I have felt for a long time that what happens in Ireland, on the political front, would be a signal for what can happen in the Middle East--though the specifics are very different in each case. What they have in common is a history of viscious cycles of injustice, violence and vengeance that have trapped both societies in fear and hatred that have barred the way for two opponents, who hold differing world-views, to live at peace as neighbors.
A breakthrough has happened in Ireland's political scene this week. You can read about it at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/world/europe/27irish.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th.
My prayer is that some kind of similar "coming to the table" for the purpose of forging a workable peace in the Middle East will be engineered by Jesus Christ through the influence of His Holy Spirit upon the hearts and minds of "the powers that be" in that war-torn and ravaged land. May Christ's messages of "loving our enemy" and "total forgiveness" find it's application in the hearts of the leaders and people of Middle Eastern countries.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
The Romance of Romans—Ten
Therefore salvation must be by grace through faith so that the promise might be divinely secured for all, Jews or Gentiles, who express the same kind of trust in God which our father of faith, Abraham, did. As it says in scripture, "I have made you a father of many nations." He believed God who raises the dead and has the prophetic power to call the things yet future, as good as done.
Against all odds, he continued to hope and believe that God would give him a son and make him a father of many nations. Even after he turned one-hundred and both he Sarah were beyond the age of conceiving children, he grew strong in faith without surrendering to unbelief and kept praising God, fully convinced that God would do what he said he would. Again, it was his faith that was counted to him as righteousness.
Now this was not just true for Abraham; that his righteousness was by faith. It applies to us, who will also receive God's righteousness if we believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was sacrificed for our trespasses and raised again so that we might be made right with God.
Commentary:
It’s interesting to me that Paul totally “edits out” Abraham and Sarah’s decision for Abraham to attempt to have an heir through having relations with Hagar! It’s good to know that God does the same for us in our deviations from His will and that specific wrong choices do not automatically disqualify us as a person of faith. It’s also interesting to me that this particular act of faith that Paul highlights in Abraham’s life happened many years after his initial response of faith. Yet, Paul is still speaking about “salvation by grace through faith” and it’s dynamics in a person’s life story. Salvation is a big word in the New Testament. It goes beyond “justification” and includes the whole of one’s life journey in friendship with God. Exercising faith in Jesus Christ is not a one-time event in our lives, but an ongoing trust in Him to do for us what He has promised to us in the Gospel. Our initial faith in Jesus is confirmed again and again in our lives as we live out the implications of having been regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Against all odds, he continued to hope and believe that God would give him a son and make him a father of many nations. Even after he turned one-hundred and both he Sarah were beyond the age of conceiving children, he grew strong in faith without surrendering to unbelief and kept praising God, fully convinced that God would do what he said he would. Again, it was his faith that was counted to him as righteousness.
Now this was not just true for Abraham; that his righteousness was by faith. It applies to us, who will also receive God's righteousness if we believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was sacrificed for our trespasses and raised again so that we might be made right with God.
Commentary:
It’s interesting to me that Paul totally “edits out” Abraham and Sarah’s decision for Abraham to attempt to have an heir through having relations with Hagar! It’s good to know that God does the same for us in our deviations from His will and that specific wrong choices do not automatically disqualify us as a person of faith. It’s also interesting to me that this particular act of faith that Paul highlights in Abraham’s life happened many years after his initial response of faith. Yet, Paul is still speaking about “salvation by grace through faith” and it’s dynamics in a person’s life story. Salvation is a big word in the New Testament. It goes beyond “justification” and includes the whole of one’s life journey in friendship with God. Exercising faith in Jesus Christ is not a one-time event in our lives, but an ongoing trust in Him to do for us what He has promised to us in the Gospel. Our initial faith in Jesus is confirmed again and again in our lives as we live out the implications of having been regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
The Romance of Romans--Nine
If this promise (of being made righteous) is based on "earning it", then faith is nullified and God "owes" salvation to people. But trying to live up to the Mosaic code actually produces greater offense and guilt in people, for where there is no clear standard, there is no clear violation.
Commentary:
Like in chapter 3, Paul alludes, in the briefest of ways, to a revolutionary view of God's primary purpose for encoding His law and giving it so clearly to Israel through Moses. It was never given to make people righteous, but to expose how far short we fall of His perfections if we are left to our mere human powers. In preparing humanity (and human hearts) to be receptive to His ingenious divine rescue mission in Christ, God desired to create a "relief map" that showed starkly the difference in "altitude" between His righteousness and ours. Paul even reveals the agonizing and frustrating irony that the harder we try in our own strength to "prove" to God, others or ourselves how obedient we are to His law, the more miserably we fail to obey it in the depths of our being.
We need a Savior and we have to come to the end of our own religious strength (not to mention our moral weakness!) in preparation for humbling our hearts to receive the free gift of God's righteousness in Jesus in such a way that we will be forever amazed by His grace and eternally grateful for His kindness. Paul will expand on this theme in chapter 7.
Commentary:
Like in chapter 3, Paul alludes, in the briefest of ways, to a revolutionary view of God's primary purpose for encoding His law and giving it so clearly to Israel through Moses. It was never given to make people righteous, but to expose how far short we fall of His perfections if we are left to our mere human powers. In preparing humanity (and human hearts) to be receptive to His ingenious divine rescue mission in Christ, God desired to create a "relief map" that showed starkly the difference in "altitude" between His righteousness and ours. Paul even reveals the agonizing and frustrating irony that the harder we try in our own strength to "prove" to God, others or ourselves how obedient we are to His law, the more miserably we fail to obey it in the depths of our being.
We need a Savior and we have to come to the end of our own religious strength (not to mention our moral weakness!) in preparation for humbling our hearts to receive the free gift of God's righteousness in Jesus in such a way that we will be forever amazed by His grace and eternally grateful for His kindness. Paul will expand on this theme in chapter 7.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
The Romance of Romans--Eight
David also affirmed that God's righteousness isn't given according to "earning it” when he declared, "How blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the person whose sins the Lord does not count against him. "
Now think about it. Is this "blessedness" only given to circumcised Jews, or is it also available to uncircumcised Gentiles? Remember, we agreed that Abraham's faith was the basis of his righteousness. Was he circumcised or uncircumcised when this was said about him? He himself was an uncircumcised Gentile when God said this to him! Only after this was he circumcised, which was only an outward sign of the righteousness that God had already bestowed on him because of his belief. This made Abraham the father of all who believe God, even uncircumcised Gentiles. So then, God's righteousness is available to them as well. And he is obviously the father of the Jews, if indeed they walk in the same kind of faith Abraham displayed while he was still an uncircumcised Gentile. For God's awesome promise that Abraham would be the father of many nations was not given to him and his descendants on the basis of religious performance, but because of the right relationship with God he enjoyed on the basis of believing God.
Commentary:
Paul also includes some verses from Psalm 32 to remind his readers how David, like Abraham, didn’t earn God’s righteousness by his mighty or godly deeds, but that he needed and celebrated God’s forgiveness and gracious covering for his failures and sins. Paul quickly returns to father Abraham’s journey with God and reminds his readers (especially his Jewish readers) of an amazing but embarrassingly obvious fact that so easily gets buried beneath the many subsequent events of Israel’s history. Paul takes us back to the genesis of Abraham’s walk with God. Here’s the million-dollar question: Is it “un-Jewish” to believe that God is passionate to save and redeem gentile people? And…here’s the great irony—the father of all the Jews was made righteous by God while he was an uncircumcised gentile. The beloved and revered father of the Jews was himself a gentile! Of course God wants to save all peoples—He always has and He has repeatedly and clearly spoken through the Hebrew prophets that He would one day do so in a major way through the coming of the Messiah. It should be no surprise to the Jewish people of Paul’s day (or ours) that the gentiles (the people groups of the whole earth) are freely invited to enter into the Abrahamic covenant and the commonwealth of Israel by simply believing and trusting in Messiah Jesus—who He is and what He has done. In another place, Paul will refer to this inclusion of believing gentiles into this covenant, rooted in the spiritual journey of the Jews, that has “flowered” into the manifestation of a new creation, a new covenant, and a new humanity in Christ, as the essence of the mystery of the gospel. This mystery is still “messing” with the hearts and minds of religious people today!
Now think about it. Is this "blessedness" only given to circumcised Jews, or is it also available to uncircumcised Gentiles? Remember, we agreed that Abraham's faith was the basis of his righteousness. Was he circumcised or uncircumcised when this was said about him? He himself was an uncircumcised Gentile when God said this to him! Only after this was he circumcised, which was only an outward sign of the righteousness that God had already bestowed on him because of his belief. This made Abraham the father of all who believe God, even uncircumcised Gentiles. So then, God's righteousness is available to them as well. And he is obviously the father of the Jews, if indeed they walk in the same kind of faith Abraham displayed while he was still an uncircumcised Gentile. For God's awesome promise that Abraham would be the father of many nations was not given to him and his descendants on the basis of religious performance, but because of the right relationship with God he enjoyed on the basis of believing God.
Commentary:
Paul also includes some verses from Psalm 32 to remind his readers how David, like Abraham, didn’t earn God’s righteousness by his mighty or godly deeds, but that he needed and celebrated God’s forgiveness and gracious covering for his failures and sins. Paul quickly returns to father Abraham’s journey with God and reminds his readers (especially his Jewish readers) of an amazing but embarrassingly obvious fact that so easily gets buried beneath the many subsequent events of Israel’s history. Paul takes us back to the genesis of Abraham’s walk with God. Here’s the million-dollar question: Is it “un-Jewish” to believe that God is passionate to save and redeem gentile people? And…here’s the great irony—the father of all the Jews was made righteous by God while he was an uncircumcised gentile. The beloved and revered father of the Jews was himself a gentile! Of course God wants to save all peoples—He always has and He has repeatedly and clearly spoken through the Hebrew prophets that He would one day do so in a major way through the coming of the Messiah. It should be no surprise to the Jewish people of Paul’s day (or ours) that the gentiles (the people groups of the whole earth) are freely invited to enter into the Abrahamic covenant and the commonwealth of Israel by simply believing and trusting in Messiah Jesus—who He is and what He has done. In another place, Paul will refer to this inclusion of believing gentiles into this covenant, rooted in the spiritual journey of the Jews, that has “flowered” into the manifestation of a new creation, a new covenant, and a new humanity in Christ, as the essence of the mystery of the gospel. This mystery is still “messing” with the hearts and minds of religious people today!
Friday, March 23, 2007
The Romance of Romans--Seven
CHAPTER 4
How was Abraham, our father according to human ancestry, made right with God? If he were justified by his religious performance then he would have had something to boast about- even though God would have seen right through it. For the scripture makes it clear: "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." If someone works, then his reward is not a free gift, but something he's owed for his labor. But to the one who realizes he can't earn salvation, but simply stops trying to and just trusts in the One who saves the sinful, his belief is counted to him as righteousness.
Commentary:
Paul now turns his attention to the reality that what Jesus proclaimed so clearly about the necessity of “believing in Him” as the means to eternal life was not a new or foreign concept in the historical interactions between God and his people. In fact, “believing God” was front and center right from the start. Paul is linking deeply the gospel of Jesus (and the New Covenant encoded within it) back to God’s covenant with Abraham—the first Jew and father of the Jewish people. If Paul can show that believing in Jesus is not, in any sense of the word, “un-Jewish”, but in fact a logical extension and prophetic fulfillment of God’s historic promises to the Hebrew fathers, then he can show clearly that God has been faithful to keep His word despite the present-tense rejection of Jesus as Messiah by the majority of ethnic Jews.
How was Abraham, our father according to human ancestry, made right with God? If he were justified by his religious performance then he would have had something to boast about- even though God would have seen right through it. For the scripture makes it clear: "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." If someone works, then his reward is not a free gift, but something he's owed for his labor. But to the one who realizes he can't earn salvation, but simply stops trying to and just trusts in the One who saves the sinful, his belief is counted to him as righteousness.
Commentary:
Paul now turns his attention to the reality that what Jesus proclaimed so clearly about the necessity of “believing in Him” as the means to eternal life was not a new or foreign concept in the historical interactions between God and his people. In fact, “believing God” was front and center right from the start. Paul is linking deeply the gospel of Jesus (and the New Covenant encoded within it) back to God’s covenant with Abraham—the first Jew and father of the Jewish people. If Paul can show that believing in Jesus is not, in any sense of the word, “un-Jewish”, but in fact a logical extension and prophetic fulfillment of God’s historic promises to the Hebrew fathers, then he can show clearly that God has been faithful to keep His word despite the present-tense rejection of Jesus as Messiah by the majority of ethnic Jews.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
The Romance of Romans--Six
Chapter 3 cont'd:
However, a new day has dawned and the righteousness of God is revealed that transcends the Mosaic legal system. The scriptures themselves, written by Moses and the prophets, point us to this very truth. Now this divine righteousness is available to all people who really believe in the Messiah, Jesus, and put their trust in who he is and what he has done for them. For there is no real difference between people- all have sinned and fall far short of God's standard of perfection. Justification (God reconciling us to himself) is a free gift of God's grace purchased by Jesus Christ; whom God has clearly presented as the only righteous one and therefore, the only worthy blood sacrifice for the sins of all people of all times, which God has patiently endured. Sacrificing his own Son was the only possible way that God could impart his righteousness to people and still be true to both his justice and his mercy.
God's ingenious salvation strategy undermines all the arrogant self-righteousness of religious people because it is not based on the principle of trying, but trusting. We therefore conclude that people are made right with God, not on the basis of religious works, but on the basis of putting their confidence in Jesus the Messiah. God isn't only the God of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles. And if he is the same and only true God for all, then he must save all by the same means- believing.
So do we nullify the value of the Mosaic law because of this? No way! In fact, its very focus is confirmed.
Commentary:
Paul again refers to "salvation" being equated with "the righteousness of God" being openly revealed through the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. Actually "righteousness" and "justice" are the root same word in Greek. We similarly see God's salvation and justice wedded as one in the prophecies of Isaiah--salvation comes as God brings His justice to bear. It's a bit ironic because we typically think of salvation as mercy as opposed to justice, but in God's economy they are perfectly blended and entwined. God has visited the earth in Jesus to save His chosen ones by bringing justice upon their oppressors--justice for sin, sickness and Satan implies liberation for believers. God brought His justice down upon the aggregate sins of all humanity when He executed His Son on the cross as the ultimate sin offering. God doesn't save us only on the basis of His kindness, but also on the basis of "dealing justly" with our universal treason against Him. Justice and mercy meet in the crucifixion of our Saviour. He simply requires us to agree with (i.e. trust in; believe in; surrender to) these terms--a deal that is hard to refuse and, if we turn it down, a choice that can only be described as foolish to the max.
However, a new day has dawned and the righteousness of God is revealed that transcends the Mosaic legal system. The scriptures themselves, written by Moses and the prophets, point us to this very truth. Now this divine righteousness is available to all people who really believe in the Messiah, Jesus, and put their trust in who he is and what he has done for them. For there is no real difference between people- all have sinned and fall far short of God's standard of perfection. Justification (God reconciling us to himself) is a free gift of God's grace purchased by Jesus Christ; whom God has clearly presented as the only righteous one and therefore, the only worthy blood sacrifice for the sins of all people of all times, which God has patiently endured. Sacrificing his own Son was the only possible way that God could impart his righteousness to people and still be true to both his justice and his mercy.
God's ingenious salvation strategy undermines all the arrogant self-righteousness of religious people because it is not based on the principle of trying, but trusting. We therefore conclude that people are made right with God, not on the basis of religious works, but on the basis of putting their confidence in Jesus the Messiah. God isn't only the God of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles. And if he is the same and only true God for all, then he must save all by the same means- believing.
So do we nullify the value of the Mosaic law because of this? No way! In fact, its very focus is confirmed.
Commentary:
Paul again refers to "salvation" being equated with "the righteousness of God" being openly revealed through the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. Actually "righteousness" and "justice" are the root same word in Greek. We similarly see God's salvation and justice wedded as one in the prophecies of Isaiah--salvation comes as God brings His justice to bear. It's a bit ironic because we typically think of salvation as mercy as opposed to justice, but in God's economy they are perfectly blended and entwined. God has visited the earth in Jesus to save His chosen ones by bringing justice upon their oppressors--justice for sin, sickness and Satan implies liberation for believers. God brought His justice down upon the aggregate sins of all humanity when He executed His Son on the cross as the ultimate sin offering. God doesn't save us only on the basis of His kindness, but also on the basis of "dealing justly" with our universal treason against Him. Justice and mercy meet in the crucifixion of our Saviour. He simply requires us to agree with (i.e. trust in; believe in; surrender to) these terms--a deal that is hard to refuse and, if we turn it down, a choice that can only be described as foolish to the max.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Friday, March 2, 2007
On Reading the Scriptures
Before I knew the Lord, I somehow got it into my head that the Bible was an ancient mystical book that no ordinary person could understand--maybe it was the old English that intimidated me! I imagined that there might be some enlightened souls hidden away in far off and benighted places who might possibly be able to decode its secrets. What a shock I encountered when, at 18, I began to read the Bible (beginning with the New Testament) and discovered how it spoke so clearly and incisively into my heart and mind--even the KJV came alive to me. (Fortunately, I had studied Shakespeare in High School and had learned to comprehend a bit of Old English.)
After my birth from above and having received the power of the Spirit into my life, I literally began to drink in the passages of the Bible. I suddenly realized that there was an invisible Companion hovering over me and speaking within my heart regarding the meanings of the texts that I was reading. He was acting like the Author Himself! That was well over 30 years ago that I began this love affair with Scripture and I am still amazed by the grace and truth that grips my soul when I study it with a heart that is willing to learn and obey.
I love to read the Scriptures with others and then share our impressions and insights and questions with one another. There is something special about the public reading of the Bible and its stories. We don't get enough of this anymore, since we all have our own personal copies and the ability to read it silently. I'm not much on liturgies, but I secretly hope that we, as a congregation, might think about ways to weave the public reading of the Scripture into our gatherings--large and small. With all the voices in this world that are clamoring for our attention, it's so refreshing to hear "the Word of the Lord."
After my birth from above and having received the power of the Spirit into my life, I literally began to drink in the passages of the Bible. I suddenly realized that there was an invisible Companion hovering over me and speaking within my heart regarding the meanings of the texts that I was reading. He was acting like the Author Himself! That was well over 30 years ago that I began this love affair with Scripture and I am still amazed by the grace and truth that grips my soul when I study it with a heart that is willing to learn and obey.
I love to read the Scriptures with others and then share our impressions and insights and questions with one another. There is something special about the public reading of the Bible and its stories. We don't get enough of this anymore, since we all have our own personal copies and the ability to read it silently. I'm not much on liturgies, but I secretly hope that we, as a congregation, might think about ways to weave the public reading of the Scripture into our gatherings--large and small. With all the voices in this world that are clamoring for our attention, it's so refreshing to hear "the Word of the Lord."
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