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!

The Dance - Your Destiny

C.S. Lewis writes, “In Christianity God is not a static thing…but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.” If we press out this metaphor of dance a bit further, we can understand Father, Son, and Spirit as each dancing, orbiting, around the others. They each give unconditional, infinite agape love to the others. They each give glory to the others. There is an eternal dance of glorifying love going on within the Trinity.

Tim Keller writes, “Because the Father, Son, and Spirit are giving glorifying love to one another, God is infinitely, profoundly happy. …The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are pouring love and joy and adoration into the other, each one serving the other. They are infinitely seeking one another’s glory, and so God is infinitely happy. And if it’s true that this world has been created by this triune God, then ultimate reality is a dance.”

Ultimate reality is a dance. We are meant to dance and move and orbit around the Trinity, our triune Creator God. We are not meant to be still, meaning we are not meant to be the center of the universe. Hell is stasis. Hell is ordering your life around yourself, and demanding that others, even God, dance around you.

But God himself, within his internal dynamics, does not even do this. God is three-personal, and each person of the Trinity orbits around the others in a dance of glorifying agape love.

Have you ever wondered why God created humans? Was he lonely? No, he wasn’t lonely, because he is three-in-one. He didn’t lack for relationships or love. Did he have needs? Like, was he hungry? No, he had no needs. He wasn’t hungry, and he didn’t need to create humans to bring him food. Some ancient religions taught that. But not ours.

What compelled God to create humanity was desire, his desire to extend the divine dance from 3 to infinity. God's desire was to spread the other-glorifying dance of self-giving love within himself to an infinite number of beings created in his image. As Tim Keller says, “You were made to enter into a divine dance with the Trinity.” This does not mean that you or I will ever become divine. We will not. But we will become the closest thing possible: The Bride of Christ.

There is a wedding at the end of Scripture, the marriage between Christ and the Church. We, the Church, will become Christ’s everlasting companion; and so the dance will grow. We will be invited in. As the prophets so often put it from God’s perspective: “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” Your destiny is to join the dance of the Trinity as a full member of the Church, Christ’s Bride.

But this, of course, is not a dance that we must wait for. You are invited to participate now, today. If all of life is a dance, if ultimate reality is a divine dance, then you need, more than anything, to join the dance today. What bride would show up to her wedding not knowing how to dance?

So the onus is on you to learn how to dance. You must learn humility. You must learn agape love. You must commit yourself to seeing the Gospel happen in your heart, in your relationships, and in your community. You must learn to dance with Jesus as a part of a community of faith. You must learn to live within the agape love of the Trinity.

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.

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.

Predestination and Free Will

If you've been a Christian for a decent amount of time, you've probably engaged in, or at least been around people who are talking about, the ubiquitous discussion of predestination versus free will. This may seem like an arcane point of theology that has no bearing in real life, but, as a friend of mine said last night, it profoundly shapes your view of God. Let me briefly lay out the two sides of the argument.

PREDESTINATION (ELECTION)

This is often called the "Reformed" view, or "Calvinist" perspective. Basically, people who hold this view believe that God has predetermined those people who will be saved. In other words, he has elected some to spend eternity with him in heaven. This election has no basis on the individual's behavior or morality, but is wholly based on the grace of God. Because God is completely holy, and because we are utterly sinful (totally depraved), we cannot choose to follow God or believe in him of our own will. That is to say, we are too sinful to humble ourselves, repent of our sins, and place our faith in Christ. This faith must be a gift from God, flowing out of his grace. The elect are those to whom this faith has been given.

FREE WILL

This is often called the "Arminian" perspective. People who believe in free will understand humans to have a choice in whether they repent of their sins and place their faith in Jesus Christ. God's will is for all people to be saved, but, out of his gracious humility, he has left the choice of faith to us. He calls us to follow him, and we can freely embrace him or reject him. God compels no one to choose him against their will; rather, he honors human beings as free moral agents created in his image. God's grace comes as both a gift and an offer, the intended response to which is faith. Everyone who accepts this offer will be saved.

These are two very brief sketches, and I hope that I've done justice to each perspective. I fall into the free will camp, but have often felt the weakness of the Arminian position in its poor explanation (or total lack thereof) of election. In what follows I'd like to begin an attempt at explaining what election means.

In order to understand biblical election, we have to set aside the medieval notion of the subject, namely that God has elected certain individuals for salvation and others for damnation. This is unhelpful and anachronistic. Understanding election means going back to the source, and discovering in the Scriptures what is meant by this controversial term.

What did election mean for Jesus? In fact, election was a core tenant of Jesus' faith. As N.T. Wright has shown, Jesus fully believed in election, though not in the same way in which we define it today. Jesus believed that the creator God has intended, from the very beginning, to address and deal with the problems of creation through Israel. When everything went wrong in Adam--when sin and death entered the world through him--God intended to set everything aright through Abraham and his descendants.

Israel was chosen by God to be the instrument by which sin and death would be undone, and everything in creation would be set to rights. Israel was The Elect. Unfortunately, Israel failed to live up to their high calling. They failed to be The Elect. In steps Jesus, to be the Israel that Israel could never be, and to do what Israel was always meant to do--set the world to rights by atoning for sin and conquering death. In other words, Jesus is The Elect. He has done what The Elect were elected to do.

Any understanding of election must begin with Israel and move then to Jesus. This, rather than individualistic predestination, is the biblical view of election.

Because Jesus is The Elect, all who have faith in him are The Elect in him. Election is not an arbitrary divine choice, but rather a new reality and identity bestowed on all who obey Jesus' command to believe in him. Salvation is the gift of God, and election is the new reality brought about by the reception of that gift.

God has not, as some would contend, elected some for salvation and, therefore, others for damnation. Instead, God has elected his Son to right the wrongs of the world by atoning for sin and conquering death through his own crucifixion and resurrection. All who confess Jesus as King are saved and become a part of The Elect in Christ because they have become a part of Christ through faith. Their task becomes the task of The Elect: Announcing to the world that Jesus Christ has atoned for sin through his death and conquered death through his resurrection.

Biblical election, therefore, is a new reality that comes with a very old mission. Live, then, as The Elect, announcing and enacting the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus > Heaven

If you're a Jesus Nerd like me, you know that there was a huge blow up this past weekend in theological circles. (Yes, there are theological circles.) HarperOne released the promotional material for Rob Bell's latest book, Love Wins, and speculation quickly grew that Rob had become a Universalist. It started at Justin Taylor's blog at The Gospel Coalition, and then John Piper tweeted "Farewell, Rob Bell" with a link to the blog post. There has been a veritable firestorm of bloggers and tweeters since then, with many condemning Bell and many supporting him.

My first response, which I left on two friends' Facebook posts, was "I'm disappointed, but not surprised." All I had to go on was the HarperOne promotional blurb and a short video of Rob speaking. I have not, of course, read the book yet. I was foolish to pass judgment so quickly, and wish that I hadn't done so. Perhaps Rob Bell has become a Universalist, and perhaps he hasn't. I'll have to wait for the book. (By the way, bravo HarperOne for your marketing strategy. I'm not sure you intended to do it this way, but you've just generated A TON of interest.)

If you don't know, a Universalist is someone who believes that God welcomes every person into heaven. Hell is either empty or it does not exist at all. One of the toughest questions that faces Christians is this: "How could a loving God send anyone to hell?" The Universalist's answer is, "He doesn't".

This little dust up got me thinking about Universalism, heaven, hell, and the afterlife. Whether or not Rob Bell is a Universalist is beside the point. Universalism seems to be a reaction against a strict fundamentalism which places a great amount of emphasis on the afterlife, escaping hell, and getting into heaven. Gandhi is often the Universalist's prime example of justification for their view. If Gandhi is in hell, they might say, then God truly is unjust. The Fundamentalist's retort would be, of course, "Unless Gandhi placed his faith in Christ, he's burning in hell."

The trouble with Universalism and these strict forms of Fundamentalism is that they get things all backwards. Heaven is not the grand prize; Jesus is. Heaven is just the parting gift. The only reason heaven is great is because that's where Jesus reigns. Jesus makes heaven great. Universalists are wrong because you can't reject the grand prize and then demand the parting gift. If a potential employer clears the company account and rolls out the red carpet for you, and you turn down the job, don't expect them to validate your parking.

Fundamentalists and Evangelicals get it wrong when we say that Jesus is the way to heaven. He's not. He's what makes heaven worth pursuing. Heaven is nothing without Jesus. In fact, without Jesus (and the Father and the Holy Spirit) there is no heaven, because wherever they are, that is heaven! Let's make sure we're getting these in the right order. Jesus > heaven.

The Payoff of Doctrine

Last Tuesday we started the context track of e4 at church. e4 is a program we've developed and designed to lay deep foundations of Christian faith and practice. It's intense and challenging, a bit like drinking from a fire hose, but we've seen great results and this year's group is really excited about the program.

The context track deals with theology, church history, and culture. The first session is on the Trinity, and even though it was the same night the Buckeyes' played in the Sugar Bowl, we had a full house and some great conversation. The Trinity is a difficult subject to tackle because it defies explanation; it presses the boundaries of human intellect and language. We don't have any good metaphors to help us understand. The doctrine of the Trinity strips your intellect naked, revealing in what you finally trust--human reason or the character of God. Personally, I couldn't believe in a God I can fully explain and understand. The doctrine of the Trinity helps me to have faith and is, in a strange sense, a satisfactory proof (for me) of God's existence: If God exists, he must in some way be beyond our comprehension. The doctrine of the Trinity is beyond our comprehension. Therefore, the God known as the Trinity must exist.

But that's not the real payoff of learning the doctrine of the Trinity. Tom, one of our most faithful e4 participants (I call them e4eigners), asked about the internal dynamics: "Is there a hierarchy within the Trinity?" What a great question! I thought it about for a bit, running through the Scriptures in my mind, and answered that there was not. The Son submits to the Father; the Father glorifies the Son; the Father and Son honor the Spirit; the Spirit speaks only what he hears from the Father and Son.

What we find at the heart of the Trinity is not hierarchy, but humility. Each member defers to the others. Each member glorifies the others. The very nature of God--that he is three-in-one--is held together by total humility manifesting itself in agape love. This is why John can say, plainly, "God is love". There is no striving for position or selfish ambition within the Trinity; there is only complete and total humility and selflessness. The payoff of the doctrine of the Trinity is the invitation to possess in part what he possesses in full: humility. The nature of the Trinity teaches us to be humble enough to be unified with our brothers and sisters in Christ in this life. Pride and arrogance make unity impossible, but humility makes it inevitable.

Be humble, then, as God is humble. Defer to your brothers and sisters. Praise them publicly. Speak exceedingly well of them behind their backs. Listen well. Take correction without becoming defensive. The doctrine of the Trinity compels us to pursue utmost humility and manifest it in agape love.

You Can't Manipulate God

One of the most important lessons we can learn in this life is that God can’t be manipulated. There is no ritual act we can perform that will change God’s mind. We can’t compel him to act by our good deeds. There is no magical incantation that will stir him up and cause him to act in our favor. So why do we always try to pull this kind of crap with God?

I just finished reading a great book by John Oswalt called The Bible Among the Myths. (Book Review coming on Friday.) The core thought of the book is that the Bible is radically different from the other sacred texts of the ancient world in that it presents a completely new way of seeing the world.

All of ancient Israel’s neighbors (and many cultures today) viewed the world as an extension of a greater, unseen reality—the realm of the gods. The two were connected the way that you are connected to your shadow (with this world being the shadow). John Oswalt calls this idea Continuity. The physical world and the spiritual world are continuous.

This means that what you do in this world is also being done in the spiritual world. For example, the ancients understood the earth and the sky (and the sun and the moon and the clouds) to be gods. In order for crops to grow, it had to rain, which was the act of the earth and the sky having sex. So if you wanted it to rain so that your crops would grow, you would have sex with a prostitute at the shrine of your god. Your sex act in the physical realm meant that the gods were having sex in the spiritual realm. In other words, the gods could be manipulated.

But the Hebrews did not believe this (or at least their scriptures did not teach it). They believed that there was only one God and that this God was not continuous with the physical world in any way. He was utterly separate from it. The word for this is Transcendence.

Because this God was transcendent, he could not be manipulated. Whatever ritual act you might perform would have no corollary in the spiritual world. God is completely other than the world, and therefore every divine action is an act of grace. This means that you are not in control.

But the good news is that this God is fundamentally characterized by love, truth, faithfulness, and integrity. He deeply, deeply loves you. He has our ultimate good in mind, always. He is a God who is safe to surrender to, one to whom you can hand over control. He is a God who desires relationship—he wants to be known by you, and for you to fully and willingly reveal your heart and mind to him. Unlike the gods of the ancients, he can’t be manipulated, but he can be loved.

The Gospel 2.0

In my last post, I claimed that, for Jesus and other faithful Jews of his day, the gospel could be summed up in the simple phrase YHWH is King. I called this Gospel 1.0. But it's only version 1.0 because Jesus came and, through his life, death, resurrection and ascension, provided a subtle but crucial nuance to the gospel.

When Jesus came preaching through Galilee he announced, over and over again, that the kingdom of God was now upon Israel. In fact, Luke records his first public teaching as the reading of a kingdom-passage from Isaiah. After reading this passage, Jesus sat down and simply said, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." In other words, Jesus was saying that the kingdom of God was breaking upon you through me. YHWH is becoming King (truly, fully, and over against all the other gods of all the other nations that had oppressed Israel) in and through the life and ministry of Jesus. (This is a summary of what N.T. Wright writes in, among other places, The Challenge of Jesus.)

So Jesus is essentially walking around ancient Israel saying, believe the gospel that YHWH is King, and watch it happen through me. The funny thing is that Jesus was probably not the first to say this (there were plenty of other would-be Messiahs in his day). But Jesus is the only one who could back it up, not by defeating Rome, but by defeating sickness, demonic powers, and in several instances even death itself.

Ultimately, of course, Jesus defeated his own death. His resurrection was the decisive victory over Israel's (and all of humanity's) true enemy--Satan, ruling through sin and death. His ascension was not so much spiritual space travel as it was the act of the true cosmic king taking his rightful place on the singular throne over all creation. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, the Father put everything under the authority of the Son. In other words, Jesus is King.

This is the Gospel 2.0--the good news as Christians understand it. Jesus is King (or, if you prefer, Lord). Because of the obedience of the Son, the Father placed him on the throne and put him over all things (except for himself, of course). The kingdom of God, then, is ruled and mediated by Jesus. It is his kingdom. YHwH is King because of what his son did; and because the Son did what he did, the Father made him king. That's the Gospel 2.0--Jesus is King.

The Gospel 1.0

On Thursday I was hanging out with a friend and he asked me, "What is the gospel?" He had gotten into some conversations that had confused him on the basics of our faith. I understand. I've been there. As I've been reflecting on that and some other confusing conversations of my own, I started thinking about the gospel, what it is now, and where the whole concept came from. This is going to be the first of two posts: The second post will be on what the gospel is, and this post will discuss what the gospel was.

What I mean by "what the gospel was" is simply what Jesus (and other Torah-observant Jews of his time) thought of when he said the word gospel. Mark records the opening lines of Jesus' ministry: The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the gospel! So what did he mean by this?

He couldn't have meant, of course, that I have died for your sins and risen again on the third day because he hadn't done that yet. So there must have been a gospel before the gospel--a gospel 1.0. And in order to find that, we must turn to the pages of Jesus' scriptures, the Old Testament.

Perhaps the best place to start is in Isaiah, and as instructive a passage as any comes from chapter 52.

How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
"Your God reigns!"

So what is the good news? It's not the peace or the salvation--those are what flow out of the reality that lies behind the good news. The good news is simply that the God of Zion, YHWH, reigns. (Of course, I'm skipping over A LOT of stuff. But since this is a blog and not a dissertation, I'll allow it. If you want to read more on this, I highly recommend N.T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God and Jesus and the Victory of God.) In other words, the gospel as Jesus understood it at the beginning of his ministry, was YHWH is King.

That's what he meant when he walked around Israel declaring that the kingdom of God had come upon the nation. He meant that YHWH is now decisively taking his rightful place as King of all Creation. How he was doing that, and what it all meant, and what were the implications of it all is another blog (or book) for another day. But that he was doing it was apparent to Jesus. YHWH is King. That's the Gospel 1.0.

God and Government

I came across this article by N.T. Wright, which is more a sermon transcript than an article, actually. Though he is talking exclusively about British Parliamentary politics, I think much of what he says is applicable to American Republicanism. But it's what he says about the interaction between God and Government that I find most fascinating.

The concept of humans bringing God’s order to the world lies at the heart of all ordering of human society, all leadership, all government. The New Testament reaffirms very strongly the essentially monotheistic vision of human powers and authorities: all of them, rulers, authorities, powers and dominions, declares St Paul, are created in, through and for the Messiah who is the Image of the invisible God.

When it comes to government, this is the theology that ought to form the framework of the Christian perspective. Governments exist for Jesus. He is, after all, the King of the Universe. This was the view that early Christians had toward Rome.

The Christians were perceived not only as giving their full allegiance to this strange character called Jesus; that was bad enough, even though they claimed they were living as good, law-abiding citizens in other ways. They were discovering that following Jesus generated and sustained a new way of living together, a new kind of communal life, which, strangely to ancient eyes, didn’t offer sacrifices to the gods, didn’t go off to ask directions from the oracles, and, though it paid Caesar’s taxes, didn’t pray to him or offer incense before his image. They weren’t normal revolutionaries; they were worse than that. And so, as the early church spread, the story of Acts was multiplied: martyrdoms on the one hand, explanations on the other, and, increasingly, a whole new view of how the world should be governed. The earliest Christians were in no position to do the governing themselves. But they, like some ancient Jews, had no hesitation in telling rulers how to do their job. The church was not simply called to be a parallel society, leaving the world to go its own wicked way. The church discovered that, out of allegiance to Jesus, it had the annoying and dangerous task of calling the world to account.

Jesus is not merely a god among many. He is the Lord of the world. And it has always been the responsibility of the Church to publicly proclaim him as Lord, and see to it that his designs for the world are accomplished. And the designs of Jesus are, as Wright puts it, setting everything to rights.

What has changed with the victory of Jesus is that we now know that the ancient Israelite dream of a world put to rights was not a mere fantasy. Jesus has launched God’s new creation, and one day the whole world will be put to rights. The task of governments in the present time, seen from the Christian point of view, is to perform within the world that waits for that eventual day such acts of judgment – the making of decisions, the drawing of lines, the setting of parameters – which will properly anticipate, even in the present time and even if the rulers in question are unaware of this God-given role, that final putting-to-rights of all things. And it is a prime task of the church to remind the rulers, whoever they are, of this vocation.

You might say that the government's job is to prepare each society for the coming of the true king of the world, Jesus Christ, by putting setting into motion that which anticipates the final setting to rights of creation. The Church's responsibility is to remind the government that this is their God-given task and their part in the coming of the kingdom of God.

As we work this out, we will find that speaking in a prophetic voice (for that is precisely what this is) requires moving beyond liberalism and conservatism. The role of the Church is far too great to be contained within a singular political party. This task brings us back to the cross where we find the greatest victory and the truest use of power for the sake of all mankind. In this task the cross is not only what we speak but how we speak it.

The Trinity

In an attempt to make this blog more edifying, here is a post from my work blog. It's a short article I wrote up for a class we offer called "Biblical Theology."

The Trinity

Although the word “trinity” never appears in the Bible, the doctrine of the trinity is, perhaps, the most important statement of the Christian faith. It lies at the very center of Christian theology, and is one of only a few doctrines that mark out historical, orthodox Christian faith. In other words, if you don’t believe in the trinity, you stand outside of orthodox Christianity.

Wayne Grudem defines the doctrine of the trinity this way: “God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is one God.” (Grudem, Systematic Theology, 226) Let’s break this definition down into three statements and examine each more closely.

God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

God is three persons. This means that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. There is a distinction of personhood within the Godhead. The Scripture that most clearly demonstrates these distinctions is the baptismal formula given by Jesus to the disciples at the end of Matthew’s gospel: “…baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” By arranging the names in this way, Jesus is equating the three in status. He would not have, after all, given the disciples a command to baptize anyone in the name of a mere creature. It is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not Father, Son, and the archangel Michael.

John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word, of course, is Jesus. John plainly states that Jesus was both with God in the beginning and that he was God. Jesus and God (whom we also call “The Father”) are the same in essence, and yet there is distinction in their personhood.

John 16:7 says this about the Holy Spirit: “But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” The Counselor is the Holy Spirit, and we see here a distinction between him and Jesus. The Holy Spirit is sent by Jesus (and he reveals, later, by the Father as well) once he returns to the Father. And so we see that the Scriptures testify that God eternally exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Each person is fully God

Each person of the trinity bears the full essence and character of divinity. The Father is clearly God—we take that as a given. Jesus is called God in several locations throughout the NT: John 1:1, John 20:28, Hebrews 1, Titus 2:13, 2 Peter 1:1, Romans 9:5, Colossians 2:9.

Once we understand that God the Father and God the Son are both fully God, it becomes evident, from the Trinitarian expressions elsewhere in the NT that the Holy Spirit is also fully God. Jesus declared that the only unforgiveable sin was to commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. How can one blaspheme that which is not God? We see, also, numerous instances in which the Spirit is placed alongside the Father and the Son: 1 Corinthians 12:4-6, 2 Corinthians 13:14, Ephesians 4:4-6, 1 Peter 1:2, Jude 20-21. So we see that the Scriptures testify that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each fully God.

There is one God

Scripture is clear that there is one, and only one, God. The core prayer of the Hebrew people is the Shema: Hear, O Israel, YHWH your God, YHWH is one. Over and over again, God attests to his own uniqueness through the prophets. There is no other god like him. The gods of the pagan nations are all worthless idols. Isaiah writes, “And there is no God apart from me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none but me. Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.”

The New Testament is also clear in its assertion that there is one God. For example, Paul writes to Timothy, “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Nowhere in Scripture does it teach that there are three Gods. Rather, the testimony of the Scriptures is that there is only one God.

So What?

The doctrine of the trinity serves as a boundary marker for historical, orthodox Christian faith. To deny that either the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit are God is to place yourself outside of the faith of the Church and to reject the teaching of Scripture. What, you ask, is at stake if we reject the doctrine of the trinity?

When we lose the trinity, we lose the atonement for our sins. If Jesus is not God, how can he bear the wrath of God for our sins? How can he bear all of our sins in his body on the cross? “Could any creature, no matter how great, really save us?” (Grudem, 247)

When we lose the trinity, we lose justification by faith. We cannot possibly hope to be justified before God by putting our faith into a mere man, a created being. We cannot trust him to save us if he is just another human, regardless of the magnitude of his accomplishments or the majesty of his message.

When we lose the trinity, we lose worship. It is idolatry to worship a created being rather than the Creator. What hope is there that Jesus or the Holy Spirit will hear our worship and our prayers unless they are each God?

When we lose the trinity, we lose salvation. All three members of the Godhead are on display in the work of our salvation—the crucifixion and resurrection of the Son. God judged and poured out his wrath on the Son, who bore all the sins of humanity in his body when he died, but then was vindicated three days later when he rose from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. If God is not intimately involved at every step of this process, then we are entrusting our salvation to a creature rather than to the Creator.

This is only a brief introduction to the glorious truth that we have in the doctrine of the trinity. For more information, please listen to the e4 session on the trinity, or look into any of these resources:

Wayne Grudem | Systematic Theology

Colin E. Gunton | The Promise of Trinitarian Theology

Gerald Bray | The Doctrine of God

Richard Bauckham | God Crucified

Donald Bloesch | Essentials of Evangelical Theology

Robert Letham | The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology and Worship

Peter Toon | Our Triune God: A Biblical Portrayal of the Trinity