Tag: Jesus

What is the New Perspective(s) on Paul?

What is the New Perspective(s) on Paul?

The “New Perspective on Paul” (“NPP”) is a re-calibration of the traditional Protestant understanding of “justification.” NPP has now been a force in New Testament and Pauline scholarship for nearly three generations. This article aims to present a positive statement of NPP. It is a summary, not a critique—so there will be no critical interaction.

First, we briefly sum up the traditional Protestant understanding of “justification.” Next, we survey five aspects of the NPP that differ from the traditional framework.

The Traditional Protestant Understanding of Justification

In light of the New Testament revelation, “justification is God’s declarative act by which, on the basis of the sufficiency of Christ’s atoning death, he pronounces believers to have fulfilled all of the requirements of the law that pertain to them.”[1] The person “has been restored to a state of righteousness on the basis of belief and trust in the work of Christ rather than on the basis of one’s own accomplishment.”[2]

God reckons or imputes Christ’s righteousness to the believer as a judicial declaration—communicating His righteousness to us “by some wonderous way,” transfusing its power into us.[3] For God to “justify” someone means “to acquit from the charge of guilt.”[4] This He does “not as a creditor and a private person, but as a ruler and Judge giving sentence concerning us at his bar.”[5]

One Baptist catechism explains that God “does freely endow me the righteousness of Christ, that I come not at any time into judgment.”[6] Millard Erickson writes: “it is not an actual infusing of holiness into the individual. It is a matter of declaring the person righteous, as a judge does in acquitting the accused.”[7] Union with Christ makes this possible in what Francis Turretin styled a “mystical … communion of grace by mediation. By this, having been made by God a surety for us and given to us for a head, he can communicate to us his righteousness and all his benefits.”[8]

The Baptist, 1833 New Hampshire Confession explains that justification:[9]

  1. Includes the pardon of sin, and the promise of eternal life on principles of righteousness;
  2. that it is bestowed, not in consideration of any works of righteousness which we have done, but solely through faith in the Redeemer’s blood;
  3. by virtue of which faith his perfect righteousness is freely imputed to us of God;
  4. that it brings us into a state of most blessed peace and favor with God, and secures every other blessing needful for time and eternity.

John Calvin explains that “being sanctified by his Spirit, we aspire to integrity and purity of life.”[10] In other words, good works are the fruit of salvation. Thomas Oden summarizes: “Justification’s nature is God’s pardon, its condition is faith, its ground is the righteousness of God, and its fruits are good works.”[11]

A Survey of Five Aspects of the New Perspective(s) on Paul

There is no single “new perspective,” and it is a mistake to assume that (say) N.T. Wright and James D.G. Dunn speak with one voice on NPP. What unites the new perspective isn’t so much a single consensus on Paul, but more a shared understanding of first-century Judaism.[12] “There is no such thing as the new perspective … There is only a disparate family of perspectives, some with more, some with less family likeness, and with fierce squabbles and sibling rivalries going on inside.”[13]

The NPP is not “new” because it displaces the “old” perspective. “Rather, it is ‘new’ because the dimension of Paul’s teaching that it highlights has been largely lost to sight in more contemporary expositions … The ‘new perspective’ simply asks whether all the factors that make up Paul’s doctrine have been adequately appreciated and articulated in the traditional reformulations of the doctrine.”[14] Dunn explains that the new perspective “is not opposed to the classic Reformed doctrine of justification. It simply observes that a social and ethnic dimension was part of the doctrine from its first formulation …”[15]

We will survey the NPP by looking at five related issues:[16]

  1. The new perspective on Paul arises from a new perspective on Judaism.
  2. The significance of Paul’s mission is the context for his teaching on justification.
  3. What does Paul mean when he writes about justification by faith in Christ Jesus and not works of the law?
  4. What does “justification” mean?
  5. What is the relationship between works and salvation?

The new perspective on Paul arises from a new perspective on Judaism

Judaism was not a religion of works-righteousness, but of grace. The Reformed (or “Lutheran”) perspective errs by reading the Protestant-Catholic divide back into Paul’s polemics in Galatians and Romans. “The degeneracy of a Catholicism that offered forgiveness of sins by the buying of indulgences mirrored for Luther the degeneracy of a Judaism that taught justification by works.”[17]

The NPP objects to this framework. Instead, it sees a “symbiotic relationship implicit in Israel’s religion (and Judaism) between divine initiative and human response.”[18] Israel’s obedience to the law was not about amassing good works to wipe away sin—it was simply a response to God’s covenant faithfulness.

E.P. Sanders coined the term “covenantal nomism” to describe this ethos and said it was “the view that one’s place in God’s plan is established on the basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man his obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for transgression.”[19]

The “righteousness of God” was saving righteousness, not judgment. Luther came to realize this, but Dunn writes that “it wasn’t a new insight for the bulk of Second Temple Judaism; it was rather an axiom that was fundamental to Judaism itself.”[20] Dunn asks whether “traditional Christian antipathy to Judaism has skewed and distorted its portrayal of the Judaism against which Paul reacted?”[21]

So, it is a mistake to read Paul as if he were reacting against crude legalism. Indeed, Paul’s “zeal for God” (Phil 3:6) was “not simply zeal to be the best that he could be,” but a zeal to attack Jews who were violating these boundary markers and thus being unfaithful to the covenant they did not realize was now obsolete.[22] Paul did not attack legalism—he attacked a now-outmoded Jewish nationalism.

The significance of Paul’s mission is the context for his teaching on justification

Paul’s great burden was to proclaim that God’s community included both Jew and Gentile—and this was unacceptable to the Judaism of his day. The Torah taught the Israelites to be different, to be set apart. Dunn says, “no passage makes this clearer than Lev 20.22-26,” which reads (in part): “You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you,” (Lev 20:23).

So, Dunn argues, this “set-apartness” ethic is what motivated the agitators we read about in Galatians. It is this clash which is “evidently the theological rationale behind Peter’s ‘separation’ from the Gentiles of Antioch.”[23]

Judaism was not missionary minded. Why should it? Judaism was primarily an ethnic religion, the religion of the residents of Judea, that is, Judeans. So it was natural for Second Temple Jews to think of Judaism as only for Jews, and for non-Jews who became Jews. This was where Christianity, initially a Jewish sect, broke the established mold. It became an evangelistic sect, a missionary movement, something untoward, unheard of within Judaism.[24]

Even Jewish Christians found it difficult to fathom the Gospel going to Gentiles (see Peter at Cornelius’ home in Acts 10:27-29, 44-48). This conflict—the “who is a child of God and therefore what is required to become one?” question—drove his teaching on justification. “The social dimension of the doctrine of justification was as integral to its initial formulation as any other … A doctrine of justification by faith that does not give prominence to Paul’s concern to bring Jew and Gentile together is not true to Paul’s doctrine.”[25]

For the new perspective, the concern that Paul’s concept of justification by faith addresses is not a universal human self-righteousness instantiated in a Pelagian-like, works driven Judaism. Rather, it is a problem specific to the setting of the early church, where a dominant (Jewish) majority was attempting to force the Gentile minority into adopting the Torah-based symbols of the (Jewish) people of God in order to gain access to the (Jewish) Messiah Jesus. As such, Paul’s teaching on justification is nothing like the “center” of his theology—let alone the “article by which the Church stands or falls.”[26]

What does Paul mean when he writes about “justification by faith” in Christ Jesus and not “works of the law”?

“But, if Judaism was essentially a religion of grace, then why did Paul reject it?”[27] That is the question! To what was Paul objecting when he railed against “works of the law?”

Well, because Judaism was a religion of grace, this means legalism is not the true issue, and we are mis-reading Paul if we think it is. Because the “works of the law” are not about legalism, they must be about something else—but what? Well, the cultural wall against which Paul kept hitting his head was about whether Gentiles could come into God’s family, and what this “coming in” looked like.

The Jewish agitators believed the “coming in” meant observing certain Jewish “boundary markers” like circumcision, the Sabbath, and the laws about cleanness and uncleanness—that is, becoming Jews. God gave them to keep His people separate from the world. Dunn explains “works of the law” also included “the distinctively Jewish way of life”[28]—a sort of sociological identity to which the boundary markers pointed.

But Jesus has now come and fulfilled these good but temporary boundary markers. They no longer tag someone as “in” or “out” of the covenant—faith in Christ and indwelling of the Spirit is now the boundary marker. This is the dividing line. This is what Paul meant when he spoke against “works of the law.”

Paul taught and defended the principle of justification by faith (alone) because he saw that fundamental gospel principle to be threatened by Jewish believers maintaining that as believers in Messiah Jesus, they had a continuing obligation to maintain their separateness to God, a holiness that depended on their being distinct from other nations, an obligation, in other words, to maintain the law’s requirement of separation from non-Jews … For Paul, the truth of the gospel was demonstrated by the breaking down of the boundary markers and the wall that divided Jew from Gentile, a conviction that remained the central part of his mission precisely because it was such a fundamental expression of, and test case for, the gospel. This is the missing dimension of Paul’s doctrine of justification that the new perspective has brought back to the center of the stage where Paul himself placed it.[29]

What does “justification” mean?

Dunn explains that “justification by faith” means trusting in Jesus alone for salvation, and not relying on obsolete Jewish boundary markers as covenant preconditions for God’s acceptance (i.e., “works of the law”). Jesus is enough. According to Dunn, Paul’s target is not grace v. legalism, but grace v. outmoded nationalism.

N.T. Wright explains that righteousness is not a changed moral character, but a new declared status—acquittal.[30] The true scene is the lawcourt, not a medical clinic.[31]

It is the status of the person which is transformed by the action of “justification,” not the character. It is in this sense that “justification” “makes” someone “righteous,” just as the officiant at a wedding service might be said to “make” the couple husband and wife-a change of status, accompanied (it is hoped) by a steady transformation formation of the heart, but a real change of status even if both parties are entering the union out of pure convenience.[32]

He breaks decisively with the traditional perspective by saying that “righteousness” is not a substance which can imputed or reckoned to a believer.[33] This is dangerously close to the Roman Catholic concept of righteousness as an infusion of grace.[34] No, Wright argues, God is not “a distant bank manager, scrutinizing credit and debit sheets.”[35] Christ has not amassed a “treasury of merit” that God dispenses to believers.[36]

But “righteousness as declared status from God” is not the whole story. Wright sets his NPP framework by insisting we read all of scripture through a “God’s single plan through Israel for the world” lens. This means “righteousness” is more than acquittal, because this declared status takes place in a particular context. It is “absolutely central for Paul” that one understand “the story of Israel, and of the whole world, as a single continuous narrative which, having reached its climax in Jesus the Messiah, was now developing in the fresh ways which God the Creator, the Lord of history, had always intended.”[37]

For Wright, this is the hinge upon which everything turns. “Paul’s view of God’s purpose is that God, the creator, called Abraham so that through his family he, God, could rescue the world from its plight.”[38] He sums up this “single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world” hinge as “covenant.”[39]

This is the prism through which we must understand (a) the nature of the law and the believing life, (b) what “works of the law” meant to Paul, and (c) the apostle’s relentless focus on the Jew + Gentile family of God.

In Paul’s day, Wright notes, Jews were not sitting around wondering what they must do to get to heaven when they die. No—they were waiting for God to act just as He said He would (i.e., to show covenant faithfulness), because they counted on being part of His single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world.[40] They were in “exile,” and waiting for a Savior who would be faithful to God’s promises to them.[41]

The Gospel is not simply about us and our salvation. It is about God’s plan. “God is not circling around us. We are circling around him.”[42] We are making a mistake, Wright says, if we make justification the focus of the Gospel. The steering wheel on a car is surely important (critical, even!), but it is not the whole vehicle.[43] In the same way, justification is one vital component of a larger whole—God’s “single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world” plan.

God had a single plan all along through which he intended to rescue the world and the human race, and that this single plan was centered upon the call of Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition in Israel’s representative, the Messiah. Read Paul like this, and you can keep all the jigsaw pieces on the table.[44]

Because the Christian story hinges upon this covenant, Wright interprets the “righteousness of God” as God’s covenant faithfulness to do what He promised for Abraham. This faithfulness consisted of three aspects: (a) eschatology—God’s “single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world” unfolding in time, and (b) lawcourt, and (c) covenant.

Paul believed, in short, that what Israel had longed for God to do for it and for the world, God had done for Jesus, bringing him through death and into the life of the age to come. Eschatology: the new world had been inaugurated! Covenant: God’s promises to Abraham had been fulfilled! Lawcourt: Jesus had been vindicated-and so all those who belonged to Jesus were vindicated as well! And these, for Paul, were not three, but one. Welcome to Paul’s doctrine of justification, rooted in the single scriptural narrative as he read it, reaching out to the waiting world.[45]

What is the relationship between works and salvation?

Paul declares that it is “the doers of the law who will be justified” (Rom 2:13), and that God will repay each person for what he has done (Rom 2:6). Jesus is the judge at the law-court, and “possession of Torah, as we just saw, will not be enough; it will be doing it that counts …”[46]

Wright says traditional interpretations of these passages have “swept aside” the implications of Paul’s words. Judgment is—somehow, someway—based on works. It is “a central statement of something [Paul] normally took for granted. It is base line stuff.”[47]

This “judgment” is not a reward ceremony for believers where some will get prizes and others will not. No, it is an actual judgment at which everyone (including but not limited to Christians justified by faith) must present themselves and be assessed.[48] To critics who are alarmed at Wright’s insistence on this point, he replies: “I did not write Romans 2; Paul did.”[49] Indeed, “those texts about final judgment according to works sit there stubbornly, and won’t go away.”[50]

Christians are to “do” things to please God. Joyfully, out of love. To those who accuse him of teaching believers to put their trust in something other than Jesus, Wright declares: “I want to plead guilty …”[51]

The key, Wright argues, is the Holy Spirit who sets us free from slavery and for responsibility—“being able at last to choose, to exercise moral muscle, knowing both that one is doing it oneself and that the Spirit is at work within, that God himself is doing that which I too am doing.”[52] The believer “by persistence in doing good” seeks glory and honor and immortality (Rom 2:7). It is not a matter of earning the final verdict or ever arriving at perfection. “They are seeking it, not earning it.”[53]

This seeking is by means of Spirit-filled living that is a bit of a synergistic paradox—“from one point of view the Spirit is at work, producing these fruits (Galatians 5:22-23), and from another other point of view the person concerned is making the free choices, the increasingly free (because increasingly less constrained by the sinful habits of mind and body) decisions to live a genuinely, fully human life which brings pleasure—of course it does!—to the God in whose image we human beings were made.”[54]

This is the kind of life which leads to a positive final verdict.[55]

The present verdict gives the assurance that the future verdict will match it; the Spirit gives the power through which that future verdict, when given, will be seen to be in accordance with the life that the believer has then lived.[56]    

Both Sanders and Dunn are more to the point and suggest Christianity is kinda, sorta a new flavor of covenantal nomism. Dunn writes that the Torah was both the way of life and the way to life, that we cannot play the two emphases off against one another, and that “NT teaching has the same or at least a very similar inter-relationship.”[57]

As Israel’s status before God was rooted in God’s covenant initiative, so for Paul, Christians’ status before God is rooted in the grace manifested in and through Christ. And as Israel’s continuation within that covenant relationship depended in substantial measure on Israel’s obedience of the covenant law, so for Paul the Christians’ continuation to the end depends on their continuing in faith and on living out their faith through love.[58]

The difference is that the New Covenant believer has the Spirit, and so the Christian must walk by the Spirit and “to fulfill the requirements of the law.”[59] Sanders sees Paul as more transforming old categories than dressing them in new clothes. The apostle uses “participationist transfers terms” to describe his doctrine of salvation:

The heart of Paul’s thought is not that one ratifies and agrees to a covenant offered by God, becoming a member of a group with a covenantal relation with God and remaining in it on the condition of proper behaviour; but that one dies with Christ, obtaining new life and the initial transformation which leads to the resurrection and ultimate transformation, that one is a member of the body of Christ and one Spirit with him, and that one remains so unless one breaks the participatory union by forming another.[60]

If you break the union (by defecting and not repenting), then you are out—“good deeds are the condition of remaining ‘in’, but they do not earn salvation.”[61]

What does it matter?

This matters because the NPP will interpret Galatians and Romans quite differently.

  • Judaism is a religion of grace, forgiveness, and atonement—not of legalism.
  • This means Paul is not fighting against legalists. Luther and the Reformers are wrong on this point. So is every major creed and confession the Protestant world has produced in the past 400 years. Like people staring up at the sun and assuming it orbits the earth, the traditional perspective sees but does not understand.[62]
  • Paul’s real problem is a mis-guided Jewish nationalism its agitators do not realize is now obsolete.
  • So, the “works of the law” Paul rails against are not legalist impulses but Jewish “identity markers.” Being a covenant member means an obligation to be set apart and to “live Jewishly.” The agitators do not realize this is now superseded in union with Christ. So, in this context, “justification by faith” means observing Jesus and the indwelling of the Spirit as the new boundary markers.
  • The traditional understanding of “justification” is wrong. It may mean observing these new boundary markers instead of the old (Dunn). Or, according to Wright, it might mean “covenant faithfulness,” in that God is bringing His “single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world” to fruition (eschatology), on the basis of His declaration that Jesus acquits His people of their legal guilt (lawcourt), because He made promises to Abraham He intends to fulfill (covenant).

This alternative grid produces quite different interpretations of seemingly “obvious” passages. For example, the apostle Paul writes this about ethnic Jewish people:

For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness (Romans 10:2-3).

According to N.T. Wright, this “zeal … not based on knowledge” refers to the mistaken impression that Israel was not the center of the world. God intended to work not just for them, but through them for a greater plan for the world. As far as “establishing their own righteousness” goes, Paul means that “they have not recognized the nature, shape and purpose of their own controlling narrative … and have supposed that it was a story about themselves rather than about the Creator and the cosmos, with themselves playing the crucial, linchpin role.”[63]

In other words, these passages are about misguided Jewish nationalism, not legalism. Christians (especially pastors) should be familiar with the broad outlines of this newer interpretive grid. Pondering these challenges will both sharpen dull edges in our own understanding and strengthen convictions in the face of alternative challenges. It might even change some minds—the Spirit still has more to teach His church!

[1] Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 3rd (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), p. 884.

[2] Millard Erickson, The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology, revised ed. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), s.v. “justification by faith,” p. 108

[3] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (reprint; Peabody: Hendriksen, 2012), 3.11.23 

[4] Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.3.

[5] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger, vol. 2 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), 16.3.2.

[6] Hercules Collins, An Orthodox Catechism: Being the Sum of Christian Religion, Contained in the Law and Gospel, ed(s). Machael Haykin and G. Stephen Weaver, Jr. (Palmdale: RBAP, 2014), A55.

[7] Erickson, Christian Theology, p. 884.

[8] Turretin, Institutes, 16.3.5.

[9] 1833 New Hampshire Confession of Faith, Art. V, quoted in Phillip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3 (New York: Harper & Bros., 1882), pp. 743-744.

[10] Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.1.

[11] Thomas Oden, Classical Christianity: A Systematic Theology (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009), p. 584.

[12] James K. Bielby and Paul R. Eddy, “Justification in Contemporary Debate,” in Justification: Five Views (Downers Grove: IVP, 2011), p. 57.

[13] N.T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009), loc. 233-234.

[14] James D. G. Dunn, “New Perspective View,” in Justification: Five Views, pp. 176, 177.

[15] Dunn, “The New Perspective on Paul: Whence, what and whither?” in The New Perspective on Paul, revised ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005),p. 36.

[16] Three of these issues are from Dunn, “New Perspective View,” p. 177.

[17] Dunn, “New Perspective View,” p. 180.

[18] Dunn, “New Perspective View,” p. 181.

[19] E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 40th anniversary ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), p. 75.

[20] Dunn, “New Perspective View,” p. 182.

[21] Dunn, “New Perspective View,” pp. 182-183.

[22] Dunn, “Whence, what and whither?” pp. 12-13.  

[23] Dunn, “Whence, what and whither?” pp. 30-31.

[24] Dunn, “New Perspective View,” pp. 186-187.

[25] Dunn, “New Perspective View,” pp. 189.

[26] Bielby and Eddy, “Justification in Contemporary Debate,” in Justification: Five Views, p. 60.

[27] Bielby and Eddy, “Justification in Contemporary Debate,” in Justification: Five Views, p. 58.

[28] Dunn, “Whence, what and whither?,” in New Perspective, pp. 27-28.  

[29] Dunn, “New Perspective View,” p. 195.

[30] Wright, Justification, loc. 987.

[31] Wright, Justification, loc. 994.

[32] Wright, Justification, loc. 1002-1005.

[33] “If ‘imputed righteousness’ is so utterly central, so nerve-janglingly vital, so standing-and-falling-church and-falling-church important as John Piper makes out, isn’t it strange that Paul never actually came straight out and said it?” (Wright, Justification, loc. 453-454).

[34] Wright, Justification, loc. 1938.

[35] Wright, Justification, loc. 2216.

[36] Wright, Justification, loc. 2747-2748. “We note in particular that the ‘obedience’ of Christ is not designed to amass a treasury of merit which can then be ‘reckoned’ to the believer, as in some Reformed schemes of thought …”

[37] Wright, Justification, loc. 307-309.

[38] Wright, Justification, loc. 1041-1042.

[39] Wright, Justification, loc. 649f.

[40] Wright, Justification, loc. 546f.

[41] “[M]any first-century Jews thought of themselves as living in a continuing narrative stretching from earliest times, through ancient prophecies, and on toward a climactic moment of deliverance which might come at any moment … this continuing narrative was currently seen, on the basis of Daniel 9, as a long passage through a state of continuing ‘exile’ … The very same attribute of God because of which God was right to punish Israel with the curse of exile—i.e., his righteousness—can now be appealed to for covenantal restoration the other side of punishment,” (Wright, Justification, loc. 601-602, 609, 653-655).

In his Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013; Kindle ed.), Wright helpfully explains: “… the covenant, YHWH’s choice of Israel as his people, was aimed not simply at Israel itself, but at the wider and larger purposes which this God intended to fulfil through Israel. Israel is God’s servant; and the point of having a servant is not that the servant becomes one’s best friend, though that may happen too, but in order that, through the work of the servant, one may get things done. And what YHWH wants done, it seems, is for his glory to extend throughout the earth, for all nations to see and hear who he is and what he has done …

The particular calling of Israel, according to these passages, would seem to be that through Israel the creator God will bring his sovereign rule to bear on the world. Israel’s specialness would consist of this nation being ‘holy,’ separate from the others, but not merely for its own sake; rather, for the sake of the larger entity, the rest of the world,” (pp. 804-805, emphases in original).

[42] Wright, Justification, loc. 163-164.

[43] Wright, Justification, loc. 948f.

[44] Wright, Justification, loc. 326-329.

[45] Wright, Justification, loc. 1131-1134.

[46] Wright, Justification, loc. 2163-2164.

[47] Wright, Justification, loc. 2183-2184.

[48] Wright, Justification, loc. 2174.

[49] Wright, Justification, loc. 2168.

[50] Wright, Justification, loc. 2200-2201.

[51] Wright, Justification, loc. 2220.

[52] Wright, Justification, loc. 2230-2232.

[53] Wright, Justification, loc. 2266.

[54] Wright, Justification, loc. 2267-2270.

[55] “Humans become genuinely human, genuinely free, when the Spirit is at work within them so that they choose to act, and choose to become people who more and more naturally act (that is the point of ‘virtue,’ as long as we realize it is now ‘second nature,’ not primary), in ways which reflect God’s image, which give him pleasure, which bring glory to his name, which do what the law had in mind all along. That is the life that leads to the final verdict, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant!’” (Wright, Justification, loc. 2279-2282).

[56] Wright, Justification, loc. 3058-3060.

[57] Dunn, “Whence, when and whither?,” pp. 74-75.  

[58] Dunn, “New Perspective View,” pp. 199-200.

[59] Dunn, “Whence, when and whither?,” pp. 84-85.  

[60] Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p. 513.

[61] Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p. 517.

[62] Wright, Justification, loc. 101-114.

[63] Wright, Justification, loc. 2966-2967.

Church and State no. 3: God’s kingdom isn’t America

Church and State no. 3: God’s kingdom isn’t America

In the last article in this series, we discussed the most basic principle to rightly understand the “church v. state” conundrum. That principle was this—there are two kingdoms, Babylon and Jerusalem. Babylon will lose. Now we’ll build on this foundation and introduce the next building block:

  • Principle 2: God’s kingdom is not America or any other country

What hath the “Jerusalem that is above” to do with Washington D.C., London, Moscow, Beijing, Mexico City, and Buenos Aries? Nothing. That is, not directly. God’s kingdom is not the USA, Great Britain, or Russia … not even Barbados. American Christians may nod their heads at this point.

I’d like to ask you to stop. Think for a moment. Then realize that I really mean that. America has nothing to do with God’s kingdom. That means something important for the church v. state issue—but more on that later.

The “Babylon” which the Apostle John describes in Revelation 17-18 represents Satan’s kingdom in all its flavors. Some interpreters see Babylon only as a geo-political foe which will rise in the last days—it only has relevance for the tribulation. I think it’s more than that.

As I said earlier, Babylon is all the societies, cultures, values, and systems that oppose God throughout history. No matter their outward form, they have the same origin—Satan. This evil empire’s aim is to be a stealthy narcotic, dulling our senses, distracting us from the Gospel light with … whatever, all while disguising its presence. This is why the image of the high-class prostitute is so apt—Babylon is seduction to idolatry,[1] in any form. It entices us to give ourselves to something other than God.

Of course, this “dominion of darkness” (Col 1:13) will take final form as a nation state in the last days, but it still exists here and now as a nefarious shadow behind the curtain. Before it assumes legal and political shape later, it exists now as influence, as values, as worldviews, as wicked ethics, as degenerate cultures in various local contexts. Think of it as a sinister “e pluribus unum,” in that “out of many” there is really “one” malevolent force—Satan.

Jesus’ kingdom is also in an “already/not yet” state, and it will also take legal and political shape once He returns and topples Babylon (Rev 19). It, too, exists for the moment as subversive and countercultural influence, values, worldviews, and cultures. Ideally, these “cultures” are not those of nation states, but the particular, authentic expressions of the true Jesus communities within those countries. “Out of the many” that is the global church there is “one” prime mover—the Lord Jesus Christ.

Both kingdoms are “already, but not yet” in this “field” that is the world, which means the countries where we live are simply the individual battlespaces of a global conflict. Cultures, values, worldviews, and influence ebbs and flows from one side to the other as local and regional actions in a much larger war.

This means “Babylon” is the USA. It’s China. It’s Ukraine. It’s Russia. It’s every part of this world, which the Apostle Paul says is under the sway of “the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient,” (Eph 2:2). But these same places are also “the kingdom of God” in the form of individual Jesus communities—the “wheat” and the “weeds” inhabit the same battlespace at the same time. To borrow a cliché from Vietnam, it’s “hearts and minds” that each kingdom is after, because that’s what drives our actions (cp. Prov 4:23; Lk 6:45).

So, I say again—God’s kingdom is completely distinct from any country on this earth. This is what Jesus meant when He said this to Pilate:

My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.

John 18:36

He didn’t simply mean “I ain’t from here!” or “my kingdom is located in heaven, not on earth.” The kingdom will be here (Rev 21-22)—Belinda Carlisle was right about heaven being a place on earth. What Jesus meant is something like “my kingdom is totally different than anything here.” It’s from another sphere, another realm, “from another place.” It’s a different thing (cp. Jn 8:23).[2] It’s a kingdom predicated on His loving sacrifice which prompts our loving allegiance and obedience (Deut 6:5; Mk 12:28-32). If Jesus’ kingdom had merely been from this sphere, concerned with borders, power, and politics, His disciples would have fought to prevent His capture.

But it isn’t, so they didn’t.

This means whenever Christians conflate kingdom values with nationalist interests[3] as if they were the same thing, they’re making a terrible mistake. They are not the same thing—not even close. God’s kingdom is distinct from every nation state.

We’ll explore what that means in the next article.

[1] “… any form of worship or religious practice presented or interpreted by the writer or speaker as equivalent to this; the worship of a false god,” (“idolatry,” noun, no. 1a, OED Online. March 2023. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/91099?redirectedFrom=idolatry  (accessed April 29, 2023)).

[2] The preposition in ἡ βασιλεία ἡ ἐμὴ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου seems to express derivation. For commentary, see (1) Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John, in NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), pp. 769-770; (2) C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John (London: SPCK, 1960), p. 447; (3) Alvah Hovey, Commentary on the Gospel of John, in American Commentary (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1885), p. 366.

[3] “Advocacy of or support for the interests of one’s own nation, esp. to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations,” (s.v. “nationalism,” noun, no. 1a, OED Online. March 2023. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/125289?redirectedFrom=nationalism (accessed April 29, 2023)).

Romans 11 and the parable of the olive tree

Romans 11 and the parable of the olive tree

In Romans 11, Paul finally answers the question he’s been dancing around since ch. 9: what is God’s plan for the people of Israel?

  • He’s defended God against false accusations (Rom 9:6-29).
  • He’s told us the nations have obtained righteousness from God, even though they didn’t pursue it. However, the people of Israel have come up empty. “But Israel, chasing after law as the means of righteousness, didn’t achieve that goal. Why not? Because they’re chasing righteousness not by means of faith, but as if by means of works,” (Rom 9:31-32; my translation).
  • Paul explained: “… because they don’t know the special righteousness which God offers and are trying to set up their own righteousness, they haven’t submitted themselves to this one-of-a-kind righteousness from God,” (Rom 10:3; my translation).[1]

So, in Romans 11, Paul at last answers the question. But we’re making a mistake if we reduce this to an academic question about “Israel.” The real question is: “how will God’s divine rescue plan come together?” Christians sometimes have incomplete ideas about this—they either ignore His promises to the people of Israel or maximize those promises and lose sight of the whole. So, how will God’s plan come together, and what will it look like when it’s finished?

1. God hasn’t rejected the people of Israel (vv. 11:1-6)

God has not rejected His people.[2] Perhaps a better translation is “repudiate,”[3] which gives the idea of to thrust or drive away[4]—to cast off, disown, to refuse to be associated with.[5] How could God have disowned His people if Paul himself is a native Israelite (Rom 11:1)? God has known the people of Israel for a long time[6]—He has a relationship with them (Rom 11:2). It is not over for them.

So, what’s happening, then? Why have the people of Israel not accepted Jesus as their Messiah? Does God intend to rescue (a) all the people of Israel, or (b) a group from within the larger number?

Paul explains that, for the moment, God is working through a remnant. Just as He reserved a small core of people for Himself during the prophet Elijah’s day, “[s]o too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace,” (Rom 11:5). And, then and now, these are people God has reserved for Himself—salvation is ultimately the result of God’s specific grace(Rom 11:4).[7] Whatever God is up to, for right now He’s only rescuing a smaller group of Jewish people.

This rescue is by means of grace, not by means of works[8]—or else it wouldn’t be called “grace” (Rom 11:6). This is what the people of Israel had missed (Rom 9:30 – 10:4). If I owe you money, when I pay you it’s not an expression of love or friendship—it’s a business transaction. With God, His divine favor and love is a gift, not a business transaction.

2. Instead, God is punishing the people of Israel (vv. 11:7-10)

So, if God hasn’t repudiated the people of Israel, what is He doing with them?

The people of Israel had chased after righteousness but missed the boat. The chosen ones among them had made it, “but the others were hardened,” (Rom 11:7). The idea here is a divine blinding, a veil of sorts, a darkening of the mind—a mental block that makes them “not get it.”[9]

This is a punishment which follows the failed chase—“God permits them to become entangled in their own No.”[10] If God is God, then He has the power to act upon our hearts and minds so that we make real, voluntary decisions, but in the manner He wants (cp. Jn 12:39-40). God channels our desires towards the goal He’s determined. This is not a new thing:

  • When Moses preached to the people of Israel on the eastern banks of the Jordan River, he recounted Israel’s long and sad tale of disobedience. Paul quotes Moses here in support: “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear, to this very day,” (Rom 11:8; quoting Deut 29:4).
  • King David called out to God in misery and asked for judgment on his enemies: “May the table set before them become a snare; may it become retribution and a trap. May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever,” (Rom 11:9-10; quoting Ps 69:22-23).

Paul says the same thing has happened to the people of Israel. God hasn’t repudiated or disowned them—He’s punishing them.

3. What’s the point of God’s punishment? (vv. 11:11-32)

Paul writes:

So, I’m asking: “they didn’t stumble and ruin themselves, did they?” May it never be! Instead, because of their false step, the divine rescue [goes] to the nations, so that it will make the people of Israel jealous.[11]

Romans 11:11; my translation

There you have it. Israel’s “false step” or “trespass—their rejection of Christ as the long-promised prophet, rescuer, and king—triggers God’s pivot to the nations. God is making the people of Israel jealous, envious (cp. Rom 10:19). Interestingly, Paul’s focus is not the nations per se. Instead, he frames the people of Israel as the hinge upon which God’s whole rescue plan turns.[12] The idea is that the people of Israel will see God showing love + grace to the nations, become jealous, re-evaluate, then choose divine rescue through Jesus.

This obviously hasn’t yet happened. Right now, the people of Israel either (a) don’t care, or (b) reject Christ. The people of Israel will never become jealous unless they first agree that Jesus is their Messiah. For example, one kid won’t be jealous of the other’s cookie unless they both agree the cookie is worth having! I’m not jealous if my wife eats plain Lays potato chips, because I don’t like plain Lay’s potato chips.

So, when will God change their minds and make the people of Israel jealous, so they’ll want Jesus as their king, too? During the Millennium (see Zech 12:10ff). But Paul ignores this question—he homes in on “the nations” who will read his letter. He deploys a sort of parable to explain God’s divine rescue plan.

3.1. The parable of the olive tree (vv. 11:13-24)

Paul is the apostle to the nations. But, along the way, he hopes to “somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them,” (Rom 11:14). Remember that, for the moment, God is saving a remnant of the people of Israel and Paul aims to scoop some of them up as he goes along. He declares “if the root is holy, so are the branches” (Rom 11:16). That is, if the people of Israel are the channel for all the covenants, the patriarchs, the promises (Rom 9:3-5)—i.e., “the root” of the Christian family—then surely the “branches” downstream of the patriarchs (the people of Israel alive in this present age) have a future, too.[13] Their restoration will be like a resurrection from the dead (Rom 11:16)!

Paul now segues into the olive tree parable:

If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches.

Romans 11:17-18

God has broken some of these downstream Israelite “branches” off, and grafted non-native “olive shoots” into the tree. They “now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root.” This is not a substitution or a replacement—it is an unexpected addition. Both (a) the native branches which remain, and (b) the non-native branches which God has added to the tree, partake of the same nutrients from the same root. “The Gentiles nourish themselves on the rich root of the patriarchal promise”[14] because, as the apostle writes elsewhere, “if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise,” (Gal 3:29).

Because these new “olive shoots” are non-native, they mustn’t become arrogant. “You will say then, ‘Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in,’” (Rom 11:19). This is true, but the people of Israel were “hardened” or “blinded” (i.e., branches cut off from the tree) because of their unbelief. In contrast, the nations (i.e., the non-native olive shoots) only remain “in” this tree and stand firm because of faith. Faith is the determining factor, so “[d]o not be arrogant, but tremble,” (Rom 11:20).

If you ever get to the point that you think your relationship with God is because of who you are, what you’ve done, what you bring to the table—that it’s about something other than faith + trust in Jesus (Rom 11:20)—then you’ll be cut out of the tree just as surely as the people of Israel have been (Rom 11:22).

The players in the parable are now clear:

One olive tree → One family of God

Two types of branches on this tree → Two different people groups within God’s family

There is (a) one family of God, (b) from two different places, (c) drawing on the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism (Eph 4:5; i.e., the same sap). There is one flock, governed by the same shepherd and king. There is the same divine rescue, the same love, the same grace, the same forgiveness. This is the secret or mystery which has now been revealed by the Holy Spirit to God’s apostles and prophets: “the secret is that, through the Good News, the nations are fellow-heirs, and united in one family, and sharers together in God’s promise in relationship with Christ Jesus,” (Eph 3:6, my translation).

  • Jesus spoke of “other sheep” that were not native to His flock: “I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock, and one shepherd,” (Jn 10:16).
  • John wrote that the high priest Caiphas spoke better than he knew when he suggested it would be for the greater good if they killed the troublesome Jesus: “[H]e prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one,” (Jn 10:51-52). This refers to the nations.
  • The prophet Isaiah records the words of the mysterious “suffering servant” as he recalls Yahweh’s instructions. It wasn’t enough for the Servant to just rescue the people of Israel: “I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth,” (Isa 49:6).

This means Paul’s olive tree parable is a restatement of an old promise in new clothes. And to be sure, it’s not over for the people of Israel (cp. Rom 11:11)—“if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again,” (Rom 11:23).

3.2. This parable means the people of Israel have a future (vv. 11:25-32)

Paul is using the parable of the olive tree to explain God’s rescue plan—how does the tree come to its finished form? It will be a three-step process:

I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved.[15]

Romans 11:25-26

It’s never been a secret that God plans to rescue His people. What has been a secret is the specific way this rescue plan happens. Paul doesn’t want the nations to be in the dark any longer, else they might become arrogant and think themselves wiser than they are. Here, Paul writes, is the mystery:

  • First, the most people of Israel do not believe God’s good news of righteousness as a gift, by means of faith. Instead, they choose to pursue it by means of “resume-ism.” So, this majority of Israelites are the branches whom God has “broken off” and to whom He’s temporarily sent “blindness” and “hardness of heart”—a dullness of spirit.
  • So, second, God has now pivoted to the nations and to the Jewish remnant—the “wild olive shoots” are being grafted into the tree. This present stage of God’s rescue plan will last “until the full number of the nations have entered in” and joined God’s kingdom family, at which time God lifts the divine “blindness” and rescue operations will proceed for the people of Israel.
  • And so, third, this is how “all Israel will be rescued.”

The “all Israel” refers to the ethnic Jewish people who are alive at the time God moves to the third stage, after the full number of the nations have entered the family.[16]

  • It cannot mean “every Jewish person who ever lived.” God isn’t a universalist (even at the sub-category level), and it would be absurd to suppose Caiphas will be walking the streets of glory.
  • Paul isn’t referring to a re-defined “Israel” consisting of all true believers (cp. Gal 3, 6:16; Rom 4). His focus here in Romans 9-11 is ethnic Jewish people.
  • He isn’t referring to all “true” ethnic Jewish people from all time, because Paul’s burden in Romans 9-11 is to explain what’s happening to the people of Israel right now in relation to His divine timetable.

But, through it all, it’s still the same Jesus, the same king, the same divine rescue mission. Two people groups merged into the same family, the same tree, partaking of the same “sap.” God has not pushed away the people of Israel—there is (a) the remnant which can meanwhile choose to pursue God by means of faith, and (b) the entire number of Jewish people who will embrace Jesus as Messiah after the full number of the nations have come in. The people of Israel “are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable,” (Rom 11:28-29).

This three-stage rescue plan, culminating in God rescuing all the ethnic people of Israel then alive when Christ returns, is just what scripture foretold (“as it is written,” Rom 11:26). The prophet Isaiah tells us that one day the Lord looked about and saw the human situation was hopeless—that He Himself must enter the arena to set things right. “So his own arm achieved salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him,” (Isa 59:16). And so the Redeemer would one day come to Zion—“to those in Jacob who repent of their sins” (Isa 59:20). The covenant Yahweh swore to make with His people would take away their sins, because “My Spirit, who is on you, will not depart from you,” (Isa 59:21). The apostle quotes the former citation and paraphrases the latter as support for a future for the people of Israel (Rom 11:26b-27).

4. One God and father of all

Paul never again probed so far behind the divine curtain. The see-saw of God’s rescue plan—Israel, then the nations, then Israel again (Rom 11:12, 30-32)—overwhelms him. “How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Rom 11:33).

Commentators have spilt gallons of ink and gigabytes of megapixels on interpreting this passage—especially Romans 11:25-26. What is clear is that the people of Israel have a future. It’s not a “blank cheque” future which encourages a laissez-faire life of spiritual fakery. Nor is it a “I’ll never get tickets to the show!” kind of defeatism that one has when trying to purchase Taylor Swift concert tickets. There will be more than a “lucky few” Israelites grafted back into God’s olive tree! It is a real future—(a) the remnant chosen by grace now, followed by (b) “all Israel” present here when Christ returns later.

Yes, God has unfinished business with Israel during the Millennium, but that is merely the last stop before journey’s end. The “Israel maximizers” make a mistake if they hop off the train here,[17] because there is yet one more stop to go. The train decommissions in Revelation 22, when there will be one family, one tree, “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all,” (Eph 4:6). God will restore Eden, and the tree of life will be available to all “for the healing of the nations” (Rev 22:1-5).

Of course, Paul doesn’t discuss that here. But the people of Israel will be there … along with all the other nations who are blessed through Abraham (Gal 3:8) and have become His offspring.

[1] Gk: ἀγνοοῦντες (adverbial, causal) γὰρ (explanatory) τὴν (monadic) τοῦ θεοῦ (gen. source) δικαιοσύνην καὶ τὴν ἰδίαν (δικαιοσύνην) ζητοῦντες (adverbial, causal—paired with ἀγνοοῦντες) στῆσαι (BDAG, s.v., sense 3; anarthrous, complementary), τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ (monadic) τοῦ θεοῦ (gen. source) οὐχ ὑπετάγησαν (passive w/middle sense, constative).

[2] The fact that the people of Israel are “his people” (τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ; Rom 11:1) is significant.

[3] BDAG, s.v. “ἀπωθέω,” sense 2; p. 126.

[4] LSJ, s.v. “ἀπωθέω,” senses 1, 2; p. 232.

[5] OED, s.v. “repudiate,” senses 1a, 2a.

[6] It goes too far to plead that “foreknow” here (προέγνω) means something like “to choose beforehand.” The word can bear that meaning (e.g. 1 Pet 1:20), but the more common use is just “to know beforehand or in advance” (BDAG, s.v., sense 1, p. 966) or to “foreknow” (LSJ, s.v., sense 3). Reformed exegetes who wish to carry water for unconditional single election will find fertile ground elsewhere in scripture, but Romans 11:2 is not the place to plant that flag.

[7] The 1833 New Hampshire Confession explains: “… regeneration consists in giving a holy disposition to the mind; that it is effected in a manner above our comprehension by the power of the Holy Spirit, in connection with divine truth, so as to secure our voluntary obedience to the gospel,” (Article VII).

[8] Gk: εἰ δὲ χάριτι (dative of means), οὐκέτι ἐξ (means) ἔργων.

[9] See BDAG, s.v. “πωρόω,” and LSJ, s.v., sense 3.

[10] Emil Brunner, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. H.A. Kennedy (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959), p. 94.

[11] Λέγω οὖν, μὴ ἔπταισαν (fig. for “sin”) ἵνα πέσωσιν (result clause; BDAG, s.v., sense 2b); μὴ γένοιτο· ἀλλὰ τῷ αὐτῶν (dir. obj) παραπτώματι (dat. reason) ἡ σωτηρία (monadic article) τοῖς ἔθνεσιν (implied verb of “going,” dir. obj.) εἰς τὸ παραζηλῶσαι (purpose clause) αὐτούς (dir. obj. of infinitive—refers to people of Israel).

[12] John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), p. 76.

[13] Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), pp. 411-412.

[14] Brunner, Romans, p. 96.

[15] Gk: Οὐ γὰρ θέλω ὑμᾶς ἀγνοεῖν, ἀδελφοί, τὸ μυστήριον τοῦτο (dir. obj.), ἵνα μὴ ἦτε (purpose clause) παρʼ ἑαυτοῖς φρόνιμοι. ὅτι (appositional—explains the mystery) πώρωσις ἀπὸ μέρους (paired to τῷ Ἰσραὴλ) τῷ Ἰσραὴλ (dative of reference) γέγονεν ἄχρι οὗ τὸ πλήρωμα τῶν ἐθνῶν (partitive) εἰσέλθῃ 26 καὶ (conclusion) οὕτως (adverb of manner) πᾶς Ἰσραὴλ σωθήσεται, καθὼς γέγραπται.

“Now, I don’t want you all to be in the dark about this secret, brothers and sisters, so that you won’t think you’re wiser than you are. The secret is that a dullness of spirit has come upon some of the people of Israel until the full number of the nations have entered in. And so, that is how all Israel will be rescued …”

[16] “… Paul speaks of a future salvation of ethnic Israel near or at the return of Jesus Christ,” (Tom Schreiner, Romans, in BECNT, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2018), pp. 598ff). See also Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, in NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 723.

[17] Tom Schreiner rightly warns: “The purpose of this revelation is not to titillate the interest of the church or to satisfy their curiosity about future events. The mystery is disclosed so that the gentiles will not fall prey to pride …” (Romans, p. 595).

Outsiders from the East

Outsiders from the East

Epiphany celebrates God revealing Himself to the Gentiles. The first people who worshiped the Christ-child as the king over the world were lowly shepherds outside Bethlehem. The second group were magi from the east, whom God deliberately led right to the very house where the child was. Why? So they could worship Him, too. They brought gifts. They fell down on their faces in homage. They worshiped. Then, they rejoiced and went home. That means something. It’s special.

The Old Covenant clearly explained that God intended His family to include more than ethnic Jewish people. However, for various reasons, by the time of Jesus’ birth a nasty “Jew v. Gentile” attitude had taken root in major corners of Jewish popular culture. We see this in Peter’s harsh words to Cornelius (Acts 10:26-27), in the Jerusalem church’s indignant interrogation of Peter (Acts 11:1-3), and in the incident which prompted the letter to the Galatians. This attitude was completely at odds with the care and deliberation God shows us in this passage, wherein God prepared, equipped, and led the magi out west for perhaps two years time until He’d brought them right to the very house where the newborn king lay with His mother and Joseph.

This sermon is about the “epiphany” God revealed to a community that had a difficult time accepting it. In different times and in sundry ways, churches have made the same mistakes. This passage teaches us to look out for our blind spots, because there is no caste system in God’s family.

Below is my translation of Matthew 2:1-12 from my Epiphany Sunday sermon, on 07 January 2024. The video of the sermon is below, along with the problem and solution I focused on from the text.

1-2: After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which is in Judea, in the days of Herod the King—listen to what happened next!—wise men from the East arrived in Jerusalem. They were asking: “Where is the one who was born as King over the Jews? Because we saw His star in the East and we came to worship Him.”[1]

3-6: Now, when Herod the King heard about this, he was very uneasy–along with everyone else in Jerusalem. So, he gathered together all the chief priests and scribes from the Jewish people and was asking them: “Where is the Messiah going to be born?”

And they said to him: “In Bethlehem, in Judea, because that’s the way it was written by the prophets: ‘And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah–you are certainly not least among the rulers of Judah! Because from you a leader will emerge who will shepherd my people–Israel.’”[2]

7-8: Then Herod secretly summoned the wise men to learn from them exactly when the star appeared.  He sent them to Bethlehem and said: “Go and search carefully for the child. When you find him, report back to me so that I too can come and worship him.”[3]

9-12: After they heard the king, they set out and–listen, now!–the star they saw in the east was going out ahead of them and came to rest above where the child was. When the wise men saw the star, they rejoiced with very great joy.

Then they came into the house and saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him, and they opened their strongboxes and offered him gifts–gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. 

Because they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by another route.[4] 

[1] Τοῦ δὲ [transition] Ἰησοῦ γεννηθέντος ἐν Βηθλέεμ τῆς Ἰουδαίας [partitive] ἐν ἡμέραις Ἡρῴδου [partitive] τοῦ βασιλέως [gen. apposition] ἰδοὺ [interjection, imper.] μάγοι [BDAG, s.v. “μάγος,” sense 1, p. 608] ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν παρεγένοντο εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμa 2 λέγοντες [attributive, paired to μάγοι; iterative]· ποῦ ἐστιν ὁ τεχθεὶς βασιλεὺς [predicate nom.] τῶν Ἰουδαίων [gen. social relationship]; εἴδομεν γὰρ αὐτοῦ τὸν ἀστέρα ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ καὶ ἤλθομεν προσκυνῆσαι [anarthrous, complementary inf.] αὐτῷ [direct obj.]

[2] ἀκούσας [adverbial–temporal] δὲ [transition] ὁ βασιλεὺς Ἡρῴδης [nom. app] ἐταράχθη [BDAG, s.v. “ταράσσω,”sense 1, p. 990; LSJ, s.v., p. 1757] καὶ πᾶσα Ἱεροσόλυμα μετʼ αὐτοῦ, 4 καὶ [conclusion] συναγαγὼν πάντας τοὺς ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ γραμματεῖς τοῦ λαοῦ [partitive–Jewish, not secular advisors] ἐπυνθάνετο παρʼ αὐτῶν ποῦ ὁ χριστὸς γεννᾶται [futuristic present] 5 οἱ δὲ εἶπαν αὐτῷ· ἐν Βηθλέεμ τῆς Ἰουδαίας [partitive]· οὕτως [adverb of manner] γὰρ γέγραπται διὰ [agency] τοῦ προφήτου· 6 καὶ σὺ Βηθλέεμ, γῆ Ἰούδα, οὐδαμῶς ἐλαχίστη εἶ ἐν τοῖς ἡγεμόσιν Ἰούδα ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ [explanatory] ἐξελεύσεται ἡγούμενος [substantival], ὅστις ποιμανεῖ τὸν λαόν μου τὸν Ἰσραήλ [acc. apposition].

[3] Τότε Ἡρῴδης λάθρᾳ καλέσας [BDAG, s.v., sense 3, p. 502] τοὺς μάγους [dir. obj.] ἠκρίβωσεν παρʼ αὐτῶν τὸν χρόνον τοῦ φαινομένου ἀστέρος, 8 καὶ πέμψας αὐτοὺς εἰς Βηθλέεμ εἶπεν· πορευθέντες ἐξετάσατε ἀκριβῶς περὶ τοῦ παιδίου· ἐπὰν δὲ εὕρητε, ἀπαγγείλατέ μοι, ὅπως κἀγὼ ἐλθὼν προσκυνήσω αὐτῷ

[4] Οἱ δὲ ἀκούσαντες τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπορεύθησαν καὶ ἰδοὺ ὁ ἀστήρ, ὃν εἶδον ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ, προῆγεν αὐτούς, ἕως ἐλθὼν ἐστάθη ἐπάνω οὗ ἦν τὸ παιδίον. 10 ἰδόντες δὲ τὸν ἀστέρα ἐχάρησαν χαρὰν μεγάλην σφόδρα. 11 καὶ ἐλθόντες εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν εἶδον τὸ παιδίον μετὰ Μαρίας τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ, καὶ πεσόντες προσεκύνησαν αὐτῷ καὶ ἀνοίξαντες τοὺς θησαυροὺς αὐτῶν προσήνεγκαν αὐτῷ δῶρα, χρυσὸν καὶ λίβανον καὶ σμύρναν. 12 Καὶ χρηματισθέντες [adverbial, causal] κατʼ ὄναρ μὴ ἀνακάμψαι πρὸς Ἡρῴδην, διʼ ἄλλης ὁδοῦ ἀνεχώρησαν εἰς τὴν χώραν αὐτῶν.

The First Christmas

The First Christmas

Here is my translation of Luke 2:6-18 from my sermon from Christmastide, this past Sunday. I never preach my own translations, but I use them for insight while I preach the text. My preaching text is the NIV. But, for what it’s worth, here is how I rendered this beautiful revelation of the first Christmas. It’s significant that God chose to make humble shepherds the very first evangelists!

6-7: And it happened, while they were in Bethlehem, the days for her to give birth were fulfilled. She gave birth to her son—her firstborn. She wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a feeding trough, because there was no room for them at the lodging place.[1]

8-9: Now, in the same area, there were shepherds living outdoors and keeping watch over their flock at night. Then, an angel from the Lord suddenly appeared to them, and the Lord’s glory shone on them, and they were terribly frightened.[2]

10-12: And the angel said to them: “Don’t be frightened! Listen! I’m bring good news to you—great, joyful news to all the people. Because today, in David’s city, a savior has been born for you who is Messiah—the Lord. This is how you all will know this is true: you’ll find the baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a feeding trough.”[3]

13-14: Then, all at once, there appeared with the angel a large crowd of the heavenly army praising God and saying: “Glory to God who is in the heavens above! And peace on earth to the people with whom He’s pleased!”[4]

15: And it came to pass, as the angels departed from them into heaven, the shepherds were saying to one another: “Let’s all go right now to Bethlehem and check out this thing that has just happened, which the Lord has revealed to us.”[5]

16-18: So, they went and hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the feeding trough. When they saw all this, they told everyone about the message which was told to them about that child. And everyone who heard was astonished at what was told to them by the shepherds.[6]

[1] Gk: Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν τῷ εἶναι αὐτοὺς ἐκεῖ [in this context, ἐν τῷ + infinitive = contemporaneous time] ἐπλήσθησαν αἱ ἡμέραι [subject nominative] τοῦ τεκεῖν αὐτήν [partitive genitive], καὶ ἔτεκεν τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῆς τὸν πρωτότοκον [accusative of apposition], καὶ ἐσπαργάνωσεν αὐτὸν καὶ ἀνέκλινεν αὐτὸν ἐν φάτνῃ, διότι οὐκ ἦν αὐτοῖς τόπος ἐν τῷ καταλύματι.

[2] Gk: Καὶ ποιμένες ἦσαν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ [BDAG, s.v., sense 2, p. 1093] τῇ αὐτῇ [identical adjective] ἀγραυλοῦντες καὶ φυλάσσοντες [attributive] φυλακὰς τῆς νυκτὸς ἐπὶ τὴν ποίμνην αὐτῶν. καὶ [temporal] ἄγγελος κυρίου [gen. source] ἐπέστη [Louw-Nida 17.5, cp. Lk 24:4] αὐτοῖς καὶ δόξα ⸀κυρίου [gen. poss.] περιέλαμψεν αὐτούς [Louw-Nida 14.44; LSJ, s.v. “περιλάμπω,” sense II, p. 1378] καὶ ἐφοβήθησαν φόβον μέγαν [adverbial accusative].

[3] Gk: καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ὁ ἄγγελος· μὴ φοβεῖσθε, ἰδοὺ γὰρ εὐαγγελίζομαι ὑμῖν χαρὰν μεγάλην ἥτις ἔσται [epex. sense] παντὶ τῷ λαῷ, 11 ὅτι [explanatory] ἐτέχθη ὑμῖν [dat. indirect–benefaction] σήμερον σωτὴρ [subj. nom] ὅς ἐστιν χριστὸς κύριος [gen. app] ἐν πόλει Δαυίδ [subj. gen]. 12 καὶ τοῦτο ὑμῖν τὸ σημεῖον, εὑρήσετε βρέφος ἐσπαργανωμένον καὶ κείμενον ἐν φάτνῃ.

[4] Gk: καὶ ἐξαίφνης ἐγένετο σὺν τῷ ἀγγέλῳ πλῆθος [subj. nom] στρατιᾶς [part. gen] οὐρανίου [att. gen.] αἰνούντων [attributive part. with στρατιᾶς] τὸν θεὸν καὶ λεγόντων· 14 δόξα [nominative of address—optative flavor] ἐν ὑψίστοις [prep. = statial] θεῷ [dat. direct obj] καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη [nominative of address–optative flavor] ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας [att. gen; cp. TLNT; s.v., p. 103].

[5] Gk: Καὶ ἐγένετο ὡς [temporal adverb] ἀπῆλθον ἀπʼ αὐτῶν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν οἱ ἄγγελοι, οἱ ποιμένες ⸀ἐλάλουν πρὸς ἀλλήλους· διέλθωμεν δὴ [emphatic particle] ἕως Βηθλέεμ καὶ ἴδωμεν [“investigate,” LSJ, s.v. “εἴδω,” sense A.3.b., p. 483] τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦτο τὸ γεγονὸς [att. participle] ὃ ὁ κύριος ἐγνώρισεν ἡμῖν.

[6] Gk: καὶ ἦλθαν σπεύσαντες καὶ ἀνεῦραν τήν τε Μαριὰμ καὶ τὸν Ἰωσὴφ καὶ τὸ βρέφος κείμενον ἐν τῇ φάτνῃ· 17 ἰδόντες [substantival part.] δὲ ἐγνώρισαν περὶ τοῦ ῥήματος τοῦ λαληθέντος αὐτοῖς περὶ τοῦ παιδίου τούτου. καὶ πάντες οἱ ἀκούσαντες ἐθαύμασαν περὶ τῶν λαληθέντων ὑπὸ τῶν ποιμένων πρὸς αὐτούς.

A Prayer for the King

A Prayer for the King

We sometimes see Jesus’ mission as just personal salvation—a golden ticket away from a sinking ship. Christmas then becomes a celebration about the ticket going on sale for those who want it. In Psalm 72, Solomon shows us a Christmas vision that includes personal salvation, but is so much bigger than that.

Solomon wrote this psalm.[1] Like many Old Testament texts about the king of Israel, it operates on two levels. First, Solomon writes a prayer for his own son, Rehoboam. That didn’t work out so well (see 1 Kgs 12; 2 Chr 10). But, on a deeper level, this is also a wish for what the real king of Israel should be like. We’ll focus on the second level in this article. The first verse captures Solomon’s plea, and the rest of the psalm is an elaboration on that wish.

Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness.

Psalm 72:1

Solomon wants the king to embody justice or right judgment—the insight to do the right thing. We like that quality. There’s a reason why politicians run as so-called “outsiders” who are “untainted” by the Washington swamp (etc., etc.). In his 1976 presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter famously pledged “I’ll never lie to you!” We like to believe in people who claim they’ll do “the right thing,” who claim to be “good people” in contrast to the “bad” folks now in power.

Of course, we all have different ideas of what the “right thing” is! So, Solomon asks God to endow His king “with your righteousness.” God’s king is all about God’s values, God’s righteousness. But, what are His values? We might be quick to answer in terms of “moral codes,” but Solomon never mentions those at all. We’ll return to this soon.

Now we see a series of prayers. When God’s people looked forward to a good king (“the royal son”), what did God teach them He’d be like?

May he judge your people in righteousness, your afflicted ones with justice.

Psalm 72:2

He’ll judge His people “in righteousness,” which means He judges the right way, all the time. He makes sure justice is done. No courts, no trials, no deliberations, no mistakes. The state of Oklahoma just released a man who served 48 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.[2] In contrast, the true king will judge God’s “afflicted ones with justice.”

Who are these “afflicted ones”? These are the “small people.” The hurting, the struggling, the people who are tired, at the end of themselves, without hope. This royal son—the king of the world to come—will vindicate everyone who is afflicted because of injustice (in any form). He’ll set things right—especially for the “forgotten people” of this world.

This is the first hint that Solomon’s vision of the king’s mission is bigger than individual salvation. He continues:

May the mountains bring prosperity to the people, the hills the fruit of righteousness.

Psalm 72:3

This isn’t a wish for some crude prosperity gospel, but a longing for a better time when the king fixes us and this world. The agricultural references are just a metaphor for “good times.” In 1984, President Ronald Reagan famously said it was “morning in America!”[3] Well, here Solomon says “it’ll be morning in paradise when the king is here!”

What will happen when the morning comes? What will this “new day” look like? Rather than well-meaning moralism, Solomon describes a much more comprehensive renovation:

May he defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; may he crush the oppressor.

Psalm 72:4

Eternity will not involve sitting on clouds in heaven. Instead, Solomon prays for a future in which the king does justice on a renovated earth. What would this world look like if:

  1. The king defended the afflicted? If he was on the side of those who are hurting and have no advocate? No voice? No hope? No power? Nobody caring about them once they have their vote?
  2. The king rescued (cp. LXX) the children of the poor? A local elementary school just contacted our church asking if we would help stock a food pantry of sorts it was organizing for kids who didn’t have enough food at home. One day this problem will be over.
  3. The king crushed the oppressors? These are the folks who move the levers of power in oppressive, unholy directions—not just cartoon villains, but also the faceless drones who aid and abet unholy policies that have oppressive effects downstream. God will rip them down from their lofty perches! This was Mary’s prayer as an afflicted and hurting poor woman in a rural town—she wanted the Messiah to fix the injustice in this rotten world (Lk 1:52-55).

After prayers for this king’s reign to never end and to be like water to a parched land (Ps 72:5-7), Solomon shows us the breadth of this king’s reign:

May he rule from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.

Psalm 72:8

The realm will extend over the whole earth, “from sea to sea.” Solomon assembles the most exotic cast of characters his geographic frame of reference could conjure to stress this point. Nomads from the deserts, kings from Tarshish “and of distant shores,” and heads of state from Seba and Sheba (perhaps modern-day Yemen)—they will all come to Jerusalem to pledge allegiance to the true king. They’ll “lick the dust” and prostrate themselves before Him. They’ll bring tribute and presents. They’ll bow down and serve Him (Ps 72:9-11).

The New Testament writers often focus on salvation, on personal rescue from Satan (“save yourselves from this corrupt generation!” Acts 2:40). Solomon would surely agree, but in this psalm he takes a larger view. He doesn’t mention salvation at all. So, why will the nations come to the king? Why will people from exotic, faraway lands come to worship God’s royal son as the king of the world? What’s the hook? What’s the attraction? What’s the selling point?

The answer is surprising:

For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help. He will take pity on the weak and the needy and save the needy from death. He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in his sight.

Psalm 72:12-14

The nations will come to the king because (“for”) He rescues the weak, the needy, and the afflicted. These are likely the same people under cover of three names. They are the lowly, the poor in spirit (Mt 5:3). Not just the “lower classes,” but more “the hurting classes”—the struggling, the “little people,” the working class, the oppressed.

The nations will come because this king rescues. Because He has pity. It isn’t salvation at the barrel of a gun, or salvation by escape from this world. It’s a salvation whose draw, whose hook, whose attraction is pity for the hurting, and rescue for the oppressed. In short, a king who promises to fix us and this world. This includes personal salvation, but is also so much more than that.

Why will the king do this? Because our lives matter to Him (“for precious is their blood in his sight,” Ps 72:14). Because He cares about us. Because He wants to help us. Because He loves us—especially when we don’t love Him back.

Near the end of the psalm, Solomon exclaims “Long may he live! … May his name endure forever; may it continue as long as the sun,” (Ps 72:15, 17). He then writes this beautiful line:

Then all nations will be blessed through him, and they will call him blessed.

Psalm 72:17

This is an echo of God’s promise to Abraham and His special descendant, so long ago (Gen 12:3; cp. Gal 3:16). God swore that Abraham would somehow be the channel for God’s blessing to the whole world. But, who is it referring to here?

To Jesus.

Abraham is that channel to the world—through Jesus, His descendant (Mt 1:1; Gal 3:16). Christmas is indeed about individual salvation and rescue, but the Savior’s mission isn’t just to give us a ticket on a fast train to Georgia before this whole thing burns up. Solomon knew that. He knew that God’s true royal king would bless the nations of the world through the message He brought. A message about Himself, about rescue from prison, about liberation from Satan—the spiritual kidnapper.

When King Jesus rescues us, He gives us a place in the renovated world that’s coming. A world where justice will be done and things will be set right. Where the weak, the needy, and the afflicted will be defended, where the oppressed will see justice done, where the oppressors will be crushed and punished—all according to God’s definition of righteousness, not ours.

The third stanza of the song “O Holy Night!” reflects much of Solomon’s emphases:

Truly He taught us to love one another; His law is love and His gospel is peace. Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother, And in His name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we; Let all within us praise His holy name. Christ is the Lord! O praise His name forever! His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim! His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!

O Holy Night! (third stanza)

‌Brotherly love. The good news of peace on earth. Broken chains. Oppression vanquished. Songs of grateful praise. It’s beautiful. Surprisingly, the song was written in 1847 by an atheist Frenchman. He wrote it as a favor to a friend who was a local priest. He did his background research by studying the Gospel of Luke.

‌I wonder if the author ever fully appreciated the beautiful truths he wrote about so movingly. It’s the same story Solomon knew, and the same one that faithful Christians still celebrate today. Christmas is the story of a Savior who has come to rescue and renovate us and our world, so that justice can be done on earth, so we can be with Him forever. And the Christmas message is that anyone who turns to God, through Christ, will be rescued and given a place in His family, and in the better tomorrow that’s coming.

[1] Or, maybe not. The LXX subscription reads “To Solomon,” which leads some to speculate that David wrote the psalm for Solomon.

[2] Jesus Jiminez, “Man Cleared of Murder After More Than 48 Years in Prison.” NY Times. 20 December 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/20/us/glynn-simmons-exoneration-oklahoma.html?smid=url-share.

[3] See https://youtu.be/pUMqic2IcWA?si=GPPgSgaxwrzO76oD. 

Church and State no. 2: The two kingdoms

Church and State no. 2: The two kingdoms

We continue our discussion of the relationship between the church and the state (see the series here). The previous article in this series introduced the topic of church v. state. We discussed two critical paradigm shifts with which any American Christian audience must reckon (a task in which it sometimes fails). We presented three general operating environments in which the church often operates—their boosters often see these frameworks as the preferred, ideal paradigm. I then offered a precis of the five principles which should inform any discussion of the “church v. state” problem. Now, in this piece, we’ll examine the first and most basic principle for considering this issue. Here it is …

  • There are two kingdoms; Babylon and Jerusalem. Babylon will lose.

The Apostle John paints a picture of two competing kingdoms—Babylon and Jerusalem (Rev 17-18). This contrast is the story of history and reality. We’ll sketch each kingdom, in turn.

1. Babylon is Satan’s kingdom, symbolized as a charming seductress.

John’s picture fades in on a pretty woman sitting atop a beast.

The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries.

Revelation 17:4

John tells us the woman’s name is “Babylon the great,” that she is a prostitute, and the mother of all the abominations of the earth (Rev 17:5). This woman is a figure for the beguiling ways Satan tempts us to follow him.

For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.

Revelation 18:3

Babylon, personified as an attractive call girl, offers “wine” to the masses resulting in “adulteries,” which God often uses as a metaphor for spiritual rebellion (e.g. Hosea 1-3). The nations lust after her, buying her services, committing “adultery.” The merchants trade with her, less interested in her physical charms than in the money they can make in trade. Like the sinister villain in Stephen King’s Needful Things, Babylon offers up whatever we desire with the aim of keeping us in her embrace. She buys us all, each in our own way. “By your magic spells all the nations were led astray,” (Rev 18:23).

This passage ends with Babylon’s destruction, her ruins aflame (“the smoke from her goes up for ever and ever,” Rev 19:3). The merchants, the heads of state, and all those involved in the economic system which abets this “trade” will cry aloud in shock when they behold the end of everything they know (Rev 18:4-20)—the “kingdom” which shaped their reality has fallen.

In the bible’s storyline Babylon is, of course, the empire which conquered Judah, destroyed the first temple, and carried the flower of the southern kingdom off into exile. Beyond the purely historical reference to that specific calamity, scripture later takes “Babylon” and uses it to personify evil and all that opposes God—it’s a figure, a metaphor, a representation. The prophet Isaiah speaks darkly about the king of Babylon, yet his words seem to shade over to a deeper meaning—perhaps referring to Satan himself (Isa 14:3ff). Zechariah speaks of an angel crushing into a basket a woman who represents sin and sending her far away to the east … where Babylon lies (Zech 5).

Now, in Revelation 17-18, God has poured out all His judgments, “Babylon” has fallen, and now Jesus returns to the world He left behind on that day so long-ago outside Jerusalem (Acts 1; Rev 19). In this passage, Babylon is Satan’s kingdom; and the system, culture, world, and values that oppose God have finally crumbled to bits—destroyed from on high with sudden violence (Rev 18:21).

When Jesus returns with “the armies of heaven” (Rev 19:14), He quickly destroys the beast, the false prophet, and the entire army which they mustered. This is a cosmic clash of two opposing forces—darkness v. light. Each character is the opposite of the other on the divine playbill:

Antichrist is Satan’s delegate → Jesus is the Father’s delegate.

Antichrist has an army → Jesus has an army.

Antichrist loses → Jesus wins.

After the millennium, God releases Satan, who tries to salvage what he can from the wreckage—a Battle of the Bulge-like gamble, a last roll of the dice (Rev 20:7-10). Now the struggle isn’t between the delegates, but between the supreme players themselves—it’s God who immolates Satan from on high with a divine fireball (Rev 20:9-10).

The evil empire falls in Revelation 17-18. The coup leaders are each cast into the lake of fire (Rev 19:20; 20:10). God has meted out rewards to the righteous, and judgment to the wicked (Rev 20:4-6, 11-15). Now that God has swept the debris of Satan’s coup away, God brings about His own kingdom (Rev 21-22). Creation is remade, sin is destroyed, and God finally has the community He’s been working to re-create since our first parents made their fateful choice. “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them,” (Rev 21:3)—Emmanuel, indeed (cf. Isa 7:14; Mt 1:23)!

2. Jerusalem is God’s kingdom, fighting with Babylon over the same ground.

Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds tells us about His kingdom in a powerful way. He explained:

The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

Matthew 13:24-26

Jesus wants to talk about the kingdom and this parable is an allegory[1] to explain all about it. This is one of the few parables where Jesus identifies the true referent for every character in the story; you have (1) a farmer, (2) an enemy, (3) a wheat crop, and (4) a bunch of weeds. The setup is simple; a farmer sows seed but it turns out bad!

That is terrible. Something’s gotta be done …

The owner’s servants came to him and said, “Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?”

“An enemy did this,” he replied.

The servants asked him, “Do you want us to go and pull them up?”

Matthew 13:27-28

The field was supposed to be one thing, but now it’s a hot mess. The servants think they should go clean it up—why not go and rip out the weeds? What does Jesus think?

“No,” he answered, “because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.”

Matthew 13:29-30

Jesus says no. He says the field will never be cleansed until the harvest—Jesus will give orders to sort it all out then. But, for now, just leave it alone—let the weeds and the wheat all grow up together. If they try to pick out the weeds now, they’ll probably just rip out a whole bunch of wheat. Better to leave it.

In Matthew’s gospel, the writer then inserts a few other parables about the kingdom, but circles back to Jesus’ explanation of our story. This is an intriguing story, so much so that the disciples wanted to hear Jesus explain it once they had a chance to speak to Him alone (Mt 13:36).

He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.”

Matthew 13:37-39

Jesus has now explained all the referents:

kingdom of heaven→this scenario of events
farmer→Son of Man = Jesus
field→world
good seed ≈ wheat→people of kingdom
weeds→people of evil one
stealthy enemy→devil

Pay particular attention to the field—what is it? Jesus says it’s the world, and this “field” boasts two crops which are growing side by side—the “people of the kingdom” and “people of the evil one.” This battlespace is simple—two opposing kingdoms, each with its own commanding officer, each with its own followers, inhabiting the same territory. This war will resolve when the “harvesters” arrive, whom Jesus identifies as angels.

He explains:  

As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.

Matthew 13:36-43

This “field” that is our world will remain a mess until “the end of the age.” The harvesters will fix the field when Jesus sends them. But notice that Jesus now calls the “field” the “kingdom”—He says the angels “will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.” The field is both the world and the kingdom. This suggests Jesus sees the world—this present battlespace—as transitioning into His kingdom at the decisive moment in the future when He intervenes. It’s as if “this world” is the territory at issue throughout history, and Jesus views it as already His, and judgment is (in part) Him sweeping evil out of His lands forever.

“Then,” He promises, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Why? Because the “weeds” will be gone, and the “wheat” will finally be free to flourish in the field (i.e., “the kingdom of their Father”) without an invasive species choking them.

Jesus’ kingdom is here, right now. It’s in this world in the form of a dispersed community in exile (see no. 3-4, below) in a hostile land.[2] This situation will remain that way until the end of the age (cf. the parable of the net at Mt 13:47-50)—it’s why Jesus said this whole parable, the entire state of affairs it sketched, “is like” the kingdom of heaven. As one early Christian discipleship manual said, “There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between the two ways.”[3]

3. The world as the battlespace for the two kingdoms at war

This is a sketch of the battlespace we’ve occupied from the Fall to the present. This is the foundation for considering the vexing issue of church v. state. There is a kingdom of darkness called Babylon. There is also a kingdom belonging to God which the Apostle Paul refers to as “the Jerusalem that is above” (Gal 4:26; cf. Rev 21:2). These two kingdoms are the cultures, values, and societies corresponding to two quite different masters—Satan and God. Viewed the right way, we can frame the big picture of history as the story of these two kingdoms in supernatural conflict.

Babylon will lose. Jerusalem will win, and then (and only then) …

… with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

Isaiah 11:4-5

From this fountainhead, other principles logically follow. We’ll turn to these in the next articles.

[1] “A story, picture, etc., which uses symbols to convey a hidden or ulterior meaning, typically a moral or political one; a symbolic representation; an extended or continued metaphor,” (s.v. “allegory,” noun, no. 2, OED Online. March 2023. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/5230?rskey=ts99zo&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed May 05, 2023)).

[2] For an argument for the “already, but not yet” aspect of the kingdom, see Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, trans. H. de Jongste (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1962), esp. §IV. Many Americans often turn to George Ladd when they think of “already, but not yet,” but Ridderbos published first.

For dispensationalist rejoinders to the idea of kingdom being present now, see esp. (1) Chafer, Systematic, pp. 5:333-358; 7:223-224, and (2) Alva McClain, The Greatness of the Kingdom: An Inductive Study of the Kingdom of God (reprint; Winona Lake: BMH, 2009).

[3] “Didache”1.1, in The Apostolic Fathers in English, trans. Rick Brannan (Bellingham: Lexham, 2012).

The “new creation” or bust

The “new creation” or bust

This article is part of a commentary series through the Book of Galatians. This article covers Galatians 6:11-18. You can find the rest of the series (so far) here: Galatians 3:1-6, and Galatians 3:7-14, and Galatians 3:15-22, and Galatians 3:23 – 4:7, and Galatians 4:12-20, and Galatians 4:21 – 5:12, Galatians 5:13-26, and Galatians 6:1-10.

Paul now presses a few reminders and offers his assessment of the Judaizer’s motives. This is really a postscript; a closing line or two summing up the matter and issuing a broadside or two against his opponents. What’s quite clear is Paul’s genuine worry about the Christians in Galatia. The situation is so dire—believing in a false version of the “gospel”—that Paul is compelled to once more speak very plainly to press home his remarks.

See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!

Galatians 6:11

Paul often uses a secretary to transcribe his letters (cf. Rom 16:22). But here, at the end of this unpleasant but necessary communique, Paul takes the pen from his secretary’s hand and writes the last bit himself. The Christians in Galatia who handled the letter would immediately see the different handwriting and hopefully be touched by the gesture.[1] In a letter with contains so many stern rebukes, a loving and personal touch like this is a nice gesture.

Paul reveals that this isn’t an honest dispute between two parties who have a theological disagreement.

Those who want to impress people by means of the flesh are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ.

Galatians 6:12

The Judaizers are pushing for “converts” in order to avoid persecution. Paul says this is the “only” reason they’re doing what they’re doing.[2] We don’t know the precise situation. Many believe the Judaizers fear persecution from the larger Jewish community—and that may well be the issue.[3] Another possibility is that they fear local Roman authorities who may have little patience for what they perceive to be an exclusivist cult.[4] Here is a sketch of the situation to help us figure out the battlespace.[5]

First, the Roman Empire was a syncretistic society.

All sorts of religions flourished and were tolerated to some degree. All that was asked in return by Jesus’ day was a sort of mega-pluralism—a respect and homage to the cult of the emperor.

Second, the Jews were generally not loved but tolerated. Yes, they had their invisible God who couldn’t be represented by images or idols, and they had a fanaticism about their God being the “only one.” Yes, it was weird and exclusivist. But, for all that, Jews were a known quantity. They were understood, acknowledged, and tolerated within limits. They’d carved out a precarious place for themselves in the Roman world.[6]

Third, the Christians were a different story.

At first, the Romans saw them as a Jewish cult and so “the Way” initially had some measure of quasi-legitimacy. But the movement was rapidly being recognized as a “new thing.” This “new thing” got no love from the Roman authorities, who didn’t know or understand what it was about. A new, exclusivist cult that pronounced that this man Jesus was the true king? A martyr whose death was stirring unrest in various places throughout the Mediterranean basin? This was trouble.

It makes sense that anxious Jews who were attracted to Christianity might seek shelter from potential Roman persecution by hiding under a Jewish umbrella—hence the very Jewish flavor of their “gospel.” However, as Jewish unrest grew in Judea from the mid-50s AD onward culminating in the revolt of 66-70, the wisdom of aligning oneself with that party would be increasingly open to question.

On the other hand, fourthly, the Christian movement was also the target of repeated Israelite attacks, most infamously at the very hands of the apostle Paul!

The apostle’s later persecution by and incessant trouble with outraged Jews throughout the Mediterranean proves the depth of hostility that Christianity provoked in their community. This reaction operated on two levels. On the one hand were the theological conservatives, characterized by the Pharisee party among the Sanhedrin, who believed Christianity was leading good Jews into apostasy. Christians were therefore dangerous and subversive heretics who must be stopped—now. On the other hand, we have the more populist reactions from officials and laypeople in the provincial synagogues—the people from whom Paul encountered such opposition during his missionary travels.

Either way, the Jews saw “the Way” as a heretical cult and Judaism had a long tradition of bringing a sledgehammer to a fistfight when stirred to action and fueled by religious fervor. Phineas was celebrated for killing an Israelite as the blackguard cavorted with a Moabite prostitute (Num 25:1-13). Centuries later, Mattathias struck down a fellow Israelite who offered pagan sacrifice in obedience to the Seleucid king, thereby sparking the Maccabean Rebellion (1 Macc 2:15f).

Ironically, Paul himself was later this same group’s arch-foe. Paul spoke movingly about the persecutions he suffered (Gal 5:11), and the Book of Acts is all the testimony one needs to see that his main foe were the pious Jews who thought they were doing the Lord’s work by taking Paul off the board. To quote Joseph Stalin, “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem!” (cf. Jn 11:49-50). Indeed, it was enraged Jews whose hysterical reaction at seeing their nemesis in the flesh resulted in Paul’s arrest (Acts 21:27f). They then engineered more than one hare-brained plot to kill him while he remained in Roman custody—a conspiracy involving no less than certain key members of the Sanhedrin and perhaps 40 fanatics who pledged to not eat or drink until Paul was slain (Acts 23:12-15; 25:1-3).

Fifth, in between Paul and full-blown Judaism were the Jewish-flavored Christians, represented by the hardliners in the Jerusalem congregation who were always suspicious of Paul (Acts 23:17-24) and very uneasy with Peter’s forays into Gentile evangelism (Acts 11:1-18).

It was this party that pressured Peter, whom they always considered “their man,” to stop fraternizing with Gentiles (Gal 2:11f). It was these same people that sent emissaries out to Antioch to pressure the new believers there to add “obedience to Moses’ law” as a condition of salvation (Acts 15:1-4). It was the Jerusalem community which had earlier sent Barnabas to Antioch after hearing word that a large group of Gentiles had converted and joined the church there (Acts 11:22). Barnabas was likely on orders to “scout out” the situation, not because the Jerusalem leaders were overjoyed about new converts, but because these new believers were Gentiles.

The Book of Acts depicts James as trying to desperately hold the Gentile and Jewish constituencies together in the Jerusalem congregation; even securing a concession from Paul to placate the hardliners in their midst (Acts 21:22-24). Much earlier, this same congregation struggled with hostility among both the Jewish hardline and the more “worldly” widows among them (Acts 6:1). Not unlike the way regional prejudices colored the practical outworking of the Gospel in the Jim Crow south, these Jewish Christians were officially “fine” but functionally very uneasy with full Gentile participation in the Jesus community. It is people from this group who are the Judaizers stirring up trouble among the Galatian congregations.

So, sixthly, the Christians found themselves in a difficult spot by the mid-50s AD.

Despised by the Jews as an apostate cult on the one hand, whilst on the other they were scrutinized with increasingly furrowed brows by local Roman authorities of varying competence and quality. Pilate himself was a mid-level civil servant of modest abilities whose weakness was obvious to the wily Annas and his son-in-law, Caiaphas.

The question now is—what do these Judaizers fear the most? Do they fear persecution from provincial Roman authorities, or from increasingly fundamentalist Jewish (non-Christian) hardliners? On balance, the evidence favors the second option. The gossip is that Paul (and, by extension, his converts) lead Jews away from the Torah and convince them to forsake Jewish customs (Acts 21:21). This is kinda true, though not for the reasons they think. But nuance has never been sexy. In every age, those who shout the loudest have a remarkable ability to carry a larger, more passive bloc along with them. This is why a few partisans could whip a crowd into a frenzy when they spotted Paul in the temple courtyard (Acts 21:27-28).

And so the more Jewish-oriented Christians who “were not bold enough to defy the prejudices of their unconverted fellow-countrymen”[7] sought cover from the Jewish hardliners.

The rival mission considered Paul’s activity as a threat to the larger group (the Jewish people), which had to be preserved. These teachers were also acutely aware that apostates could be persecuted by the zealous (as Paul himself had done prior to his conversion; Gal 1:13-14, 23). It would have been in everyone’s best interests, they would have thought, to make it clear to both non-Christian and Christian Jews that the Jesus movement was in no way a movement that promoted apostasy.

By reinforcing Jewish (Christian) adherence to the Torah, and all the more by bringing Gentiles to the light of the law, the rival teachers could save themselves, the church in Judea, and the churches in the Diaspora where Jewish communities were strong, from the intramural persecution that perceived apostasy could invite.[8]

If you’re a Jewish person who is attracted to Christianity (for whatever reason), what is one way to (a) escape the wrath of the Jewish fundamentalist hardliners who have hounded Paul from one end of the eastern Mediterranean to the other, and (b) still retain Jesus-ish teachings? One possibility is to combine Judaism with Jesus. First, you emphasize the fraudulent heritage of works righteousness to which the true Old Covenant religion had degenerated—the rally-cry[9] of Acts 15:1; “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved!” This is the tradition which Paul earlier labeled “a different gospel” (Gal 1:6). Second, you just add “Jesus as Messiah” into the mix. Be a good Jew … and believe Jesus is the Messiah, then keep doing both.

This is a desperate tertium quid—a “third thing” that will likely please nobody. But, by hiding under the Old Covenant cloak, these Judaizers hope to “avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ,” (Gal 6:12). They fear the stigma of identifying themselves with Jesus, His message, and all this implies.[10] This means “the cross of Christ” has some hold on them, which suggests (a) they either are professing Christians already, or (b) they’re intrigued enough by the Christian story to be tagged as being Christians—which is essentially the same thing in the eyes of suspicious Jewish communities at home and abroad. Either way, the Jewish emphasis of their teaching—the entire point at issue in Paul’s letter—is to some extent a front.

Perhaps some would think it presumptuous of Paul to say this—has he become a mind reader? How does he know what their motives really are? But, the fact is that Paul is the most experienced missionary in the Christian community. He has experience. He knows the ground. He knows the players. He knows the motives. He speaks with the sure confidence of a man who knows his job very, very well. It’s the same kind of experience that enables a professional in any field to hear the bare facts of a situation and then pronounce an opinion that seems clairvoyant and telepathic—especially when it’s proven right.

“How did you know that!” we ask. Experience, that’s how.

Not even those who are circumcised keep the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your circumcision in the flesh.

Galatians 6:13

Nobody can keep the law—not even the Judaizers. Yet, they want people to buy in on a system that had twisted the Old Covenant into a relationship with God based on good works. And why? So they could use them as cover for being “Jewish,” to escape the taint of being Christian. What a ridiculous situation! They claim the cross of Christ, yet spend all their time denigrating it—boasting about their convert’s circumcision—in order to escape suspicion by the local authorities![11] With “believers” like that, who needs enemies?

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

Galatians 6:14

Paul has a different focus. The world is dead to him. Babylon is dead to him. The harlot atop the beast, with all her charms and wiles and beauty, is dead to him (Rev 17). The world has been crucified to him. Of course, no mortal human is totally dead to the world, and Paul has told us about his own struggles to stay faithful to Jesus (Rom 7:7f). But, we get the idea. Paul has made the decision to follow Jesus and boast in “the cross,” to not knuckle under and look for some cover to shield himself from the Roman authorities. He crossed that bridge a long time ago and then burnt it behind him.[12]

The cross is the means or instrument which has brought about this new reality.[13] Paul is very fond of metaphysical language to describe spiritual realities (see Rom 6). In an unseen but extraordinarily real way, Christ’s death on a cross, His burial, and His resurrection have significance far beyond their physical implications for His own body. When we pledge allegiance to Jesus, we somehow participate, are amalgamated into, are united with Him and His death, burial, and resurrection—and nothing is ever the same.

Jesus is crucified → Our “old person” is crucified

Jesus dies → Our “old person” dies

Jesus is buried and gone → Our “old person” is buried and gone

Jesus raises from the dead to new life → We’re “born again” and have spiritual life

This isn’t typology—it’s real. This is why the cross is literally the instrument which crucifies Paul to the world, that makes it dead and gone to him. But this “crucifixion” goes both ways—it makes the world dead to him, and him dead to the world. The bridge has been taken out. There is no path back for either party—for Paul or the world. Neither can return. The die has been cast. Quite literally, Paul says, “we’re both dead to each other.”

A great sea change has happened, triggered by a divine encounter with Christ by way of the Holy Spirit. Reality has changed, life has changed—his mind and heart has changed. This is why Paul can never do what his opponents do—to boast in so-called “converts” as a cover to escape persecution. He can only boast in the cross of Christ because it’s what changed everything. For the Christian, it’s not simply an event we look back on with a sweet smile. It’s the engine which triggered an entirely new reality—the true and real reality.

Because of Jesus and the new and better relationship that comes along with the new and better covenant, Paul can sum up the whole matter with this:

Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation.

Galatians 6:15

This is the grand summary of the whole issue in this letter.[14] Are you a Christian? Have you had an encounter with Jesus via the Holy Spirit? Has the Lord opened your heart to understand the things of God? Has the Spirit lifted aside that Satanic veil so the Gospel can shine in (2 Cor 4:3f)? Have you been born again? Do you have spiritual life? These questions are all getting at the same idea—have you been made new in relationship with Jesus Christ?

… if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God!

2 Corinthians 5:17-20

In Christ, we’re changed. Reconciliation triggers moral and spiritual renovation in our hearts and minds. The “ministry of reconciliation” of which Paul speaks is the good news that triggers this divine renovation. This is the Christian community’s mission, its ethos, its telos. We’re ambassadors who represent the new Jerusalem in kingdom outposts scattered hither and yon across rural and urban Babylon. We show and tell about Jesus so people would choose to be reconciled to God.

Against that mission, what exactly is circumcision? It’s nothing. The Judaizers want external rites to be the main thing, but they are not—it’s the new creation which is the first principle. “Political laws, human traditions, church ceremonies, and even the law of Moses are without Christ; therefore, they do not bring us righteousness before God. We may use them as things both good and necessary, in their place and time; but if we talk of the matter of justification, they do not help but harm very much.”[15]

The new creation is the issue, and it’s the only issue that matters. Circumcision, uncircumcision—it doesn’t matter. Legalists always focus on these things because it’s what they think God wants. They think relationship with God is about “doing the right things” (orthopraxy), and so they think it’s really important to identify the right things so we can all do them. Paul says no—all that’s pointless. It’s downstream of the first principle, which is “are you a new creation in relationship with Jesus?”  

Who are the people who follow this rule? Who are the folks who really get that this “new creation” business is the hinge upon which everything turns?

Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule—to the Israel of God.

Galatians 6:16

True believers are the ones who understand all this—ones who aren’t defined by outmoded covenant markers, but by the inward love that comes from being a new creation in union with Christ. The “true” Israelites are the ones whose hearts are marked with God’s covenant sign (Rom 2:28-29)—who’ve been “branded” (as it were) by the Holy Spirit. The true child of Abraham is person (whether she be Jewish or whatever) who has the same faith and trust in God that Abraham displayed (Rom 4:16; cp. Gal 3:7). In union with Jesus Christ, we are all children of God through faith (Gal 3:26). Paul explained earlier that, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise,” (Gal 3:29).

And by ‘the Israel of God’ he means without doubt the true Israel, those who are sons of God through faith in his Son, whether of Jewish or Gentile descent after the flesh.[16]

Some Christians believe Paul refers to two group; (a) Gentiles who follow the rule of “new creation or bust,” and (b) the Jewish folks who do likewise. This is grammatically possible, but contextually unlikely.[17] In this letter Paul simply isn’t concerned about a future for Israel—turn to Romans 9-11 if you want to see that discussion. In a context in which he’s combatting legalist Judaizer posers, the very last thing the apostle would do would be to toss out onto the table a reference to ethnic Israel as a bloc.[18] No—his focus here is on real believers, no matter who they are.   

The “true circumcision,” Paul declared elsewhere, are “we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh,” (Phil 3:3). When Jesus rescues us, He marks us with an invisible “circumcision” (so to speak) on our heart that declares us to be His (Col 2:11). This marker is a beacon saying that we’re now alive with Christ.

So, in that vein, the “true Israel” are those people (Jewish, Canadian, Azeri, Chilean, or whatever) who understand that the new creation is the only thing that matters for relationship with God, because it’s the only thing that establishes this relationship! [19]

From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen.

Galatians 6:17-28

Paul concludes with what one commentator called an “impatient grumpiness,”[20] but this seems a bit unfair. It more about exasperation, a dusting off the hands with an “I’m done with this!” sort of attitude. It’s not directed at the Judaizers, but at the Galatians believers.[21] “Forget those people,” he says. “Don’t cause me anymore trouble by letting them confuse you about the Gospel again. I’m done with them, and you should be, too!” Paul has suffered for Christ—literally suffered. He’s been beaten, left for dead, imprisoned, and bears real scars and real marks on his body that testify to his dedication for Christ.

Again, he asks, “what is ‘circumcision v. uncircumcision’ when compared to the love, forgiveness, and reconciliation that God offers through His dear Son?” In a 2023 American context, we might ask, “what is ‘Republican v. Democrat’ when compared to Christ?” If a local church puts any external rite, habit, tradition, or so-called “essential” in front of the Gospel, as a prerequisite, then run away. Fast.

The late pastor John Stott wrote this about the scandal of the cross of Christ:

Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.[22]

This is what Paul wanted the Galatians to see. It’s what he wants us all to see. I hope we do.

[1] For a representative analysis along this line which doesn’t attribute Paul’s “large letters” to poor eyesight, see Longenecker, Galatians, pp. 289-290. The old Scofield Reference Bible is representative of the tradition that sees great significance in Paul’s handwriting here: “But now, having no amanuensis at hand, but urged by the spiritual danger of his dear Galatians, he writes, we cannot know with what pain and difficulty, with his own hand, in the ‘large letters’ his darkened vision compelled him to use,” (Scofield Reference Bible (New York; London; Toronto; Melbourne; Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1917), Gal 6:11, p. 1248).

[2] The Greek is clear: μόνον ἵνα τῷ σταυρῷ τοῦ Χριστοῦ μὴ διώκωνται. The ἵνα + subjunctive, combined with the negation, tells us they are doing this for the purpose of escaping persecution. Paul clarifies that their sole motive (μόνον) is this objective.

Dunn (and others) suggest Paul is exaggerating the “only” part for rhetorical effect (Galatians, p. 336), but I disagree. I don’t believe we must suppose that the Judaizers quite literally had no other motive, thought, or quest in mind but using them as a cloak for persecution. But, Paul surely states this was the most important, controlling, dominating motive.

[3] On the theory that the Judaizers don’t so much fear the Romans, but sanctions from their own Jewish communities, see (1) Hendriksen, Galatians, pp. 242-243; (2) Ridderbos, Galatians, pp. 242-244; and (3) Barnes, Notes on Galatians, pp. 397-398. This is only a representative sample—most commentators take this view.

[4] Bengel observes that either option is possible; persecution might come “from the Jews, or even from the Gentiles, who now bore more easily with the antiquity [antiquated usages] of the Jews, than with the supernatural novelty [new doctrine and rule] of the Christian faith,” (Gnomen, p. 4.57).

[5] For a reliable survey of this period, see esp. Grant, Jews in the Roman World, parts III and IV. See also F.F. Bruce, New Testament History (reprint; New York: Doubleday, 1980), ch(s). 21-22.   

[6] Michael Grant observed that it was “an emphatic principle of Roman rule that every community should, as far as possible, be allowed to maintain its national customs, including the worship of its own gods in its own way. Pagan cults, after all, tolerated one another; religious exclusiveness was regarded as weird. And so, paradoxically, the Roman authorities issued tolerant dispensations in favour of the intolerant Jewish God,” (Jews in the Roman World (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1973; Kindle ed.), p. 60). 

[7] Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 302.  

[8] David deSilva, An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods and Ministry Formation, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018), p. 436.

[9] Stott, Galatians, p. 176.

[10] Dunn, Galatians, in Black’s New Testament Commentary (London: Continuum, 1993), p. 336f.

[11] John Calvin remarks, “It is the usual practice of ambitious men meanly to fawn on those from whose favour they hope to derive advantage, and to insinuate themselves into their good graces, that, when better men have been displaced, they may enjoy the undivided power,” (Galatians and Ephesians, p. 182).

[12] “What Paul means is that every rationale for individual and corporate existence which is independent of God (as in Rom. 1:21–2), together with its system of beliefs and values and corresponding life-style, has been condemned and put to death so far as he is concerned; and that he himself has likewise been rendered inoperative so far as the attractions of such rationales, belief and value systems and life-styles are concerned,” (Dunn, Galatians, pp. 340-341).

[13] In the phrase διʼ οὗ ἐμοὶ κόσμος ἐσταύρωται κἀγὼ κόσμῳ, the preposition expresses means, and the relative pronoun refers back to the cross(τῷ σταυρῷ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ) and not to Jesus.The pronoun ἐμοὶ is a dative of reference, expressing that the world has been crucified in reference to him or so far as he is concerned. Not only that, but Paul adds that “I have been crucified with reference to the world” (κἀγὼ κόσμῳ).

[14] Longenecker, Galatians, p. 296. “… Paul uses it to climax all of his arguments and exhortations in 1:6 – 5:12 with respect to the Judaizing threat.”

[15] Luther, Galatians, p. 301. 

[16] Hovey, Galatians, in American Commentary, p. 78. Lightfoot observes, “It stands here not for the faithful converts from the circumcision alone, but for the spiritual Israel generally, the whole body of believers whether Jew or Gentile; and thus kai is epexegetic, i.e. it introduces the same thing under a new aspect …” (Galatians, p. 305).

[17] See esp. Hendriksen, Galatians, pp. 246-247.  

[18] Longenecker is especially on the mark here (Galatians, p. 298).  

[19] In the phrase καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν Ἰσραὴλ τοῦ θεοῦ, the conjunction is ascensive and hones in on the “them” and explains who they are. It’s essentially appositional. The genitive in Ἰσραὴλ τοῦ θεοῦ is subjective—God’s Israel, which basically means “God’s people.” This suggests it could be a possessive genitive, but that usage is generally for personal property, not people in a relationship. We have a translation conundrum here, because the true force of “Israel” in this context is to emphasize the “real believers.” A more colloquial rendering (and perhaps a more accurate one) would be something like “… peace and mercy to them—the true believers.”

On my interpretation of “Israel of God,” see (1) Alford, New Testament, p. 2.360; (2) DeSilva, Galatians: A Handbook on the Greek Text, p. 145, (3) Stott, Galatians, in BST, p. 180, (4) esp. Schreiner, Galatians, p. 381f, (5) Luther, Galatians, p. 303, and (6) the NLT, RSV, NIV, REB. For a contrary view which sees two groups (Gentiles + Jews), see Fung, Galatians, in NICNT, loc. 3730f.

[20] Dunn, Galatians, p. 346.

[21] See Fung, Galatians, loc. 3771.  

[22] Stott, Galatians, p. 179.

On freedom and Paul’s “third way”

On freedom and Paul’s “third way”

Freedom rings out again. It’s a big thing with Paul. The problem in the Old Covenant was externalism. After the return from exile, God’s people gradually overcorrected into legalism by the time of Jesus and the Apostles—an ossified, frigid works righteousness. This target is Paul’s rhetorical foe through the letter. Almost always, when Paul refers to slavery, the law, or freedom, he’s referring to the perverted form of “the faith” that had developed by his day—a system so crusted over with the barnacles of tradition that it wasn’t the Old Covenant religion anymore. “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions,” (Mk 7:8).

This article is part of a commentary series through the Book of Galatians. This article covers Galatians 5:13 – 26. You can find the rest of the series (so far) here: Galatians 3:1-6, and Galatians 3:7-14, and Galatians 3:15-22, and Galatians 3:23 – 4:7, and Galatians 4:12-20, and Galatians 4:21 – 5:12.

It’s this backdrop that helps us understand what the apostle says now:

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.

Galatians 5:13

So, when Paul reminds the Christians in Galatia that “you were called to be free,” he means something like “free from the legalism and false religion the Jewish establishment is peddling.” Not free from relationship with God. Not free from partaking in the faith that Abraham had—but free from the false system that had developed atop the Old Covenant and crusted over it. But, if they’re free from that—and from the Old Covenant framework entirely—then what was their matrix of authority? What was the new law? How did God regulate His people?

Christian have always struggled with how authority ought to work. Some say “the church” decides—this is the outsourcing option. Others say the bible alone is the answer—this is individualism and (if church history is any indication) a potential road to apostasy.[1] Others say we ought to primarily rely on the Holy Spirit—but this is the potential road to subjective mysticism. The true pattern of authority is the Holy Spirit speaking in and through the scriptures.[2] The scriptures are but one link in an integrated revelatory chain which goes like this:

Father and Son → Spirit → Scriptures → Christian community

There have always been some in the Christian community who abuse God’s love and grace. Perhaps they wouldn’t put it quite so crudely, but there it is nonetheless. It’s folks like this who may be creeping around the churches in Galatia, whispering that, because the Old Covenant is abolished, we’re now free to do whatever we want. “Not so!” Paul declares. Don’t use your freedom from legalism as an excuse, a pretext, as an absurd justification.[3] The NIrV renders this as, “don’t use your freedom as an excuse to live in sin,” and the NEB reads, “do not turn your freedom into licence for your lower nature.”

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

Galatians 5:14-15

The key, Paul says, is to read and interpret the law through a prism of love—through relationship.[4] This isn’t a new thing—it was there in the Old Covenant all along—but it’s become a new thing in light of Jesus’ authoritative interpretation and application of that first covenant. After all, didn’t Leviticus (of all places!) say that we must love our neighbor (Lev 19:18)? Isn’t that what Jesus said was the sum of the Old Covenant law (Mk 12:28-34)? Isn’t that what even a scribe figured out from his own study of the Torah(Mk 12:32-34)? That’s why Paul said elsewhere that love was the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:10).

So, what to do with this sudden freedom from crushing legalism, freedom from the weight of all the external expectations of “right behavior,” freedom from the cold scrutiny of religious leaders anxious to condemn you? The solution isn’t to run wild and party. It isn’t to rip up the Torah and burn it in celebration. It’s to retain the Torah (Paul and Jesus both quoted Leviticus, after all!), but interpret it the real way—through a paradigm of covenant love for God and for one another. Without love, all the New Covenant community will do is destroy itself with infighting and selfish dealing (cp. Micah 2:1-5; 3:1-8). Paul illustrates this with an analogy of animals biting and eating one another. Real Christianity expresses itself in loving service to each other (cp. Acts 2:42-47).

When Paul says “serve one another in love,” he means the manner, the way, the inner disposition which prompts the service.[5] We don’t need a book or a podcast to teach us how to love one another—all we need to do is ask ourselves how we would wish to be treated. Your own heart is your teacher![6] Emil Brunner wrote persuasively about how brotherly love is the necessary witness of the church’s life in union with Christ.

The Spirit who is active in the Ekklesia expresses Himself in active love of the brethren and in the creation of brotherhood, of true fellowship. Thus the Ekklesia has to bear a double witness to Christ, through the Word that tells of what He has bestowed upon it, and through the witness of its life, through its being, which points to Him as its vital source.[7]

But, how to “be free,” be holy, and yet still live without legalism? The answer is a conjunction of Word + Spirit. Remember, the same Apostle Paul elsewhere said that the scripture had two jobs; (1) to bring people to faith in Christ, and (2) to teach us how we ought to live as children of the King (2 Tim 3:14-17). This is the tail end of that organic “revelatory chain” we mentioned earlier. Jesus promised He would continue to make His Father known to Christians “in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them,” (Jn 17:26). This suggests an ever-present communication between Jesus and His people—but how? Through the Spirit (Jn 14:26-27; 16:12-15). How does the Spirit speak to us? Primarily through God’s message, His story recorded in scripture—it’s the Spirit’s sword, after all (Eph 6:17)!

So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Galatians 5:16

Paul says we must live a certain way—that’s what the “walk” metaphor means. How, then, shall we live? In union with the Holy Spirit, in relationship with Him.[8] Instead of incessant reference to laws and traditions (e.g. “can I do this on the Sabbath?”), a New Covenant believer lives in personal relationship with the Spirit of God. This is warmth, not frigid rules. Again—and this cannot be stressed enough—love for God was always the basis of a proper Old Covenant relationship (cp. Deut 10:12-22). But, after the return from exile a creeping legalism set in amongst the community that gradually ossified this love ethic into a works-righteousness that rescued nobody.

Now, in the New and better covenant, Jesus ups the ante (as it were) on love as the hinge for Christian life, doctrine, and practice—it’s love which fulfills the whole purpose of the Old Covenant law.[9] Jesus’ relentless focus on this love ethic is why the apostle John is so fixated on love (see 1 Jn 3). It’s also why Paul emphasizes freedom from a works-righteousness ethic in favor of a live lived in loving relationship with God via the Holy Spirit—remember that revelatory chain we mentioned earlier by which Jesus promised to never leave us alone (Jn 17:26; cf. Jn 14:26-27; 16:12-15)?

Father and Son → Spirit → Scriptures → Christian community

Live in union with the Spirit! This is a bit loose for people who prefer lists, categories, and a catalog of rules. But, if taken too far that’s the road to a new legalism, and they just broke free from all that. So, we keep the Torah but read it in dialogue with God’s message from the scriptures, by the power of the Spirit.

This isn’t a rote promise that “if you do this, you’ll never sin!” It’s a general truism, like many sayings in Proverbs. Paul is just saying that, to the extent you live in real union and relationship with the Spirit (in conjunction with the scriptures), then you will not be controlled by your own lusts. His wording in Greek is as emphatic as possible; it could be rendered something like “… you will never ever carry out the lusts of the flesh.”

For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Galatians 5:17-18

God is changing us from who we are into who He wants us to be. “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory,” (2 Cor 3:18). This means there is an ongoing, internal struggle as this renovation happens. Our “old person” doesn’t want to fade to black, and our “new person” must struggle to assert itself in our hearts and minds (cp. Eph 4:22-24). We win this battle to the extent we’re led by the Spirit—and to that extent, we’re free from legalism, self-righteousness, and the crushing weight of meeting impossible standards. To the extent we allow the Holy Spirit to lead and energize us, we’re free from the “law” of works-righteousness.  

Basically, Paul’s audience is situated in a culture that presents two different authorities for the Christian life:

  1. The Judaizers are offering “Jesus + obey all the Mosaic Law.” This is externalism. It’s legalism. It’s a bad option.
  2. Other folks are offering a “do whatever you want” vibe.

Both these options are unacceptable, and so Paul offers a third way[10]—a life lived according to God’s will as expressed in the scriptures, interpreted through a prism of love for God and neighbor, by the power of the Spirit. To be led by the Spirit (Gal 5:18) is to be guided, to be led towards some goal[11]—to be shepherded. In the Christian faith, that goal is Christ-likeness—to be renovated from who you were and guided and led into the image of God’s dear Son (2 Cor 3:18).

So, we have a choice to make. Paul now compares the fruit of two paths—the flesh v. the Spirit. The “flesh” means our bodies, but more specifically our lusts, our sinful desires. It means the appetites and passions that characterize who we used to be (and partly still are),[12] rather than the “mind of Christ” which is the prototype and pattern for our moral renovation in process.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery;  idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21

These contrasting lists are rightly famous. They’re not exhaustive (Paul ends the list with “and the like”), but they’re representative enough to get the point across. A tree is known by its fruit (Lk 6:43-45). God’s people have His “seed” planted within them, and God’s seed always generates recognizable fruit (1 Jn 3:9). Perhaps a Christian’s fruit isn’t all it should be, but the point is that it’s recognizable. You might have a pitiful apple tree in your backyard, and even if it only produces a few sorry apples each year, you still recognize them as apples. So it is with Christians … and with those who serve a very different master. “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister,” (1 Jn 3:10).

There are four general categories in this list. This doesn’t mean everything “bad” in this life should be situated in these categories; it’s just how this particular list shakes out:

  1. Sexual crimes. Sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery.
  2. Spiritual adultery. Idolatry and witchcraft.
  3. Love of self. Hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy.
  4. Drunkenness. Drunkenness is just what it sounds like, and what the NIV translates as “orgies” means the general sort of “carrying on” that happens at alcohol-saturated parties.

Because this is rotten fruit, people who practice these things—whose lives show a pattern of rotten fruit—will not gain possession of the kingdom of God.[13] Their actions make it clear to which master they really belong. Because Paul says these rotten fruits “are obvious,” I’ll only remark on a few of them here:

  • Sexual immorality. As the incarnate Messiah (the divine person with a human nature), as a Jewish man whose mission involved perfectly obeying the Old Covenant law in our place, as our substitute (cf. 2 Cor 5:21), Jesus’ frame of reference to define sexual ethics was Leviticus 18. As the eternal Son within the one Being who is God, Jesus gave Leviticus to Moses.[14] This means the sexual boundaries depicted there are still in effect—all of them.
  • Impurity. This literally means “dirty.” It’s figurative here, meaning activity that morally pollutes you. How do we know what these activities are? Well, that’s why you have the scriptures! Again, Paul isn’t saying we burn the Old Covenant and start from scratch—he’s appealing to God’s moral laws as standards of behavior loving children should want to do. We love God because He first loved us (1 Jn 4:19), and this love produces fruit. The opposite of that is to live a polluted, morally filthy life.

The apostle now shares the other side of the coin—the fruit of a Spirit-referenced and led life:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

There are all virtues, or what some would call moral qualities.[15] They come from within. They aren’t measurable. They can’t be quantified or plotted on a chart. They’re inner character qualities which flow from a heart disposition. The word “fruit” can also be translated as crop or harvest. Paul’s talking about the product of your heart; the “crop” which the Gospel has yielded in your life.No believer’s life is perfect. But, would an impartial observer seethis fruit in your life—no matter how underdeveloped it might be? Do they flow from your heart, habits, and appetites?

Love. Jesus is the paradigm for love, which is unearned and undeserved (see Hosea 1-3). This means we love others especially if they don’t deserve it. This is hard to do, obviously, but it’s clear that a “get off my lawn!” vibe is not a fruit of the Spirit—but quite the opposite.

How many Christians are curmudgeons? Are bitter? How many of us sing “They’ll Know We Are Christians” and then leave the church building and ignore everything we just sang? How many of us do anything at all to make love the defining virtue of our lives? Take any steps to make that a reality? How many of us have prayed, “God, make me love you more, so I’ll love people more?” How many conservative Christians in America are more passionate about Donald Trump, who personifies corruption and debauchery, than about Jesus of Nazareth—who personifies love, kindness, and grace?   

In Christ there is no East or West, 
In Him no South or North, 
But one great Fellowship of Love 
Throughout the whole wide earth[16]

Would that our goal would be make this true in our hearts and lives!

Joy. This is a spirit of pure delight, or great pleasure and happiness.[17] It’s an inner glow that comes from experiencing the joy of union and relationship with the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Spirit. It’s what the angel Gabriel said Elizabeth would experience when she gave birth to their son John (Lk 1:14). It’s what the angels in heaven do when just one sinner repents (Lk 15:7). Jesus told the disciples that, when they saw Him alive after His impending death, “no one will take away your joy,” (Jn 16:22).

Are you a happy person? If you’re a Christian, and your outlook is more about misery and gloom than joy, then perhaps there’s a problem? Of course, life is difficult and we all go through seasons of drought. But, overall, do you have joy, happiness, and delight in your life because of your salvation? Pray for God to give you joy. Pray the Psalms. Ask God for a joyful disposition. Ask him to change your mindset—to see the world through new eyes. Ask Him to teach you to love life in the Spirit. Pray all that before you read the scriptures.

Oh the sheer joy of it! 
Living with Thee, 
God of the universe, 
Lord of a tree, 
Maker of mountains, 
Lover of me!

Oh the sheer joy of it!
Breathing thy air;
Morning is dawning,
Gone every care,
All the world’s singing,
“God’s everywhere.”[18]

Peace. This means an inner tranquility, a trouble-free spirit or conviction because “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand,” (Rom 5:1-2). It speaks of security, of safety, of a certainty that all will be well, because you have “peace that transcends all understanding,” (Phil 4:7). Jesus is our peace (Eph 2:14). The Apostle Paul apparently didn’t write these virtues in any particular order, but if he had then “peace” would have gone before “joy,” because the first produces the second.

O what a happy soul am I! 
Although I cannot see, 
I am resolved that in this world 
Contended I will be;

How many blessings I enjoy
That other people don’t!
To weep and sigh because I’m blind,
I cannot, and I won’t.[19]

Forbearance. This means we put up with things—“love covers over all wrongs,” (Prov 10:12; cp. 1 Pet 4:8). The Pharisees didn’t like forbearance because their idea of relationship with God was an unwitting legalism—an adoption dependent on performance. When what we do is the basis of relationship, there is little tolerance for failure. Real grace isn’t that way at all. A honest thirst for personal holiness is a non-negotiable fruit of real faith (1 Pet 1:15-16), but that doesn’t create relationships. Grace does. Love does. Unearned mercy does.

That has implications for our relationships—we have patience. How willing are we to give in? To not insist on our own way? To listen to other voices? To be patient? To be understanding? Think of how much God has put up with from you—has He lost patience yet? It could also mean a kind of patience as the world falls apart around us, and in that sense it’s basically the same as peace. We’ll only want to cultivate forbearance in our lives if we truly appreciate God’s patience with us—seen most clearly in Christ’s voluntary death for us, in our place, as our substitute. The “Cross + Resurrection + Ascension” trilogy is the prism for seeing and living real life.

Whenever there is silence around me
By day or by night—
I am startled by a cry.
It came down from the cross—
The first time I heard it.
I went out and searched—
And I found a man in the throes of crucifixion
And I said, “I will take you down,”
And I tried to take the nails out of his feet.
But he said, “Let them be
For I cannot be taken down
Until every man, every woman, and every child
Come together to take me down.”
And I said, “But I cannot hear you cry.
What can I do?”
And he said, “Go about the world—
Tell everyone that you meet—
There is a man on the cross.”[20]

Kindness. The word sometimes means a kind of “moral uprightness” (cp. Rom 3:12), but it can also mean an interpersonal kind of goodness that’s almost a synonym for love.[21] It’s difficult to draw a hard line between these virtues, because they shade over into one another. The idea here seems to be a softness of heart, a kindness, a loving disposition towards other people. It’s this same “kindness” that describes Jesus’ mission to rescue us (Rom 2:4; Tit 3:4).

If we walk in union with the Spirit—in living relationship with Him—then kindness should always threaten to overflow from our hearts and into real life. Some of us have problems with kindness. I’m not talking about being an introvert or being shy, and perhaps being misinterpreted as unkind. I’m asking whether, if we could open your heart, “kindness” would be stamped inside. Do you have a desire to be kind, to be loving, to be tender-hearted? Or, are you a quarrelsome person? Do you only show kindness to select people?

God changes us to be more like Christ over the course of time. Is kindness gradually working its way into the overflow of your heart and mind? If we have God’s “seed” within us, then His fruit will come. Pray and ask God to give you kindness, as you ponder how kind Christ has been to you.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Goodness. The idea here is quite close to kindness, but perhaps shading more to sweetness and gentleness. It’s not exactly the moral uprightness of an external act (“he always does good!”), but more of an inward disposition, a virtue, a character that’s suffused with goodness, sweetness, tenderness.[22] St. Paul said he was convinced the Christians in Rome were “full of goodness,” (Rom 15:14). That didn’t mean they “always did good” (though perhaps they did), but it seems to indicate something like “you’re all good people—sweet and gentle people!” Paul prayed that God would grant to the Christians in Thessalonica their “every desire for goodness” (2 Thess 1:11), which again suggests an inward virtue rather than the moral quality of an outward action.

Pretend you’re at a funeral and someone says, “he was a good man!” What does that mean? It doesn’t mean so much that he did good things, but instead it refers to character. Not character in the sense of “his good outweighed the bad”—erase all imagery of doing things from your mind at this point. The focus is character, attitude, demeanor, disposition—you’re saying the guy was kind, sweet, gentle, nice, tender-hearted.  

We’re selfish people. We want to look out for ourselves. We weren’t made that way, but we’ve become that way because of the Fall (see Gen 3). Part of “being made in the image of God” is that we alone among God’s creatures have the capacity to know God, to receive and acknowledge His love, and to love Him back in return. There’s a “I-Thou” connection with God ready to be wired up—one that no cat or dog will ever have. God is relational. Father, Son, and Spirit are “one” in the sense that their mutual love is the reality that (as it were) binds them together into one society of persons, one constellation, one compound being. It’s the inward circularity of divine life that explains the mutual indwelling language that Jesus used (see Jn 14-16, passim).

When God restores this “image” through salvation, part of what that means is that He renovates our capacity for relationship as it was meant to be—on both the vertical (us to God) and horizontal (us to others) planes. We can now begin the work of patching up our relationships so they better reflect the nature of the triune God whose image we mirror. That means these virtues Paul keeps pressing—kindness, goodness, gentleness—are possible … if we have union with Christ.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road—
It’s here the race of men go by.
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong
Wise, foolish—so am I; 
Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat,
Or hurl the cynic’s ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.[23]

Faithfulness. Paul means loyalty, trustworthiness, and reliability. To whom? To God, and to covenant brothers and sisters. It’s not just a “when I give my word, I mean it!” kind of vibe, but the more wholistic idea of “she’s such a loyal friend—I can always trust her!”

Faith is often a synonym for “trust,” and that’s what it means to “believe in Jesus”—it means to trust His representations about who He is and what He’s done for us. We trust God. We’re loyal. We’ve pledged allegiance to Him. We’re the same way towards our brothers and sisters in the believing community. These virtues interpenetrate one another, build upon each other. We’re loved by God, so we have peace, and so we have joy, and kindness, and goodness, and patience, and faithfulness to God and to one another. And, of course, we can be faithful like this because God has first been faithful to us in Jesus.

Thou hast given so much to me, 
Give one thing more—a grateful heart:
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose Pulse may be
Thy praise.[24]

Gentleness. This is “a spirit of gentle friendliness.”[25] It’s a mild-mannered kind of disposition. The apostle isn’t declaring everyone must try to be Mr. Rogers, but he is saying that a “gentle friendliness” ought to characterize our interactions with others.  

Self-control. Paul means a mastery over one’s emotions and desires. We get better at this as the person we were gradually fades into the background to be replaced by the person we now are in union with Christ. The question to ask is, “am I getting better at suppressing the old me?” This isn’t a matter of sheer willpower, but a character renovation the Holy Spirit works from the inside out. Self-control is one of the virtues that the apostle Peter said “will make you useful and fruitful as you get to know our Lord Jesus Christ better,” (2 Pet 1:8, NIrV).

God changes us so we can honor Him with our life and work. Self-control is part of the harvest the Spirit reaps from within our hearts from that change. The question, of course, is whether we pray for change, for self-control, for greater holiness. Or, whether we remain on autopilot.

Thy way, not mine, O Lord,
However dark it be!
Lead me by thine own hand,
Choose out the path for me.

Smooth let it be or rough,
It will still be the best;
Winding or straight, it leads
Right onward to thy rest.

I dare not choose my lot;
I would not, if I might;
Choose thou for me, my God;
So I shall walk aright.[26]

This all seems like a tall order. What we must never forget is that Paul isn’t talking about a transaction, a “do this for God, and He’ll do this for you” arrangement. That would be legalism and works-righteousness. You must always read every single command from scripture in light of Christ and His Good News; as the fruit of trusting that message, owning it—as the natural harvest which comes from a personal encounter with Jesus of Nazareth, by the power of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 4:3-6). These aren’t the fruit of hard work, but the fruit of the Spirit.

Paul continues:

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Galatians 5:24-26

Hopefully you haven’t literally crucified yourself! Paul is employing the same metaphors he uses in the letter to the church in Rome (“for we know that our old self was crucified with Him,” Rom 6:6, passim)—if you’re in union with Christ, then your old person is dead and gone. Your flesh and bones remain, but your spirit, your soul, your heart, your mind have changed. Spiritual birth has occurred, a God-seed has been planted, and things will never be the same again.

We can walk away. God has given us the power to walk away—to be led by the Spirit instead of our flesh. Instead of remaining unwitting slaves to our own lusts and ultimately to Satan, we’ve been set free. Jesus defeated Satan (Heb 2:14-15) and killed death itself for all who trust Him and His message (1 Cor 15:54-57). In return, He’s given the Holy Spirit to His brothers and sisters so He and the Father can teach us, communicate with us, mold us into the Son’s image. We must make a conscious, everyday choice to live with incessant reference to the Spirit.

Paul uses a military metaphor here which the NIV rightly keeps[27]—we must “keep in step” with the Spirit, “march in step” (NIrV) with Him. The Spirit “calls the cadence” in that we live in union—in relationship—with Him[28] (“we live by the Spirit”), and so we can and must choose to march in tune to His call. We can do that because we’re now free from both a false legalism and from Satan.

The danger is that it’s possible to fool ourselves; to become conceited and arrogant while maintaining an unwittingly fraudulent front of piety. We can do “good things” and even produce some fruit—tellingly, in this context the “fruit” will rarely be a virtue or a moral quality like those Paul listed. In short, we can become Pharisees. It’s to that danger that Paul now turns.

[1] Some Christians—especially those from the free church tradition—may be confused at this point. One key emphasis from the Protestant Reformation was suprema scriptura—that scripture was the supreme or highest channel of authority for Christian faith and life—not the only channel, but the final one. This is most often called sola scriptura, but supreme scriptura is a better term (see esp. James Leo Garrett Jr., Systematic Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, 4th ed., vol. 1 (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2014), p. 206). This doesn’t mean “the bible alone,” but rather that the scriptures are the supreme channel; the yardstick by which everything must be measured.

[2] Bernard Ramm, The Pattern of Religious Authority (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), p. 28. 

[3] See LSJ, s.v. “ἀφορμή,” sense no. 2, p. 292.

[4] “In this entire summary, Paul’s purpose is both to let the law come into its own proper validity in the life of believers; and to graft its fulfillment upon a different principle from that of human self-vindication through works—namely, the salvation brought by Christ. For the love, in which the law has its fulfillment, is the fruit of faith (verse 6),” (Ridderbos, Galatians, in NICNT, p. 201).

[5] The preposition in ἀλλὰ διὰ τῆς ἀγάπης δουλεύετε ἀλλήλοις could refer to personal agency (“serve one another by love”) but this option is typically for active and personal agents, not attributes or virtues. It could be instrumental means (“serve one another by means of love” or “with love”). I believer manner is best—Paul is describing the way we ought to serve one another.  

[6] Martin Luther, Galatians, in Crossway Classic Commentaries, ed. Alister McGrath and J.I. Packer (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998), p. 265. 

[7] Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, trans. David Cairns and T.H.L. Parker (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), p. 134.

[8] I take the dative in πνεύματι περιπατεῖτε to be a dative of association. Most commentors opt for a dative of agency (“by the Sprit”), but in this circumstance the agent usually performs the action of the verb (in this case, the Holy Spirit, if the dative truly expresses agency), whereas in our text Paul is telling Christians to perform the action. Daniel Wallace dismisses dative of agency and suggests means (GGBB, pp. 165-166), but this is quite difficult to explain in exposition. Another option is manner, which answers the implicit “how” of the verb. But, on balance, I believe a dative of association is the best option. Regardless of the syntactical category one chooses, the root idea is that we cannot live without the influence, leading, and direction of the Spirit.     

[9] “So it is love—love that responds to Christ’s love and that expresses a new existence in Christ (cf. 2:20)—that motivates the ethical life of a Christian, with the results of that love ethic fulfilling the real purport of the Mosaic law,” (Longenecker, Galatians, p. 243).  

[10] Fung, Galatians, in NICNT, loc. 3057.

[11] LSJ s.v. “ἄγω,” sense no. II.2.

[12] “[T]he flesh, as the seat of the affections and lusts, fleshly nature …” (LSJ, s.v. “σάρξ,” no. II, p. 1585).

[13] The phrase is ἃ προλέγω ὑμῖν καθὼς προεῖπον ὅτι οἱ τὰ τοιαῦτα πράσσοντες βασιλείαν θεοῦ οὐ κληρονομήσουσιν. It can be rendered, “I am warning you beforehand, just as said previously, that the ones who are practicing such things will not gain God’s kingdom.” The key word is πράσσοντες, which in this context means “to practice,” (LSJ, s.v. “πράσσω,” no. IV, p. 1460).

[14] Leviticus 18 begins with “The LORD said to Moses …” (Lev 18:1). We know this is the triune God speaking, because the divine name of Yahweh is always signified by a capital “LORD” in our English bibles.

[15] Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “virtue,” noun, sense I.1.a, July 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/2971758024.

[16] John Oxenham, “No East or West,” in The Treasury of Religious Verse, ed. Donald T. Kauffman (Westwood: Revell, 1962), p. 322.  

[17] See (1) LSJ, s.v. “χᾰρά,” p. 1976, and (2) Abbott-Smith, s.v., p. 479.

[18] Ralph Cushman, “Sheer Joy,” in Treasury of Religious Verse, p. 209. 

[19] Fanny Crosby (at age 8), “Blind But Happy,” in Treasury of Religious Verse, p. 211.  

[20] Elizabeth Cheney, “There is a Man on the Cross,” in Treasury of Religious Verse, p. 143.

[21] See (1) Ceslas Spicq and James D. Ernest, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), s.v. “χρηστεύομαι, χρηστός, χρηστότης,” p. 511f, and (2) Abbott-Smith, Lexicon, s.v., p. 484.

[22]  Spicq, Lexicon, s.v. “ἀγαθοποιέω, ἀγαθωσύνη,” p. 1.

[23] Excerpt from Sam Walter Foss, “The House by the Side of the Road,” in Treasury of Religious Verse, p. 244.  

[24] George Herbert, “A Heart to Praise Thee,” in Treasury of Religious Verse, p. 256. 

[25] Friberg, s.v. “πραΰτης,” Analytical Lexicon, p. 326.

[26] Horatius Bonar, “Thy Way, Not Mine,” in Treasury of Religious Verse, p. 219.  

[27] See (1) LSJ, s.v. “στοιχέω,” p. 1647, (2) Abbott-Smith, s.v., p. 418.

[28] Once again, I believe this is a dative of association (contra. NIV and most EVV). The military metaphor further supports this usage over against agency or means. We are, as it were, marching in step with the Spirit which means we have to “stay with Him.”  

Killing Death

Killing Death

This Easter, I preached about Jesus destroying death (1 Cor 15:12-26). This has always been a difficult topic for me–how do you describe something like death being “destroyed”? The concept is abstract and hard to grasp. But, I gave it my best shot.

I hit upon a different way to describe the substitutionary nature of Jesus’ condemnation and execution–which I labeled (respectively) as indictment and punishment. I tried to show how Jesus’ resurrection secures His people’s hope of victory over death. I was able to do the sermon in less than 30 minutes, which is my goal nowadays.

Here is the video and audio from the sermon: