http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/16964149/what-makes-someone-spiritually-dirty
Audio Transcript
What makes someone spiritually dirty? This is an important question, and one born out of our Bible reading together, specifically in three Bible texts that a female listener to the podcast named Ivy is trying to put together and understand, texts coming up for us in the reading. Ivy writes this: “Pastor John, I never saw this connection until it was put together in the span of one week in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan. In Leviticus 5:2 and Leviticus 7:19–21, we read that touching unclean things makes one unclean. But Jesus completely changes this. He later says it is what comes out of us that makes us unclean. He says this in Matthew 15:18–20.
“I’m trying to put myself in a first-century Jewish mindset that was conditioned to think about clean and unclean things, what to touch and what not to touch. This seems like a radical change. Uncleanness is born inside of us! What caused such a major turnaround here, in what seems to me to be a fundamental redefinition of evil?”
I think this question is an example of making right observations from the Bible but drawing from them a wrong conclusion. Sorry about that. Let me see if I could gently nudge a correction.
It is right to observe that in the Old Testament there are laws against touching or eating certain things because they are ceremonially unclean. For example, if you touch a carcass, then you become unclean until the evening (Leviticus 11:24–25). Or, “Every animal that parts the hoof but is not cloven-footed or does not chew the cud is unclean to you. Everyone who touches them shall be unclean” (Leviticus 11:26).
So, there is such a thing in the Old Testament as external ceremonial contamination through the touching of something that is declared in the law to be unclean. That’s a true observation. These laws were one of God’s ways at that time of separating his people from the nations around them and emphasizing his distinctness, his holiness.
It is also true that Jesus spoke about becoming impure because of what the heart produces from within — for example, Matthew 15:18: “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person [makes them unclean].” So, that too is a true observation. So far, so good.
Purity Across the Covenants
But the mistake is in drawing the conclusion that in the Old Testament impurity was only external, while in the New Testament impurity is internal. That’s a mistake for two reasons.
In the first place, it contrasts the wrong things. Instead of contrasting Old Testament ceremonial uncleanness with New Testament moral uncleanness, the contrast is between Old Testament ceremonial uncleanness and the declaration by Jesus that there is no ceremonial uncleanness anymore: “He declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19). In other words, Jesus does away with the Old Testament ceremonial cleanness and uncleanness. It’s not replaced by internal moral cleanness and uncleanness, but rather by the removal of ceremonial defilement entirely. It doesn’t exist in the church anymore.
“There was a real faith, a real obedience of faith, a real holiness in the saints of the Old Testament.”
The other reason it’s a mistake to say that the Old Testament impurity was external while the New Testament impurity is internal is that already in the Old Testament there was internal purity and impurity. It was already there. In both the New and the Old Testaments, there is internal moral purity or impurity. That’s not a contrast between the Old and New Testaments. So, in the Old Testament, there was both ceremonial external uncleanness and moral internal uncleanness, whereas in the New Testament, the ceremonial aspect of uncleanness is done away with, and the moral dimension is what’s left.
Now, that may seem like not a big deal, but it is a big deal because of the implications of it. Let me try to draw them out.
Spirit of Old Testament Saints
This is a bigger deal than we might think, because what it implies is that, already in the Old Testament, before Christ had died for our sins and before the unique outpouring of the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the forgiving work of the cross and the transforming work of the Spirit were already active in the saints of the Old Testament.
That’s huge for the way we read our Bibles, the way we appropriate patterns and commands and illustrations and so on. Let me say it again: the forgiving effect of Christ’s death and the transforming effect of God’s Spirit were already at work in the saints of the Old Testament. In other words, the reality of internal purity or impurity was known, and the purity was required in the Old Testament — internal purity, not just external ceremonial purity.
The Old Testament knew about the deep internal reality of original sin, for example. David says, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). In other words, the saints of the Old Testament knew that their bad behavior came from inside, not outside. So, Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” That’s just like what Jesus said.
And David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). He expected that to happen. It did happen. And Psalm 24:3–4 says, “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.” Now, that did not mean nobody. It was possible through prayer, through repentance, through forgiveness, through sacrifice to get a pure heart before God.
Born Again Then and Now
God was at work in the Old Testament among the faithful remnant of Israel, transforming their hearts and leading them in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake (Psalm 23:3). For example, in 1 Chronicles 29:17–18, David says, “Now I have seen your people, who are present here, offering freely and joyously to you. O Lord . . . keep forever such purposes and thoughts in the hearts of your people, and direct their hearts toward you.” That’s amazing. That’s exactly what he does today for the saints and what he did then for the saints.
So, here it is again in 2 Chronicles 30:12. It says, “The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the princes commanded by the word of the Lord.” In other words, God was at work in the hearts of his people to give them the kind of disposition and heart to be trusting and obedient toward him.
This is why Jesus — at least, this is my interpretation of Jesus in John 3 — was amazed in speaking to Nicodemus that he didn’t understand that you must be born again to see the kingdom of God. Well, people saw the kingdom of God in the Old Testament. They saw God; they knew the reign of God; they walked in holiness before God — the saints did. That was true in the Old Testament (“You must be born again”) and in the New Testament.
Nobody can overcome their unbelief, hardness of heart without the sovereign work of the Spirit, whenever they live — four thousand years ago or twenty minutes ago. So, Jesus said, “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again’” (John 3:7). Nicodemus says to him, “How can these things be?” (John 3:9). And Jesus — I can see him rolling his eyes or throwing up his hands and saying, “Are you a teacher in Israel, and you don’t understand what I’m talking about when I talk about the new birth? What have you been reading?” (see John 3:10).
That’s my paraphrase of Jesus. In other words, “Surely you see that this is how spiritual deadness was overcome among the saints in Israel.” They can’t do it themselves. It had to be done for them, just like today.
Old Patterns for Today
We can see, then, that there’s more riding on this question than it seemed at first. There was a real faith, a real obedience of faith, a real holiness in the saints of the Old Testament. And that is not possible (Romans 8:7) except that Jesus died for their sins in the future, counted backward, and the Holy Spirit was at work overcoming their sinful bent.
So, when we read the beautiful statements — for example, in the Psalms — of genuine love for God, obedience to God, delight in God’s word, we don’t have to deny any of that, as though such things were not possible in the Old Testament. We can take these saints as wonderful patterns for our lives and be stirred up by them to love God the way they did.
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How to Not Return Evil for Evil: 1 Thessalonians 5:12–22, Part 8
http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15797662/how-to-not-return-evil-for-evil
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How Does God’s Joy Become My Joy?
Audio Transcript
Welcome back to the podcast.
Well, God is happy in himself. Amen. And God wants us to be happy in himself. Amen. If you start applying biblical categories here, you begin to ask this question: How does God’s joy become my joy? That’s our question today — a really good one — from a listener named Heather in Chicago.
“Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast,” she writes. “My question for you is about the nature of who God is and how he relates to our joy. Can you explain to me, from the Bible, the person and work of the Holy Spirit as the love and joy shared between the Father and the Son? I don’t quite understand this without making his person seem more like a force or a cosmic energy. And then how does the person of the Spirit enable us to experience God’s joy within us? It seems like those two realities connect, the person of the Spirit and the joy in us. But it doesn’t connect for me. Not yet. Can you help me understand these two dynamics from the Bible?”
I think it’s crucial, as we try to understand our relationship with the Holy Spirit, that we fix it firmly in our minds that we are dealing with a distinct person. Just fix it, so that whatever else is uncertain, don’t let that be uncertain: a person, a divine person, the third person of the Trinity.
Fellowship of the Spirit
In fact, I’ve been struck recently — even before I heard this question — how the New Testament encourages us to enjoy fellowship with each of the three divine persons of the Trinity, not just fellowship with God in the abstract or general way, but fellowship with God the Father, fellowship with God the Son, fellowship with God the Spirit. For example, 1 Corinthians 1:9 says that God called us “into the fellowship of his Son.” Second Corinthians 13:14 refers to “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” First John 1:3 says, “Our fellowship is with the Father.” So, we’re taught to have fellowship — communion, personal relations — with the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.
You know what book I would recommend, Tony: John Owen, Communion with the Triune God. Nobody, I don’t think, in the history of the church has helped people come to terms with what it means to relate to each person of the Trinity like John Owen. I would recommend Communion with the Triune God by John Owen.
Now, that implies that the Holy Spirit is a person — someone you can relate to, talk to — which is exactly the way Jesus spoke of him. He says in John 14:26, “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he” — and yes, it is masculine, not neuter (to agree with spirit, pneuma) — “he will teach you all things.” So, he is distinct from the Father, because the Father sends him, and he’s a teacher when he comes, not just a force or gas.
“The New Testament encourages us to enjoy fellowship with each of the three divine persons of the Trinity.”
The apostle Paul picks up on this very reality of the Spirit as distinct from the Father and a very personal teacher in 1 Corinthians 2:10, 13, where he says, “The Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” What an amazing statement. “The Spirit searches . . . the depths of God. . . . And we impart [things of God] in words . . . taught by the Spirit.” So, Paul is just like Jesus. Paul is picking it up and continuing what Jesus taught. Jesus and Paul treat the Holy Spirit not as an impersonal force or power, but as a person who comes and teaches and indwells believers and who can be related to personally.
Spirit of a Spirit?
Then consider that Jesus said in John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” In other words, God is not material. He’s not physical. He is spirit, which means that when we say that one of the persons of the Trinity is the Spirit of God, we are saying he is the Spirit of a spirit.
Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to say the spirit has a Spirit? We are not saying he’s the image of the spirit or the radiance of the spirit or the logos or word of the spirit, all of which are said about the Son. So, what are we saying when we refer to the Holy Spirit of God, who is himself as Trinity spirit?
Here’s what Jonathan Edwards — who has helped me so much — says: “The word ‘spirit’ in Scripture, when used concerning minds . . . is put for the disposition, inclination, or temper of the mind.” For example, when Ephesians 4:23 says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind,” it refers to the disposition or temper of your mind. Edwards goes on,
So, I suppose when we read of the Spirit of God, who we are told is a spirit, it is to be understood of the disposition, temper, or affection of the divine mind. . . . Now, the sum of God’s temper or disposition is love, for he is infinite love. (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 21:122)
Now, when he says that, we must resist — as Heather pointed out — the temptation to think of love as a mere force or power rather than a person. Edwards is not denying the personhood of the Holy Spirit when he talks of him as the temper or the disposition or the love of God. Edwards is simply trying to put all the biblical pieces together.
Eternal Love of God
The New Testament doesn’t just come out and tell us in a doctrinal statement, “The Holy Spirit is a person,” or, “The person is the very embodiment of the love of God.” It doesn’t say that. The various statements of the New Testament point in this direction. But you have to put the pieces together, which means we need to be careful — oh, how careful — lest we go off the rails and become heretics. I think all of our human efforts — I’d say this in general now about Edwards, myself, or anybody else — to conceptualize the relationships within the Trinity need to confess that we see through a glass darkly until we know even as we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12), which means, “Be careful.”
“The Spirit, in his essence, is God’s joyful love, loving joy in person.”
Now, here’s another pointer to the question that Heather’s concerned about. First John 4:12–13 points to the Holy Spirit as the love of God in us. Here’s what it says: “If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” So, if you put all that together, God in us, his love in us, his Spirit in us, all seem to point to the fact that the way the love of God abides in us is by his Spirit. That is his disposition, his temper. That is his love in person, abiding in us by the person of the Holy Spirit.
Eternal Joy of God
Now, the piece that remains to be added for Heather’s question is joy. This is added by pondering that the love that God is from all eternity is not a sacrificial love between the Father and the Son. They are infinitely beautiful, infinitely worthy of each other’s love, which means that they delight in each other infinitely. That’s what their love is.
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am [totally delighted]” — that’s my paraphrase of “well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). To say that the love of the Father and the Son for each other is embodied in the Spirit is to say that the Spirit, in his essence, is God’s joyful love, loving joy in person, because God’s loving from eternity has been his enjoying from eternity. That’s how the persons of the Godhead have related to each other. They’re not disappointed; they don’t have to overcome any obstacles to delight in each other.
So, when Jesus says, “My joy I give to you” (see John 15:11), or when he says, “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21), he is welcoming us into the fullest experience of the Son’s love for the Father. It seems right, then, to say this is experienced by being filled with the Holy Spirit, who is the very person who is the love of God and the joy of God. Paul speaks in 1 Thessalonians 1:6 of “the joy of the Holy Spirit,” the joy that the Holy Spirit gives by coming himself to live in us as the very love and joy of God.
I pray that God would help you, Heather, and all of us, as we humbly and carefully try to faithfully put the pieces of God’s precious word together.
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Imagine Lust: A Lost Weapon in the Fight for Purity
A TV with no remotes. A theater with no exit. A dream with no waking. Such can the imagination seem in the midst of lustful temptation.
Many are familiar with the mumbled no, the shake of the head, the attempt to turn thoughts elsewhere. And perhaps just as many have felt the persistence of dark ideas, the return of images unwanted. We wandered into this theater of the imagination so easily, but now we can’t seem to find the way out.
How do we wake from this dream and break this imaginative spell? Many strategies may prove useful. Rehearse God’s promises, pray earnestly, sing a hymn. Or, less spiritual but still helpful, get outside, do push-ups, call a friend. Francis of Assisi once counseled a brother to throw himself into a freezing river, which he did. No doubt that would work.
Alongside these approaches, however, Scripture offers another. Instead of trying to shut down the imagination, engage it. Take this theater, which lust has so often wielded against you, and wield it now against lust.
Guard Your Mind
Perhaps no book teaches us how to wield the imagination against lust more than Proverbs does. Especially in the father’s words to his son in chapters 5–7, the book fills the theater of the mind with images designed to strip lust of its strength. Consider, for example, the father’s warning against the forbidden woman in Proverbs 7:25–27. He begins with a simple command:
Let not your heart turn aside to her ways; do not stray into her paths.
Here is well-worn wisdom for resisting lust, wisdom we have likely heard many times before (and probably can’t hear too often). As with so many sins, the battle against lust is often won or lost at the start. Once the heart has turned aside, once the feet have strayed, we bring them back only with great difficulty. The road to the forbidden woman’s house runs downhill in every direction — and every road back is an upward climb. Far easier, then, to turn and flee at the head of her street than over the threshold of her home.
“As with so many sins, the battle against lust is often won or lost at the start.”
So far, so good. But how do we turn away at these crucial moments, as the wisp of a thought begins to form? Again, many strategies may prove useful. But here, the father bids his son to do something counterintuitive, even seemingly dangerous: imagine lust. Don’t simply look away, but look even more intently, beyond the temptation, to see what really lives behind the door of dark desire.
Theater of Faith
After commanding his son not to stray in verse 25, the father fights image with image:
For many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng.Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death. (Proverbs 7:26–27)
The word for at the start tells us that what follows gives the reason, the great why, for stopping lust before the first step. And this why is not just a logical argument (though it is that too), but an image, a scene — a different story on imagination’s screen. Before, the son had seen the forbidden woman dressed scantily on the corner, her couch covered with linens, her bed perfumed — lust wearing makeup (Proverbs 7:12, 16–17). Now, he sees her black-robed and holding a sickle, her couch a sinkhole to hell, her bed an open coffin.
What is this father doing? Perhaps he remembers how, in the beginning, our first parents fell not merely by argument but by image: an image of a good tree, a wise self, and a withholding God (Genesis 3:4–6). Perhaps, closer to home, he remembers how the mighty David fell, in a moment, by a sight that remained on the surface, a figure that filled the mind (2 Samuel 11:2–3).
Either way, he knows the power of image, for both good and ill. He knows that, though imagination cannot substitute for faith, yet faith feeds on true images of God, self, and the world. Faithful imaginations remind faith what’s real — and what’s not.
Conceivably, the son in Proverbs 7 could have said no to the forbidden woman even if he failed to see the grave behind her door — just as Eve could have said no to the serpent even under the sway of his false images. The will may say no for the moment, even when the imagination is held captive. But long-term, those who say no on these conditions lose even if they win, for today’s corrupt imagination is tomorrow’s corrupt heart, corrupt will. Self-control cannot live long in a theater filled with lies. For as the imagination goes, so goes the man.
Come then, along with this father and son, and imagine.
Imagine Lust
There you are, sitting at your desk or lying in your bed, when a figure begins to call from the corner of your mind. An image flickers. A thought starts to take shape. But then you imagine: Who is this forbidden woman, this lady lust, this whisper in the dark?
Though her lips drip with honey and oil, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a sword (Proverbs 5:3–4). The very opposite of medicine, she leads with pleasure and ends with pain; she pledges healing and slashes instead. Beyond her, you see her former “lovers”: retching, writhing, bleeding, dying.
She is a hidden snare, an invisible cord (Proverbs 5:22). Carried on by “just this once” and “just a little more,” her victims find their foot caught, their wrists wrapped. They promised themselves one visit to her home. Now they find they cannot leave.
She is a butcher and a hunter (Proverbs 7:22–23), the catcher of simple animals who see the meat and miss the hook. The man who follows her path walks as vulnerable as a stag seen from the other side of a bow. “He does not know that it will cost him his life” (Proverbs 7:23).
And then, as our passage puts it, she is death’s reaper, Sheol’s usher, mistress of the grave (Proverbs 7:26–27). With every stolen pleasure, she digs your grave deeper, carves another letter on your headstone, pounds another nail into your coffin.
Wormwood and sword, snare and cord, butcher and hunter, reaper and undertaker — here is the face of this seductive killer, the true face a wise father shows his son. Of course, a man may see lust as such and still fall into her arms. But he will have a harder time imagining himself lying down on a linen-covered couch: to get to her, he will have to climb into his grave.
Imagine Purity
God made the imagination for more than grim warnings, however. In temptation, faithful imaginations will not only look past the apparent beauty of lust; they also will look past the apparent homeliness of obedience. They will imagine purity.
The father sets the two imaginative tasks side by side:
Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe.Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? (Proverbs 5:18–20)
“Self-control cannot live long in a theater filled with lies. For as the imagination goes, so goes the man.”
The antidote to sinful intoxication is not mere sobriety, but righteous intoxication. Fight imagination with imagination — and for those who are married, begin with your spouse. Imagine the beauty of your marriage bed. Remember “the wife of your youth,” whose lips drip with honey that never sours, whose hands hide no sword, whose face gets lovelier the longer you look with faithful eyes. And do this “at all times” and “always.” Keep the theater of your mind filled with an intimacy guarded by vows.
That said, not all — and not most — who battle lust are married. And what’s more, Proverbs holds out a more powerful purity even for those who are married.
Imagine Him
Alongside “the wife of your youth,” the father counsels his son, again and again, to imagine another figure — better than a spouse, more pleasurable than married love: wisdom and, beyond her, the God she gives us.
The path of God-fearing wisdom, even the path of celibate God-fearing wisdom, is “more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her” (Proverbs 3:15). She gives a smooth road, a fearless way, sweet sleep (Proverbs 3:23–24). Indeed, “her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace” (Proverbs 3:17). Whatever road of wisdom lies in front of you, however austere it may seem, you will find in the walking of it pleasantness and peace — pleasantness like Eden’s lawful fruit, peace like quiet streams in the land of the living.
Because all of wisdom’s paths lead us to the God who made them — more than that, the God who walked them himself, pure and happy and far better than anything forbidden. He is our glory and joy, our dignity and delight, the face meant to fill the theater of our mind. His fellowship is lust’s worst loss, purity’s greatest prize. He is Jesus.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Imagine that. Imagine him.
