"All" of "More" of the Holy Spirit?

Within evangelical circles a traditional divide exists between those who advocate an additional experience of being “filled with the Holy Spirit” after being “saved,” and those who insist that upon trusting in Jesus a believer then fully partakes of the Spirit of the risen Lord so no further “filling” is needed. “We’ve already received the Holy Spirit,” say those in the latter category. “Why would we ask for more?”

Asking the question in this form simply reveals the inadequacy of human speech to encompass the realities of God. The Holy Spirit is one way of experiencing the one God, the Creator, in the same way that the Father and the Son are ways of experiencing the Creator. If Jesus says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9), then the Son (the Lord) is equivalent, in our experience, to the Father. And if Paul says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:17), then the Spirit, in our experience, is equivalent to the Son, or Lord. Father, Son and Spirit are experienced as “Persons,” to use the classical Trinitarian term.

Asking whether we could have either “all” or “more” of the Spirit is to reduce a Person to a quantity — as though the Spirit were a substance, like ethanol or corn syrup, that could be added to something else as an ingredient. Since the Spirit is a Person, he cannot be quantified in a literal sense. “All” and “more” are simply metaphorical ways of speaking of something that cannot literally be quantified. You could say that you have “all” of your husband, and at the same time you want “more” of him, but these are only quantitative analogies. Because of the depth of personhood, you have both “all” of him at the same time you want “more” of him.

God operates beyond the four dimensions of our space-time universe, but because of the restrictions of our perceptions we are forced to speak of him, and his ways, by analogy. It is a mistake to consider such metaphorical expressions as literal “facts” about God; it is only the limitation of our language that makes them necessary and, when not misapplied, useful.

Consider the analogy for the Spirit that the Bible itself uses. Recall that, in the biblical languages, “spirit,” “wind” and ”breath” are the same word. So the Spirit is spoken of only by analogy with something to which we can relate in our physical world, just as Jesus points out in John 3:8: “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.” Applying this analogy to the question of “all” or “more,” we realize that a person has “all” of the earth’s atmosphere available to breathe; yet that same person, to stay alive, has to constantly seek “more.” So the Bible sees no inconsistency between having “all” of the Spirit and still asking for “more.”

The Bible often presents truths that seem inconsistent to those who insist that everything has to fit within the logical paradigm of Western science. With respect to the “all-or-more” issue, consider the way Paul speaks of the resurrection. To the Colossians he writes, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). So Paul insists that Christian believers are already living the resurrection life. Yet, in Philippians, he expresses the desire “that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own” (Philippians 3:11-12). Which is it — do Christians have “all” the resurrection, or do they need “more?” Is it resurrection now, or resurrection to come? It is both.

Biblical logic does not operate with the cause-and-effect logic of the Western mind. Instead, biblical logic surrounds an issue and approaches it from a variety of angles that may appear, to us, to be inconsistent among themselves. This is so because it is an authoritative Person (i.e., the Lord), who utters the final word, and not whichever debater brings the most “reasoned” argument. The best example of this is the Book of Job. (See my article Biblical Logic and Interpretation on our web site.)

So to speak of having “all” of the Spirit, or of desiring “more” of the Spirit, are simply metaphorical, or analogical, ways of expressing our commitment to the Person of the Creator. We may indeed have “all,” in the sense that we are potentially “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) through our membership in Christ, the Son. The Spirit, as a Person, cannot be divided so that to have the Spirit at all is to have “all” of the Spirit. Yet, through self-centeredness or fear, we may have not surrendered our wills to him so that his creative life and ministry gifts can be more fully released in us. In that sense, we desire “more” of the Spirit than what we currently experience. It is not that we need more of the Holy Spirit, but that the Spirit needs more of us.

It is not that we have “all” the quantity of the Spirit as a substance, or that we need “more” or a greater quantity of the Spirit. In this sense, it is not so much a question of who is right — the dispensationalists who say we have received “all,” or others who say they want “more.” It is a question of recognizing how we are using those terms, and what we really mean by them.

Unbelievers, Then and Now

Within evangelical circles it isn’t unusual to find leaders delineating a stark contrast between “believers” and “unbelievers” — people who can be identified as true Christians versus those who are clearly not recognizable as such. Some evangelicals use the term “Christian” to refer to themselves in contrast to adherents of other traditions thought to be less worthy of that label. I recall an incident some years ago when the local Roman Catholic archbishop was a guest speaker at an evangelical Christian college. He was somewhat taken aback when a student in the audience raised a question about the difference between Catholics and “Christians.”

It’s not uncommon for an evangelical pastor to decline to perform a marriage ceremony for a couple if he believes one of the partners is an “unbeliever.” Such a refusal is based on the admonition of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:14: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.” An “unequal yoke” is held to be inappropriate for any joint enterprise whether a marriage, a business partnership, or any relationship of common cause. For example, the late Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” movement received criticism because it embraced a diversity of religious groups, not only evangelical Christians but Mormons and others.

The stricture against an “unequal yoke” therefore raises the question of how, from a Christian standpoint, one defines an “unbeliever.” We can approach the issue by asking a simple question: “How many Gods are there?” In posing that question to a general audience today in our Western culture, we are likely to hear the answer: “one.” For people in our cultural environment it seems logical to reduce the inventory of divinities to a single member, namely the God who is understood to be the Creator of the universe. While people may effectively worship many entities, in particular their own selves, the appellation “God” is generally held to apply to only one entity.

But if we were to ask this question, “How many Gods are there?” in the Roman world of the first century, “one” is not the answer we would likely receive. The Roman world was awash in “gods” — not only the traditional pantheon of Zeus, Athena and the rest but also local divinities attached to various cities, family gods, divinities connected with trades and occupations, and in particular Caesar himself who, having declared his predecessor to be divine, claimed to now be the “son of god.” Life in the Mediterranean world involved everyone in a constant veneration of the gods appropriate to whatever situation in which one found himself. Such veneration was expected, and to abstain from it rendered a person socially suspect, even subversive to the social order.

Consider, then, the suspicion that would be directed toward people who became Christians and were therefore converted to the worship of the one God, the singular Deity worshiped by the Jewish community out of which the Christian church emerged. The Jews themselves, in a way, received a “pass” from the mandatory worship of the multiplicity of gods; the pragmatic Romans, recognizing the Jews’ fanatical monotheism, looked the other way when that community declined to take part in the public religious functions. But non-Jews who became monotheistic Christians were another matter, and their refusal to take part in the polytheism of their neighbors even led to the accusation that Christians were atheists.

Nevertheless, the Christians’ worship of the one God was a hallmark of their faith that distinguished their belief from the beliefs of others in their environment. As the apostle Paul wrote, “For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth — as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’ — yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:6). For Christians, the “gods” of their neighbors were mere idols, or even demons. When Paul urges the Corinthian Christians to avoid being unequally yoked with unbelievers, he adds, “What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God” (2 Corinthians 6:16). So when Paul urges the Corinthian Christians to avoid being unequally yoked with “unbelievers,” the unbelievers he was referring to were not people who would entertain no religious belief in God. To the contrary, these “unbelievers” were people whose lives were inundated with gods, who were therefore not unreligious but hyper-religious.

This suggests that an evangelical pastor who declines to marry a couple on the basis of Paul’s admonition in 2 Corinthians 6:14 might reconsider what it means to be an unbeliever in the New Testament sense. To most people in contemporary Western culture an “unbeliever” would be someone who has no belief in God, but that’s not the person to whom Paul is referring. If a Christian comes to his or her pastor desiring to marry someone who hasn’t made an express profession of Christian faith, it might be well to ask some pointed questions of the projected marital partner before flatly refusing to perform the ceremony. Far from being the polytheistic “unbeliever” to which Paul refers, the applicant’s projected partner may be very close to affirming the oneness of God that is a hallmark of Christian belief. And he or she may not be far from affirming a personal commitment to Jesus as the revelation of the one living God, the “way, the truth, and the life.”

Why Don’t People Accept Christianity?

A discussion group I once belonged to was reading a book on how men can live the Christian life. At one point the author suggested that people reject the Christian faith because they believe the Bible “puts them in bondage” to a moral standard they don’t want to live up to.

I disagree with that assessment. I believe that if people really believed in God, and accepted the Bible as the expression of his purpose, they would be glad to have a guide by which they could align themselves with the purposes of the Creator of the universe. In this way they could enjoy the benefits of being in partnership with God, and even aspire to being “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

So the issue is not that people resent the standards set by biblical Christianity and seek to escape them. The problem is that they don’t believe such standards exist in the first place, because there is no Authority who has decreed them. In their view, when Christians uphold a biblical standard for life they’re simply parroting the opinions of the biblical authors, benighted souls who lived in a dark, pre-scientific age and thought they had heard from some supernatural Source who really isn’t there. Today, of course, we know so much more than they did — in an observable universe of 300 billion galaxies 93 billion light years across (or whatever the latest numbers are), how can there be such a God as the one depicted in the Bible? Or if there is a God somewhere, how could any human being really hear from him?

In reaching people with the message of the Christian faith, the first task is to show that the perspective, or “world view,” I have just described is erroneous. It should be made evident that the Scriptural authors had a deeper perception of reality than the “flat” view that modernity imposes upon us. The biblical witness needs to be related to what cosmologists and atomic physicists are finding out about the nature of the universe, and what comprises it.

For example, there’s no way to avoid the view that this still-expanding universe of space, time and matter had a beginning similar to that described in the opening verses of the Book of Genesis. That light appeared after the “big bang,” as a separate stage in creation (Genesis 1:3), becomes plausible in terms of the theory that the plasma of the universe expanded to something close to its present size in the first split second after creation — expanding faster than the speed of light, which itself had to first be differentiated from that primordial plasma that was “without form and void” (Genesis 1:2).

As another example, the “stuff” of the universe appears to be solid, but in fact all matter is mostly space. The distance between subatomic particles (protons, neutrons, electrons, etc.) is comparable in scale to the distance between bodies of our solar system. I have seen it stated that if that space between particles were eliminated all the matter of the universe could be collapsed into something similar in size to a golf ball. Moreover, those “particles” are themselves made up of sub-particle entities, right down to what some theorists call “strings” that vibrate multi-dimensionally, not just in the four dimensions of space-time that we can experience. Whatever the case, it’s evident that the basis for all matter is some kind of frequency, not a material substance at all, and that “what is seen was made out of things which do not appear” (Hebrews 11:3). A non-material entity of some kind is required to sustain the shape of the material substance of the universe. Hence the Scriptures speak of Christ “upholding the universe by his word of power” (Hebrews 1:3).

These are only a few examples of where the biblical writers are far more insightful than most people give them credit for when it comes to understanding what is “really real.” By the Spirit of God, the apostle Paul states, they have been given a window into “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Cosmologists are only beginning to comprehend realities those ancient authors hinted at. They wrote in language the culture of their times could understand, but their perception of truth was deeper than what they’re often given credit for today.

So why do people reject the Bible, and the Christian faith based upon its witness? I believe it’s because they’ve never been presented with the evidence for the depth of the Scriptures’ understanding of the nature of reality. Their idea that the Bible is the product of outmoded perceptions of the universe is rarely challenged. Nor has their shallow world view that sees everything in flat, materialistic terms been subjected to the insights upon which both the Bible and contemporary science agree.

Francis Schaeffer suggested that in our culture the first premise of the gospel is not that “Christ died for our sins” but rather that God is real and we have to deal with him. Typically the church presents the gospel as the message that Christ died on the cross to atone for the sin that prevents us from being connected with God. But if there’s no God to whom to be connected, there’s no sin that needs to be atoned for because there are no moral or behavioral standards. So such a truncated “gospel” can safely be ignored, for it’s irrelevant within the contemporary cultural paradigm or world view.

Only when the Creator comes to be understood in terms of the vastness and mystery of the universe he has brought into being can any gospel that calls us to be accountable to him be taken seriously. Yes, sin is real — sin against the way things have been made, and therefore against the Maker of all things (see Romans 1:19 ff.). Sin is a disregard of God’s purpose for human life, and of his design of this universe. Once that sin can be exposed the way is open to offer the work of Jesus as its undoing.

Sometimes it is said that the teachings of the Bible have to be taken “on faith.” Decades ago one of my seminary professors quipped, “Faith doesn’t mean believing what you know isn’t true” — yet so often faith seems to be presented as if that were the case. But we don’t need to take the Scriptures “on faith,” nor to impose that requirement on people who don’t take them seriously. Instead, we take the Bible as a witness to what is demonstrably most deeply real and true about the nature of the universe, and the life we live within it.

Originally written 12-2012, revised 2-2025

Literal and Figurative Expressions in the Bible

Should we take every expression in the Bible literally? Interpreters have always recognized that some expressions in Scripture are not intended to be taken literally, since the obvious meaning is a figurative one. For example, when the Book of Isaiah states that “the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear” (59:1), interpreters acknowledge this as a figurative expression that doesn’t imply that God has a literal arm or ear. And obviously, when Genesis portrays people as being made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26) this doesn’t mean that people are visually modeled after the deity, but rather that their human functioning is in some sense patterned after the way God functions, exercising dominion over the earth.

Portions of the Bible that are poetic (e.g., the Psalms or writings of the prophets) or in dramatic form (e.g., the Revelation to John) may not be candidates for a literal interpretation. The astute interpreter makes a judgment about what type of literature is in question before deciding what can be taken literally and what is symbolic, analogical, or figurative.

Nevertheless, there are some expressions in the Bible where what seems to be a figurative expression — and is usually taken as such — may indeed have a literal referent. When such expressions are taken literally, a new insight into the meaning of the passage may emerge. Here I am exploring two such expressions, one from the Hebrew Scriptures and one from the Gospels.

First, a believer may speak of being nurtured by the Lord “beneath the shelter of his wings.” The meaning is that the believer senses the protection and blessing of the Lord in the course of his life, as in the promise of Psalm 91:4, “He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.” In using this expression we would not visualize God as some gigantic fowl with literal wings.

Nevertheless, in Psalm 61:4 the worshiper prays, “Let me dwell in your tent forever! Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings!” Here, the “wings” of the Lord are located in a specific place, the “tent” or tabernacle where the presence of the Lord is most intensely manifested. The reference is clearly to the ark of the covenant, which was set in the most holy place of the tabernacle of the wilderness, later in the Temple of Solomon. The “wings” are the literal wings of the cherubim, the guardian figures of hammered gold which faced one another above the ark as in Exodus 37:9, “The cherubim spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, with their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat were the faces of the cherubim.” While it is said that the high priest alone would enter the Holy of Holies annually on the Day of Atonement, there is evidence that at times the ark was removed and returned in procession to the sanctuary (e.g., Psalm 24), so other worshipers would be familiar with its appearance.

Recognizing the literal implication of the phrase “beneath the shelter of his wings” adds an important nuance to this expression. It’s not enough for the believer to have some sort of personal, but nebulous, assurance of enjoying the presence and protection of the Lord. Rather, this sense of presence is specifically connected to the place of worship, where the Lord’s devotees have gathered to offer “a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” (Hebrews 13:15). Participation in the worshiping community is, or should be, the venue in which an individual believer experiences “the shelter of his wings.”

Turning to the New Testament, we find another expression that is always taken figuratively, but which has a literal geographic referent that most interpreters ignore. In Mark 11:23, Jesus tells his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.” Obviously this “faith to remove mountains” (1 Corinthians 13:2) doesn’t refer to the use of supernatural earth-moving equipment, but to the ability of our faith to challenge difficult conditions encountered in Christian life and witness.

Nevertheless, there is a specific historical nuance to this statement by Jesus. When he states, “whoever says to this mountain,” to what mountain does he refer? The scene is Jerusalem, and the largest mountain in view is the Mount of Olives to the east of the city. But there is another mountain close by, not as prominent topographically but vastly more important theologically: the elevation we know as Mount Zion or, in context, the Temple mount that adjoined it.

A well-known passage in Isaiah (2:3, echoed in Micah 4:2) declares that “many peoples shall come, and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” It was the Lord’s intention that the worship of Israel should be the vehicle through which his righteous purposes would be extended from “his mountain” to all the world’s peoples. But, as is clear from the Gospel record, Jesus was acutely concerned that this hadn’t happened. Through his proclamation of the kingdom of God he sought to remind his Jewish contemporaries of God’s interest in reaching other nations, the “Gentiles,” as well. In cleansing the Temple of the activities that were blocking Gentile access (the vendors’ booths were crowding the Temple’s outer enclosure, the Court of the Gentiles), he reminded his listeners that the sanctuary in Zion was to be “a house of prayer for all the nations” (Matthew 11:17, quoting Isaiah 56:7).

In the Scriptures, especially the writings of Isaiah, the sea can stand for the Gentiles, the nations of the world (e.g., Isaiah 60:5, “the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you”). When Jesus speaks of the “mountain” being “thrown into the sea,” we can note a specific reference to extending the worship of the one righteous God to all nations, displacing their immoral polytheism. This was to be accomplished through the faithful witness of his followers, who carried the message of kingdom of God beyond its Jewish environment into the wider Mediterranean world and beyond.

So, while figuratively dwelling “beneath the shelter of his wings” and exercising “mountain-moving faith” are expressions describing the believer’s ideal life as a follower of Jesus, they have literal implications as well. Acknowledging the specific architectural and geographic references underlying these expressions can yield additional interpretive insights.

What “World” Did “God So Love?”

Perhaps the best-known passage of Scripture is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Usually this is taken to mean that God loves all people in the world and wants them to come to him and live forever in heaven. Of course, we know that God does not love sin, which is a violation of his plan for human life. So to the extent that human cultures practice and advocate conduct or doctrine that (based on the witness of Scripture) is clearly repugnant to him and therefore sinful, God does not love that culture. Indeed, he wants to free people from enslavement to sinful cultural values, and that is what repentance (metanoia, “change of mind”) in the New Testament is all about.

So, when John (or Jesus, depending on how you punctuate the originally unpunctuated manuscripts) says that “God so loved the world,” we understand this doesn’t mean that God loved a sinful world culture. But does it mean, instead, that he loved all people in the sinful world, as is usually taught? To approach this, we need to define some terms. What does “love” mean, in the Bible? What does “world” mean in the Gospel of John?

Usually, in our culture, we associate “love” with a feeling of attraction toward someone (or something — like money). But the New Testament word for “love,” agape, has a radically different connotation. It is based on the concept of chesed in the Hebrew Scriptures. The word is variously translated in English versions as “lovingkindness,” “steadfast love,” or simply “love.”

The Torah and the Prophets often speak of the Lord’s chesed toward his worshipers, and the way the term is used shows that it refers not to the Lord’s attraction to them but to his loyalty or faithfulness because he has entered into a partnership, or agreement, with them. This agreement is often termed the covenant, a treaty or contract in which the partners have a family bond and have mutual obligations. For example, the Psalmists sometimes appeal to the Lord for deliverance on the basis of his chesed, not because they deserve his help but because that is his fatherly responsibility in the covenant.

So chesed is God’s covenant love, his faithfulness to the agreement he has made with his people — that is, his family. Obviously, if there is no covenant and no family bond, there is no application of the Lord’s “covenant love.” If the New Testament usage of agape “love” has its roots in this important biblical concept (as I am persuaded it does), then it’s not correct to state that God “loves” everyone. He loves those who have become his partners and entered into his family, and to whom he therefore has a gracious obligation.

Then, what does it mean that “God so loved the world?” And here we have to look at what the term “world,” or kosmos, means in the Gospel of John. Today, when we speak of the “world,” we usually mean the globe of the earth. But certainly God doesn’t “love” the physical globe in the same sense that he would love his family members (although as Creator he surely has an attachment to what he has made). Ancient people knew the earth was a globe (Columbus didn’t invent the idea), but when they spoke of the “world” or kosmos they did not have the globe of the planet in mind. They were referring to the human culture of the globe’s inhabitants.

But, in John’s Gospel, this term has a specific reference to the community of ancient Judaism. We know this because of the way Jesus uses the term in John 18:20, speaking to the high priest. Scripture often uses the method of parallelism, where an idea is stated in one phrase, then restated in different words in another phrase. This style is why the Bible often sounds like the Bible and like nothing else. And in John 18:20 Jesus states, “I have spoken openly to the world [kosmos]. I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all Jews come together.” By parallelism, Jesus is equating the “world” with the institutions of the Jewish community.

When John 3:16 states that “God so loved the world,” the meaning is that God was faithful to the people he had chosen to serve him in his call to their father Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3). In spite of their lack of faithfulness to that mission to be a blessing to all peoples, God provided a way for his people to be reconstituted as “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16) through membership in the risen Jesus, and through living out in their witness the kingship of God — the “new-creation” life, the eternal life (zoe aionion, “life of the [new] aeon or age”). This was always God’s plan for people made in his own image, that through Jesus his chosen family, his covenant partners, might be “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

When Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, they often say that Jesus was born so that through his death and resurrection we have a way to “go to heaven” when we die. But this is “another gospel” (Galatians 1:6-7), a serious truncation of New Testament teaching, because the “Israel” dimension is left out. Jesus announced the kingship of God, was crucified, and was raised as “both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36) with specific reference to Israel. And through what he did the “Israel of God” was raised up as the renewed family of Abraham to fulfill that calling to bless all people, inviting them into Jesus’ new-creation life — a life available to people from “every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9).

Our Creator, the Analyst

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. — Genesis 1:1-4

Our Creator is an Analyst.

It wasn’t enough just to launch the “big bang,” when “what is seen was made out of things which do not appear” (Hebrews 11:3). In the beginning, after the primordial plasma, there was nothing but light. But light reveals nothing if there’s nothing else to reveal. So the Creator took a further step. He “separated the light from the darkness.” As the older translations say, he divided. That’s what an analyst does, for analysis is the process of differentiating things into their components. God continued his analysis until the created order began to take shape, no longer “without form and void.”

In other words, God created information. As Gregory Bateson pointed out, information is “a difference that makes a difference.” There’s no information in sameness; information is the difference between one thing and another. That’s the principle of the digital computer. A “bit” is either on or off, and everything the computer does for us is based on the difference between what’s on and what’s off. God is the original Programmer-Analyst.

In a day of post-modern skepticism about the possibility of knowing what’s true and what isn’t, the Christian thinker needs to emulate the Creator in his digital differentiation. As Harry Blamires wrote six decades ago, “The thinker hates indecision and confusion; he firmly distinguishes right from wrong, good from evil; he is at home in a world of clearly demarcated categories and proven conclusions; he is dogmatic and committed; he works toward decisive action.” A Christian intellectual may well acknowledge nuances and “gray areas,” but works through them to a firm conclusion. He or she is like the men of the tribe of Issachar “who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (1 Chronicles 12:32).

In submission to the Creator, we pursue His analytical ways. We learn to differentiate and distinguish, in order to contribute to his purpose for human civilization. The English Old Testament begins with God’s differentiation of the created order. It closes, in Malachi 3:18, with an admonition to carry the process of analysis into the realm of human conduct: “Then once more you shall distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.”

Did Jesus “Watch the News?”

For many people today, the network or Internet news has become so full of negativity that it engenders disquiet and depression to the point that some refuse to listen to it. There are even some Christian teachers who recommend that believers avoid watching the news because it discourages living the life of faith. Instead, they suggest, focus on reading the Scriptures and listen to Christian teaching, and don’t let the CNN (the “constantly negative news”) pull you down into defeatism and fear.

While it’s clearly a believer’s responsibility to focus on the Word of God, it’s not a responsible attitude to ignore the news of the world and the nation. Christians need to be forewarned in order to be forearmed. Knowing what’s happening in politics and world affairs is important in understanding how to vote, and how best to prepare for the impact of current trends or the ill-considered policies of authorities who make unwise decisions that affect all members of the public.

Pondering this issue, I asked myself whether Jesus “watched the news.” Obviously, the various broadcast or print media we know today were not available in first-century Galilee and Judea. What people knew of “the news” was what had been circulated by word of mouth, or perhaps announced in some local gathering. But while their immediate access to the news of events outside their local milieu was limited, they could be aware of general conditions that obtained in their region, and of events that had occurred within recent memory.

The Gospel record reveals that Jesus knew of situations that were “newsworthy” in the cultural environment within which he functioned. He would have been aware, of course, because Jesus himself was a news broadcaster announcing the arrival of the kingdom of God. At the outset of his ministry he gave out the “late breaking news” that Israel’s God, seemingly silent for centuries, was back on the move. “The time is fulfilled,” he proclaimed, “and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent [change your thinking], and believe in the gospel [good news]” (Mark 1:15). For people in Jesus’ cultural environment, as for people today, the idea that the Creator God is implementing his plan for his human family is the most newsworthy, and perhaps most disquieting and ominous, developing story.

Jesus understood how rulers functioned in the pagan environment of the Roman Empire. “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them,” he told his disciples. This, of course did not meet with Jesus’ approval. “It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave” (Matthew 20:26-27). The coming of God’s rule means that a new style of leadership and human interaction is to become the order of the day.

So Jesus understood, and referred to, the ways rulers and nations typically acted in the first century, as they might act today. He knew that going to war requires careful planning and an accurate assessment of the assets available to both the attacker and the defender. “What king,” he asked, “going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace” (Luke 14:31-32). World conflicts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries show the disastrous effects of ignoring this advice, but Jesus had “watched the news” and drawn a wiser conclusion. In the same vein, Jesus had observed that a nation weakened by internal conflict and division is in serious trouble. He posed this to his disciples: “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand” (Mark 3:23-24). As we watch the media today, we understand that Jesus was highlighting a serious problem for any nation, including our own.

Jesus was well aware of the power and sway of imperial Rome, and how Caesar demanded allegiance, tax revenue, and even — for most people of the empire — worship. He knew how the faith of Israel adamantly condemned idolatry and rejected images, but he also knew that Jewish teachers who opposed him still possessed images of Caesar on coins they carried. When they tried to trip him with a question about whether paying taxes to Caesar was lawful for a committed Jew, he asked for a coin and was presented with one with Caesar’s image. He used that coin to expose their trickery, telling them to give Caesar his pittance but the give God what was really important — the loyalty of his covenant partners (Mark 12:15-17).

Nor was Jesus unaware of the conduct of the local Galilean ruler, Herod Antipas. It had been Herod’s rash vow that had resulted in the execution of John the Baptist, and Jesus knew about his cunning ways — perhaps by report of the wife of Herod’s steward Chusa, Joanna, who was a supporter of Jesus’ traveling ministry (Luke 8:3). When some Pharisees tried to get Jesus to leave their locality by warning him that Herod wanted him killed, he replied, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course’” (Luke 13:32). Jesus understood that the “teaching,” or manner of life, of neither the Pharisees nor the Galilean puppet ruler Herod were what God was looking for in the people of his kingdom; he warned his disciples not to let their “leaven” creep into their outlook and lifestyle (Mark 8:15; 16:11).

Jesus knew the history of the region in which he circulated. In the well-known “parable of the talents” (Luke 19:12-27) he referred to a nobleman who “went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return,” but whose subjects “hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’” When the nobleman returned to assume rulership, he had his enemies executed. This seems to be a reference to how the first Herod (“Herod the Great,” ruled 37-4 B.C.) was made king of Judea by the Roman Senate, and then executed many of his real or suspected opponents.

More recent newsworthy events in Judea also came to Jesus’ attention. Consider this passage from Luke 13: “There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish’” (Luke 13:1-5). This was not a warning about people’s eternal destiny. Jesus was aware of long-term trends in his nation, including a growing appetite for rebellion against Judea’s Roman occupiers. He was warning his community of the fateful consequence of an uprising against the superior military power of Caesar, and urging them to repent (change their mind) about resorting to violence. His warning went unheeded, however, and many people lost their lives in the Jewish revolt of A.D. 66-70 that ended in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its temple.

Jesus, evaluating the temper of many Judeans (including the Pharisees), saw that difficult times were ahead if they persisted in the course that would lead to revolution. He counseled his followers about what stance they should take during the coming time of turmoil: “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. These are but the beginning of the birth pains. But be on your guard. For they will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them. And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations” (Mark 13:8-10).

Jesus, prophetically, was “watching the news” ahead of time, like the news analysts of today who warn of the future consequences of things occurring in the present. Knowing the temper of the times, he advised his disciples to be “wise as serpents” even if they were to be, in their own conduct, “innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:13).

And Jesus, himself, was in the news. Speaking later of the events of Jesus’ ministry and what eventuated from it, Paul reminded King Agrippa that he knew about it because “this has not been done in a corner” (Acts 26:26). The Gospels tell us that news about Jesus’ doings was being widely reported in Galilee and Judea. Mark records that when Jesus healed the daughter of Jairus, a synagogue official of Capernaum, “the report of this went through all that district” (Mark 9:26). And when he brought a dead man back to life, Luke tells us, “this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country” (Luke 7:17).

When Jesus approached Jerusalem shortly before the Passover week that would take him to the cross, crowds of people went to meet him because they had heard about his raising Lazarus from the dead. The Pharisees, in consternation, said, “Look, the world [i.e., the Jewish community] has gone after him.” But the news about Jesus had gone beyond Judea and penetrated even the Greek-speaking Jewish Diaspora, for, as John tells us, some “Greeks” attending the feast asked Jesus’ disciple Philip, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (John 12:17-21). When Jesus entered the city in procession many people already knew who he was and answered their questioners, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee” (Matthew 21:11).

Did Jesus “watch” the news? He was aware of current, recent, and future events in his region. Not only that, but he was in the news, and a broadcaster of the news of the God’s return to his people — the news we call the gospel.

Addressing the Decline in Church Participation

Decline in church participation is an almost universal phenomenon in the Western world, as churches find it more difficult to involve younger populations. Prosperous economies, coupled with government policies, have created a situation in which people feel less need for help from a “spiritual” or non-material source. Perhaps the most serious factor, however, is the disconnect between the world of the Bible and the world experienced by people in the twenty-first century, a world shaped by technology and by the philosophy of scientific materialism. In such a world, God is simply not on the “radar screen” of most young people.

At the same time, demographics point to an expansion of the “senior” population in proportion to other segments. Factors responsible for this include a declining birth rate, and advances in medicine. The declining birth rate has resulted from the availability of abortion, postponement of child-bearing, and reduced fertility due to environmental factors such as widespread exposure to cell phone and other wireless radiation.

Considering these factors, I am led to several conclusions. First, ministry style that is comfortable for older people does not have to mean a decline in church membership, since the percentage of older people in the community is on the increase. Tailoring the ministry style to appeal to younger people may have limited effectiveness, because that demographic group is decreasing in proportion to the whole population.

Second, renewal of the church needs to begin with the people who are already taking part in church life, and not with people who are indifferent to Christian faith. (You cannot revive the faith of someone who has no faith to begin with.) The apostle Paul indicates that unbelievers entering the Christian assembly will become worshipers if they recognize that “God is surely among you” (see 1 Corinthians 14:23-25).

This means that the first step in church renewal might be for members of existing congregations to become more spiritually sensitive and aware of the living presence of the Lord in their midst, and the effect of that living presence on the corporate life of their community. Historians of the New Testament church have concluded that the appeal of the gospel of Jesus was not so much the proclaimed message, as it was the corporate life of the body into which new believers were invited.

As a family centered on the presence of the risen Jesus, believers were committed to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Each local church was a “beachhead” of God’s new creation, which had been inaugurated in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The churches’ witness was undertaken as a vanguard of the fuller appearance of the kingdom of God, which is at the heart of Jesus’ own proclamation of the gospel (Mark 1:14-15). A church that functions simply as a “religious club,” without embodying this new creation in a caring and sharing family, will have little to offer to new entrants.

This does not mean, however, that the church is to become a dispenser of social services to the larger community. Of course churches need to obey the gospel imperative to help the less privileged, as a demonstration of God’s providential care for all (Matthew 5:42-45). But churches can hardly compete with tax-supported or other public agencies in providing services to those in need. It would be easy to get lost in such efforts and forget what makes the church the church. Paul wrote, “Do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10), and Jesus reminded his disciples, “You always have the poor with you, and whenever you will, you can do good to them; but you will not always have me” (Mark 14:7).

Finally, churches need to consider what it is that makes them different from other organizations. Other organizations reach out to people in need and assist them, but the church is the only organization that worships. Proper attention to worship, as the offering to God of the praise that is his due, should be a priority. The ordering and content of the Sunday gathering for worship, or other worship occasions, cannot be left to chance. Worship should not be conducted in a casual or haphazard manner.

Worship is the principal way in which the invisible God is made real to people — and the great need of people in Western culture is to come to the realization that God is real. Through worship, and the life of the body that flows from worship, it becomes apparent that God is not distant, but near, and that he has a plan and purpose for those made in his own image — Jesus being the full realization of that image (Colossians 1:15). The church’s witness to the resurrection of Jesus, epitomized in its worship and in its own internal quality of life, would be the most effective path for bringing to repentance (change of worldview or mindset) the person who exists “having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). In this way people can be enabled to work out their potential for successful living, under the guidance of the Word of God.

“Christian Sacred Cow” No. 5 — “We all have our cross to bear.”

We conclude our discussion of "sacred cows" — familiar things Christians sometimes say without thinking, but which on further examination don't really square with the teaching of the New Testament. In this final example, when people are experiencing difficulties in life we sometimes hear these problems described as a cross we have to bear. It could be a serious illness, or a difficult family member (such as an alcoholic spouse), or some other stressful condition. People think of Jesus’ suffering on the cross and try to compare their own situation to what Jesus was facing. But let’s take a closer look at this comparison and ask if this isn’t another one of these “sacred cows” we need to avoid.

What was the cross of Jesus? In the ancient Roman world, crucifixion was the penalty for rebellion. A person the Roman authorities deemed guilty of defying their regime could be hung on a cross, in public view, and might linger for hours or days in painful humiliation before succumbing to a merciful death. (In fact when we speak of excruciating pain we’re comparing the pain to crucifixion.) Jesus was crucified as a rebel against Rome, actually for questioning the “sacred cows” of some leaders of first-century Judaism who got the Romans to do their dirty work for them.

But it was through the cross of Jesus, and his resurrection, that God won the victory over sin and death and opened up the possibility of new life for those who unite with him. As Paul asks the Romans, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:3-5).

I suggest that to call sickness, or family problems, or some other stressful condition a “cross” we have to bear is to cheapen the cross. Jesus spoke of “taking up our cross and following him” (Mark 8:34), but in the New Testament the cross means persecution. Unless we’re being persecuted for our faith we’re not “bearing a cross.” Paul (Philippians 3:10) and Peter (1 Peter 4:13) speak of sharing in the sufferings of Jesus. But didn’t Jesus suffer enough for all of us? As members of Jesus we enter into his suffering on the cross, and also his victory over sin and death in his resurrection. The stressful and difficult situations we face aren’t equivalent to the cross of Jesus.

Sometimes our favorite songs contain “sacred cows” we need to question. “Take the name of Jesus with you, child of sorrow and of woe.” No, we’re not children of sorrow and woe; we’re children of our Father and we take the name of Jesus as our shield against the foe. Or we sing, “I will cling to the cross, the old rugged cross” – no, we don’t cling to the cross; we cling to the risen Jesus who has overcome the cross and opened our pathway into God’s new creation.

In this study we’ve looked at five “sacred cows”: (1) “God is in control”; (2) “This world is not my home”; (3) “You never know what God will do”; (4) “I’m just an old sinner”; and (5) “We all have our cross to bear.” When I hear expressions like these I’m tempted to exclaim, “Holy Cow! — is that really true? Does that square with Scripture?” We need to be like the people Paul and Silas met in Berea who “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

“Christian Sacred Cow” No. 4 — “I’m just an old sinner, saved by grace.”

We continue our discussion of Christian “sacred cows” — ideas or sayings we accept without thinking just because they’ve been traditional. Like the sacred cows that roam unhindered in certain regions of India, we don’t question these statements because they sound pious, or holy, and are so widely accepted we never venture to examine them in the light of the full testimony of Scripture.

One of these “sacred cows” is the statement one often hears, “I’m just an old sinner, saved by grace.” People think saying this makes them sound humble and religious, because it would be prideful to claim they’re not sinners. But does this idea stand up to the Berean test, a thorough scrutiny and deep understanding of the Scriptures? That was the test applied by the people the apostle Paul met in the ancient city of Berea (Acts 17:10-12) who were “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”

It’s really easy to dispose of this “sacred cow,” once we remind ourselves that as believers we’re members of Jesus. “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body . . . ,” says Paul, “and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:13). The “body,” of course, is the body of Christ, and we’re members of that body. The New Testament tells us that Jesus “in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). As Paul states, “For our sake he made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). So follow the logic here: if you’re in Jesus, and Jesus isn’t a sinner, then you can’t be a sinner either.

That doesn’t mean that, from time to time, we don’t commit sinful acts. Paul often has to remind his readers — whether in Corinth, or Ephesus, or wherever — to avoid sinful conduct of one sort or another. He warns the Corinthians, “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). Christians can slip up once in a while; if that weren’t the case John wouldn’t have told his readers, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).

But just because we don’t always measure up to the standard of godly behavior doesn’t mean we’re supposed to brand ourselves as “just an old sinner.” We were sinners before we knew the Lord, but when we were “saved by grace” we stopped being sinners and became “the righteousness of God” in Messiah Jesus. What I do on a few occasions doesn’t mark my identity for my entire life. Sometimes I drive a car, but that doesn’t mean I’m always a motorist. Every week I go the store, but that doesn’t make me nothing but a Walmart customer. Three times a day I enjoy a meal, but I’m not just an eater all the time. So for me to say, “I’m just an old sinner, saved by grace,” is to feed another “sacred cow” I shouldn’t be feeding.

"Christian Sacred Cow" No. 3 — “You never know what God will do.”

In heavily Hindu nations like India, milk holds a central place in religious rituals. In honor of their exalted status as milk producers, cows often roam free even in large cities. Authorities in several cities have tried to remove the cows, but usually they come back. Christians have their own “sacred cows” as well — things we just assume are true, and often say without asking whether they square with the Bible. As we continue our discussion of these Christian “sacred cows,” we turn to the often-heard statement, “You never know what God will do.”

It sounds pious, or religious, to say we don’t know what God will do because we think that expresses our humility in the face of God’s sovereignty, his ability to do whatever he wants to do. In Isaiah 55 God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). And, of course, because “God’s space” is a dimension we can’t access through our normal senses, we recognize that there are many things about the Creator we’ll never fully understand. But that doesn’t mean we “never know what God will do” — because in many cases he’s told us exactly what he will do.

There shouldn’t be any doubt that he will heal us — in fact, he has healed us — if by faith we take the healing he offers us in Jesus. There should be no doubt that God will bring justice to unjust situations, because as Psalm 103 declares, “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed” (Psalm 103:6). There ought to be no question in our mind that God will hear our prayers, forgive our sin, and renew our living space according to his purpose — since he tells us, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

The Lord has told us that if we obey his commandments he will make us “the head and not the tail” (Deuteronomy 28:13). So we have no uncertainty about whether God will reward a life of generosity with blessings in return; Paul says, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. . . . And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:7, 9). We could go on and on.

And there’s the other side to that equation: foolish actions will bring unpleasant results because that’s the way God has set up the universe. Paul, in Romans 1, calls this “the wrath of God”; but God doesn’t actually have to do anything for the consequences of disobedient and foolish actions to have their effect. As Paul explains, all God has to do is to “give people up” who refuse to acknowledge him, and the effects of their poor choices will play out in their lives because that’s the way his universe works.

So it’s not correct to suggest that God is unpredictable and we don’t know what he’s going to do. We do know, because he’s told us in his Word. God’s purposes aren’t hidden from us. Paul quotes Isaiah 40:13, “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” Then he adds, “But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). As members of Jesus we have insight into God’s purposes and intentions. So when people say “You never know what God will do,” that’s another “sacred cow” we can drive off, like the city authorities in India.

"Christian Sacred Cow" No. 2 — "This world is not my home."

We continue our discussion of “Christian Sacred Cows,” things believers often say that have taken on the status of truisms but which lack a real biblical foundation. One of these declarations is “This world is not my home — heaven is my home, I’m only passing through.”

Discussing this “sacred cow” is bound to raise some eyebrows because we hear it all the time, especially in a some of our songs including a lot of country “gospel” music. But we have to apply the principle of the Bereans, to “examine the Scriptures to see if these things are so.” Does Scripture really teach that “heaven is our home” and this earth is only a place we pass through on our way there? Let’s take a closer look.

It may shock you to hear that “going to heaven when we die” is not the ultimate goal of the Christian life. The New Testament says little about what happens when we die. Indeed, Paul told the Philippians, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1:23). But he doesn’t elaborate on exactly what that means, or give us a picture of what it looks like. Several passages in the New Testament tell us that Jesus is seated “at the right hand of God” (Romans 8:34), so we assume that means heaven because heaven is the dwelling place of God.

But what is “heaven”? Obviously it’s not someplace that’s literally “up” above the surface of the earth, because the earth is a ball floating in space. So heaven could be “down” as well as “up.” It’s better to say that heaven is “God’s space,” as contrasted with our space. It’s not “up there” but it’s all around us in a dimension beyond the four dimensions we normally experience. Paul says, “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). If we’re in Jesus, who has been raised from death, then we’ve already been raised and are already “seated with him in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6) — we already participate in God’s space.

The aim of being “saved,” or delivered from the false values of the prevailing culture (see Galatians 1:4) through membership in Jesus, is not so we can “go to heaven when we die.” The aim of our membership in Jesus is to live the resurrection life now, as we anticipate the fulfillment of God’s ultimate plan for us.

But what is that plan, as Jesus and the New Testament writers teach it? God’s plan is to merge “his space” with “our space” in the new creation. Often we quote Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5:17, to say that when a person comes into Christ he becomes a “new creature.” But the Greek puts it a little differently: ei tis en Christo, kaine ktisis – “If anyone in the Messiah, a new creation.” There isn’t any “he is” in this sentence. What Paul is saying is that when a person becomes a member of Jesus, a new creation exists for him, a new way of life in which everything has changed. As members of the risen Jesus we experience a foretaste of our ultimate destiny in the new creation, which is described in the Bible’s final chapters.

The picture many people have of heaven, with the “golden streets” and all that, is actually drawn from the Bible’s picture of the new creation in Revelation 21, the “new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:2). But if it’s coming from heaven then it’s not heaven but the renewed earth, which is to be like the earth God originally made, where God dwells with his people as our space merges with his space. So if we say, “Heaven is my home, I’m only passing through,” we have it exactly backwards. Earth is my home, and heaven is where I pass through on the way to my real home in the renewed earth. Heaven is a “holding pattern” until, with Jesus, we “come in for a landing” in our ultimate destination in God’s new creation, here on this earth. We don’t stay in heaven forever. “This world is not my home” is another “sacred cow” we need to put out to pasture.

“Christian Sacred Cow” No. 1 — “God is in control.”

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines a “sacred cow” as “someone or something that has been accepted or respected for a long time and that people are afraid or unwilling to criticize or question.” However, as Christian believers we need to follow the example of the people the apostle Paul met in ancient Berea (Acts 17:10-12) who were “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” Sometimes we just repeat certain “sacred cows” that sound religious or pious without asking whether they’re really true in the light of Scripture. This is the first of several Christian “sacred cows” we’ll be taking a closer look at.

A favorite saying of Christians is that “God is in control.” When we say this, we usually mean that in spite of some kind of bad news, of whatever sort, God is working through it to achieve his purpose. It’s easy to extend this thought to the idea that everything that happens occurs because it’s God’s will that it should happen — even bad things we don’t like because they’re harmful. We think that if God is God, then nothing can happen that isn’t his will.

Actually, that’s not a Christian teaching; it’s a Muslim teaching. In Islam, Allah has total control of everything; his will overrides every other influence or purpose. In fact, “Islam” means “submission” — total submission to the will of Allah.

As Christian believers we understand that God has created all things by his Word, and his Word underlies and sustains the universe. That’s clear from the Bible’s opening chapters in the Book of Genesis. Hebrews reminds us that through Jesus God is “upholding the universe by his word of power” (Hebrews 1:3). But does that mean God controls everything? We need to look at the whole story.

Consider Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’” In other words, the Creator has turned control of this earth over to people who are made in his image.

People are the Creator’s representatives or agents in the management of the world. If something goes wrong that’s not God’s fault; it’s usually because people have made sinful decisions contrary to his purpose. God has made all things, but he’s turned the management of those things over to us. As Psalm 115:16 says, “The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man.”

So claiming that “God is in control” is a “sacred cow” we need to question over against the full teaching of Scripture. When it comes to problems we deal with in life, for example, God isn’t responsible for them. Jesus declared that, as the Son of God, he came to give us abundant life, not problems and difficulties.

When something goes wrong, then, that’s not God’s doing; it’s the thief who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10) who is responsible; and we have the authority to oppose him because God has put us in charge and given us dominion. As James says, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). We don’t need to ask God to change something he has given us the ability to change. As Gloria Copeland puts it, “If you need a change, make a change.” Don’t just wait for God to change things.

So when we say “God is in control” we’ve forgotten that he has entrusted to us the control of many aspects of our life and experience. Don’t let that religious-sounding expression be an excuse for accepting or tolerating situations or conditions you have the ability to deal with, as a creature made in God’s image.

The Logical Fallacy of “Endangered Species”

The efforts to prevent certain “endangered species” from extinction are well known. One has only to recall the 1973 “snail darter controversy,” in which construction of a Tennessee dam was halted because of the threat to the habitat of a tiny mud fish. Since then such incidents have multiplied with an impact on agriculture, fishing and other industries, and recently on the use of river water in California to combat forest fires. For that matter, the proliferation of fires is itself the result of restrictions on forest management, supposedly in the interests of preserving botanical habitats.

Of course, the most “endangered species” is the human race, whose young are liable to be deprived of life while still in the womb — or even newly emerged from the womb. Human young, in the United States, enjoy less protection than the pre-hatched young of the bald eagle. But that’s another story.

The purpose of this essay is to point out the logical fallacy of protecting “endangered species.” We’re not opposed to such efforts. We only wish to expose the irony in the philosophical position of people who push for the protection of all species, whatever the cost to human industry and property rights.

It’s highly likely that proponents of protecting all species believe in the theory of unguided evolution — that life has arisen, and life forms have evolved and changed, without the intervention of a directing Intelligence, namely, God. In popular culture today there’s no room for the activity of a non-natural force in the emergence and development of life in its various forms. I surmise it would be rare to find anyone concerned about “endangered species” who’s not a believer in unguided evolution.

And this is where the logical fallacy we’re pointing out begins to appear. One of the principles of evolutionary theory is that life forms less equipped to survive in their environment are superseded, and eventually wiped out, by more successful life forms. The crass formula “survival of the fittest” (which really means only “survival of the survivors”) is a generally accepted maxim of the evolutionary viewpoint. Species exist today because they’ve successfully adapted to a particular environment and haven’t been driven out by another, more successful, species which has passed on its genetic information to succeeding generations.

Humanity, according to the evolutionary point of view, is simply another form of biological life having no inherent superiority over other species. Indeed, to regard human life as somehow having more worth than that of, say, the snail darter is to merit the epithet of “speciesism,” an accusation equivalent to “racism.” Logically, then, for human beings to drive out another species less able to cope with its environment is a perfect example of the evolutionary principle in operation. Someone with an evolutionary worldview, if looking rationally at the issue, should have no problem with extinction of the snail darter, bald eagle, or any other species when the human species proves more powerful, more “successful” in coping with its environment. That’s how evolution is supposed to work.

So the outcry for “animal rights” to take precedence over “human rights” is a logical fallacy, because any species has the evolutionary “right” to supersede another, less viable, species. To regard human life as simply another example of a zoological species means that when human activity adversely affects another species this is simply evolution talking its natural course.

There’s a better approach to the protection of “endangered species,” and that’s to abandon the religious faith of unguided evolution. That is a “faith” without evidence in natural history, for it ignores the presence of sequential information in the genetic code of living creatures — information which could have originated only in the mind of an Information-Giver. In other words, an Intelligence has been at work in fashioning each species, and that’s what gives them their worth.

There’s only one species that cares about the welfare of other species. That is people who, according to the Book of Genesis, are charged with managing and protecting the rest of the biological ecology (Genesis 1:28; 2:15). No one ever met a wolf, or a shark, concerned with “people rights.” The sea otter that people rescued from the Exxon Valdez oil slick, when cleaned up at a cost of $80,000 and released into the ocean, was immediately attacked by a killer whale. But there’s something unique about people, a trait that goes beyond what can be explained by the unfolding of blind, impersonal processes. People care about other living creatures in a way that’s unique to them, and can’t be explained by unguided evolution. Protecting supposedly endangered species is an activity appropriate only for people who believe, with the writer of Genesis, that “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

How Do We Evaluate a Preacher's Message?

Unhappily, Christian people are often all too ready to attack other Christians and to accuse them of being “heretics” because they disagree with their teaching. The gospel (euangelion) is the proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection and his authority over all things,as the Son of God (e.g., Romans 1:1-4).

But this basic “good news” has many implications and facets, and different preachers focus on different aspects of the gospel. Some stress accepting God’s forgiveness of sin and the promise of eternal life. Others emphasize the experience of knowing that God loves you. Still others stress the new way of life that becomes possible for us through the work of Jesus. Obviously all these are aspects of the basic message about Jesus, so it’s unkind and even foolish to attack a preacher as a false teacher because he or she stresses a different facet of the Christian message.

As an example, in certain Christian circles there’s a sustained attack on the “prosperity gospel” or “word of faith” movement as a false teaching. (Never mind, of course, that the Apostle Paul calls the gospel the “word of faith” that he preaches — Romans 10:8-9.) Opponents evaluate the “prosperity gospel” negatively because millions of third-world Christians continue to live in deprivation and poverty despite having come to the Lord.

But, we have to ask, should we evaluate the truth or falsehood of a preacher’s teaching based on the experiences of people, or on what we see reported in the media? Or should we judge the preacher’s message based on how it corresponds to the Word of God? In other words, does the poverty of millions of believers negate the clear teaching of Scripture that “the reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life” (Proverbs 22:4)? It seems to me that it’s the Word of God, rather than human circumstance, that provides the criterion by which to evaluate the truth or falsehood of someone’s teaching.

We Need More Pharisees

The Pharisees get a “bad rap” in the New Testament because Jesus called some of them on their inconsistent practices (Matthew 23:13ff.). Indeed, he told some of them that they were children of the devil (John 8:44) — pretty strong language! The epithet “Pharisee” has become synonymous with “hypocrite,” and nobody wants to be accused of being Pharisaical.

But the fact is, all Christians are Pharisees. If you believe the Word of God should be your guide for living, if you believe in miracles, and if you believe in the resurrection of the dead you’re a Pharisee — for those things were what distinguished the Pharisees from other Jews of the first century. The apostle Paul was a Pharisee (Philippians 3:5), and used his identification with the Pharisees to stir things up among his accusers (Acts 23:6-7). Jesus certainly cared about the Pharisees or he wouldn’t have tried so hard to straighten them out, to make them into more effective and accurate teachers of his people.

Contrary to common opinion, the Pharisees weren’t trying to get people “saved” by keeping the most stringent provisions of the Law of Moses. They were actually developing “workarounds” so the Law would be easier for more people to keep. For the Lord had given the Law as an act of grace (Deuteronomy 7:7ff.), in order to prepare the people he had chosen as his witnesses to lead an orderly and successful life in the land he had promised to give them.

Our culture of today has experienced the disappearance of many standards of upright and compassionate behavior, and a diminished belief in the resurrection and in God’s miracle-working power. So we don’t need fewer Pharisees, we need more.

Jesus and the Crowds: A False Teacher?

Several times recently in social media I have seen posts that contrast an image of a large, well-filled auditorium with that depicting a sparsely populated church. The message accompanying these images proclaims that false teaching about the Christian faith draws large crowds, while a small attendance is indicative of true Christian teaching.

If the message is drawing a large audience, that must mean it’s tailored to the “itching ears” of people who only want a non-challenging, complacent, or distorted version of the faith. On the other hand, it is inferred, genuine Christian teaching appeals only to a few. The implication of this contrast is clear: if a preacher has a large following, drawing great crowds to his ministry, he must be a false teacher who should be avoided.

Let’s apply this criterion to the Gospel record of the ministry of Jesus. Because whatever Jesus taught about living in the kingdom of God was true and valid, he must never have spoken to large crowds, right? Only a handful of people would have been drawn to his teaching or followed him.

Jesus drew large crowds.

The problem is, that’s not what the Gospels tell us about Jesus’ teaching. In all four Gospels we find that large crowds sought Jesus out, surrounded him, and received his teaching gladly. I surveyed the Gospels in a well-known English translation of the New Testament looking for occurrences of the word crowd or its equivalent in association with Jesus’ teaching or healing activity. Here’s what I discovered: for the words crowd or crowds, 72 occurrences; for multitude or multitudes, 25 occurrences; and for throng, 5 occurrences. (In almost all cases the Greek word is the same, ochlos, though in a few cases the Gospel writers used plethos. The translator’s judgment governs which English word is used.)

In collating these instances I was able to group them into ten, often overlapping, categories:
  Crowds follow Jesus or gather around him
  Crowds surround Jesus and hinder access to him
  Jesus addresses the crowds
  Jesus dialogues with a crowd, or with people in the crowd
  The crowds react to Jesus’ teaching or things he does
  Jesus has compassion on the crowds and meets their needs
  Jesus leaves the crowds or dismisses them
  Jesus’ opponents react to the fact that he draws great crowds
  The crowds acclaim Jesus
  A sorrowful crowd accompanies Jesus to his crucifixion.

What is most often said of the crowds in the Gospels is that they gathered to Jesus, followed him, or clustered around him. A good example is Matthew’s introduction to the “Sermon on the Mount”: “And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan. Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him” (Matthew 4:25—5:1). Mark reports, “Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea; and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land” (Mark 4:1).

Luke provides another instance: “When the crowds learned it, they followed him; and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God, and cured those who had need of healing” (Luke 9:11). And this example comes from John: “After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a multitude followed him, because they saw the signs which he did on those who were diseased” (John 6:1-2). There are too many instances of this to list here; altogether the Gospels contain some twenty passages or verses that refer simply to the fact that whenever Jesus taught about the kingdom of God, and demonstrated its presence by healing peoples’ diseases, large numbers gathered to him and followed him.

Jesus’ audience was often so closely clustered about him that it was hard for people to gain access to him. Luke provides two examples: “Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him for the crowd” (Luke 8:19). “And there was a man named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector, and rich. And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not, on account of the crowd, because he was small of stature” (Luke 19:2-3).

The crowds respond to Jesus’ teaching.

Sometimes the Gospels simply report that Jesus addresses the crowds, and occasionally they record his conversation with members of his audience. Here’s an instance from Mark: “And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). Again, Luke tells us: “And when a great crowd came together and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable: ‘A sower went out to sow his seed . . .’” (Luke 8:4-5). The people surrounding Jesus were not simply passive listeners, but engaged him in conversation as in Luke 11:27: “As he said this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!’” Jesus’ hearers asked questions: “The crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the law that the Christ remains for ever. How can you say that the Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man?’” (John 12:34).

The Gospels record the crowd’s reaction to things Jesus says and does. Matthew concludes the “Sermon on the Mount” with this statement: “And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28-29). Jesus’ healing of the paralyzed man provoked the crowd’s response:  “And he rose, and immediately took up the pallet and went out before them all; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, "We never saw anything like this!" (Mark 2:12). John tells us one reason why people were attracted to Jesus: “The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead bore witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign” (John 12:17-18).

Jesus has compassion on the multitude.

We are reminded, several times, that Jesus had compassion on the crowds who came to him and was moved to meet their physical needs. Here’s an instance from Matthew: “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a lonely place apart. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. As he went ashore he saw a great throng and he had compassion on them, and healed their sick” (Matthew 14:13-14). Mark provides these examples: “As he went ashore he saw a great throng, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34). “In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him, and said to them, ‘I have compassion on the crowd . . .’” (Mark 8:1-2).

The needs of the multitudes coming to him were so great that sometimes Jesus had to send them away and take his departure, often by boat. As Matthew tells us, “And sending away the crowds, he got into the boat and went to the region of Magadan” (Matthew 15:39). Mark records another instance: “Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd” (Mark 6:45). Jesus drew aside from the crowd to heal a deaf man (Mark 7:32-34).

Jesus’ crowds threatened his enemies.

Jesus’ popularity with the people alarmed his enemies. The Gospels record their reaction, and we cite three instances. Matthew reports, “But when they tried to arrest him, they feared the multitudes, because they held him to be a prophet” (Matthew 21:46). John tells us, “Yet many of the people believed in him; they said, ‘When the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man has done?’ The Pharisees heard the crowd thus muttering about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him” (John 7:31-32). Because the crowds believed in Jesus, Judas could not arrange to have him seized when they were present: “So he agreed, and sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of the multitude” (Luke 22:6).

Beginning the week of his passion with his entry into Jerusalem, Jesus drew the acclamation of the multitudes — as the well-known account of “Palm Sunday” reminds us. John tells it this way: “The next day a great crowd who had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!" (John 12:12-13). The esteem in which the crowds held Jesus complicated his enemies’ efforts to eliminate him.

It was only at Jesus’ crucifixion that crowds were stirred up against him and called for his death, and that was the doing of Jesus’ enemies. Preachers sometimes claim that the people who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on “Palm Sunday” had turned against him by Good Friday. That’s not true; the scornful Friday crowd was a different crowd. And even as Jesus was being led to Calvary, Luke tells us, “there followed him a great multitude of the people, and of women who bewailed and lamented him” (Luke 23:27). The disciples whom the risen Jesus met on the Emmaus road were but two of a sizeable following who had “hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21).

Is the size of the audience a valid criterion?

It’s clear that Jesus, during the years he preached the kingdom of God in Galilee and Judea, was the head of a large popular movement, gathering crowds of people wherever he went. So, returning to our original issue, was Jesus therefore a false teacher? If we follow the logic of the social media posts we cited, we would have to conclude that he was — because if his teaching was the truth, it should have attracted only a small following!

The size of a preacher’s audience ought not to be taken as an indicator of whether or not he or she is giving forth teaching that is true to Scripture and the Christian faith. As the Gospel record of Jesus’ ministry shows, the message of the kingdom of God can draw a large, responsive audience. If there is a question about the validity of a popular preacher’s ministry, the question can only be resolved by a thorough examination and analysis of what’s being presented in the light of the Word of God.

Attacking fellow believers is surely not an effective way to promote the Christian faith. But if, on social media or any other platform, a critic wants to label a preacher as a false teacher, let that critic state his case on the basis of Scriptural principles. The size of the audience has nothing to do with it.

"Keep the Butter Square!"

I seem to have inherited from my father not only my first name, and my profession in the ministry and college teaching, but also my habit of wanting to make everything neat, orderly, and symmetrical.

At mealtime, in our family home as I was growing up, the butter was placed in a dish to pass around the table as needed. I think this was before we were buying the spread packaged in four quarters, so it was in a larger shape like a cube protected by an ancient pewter cover. To butter our bread, boiled potatoes, or whatever, we would take our knife and dig out a gob of butter, only to hear my father admonish us to “Keep the butter square!” He preferred that the butter in the serving dish not become misshapen, but remain neatly squared off.

This trait stayed with Dad till the end of his life. One incident stands out. When I was the pastor of a small-town church, he and my mother visited for a Sunday worship service. Seated on the platform after the service had begun, I noticed Dad in the congregation making a sideways motion with his outstretched hand. It turned out that the flower stand and pulpit chair on one side of the platform were not symmetrical with those on the opposite end. He was trying to get me to make the necessary adjustment then and there, to restore the proper order of the furniture.

This penchant for having things orderly and organized has been one of my lifelong character traits. Books must be shelved by topic and subtopic, and within the subtopic organized by author’s name. Vinyl records or music CDs must be organized by composer and genre, and a list made of all music so I can consult it when considering a new purchase, in order to avoid duplication, without going to another part of the house where they are stored.

Memorabilia must be boxed by life periods, in sequence. All other stored items, such as railroad ephemera (a hobby of mine), computer equipment, or unused kitchenware must be placed logically into cartons and labeled. I prefer the type of carton with a removable lid, like the cartons used to ship reams of copy paper, and have collected enough over the years to contain anything that will fit into them. I never throw away a good carton, and have stacks of folded cartons stored in a shed for possible future use.

When I moved to a new home some years ago, I installed seven large metal shelves in the basement to store such items, each loaded with clearly labeled cartons grouped by similarity of contents. When I held an open house welcoming friends to my new residence, people would go downstairs to inspect the basement. Cries of “Oh, my God!” could be heard as they registered their shock at what they witnessed down there.

The urge to organize and sort affects my use of the computer, as well. I don’t understand how people can load up their cameras or cell phones, or their computers, with thousands of images none of which have a caption that would explain, to the outsider, the subject and date of the image. I have standard methods of naming photo files that enable me to quickly find what I want. For family photos, for example, the file name begins with the date (year-month-day) and then the subject. A photo of my wife and me in front of a locomotive is labeled “2015-09-26_Richard_ Shirley_at_Monticello_Rwy_Mus.tif.” That way, when I sort by name I am also sorting by date. Of course, photos from each branch of our large family are kept in their appropriate sub-subfolders, under the proper subfolder, under the master “Images” folder in my hard drives (I back up everything to two other computers). I don’t keep every image I take of a subject; I pick out the best one or two and then get rid of the rest. Why do some people keep every shot, whether blurred, off-center, duplicative, or whatever, and then even put them on Facebook?

And I don’t like what the various versions of Windows do with downloads, scans, etc. Since I’m the only user of my computers, I don’t use the “My Documents,” etc. folders; I put everything in an appropriately named folder on the main “C” drive. It annoys me when some piece of software, such as a printer program, automatically puts my scans into “My Scans,” in “My Documents,” in my User folder, and assigns it some goofy name of its own. I have to go and locate it, cut it out to where it should go, and rename it according to my naming conventions.

Okay, call me compulsive if you like. I’ll tell you one thing, though: when I need to locate something I know where to find it, whether it’s in bookcases or storage shelves or the computer. “OCD” can pay off if you use it wisely; in the end it can save time and trouble.

Besides, I have a theological justification for my efforts. When God began to create the earth it was “without form and void”; what he did during the days of creation was to bring symmetry (e.g., light and darkness) and labeling (“God called the light day,” etc.) into what had been unordered and unlabelled. Then, finally, he could “rest” in his temple and enjoy his good work. By ordering our lives we participate in the Creator’s work; at least, that’s how I think of it. So when my open house guests encountered the order and organization of my basement, their reaction, “Oh, my God!” was not entirely inappropriate.

And, of course, it’s also good policy to keep the butter square.

Defending the “Prosperity Gospel”

The so-called “prosperity gospel,” or “health and wealth gospel,” is much maligned in certain Christian circles. An Internet search will turn up a plethora of web sites, blogs, and the like that raise objections to the idea that following Jesus leads to a healthier, more prosperous life. The assumption of these critics is that the Christian life is to be marked by suffering, so that Christians who view their faith as promoting prosperity and health are departing from the pattern of the New Testament church. We present here some arguments that counter certain assumptions of the critics of the “health and wealth gospel,” who would instead advocate a “sickness and poverty gospel.”

The early Christians were not poor.

Jesus and the earliest Christians were not poor by the standards of their time and place, as they are often depicted. Jesus was a general contractor; the word tekton (Mark 6:3) refers to something more than a simple carpenter. The first disciples were in the fishing business; Matthew (Levi) was wealthy, being a publican. Well-to-do people, including the wife of one of Herod’s officials (Luke 8:3), supported Jesus and his disciples in their ministry. The disciples maintained a treasury from which they distributed aid to the poor (John 13:29). Jesus’ garment was of such quality that the Roman soldiers declined to cut it up (John 19:22-23). Wealthy men provided a tomb for his burial (John 19:38-40).

Early Christians worshiped in the homes of substantial citizens (e.g., Lydia, Acts 16:14-15) whose residences could accommodate an assembly. People like Paul with his entourage, or Priscilla and Aquila, could afford to travel through the Mediterranean world, booking passage on merchant ships. Paul was able to rent the lecture hall of Tyrannus to conduct his seminars (Acts 19:9).

The New Testament writings are the work of educated authors.

The New Testament writings are not the work of poor, uneducated peasants. They display a literary skill consistent with a high level of education, vast knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures, and serious historical research (e.g., Luke’s introductions to his Gospel and Acts; a wealthy patron apparently underwrote the production and publication of these works, Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1). The manner in which the gospels are constructed reveals a deep theological insight into Jesus’ own intent, and reveals his intellectual brilliance in reformulating the story of Israel around his own ministry.

Paul’s writings reveal a philosophical genius that has been said to equal or surpass that of pagan thinkers of the time. The New Testament writers, and Jesus himself, were multi-lingual, conversant with Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek (Jesus, Matthew 15:22-28), and perhaps Latin and various local languages such as Lycaonian (Acts 14:11).

The early church had the witness of the Scriptures.

The earliest Christians did not have a “New Testament;” their Scriptures were what we call the Old Testament, i.e. the Hebrew Scriptures of the Law, Prophets, and Writings. Thus they had the example of wealthy Israelite leaders such as Abraham, Joseph, and Solomon. Moreover, they had the counsel of the Book of Proverbs, that “the reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life” (Proverbs 22:4), and such counsel was not lost on the New Testament church.

While Jesus made clear that excessive concern for wealth can be a hindrance to receiving the good news of God’s kingdom, he also promised a “hundredfold” material reward for his followers in the “age to come” (Mark 10:17-31). He also told a parable about faithful servants who used what they were entrusted with for material gain (Matthew 25:L14-23). Paul recognizes that some members of the Christian community will have ample resources to give “with generosity” (Romans 12:8), and underscores the Scriptural principle that “sowing” leads to reaping a reward (Galatians 6:7; cf. Malachi 3:10).

Suffering, in the New Testament, is not poverty or sickness.

While the New Testament refers to the suffering of Christians, this suffering is not poverty and sickness but persecution, because the message of the earliest Christians ran counter to prevailing societal norms. Among Jews, the inclusion of Gentiles threatened the exclusivist, revolutionary mentality of the Pharisees and others, about which Jesus warned them (Luke 13:1-5). Acknowledging Jesus as “Lord” threatened the Jewish understanding of monotheism, and it is clear that early Christians, while not abandoning monotheism, melded the work of Jesus into the activity of the Father (1 Corinthians 8:6; cf. Jesus’ words in John 14:9 and passim).

In the Roman world, the announcement that “Jesus is Lord” threatened the lordship of Caesar, who was worshiped as a god. For these reasons the activity of the followers of Jesus was accompanied by persecution. But Jesus taught his disciples to pray that they would not be subject to peirasmos, the testing of persecution (Matthew 6:13). Writing to Gaius, John reproduced the customary greeting of a letter writer, “I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in health” (3 John 2); he saw no need to alter the greeting to reflect an expectation of illness and deprivation.

The purpose of Jesus’ coming is not to foster poverty and sickness.

The New Testament abounds with brief statements about the purpose for which Jesus has come. While he came to serve, and to seek and deliver the “lost,” he also came to impart abundant life (John 10:10) — however we take that phrase. He also came “to destroy the works of the evil one” (1 John 3:8). Since the “thief” comes to “steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10), logically the Son of God comes to do the opposite — that is, to bring blessing instead of curse, fulfilling the promise of God’s covenant and delivering his people from “the curse of the law” (Galatians 3:13) in which pestilence, deprivation, exile and other evils are included (Deuteronomy 28). In so doing, Jesus comes to “deliver us from the present evil age” (Galatians 1:4) so that the harsh circumstances of sickness, poverty, and ignorance that mark this age can be overcome. Part of Jesus’ stated mission, at the beginning of his preaching, is to bring “good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18), which can hardly mean the continuation of their impoverished condition.

The New Testament church is a transitional phase in God’s purpose.

The New Testament is not the final story in God’s plan for his people. It is a transitional phase that records how the message of the kingdom of God was first proclaimed and spread throughout the Mediterranean world. The New Testament expresses the vision for a greater culmination: “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). “Every knee shall bow . . . and every tongue confess that Jesus the Messiah is Lord” (Philippians 2:10-11). These were not realities achieved in the New Testament church, except by anticipation: “For whoever is in the Messiah, there is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The kingdom of God is like seed that takes root and eventually spreads throughout the earth (Matthew 13:31). The early church labored under great difficulty, but the difficulty was not supposed to last forever.

Two millennia of history show the beneficial results of Christian faith.

The history of those parts of the world that have been dominated by Christian influence reveals the beneficial impact of Christianity as a “health and wealth gospel.” The development of hospitals and charitable organizations, institutions for research and learning, and efforts to promote the public good has been the result of the practice of Christian virtues. The rights of the individual, valued by God as a creature in his own image, have become a cornerstone of human culture leading to such milestones as the abolition of slavery. Industrial initiative and the results of technology have, on the whole, benefited people across a spectrum of society. Poverty has diminished, pestilence has been curbed, and people have been freed to explore their possibilities in life to a degree not seen in parts of the world where this Christian “health and wealth gospel” has not been promulgated. (For a summary of the cultural and social impact of the spread of Christian faith, see John Ortberg, Who Is This Man? Zondervan, 2012.)

Opponents of the “health and wealth” gospel are inconsistent.

Critics of the “health and wealth” gospel take the supposed New Testament church as their model, claiming that the Christian life is subject to poverty and sickness. To be consistent, they should apply that model to all aspects of their life and witness. They should not have church buildings, or if they have them, not furnish them with electricity or flush toilets. They should avoid the use of radio, television, or the Internet to propagate their ideas. They should walk to all church meetings instead of riding in automobiles, and meet during the night only because there was no “weekend” as we know it in the Roman world. They should not use printed or electronic Bibles, which were unknown in the early church, but restrict their use of Scripture to oral or handwritten format.

Insistence that Christians must suffer poverty and illness is a “gospel” of works.

The “sickness and poverty gospel” nullifies the suffering of Jesus on our behalf. It claims we have to suffer in order to be true Christians. It is a “gospel” of works, not grace. In a world awash in poverty, illness, injustice, and all forms of oppression one wonders why any Christian would not choose to preach a gospel of deliverance from these evils.