Category: Christian

What Business Do We Have Judging the World?

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The title to this blog article is a question that doesn’t come from me. It comes from Paul, the Apostle. The question is rhetorical, meaning that Paul assumed his audience would know the answer, though he doesn’t leave them guessing. He provides the answer.

His audience was the Corinthian church in the 50’s AD. The larger context in which Paul asked this rhetorical question is also instructive. This is that context in which Paul asks the question:

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

1 Corintihans 5:9-11 (emphasis added)

Then Paul asks the question,

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.  

1 Corinthians 5:12 (emphasis added)

I am reminded of this passage today because of a comment posted by someone on Facebook about how we should treat people who seem to be “acting against God.” The poster expressed the opinion that something should be done by Christians about the “open immorality … being accepted in society.”

I don’t want to suggest that biblical morality should not instruct how Christians vote and engage politically in the world, but Paul’s question about judging the world should affect how we interact with the world in politics and other ways. At the same time, we need to know how to model Paul’s instruction not to judge those outside the church.

Christians are often accused of “forcing their religion” or morality on others. Simply voting and engaging politically based on biblical values is not forcing religion or morality on others any more than others voting and engaging politically based on their own values is forcing their views on us. We can vote our consciences without judging.

This is where we may need some nuance, however, as some Christians seem to think they have a biblical obligation or mandate to make the world conform to a biblical morality. I have to admit that I have shared this confusion in my past until I began to take seriously what Paul said to the Corinthians in the passage quoted above.

Judging by Paul’s words, I used to view this exactly backward! I judged the world by biblical morality, but I often gave myself and fellow Christians a pass when it came to strict adherence to righteous behavior. After all, we are saved by our faith and not be works, right? If I mess up, I can confess it and be forgiven – even as I demand that the world acknowledge and follow the law.

As I meditate on Paul’s words, I see that Paul’s instruction aligns with what Jesus said about judging. I think you will see that as I unpack what Paul and Jesus said and try to work out why they said it and what it might mean for us in the way we conduct ourselves in the world.

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Comments on Why God Became Incarnate and Died for Our Sins

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Daniel Mann does a good job of explaining Why Christ, as God Incarnate, Had to Die for Our Sins. In reading his explanation, my mind goes to statements like God’s “transcendent love” and “total abhorrence for sin”, God’s “righteousness” and “divine forbearance” for sin, and the price that had to be paid “to satisfy God’s righteous character”.

Daniel describes his own reaction to these concepts formerly, as a non-Christian. He felt God was a “deceiving sadist” until one day he realized that Jesus was God incarnate, that God did not merely sacrifice a created being – God sacrificed Himself in human form!

Indeed, that is the central point of Christian belief, which is described beautifully and poignantly in Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2:5-8):

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature [form of] God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature [form] of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

These things would be small consolation, also, if not for the victory on the other side of the cross (Phil. 2:9-11)

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

That Jesus was fully man and fully God incarnated into a man is key to the understanding of Christianity. That God is three “persons” in one is also key, as it provides some explanation how God can incarnate Himself into the form of a man and die (in human flesh), though God remains self-existent and eternal, the Creator (and not a created being).

Not that there is no mystery in this. I concede this is hard for creatures who are limited dimensionally to wrap our heads around these ideas.

Finally, it explains how (and why) death to Jesus in the flesh had no power over him. As God incarnate, death “could not hold him”. (Acts 2:24)

But, I am not writing to clarify these aspects of Christian doctrine. I want to focus on Daniel Mann’s personal revelation that Jesus was God incarnate, and his death was voluntary – God sacrificing Himself, and not God sacrificing some created being.

This realization made all the difference for him. When he really understood this distinction, he began to see the love of God that was demonstrated in that act of self-sacrifice – something God did not have to to, but He did it for us because He loves us.

Other people, I know, are not convinced. Indeed, if a person understands Jesus to be human only, and not God incarnate, the story makes no sense.

Another stumbling block is God’s “abhorrence for sin” and the need to satiate a “righteous” God. These Christian concepts are foreign territory for many people. Why, if God is so loving, does He demand sacrifices for sin?

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Do We Have Any Evidence of the Resurrection? A Critique of Skepticism and Proof

People confuse proof, as in a mathematical proof, and proof, as in an offer of evidence that tends to support a proposition.

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Some people say that we have absolutely no evidence for the resurrection (and no evidence that God exists in the first place). Nothing could be further from the truth. We have evidence. The issue isn’t a lack of evidence; the issue is how we approach the evidence and weigh it it.

A person who approaches “supernatural” phenomenon with purely materialistic assumptions will weigh the evidence differently than one who is open to nonmaterialistic possibilities. Jesus, though, lived in time and space in history. Many people in the first century who saw him die claim to have seen Jesus and interacted with him in the flesh after he died, and those people were willing to die for what they saw.

That is evidence. Full stop. People may be skeptical of it. People may assume Jesus couldn’t have risen from the dead, despite what people think they saw, because miracles don’t happen. But, now I am talking about how people approach and weigh the evidence.

People confuse proof, as in a mathematical proof, and proof, as in an offer of evidence that tends to support a proposition. Fallible, finite human beings deal almost exclusively in the latter realm of evidence, even in science, because we don’t know what we don’t know.

Mathematical proofs are an achievable goal in mathematics (though sometimes not even then). Such proof is impossible outside of mathematics.

Science does not provide us that kind of certainty, either. Science changes all the time on the basis of new evidence, and things we thought we knew in the past are constantly being adjusted, or even discarded, on the basis of additional evidence.

Finite beings such as ourselves are limited in our knowledge, our access to knowledge, and our understanding of how the knowledge we have fits together. We have to be humble as we cautiously put our confidence in the things we think we know because we are limited in our ability to know and understand our world, and we will always lack absolute proof for most, if not all, things.

The extent of our limitations can even be quantified. For instance, 95% of the physical universe is invisible to us! The vast, unseen reaches of the universe are comprised of things like dark matter and dark energy that we cannot see and know little about, except for what we can infer about them. We aren’t sure what these things are, but we know they exist by the affects we see on the matter we see and know.

According to scientific consensus, the universe is about about 13.7 billions years old, and the earth is about 4.543 billion years old (give or take about 50 millions years), and homo sapiens appeared only 300,000 years ago (and maybe even only190,000 years ago). Assuming those calculations to be true, human-like beings have existed for only 0.0066% of the time the earth has existed and only 0.002% of the time the universe has existed. (If my math is correct.)

If we view the existence of the earth (not even the universe) on a 24-hour scale from the beginning to the present time, life began at 5:00 AM, the first vertebrates appeared at 8:00 AM, and human beings appeared just a fraction of a second before midnight.

Homo sapiens have only developed knowledge and the ability to communicate and preserve a record of it for about 5,500 years. We have been developing and recording our knowledge for only 0.00022% of the time the earth has existed, which is only 0.00007% of the time the universe has existed.

During that relatively short, 5500-year time period we have developed the capability to see only about five percent (5%) of the universe, though we have actually examined very little of it – and then only at very great distances. We hnave only explored more than five percent (5%) of the oceans on this earth – a very small planet orbiting a very small sun in a very small solar system in the inconceivably large expanse of what we we call the universe.

The body of our scientific knowledge has grown tremendously, even exponentially, especially in the last 200 years, but we have only just begun to know and understand the universe we live in. If humans live another 5,500 years, we will not have explored all of the universe, and we will not know all that there is to know.

Our world is grand and almost inconceivably complex. The DNA of a single human cell contains so much information that if it were represented in printed words, simply listing the first letter of each base would require over 1.5 million pages of text! Imagine how much information exists in the universe and how much we don’t know.

We will likely never know all there is to know about the expanse of the universe and everything in it, large and small, in all the years mankind is on the earth. Thus, we are in no position to write off the possibility of God creating the universe and Jesus rising from the dead.

The title to this piece is (admittedly) a bit misleading, so I need to provide the following disclaimer. Some people will read the title and assume that I am attempting to prove the resurrection. I am not doing that. I am offering only the beginning of proof (as in offering evidence) in this article, but it is evidence. You can weigh it how you will.

We should at least be open to consider what evidence there is for the existence of God and not write off the possibility that God exists. If God exists and made the universe out of nothing, which is what the Bible claims in Genesis 1, John 1, and Hebrews 11, then He could certainly raise Jesus from the dead.

How arrogant it would be for us to determine for ourselves (categorically) that there is no God, that He did not create the universe, and that Jesus did not raise from the dead. We don’t know what we don’t know, and we don’t understand perfectly what we think we know.

With that said, I want to provide some minimal facts that provide some evidence that tends to support the resurrection. These things are not proof; they are an offer of proof. We cannot achieve definitive proof, but there is evidence for the credibility of the claims made that Jesus rose from dead.

Continue reading “Do We Have Any Evidence of the Resurrection? A Critique of Skepticism and Proof” →

What It Means to Bear God’s Name and the Significance of Not Taking God’s Name in Vain

We who take God’s name are His representatives in the world.

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In a previous blog article, I tried to summarize the view developed by Old Testament scholar, Carmen Imes, on what it means that human beings are made in God’s image. I have only summarized her view as I understand it from a conversation on the Holy Post podcast (with some thoughts of my own added in), but she wrote a whole book about it!

The book, Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters, was recently published as a prequel to her previous book, Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters. The previous book on bearing God’s name, in turn, was distilled from Imes’ doctoral dissertation.

Her observations are profound in my book! (Which I don’t have because I am speaking figuratively now.) Having summarized her view on human beings being made in God’s image, I am turning now to the significance of bearing God’s name and not taking His name in vain.

Imes says we don’t bear (take on) God’s image because we are (already made in) God’s image, but we do take on (bear) God’s name if we are His covenant people. The significance of taking on God’s name is what is implicated in the third commandment: thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.

In Carmen Imes’ first book, Bearing God’s name: Why Sinai Still Matters, she explores the commandment not to take the Lord’s name in vain. She argues for what she calls “missional reading”. Thus, she says we should not understand this command simply as a rule to be applied to our speech and how we refer to God verbally. She says the meaning is much broader, deeper and more fundamental than that.

This commandment implicates our whole lives! We who take God’s name are His representatives in the world. We bear or carry His name, so what we do, and who we are, and how we represent God, who’s name we carry, matters deeply!

Every human being is made in image of God, but only God’s covenant people bear His name. Every member of the human race is invited to join the covenant community, but until people join themselves to God’s covenant community, they do not take His name.

Thus, Imes says, “It’s impossible for a nonbeliever to take God’s name in vain.” They haven’t taken His name at all, so they cannot violate the command not to take God’s name in vain. If a person doesn’t take God’s name in the first place, he/she cannot take His name in vain.

Remember that God revealed His proper name, Yahweh, only to His covenant people. Yahweh was not revealed to all people at the time the commandments were given to Moses. The name of God, Yahweh, was only revealed to Israel in the context of the covenant God made with them.

In New Testament verbiage, we are ambassadors of Christ if we have been born again and accepted Christ as our Lord. When we are born again, we take on the “heredity” of God as His children. When we accept Jesus as Lord, we “take his name”: we become identified as Christ followers, traditionally known as Christians.

Because we are followers of Christ who bear his name, everything we do and say is a reflection of Him. We are representatives of the kingdom of God. We carry His flag as we live our lives in the world. (If, indeed, we are not ashamed to be called by His name.)

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The Surprising Significance of Being Made in God’s Image

The ultimate significance of human beings being made in God’s image is that we are to love (value) our neighbors and even our enemies.

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ROME, ITALY – MARCH 08: Michelangelo’s masterpiece: The Creation of Adam in Sistine Chapel

What does it mean that human beings are made in God’s image? What does it mean that God commands us not to take His name in vain? New answers to these interrelated themes might surprise you.

Carmen Imes wrote a book called Bearing God’s Name that explains for common folk like me the conclusions she developed in her doctoral dissertation. She just published a new book called Being God’s Image, a kind of prequel to the first book. I recently listened to her talk about these things with Skye Jathani on the Holy Post podcast that inspires my writing today. (The conversation starts at 54:20 if you want to hear it from her mouth.)

The commandment not to take God’s name in vain is where the conversation started, but being made in God’s image is actually the prequel to that “story”, and the significance of bearing God’s name (in contrast to being God’s image) is central to the story.

I am going to start with the backstory (in the beginning), what it means to be made in God’s image, and what it means to bear God’s name before opening a new understanding of the commandment not to take God’s name in vain, according to Carmen Imes.

Imes says that some theories entertained by the church misperceive the significance of the revelation in Genesis to people in that culture filled with false idols. They miss the mark and fall short of the reality that is expressed in Genesis.

Imes says, “The majority of the views out there through the centuries attached the image of God to some human capacity or function. That view makes the image of God something we do or are qualified to do by having a certain capacity.”

Some say human rationality is what it means to be made in the image of God. They reason that we are intellectually superior to animals; therefore, rationality is what it means to be made in the image of God.

Others have ascribed being made in the image of God to our social and political ability to govern ourselves. Still others believe our morality and conscience are what distinguish us from the animals as being made in God’s image.

These things certainly distinguish human beings from other creatures created by God, but Imes says these human capacities, true as they are, do not accurately convey what the biblical text actually says. Imes says that assuming the differences between humans and the animals is what being made in the image of God means s just “theological speculation” It is eisegesis – imposing our own thinking on the text – rather than exegesis – extracting the meaning from the text, itself.

Th view that special human capabilities are what it means to be made in the image of God is not true to the biblical text, and it is not justified by the text. Exegesis of the text (pulling the meaning from the text, and not from our conceptions applied to the text) reveals a different view for what it means to be made in God’s image.

Imes says we need to pay closer attention to what the text actually says to determine its meaning. She also reads the text in light of its context, the Ancient Near Eastern culture, to determine more precisely what it means that human beings are made in the image of God.

The backstory begins in Genesis 1:27:

God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

The Hebrew word translated “image” in this passage is tselem, meaning literally an image. Strong’s Concordance describes the word further as “a phantom, i.e. (figuratively) illusion, resemblance; hence, a representative figure, especially an idol — image, vain shew”. (See BibleHub)

We resemble or are representative of God, though we are not (yet) true representations of God. Given the Hebrew meaning of the word, tselem (with overtones of “phantomlikeness” and resemblance – implying something less than the real thing), perhaps we are merely phantom resemblances at this time.

I would note that we may only have the potentiality of being truly like God. In the New Testament, we find that we must be born again to become God’s progeny, His children, his ambassadors (representatives) and to be found “in” Christ, who alone (at this time) is the exact representation of God in the flesh (not merely a resemblance).

Perhaps, we only have the potentiality to be exactly like God, but that doesn’t discount the fact that we are created in His image – as Adam and Eve were created in His image. This understanding sheds new light, perhaps, on the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”; and it sheds new light on the second commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”

I am going beyond, now, what Carmen Imes says in the conversation, though I think it follows from her observations. I will also get to the surprising nuance she finds in reading Genesis 1:26-27* that sets this text apart in the Ancient Near Eastern culture.

Continue reading “The Surprising Significance of Being Made in God’s Image” →