Author Archive
Bechdel
The Bechdel test is interesting, but it is fundamentally flawed. It is flawed because it cannot account for the story of history itself: the story of a boy, a girl and a dragon.
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
if you find my beloved,
that you tell him
I am sick with love.
History is much more than a chick flick, but it is no less.
Leviticus
If we printed red-letter Old Testaments, the pages of Leviticus would bleed redder than any of the gospels.
You cannot have King Jesus without also having his royal proclamations in the book of Leviticus.
Torah
Almost the entire book of Leviticus was dictated by Yahweh to Moses. Commentators and theologians widely agree that the appearances of Yahweh in the Old Testament are the pre-incarnate Jesus (consider John 1:18, 6:46 together with Exodus 33:11; consider also John 8:58). We cannot read Jesus into every single occurrence of Yahweh (Psalm 110:1 refers to the Father); but in Israel’s exodus it is even clearer than usual that Jesus was present, since some of the imagery surrounding Sinai portrays it as God’s marriage to his people.
Leviticus was and is meant to shape the consciousness, speech and life of God’s people. It is among the books that Moses commanded Israel’s kings to copy and meditate upon (Deut. 17:18-19). It is among the books that all Israel praised so highly in Psalm 119. It constitutes part of the torah-law which, if Israel obeyed, God promised to make the envy of the nations (Deut. 4:6-8, Micah 4:1-2).
In Leviticus, Jesus speaks of animal offerings, priestly service, food, leprosy, uncleanness, sex, feasts and more. Leviticus is not Jesus’s final word on these things, but it is his word, and — we must confess — a righteous word, on these things.
Typology
Jesus speaks Leviticus, but Leviticus speaks of Jesus. All of these things have a corresponding symbolic purpose relating to Jesus and his creation. And because Jesus means to transform creation and cause his people to mature into his likeness, some parts of Leviticus have a built-in obsolescence, while other parts grow intensified and transfigured. Acts 15:28-29 gives us a brief and helpful summary of what has gone and what remains. Gone are most of the laws of food and cleanness; remaining are laws concerning idolatry and sex.
God meant for forbidden foods to symbolize the Gentile nations. It would take some time to fully develop this imagery, but there are parallels visible in the law, and God makes it very explicit in Acts 10. Fifteen hundred years of practice at being strictly separate from the world have prepared God’s people to sacrificially conquer and inherit it (Rom. 4:18); and, by the Spirit, to handle the greater responsibilities of a greater unity (Eph. 2). So now that (you might say) Jesus eats all nations into his body (pace Rev. 3:16), we as the members of his body may also take unclean animals into ourselves. Just as the nations are God’s gifts to the church (consider Eph. 4:8), bacon and shrimp are God’s gifts to his people. If you reflect on the nature of maturing, the food laws’ coming to an end is not a great surprise. We know that God’s purpose in history is to grow his church from infancy to maturity (Gal. 4, Eph. 4), and infants and adults appropriately have very different diets and boundaries. Maturity brings mature food.
Sex has symbolic potency as well. It is meant to symbolize Jesus’s union with his bride, his body, his church (Eph. 5:32). Sex and marriage were designed to point to something bigger: the one and only marriage that will survive into eternity. Even strange laws like the jealousy inspection of Numbers 5 teach us how Jesus relates to his church down to this day (consider the jealousy inspections of 1 Cor. 10-11 and Rev. 2-3). From the first Pentecost at Sinai to the last Pentecost at Jerusalem, Jesus has always related to his people as husband to bride. This has enduring implications for human marriage and sex that stretch “from the beginning” (Matt. 19, Mark 10) to the end. So unlike the food laws, restrictions on sexual relations only grow more intensified in history.
Similarly, the laws of offering and sacrifice remain in the new covenant; however, they are transformed and intensified from animal sacrifice to human sacrifice in the death of Jesus. The laws of feasts remain, but are transformed into a single feast: the Lord’s supper. The feasting is intensified as well: instead of presenting ourselves only three times a year to God (Deut. 16:16), God now summons us to dine with him every week. Israel had three annual furloughs that were a great celebration and refreshment (consider the Psalms of ascent, 120-134); we have a weekly furlough from our labor, trials and suffering as we show glad faces to our king (Neh. 8:9-12).
Administration
Jesus is king of the nations and the husband of his church, but he has established separate administrations of his rule in these realms. In the church, his kingdom is tended and guarded by the judicial binding and loosing (Matt. 16:19) of baptism and excommunication. In the civil realm, the church does not carry out Jesus’s ministry of the sword, but she is called to disciple nations and kings in Jesus’s law (Matt. 28:19-20).
While it requires deep kingly wisdom to apply this law rightly, such wisdom begins with the fear of God (Prov. 1:7, etc.) and the love of his law (Psalm 119). While we do not understand it perfectly, we confess it to be holy, righteous and good (Rom. 7:12). As in times of old, we must allow Leviticus to shape our consciousness and speech. God’s word — all of it — is still meant to be the envy of the nations, and the church has the privilege of leading the way in treasuring and proclaiming it.
Gloria in Profundis
There has fallen on earth for a token
A god too great for the sky.
He has burst out of all things and broken
The bounds of eternity:
Into time and the terminal land
He has strayed like a thief or a lover,
For the wine of the world brims over,
Its splendour is spilt on the sand.Who is proud when the heavens are humble,
Who mounts if the mountains fall,
If the fixed stars topple and tumble
And a deluge of love drowns all—
Who rears up his head for a crown,
Who holds up his will for a warrant,
Who strives with the starry torrent,
When all that is good goes down?For in dread of such falling and failing
The fallen angels fell
Inverted in insolence, scaling
The hanging mountain of hell:
But unmeasured of plummet and rod
Too deep for their sight to scan,
Outrushing the fall of man
Is the height of the fall of God.Glory to God in the Lowest
The spout of the stars in spate—
Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest
And the lightning fears to be late:
As men dive for sunken gem
Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,
The fallen star has found it
In the cavern of Bethlehem.
Egypt
I contributed the following Advent reflection on Matthew 2:13-15 to the Sovereign Grace Church blog, where this is crossposted:
In today’s reading, we see Jesus and his family fleeing to Egypt at the warning of an angel, in order to escape Herod’s murderous rampage. Matthew writes that Jesus fulfilled what God had spoken through Hosea in this. But if you’ve ever taken the time to look back at Hosea 11, what Matthew says seems a bit of a puzzle. Hosea was referring to Israel rather than Jesus, and Israel’s calling out of Egypt had happened long before. Hosea does not seem to have been conscious of making any kind of prophecy. Calvin writes that because of this passage, “scoffers have attempted to disturb the whole religion of Christ, as though the Evangelist had misapplied the declaration of the Prophet.” But if we are not to be scoffers, how are we to understand this?
We have seen already that in the very first verse of his gospel, Matthew presents Jesus as the true Isaac, the true Solomon. In the same way, what Matthew is saying in today’s reading is that Jesus is also the true Israel. Just as Isaac failed to bring an enduring blessing to all the nations, and just as Solomon’s throne did not endure, so also Israel failed in their mission to be priests to the nations. Hosea himself goes on to indict Israel for their refusal to turn to God. But at the very climax of Israel’s failure — at the moment when they led all the nations in rebellion rather than worship — Jesus came as the true Israel, walking in their footsteps, suffering the same trials and temptations. Unlike Israel, Jesus remained faithful, and ultimately it was this very faithfulness that brought about the possibility of restoration that was also promised to Israel in Hosea 11. What the scoffers do not recognize is that Jesus fulfilled much more than just prophecy. We know, for example, that Jesus also fulfilled the law (Matthew 5:17). And what Matthew is telling us here is that Jesus fulfilled a calling. Where Israel failed in the calling to minister to the nations, Jesus has succeeded.
But there is more. Notice that it is out of Israel that Jesus was called by an angel. It is in Israel that a tyrant murders Hebrew sons and must be deceived so that the savior can be saved. It is out of Israel that Jesus escapes by night. It is not Israel but Egypt that is a place of refuge. Taking all this together, Matthew is not only telling us that Jesus is the true Israel: he is also telling us that Israel itself has become Egypt, and Herod has become Pharaoh. There is a need for a new exodus and for a new Moses.
There is a calling and a caution for us in this, because the body always follows the head. Just as Moses made a personal exodus from Egypt for 40 years before leading Israel in the great exodus, the church must follow our head. Our calling is this: the church must now lead the nations in worship. Our caution is this: we must fulfill our calling sacrificially. While we are called to different kinds of death in different seasons, it is always the church’s willingness to die that brings life and light to the world.
Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. (Hebrews 13:13)
Son
I contributed the following Advent reflection on Matthew 1:1 to the Sovereign Grace Church blog, where this is crossposted:
It’s been said that some parts of the Bible are boring to read but interesting to study, and Matthew starts right off into one of those parts — a genealogy. This is especially boring for us as modern readers, because the old covenant’s Adamic priesthood has come to an end with the arrival of the long-promised seed. There is for us no longer any spiritual value in the careful recording of years and generations, so it is strange and unfamiliar.
Jesus is the last in a long history of promised sons; of miracle sons born in impossible circumstances; of latter sons who replace the first son; and of sons born to faith-filled women of tarnished reputation. Matthew begins his gospel with the hint that all this is coming to an end, that Jesus is the one true son to replace Adam and Israel. The phrase “book of the genealogy” uses the Greek root genesis, leading some commentators to suggest that Matthew is subtly presenting his entire gospel as a new Genesis, a “book of new beginnings.” And in this first verse, Matthew reaches back to two key promises that built upon God’s earlier promise of the seed in Genesis 3:15.
God had given to Abraham the promise that “your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 22:17-18). Abraham first thought this would be fulfilled through Ishmael, and later through Isaac. Abraham was willing to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, trusting that God would raise him from the dead, and seeming to understand that the nations would be blessed by the sacrifice of the seed. But Isaac was spared by a substitute, because the true seed, the true substitute, was still to come. By the end of Genesis, God had worked through Joseph to bring a preliminary blessing on all nations, and yet the nations turned away again from God. Jesus is the promised son of Abraham who brought an enduring blessing to the nations.
God made a similar promise to David, that his offspring would “build a house for my name,” and that God would “establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Sam. 7:13). Solomon built a physical palace for God, but his kingdom was broken up shortly after his death, and that palace was torn down by Nebuchadnezzar. As Israel waited for this promise, one they sang for nearly a thousand years in the Psalms, they came to call the Messiah the “son of David” (Matthew 22:42). Jesus is this son of David, the one who built the true house of God — a house made out of people (1 Pet. 2:5-6) — and whose throne will truly endure forever.
Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:28-29)
New creation
I contributed the following Advent reflection on Acts 2 to the Sovereign Grace Church blog, where this is crossposted:
After the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, Peter portrays God’s plan for history, and how he was accomplishing this through his son Jesus. As Christmas approaches, this helps us to remember where this baby in a manger was destined: a glorious king, seated on a throne with all things being put in increasing subjection to him, until he delivers the kingdom to the Father.
We recall that the flood was the first and last time God destroyed the earth itself; however, it was not the last time he brought an old creation to an end and established a new creation. To use prophetic and visionary language, in each of his covenants God tore down the sun, moon and stars of one fallen created order, and fashioned out of its very dust a new and better creation. Israel’s great exodus from Egypt was one such miraculous new creation. But even there our separation from God and the sting of the curse were highlighted: at Sinai, God’s glorious presence descended on a lofty mountain, Israel was forbidden to draw near, and only seventy elders could share a meal with God at a distance. Immediately afterwards, Israel fell into sin with the golden calf, and 3000 people were put to death. A newer and better creation was needed!
In his death, resurrection and ascension, Jesus accomplished the last and greatest exodus from the old creation into the final new creation. In contrast with Sinai, at Pentecost God’s glorious presence descended directly on his people, all of whom are now welcome to draw near and commune with him in his own house. 3000 people were then added to God’s house: in Jesus, life, cleansing and healing are now contagious rather than death and curse. The sweep of Peter’s sermon also reminds us that Jesus’s whole life was wrapped up in this mission of “loosing the pangs of death” and of renewing all creation in himself. Not just his death but his life, obedience, teaching, prayers, healings, resurrection and ascension were all working to accomplish the condemnation and destruction of the old creation in its climactic failure, and at the very same time to prepare and begin to transfigure the old creation into the new. Even in the events of his birth we see battle lines beginning to be drawn.
And until the end, it remains a contest of loyalties, a war both without and within. Peter reminds us that we participate in this glorious new creation through identification with Jesus. Repentance breaks allegiance with the old creation and all that is both good and bad in it: we repent for our sin, and even for our attempts to deal with sin and find life apart from Jesus. Faith identifies with Jesus by continually laying hold of his sacrifice for sin and welcoming his rule over all things. Finally, baptism joins us with Jesus in an exodus from the old creation, just as Noah and later all Israel passed through the waters into a new creation.
Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. . . . Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Work
I was amused to find this in my fortune cookie last night.
For most of the last thirteen years, I have worked on IBM’s z/OS Communications Server mainframe networking product. Over the last two years I have still reported to Comm Server management but have been on loan to other IBM product areas as part of helping to lend our networking, security and high-availability expertise. I’ve only had three managers in the last thirteen years, which I think is fairly unusual.
But now I’m making the move to the IBM PureApplication System organization, where I have been working for the past year. You can think of it as “cloud in a box” (although this is both a little inapt and also oversimplified).
I’ll miss working with all of the wonderful folks in Comm Server. But I’m looking forward to wrestling with a new challenge.
Reformation
Jon Barlow writes:
History works because of the suckers. I am not ashamed to be counted among the suckers. If the sucker can rule his own heart, he is greater than he who can rule a city (Prov. 16:32). Tell me that the broken politics in America right now is not an externalized vision of your own heart and I’ll praise your self mastery. Otherwise, there is a city for you to rule right now. It requires no compromise. You are a little laboratory of the word and spirit and and you can try out any program of reform you like right now. You can experiment with incentives. You can legislate morality. You can implement austerity. You can give everything away. You can keep everything and use it for good. There will be a day when your little city stands before a much more exalted bar than a senate oversight committee meeting.
Jordan Ballor quotes Bavinck on a similar theme:
All good, enduring reformation begins with ourselves and takes its starting point in one’s own heart and life. If family life is indeed being threatened from all sides today, then there is nothing better for each person to be doing than immediately to begin reforming within one’s own circle and begin to rebuff with the facts themselves the sharp criticisms that are being registered nowadays against marriage and family. Such a reformation immediately has this in its favor, that it would lose no time and would not need to wait for anything. Anyone seeking deliverance from the state must travel the lengthy route of forming a political party, having meetings, referendums, parliamentary debates, and civil legislation, and it is still unknown whether with all that activity he will achieve any success. But reforming from within can be undertaken by each person at every moment, and be advanced without impediment.
Fall
Spring used to be my favorite season.
Now it’s fall.
I wonder if that is a result of growing older (barely).
I have a theological rationalization handy, of course. You see, the biblical themes of maturation, glorification, reaping and eschatology are just as vital as the biblical theme of regeneration, new life. History moves toward harvest, autumn.
Surely there will be Ferris wheels, funnel cake and pecan pie in the resurrection.
I’m grateful, though, that each year we experience the whole cycle of seasons, that we taste this repetition of death, rebirth, glorification and feasting. My other favorite season is whichever one comes next.
Ephesians and the Ten Commandments
Earlier I pointed out that it would be interesting to map the structure of the middle ethical section of Ephesians relative to the ten commandments. I haven’t yet found an outline that explains the organization of every single commandment in this passage, but I do hope to show that all ten commandments are represented here.
This section of Ephesians runs from 4:17 to 6:9. It seems to have two major divisions, one from 4:17-31 and the other from 5:1-6:9. Each division begins with an introductory statement grounded in the first four commandments, then addresses human relationships out of the last six commandments. The first division focuses on those commandments that address our relations with all men, while the second division focuses on those commandments that have to do with covenantal relations with one another. In the words of Peter, we could summarize this section of Ephesians by saying, “Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God.” (1 Pet. 2:17). This gives us an outline as follows:
-
Honor everyone (4:17-31)
- Put on the new self (4:17-24, mainly from the first and second commandments)
- Give no opportunity to the devil (4:25-31, mainly from the sixth commandment)
-
Love the brotherhood (5:1-6:9)
- Walk as children of light (5:1-20, mainly from the first and third commandments)
- Submit to one another (5:21-6:9, mainly from the seventh and fifth commandments)
Let’s see how each of the commandments is represented in this passage. Recall that each of the commandments is meant to be understood broadly, and in particular that the book of Deuteronomy gives us an inspired template for reading the commandments in this way. Note that there is significant overlap in how the commandments appear in Ephesians.
First Commandment
God first commands that we are to have no gods before him. In Deuteronomy 6-11, Moses applies the first commandment to a variety of issues including fearing God, teaching our children, walking in holiness and obedience, idolatry, recalling our disobedience and unworthiness, recalling God’s covenant, circumcising our hearts, and loving, serving and obeying God. This is wide-ranging, but not surprising, since the first commandment can be understood to sum up all ten commandments.
These themes appear throughout this passage in Ephesians, but most particularly in the introductory sections for each division (4:17-24, 5:1-18). The first commandment also relates to the church’s submission to Jesus in 5:23ff, and to fathers instructing children in 6:4.
Second Commandment
While the first commandment is concerned with what James Jordan calls “covenantal idolatry,” the second commandment is concerned with “liturgical idolatry,” that we worship the one God rightly. Thus, in Deuteronomy 12-13, Israel is commanded to be iconoclastic and to worship only at God’s tabernacle and temple. This theme undergirds the introductory section 4:17-24, where our relationship with Jesus is highlighted, but not so much the second introductory section, which is more concerned with our relationship with fellow men. However, the theme does reappear in 5:22ff, as the church must rightly relate to Jesus her head.
Third Commandment
We generally take this commandment to mean that we should not speak God’s name lightly, but the word used is to take or bear God’s name. This has much broader implications: since, as God’s people, we carry his name out into the world, we are to honor his name not only with our lips but also with our actions. We are to rightly represent him before the world in everything we say and do.
In Ephesians, I find this theme in 4:24 (“created after the likeness of God”), 4:30 (grieving the Spirit), and 5:1ff (which are concerned with imitating God and being light to the world).
Fourth Commandment
The fourth commandment concerns work and Sabbath-keeping, but we have seen that it applies to corporate worship in the church. As it relates to work, this appears in Ephesians 4:28. As it relates to worship, it is relevant to singing in 5:19-20, but especially to the church’s rightly relating to her husband in 5:22ff. The church stands before Jesus for his evaluation and approval every Lord’s day.
Fifth Commandment
The fifth commandment, as we have seen before, applies not only to obedience to parents, but also to our relations with anyone who has a place of honor or authority over or under us. This means that all nine verses from 6:1-9 relate to the fifth commandment.
Sixth Commandment
The sixth commandment prohibits murder, but as Jesus reminds us, this commandment applies to much more than murder (Matthew 5:21ff). In Ephesians 4, verses 26-27, 29, 31-32 all apply to the sixth commandment, because they concern destructive speech.
The reason I include verse 27 here is that the devil is said to “steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10) and to be the “father of lies” (John 8:44). I think that verse 27 countenances not only the sixth but also the eighth and ninth commandments, in that we are to carry out the Spirit’s ministry and not the devil’s ministry.
Seventh Commandment
The seventh commandment prohibits adultery, but in terms of Deuteronomy 22:9-23:14 this includes all forms of sexual immorality. Ephesians 5:3-5 is concerned with sexual immorality in general, and 5:22ff is concerned that marriage specifically be upheld and honored.
Eighth Commandment
The eighth commandment forbids stealing; this is addressed in Ephesians 4:27-28.
Ninth Commandment
The ninth commandment requires us to speak the truth; Ephesians 4 speaks to this in verses 25, 27, 29.
Tenth Commandment
The tenth commandment forbids coveting. Interestingly, Ephesians 5:3-5 links coveting directly to idolatry (the first and second commandments). In their own way, both the first and last commandment serve as summary statements that include all of the other sins contemplated by all ten commandments.
Conclusion
Paul draws from all ten commandments, with a significant amount of overlap. The introductory sections in each of the two divisions draw from the first four commandments. Then, Ephesians 4:25-32 takes as its basic theme destructive speech (the sixth commandment), but it layers on top of it the third, eighth and ninth commandments, in such a way that verse 27 becomes highlighted as the point at which these all stack up. Only towards the end do we have more clearly defined sections that cover the seventh and fifth commandments, but even in these cases there are intrusions (the seventh commandment overlaps significantly with the first, second and fourth; the fifth commandment includes the first when it relates to training our children).
I’m not entirely content with the structure I’ve outlined above. It seems to capture the organization of the passage, but the only significant payoff it has yielded is identifying 4:27 as a kind of keystone for the surrounding verses. But I do hope that I’ve offered something useful in identifying all ten commandments in this passage. Please comment if you find additional connections!
I gotta have my orange juice. 