Between the Washbasin and the Cross

I write and talk a lot about agape love. One of the most formative sermons I've ever preached (formative for me, at least) was on agape love. Agape is one of Ember Church's core values. I blog about it frequently. We're talking about it at Ember Outdoors this summer.

Agape love is a major theme of the New Testament, especially the writings of John. In John 13, the apostle writes:

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Of course, every instance of the word "love" in that passage is a translation of the Greek word agape. So you might as well write it like this: A new command I give you: Agape one another. As I have agaped you, so you must agape one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you agape one another.

Jesus said this before he went to the cross, but he referred to his demonstration of agape love in the past tense. What was he talking about? He was talking about how he had just washed his disciples' feet. That was an act of agape love, one that resonated deeply within their own souls, and should be paradigmatic for the way in which they ought to relate to one another.

But washing their feet wasn't the only act of agape love Jesus would commit that week. It was the very next day that he was brutally tortured and killed on a roman cross, dying as the final sacrifice for the sins of all humanity.

The sweet spot of agape love is between the washbasin and the cross. In the washbasin, Jesus set aside his rights, privilege, and honor as the world's true king to perform the duties of the lowliest household servant--washing the filthy feet of 12 nomads, one who would, just hours later, betray him. At the cross he laid down his life and forgave the sins of humanity.

Jesus didn't just talk about agape love, he defined it. He demonstrated it. He lived, and yes, died, it. The agape love of Jesus encompasses the washbasin and the cross, and this is the same agape love which he demands of us.

"A new command", he said. Like the first two: "Love YHWH your God...", and "Love your neighbor." Now a third. "Love one another." Agape one another. Agape one another with a washbasin, and with a cross. The love of Jesus' was no sentimental affection; it was both dirty and bloody. And that's the kind of love he expects from us: agape love.

Whenever you're not sure how to love somebody, just remember how Jesus loved us, and that the sweet spot of agape love is between the washbasin and the cross.

From Eros to Agape

Breena and I watched a movie the other night called Like Crazy. It was an interesting movie that I think I liked--a love story without being a chick flick. I don't want to give anything away, in case you decide to spend the dollar and rent it from redbox. But I will say that it got me thinking about love and relationships.

You've probably heard it said before that, in the early stages of a relationship, you experience the emotional joys of being "in love"; later, however, if you want the relationship to work, you have to choose love. Eventually, love doesn't come pouring out of your heart like a river at flood stage. You have to do things that nurture and foster love, even to the point of choosing love against your emotions and will.

This is true. Sorry to disappoint you, but the Hollywood love story is a myth. Happily ever after is hard work. But I want to look at this from a slightly different perspective.

What do we mean by "love"? What are we talking about when we talk about love? The trouble is, love is far too big a concept to be confined to one word. The Greeks knew this, and had four words that each defined part of the love spectrum.

The love that we often talk about is eros, or romantic love. This is the butterflies-in-your-stomach kind of love. It is erotic and sexual. It's the love of every Hollywood love story.

The funny thing about eros is that it dominates then dissipates. At first, it's all you feel for the other person. You're captivated by them. You can't help it. You think about them all the time. It's always hot when they're around. You just want to rip each other's clothes off. This is normal. It's good. You're meant to feel this way...for a time.

But then...life happens. Your googley eyes return to normal. You've thoroughly digested most of the butterflies in your stomach. You stop feeling toward this person in such extremes. This is also normal. And good. eros is meant to fade. Not all the way, obviously. But it's meant to become a healthy part of your love spectrum, not the only sort of love within it.

When eros doesn't dominate anymore, it can feel like you're falling out of love. You might even find yourself saying that you don't love that person anymore, that they're not "the one", or that you just don't feel it any longer. When this happens, it's important to remember that eros isn't the only kind of love. In fact, it's not even the most powerful kind of love. When eros fades, there is a greater love ready to come in. That love is called agape.

I've written a lot about agape, especially as it pertains to God's love toward us. (You can find the most definitive post here.) But agape is also the love that we are commanded to have toward one another, particularly between a husband and a wife. Agape is not so much a felt love as it is a willed love. We choose agape, often against our own wishes and desires.

When eros fades, that creates more opportunity for agape. A healthy marriage will have a good mix of both eros and agape, as well as the other kinds of love in the love-spectrum. As my own marriage grows and matures, I've found that choosing agape has led to feeling more eros. Making room for agape has actually created more space for eros. These two kinds of love are not mutually exclusive, but actually serve one another.

So, in your marriage, when you feel yourself "falling out of love", choose to love your spouse in a new way. Choose agape.

God's Sovereignty

N.T. Wright stated something in his book Simply Jesus that I thought was quite profound. Christians talk about how Jesus is Lord, how God is in control and sovereign, but there is plenty of evidence in the world that seems to point to the contrary. "If Jesus is Lord and God is control," the skeptic might ask, "then why Katrina? Why AIDS? Why genocide? The world sure doesn't look like a place where God is King."

The story of Jesus's resurrection and his going into "heaven" are only the beginning of something new, something that will be completed one day, but that none of the early Christians supposed had been fully accomplished yet.

The early Christians were, after all, a small minority, staking their daring and apparently crazy claim about Jesus from a position of great weakness and vulnerability. They were perceived...as a threat to the established order.... But their threat to the present world was not of the usual kind. They were not ordinary revolutionaries, ready to take up arms to overthrow an existing regime and establish their own instead. Celebrating Jesus as the world's rightful king...was indeed a way of posing a challenge to Caesar and all other earthly "lords." But it was a different sort of challenge. It was not only the announcement of Jesus as the true king, albeit still the king-in-waiting, but the announcement of him as the true sort of king. Addressing the ambitious pair James and John, he put it like this: "Pagan rulers...lord it over their subjects. ...But that's not how it's to be with you" (Matt. 20:25-26). And, as he said to Pilate, the kingdoms that are characteristic of "this world" make their way by violence, but his sort of kingdom doesn't do that (John 18:36). We all know the irony of empires that offer people peace, prosperity, freedom, and justice--and kill tens of thousands of people to make the point. Jesus's kingdom isn't like that. With him, the irony works the other way round. Jesus's death and his followers' suffering are the means by which his peace, freedom, and justice come to birth on earth as in heaven.

Jesus's kingdom must come, then, by the means that correspond to the message. It's no good announcing love and peace if you make angry, violent war to achieve it!

That's a long quote, but he's saying simply this: The cross of Jesus characterizes the rule of Jesus. His rule and reign is spread, not through violence or war, but through proclamation and agape love. In fact, Christianity grows best when it is oppressed and persecuted--in other words, when the powers of the world do to his followers what they did to Jesus.

Now, here's the point I want to make, and this applies to many Christians, particularly to those who are Reformed. The cross of Jesus replaces everything we thought we knew about what it means for God to be "sovereign" and "in control". The iron scepter that Isaiah talked about, the one by which the Messiah would rule, turned out to be the two wooden beams on which the Messiah was crucified. The sovereignty of God is most clearly visible at the cross, where the Son of God was murdered by Roman soldiers under the command of the Roman Governor, Pilate, and at the behest of the Jewish leaders. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, the strength of God looks like weakness to human eyes.

If you don't perceive God's sovereignty through the lens of the cross, then you fail to perceive it at all. God does not rule with an iron fist, like a great army general; he rules like a sacrificial lamb. The rule and reign of Jesus the King is extended, on earth, through the same means by which it was inaugurated--self-giving, life-losing love. That love, the agape love of the cross, is the one force on earth that no king or general or president can ever stamp out!

A Response to a Response

This post is a response to Jacob's post, which was a response to my post on questions for Calvinists. If you haven't been following the discussion, it all started with this post, in which I criticized something that David Platt said in a sermon about God hating/abhorring sinners. There is a long thread of comments in that post, which then precipitated a follow-up post on biblical hatred, and then a post called How I Read the Bible. Finally, I offered my reasons for criticizing David Platt here. That's a dizzying trail of links, to be sure. But it's been a fun and fruitful discussion. Before you read what I've written here, you should probably have Jacob's post open in another tab, and it might even be beneficial to have my questions post opened in yet another tab. Now to it.

Jacob, thank you for such an insightful and well-written response! I think you've articulated your position expertly.

While I certainly could have characterized Platt's sermon as "pastorally irresponsible", I didn't think that would be sufficient. Moving to the other end of the evangelical spectrum, I spent a great deal of time working through Rob Bell's book Love Wins, which I also thought was pastorally irresponsible, but which deserved a fuller treatment. I felt the same with Platt, since he is so revered by a great number of evangelicals, particularly of the young and conservative persuasion. As I've written elsewhere, I am not in Platt's faith community, but ,because of his celebrity, and through the miracle of modern social media, he is in mine. Obviously, I felt strongly enough about what he said here, combined with the level of his influence within my own congregation, that something more needed to be said.

I addressed this post to Calvinists/Reformed folks because every person who offered a critique/comment/question holds to that framework, insofar as I know. I could only assume that what I wrote rubbed them the wrong way, and that it had something to do with their overarching theological framework. (Or maybe it's just because Calvinists love to argue theology. Admit it. It's true!) My questions arose because two popular Reformed preachers taught that "God hates (abhors) sinners" (David Platt), and "God hates you" (Mark Driscoll). Furthermore, I find that those who hold to a Reformed framework, with the exception of Tim Keller, emphasize God's glory and his holiness, but not his love. Perhaps I haven't read broadly enough. (I'm not saying they don't believe in God's love or talk about it at all; I'm just saying, from an outsider's perspective, it's not something that seems to characterize Calvinist/Reformed teaching.)

Regarding total depravity, perhaps I haven't understood it correctly. Here is my understanding of total depravity: Human beings are utterly and completely sinful from birth, incapable of doing anything good whatsoever, and incapable of choosing to follow God or ever worship him. Perhaps I haven't got that right.

My perspective is that we are originally created in the image of God, that we rebelled and invited sin and death into God's perfect world. Furthermore, the image of God was broken and perverted in us. We are completely incapable of restoring both that image and the relationship we once held with God. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot redeem ourselves. We need God to do that for us.

Maybe I've gotten total depravity wrong, but I know there are some circles that teach that nonChristians are incapable of doing anything good whatsoever. This is clearly false, in my opinion. Now, do those good deeds earn them salvation, or a little bit of God's favor? No. The "good deed" God wants from us is to believe in his Son, and it is only by God's grace, through faith in Jesus, that we are saved. I believe this puts me well into the Reformed camp. Perhaps I have merely rejected a caricature of total depravity, as you say. But the caricature is a reality in many circles.

As for God's hatred and wrath, I have done my best to define the former, at least. I wrote in my post Biblical Hatred, "Hatred is the intense or passionate dislike of someone or something. But the term has deeper connotations in our culture, implying oppression, ridicule, and antagonism." Perhaps I should have also defined wrath, which I take to mean "the eschatological judgment of God unto condemnation." As I understand it, the wrath of God is a picture of the coming judgment of all humanity, and will be poured out upon all who have rejected Jesus. The overwhelming picture from the Scriptures--mostly the prophets and the NT--is that God's wrath is a future event, the only escape from which is to find salvation in Christ himself.

But both Platt & Driscoll used "hate" in the present tense, meaning God hates you (or sinners) right now, in the present. This is not God's coming wrath, as the Prophets and Jesus and the apostles talked about. This is God's present extreme dislike--his open and full antagonism and oppression today. That is what, in the light of the cross and the overwhelming witness of the NT, I simply cannot believe. I believe that God, like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, is actively and fully running toward every lost soul in the world, and he is doing it in the person and work of his Son.

To sum up, God's wrath is the eschatological judgment unto condemnation; God's hatred is the present antagonism and passionate dislike of sinners. I affirm the former, but reject the latter.

The conversation between Simeon & Wesley is very appropriate. Truly, Christ is our only hope. But that does not mean we do not have the responsibility to persevere and obey, by the grace of God and in the power of the Spirit. Surely, at the very least, the book of Hebrews and the seven letters of Revelation affirm this.

Question 1

What role, if any, does the Abrahamic/Davidic covenant play in these expressions in the Psalms. Are the wicked those Israelites who reject YHWH, or would that also include the Gentiles? Are the righteous David and his followers, or is it the covenant people as a whole?

Here, as with Platt, I would argue that you're overlaying a cognitive framework on the Psalms that they were never intended to accomodate. The theology within the Psalms, while true of course, is expressed in extreme terms because the Psalms are written in the language of the heart. To expound them in search of a literal dogma is to miss the point of the Psalms.

For instance, using Platt's exegetical method, I could make the following case, which I believe would be fully "biblical":

Psalm 137:8-9 • Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. If you want to be happy in life, go to Babylon, which is modern day Iraq, and throw some infants off a cliff. Kill as many babies as you can find, and you will be happy--blessed, even. In fact, this verse is proof that God has commanded the United States Army to invade Iraq, and kill as many civilans as possible, especially children. If we want to be happy, we'd better go to war!

Absurd. Offensive. Horrifying. But my method is the same as Platt's. Ahistorical. "Literal". And, quite frankly, ignorant of proper exegetical methods and the differences between varying types of literature found in the Scriptures.

Question 2

I don't think I'm being vague here at all. A sinner is someone who sins. That seems self-evident. But it seems you don't agree with the premise. Fair enough.

I stand by my exegesis of 1 Timothy 1:15. The verb is in the present tense. His past has humbled him in the present. He knows what he's capable of doing and being, and is teaching Timothy to live with that same sense of his own sinfulness in order to remain humble.

Question 3

I would argue that God has not revealed himself analogically, as you say, but directly and personally, in the person of Jesus Christ. We know God, not through a roundabout circuit of analogies, but in the person of the Incarnate Son.

Colossians 1:15 • The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
Colossians 1:19-20 • For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
John 14:9 • Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
Hebrews 1:2-3 • In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.
John 8:19 • If you knew me, you would know my Father also.
2 Corinthians 4:6 • For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
John 1:18 • No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

This is really the crux of it, for me. We most clearly know God through Jesus. Whatever we thought we knew about God through Israel's history and their Scriptures must now be reinterpreted through Jesus Christ, which, of course, was exactly what Jesus and the apostles were doing.

Question 4

This is not sophistry at all. The verse in Romans 9 has been quoted to me on multiple occasions, but I've yet to hear an adequate explanation. I put the verses together like that because it seemed especially relevant to the discussion.

Question 5

I agree! Perhaps my clarification above regarding the terms "hatred" and "wrath" will shed some light on this issue. God's wrath is coming at the eschaton, and all who do not believe/reject Jesus will be eternally condemned. But, in my opinion, that does not mean that God hates us today.

•••••

I'll conclude by stating my position as clearly as I can.

1. God loves humanity with agape love, the love that exists within the Godhead, binding him together in perfect unity.
2. God will judge sinful/rebellious/unbelieving people.
3. God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to, among other things, spare all humanity from this coming judgment, also known as God's wrath.
4. God did this because of his great love for humanity, and the cross of Christ is the clearest and most powerful sign of this love.
5. All who turn to Jesus in faith and repentance will be saved from the coming judgment.
6. God is actively pursuing all humanity by empowering his people, the Church, with his very Spirit to make disciples of every people group.
7. Hatred has to do with present opposition and antagonism, not future judgment unto condemnation.
8. God does not hate any human being.

And there you have it.

Questions for Calvinists

On Tuesday I posted a critique of David Platt's sermon on why God hates sinners. (Mark Driscoll recently said much the same thing.) I contended that God does not hate sinners, a position I still hold.

This post generated, by far, the most conversation I've ever had on this blog. Many folks with a Calvinist/Reformed/neo-Reformed perspective brought some great questions and challenges to what I wrote in that and the two subsequent posts. I did my best to answer those questions and challenges within the comments, and in the course of the conversation, some questions began to formulate in my mind that I would like to ask of Calvinists. What follows is a series of questions and challenges for any Calvinist/Reformed readers related to the discussion at hand. Please feel free to post your replies in the comments on this post, and please also use the numbering convention I use here so that we can keep track of the discussion.

Question 1

It seemed to me that, in the challenges I received to my post, God's hatred of sinners was equated with his judgment of sinners. Is this true? If so, why must God hate sinners in order to judge them? And I know this sounds sarcastic but it's not meant to be, but do you really believe that God hates people? Do you believe that God is actively, objectively, and fully (with all divine power) antagonistic and oppressive toward those who have not put their faith in Christ?

Question 2

If God hates sinners, as Platt (and Mark Driscoll) argues, does he hate you? 1 John 1:8 says, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." We all have sin, and we are all, therefore, sinners in a very real sense. Does that mean that God hates even those who have put their faith in Christ? Please bear in mind the words of Paul, written at the end of his life, to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:15, "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst." (Note the present tense.) Did God hate Paul?

Question 3

It is often said that hate is not the opposite of love. Perhaps it's not, but they are certainly on the same plane--of the same order, or belonging in the same category. Is it possible for God to both love and hate an individual? Can love and hatred exist within God's heart for the same person at the same time? At the risk of leading the witness, it may be helpful to reflect on what Paul writes in Ephesians 3:16-19.

16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Question 4

The verse from Romans 9 came up in the discussion: "Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated." This is a quote from Malachi 1. I'd like to put a few of the relevant verses together and have you give your comments on them, please.

1. Genesis 27:19 • Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me. Please sit up and eat some of my game, so that you may give me your blessing.”
2. Psalm 5:5b-6 • You hate all who do wrong; you destroy those who tell lies. The bloodthirsty and deceitful you, LORD, detest.
3. Malachi 1:2b-3a • “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the LORD. “Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated."

Jacob lied to get Isaac's blessing. God hates liars. God loved Jacob. How do you explain this series of verses?

Question 5

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about the conversation we've been having is that nobody took the time to address the New Testament passages I mentioned, and how they were relevant to the discussion, and how they should have influenced Platt's exegesis. I'll repost the verses here for your reflection.

• Romans 5:8 • But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
• John 3:16-17 • For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
• 1 John 4:10 • This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
• 1 John 4:19 • We love because he first loved us.

So, does God hate sinners, or does he love them?

Question 6

If God is love, how can there be any hate within him? Keep in mind, I'm not talking about judgment. I'm not talking about wrath against sin. I'm talking about hatred, the passionate disliking of someone to the point of active oppression and antagonism.

Question 7

Jesus says, in John 13:34-35, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” If the world recognizes the disciples of Jesus by their love, what does that say about Jesus? What does that say about the Father, the one about whom he said in John 5:19, "Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does."

•••••

There are probably other questions that have been floating around in my mind this past week, but this will do for now. Some of these are meant to clarify, some are meant to challenge. Perhaps they won't do either, I don't know. But I would like hear from you.

One final note, which may explain, a bit further, why I've written what I have.

I think it's important to point out that, when you or David Platt or Mark Driscoll or whomever says "God hates sinners", you're not saying, "God judges sinners apart from Christ." You may think you're saying that, but you're not. Judgment and hatred are not the same thing. So even if what all this boils down to is semantics, the semantics are crucial, particularly for an unbelieving world that already believes God hates them because the Church has done a terrible job of loving them. If it's just semantics, then to say, "God hates sinners" so smugly as Platt said it is pastorally irresponsible.

Biblical Hatred

Corey, who I hate, posted a comment in yesterday's post about biblical hatred. What is it? Why is it there? What's it all about? Well, the short answer is this: "Shut up, Corey! Don't let me ever see your stupid face around these parts again!" (For those of you who don't know about my friendship with Corey, our love language is hatred. It's complicated.)

According to a quick search on biblegateway.com, the English word "hate" appears 127 times in the NIV. ("Love" appears 686 times.) The majority of these passages do not have God as the subject of the verb, to hate. But there are some that do, and the object is occasionally human beings.

As I wrote yesterday, I don't believe that God hates sinners. The biblical evidence is, in my opinion, overwhelmingly in favor of the position that God loves sinners. The whole arc of redemptive history leads us to the cross, where God's agape love is most clearly on display.

What, then, are we to do with these hatred passages? Hatred is the intense or passionate dislike of someone or something. But the term has deeper connotations in our culture, implying oppression, ridicule, and antagonism. The imagery that gets conjured in our heads when we say, "God hates [whomever]", is of fiery destruction and torment--which is to say, of hell. But is that biblical hatred, properly applied to God? I don't think so.

Throughout the Scriptures, God relates to people through covenants. A covenant is basically an agreement between two parties, one greater and one lesser. God made covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David in the Old Testament. When God chose someone with whom to make a covenant, this person was seen as particularly loved, blessed, and accepted. When God chose to not make a covenant with someone (Esau, for example), this person was viewed as rejected, hated, and cursed. I believe that biblical hatred, with God as the subject, is covenant rejection, and does not imply divine oppression, ridicule, or antagonism.

God's hatred is exclusively linked to his covenant-making choices. When the Psalmist proclaims that "God hates liars", it is because liars and evildoers and murderers are actively breaking the stipulations of God's covenant with Israel. "Thou shalt not lie. Thou shalt not kill." And so on. When you break the stipulations of a covenant, you stand to receive the curses, or punishments, outlined within that covenant. Which is to say, you will receive the wrath and judgment of God. This doesn't mean that God hates you, in the 21st-century American sense of the word, but that you must suffer the consequences of breaking his covenant.

Fortunately, we live under a new and better covenant, the one made by Jesus through his spilled blood and broken body. This is a covenant of grace that comes to us through faith in Christ, and it was made because of God's deep love for humanity. And this new and better covenant depends on the faithfulness of Christ, and not our own perfect obedience. Praise God we live in such a time!

Does God Hate Sinners?

A friend of mine pointed me to this video of a sermon by David Platt, author of Radical. In this sermon, Platt argues that God both loves and hates sinners. You can watch the video for yourself, and then read my response below.



The first point I would make is this: Platt commits an exegetical fallacy by relying on the Psalms to make his theological point. The Psalms are Israel's Prayer-Song Book. They were, as Fee & Stuart point out in their classic book on exegesis, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, "addressed to the mind through the heart". (207) The Psalms use emotional language in order to draw out an emotional response from the worshipper. More from Fee & Stuart:

The psalms themselves are musical poems. A musical poem...is intended to appeal to the emotions, to evoke feelings rather than propositional thinking, and to stimulate a response on the part of the individual that goes beyond a mere cognitive understanding of certain facts. ...While psalms contain and reflect doctrine, they are not intended to be repositories for doctrinal exposition. Thus it is dangerous to read a psalm as though it taught a system of doctrine. (207-8)

I'm not sure who taught Platt how to do exegesis, but the fact that he doesn't understand this basic exegetical concept, and relies exclusively on the Psalms to make a rather bold and daring theological claim, troubles me deeply. This is a man with a wide reach within the Church, but he doesn't seem to know how to handle the Scriptures. This, by the way, is a major reason why I didn't like Radical, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone. In my judgment, Platt simply, and consistently, fails the exegesis test.

The second point I would make is this: The Hebrew word we translate "hate" means rejection, and particularly rejection according to the covenant. While it can also mean "despise" or "abhor", we must be careful with this word, particularly when we apply it as God's heart toward human beings.

The third point I would make is this: The truest thing about you is not that you are a sinner, as the neo-Reformists would have us believe, but that you are created in the image of God. The work of Satan cannot completely undo the work of God. He is not that strong. The first thing that was ever true about humanity was not that they were sinners, but that they were created by God in his very own image, and no amount of sin or temptation unleashed by the forces of hell can rewrite that history.

The doctrine of total depravity spits on the work and power of God because it makes the tacit point that Satan's de-creative acts are stronger than God's creative acts. False. God's creation is stronger than Satan's attempts at de-creation. Has the devil perverted God's work? Yes. Has he distorted it? Yes. Has he broken it? Yes. Has he undone it? Has he completely destroyed it? No. We are created in the image of God, and that is a fact of redemptive history.

The fourth point I would make is this: God is agape love. At least according to John the apostle. If God is love--the love that lays down its life, surrenders its rights, and forgives all offenses--can there be any room for hatred? If love is something that God fundamentally is, at the core of his being, how can he hate?

The fifth point I would make is this: Platt makes another exegetical fallacy by not working out his theology within the larger biblical context. In other words, Read the New Testament! Here are just a few samplings:

• But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. -Romans 5:8
• For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. -John 3:16-17
• This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. -1 John 4:10
• We love because he first loved us. -1 John 4:19

I don't know how to make this point any clearer: God loved us with the strongest force in the universe, with the agape love that resides at the core of his being, with that unbreakable bond which binds the Trinity together, before we believed in him. God loved us before we loved him, and his love is not so flimsy or wishy-washy as to leave any room for hatred. God loves sinners, and his love is too big, too full, too rich, and too deep to leave any room for hatred.

So I make this conclusion: No, David Platt; No, Mark Driscoll, God does not hate sinners. He loves them. He loves them enough to send his Son to die as an atoning sacrifice for their sins. What is lacking in the cross that makes you think that God hates anybody? What is lacking in all that God has done for us that would leave room in your heart and mind for a hatred of sinners coming from the heart of God? What else does he need to do to convince you that he doesn't hate you, or anybody else for that matter?

And, for the love of God, who taught you how to read and teach the Scriptures?! Your misunderstanding of basic exegetical principles and misapplication of Scriptures is astounding. It would be comic if your reach weren't so vast. But it's tragic. Please pick up Fee & Stuart's book and read it. Your churches, and evangelicalism in general, needs you to get the Scriptures right.

Love Your Enemies

After the killing of Osama bin Laden, N.T. Wright, one of my heroes, offered up a scathing indictment of the operation and U.S. foreign policy, in general. He wrote about the self-serving nature of American Exceptionalism and compared us to a character in our cultural mythology, The Lone Ranger.

I love N.T. Wright, and I've learned more from reading his books than anyone else...but, and I say this reluctantly, I'm going to have to disagree with him. He concludes his article with this sentence:

And what has any of this to do with something most Americans also believe, that the God of ultimate justice and truth was fully and finally revealed in the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, who taught people to love their enemies, and warned that those who take the sword will perish by the sword?

First of all, not to get nitpicky, but I don't think "the God of ultimate justice and truth was fully and finally revealed in the crucified Jesus of Nazareth." The book of Revelation seems to indicate that the God of ultimate justice and truth will be fully and finally revealed at the wedding of Jesus and the Church. This will be when the Father himself comes and dwells among his people, thus fully and finally revealing himself directly to those who love and worship him.

What I really want to get to, though, is this business of loving your enemy. Jesus said, in Matthew 5:43-45a, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love [agape] your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."

The relevant question in this discussion is this: Does Jesus' command to Love Your Enemies apply to nation-states? To apply this to our current situation, does Jesus' command obligate America, as a political entity, to love Osama bin Laden? And now we have another question: Does this command to love, by its nature, rule out physical punishment as a response to physical aggression? Does Jesus' command impel America, again, as a political and national entity, to refrain from killing Osama bin Laden?

My answer to the first question is No, sort of. This command is found in the Sermon on the Mount, which Jesus delivered to his disciples, who were all first-century Jews living in Palestine under the occupation of the pagan, Gentile Romans. This particular period of Jewish history was a hotbed for revolutionary activity, and saw many would-be Messiahs take on Rome through violent means, and fail. These false Messiahs, belonging to a larger group called the Zealots, were trying to usher in the kingdom of God through violent force. As N.T. Wright says elsewhere, they were trying to achieve a military victory over the pagan Gentiles that would symbolize the theological victory of good over evil. Jesus' command to Love Your Enemies was a direct assault on the Zealots' way of ushering in the kingdom. In essence, Jesus is saying the kingdom of God comes about by laying down your life, not by taking up your sword.

It's important to remember that Jesus is talking to his Jewish disciples, not to the Roman occupiers. The Jewish temptation was to create a sovereign political state and call that the kingdom of God. But the kingdom of God is neither political nor national (Hence, Jesus' refusal to be crowned king in John 6); it is suprapolitical and transnational. The kingdom of God consists across and within the nations, and it goes far beyond politics.

The presence of the kingdom of God, however, does not make nation-states or governmental authorities obsolete. In fact, Revelation 21 seems to indicate that, even after the end, when God comes to fully and finally reveal himself by dwelling with his people, there are still other nations on the earth. Moreover, texts like Romans 13 indicate that God has ordained governmental powers for the sake of maintaining order and justice on earth.

There is nothing in the text of Matthew 5 to indicate that Love Your Enemies applies to nation-states or human governments. The word we translate enemies in Matthew 5:44 could just as easily (though more cumbersomely) be translated those who hate you. The relationship Jesus has in mind, as I see it, is interpersonal, not national. Return hate with love; that is the way of the kingdom of God. But because the kingdom of God is neither a political nor a national entity, this command does not apply in the same way to nation-states.

Let me put it this way: If someone were to strike me, I would turn my other cheek to them; but if that same person were to strike my child or wife (assuming this person is an adult male), I would open up a very particular can on them. Just as my primary obligation, in this instance, is to defend my wife and children, so the primary obligation of government leaders is to protect the citizens and residents of that particular country. Love Your Enemies is not a command that overrides all other commands and responsibilities. It is a part of the means by which we usher in the kingdom of God, but there are times when it can be taken to extremes and do precisely the opposite of what it was intended. Therefore, my answer to the second question above is a hearty No.

My friend, a police officer, was killed in the line of duty. His murderer was killed shortly thereafter in a firefight with other police officers. This was right. This was just.

Osama bin Laden masterminded a cowardly attack against unsuspecting civilians using proxy assassins, and then hid for 10 years in the rugged mountains of central Asia. He was apprehended and killed in a firefight with American military forces. This was right. This was just. In this instance, Jesus' command to Love Your Enemies was superseded by the responsibilities of the President (these responsibilities, according to Romans 13, come from God) to protect America's citizens and enact justice, in this case with the metaphorical sword.

This post has been long, I know, but I have tried to deal seriously with what N.T. Wright said we Americans haven't dealt seriously in the death of OBL--Jesus' command to Love Your Enemies.

How It All Will End

All this talk and blogging on Love Wins, and the fact that the world is clearly going to end on May 21, has got me thinking about the end times. Or, to be more accurate, it’s got me thinking about the end of the Bible.

Revelation is a tricky book. It’s difficult to understand and interpret because of it’s apocalyptic nature. The images are extreme, the language is deeply biblical and often coded, and the timeline seems to skip around a bit. Some of it is clearly in the past, while other parts of it seem to be yet in the distant future. That’s what I want to write about today: the future parts.

Revelation 17-19 deal with the fall of Babylon, which is probably a code for Rome. You have to remember that the people to whom Revelation was first written (the seven churches of Asia Minor in chapters 2 and 3) were under severe persecution from Rome. Rome and her emperor stood against Christ, and often waged a violent war against the followers of Jesus. So, for those saints, the fall of Rome meant the destruction of God’s great enemy on earth.

In the middle of chapter 19, we get this wonderful song:

Hallelujah!
For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.

Babylon falls. People rejoice. And a wedding is coming. But we don’t have the actual wedding; we only have a song. The wedding is coming between the Lamb (hint: Jesus) and his bride. And as chapter 19 continues on into chapter 20, we see Jesus portrayed as this conquering King who throws Satan and his minions into the Abyss for a thousand years. And then his people rise from the dead and reign with him for that thousand years, after which the devil and his crew come out of the Abyss and wage war against Jesus again, only to be defeated again, and cast into this awful, horrible lake of burning sulfur to be tormented for ever and ever.

Thus the groom. The twice-conquering King. But do you know who hasn’t shown up yet? The bride. As in weddings today, the bride doesn’t show up until she’s ready. And in this wedding, she doesn’t show up until chapter 21.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. …One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.

Thus the bride. But what does this mean? Does Jesus marry a city? That can’t be right, can it? Maybe this is another one of those parts in Revelation where the language shouldn’t be taken literally. Maybe the New Jerusalem is something else—someone else. In fact, the bride is us, the Church, all who have called on the name of Jesus and overcome the world. You and I are the New Jerusalem, the bride of Christ, beautifully prepared for the wedding by God, and being escorted down the aisle, from Heaven to Earth, by God himself.

And this “Heavenly City”, the New Jerusalem, which is us, dwarves the “Eternal City”, Rome. By a lot. And not just in size, but in grandeur. There is no temple because God Almighty and the Conquering King-Groom are the temple. As Jesus declared from the throne,

“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

There is no need for the light of the sun or moon, because God himself will give us light. The gates will never be shut, not because it is all-inclusive, but because there is nothing to fear. The night and its terrors have fled away, and there is no reason to hide behind city walls and closed gates. And “nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” Why? Because God has already prepared the bride. He has already brought his people through tribulation and great trial, and they have overcome by the blood of the Lamb. God’s work of preparing the bride for the wedding is done. She is ready. She has gone down the aisle.

The Holy City, the New Jerusalem, is not heaven; it’s us. We are being made ready for a wedding, our wedding, where God walks us down the aisle and gives us over to his son, the Conquering King-Groom, the Lamb, Jesus Christ. We are far, far greater than Rome or any of God’s enemies, because we are being made suitable for the Son of God.

At the end of the book of the Revelation is an invitation—a wedding invitation. But it’s not simply an invitation to the ceremony; it’s a call to participate, to be the bride.

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.

This is how love wins.

God's Aching Heart

I was reading Jeremiah 2 this morning, and like you find in so much of what the prophets wrote, we see God's heart, wounded and broken by Israel.

What fault did your fathers find in me,
that they strayed so far from me?

You can hear the hurt in his voice. He had loved Israel; he had brought them out of slavery in Egypt, through the trials of the desert, and finally into a land of their own. And they deserted him. They abandoned him. "It's no use!" Israel declared, "I love foreign gods, and I must go after them." Again and again, Israel broke God's heart.

If I were God, there would only be so much of this that I could take before I completely shut myself off from humanity. But God didn't do that. Instead, he opened his heart up all the way, to everyone! In Christ, God has opened the doors of the kingdom to everyone, and by doing that he opened his heart to be hurt and betrayed at a rate far beyond what Israel had ever done.

How many billions and billions of times has God been betrayed since then? If everyone who has ever believed has betrayed God as much as I have, that is an unfathomable amount of heartache. Yet he has not become cynical. His heart has not become hard. Before Jesus came it was just Israel, just one people group; now it's the whole world to whom God has opened his heart. We have wounded him time and time again, yet still the doors of his heart are open wide. Still he loves each new generation.

This is remarkable. So much hurt. So much betrayal. So little love returned. So little obedience. And yet he continues to love as he has from the beginning. What an amazing God we have!

God's Loving Presence

This will be the last post of my journey through Dick Staub's book, The Culturally Savvy Christian. This book has been very formative for me (we even got a kind comment from the author on one of the posts!), and I hope that you go out and buy yourself a copy of it--or you can join our life group and go through it with us for free, because one couple generously offered to buy everyone a copy! The last two posts have been about God's deep and transforming presence, and this one is about God's loving presence.

I've blogged and preached extensively (for me, anyway) about agape love--a love that lays down its life. This is God's kind of love, and by this love we are transformed. We cannot be made like Christ simply by accumulating knowledge and experience; we become like Christ because we experience the depth of God's transforming love in our souls. "Soul wellness is ours only when the indwelling God, whose love is eternally available and utterly reliable, sustains us." (121)

"Only those who experience God's loving presence in the deepest places of their soul can be a loving presence in the souls of others. When touched by God, our deepest wounds can become our deepest well of compassion for the sorrows of others." (124) If we allow him, God can transform our pain and weakness into sources of compassion, empathy, and wisdom for our brothers and sisters. It is not a question of can God, but will you let God. His presence is liquid, seeking its own level in the deepest, darkest caverns of our hearts where the ground is both parched and fallow from the lack of water and light. His presence brings refreshment, healing, and eventually a harvest to the deep wounds of our souls. In this way we are transformed, not in manners of behavior, but in modes of being. "Our transformation is the result of God's presence in our life, and the evidence of God's presence is our embodiment of God's love." (125)

If you want to transform the culture, you yourself must be transformed by the rich, loving presence of God. "Today's Christians are often a mirror image of popular culture, wanting to transform the world without being transformed, wanting to prove Christianity intellectually without displaying the love that is the proof we are Jesus' disciples. The only way to enrich our culture is to be enriched personally, which comes when we experience God deeply and then embody God's loving presence. ...The culturally savvy Christian's goal is to embody God's loving, transforming presence in the world." (125)

I don't know about you, but I want to be that kind of Christian. I've only got one shot at this, and the greatest terror that haunts me is to think that I might go to my grave having lived a mediocre life characterized by the capitulation to popular culture rather than the embodiment of God's agape presence, by the stale shallowness of mindless distraction rather than the healing, soul-level transformation that comes from experiencing God deeply. True transformation--not just behavior modification--begins by experiencing God in the deep recesses of your inner being, and slowly but steadily grows upward and outward. The same is true, I suppose, of popular culture.

Black Friday

Today is Black Friday, and every year before this one I spent this "national holiday" sitting comfortably at home, smugly congratulating myself on not being one of those exhausted consumers scratching and clawing their way through the stampeding masses on safari for the latest toy, television, or gadget. Every year I scoffed at the idea of waking up at 3am to stand in line in the cold November air, waiting to rush madly into the local superstore in a vain attempt to quell my own (and now, my children's) materialistic desires. Every year I refused to participate in this cavalcade of consumerism--every year, that is, until this one.

My wife is very much not like me. I hate crowds. She thrives on the chaos of a packed parking lot and the buzz of a crowded mall. I hate shopping. It breathes life into her soul. But I love my wife very much, and because I love her very much, I found myself at a WalMart teeming with shoppers at 12 midnight on Black Friday.

We all stood idly by large pallets covered in wrapping paper, waiting for the signal to come over the intercom that the clock had struck 12:01 and the free for all could begin. My pallet contained Lego sets of 405 pieces for a scant $15. Cyrus loves Legos. This is a great value. I can purchase his happiness at Christmas and pass on the savings to Eisley and Ezekiel. These were the thoughts running through my head when an unintelligible voice cackled over the intercom and my fellow consumers began tearing through the wrapping paper. There was a rush from behind me as arms came flailing through every available opening grabbing at the blue boxes (the green ones were Duplo--lame) full of Junior's happiness. I grabbed my box and moved away as quickly as I could, searching out a part of the store less populated by overly motivated parents.

When all was said and done, Breena and I managed to get what we came for (and a little bit extra, of course--that's how they get you!) without doing too much damage to our bodies, our bank account, and possibly our souls. This is not something I would ever do by myself or for myself. I participated in Black Friday because I love my wife and I wanted to spend time with her in her world. And because of that, it was fun.

Black Friday isn't for me. Maybe it's for you. It's certainly a smart consumer choice if you're willing to sacrifice some sleep and physical comfort. You can get your Christmas shopping done and spend less money doing it. But, for me, Black Friday isn't about savings, it's about love. I love you Breena!

We Shall Not Be Doormats

Here's the last bit of the sermon that I cut out.

•••••

Now, at this point, the question always arises, “What’s the difference between laying down your life and being a doormat? What about people who take your life away from you through some kind of verbal, physical, or emotional abuse?” Those are great questions that we need to reconcile with this core call of laying down our lives and not demanding our rights.

In those moments, my mind always goes to the scene from the Passion of the Christ where Jesus is talking with Pilate. He’s bloody and beaten, and Pilate asks him, “Don’t you know that I have the power to either crucify you or set you free?” And Jesus responds, “You have no power except that which is given you from above.” In other words, Jesus and the Father have agreed to this. You can’t take his life. He’s laying it down willingly. I think about that and I remember that Jesus was neither a martyr nor a victim. Nobody took his life from him; he wouldn’t have allowed that. He willingly laid it down.

Don’t be deceived. Agape is strong. Of all the loves, agape has the most backbone. It takes tremendous strength of will and courage to lay down your life. Agape is neither spineless nor gutless. If it were easy, everyone would do it.

Agape talks back. Agape puts up the hand and says, “No. No farther. I will lay down my life for you, but you will not take it from me.” Remember, agape is a love that walks, not a love that lays down passively.

Agape forgives sins. Anyone who has forgiven the sins of another is no longer a victim, and agape frees us from the downward spiral of being a victim, always seeking revenge, always demanding more and more retribution. Agape offers the way out through forgiveness.

Agape

God has been teaching me so much lately, but the most important lessons I'm learning are the ones that seem most basic, but are the hardest to put into practice in my life. They are the lessons of agape love.

Agape is a love that lays down its life. We see it most extravagantly at the cross of Jesus Christ, where the Son of God laid down his life to atone for the sins of all humanity. Agape is also a love that refuses its rights. This doesn't mean that we are spineless doormats, it means that we are strong enough to not become victims when someone else sins against us.

The hardest part about living a life of agape is dying to myself in all the tiny moments of the day. Just a few hours ago I was at a gas station, trying to use the air machine to fill up my tires. Somebody was parked right in front of it but not using it, so I waited patiently. When they moved their car, I started backing up. But then some other guy zipped around me and parked right in front of the air machine, only to let his wife out of the car to go buy something in the store. He wasn't even using it! I was so furious! I desperately wanted to hop out of the van and give him more than just a piece of my mind, but I drove off, cursing him under my breath.

Honestly, I can't even tell you what it would look like to have agape for a total stranger like that, but I'm sure it doesn't look like my passive-aggressive anger. But I can imagine that, if I had died to myself in that moment, and politely asked him to move so that I could fill my tires, he probably would have agreed. But I chose to be offended. I chose to be a victim.

In the tiny moments of your day, before you get angry, or offended, or choose to be a victim, take a second to consider what agape would like. Ask yourself, "How can I live a love that lays down its life?" This is what it means to walk as Jesus walked.

A New Look at Love

As a language, I really like English. You can make up words, a process I like to call "enwordenate". But for some reason English has only one word (love) to express a wide range of concepts. Greek had four words (storge, eros, philos, agape) to express that range. We translate all of these words as "love". Needless to say, love can be confusing.

Why haven't we come up with a new word to accompany love? We used to have one, actually. It was "charity". It was probably the best way to translate the Greek word agape that we find in the New Testament. But then that became something else. And nothing else seems to fit the bill.

Coming up with a new word is a bit audacious, so I won't try that. But I do want to help people understand what the New Testament means when it talks about [agape] love. 1 John 4:7-21 has, I'm guessing, the most agapes per capita of any passage in the Bible. But if we don't know what that word really means, and we just fit it into our preconceived notions of what love is, then we're probably going to miss the meaning. So I'm going to take "love" out of this text and put in something that might help you understand it better.

Dear friends, let us lay down our lives for one another, for self-sacrifice comes from God. Everyone who doesn't demand his rights has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not lay down his life but clings to his rights does not know God, because God is the very definition of self-sacrifice. This is how God showed his willingness to lay down his life among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is self-sacrifice: not that we died for God, but that he died for us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so laid down his life for us, we also ought to lay down our lives for one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we surrender our rights for the sake of one another, God lives in us and his sacrifice is made complete in us.

We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the sacrifice God has made for us.

God is self-sacrifice. Whoever lives in self-sacrifice by surrendering his rights and even his very life lives in God, and God in him. In this way, the lifestyle of laying down our lives for one another is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in dying to yourself. But perfect sacrifice drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in self-sacrifice.

We lay down our lives and surrender our rights for others because he first laid down his life and surrendered his rights for us. If anyone says, "I would die for God," yet wouldn't give up anything for his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not lay down his life for his brother, whom he has seen, cannot lay down his life for God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever sacrifices everything for God must also sacrifice everything for his brother.

A bit wordy, perhaps. But it changes the game entirely, I think. Love is suddenly much more concrete. It's easy to get around obeying this passage when we think of love as some inner feeling or warm sense of affection. But that's not the love of the New Testament. That's not agape. I hope this little exercise in rewriting the Bible (actually, just the NIV translation) helps you to take a new look at love.