http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15354599/what-kind-of-conduct-validates-the-gospel

ABSTRACT: Several biblical passages speak of what some theologians call a “divine council,” an assembly of heavenly beings or “gods.” For Israel’s neighbors in the ancient Near East, such councils reflected polytheistic worldviews, where rival gods vied for power and supremacy. For Israel, however, the members of the divine council, though heavenly and supernatural, remained subject to the providence and decrees of the one Creator God. Furthermore, God disarmed all these malevolent spiritual powers at the cross of Christ, and one day he will strip them of all authority entirely.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors, leaders, and teachers, we asked Kaspars Ozolins, research associate at Tyndale House in Cambridge, to explain the meaning of the divine council in Scripture.

When studying Scripture, it is always helpful to understand more about the particular historical, cultural, and linguistic setting in which the story of the Bible unfolds. Michael Heiser’s 2015 book The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible has introduced many ordinary readers of Scripture to a new concept with ancient roots: the divine council.

This term, although not found in the Bible, is best illustrated with reference to the famous prologue in Job 1–2, where “the sons of God” present themselves before the Lord. Heiser’s work has been lauded by such established evangelical scholars as Darrell L. Bock, John Goldingay, and Tremper Longman III. It has also received favorable reviews in Themelios, the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, and the Review of Biblical Literature. In his book, Heiser presents the divine council as an assembly of lesser divine figures, presided by a higher, supreme being. While in ancient Near Eastern (ANE) societies, such a concept entails a polytheistic pantheon of deities, its occurrence in Scripture is variously interpreted and debated.

How might Christians today approach the divine council theme in Scripture? We can begin by looking at the Old Testament’s ANE context.

Israel’s Ancient Near Eastern Context

In exploring the divine council theme and potential connections to extrabiblical contexts, it is useful to understand the ancient setting of the Bible itself. For the Old Testament, the context is largely ancient Canaan, a land situated in the Levant, on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The books of the Hebrew Bible span approximately one thousand years, from the Late Bronze Age up to the Persian period. These centuries witnessed the rise and fall of major world empires, as well as innumerable smaller local kingdoms. Within this relatively small territory, many languages and cultures came into contact with God’s people.

The linguistic context of the Old Testament is particularly important to us because culture and language go hand in hand. Words, concepts, and ideas are conveyed through language, and these connections are often more transparent when examining genetically related languages. Linguistically speaking, biblical Hebrew is the language of the vast majority of the Old Testament (just a few chapters in Ezra and Daniel are written in Aramaic), and it was the language spoken by the ancient Israelites themselves. Its closest relatives are the other Canaanite languages: Moabite, Edomite, Ammonite, and Phoenician. These languages are unfortunately very poorly attested, being found only occasionally in a few inscriptions.

More distant languages, yet still closely related to biblical Hebrew, are Aramaic and Ugaritic. The former was the language of various kingdoms in the region of Aram, mostly located in present-day Syria. This language would later greatly spread in influence and become the lingua franca of the entire ANE for centuries. Many important religious texts, both Christian and Jewish, were written in varieties of Aramaic.

The latter, Ugaritic, is of more interest for our purposes because of its very early collection of clay cuneiform tablets, discovered by accident in 1928.

Ugaritic Pantheon

When archaeologists and other scholars began working on this significant collection of Ugaritic texts, they were amazed to discover extensive documentation of a language and a culture that flourished north of Israel, around the time of the biblical judges. Many of the cuneiform texts (an ancient writing system that made use of various combinations of wedge-impressions made in wet clay tablets) are records of mundane economic activities and other facets of daily life. A select few, however, provide invaluable information about the religious practices of the ancient city-state of Ugarit, including the deities worshiped there, and the temple rituals carried out within the kingdom.

A famous series of large tablets, called the “Baal cycle,” contains epic texts that depict a divine council of deities, headed by the chief god ’Ilu (a word that is related to the generic words for God in biblical Hebrew: ’Ēl and ’Ĕlōhîm). Featuring prominently in the epic is the deity Ba‘lu, parallel to the Hebrew word Ba‘al. He was perceived by the ancient Canaanites as a storm deity who brought life-giving rains in the winter season.

In the epic, Ba‘lu engages in annual combat with Môtu, the god of death and drought. The Mediterranean cycle of rains and drought was thus conceived of as a struggle between rival deities for supremacy. Although Ba‘lu is defeated and descends into the underworld, he is subsequently assisted by ‘Anatu and Šapšu (the sun deity), who resurrect his body and transport it to Mount Ṣapunu (a mountain directly north of Ugarit, and whose name is related to the cardinal direction ṣāfôn, “north” in biblical Hebrew). It was here, in fact, that the autumn rains broke, as the sea-borne clouds were trapped by this towering landmark.

Other deities could be named as part of the divine council of gods: ’Aṯiratu (related to Hebrew ’Ăšērâ, “Asherah”) was seen as the wife of ’Ilu and his consort. Kôṯaru-wa-Ḫasīsu was the craftsman of the council, who helped fashion a mace for Ba‘lu. Yammu (related to Hebrew yām, “sea”) was the god of the seas and another adversary of Ba‘lu. Together, they paint a portrait of an Ugaritic cosmology in which the various deities are active in their respective domains, forming alliances and also vying for power.

Key Passages and Concepts in Scripture

With this ANE background in place, one can now compare and contrast some of the various passages and concepts associated with the divine council theme in Scripture. Certain passages in the Bible seem in particular to give evidence to a spiritual realm beyond that of our physical world. Generally, students of the Bible conceive of only two broad categories — angels and demons (fallen angels) — but there is much more.

Although in modern parlance we equate the term “angel” with any non-physical heavenly being, in the biblical languages (both Greek and Hebrew), the words translated “angel” (Hebrew mal’āk; Greek ángelos) are more properly descriptors of messenger activity (in particular from the heavenly realm to the earthly realm). Thus, it would not be precise, for example, to speak of the śerāfîm in Isaiah 6 — or indeed the four living creatures described in Revelation — as “angels.”

Beyond these more familiar categories is an additional term that may not be as apparent to students of the Bible: “sons of God” (Hebrew bnê hā’ĕlōhîm). It appears to be related to the equivalent Ugaritic expression banū ’ili, “sons of ’Ilu,” a descriptor for the various non-human divinities in their pantheon. We can examine its occurrence in a few biblical passages.

Genesis 6

The phrase occurs in key passages in Scripture, most notably in Genesis 6 and Job 1–2, as well as in a number of psalms. According to Genesis 6, one precursor for the flood was the intermarriage of the “sons of God” with the “daughters of men.” Although the understanding of this passage is difficult, it seems likely, when taking into account the references to this passage in Jude and 2 Peter, that “sons of God” here refers not to men from the godly line of Seth, but rather to fallen spiritual beings. Thus, Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 appear to be describing the unnatural union of fallen angels and humans.

The primary objection to this interpretation is Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 22 in response to the Sadducees’ question about marriage in the resurrection. However, when Jesus states that in the resurrection people “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30), he probably did not intend to claim that an (unlawful) union of this sort had never occurred in history. The offspring of this unholy union are called Nephilim (Genesis 6:4), a word in Hebrew that means “fallen ones.”1

Deuteronomy 32

Other intriguing references to the “sons of God” can be found in the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy 32:8, Moses speaks: “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.” This is the rendering from the ESV. Most English versions have “sons of Israel” here instead of “sons of God.” “Sons of Israel” is the reading reflected in various ancient translations of the Bible; it is also the reading in the Masoretic Hebrew tradition, which is the basis of our English Old Testament. The Greek Septuagint, however, features the reading angélōn theou, “angels of God,” and most intriguingly, a Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript has “sons of God.”

The context of the verse appears to allude to the Tower of Babel and the subsequent dispersal of the nations. If so, the “sons of God” would seem to be heavenly beings assigned by God to the various nations of mankind. By contrast, the Lord’s inheritance is Israel, specifically (Deuteronomy 32:9). An alternative interpretation, which cannot be excluded, is that the (approximately) seventy nations listed in Genesis 10 correspond to the seventy members of Jacob’s household (i.e., Israel), which went down to Egypt to Joseph (Genesis 46:27). On this understanding, however, it is not entirely clear what kind of connection between Israel and the nations Moses would have intended.

Job 1–2

Probably the best-known reference to the “sons of God” is found in the prologue to the book of Job (chs. 1–2). Here we learn that the “sons of God” present themselves before the Lord, and furthermore, that Satan is among their number. The word “Satan” is a transliteration of the Hebrew śātān, “(the) accuser.” Strictly speaking, it is an epithet, not a personal name, and yet we know from other passages of Scripture, especially in the New Testament, that Satan is a particular fallen angel who is the originator of sin. Revelation 12:9 describes him as “the dragon . . . that ancient serpent,” a clear allusion to the serpent who tempted Eve in the garden. In the Septuagint and the New Testament, the equivalent term in Greek for Satan is diábolos (also meaning “accuser”), transliterated in English as devil.

Yet another, less well-understood reference to this member of the divine council is “Beelzebul,” sometimes also spelled “Beelzebub.” The Pharisees and scribes describe him as the “prince of demons” (Matthew 12:24), and Jesus calls him the “master of the house” (Matthew 10:25). This title appears to be equivalent to the Old Testament “Baal-zebub,” who is described as the god of Ekron (a Philistine city) in 2 Kings 1. The epithet ba‘al zəbûb, “lord of the flies,” is apparently a deliberate corruption of ba‘al zəbûl, “exalted lord,” whose equivalent is found in Ugaritic literature (ba‘lu zabūlu).

Interpreting the Divine Council Passages

Mainstream secular scholarship argues that passages hinting at the divine council theme are remnants of the original polytheistic cult of Yahwism, the religion peculiar to the ancient Israelites. In particular, it is asserted from archaeological evidence that Yahweh was worshiped alongside his consort, Asherah.2 These scholars claim that the majority of the Hebrew Bible, considered to have been written late, witnesses a kind of anachronistic polemic of the worship of deities beside Yahweh (when in fact there was no such taboo originally). Concomitantly, over time Yahweh increasingly assumes roles that were previously assigned to other deities, or to his wife Asherah. Thus developed the classical conception of monotheism, which is the foundation of Western Judeo-Christian civilization. Despite this paradigm shift, these scholars argue, extrabiblical evidence, together with clues such as the divine council theme in Scripture, allow for the reconstruction of the Israelites’ original polytheistic system of worship.

By contrast, evangelicals, such as Heiser, maintain that the divine council in Scripture, while influenced by the surrounding ANE cultures, nevertheless is distinctive, and does not contravene monotheism. Another scholar who has popularized the use of ANE backgrounds in studying Scripture is John Walton, whose Lost World book series examines various Old Testament passages in light of the ANE context. A common distinction he makes is the following: “Although the Bible was written for us, it was not written to us.” If the Bible was not written to us, then it seems we must adjust to the worldview of the biblical authors, at least to some degree, in order to properly understand the Old Testament, including the theme of the divine council.

Given the work of these scholars (and others), however, ordinary Christians might be wondering how they could possibly access the meaning of the Old Testament (almost eighty percent of God’s word!) without an adequate understanding of its ANE background. What is more, if the Hebrew Bible is a product of its own cultural and historical setting, does it even make sense to speak of it as Christian Scripture?

As is so often the case, one’s hermeneutics plays a decisive role in determining the interpretive outcome. A critical component in any hermeneutical process is the assessment and incorporation of various types of contexts. There are near and far biblical contexts (e.g., verse, chapter, book, canon). There are also extrabiblical contexts situated around the ANE milieu in which Holy Scripture arose. It is precisely here — the proper adjudication of biblical and extrabiblical contexts — where significant hermeneutical battles are fought. When faced with apparently conflicting contextual evidence, which type of context ought to play a more primary role? Should the ANE context of the Old Testament be dominant, with the Bible’s internal textual context playing a subservient role?

Heiser argues,

The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers — the context that produced the Bible. Every other context is alien to the biblical writers and, therefore, to the Bible. Yet there is a pervasive tendency in the believing Church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational preferences.3

Heiser appears to be arguing that certain key elements about the biblical text (here, especially the divine realm) were essentially obscured to Christians over two millennia because they lacked access to the extrabiblical resources that we now possess, thanks to archaeology and other historical disciplines. Thus, he goes on to state,

The biblical text was produced by men who lived in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean between the second millennium BC and the first century AD. To understand how biblical writers thought, we need to tap into the intellectual output of that world. A vast amount of that material is available to us, thanks to modern technology.4

Just how unique was Israel in its ancient context? On the one hand, Israel, as we have seen, was a nation and a people with a language and culture that was situated in a specific historical context, one that we dare not ignore. On the other hand, Israel was a distinct entity, constituted by God to be a “kingdom of priests” and a “holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). Its God, Yahweh, the true God, was unlike the false gods of the nations (Jeremiah 14:22). We must be careful not to assume that the true meaning of divine Scripture (both New and Old Testaments) is somehow ultimately inaccessible to modern people apart from specialist knowledge of the ancient cultural context. While the Bible is indeed the product of multiple human authors, the ultimate author of Scripture is God himself, and it bears witness to a fundamental unity from Genesis through to Revelation.

“Israel was a distinct entity, constituted by God to be a ‘kingdom of priests’ and a ‘holy nation.’”

In general, Heiser’s work offers interesting and sometimes illuminating exegeses of many passages. Unfortunately, it is sometimes imbalanced and suffers from a deliberate attempt to downplay the church’s historical engagement with Scripture. Some of the language in the book on Trinitarian matters, for example, is unhelpful, and potentially dangerous. Certain terms that Heiser uses to point out a distinction between the Father and the Son in the Old Testament (such as “a second Yahweh” and “two powers in heaven”), are at best careless, and at worst ignorant of historic orthodox Christian doctrines such as divine simplicity.5 More broadly, in emphasizing the reality of other spiritual beings, especially malevolent powers, Heiser tends to downplay the central problem described in Scripture (our sinful state before a holy God) and its only solution (the substitutionary death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, for us and in our stead).

Divine Council and Christian Theology

Consequently, while it is helpful to consider the ancient cultural context, it is vital to always think theologically and canonically when studying Scripture, especially in the context of the historical theology of God’s church. When thinking about the divine council theme, one vital component of historic Christian theology is the Creator-creature distinction. God is not merely the greatest of all beings, as though he were somehow a species of a genus of “things” in common with plants, galaxies, and humans. Rather, God is utterly unique, separate from his creation. God is in a class of his own.

“God is utterly unique, separate from his creation. God is in a class of his own.”

A major section in Scripture devoted to the uniqueness of God is the so-called “trial of the false gods” in Isaiah 40–45. There, Yahweh sets himself in distinction to both the false gods and more broadly his entire creation. God cannot be likened to anything (Isaiah 40:18), neither to the idols of men nor to his majestic creation. Yahweh challenges his opponents to “tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome; or declare to us the things to come” (Isaiah 41:22). The “former things” in history may be known, but their deep purposes in the hand of a sovereign God are beyond the grasp of his creatures. Because of this, the Lord does not give his praise or glory to anyone else in creation (Isaiah 42:8). Indeed, the Lord declares, “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me” (Isaiah 43:10). It is the Lord who created the heavens, and there is no other (Isaiah 45:18). God’s creatorship and sovereignty are thus vital indications of his uniqueness.

Given this, how are we to understand the divine council theme? Where do these beings fit? Clearly, they fit on the creature side of the Creator-creature division, and as such they share none of God’s incommunicable attributes (for example, his aseity, his omnipotence, his omnipresence). Consequently, it is better to speak of the members of the divine council as “heavenly beings” and not “divine beings.” For although the council is of a heavenly, spiritual nature, and although Scripture portrays God as heading this council, these beings are not in the same class as him. As A.W. Pink so eloquently states in his book The Sovereignty of God, even the loftiest creatures of all, the awe-inspiring seraphim who dwell in God’s presence (as seen in Isaiah’s vision), are infinitely closer to the tiny insect with its fleeting life than they are to Yahweh. They cover their feet before their Creator because they too are made by him.6

“God, although he maintains a divine council, is not in any way subject to it, but is in fact ultimately sovereign.”

It is also important to understand that God, although he maintains a divine council, is not in any way subject to it, but is in fact ultimately sovereign over both it and the rest of his creation. By employing the important theological concept of secondary causation, we can thus properly understand how 1 Chronicles 21:1 states that Satan incited David to number Israel in a census, and yet 2 Samuel 24:1 claims that it was the Lord who ultimately incited David. Although Satan and other members of the divine council are genuine agents and active in the world, nevertheless, none of their activities is ultimately independent of God’s providence and his divine decree.7

The ‘gods’ Behind Idols

Given this theological foundation, what should we make of the fact that in a number of passages, Satan and other members of the divine council are described as “god(s)”? For example, Satan himself is described as “the god of this world” in 2 Corinthians 4:4, an apparent reference to his temporary domination of fallen mankind by means of blinding them to the “gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” When Hebrews 2:7 quotes from Psalm 8, it appears to be interpreting the occurrence of ’ĕlōhîm in that passage as a reference to the members of the divine council (i.e., angels). This word is ambiguous in Hebrew, since it has a plural form (the -îm suffix indicates plural), yet it usually refers in context to God (singular). Thus, one could translate the verse as follows: “You have made him [man] a little lower than the gods.”

Likewise, Psalm 82, although exegetically challenging, appears to be describing a council of non-human beings as gods: “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” If this interpretation is correct, it seems that these beings had some kind of jurisdiction over the nations (as is also hinted in the passage discussed earlier, Deuteronomy 32:8). They are faulted for judging unjustly (Psalm 82:2) and hence condemned by God in verses 6 and 7: “I said, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.’” Astonishingly, the psalm ends with the promise that God will one day both judge all the nations and inherit them (i.e., redeem them).

It is crucial to observe what Paul’s theology both says and does not say about other gods in the context of idol worship. In his extended discussion of food offerings to idols, beginning in 1 Corinthians 8, Paul does not deny the existence of malevolent spiritual realities behind the physical idols worshiped by the pagan nations. On the one hand, he states that the physical object (the idol) “has no real existence” (1 Corinthians 8:4), something that even the ancients acknowledged. Nevertheless, there is an actual demonic realm behind idol worship, for Paul later warns the Corinthians not to be “participants with demons” like the pagans, who, when they sacrifice, “offer to demons and not to God” (1 Corinthians 10:20). Consequently, Paul is not being sarcastic or speaking hypothetically when he says the following:

Although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth — as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords” — yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:5–6)

The gods behind idols are “gods” for the pagan unbelieving nations, not for Christians. One day, all such “gods” will be judged, and their authority over the nations will be stripped away. Indeed, this process began at the cross and the resurrection of Christ, where God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and them put to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:15).8

New-Covenant Realities

For the believer, everything in the new covenant is new. Not only does he have a new relationship with God, but he has a new relationship with sin, the flesh, and indeed the fallen heavenly beings who presently are in this world. There has been a fundamental shift in allegiances, to the point that Paul boldly declares to the Colossians that God has “delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13–14).

Furthermore, the Gentile nations are now progressively turning to God and becoming part of his eschatological people. This was already promised in the Old Testament prophets and was inaugurated with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is very significant, therefore, in Acts 2, when the disciples begin to speak in the languages of the nations and three thousand are added to their number. Later in Acts, Paul is specifically told that he is being sent to the Gentiles “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18).

As modern Western believers, we should be aware of the supernatural realm that exists around us. Yet just the same, as Christians we must always put these spiritual realities into their proper context in terms of our theology of God. Furthermore, as new-covenant believers, we joyfully recognize that we have been delivered from genuine spiritual darkness and that our gospel witness to the nations is truly a matter of life and death.

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning. If you are driving to work or to school, or walking the dog, welcome back, and thanks for making the podcast part of your routine. We start this week with a question from a listener named Kate who lives in the bustling city of Cape Town: “Pastor John, hello! I appreciate you and your ministry from down here in South Africa, a country with an unemployment rate at 35 percent — a rate often mentioned as the highest in the world. On the ground, navigating beggars is daily life for us.

Here’s a daily scenario. You’re sitting in your car at a stoplight. Someone approaches your window to ask for money or food. You sit facing forward, ignoring them to focus on the traffic light ahead, until you finally drive off. Every time I do this, something doesn’t feel right here, especially with regards to Luke 6:30 — we should give to everyone who asks. But then what about 2 Thessalonians 3:10, a text that calls for diligent work, or else you will not eat? I listened to APJ 80, “How to Handle Panhandlers,” from over nine years ago, but there you didn’t address this second text. And I feel pulled between them. What suggestions would you have to offer me?”

Before I give some specific suggestions for how to put together Jesus’s command to give to everyone who begs from you (Luke 6:30), and Paul’s command that those who are unwilling to work should not eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10), let me lay a little bit of foundation that I think Jesus wants us to hear. And I’m really preaching to myself here, mainly as I’ve, over the years, analyzed my heart in dealing with folks who stand on the corner. I walk by them almost every day. So, she’s not alone in South Africa. Here in the middle of Minneapolis, I deal with this on foot, not just in the car, which it makes it even more poignant, I think.

I think that Jesus’s radical, sometimes unqualified, commands are intended especially — not only, but especially — to sever the nerve of our deep, deep, deep selfishness as human beings. He meant to expose the most fundamental problem with human nature — John Piper’s human nature — namely, our sinful condition that consists essentially in a deep bondage to self-exaltation, self-preservation, worldly self-gratification, all of which more or less conceals a self-asserting resistance to God’s right to tell us what’s good for us and to be for us what’s good for us.

“I think Jesus’s radical commands are intended especially to sever the nerve of our deep selfishness.”

I think Jesus cares more about exposing and healing this disease of our evil self-centeredness than he does about working out all the details of how our healing and liberation from self will express itself in ways that help other people — like the way we deal with panhandlers, or the way we deal with idle busybodies in church who won’t work.

Severing Deep Selfishness

Maybe you can sense what I see if I read the passage that Kate referred to in her question — namely, Luke 6:30. But I’ll do the surrounding verses so we can really feel the force of what Jesus says:

I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. (Luke 6:27–31)

Now that last command is what we call the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And that Golden Rule is really an alternate form of Jesus’s second great commandment in Matthew 22:39, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” I think doing unto others as you want them to do to you means, “Take the measure of your own self-regard, your own self-care, your own self-comfort, and make that the measure of your regard and your care for others.”

Now that’s a devastating command. It is a mortal threat to our own self-exaltation, self-preservation, self-gratification, self-centeredness to take all that deep commitment that we have to our own well-being and make it the measure of our commitment to the well-being of others. That’s simply gloriously astonishing, something nobody can do apart from a miracle of God. I think it’s the same thing Jesus was calling for when he said, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). Being the servant of all is virtually the same as loving others as you love yourself and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

So, I’m saying all of this as a preface to the ethical effort to sort out the details of what love looks like, what liberation from self-centeredness looks like. Because if we don’t come to terms with our own sinful selfishness, we will almost certainly twist the teachings of Jesus and Paul to make them fit into our bondage to self-gratification.

Tough Love in Thessalonica

So, now to Kate’s specific question regarding 2 Thessalonians 3:10. The situation at Thessalonica is that some people were using the nearness of Christ’s coming to justify their unwillingness to go to work and in an ordinary way earn their own living. Instead, they were acting like busybodies and going from house to house and were expecting others to provide the food and the needs that they should be providing for themselves by their own gainful employment. So, Paul says to the church in 2 Thessalonians 3:10–12,

Even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now, such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

So, these are professing Christians. He’s exhorting them “in the Lord Jesus.” And it’s not that they can’t work, like they have a disability, but that they won’t work. They don’t want to. You can see that in the word “not willing to work.” So, Paul is saying that one strategy, one brotherly loving strategy, to pressure these people back to doing what they ought to do — namely, earn their own living — is making it harder on them to depend on the work of others. You might call this a form of tough love.

Inclined to Give

But it would be very careless, I think, to take 2 Thessalonians 3:10 and apply it to every beggar or panhandler or homeless person on the street. We simply do not know why they are there, not without getting involved with them and talking to them. So, I think it would fly right in the face of the intention of the teachings of Jesus to use 2 Thessalonians 3:10 to make us resistant to beggars, assuming that they are lazy — unwilling to work for their own living — when we don’t know. That might be the case, but it might not be. We just don’t know.

“When Jesus says, ‘Give to everyone who begs from you,’ I think he means that that is our default inclination.”

When Jesus says, “Give to everyone who begs from you,” I think he means that that is our default inclination when we are set free from our bondage to self. That’s our default inclination. That is our declaration of freedom from bondage to self and this world. That’s our declaration of desire to be gracious, even to the undeserving. “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who abuse you,” and so on.

To be sure, 2 Thessalonians 3:10 cautions us that there are situations in which giving to the one who asks would do more harm than good. And I think Jesus already implied that when he said earlier in that paragraph, “Do good to those who hate you.” That means we need to think seriously about what is good for people. And when he said, “As you wish that others would do to you,” you would want people to do what’s really good for you, what helps.

What Might Help Most?

So I encourage all of us to do a little bit of research, a little bit of homework of what would be really most helpful to people on the street, all things considered. It’s not an easy question. And since we’re so prone towards selfishness, I think we should err on the side of being taken advantage of rather than erring on the side of shrewdly protecting our wallet and our ego.

At the last judgment — I’ve thought about this many times — I think Jesus will be much more prone to commend lavish generosity to the undeserving than he will be to commend how shrewd we were in keeping for ourselves our few dollars rather than giving them away. I just can’t imagine Jesus saying, “Wow, you were especially good at being shrewd at not being taken advantage of.” I don’t hear anything like that in Jesus’s teachings.

So, let’s know our own hearts, let’s confess the sin of selfishness, let’s pray for the compassion of Jesus and the far-seeing wisdom of Jesus, and let’s do our homework, a little bit of research to find out how our lives as a whole can bring blessing into people’s lives, especially eternal blessing.

Her time had come, unexpectedly. The morning through the lattice shone with a bright and soft melancholy. In her arms, her second son. The fruit of the night’s long and anguished labor. Gentle tears fall; the child has her eyes.

A former life pressed in upon her. Leah, her sister, Leah. The feud between them over Jacob — for his love and for his offspring — had availed neither. So much of her married life, she now realized, glowed with envy — she wanted more than Jacob’s heart and eye. She wanted his heirs (Genesis 30:1). She remembered her desperate cry to her husband, a lifetime ago now, “Give me children, or I shall die!”

Even at the birth of her first son, Rachel already began to look for another: “And she called his name Joseph [literally, “May he add”], saying ‘May the Lord add to me another son!’” And now, she held him — for the first and last time. The midwife aimed to comfort her with the fulfillment, “Do not fear, for you have another son” — consolation to a dying mother.

How many such golden mornings would this son grow to know without her? How many grandchildren would her wilting arms never hold? As her soul made ready for its unwilling exodus, tears showered the plant just sprouted. She sighs a name, “Ben-oni, son of my sorrow.”

Jacob sat beside his great love, grief gripping him by the throat, yet managing to say, “He shall be called, ‘Benjamin, son of my right hand.’” Son of my right hand, as though to say, “As you depart, my Rachel, my dove, this son — this life you brought forth from death — shall be in favor at my side. He shall be closer to me than a shadow; as close as your memory. This, the last token between us on earth, I will cherish.”

And with that, Rachel departed from the world and was buried on the way to Bethlehem.

A Ghost, Crying

It moves the soul to imagine a mother saying hello and goodbye to her child in the same moment. We can see her with our imagination, gazing around longingly at loved ones, her eyes resting upon her son with a look to bring water from the hardest heart. Ben-oni, Ben-oni.

And it moves us to hear the other two mentions of this mother’s tears in Scripture. As the blood of Abel continues to speak, Rachel too continues to cry.

In the first incident, Israel has fallen bloodily to Babylon. Amid the stunning note of hope given in Jeremiah 31, we hear her:

Thus says the Lord,“A voice is heard in Ramah,     lamentation and bitter weeping.Rachel is weeping for her children;     she refuses to be comforted for her children,     because they are no more.” (Jeremiah 31:15)

Near the place of Rachel’s tomb, her voice cries out at the devastation of Benjamin and the other Israelite tribes. The Lord speaks poetically, resurrecting Rachel, as it were, to picture her as an Israelite mother weeping without remedy for her slain and exiled children.

In response, Yahweh comforts her, “There is hope for your future, and your children shall come back to their own country.” He will relent of his judgment, and depicts himself as a Father to Israel, saying, “Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? . . . I will surely have mercy on him” (Jeremiah 31:16–20). In other words, he shall be called “Benjamin” — a son at my right hand.

She Refuses to Be Comforted

Hundreds of years later, her consolation is again disturbed.

Herod has done the unthinkable. Furious at the wise men for not divulging the location of baby Jesus, “he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under” (Matthew 2:16). The dragon devoured many to ravage the one.

Matthew writes of the infanticide,

Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:
“A voice was heard in Ramah,     weeping and loud lamentation,Rachel weeping for her children;     she refused to be comforted,     because they are no more.” (Matthew 2:17–18)

“She weeps, and refuses to be comforted, because they are no more.”

As the brutes went door to door, Rachel again raised her anguished cry. These tears did not signal exile, but extermination. She does not die with her healthy child in her arms — bequeathing her son with a hope and a future — she watches, as baby boy after baby boy is ripped from his mother’s arms and done away with. She weeps, and refuses to be comforted, because they are no more.

Do We Weep with Her?

Because they are no more.

There is a discomforting calm in these words: The deed is done; the violence spent. The water is again calm over the sunken ship. The dreadful stillness; an unholy hush. Little giggles, gone. Creaking floors cease playing the music of pattering footsteps. They are no more.

“Because they are no more.”

“If a pitiless culture will not mourn for the missing, she will. If we live too busy to mind the brutality, she isn’t.”

What a word to echo through the empty corridors of the world today — and in the United States alone, a child misplaced every minute. Though not ancient Israel, I hear Rachel, from a forgotten corner of the world, weeping. If a pitiless society will not mourn for the missing, she will. If we live too busy to mind the brutality, she isn’t.

Day after day, she mourns as a mother bereft of more children. As one after another is stolen from behind fortress walls, she begets tears without number. Final punctuations fall; biographies end. Nothing left to read, nothing more to say. Towns and cities and even nations full of people — gone — “Ben-oni.”

She looks out from the lattice, daylight rests upon her with a bright and terrible melancholy. How many have never lived to see this dawn? Will we not weep with her — because they are no more?

On Pentecost Sunday 1862, as Western eyes watched civil war rip through America, an event just as momentous unfolded half a world away, hidden from every headline. Some five thousand men and women, many of them former cannibals, gathered on a South Pacific island to worship Jesus Christ.

George Tupou I, the first Christian king of Tonga, had assembled his citizens as part of a ceremony commemorating a new code of laws. And there, “under the spreading branches of the banyan trees,” writes George John Stevenson, with the king surrounded by “old chiefs and warriors who had shared with him the dangers and fortunes of many a battle,” five thousand voices sang,

Jesus shall reign where e’re the sunDoes his successive journeys run;His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

For centuries, the sun had run from east to west, the moon had waxed and waned, over a Tonga without Christ. His gospel had not yet reached Tonga’s shores; his kingdom had not yet touched Tongan hearts. But now, a new nation rose to sing his reign.

First Missionary Hymn

Although the words were not in the Tongans’ mother tongue (the song having been taught to them by Methodist missionaries), few lyrics could have described the situation in Tonga more fittingly. For by 1862, the hymn told their history.

“Christ’s Kingdom Among the Gentiles” — or, more commonly today, “Jesus Shall Reign” — has been labeled by some “the first missionary hymn.” Almost a century before the modern missionary movement, before William Carey sailed to India, and Adoniram Judson to Burma, and Hudson Taylor to China, and Methodist missionaries to Tonga, the English minister Isaac Watts (1674–1748) penned a hymn of Christ’s coming reign: a reign that would reach islands far beyond Britain and gather tongues far different from English.

To look out over unreached lands and sing “Jesus shall reign” is always a cry of faith, but Watts needed far more faith than we do today. The mustard seed of the kingdom had grown large by 1719 (when Watts published the hymn), but its branches had not yet spread far beyond the Western world (Matthew 13:31–32). It was not the kind of tree we see today, sheltering multitudes of peoples far south and east of Europe and North America.

Nevertheless, Watts knew his Bible — and in particular, he knew Psalm 72, of which “Jesus Shall Reign” is a Christian paraphrase. And so, by faith he sang of the day when “the whole earth [would] be filled with his glory” (Psalm 72:19).

Song in the South Seas

Two themes dominate the hymn the Tongans sang 160 Pentecosts ago: the universal reach of Jesus’s reign, and the unrivaled blessings of that reign. The risen Christ is on the move, undeterred until his blessed foot treads every coastland and continent, every inland and island, from Israel to England to Tonga. The Tongans sang because Christ’s reign had reached even them, and because his was the kind of reign to make one sing.

Universal Reach

The first stanza of Watts’s hymn, quoted above, finds its inspiration from words like these:

May he have dominion from sea to sea,     and from the River to the ends of the earth! . . .May his name endure forever,     his fame continue as long as the sun! (Psalm 72:8, 17)

“A boundaryless, timeless kingdom calls for an omnipotent, eternal King.”

Psalm 72 comes from Solomon’s hand, written in the first place as a tribute to “the royal son” (Psalm 72:1). Clearly, however, the psalm speaks of a king greater than Solomon, even at the height of his strength: this royal Son’s kingdom is boundaryless (“to the ends of the earth”) and timeless (“endure forever”). And a boundaryless, timeless kingdom calls for an omnipotent, eternal King.

Far before 1862, then, God had planned to give Tonga to his Son. And so, Solomon, inspired by the Spirit, sang of the day when “the kings . . . of the coastlands [would] render him tribute” (Psalm 72:10), captured in the second verse of Watts’s hymn:

Behold the islands with their kings,And Europe her best tribute brings;From North to South the Princes meetTo pay their homage at his feet.

On Tonga, one more island and one more king rendered tribute to Jesus. One more southern coastland paid homage at his feet. One more prince found his place in ancient prophecy, and bowed before the God who had pursued him.

Unrivaled Blessings

Conquered peoples seldom sing the reign of their new king — at least not willingly and gladly. Yet here is where Christ’s kingship differs so markedly from “the kings of the Gentiles” (Luke 22:25), for he conquers in order to bless. As Watts puts it,

Blessings abound where e’re he reigns,The prisoner leaps to lose his chains,The weary find eternal rest,And all the sons of want are blest.

Wherever King Jesus plants his scepter, flowers bloom in fields of thorns, prisoners run for release, and the weariest of all finally rest. He is, Solomon says, “like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth!” (Psalm 72:6). And therefore, “May people be blessed in him, all nations call him blessed!” (Psalm 72:17). In 1862, the Tongans were, and did.

Some today may cringe at the claim that a nation like Tonga needs Jesus — indeed, is lost without him. The idea may sound like it belongs to the Age of Imperialism. But those who have felt sin’s bone-bruising chains, and the black cell of guilt, and the impossibility of escape — and have heard, at last, the King’s “come forth!” — cannot cringe. Rather, we sing.

Some of the Tongans, remember, had eaten humans. But now, those very mouths were praising the risen Christ. We may be more civilized sinners, but we have similar stories to tell, don’t we? The hands that once flew in rage now gently rise in praise. The feet that once fled to the far country now carry us to worship. The minds that once invented evil now weave good works. The eyes that once feasted on all that’s forbidden now gladly gaze at Christ.

“Whatever the culture or background, Jesus reigns to bless.”

Whatever the culture or background, Jesus reigns to bless — to redeem all the good, remove all the bad, and scatter gifts with open hands.

He Shall Reign

On Pentecost 1862, while the newspapers reported the progress of war, God was quietly advancing his kingdom among the coastlands. The tree from the mustard seed sprouted a new branch; the leaven of the kingdom rose a little higher. And so, on Pentecost 2022, we might reasonably wonder what marvels God is working outside the day’s headlines. Perhaps this morning, a nation on some far distant island began to sing his reign.

Regardless, we can join Watts, King George, and the five thousand Tongans to say it shall be. “Jesus Shall Reign” is not a prayer, but a declaration, and rightly so. For the day is coming soon when the psalm and the hymn will find their fulfillment, when the flag of the slain Lamb will wave on every hill, and every tongue will hail the reign of Christ the blessed Lord.

One of my favorite details about Easter Sunday, and Jesus’s resurrection body, is his scars. The victory of Easter is so great, the triumph of the risen Christ over sin and death is so resounding, that we might be prone to overlook, or quickly forget, an unexpected detail like this.

When Jesus first appeared to his disciples, “they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit” (Luke 24:37). So Jesus says to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:38–39). Then Luke comments, “And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet” — meaning, he showed them his scars (Luke 24:40).

In the Gospel of John, when Jesus finally appears to doubting Thomas after eight long days, he says to him, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe” (John 20:27).

That Jesus’s resurrected body would still show evidence of his wounds, that the scars of crucifixion could still be seen and touched, was both a confirmation and a surprise. The confirmation was that this was in fact him — and him risen. The same body that was killed on the cross rose from the grave. He was not a spirit or ghost. He was risen, fully alive, now in glorified humanity.

“Jesus’s scars are marks of his love. His scars tell the good news that he did not die for his own sins but for ours.”

The surprise is that we might expect a resurrected body not to have scars. That might seem like a defect. But it is not a defect. It is a feature. Because these scars, these rich wounds, are marks of his love. These scars tell the good news that he did not die for his own sins, but for ours. His wounds are invitations to sinners and assurances to his saints. His scars preach good news. They are marks of Easter glory, the very glory that makes the horrors of his death into what we now call “Good Friday.”

The Gospel in All Caps

And so on Easter Sunday, we come to the end of Galatians, and one of the last things Paul writes with his own hand is this: “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17). Like Jesus, Paul also had gospel scars — scars which pointed not to his own work, but to Jesus’s work.

Just as sinners had struck and killed the Son of God, so too sinners had struck and scarred his messenger. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul mentions some of what he has suffered for the sake of Christ: “. . . countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned” (2 Corinthians 11:23–25). Paul’s scars, “the marks of Jesus” he received from preaching the resurrection of Christ, are his final argument in Galatians. Before he closes in Galatians 6:18 with, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen,” he puts the final period in place with his own life — with what he has been willing to suffer in order to preach and defend the meaning of Good Friday and the news of Easter Sunday.

But not only is Paul’s final argument “the marks of Jesus” that he carries in his own body, but in this last section, he takes up the pen himself, relieving the secretary to whom he has dictated the rest of the letter. And so he says in Galatians 6:11, “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.”

This is Paul’s way — here at the end, with so much on the line in Galatians — of shifting into bold font. This is the apostle Paul in all caps. So, these precious five sentences of Galatians 6:12–17 that will follow are direct and blood-earnest, with a power that is very fitting for Easter Sunday. And what we see is that this last flourish of Paul’s pen turns on the reality of boasting. Let’s look at these verses in that light, with Easter eyes, in three steps.

1. Humans are born to boast.

We are born boasters. You are a born boaster — in two senses. The first sense is that we are boasters by creation. God designed us, before sin entered in, with the capacity to boast. Indeed, he designed us with the calling to boast. And what I mean by boasting is rejoicing out loud in words.

God made humans not only to think and do, but to feel and to speak. He gave us hearts, and he gave us mouths. He created us in his image, meaning he created us to image him in this world, to represent him and remind others of him — both fellow humans and the watching angels.

And he not only gave us the ability to think and consider, but also to feel. He not only gave us bodies to move and work and do, but tongues to speak, giving meaning to our works with words. In other words, God made us to boast in him — that is, to not only know him with our minds, but rejoice in him in our hearts, and to not only live in obedience to him, but speak words out of our hearts that point others to him. God made us to boast in him.

Because of Sin

And as we know all too well, though, there is a second sense in which we are born to boast. We are born into sin, and so our natural inclination to boast often becomes sinful boasting. Instead of rejoicing out loud about God, we rejoice out loud about ourselves in all the various and complex forms this takes. We all know this. We all have lived this. And of course, we’re often far quicker to recognize it in others than in ourselves.

As a youth baseball coach, let me tell you that we don’t have to teach kids to boast. Rather, we try to help them not indulge their instinct to boast in the heat of the game. We say things like, “Let your play do the talking.”

What about your own soul? What are your boasts? What aspects of life — whether manifest gifts from God or seeming abilities and accomplishments — do you rejoice in most and feel most drawn to express in words? What are you so regularly excited about that you can’t help but talk about? What qualities, possessions, abilities, achievements, or relational connections make you look good when others hear about them?

“The question isn’t whether we will boast, but in what and in whom.”

When Paul takes up the pen for himself in Galatians 6:11, he puts boasting at the heart of his last push toward the Galatians. They, as well as the false teachers trying to influence them, and Paul himself, are all born boasters. We are born boasters. The question isn’t whether we will boast, but in what and in whom we will boast.

How Will You Boast?

First, Paul turns to what not to boast in:

It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. (Galatians 6:12–13)

I think this is the most direct and succinct summary of what motivates the troublemakers in Galatia. They are putting on a show to appease unbelieving Jews. They are play-acting. They themselves do not keep the whole Jewish law. They know they can’t, and they don’t want to, besides.

But what they do want to do is avoid persecution. This new movement of Christians, claiming that Jesus is the long-awaited Christ, is troubling Jewish leaders. And now the movement is spreading to Gentiles. Non-Christian Jews want to snuff this out. They begin persecuting Christians — like Paul himself had done, before the risen Christ appeared to him and turned his life upside down.

And so the false teachers are trying to avoid persecution. They want to appease non-Christian Jews by boasting to them that Gentile converts to Christ are coming under the Jewish law. The word here for “make a good showing” is literally “have a good face.” The false teachers themselves don’t keep the law, but they are trying to get Gentile Christians to receive circumcision so they can boast in their flesh and “have a good face” to avoid persecution.

And Paul says that however well-intentioned or naïve this may be, it is dead wrong, and it compromises the very heart of the Christian message that promises Jesus is enough for right standing with God.

So, we are born boasters — by God’s design, and also in our sin. And the false teachers, to save their own flesh (from persecution) want to be able to boast in the flesh (from circumcision) of these Gentile Christians in Galatia.

2. Jesus turns boasting upside down.

Second, Paul contrasts their sinful boast with his own holy boast, which he wants the Galatians, and us, to join him in. This is how he wants us to rejoice in words.

Paul does not say that becoming a Christian banishes all boasting. We still boast. Oh, do we! Worship is boasting. Preaching is boasting. Sharing the gospel is a holy and humble kind of boasting — rejoicing in words. But Christian boasting is not like the natural, sinful boasting into which we’re born. It is not boasting in the flesh. It is not boasting in outward appearance. It is not boasting in our own strength.

Christian boasting is boasting turned upside down because of the worth and beauty and power of Jesus Christ. Look at Galatians 6:14, which says: “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” So Paul does boast. But he boasts in the cross, of all things. The cross.

Christ on the Cross

Today, it’s easy for us to be all too familiar with the cross. We see them on steeples. We wear them on necklaces. We sing about the cross. And it’s easy to forget or to overlook what the cross meant in the first century.

Some might be familiar with the hymn “Old Rugged Cross,” which calls the cross “an emblem of suffering and shame.” The cross was horrific. It was reserved for the worst of rebels against the Roman empire, and it was designed to not only make death literally excruciating and lengthy, but also utterly shameful.

And Paul says, “May I never boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

What a turn, that the very thing — a crucified Messiah — that seemed so shameful, such a stumbling block to Jews, and such folly to Gentiles, would be not only a critical truth for Christians, but central. We talk about the cross every Sunday. We remember it at the Lord’s Table. We depict it in baptism. The cross — the public execution of the Son of God — is not just a barrier to overcome to embrace the Christian faith, but it is at the very heart of our faith. We celebrate it, and we draw attention to it. We boast in it.

Why is that? Because the wounds Jesus received at the cross were not for his own sins, but for ours. Isaiah 53:5 says,

He was pierced for our transgressions;     he was crushed for our iniquities;upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,     and with his wounds we are healed.

The eternal Son of God took on human flesh and blood and went to that rugged, offensive, horrific, shamefully public cross, as the spotless Lamb, to die for our sins. For our rebellion, for our countless sinful boasts in our own flesh, we were the ones who deserved to spill our own blood in violent death and be eternally separated from God.

But the wonder of Christianity, the heart of our faith, the very good news which we call “the gospel,” is that Jesus went to the cross for us — for all those who would take Paul’s invitation to turn our boasting upside down and rejoice in words, “Jesus is Lord.”

Our Suffering and Weakness

We see elsewhere in Paul how Jesus turns our boasting upside down. Instead of boasting in comfort and ease in this life, Paul says in Romans 5:3, “We boast in our sufferings.” If God works the greatest good through the greatest evil — that is, the crucifixion of the Son of God — then our sufferings in this life are turned upside down. We grieve them, yet even as we do, we rejoice in what God is doing in and through them.

And instead of boasting in our own strengths and abilities, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11:30, “I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” And in 2 Corinthians 12:9 he says, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Jesus turns our boasting upside down. Instead of boasting in our comforts, we boast in our sufferings. Instead of boasting in our strengths, we boast in our weaknesses. Instead of boasting in natural human conceptions of glory and power, just like the world, we boast in the offense of the cross.

Cross-Conscious Boasting

But it’s Easter Sunday. What about the resurrection? When Paul says in Galatians 6:14, “May I never boast unless in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” how does Easter fit? If all Christian boasting is a boasting in and under the banner of the cross, what do we make of our Easter boast that he is risen?

The answer is that, yes, we boast in the resurrection, but it is a certain kind of boasting. It is a humbled boast. It is a God-magnifying boast. It is a Christ-treasuring boast. It is a cross-conscious boast. It is a boast in the surpassing power of God uniquely on display in and through human weakness, and suffering, and even death. It is the kind of boasting that comes on the other side of the grave, on the other side of crucifixion, on the other side of Christ turning the world, and us, upside down.

“We boast in the cross because the one who died there for our sins rose again Sunday morning to be our living Lord.”

And not only is the Easter boast permissible; it is essential. Paul’s boasting in the cross implies the Easter boast. If there is no Easter boast, there is no boasting in the cross. If Jesus stays dead, there is no glory in his cross. We boast in the cross, because the one who died there for our sins rose again Sunday morning to be our living, breathing, loving, reigning Lord. And our boasting in the resurrection is a certain kind of boasting because it is also a boasting in the cross.

3. Christians boast in the resurrection too.

Let’s see the resurrection for ourselves in Galatians 6:15–16, which begin with the word for and explain what Paul has just said Galatians 6:14. Galatians 6:15–16 says, “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” The first and most obvious link to resurrection is “new creation.” New creation points to God’s action and initiative and power, not ours.

That’s the contrast between circumcision and new creation. In this context, circumcision would be an action the Galatians would take in an effort to make sure they’re in right standing with God. And remarkably, Paul says uncircumcision doesn’t count either. Neither taking that step in the flesh, or refusing to take that step, wins you God’s acceptance. You cannot, in your flesh, earn God’s full and final favor.

What counts is what he does. His work in Christ. His new creation. And the beginning of this new creation is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Easter Sunday is the great first and decisive initiative, the great burst of divine power that launches a new creation, beginning with Christ then coming to us, as God makes us new creatures in Christ, through faith, and then culminating someday with a new heavens and new earth. So “new creation” is the first glimpse of Easter.

Crucified with Christ

The second link to resurrection is the connection to Galatians 2:20, a connection which appears at the end of Galatians 6:14. Here Paul says that by the cross “the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” The other place in this letter where Paul talks about being crucified with Christ is Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Galatians 6:14 only mentions crucifixion, but what Galatians 2:20 makes plain is that crucifixion with Christ by faith means resurrection with him. Just as Christ was crucified and raised, so Paul’s old self — our old self — was crucified with Christ by faith, and we too have been raised to new life. We now live with a new heart, a new center, a new ultimate allegiance; we are new creatures, indwelt by God’s Spirit, even as we continue to battle and make headway against remaining sin.

And this reality of being a “new creation” in Christ is both personal and individual, as well as corporate. Not only did Christ very personally “love me and give himself for me” at the cross, but he loved us, his church, and made us a people together in him.

Galatians 6:16 says that “all who walk by this rule” — that is, all who own God’s work and power in making them new creatures — are God’s true people. He calls them “the Israel of God.” This is the church, the true Israel. “The Jerusalem above,” as he says in Galatians 4:36. Or like he says in Philippians 3:3, “We are the [true] circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and [boast] in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”

There is a twist of irony here in response to the false teachers. Do you want to be God’s people? Do you want to be in “the Israel of God,” in contrast to the Israel of the flesh? Then leave behind the life of flesh, circumcision, and law, and live instead according to the Spirit and faith and love, as those who have been loved by God in Christ.

Scarred for Christ

Finally, we end with one last Easter connection to the resurrection: “the marks of Jesus.” Paul comes to the end of Galatians, takes the pen in his own hand to write Galatians 6:11–16, and then his one last word, before the concluding benediction, is one final boast. And it is a boast in the cross: “From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17).

In other words, Paul is saying, “Not only do I answer with this letter, but I answer with my life. My skin is scarred — from being beaten, and lashed, and stoned — because I have stood by this gospel with my own life.”

He is saying, “Rather than trying to tweak the message to avoid persecution, as the false teachers are doing, I have not been deterred by threats. Rather than seeking, under pressure, to make marks in other people’s flesh and boast in a head count of circumcisions, marks have been made in my flesh as I have preached and defended the truth that Jesus’s cross and resurrection, embraced by faith alone, are enough to get and keep us right with God.”

“And so I bear on my own body,” Paul says, “as faint echoes and pointers, the very ‘marks of Jesus’ that he bears on his resurrection body — marks that are no defect, but shine with glory.” Paul boasts in the cross and the resurrection. And so we boast, The Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed.

Commune with the Living Christ

As we come to the Lord’s Table on this Easter Sunday, we celebrate that the Jesus whom we remember here is alive. His resurrection not only makes good on God’s word, and not only vindicates his sinless life, and not only confirms that his cross-work was effective to cover our sins, and not only gives us access to that salvation by union with him, but the resurrection means he is alive, right now, in glorified humanity, scars and all, at God’s right hand, to know and enjoy forever.

We call this “Communion” not only because we commune with each other as we come together to his Table, but first and foremost because we commune with him — the risen, living Christ. As we eat in faith, we receive him afresh, by his Spirit, and commune with our risen, living Lord.

Waiting for the Lord.Hoping in his word.Watching for the morning.

Those phrases from Psalm 130 still bring me to tears. They describe how I lived for years, after my once-comfortable life dissolved in front of me. I waited, hoped, and watched for life to be good again.

I wanted the wait to be over quickly so my life could return to normal and I could move on. But those years taught me that in God’s hands, waiting is not a meaningless pause, an empty space to be rushed past. No, waiting has a purpose, much deeper and more refining than I ever would have imagined.

Songs That Taught Me Stillness

The psalms showed me how to wait. In my desperate longing, I read them over and over and over again. They gave me words when I had none. They gave me hope when hope was gone. They taught my heart how to trust God even in my darkest hours.

The psalms named the ache in my waiting and gave me words I could offer to God. Through the psalms, I learned that waiting is a holy exercise, one that requires my full attention. I learned stillness and silence, hope, patience, and trust.

Stillness (Psalm 37:7) and silence (Psalm 62:5) let me hear from God, without the noise of technology and the chatter of people vying for my attention. God’s still small voice spoke to my inner being when I intentionally stopped and listened. I wanted to be busy while I waited, to distract myself from the pain of the present empty moment and my overwhelming longings, but God invited me to bring those longings to him instead. Instead of busyness, I found my rest in him. Instead of distraction, my eyes and ears fixed on him.

Waiting patiently for the Lord (Psalm 40:1) is a common theme in the psalms. In those years of waiting, I was often impatient, ready to move on and move past my pain. If impatience is being discontent with the present moment, then patience is embracing the present and letting God meet me in it. I can enter into a holy experience with God in the deepest pain as I breathe in and out his presence. When all I had to hold onto was his presence and his promises, I discovered that he was and is more than enough.

God Works in Our Waiting

The psalms also showed me what God was doing in my waiting. They pointed me to the goodness and grace of God as the psalmists put their hope in him even when everything was falling apart. Sometimes I’ve received what I was waiting for, and the psalms have taught me to look back with gratitude for God’s kindness. Other times, God has not given me what I asked for, and the psalms have taught me to be equally, if not more, grateful for how God met me and transformed me.

At times, I have mistakenly assumed that nothing is happening in my waiting. Yet God works in our waiting, answering both spoken and unspoken requests, molding us into his likeness. He is preparing us for his work and teaching us his ways.

“God works in our waiting, answering both spoken and unspoken requests, molding us into his likeness.”

In our waiting, God is growing our roots. I once transplanted a beloved camellia bush only to put it in a spot with too much sun. It was quickly scorched by the heat of summer. I cut the bare twigs down in the fall, convinced the plant was dead. But over the winter, its roots expanded; what we thought was dead was teeming with life about to emerge. In the spring, green leaves sprouted at the base and our bush came back to life.

That’s a picture of what happens in our waiting. Life looks dormant on the surface, but God is strengthening and expanding our root system to tap into his streams of living water. When we turn to God, we become stronger and more confident in God because of our wait.

More Than the Morning

Finally, the psalms taught me what I was waiting for. I was not waiting for a particular outcome, though I initially thought so. I was waiting for God himself. At first, I was waiting for clarity or direction, the answer to my questions and an outcome for which I had long prayed. But just as Job discovered, the answers to my deepest questions were found in the person and character of God himself.

While we wait, we are not just biding our time, hoping that life will eventually change. We’re putting our hope in the one who will never disappoint. We wait for the Lord, hope in his word, and watch for the morning.

I learned so much about God through seemingly endless dark years as I watched for the morning. Psalm 30:5 says, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning,” but my weeping lasted more than a night, more than a thousand nights, before I saw the night slowly give way to dawn.

At first, all I wanted were glimmers of light indicating my prayers were answered and the wait was over. I was waiting for the outcome I wanted, or at least for an indication of where life was headed. Was life going to get better, or would it continue to deteriorate? Would I get what I’d earnestly prayed for, or would God’s answer be no? I wanted to know which outcome to put my hope in.

That’s when I learned that my hope wasn’t in an outcome. It was in God alone. I needed to trust in the goodness of God and lean into him as I waited. I wasn’t watching and waiting for the morning; I was watching and waiting for God.

As Surely as the Dawn

That realization brought profound change in me. The night was still pitch black as I learned to wait for God more watchfully, more attentively, more expectantly than watchmen wait for the morning (Psalm 130:6). Before sunrise, watchmen see shadows dimly in the receding darkness that become clearer and clearer as the night turns into day. They are looking closely, attentive to the details. And they have no doubt about the outcome.

“Can we wait for God and be satisfied in him alone without insisting on the outcome we want?”

All the psalms echo this earth-shifting revelation. We are waiting for the Lord. For God alone, our soul waits in silence. We wait patiently for the Lord. What we wait for is certain. As Hosea 6:3 says, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”

So as we wait, we can ask ourselves:

Can we be still and know that he is God when everything in us wants to fix the situation?
Can we embrace the present moment, with its suffering and sorrow, its pain and imperfections, or are we just waiting for our problems to disappear?
Can we live with uncertainty, trusting that God is doing something in what appears to be an empty silence?
Can we wait for God and be satisfied in him alone without insisting on the outcome we want?

The psalms are songs of hope. Not hope that our situation will change immediately or even in this life. But hope in the God who makes all things new, who cares fiercely and tenderly for us, and has all of eternity to show us what he did in our waiting. Our hope will never disappoint because it is not in an outcome but in the living God. Our hope is in him (Psalm 39:7) and from him (Psalm 62:5), and we wait patiently for him (Psalm 37:7), more than watchmen wait for the morning.

He will always come to us. As surely as the dawn.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15349662/joy-in-affliction-validates-election

Your home may be someone’s hallway out of hell. There’s a spiritual power that pulses through the floors and walls and furniture of a Christian home — a strong, even overpowering aroma, a wild and compelling story unfolding for anyone who comes close enough to hear. Beneath the dirty clothes, behind the unwashed dishes, just below the dusty surfaces, a glory hums and unsettles and woos. A 1,500-square-foot sermon.

When God saves us, he takes our ordinary homes and renovates them with purpose, love, and power. The place may have lain spiritually dormant for years, even decades — utterly dark and cold — but then a voice suddenly calls, “Let there be light.” The walls, the appliances, the paint colors might all look the same, but the home soon becomes almost unrecognizable. A flag has been planted, an address transfigured. And within these four walls, eternities are altered.

This phenomenon is the call and wonder of Christian hospitality.

Humanity and Home

Home has always been a vital part of being human. When God made man, he “planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Genesis 2:8). In other words, he gave the man a home.

And at the end of time, how will humans cross over into a new and renewed history? “Behold, the dwelling place of God” — his home — “is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3). The human story begins and ends in homes. We’re all born into a home, and we all live to find home. It’s no wonder, then, that so many find healing, forgiveness, redemption, and true life in a normal house filled with faith.

“Your home may become someone’s hallway out of hell.”

Rosaria Butterfield has captured such hospitality as well as anyone I know. “Radically ordinary hospitality is this: using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers neighbors, and neighbors family of God” (The Gospel Comes with a House Key, 31). Have you ever thought about your home, your neighborhood, your schedule that way? Have you imagined your home as a hallway out of darkness and into Christ?

Hospitality to the Church

Effective hospitality to the lost, at least in Scripture, often begins with effective hospitality to the church. Much of what the New Testament has to say about hospitality is, first and foremost, about life together in the family of God — how well we welcome one another into our hearts and households (Romans 12:13). “Welcome one another,” the apostle Paul writes, “as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Romans 15:7). Those who have been invited into heaven become people who love to open their front doors, especially to others who have already been welcomed home by God.

That the apostle needs to give the command, though, suggests that our welcoming, even within the church, won’t always feel warm and cozy. There are obstacles to hospitality, lots of them. Those obstacles are the context of Paul’s command to “welcome one another”: “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves” (Romans 15:1). Open homes invite the weak and often failing — the kinds of weaknesses that will inconvenience us, the kinds of failings that will disappoint and wound us. Faithful, consistent welcoming of one another will mean faithful, consistent bearing with one another.

“Those who have been invited into heaven become people who love to open their front doors.”

This patient and resilient love is actually the special ingredient in the recipe. It’s what makes ordinary Christian hospitality extraordinary — why the divine drama of the gospel seeps through everyday interactions and simple meals. Godless people don’t bear with one another, not for long. They get angry. They hold grudges. They grumble. Until God brings them home, and then makes their homes into a home for others.

In a world bereft of Christian hospitality and crowded with grumbling, Peter encourages the church, “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:9). Surprise your neighbors by regularly opening up your home, despite the costs that come with open doors. And then confound them by bearing those costs, again and again, without complaining. They’ve likely never met someone who rejoices to spend and be spent like this, who welcomes the discomforts of hospitality with a warm smile (and a fresh pot of coffee).

Front Door of Escape

This kind of hospitality within the church bears lots of good fruit, but one often overlooked is in the war against temptation. Butterfield presses on the sin-defying power of an open front door:

Consider with me the tension of 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” This passage speaks to the intensity, the loneliness, and the danger of temptation. . . . Have you ever thought that you, your house, and your time are not your own but rather God’s ordained way of escape for someone? (109–10)

Ordinary hospitality undercuts Satan and his schemes in a hundred ways and more. Sin is horribly deceitful, and all the more so when we’re distant or disconnected from one another. A brief greeting in passing on Sunday probably isn’t penetrating through those lies. However, just an hour in your home might be enough to convince a brother or sister to say no (and keeping saying no) to sin.

Another conversation at your table or on your couch might be the spiritual escape route someone desperately needs.

Hospitality to the Dead

As we welcome one another within the church, the world will be drawn to this unworldly love. It’s happened since the first doors opened:

Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:46–47)

The kind of community that practices hospitably is irresistible. Even just reading about the early church, and imagining what it was like, makes me want to join them — day-by-day friendship, familiar meals shared and enjoyed, prayers asked and answered, spontaneous singing, and sweetest of all, real people meeting and following Jesus for the first time. Strangers became neighbors, and neighbors became family, all because someone opened the front door.

As we begin to see our homes through God’s eyes and loosen our grips on our schedules, our budgets, and our possessions, we might begin to think of our homes as spiritual hallways — for fellow believers, out of sin and into deeper freedom and joy — and for not-yet believers, out of hell and into life.

Perhaps the word that finally draws someone out of sin, shame, and eternal destruction would simply be “Welcome.”

Audio Transcript

Well, if you’ve read and studied the Gospels, you notice that in the life of Christ there’s not a lot of detail about temple practices — in particular, animal sacrifices. We know that Jesus, as a small child, was presented at the temple with an offering of turtledoves or pigeons (that’s told to us in Luke 2:24). This was the offering of a poor mother, in lieu of a lamb sacrifice (as permitted in Leviticus 12:8). But this is a pretty rare connection between Christ’s life and temple sacrifices. In fact, later in his ministry, Jesus will forgive sin all by himself, bypassing the whole Jewish sacrificial system altogether. And that leads to a question from Karen, a listener to the podcast who wants to know why.

Here’s her email: “Hello, Pastor John, my name is Karen, and I live in Germany. Thank you for this podcast. My question concerns the act of forgiveness mentioned in the Bible. I have learned that without blood there is no forgiveness. Hence the sacrifices in the Old Testament and the dying of Jesus in the New Testament. I understand that. But what I don’t understand is the period between the two. When Jesus walked on earth, he often addressed people by simply telling them that their sins were forgiven. He didn’t prescribe an offering in the temple. And he had not shed his own blood yet. So how was that possible, under the assumption that blood is still needed for forgiveness?”

This may sound like a question with limited application or a question of interest to only a tiny number of Christians. But I want to show that it touches on the issue that is at the heart of Christianity. Every Christian needs to be aware of it for our own stability and courage and joy. So, hang on.

Forgiveness Requires Blood

The question starts with a biblical assumption from Hebrews 9:22, which says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” That’s what it says. So God instituted in the Old Testament the way, the plan, that there would be animal sacrifices, and that sinners who looked to God and, by faith, identified with this killed animal would be forgiven for their sins. The death of the animal would be counted, so to speak, as the punishment for their sin.

For example, in Leviticus 4:15, if the people as a whole have sinned, it says, “The elders of the congregation shall lay their hands on the head of the bull before the Lord, and the bull shall be killed before the Lord.” Then verse 20 says, “The priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven.” So that’s where Karen’s question starts. God regards sin as so evil and so destructive that in order to set things right there must be a death, a blood-shedding, in order for sins not to be counted — that is, to be forgiven.

“God regards sin as so evil and so destructive that in order to set things right there must be a death.”

Then the second premise of Karen’s question is that Christ has in fact shed his own blood for sinners so that, if we are united to Christ by faith, our sins are forgiven for his sake. His blood-shedding counts for us.

He became “a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). He bore our condemnation in his flesh (Romans 8:3). This is the center and the glory of the gospel. So Paul says in Romans 5:9, “We have now been justified by his blood,” or in Ephesians 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood,” or in Ephesians 2:13, “You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

So Karen’s question is, When Jesus walked the earth, he often addressed people by telling them that their sins are forgiven, but (she says) there was no offering in the temple, and Jesus had not yet died — how’s that possible under the assumption that blood is needed in order to have the forgiveness of God from all the sins that we do or that take place?

Animal Blood Was Not Enough

Now let’s clarify the question, first of all. Whether or not there were sacrifices being offered in the temple, Jesus pronounced forgiveness on his own authority, without any reference to those sacrifices. For example, in Mark 2:5–7, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” And the scribes say, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

So Karen wonders about this relationship of forgiveness that Jesus pronounced to the God-appointed shedding of blood, when Jesus hasn’t yet shed his blood and he isn’t pointing people to the blood-shedding of the animals. And here’s one of the keys that unlocks this puzzle for Karen. In Hebrews 10:4 and 11, the writer says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. . . . Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.”

So now we get the startling revelation that all those animal sacrifices actually in themselves accomplished nothing. Oh, we’re not between two really effective seasons here — Old Testament, New Testament. The forgiveness that God pronounced on faithful worshipers in the Old Testament was not ultimately owing to animal sacrifices.

The true saints in the Old Testament, they grasped this — they did, at some level. For example, David said in Psalm 51:16–17, “You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrary heart, O God, you will not despise.” And God said in Hosea 6:6, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” And Jesus quoted that verse, Hosea 6:6, twice to show how badly some of the Jewish leaders were misreading the Old Testament (in Matthew 9:13 and 12:7).

Every Sacrifice a Pointer

So now we can see that Karen’s question about forgiveness during Jesus’s lifetime really does apply to the entire history of Israel. The animal sacrifices were not achieving the forgiveness of sins — not ever. So what were they doing?

The answer is, they were pointing to Jesus — God’s final, once-for-all, decisive sacrifice for sins. They were foreshadowing the blood-shedding of Christ. So it says in Hebrews 9:12, “[Christ] entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” So the reason all blood-shedding has ceased — animal blood-shedding has ceased; Christ’s blood-shedding has ceased once for all — is that Christ’s sacrifice was so complete, so glorious, so full, so decisive that it secured an eternal redemption.

“Christ’s sacrifice was so complete, so glorious, so full, so decisive that it secured an eternal redemption.”

If you have Christ, you have eternal forgiveness for all sins. Now I think Karen knows this, but what she may have overlooked (I don’t know) is that not only does the sacrifice of Christ extend forward as an eternal redemption but also backward in history as a redemption for all those saints who put their faith in God for his forgiveness — through the foreshadowing of the cross in the animal sacrifices. The cross worked effectively backward and forward.

And that’s what Paul makes clear in Romans 3:25. He says, “God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” In other words, the reason God was righteous to pass over — that is, forgive — the sins of all Old Testament saints, and the sins that Jesus forgave during his lifetime, was that God was looking to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. So just as our sins two thousand years after Christ are covered by the blood of Christ, so Abraham’s sins were covered by the cross of Christ two thousand years before Christ existed. And so it was with all the saints in between.

Glorious Divine Achievement

So, Karen’s question is not of limited significance. It takes us to the very center of the gospel — indeed, the center of reality. It shows us that all forgiveness, and all the benefits that flow from forgiveness through all time — as far back as you can go, as far forward as you can go, all of it — all of that forgiveness is based on those few hours when the Son of God suffered and bled and died for sinners.

If we grasp how central, how profound, how glorious was that divine moment, that divine achievement, our lives will be more stable, more courageous and more joyful.