When posed with the query, "I really have intentions to start reading the Bible again. Where is a good book to start?" I would always point to Romans. Romans is a great summation of Christian theology, written in very organized and accessible language, and its chapters flow from one logical thesis to the next. The first chapter describes humanity's moral corruption and deviation from God, the second continues on to explain the law that delineates between holy and unholy and the condemnation under which we stand, and the rest of the book goes through the arguments of whether Jewishness is of spiritual import, the exemplification of godly faith by Abraham the patriarch, the explication of God's provision and our redemption through Jesus Christ, the exhortation to live transformed and righteous lives as new believers, our obligation and indebtedness to God's divine law, the explanation of the great hope we have in God's salvation, and the call to bring the gospel to the Jews and to the nations. In fact, most evangelical Christian literature follows a similar model: describe God's perfection and creationist relationship with man, demonstrate man's sin and corruption, show Jesus as the hope and assurance of salvation, and give counsel to lead transformed and missional lives in response to the gospel truth. Romans is overall an excellent read for establishing the basics about sin, the law, salvation, grace, and the relationship between God, Jesus, me, and you.
For the advanced subscriber to the gospel of Christ, I've recently decided to point to the book of James. Once upon a time, I was pretty dismissive of James because here was my understanding of the epistle:
Chapter 1, be persevering under trials, check.
Chapter 2, faith without works is dead, understood.
Chapter 3, no man can tame the tongue, simple concept.
Chapter 4, be nice and humble and peacemakers, okay.
Chapter 5, be patient for the Lord's coming and pray a lot, got it.
It's not that I oversimplified the text, although that certainly is true of most of my literary distillations. James is not a difficult or abstruse read. It lacks the bizarre prophecies, scriptural cross-references, or theological nuances that are more replete in a lot of other New Testament books. James is, to the casual reader, an easy book.
But the more I've progressed in my pursuit of Christ, the more I am convinced that this Christian life and our approach to scripture is not based in conceptual understanding. It is a benchmark of maturity for Christians that they progress from being able to read and interpret the Bible on an intellectual level to becoming the people that exemplify the better parts of God-inspired character. The first time you read James 1, you might read it like I read Proverbs: good wisdom, good advice for living so that we can all play nicely with each other. But the next time you read James 1, maybe you'll consider Jesus dying so that we could shrug off the shackles of sin, the dregs of our very nature, and become one with God and become like Him in righteousness, and you'll be humbled by the sort of person you are supposed to be: a person who welcomes trials and difficulties with joy in his heart, a person who takes pride in his humble circumstances knowing that he is where God wants him, a person who perseveres patiently through harsh circumstance spurred onward by an eternal perspective, a person who is quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, a person who keeps a tight rein on his tongue, a person who looks out for widows and orphans and keeps himself pure. And that's only the first chapter, succeeded by the chapter that tells you that faith without substantiating works is in vain.
If you read that passage not with the goal of conceptual understanding, (check, I've got this passage down) but with perspective on the sort of person you are and the sort of Christ-like nature God expects of His servants, it is utterly humbling and transforming, and you come to an awestruck understanding that only through God's grace and the transforming work of the Holy Spirit will you become anything like that because it's not in our nature. You come to appreciate that Jesus modeled this righteousness to unfettered perfection. You draw closer to God's heart.
Romans is a good book for the head. James is a good book for the heart. As Peekay would say, first with the head, and then with the heart. Ecclesiastes is probably Level III.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Ghost of Christmas Recent
23 December.
Here are my notes from the Christmas service I put together for interested crew members:
It’s easy to see, in a theological sense, why Good Friday and Easter are important commemorations for Christians. Jesus’s sacrificial death and subsequent supernatural resurrection are the cornerstone of our salvation and our restitution with God our Father. But why is Christmas, the supposed celebration of Christ’s birth, important to the believing Christian?
A possible and increasingly common answer is that it’s not. Many people would point to the season’s commercialist nature, the date December 25th’s origin in the pagan festival of Saturnalia, and the seeming insignificance of a birthday as a divine milestone to infer that the observance of Christmas is irrelevant to the Christian faith.
In response, I came up with two serious reasons that Christmas might be a worthwhile occasion to celebrate. The first stems from the precedent that it is appropriate to celebrate special days to commemorate special occurrences. In the book of Leviticus, God ordained the Feast of Passover for the Israelites to remember their deliverance, the Feast of Unleavened Bread to further remember His distinctions of holy and unholy provision, and the Feast of Tabernacles to remember their time of nomadic itinerance and utter dependence on God in the wilderness. Although not biblically mandated, it seems also appropriate to celebrate a special day commemorating Jesus’s arrival into the world: the miraculous beginning to a very special and remarkable 33 years, perhaps the greatest 33 years in the history of mankind. Even if it’s since been moved to the wrong day, it’s a day worth celebrating.
The second argument for Christmas is the significance of Jesus’s incarnation. It’s true that His death on the cross was what saved us from sin, overcame death, and captured eternal life for believers. But His life among us on earth gives an inexorable, indelible portrait of the sort of God we’re supposed to worship: it’s a historically true rendering of a God who really loves us. If you feel sorry for someone, you give them a handout. We observe this behavior in the way we give to the Salvation Army or the Vietnam Vet around Christmastime. We feel sorry for the disenfranchised and the destitute, we see that it is right to help, and we give. But if you love someone, you leave where you are and go to them. If your brother or sister had fallen into difficult times, you would buy a plane ticket and travel thousands of miles to be with them. And given our plight and sinful condition, our God responded not with some blanket, impersonal measure, but instead left where He was and came to us Himself.
I like to think, and I think it’s reasonable to think, that Jesus didn’t see His time on earth solely as an obligation towards the plan of salvation, but that He actually likes us and liked to spend time with us. He wept with Martha and Mary, ate with His disciples, took the time to coach and mentor them personally, played with little children. His coming to earth was a matter of love, not duty. And Christmas is a celebration of, yes, His coming to earth in human form.
It is an important truth that God loved us not only enough to die for us, a one-time event, but enough to live with us day in and day out and still love us. In light of that love so demonstrated, how then should I live?
2 February.
My most recent favorite passage: James 1:26-27:
“If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
Here are my notes from the Christmas service I put together for interested crew members:
It’s easy to see, in a theological sense, why Good Friday and Easter are important commemorations for Christians. Jesus’s sacrificial death and subsequent supernatural resurrection are the cornerstone of our salvation and our restitution with God our Father. But why is Christmas, the supposed celebration of Christ’s birth, important to the believing Christian?
A possible and increasingly common answer is that it’s not. Many people would point to the season’s commercialist nature, the date December 25th’s origin in the pagan festival of Saturnalia, and the seeming insignificance of a birthday as a divine milestone to infer that the observance of Christmas is irrelevant to the Christian faith.
In response, I came up with two serious reasons that Christmas might be a worthwhile occasion to celebrate. The first stems from the precedent that it is appropriate to celebrate special days to commemorate special occurrences. In the book of Leviticus, God ordained the Feast of Passover for the Israelites to remember their deliverance, the Feast of Unleavened Bread to further remember His distinctions of holy and unholy provision, and the Feast of Tabernacles to remember their time of nomadic itinerance and utter dependence on God in the wilderness. Although not biblically mandated, it seems also appropriate to celebrate a special day commemorating Jesus’s arrival into the world: the miraculous beginning to a very special and remarkable 33 years, perhaps the greatest 33 years in the history of mankind. Even if it’s since been moved to the wrong day, it’s a day worth celebrating.
The second argument for Christmas is the significance of Jesus’s incarnation. It’s true that His death on the cross was what saved us from sin, overcame death, and captured eternal life for believers. But His life among us on earth gives an inexorable, indelible portrait of the sort of God we’re supposed to worship: it’s a historically true rendering of a God who really loves us. If you feel sorry for someone, you give them a handout. We observe this behavior in the way we give to the Salvation Army or the Vietnam Vet around Christmastime. We feel sorry for the disenfranchised and the destitute, we see that it is right to help, and we give. But if you love someone, you leave where you are and go to them. If your brother or sister had fallen into difficult times, you would buy a plane ticket and travel thousands of miles to be with them. And given our plight and sinful condition, our God responded not with some blanket, impersonal measure, but instead left where He was and came to us Himself.
I like to think, and I think it’s reasonable to think, that Jesus didn’t see His time on earth solely as an obligation towards the plan of salvation, but that He actually likes us and liked to spend time with us. He wept with Martha and Mary, ate with His disciples, took the time to coach and mentor them personally, played with little children. His coming to earth was a matter of love, not duty. And Christmas is a celebration of, yes, His coming to earth in human form.
It is an important truth that God loved us not only enough to die for us, a one-time event, but enough to live with us day in and day out and still love us. In light of that love so demonstrated, how then should I live?
2 February.
My most recent favorite passage: James 1:26-27:
“If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
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