Archive for March, 2007

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God Is Love (1 John 4:7-12)

Friday, March 16th, 2007
 
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According to 1 John 4:7-12, God is love’s direct source, best example, prime mover, and ultimate completer.
 
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
 
As you read these verses, notice their overall purpose: to motivate us to love one another. Love is the basic Christian ethic, whether that love is directed toward God, neighbor, and self (Matthew 22:37-40) or toward enemies (Matthew 5:43-48). Furthermore, for the Christian, there is no such thing as love without God.
 
This is true, first, because God is the direct source of love. John makes three statements about love to prove this: (1) “God is love.” Love is the essence of God’s moral character. (2) “Love comes from God.” It has its origin in his character. All love reflects his love. (3) “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” We were created to love God, neighbor, and self, but our sin alienates us from God and his purposes for our lives. Salvation (i.e., being “born of God”) reconciles us to God and restores in us the ability to love as we should.
 
Second, God is the best example of love. “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” Since I will be writing about this topic in the next Daily Word, I won’t comment further on this verse at the present moment.
 
Third, God is the prime mover of love. “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” God takes the initiative in his relationship to us. He does not wait for us sinners to get our acts right before he loves us. He loves us first—indeed, he sacrifices himself for us—so that we might get our acts right. Grace always precedes obedience and makes it possible.
 
And that is the fourth point: God is the ultimate completer of love. “if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” Or, to turn the sentence around so that its logic is clearer: As God lives in us and completes his love in us, we love one another.
 
God, then, is the beginning and end of love, its model and motivation. Therefore, as believers in God, let us act like him and love one another!

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Church Matters (1 John 4:4-6)

Thursday, March 15th, 2007
 
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First John 4:1-3 offers a Christological criterion for distinguishing between true and false prophecy; verses 4-6 add an ecclesiological one.
 
You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.
 
Notice, first of all, the “you versus them” language in this passage. John is writing to churches in or around Ephesus that have recently experienced a church split over doctrinal and ethical issues (Regarding the church split, see 1 John 2:19; regarding the doctrinal and ethical issues, see 2:22-23 and 1:8-10). Unfortunately, the members on the “wrong side” of the split—the one that taught false doctrine and bad ethics—continued to consider themselves Christians of some sort. Indeed, they seem to have grounded their ersatz Christianity in spiritual revelations. This is what prompted John to offer Christological and ecclesiological criteria for distinguishing between true and false prophecies.
 
Second, notice the “from” language. According to John, “you versus them” is not an arbitrary description, the result of a power play between sides in a first-century church split. Rather, the “you versus them” distinction bespeaks great spiritual realities. “You” are “from God.” “They” are “from the world.” “You” have been saved; “they” are still caught in sin. “You” are authentic Christians; “they” are counterfeit ones.
 
Third, therefore, notice that which group you belong to serves as a rational criterion for distinguishing true and false prophecy. If “you” belong to God and “they” belong to the world, then “you” can speak for God, but “they” cannot. This is an ecclesiological criterion: what church you belong to matters. Or as John says, “This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.”
 
Now, if you are at all like me, you might be a little skeptical of this argumentative strategy. To take a trivial example, suppose a church split over whether the organ should be played in the worship service. And further suppose that both sides of the split had alleged prophecies to back up their side. “Thus saith the Lord: Organ!” Or, “Thus saith the Lord: No organ!” To say that you ought to take my side because true churches always have organs (or never have them) would beg the question under consideration. Right?
 
But this is not the argumentative strategy John takes. He grounds his teaching about Jesus “in the flesh,” that is, in the historical events of Jesus’ ministry to which he and others were eyewitnesses (1 John 1:1-3). The secessionists, on the other hand, advocated spiritual revelations about Jesus that contradicted eyewitness testimony of Jesus. Eyewitness testimony is more determinative of truth than later, supposedly spiritual revelations. Consequently, you have a greater chance of getting the truth about Jesus and the authentic Christian lifestyle if you join the eyewitness community than if you join the spiritual revelation community.
 
Whose side you join, in other words, helps you draw closer to Jesus or pulls you farther away from him.

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The Importance of Disbelief (1 John 4:1-3)

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007
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Belief is an important part of Christianity, but so is disbelief.
 
The Bible teaches the importance of belief (or faith) in several places. According to 1 John 3:23, belief is a divine requirement: “And this is [God’s] command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.” According to Ephesians 2:8-9, faith is instrumental in our salvation: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” Indeed, “without faith,” as we read in Hebrews 11:6, “it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently seek him.” There simply is no Christianity without belief. That is why Christians are also called believers.
 
But by the same token, there is no Christianity without disbelief. There are some things about which Christians are outright skeptics. First John 4:1-3 is the foundational verse of Christian disbelief:
 
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
 
The gift of prophecy was very active in the New Testament church, as it is to a certain extent even today. In the biblical understanding of prophecy, the words of a prophet are inspired by the Holy Spirit. According to 2 Peter 1:21: “prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” But what happens when two people, claiming to speak under the alleged inspiration of the Holy Spirit, make contradictory truth claims? Obviously, since God is a logical God, one of them is not a true prophet; he or she is not telling the divinely inspired truth. But which one?
 
First John 4:1-3 provides an answer to this question. It teaches us to “test the spirits,” that is, to use our God-given brains and apply rational criteria for sorting out the truth of a matter. One of the specific rational criteria we must use is Christological in nature: “Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.” In other words, any supposedly spiritual person must at a very minimum affirm the obvious historical truth about Jesus—that he came “in the flesh.” If the spirit cannot affirm this baseline truth, nothing it says is true.
 
There are other rational criteria, of course. A prophet cannot speak in logical contradictions. He or she cannot advocate immorality. But according to this passage, if we are going to believe a word of prophecy, it must conform to the historical evidence about Jesus. Otherwise, we are free—nay, required—to disbelieve it.

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Condemnation or Confidence (1 John 3:19-24)

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007
 
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Is your relationship with God characterized by feelings of condemnation or confidence?
 
If you’re at all like me—in other words, if you’re an ordinary Christian—your answer to this question is probably, “Both.” Sometimes I feel guilty and ashamed of my sins. Knowing that I’m a sinner, I feel like I should be condemned. Other times, however, I feel like I’m in sync with God and his purposes for my life. In those times, I feel God’s love for me, have hope for the future, and approach him confidently in prayer.
 
These wavering feelings are my issue (and yours), not God’s. God is constant in his love for us. First John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” And 2 Timothy 2:13 adds, “if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” The key word in both verses is faithful. Our feelings for God may fluctuate, but God’s commitment to us does not.
 
So, the question we ought to ask is, what do we do when instead of feeling confidence before God, we are plagued by feelings of condemnation? First John 3:19-24 provides an answer:
 
This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
 
Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
 
According to these verses, when plagued by feelings of condemnation, we should first and foremost think about God. “God is greater than our hearts,” John tells us. He is faithful to the faithless. Indeed, “his Son, Jesus Christ” is the demonstration of his love for sinners (1 John 3:16). And he “lives in us” through “the Spirit he gave us.” The work of the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit) confirms God’s constant love for us and is the foundation for moving from feelings of condemnation to confidence.
 
Knowing God’s constant love for us motivates us toward greater faith and better works. “And this is his command,” John writes: “to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.” Whenever you feel condemned, believe in Jesus Christ and produce the good works which faith in him inspires. The more you turn to Jesus (which is faith) and act like Jesus (which is love), the more confident you will feel in your relationship to God.

P.S. Check out my comments on Chapter 2 of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion here.

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Self-Sacrificial Love (1 John 3:16-18)

Friday, March 9th, 2007
 
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Christianity is a religion of love. But what exactly is love? First John 3:16-18 provides an answer.
 
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
 
In these three verses, we see the model, definition, application, and test of true love.
 
The model of true love is Jesus Christ. More specifically, the model of true love is Jesus Christ crucified. “This is how we know what love is,” John writes. “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” In John 15:13, Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” It is one thing to lay down your life for your friends, but Jesus takes things a step further. He lays down his life for his enemies. According to Romans 5:8, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
 
This model of true love leads directly to its definition. Love is self-sacrifice. Following the example of Jesus, John writes, “we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” Self-sacrifice, the act of laying down our lives for others, can be understood literally. Certainly Jesus understood it literally with regard to his own life. But self-sacrifice can also be understood metaphorically, as a mindset that places the interests of others before one’s own.
 
John shows the application of true love in terms of our use of wealth. “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” Charity toward the poor is not the only application of self-sacrificial love, but it is an especially clear one. Every time you give money to the homeless man on the freeway corner or write a check to your church or volunteer in the pediatric oncology wing of your local hospital, you are putting the interests of others before your own. The time, talent, and treasure you would otherwise give to yourself is being sacrificially given to others.
 
The test of true love is whether we are actually self-sacrificial. If we don’t show charity to the poor (and to others), John asks, “how can the love of God be in [us]?” The love of God may refer to God’s love, or it may refer to our love for God. If we fail to love the poor, then God’s love has not permeated our being, and our love for him is incomplete. Our love for others, then, demonstrates the love of God in both senses.
 
Having set out the model, definition, application, and test of true love, John concludes with an exhortation: “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” What the world needs from Christians is not more talk about love, but simply more love.

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Love vs. Hatred (1 John 3:11-15)

Thursday, March 8th, 2007
 
Listen to The Daily Word online.
 
Christianity is a religion of love, not hatred.
 
Before you start citing examples of hateful Christians, whose existence I freely concede, permit me to draw an elementary distinction between ideal Christianity and actual Christianity. Ideal Christianity is normative Christianity, what Christianity should be. Actual Christianity is descriptive Christianity, what Christianity currently is. At the ideal level, Christianity is a religion of love, not hatred. But at the actual level, Christianity contains more than its fair share of haters, bigots, and jerks.
 
First John 3:11-15 paints a picture of ideal Christianity in particularly bright colors.
 
This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.
 
Notice two things about this passage.
 
First, love is part and parcel of the Christian gospel. John writes, “This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.” The words from the beginning could refer to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Alternately, they could refer to the evangelization of John’s churches, the moment at which they heard the gospel message and converted. Either way, whether from Jesus’ lips or from John’s, the Christian gospel included an ethically normative component: “We should love one another.” Christianity is not just a statement of beliefs; it is a code of behavior. It includes both faith and works.
 
Second, love and hatred are antithetical. “Do not be like Cain,” John commands. This commandment refers to the story of Cain murdering his brother Abel in Genesis 4:1-16. According to John, hatred is a form of murder. “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.” Now obviously hatred does not actually kill a person. John’s point is that the motivation underlying hatred and murder is the same, even if the effect of each is different. What is the source of hatred? “Evil” generally, and “the evil one” particularly. And the result of hatred is exclusion from “eternal life.” By contrast, the result of love is passing “from death to life.”
 
Christianity is a religion of love, then, and love is the opposite of hatred. This is the moral ideal toward which all actual Christians should strive, not to mention the rest of the world. We will not achieve the perfection of our love in this lifetime—sin won’t yield its grip on us so easily—and yet we should strive for perfect love. And as we can all see the amount and intensity of hatred active in the world today, I think we can all agree how necessary is our striving to love.

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Are American Christians Fascists?

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007

In a new book, American Fascists, Chris Hedges argues that conservative Christians are. The fascist charge is both cliched and easily refuted. How easily? Read Ryan T. Anderson’s post about Hedges at First Thing’s blog. Here are the money paragraphs:

What really animates Hedges’ anger at religious conservatives, however, is their recent political power and success on the state level at banning same-sex marriage—an issue that has been central to Hedges since his father made him start a gay-rights group at college. According to Hedges, the religious right demonizes homosexuals: “Gays and lesbians, like other enemies of Christ, are not fully human.”

The truth, of course, is that Hedges is the one who is in the business of demonizing. How open is Hedges’ “open society” if it excludes evangelicals, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and faithful Catholics from political debate? He protests, at one point, that “democracy keeps religious faith in the private sphere.” Yet, a mere seven pages, later he praises the “acts of faith” of Cardinal Mahoney, the archbishop of Los Angeles, for his stand on immigration, Al Gore on global warming, and select “clergy and rabbis” on gay rights.

In fact, Hedges isn’t opposed to the presence of faith in politics. Faith and politics can meet—if they’re Chris Hedges’ faith and Chris Hedges’ politics. This isn’t surprising, given Hedges’ admission of his own intolerance toward his opponents. As he sees it, “there arise moments when those who would destroy the tolerance that makes an open society possible should no longer be tolerated.” That moment is now, and those people are the religious right—who for Hedges “have no religious legitimacy.” His contempt is clear: “Debate with the radical Religious Right is useless. . . . It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion.”

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Sin, Jesus, and Us (1 John 3:4-10)

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007
 
Listen to The Daily Word online.
 
What is sin? What is Jesus’ relationship to sin? And what is ours?
 
First John 3:4-10 provides an answer to each of these questions.
 
First, what is sin? Verse 4 says, “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.” According to the Bible, God’s moral will is revealed in both nature (Romans 1:18-20) and Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Sin is the intentional disobedience of this divine will. It is acting contrary to both reason and revelation. Because the devil is the first and most notorious example of such disobedience, John considers all sinners to be of the devil’s party. According to verse 8, “He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.” Sin is no trifling matter, then; at root it is anti-God behavior.
 
Second, what is Jesus’ relationship to sin? Verse 5 says, “But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin.” In terms of his person, Jesus is sinless. In terms of his work, he is the Savior of those who have sinned. Jesus’ person and work make him diametrically opposed to the devil. According to verse 8, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” If the devil’s work is the cause of all the misery in the world, then Jesus’ work is the source of its blessedness.
 
Third, what is our relationship to sin? How we answer that question depends on what our relationship with Jesus is. So, verses 6-7 say, “No one who lives in him [that is, Jesus] keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.” And verses 9-10 add, “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.” Our relationship to sin is determined by whether we are “in him,” that is, saved by Jesus.
 
Throughout 1 John 3:4-10, John presents the spiritual life in stark, either-or terms. You are either a sinner or not. You are either the child of the devil or the child of God. We live in an easy-going age that is uncomfortable with such black-and-white thinking. Indeed, some people think that moral absolutism of this sort is a cause of great evil in the world. And perhaps it can be. (In the case of radical Islamist terrorists, it is.) But being “in Jesus” is not that kind of religion. It is, rather, a religion of love. Whoever does not love is of the devil’s party. Whoever loves, through Christ, is a child of God.

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