Human and Angelic

“He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement.”

John makes this observation in the second-last chapter of our Bibles, amidst visions of a new heaven and new earth, complete with the holy city coming down out of heaven from God. This is where we find the famous line about how God will wipe away every tear from the eyes of his people, and there will be no mourning, crying or pain. Believers all long to realize these visions of the future; they really, really matter, and the chapter contains many more statements equally significant to the remedy of the human condition and our final destination.

In such a context, why would we care if human beings and angels use the same measurement system? Can such an observation be anything more than comparative trivia?

Perhaps. Indulge me, if you will.

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“What does the command to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ entail?”

Today’s question is a reference to Genesis 1:28, in which God told our distant ancestors, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” He gave Noah and his sons a similar mandate after the flood: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered.”

A Two-Letter English Pronoun

Relatively mature Christians have absorbed an abundance of important principles from scripture. Sadly, we don’t always apply them as effectively or comprehensively as we might. At least, I don’t.

The limitations of human memory in a fallen world are such that we are constantly relearning things we already know. For me, this week’s “Oh yeah” moment was a conversation with my brother about our dad, and a reminder that the Lord put us together in one Body by his Spirit for many reasons.

One good reason: iron sharpens iron. We help each other understand the Bible. You will always see things I don’t, and vice versa.

No King in Israel (30)

Judges is a grim book. It shows fallen man the way he truly is, even when favored with a level of access to divine revelation that many nations never experienced. Few of its chapters are consistently uplifting or their positive aspects unmitigated by reminders of human wickedness and fallibility. Jephthah’s story, which we have just finished, mingled God-given victory with bad judgment, betrayal and brother-against-brother violence. Our final judge’s life was a notorious mess, and the book gets even bleaker from there.

In between, chapter 13 is a brief, cheery respite from the darkness. From verse 2 on, it’s all wonderful, including a rare pre-incarnate glimpse of Christ himself.

Too Hot to Handle: The Words are Immaterial

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Tom: Clint Bryan at Christianity Today has a post up about something called the Hillsong Church. I’ve heard the name and vaguely associate it with religious music and the “worship team”-style presentation, but I know very little about the Hillsong phenomenon, and I don’t think I could hum even a single one of what Mr. Bryan says are very hummable tunes. If you tell me that’s a not-very-subtle indication I’m not exactly at the nexus of mainstream evangelicalism, IC, I suppose I’ll have to take the rebuke with grace, but I thought maybe we could talk about Mr. Bryan’s article since it touches on a subject you’ve written about a fair bit.

Immanuel Can: Yep, okay. Where do you want to start, Tom?

The End of Evangelism

There is general fear being widely expressed among evangelicals today that we are not reaching people the way we used to. Certainly the numbers of people in the modern West who are becoming Christians seems to be slumping, and a lot of us are a bit nervous about the trend.

Is the Age of Evangelism Ending?

According to Bible.org, one problem is that the professional clergy people and leaders are not stepping up, and that church ministries and programs are not going out to reach people. Meanwhile, The Evangelism Institute has found that while 85% of evangelical churches have a pro-evangelism statement in their constitution, less than 5% of the people are actually involved in doing something with it.

What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (34)

A Minneapolis pastor named Jonathan Parnell is offering tips on being a friend of sinners. He believes it’s a good thing to be. John MacArthur riffed on the “friend of sinners” idea in a 1980 sermon. He liked it too. A church in Milwaukee identifies with the concept so much that it has taken the name. “Friend of Sinners Church” offers a free breakfast followed by a worship service each Sunday.

So was Jesus a friend of sinners? Should we be? Well, yes and no.

Tears in Your Bottle

“You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?”

— From Psalm 56, a Miktam of David

Scholars debate when various scribes added the superscriptions over some of the Psalms, and whether we can trust them all to the same degree. They note, for example, that the translators of the Septuagint a few centuries before Christ both edited and freely supplemented existing Hebrew superscriptions.

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“Is thrill-seeking wrong?”

An old acquaintance is in hospital right now going on two months with little prospect of an easy recovery, the victim of a motorcycle accident. He’s got a long road ahead of him with many potential pitfalls and pains as he tries to regain his strength and mobility and get back on his feet without inadvertently undoing the beneficial effects of a complex surgery in the process.

His drastic reversal of fortune brings up the question Did this have to happen? Not knowing all his circumstances, I have no good answer for that.

Clearing Away the Cobwebs

“For those who love God all things work together for good.” So wrote the apostle Paul, and so we believe. Of course, as with other frequently quoted verses of scripture, a variety of interpretations and applications exist and are commonly (and sometimes unreflectively) held by fellow believers.

Supposing your elders tasked you with expositing that familiar quotation from Romans on a Sunday morning, you might find you have to clear away a few cobwebs first.

No King in Israel (29)

Today’s instalment takes us to the eleventh of our twelve judges of Israel. We are getting there.

At least eight tribes provided Israel with leadership and deliverance during the period of the judges, and perhaps as many as ten.* The tribal affiliation of at least two judges is questionable, so we cannot confirm precisely which tribes did not receive representation in leadership during the period. We can say with certainty that Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Gad go unmentioned.

Too Hot to Handle: Fundamentalism and Modernism

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Theistic evolution is a concept that has become increasingly acceptable throughout Christendom. As long as God is said to have directed it, evolution is a pill many otherwise-solid Christians seem prepared to swallow.

Tom: I read Terry Mortenson’s article on compromise this morning. It seems as good a starting point as any. He names a number of well-reputed conservative stalwarts whose own statements suggest they have gone (or went) a little soft on the issue — James Orr, Dyson Hague, George Frederick Wright, R.A. Torrey — to one degree or another, some as far back as the early 1900s. Other less conservative believers like Andrew Klavan accept evolution outright, convinced it’s so obvious that believing it is simply common sense.

Traitors at the Table

People: you just can’t count on them.

That’s one of the things you can count on about human nature. We don’t have what it takes to see things through.

Oh, we mean well enough … and we intend to try our best … but often our best is a lot less impressive in the delivery than we thought it was going to be.

And let’s face it: most of us are just not in anything for the long haul. While the idea is new and the fire in us is fresh, we’re all enthused about whatever’s going on. But fires cool, and new turns old, and we lose interest.

A career, a program, a plan, a commitment, a hobby or a marriage … all fine in the short term, but give any of them enough time and everything turns out to be work.

So we quit. And honestly, sometimes by the time we do it’s just as well that we do.

Not a Matter for Rule-Making

An anecdote only: I won’t try to turn it into a thesis since it’s merely an observation.

The habit of using the Law of Moses as a way of filling in any perceived blanks left by the writers of the New Testament seems well ingrained among the supersessionist Reformers I encounter. For example, there are many discussions online about tithing these days. These almost inevitably take on a quasi-legalistic tone (“What must I do?”).

When you think about it, this makes some sort of sense.

Who Then Is It?

“If it is not he, who then is it?”

Good question, Job. If it is not God who gives the earth into the hand of the wicked … if it is not God who keeps his appointed rulers from dispensing justice … then who can we blame? When we suffer inexplicably, whom but God may we reasonably charge with afflicting us?

Most deep thinkers eventually arrive at this question, and not all are omni-determinists. Job was several millennia pre-Calvin.

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“Why do people struggle with lack of faith?”

On its own, the word “faith” is content-free. There is no such thing as generic faith. To talk about believing without asking what you are supposed to believe is like trying to order dinner at a restaurant when you’ve never been given a menu and the waiter refuses to tell you what the options are. A question so unspecific is quite impossible to answer meaningfully.

Faith always has to be in something or someone. It cannot exist in a vacuum.

The Commentariat Speaks (34)

The subject of faith has been on my mind this week, and we’ll revisit it tomorrow in our usual Monday “Anonymous Asks” post. Faith does not come easily to many, and even those of us habituated to trusting in Christ to meet our physical and spiritual needs on a daily basis find occasions when we too struggle to believe the Lord will do the things he has promised.

Far more important in the long run is faith that saves. One man’s honesty about his personal struggle to find it touched me the other day, and I’d like to share it with you.

No King in Israel (28)

Joseph had two sons during his glory years in Egypt, Ephraim and Manasseh. When his father Jacob was old and full of years, he blessed the two boys and adopted them as his own sons, meaning that Joseph effectively received the birthright in his generation, the double portion of Jacob’s inheritance that Reuben, his older brother, had forfeited by sleeping with his father’s concubine. In Canaan, Ephraim and Manasseh grew to be among Israel’s most powerful and numerous tribes, and Manasseh held territory on both sides of the Jordan.

We have previously mentioned irony in Judges: there’s lots and lots of it. We come to more of it today. The last chapter of Jephthah’s story involves conflict between two brother tribes.

Too Hot to Handle: Two Promises

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

In Matthew 16, upon Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus responds with two promises, which we may briefly restate as: (i) “On this rock I will build my church”, and (ii) “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven …”

Tom: There’s more to these promises, obviously, but I wanted to consider a couple of issues. First, whether these are two separate promises, or if the second is merely some kind of amplification of the first, and second, when can we anticipate the realization of these promises.

How Do You Love the Gospel?

I hear a lot of people talk about their love for the gospel. But then I also hear a lot of talk about how people “love” ice cream, their cars, their mates, their pets, and the NFL.

I’m pretty sure there’s a difference in each case.

There are different ways to love. Some of them are a million miles from the others. So what are people talking about when they say they really love the gospel?

I’m going to give you three different ways. There are probably more, but I’ve seen these three a lot.

Stubble Trouble

Six years ago, a new Gillette commercial indicting all men for the sins of some prompted this discussion of biblical masculinity between IC and me. We concluded the sort of male behavior encouraged in scripture is not toxic, and that the problem is not that men today are too masculine, but that they are not masculine in biblical ways … and that’s when they are masculine at all.

It wasn’t just Christians who were turned off by Gillette’s politically correct hectoring. The ad was brutally panned within hours of airing, and I was curious how much money Procter & Gamble was prepared to lose to make the ideological point it was pushing. Well, now we know.

Grace and Mercy

The words “mercy” and “grace” appear hundreds of times in scripture. We use them in the vast majority of our public prayers. They are among the most common words heard in churches and among Christians conversing.

As with so many words we use to express religious truths, both terms easily become jargon; clichés so comfortable we don’t even think about what we are saying. Grace especially has a broad semantic range, creating some overlap in meaning. (For example, the throne of grace is where we receive mercy and find grace.) Nevertheless, the concepts are not interchangeable despite their similarities and their occasional appearance in the same scriptural context.

It’s Tuesday. Let’s differentiate.

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“Why did Jesus weep at the grave of Lazarus?”

This week has been hard. An unsaved friend of over 30 years is on his way out of this world. He can’t communicate directly anymore, and his younger sister, the “baby” of the family, has been passing messages back and forth to me. I have every confidence the Judge of all the earth will do justice with respect to my friend, but his poor sister has no clue. Her desolation when she talks about losing her brother would break your heart.

Am I grieving for my friend? Absolutely. But I’m grieving even more for his family, who do not have the resources I do.

Enraptured

Matt Littlefield is posting about the rapture on his Substack account, and I couldn’t let that slip by without a little light commentary.

The post is entitled “Missed Another Rapture?”, and it’s about the false claims and erroneous connections made by some fringe dispensational Bible enthusiasts eager to be assured the Lord’s return will happen in their lifetime.

I don’t generally pay attention to the prediction-makers in Christendom. I truly believe it’s a fool’s errand to presume esoteric knowledge the Lord never intended us to pursue.

No King in Israel (27)

I find it interesting that the scriptures rarely spend much time describing the conflicts in which Israel engaged (Jericho and Ai being exceptions). In a Tolkien novel, a battle may take multiple chapters to cover. Same with a secular history. But the writers of scripture are teaching moral lessons, and are not interested in martial minutiae unless it serves their spiritual purpose in writing.

In this case, the writer dispenses with a great victory over Ammon in a single verse.

Too Hot to Handle: A Zipper-Lipped Life

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, who believes sex-associated personality differences are at least partly genetic, is deeply unhappy anyone would dare to challenge his worldview, set limits on his contribution to the public discourse, and disrupt his ongoing pursuit of intellectual fulfillment.

Who is doing such a thing, you ask? Why, it’s not the “moral majority” or the Christian Right; Wright dismisses Creationists as irrelevant. No, it’s the social justice Left.

Tom: It turns out the current state of evolutionary psychology has finally collided with the “blank slate” ideology of progressives, IC, and the sparks are making both sides unhappy. How unfortunate for “science”!

The Laughter of Jackals

When I was young, back in the 1970s, disaster movies were in vogue. Perhaps the most memorable was Jaws (1975), but before that were such noteworthies as The Omega Man (1971), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Airport and Earthquake (1974). Afterward came such screen gems as Rollercoaster (1977), Meteor, Hurricane and The China Syndrome (1979). All in all, there were more than fifty such major Hollywood disaster productions released in the period.

And everybody was going to see them and talking about how great the special effects were or how spectacularly people were shown dying in them.

Odd, don’t you think?

Under the Microscope

Early in the last book of the Bible, the apostle John saw a vision of seven golden lampstands, in the midst of which was one “like a son of man”, the glorified Jesus Christ. He told John to write down the things he had seen in a book, and to send that book to seven Asian churches: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. Then he told the apostle plainly that these seven lampstands in his vision represented those seven churches.

That book John wrote at the Lord’s command was Revelation.

The Original and the Copies

“Though you have not seen him, you love him.”

How do we come to love one whom we have not seen?

This is not a new problem. There are no video clips of the Lord’s healings, sermons or public interactions available on YouTube. We have no pictures of him to look at. The last words he uttered on this planet were spoken almost two millennia in our past. For everyone outside of Judea, and who lived in the years after the Lord Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father, knowing him and loving him — to the extent we manage it — has been the result of hearing and reading about him.

For many people, Christ himself is little more than an abstract idea. How do you genuinely love an abstraction?

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“Why did Pharaoh give Joseph so much authority in Egypt?”

The question is a reference to the events of the latter portion of Genesis 41, in which the king of Egypt takes a thirty-year old foreign prisoner fresh out of the local hoosegow and promotes him to the second-highest position in the kingdom, allowing him unprecedented discretion and political influence. “All my people shall order themselves as you command.”

It’s fair to say nobody saw that coming, and the first-time reader can be forgiven for saying, “Huh. That’s unlikely.” Because it was.

Out of the Bag

Giving is down. At least at my church it is. So say our elders, and I have no cause to disbelieve them.

When I attended this same local church in my early twenties, two offering bags sat each week during our celebration of the Lord’s Supper on the small, central table, to one side of the bread and wine. At least, they did so prior to our COVID interregnum. For years, after we had passed the bread and wine around, the bags went through the congregation during the weekly meeting at which all the most mature, committed believers were likely to be present, and the fewest visitors troubled by the (incorrect) perception that we expected them to follow suit.

We didn’t.

No King in Israel (26)

I try very hard never to negotiate with God.

Perhaps you struggle with that too. The habit is hard to kick, especially when you want some particular outcome very badly and believe only Heaven can deliver it. But promising God this or that provided he does what I want for me is a pagan instinct, not a Christian one. In his Sermon on the Mount, the Lord Jesus instructed his Jewish followers, for whom vows and oaths were commonplace, not to take oaths at all.

Keeping that in mind, I try never to put myself in the position of promising the Lord things I may not be able to deliver.

Too Hot to Handle: A Hot Mess

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Young pastors in American churches are a dying breed. So says Eric Conn, and he’s got a major 2017 study in hand from the Barna Group to prove it. The number of U.S. pastors under forty is currently half what it was in 1992, while the number over sixty-five has tripled. The Barna report concludes, “It is urgent that denominations, networks and independent churches determine how to best motivate, mobilize, resource and deploy more younger pastors.”

Tom: That’s a highly debatable conclusion, but not a surprising one. What’s interesting to me, IC, is not so much Barna’s “Aging of America’s Pastors” article, but Conn’s analysis of it. As someone who’s been there, he described vocational ministry as “a hot mess”.

Why Your Pastor Won’t Help You Now

Michael O’Fallon, host of the very worthwhile Sovereign Nations podcast, says he’s perplexed.

Some time ago he discovered a very nasty kind of false teaching was creeping into the churches in his denomination, a false teaching prepared in the fires of Marxism but now channeled by respected evangelical sources. It seemed obvious to O’Fallon that the first people who would be concerned and who would have a stake in understanding the danger would be those charged with maintaining sound doctrine on behalf of the church.

Crossing Jordan

All Christians allegorize, but some do it much more than others. Symbolic language is plentiful in scripture: we find it in poetry, metaphors, figures of speech, parables, prophecy and in the New Testament’s interpretation of the Old. You will find allegories in every book of the Bible and perhaps most often in the teaching of the Lord Jesus, who used symbolic language both to reveal and to conceal. In view of this, even the most literal Bible teachers allegorize from time to time. It’s impossible not to.

Of course, not all interpretations of allegories are on the same level.

Possession of the Pastures

Christians love to quote from the book of Psalms, but some psalms are easier to apply to ourselves than others are.

I was enjoying Psalm 83 this morning while simultaneously noting just how difficult all the Hebrew specifics make it to apply the psalmist’s words meaningfully to present-day believers. The enemies of Israel do not work well as analogies for grumpy HR ladies, obnoxious environmentalist neighbors, or even — to make it more relevant — social misfits with sniper rifles and a burning grudge.

Too soon? Yeah, probably.

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“Why do so many preacher’s kids apostatize?”

I feel as if this is one of those “When did you stop beating your wife?” questions. It assumes the veracity of its premise without any actual investigation. Do “so many” preacher’s kids really abandon their faith when they leave home? What does “many” mean relative to the total number of children born to full-time servants of Christ? If large numbers really did apostatize, how would we know? How many of them come back to the faith later?

Also, who’s keeping the stats: George Barna?

On Nationhood and Prayer

I’ve been praying for Canada lately. If you’ve been following our political scene, we got rid of one failing, bitterly disliked Prime Minister and replaced him with the behind-the-scenes architect of his most abject failures. It’s been 17 months since we had a federal budget, gas prices and food prices are through the roof, youth unemployment is soaring, immigration is wildly out of control and I’m seeing drug addicts and homeless people in every city in Ontario that I visit.

In short, lots to pray about. But how to pray is a good question.

No King in Israel (25)

New readers of Old Testament history may occasionally find themselves lost in a sea of names, places and peoples. Ammonites and Amorites both begin with the letter “A”, but seasoned readers know the Ammonites were fellow Hebrews descended from Lot, as Israel was descended from Abraham, whereas the Amorites were descendants of Canaan son of Ham. They founded the Old Babylonian Empire and ruled Mesopotamia, the Levant and parts of Egypt for four centuries prior to and including Israel’s time in Egypt.

In fact, one reason the Lord obliged Israel to spend so long in Egypt was to give the Amorites opportunity to repent. God told Abraham their iniquity was “not yet complete”. He would judge their sin at the appropriate time, and not before.

Too Hot to Handle: Baptized Into What?

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

I’m going to quote a full minute of a recent sermon on the subject of the New Testament teaching about baptism here because I want to fairly represent what this particular pastor was trying to communicate. A punchy line or two out of a message is fun, but may distort the speaker’s intent. In this case, providing the entire context makes that intent quite clear.

“I believe that the commission to baptize all nations was given to the church.

Contemplating Evil

The most popular course in the Religion and Culture department of one Canadian university is a course titled “Evil and Its Symbols”. It’s the one course where there never seems to be enough room to fit all the applicants. One student quipped that the homework assignment was probably “Go home and do evil.”

Maybe not. But people sure are fascinated with the topic. Why evil exists is a challenge for any Christian to explain; perhaps the biggest. Still, two things bear remembering right away: firstly, that to say that it’s a challenge does not mean that the challenge cannot be met, and secondly, that to explain the existence of evil is not a challenge unique to Christians or even to theists more generally — it’s equally necessary for atheists. Not only that, but it’s a lot harder for them.

Let me justify those statements a bit further in a moment; but first, let me set the stage for today’s post.

Next in Line

Having seen conservative evangelical Charlie Kirk sent to his eternal reward last week in Utah with a single sniper shot to the neck, one wonders which media personality the enemies of the current US regime would like to see ended next.

To be clear, I’m not alleging Kirk was killed by a leftist — that remains to be proven in court. That said, both the Canadian and American political left are not shy about voicing their delight all over social media that the fatal bullet hit home.

So then, no speculation required. They are happy to tell us who they hate most. [Linked graphic has language issues.]

Can Christians Be Lucky?

It’s probably fair to say most Christians dislike the word “luck”. I remember being discouraged from using it as a child and being asked to substitute “blessing” or some such. My parents and Sunday School teachers were (not unreasonably) concerned that I learn to discern the hand of God at work in the world. They also wanted me to not talk like a pagan.

There is wisdom in teaching God’s sovereignty and in speaking of his hand in our daily lives as a matter of course. A child who grows up reckoning without the possibility of God’s personal intervention at any moment as he makes his way in the world is dangerously disconnected from reality. The same default worldview that keeps him from superstitious fearfulness also inoculates him from reverent awe toward his Maker. Atheism is a bad way to go, but it persists. So then, the thought is that people who refer to “luck” and “fortune” are in every instance reckoning without God.

But is that true?

Anonymous Asks (371)

“Should we take miracles literally?”

If we are talking about the miracles of scripture, absolutely. Once we have conceded the existence of God, there’s no logical reason not to. Any being sufficiently powerful to create and sustain the laws of nature, as the Bible claims God did, is also sufficiently powerful to suspend those laws at his pleasure.

Moral and Ceremonial

How are Christians supposed to relate to the Law of Moses? Acts 15 gives us a play-by-play of the discussion in Jerusalem on that subject between the apostles and elders of the early church in that city. It ended like this: “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,” they wrote to the church in Antioch, “to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.”

I suppose I have always found their decision settled the matter conclusively for me.

No King in Israel (24)

As in other cases, some judges ruled over specific portions of Israel rather than the entire nation. The action in these next two chapters takes place almost entirely outside Israel proper. Jephthah’s dispute with the Ammonites was over territory acquired in battle three centuries earlier under Moses prior to Israel entering the Promised Land. Often referred to as Gilead, this region now belonged to the tribes of Reuben, Gad and the eastern half of Manasseh.

As we saw in the previous chapter, the Ammonites had previously crossed the Jordan to harass Judah, Benjamin and Ephraim, but Jephthah met and fought their army east of the Jordan.

Too Hot to Handle: The State of Theology

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

David B. was kind enough to forward us this link to a recent survey by Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research about what Americans believe about God, Jesus Christ, sin and eternity.

Tom: Apparently they are doing this every couple of years now. Having regular new data sets to browse can be useful in noting trends of one sort or another. We discussed the LifeWay 2016 survey in this space, if I recall correctly … yes, I do. That was the one where, based on the frequency of their heretical answers, my fellow writer Immanuel Can was inspired to refer to some of the respondents as not so much Christian as “ ‘Christian-flavored’, like a really, really bad kind of tofu.”

How’s the tofu this year, IC?

When Life Really Hurts

There’s a woman in my church — a lovely woman, a mother and a wife, and selfless servant of the Lord’s people, one most highly esteemed. She has been a grief and addiction counselor, and has spent her whole life ministering to others in their moments of darkest sorrow. Her husband is also a wonderful person, and his career for several decades has been as chaplain to the elderly, caring for fragile souls on the doorstep of eternity.

This woman has just been diagnosed with aggressive, metastasizing liver cancer. The fatal kind.

Incomplete Obedience

“Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

If you remember the context of today’s quote, the “right thing” James is writing about means prefacing our public declarations about plans for the future with the words “if the Lord wills”. Anything else is presumption.

“Do the right thing,” he says. “The future is not ours to boast about.”

Outside with Christ

John 9 begins with the healing of a man born blind. The story, like so many others in John, is unique to that gospel. The chapter is not even primarily about the healing itself, which takes up a mere seven verses. Strange as it may seem to a first-time reader to find Jesus making mud with his own saliva and anointing a man’s eyes, it’s no stranger than some of his other healings. John’s account is concerned primarily with the repercussions of the event, which take him almost five times as long to tell as the actual healing.

John gives us 41 verses devoted to a man’s story, but no record of his name. That’s actually fairly common in all the gospels, since their subject is Christ, not us. In a way, the man himself is incidental. In another way, he’s anything but.