Scott Stilson

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Lord, be more than a topic.

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Things I learned yesterday:

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Carla’s comment about the killer “taking away [the] power“ of our main character in Secret Sunshine is illuminating for how things may have shifted since the days of Jesus: It used to be that the Pharisees could lord unforgiven-ness over people as a means of power, hence the importance of Jesus forgiving sins and—gasp!—authorizing scruffy Galileans, et al to do the same. But now, we’ve taken the requirement to forgive and turned it into an instrument for the maintenance of power. Ugh!

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“With.”

— God, in answer to another round of “What should I do?” or “How to decide what to do?”

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“I only do what I see the Father doing.” Does that mean Jesus never masturbated?

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In reply to a piece of email correspondence in which Ethan indicated an eagerness to incorporate “communion” into our weekly church schedule:

I’m not sure I’m game for the “every week” part yet myself, so let’s slow down on that and make sure to subject it to consensus. Part of my concern is procedural—ensure consensus for all such decisions—but part of my concern might also be personal: I maintain a tenuous sense of what His body being given and His blood being poured out “for [me]” even means.

Or maybe it’s not tenuous but feels that way because it’s substantially different from what I think most of us learned growing up, and I haven’t had much chance to share (and thus practice knowing) it. Maybe I’ll make it part of what I share when I tell the story of my life and the life of God in and around me.

“Died for us” and “died for our sins” are obviously crucial Jesus’ whole shebang. But I don’t want to establish a ritual around those concepts if I don’t have a firm grasp on what they mean. I could see us spending a whole meeting teaching each other about this and discussing this…

Anyway, no immediate actions out of the above. Let’s yes set aside time to ritualistically break bread and drink sparkling grape juice this Friday (provided there’s no objection from anybody else at the time) and then take it from there. I bet doing it this once will make the topic of doing it more often come up naturally. But let’s not be pre-married to the idea of doing it every week yet. Please.

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The important part for me in leisure is a deliberate decision to engage and stay engaged. “…do it with all your might…” Remember the lesson of the ceiling at the Upper Room.

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My reflections on excerpts from Do We Need the New Testament?: Letting the Old Testament Speak for Itself (2015) by John Goldingay:

A novel summary of the Gospel in light of the Old Testament:

In a sense God did nothing new in Jesus. God was simply taking to its logical and ultimate extreme the activity in which he had been involved throughout the First Testament story.

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One might almost say that God had to provoke humanity into its ultimate act of rebellion in order to have the opportunity to act in a way that refused to let this ultimate act of rebellion have the last word.

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My argument is that the execution and the resurrection were indeed the logical end term of a stance that God had been taking through First Testament times, so that the First Testament story does give an entirely adequate account of who God is and of the basis for relating to God. Because of who God has always been, God was already able to be in relationship with his people, despite their rebellion. God has always been able and willing to carry their waywardness. And on the basis of that story, Israel has always been able to respond to God and to be in relationship with God. In this sense the gospel did not open up any new possibilities to people; those possibilities were always there.

In which Goldingay delivers big “ouch“ for the church that seems like it’s also a knock on God as a strategist:

God’s strategy was that his people would be the magnet that attracts people to him. Israel was not very good at being such a magnet, and the church continues to have this problem.

In which I hear, “Zing!”:

Once people know about eternal life, they often stop taking this life really seriously. The history of Christian attitudes provides evidence for this speculation. We need the New Testament to give us hope for resurrection life, but we need the First Testament to remind us of the importance of this life, and to give us hope for this life.

In a comment about our action in relation to God’s kingdom that echoes (by a period of days) something I was trying to get across to a friend in an email correspondence:

In none of the Gospels does Jesus tell his disciples to extend the kingdom, work for the kingdom, build up the kingdom, or further the kingdom.

To which I can only say wow:

Further, the First Testament is under no illusion about whether implementing the Torah has the potential to achieve God’s purpose for Israel’s life. There is no direct link between seeking to restrain injustice in society and the giving implementing of God’s reign. Implementing God’s reign is fortunately God’s business. We have noted that the New Testament does not talk about human beings furthering or spreading or building up or working for God’s reign. Human efforts to achieve social justice are not destined to be successful. “Our responsibility is not to save the world. We are not required to transform This Age.” The problem about human society is too deep. As human beings living in God’s world, our vocation is to do what we can to restrain disorder in society, in light of what the Scriptures tell us about God’s creation purpose, but not to be overly optimistic about what we can do to bring in the kingdom.

In connection with our life in the world, then, do we need the New Testament? From it we get a further articulation of God’s creation ideals. Jesus does not need to give us any new truths or to issue new divine expectations in this connection, though he does provide a fresh prophetic articulation of God’s truth and God’s expectations. More important is the fact that from his story we know how God’s self-giving came to a climax in him as he let himself be martyred. We learn how that self-giving issued in the promise of resurrection and eternal life that extends to the whole world. It is what Jesus did that crucially matters. We could not do without that.

Important for me to remember:

The person and activity of God’s Spirit are objective realities separate from any sense of them that we may have.

Here’s the bit about the recurring theme I found so remarkable:

The prophets characteristically announce an event that sounds as if it will be the ultimate fulfillment of God’s ultimate purpose, and it is characteristic of the New Testament to talk as if that fulfillment has happened. That perspective applies to [Joel 2:30-32]. These declarations look like a description fo cataclysmic events at the End, of the kind that are also described in a passage such as Luke 21. Acts 2 sees these declarations, too, as fulfilled at Pentecost, which reflects that fact that Pentecost is itself indeed a partial realization of the End.

Yet is is only a partial realization, as is also characteristic of the fulfillment of prophecy. When a prophet announces the End (with positive or native implications), we have noted that an end does come, but it turns out not to be the End. The indication that Pentecost was not the End is the way history continues to unfold, with further withdrawing of the Spirit as well as further outpourings. Given that two thousand more years have passed (three or four times as long as passed from Joel to Pentecost), it seems Pickwickian even to call Pentecost the beginning of the End, though theologically there is a basis for speaking in these terms. It is rather the most magnificent instance of a pattern that runs through the First Testament and continues to run through the church’s story, and it is part of the guarantee (as Paul emphasizes) that the End will come. It is also a basis of praying and hoping that we may see more instantiations of the pattern, if we do not see the end itself.

An uncomfortable truth about the Holy Spirit is that we cannot control its coming and operation, as we cannot bring in or further or work for God’s reign. We can hurt or grieve the Holy Spirit and forfeit any right to the involvement of God’s spirit with us. But in ordinary human experience we cannot make another person fall in love with us or want to spend time with us, and neither can we take action that will ensure that God pours out his spirit on us. Our relationship with God is not contractual, so that we could fulfill the right conditions and it would have the desired results, as if our relationship with God resembled putting coins in a vending machine. It is a personal relationship, and such relationships involve freedom on both sides.

Isn’t the following what Deuteronomy actually says?:

It was the must that was the problem. There were circumstances in which Paul was happy to observe rules in the Torah, in connection with taking and keeping a vow or with circumcision. But the must implied that observing the rules in the Torah was the make-or-break factor in a relationship with God.

A curious take on the role of the Law that I’d like to look further into:

Elsewhere, Paul describes the Law as designed to increase transgression (Rom 5:20), perhaps in the sense that it designated as transgression offenses such as coveting that we might not otherwise have seen as sinful (e.g., Rom 4:15; 5:13; 7:7).

I love his refusal to disguise the Bible:

The Bible is not a lover letter to us from God; it does not focus on a personal relationship between God and the invidious. Nor does it focus on a challenge to work for peace and justice or on adherence to a body of doctrinal beliefs. Nor does it focus on faith itself: “The Gospel is not primary concerned with faith” but with “that upon which the faith reposes,” with the object of faith, “the kerygma that arouses faith.” It suggests a grand narrative about a project that God initiated and will bring to completion. Human communities and individuals gain their significance through being drawn into that project.

On the way the Scriptures use the Scriptures:

To put it more paradoxically, the hermeneutical guidance that the New Testament offers us is that we should not be looking to it for hermeneutical guidance, unless the guidance is an invitation to be imaginative in seeking to see how First Testament texts speak to our concerns.

Is this true? I think not, at least not exclusively. There’s a lot about the people talking.

The worship the Psalms commend and model is one that focuses on God.

This is a great spiritual strategy:

Intercession implies interposing between two parties so as to bring them together. It entails identifying with one party and representing it to another. For a prophet, intercessory prayer involved identifying with people and representing them before God, so that one speaks as “we” or “I,” not as “they” or “he” or “she.” I realized that the apparent absence of intercessory prayers from the Psalter might mean that actually the “I” and “we” psalms could be used as intercessions as well as supplications. Perhaps Israel used them that way; certainly we might do so. In praying protest psalms, one need not be praying for oneself. Specifically, in praying the prayers in the Psalms that speak out of oppression, affliction, persecution and tyranny, we pray not directly for ourselves but for people who experience oppression, affliction, persecution and tyranny, with whom we identify. We pray for God to put down tyrants and oppressors.

Not so fast:

Christians commonly justify their opposition to the use of such psalms by suggesting that these psalms are out of keeping with the New Testament, but it is not so. While the New Testament doesn’t quote Psalm 137, it does utilize imprecatory parts of Psalm 69 (e.g., Jn 2:17; Acts 1:20), which as a whole is more extensively imprecatory. Further, we noted in the introduction to this volume that Revelation 6:10 reports an imprecatory prayer on the part of the martyrs, who ask, “How long, Lord, holy and true, will you not judge and take redress for our blood from earth’s inhabitants?” God’s response is not to point out that such a prayer is inappropriate in light of Jesus’ exhortation to forgive enemies; it is to promise them that the time will soon come. Since it has not done so, perhaps this promise provides further reason for praying in imprecatory fashion, or further reason for us Westerners to avoid doing so if we allow for the possibility that we will be its victims.

A nice way of viewing the Bible:

“From a theological perspective, the Bible is the revelation of what God selected to be remembered and forgotten of God’s relationship to Israel and to the world” and of “God’s own character and configuration.”

What?!:

There is no basis in Scripture for the conviction that the narrative of history is moving toward the kingdom of God.

Again, something to think about:

Jesus did not reveal something new about God. What he did was embody God.

C’mon, preach it!:

I am not sure what would be the unfortunate result of interpretive programs that assume an autonomous Old Testament. Our actual problem is that of subsuming the First Testament under our understanding of what is Christian, so that this strategy enables us to sidestep parts of the First Testament that we want to avoid. By sleight of hand, aspects of what the First Testament says about God are filtered out in the name of christocentric interpretation. But the real problem is that we don’t like these aspects of the Scriptures. Christocentric interpretation makes it harder for the Scriptures to confront us when we need to be confronted. It is not the case that what was hidden in the Old is revealed in the New. Rather, there are many things revealed in the First Testament that the church has hidden by its interpretive strategy, obscuring the nature of scriptural faith.

This is to completely discount the idea that we can hold it up as an example to be spiritualized. Nope.:

the positive way the New Testament speaks in Acts 7:45 about Joshua’s taking the land and in Hebrews 11 about Israel conquering kingdoms, becoming faithful in battle and routing foreign armies suggests that it did not feel any of the unease about such First Testament narratives that is characteristic of modern Christians, as it does not feel any unease about the kind of praying that occurs in Psalm 137.24

In its entirety, worth the price of admission:

So do we need the New Testament? Or rather, what’s new about the New Testament? Christians commonly operate with the working hypothesis that Jesus brought a revelation from God that went significantly beyond the revelation in the First Testament. My thesis in this volume has been that the chief significance of Jesus does not lie in any new revelation that he brought. It lies in who he was, what he did and what happened to him, and what he will do. He did not reveal new truths about what it means to be God except the fact that God is more complicated than people would previously have thought (“three persons and one God”). He did not reveal new truths about what it means to be human but (like a prophet) brought into sharper focus some of the truths that people ought to have known.

Thus their reaction to him was not, “Wow, we never knew that.” It was more something along the lines of, “I wish you hadn’t reminded us of that,” and of, “What right have you got to be associating yourself with God so closely?” He did bring a concrete embodiment of who God had already told Israel that he was and had shown Israel that he was. In this sense Paul indeed implicitly thinks in terms of “a revelation which began with creation but which now has been brought into sharper focus in Christ.” Jesus provoked Jews and Gentiles to an ultimate rejection of God that God turned into the ultimate means whereby his relationship with his people could be affirmed, healed and restored. He also thus opened the way for the news about what he had done to be shared with the Gentile world as something that could bring it the same blessing, in keeping with God’s original intention. And he established his own authority to be the person who would ultimately judge the world as a whole.

In the course of telling his story and working out its implications, the New Testament does make some affirmations that supplement what people could know from the First Testament. One is the fact that Sheol is not the end for humanity. At the end, all humanity is going to be raised from death in order to enjoy resurrection life or to go to hell. Thus people in the First Testament “did not receive what was promised. God had planned something better for us, so that they would not be brought to completion without us” (Heb 11:39-40). Paul pushes the argument further in connection with affirming that all God’s people will be raised or will meet the Lord together (1 Thess 4:13-18). We do not go to heaven when we die; the entire people of God will reach completion together. Alongside this truth is the way the New Testament assumes the existence of Satan. While the First Testament presupposes the existence of an embodiment of resistance to God, the New Testament puts more emphasis on this motif.

It is appropriate that the truths about resurrection, hell and Satan should be associated with the story of Jesus’ dying and rising. It was Jesus’ dying and rising that made resurrection possible. It was these events that brought to a climax the conflict between God and the power that resists God. And it was these events that made hell necessary for people who turn their back on what God did in Jesus and insist on maintaining their resistant stance. Oddly, these truths were all part of Jewish thinking in Jesus’ day, so that even they are not new revelations that Jesus brings. It is almost as if the people of God knew they needed to affirm these beliefs even though they couldn’t quite know why or on what basis they might do so. It is Jesus who gives us reason to believe things that it would be nice to believe (at least some of them are nice to believe). He rescues us from just whistling in the dark and invites us to trust in him.

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At the end of the day, my belief that Jesus is alive comes from hearsay. I need to be OK with that. Am I?

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The Bible is a reference book—a reference book authorized by God through His people. That “reference” status contains not enough information for us to gauge the historicity of its narratives or the authority of its imperatives. It is authoritative, but that doesn’t make every apparently historical account or even divinely issued command in it so.

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Why is it wicked and adulterous to seek a sign? Is Sullivan wicked and adulterous in “waiting for proof” of You?

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“It is a sin when someone knows the right thing to do and doesn’t do it” (James 4:17).

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Community is built, not found. Therefore, stay for UBBC’s little post-service social time even though it is on Zoom.

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If the church is the people, then the gatherings and their proceedings are at their worst an excuse to bring those people together that we might realize more our inheritance of God’s kingdom. That means I should not wring my hands to worry about proceedings, whether liturgical as in the the case of UBBC, or low-churchy, as in our house churches. If I am to be unhurried, unworried, and deliberate, then I must be so about church. I will not worry about the way church proceeds. I will simply be deliberate.

Correspondence about there “no longer remaining a sacrifice for sins“ (Hebrews 10:26)

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friend:

As I’ve left the penal substitutionary atonement understanding of things, I’ve come to believe that God’s forgiveness was present before the Cross and that the blood of Jesus was not legally necessary for God to forgive sins: It was necessary for us to understand it. Because of this, I don’t see forgiveness in legal terms, but rather in terms of relationship: We simply return to Him, which was available pre-Christ as well.

Yet there are many troubling passages which allude to a legal understanding, as in “If you do this, then legally you’re out of mercy.” Among them Hebrews 10:

> For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there is no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has ignored the Law of Moses is put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severe punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God (vv. 26-31).

What do you do with passages like this? And how do you see the work of the Cross? I feel like I have to keep going around this tree to understand the PSA theory and there are certainly a lot of scriptures that affirm that understanding of things.

me:

My short answer to any question about the New Testament’s talk of Jesus’ blood, sacrifice, and the resulting cleansing from sin: What’s wrong with a little metaphor?

Of course, it’s not all metaphor. Jesus really did make a sacrifice, viz., a relinquishment of something to gain a greater good. And it really was bloody. And it really does have an effect on sin. But don’t completely literalize the reference to the Levitical system, especially in a book that’s explicit that God doesn’t want that kind of sacrifice.

It also helps to always keep the following two and a half facts in mind:

  1. Who killed Jesus? People, not God (although Jesus did relinquish his life willingly).
  2. Could God forgive without the Cross? As you’ve already said, yes.

Now, the beginning of my long answer to your specific question goes like this: For my part, I don’t see a legal understanding in the passage you cite. But in it I do see most of your paraphrase—“If you do this, then … you’re out of mercy.” And you’re right that this idea isn’t unique to Hebrews. You’ll find it in:

along with echoes of it in any passage implying an only conditional, potentially temporary efficacy of salvation (Mark 4:16-19, 1 Corinthians 15:1-2, 1 John 2:24, 2 John 1:8, Revelation 3:1-5; see also Matthew 7:21-23, Luke 9:62, and John 8:11).

So, how does Jesus once-for-all sacrifice (Hebrews 7:27, 9:12, 10:10; Romans 6:10) have its good effect on our sin? And, understanding that effect, how can it be that it can be nullified?

More than a few books have been written to answer the first question. And I think you’ve done a lot of thinking on the subject yourself that will help you interpret the second. Here’s the tip of the iceberg of my response, based mostly on Hebrews itself:

Note the very first way the writer of Hebrews says we are saved. It’s been one of your favorite biblical phrases of late: “Since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, so that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives” (Hebrews 2:14-15, emphasis mine). Two sentences later, this very liberation is put into terms closer to those of chapter ten: “Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every way. This was so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in things relating to God, in order to wipe away the sins of the people” (v. 17, CEB). The two concepts—removal of sins and freedom from the fear of death—are related.

And now I’ve got to go to work. More later. Hopefully we can boil this stuff down when we’re done.

me again:

Lemme see if I can finish this now. Perhaps a dose of hurry-up-you’ve-got-to-go-to-work will get this stuff out faster.

God doesn’t need blood sacrifice to forgive sins. God instituted (or allowed the Israelites to believe that He instituted) various blood sacrifices because that’s what they could comprehend as the way to be reconciled to God. And indeed, it’s worthwhile to see that sin and estrangement from God cost something. But God Himself doesn’t need it.

It’s no different with Jesus. God didn’t need Jesus’ sacrifice to forgive sins. Israel may have needed to see it that way for a time for them to have any chance of a crucified messiah making any sense to them. But more to the root of things, God has always been in business of, for our good and as an expression of His essential character, subjecting Himself to human misconstrual and resistance and not being overcome by it, defeated by it, or cowed into giving up on going for His rightful, very loving, very beneficent reign among us. On the Cross, God goes as far as He can go in doing that by allowing humanity to do its very worst to Him and then overcoming it. He overcomes it by utterly refusing to retaliate—indeed, by offering forgiveness and “times of refreshing” (Acts 3:19)!—and by raising Jesus from the dead.

Thus, He has proven that He is not a “hard man” (Matthew 25:24). He really is slow to anger—the only thing that makes Him mad are things that keep people from Him and from flourishing—and abounding in mercy, as the Old Testament always said.

And thus, He has shown that we are not to fear death—neither as annihilation nor as the doorway to unjust, unkind divine judgement.

So if you sin willfully after learning this stuff, the “sacrifice for sins” goes away for you in Hebrews 10:26 because there’s nothing more God can do this side of heaven to convince You that He is not like you thought, that life’s not a bitch and then you die, and that therefore sin, which hurts other people and rejects God’s loving kingship, is not worthwhile. Was the Incarnation not enough? Was Jesus’ ministry not enough? Was His subjection to gruesome, unjust execution at the hand of your fellow men not enough? Was His resurrection not enough? Was His refusal to retaliate upon His resurrection not enough? Well then nothing will be enough. You’re trampling underfoot the Son of God, regarding His sacrifice as unclean, and insulting the Spirit of grace (i.e., gift). There will be terrifying judgment for that, and as long as you hold that view, you are by definition in outer darkness.

By the way, given its very nature, the sacrifice for sins doesn’t actually cease to exist in some ontological sense. It only becomes unavailable, in an epistemic sense, if you sin willfully. And read 1 John 1:7–2:2 and Luke 17:3-4 and tell me the sacrifice doesn’t become immediately available to us again upon confession and repentance.

So none of this is legalese. It is utter, self-sacrificial Gift from the king of the cosmos and its refusal. Think of how you’d feel if you went all out, liquidating all your net worth so you could buy [your wife] a gift that cost that much—and then her not believing that you love her and acting against your wishes and hurting herself and others and spurning you. Would’t you be a little angry? Wouldn’t you be righteous in calling her ungrateful? Might you not cast her out of your house for a time?

Of course, we’re judged in light of what we know. If we haven’t fully received a knowledge of the truth, which is the prerequisite for Hebrews 10:26ff to take effect, then God will not judge us as harshly. If [your wife] couldn’t or didn’t know how much you paid, failed to see why you gave her the gift in the first place, couldn’t grasp what good it accomplished, or, say, didn’t know who you were, you wouldn’t be harsh at all. It’s only those who have received a knowledge of the truth and then sin willfully who will have to face a severe judgment.

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Parenting Scriptures

All of the above except for the Martha and Mary bit, the excerpt from Philippians, and the substitution-heavy quotation from John came to me last night on a walk I took up and down Balmoral Way by myself just after a similar walk Carla and I took in which I was grumpy and we discussed, seemingly to little good, how it is that I feel so frustrated with the kids sometimes and speak them accordingly. It was seemingly to little good because Carla took it as another opportunity to insist that I see a counselor. Perhaps more helpfully, she did say that she thinks I expect too much of the kids and out of the kids.

But Lord, You are a wonderful counselor Yourself, and you proved it yet again last night.

The fact is, I’ve been worried about Sullivan and Éa. I worry that our relationships don’t look like the kindred feeling I have with, say, Ethan. They’re not enthusiastic about the same things about which I’m enthusiastic—namely, You. They’re wrapped up in television shows, Minecraft, and carbohydrate-heavy foods. I’m worried I’m going to leave them without a spiritual legacy because I didn’t lead them correctly to You.

But what is it I really want of them? I want them to be loved and know it, both as an end in itself and that they may love You and others in turn. The only way to inculcate that is to quit wringing my hands over their performance and demonstrate the Love! Monkey see, monkey do! Right now, the only good they seem to know of me am to them is as a provider. They need to know it’s more than that: That I joyfully care about and care for them and caringly enjoy them. They’ll know where I get the Love if I love them. The greatest apologetic argument is a life lived abiding in Jesus.

I’ve already grown more gentle this morning as a result of Your input, and their response and responsiveness to me have already improved.

So don’t worry about them. Don’t worry about anything. Be gentle. Be patient. Don’t fret their salvation. Just love them. What kind of education and instruction is Jesus’? Think about that? How would Jesus treat Éa and Sullivan?

As for life more generally, I asked You whether I should abandon my scheduled approach to life. You said no, my structure is good. But I should just listen for Me all the while. Hold on loosely to your plans. Don’t be greedy or anxious about accomplishment or checking off boxes. Dismiss the oughts and act in grateful, joyful love only. Sullivan and Éa will feed on that easygoing, lighthearted life in Love, in Jesus.

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How do you reconcile the antinomy between these two excerpts from the Sermon on the Mount?

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:14-15).

and

Take care not to practice your righteousness in the sight of people, to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven…[W]hen you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your charitable giving will be in secret…[W]hen you pray, go into your inner room, close your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret…[W]hen you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that your fasting will not be noticed by people but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you (Matthew 6:1,3-4,6,17).

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“What I heard, and offer to you for testing, was that…”

— Brad Jersak • Can Your Hear Me? (2003) [emphasis mine]

A remarkable qualifier in book by a Christian teacher. It shouldn’t be remarkable. It should be normal.

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I observed a prayer ministry session with a lady who would pray aloud and then the answers from God back to herself, out loud in continuous dialogue. I took notes during this awesome conversation and weighed carefully what was being shared. At times her grief and panic came through in the questions. “Oh dear, oh dear! What shall I ever do?” She would cry. Then the calm voice of the Lord would respond with gentleness and comfort: “My daughter, there is no need for fear. I am with you. Hold my hand, and I will lead the way.” This would continue for hours as God did his own marvellous [sic] therapy of the soul.

[…]

If you struggle with static when trying to listen, you might her simple method a try.

— Brad Jersak • Can Your Hear Me? (2003)

So there’s precedent for how I best hear Your voice!

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Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the vault of the heavens.” God created the great sea monsters and all the living creatures that swarm in the waters, each according to its kind, and all the winged birds, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth” (Genesis 1:20-22).

When I read “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures” a week or two ago as I finished my usual solo lunch in the main conference room at DiamondBack, tears welled in my eyes. God wants our oceans and lakes and rivers to teem with life.

I’m memorizing the above passage now.

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On my walk last night I tried to work out with God why I’ve been so unhappy this week. Toward the end of a mildly frustrating, brassy-heaven walk, I heard “Coffee!” At first, I thought this was referring to my actual intake of the decaf I recently secure via Jen Bean via Josh Potter from Standing Stone: Perhaps the intake of some other chemical from the coffee was depressing me. But after reentering the house, it occurred to me that wasn’t it at all. This decaf coffee was a great example of me treating something as a must-do that clearly is not. So here was the answer: I have been unhappy because I have been treating as musts things that are not.

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friend:

Was reading Hebrews 6:1-3 this morning which lays out the very basics of the faith:1. Repent from any attempts to work toward “goodness”2. Have Faith in God’s forgiveness in Christ3. Baptism at the start of your allegiance to Christ4. Laying on of Hands - to receive the Holy Spirit? And Gifts?5. Resurrection of the dead (for those “in Christ"?)6. Judgement in the age or everlasting judgementMy reflection is that I have largely ignored “judgement” as a primary thing in my toolbox when preaching the gospel and I wonder if I should be rethinking how I communicate the message.[To] the last persons I’ve been involved in helping to allegiance to Christ […] I spoke heavily of the love of God, of their purpose is spreading that love, and becoming like him. The wife was baptized […] and we laid hands on her and prayed for the Holy Spirit. I think she would be able to articulate points 1-5.But I don’t think I shared much of anything about the judgement and that concerns me, as it’s part of the core.If you were teaching a new person about the faith, how would you discuss the judgement?

me:

A smattering of thoughts:“We are not coherent when we applaud justice and jeer judgment” (Dale Allison, Night Comes, which I can loan you via Kindle if you’d like). You can’t have the former without the latter. How do we expect God to deal correctly with everything unless He applies His judgement to it first?I, for one, look forward to being judged by Jesus. It’s the beginning of how He is going to set me right. It’s the beginning of how He is going to set everything right.And it dovetails nicely with other parts to the gospel with which you’re more comfortable: “God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30b-31).It may also help to bring this down to a human level: Social justice warriors belie themselves if they ever say “don’t judge me,” for judgement is the basis of all their work.See also Psalm 7.

friend:

Those are good thoughts and very helpful. If you like Justice, you can’t ignore judgement. I think because the nature of the judgement is so complex and confusing it’s easier to just ignore. But God will make all things right, and weigh the scales, so to speak, which is good.One follow-up. What role does “faith in Christ” have on that day? The righteousness that is by faith, does that change the nature of the judgement? Or is that dealing with HOW we are live right now? That is, we can access Christ now, through faith, which can transform us to live as He desires, which will spare us some judgement. Or when we get to the end and all our misdeeds are judged, we pull out a “get out of trouble free” card by appealing to our faith in Christ.How do you see these working? Faith in Christ and not our works. But then our works being judged.

me:

First, a brief excursus: It’s not just misdeeds that are judged: It’s our good deeds, too. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). See also Ephesians 6:7-8, among other places. “Judge” is not (or should not be) always be synonymous with “judge negatively.” For example, I judge [a lot of] work you’ve done for […] people […] to be good.Now, in reply to your question about the role of faith in Christ (or, as some translators are now favoring and as I will now throw in for fun as a very distracting aside, “the faithfulness of Christ”—wha!?) on the Day of Judgement, I think you’re basically right when you write, “[W]e can access Christ now, through faith, which can transform us to live as He desires, which will spare us some [negative] judgment.”There is no get-out-of-trouble-free card. Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Prophets, Jesus, Paul, and John of Patmos are clear that we will all be judged, both good deeds and misdeeds, no exception. There is no partiality with God. And we have all fallen short in at least some measure, so we will all undergo at least some negative judgment. Those of us who fall very far short (God no doubt taking into account each of our starting points) will face much more negative judgment. For those folks, it really will be a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.This is where faith comes in. We “persevere in doing good” (Romans 2:7) by faith in and faithfulness to Christ (cf. Hebrews 11). It is by right living that we gain “the life of the Age.”Does the centrality in all this of doing good mean:- that there are paths other than Christianity to a relatively pleasant judgment day for any given person? Of course it does! But those paths, whatever they’re called, are not different paths at their core, for the degree to which they lead to affirming judgment is the degree to which they adhere to God’s Word, that is, to Jesus, whether the people following those paths know it or not (c.f. Emeth following Tash in The Last Battle). Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, whether you call Him by name or not.- that we’re not saved by grace (i.e., a gift)? Of course not! We live and move and have our very being in God. Our very existence is a gift. How much more so our persisting into deathless life after death in the blissful, direct presence of Him whom we’re not even worthy to see! We who are made of dust! That’s saved by grace.

friend:

Wow. So much here:Faith in Christ ensures Everlasting life becomes “The faithfulness of Christ ensures the life “of this age”. That’s a head spin from my evangelical roots.In light of what you’ve written here, which I am inclined to agree with, I need another level of clarity as maybe you see it. So I present an example:- Bill lives an ok but mostly selfish life. Most of his works are just for his own gain, he cheats on his wife, they get divorced, he is a lame father but not abusive, he succeeds in business, hordes his wealth, etc. When he is 75 he finds out he has stage 4 lung cancer and has only weeks to live. As he nears the end of his life, he is watching the television when Franklin Graham comes on the screen. Franklin is half way through his salvation message when a malfunction to Bill’s breathing tube shuts off the oxygen and he dies a few moments later before the end of the message.- Mark lives an ok but mostly selfish life. Most of his works are just for his own gain, he cheats on his wife, they get divorced, he is a lame father but not abusive, he succeeds in business, hordes his wealth, etc. When he is 75 he finds out he has stage 4 lung cancer and has only weeks to live. As he nears the end of his life, he is watching the television when Franklin Graham comes on the screen. Franklin delivers his message on salvation through believing in Christ and saying a prayer of Faith. Mark is deeply moved, regretting his past sins and trusting in Jesus. As Mark is dying he utters the words that he repents of his sins and asks Jesus into his heart. Then he dies.At the judgement day what happens to Bill and what happens to Mark. Are their fates identical. Is Mark’s any different at all having “come to faith” before the clock ran out?And if nothing is different, then we really are talking about Salvation in real terms of relationship with Christ that transforms, and the benefit on judgement day will be in the proportion to which we lived out that transformation in the world. No real benefit for just a statement of belief.

me:

I want to be clear that I’m spitballing. With sometimes forceful rhetoric (as usual), yes. But just spitballing. The rhetoric is just the best way to get an idea across and therefore to have the idea tested. Please push back. I’m ready to be corrected.Now, onto your question:You and I have already reviewed the possibility of postmortem evangelism as being at least biblically implied in 1 Peter 3:19 & 4:6, John 5:25, Revelation 21:25, Romans 8:38-39, and perhaps 1 Corinthian 15:29, so I don’t need to make the case to you that Bill’s chances of Making It to the Party don’t end with his demise. But your question isn’t about his Making It to the Party. It’s about whether his pre-Party judgment will be less tolerable than Mark’s.Assuming Bill and Mark are noetic twins and would thus reply identically to Jesus, the answer is no, with the exception that Bill will have to do his regretting in front of the Throne instead of in front of the TV.To me, 1 Timothy 5:8, James 2, and, like, the entirety of 1 John make clear that, as you say, there is “no real benefit for just a statement of belief.”There does, however, remain an urgency to “coming to faith” in this life because it is this life that will be judged. The sooner you repent, the sooner you can get busy Living (or, if you prefer, building out of “gold, silver, and precious stones” [1 Corinthians 3:12]).And as you’d be the first to say, the statement of belief does have a benefit—provided it does not remain “just” a statement of belief, provided we’re not “believing in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:2), provided the seeds of the Word take strong root in our hearts (Matthew 13:18-23, etc.). I don’t need to tell you that our belief in an infinitely kind God who stoops to know us and redeem us and enjoy us and love us is plenty for some people (most people?) to really get going on the narrow gate to Life.

friend:

Yeah, this all makes sense to me and we’ve discussed before, but it does seem to run in the face of so much evangelical work. So much effort to talk about “salvation through faith in Christ” and salvation being ”from judgement.“ So many people rejoicing over the sinner prayers prayed on the deathbeds. How did we get here?One last quick one: So over and over again it talks about “salvation by faith” or that “we are justified by faith.” etc. In Romans 4:5 it basically says the opposite of what we’re saying here about judgement of our works: “You’re justified by faith alone, and not by works.” So what good is the “justification”? Or what am I justified from by faith alone?Is this whole business of justification and salvation just misunderstood as to what the benefits are? We say “salvation” as if people agree what that means.Is the whole thing about “Salvation is relationship with God” which is available to you now through faith, and not through works. So you are not “made right” by your works, you’re just made right by your faith in him (leading to relationship with him lest you believed in vain). So go to him, be transformed by him, because how you live matters, you’re works will be judged, and you can only live transformed if you have relationship with him.

me:

I still rejoice over a sinner’s prayer prayed on deathbeds, inasmuch as it represents true repentance from dead works and real trust in God—just not with a “phew!” about the avoidance of hell or annihilation.I think we got here because as Americans we’re focused on maximizing measurable results. And prayers prayed or hands raised is much easier to measure than love points. Mix in easy transportation, mass communication, and the democratization of hermeneutics, and there you have it. Incidentally, I don’t think the Roman Catholics or the Orthodox have quite the same problem. (They have different ones.)Now, regarding salvation and justification, Romans 4:5 doesn’t contradict the ideas we (and let’s hope the Holy Spirit) are developing here. It complements them: None of us, not even the best among us, deserves to live forever or to be (eventually) treated as though we have acted faultlessly. That these things will happen to us is 100% the gift of God. To receive this gift, we believe Him, entrust ourselves to Him, and begin to follow Him. In that sense, it’s really not that different from what you and I grew up believing.All we’re adding is that at some point after the normal course of this life, each of us will have to give an account of what we’ve done, pre-Jesus and post-Jesus both—and that following the words of the New Testament, including those of our Lord, this assessment has an important place in our suite of morally motivating ideas.Actually, allow me a quick revision. What we’re actually adding is that:- we, the people who have already made profession of trust in and allegiance to Jesus in this life, will be part of the Judgment,- everybody gets the get-out-of-trouble-free card after the Judgement, provided there’s true repentance, and- therefore the traditional rejection of postmortem evangelism is in error.These are our serious departures from the tradition we grew up in.

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Now that’s a fetching image.

A brick church building with a tall tower features solar panels installed on its roof.
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What I really want in this instance, as George MacDonald taught me, isn’t the forgiveness for the consequences of my sins (e.g., the wrath of God) but freedom from my actual sins. I’d like to become the father that doesn’t snap at his son. I don’t want an imputed purity. I actually want to be, myself, pure.

— Richard Beck

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Good working definition of joy from Richard Beck: “great delight regardless of external circumstance.”