All The Saints (part 7)

The “all” barrage continues on into the next verse, which reads “He Himself is before all things and all things are held together in Him” (Colossians 1:17), which flows right into “He is the head of the body, the church, as well as the beginning, the firstborn among the dead, so that He Himself may become first in all things” (1:18).  So here Paul writes about “all things” and “all things,” with the “all-inclusiveness” of humanity being carried in its basket of meaning and implication, moving directly into mention of the body of believers, that being the church, which is composed of all nations, apart from the covenant markers that delineated national Israel. 

This becomes inextricably linked with the assembly of Israel when “firstborn,” as part of “firstborn among the dead,” is attached to it.  This is an interesting phrase with an interesting addendum.  While “firstborn” is a position of honor, and while “the dead” can certainly be honored, talk of “the dead” in connection with Jesus generates thoughts of the cross.  If the cross is indeed brought to mind, this creates an interesting juxtaposition of honor and shame, as honor is identified with life, and shame is identified with death.  Jesus then, receives His honor at the place of shameful death as part of the cosmic reversal in which the last become first and the first become last, and in which that which is the source and place of greatest shame (the cross) is converted into the place of highest honor. 

In His willful trek to the cross, Jesus, by going to the lowest place, ascends to the highest place, becoming “first in all things.”  As “firstborn” implies the first of many, while also carrying its congregational cognitive in connection with the whole of Israel, the attachment of “among the dead” provides a double-meaning of tremendous importance to those that follow Jesus, with its demand that those who do indeed follow Him also be willing to go to the places of shame, carrying the message of the kingdom of the Creator God and being the place where heaven and earth overlap---representing and bringing that kingdom’s reign to those places where death attempts to assert its complete, total, despairing, humanity and creation defacing reign in defiance of Jesus.    

The nineteenth verse states “For God was pleased to have all fullness dwell in the Son” (1:19).  This reinforces that which has been asserted in verses fifteen and sixteen, while also continuing the heavy theme of “all” that appears to be so crucial to Colossians in particular, as well as to Paul and the church in general.  It is appended by “and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself by making peace through the blood of His cross---through Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven” (1:20). 

“All” features from first to last, is here linked to reconciliation and “peace,” is contexted by the “cross” (which ties neatly back to the “dead” of verse eighteen), and drawing conclusions from the formulaic setting forth of some of the earliest doctrines of Jesus, flows nicely into the twenty-first and twenty-second verse, where Paul insists that “you were at one time strangers and enemies in your minds as expressed through your evil deeds, but now He has reconciled you by His physical body through death to present you holy, without blemish, and blameless before Him” (1:21-22). 

Suppression Of Truth (part 5 of 6)

Amplifying the seriousness of the charge, the Apostle Paul repeats himself and says that this situation with humanity developed because “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever!” (1:25)  Of all of the things that can be said about the fall of man, it should probably be made abundantly clear that it is said to have occurred because they believed the lie. 

In believing the lie, not only did they, in effect, point their faith towards the serpent, honoring that part of the creation more than the Creator, but above all things, it occurred because they knew themselves to be the pinnacle of their God’s creation.  With that knowledge, it would not be a stretch to surmise that they sought to worship themselves.  The serpent merely provided the justification for that which was already desired.  In many ways, this mindset continues unabated to this very day.  It is the single darkest component of man’s fallen state, and it could be said that this is what keeps humanity entrenched in the state of falling short of the glory of their Creator God. 

At this point in Romans, Paul can be understood to be moving on from Adam and Eve and surveying the scope of human history from the that day until his own, as he writes, “For this reason”---holding the lie as truth and in so doing worshiping the creation rather than the Creator---“God gave them over to dishonorable passions” (1:26a).  The implication would seem to be that mankind’s passions were no longer directed towards honoring the Creator God by engaging in the purpose for which he was created, but rather, those passions are directed towards that which dishonored the Creator by dishonoring the image of the God in which he had been made. 

It could be said that this dishonor was a diminishing of what can be called “human-ness.”   This diminishing stood in stark contrast to the Creator’s very first command to those made in and as His image, which was to “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).  Bringing forth life is one of the primary ways in which mankind can participate in and represent that image with which it has been endowed, and it will generally involve much sacrifice and care and concern on the part of the ones responsible (human parents) for the creation of that life. 

This necessary sacrifice, care, and concern towards a creation sounds very much like the attitude of the God that is both revealed and discovered in the pages of Scripture.  It is possible that Paul sees the rejection of this creation of life, together with the sacrifice, care, and concern that is learned in this creation and rearing of fellow humans, as a core component of the self-idolatry that is rampant within humanity, and addresses it in writing words such as “For their women exchanged the natural sexual relations for unnatural ones, and likewise the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed in their passions for one another” (1:26b-27a).  

Visiting Bethany (part 5 of 6)

After a brief exchange between Jesus and Martha that serves to outline the basic Jewish hope concerning the resurrection of the dead, “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.  The one who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and the one who lives and believes in Me will never die’.” (11:25-26a)  How does Martha respond?  Again, making use of imperial titles, “She replied, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God Who comes into the world’.” (11:27) 

Now, even though both “Christ” (Messiah) and “Son of God” are both titles for the Jewish king, and are not necessarily meant to automatically connote divinity (ironically enough, as opposed to the appellation of the term “son of god” to the Roman emperor as part of the Caesar cult), one can here discover yet another appropriation of emperor related language, further reinforcing the idea of the supremacy of the eternal kingdom of the Creator God that is being established in and through Jesus (Son of God), as opposed to the temporal kingdom of Rome that has been established and perpetuated by the Caesar (son of god). 

Shortly thereafter, Mary, repeating Martha’s actions, “got up quickly and went to Him (Jesus)” (11:29b).  What follows is where it is learned that Jesus has not, in fact, entered into Bethany, as the text states: “Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still in the place where Martha had come out to meet Him” (11:30).  This information is inserted parenthetically here in the middle of the story, rather than at the beginning, which is a subtle placement which would seem to serve to partially mask the politically subversive nature of the language that is being used surrounding this event that leads up to Jesus’ grand parousia, which is His “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem.  That particular parousia will bear all of the explicit earmarks of what would be well-understood as a royal visit (depending on one’s viewpoint) by a Caesar or by Israel’s King. 

As would be expected from a person going out of his or her city to greet the “Lord Caesar,” upon reaching Jesus “Mary fell at His feet and said to Him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died’.” (11:32b)  Here, Mary echoes Martha, and once again use is made of an imperial title, as Mary calls Jesus “Lord.”  The author clearly does not want his audience to lose sight of Jesus’ position.  

It was at this point then, with Jesus having been greeted outside the city, with people falling at His feet, referring to Him as Lord and Son of God and Messiah, and making note of His great power, that Jesus finally enters into the village.  It seems that the tomb is in the village, or at least adjacent to the village, which would account for the author’s comment that Jesus “had not yet” made His way to the village. 

The reader makes note of the fact that Mary did not go to Jesus by herself (11:31,33,36), so when Jesus does make His way to the tomb, presumably, it is with a group of people.  Since Martha’s voice can again be heard breaking into the story when Jesus asks for the stone over the mouth of the cave to be rolled away, one can also presume that Martha, as one that has bowed at the feet of Jesus and called Him Lord, was one of the people in the procession that made its way to the tomb with Jesus.   

Visiting Bethany (part 3)

To this point, it seems that the author of the Gospel has been building a case for Jesus as a royal personage---the ruler of the world in fact---with this especially noticeable when viewed in the light of that which was thought of and said about the Caesar---the one who was then looked upon as the ruler of the world. 

To the end of presenting Jesus as royalty, this particular Gospel narrative begins with Jesus (personifying “the Word”) being heralded as the Creator God (John 1:1).  It is said that “in Him was life, and the life was the light of mankind.  And the light shines on in the darkness…  We saw His glory---the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth… For we have all received from His fullness one gracious gift after another” (1:4-5a,14b,16). 

A bit further on, Jesus is referred to as the “one and only Son” of the God of Israel (an epithet that had also been applied to Israel itself) and that “everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through Him” (3:16b-17).  Shortly thereafter, one again reads “that the light has come into the world” (3:19b), and later on also finds Jesus speaking of Himself as “the light of the world” (8:12).  These things are said about Jesus in a world that is provided context by the presence and rule and worship of the Caesar. 

Interestingly enough, in an inscription from 9BC, Caesar Augustus is hailed as  “The most divine… we should consider co-equal to the beginning of all things… for when everything was falling [into disorder] and tending toward dissolution, he restored it once more and gave to the whole world a new aura; …the common good fortune of all…The beginning of life and vitality. …All the cities unanimously adopt the birthday of the divine as the new beginning of the year…  Whereas Providence, which has regulated our whole existence…has brought our life to the climax of perfection in giving to us (this man), whom it [Providence] filled with strength…the welfare of men, and who being to us and our descendants as Savior, has put an end to war and has set all things in Order; and [whereas] having become [god] manifest, has fulfilled all the hopes of earlier times… in surpassing all the benefactors who proceeded him… and whereas, finally, the birthday of the god has been for the whole world the beginning of the good news concerning him [therefore let a new era begin from his birth].” 

Though this was written of Augustus, who was the first of the Caesars to be hailed as the son of god, all subsequent Caesars were accorded the same title, which provides information about the way in which the emperor was viewed, with this being so even at the time of the writing of the Gospel of John (presumably late first century).  The parallels between the things that are here said about the Caesar in the Augustus inscription, and the things that are said about Jesus in the Gospel of John, are quite interesting and inescapable.  Similar claims are being made for both, while a stark and clear contrast is being drawn.  A person could be forgiven for believing that the author of John had the Ceasar cult and such inscriptions in mind (along with Genesis naturally) when penning the opening of his work.  

Repudiating Its Power (part 1 of 2)

They will maintain the outward appearance of religion but will have repudiated its power.  So avoid people like these. – 2 Timothy 3:5  (NET)

Consider Paul’s use of the term “power.”  This terms makes frequent appearances in his writings.  To take just a couple of examples that set out Paul’s opinion concerning power, one can look to the first chapter of Romans.  There, Paul refers to Jesus as the Son-of-God-in-power (1:4).  He then goes on to declare that the Gospel “is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes” (1:16b).  Here, Paul equates the Gospel of Jesus, which is the message that Jesus is the crucified and resurrected Lord of all, with power.  That is what produces salvation---bringing a person into the ranks of the covenant people. 

For Paul, it seems that the very declaration of the fact of the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, which for him is somehow brought about through the prompting of the Holy Spirit (for Paul insists that one only calls Jesus Lord---confesses a trusting allegiance in the Gospel---by the movement of the Holy Spirit – 1 Corinthians 12:3), is what releases the inherent transformative power of the Resurrection into the world. 

Returning then to the second letter of Timothy, one finds Paul writing that it is through “our Savior Christ Jesus,” that the Creator God has “broken the power of death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel” (1:10).  The fact that Jesus is Lord, and ones belief in such, is paramount.  It is what brings heaven to earth and ushers in the new age.  Paul here informs his audience that the power of the Gospel (Jesus is Lord) is such that it breaks the power of death.  Since the Gospel includes the message of One that was raised from the dead, such an insistence is a necessary corollary.  It goes beyond the breaking of death’s power, as the Gospel brings life and immortality. 

To see this life and immortality, Paul has only to reflect on what he takes to be the fact that the risen Jesus is alive and ruling the kingdom of God that has been inaugurated, in a world that is now subject to two forces (death and Resurrection), and in which one of those forces (death) has already been defeated, while all creation, together with the people of God, await the consummation of that kingdom and the installation of the force of Resurrection as the animating principle of the Creator God’s kingdom in a restored and renewed creation.  In this way of thinking, Paul, in hope, awaits the life and immortality to be shared by the Creator God’s people, through their believing union with the Christ, in the Resurrection of the righteous that is to come. 

Having spoken in this way, Paul goes on to insist, “For this Gospel I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher” (1:11), with a clear echo (along with his talk of power) of the opening of Romans, as he refers to himself as “a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God” (Romans 1:1).  To Timothy he continues on to write: “Because of this, in fact, I suffer as I do.  But I am not ashamed, because I know the One in Whom my faith is set” (1:12a).  Paul’s use of “not ashamed” is not only significant in that it reminds the reader of the fact that he lives in an honor and shame culture in which casting one’s lot with a crucified man was a shameful thing, immediately evokes thoughts of Romans 1:16 again, where he announces the power of the message of the crucified yet risen Lord, prefacing it with the words “I am not ashamed.” 

Raising Lazarus For Glory (part 3)

Before one can return to the issue of Lazarus’ sickness and death and God’s glory, it is necessary to traverse the territory that is laid out before the reader with the exchanges that take place between Martha and Jesus, and Mary and Jesus.  Jesus goes to Bethany, where He encounters the grieving sisters of Lazarus, whom He loved (along with his sisters).  Upon His arrival, Martha greets Him, saying, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.  But even now I know that whatever You ask from God, God will grant You” (John 11:21-22). 

There is, it needs to be said, a faith-rooted belief to be found in those statements.  Martha, apparently believing Jesus to be the Messiah, and combining that belief with some type of knowledge that part of the work of Messiah will be to restore all things, along with the general belief in the resurrection of the dead, appeals to her awareness of His powerful, healing and restoring works, in hopes that a restoration to life will be granted to her deceased brother.  Jesus responds to Martha’s faith and messianic understanding by saying, “Your brother will come back to life again” (11:23). 

Martha, who is merely reflecting the general hope of Israel in that day, which was the resurrection of the righteous dead (the Creator God’s covenant people) into their God’s good and restored creation, replies by saying, “I know that he will come back to life again in the resurrection at the last day” (11:24).  Jesus’ response to this is to flatly inform Martha that “I am the resurrection and the life.  The one who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and the one who lives and believes in Me will never die” (11:25-26a).  An interesting statement to be sure. 

Jesus punctuates this statement of response with an inquiry, saying, “Do you believe this?” (11:26b)  With this, Jesus confirms both Martha’s belief in Him as Messiah, as well as the Jewish hope in the resurrection of the Creator God’s covenant people into a renewed created order in which the God of Israel has put down death and corruption (as they were most definitely not looking towards a spiritual, dis-embodied, heavenly existence for all eternity), defeating the evil that had been launched into the world at Adam’s fall, all of which was connected with the coming of messiah at the last day.  Martha’s enthusiastic reply is “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ (the Messiah), the Son of God (King of Israel) Who comes into the world” (11:27-parentheses supplied).   

This worldview that Martha presents is that upon which the Apostle Peter will seize in what is generally referred to as his Pentecost “sermon” in the second chapter of Acts.  As a member of the nation of Israel, Peter himself had been looking towards their God’s action in history, which would eventually culminate in the resurrection of the righteous dead into the renewed creation.  The righteous dead were the saints---those who were the Creator God’s covenant people, Israel.  In that tremendous piece of oratory, Peter said, with an ultimate reference to what had been wrought in the world via the Resurrection of Jesus, that “this is what was spoken about through the prophet Joel” (Acts 2:16).  Following that, Peter recounts Joel’s prophecy, which, prior to the Christ-event, was generally understood as a presentation of that which would accompany the resurrection of the righteous dead, Israel, in the last days. 

After quoting Joel, Peter would go on to speak of Jesus, saying “God raised Him up, having released Him from the pains of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held in its power” (2:24).  This was what the people of Israel, Peter’s fellow Jews, were expecting to be said of all of their God’s covenant people in the last days.  Peter makes it clear that the expectation of Israel has been fulfilled in Jesus, and that He had gone down into death and had been raised up, experiencing these things as Israel’s representative.  

Measure Given, Measure Received (part 9 of 9)

It is then, after all of this, that Jesus says, “Give, and it will be given to you: A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be poured into your lap.  For the measure you use will be the measure you receive” (Luke 6:38).  It is possible for reasonable observers to agree that, after this lengthy examination, in no way does this statement have anything to do with giving as it is generally considered, or as this particular verse is generally positioned?  What is it that the Creator God wanted to give His covenant people?  According to Deuteronomy, which would have been the framework for the way that the people understood their situation, God wanted to reverse the captivity and have pity on His people. 

Thinking along those Deuteronomic lines, Jesus can be heard to be effectively saying, “Look! I have set before you today life and prosperity on the one hand, and death and disaster on the other” (Deuteronomy 30:15).  Choosing the way of love and compassion was choosing the way of life rather than the way of death.  The way of death, for Israel, was that of judgment, condemnation, and lack of forgiveness.  Choosing life, which would be made possible by their trusting in their God by trusting that Jesus was the Messiah, would have their God saying to them “you will live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are about to possess” (30:16b).  By this, they would truly become sons of the Most High. 

Jesus expected the covenant people of the Creator God---the people who claimed a loyal allegiance to that creative, providential, and covenant God---to give more than they could ever imagine.  They were to give love (and all that naturally attends it) where it may not have been deserved, for they had received love when it had not been deserved.  They were to do good to those who hated them, or at the least, to those that they hated, so presumed that the feeling was mutual.  They were to offer blessings to those who cursed them, or to those who represented the ongoing cursing of their God.  They were to give compassion to those that struck them.  They were to be willing to give up their possessions, even to an enemy.  They were to give the withholding of judgment.  They were to give the withholding of condemnation.  They were to give forgiveness, for they had certainly experienced all of these things through the patience and promises of their God. 

It would be through the giving of all of these things that they would come to realize just how much they had already been given.  Indeed, in that realization, a good measure would be effectively poured into their laps; and indeed, they would come to understand that loving their enemies stemmed from their love of their God (as their God loved them even though they had almost continually been His enemies).  Finally, they would realize the measure of mercy they had already received, and in turn, realize that such was the measure that they should be willing to give.      

Renewed (part 4 of 4)

Union with Christ allows the believer to share in the power of an indestructible, eternal life.  That power, of course, is the same power, by the same Spirit, that raised Christ from the dead, again echoing the eighth chapter of Romans, offering the reminder that God “will also make your mortal bodies alive through His Spirit Who lives in you” (8:11b).  Yes, the activity of the Holy Spirit, prompting faith in Jesus as Lord, by which God brings individuals into His covenant, is what serves as a reminder that God has a complete work to do for all of those that then come to be referred to as His anointed ones.  The Creator God will accomplish for His people what He accomplished for Jesus---a physical Resurrection into a world that is drastically changed by the presence of His power.  In this time and in this world, that power operates as a down payment, but believers trust in the full payment to come.

The Apostle Paul firmly believes that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away---look, what is new has come” (5:17).  Though there is a knowledge that physical bodies are still subject to corruption, to disease, to decay, and yes, to death, Paul makes this declaration.  Seemingly, this is at least part of what it means to “live by faith, not by sight” (5:7).  This incorporate a looking forward to the blessed hope.  Paul stands firm on his insistence that the new creation, because of Christ, is something more than merely spiritual.  Because of the Resurrection, Paul believes that the Creator God did not make a deal with death that would allow the grave to keep the bodies of His people, while God gets the souls.  It is conceivable to believe that Paul would see that as Christ’s work being incomplete. 

In light of that, Paul insists that the new creation will be physical, and that both God’s people and God’s creation groans for it.  In the midst of any and all evidence to the contrary, as death was a daily experience for those that were putting their faith in Jesus as Lord, Paul allows his mind to flee to the refuge of that great hope, with a reminder that “we are not looking at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen.  For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (4:18). 

Because this was his firmly entrenched belief, rooted in a faith that he believed to have been gifted by God, through His Spirit, because of Jesus’ Resurrection, Paul was constrained to preach this message of the Gospel.  Because he apparently actually believed that there was a power of God at work, and because he actually believed that the Holy Spirit could work in hearts and minds and lives in order to convince people of the fact of the Resurrection and so shape men and women into the image that God desired them to bear, he writes, “Therefore, because we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade people” (5:11a).  Paul knew that the message of the Gospel was to be spread through preaching.  More than that, he knew that the persuasiveness was to be found in the message itself.  Why?  Well, because Paul did not give lip service to God’s power and the work of the Holy Spirit, but as has been said, he firmly believed that the Gospel itself was the power of God. 

The Apostle Paul seems to have stood in reverential awe (fear) at what God had done, was doing, and would do through Christ, His Resurrection, and through the preaching of the Gospel message (Jesus is Lord).  “Therefore,” Paul goes on to write, “we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His plea through us” (5:20a).  Paul knew that God was not limiting the making His plea through the voices of those that carried the message, but that the message of power made its own plea, presumably through both the words and deeds of those that claimed allegiance to that message.  Paul, knowing that he himself had undergone such a radical transformation, had a keen understanding of the power of the testimony of Jesus as Lord.  He knew himself to be a new creation in which the old had passed away.  He believed in a God that was faithful to His covenant promises, so the fifth chapter closes with Paul writing about Jesus, saying that “in Him we would become the righteousness of God” (5:21b).  He knew that in union with Christ, carrying His Gospel message into the world, believers themselves become the manifestation of God’s covenant faithfulness, and the source of God’s blessing of restoration and renewal for the world. 

Wide & Narrow Ways (part 1 of 2)

Enter through the narrow gate, because the gate is wide and the way is spacious that leads to destruction, and there who are many who enter through it.  But the gate is narrow and the way is difficult that leads to life, and there are few who find it. – Matthew 7:13-14  (NET)

These words are drawn from Jesus’ famous “Sermon On the Mount”.  Though there can be little doubt that Jesus spoke these words on more than one occasion and in various places, the setting in which Matthew sets them forth, as Matthew goes to great lengths to make the point that Jesus is a new Moses, has Jesus sitting on a mountain and teaching His disciples (5:1)---offering a different set of commandments from a different mountain (the implicit reference to Moses and Sinai).  At this point, the record of Matthew shows that Jesus has only called to Himself four of His chosen twelve, but that “large crowds followed Him” (4:25).  Additionally, we find that the crowds, which seem to be referred to as His disciples, would be “amazed by His teaching, because He taught them like One Who had authority” (7:28b-29a). 

It is important for us to remember that the words of our text are presented in the context of a continuous series of thoughts that make up chapter five through seven of Matthew.  Now, there is a reason that it is generally referred to as a “sermon,” and that is because it presents a series of ideas that press towards a conclusion.  We find that conclusion as the seventh chapter comes to a close, when Jesus says, “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does them is like a wise man who built his house on rock.  The rain fell, the flood came, and the winds beat against that house, but it did not collapse because it had been founded on rock.  Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.  The rain fell, the flood came, and the winds beat against that house, and it collapsed; it was utterly destroyed!” (7:24-27) 

Jesus’ entire discourse built to that point, as in His teaching, as He farmed the fallow grounds of the Galilee (from whence revolutions in Israel sprang) to form His new and revolutionary group (though a different sort of revolution) He began to set Himself apart from those that had come before Him.  There had been numerous people before the time of Jesus (including numerous messianic claimants) that had drawn crowds to themselves, with John the Baptist being one of those that had drawn significant audiences (without any messianic claims, though it is possible that there were those who looked to John as a messianic figure as he proposed a new exodus movement as symbolized by his baptizing in the Jordan); but inevitably, they pointed to the prophets or to Moses or to some person of renown in order to lend them credibility and legitimacy.  Jesus, on the contrary, seems only to point to Himself and His words, providing His own credibility.  This was unique.  Obviously, with such poignant words, undoubtedly offered over and over, we can surmise that Jesus intended His teachings to be taken seriously and to be accurately understood and applied by His hearers.    

When we hear a sermon, or a speech of any kind for that matter, we do not expect the speaker to flit about from topic to topic, offering up disconnected thoughts that have nothing to do with what comes before or after; but rather, to present, with minor digressions useful for making or elaborating points, a unified system of thoughts and ideas.  However, for some reason, when we come to these words of Jesus concerning wide and narrow gates and ways, and the destruction and life attendant upon those ways, we have a strange tendency to disconnect it from its larger context.  Doing that, we put these words into Jesus’ mouth as some type of amorphous and ambiguous statement, lacking in substance, that is just sitting there waiting for us to fill it with the content of our subjective musings concerning what it is that constitutes sin.  How ridiculous, presumptuous, and short-sighted.  Rather than look for what it is that Jesus is communicating, we project on to Jesus’ statement nothing more than our own opinions about what actions should be described as “wide gate” actions that lead to destruction, and “narrow gate” actions that lead to life.

Consider Your Ways (part 2 of 2)

When we busy ourselves with our own houses, consistently and proudly setting ourselves in opposition to others of God’s chosen and closing ranks around our creeds and traditions (as did Israel instead of being a light to the Gentiles), rather than busying ourselves with God’s house (which can be more properly understood as His kingdom and its blessings of eternal life and new creation in covenant with Christ) by consistently reaching out for purposes of discipleship, for showing care and compassion and concern, for preaching so that others of God’s chosen can have the Gospel revealed to them by God’s Holy Spirit working through us, our God responds by saying, “Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce” (1:10).  This makes for an unfruitful situation for sure. 

To that is added, “And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors” (1:11).  For their sin of turning inwards and not being a light for the world as demanded by their covenant God, Israel was to be re-introduced to the curses that were to result from a failure to uphold the covenant that we find in Deuteronomy (see Deuteronomy 28:38-51).  Let us not forget that these cursing words of withholding and drought are the words of our God that does not change.   

On the other hand, how would God respond to their attention to and service of God’s Temple?  How would God respond to Israel’s being the light for God’s glorification?  For us, the question would be, what is God’s response for those that are about His business of preaching the Gospel, giving to the preaching of the Gospel for the ongoing establishment of His kingdom and the renewal, restoration, and re-creation of eternal life that is the powerful attendant of the message that Jesus is Lord?  For that answer, we turn to Malachi. 

In the third chapter, God’s cursing of His people is mentioned because Israel as a whole was not about God’s business but their own, so we read, “You are cursed with a curse” (3:9a).  However, in attending to the Temple, to their duty to be a light, and consequently to our duty as renewed Israel (God’s people under the new covenant in Christ) to be God’s image-bearers to God’s chosen of the nations and stewards of the creation that He is renewing through the power of the Resurrection that flows to and through us by the Holy Spirit, God says, “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house.  And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.  I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts.  Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts” (3:10-12). 

These verses are more than just a command and incentive to give tithes, but a command to be about God’s business, not isolated, not separated, not holding to barriers of tradition and creeds, but being a light, with God at work in us and through us, by the gift of faith for belief and the work that flows from that gift, to be the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant to bless all the families of the earth.  Tending to the business of God’s covenant faithfulness, and to that which represents God’s covenant faithfulness, that being the message of the Gospel preached without hesitation or reservation so that all may hear, is what causes God to open the heavens, to reverse the curse.  By the preaching of the Gospel, as Christ’s reign and God’s kingdom are extended to the reaches that God intended, eternal life in Christ is extended, and through that renewing eternal life, God reverses the curse on His chosen people and on His good creation, bringing them out of the exile of the oppression of death that is the accompaniment of sin, to which all of mankind and all of creation have been subjected.

As we contemplate our role and responsibility as chosen ones of this kingdom and stewards of the business of our Lord, in light of the example that we find in Israel, the words of the prophet ring true: “Consider your ways.”