The Destoyer

The Destroyer.  In many instances in Scripture, God is distinctly, righteously ferocious. “The Lord has roared; who will not fear?” (Amos 3:8). He has legitimate fury and wields genuine wrath but never with bad temper or uncontrolled rage. God doesn’t fly off the handle; he initiates, explains, enforces, establishes, and executes justice to such an extent that the most appropriate, albeit paradoxical result is not terror but gladness. “He will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice” (Psa. 96:10-11). God alone is awesome in the most literal sense, awe-inspiring in the most holy, glorious way. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). Thus, encountering God without the covering of Christ is lethal. Encountering God with the covering of Christ is no less lethal, but all God’s lethality has fallen upon his Son on behalf of the redeemed.

It is highly shocking yet perfectly congruent to notice first at the Passover, but then fully in the Passion of the Christ, that God is the Avenger. Just as God deliberately crushed his Son vicariously for the sins of humanity—“It was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief” (Isa. 53:10)—God deliberately caused the Ten Plagues for the sins of Egypt. “For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you” (Exo. 12:23). To strip God of his lethality is awfully dangerous.

Some questions remain as to whether the Lord himself is the Destroyer, a holy angel is the destroyer as God’s appointed executioner, or an unholy demon is the destroyer that God has commandeered to accomplish his good purpose of justice. But any controversy is moot because, clearly, the Lord is intimately involved. “At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt” (Exo. 12:29). Psalm 78 remembers the Ten Plagues and attributes to God directly the actions upon Egypt. “He turned their rivers to blood” (Psa. 78:44). “He let loose on them his burning anger, wrath, indignation, and distress, a company of destroying angels” (Psa. 78:49). “He struck down every firstborn in Egypt” (Psa. 78:51).

The New Testament unflinchingly names God himself as the Destroyer (1 Cor. 10:10; Heb. 11:28). Thus, the Destroyer is also our Deliverer. The same God who judges sin is also the Sacrifice which takes away sin. “Note then the kindness and the severity of God” (Rom. 11:22).

I Never Made a Sacrifice

I Never Made a Sacrifice.  The norm is to grandstand; the rule is to bet on oneself. Therefore, any deviation from the norm or exception to the rule draws attention, positive or negative. Compared to some of today’s celebrities who are entirely contained in the Internet, it is hard to imagine the international celebrity heaped upon the Scottish medical doctor turned missionary, David Livingstone (1813-1873). Livingstone was the first European to crisscross the African Interior, opening the continent to commerce and Christian evangelism while exposing the dark industry of the slave trade. Livingstone grew up in a tenement adjacent to a cotton mill and fought hard to enter medical school at Glasgow only to set it all aside immediately after graduation to answer the call to missions in Africa.

Legend grew up around Livingstone and his expeditions, especially when he trekked the mountains all over Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Malawi, etc., searching for the source of the Nile River. "The Nile sources," he told a friend, "are valuable only as a means of opening my mouth with power among men. It is this power [with] which I hope to remedy an immense evil" (Tim Jeal, Livingstone: Revised and Expanded [2013], p. 289). After his wife, Mary, died in Mozambique of malaria (1862), no one had seen him in years. When Henry Morton Stanley finally found Livingstone in 1869, sick and recuperating in Ujiji, a Tanzanian village, he said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” Livingstone replied, “Yes, I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.”

Of his physical heart Livingstone had famously said, “If I die, bury my heart in Africa.” His friends did exactly that when Livingstone died of malaria in Zambia (1873) while the rest of Livingstone’s body was buried in Westminster Abbey, London. But one brief interchange by Livingstone to a group of Cambridge students (1857) during a furlough captured his spiritual heart. When asked about his sacrifice, he resisted using the term.

“For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. . . . Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice” (R. Winter and S. Hawthorne, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, [1981], p. 259).

He Must Increase

He Must Increase.  In more highly liturgical churches across the globe, today marks Ash Wednesday, the formal beginning of Lent (derived from the Latin word for fortieth). Last year’s palm fronds from Palm Sunday have been burned, their ashes are smeared on the foreheads of the penitent ones who will observe the 40 days leading up to Good Friday (not counting Sundays) in mourning over their sin. Such is a worthy gesture, especially if the day before Ash Wednesday, Mardi Gras (from the Latin phrase meaning Fat Tuesday), was raucous. Traditionally, people give something up for Lent: meat, one meal per day, etc. Modern examples often include giving up chocolate, booze, sugar, social media, etc.

Yet, on a basic level, giving up to gain something is faulty logic. I can’t subtract my way into addition. I can’t decrease my body fat index by simply tightening my belt. I can’t balance my family budget by solely turning off a few lights in the daytime. So then, why would decreasing my luxuries for six weeks increase holiness? We need holiness, for sure, but holiness isn’t added by subtraction. Only because Christ’s holiness has been added to our account (i.e., imputed)—by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8)—can unholiness ever be subtracted from our account. Ultimately, we need Christ, not math.

According to faith, we can and should sometimes fast from certain rights and privileges, as Christ assumed was normal in the rhythm of faithfulness. “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast” (Matt. 9:15). We fast not that Christ might sanctify us, but because Christ has sanctified us, is sanctifying us, and will sanctify us. “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).

When John the Baptist spoke his wise words as almost a prayer, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30), the increase of Christ was not the result of John’s decrease, but the cause of John’s decrease. In other words, the only way John could possibly decrease was that Christ had arrived in a state of fullness. The increase that John desired was not for Christ to increase in essence but in recognition. Christ was already preeminent; John wanted everyone, including himself, to see Christ as the Preeminent One. “He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all” (John 3:31). Recognizing Christ as maximum displaces all other ambitions, desires, and rivals.

By Faith Abraham Obeyed When He Was Called

By Faith Abraham Obeyed When He Was Called.  When the kids were little, we would say to them as often as the situation required, “Slow poking is not obeying.” Unnecessary nonchalance in compliance to a direct instruction, to maintain plausible deniability and perhaps to avoid discipline, did not fit the spirit of obedience. For instance, picking up toys while playing with said toys on their way to the toybox was slow poking, dragging feet on the way to the car when we were late for church was slow poking, reading past Lights Out time was slow poking. Abraham was non-compliant in some ways, unwise in other ways, and dreadfully wrong when he lied twice about Sarah being his sister to save his own skin (Gen. 12:13; 20:2), but he did not slow poke when God initially called him (Gen. 12:1-3).

The quickness of Abraham’s initial obedience is emphasized in Hebrews 11:8: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance.” By using a present tense participle—when he was called—with a past tense verb—obeyed—the grammatical effect is spontaneous action. His obedience virtually accompanied his calling, as if while God was calling him Abraham was already packing. He had an eagerness to obey despite a lack of knowledge about where this journey would take him.

Making application to our faith response to God’s calling could be endlessly varied, but the eagerness of our faith response is worth evaluating. Do we slow poke? Will we get around to it, whatever it is? Or will we masterfully construct excuses like the potential followers of Jesus? 

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." And Jesus said to him, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Yet another said, "I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home." Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:57-62).

God, who sees the end from even before the beginning, says that Abraham, despite his many fumbles, is “the father all who believe” (Rom. 4:11). Sarah also, who might have been pigeon-holed by humans as the mother who doubted, since she first scoffed at God’s announcement that she would have a baby at 90 years old (Gen. 18:12), is honored by God to be as important in faith as Abraham. “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11).

You Have Need of Endurance

You Have Need of Endurance.  Without checking our heart, biting our tongue, and pumping the brakes on our pride, we are prone to misinterpret advice and encouragement as meddling. Granted, unsolicited advice often is meddling, but not always. In those cases when it is meddlesome, we react nearly automatically with: “Who asked you?” or “What gives you the right to speak that way to me?” or “You don’t know me.” If manipulation happens regularly enough, then we will always suspect advice as an external force attempting to bend us toward somebody else’s agenda. But God’s advice is never less than good and always welcome because we have, in fact, asked him for wisdom, because he does have the right to speak that way to us, and because he knows us intimately, far better than we know ourselves. How easily we receive biblical instruction parallels how spiritually mature we are.

Twice in the book of Hebrews the author tells his audience what they need. Is he rude, or is he right? His instruction is quite forceful, especially in contrast to the two times that Paul tells his audience in Thessalonica what they do not need. “Your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything” (1 Thess. 1:8). “Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another” (1 Thess. 4:9). But to the Hebrew Christians in Jerusalem, the author admonishes them to grow up spiritually. “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Heb. 5:12-14). “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised” (Heb. 10:36).

Immediate defensiveness to the revelation of God is a symptom of spiritual immaturity. Pliability or receptivity to the revelation of God is a mark of spiritual maturity. It’s not personal, it’s spiritual! You have need of endurance! You are in the crucible of suffering which lays bare your underdeveloped receptivity to the word of God. That said, endurance itself is not the point, per se; it is the means to the point, which is doing the will of God. Survival is not the goal; it is the way toward the goal, which is receiving what is promised. Stay in the battle; continue with the struggle; persevere so that you can obey. Endure the race so that you can glorify God in the running of the race that was set before you. No one else’s race is exactly like your race, but everyone else’s race needs the same endurance. “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted” (Heb. 12:1-3).

And He Said to Man

And He Said to Man.  At our core, we are meaning makers. Humans seek meaning in the universe. Across language, education, religion, and geography meaning-making is an unstoppable internal force that compels us to seek answers to the question, Why? Note the contrast with some humor, my dogs do not ask me why the stars seem to twinkle in the night sky whereas my children do. Asking why? is a valid but often disappointing question. The answers are usually either unavailable or unbearable. But setting all answers aside, the asking of this question shows the universal characteristic of humanity to connect to significance. We seek understanding. This is a wonder; it constitutes one aspect of bearing the image of God!

But there is a bend in the framework of our insatiable drive to find meaning. While we are born hungry to ask meaningful questions, we initiate double trouble when we: (1) look to the wrong source for meaning, and (2) neglect the right source of meaning. A principle emerges in the Scriptures: we search for but cannot find understanding from the universe about the universe or our purpose in it. We need an infusion of wisdom from the outside. We need God.

In the 28^th chapter of Job, Job takes a pause in the unprofitable back-and-forth between himself and his so-called friends as to why Job suffers. Their many words generated zero wisdom, so a stand-alone poem on wisdom is dropped in the middle of their futile opinions.

The first half of the poem (vv. 1-11) argues effectively that while man mines for treasure, better than the rest of creation, he cannot find wisdom. Two pairs of questions emerge in the second half of the poem (vv. 12-28), the first two ask about discovery and the second two ask about source. “But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?” (vs. 12). “From where, then, does wisdom come? And where is the place of understanding?” (vs. 20). Where can we find wisdom? Clearly, it is undiscoverable (vv. 13-19). From where does wisdom originate? Clearly, it is unsearchable (vv. 21-22). God alone is the source of wisdom. “God understands the way to it, and he knows its place” (vs. 23). To find wisdom is to know God. “And he said to man” (vs. 28a). Wisdom is personal, “And he.” Wisdom initiates relationship, primarily through his spoken word, “he said.” Wisdom enlightens humanity, “And he said to man, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding’” (vs. 28).

Now Faith Is

Now Faith Is.  “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread” sank the barb by Alexander Pope (An Essay on Criticism, 1711) that shamed over-confident critics who bullied young writers though they themselves had not published anything. The same danger exists when offering commentary on faith if, while attesting self-expertise in faith, I functionally discourage another’s faith. The far safer and wiser course defers to The Faith to make comments on faith.

“The faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), unsurprisingly, says a lot about faith, comprising the distinguishing characteristic of Christianity. The same Greek word (pistis) sometimes translated as belief, faith has over 200 occurrences in the New Testament as a noun (faith), over 200 as a verb (to believe/have faith), and over 60 as an adjective (faithful). Faith is a huge subject. To give faith its proper attention would take centuries, but the Bible itself offers roughly three aspects of faith, equally true and truly equal in the exaltation of Jesus Christ as the epicenter of all faith: (1) covenant loyalty, (2) Christological understanding, and (3) hopeful expectation of the future.

This triple-tiered view of faith helps us see its generous overlaps and appreciate its exquisite texture. James emphasizes faith’s covenant loyalty, Paul emphasizes faith’s Christological understanding, and Hebrews emphasizes faith’s hopeful expectation of the future. Thus, the first verse of Hebrews’ Chapter of Faith leans toward the hopeful expectation of the future in its characterization of faith. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). It is not a technical, exhaustive definition of faith, per se, but a functional explanation for a particular situation in the historical, mid-first century, Jerusalem church (60-69 ad). Faith is the way, the only way, that we can functionally relate to God’s invisible order. “Physical eyesight produces a conviction or evidence about visible things; faith is the organ which enables people to ‘see’ the invisible order” (F. F. Bruce). This unique aspect of faith is trust in things unseen, especially when spiritual pressure is applied.