Audio Transcript

Many questions in our inbox are questions that I could never anticipate — like this one today, sent to us by a listener named Jessica. Here’s what she writes: “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast. I was recently confronted by an abortion advocate about a chapter in the Bible. I was then, and remain now, quite perplexed about its meaning.

“We read that suspicion of infidelity in the Old Testament triggered a potentially dangerous ritual in which a woman was put on trial, made to drink a potion of sorts, and, if she was found guilty, the verdict was rendered in physical consequences. The verses are Numbers 5:22 and 27, texts that say the adulterous woman’s ‘thigh shall fall away’ (the ESV translation), which doesn’t make any sense to me. Other translations say the consequence is ‘miscarriage and untimely birth’ (according to the NEB and REB translations). Basically, a guilty verdict was rendered by an induced abortion.

“In fact, that’s the interpretation I found in Old Testament scholar Norman Henry Snaith’s commentary, Leviticus and Numbers. On linguistic grounds, he said, ‘cause an abortion’ is a possible interpretation here. I was surprised. How would you respond?”

My response is first to ask, Was this abortion advocate seriously willing to follow where the Scriptures lead? Or was this simply a superficial cheap shot because a text might picture God as aborting a child? Now, I don’t know the answer to that question, but it would make a difference personally in how I spoke to that person directly.

My second response is to say that I don’t think we can have any confidence that this text describes an abortion or a God-caused miscarriage. In fact, I think a good case can be made that this is not what’s happening. And I’ll come back to that.

And my third response is that even if God were pictured here as bringing about the miscarriage as part of the punishment for adultery, that would not give us any right at all to take the life of the unborn. All of life is in God’s hands. He owns it. He gives it and he takes it according to his own infinite wisdom. It’s his. And therefore, he gives it where we can’t, and he takes it where we shouldn’t, because we are not God. So, let me say a word about each of those three responses.

Discerning Sincerity

If a person comes to us with a biblical objection to our pro-life position, it may be that the most helpful and hopeful thing we could do is sincerely offer them to sit down and do a serious study together with them of what the whole Bible has to say about the unborn and the rights we have or don’t have to intrude upon God’s person-forming work in the womb (as it says in Psalm 139).

That might be the test of the sincerity of their objection.

Does God Cause Miscarriage?

Second, let’s look at what the text actually says in Numbers 5. The situation is that a husband has accused his wife of committing adultery against him, but he has no proof. He brings her to the priest, who sets up a test to determine her guilt or innocence. He mixes holy water with dust from the tabernacle floor and has her drink it.

Significantly, the test is designed so that her innocence is assumed and what has to be proved is her guilt, not her innocence. The ordeal is favorable for the defendant — namely, the woman. In other words, it’s not as though, if nothing happens, she’s guilty. No. Something extraordinary has to happen to prove her guilt — indeed, something supernatural. The assumption is that God will decide this case.

If she’s guilty, Numbers 5:22 describes what will happen. Here’s the wording: “May this water that brings the curse pass into your bowels and make your womb swell and your thigh fall away.” If that does not happen, she’s innocent. Now, Jessica points out that some interpreters take this “falling away of the thigh” as a miscarriage or an induced abortion from God.

This is a pure guess. Nobody knows for sure what those words “falling away of the thigh” mean. That wording is not a common idiom. It’s not as though the writer used an idiom here that we all know from elsewhere means “miscarriage.” We don’t. We only have this context to go on.

More Likely Meaning

I think the text, the context here, points in a different direction. First of all, the Hebrew word for thigh can mean hip, as it does when Jacob’s hip is put out of joint (Genesis 32:25); or it can mean loins, including the sexual organs, as when Abraham’s servants swears by putting his hand in that sacred place of reproduction (Genesis 24:2–3).

“The focus of the punishment is not on miscarriage, but on the fact that the innocent will go on to have children.”

The falling of the woman’s loins would be a very odd way to describe a miscarriage, but it would not be an odd way to describe a vaginal prolapse. A prolapse, which my grandmother had to have surgery for while she was living with Noël and me — that’s why I know about this — is what happens when the pelvis muscles and tissues can no longer support the female sexual organs because the muscles and tissues are weak or damaged, which causes one or more of the pelvic organs to drop or press into or out of the vagina. Now, that’s an easily treatable situation today with surgery. In those days, that must have been horrible.

And then notice that Numbers 5:28 shows us what this punishment involves by contrasting it with the woman who proves innocent. Here’s what it says in verse 28: “But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive children.” In other words, the focus of the punishment is not on miscarriage, but on the fact that the innocent will go on to have children, and the guilty woman won’t, because that’s the effect of the falling of the loins, I’m suggesting.

All Souls Are God’s

Now, suppose my interpretation is wrong, which it could be because none of us knows for sure what the “falling away of the thigh [or the loins]” means. And suppose this text really does say that God, the just judge, decreed that the child in the woman, supposing there was one (it doesn’t say), was aborted. Suppose that. What does that tell us about the life of the unborn and our right to take it or not? And the answer is nothing, because we are not God.

“God’s decision to take the life of an unborn child does not give us any permission to do the same.”

God says in Deuteronomy 32:39, “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.” In other words, to be God is to have rights over life and death that others don’t have. Hannah speaks for God in the same way in 1 Samuel 2:6, when she says, “The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up.” And Job, when he lost all ten of his children, said — and the verse following says he didn’t sin when he said this — “The Lord gave, and Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

In other words, one of the things it means to be God is to have absolute rights over human life. God made all life. All life belongs to him. Only God can say Ezekiel 18:4 in truth: “Behold, all souls are mine.” Therefore, God’s decision to take the life of an unborn child does not give us any permission to do the same, any more than God’s giving us his own Son in crucifixion gives us the right to kill Jesus. God ordains the death of his own Son, not to legitimate murder, but to make it possible for murderers to be saved, including those who take the life of the unborn.

Audio Transcript

Sound preaching, happy God. Those two themes are connected in Paul’s mind, as evidenced in today’s question from a podcast listener who is also a preacher. “Pastor John, hello, and thank you for this podcast. My name is Matt, and I have been the lead teacher and preacher in a congregation for about five years now. I find myself stunned by 1 Timothy 1:10–11. And I’m wondering if you can riff on these verses for a full episode. Explain to us how the happiness of God relates to the soundness of our preaching. This link seems essential. And if such a connection can be made, you seem like the guy to do it! Thank you!”

Well, to riff on that will be my pleasure. Let’s put this amazing text in front of us. In 1 Timothy 1:9–11, Paul is describing the kinds of ugly behaviors that the law exposes. And in verse 10, he gives another way to discern those behaviors (and the good ones). He says they are “contrary to [healthy] doctrine,” or healthy teaching. Then in verse 11, he says that healthy teaching is healthy because it accords “with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.”

Now, there are four great realities here: (1) the blessed God, (2) the glory of the blessed God, (3) the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, and (4) the healthy teaching that accords with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. Matt is asking about how the blessedness of God affects the healthfulness of pastoral preaching and teaching. That’s a great question that I’m very, very eager to talk about. Let’s move backward through each of these four realities.

Blessed God

First, the blessed God. What does blessed mean? There are two ways the word blessed is used in the Old and New Testaments. It’s used for “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus.” Now that’s not the word that’s used here. That’s eulogētos. It means I bless God. He doesn’t bless me; I bless him. This word is makarios, which means blessed in the sense of fortunate or happy. Here are the uses of it in Paul — just a few examples — so you can taste what this word means when it’s applied to God.

Titus 2:13: “[We are] waiting for our blessed hope” — that is, our joyful, wonderful, satisfying hope — “the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” The adjective blessed is used to describe the hope, meaning a joyful hope, a wonderful hope, a satisfying hope.

Here’s Romans 4:7–8: “Blessed” — that is, happy, fortunate — “are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed [same word] is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” I mean, we’re supposed to picture a man in the courtroom. He is dead guilty. Everybody knows it. He’s pronounced innocent and sent into eternity with infinite joy. He goes out of that courtroom clicking his heels and dancing for joy into eternity. That’s makarios. That’s the word.

Here’s one more: 1 Corinthians 7:40. Paul says of the widow (because he loves his own singleness), “Yet in my judgment, she is happier if she remains [single] as she is.” Makariōtera is the relative form or the comparative form of makarios.

So, my conclusion is that blessed means fortunate (objectively) and happy (subjectively). God is happy. If that word bothers you — if it just sticks in your craw to say God is happy because it’s just too superficial, and God is big and great and glorious — I sympathize with that. I suggest you choose another word, like contented, joyful, euphoric, felicitous, glad, rhapsodic. I mean, get your thesaurus out and find some words. But don’t conceal the reality, the affectional reality. He’s not glum. He’s not morose. He’s not gloomy. He’s not dour or moody or sour or grim. He is the glad and happy God. He’s not disappointed in being what he is.

Glory of the Blessed God

Now, what’s he happy about? Well, it all starts in eternity — except that nothing starts in eternity (language just won’t work). It all is in eternity. God had no start, and his happiness had no start. That’s where we are. We’re back in eternity. From all eternity, he has been supremely happy in the fellowship with his Son.

Matthew 17:5 says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” There is no greater energy in the universe, no greater intensity, no greater zeal, no greater passion, no greater esteem, no greater force or vehemence of affection than the infinite, eternal love and delight that the Father has in his Son. That delight belongs to the very nature of God from all eternity. He is happy in his Son — eternally, infinitely.

Then he’s happy in the wise, just, and holy ways in which he does everything that he does. Here’s Isaiah 46:9–10. This is the very heart of what it means to be God:

I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.”

That is a literal translation of the Hebrew: “I will accomplish all my good pleasure.”

Or Psalm 135:6: “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.” In other words, God approves of what he does. He’s pleased with his wisdom and his power. He is happy with the choices that he makes. His sovereign will cannot be thwarted. Therefore, he is a consistently happy God.

Most amazing of all, perhaps, is God’s delight in the people whom he created for his glory. Listen to these breathtaking statements from God’s happiness in his people. Psalm 149:4 says, “The Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation.” Or Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” If God gets loud, it can be heard billions of light years away.

Then Jeremiah 32:40–41: “I will make with them an everlasting covenant.” Now for all of us Christians, this is what Jesus bought with his blood. He called his blood the “blood of the covenant” (Matthew 26:28).

I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their heart, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.

Now, in 1 Timothy 1:11, I think Paul calls this overflow of God’s happiness onto his people God’s glory. This is the glory of the blessed God. When God’s eternal happiness in himself is seen in all its various manifestations, it reveals God’s fullness, completeness, perfection, glory.

A gloomy God is a deficient God, a defective God. He lacks something; he has a defect. He’s not glorious. But the eternally, infinitely happy God is glorious in the overflow and the fullness of his happiness — perfectly glorious, without any defect or deficiency.

Glorious Gospel

Then Paul says that the gospel is the gospel of the glory of the blessed God (1 Timothy 1:11). This glory of the infinite fullness of God’s happiness is essential to the good news of Christ. Why is that? Because 1 Peter 3:18 says that Christ died to “bring us to God.” That’s why he died.

“It is not good news to be brought to a gloomy God.”

It is not good news to be brought to a gloomy God. “Watch out for him. He’s got his moods. Stay in your bedroom when he’s out of sorts.” That’s not good news. That’s not the gospel. A dour, downcast, unhappy God is not good news. Who wants to go there? Yet Christ died to take us there — namely, to a happy God, a Father who is infinitely happy as he overflows onto his children with his own happiness.

What is good news is when Jesus says in John 15:11, “These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be full,” and when we hear Jesus say at the last day, in Matthew 25:23, “Enter into the joy of your master.” In other words, the glory of the happy God is good news because we will share in it. That joy that God has in the fellowship of the Trinity, in his Son in particular, will become our joy.

In John 17:26 — this may be the most amazing statement of it — Jesus says, “The love with which you [Father] have loved me” — this is the infinite joyful delight in the Son from all eternity — “[will] be in them, and I in them.” The very love that the Father has for the Son will be our love for the Son, our joy in the Son. This is why Jesus died, so that undeserving sinners who cast themselves for mercy on Christ could actually share God’s joy in God.

Healthy Preaching

Now, the last thing Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:10–11 is that we pastors and elders should make sure that our teaching and preaching are healthy teaching and preaching, healthy doctrine (sound is the old translation).

“The ultimate glory of the gospel is that we will share in God’s immeasurable happiness in God.”

Now what is that? Well, here’s what he says: healthy teaching accords “with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.” This means that we preachers will ask these questions:

Does my preaching sound like and look like I have been in the presence of such God-centered glory?
Does my preaching echo the infinite worth of the glory of the happy God?
Do I open the gospel so clearly and so faithfully — so biblically, so deeply — that people can see that the final reason, the ultimate reason, it’s good news is not that our sins are forgiven, or that we escape hell and wrath, or that our guilt feelings are gone, or that our bodies are going to be glorious and get well and not suffer anymore, or that we’re going to see loved ones again, or there are going to be no more tears?

Those are glorious, but they’re not the ultimate glory. Rather, the ultimate glory of the gospel, the ultimate thing that Jesus bought when he shed his blood, is that we will share in God’s immeasurable happiness in God. Do all of our doctrines ring with this God-centered hope? Do all of our doctrines ring with the serious joy of God and our share in it?

Audio Transcript

Happy Monday, and welcome back to the podcast. Today, I’m going to batch several questions together all on the same Bible text: Colossians 1:20. Here’s the first one, from John, a listener to the podcast in Mullumbimby, Australia. “Pastor John, hello! What does it mean that God reconciled to himself all things, whether in heaven or on earth? And why did he need to reconcile all things to himself?”

A listener named Ryan writes in, “Dear Pastor John, a friend of mine and I have been discussing Colossians 1:20 and the reconciliation of ‘all things’ in heaven and on earth, making peace by the blood of the cross. What does this mean for those who are not elect? Does Colossians 1:19–20 allude to a reconciliation for both elect and non-elect alike? Many thanks from a longtime listener!”

And a listener named Lake writes in, “Pastor John, I understand that earth needs reconciliation. But what’s in heaven needing reconciling?” So also asks Vikki in Dayton, Ohio. “Pastor John, Colossians 1:20 seems to imply that not just earth but also heaven has been reconciled to God. The ladies in my Bible study group can’t agree here. Some think Paul means the general universe. Others think he means the actual heavenly abode of God. We’re wondering which is correct? It would seem to me that when the devil originally sinned, he contaminated heaven. Therefore, part of Christ’s atonement also cleansed the heavenly sanctuary. Maybe. Is that consistent with Scripture?” So, a lot of questions on Colossians 1:20.

Well, let’s get the text in front of us. This is Colossians 1:19–20: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”

So, the questions our listeners are raising revolve mainly around what it means that God, through the ministry of the divine Christ, will reconcile to himself all things. The phrase “all things” raises the question of universalism for a lot of people. That is, will every person, even the demons and Satan himself, be reconciled to God — and there will be no hell, and there will be no final judgment, no final destruction of anyone? That’s the first question. Second question is raised by the phrase “whether on earth or in heaven.” What would it mean to speak of reconciling anything or any being in heaven? What in heaven needs reconciling? And then the third question I hear would be, How does the blood of Jesus establish peace in heaven and on earth?

Let’s take these one at a time.

Will Everyone Be Saved?

First, through Christ, God reconciles all things to himself, whether in heaven or on earth. Does that mean that there is universal salvation and that, in the end, hell will not exist, and all unbelievers and all demons and Satan himself will be reconciled and saved?

The first problem with that interpretation is that Paul himself, both in this letter of Colossians and elsewhere, teaches that there will be the final wrath of God that will last forever on people. It’s not even that they will be put out of existence (called annihilationism). For example, in Colossians 3:5–6, he says, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming.”

Then if you ask, “Well, how long will that wrath last? What will that experience be like?” And he says in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, “[Those who do not obey the gospel] will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”

And if we look for confirmation that we’re on the right track here in understanding Paul, we find in the teachings of John and the teachings of Jesus the same kind of thing. For example, in Matthew 25:46, Jesus says, “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” And since “eternal life” is parallel with “eternal punishment,” then it seems clear that the eternal punishment will have the same duration as the eternal life.

And then in Revelation 14:11, John uses the strongest phrase possible in Greek to express eternity. He says, “And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.” The Greek phrase behind that “forever and ever” is as strong as it can be.

So, we’re talking everlasting duration of wrath, and therefore, the problem with thinking that Colossians 1:20 is teaching that all things will be reconciled and thus saved — with no hell, no eternal punishment, and no unbelievers or demons in existence — is that Paul says that’s just not true.

What Does ‘All Things’ Mean?

So the question is, Well, what does it mean? If it can’t mean universalism or annihilationism, what does it mean — “through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven”?

I would say to our readers, Have you ever asked why it doesn’t say “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven or under the earth”? Why does Paul omit “under the earth”? And I say that because he uses that phrase in Philippians 2:10, when he says that every knee will bow to Jesus and confess that he’s Lord — every knee “in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” Even the unsaved will grant that Jesus is Lord.

But here in Colossians 1:20, he doesn’t mention “under the earth” as what will be reconciled. It only says that he will reconcile all things to himself in heaven and on earth. So, here’s my suggestion: Paul is not at all contradicting the fact that the Bible teaches eternal judgment on Satan and his angels and on humans who are unrepentant, but all of those persons will be consigned to a realm outside the new heavens and the new earth.

“Everything in the new heavens and the new earth that has been contaminated with sin in any way will be reconciled.”

In Matthew 22:13, Jesus calls this “outer darkness.” They will be in a realm that is not part of the new heavens and the new earth. Everything in the new heavens and the new earth that has been contaminated with sin in any way will be reconciled, will be redeemed.

So, when Paul says that all things will be reconciled in heaven and on earth, he means that because of the work of Christ, there will be nothing unreconciled on earth, nothing unreconciled in heaven, when God consummates his purposes. For demons and unbelievers, there will be another entirely different realm of existence, which we call “under the earth” or “outer darkness,” but it will not be part of the new creation. All things will be reconciled in that earth and that heaven. So, that’s my answer to the first part of the question.

What Needs Reconciliation in Heaven?

Let’s turn to the second question: What would it mean to speak of reconciling anything or any being in heaven? What in heaven needs reconciling? What would Paul mean when he says that through Christ God reconciles to himself, “whether on earth or in heaven,” all things? And one answer is implicit in what I’ve already said — namely, he may not be talking about reconciling what is in heaven now but what will inhabit the new heavens and the new earth. And his point is, nothing contaminated by sin will inhabit the new heavens and the new earth that’s not reconciled to God. Everything will be reconciled that’s there.

But if someone pushes back and says, “Well, it looks, Piper, like it’s referring to the present heaven and earth, not just the future heaven and earth,” then my suggestion would be — if they’re right and I’m mistaken in that first suggestion — that Paul teaches in the next chapter, Colossians 3:4, and in Philippians 1:20 and 2 Corinthians 5:8, that Christians who have died are now in heaven. And Paul would then be saying that all of them are reconciled to God by the work of Christ.

That’s my suggested answer to the pushback and the suggestion that he may be referring to the present heaven and not just the future heaven: Christians are there. Christians are reconciled in heaven through the blood of Christ.

How Does Jesus’s Blood Make Peace?

One last question: How does the blood of Jesus establish peace in heaven and on earth? Paul says, “making peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20). And I add this question for two reasons. One, because we know that demonic beings not only inhabit the earth but are referred to, for example, in Ephesians 6:12 as being operative in the heavenly places. For example, Job teaches that Satan had some kind of access to God.

“The blood of Christ takes away the one damning weapon that Satan has: the power to accuse us for sin.”

The other reason I ask this question is because Paul connects the blood of Christ with the defeat of the demonic rulers and authorities in Colossians 2:15. So, right after saying that the record of our sins, the record of our debts, is nailed to the cross so that our guilt is removed and our forgiveness is secure, he says in Colossians 2:15 that God, by this work of Christ, stripped (or disarmed) the demonic powers and shamed them and triumphed over them in him.

I take that to mean that the blood of Christ takes away the one damning weapon that Satan has — namely, the power to accuse us for sin, because they’re all forgiven. Our sins are all forgiven. He doesn’t have that weapon because of the blood of Christ. He’s stripped of it. He’s disarmed. And with that triumph over Satan and his demonic forces, all demonic hopes of victory are shattered, and Satan is finally consigned to outer darkness with his forces. And in that way, complete peace is established in the new heavens and the new earth.

So, when Paul says that God made peace through the blood of his Son, he means not only that Christians enjoy no condemnation and peace with God forever, but also that the marauding, tempting, destructive work of Satan and his forces is totally disempowered and consigned outside the new heavens and the new earth forever. There’s only peace.