Jesus revealed not just God’s love, or just God’s Law, but both. Anything less is not real love.

Part 1 introduced the myth, the forms it can take, and some of the reasons why people may believe it. We also must remember not to overcorrect for an imbalanced “lovey” Jesus.

Part 2 delved into the depths of Jesus’ famous (but apparently not taught enough) truth in Matthew 5, that He did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. The rest of His Sermon on the Mount shows that He wasn’t simply making the Law easier for people. He reminded them instead of how hard God’s real Law is to obey, and (by proxy) how we need Him to fulfill it.

Part 3 brought one of Jesus’ debates about the Law, with the Pharisees, into focus.

That is where I’ll pick up today, with the series’ final column. This will exegete the rest of Mark 7: 1-13, and see the reasons Jesus gave for His opposition to the Pharisees. Jesus did not defend His disciples for breaking the Law, but said that the Pharisees’ rule wasn’t real Law. And He didn’t debate the Pharisees because they pushed the real Law, but because they didn’t.

And I’ll conclude with the most important thing to learn from these Biblical truths.

2. Did the Pharisees accuse the disciples of violating God’s Law?

Answer: No. They asked why the disciples didn’t obey man-made traditions.

If the Pharisees were honestly confusing the two — God’s Law and their own made-up laws — they didn’t say so here. Jesus didn’t seem to think it was an honest mistake on their part.

3. Did Jesus say the leaders needed to lighten up, love a little more?

Jesus could not make His reasons clearer. If the Pharisees had really asked why Jesus’ disciples weren’t obeying the Old-Testament Law — and the Pharisees’ problem was that they were all about God’s rules and not Jesus’ love — Jesus’ response here makes no sense.

He does not say “you must learn to accept and love others instead of talking about God’s rules.”

Instead, He says, quoting Isaiah 29:13: You are teaching your own rules rather than God’s real rules, and your worship of God is in vain and without heart.

Answer: No, Jesus did not argue from only “you must love people more.” Instead He said they were hypocritically ignoring God’s real Law in favor of their made-up laws.

Many professing Christians¹ claim that Christians who defend God’s Law or holiness, or a plain reading of His Word, are automatically leaning toward hypocrisy and unloving attitudes in the same way the Pharisees did. But if the Pharisees were actually defending God’s real Law, why would Jesus call them hypocrites? He would have to mean they were claiming to adhere to God’s real Law, while actually ignoring it.

4. Was the Pharisees’ main problem only adding their own laws onto the real Law?

Answer: Not at all. And Jesus clearly says the Pharisees were not just naïvely confusing their own religious rules for the real Law. Even worse, they were actively rejecting the real Law and not just ignoring it — they were defying it, and teaching others to do the same.

I love His wording here: “You have a fine way … !” The sarcasm and outrage just blazes forth in His phrasing, with divine authority only He could have.

Again, Jesus doesn’t base His argument on “you must love more,” or even, “you are adding your own rules on top of God’s real Law.” He says “you are rejecting God’s real Law.” Here He cites a specific example: Moses, speaking for God, had commanded that people ought to honor their parents. But instead of following and teaching that part of the Law, the Pharisees had effectively thrown it out in favor of their own rule: you can avoid caring for your parents so long as you claim a Very Spiritual Exemption for your property, i.e., oh, well, this is “God’s money.”

Can you see it here? Jesus was disgusted. With the Pharisees’ very high-sounding, religious and “spiritual” idea about this, they were violating God’s real Law. They were making His word “void … by your tradition that you have handed down.” And that was just a small example, He added.

Conclusion

Many people have different reasons for wanting to make Jesus a dispenser of “love” apart from God’s Law. But such an approach simply isn’t found in Scripture.

The passages here and in part 2 are not isolated cases. For example, in Jesus’ righteous rant against the Pharisees in Matthew 23, He never talks about how they’re all about the real Law and He’s all about “the better way of love” or any of that. He laments and lambastes them because they have “neglected the weightier matters of the law.” What are these? “Justice and mercy and faithfulness.” All are important — and all are what God’s real Law was all about.

Anyone who believes Jesus even came close to opposing or overruling His own Father’s Law with love needs to consider the whole picture that Scripture shows us. Not one time does He play the “good cop” to God’s or His real Law’s “bad cop,” and contradict Himself in that way.

If this really sinks in, it should come as a shock! After all, we have always been taught that Jesus came not to just “make” the Law harder, but to provide a way of salvation.

And that’s true. Any of this emphasis on Jesus’ upholding God’s Law should not simply reinforce someone’s “well I guess we’d best try and obey the Law even harder” reaction! The only reaction this should bring us is gratitude, to Christ, for what He also did to fulfill His own Law.

This is the most important thing to know from busting this myth.

Christ fulfilled God’s real Law by sacrificing Himself as the ultimate atoning sacrifice (or propitiation, 1 John 4:10) for the sins of those who would repent of sins and believe in Him.

Knowing this, and that God’s real Law still applies today, helps us see our need for Christ even more. Instead of only reinforcing the Law and either calling people to obey it by themselves, or just to love each other better, His goal was to die, rise to life, redeem His people with His blood and start His Church. He fulfilled God’s Law so we would trust in Him, not in moral rules.

Thank God for His Law that shows us our need for Him. Thank God for His sacrifice that shows us His love. Thank God for the Bible that shows us both truths in perfect balance.

Many people seem to think so (see part 1 of this series). For very different reasons — perhaps trying to correct for real-life, sinful legalism in other Christians — they say things like, “Jesus wasn’t about rules; He is about a loving relationship with Him.” And many such things they say.

But it doesn’t take that complicated a reading of Scripture to show otherwise (seen in part 2).

Yet the question remains: if Jesus actually defending the Law and insisted it was still in effect — and maybe worse than some people thought — why then did the Pharisees pick on Him so much? And why did He argue against them? Some people might ask: “Weren’t they the religious leaders who had no love and only the Law?” What was their argument truly about?

In these last two columns of the series, we’ll begin more Biblical exploration of those questions.

Further in

It seems Mark 7: 1-13 is one of the best passages about this.

Here, in one of the clearest arguments with the Pharisees, Jesus did not base His arguments on anything close to “I am not about the Law; I am about ‘love.’” Some professing Christians (or real Christians who aren’t taught well on this topic) may assume that was His goal.

But instead He made three main points:

1. In all their “laws,” the Pharisees had no heart for the real God and worshiping Him.
2. The Pharisees were actually substituting their own made-up laws for the Law.
3. With their made-up religious rules, the Pharisees ended up denying God’s real Law.

Don’t miss the Mark

I think the scene sets itself here. Mark in his gospel has already described the religious leaders’ reactions to Jesus’ teachings and miracles. But when the Pharisees see the disciples violating a religious tradition, this encounter is so far the most clear about the exact nature of their conflict.¹

Did Jesus oppose the Pharisees because they were only about the Law, with no love for people? My suggestion: ask this very question as we read …

This is a fascinating passage. Similar to last week, let’s draw out the points one by one, and ask even more specific questions before reading sections of the story up close:

1. Were the disciples really “defiled,” as in breaking God’s real Law?

Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed.

The word defiled is crucial here. Some readings of this would hold that the disciples were being very cavalier about the Law of Moses. This assumption would say that somewhere in the Law is something about needing to wash hands exactly this way. And with all the laws in Leviticus and more (which often sound strange to us), that’s an easy assumption to make.

But how does Mark define this use of defiled? He says “that is, unwashed,” and goes on to say:

(For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.)

This understanding of defiled is not according to the Law, but means only “unwashed,” and according to nothing more than the “tradition of the elders.” If they are coming back from the secular marketplace, for example, they have decided it’s their rule to do ritual washing.

Mark goes on to say that according to their religious rituals, they wash all kinds of things, not just to keep them clean physically, but to keep them clean (in their view) spiritually.

But though the Law is detailed, with many odd-sounding commands, it does not say to do that.

Answer: No. This is Pharisee-style “defiled.” God’s real Law doesn’t require this washing.

In next week’s final column, we’ll see how Jesus opposes them, not based on some you-must-lighten-up-and-love rationale, but based on the real Law. Again, here it is important to see: the disciples were not truly defiled according to God’s Law. This “defiled” only means “unwashed,” and only as defined by this Pharisee belief — which itself is never mentioned in the Law.

Next week: did Jesus condemn the Pharisees for being up-tight about God’s real Law? Did He argue that they needed to love people more and stop being so legalistic about the real Law? And did He fault them only for adding laws to the real Law, or actively rejecting it?

What’s the Word?

One very relevant passage to explore ¹ is from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” ² Many wrongly think Jesus only offers better ways to live, or moral encouragements for all who listen. But although His words may sound soft-spoken, the realities are much harsher.

Wow. Let’s be sure we don’t miss the profound truths buried in that paragraph. Nothing than less than an attempt at exegesis (my best, anyway) seems due here …

1. Jesus fulfills, not abolishes, the Law.

Lest anyone think Jesus came to offer anything different from the Law, He directly denied it. “I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them,” He said. I wonder: if I had been Jesus (scary thought), and I had wanted to tell people for sure that the true Law was not dead and gone or unnecessary for anyone in the present day, how would I have communicated this more clearly?

If Jesus actually did abolish the effects of the Law, here He was lying or obscuring the truth.

2. The Law won’t end until the world ends.

In case we missed the point, He makes it even more clear: the Law is still in effect “until all is accomplished.” Not a nano-piece of it will expire until that time.

Might someone think that has already happened — that at some point before now, the Law’s effects have passed as He predicted? No, Jesus’ context makes clear what “all is accomplished” means: the time when “heaven and earth pass away.”

I just looked out my window. Earth is still here, so I presume Heaven is too. He hasn’t yet redeemed, remodeled and combined them (Revelation 21).

Therefore I presume the Law’s iotas and dots are still un-passed.

3. We should not downplay the Law.

These seem like very strong words: those who try to downplay the Law and its truths aren’t just misguided, naïve or doctrinally wrong, but they “will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.”

That just makes me want to wipe my brow and pray I won’t be too cavalier about the Law!

God’s standards are just as holy today as they were back then. Jesus hasn’t lowered the standard; here, He has just made it higher and more strict than ever. If He hadn’t made it clear here and elsewhere that He Himself was the fulfillment of that standard, and died and rose again to prove it, people might still be calling Him a “legalist” today.

4. If we follow the Law’s commandments, we will be called great.

I’d much rather be placed in this group. And why is that? So we can be called “great in the kingdom of heaven.” Christians ought not do as I once thought deep down, that the best and most “spiritual” Christianity is disinterested devotion to religious duties. Rather, I should want to want the best reward He can give — Himself — in the Kingdom when it comes here directly.

5. Want Christ’s Kingdom? Then out-obey the Pharisees.

We might not see Jesus’ impact here without comparing it with a direct-opposite view: a “cheap grace” that assumes we don’t need to consider God’s holiness, only His love.

But here, Jesus doesn’t mention a word about God’s love. He talks about His great love at other times, and it’s absolutely essential to remember that as we seek to know Jesus and all of His character. But here, His focus is His Father’s holiness and the Law. Its standard was in effect then, and remains in effect today for those who don’t believe Him.

6. Christians are not under the Law, because of Christ’s coming and personal faith.

Years later, Christians in the Galatian church were being told opposite ideas of the Law, by very “spiritual” teachers who claimed the Christians were still under its requirements. But Paul wrote:

So Paul makes things even clearer to Christians: they are no longer captive to the Law. But the essential ingredients for the status change are Christ’s coming, what He did, and personal faith that brings forgiveness of sins and adoption as God’s sons.

Next week: if it’s true that Jesus did not oppose the Law, but came squarely on its side, why then was He so often fighting with the Pharisees? Weren’t they all about the Law when He wanted them to understand His grace and love? What do you think?

Perhaps it’s best to leave this little lie alone. After all, it brings so many people together in agreement, doesn’t it? Many Christians want to be loving to their unsaved friends, or “worldly” Christians. Or they may want to correct for their legalistic backgrounds, and make sure they emphasize that God is all about love, not rules. The popular evangelical phrase remains, on a billion church signs: that “Christianity isn’t about rules, it’s about a relationship.”

So they present one side of a truth, to the point of half-truth: Jesus isn’t about the Law.

But that is not what Scripture says. This is clear not only from the epistles written by Paul and other apostles about Jesus, but from the words of Jesus Himself.

“Take a look, it’s in a Book …”

Ye have heard that it was said …

Jesus fought the Pharisees because they were all about the Law, and He was all about love.

AKA: Jesus wasn’t about rules, He was about love and personal relationship with Him.

AKA: “Christianity isn’t about rules, it’s about relationship.”

Figure A:

“The God of the Old Testament is a vengeful God,” says a popular professing Christian during a lecture circuit, named the same as his new book with a catchy, “outrageous” title. “He is all about the Law and following a system of rules. Then along comes Jesus, and His only law is the law of love! He accepts people just the way they are. He breaks down the barriers.” ¹

Figure B:

[After agreeing that boundaries are in the Bible] Jesus is frequently breaking through those boundaries, challenging what the OT purity laws say about dirt and cleanliness, Sabbath and love…which is why Christianity has always had a bit of an iconoclastic streak. Add to this Jesus’ acceptance of the Other, be they of an enemy empire (the Centuriion)², or heterodox (like the many Samaritans who held a different canon and worshiped at a different temple), or outright occult (the blessed Magi who visited the child Christ [. . .]), you see a relaxing of the boundaries and a universalizing of the Old Covenant’s YHWH into a God who brings “peace and glad tidings of great joy to all peoples[.]”

From an acquaintance’s Facebook post

Figure C:

All my religious training was in Sunday school, maybe 25 years ago, and the main thing I remember was that God was always smiting the Pharisees. At least I think it was the Pharisees[. . . .]

My wife, who has had bales of religious training, tells me that this was the Old Testament God, who was very strict, whereas the New Testament God is a genuinely mellow deity, the kind of deity who would never smite anybody or order you to smear goat’s blood on your firstborn son, which is the kind of thing the Old Testament God was always doing.

The otherwise hilarious author and humor columnist Dave Barry, from a 1985 column

What’s the truth in this?

While it is easy to make lovey-dovey Christians (or those who want or claim to be so) into easy villains, I hope to Heaven that Biblical Christians will not overcorrect the opposite way. We’re already needing to deal with overcorrection — from not-loving-enough views of God to a “love”-as-the-only-defining-attribute view of God. Let’s not swing the pendulum back again!

It is so true that Jesus came to Earth to exercise love. No informed Christian would deny this. He healed the sick, taught of His Father’s care for people, lived as a Man, comforted the hurting, and did not fight back when He was persecuted.

He did not specifically deploy punishments, like God the Father. At that point, it wasn’t His goal.

What’s the lie in this?

What Biblical Christians would disagree with is that “love” is so easily understood as simple healing from sickness, or acceptance of all other views, or especially making things easier for people who had suffered under the Old Testament Law for centuries. Rather:

1. Jesus doesn’t just release people from the Law’s burden. He increases it, by reminding us that true violations are in our hearts, not in our deeds! Only He Himself can remove its burden.
2. Jesus does not oppose the Law. He opposes false views of it. He decries the often-willing ignorance of some people, in particular religious hypocrites. Such people refuse to see that the Law pointed to Him as the One Who relieves its burden for those who repent and believe Him.
3. And Jesus did not come to overthrow the unfair, too-hard Law. He came to fulfill it.

(This topic is so incredible, deep and rich that it will take at least three parts of a new series to get through it. Watch for the next part coming Saturday. Meanwhile, a great way to study up on this topic is to re-read the Sermon on the Mount, especially Matthew 5: 17-20, and Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees in Mark 7: 1-13, and onward. What do you think?)

For me, that has proven especially true in the past couple of weeks, for at least three reasons.

The first is that they keep saying things about God that are not too Biblical, or imbalanced, even if they aren’t strictly heretical (i.e., something that keeps you from being a real Christian).

The second is that they keep assuming other Christians, such as myself, mainly believe as they do for certain reasons — they want to preserve power, they want to shoot homosexuals in the streets for sport, they’re all legalists, fundies, etc. They don’t give much leeway to those who believe “traditional” Christianity, and live their faith in love, because they really believe the Bible teaches this and God wants it.

The third reason is because these are not just philosophical issues that can be talked about over (insert trendy drink of your choice) while tapping out notes on your (insert i-Something of your choice).¹ I keep getting that impression from a lot of “emergent” advocates — and to be fair, from some “traditional” Christians too — that all this is just a bookish discussion.

Instead, this stuff is vital. It affects people’s lives. Believing wrongly about spiritual realities ruins marriages, families, churches. False doctrine (no matter which doctrines you believe are false) corrupts how one views God, morality, salvation, how to interact with the world.

And what if it’s true that Christians who still hold to the Biblical framework of man’s personal sin against God²), and eternal consequences for failure to repent and believe Christ? If so, those who claim or act otherwise are in a lot of trouble. Why? Because in their efforts to help the world, heal its hurts, etc., they’re stepping right over dead bodies — ignoring man’s true problem, deadness in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 1-2), in order to treat flesh wounds.

One month ago I addressed this issue in Part 1. It started with a fantasy-world analogy³ and actually dared to finish with a surface evaluation of the civil rights era. Now I’ll finally finish up, with some thoughts on Christians and others who could seem to prefer moral zeal but without Biblical knowledge, following a certain earthquake.

Do your paperwork

More than a month has passed since the earthquake that tore through the half-island nation of Haiti. Already afflicted with disease, death and poverty, the island is still suffering the aftermath of that near-apocalypse. The blighted country’s existing population of orphans undoubtedly swelled, and charity workers, Christian or not, are trying to figure out what to do.

They want to help the suffering people, they really do. They have great hearts, those charity workers. But what they also need to make sure they have is, um, the right paperwork.

This also goes for a certain group of Baptists.⁴ In early February, ten members of an Idaho church were trying to get into the Dominican Republic, crossing the border with multiple Haitian orphans in tow. Instead they were arrested and charged with child kidnapping.

More recently, eight of the Baptists were freed and returned to the U.S. in time for some to get on the Oprah show.⁵ But two of their leaders, Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter, are still jailed in Port-au-Prince. They hadn’t had the right documents, Haiti authorities said, and oh, by the way: some of the children weren’t really orphans. A World magazine story (on Feb. 4) further describes:

[Silsby] told reporters last week: “Our hearts were in the right place.”

[. . .]

The Americans, members of a group called New Life Children’s Refuge, said they planned to establish an orphanage for children in the Dominican Republic. CNN reported that the group has no experience running an orphanage, and that the group’s headquarters are listed as Silsby’s now-foreclosed home.

What I hope is that the missionaries (or missionary wannabes?) are not now thinking this is simple anti-Christian persecution. I hope they aren’t claiming “this was God’s will” for something that just wasn’t very good sense. I hope good intentions aren’t being held up over God-glorifying wisdom.

I also hope other Christians won’t pick on them too much. Rather, we should seek to encourage good-hearted Christians who could use some, well, wisdom too.

In Romans 10:2, Paul refers to non-Christian Jews who have “zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” They don’t “submit to God’s righteousness,” the apostle says. In their case, having a “heart in the right place” was not enough.

The same is true of not only the Baptists in Haiti, or the social-gospel “emergent” folks, but any Christian. We should also be Biblical. We need to do the right paperwork. Otherwise, we risk making Jesus look bad, or else, have all these great intentions to help people but instead miss the real problems. ⁶

Rejecting society-prosperity “gospels”

Not having an actual orphanage to take the “orphans” to is a bad enough problem. Far worse is the issue described in Part 1: if you had a God-given “power” to give resurrection from death to some victims (though you don’t know who), why would you ignore it in favor of only treating not-quite-dead-yet people for surface wounds?

Yet many Christians, “emergent” or not, do this all the time.⁷

We get wrapped up in things like Natural Disaster Recovery, and Man’s Inhumanity to Man, and Addressing Injustice, and tend to neglect the far worse problems in man: the natural disaster of the Fall, man’s inhumanity to God, and the worse injustice of not constantly giving Him glory.

Many know the health-wealth-and-prosperity “gospel” teachers are an easy and rightful target for Christians who point out their heresies and/or greed.

But how is a society-prosperity “gospel” much different? It turns the Christian religion, or missionary work, primarily into trying to heal a society’s wounds, without the “secret power” of the Gospel that God uses to raise someone from spiritual death!

Though it sounds cliché, John 3 remains clear: Jesus told Nicodemus that unless anyone is personally, supernaturally, “born again,” he cannot even “see” the Kingdom of God. The Gospel, personal and life-transforming, powered by Christ’s divinity, sacrificial death and resurrection, is what raises people to life. It’s the secret power. It’s the only ultimate hope for humanity.

No one is saying all Christians should end their Haiti relief work, or any civil-rights work, so we can all only yell John 3:16 all over the place. Rather, Scripture is clear that helping the poor, feeding the hungry, addressing injustice, defending life, etc., are part of Christians’ Gospel-powered presence in the world. However, in combating civil-rights evils, or caring for the poor or orphans after the Haiti earthquake, shouldn’t Christians at least also spread the Gospel that Christ died to save sinners from their own spiritual deadness?

The choice is not “either we preach the Gospel, or we help the poor or fight injustice.” Christians throughout history haven’t seen this as a dichotomy (though a lot of people nowadays seem to force it into a black-and-white issue). Neither does the Bible.

By rooting everything we do not in our own society-prosperity work, but in that secret power of God to replace hearts of stone with living hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26), we stay truly humble. We work out of gratitude to God, not confidence in our own morality or intentions. We still have zeal, but with Biblical knowledge. We do our paperwork — and hopefully have a little more common sense and hearts in the right place. Best of all, God, and not us, will get the glory.

“Jesus wept,” from John 11:35, is often quoted because of its well-known shortness, and out of motivations to highlight Christ’s humanity. As the onlookers in the passage themselves say in verse 36, “See how he loved [Lazarus]!” Thus, some Christians also say: He loves you too, just as much — then stop without going further.

I hope no one would argue Jesus was weeping for only any reason besides genuine grief. Still, it seems readers should instead be asking, along with the crowds: if He loved Lazarus so much, why did He not come to heal Him sooner?

This same question is repeated three times. Great preachers point out that repetition like that, especially with writing space limited to the ancient authors, should make us pay close attention.

The Apostle John does show Christ’s humanity in this account. But His deity, and the fact that He is the resurrection and the life, are meant to be the main theme.

Further in

In any teaching about this passage, I’d love to hear more about all aspects of His reaction.

Jesus was not only sad. He was sovereign. He was not only human. He was divine. He was not only “deeply moved in his spirit,” but “greatly troubled” (verse 33).

So why was Jesus troubled, if His reason was simply sharing His friends’ grief?

The answer lies in the chapter’s main theme. In His weeping, He not only empathized with Lazarus’s grieving sisters; He was also reacting to the crowd of Jews (also in verse 33). Why was that? Because they were not believing in Him.

This is made even easier to see from Jesus’ own given reasons for why He delayed in coming, first to His disciples, and later to Lazarus’ sisters.

What were the reasons He gave His disciples?

1. He wanted to glorify His Father and Himself — that’s the first reason He gives (verse 4).
2. He wished to show them His light (verses 8 to 10). When they stumbled over why He would walk into what could be a very dangerous situation, He illustrated their problem by suggesting it was like they were walking by night, outside of His light.
3. He wanted to encourage them to believe, for their own sake (verses 14 to 15). He even said He was glad He had delayed, so as to build up His disciples’ faith in Him.

What were His reasons for Mary and Martha?

1. It was because He loved them. Note what could seem a strange line of reasoning in verses 5 through 6! “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”

   One might say: well, some kind of love that was. But who could accuse Jesus of being cruel? He loved Mary, Martha and Lazarus, and so He stayed away and did not heal Lazarus immediately. From our perspective, especially if we were there and did not know the ending, it could make little sense. But He knew better.

2. He would prove He was the resurrection and the life (verse 25).
3. He wanted Martha and Mary to show they believed in Him (25 to 26).
4. He wanted them never to die in an eternal sense — a more important issue than dying temporarily, as Lazarus had done (verse 26).
5. He would show them the glory of God — by implication in a way they would not have seen if He had merely healed a sick Lazarus (verse 40).
6. For the benefit of those around Him, He prayed to His Father and said He wanted observers to believe God had sent Him (verse 42).
7. And the greatest reason of all is implicit in verses 45 through 57. Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus, and the resulting faith of Mary and Martha and surely Lazarus himself, is merely a subplot in John’s main story. After Lazarus was brought to life, Jesus’ religious enemies upped the ante. That brought the Lord’s death even closer — the tension is increasing.

   Thus the same Lord Who resurrected Lazarus would later resurrect Himself, from a death He also planned, for the glory of God. This shows Who Jesus was, and why He came, so that you, gentle reader, may also believe in Him and have life in His name (John 20:31).

I wish I could hear an awesome sermon about all this. This feels like an outline for one.

And I can’t get over that first point in the above list: that Jesus delayed coming to Lazarus because He loved him, and his family. A greater goal was in His mind: His own glory, and the far more profound need for people to believe in Him as the resurrection and the life.

How often has the Lord delayed coming, delayed a healing, or not healed at all, for reasons that only He can know, because He loves us more than we would if we could decide what He did?

How often is He grieved, but still worked differently than we would, for greater reasons?

How often has He wept, not only because He empathizes with our losses (any non-Son-of-God person could do that), but instead because He wants us to understand that He is the resurrection and the life, sent from God the Father, Who will be glorified!

For example, who among us has learned, from just about any church or Sunday-school circular, this Fun Fact about the Bible? “Jesus wept,” in John 11:35, is the shortest verse in the Bible! ¹

Great. Wow, the shortest verse. Does that make it less important? Or maybe more important? Does it matter at all? Who divided those verses anyway? (Hint: not the original writers.)

But who among us knows why Jesus wept in the first place?

I hadn’t thought about it either, at all — that is, until a friend reminded me of the passage’s context. This illustrates well one of those little myths that gets about Christendom and needs to be set straight. Maybe, thanks to God’s grace, it doesn’t wreck a whole lot, and by itself it certainly won’t prevent someone from being truly redeemed. But what might we miss anyway?

Ye have heard that it was said …

“Jesus wept” (John 11:35) because He was very sad that his friend Lazarus had died.

Figure A:

In a Christian small group, someone shares her struggles with personal sickness, or conflict in her family. Perhaps a relative has died, or is about to die. In a sincere attempt at comfort, a friend pats her hand and reminds her, “Remember, ‘Jesus wept.’ He knows your pain.”

Figure B:

A devotional book, by a popular Christian author, is all about the humanity of Jesus. He was just as human as you and me, the writer says earnestly — Jesus felt all the emotions we do. Jesus got angry. He was tired. He was hungry, thirsty, loving, and He wept when a friend of His had died (John 11:35). Remember, Jesus may weep for your troubles, too.²

What’s the truth in this?

Jesus was certainly a Man, 100 percent — as well as being 100 percent God. I can’t fully get that, and sometimes (especially if we’re not wary of overcorrecting one excess with another) the comparisons can sound odd. He ate, slept, got sick, went to the bathroom, and best of all, suffered and died the cruel, physical death of a man — but with wonderful spiritual results.

What’s the lie in this?

Will anyone argue that Jesus was not really weeping because He was grieved? I doubt it — and I won’t! But to focus on His human nature in this, without also including the reasons He gives for His divine, sovereign actions and choices, downplays the main theme of the story.

The tension is breathtaking in the account of the death and resurrection of Lazarus in John 11. Jesus reacted in many ways like any person would in this situation. Yes, He felt their pain. But He had also held back from healing Lazarus for an even more important reason than to assuage someone’s grief. Rather than work a quick healing for His friend, He was planning to manifest Himself in a way that could have been His most publicly divine act so far in His earthly life.

What’s the Word?

The scene: After suffering through a long sickness, Jesus’ friend Lazarus has died. And oddly enough, though He was told in advance, He had already spent at least two days delaying in not coming to heal Lazarus. John 11 must be read in full to see this truth, but here’s an excerpt:

The reason for Jesus weeping? Based on the different reactions from the crowd, it is twofold.

Notice that John doesn’t leave the onlookers’ reaction at “See how he loved him!” There’s more.

Rather, the author’s paragraph ends with a question, which strongly implies the reader could be asking the same thing: “could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” Their confusion reflects that of the disciples earlier (verses 5 through 16).

(Next, we’ll go further in — if Jesus wasn’t only sharing their grief, why else did He weep?)

In this continuing collection of sermon notes from Sunday messages, one of my church’s pastor answered why, based on the Apostle Paul’s encouragement to the Romans in Romans 12 …

01.31.2010 — Romans 12: 1-16 (Paul)

• In our church, we want to be committed to “living theology” as a community of believers. We are called by God, all of us, by Jesus and empowered by the Spirit to do the work of ministry (2 Corinthians 5: 17-21).
• Our unity now is found only in Christ, for the glory of God alone, making much of Him as His new creations, for the rest of our lives.
• But we still struggle because we wrestle with our sin natures. We do not always deal well with diversity, do we? Too often we think deep down like we are always right. If the world were a perfect place, we subconsciously assume, everyone would only act as we do! Such disagreements have done such damage, over insignificant things, to the cause of Christ. Yet we are called to love God, and each other as we love ourselves, and we know we do that.
• “God’s mercy is our motive and our motivation for growing together in grace. … The mercies of God make us family.” So we can call each other brothers and sisters in Christ, with affection He has given us, with God as our heavenly Father.
• The mercies of God give us a common purpose and move us through a common process. He has given all for us; let us be grateful and give all to Him. This makes rational, reasonable, right worship. We help each other in perseverance too, because we need each other. This is a lifelong community project, letting our lives be transformed.
• We must encourage one another to find our satisfaction not in the temptations of the world, but in Him (2 Corinthians 5:18). We need to want to be like our Heavenly Father, beholding His glory in everything. His mercy moves us from selfishness to being committed to others.

• Don’t think of yourself and that you are more than you are; instead, look to Christ. All this is for His glory. Yet this does not diminish the importance of each member of the body. His plan is to build His Church not through uniformity but through diversity.
• We all have different gifts, and we should humbly use them. If we don’t the body cannot function as it should. Here, we need everyone involved! The leaders don’t have all the gifts; everyone can use his/her gifts!

• We should always endeavor to live like this. These verses pack quite a punch. But people will know we are His disciples by our love. If we don’t have true love, other good deeds mean, or gain us, nothing (1 Corinthians 11: 1-3). “None of this shake hands, give a hug, then talk behind your back business. … Don’t let your ‘love’ be hypocritical.” I pray that will never happen at our church; let us not dwell on others’ flaws.
• Meanwhile as we grow in grace, we must learn to hate evil, and we must be talking about Jesus together, and stir each other to good works.
• “Outdo one another in showing honor.” This denotes respect and deference.
• Finally, all this must be with fervency, “boiling” passion. This is not a business — we must delight in this! Paul also encourages unity through humility, working together side-by-side for the cause of the Gospel. Let’s build our lives on His mercies, making much of Jesus through how we live, how we love and how we speak.

Hey back, Isaac,

Last time, your closing paragraph, about claiming God “gave us a word” and thus risking taking His name in vain, is one of those salient points that should make any reader go … “ooooohh.”

Greg Koukl pointed out that Christians often get offended when people exclaim “Oh God!”. We say “How dare you take his name in vain!” And then we get a “Word from the Lord” and tell someone whom they should or should not marry. Who’s committing the most serious sin in taking the Lord’s name in vain? Ours does much more damage.

Further on that truth: from what I understand, the Fourth Commandment wasn’t just a ban on saying God’s Name aloud when one isn’t actually addressing Him. That is included, but I’m very sure the wider meaning was that the Hebrews, by their actions, should not profane the Name of God to others by what they do.

Two recent (at the time of this writing, Jan. 14) news stories add even more to this point.

The first is the life-shattering earthquake in Haiti. Christians need to clarify that God is not weak; the earthquake didn’t stun Him. But should we say “the earthquake was God’s will” as some might? It is like we should, in one sense, only among ourselves as Christians. But even then we must be careful, because many Christians (likely because they haven’t been taught) are not careful to distinguish God’s on-the-surface will from His deeper will.

Revealed will: God hates sin and suffering. Deeper will: He allows it anyway, for reasons only He knows but that even now we can begin to see, for greater good and His glory.

The second related issue is Pat Robertson’s statement that God’s will is judging Haiti for some sin in the past (such as a “pact with the Devil”). As you said, this seems to take the Lord’s Name in vain as much as anyone who utters His Name aloud as part of a vile cussphrase.

Disclaimer: I think an equal problem to Pat Robertson’s self-righteous announcements is making equally self-righteous pronouncements against him — playing the “I’m the good cop” Christian game, trying to elevate ourselves in the world’s eyes. But instead of falling into the same sin of spiritual arrogance, we ought to plead: Mr. Robertson, you ought to first, get off the TV and come back and renounce false “prophecies”; second, understand that in the deepest sense, anything that happens is according to God’s will! Make it clear God does hate sin and suffering, but that He allows it — like the tower disaster in Luke 13: 1-4 — to remind people to repent!

What I find most often, is people do not use the principles in the Bible to make sound decisions themselves. Often, we wish to get a clear answer about God instead of making a decision for ourselves, taking the responsibility.

Like many Christians do when they claim “God told me” something, I can illustrate this truth with a Personal Anecdote. Recently I visited extended relatives over the holiday break. Someone, in a personal story of her own, told me “God told her” to give a Bible to someone.

Did she take God’s Name in vain? I’m not sure what to say about that. Isn’t it always good to share the Word with someone? Wouldn’t that obviously be in God’s revealed will? So why not just say you followed those clear written words from Him, rather than claiming some special Spirit whisper inside? In this instance, I just smiled and nodded. That action was likely more honoring to God, and to her, than picking a fight with her wording would have been.

But what if she said God wanted her to donate her entire life savings to Joyce Meyer Ministries or something? — and I, knowing her better years later, had already let her “get away” with claiming God’s direct word about her more-minor actions, and not said anything?

Really I think it comes back to being careful about our language. Someone may say God told me directly to do this and mean it very sincerely. As you said, that can still happen! But in so many cases it’s hard not to say that, or use that, as a way of setting ourselves up as so very Spiritual: God speaks to me directly. Thus the implication: Hmm, does He speak to you directly?

This seems much too close to a Gnosticism-type Christianity, in which the Holy Spirit constantly speaks mainly and “loudest” to people on a very deep Spiritual level that only very Spiritual people can hear.¹ But rather than forcing us to cringe and listen closely to whatever God might be saying in between the lines of life, the Bible gives us all the same Word. And yes, it takes physical work with actual language, to understand it. I don’t mean to imply it is easy. But it’s less difficult than how some say it is!

Here’s another point I heard somewhere If God only gave us nudges and whispers, rather than primarily speaking with His direct Word (as He has!), He would be cruel and unloving.

Last time, you mentioned looking for precedents in Scripture about finding God’s will. I think many people actually do look there for precedents, but only selectively. For example, some homeschooling-oriented Christians look to Middle-eastern culture of Old Testament days and their courtship practices² as precedent for matching up in modern times. But they never have their daughters sneak into the handsome field worker’s property when he’s in high spirits from too much drinking, and lay at the foot of his bed until he wakes up and then you say he’s your choice of a mate — a la the book of Ruth!

You also mentioned the many examples of people in Scripture asking for God’s wisdom, but making choices on extra-Biblical matters without waiting for a supposed “direct word from the Lord.” Do you think Christians blithely see past those? For example, the many times Paul in his missionary travels just went to Antioch or Crete or Attalia in Asia Minor and did not wait for a direct leading from the Lord. Instead, readers subconsciously pay more attention to the Spirit not allowing Paul and his fellow missionaries to enter one place and sending them elsewhere, or the way Moses heard from God in the burning bush, and perceive those as the way God normally works. Again, it’s selective. I wonder how much of that ties into the “life verse” fallacy, where someone bases his lifestyle or ministry on favorite parts of the Bible, ignoring the rest.

That probably means that if we were to question someone’s “word from the Lord” about even where to buy a new car, he/she would be upset and assume we believe God never speaks or acts miraculously. Of course we believe He does! Yet like you said, that’s not the Biblical rule for living. We should not expect Him to give us extra revelation when He’s already closed the canon of written Scripture, and gives us wisdom and the abilities to grow in it, with His Spirit’s help.

So here are my closing questions for next time: how do we react when someone says “God told me” such-and-such? Do we nitpick? Lovingly ask deep questions? Ignore it? And especially if someone is using that as a reason/excuse not to make a decision and take the consequences if it turns out to be “wrong” — that is, if God uses it to help us the hard way — what can we do?

Again, Godspeed! And in Him,

Stephen

So, that is one reason why I didn’t post a new column for yesterday.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been learning a lot about the “emergent” movement, and particularly its emphasis on saying the Christ-died-in-place-of-sinners idea is not right (calling it “barbaric,” or in the infamous words of Steve Chalke quoted by Brian McLaren, “cosmic¹ child abuse.” A writer acquaintance of mine, Rebecca Miller, has been writing a lot about these “emergent-cy” doctrines. Her Jan. 25 installment, The Emerging Heresy, caused much “conversation” and I found myself writing a lot of comments and rebuttals in response.

A few of those comments are excerpted below, but I encourage readers to have a look at the full back-and-forth thus far. It’s well worth a deep read, for a helpful cross-section about what many “emergent” activists are teaching, possible reasons why, and the need to address them with as much truth and grace as we can, and maybe even a little sarcasm.

From what I can tell of “emergent” Christians, they may mean well in their re-imaginings and all that sort of thing. I fear that what they are doing is taking one hammer in hand, namely, that of avoiding What the Church has Done Wrong in the Past — either actual wrongs, or perceptions thereof. Many such people seem to have backgrounds in legalistic churches, and/or megachurches that cared more for programs (ostensibly doctrine) than they did for people, the issues of the world, etc.

With that hammer in hand, every problem begins to look like a nail. And the result is that too many “re-imagining” folks swerve to opposite extremes. With the chief end of man reset from “glorify God and enjoy Him forever” to “we must fix the problems in the church, and then the world,” legalism roars back into force, more hip and socially aware and creative than before.

The three issues at the heart of this debate: God’s nature, the seriousness of man’s sin, and Christ’s Atonement for sins.

[. . .]

McLaren and others have referred to the idea of God’s plan to crucify His Son to satisfy His wrath as “divine child abuse.” For all that exploration and conversation and open-mindedness, they make an exclusive claim about what Christ’s death was *not* about. Scriptures clearly saying the contrary are thrown aside for the sake of the System. The System takes this as axiomatic: God needing to punish His Son on behalf of those who would believe is a “barbaric” concept.

[. . .]

Again I cite: a plain reading of Romans, a plain reading of Hebrews, plain reading of the entire Old Testament, plain reading of the whole Bible — respecting the (divinely inspired) authors’ intent from the beginning, ignoring (as much as possible) our own 21st-century, philosophical, “enlightened,” chronologically-snobbish cultural constraints.

Cheez, it hurts to see my Savior’s sacrifice so denigrated. By believing this, one says three things about the God one claims to value more highly than such a “barbaric” God.

1. “My sin isn’t so bad.”

God could not be so offended by humanity’s rebellion, or my own personal desire to use Him and his gifts as a means to my own idols, as to require a punishment. I’m either a basically-good person, or I’m a victim of sin, and instead of being only angry at me, God should only feel sorry for me. (What a narrow and false dilemma! Yet Scripture dares to show that God is both/and, quite above reductionistic divisions of His character.)

2. “God isn’t so good.”

Along with elevating man’s nature far above the level permitted by clear Scriptures about his natural and willful wickedness, such a claim is an insult to God’s holiness. He’ll overlook sin; regardless of how He punished it in the Old Testament, He’s learned better now, and pretty much everyone is okay by Him because He’s figured out how to rise above it all.

Justice is cheap. Grace is no longer valuable and undeserved — it’s expected! God just indulges the little hellions. Universalism is constantly hinted at, and now (as many expected) directly taught by many “emergent” leaders. Reacting to the wrong “get a contract with God and you’re saved forever” notions, they have overreacted and said *no* conscious new birth (repentance and conversion) is necessary to be in God’s favor.

3. “God is about me, not about Himself.”

Contrasted with the clear truths that God wants to give of Himself to the world, to those who repent and believe in Him, because He is the most glorious “thing” He could offer — is the idea that His all-defining, all-central characteristic is “love.”

In this view, God’s “love,” undiscerning, always tolerant, never condemning a person for his free-will choices to reject Him as the ultimate good, is now His defining virtue. He does everything for the sake of just love, love, love — as certain people wish to define it, that is. Even the “Harry Potter” series, with all its “love, love” basis, was deeper than that.