. No, the Greek New Testament is by far the best attested ancient writing in existence. There are over 5,000 ancient Greek documents, 8,000 ancient Latin documents that are translations of the Greek and many other ancient documents that are translations into other languages.[ii] In addition, there are many quotations from the New Testament in the surviving writings of early Christian leaders. No other ancient writing comes anywhere near such a vast array of surviving manuscripts and witnesses. Just to give you a basis for comparison, consider Caesar’s Gallic Wars, a classic Latin text which I had to struggle with when I took high school Latin. There are only nine or ten good ancient manuscripts that have survived, and the oldest was copied about 900 years after Julius Caesar wrote the book.[iii] I could give you other similar examples. Again, there is no other ancient document with a surviving textual record anywhere near like that of the Greek New Testament.
Also, in the vast multitude of these hand copied documents, there is a strong overall consensus as to what is the original text of the books of the New Testament. God has preserved the text not by making every copyist infallible but by providing us with a vast multitude of documents with “a high degree of textual uniformity.” And this high degree of textual uniformity increases significantly when we limit ourselves to the vast majority of the documents that are in large agreement with each other.[iv] Yes, there are those accidental slips that occur when someone copies any long document by hand, but these tend not to be an obstacle to discerning the original text, especially when multiple copies of the document are available.
If that is the case, then you might wonder why there is some question about verse 4 in our text for today. The majority of the copyists did a good job in faithfully copying the content of earlier copies. Yet early on there were a few copyists in certain regions who felt free to expand the text here and there, to add an occasional something that was not in the text that they were copying from. In response to these few early expanded manuscripts, there were some copyists in Egypt who tried to purge the text. Too often these Egyptian copyists left the extraneous expansions in and took out instead portions of the true text. Yet even these manuscripts with this occasional foolish unauthorized editing tend to agree in large part with the consensus text that is in the majority of the manuscripts. And these manuscripts where the text has been inappropriately changed in some places can often be identified because they do not agree with one another in the changes that have been made. For example, the vast majority of the manuscripts containing our passage for today call the pool Bethesda. Yet in a few older manuscripts, the pool is called Bethsaida or Bethzatha or Belzetha. These few texts agree in changing the name of the pool but can’t agree on a replacement name. Disagreements such as that are a good indication that some copyists did indeed make some changes in the text that they were copying. Contrary to what many today claim, these few manuscripts which leave out verse 4 are not among the better manuscripts.
Let me give you one interesting piece of evidence for the reliability of Bethesda, which is the majority text reading, as the name of the pool. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the mid-twentieth century, and among these ancient scrolls is a scroll made out of copper. This copper scroll is dated between A.D. 35 and 65, which would be sometime after the death of Jesus and before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. This very ancient copper scroll existed long before the surviving Greek New Testament manuscripts were copied, and it confirms that the name of the pool was Bethesda, the name that we find in the majority of the ancient Greek manuscripts.[v]
Most of these ancient manuscripts do include verse 4 of our passage, but there are a few early manuscripts that omit verse 4. Yet a manuscript can be an early copy and also be the work of a less than reliable copyist. Age does not necessarily guarantee reliability. In addition, verse 4 has its own early witnesses. Tertullian in the third century wrote about the water stirred up by an angel in John chapter 5 and thus testified to the validity of verse 4. Verse 4 is also included in the translations of the Gospel according to John into Syriac and Latin that date back to the second century. So there is ample ancient testimony for the inclusion of verse 4.
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The elements of the Lord’s Supper understood as a true natural image of Jesus must incorporate the literal physical body and blood of Jesus. This understanding of the Lord’s Supper is a logical implication of the eighth century Christological argument.

In the history of the Christian church, there have been two very significant documents related to an argument against all visual representations of Jesus, an argument commonly called the Christological argument. The first document is a statement of the decisions of a church council held near Constantinople in 754. The second document is the eighteenth century book by Ralph Erskine, Faith No Fancy. The eighth century and the eighteenth century versions of the Christological argument have much in common, but they also have their differences. Each version was also associated with a particular understanding of the Lord’s Supper.
Let’s begin with the eighth century Christological argument. A church council in the year 754 condemned all images representing Jesus in His humanity based on the Christological argument. A subsequent church council in 787 reversed this decision and also condoned the veneration of images as an element of Christian worship. The 787 church council was the Second Council of Nicea, the seventh and last of the early ecumenical councils recognized by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. After the 787 council, the controversy flared up again in the east but was soon settled permanently in favor of those who venerated images.
After this, the eighth century Christological argument seemed largely forgotten. The eighth century Christological argument had stirred up controversy in the eastern churches associated with Constantinople but not in the western churches associated with Rome. Also, as we will see, the eastern understanding of images of Christ soon changed in a way that made the eighth century Christological argument irrelevant even in the east.
In the years leading up to the 754 council, the eastern emperor Constantine V originated the eighth century Christological argument. His main critic was John of Damascus, a Christian theologian who lived in an area under Muslim control where he was free to criticize the emperor’s views. These two opponents shared a common foundational understanding about the basic nature of any visual representation of Jesus. They both regarded such images as natural images as opposed to artificial and external images. Using modern comparisons, this means that their common understanding of an image of Jesus had more in common with a clone, which is a natural image, than it had with a digital picture, which is an artificial and external image. Their common foundational understanding was based on the idea that God the Son as the divine image of God the Father is the pattern for understanding the relationship of a visual image of Jesus to Jesus himself. God the Son is a natural image of God the Father in that they both are fully divine and thus both have the same nature. Thus, they reasoned, a visual image of Jesus must also be a natural image of Jesus. They shared this understanding of visual images of Jesus but came to opposite conclusions. John of Damascus believed that such images should be venerated, and Constantine V believed that they should be prohibited. There was no thought of the possibility that there could be an artificial and external visual representation of Jesus in His humanity that was neither a proper object of worship nor a necessary object of censure.
The eighth century Christological argument presented a dilemma regarding any visual representation of Jesus that was regarded as a true natural image. A summary statement of this dilemma is found in the decisions of the 754 council:
Whoever, then, makes an image of Christ, either depicts the Godhead which cannot be depicted, and mingles it with the manhood (like the Monophysites), or he represents the body of Christ as not made divine and separate and as a person apart, like the Nestorians. (Percival, p. 544)
In other words, if anyone tried to make a visual representation of Jesus that was a true natural image, he had to choose his poison, either monophysitism or Nestorianism. A true natural image of a monophysite Jesus is theoretically possible because the human and divine natures are blended and thus are depictable in a true natural image through the human element. Also, a true natural image of a Nestorian Jesus is theoretically possible because the human and divine natures are separated, with a divine person subsisting in the one divine nature and a human person subsisting in the human nature. The human person subsisting in a human nature is depictable in a true natural image separate from the divine person subsisting in the one divine nature. Yet an orthodox Jesus is not depictable through a true natural image. The orthodox doctrine, affirmed by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, is that Jesus has two natures, the one divine nature and a complete and genuine human nature, that are never separated but also never mixed or confused. For anyone who tries to make a true natural image of Jesus, the choice is between either depicting the undepictable or separating the inseparable. Both choices involve a serious Christological heresy: either Nestorianism, which separates the two natures, or monophysitism, which blends the two natures. With both horns of the dilemma rejected, the implication was that all visual representations of Jesus should be prohibited and avoided. This argument was very effective in a context where Christological heresy was taken very seriously.
Yet the eighth century Christological argument did not deprive the church of every possible visible representation of Jesus. The 754 council pointed to the Lord’s Supper as a valid visual image of Jesus. What finite humans could not do through icons, God could do miraculously through the Lord’s Supper. According to the eighth century Christological argument’s understanding of a valid image, the Lord’s Supper must be a true natural image of Jesus in order to be a valid image of Jesus. If the Lord’s Supper is not a miraculously effected natural image of Jesus, then the dilemma of the eighth century Christological argument would apply to it as well. The same 754 council that stated the eighth century Christological argument also made this statement regarding the Lord’s Supper:
And the body of Christ is made divine, so also this figure of the body of Christ, the bread, is made divine by the descent of the Holy Spirit; it becomes the divine body of Christ by the mediation of the priest who, separating the oblation from that which is common, sanctifies it. (Percival 2011, p. 544)
The elements of the Lord’s Supper understood as a true natural image of Jesus must incorporate the literal physical body and blood of Jesus. This understanding of the Lord’s Supper is a logical implication of the eighth century Christological argument.
The dilemma of the eighth century Christological argument could have been avoided altogether if visual representations of Jesus in his humanity had been regarded as artificial and external images. This insight was not suggested until later by Patriarch Nicephorus (c. 758-828), who was the first to give an effective answer to the eighth century Christological argument. John of Damascus had thought in terms of ontological Platonic participation. In contrast, Patriarch Nicephorus analyzed the issue in terms of Aristotelian logic. In his argumentation against the eighth century Christological argument, Patriarch Nicephorus defined the icon as an artificial external image:
It is a likeness of its living model, and through this likeness it expresses the entire visible form of the one it depicts; yet it remains in essence distinct from this model because it is of a different matter. (Schoenborn 2011, location 3036, p. 87)
With this understanding of visual representations of Jesus in his humanity, the eighth century Christological argument became irrelevant.
Sadly the eastern church continued its veneration of icons of Jesus. A third and final foundational thinker on this issue arose in the eastern church, Theodore the Studite (729-856). Like Patriarch Nicephorus, he explained images in Aristotelian relational terms and not in Platonic terms of ontological participation. Yet he went beyond Patriarch Nicephorus by clearly stating that to see an icon of Christ is to look upon the divine person of Christ. The basic contention of Theodore the Studite was that an icon of a person depicts not that person’s nature but that person’s person. He claimed that the personal connection between a visual image of Jesus and Jesus himself was the icon’s physical resemblance to the historical Jesus. The eastern church had a legend explaining how the knowledge of Jesus’ physical appearance had been preserved for use in painting icons. Like John of Damascus, Theodore the Studite held to an intrinsic connection between the image and its prototype, though on the level of personhood and not on the level of essential nature.
The 754 council became irrelevant even in the east, and many of its documents were lost. We know about their content mainly from their being quoted by the 787 council in the process of condemning them. We do not later read about the eighth century Christological argument even as a defense of the iconoclasm associated with the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. The Protestant Reformer Peter Martyr did mention the 754 church council and the eighth century Christological argument, but only to express his disagreement with the argument. John Calvin also mentioned the 754 church council but not in an effort to glean an argument against the worship of images. Calvin noted both the anti-image council in 754 and the pro-image council in 787 as part of his argument that church councils can disagree with one another and therefore cannot be infallible. In the course of his argument, Calvin implied his agreement with the 754 council’s decision to remove images from churches and strongly condemned the 787 council’s approval of worshipping images. Yet his main contention was that “… we cannot otherwise distinguish between councils that are contradictory and discordant, which have been many, unless we weigh them all … in the balance of all men and angels, that is, the Word of the Lord” (Institutes 21:1173 4.9.9). Calvin did not mention the eighth century Christological argument.
After the eighth century controversy, the Christological argument did not receive any significant attention to my knowledge until Ralph Erskine in the eighteenth century wrote his book Faith No Fancy. Ralph Erskine was apparently not even aware of the eighth century Christological argument when he began writing his book. Well into the writing, he revealed that he had learned about the 754 church council and the eighth century Christological argument through reading Peter Martyr:
Then [Peter Martyr in Loc. Com.] makes mention of the seventh synod, (which was not allowed by the Papists, and) which was held by Constantine and his son: wherein it was decreed, “That Christ was not to be painted, feigned or figures, no not as touching his human nature. And the reason is set down and assigned, because it is not possible to describe by art any thing else but his human nature. Wherefore they that make such things, seems to embrace the Nestorian error, which separated the human nature from the divine.” When above I supposed Mr. Robe’s doctrine of mental imagery touching Christ’s human nature to savour of Nestorianism, I had not glanced at this passage, so as to see my opinion fortified by the decree of such an ancient synod. (page 294)
At this point, a little historical background to Ralph Erskine’s development of the eighteenth Christological argument would be helpful. In Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards wrote an account of the awakening that occurred in his church from 1734 to 1735. An unabridged version entitled  A Faithful Narrative was published in London in 1737, and reprints appeared in Edinburgh in 1737 and 1738. In 1741, Edwards preached a sermon on the distinguishing marks of a true spiritual awakening. This was published under the title The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God. Editions were published in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1742. Also in 1742, Edwards’s earlier work A Faithful Narrative helped inspire awakenings in two congregations of the Church of Scotland, William McColloch’s church at Cambuslang and James Robe’s church at Kilsyth. George Whitefield then preached in these churches in June 1742. Ralph Erskine and James Fisher were members of the Associate Presbytery, a group that had seceded from the Church of Scotland in 1733. According to James Robe, Fisher sent circular letters “Misrepresenting this blessed Work as a Delusion, and Work, of the Devil, very soon after its first Appearance at Cambuslang.” On July 15, 1742, the Associate Presbytery called for their churches to fast on August 4 in response to Whitefield’s ministry in Scotland and the alleged works of delusion. James Robe quickly wrote a book defending the Scottish awakenings, and Fisher quickly responded with a critical review. This was followed by a series of published letters between Robe and Fisher. After Robe’s fourth letter, Ralph Erskine wrote Faith No Fancy in 1745 as his definitive response to Robe.
In The Distinguishing Marks, Jonathan Edwards had made this comment about mental images:
Such is our nature that we can’t think of things invisible, without a degree of imagination. I dare appeal to any man, of the greatest powers of mind, whether or no he is able to fix his thoughts on God or Christ, or the things of another world, without imaginary ideas attending his meditations? (Edwards 2009, 236)
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