Suppression Of Truth (part 6 of 6)

Here again, one simply finds passion misdirected to that which dishonors, springing from self-idolatry, rather than to that which acknowledges and honors the Creator God.  In a sharp and revealing contrast to the shame that was said to have been experienced by Adam and Eve when their eyes were opened and they realized what they had done and that they were naked, Paul insists that mankind’s course of dishonor and idolatry would quickly reach the point at which “Men committed shameless acts with men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error” (Romans 1:27b). 

Indeed, it would appear to be the general argument of Scripture that, because of the corruption that occurred at what is recognized as the fall of man, which is pointed to as the time at which the truth of the covenant God and of man’s purpose in this world to honor the Creator rather than self began to be suppressed, that death began its long reign.  Borrowing the language of the Apostle, this was a due penalty indeed.  With this in mind, Paul goes on to describe the lot of all of humanity, writing “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what should not be done” (1:28). 

Thusly, from time immemorial mankind has been “filled with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, malice… rife with envy, murder, strife, deceit, hostility” (1:28a).  It goes beyond that, as Paul goes on to write, “They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, contrivers of all sorts of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, covenant-breakers, heartless, ruthless” (1:29-31).  This would certainly seem to run amiss of that which the Creator intended for His specially created image-bearers.  Paul continues, writing that even though all this be the case “they fully know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but also approve of those who practice them” (1:32).  

So yes, because man had been imprinted with/as the divine image, he retains, even in the midst of his self-worship and petulant refusal to acknowledge a god beyond himself.  Here Paul implies that there is still a basic, residual knowledge and understanding of the Creator God’s decree of death for violation of His covenant, though the fallen image-bearers impotently rage against and attempt to deny that decree, along with the just Creator that stands behind it.  In spite of this damning indictment, the reader of the letter to the Romans eventually come to find that, because of the love of God, the Christ died (5:8) for that same humanity just described, which is most definitely a truth that should not, cannot, and will not be suppressed.   

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).  

Make Your Tent Larger (part 1 of 2)

Make your tent larger, stretch your tent curtains further out!  Spare no effort, lengthen your ropes, and pound your stakes deep. – Isaiah 54:2  (NET)

The prophet Isaiah, who is understood to be communicating on behalf of the God of Israel, speaks to the covenant people of this God and tells them to “Make your tent larger.”  This is in the wake of the vivid description of what would eventually be taken to be the cruelly inflicted death and glorious resurrection of the suffering servant of chapters fifty-two and fifty-three (though this was unlikely its original interpretation). 

If anything, the presumed death of the servant, who was understood in some circles to have represented the messiah that was to come into the world for the redemption and salvation of the Creator God’s people, while some circles would have seen the servant as a microcosm of Israel itself, would have caused an inward turning and isolation, with shock and shame and grief being the well understood order of the day.  In the wake of this however, the Creator God directs His people to “Shout for joy” (54:1a), primarily because they were acquitted by the actions of the servant (53:11), and because he carried away their sins (53:11) --- their failure to rightly bear the divine image, thus ending their cursing and exile. 

Yes, because it seems to be insisted upon that the Creator God’s servant intervened on behalf of His rebellious people (53:12), they were to shout for joy.  Having entered into joy, they were to make, or perhaps in the act itself, made their tent larger.  What did it mean to make their tent larger?  What is this stretching out of curtains?  Most that come to this text are generally not tent-dwellers, whereas the people for and to whom this was written, though they did dwell in permanent structures, would have understood the tent-dwelling, nomadic lifestyle quite well.  So even though most observers are removed from such a lifestyle, the original audience could certainly have well-understood this to mean that they needed to make room for a larger family.  

Looking into this then, one would see (as perhaps Jesus Himself did) that the death and resurrection of the suffering servant that represented Israel, which would see the servant being cursed and then accepted by the Creator God in spite of the cursing, had the effect of acquitting God’s people Israel.  Along with this, it would have the effect of extending the Creator God’s covenant to all of mankind, thus creating a worldwide covenant family that would no longer be confined to national Israel. 

At that point, and even through the time of the Christ, it was the opinion of the majority of those that dwelled within the borders of Israel that all that were not members of the nation of Israel.  Therefore, those that were outside of their God’s covenant family were cursed, standing outside of the realm of God’s blessing.  Expanding on this and reiterating, with the benefit of hindsight, one is now able to look back to these words from Isaiah, as did men such as the Apostle Paul, and see that the cursing (crucifixion) of the suffering servant put the servant into the same category that Israel had reserved for the Gentile nations.  Those that would identify themselves with the servant would fall into this category as well. 

The redeemed (resurrected) servant, since he had been considered to be as a Gentile through the cursing, served to imply that the Gentiles were now being pulled into the family of the covenant God.  For this reason, the original covenant family (Israel) is instructed to prepare to welcome and accept a larger covenant family.  Not only are they instructed to welcome and accept, but they themselves are effectively commanded to actively prepare the larger dwelling place to accommodate this rapidly growing and ever-expanding family.  In fact, Isaiah includes the directive to “spare no effort,” as they were to do whatever was necessary to open wide their arms of acceptance. 

Marring Of A Servant (part 2)

As the implications of the suffering servant and its relation to both Israel and humanity are considered, one does well to bear in mind that the Creator God referred to Israel as His firstborn son, and that Israel can also be thought of as a replacement for Adam---chosen as a people that would be the specific means by which the Creator God would deal with the problem of evil in the world. 

However, because their narrative suggests that they failed to rightly act in and for the world as the image of their covenant God, it would eventually be the person of suffering servant, the messianic Son of God that would be looked upon as the Creator God’s firstborn son (Son of God and firstborn son being titular rather than literal, which is how these terms would have been understood in the ancient near east and in the world of Jesus’ day), that would come to be understood as the actual representation of the divine image in and for the world, completely fulfilling the role that was rejected by Adam (the one originally looked upon as the son of the Creator God, as indicated quite notably by Luke). 

Tying the firstborn, divine-image-representing suffering servant with Israel’s self-understanding at the time of Isaiah, as dictated by the Torah narrative, it is understood that the suffering servant becomes marred so as to share in the horror-inducing cursing of Israel, as it is realized that this is a seminal part of his being their representative.  It is the marring that allows him to stand in the place of all peoples, as representative of a marred humanity as well. 

Thinking about these things in this way allows an observer to consider that not only was the messiah of Israel to be the servant of the Creator God, but that Israel was to be their God’s servant, and that mankind as a whole was also supposed to be the servant of that same God.  Mankind, in Adam, was the first to be marred, taking the whole of the good creation with him.  Israel followed Adam’s footsteps in that marring. 

That being the case according to the historical narrative by which Isaiah’s worldview makes sense, it then also makes sense that the suffering servant, as representative of both Israel and humanity, had to undergo a marring as well.  By this, the suffering servant (the suffering servant would eventually be recognized as messiah, and therefore Jesus would eventually be read back into the suffering servant) would be able to sympathize with the situation and ultimately redeem both Israel and mankind (and then all of creation by extension) from out of that state of cursed marring.        

Putting these thoughts in play allow for a movement to the second half of the theme text, and to the suggestion that the suffering servant of Israel will “startle many nations” (Isaiah 52:15b).  When this startling of the nations is considered, one cannot help but think about the statement in the book of Acts, in reference to the preaching of the Gospel of a crucified and resurrected Jesus as the Christ (messiah) by Paul and Silas, concerning the “people who have stirred up trouble throughout the world” (17:6a).  That stirring up of trouble is often rendered as “turning the world upside down.”  It could be said that Rome itself was startled by this world-transforming message.