Bad Day

I love this cartoon. This past Sunday we did a message on God and the flood. If you're interested in a bit of a different take on the story you can check it out here.

Enjoy a bit of Calvinism

Smile

Jude's Surprises

Jude in his short book tosses some words (phrases) our way that we don't expect. Here are a couple of the unexpected

Jude 1 Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ...

Here are the unexpected:

We are beloved in God the Father (Expected: we are loved by God the Father)

We are kept for Christ (Expected: we are kept by Christ)

We so expect that we are loved by God and kept by Christ that the NIV smooths out our problems with the original Greek by giving this translation, "To those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ...."

What does it mean that we are beloved (literally "the ones being loved in God the Father). The first things to notice as we try to understand this is that Jude is addressing not individuals but the community of faith. As I thought about this it struck me that overwhelmingly when we hear of God's love we hear about it in the context of community. There are few times when God's love is spoken of as being for a specific individual. One of those rare occurrences is in Galatians 2.20 where Paul speaking of himself says, that Christ loved him and died for him. The general focus on God's love spoken of in the context of community should remind us of the importance of seeing our faith and God's love for us in that light. It is good to continually remind ourselves as one person has said, "God's love is a love for a community of people wh he has called to be his own. The address of the gospel writers almost everywhere assumes a community of faith."

But beyond that these words by Jude of "the one ones being loved in God the Father" go beyond being love by God as they reflect being brought into intimate fellowship with God, embraced by him. There is an amazing intensity in these few words. To be loved in God the Father is to be in God the Father. It is a great picture.

Since we are in the Father or loved in God the Father he is the one who is keeping us for Jesus. It is not Jesus who keeps us, but God the Father. This seems to reflect the words of Jesus in his high priestly prayer in John 17.11 "And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one." We are being kept for the day when Christ returns. The Greek in Jude indicates the security that God provides, his own will not be lost but will know the eschatological benefits of the New heavens and earth.

Looking from the Outside In

One of the books I'm presently reading is Beowulf on the Beach. The book is a summary of all the classic books through the ages that we should all read at one time or another. The book is filled with humor, insight, and just in case you never get to read all the classics at least you learn something about them.

On Monday I got to the part of the book that talks about the Bible. The author of Beowulf on the Beach, Jack Murnighan calls people back to reading this text as a very important one. But in the call there is a world of humor. Just a few quotes from the book

"What the Old Testament lacks in conventional reader-friendliness it more than makes up for in diversity and sheer, fascinating, almost incalculable weirdness. Page after page you're blindsided by things you thought you'd never see in a religious book..."

"It's wackier, than wacky, not short on plot, and I can guarantee you'll never read anything like it.

"In reading the Old Testament stories, every time we think, "Why is he sinning? Doesn't he know the Lord will punish him? we are probably supposed to pose ourselves similar questions, Oh, crap, fornication this morning; what was I thinking? That kind of subtle lesson would account for the constant backsliding and repetition in the Old Testament, which does, I admit, get rather exasperating."

What I enjoy about Murnighan's take on the Old Testament is straight reading that causes wonder, confusion, laughter and so much more that many Christians miss because they read the book with a piety that misses the fullness of human life and human screw-ups that are seen. A friend of mine, Tom Kragt, points out that as an alcoholic he couldn't see things in his life that a six year old could tell him were wrong. Sometimes it takes a person from the outside of Christianity to help us see what a six year old could tell us--the Bible is much wilder, crazier and more wonderful than we have noticed or let ourselves see.

Jude--thinking out loud

I've been working in one of those shorter books of the Bible: Jude. It's a book that is filled with a bunch of interesting teaching and a few surprises. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting some of my thoughts along the way.

The first surprise of the book of Jude is its name. The name of the book is literally Judas (Greek ∆Iou/daß) The book was renamed Jude to distinguish the writer from Judas Iscariot. The second surprise is that Judas is brother of James which means he is also the brother of Jesus. Imagine having a brother whose name was the same as the person who betrays you. But in this we also see something else: Jesus' own family comes to recognize him as the Messiah. This is distinctly different than what we find the gospels. For instance in Mark 3 we read, Mark 3:20 Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. Mark 3:21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”

The change in attitude is seen as well in Jude designating himself as a servant of Jesus Christ (i.e. Jesus the Messiah). Jude/Judas no longer calls himself a brother, but rather a servant. A servant in this context is one who is completely controlled by another. The one who they thought was out of control is now in control of Jude's entire life.

This radical change of attitude reminds me of Joseph and his brothers. Joseph's dreams of his being a ruler and his brothers bowing down to him brought rebuke and hatred. The text says, 9 Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” 10 But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?” 11 And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind. (Remember how Mary stores up all of these things in heart in Luke 2?). While the family relationships start out ugly and get worse in the end the brothers do bow down. One wonders if this is a foreshadowing of Jesus and his family.

But the bottom line for me in this is that even Jesus' family recognize him as Messiah and honors him as such. They become completely controlled by him. Jude will make it clear as he writes that such total control of the Messiah in our lives is a must if we are going to live a life that is pleasing to him.

God is Love

There is a continual theme that pulsates through our culture. The theme is "God is love". The thing that always intrigues me about this idea that God is love is that love gets defined in a way that reflects whatever a person wants. So if I want my god to be loving so that he would never demand anything of me, then that is love. If I want my god to be the kind of god who would never separate someone from him for all eternity, then that is love. If I want the kind of god who just is a feel good, kind, and grandfatherly kind of god, then that is love.

I was reflecting on this while reading the epistle of 1 John a bit ago. This, of course, is the epistle that declares "God is love". I've read the epistle and those words many times before, but for some reason for the first time I stopped and realized that John doesn't just tell us that God is love, but also defines that love. Here's the text:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 1 John 4

Rather than leaving the definition of what it means to love God up to us, John spells out that God's love reveals itself in sending his Son into the world as a propitiation (see definition below) for our sins. God's love is connected to the sending of his Son into the world. It is a love that compels us to love others, especially those who are fellow believers as John points out.

Love as it turns out is not defined however we desire. Love is always connected to Christ. If someone tries to give definition to "God is Love" without this connection they are not being true to the text. Not only so, but God's love far from freeing us to do whatever we wish actually obligates us to follow God's love by loving others. To divorce "God is love" from this obligation to love also brings a failure to the true definition of God is love.

Maybe the next time someone says, "God is love" it might be an interesting conversation to graciously inquire of them where they get their definition from. Such an inquiry might open up a wonderful conversation.

Propitiation
This means the turning away of wrath by an offering. It is similar to expiation but expiation does not carry the nuances involving wrath. For the Christian the propitiation was the shed blood of Jesus on the cross. It turned away the wrath of God so that He could pass "over the sins previously committed" (Rom. 3:25). It was the Father who sent the Son to be the propitiation (1 John 4:10) for all (1 John 2:2).

Bigger Barns

1 John 3.1 raises a bunch of interesting questions.  The words of the verse are  See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  One of the questions is, "When John tells us that God has "given" (or bestowed) the kind of love that makes it so we are called "his children", how do we understand "given" or "bestowed"?  The Greek makes it possible to understand the word as a gift that is given or something that is given in response to a request.  Did God give us this love as a gift or has he called us his children because we asked for this gift?  The answer to that sends us on a theological trek that I don't want to explore right now.  

But there is another question I do want to explore.  John tells us that the world does not know us because it doesn't know the father.   To which my response is "So what?"  So the world doesn't know us, what's the big deal?  Now we know that because the "world" didn't know Christ that he ended up on the cross.  So if that is what John has in mind here, then it is a big deal.  The world doesn't know the Father, so it doesn't know us and the result is going to be persecution.   That has some possibilities.

However, I wonder if there is another big deal here, especially for North American Christians.  In 1 John 2.15 John has told us that we are not to love the world.  The world is about the desire of the eyes, the desire of the flesh, and the pride in possessions (esv).   Or putting it another way.  A person of the world lives a certain kind of lifestyle where they operate on a purely human level and have no interest in spiritual things.  They focus on protecting themselves and find security in their stuff rather than in God.  The best picture of this in the Bible is Jesus parable of the man who wanted to build bigger barns, 

Luke 12.13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”    

Now in all of this, this is what I see.  Bigger Barns people are those who have no love of God or spiritual things, who are willing to take from another to gain their own security, these kind of people don’t know followers of Jesus because they don’t know the Father.  Here's my punch line:  Implied in this is a powerful statement about followers of Jesus.  They live a distinct lifestyle where their affections are centered on God, they have a deep love for spiritual things and they have a deep concern for the good of others.  The words of John speak as much about our behavior as they do about the world.  If our lifestyle distinct enough that instead of looking like bigger barns people, our life looks so odd that the rest of the world can't understand it?