Archive for the ‘Biblical Theology’ Category
Bound
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while. (Revelation 20:1-3 ESV)
If you are an amillennialist or a postmillennialist, this verse poses a little problem. How can it be that Satan is bound, and yet he also “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8)?
The answer is that, especially for a spiritual being like Satan, binding may refer to something other than total physical restraint. In Satan’s case, it refers to a sort of covenantal or legal restriction placed upon Satan by God. He is not allowed to “deceive the nations” while the church undertakes to disciple the nations, but he may still “prowl around.”
Consider Romans 7:2, which uses the same word but in this legal or covenantal sense:
For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.
In this sense, it is proper to speak of ourselves as bound to God, and even to speak of God as bound to us. Calvin writes of God’s “mutually bind[ing] himself to us without having to do so.”
Bowls
After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels with the seven plagues, clothed in pure, bright linen, with golden sashes around their chests. And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished. Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth [or land] the seven bowls of the wrath of God.” (Revelation 15:5-16:1)
Summarizing James Jordan, the bowls of Revelation constitute a kind of day of at-two-ment. Seven mediators, dressed in linen, come from the cherubim-throne and issue a return-to-sender for centuries of offering bowls, tribute bowls, purifying bowls, and seven-fold sprinklings. This is poured out not only upon the unbelieving land of Israel, but upon the entire old-covenant and old-creation world where Israel served as mediator for the nations.
After Jerusalem falls, Jesus is the only mediator left standing, the fountainhead of the new creation and the greater Solomon to whom kings and nations must gather.
Draw near
My pastor has some helpful reflections on the Christian’s privilege to “draw near to God” at our church blog.
Another important aspect of drawing near relates to Israel’s system of offerings and sacrifices. There are a cluster of Hebrew words that relate to this:
- qarab — to draw near, to offer; used frequently to speak of worshippers bringing an offering
- qorban — an offering, or the “thing brought near”
- qereb — inside, in the midst, inner parts; used of the inner parts of an offering that are burned and made to ascend into God’s presence
So, we can say that God’s people draw near to him through offering a sacrifice. There are two ways in which this is true for the Christian — first, we draw near through the once-for-all sacrifice made by Jesus nearly 2000 years ago. But second, we draw near week to week by offering ourselves, by offering a “sacrifice of praise.”
The purity regulations for worshippers also come into view as we draw near. There are also two ways to take this; on the one hand, we have “once been cleansed” (Heb. 10:2) by Jesus’s blood, so we may stand with confidence before our king. But on the other hand, we are called to actively cleanse our hands and purify our hearts (James 4:8), and we do so by confessing our sins (1 John 1:9). What this means is that the church’s historic practice of corporate confession and public proclamation of our forgiveness in Christ is a very appropriate and helpful part of our drawing near.
Finally, we are helped by remembering the ultimate outcome for sacrificial worship — a fellowship meal with God. The offerings themselves were food for God (Leviticus 1:9), and all but one of Israel’s offerings culminated in the priests or the worshippers sharing food with God. Furthermore, the high points of Israel’s liturgical calendar were the feasts where they met and ate in God’s presence at God’s house. The most familiar example of this is the annual Passover feast at the tabernacle and temple. In the same way, the high point of Christian worship, our drawing near, is our fellowship meal with Jesus in his house: the Lord’s supper. As Calvin writes, “the sacrament [of communion] might be celebrated in the most becoming manner, if it were dispensed to the church very frequently, at least once a-week.” Even if you do not practice the Lord’s supper weekly, you can remember and rejoice in the fact that you have an open invitation to sit at Jesus’s table.
See also: Ascent
Saints
M. F. Sadler discusses the meaning of “saint” in his 1876 book, The Second Adam and the New Birth:
The word “saint,” or “holy person,” is now almost universally used as implying real purity of heart and devotion to God’s service. It is applied to Apostles, such as St. Peter or St. Paul; to eminent men who have been raised up by God in bygone times to contend for the faith, such as St. Athanasius or St. Augustine; or to men and women of very deep holiness and spirituality of mind.
In the New Testament, on the contrary, it is the common appellation of Christians. In no one place is it used to distinguish Christians of very deep holiness and spirituality from those who have not attained to such a measure of conformity to God’s will. In only a small number of texts does it imply internal purity and spirituality, and in these places it has reference not to the present character of Christians, but to that which those will be found to possess at Christ’s second coming who have continued in that service of Christ to which at Baptism they were solemnly separated and set apart. (111)
As James Jordan often says, the meaning of saint is to have sanctuary access:
[God] raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6 ESV)
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16 ESV)
Seventy times seven
Frequently, in the gospels, when Jesus has words or parables that apply to us as individuals, he is also making a deeper theological point that applies to his people, his church. This is the case for how he speaks to Peter about forgiveness in Matthew 18:21-22:
Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.”
Certainly Jesus’s answer is applicable to us as individuals. But it is not merely the case, as many commentators suggest, that Jesus is employing hyperbole to underscore that our forgiveness is to be without condition, presumably just as God’s forgiveness is without condition. We can see this from the fact that seventy times seven is not just a random and meaningless number that Jesus makes up. There are two previous occurrences of seventy sevens in the Bible that I can make out.
The first is in the time of sin and apostasy leading up to Judah’s exile. Leviticus 26 warns Israel what will happen “if you do not obey Me and do not carry out all these commandments, if, instead, you reject My statutes, and if your soul abhors My ordinances so as not to carry out all My commandments, and so break My covenant” (vv. 14-15). God will give them over to their enemies, make their land desolate, and scatter them among the nations. God concludes that “the land will enjoy its sabbaths all the days of the desolation, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it will observe the rest which it did not observe on your sabbaths, while you were living on it . . . the land will be abandoned by them, and will make up for its sabbaths while it is made desolate without them” (vv. 34-35, 43). But God also assures them that “if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their forefathers, in their unfaithfulness which they committed against Me, and also in their acting with hostility against Me . . . I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am Yahweh” (vv. 40, 45).
Thus, when Jeremiah prophesies seventy years in exile for Judah (Jeremiah 25, 29), we should recall Leviticus 26 and realize that the land is making up for seventy sabbath years, seventy times seven. God tells us this explicitly in 2 Chronicles 36:21, that the exile “fulfill[ed] the word of Yahweh by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete.”
The second occurrence of seventy sevens comes as Daniel, the prophetic representative of Israel, realizes the seventy years of exile are ending, and so confesses and repents in obedience to Leviticus 26. Daniel prays:
Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, we have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances. Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers and all the people of the land. . . . O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and take action! For Your own sake, O my God, do not delay, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name. (Daniel 9:4-19)
In answer to Daniel’s prayers, the angel Gabriel reveals that there will be a second period of seventy weeks, seventy sevens, for sin to abound and then to be covered forever. This is the great exile which will end with the Messiah’s final great exodus into new creation.
Jesus is self-consciously calling attention to this in his answer to Peter. Jesus is identifying himself as the anointed one who has come at the end of Daniel’s seventy sevens to bring about the new creation, the new covenant, the enduring forgiveness. But, as we see from Leviticus, this new creation is a double-edged sword (Matthew 10:34ff). One of the things that Jesus is doing in the gospels is bringing an indictment against his people, his bride. It turns out that God’s forgiveness is not without condition: after the seventy sevens comes the purging fire of exile; on the other side of exile is death for those who, like the unforgiving servant, treat God’s forgiveness lightly; but resurrection life for those who forsake wickedness and identify with the anointed king and his way of life (which includes seventy sevens’ worth of patient forgiveness). Jesus clearly warns Israel of this throughout the gospels, including the parable of the unforgiving servant that immediately follows his conversation with Peter (Matthew 18:23ff), but elsewhere in even more pointed terms (e.g., Matthew 24).
Thus, while Matthew 18 has general application to individuals today, it had a particular prophetic application in the time of Matthew’s writing. It was both a warning and an encouragement to Israel and the people of Israel that time was running out: they were to identify with their Messiah and walk in his ways, or else suffer final destruction. This prophetic application continues to apply today to God’s church; as Paul reminds us, “Do not be conceited, but fear; for if God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you, either” (Romans 11:20-21). And this same prophetic perspective continues into Matthew 19. When Jesus answers the Pharisees’ question about divorce, there is an implied subtext that Jesus would divorce his own bride for her persistence in adultery, and that he would form a resurrected bride out of the remnant (c.f., Ezekiel 16). In every new covenant the old things must pass through death and resurrection; the old kingdom must come over to the new king (2 Samuel 5:1-5).
If, with Matthew 18 and Daniel 9, we speak of seventy sevens of forgiveness and atonement, we are almost certainly speaking about 490 days of atonement (Leviticus 16, 23) — 490 years. But if, with Leviticus 26 and 2 Chronicles 36, we are speaking of seventy sabbaths, it is possible we have a different time interval. If we count jubilee years as years of rest for the land, then seventy years of rest are accomplished in about 430 years. This makes me wonder if seventy sevens also applies to God’s patience toward converted Canaanites. Abraham carried on a ministry of establishing places of worship in Canaan, including among the Amorites (Genesis 13:18, 14:13). God told Abraham that he would delay the conquest of Canaan because “the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). Unlike the Amalekites, whom God had singled out for destruction for their great wickedness (Deuteronomy 25:17-19), it seems that God had greater patience with the Amorites because at one time they had worshipped him through Abraham. Depending on the starting point, the Amorites were given 400 (Genesis 15:13) or 430 (Exodus 12:40-41) years. Consider, too, that the Amorites were given a further forty-year reprieve because of Israel’s disobedience (Numbers 14). Israel herself is granted a similar reprieve: if Jesus’s resurrection marks the end of Daniel’s seventy sevens, then Israel had forty more years to come into the church before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Incidentally, this makes the church’s struggle with Jews and then Judaizers a kind of wilderness period before entering into the fullness of the new covenant.
Marriage equality
Should government be allowed to divorce the people and marry business?
Must power ever be crowned with feminine glory, or may it hunger for other power?
In a multitude of people is the glory of a king,
but without people a prince is ruined. (Proverbs 14:28)
In the regeneration
My pastor turned up this great quote from Herman Bavinck:
In short, the counsel of God and the cosmic history that corresponds to it must not be pictured exclusively—as infra- and supralapsarianism did—as a single straight line describing relations only of before and after, cause and effect, means and end; instead, it should also be viewed as a systemic whole in which things occur side by side in coordinate relations and cooperate in the furthering of what always was, is, and will be the deepest ground of all existence: the glorification of God. Just as in any organism all the parts are interconnected and reciprocally determine each other, so the world as a whole is a masterpiece of divine art, in which all the parts are organically interconnected. And of that world, in all its dimensions, the counsel of God is the eternal design. (Reformed Dogmatics, II:392)
This is a great perspective on how God relates to time and history. God is the painter to our painting, the composer and conductor to our symphony.
I want to consider how this perspective relates to the doctrine of regeneration. We generally speak of the regeneration of the Christian almost as though God reaches down and flips an invisible switch inside of us from death to life. For example, Wayne Grudem writes:
We may define regeneration as follows: Regeneration is a secret act of God in which he imparts new spiritual life to us. . . . Because regeneration is a work of God within us in which he gives us new life it is right to conclude that it is an instantaneous event. (Systematic Theology, 699-701)
This may be true as far as it goes, but it does not fully account for the way that God works with his creation and with us. Consider the example of Ebenezer Scrooge’s conversion-regeneration:
Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!
“I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. “The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this. I say it on my knees, old Jacob, on my knees!”
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears. (Dickens, A Christmas Carol)
In one sense, it is quite correct to say that something changed inside of Scrooge from death to life. But this is not the whole picture: it does not account for Dickens and his own steady resolve to make a new man out of Scrooge. In the same way, our understanding of regeneration should take into account how God works with his creation and how he imparts life to us. For our physical life we are dependent on God to sustain us at every moment; certainly we are equally dependent on God at every moment for our spiritual life. It is thus more proper to speak of regeneration as a settled determination on God’s part to continually fill us with life through his Spirit.
This perspective helps us in several ways. It reminds us that God is the source of regeneration, so that we are always looking to him rather than making a futile search into whether something invisible has happened inside ourselves. It reminds us that regeneration is an ongoing process. So, just as we cannot rely on past repentance and faith but must walk in new repentance and faith each day, neither can we rely on past regeneration. We must look to and ask for more help from the Spirit each day. Rather than asking “am I regenerate,” we ask “will God give his Spirit to those who ask him?” Yes (Luke 11:13), he will!
Another way to think of this is in terms of what we might call the tenses of salvation. There is a sense in which we can say we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. Likewise, we have been given new life, we are being progressively given more abundant life, and we will finally be fully given life.
Calvin speaks of regeneration as occurring progressively. In the Institutes, he refers to it as something “which [God] begins in us” (Method and Arrangement III). It will be “complete” at “the final resurrection,” (M&A III) which he refers to as “the day of regeneration or resurrection of the body” (M&A IV). Calvin identifies regeneration with the ongoing procession of the Spirit to us, saying that “we have nothing of the Spirit except through regeneration” (II.3.1). Interestingly, he identifies regeneration and mortification as two halves of repentance, to the point that he says “by repentance I understand regeneration” (III.3.9). He later speaks of the “commencement and progress of regeneration” (III.11).
This definition of regeneration also underscores that it is a change in our status and position before God at least as much as it is an internal change in our persons. We are grafted into a tree (Romans 11), into a vine (John 15); we are planted by streams of water (Psalm 1). This links it closely with other great changes in status like justification and adoption. Adoption in particular is how we come to receive the Spirit (Romans 8:15). In regeneration we enter into God’s new creation, which is to say that we are reconciled to God and made a part of his kingdom (2 Corinthians 5:17ff) — again, a change in status.
Scripture uses the term regeneration to refer to a change in our status. In Matthew 19:28, Jesus refers to his kingdom and new creation itself as the regeneration. In Titus 3:5, our baptism is called the “washing of regeneration.” In The Priesthood of the Plebs, Peter Leithart demonstrated that baptism is a symbolic form of priestly investiture, hearkening back in all its imagery to passages like Leviticus 8:15. In terms of Titus, this means we can speak of baptism not only as our investiture into priesthood and sonship, but also our entry into the new-creation kingdom that is God’s church, our enrollment into an inheritance (Titus 3:7).
On the one hand, this serves as a warning to us that we are not meant to coast on yesterday’s experiences and accomplishments. But it also serves to remind us that God is near to us, and has a settled determination to provide all that is needed to complete his work (Philippians 4:19, 1:6).
Do this
It is rare to practice the Lord’s supper without reading from 1 Corinthians 11. There is certainly nothing wrong with this, but it is odd. We have plenty of other material to draw from for communion reflections; it would take a year alone to work through passages that reference bread (or grain) and wine, not to mention food and feasting in general.
I worry that we have come to believe reading God’s instructions discharges our duty to obey them. Jesus commands us to “do this.” Considering 1 Corinthians 10-11 together with Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts, what is it that we are to do?
- Use bread
- Give thanks to God for the bread
- Break the bread
- Use wine
- Give thanks to God for the wine
- Examine ourselves to ensure we discern one another’s membership in the body
Many evangelical churches are failing on all counts listed above, possibly with a sense that it is permissible to ignore these, but without the necessary conviction that it is better to ignore them.
The last point may be the least obvious. I have argued elsewhere that Paul’s use of discern and examine is generally misunderstood. I suggest that we are failing to do this not least in failing to recognize our young children’s participation in Jesus and their full welcome to his presence and his table. We therefore, with Peter, stand condemned and out of step with the truth of the gospel (Gal. 2:11ff). If we were to work through those many food and feasting passages, we would become more sensitive to this.
The result is that we have arrived at something unnaturally stilted, unfamilial, un-supper-like. It is not straining in every way to enact a foretaste of Jesus’s marriage feast, or to welcome all those here who would be welcome there if they were to die today.
See also: Unbelievers?
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.
I gotta have my orange juice. 