Wednesday 23 July 2014

Christians flee Mosul

Christianity Today reports the fall-out of the ISIS ultimatum that Christians in Mosul either convert to Islam, pay jizyah (a head tax for non-converts which is simply not affordable for most citizens of the area), or die by the sword.  The story may be found here.

Pray for our Iraqi brothers and sisters in the faith, especially those who have chosen to convert out of desperation due to the inability to flee or pay.  And pray for ISIS, that our God of mercy would visit them with repentance.

The Biggness of the Atonement

Derek Rishmawy has a great post here on the various models of the atonement.  He addresses something I have thought about for a long time:  that Scripture speaks of the atonement in many different ways and uses many different metaphors to describe what Jesus has done for us in accomplishing our salvation.  Rishmawy argues that we ought not to play one model of the atonement off against other models but, to the extent that each model is argued from and informed by a correct and faithful interpretation of Scripture, we ought to welcome multiple models as expanding the exaltation of God's saving work through Christ.  We ought not see these models as mutually exclusive if they have biblical warrant and ground and if they foster the greater glory of God in Christ.  Rishmawy calls it 'theological maximalism'.

I have put down some thoughts along the same lines here

Why so many theologians feel the need to find one commanding model at the exclusion of all others (and at the practical exclusion or through the fanciful interpretation of all the Scripture passages the other models are defended from) is beyond me. 

It has been said that when God does one thing, he does a thousand things.  Surely this is true of the atonement if it is true of anything God has done.  

A right view of the atonement, a biblical view, includes many aspects and angles on the saving work of the Son, along with the Father and Spirit, and includes the ongoing benefits to the church as well as the ongoing effects in the world.  There is no one model that I have seen which is sufficient to say all there is to say about the atonement. 

Friday 18 July 2014

Does God tempt us?

Here is the first of two sections of discussion of the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4 from David Platt's new commentary (2013) on Matthew in the new Christ-Centered Exposition commentary series, published by Holman Reference (p. 66-67):
Matthew 4:1 says that Jesus was led "by the Spirit" to be tempted by the Devil in the wilderness.  But in what sense did the Spirit lead Jesus to be tempted?  Did the Spirit of God tempt Jesus?  The clear answer from Scripture is, "No."  God never tempts us in the sense of enticing us to evil.  James 1:13 says, "No one undergoing a trial should say, 'I am being tempted by God.'"  Instead, Satan is seen in Scripture as "the tempter" (Matt. 4:3).  Therefore, we can say that we are tempted by Satan (who is subordinate) for evil.  Only the Devil and demons tempt us to evil, but even their tempting, though directly attributable to them, is ultimately under the sovereign control of God.  Nothing happens in the universe apart from the sovereignty of God.
     There is a flip side to Satan's temptations in Matthew 4:  We are tested by God (who is sovereign) for good.  If we put the two points together we can say that temptation by the Devil (who is subordinate) toward evil is ultimately a part of a testing by God (who is sovereign) for good.  The book of Job teaches us that Satan is on a leash; he can do nothing that God does not allow him to do.  Now to be sure, when Satan tempts, he intends it for evil, but God uses these temptations to refine His children and to teach them His faithfulness (Jas 1:2; 1 Pet 1:6-7).  The apostle Paul experienced this when God gave him a "thorn in the flesh...a messenger from Satan" to torment him (2 Cor 12:7).  The purpose of the trial was so that Paul would know the strength and sufficiency of Christ (2 Cor 12:9-10).  Consider also Joseph in the Old Testament, who was sold into slavery and tempted in a number of ways.  God used these trials to bring about good - for Joseph and for his brothers who sold him into slavery (Gen 50:20).
     We can say definitively that God was not tempting Jesus, nor was He tempting Adam, Joseph, Israel, or Paul, toward evil.  For that matter, He will never tempt you toward evil.  Instead, in His sovereignty, God uses even Satan's temptations to evil in order to bring about good in your life (Rom 8:28).
While I agree overall with what Platt is saying here, there are some clarifications which I think need to be made.  Platt rightly points to James to show that we can never say that God is tempting us toward sin.  However, he then goes on to say that it is Satan who tempts us.  This is partially true, or it is entirely true but only part of the time.  There are many places in Scripture which clearly point to Satan as the source of temptation, not least of which is the first temptation which lead to the original sin of the garden, and of course also the very temptation story recorded in Matthew 4 where Satan directly tempts Jesus.  But it is important to note a couple of things to further clarify and qualify what Platt says here.

First, Satan is not omnipresent as God is.  In other words, unlike God who is everywhere present all the time, Satan is not.  Like all other angelic beings, obedient or fallen, he can only be in one place at a time.  Since many millions of Christians the world over experience temptation simultaneously, we cannot say that all that temptation is from Satan directly, even as a subordinate cause.  In fact, we cannot even say that all temptation is indirectly from Satan through his minions, his legions of fallen angels who rebelled along with him against the authority and glory of God.  The reason we cannot say this is because of the very James passage that Platt quoted a portion of.  This passage bears quoting at length:
Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.  But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.  Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.  (ESV James 1:13-15)
                                                                                                     
Now, Satan can and does certainly tempt people in accordance with their own desires, pressing those temptations on people from the outside.  But the second thing that needs to be mentioned here is the clear sense of this passage in James.  James tells us that the typical pattern of temptation is one of internal temptation.  We are tempted because we are lured and enticed by our own desire.  This is the normative pattern of the struggle with temptation.  Our temptations stem from within, from the remnants of our sinful natures, growing out of our own sinful desires, far more often then they are pressed upon us from outside.  The sin still living in us is most often the cause of our temptations, although that was not the case for Jesus who had no sinful nature.
 

Thursday 10 July 2014

Paul: Thankful for suffering


In his commentary on 2 Corinthians (NIVAC), Scott Hafemann sees Paul’s apologetic for his ministry implicit throughout the letter, starting at the beginning (2 Cor. 1:3-7).  I heartily agree.  He notes that Paul opens his letter with thanksgiving to God for the very thing which his opponents are using to call his ministry into question in the minds of the Corinthians:  his manifold sufferings (61).  As one works through 2 Corinthians, it becomes obvious that Paul considers his sufferings as an apostle to be one of the proofs that he is truly qualified as an apostle.  This is directly opposed to the assertions of the false apostles that are plaguing the Corinthian church, who would hold up Paul's sufferings as proof that he is not a true apostle.

Paul understood suffering for the sake of Christ as a central part of his calling as an apostle right from the beginning of his Christian experience.  In Paul's Damascus Road vision of Christ, his conversion, and in his commissioning three days later, Paul understood that suffering would be a sign of his apostleship (Acts 9:3-19).  In Paul's robust theology of union with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection (Rom. 6:3-11; Gal. 2:20), we can see that Paul saw the story of Christ's salvation-accomplishing event in the story of his own Damascus salvation event.  In the Damascus event, in the vision of Christ and the words he spoke, Saul died to self and to his old perceptions and ways of understanding and relating to God (Phil. 3:4-11), and in three days he was raised to resurrection life, when he received the Spirit, his eyes were opened, his gospel mission was explained to him, and he was baptized.  In fact the way Paul speaks of baptism as a dying and being raised to new life in Christ shows us just how profoundly his own experience, interpreted though the light of the Spirit, shaped his theology (Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:12).
 Paul was promised that suffering would be a part of his apostolic calling, his gospel mission.  As Jesus said to Ananias when he was preparing him to meet Paul, 
“Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

(Acts 9:15-16 ESV)

So long as Paul continued to speak the true gospel and suffered for it, he could rejoice.  Why?  Because it was a confirmation that he was fulfilling his mission.  God was showing Paul how much he would have to suffer for Christ's sake.  And because it was for Christ's sake that he was suffering, Paul rejoiced.  In his second letter to the Corinthian church, Paul pointed to his sufferings as a sign of his apostolic legitimacy in the face of challenges from the false apostles.  Anyone who had heard the story of Paul's conversion-commissioning would know that Christ had not only called him to take the gospel to Gentiles, kings and the children of Israel, but they would also know that Paul was promised suffering for the sake of the gospel as well.  Paul could thank God for his suffering because he saw it as confirmation that he was truly fulfilling his apostolic gospel mission in the way God had told him from the start that he would.