Category: Gospel

Gospel Shoes

The art of music has a way of moving us and conveying messages that might not be as well received more directly and bluntly spoken

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Blindfaller by Watchhouse

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? ….
God will judge those outside….

1 corinthians 5:12,13

Paul wrote these words to the Corinthians while urging them to deal with sexual immorality in the church that was so bad it would not have been tolerated by pagans. (1 Corinthians 5:1)

I am reminded of these words that Paul wrote as I listen to Gospel Shoes by the folk/Americana group, Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange) from Chapel Hill, NC. This isn’t a “Christian” song written by people who profess to be Christian, but it speaks with poignancy, clarity, and tenderness. This version is particularly well done:

 Some set their heads to swimming, nothing to lose
Drift about their good times, slivers in their boots
Some walk the straight and narrow, only passing through
Trading this world over for a pair of gospel shoes

The opening stanza of the song contrasts the “pagans” of the world with the “Christians” (more or less). Andrew Marlin (the writer of the song) may put it another way. He might say that he is contrasting “normal”, average, typical people with “religious”, church-going people.

To be fair, the caricatures of religious people do not accurately describe most of the people in my church (or in any church I have gone to, for the most part). BUT, those caricatures do have some elements of truth to them about some people, or some segment of people, who are religious in our society.

Those who “set their heads to swimming, nothing to lose”, are living this life for all it can give them because they believe this life is all there is. They “drift about their good times” because they have no particular aim, meaning, or purpose. They are looking for whatever fun and pleasure they can get, though they accumulate “slivers in their boots”.

Those who “walk the straight and narrow, only passing through”, are the religious people, of course. They are people who profess to believe in a better life after death, “trading this world over for a pair of gospel shoes”.

The term, “gospel shoes”, finds some resonance in Isaiah:

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’”

Isaiah 52:7

The word, “gospel”, of course means “good news”. The feet are beautiful of those who say “God reigns!” because it is news of peace, good tidings, and salvation. Or so it should be. Paul says, our feet should be “fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.”

Ironic, isn’t it? That Paul in talking about the “armor of God” includes “shoes” made of the “gospel of peace”. (Ephesians 6:15) It’s no wonder that we send mixed messages out into the world. But, that isn’t the “fault” of scripture; it’s our misunderstanding of it and of the upside down nature of the kingdom of God that Jesus preached.

The armor of God does not protect us against people (flesh and blood) but against dark spiritual forces. (Eph. 6:12) We are not intended to use the armor of God as a weapon against people.

Of course, some people often don’t want to hear about God. They don’t want to do be accountable, so the news of God is not “good” to them. The people who set their heads to swimming, who think they have nothing to lose and drift about the good times, however, are bound to gather slivers in their boots.

Drifting through life doing “whatever feels good” inevitably results in hardship and heartache. These are people, however, for whom God emptied Himself to become human in Jesus and for whom Jesus gave up his life, dying on a cross. He didn’t come to condemn them; he came to save them. (John 3:16-17)

Those slivers in their boots are problems that will fester and get worse. People often do not wake up to the folly of our youth until we have accumulated more hardship, difficulty, and pain than we can handle. And sometimes, those slivers cause problems that linger for a lifetime.

God who loves “those people” so much that He gave His son for them. He loves them no less than any religious person in the world, no matter how devout. Thus, God desires to reach them with His Gospel, the good news that there is a way for them to avoid the pain of their own doing and judgment that inevitably follows this life and enter into relationship with the God who created them and loves them.

As I recall Paul’s words to the Corinthians, I am struck that we often seem to have gotten things backwards. Instead of loving the world and seeking to reach them with the good news, we condemn the world and preach judgment.

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The Surprising Value of the Concept of Sin

The idea of sin makes people feel uncomfortable, and people blame sin for making them feel bad about themselves.

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Many people bristle at the Christian idea of sin, and many people fault Christianity for its emphasis on sin. Richard Dawkins criticized Christianity in his book, The God Delusion, that it’s all about sin, sin, sin. His sentiment seems to be a popular one.

As a long-time Christian, I have a “robust” view of sin not just because I have robust respect for the Bible. I see sin in myself, and I see it in mankind, generally. I see it as a fact, like gravity, that makes sense of the foibles, failures, and futility of people and human systems I see in the world.

Not that people are incapable of doing good. Even who do not believe in God can do good. Even in doing good, though, I believe most of us do it good “selfishly” – because it makes us feel good; because of peer pressure; because we want people to honor us; because we want other people to be nice to us; or simply because of the utilitarian ideal that it makes the world a better place for me and my tribe to live in.

Most people, I assume, would be uncomfortable with my assessment. Maybe what I see in myself shouldn’t be “projected” onto other people. Maybe I am right, though. I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t think it is a fair assessment.

I think one issue people have with the idea of sin is that they don’t know what to do with it. It doesn’t fit into an evolutionary paradigm that celebrates the progress of humanity from primordial ooze to ape to rational being.

Absent a cosmic redeemer, people have no “solution” for sin. Reject the One, and the other makes no sense. Many people don’t want a cosmic redeemer interfering with their self-determination (even people, ironically, who believe we have no self-determination, because we merely dance to our DNA).

People don’t see any “value” in sin. The idea of sin makes people feel uncomfortable. They blame the concept of sin for making them feel bad about themselves. When people measure their goodness against others, they either feel shame or self-righteousness, because they see themselves as better or worse than others.

People blame judgmental attitudes, intolerance, lack of empathy for others, and a host of other evils on the Judeo-Christian concept of sin.

On the other hand, do people who have rejected the Christian concept of sin stop feeling bad about themselves or stop being self-righteous? In my experience, no, they don’t.

Abandoning the idea of sin doesn’t seem to help people not feel bad about themselves, and it doesn’t stop people from being self-righteous. People still compare themselves to others. People still struggle with self-image, and some people still seem to think themselves morally superior to others even after rejecting the concept of sin.

The Christian vocabulary that includes sin has no place in alternative cultural constructs, like cultural Marxism, and the host of critical theories that flow from it. Judgment of others, however, is baked into those constructs, and virtue is signaled for group approval in ways that seem, to me, just as inimical as any bad church environment.

People are shamed and labor under judgmental attitudes perfectly well without the help of Christianity. In fact, I believe the shame and self-righteousness is even worse because other cultural constructs lack the Christian concepts of redemption, grace, and forgiveness.

But, I believe in sin simply because it makes sense of all my experiences and everything that I see in people and the world that is run by people. I have never thought of sin as a value proposition, other than to think that sinfulness is generally bad. I have certainly never thought of the idea of sin as good!

Until now.

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The Curious Upside Down Kingdom of God Revealed in the First Prophetic Utterance in the Bible

The imagery in Genesis 3:15 is confusing in light of Isaiah 53, but that is a clue to our understanding

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In my last blog article, I focused on the way that Genesis 3:15 anticipates and foreshadows the coming of a Messiah, generally, and how it was specifically fulfilled in the virgin birth of Jesus. Not only that, but it introduces a thread in Scripture (the elevation of women) at the very beginning that runs through the entire Bible.

That the Bible uniquely elevates the stature of women despite the distinctly male dominated history of mankind should be noted. That this thread is embedded in the earliest biblical texts despite the ancient, backwards culture of the time speaks to a creator God who is able to influence the course of history even when people have a tendency to go their own ways.

I am constantly amazed how many hidden threads are woven into the great tapestry that is the Bible. I see new ones all the time, and I am going to highlight another thread in this article that I see in Genesis 3:15. In fact, I only noticed it as I was writing the last blog.

Genesis 3:15 reads as follows:

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

In the last article I focused on the woman’s (Eve’s) offspring (seed) as a foreshadowing of the virgin birth. In this article, I will focus back on the second half of God’s statement to the serpent: “he [the woman’s offspring] will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

In my contemplation of the prophetic quality of this verse for the last article, I was drawn to Isaiah 53, which is (perhaps) the clearest prophetic passage anticipating and foreshadowing Jesus in all of the Old Testament:

  • 2 – “He grew up before him like a tender shoot”;
  • 3 – “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain…., and we held him in low esteem;
  • 4 – Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted”;
  • 5 – “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed”;
  • 6 – “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all”
  • 7 – “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth”; and
  • 8 – “By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished”;
  • 9 – “He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth”;
  • 10 – “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of he Lord will prosper in his hand”
  • 11 – “After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities”; and
  • 12 – “Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors”.

In reading through this passage again, I noticed multiple uses of the word “crush”. The Hebrew word, דָּכָא, (daka), found in Isaiah 53:5 and 53:10, is the same Hebrew word used in Genesis 3:15. It means, literally, “to crush” in English. It can also mean, figurately, to oppress (and it can mean contrite of heart for those who “are crushed”).

The appearance of the same word in both passages caught me eye. What are the odds of that? The imagery, however, is confusing.

Genesis 3 says that the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent. Whereas, Isaiah 53 says that God will cause the crushing and “cause him [the suffering servant] to suffer” as an “offering for sin”.

On the one hand, God will crush the suffering servant as an offering for sin (Isaiah), and on the other hand the woman’s offspring will crush the head of the serpent. (Genesis) These verses seem to describe very different things, but the very particular use of the same word in both passages is cause for further consideration.

Continue reading “The Curious Upside Down Kingdom of God Revealed in the First Prophetic Utterance in the Bible” →

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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Should Christians Be Like Elijah and Call Down Fire on People Who Reject Them?

God has been working out His plans and unfolding His purposes – the redemption of mankind and of His creation – throughout history

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I am reading through Kings and Chronicles right now in my annual trek through the Bible, and the Prophet, Elijah, has been the “star” these last few days. Elijah means “Yahweh is my God” in Hebrew. He is known for his great faith and is one of the most prominent and revered prophets in the Old Testament.

Elijah is known for his fierce faith in the face of difficult circumstances when Ahab, the King of Israel, and his domineering, foreign wife, Jezebel killed off most of the faithful Hebrew prophets and instituted the worship of Baal and Asherah for the nation of Israel.

Elijah stood defiantly against Ahab and Jezebel who sought to kill him for his defiance Elijah is, perhaps, most known for his public challenge to the prophets of Baal and Asherah that culminated in a powerful demonstration of Yahweh’s superiority to those foreign gods.

This story and another story in a similar vein to it are the backdrop for this article. If Elijah is an exemplary man of faith, to what extent should we follow his example today in the expression of our faith in the face of governmental and cultural opposition?

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