The Other Birth Story

Posted on 12/30/2010 by Paul Pavao

"Begotten, not made …"

Millions (I’m pretty sure it’s actually millions) of churches repeat that line every week. Pretty much all of us have, at one time or another, said we believe it.

We might as well know what it means.

Especially because it’s adds so much to the birth story—the Christmas story—that we already know.

I have to explain "begotten, not made" as quick as I can, then the fun part is below that!

Begotten, Not Made

"Begotten, not made" is a phrase from the Apostles Creed.

It was made a part of the "official" belief of the united churches in the 4th century (there was no Roman Catholic Church at the time) at the Council of Nicea. It was not an addition to the faith, but simply a clarification of terminology because of a heresy that had arisen.

Arius, an elder from Alexandria, and Eusebius, a bishop from Nicomedia, were teaching that the Son of God had been created from nothing in the beginning, the first and greatest of God’s creatures.

This was an innovation, a teaching that no one had held to in the history of the church. (Abundant evidence for that is given at Christian History for Everyman.)

The problem is, it wasn’t unscriptural terminology. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that everyone used at the time, says in Proverbs 8:22:

The Lord made me the beginning of his ways for his works; he established me before time in the beginning, before he made the earth.

To the early Christians that was an obvious reference to the Son of God being born of God in the beginning. No one denied this or argued about it. Both sides at Nicea agreed on it.

But from the beginning the church had never understood this passage to refer to the creation of the Son in the same way everything else was created. No, the Son was stated by Scripture to be the Logos (the Word, Reason, or Thought) of God. Before the beginning, he had been inside of God as the Logos, and then, at some point in eternity past, the Father generated, birthed, or begat his Son in some way that humans can’t comprehend.

Tertullian, an early 3rd century Christian, said that this birth happened at the time that the Father said, "Let there be light." Origen said that it had always happened, that there could never have been a time when the Father was not yet Father.

Either way, none denied either that the Son had always existed—either inside the Father as the Logos or eternally begotten of God—nor that he was begotten before the beginning.

Prior to Nicea, that begetting was occasionally referred to as "created" or "made," but everyone knew what was meant by that.

At Nicea, because of the heresy of Arius and Eusebius, they forbad referring to the Son as created. They did this by adding the phrase "begotten, not made" to the Creed issued at Nicea.

The First Birth of the Son

Sorry about the long first part. I had to explain that it’s not only orthodox, but part of the universally-accepted Apostles Creed, to say that the Son was born twice. Once before the beginning (or eternally), when he became the Son, and once when the Son came to earth and became man.

It’s important to understand the idea of the Logos of God being with God in the beginning, because once you do, it makes the birth story in John 1 possibly even more thrilling than the birth stories in Matthew and Luke that we read every Christmas.

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was fully divine. He was in the beginning with God, and all things were made by him. Without him, nothing was made that was made. … He was in the world, and the world was made by him, but the world didn’t know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him. But to those that did receive him, to them he gave the authority to become the sons of God. (Jn. 1:1-3; 10-12)

Wow! Did I manage to get the picture across at all?

I love this picture! The divine Logos came to earth. He had made everything, and then he put on flesh, and he lived in our midst. People didn’t recognize him, but those that did recognize and acknowledge him received power from him to become children of God.

I say again: Wow!

The First Birth Story in Proverbs

Maybe it will help some to look at that first birth story, the one that happened before the beginning, as it is described in Proverbs.

The divine Logos came to earth as a humble carpenter and is known to us as Jesus Christ, but there’s something about the divine Logos we don’t talk about much.

Well, of course we don’t talk about it much. We over-reacted to Arius in the 4th century, and so all of us later Christians aren’t allowed to believe the obvious: that Proverbs 8 is a description of our Lord Jesus in the beginning, when he was God’s companion, known only as the Son and the Logos, not yet as Jesus.

So let’s pretend that we’re early Christians, in the apostles’ churches, who don’t know yet that we’re not allowed to believe that Proverbs 8 is about Jesus, and let’s get all the joy out of it we can …

One of the statements about him is:

My delight was in the children of men. (Prov. 8:31)

From the very beginning, Jesus’ delight was in the children of men. So when John says that he came to his own, it was not just a creation of his, the way a factory might produce blocks for children to play with. People were his delight, and he had given personal attention to preparing the world for them:

The Lord made countries and uninhabited regions and the highest uninhabited parts of the world. When he prepared the sky, I was present with him; and when he prepared his throne on the winds. When he strengthened the clouds above; when he secured the fountains of the earth; when he strengthened the foundations of the world; I was by him, suiting myself to him. I was that in which he took delight, and daily I rejoiced in his presence continually. For he rejoiced when he completed the world and rejoiced among the children of men. (Prov. 8:26-30, LXX)

This was the only-begotten Son, God’s divine Son, before he was born on earth.

But his generation in the beginning is not the only mention of him in the Old Testament.

Two Jehovahs

Any Christian who’s ever been in an argument with Jehovah’s Witnesses knows Genesis 19:24:

Then Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah in heaven.

That, to early Christians who still remembered that Jesus was the Logos generated from out of the Father before the beginning, was the divine Logos on earth, calling down fire and brimstone from his Father in heaven.

But that’s not the only place where there’s two Jehovahs. Jehovah’s Witnesses know that we know about Genesis 19:24, and they are prepared with an answer (though I don’t remember what it is). They don’t seem to know about Zechariah 2:8-11, which is just as effective against them in their New World Translation as it is in any of our translations:

“… For this is what Jehovah of armies has said, ‘Following after [the] glory he has sent me to the nations that were despoiling YOU people; for he that is touching YOU is touching my eyeball. For here I am waving my hand against them, and they will have to become spoil to their slaves.’ And YOU people will certainly know that Jehovah of armies himself has sent me.
   “Cry out loudly and rejoice, O daughter of Zion; for here I am coming, and I will reside in the midst of you,” is the utterance of Jehovah. (NWT)

So here we have Jehovah of armies—LORD of Hosts or Yahweh of Hosts in our translations—saying that he was sent by Jehovah of armies.

That renders JW’s speechless—in fact, a little breathless, too—but it’s somewhat mystifying even to mainline Christians.

But it’s extremely interesting, isn’t it?

Why There Are Two Jehovahs

It’s because the Logos was the God of Israel. The Father sent the Son, who had as much right to the name of Yahweh as his Father, to be the God of Israel. Early Christians were convinced that all the appearances of God to ancient Israel were appearances of the Logos.

That would be why John could say in John 1:18 that no man has seen God at any time, despite the fact that many people saw God in ancient Israel. But what they saw was not the Father but "the only-begotten God" as most modern translations render John 1:18 and as early Christians understood John 1:18.

That adds even further meaning to John 1:11: "He came to his own, and his own did not receive him."

The Jews were his own people. According to Zechariah 2, they were "the apple of his eye," or, as the New World Translation accurately renders it in this case, his eyeball. Going after the Jews was like poking the Logos in the eye. They were his delight, and he was their God.

Where Did I Get This?

I’m not making any of this up on my own. Justin Martyr has a very thorough explanation of all this starting around chapter 56 of his Dialogue with Trypho. It goes on for pages, and the understanding that only the Logos ever made appearances on the earth is in most of the pre-Nicene writings of the church (as well as in John 1:18).

I’d assume this was the understanding for centuries after Nicea, but I haven’t read the post-Nicene writings myself.

So Next Christmas …

So next Christmas, and even before next Christmas, I’m hoping that you can enjoy both birth stories of the Son, his begetting before the beginning and his incarnation upon the earth to dwell in the midst of the people for whom he’d been the only God for centuries.

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. Proverbs 8 remains my favorite creation story because it’s the most personal and relational, and I love the very literal understanding that the apostolic churches had of Jesus as the Logos of God.

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Too Lazy to Reason, Part III: Liars

Posted on 12/29/2010 by Paul Pavao

Yesterday I said that it was okay to just get your tradition from your church, as long as you judged the source by their fruit.

Today I want to talk about when you have to do your own research.

You have to do your own research when you claim you do your own research. Most of the time, that means when you’ve appointed yourself an apologist for your church’s tradition.

For me, evolution or apostolic succession are the places I see it most because both subjects really offend particular brand names of Christianity. Protestants who hold to a 7-day creation week just 6,000 years ago really don’t like hearing that there are legitimate Christian traditions that have never thought that Genesis had to be literal. Churches that have apostolic succession really don’t like being told that they have twisted an early Christian doctrine that never meant anything like what they hold to today.

Worse, there are many thousands of self-appointed apologists for these doctrines that pretend to be researching the subject.

The problem is, they’re lying.

Caveat

I’m using the word lying because I think we need to use strong words with ourselves. We have to acknowledge what we are doing when we ourselves are guilty of what follows.

I don’t really want to call most of those self-appointed apologists liars.

For example, I listened to a video of a young lady recently who began by saying that she had researched evolution. It only took about 30 seconds to realize that she hadn’t spent more than a few minutes "researching" evolution.

I don’t blame her. She seemed to be a very sweet deceived girl.

I don’t believe she was a liar, and it would be really awful to call her one.

But she was lying.

Lying

She didn’t really research evolution despite saying she had. She could have answered every one of her own arguments with 5 minutes of Google searches.

That would have been research.

Examples

One argument against evolution that I hear occasionally is that if Homo sapiens had really been around 200,000 years, then the earth would be grossly overpopulated. Then some math is presented, guessing at numbers of generations and reproductive rates.

Come on. Do I really have to tell anyone that plagues, wars, and droughts destroy those mathematics and make them completely irrelevant?

Another example, concerning apostolic succession, is the Roman Catholic habit of quoting Cyprian, an immensely respected north African bishop of the 3rd century, as teaching that the bishop of Rome was the successor of Peter.

How dishonest is that?

Cyprian only wrote over a space of about 10 years, and during most of that time he was feuding with Stephen, bishop of Rome, over whether Novatianist baptisms should be recognized by the church. (—Novatian formed a church that was orthodox in its theology but divided from the united churches over what to do with Christians that lapsed during persecution but repented later.)

During his feud with Stephen, Cyprian called a council of 82 North African bishops and declared that no bishop could call himself a bishop of bishops because no bishop could have authority over any other bishop.

So the man who called this council, specifically directed against Stephen, the bishop of Rome, believed that the bishop of Rome was the pope with authority over all other bishops???

I don’t think so. And I think that anyone who claims otherwise has not done their research or is woefully disinterested in honesty. (A little research, such as reading Cyprian’s short tract On the Unity of the Church will reveal that he believed all bishops inherited authority from Peter.)

Not Interested in Truth

These people who claim to have done research, but refuse even to think about what they’re saying, are never going to find the truth.

I began this series by quoting Origen. Let me quote him again:

It was the intention of the Holy Spirit to enlighten [only] those holy souls who had devoted themselves to the service of the truth. (Origen, De Principiis IV:1:14, c. A.D. 230)

It is those who keep seeking who find. God does not reveal truth to lazy people. He reveals truth to those who keep seeking, keep knocking, and keep asking.

And never get it wrong, truth comes from God. We humans are too easily deceived. That’s why Jesus gave us a check for what we’re hearing and believing. If it’s truth from God, it will produce good fruit: love, faith, joy, peace, unity, holiness, praise toward God.

Reading a book by a person arguing for a point, then quoting them without checking anything they say, is not research.

As I pointed out, it’s okay to get your information from someone else if you have reason to trust that someone, but once you do that don’t say that you’ve researched the subject. Be honest! Say, "I read a book on this subject. I’m no expert myself, but the person who wrote the book said … "

It’s okay to disagree with a person even if you haven’t done as much research as they have! You don’t actually have to enter a debate with them and pretend like you know more than they do … especially when the sum of your experience is 15 minutes on Wikipedia or a one-hour video you purchased.

Taking the Time To Reason

A reader wrote me once to disagree with something I said about the Sabbath. I had quoted Ignatius, a bishop of Antioch in the early 2nd century, as saying that even Jewish Christians no longer kept the Sabbath, but instead lived in observance of the Lord’s day.

This person was at least honest enough to tell me that one 19th-century book says that this passage could be translated as the Lord’s "way."

I doubt it’s true that the passage could be translated that way. We have Ignatius’ letter in Greek, and odos and emera are not so close that they’re likely to be confused.

But, even assuming it was so, what difference would it make?

My question is, why do I have to tell this person, "Um, even if you change that sentence to ‘Lord’s way’ rather than ‘Lord’s Day,’ it still says, ‘No longer keeping the Sabbath, but living in observance of the Lord’s way.’ What’s the difference?"

Did that person not have the extra 5 seconds it would have taken to consider whether his argument was reasonable or to wonder what I would answer in return?

Can This Argument Be Reasonably Answered?

Every now and then I’ll tell my friends or family about some discussion I was in, whether in person, by email, or on a message board. I’ll tell them an argument I gave. Most of the time, I get asked, "What do people say when you say that?"

Obviously, that question comes to a lot of people’s minds when they hear about an argument: What did the other guy say?

But just as apparently, it doesn’t come very often to the mind of a person bent on defending their tradition. If they considered for any time at all what I would say in response, they would figure out I have an easy answer and at least acknowledge it exists.

So why don’t they?

That’s why this series is called "Too Lazy To Reason."

Real Research

So far I’m just talking about taking a few seconds to determine whether there’s an easy answer!

A real researcher would do far more than that. It’s simple for most people—and certainly someone who’s emailing—to do a Google search and determine whether their question is already answered.

If a person is just asking me a question, I really don’t mind researching it for them. That’s what I do. I like it. If you just want to know, and you’re too busy or lazy to research on your own, I’ll often be willing to do it for you.

But if you’re painting yourself as a researching defending a viewpoint, and you haven’t even googled your question! Good grief! That ought to embarrass you!

The Point?

Well, you could consider this a rant, I guess. Those are popular on the internet, and I do that some.

However, when I talk about things like this with my kids, I’m trying to teach them not to be like that. You’re not my kid—well, unless one of them is reading this, which will happen—but this sort of "research&quote is so common that I have to assume it’s acceptable to American Christian tradition to behave in this dishonesty and lazy way.

So I guess my point is to ask you not to do this yourself.

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Too Lazy to Reason, Part II

Posted on 12/28/2010 by Paul Pavao

The point of this 3-part series is to get to examples of Christians being too lazy to reason. Any ol’ excuse will do for maintaining the status quo, even if it’s completely unreasonable. Or, “Here’s my argument; if I took 2 seconds, I could refute it myself, but I don’t care enough to give it 2 seconds.”

Today, though, I want to talk about when it’s okay to not give the reasons for your faith 2 seconds of thought.

Christianity IS Tradition

That statement ought to come as a surprise to us non-Catholics, but really, it’s undeniable.

At least, it’s undeniable if you believe in sola scriptura.

  • Now I commend you, brothers, that you keep the traditions as I delivered them to you. (1 Cor. 11:2)
  • Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you have been taught, whether by word or by our letter. (2 Thess. 2:15)
  • We command you, brothers, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother that walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which you have received from us. (2 Thess. 3:6)
  • It was necessary for me to write to you and exhort you to earnestly battle for the faith that was delivered to the saints. (Jude 3)
  • Let what you heard from the beginning remain in you. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, you will, as well, continue in the Son and in the Father. (1 Jn. 2:24)

The early churches always understood that there was a body of truth delivered to them by the apostles, and it was their job to preserve it. They did an excellent job of it, too … for a while. Even when they departed from their faith, they took their lumps—delivered in the form of rebukes from apostles and chastenings from the Lord—and got back going in the right direction. Even Laodicea maintained a good and godly church past the 1st century!

Of course, it shouldn’t surprise us that a letter from the Lord Jesus would be effective at turning a church around, especially since he can follow it up with a personal visit by means of the Holy Spirit!

Cling Tightly to Tradition

It’s only the traditions of men that the apostles and Jesus wanted us to avoid. Jesus’ traditions and the apostles’ traditions, those are a new law for us (Heb. 7:12).

(Yes, I know: "New law" isn’t the most comfortable way to phrase it, but the fact is that we do have commands that we are to obey. We do so spiritually, empowered and led by the Spirit, but we nonetheless do so. It is only those who obey Jesus’ commands who know and love him [Jn. 15:14; 1 Jn. 2:3-4]. Further, Heb. 7:12 lets us know that we don’t have to be afraid of such terminology, and it was used off and on by the Christians in the apostles’ churches who still clung tightly to apostolic tradition.)

It is good for us to know what traditions came from the apostles. It is for that reason that the New Testament was gathered. I’ve read plenty of books by competent scholars giving numerous reasons why those specific 27 books made it into the Bible, but the more familiar I get with the first 4 centuries of the church the more convinced I get that there was only one criteria for whether a book made it into the New Testament: Did an apostle approve it?

All those Christians of the first 4 centuries cared about was whether a teaching came from the apostles. That’s it. If the apostles taught it, then it was true. If the apostles didn’t teach it, then it might be interesting, but it certainly isn’t crucial. We are "apostolic" churches.

Handing Down Apostolic Tradition

I’m a researcher. It’s my gift from the Holy Spirit. I love digging through the early writings of the church. I love hunting down truth.

So you might expect me to recommend that to you.

Nope.

I suggest you listen to me after I do the research for you.

… …

It’s okay to have tradition handed to you.

Your job is to determine whom you trust to hand it to you.

I usually get a couple emails a week telling me that I ought to trust a priest with apostolic succession—whether Catholic or Orthodox—to hand that tradition down to me. Most of them are appalled at my gall in saying I can find it on my own.

But I never find apostolic tradition on my own. I get it by listening to people I have judged in the same way I’m about to ask you to judge me.

Jesus said that you will know a prophet by his fruit. Good fruit always comes from good trees and bad fruit from bad trees. If you see bad fruit—say, for example, a church that burns someone to death for translating the Bible into a language that everyone can read—then you can know that’s a bad tree.

On the other hand, if you see good fruit, then you ought to pay attention to that "prophet," whether that prophet is a church or a teacher. That’s a good tree, even if that church or teacher is teaching something contrary to what you intellectually have determined to be true.

Chances are, you’re misled or deceived in some way—minor or major—and that’s why they’re bearing better fruit than you. That’s also why you should learn from them.

Now I’m not asking you to listen to me because I personally bear great fruit. If there was no one around but me, you probably shouldn’t listen to me.

I’m asking you to listen to me because what I’m teaching has produced good fruit for a very long time. It’s what Rose Creek Village teaches, and what RCV teaches works. It’s what the Anabaptists taught, and in their early days, they were immensely successful at the things that matter in God. It’s what the 2nd century church taught, and as far as I’m concerned no generation has lived up to that standard since.

Back on Subject

It’s okay to have your faith generally handed to you. It’s okay not to intellectually analyze every aspect of it. It’s even okay if your tradition, given to you by your good-fruit-bearing church, happens to differ in some ways from the tradition of another good-fruit-bearing church. If both churches are good trees, then the differences can’t be too important, can they?

Of course, if your two good-fruit-bearing churches can’t get along, then neither of you have good fruit, because the two most important fruits are love and unity (Jn. 13:34-35; 17:20-23).

So, if you get your tradition from a good source, a source that bears good fruit, then you’re okay. You don’t have to do all that research. You can let them do it for you, and you can trust them. Simple!

Now, let me tell you when all this holding to tradition falls apart.

It’s when you start lying.

Oh, that’s right. That’s tomorrow’s subject.

Posted in Bible, Church, History, Modern Doctrines, Roman Catholic & Orthodox, Unity | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Too Lazy to Reason, Part I

Posted on 12/27/2010 by Paul Pavao

"It was the intention of the Holy Spirit to enlighten [only] those holy souls who had devoted themselves to the service of the truth." (Origen, De Principiis IV:1:14, c. A.D. 230)

I don’t know if you’ve thought about why most of us don’t keep the Sabbath, but keeping the Sabbath is, after all, one of the ten commandments.

Some Christians would say that Sunday is the Sabbath. Catholics and Mormons would agree on this, and a lot of Protestants would as well. It may not matter much which day of the week the Sabbath falls on, but if we’re supposed to keep the Sabbath, why would we keep it on the first day of the week rather than the 7th? God did give a reason that he chose the 7th day as a day of rest.

The reason things are this way is because you are keeping a very ancient tradition. For those who do not keep a Sabbath at all, I would say that tradition is apostolic … sort of.

Why We Don’t Keep the Sabbath

The following is not a discussion of why you shouldn’t keep the Sabbath. It’s a discussion of why you don’t. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with what follows; what follows is still why we Christians do what we do (or don’t do what we don’t do).

All we know for certain from the apostles is that Paul said that the Sabbath is a mere shadow of things to come (Col. 2:16) and that Christians don’t have to hold one day above another (Rom. 14:5-6).

But after the apostles? Then we know a lot. The early Christians believed that Jesus did not only "fulfill" the Law of Moses, he "filled" it as well. He brought it to its full state, so that now we not only avoid adultery, we avoid lusting (right?). We not only keep our oaths, we honor every word that comes out of our mouths. (Matt. 5:17ff and fuller explanation here)

Also, we don’t just sanctify the 7th day, we sanctify every day. Because our salvation is not physical, as it was with the ancient Israelites, our rest is not physical, either. We have entered a new Sabbath, the perpetual rest we have in Christ.

That’s what early Christians taught across the board in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and the practice of not bothering to rest on Saturday has come down to us, but the reason for that practice has not.

Because the reason was forgotten, along with a lot of other things that were forgotten, Christians began asking, rightly, "Why aren’t we keeping the 4th commandment?"

(Except medieval Roman Catholics, who had to ask, "Why aren’t we keeping the 3rd commandment?" The RCC didn’t like the command about not making graven images, so they took it out, which they could get away with because they wouldn’t let their captives read the Bible. But that’s a different tradition.)

The response to this question could not be "Let’s go back to resting on the 7th day" because the tradition against it was too well-established. Thus began the practice of resting on the 1st day, the "Christian Sabbath."

Early Christians honored the first day, too, but not as a Sabbath. It was a day of rejoicing. On Sunday they did not kneel or fast. They also held their weekly meeting on that day, though it was early in the morning so that everyone could get to their fields or business after the meeting. It was not a day of rest. Even for the Romans, the great day of Saturn was the chief day of the week, not the day of the Sun. Everyone worked on Sunday, and if there was a day of rest, it was the 7th day for the Jews, and the same day, the day of Saturn, for the Romans.

But because the 1st day was a day of joy in honor of the resurrection, it was the primary candidate for restoring the physical rest that properly belongs to the Old Covenant.

Should We Keep the Sabbath?

Ah, that’s the question. But it’s a question for tomorrow. It’s not the answer that I want to talk about, it’s the answering.

So "Reasoning, Part One" was devoted to actually thinking about why we don’t keep a 7th day Sabbath. Part Two will be devoted to whether we should just accept tradition as it’s handed to us, and Part Three will discuss the terrible temptations we face when we discuss such issues.

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Getting Ready for Xmas, 2011

Posted on 12/26/2010 by Paul Pavao

I know Christians usually don’t like the use of Xmas. They feel like Jesus is being x’d out of the holiday.

For the record, the use of Xmas was an attempt to abbreviate Christmas that I find interesting.

X represents the Greek letter chi; it’s the first letter in Christ. Jesus isn’t being x’d out of Christmas with Xmas, he’s being chi’d in!

You’ve probably seen that Greek letter chi on bumper stickers. It’s normally inside a fish symbol, and it looks like this:

ΙΧΘΥΣ

Iota, chi, theta, upsilon, sigma: It spells ichthus, which is the Greek word for fish. It stands for Iesous, Christos, Theou, Uios, Soter—Jesus, Christ, of God, Son, Savior.

When you see it, it’s not pronounced iks-oh-yay; it’s pronounced ik´-thoos, soft th, long oo.

And if you don’t mind the Χ in ΙΧΘΥΣ, then you don’t have to mind it in Χmas, either!

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Merry Christmas!

Posted on 12/25/2010 by Paul Pavao

I meant to just give you a link today. The link’s more important than the post that follows, so if your time is limited, read John Bob’s blog, not what I wrote below the link:

God entered our world

Some Thoughts on Christmas

This is the day when a pretty good portion of the world’s population celebrates the day that a poor Jewish kid was born in a small town in a conquered nation over 2,000 years ago.

It’s an unanswerable miracle that we even know that day happened; never mind whether we know the exact day of the year it happened on—or even that we don’t know the exact year.

Atheists love to point out that the worshipers of Mithras drank bread and wine in honor of their resurrected deity just like Christians do. They love to point out the lack of contemporary, non-Christian, historical testimony to Jesus’ existence. They love to point out geographical problems in the Gospels and seeming contradictions.

Yeah, exactly. There’s no earthly reason that the whole world should know who Jesus is and refer to him as Christ. That’s a Jewish term for a king or anointed prophet! Why would the whole world use that tiny, tribal nation’s vocabulary, especially when they weren’t even a nation for 97% of those 2000 years!!! Yahweh, the tribal war god of an insignificant people, has conquered the world—without war!

Marvel today. Also, share a cup of cheer. Make someone warm today, whether that’s bodily or emotionally. Give gifts and don’t worry about getting them. Don’t worry about whether those gifts are physical because Jesus didn’t give a physical gift except the gift of himself. Enjoy the lights and think of the light of world.

It’s a great day to give.

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Imperative-Indicative and Performance-Acceptance

Posted on 12/24/2010 by Paul Pavao

I read an article today discussing "imperative & indicative."

Imperative & indicative is the idea that all of God’s imperatives—his commands—go back to and are based on his indicatives—what he says about his love for us.

You can do this with all of Scripture. You can trace back all the imperatives back to, if it is not in the context of the chapter or the book, its in the bigger picture.

The example given is the first commandment in Ex. 20:2-3. God tells the Israelites that they must not have any gods before him; that’s the imperative. But first he tells them that he is God and he has rescued them; that’s the indicative. The imperative, that they must put God first, is based on the indicative, that God has rescued them.

He says, "You can do this with all of Scripture."

That’s a really sweet, nice idea, but no, you can’t.

At the very least, there are dozens of Scriptures you can’t do that with, and perhaps there are hundreds.

A Massive Conflict

Protestants are always coming up with falsehoods like this because they’re struggling so hard to defend their version of faith alone. It’s very easy to squash the overboard faith-alone theology that is rampant in modern Protestantism. It’s terribly unscriptural.

The problem is, there’s a point that Protestants—and, in the case of the article linked above, Darrin Patrick—are trying to make, and that point is valid.

We love him because he first loved us.

There’s no getting around that. People who are working their way to heaven by obedience to God are, in general, insufferable. They’re self-righteous, dishonest about their own weaknesses, and no one really wants to be around them. In that way, they’re nothing like Jesus himself. Sinners loved to have Jesus around, and it certainly wasn’t because he beat around the bush or hid his light under a bushel!

The people we want to be around are the people who know that they only love him because he first loved them. They know that there is none righteous, no, not even they themselves. They are full of mercy for us because they know the mercy they need themselves.

But that’s not the whole story!

Performance and Acceptance

God’s imperatives are not always based on indicatives except for the indicative that if we don’t obey, then we’re going to be punished.

The Bible doesn’t only say that we love him because he first loved us. Sometimes it says that if we don’t do what we’re supposed to do, we’re going to hell.

Jesus said that in Matt. 25:31-46. There the people who go to heaven are the nice people who helped others. Everyone else goes to hell even though they think they’re nice people. And the context doesn’t help. Jesus leads up to the judgment by telling the story of the 3 servants with the talents. There’s good and faithful servants who get a reward, and there’s a lazy servant who is thoroughly chewed out by his master for being wicked, and then he’s punished pretty severely.

Then there’s Rev. 3:4-5. There, Jesus comments that there’s people "even in Sardis" who haven’t defiled their garments.

That’s a pretty rough statement, don’t you think? "Even in Sardis"? It doesn’t sound like he’s pouring out love and acceptance on them, does it?

And he’s not! Those "few," "even in Sardis," will walk with him in white. The rest will have their name blotted out of the Book of Life unless they repent.

What’s a Soul To Do?

So what are we to do? Does God love us and lead us to love him, or does he threaten us so that we’ll love him?

Yes.

Read through the Gospels some time. Jesus doesn’t care about whether you believe in works-righteousness or faith-righteousness. He cares whether you’re doing what you’re told. If he has to love you sweetly to encourage you, then he does that. If he has to threaten firebolts from heaven, then he’s not averse to doing that, either.

You can find Jesus comforting a woman caught in adultery, assuring her he doesn’t condemn her.

Don’t be fooled; that’s not for her faith! He did that because that would help her live righteously! That woman didn’t have any faith. She just had a distant hope that she wouldn’t be stoned that day and face a God whose laws she’d despised.

She looked in the face of Jesus, who, like his Father, always wants people to repent and live, and she found a love that transformed her.

The Pharisees, however, didn’t always find that same love. He wanted their repentance, too, and he got it by threatening the judgment of hell on them and calling them open graves and the children of snakes.

Comfort the Fainthearted; Warn the Unruly; Help the Weak

One good way to test a teaching is by looking at its conclusion. What does the teaching tell you to do? And does God tell you the same thing in the Scriptures?

For example, I did that the other day with evangelism. We cajole, coerce, and convict people into evangelizing over and over. Do the letters to the churches do the same? No, they don’t, so I taught a teaching that matches what we’re told to do in the letters to the churches.

That seemed better.

So do the Scriptures tell you to do what I’m talking about today?

They sure do. First they tell us that we are to treat different people differently:

Now we exhort you, brothers: warn the unruly; comfort the fainthearted; help the weak; be patient to everyone. (1 Thess. 5:14)

Okay three different things to do with 3 different people.

  1. It’s okay to warn those arrogant, “I don’t have to obey because Jesus died for me” people. You’re doomed. Jesus is going to enjoy sending you to hell. (Well, I don’t know about the enjoyment part, but he is going to send them to hell.)
  2. It’s important to comfort the fainthearted, or you’re going to discourage and destroy them. Don’t. Jesus loves those people.
  3. Help the weak. Give them any help you can! Love them, visit them, give them your time, and chew them out if you need to.

In the end, though, don’t miss the "patient with everyone" part. It’s okay to chew out pharisees; it’s not okay to give up on them. Pray for them, love them, and be patient with them … while you’re calling them snakes and telling them they’re sons of hell.

Have the right goal! God’s goal! That all would come to repentance and be saved!

Okay, finally, here’s one other proof that this is the way Jesus thinks:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father in heaven

That’s what matters to Jesus, is that the Father’s will is done. Forgive the adulterer, condemn the Pharisee, be frustrated with the apostles and those in Sardis. Whatever it takes, help them do the Father’s will. It doesn’t matter what they’ve done; it matters what they will do.

Give them time, give them love, give them rebuke, give them forgiveness, promise them rewards (real ones, not made-up ones); do whatever you have to do, but help them live for Jesus, and pay the price of suffering and time to help it happen.

Anyway, that’s my take on it.

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On Dealing with Insecurities, Part 2

Posted on 12/23/2010 by Paul Pavao

Yesterday’s Part 1 to this post was called "Dealing with Mental Illness," not "Dealing with Insecurities."

Yesterday, I had a point to make about ignoring that sort of mental illness.

Today, though I want to talk about security and the family of God.

This post started out as an addendum to yesterday’s post, but it got long enough and off the subject enough that I thought it deserved its own post.

So here goes:

Dealing with Insecurities, Part 2

Yesterday, I called my post “light-hearted.” Far from being light-hearted, that post made me nauseous. I don’t talk about my feelings very well, and I don’t disparage myself very well unless I’m just joking around.

Too proud, I guess! 🙂

I wrote yesterday’s post just in case there were others as messed up as me, and afterward I wanted to go hide in a closet and peek out the door to see if anyone was going to come in and comfort me. (That’s not a very mature thing to do, so I didn’t do that.)

Okay, having said all that, now the manly side of me can shrug all this off, make sure everyone knows I only wrote that post to help others who might struggle with those kind of thoughts, and act real secure … at such times it’s important to laugh the discussion off with a deep, resonant, manly laugh.

The fact is, though, that I can laugh it off because my insecurities are driven out by wonderful love and fellowship from people who know everything I said yesterday is true, but who don’t think I’m stupid, insane, or childish—or if they do, then they must not care. I don’t have to worry about those feelings because they neither control me nor get hidden in a cage, silently affecting all my actions in the background.

We all need that kind of love, and that’s why the church is so important. For us to walk in the fullness of what God has given us to do, we have to grow up—even if we do that growing up when we’re 40, 50, or 60 years old—in the wonderful, loving environment of the family of God.

The Family of God and Insecurities

The family of God is not a Sunday morning meeting in suits.

Now would be a good time to talk about how to either start or be a part of the real family of God—not a meeting; not a club; but people who act like family to one another because their spiritual kin are more important to them than their physical kin.

But I write about that a lot.

Today I just want it to sink in that it’s so important.

Most men are like me, full of insecurities. Most men—and unfortunately, especially Christians—are not like me, in that they don’t have intimate friends loving and nurturing them spiritually so that their insecurities don’t overrun them.

One of the most amazing revelations of church life, and there’s been many, is that most men who come to the church are overrun by fear; fear affects every aspect of their personalities, and their bravest, most macho behavior is usually 100% fear-based.

I don’t think I have time to explain how true that is. I can give you an example, though.

We met one really macho, sharp-tongued, not-afraid-to-say-anything Christian guy a few years back. As we got to know him, it slowly became apparent that the reason he was so sharp-tongued is that he was scared to talk to people! Amazingly, what looked like “I’m not afraid to talk about anything” was really “I have to offend you quickly because I’m afraid to talk about almost anything.”

So many men are just that way. They growl their way past their insecurities, unable to love lest they look bad while loving.

The answer my friend, is not prayer. The answer is to be exhorted, comforted, and encouraged every day, while it’s called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of insecurity … oops, sin (Heb. 3:13).

That’s what the church needs to offer, not just good teaching or good singing, and especially not a beautiful building that we foolishly call the church.

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On Dealing with Mental Illness

Posted on 12/22/2010 by Paul Pavao

If you’re here because you googled mental illness, you came to the wrong place. There are mental illnesses that need professional, medical treatment, and there’s others that require deliverance by Christians that are close to God and able to drive out demons.

I’m not talking about those mental illnesses. I’m talking about the ones that come from being human, which most of us don’t realize are mental illnesses.

This is a little more light-hearted than most of my posts, but no less important in my eyes.

Swollen head Syndrome

God’s called me to a be a teacher. He’s given me a gift. Sometimes that means it’s really easy to teach and really easy to know what God’s saying. Sometimes that means that people walk away saying wonderful things about me, and other times they just walk away amazed, just a little bit more open to God in their lives.

I don’t want to talk about being a teacher. I want to talk about what it took for me to write the last paragraph.

Just saying that God called me to be a teacher sets off alarm bells inside. Numerous parts of me start speaking:

  • The part that catalogs what other people think so that I can make sure to follow all the rules for life says, "That’s not a very humble thing to say."
  • The part of me that is scared of what other people think—the part that wants me to follow polls like a politician—says, "Think of a way to tell them you’re a teacher http://rosecreekvillage.com/shammah/wp-admin/post.php?post=837&action=edit&message=1to get your point across, but find some words that make you look humble."
  • The part of me that wants to affect what other people think of me, says, "Be bold! You can’t be humble by acting humble, anyway. Cross lines fearlessly, like all those guys you admire, and then maybe others will admire you, too!"

All that happens inside me in a split second.

Shrunken Head Syndrome

Worse, I’d love to acknowledge that I’m astounded at the revelation God gives me sometimes. It comes down from heaven, fills me with joy, makes my insides quiver, and always gives me power to dispel anything that comes up against what I’m saying. When that revelation comes, I can see inside of people, and it’s no problem cutting right to the center of a matter, nor to speak fearlessly yet with care and compassion.

That’s a gift of God. It’s incredibly delightful, and I think it’s a good thing to talk about because every one of us has a gift from God like that, and every one of us can experience the thrill and the inexplicable confidence that comes from operating in that gift.

But it’s exceptionally difficult to talk about the gift of God in me.

The fact is, when it’s happening, it’s very easy to be really, truly proud in a sinful way.

But then, afterward, this other gift of mine rises up. It’s the ability to condemn, and especially to condemn myself.

"Got arrogant again today, didn’t you? There’s people who ask you now and then just who you think you are, and they saw you today, puffed up and full of pride. Today, they know they’re justified in paying no attention to you because they’re right. You’re too big for your breeches."

The voice goes on:

"And what do you have to be proud of, anyway? It’s not like you deny yourself the way Hudson Taylor did. Are you scraping aside every bit of extra money? How about selling your furniture for missions support like Carol Vezey did? Amy Carmichael had her eyes set on the Gospel all the time. She wasn’t unmoved, and she sure wasn’t spending any time thinking she just gave a wonderful message. She was too busy being spiritual."

Your Voices

Do you ever go through that kind of thinking?

I’m 49. I’ve been walking with God for 28 years. I’ve paid a lot of attention the advice that’s been given me over the last 28 years in hopes of overthrowing those voices and thinking properly.

And I’ve found an answer.

The answer is that there is no answer.

No, the answer is that no answer is needed.

My mind’s going to be like that forever. Maybe it’s a mental illness. I’ve lived long enough, though, to know that if it’s a mental illness, it’s a mental illness that afflicts a lot of people.

But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Those voices make a lot of noise, and it’s slightly uncomfortable, and sometimes I feel bad for a little while, but those voices don’t deceive me. I know what’s right, and if I ignore what I feel about a situation and do what I know to be true about a situation, those voices don’t get in the way of that.

By the way, I’m not talking about really hearing voices. I heard voices for a couple years as a teenager after doing some LSD, and it took the prayers of the saints for those voices to go away … and they didn’t go away without a fight, nor without my choosing to do what’s right.

A 2nd-century Christian once wrote, "The evil demons … subdue all who do not put up a strong opposing effort for their own salvation." (Justin, First Apology 14). Don’t think that it’s all about God’s call. There’s God’s call, but he only chooses those who take the kingdom of heaven with violent effort.

The answer God has given me is to ignore all those thoughts and feelings. Who cares if I’m insecure, shaken by circumstances, and my feelings are driven around by what others think about me? My job is to ignore all that and get about my business serving God. I’m too busy to spend time fixing inadequacies that are impossible to fix, anyway.

What would be worse is if I used them as excuses.

To this day the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force. Maybe God will deliver you from your insecurities, but he’s never delivered me from mine, nor from the utterly ridiculous thoughts that accompany them.

I don’t argue with those thoughts, anymore. I just ignore them, and I get on about my business.

You need to do the same because I’m pretty sure God thinks you can rise up and serve him despite how you feel.

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The 3 Things Paul Wants Us To Know

Posted on 12/21/2010 by Paul Pavao

Many years ago a read a book suggesting that we learn how to pray for each other from the apostle Paul. Paul tells three churches—Ephesus, Philippi, and Colossae—what he was praying for them about. He gives his prayers for the church in Ephesus twice, once in 1:17-23 and once in 3:14-21.

I only want to focus on the first of those prayers because it lends itself well to an outline, and its outline matches the other prayers in Philippians, and Colossians well.

Here’s his prayer:

"… that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give to you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, so that you may know …

  1. "what is the hope of his calling,
  2. "what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
  3. "and what is the exception greatness of his power to us who believe."

1. The hope of his calling

The issue here is first and foremost eternal life. In Titus 1:2, Paul writes:

… in hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began.

In another place, Paul tells us we are saved by hope, and that hope concerns those things that we cannot yet see. The context of that hope is …

[We], who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom. 8:23)

The apostle John adds, "This is the promise which he has promised: eternal life." (1 Jn. 2:25).

How many times does our Master promise us riches in heaven if we will forsake the riches of this earth? Paul, too, tells us that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us.

The writer of Hebrews, when he asks us to set aside the weights, the things that hold us back, as well as the sins we’ve done, tells us to do so with our eyes on Jesus who endured the cross for the joy that was set before him. If even our Master kept his eyes on the reward at the end, how much more should we!

So Paul prays that we would first know the hope of eternal life.

2. The Riches of the Glory of His Inheritance in the Saints

Paul takes the time to distinguish between the hope of our calling and the riches of the glory of God’s inheritance in the saints.

It’s important not to treat the two as the same thing.

Note that it is "his" inheritance in the saints, not "ours."

I’m sure that I’ll not be able to do this topic justice, but the adoption, the redemption of our bodies is not just something that we groan for. "The whole creation" groans and it travails like a woman in childbirth, awaiting the revelation of the sons of God (Rom. 8:20-23).

We’re going to save the universe, folks. When the sons of God are revealed, the entire creation will be released from its slavery to decay and brought into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.

I’ll bet you’ve heard the verse that says that the sufferings of this time aren’t worthy to be compared to the glory which will be revealed in us. I bet you have never thought about the context of that verse, which is that all creation will enter into the glorious liberty of …

Of us!

All creation … our glorious liberty …

Pretty heady stuff, isn’t it?

Paul’s prayer was that we would know the hope of our calling, which is eternal life, but that, second, we would also know the incredible wealth associated with the glory of God’s inheritance in the saints. That incredible wealth is the deliverance of the creation from uselessness and decay.

The entire creation is groaning in earnest expectation of that day.

We think so small.

3. The Exceptional Greatness of His Power … Toward Us Who Believe!

The third thing Paul prays for us to know is not just the exceptional greatness of his power. We all think we know that. After all, he created the universe. He can do anything he wants. Yeah, God! He’s awesome.

No, Paul prays that we would know the exception greatness of his power to us who believe.

Paul was going for it. Nothing deterred him. He was convinced of the power of the Gospel, and even if you bottled him up in a prison, illegally beat him with whips, and stuck him in stocks, he was going to cry out praises to God.

When he did, the earth shook, the stocks fell off, and Paul preached the Gospel once more.

Well, that was for then, right?

May God grant you to know the exceptional greatness of his power to us who believe!

We’re wimpy. And we’re wimpy because we’re full of unbelief. It’s not our weakness as humans that makes us wimpy. It’s our unbelief. According to James, Elijah was just like us, subject to the same passions. But he prayed and no rain fell for 3 years.

I talked about it on this blog a few days ago. Moses, David, and even Samson were mightily used by God, and it wasn’t because they were overflowing with the power to overcome temptation beyond all the rest of us mere mortals. They just believed God more. As a matter of fact, Moses probably didn’t even believe God more. He was just in the right place at the right time.

Oh that we knew the exceptional greatness of his power!

4. The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation in the Knowledge of Him

Wait, I said 3 things, didn’t I!

This last one is not something he wanted us to know, it’s how he wanted us to get to know the other things!

The knowledge of those things does not come by my explaining them in a blog. It comes by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.

The first thing Paul prays for is not that we know those 3 things I mentioned, but that we have the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; otherwise, we’re just blind, carnal theologians, repeating words without power, except perhaps the power to kill, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

We’ve addressed other verses in Romans 8, let us never forget Romans 8:14: "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God."

Christianity is not a religion of knowledge; it’s a religion of power; it’s a religion of revelation; it’s a spiritual religion. If you aren’t led by the Spirit of God, then you aren’t a son of God, and if you’re not a son of God, then you’re not a Christian.

Christians aren’t good people; Christians are sons of the living God.

I’ve said enough. May God give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, so that you can really be a believer, and never underestimate that incredible, universe-changing word: Believer.

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