The Purpose of Marriage

The following post is excerpted from the chapter, "The Purpose of Marriage," in my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God.

At some point, all the practical questions about marriage find their basis in the central question of what marriage is supposed to be all about. One might think that we should begin with that question, but in reality none of us do. Ask most couples when they’re about to get married, and they will tell you that they’re getting married because “We’re in love.” Doubtless at the time, that is true. Ask a couple on the verge of divorce why they got married in the first place, and sometimes they’ll say the same thing, and say that later on they fell out of love. If they’re being sincerely reflective, though, they’ll acknowledge ulterior motives. She wanted to get out of her parents’ house and couldn’t afford to be on her own. He wanted sex, and for religious or other reasons didn’t want simply to sleep around. She wanted the security of a committed relationship. He was afraid he was going to lose her if he didn’t lock in the relationship with a ring. She hadn’t had a lot of guys interested in her, and felt that this was the best she could do. He had been scared to death of marriage, until he ended up being more scared of ending up alone. She wanted children and didn’t want to raise them alone. There are a multitude of reasons. Feel free to swap the pronoun genders around: none of these reasons are specific to men or to women in particular.

So which is true? The romantic version at the time, or the jaded version from years later? Most likely, both are. People are complex beings, and we all have ulterior motives, whether we think we do or not. It doesn’t make the love we feel at the time any less real.

But the important issue is not what we think marriage is all about. Rather, it’s what does God think marriage is all about? Why did he create marriage? What is it for? How is it supposed to function in our lives?

Christian Married Sexuality (part 2)

The following post is adapted from the chapter, "Sexuality," from my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God. 

Check out Part 1 of this series by clicking here.

Sex and the Christian Marriage

The previous post of course leads to the question: what is healthy sexuality in marriage? A favorite text that seems to address this topic is Hebrews 13:4, which reads in the King James Version, “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” This looks like an endorsement of marriage itself and of married sexuality (take that, Jerome!), and I recall having heard a number of sermons that focused on this endorsement as an affirmation of the goodness and rightness of married sex. Not only that, but it was pretty much interpreted to mean that anything goes within the marriage relationship. Nonetheless, contextual indicators lead most modern translations and commentators to take the passage as an imperative: “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral” (NIV). While this is doubtless the correct translation, it reopens the question of what keeps the marriage bed pure. Is an undefiled marriage bed one in which sexuality is restricted only to procreation? Is it one in which only the missionary position is used? Is there stuff that’s allowable and stuff that isn’t for a married couple?

Those looking for specific techniques and detailed strategies will have to go to other writers. However, the immediate context seems to spell out the intent of the author of Hebrews: what would defile the marriage bed is adultery and sexual immorality. That is to say, it wasn’t anything happening between the married partners, but rather when one of the partners committed infidelity of some sort. The kinds of things that defile the marriage bed are the same kinds of things that eventually lead to permissible divorce and remarriage, according to Jesus. When the author of Hebrews says that the “marriage bed [should be] kept pure,” he essentially means to keep other people out of it. (tweet this)

Christian Married Sexuality (part 1)

The following post is adapted from the chapter, "Sexuality," from my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God.

On the evening when Cecile first came to church with me, a group of us went out afterward to a Big Boy restaurant. Pastor Bill, our College and Career pastor, came out to eat with us—probably to get to know Cecile better and witness to her—and sat down with Cecile, me, and my best friend Dave. He was asking her questions, and I was mostly nervously listening. I didn’t really know this woman all that well, although I knew enough to know she was liable to say anything. I felt that whatever she said would reflect on me, even though it wasn’t as though we were dating or anything.

After learning about her background, her divorce, and the loss of her children, Pastor Bill asked her, “So have you ever thought about becoming a Christian?”

“Well, I did for a while, but then I heard that you had to give up sex, so I thought, Forget that!”

Dave snorted Coke out of his nose, and I started slinking under the table. Pastor Bill didn’t miss a beat, though. He simply replied, “Well, that is an obstacle for a lot of people. What you have to decide is, what’s more important?”

Cecile didn’t betray that Pastor Bill was getting to her, but she went home thinking about the conversation, and within a week, she had given her life to Jesus. That was to be the beginning of living celibate for two years before we got married.

New distribution for Marriage, Family, and the Image of God

I'm happy to report that my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God, is now available for the Apple universe on iTunes, as well as in ePub format at Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and other online retailers.

It's also still available for Kindle on Amazon, and as a paperback at CreateSpace, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers.

If you're interested in the big picture of what marriage and family are all about, and if you're interested in seeing how that connects with us being created in God's image, please check it out! And if you like it, please post an honest review on the site where you purchased it. That would really do a lot to help me spread the word. Thanks!

The Not-So-Romantic Tale of Jacob, Rachel and Leah

Those of us who grew up in the church are familiar with the story of Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. After fleeing for his life from his brother Esau, Jacob comes to his relative Laban in Haran to find a wife, and meets Rachel, Laban's daughter. He falls in love with her at once and makes an arrangement to work for seven years to earn her hand in marriage. At the end of the seven years, Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Rachel's older sister Leah instead, and Jacob works another seven years for Rachel. The story is almost always presented as a beautiful love story with a touch of intrigue thrown in. Laban is considered a rotten trickster, Leah his accomplice, Jacob is viewed as receiving a bit of poetic justice after having tricked his brother and his father out of the oldest child's traditional birthright, and Rachel has the role of the hapless heroine, caught in the middle of this mess through no fault of her own. It is often pointed out that "Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her" (Gen. 29:20).

We are told that "Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. Jacob loved Rachel" (Gen 29:17-18). Commentators are not agreed on what the "weakness" of Leah's eyes means. Most seem not to believe that it reflects poor eyesight or blindness; the majority seem to believe that her eyes were simply unattractive--possibly blue, which may have been considered a defect in the ancient Middle East. Adam Clarke has an intriguing suggestion: that the "weakness" of Leah's eyes reflects not a negative quality but a positive one--that she did have pretty eyes, but by contrast, Rachel's entire "form and appearance" were attractive, and therefore Jacob gave his love to Rachel. One way or another, it was Rachel's beauty that swayed Jacob. There's nothing wrong with this, in and of itself: many significant women in the Bible are described as being beautiful. But if we look at the respective characters of Leah and Rachel, and the results that came from the two marriages, a picture emerges that is very different from the romantic one usually taught.

Stuff I Wish People Would Stop Writing about Christmas

Every year people trot out the same observations about Christmas. It's not so much the observations themselves I object to, but the air of smug intellectual superiority, the "I know something you don't know" attitude. Because we all know all this stuff already. And some of it isn't even true. Here's my list:

1. Jesus wasn't really born on Christmas Day.
That's right, kids. Jesus wasn't really born on December the 25th. Well, duh. Strictly speaking, there is just about a 1/365th chance that Jesus was born on December 25th. I'm not going to go into details, but arguments both for and against a December birth aren't conclusive. Nonetheless, the date wasn't included in the gospels, and there's no reason to suppose that Jesus' birthday would have been remembered and celebrated outside the gospel records. Look, we all understand that December 25 is the day we traditionally celebrate the incarnation. It doesn't have to be accurate. That's not the point.

What Does It Mean to Follow Jesus

As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him.

--Matthew 4:18-20 NIV

The phrase Jesus uses most often to call people to become his disciples is the familiar phrase, "Follow me." Most people are reasonably clear on what that meant in Jesus' day, at least for Peter, Andrew, and the rest of the twelve. They left their occupations and traveled with Jesus, being taught by him and being commissioned to do the things he was doing: preach the good news of the kingdom, drive out demons, and heal sicknesses (Matt. 10). Their "following" was quite literal: Jesus was an itinerant preacher and they went with him wherever he went. Following Jesus involved sacrifice: Peter once said to Jesus that his disciples had "left everything" to follow him, and Jesus didn't contradict Peter, but rather held out to him promises of reward (Mark 10:28-31).

It's difficult to say in what sense other people also followed Jesus. Crowds followed Jesus from one side of the Sea of Galilee to the other, and Jesus rebuked them for having wrong motives (John 6:24-26). However, it's clear that at least some people outside the circle of the Twelve were also disciples, or at least true believers who followed Jesus' teachings: Mary and Martha, along with their brother Lazarus, Mary Magdalene and the other women who went to anoint Jesus' body and found the tomb empty. Joseph of Arimathea is also identified as a disciple of Jesus, albeit secretly, along with Nicodemus (John 19:38-39). So to be a disciple or follower of Jesus did not necessarily mean to be one of those who actually went around with him physically.

These questions become relevant for us in the present day because there are some current teachings relating to discipleship that make assumptions regarding what following Jesus is all about, largely based on the biblical example of Jesus and the Twelve. These teachings also relate to how we understand the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), because Jesus' command was to "make disciples," not merely to make converts. What it means to be a disciple, what it means to follow Jesus, is thus very important.

More on Rob Bell's "What Is the Bible?"

I have no intention of starting a running commentary on Rob Bell's "What Is the Bible?" series on Tumblr, but a couple of recent posts of his 1) answer some questions I had raised about how he was going to handle the Resurrection, and 2) provide a wonderful example of how not to do exegesis on Ephesians 1:9-10.

First, on the Resurrection. I had raised the question of how Rob would handle Jesus' resurrection, considering the fact that he had made a point of saying that the historicity of events in Scripture was beside the point. In his post #18 of the series, Rob gets to the Resurrection. And his conclusion is that, yes, literally, "Dude is alive!"(Rob is living in southern California now. And surfing a lot.)

So that's great: Rob and I agree that the Resurrection really happened. Rob gets there by an interesting path--he sees the discrepancies (or what he views as discrepancies) in the various Resurrection narratives and post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus as evidence that this was not propaganda and therefore really happened. (That it was women who saw Jesus first is additional evidence. A phony story would not have been set up that way.) So Rob manages to affirm the literal truth of the Resurrection while not having to affirm (or reconcile) the literal truth of any of the documents that document that fact. It all fits into his method pretty well.

Rob Bell's "What Is the Bible?" Series

Rob Bell has been blogging a series called "What Is the Bible?" If you're interested in reading it from the beginning, it starts here.

I'm neither a particular fan nor a particular detractor of Rob. (He strikes me as the kind of guy who'd like you to refer to him by his first name. Rob, feel free to call me Keith if you pop in.)

I read his Velvet Elvis, which didn't make a really significant impression; I think he was just tilting at different windmills than those that occupy my back yard. I haven't read any of this other books, including the controversial Love Wins. I was going to write that I have no particular axe to grind, but of course that isn't true; everyone has an axe to grind. I guess it's more true to write that I'm not jumping on board any particular pro-Rob or anti-Rob bandwagon.

So anyway, back to the "What Is the Bible?" series. A good summation of Rob's method can be found in Part 13: Consciousness and Violence. Rob's essential argument is that the Bible was written by people (he doesn't deny divine inspiration, but I suspect that what "inspiration" means is one of the things he'll get around to), those people were influenced by their own cultural biases and attitudes, those biases and attitudes become a part of the text, but also some new thoughts and ideas that weren't a part of the writers' culture also get introduced, which pulls the consciousness and attitudes of humanity forward. This process is very slow, because humanity is incapable of turning on a dime. God works from where we are, and draws us toward the next step forward.

Mike Breen and Building a Discipling Culture: A Dissent

Note (January 7, 2018): since this post has engendered more comments than the Blogger platform seems able to deal with, I would like to invite anyone interested in continuing the discussion over to a more recent post at http://www.schooleyfiles.com/2018/01/new-analysis-of-building-discipling.html. You can download an excellent in-depth commentary on Building a Discipling Culture  from there, and commenting and responding will be easier to get to than on this page.

Last summer, I commented on a review of Mike Breen's Building a Discipling Culture. The original review was at a blog entitled Notes from the Trail. In it, Jeff Noble offered a mixed review of Breen's book, lauding its intentional and structured approach to discipleship, but questioning the necessity of such a convoluted approach to discipleship and the effectiveness of the geometric images that Breen employs.

Based on my own experience in a church that had begun using Breen's approach, I commented on Noble's review. I've thought long and hard about whether to deal with the subject here on this blog, and decided that rather than saying a lot myself, I'd simply reprint my comment on the original review, along with a couple of the responses to me. I'm doing so because I think that Breen's approach is dangerous, and I feel that I need to let people know. My comment on the original review read as follows:

Jesus vs. Paul?

Recently I've been running up against a controversy of which I'd previously been blissfully ignorant: the supposed conflict between Jesus and Paul. I guess I'd known about the views of Ferdinand Christian Baur and the "History of Religions School" that had pitted Jesus' allegedly minor innovations to Judaism against Paul's ostensibly radical innovations, which then supposedly synthesized into early Catholocism. But I also thought that this theory was considered to have been discredited and outmoded. I didn't think that anyone who took the Bible seriously bought into it. Seems I may have been mistaken.

Apparently, the general idea is that we've been too influenced by Paul and his teaching of justification, which, we're told, leads to a focus on individual salvation, "accepting" Jesus as savior, praying a simple prayer, and being eternally secure thereafter. Evidently, what we should be doing is focusing on the teachings and example of Jesus in the Gospels. We see the differences described nicely here (by someone I consider a dear friend, by the way).

Holy Saturday

What must it have been like?

You've been following him for the better part of three years. You've seen amazing things that no one else would believe in. You've watched him confound his opponents and open your mind to new ways of seeing that you couldn't have imagined on your own. At first it came as a thought, too far beyond the pale to do more than chuckle over. But then it was persistent, and at last you came to formulate it, at least as a question: could this be the Messiah? He was different, certainly, than what you had expected. But his teachings were so different, and yet so self-evidently true, and the works of power that you had seen with your own eyes! Whoever he was, he was no ordinary man. And so you began to dare to hope.

The Great Commission - Who Does It Apply To, and in What Ways?

The following is adapted from "The Great Commission," in What's Wrong with Outreach.

The Great Commission is one of the most frequently referred-to passages in the Bible. I’m also convinced that it is one of the most misunderstood and misapplied. Let’s look at the text:

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” --Matthew 28:16-20

The common evangelical interpretation of the Commission involves several features. First, the Commission is understood to be the driving missions statement of the church—its placement at the end of Matthew’s gospel, spoken by the post-resurrection Jesus, makes it clear that this is Jesus’ mandate to all who follow him. Second, evangelicals apply the Commission to all believers individually: it is each disciple’s responsibility to live out this mandate in his or her life. Third, the Commission is directed specifically toward reaching the lost—that is, bringing people to saving faith in Jesus. It is generally understood in terms of rescuing people from an eternity in hell. Finally, the Commission is primarily accomplished by personal witnessing—sharing one’s faith with others—in combination with supporting preaching and missionary ministries (or directly engaging in such ministries), sometimes also in combination with such “pre-evangelism” activities as service projects that are intended to gain a receptive hearing for the gospel.

Why Joseph's Choice Matters

The Of Dust and Kings blog has a great article: "Divorce: Joseph and the Essence of Sacrificial Love." Here's a snippet:

Pregnant? The accusations rattle in his head, but he bites his tongue. And then, as if the pregnancy was not wounding enough, his adulterous betrothed goes on to insult his intelligence with some mystical story regarding an angel, and a divine pregnancy from God Himself.

“Yes, Joseph, I’m pregnant… but I promise I never had sex. I’m a virgin, and God magically made me pregnant! Pinky swear!”

So now he faces a choice. Betrayed, insulted, humiliated, angry, hurt – all the emotion swirls about within him, threatening to consume him, and he has to choose how to respond.

Most of us know how this all turned out, but TE Hanna really makes one think about the options Joseph really had and the price he paid for choosing the one he did. Great stuff. Check it out. 

For more on marriage, check out my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God .

"Your labor is not in vain"

To wrap up this series summarizing what was memorable to me in N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope, I'd like to focus on a particular verse that Wright points out as significant, and which ended up being perhaps the most significant insight in the book for me. It occurs at the end of 1 Corinthians 15--that is, at the end of Paul's powerful defense of physical resurrection as a necessary future event, and of his description of the resurrection body.  In verse 58, Paul writes:

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Here's the point: the traditional view of the afterlife, with us being whisked off into heaven and this present creation being destroyed, tends to leave a futile view of our actions in the present life. It's often said in Evangelical churches that the only thing that really counts is how many people we bring along with us into heaven. Although it's seldom directly stated, we're left to infer that everything else in life is pretty much just marking time until we die or until Jesus comes.

Even a view that takes resurrection seriously can be liable to the same distortion. This present life is just marking time. God's going to remake both our bodies and our world, so what we do in this lifetime doesn't ultimately have any value. What we do to this world, or to our bodies, might be regrettable--as when we give ourselves cancer through smoking or a poor diet, or poke a hole in the bottom of the ocean and let it spew oil into our oceans--but it's ultimately unimportant. God's going to right it all.

But that's not at all the point of view that Paul is espousing in this verse. Rather than ending his treatise on resurrection by saying, "Therefore, relax. Continue trusting in Jesus, and know that God will resurrect your bodies and remake this world," Paul specifically affirms to his readers the value of their work in the Lord.  In some sense, our work is going to endure. What we do in the Lord's service, in this present fallen world, matters.

Most Evangelicals would see "your labor in the Lord" as referring, in some sense, to evangelism. What Paul means here is that  our labor produces new followers of Jesus, who will then be resurrected and inhabit God's new creation: in that way, our labor is not in vain. That is how it endures.

Certainly that is at least part of what Paul means here. But it's hard to see that that's everything that he means. For one thing, there's very little about overt evangelism either in the context of this verse, or in 1 Corinthians in general--which deals much more with Christian character and behavior than it does with evangelism--or, to be honest, in the Pauline epistles in general. This is not to say that evangelism is unimportant; but taking "your labor in the Lord" to refer exclusively to evangelism is an assumption that has to be imported into the text. You can't get it out of what Paul writes here.

It seems much more likely to me that "your labor in the Lord" refers to anything and everything that we do in this life because we are followers of Jesus--whether it's fighting against the slave trade, conducting one's business in an honorable and charitable manner, working toward conservation of the environment, reaching people for Christ, standing against abortion, helping those who are oppressed, sharing grace and mercy to people, opposing unjust business or governmental practices, or anything else we do to live out Jesus' life in us. It all matters. It's all going to carry over into the future creation that God has envisioned for us.

As a matter of fact, it might be instructive to look at how prophecies in the Old Testament were fulfilled. Let's take the one about the city of Tyre in Ezekiel 26. While Ezekiel makes clear that God is accomplishing the judgment against Tyre, the actual fulfillment occurred through the actions of human beings. God worked through people, including some who were not following him and were not consciously trying to fulfill the prophecy, to accomplish his work.

While the new heavens and the new earth spoken of in Revelation 21:1 and Romans 8:21-22 certainly seem to involve a supernatural transformation, there may be in some sense a redemptive aspect to what we do in this age. Perhaps, instead of God just speaking the word and the world's transformation happening, we will be a part of it happening. Perhaps we are supposed to be a part of it happening even now. And maybe that's the way in which our labor is not in vain.

Overcoming an Objection to Physical Resurrection

One of the stumbling blocks to Christians fully embracing the biblical teaching of physical resurrection lies right in Paul's exposition of the importance of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. Verses 42-43 read,

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

The stumbling point is in the contrast between "natural" and "spiritual." In post-Enlightenment rationalistic thought, "natural" means material, physical, and "spiritual" means non-material, non-physical. So even though we'll affirm the reality of resurrection because it's there in the Bible, the really relevant teaching to us is "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8). Being reunited with the body seems mostly anticlimactic.

But this is a misreading of the words "natural" and "spiritual." "Natural" is Greek ψυχικον, psychikon; it refers not to the substance of which the body is composed, but rather the nature of the motivating force behind that body's activity. The "natural" body's activity is driven by the human psyche--i.e., the mind. Similarly, the "spiritual" body does not refer to the substance (or lack of it) of which that body is composed. The Greek word is πνευματικον, pneumatikon; the motivating force behind that body's activity is the Spirit of God. Paul is not saying, "It is sown a physical body, it is raised a non-material body"; he's saying, "It is sown a mentally-motivated body, it is raised a Spiritually-motivated body."

The main difference between the natural body and the spiritual body is not that the spiritual body is immaterial; it is that the spiritual body is imperishable, glorious, powerful, and motivated by God's Spirit. The main physical aspect of this resurrection body is that it is incorruptible, not subject to decay; but then, the entire creation will be incorruptible as well: "the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:21).  Once again, we are confronted not with disembodied spirits sitting on clouds with harps, but with a renewed physical creation. The picture is more like Adam and Eve pre-fall than it is like what we generally think of as ghosts or spirits--or even, dare I say, the mental pictures most of us have involving heaven.

As I write this, I can look out my window on a beautiful spring day. The sun is shining, the trees are in bloom--I really should get outside today. I'm blessed to live in a place where I can see at least a little of the beauty of nature. But think of the difference in my perspective, if I think on the one hand, "This is beautiful, but temporary and corrupt. The real thing God has for me waits on the other side of death, or the Rapture. One glad morning, when this life is o'er, I'll fly away," or if I think on the other hand, "This is beautiful, and in some sense, this is the home God has given me forever. God is going to remake it, reshape it, remove the sting of sin and death; I may leave it for a while, but eventually I will be brought back, and therefore, in some sense, I am an eternal being in an eternal place."

If you are a disciple of Jesus, then today think of yourself as an eternal being in an eternal place, and see if it doesn't change your perspective on things.

[HT: N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope.]

What Resurrection Implies

What Jesus' resurrection meant was that what the Jews (at least some of them) were hoping for at the end of time was breaking into present-day reality. The technical way of saying this is that their eschatalogical hopes were being realized. Imagine everything you've ever longed for beginning to come true. That's what was going on for the first believers, the ones who saw Jesus after the resurrection.

But what did this imply to them? So far, just one guy had come back from the dead (I'm not counting Lazarus and other resuscitations--I mean permanent resurrection), and he didn't even stick around all that long. Granted, Jesus' followers would certainly be happy to see him return from death, but why would that have created a worldwide movement?

Well, it didn't simply mean that there was life after death after all, and that if we believe in Jesus then we can live with him in heaven forever after we die--and yet that is what most contemporary Christians believe today. That idea reflects the view that we are really spirits trapped in earthly bodies in a corrupt world, and what we are longing for is release from this corrupt world so we can live spiritually--that is, non-physically--forever, all of which reflects Platonic philosophy more than it does the Bible.

The biblical view is that Jesus' resurrection was not an isolated incident, however pivotal or unique. It was rather the spearheading of a new age coming into being in our present one. "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man" (1 Cor 15:20-21). "Firstfruits" is an agricultural term meaning the beginning of a harvest. Its importance is not so much in itself as in the promise of the full harvest to come. The "harvest" of which Jesus was the firstfruits is not merely a harvest of souls to be saved (although it includes that) because Jesus didn't need saving. Jesus' resurrection was the firstfruits of a new age, a new creation, what Jesus and John the Baptist had called the Kingdom. God's plan is simply much larger than simply rescuing a few of us sinners off of this wicked old earth. He plans to bring into resurrection life the whole first creation:

The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. (Romans 8:19-24)

Christians generally look forward to being with God eternally in heaven, often looking to Revelation 21:1 for a new heaven and a new earth (although they are not really much interested in the new earth), especially noting that "the first heaven and the first earth had passed away." Let's not worry about this world, because God's going to scrap it anyway. But in the above passage from Romans, creation itself is eagerly longing and groaning like a woman in labor, not for its own destruction, but rather for liberation from its bondage to decay and for being brought into freedom and glory. God isn't going to scrap the old creation and start fresh, any more than he was willing to scrap us sinful human beings and start fresh with a new Adam and Eve on Venus. Just as God's desire is to renew and transform us, his plan is to renew and transform the old creation. If you will, the "new heaven and the new earth" are going to be made out of the old ones. God's not opposed to physical reality. He created it.

That's where the resurrection of our bodies fits in. Why are we going to be resurrected? Because we're going to inhabit the new physical reality that God is going to create by redeeming and transforming the old one. And just as we are still ourselves, but redeemed, purified, and changed, so also the creation will still be the same creation, but redeemed, purified, and changed. The last chapter of the Bible doesn't speak of us going off to heaven, ridding ourselves of this awful physical universe once and for all; rather, it speaks of the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to earth. It's not us going off to live with God, but God coming down and inhabiting earth with us. The passage is worth quoting:

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God." (Revelation 21:2-3)

God's plan is to come to earth and be with us eternally in an incorruptible world which will be born out of the world we are presently in. While you may go off to be with God in heaven after you die--for a while--your ultimate destiny, if your trust is in Jesus, is to be an eternal resident of this world, once God is through remaking it. Jesus first, and then those of us who trust in him, are the beginnings of that new creation. And therefore, Paul's challenge to us is to live as though we were resurrected people right now:

Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:55-58)

Here's the point: if we know we're going to be resurrected, we need to begin living as though we were resurrected; and if we know that this present creation is going to be redeemed, then we need to live in it as though we were an agent of that transformation.

[HT: N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope.]

What Resurrection Means

In order to understand the importance of the Resurrection, we first have to understand what the first-century views of resurrection were. What were the prior expectations of the people who first heard the story of Jesus' resurrection?

In the non-Jewish Greco-Roman world, there were two predominant views of the afterlife. The first was the basic materialist stance that there is no afterlife. The Greek Epicurean philosophical school would be an example of this stance. Although construed somewhat differently than contemporary philosophers and scientists would use the terms, this point of view would hold that the material universe is all there is. There is no "spirit" apart from the body in which there is any consciousness, hence there is no continuing existence once the physical body ceases to function. Dead is dead.

The other major strand of Greco-Roman thought is well represented by Plato. There is a continued existence after death; in fact, this is what earthly existence longs for--a release from bondage to the body and the corrupted physical realm. We are essentially spirits trapped in bodies, longing for release. You may recognize this point of view--many Christians' view of "heaven" owes more to Plato than to the Bible. This earthly life is something merely to be endured until we escape it to live in heaven forevermore with God. More on this in another post.

For now, the relevant point is that no one in the Greco-Roman world was expecting anything like physical resurrection. It would either have been considered impossible or pointless. The spirit either didn't exist apart from the physical body, or if it did, the last thing it wanted was to be re-embodied. (The concept of reincarnation did exist, but this is different from resurrection--it is embodiment in a different body, not the same one, and was not considered the goal of existence, but rather a punishment or a continued stage on the way to fully-realized--that is, disembodied--spirituality.)

But that's the non-Jewish world. Christianity arose in a Jewish cultural context. What did the Jews believe regarding resurrection?

Once again, there were two predominant views. And once again, one of them precluded resurrection. The Sadducean group, which dominated the Temple priesthood, rejected resurrection (as well as angels and providence). While present-day Christians tend to scoff at this point of view, it actually accords with the Sadducees' generally more strict reading of the Hebrew scriptures, which must be admitted to have little to say on the afterlife in general and resurrection specifically.

On the other hand, the Pharisaical group which dominated the rabbis in the synagogues did believe in resurrection. However, this resurrection was not expected to occur until the eschaton--the final culmination of history. After the death of Lazarus in John 11, his sister Martha expresses this point of view in her dialogue with Jesus: "Martha answered, 'I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day'." So yes, there were Jews who believed in resurrection, but not in present-day reality--only at the end of history. It's also worth noting that resurrection played no part in Jewish messianic expectations. Messiah was to bring about the liberation of Israel as a nation and reestablish the throne of David; neither the death of the messiah nor a resurrection was envisioned.

What does this all mean with regard to Jesus' resurrection? Quite simply, it means that the usual explanations for why Jesus' resurrection is important are wrong, or at least beside the main point.

Christians generally view Jesus' resurrection in terms of God vindicating Jesus, demonstrating that he was the Messiah, God in flesh, and innocent of any crime or sin for which he should die. But while this all is true, it reflects backward reasoning: if we come to trust in Jesus and believe that he was God in human flesh, then his resurrection takes on all these meanings. But resurrection itself would not have demonstrated any of these things to anyone in the first-century world. Remember, nobody was expecting anyone to be resurrected--not in the Gentile world at all, and not in the Jewish world in the here-and-now.

But for those who were hoping for resurrection "at the last day," as Martha was, Jesus' resurrection would have meant something mind-blowing and worldview-changing: that something that had been hoped for at the end of time was a present reality, right now. It was a glimpse into a deeply longed-for future, breaking into the present. Evidently, when Jesus (and before him, John the Baptist) were proclaiming that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 3:2; 4:17), it really was.

Everything they had ever hoped for was beginning to come to pass. Right now.

That's what Jesus' resurrection meant. What it implies, for those who believe, is where we're headed next.

[HT: N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope.]

The Problem with a Cross-Centered Theology

Those who know me know that I wear a cross signet ring. It's actually my college class ring; I wanted something that I would want to continue wearing, and not just put in a box somewhere, so my parents bought me a plain signet ring and had a cross etched in it. It was intended as a statement of my faith, as an opportunity to share Jesus with others.

The cross has been the main symbol of Christianity for most of its history. Not all of its history--it wasn't until crucifixion stopped being actively used by the Romans as a means of torture and death that Christians began widely using it as the symbol of their faith. But it has long been Christianity's predominant symbol. Every church has at least one. Most Christian organizations use it in their logos. And it's not hard to see why. What Jesus did on the cross for us is central to what we believe.

Most Christians, if asked what they believe, would offer something like this: "God created human beings to be in a relationship with him, but we messed that up through sin, so he came to the earth as a human being--Jesus--and lived a sinless life and then died on a cross in our place, so we could be in a relationship with him again and spend eternity with him in heaven." You'll notice that the cross is at the very turning point of this statement of faith. It's completely central.

Now, although I agree with every part of that statement, there's something I think is missing--and it's more significant than simply the fact that the whole thing needs a lot of fleshing out and explanation. What's missing is the resurrection of Jesus. Having had this issue brought to my attention by N. T. Wright's fantastic book, Surprised by Hope, it is astonishing to me that any statement of Christian faith could ever be made without reference to the Resurrection. And yet I wonder how many people, reading that statement the first time through, noticed its absence or considered it significant.

Of course, you could tuck it in there, right between "place" and "so," and it would fit. And Christians do believe in the Resurrection and do think that affirming the Resurrection is important. My problem isn't that Christians don't believe in Jesus' resurrection; it's that the Resurrection ends up being an afterthought in the way most of us think about our faith.

Think about it: we view the central problem as sin, and the fact that a holy God can't simply let sin slide. The penalty--death--must be paid. The solution is a substitute: if someone who doesn't deserve to die dies in our place, then we don't have to die ourselves. The crime is paid for. And that's what Jesus did on the cross. But notice what we've done: Jesus' work on the cross solves the problem. When He said, "It is finished," it really was--that is to say, the whole problem is solved. It's like the end of a detective story: once the detective solves the crime, the story is, for all intents and purposes, over. The technical term for the ending of a story, after its climax, is denouement. It's really just window dressing, and a lot of modern writers try to get rid of it entirely, and just end at the climax. You can think up your own window dressing, imagine how it came out on your own.

That's what happens to the Resurrection, in the typical way of looking at it. It happened, and we believe in it, but it's not really crucial to the story. If it hadn't happened, it wouldn't really matter, because the sin problem is already taken care of at the Cross. We try to make it matter, by saying that it demonstrated that Jesus really was who he said he was, or that it proves that there is life after death. But whatever it demonstrated, or whatever it proves, really doesn't matter in the end--the real work had already been done.

But that's not how the Apostle Paul saw it. "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Cor. 15:14). For Paul, the Resurrection is absolutely central. All of the gospel messages preached in the book of Acts make the Resurrection central. What Jesus did on the Cross was very important. But the biblical writers seem to indicate that what he did by rising from the dead was equally important, maybe even more so.

In my next few blog posts, I'm going to sketch out why I think the Resurrection needs to occupy a more central place in our theology. And I'm wondering if we've missed a rather obvious symbol of the faith. The world has seen us as people of the cross for a long time. Maybe it's time we need to be seen as people of the empty tomb.

Reflections on Passion Week: Good Friday

    The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
          --T.S. Eliot, East Coker

There is nothing remotely new that I could possibly write concerning the events of Jesus' trial and crucifixion. But in the vein of re-reminding us of how revolutionary Jesus' message had been in its original context, and how unsurprising it is, after all, that his message and actions would lead to his rejection, not only by the religious leaders, but by the people as well, it might be well for us to remember how odd and unexpected and unfitting would have been crucifixion as the mode of God's redeeming humanity. It's so easy for us now to parrot, "Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again on the third day." We forget that neither the Jews nor anyone else could possibly have expected this. As Paul writes to the Romans, "we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles," (1 Cor. 1:23).

The Messiah was the hope of Israel's deliverance from foreign domination. To be crucified by that same foreign power would have been the last thing the Jews would have been looking for in their Messiah, and if they had truly thought he was the Messiah, they would not have delivered him over to Pilate or cried out for his crucifixion. Actually being crucified, if there were any doubt, would have disqualified him in the eyes of the Law: "anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse," (Deut. 21:23).

For the Greeks and Romans, the idea of a crucified god was the height of idiocy: paganism worshiped beauty, honor, and power, not weakness, helplessness, and shame. The pagan philosopher Celsus mocks the very idea:

You acknowledge that he openly suffered. How is it credible that Jesus could have predicted these things? How could the dead man be immortal? What god, or spirit, or prudent man would not, on foreseeing that such events were to befall him, avoid them if he could; whereas he threw himself headlong into those things which he knew beforehand were to happen?...

So the crucifixion makes no sense either to Jews or to pagans. And yet, this is the means by which God chose to save the world. It made no sense. The nonsensical nature of it should not be lost on us today. Because we've come into a time in which the crucifixion is once again nonsensical. But it nonetheless woke the hearts of many, even as it brought the scorn of some, and so may it do today. Let's not be afraid of the foolishness of the Gospel. It's wiser than the wisdom of humanity.