The Danger of a Good Reputation
If the prophets of the Bible were to appear on the scene in our day they would be lectured on winsomeness and shipped off for a Dale Carnegie re-education course. The court prophets of Evangelicalism would write long-winded think pieces against such “troublers of Israel,” in which they opine, “If only these Tishbites would stop destroying their evangelistic potential by cracking wise when Baal won’t come out of his bathroom.”
Turning the Tables on Christian Respectability
I blame Mrs. Hill. She was my childhood Sunday School teacher and she started it. She taught me the stories of Jesus with her warm smile and worn-out flannel graph. She would place paper figures of Jesus and the disciples on the flannel-covered board and move them about to illustrate the particular lesson for the day. I learned about a wee little man and his sycamore tree, a boy who gave Jesus his sack lunch, and Lazarus who rose like an Egyptian mummy from the dead. But mostly I learned about Jesus. Jesus, mean and wild.
I blame Mrs. Hill and her flannel graph for my contrariness. It was that story about Jesus turning the tables on the religious power-brokers of his day that got my blood up. To me this was the most exciting story of them all. Some of the more pious saints later told me that Jesus acted “out of character” when he pitched a fit in the general direction of the merchants selling their wares in the temple, but somehow I knew better than that. Jesus turned over the tables because he was mad as an old wet hen. If the picture of Jesus as a “raging rabbi” unsettles you, then the point of it all is getting through.
He was angry. He sent pigeons and penny-filled purses flying hither and yon. He scattered the sheep with cords and threatened the goats who were selling them for exorbitant prices. The zeal of the Lord consumed him. And as I heard the story it started gnawing at me pretty good too.
She didn’t paint a portrait of the Jesus who could do wonderful shampoo commercials, with his silken hair and perfectly apportioned face. She taught us that Christ had fire in his eyes and lighting in his fists. He was no doormat deity. He was anything but respectable. That made him worthy of respect.
He saw Peter, James, John, Matthew, and the rest being drones and he told them to walk away from it all. “Follow me,” he said. And they did. They weren’t cut out to be cutouts.
Jesus Christ was paradox incarnate. He blessed the down and out and he cursed the high and mighty. He stooped down to prostitutes and stood up to pharisees. He wasn’t given to the trite dearlybelovedism of most modern ministers. He addressed his combative congregants as pit vipers, whitewashed tombs, bastard sons of Abraham, and other glowing appellations. And he did so without quenching one smoking flax.
Every now and then we need to remind ourselves that Jesus had a rotten testimony. That is, He often behaved and spoke in ways that some of our more pious brethren would consider “un-Christlike.” Although no one could convict him of any sin (John 8:46), this did not prevent His enemies from talking as though they could. He was, it turns out, a glutton (Luke 7:33), a drunk (Matt. 11:19), a blasphemer (Mk. 14:64), and a companion of the disreputable (Mk. 2:15). To say that he was a man of questionable reputation would be putting it quite mildly.
Sometimes I entertain myself with thoughts of great men from the past hopping into a time machine in order to pay a clandestine visit to the institutions that were named after them. Most of these thought experiments end with furniture scattered around waiting rooms, toppled desks, broken glass, and whirling sirens in the background. And if you doubt that our “venerable dead” might behave in such an untoward fashion, just reflect on what happened when Jesus, the very image of God (Hebrews 1:3), showed up at the place where the Almighty made his name to dwell (Deuteronomy 12:11). First he made a whip. Then he made a scene.
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Seventy Times Seven
It is impossible to be forgiving unless one is first humble yet it is very easy to be unforgiving because all that takes is to be full of pride, which is natural for all of us. Perhaps its time we spend some time at the Throne of grace confessing our sins and making things right.
21 Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus *said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. (Matthew 18:21–22 Legacy Standard Bible)
Pride is poison to the Christian. Oh, our flesh loves it, but it is unredeemed and has nothing to do with God. On the other hand, all truly in Christ are New Creations (2 Corinthians 5:17) and that part of them that is redeemed is of God not of the flesh and this lost and dying world. However, all of us would be liars if we said that we have not found ourselves in situations in which we were completely controlled by our flesh and pride. In those situations, we react fleshly just like the world. We lie, cheat, steal, and refuse to forgive when wronged. Then we become bitter and the cycle just spirals downward. All of this happens because we are walking in the flesh with our pride in control instead of in the Spirit, humbly before our God. It is impossible to forgive from the heart without first humbling ourselves and that takes a work of submission to the Spirit of God.
Carefully read the passage I placed at the top of this post. Do you believe Jesus knew what He was talking about? Do You believe He meant what He said? Then why don’t we do it? I believe that most Christians walk in the flesh and are, therefore, not humble because they do not fully comprehend the magnitude of the forgiveness of God without which they would be on their way to Hell. Here is the parable our Lord told to explain His statement to Peter in v-22.
23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 “When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25 “But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made.
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Death Does Not Have the Last Word
Written by R.C. Sproul |
Sunday, August 13, 2023
When we close our eyes in death, we do not cease to be alive; rather, we experience a continuation of personal consciousness. No person is more conscious, more aware, and more alert than when he passes through the veil from this world into the next.The guns of secular naturalism, when aimed at the Christian faith, resemble not so much shotguns as carefully aimed rifles. The chief target of the naturalist is the biblical doctrine of creation. If the doctrine of creation falls, all of Judeo-Christianity falls with it. Every skeptic understands that. Thus the constant shooting at Genesis 1.
But along with the assault against divine creation comes an assault against the biblical teaching of a historical Adam who is involved in a historical fall, the result of which is the entrance of death into the world. If Adam can be confined to the genre of mythology and the fall set aside with him, then we see death as a purely natural phenomenon with no relationship to sin.
Much is at stake with the biblical teaching of the fall because this doctrine is linked to the doctrine of redemption. The historical function of the first Adam is matched and conquered by the historical life of the last Adam, Jesus Christ.
In the eighteenth century, when Jonathan Edwards wrote his lengthy treatise on original sin, he argued not simply from biblical teaching. He also maintained that if the Bible itself were completely silent about a historical fall, natural reason would have to suggest that idea based on the reality of the universal presence of sin. If sin is simply a result of bad decisions that some people make, we would assume that at least 50 percent of the people born in this world would choose the right path rather than the sinful one that is so damaging to our humanity. The fact that 100 percent of the human race falls into sin indicates that there must be an inherent moral defect in the race. Of course, Edwards points to the fall, a historical event, to account for this universal fatal flaw.
In the Genesis account, we are told that the soul that sins will die. In His warning to our original parents with respect to disobedience, God declared that “the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). But the record goes on to say that the day Adam and Eve disobeyed their Maker, they did not experience the fullness of what the Greek translation of the Old Testament calls thanatos—physical death. Because of this, some have argued that the death that God promised was not physical death but rather spiritual death.
To be sure, spiritual death set in the very day that Adam and Eve sinned.
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Setting an Example
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