Jesus, like love, is something everyone wants to lay claim to. That is, just as there is no organized coalition banded together by a hatred of love, so there are precious few people who are willing to lay a charge at Jesus’ feet. In both cases we simply change the meaning of the term, into something we’re in favor of. Like Joshua outside the walls of Jericho, we want to get Jesus on our side. This is why Marxists have created their own Jesus. This is why theological liberals have their own Jesus. We come to the Bible wearing our own glasses, and aren’t at all surprised that Jesus comes out looking just like us.
We who are Reformed are well practiced at this art as well. Only we create a Jesus who is as cranky as we are. When our gentler evangelical brothers chide us for our bitter sarcasm, we are quick to point out some of Jesus most choice words for His enemies, “White washed tombs” “Sons of the Devil” being just a few. When the happy, ecumenical feel-good neo-evangelicals fuss at us for fussing at them for being happy, ecumenical feel-good neo-evangelicals, we are quick to remind them that Jesus may not have extinguished a smoking wick, but He was known to pick up a cracking whip. He did not stand at the entrance to the Temple, and like the gentleman that He is, invite the moneychangers to take their business elsewhere.
In both cases we are caught in this tension. On the one hand, we are to imitate Christ. He is to be our model, and we are to walk in His footsteps. On the other hand, we are not at all like Him. We can never stand in His unique position of moral authority. I’d like to make a suggestion as to how we might deal with this dilemma. Perhaps we ought to be quick to pick up the cross of Christ, and slow to pick up His prophetic mantle. Or better still, we ought not to pick up the prophetic mantle until we pick up the cross.
It is interesting to note that Jesus performed what might be understood as His first destructive miracle during Passion Week. Up until that point He has made the blind see, and the lame walk. He had freed many from illness and demonic oppression. Then, the day after His triumphal entry, He cursed a fig tree for having no figs. It was the same week that Jesus drove the moneychangers out of the Temple. One gets the sense that His sense of righteous indignation rose in proportion to the closeness of the coming of His suffering. We on the other hand ratchet up our rhetoric so as to avoid suffering, to avoid the cross.
If we enter into His suffering, if we are willing to lay down our lives, rest assured He will give us prophetic opportunities. If we are willing to go, silent as a lamb to the slaughter, He will not only raise us up, but will give us words to speak. If, on the other hand, we take it upon ourselves always to pronounce judgments of woe, woe may well become a close companion.
Thesis 68 We must love our brothers.
“I know I have to love him, but I don’t have to like him.” There’s something to this, well, rationalization. That is, there is both truth in it and rationalization in it. Our call to love one another doesn’t mean we can’t have some friends closer than others, that we can’t choose to spend more time with our friends than others. It doesn’t mean we won’t find ourselves in Paul, Barnabas and John Mark situations. That said, it’s quite easy to confuse a refusal to murder those we are commanded to love as acting in love. Love for the brethren may not flatten our affections out, but it’s significantly more than merely steering clear and leaving them alone.
In the broader church we have our various and sundry tribes. Sometimes those tribes are marked by theological differences on secondary and tertiary matters. Sometimes they are marked by more subtle differences in subcultures. That ornithological creatures of similar plumage tend to congregate in close proximity isn’t anything to be ashamed of. But when we are honest we have to admit we take it too far. If there would be Reformation in our day, that needs to change.
Which is why the loss of privilege, the increasing cultural hostility toward the Christian faith may be a great blessing. I’ve had the privilege of serving the church under deep persecution, in a nation under martial law where Christians are a small and despised minority. What I found among them was that they were sustained by long and involved arguments over whether infralapsarianism or supralapsarianism represented a more biblical view of the logical order of God’s decrees. No, actually, that wasn’t what sustained them. What I found was that the heat of persecution softened them toward each other. Persecution fulfilled its good office of making of the true church a melting pot. It burned off the dross of the divisive. Perhaps this is what God has in store for us in our day.
That means friends that that church down the road, where they are stiff, where they have all sorts of cultural rules, and your church, are family. That your church, where they are doctrinally imprecise, where they are loose, having embraced many of the broader cultures mores, is family to the uptight church down the road. The charismatics and the Presbyterians, the Baptists and the non-denoms, the Lutherans and the Reformed, baby baptizers and those who think a game of Go-Fish is an invitation to the devil, we’re all in this together. We’re all bought with a price. We all have the same elder brother, Jesus who died not just for our sins but for our quirks and foibles. Jesus, who died for our brothers just as much as He died for us, who loves “them” just as much as He loves “us.”
We must stop putting up with our brothers and start lifting them up, stop begrudgingly admitting we’re related, more eagerly embracing them as beloved kin. Reformation of the church happens as we are re-formed, not separated shocks of wheat out in the fields, but one loaf, the body of Christ.
With each passing wave of stimulus checks we get closer and closer to the notion that the state should simply send everyone a check every month, or at least, send a check to everyone who doesn’t earn one in the marketplace. If the government can make money out of the blue, (they can’t), if such stimulates the economy, (it doesn’t), if education, health care, food, housing are human rights in the sense that they are owed to us (they aren’t) what’s wrong with the idea?
The Issue is Us
There are a trillion economic reasons why such an idea is a truckload of trains looking for a collision. They are not, however, my concern. The reason Paul says that if a man will not work he should not eat (II Thessalonians 3:10) isn’t because he’s concerned about what such would do to the stock market. It’s because of what it does to the man. What is that? It dehumanizes him. That is, giving stuff, even food, to those unwilling to work isn’t honoring but dishonoring the man’s humanity.
Made for Work
Though we have lost sight of it, the truth is that according to God’s Word, we were made for work. God commanded of our first parents that they be fruitful and multiply, that they fill the earth and subdue it. That doesn’t merely take work, but defines it. That’s what work is. As God’s image bearers we reflect His glory by reflecting the glory of His work in creation by recreating. He took nothing and made from it everything. We take everything He made and reshape it, mold it, form it into violins, steam engines and smart phones.
Curse ON Work
Our first parents ate what wasn’t theirs to eat. And it didn’t go well after that. God, in fact, pronounced a curse upon our work. Eve would bring forth children in great pain. Adam would find the ground infested with thorns and thistles, getting his bread by the sweat of his brow. Work would have intermingled with all its blessings, hardship and difficulty. The crafty serpent has, too often, persuaded us that because our work is cursed that work is a curse.
Blessing of Weariness
Removing work from a man removes the man from the man. It denies his purpose which in turn denies his person. It is distortion, perversion, a twisting. One need not, however, be on the dole to fall for this. The truth is we all need to embrace more fully the blessing of work. We need to stop seeing it as merely something we have to do so we can afford to do what we want to do and start seeing it as something we get to do because of the grace of God. We need to embrace our work, take joy in it, and when we crawl into bed weary, to give thanks. Weary is the exact right way to go to bed.
Our Faithful Father
It can be tough to find work sufficient to support a family. My point certainly isn’t the shame anyone. Some times are harder than others. I get that. But those truths in no way undo this truth- work is who we are. He has not left us orphans. Ask Him for a fish, and He will give you a job to do. Let us work on our work, with fear and trembling, knowing it is He who is working in us, both to do and to will His good pleasure.
Most all of us, at one time or another, have found ourselves embarrassed by God. He Who has all perfections perfectly doesn’t always fit into our scheme of things. He doesn’t always do things the way we who are altogether imperfect think they should be done. We weep with Aaron as God destroys his two sons for merely toying with strange fire. Many of us even shed a tear for the soldiers of Pharaoh as we watch the Red Sea crash down upon them. We nurse a secret grudge as we watch God destroy Uzzah, for touching the Ark of the Covenant.
Nothing, however, assaults our sensibilities more than the execution of God’s holy war against the people of Canaan. We tell our children about Joshua’s march around Jericho. We don’t tell them that every person in the city, men, women, and children, with the exception of Rahab’s family, was put to death. That is the pattern for the taking of the Promised Land, to kill every person there. Joshua made Sherman’s march look like a walk on the beach.
Our temptation is to focus our attention on the New Testament. There we see no mass executions. There we see He who would not harm a bruised reed. We find a kinder, gentler vision of the Almighty in the tender grace of Jesus. We find not a list of rules a mile long covering how we are to wash, what we may and may not eat, nor a detailed exposition of just how the stoning of the unfaithful is supposed to look. Instead we find Jesus preaching to the multitudes, casting aside the “You have heard it saids…” and giving in its place an ethic of love. There we see His call that we be not mighty warriors like Joshua or Samson, but those who are poor in spirit. We are to be merciful, peacemakers. We are to be pure in heart. We summarize the message of Joshua as this, that we are to be warmongers, mean spirited and bloodthirsty. Now Jesus tells us we not only may, but must be nice.
If we succeed, He tells us that we shall have the kingdom of heaven. If we stop beating our chests like crazed warriors, and instead mourn, we will be comforted. If we hunger and thirst after righteousness, we will have our desires met. We will be satisfied. If we will stop destroying the wicked, and would instead show them mercy, then we will receive mercy. If we would keep a pure heart, then we will see God. If we become peacemakers we will be called the Sons of God. And if our unconditional love is rejected by men, and we are instead persecuted, again, we inherit the kingdom of heaven.
I skipped one. Jesus also calls us to be meek, hardly the picture we have of Joshua as he leads his troops into battle. But if we are meek, what do we receive? The meek shall inherit the earth. Here is perhaps the biggest change, and the greatest similarity. The similarity is that like the children of Israel, we too have a promise of a promised land. The difference is that our promise is not limited to a small strip of land in the Middle East. We’re going to inherit that entire world. All of it has been promised to us.
Of course this too has changed, that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. The only sword we carry into battle is the sword of the Word, the gospel of the kingdom. But this too is the more shocking. We are not merely cutting down the bodies of pagans; we are, in the Holy Spirit, ripping their hearts of stone out of their chests, and replacing them with hearts of flesh. We are not merely removing the pagans; we are remaking them, just as we have been remade.
What hasn’t changed is that we are at war. It is a constant. The war did not begin with the conquest of Canaan. Nor did it end in 1967. It began in Genesis 3, when God promised that He would put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. That was the declaration of war, and the institution of God’s regenerative draft- He put the enmity there, moving the woman, and her seed from the forces of darkness to the forces of light, enlisting them with His effectual call. And the war will continue until our Captain, the true Joshua, has put all things under His feet.
That is the greatest change. We are no longer fighting in ourselves. If we were, there would be nothing but defeat. But in Christ we are poor in spirit. In Christ we are rich in the Spirit, who indwells us. In Christ we do mourn. In Christ we rejoice, for He has overcome the world. In Christ we are meek, and in His meekness we inherit His reward, the entire world. In Christ we are bold and strong, for He is with us wherever we go. And when that great and final day comes, in Christ we will be pure in heart, and so we shall see God.
Today He sees us. We live our lives in this context of warfare, coram Deo, before the face of God. He is watching us, guiding us, directing us. And so we are called to be more than conquerors, greater than Joshua. We are not looking for a place at the world’s table. We are not looking for recognition of our value in the grand scheme of things. We are not looking to merely keep the world from crashing down around us. We are fighting for our God-given right to the world. We are called to total world conquest, beneath His gaze, under His authority, and unto His glory. And we, in Him, shall have it, for the King has come, and He will come again.
