Somebody Else’s Mail (15)

Sometimes God gets angry. When his servants sin egregiously, even they may become the objects of his righteous and thoroughly justifiable anger:

“The Lord was angry with me because of you.”

“The Lord was so angry with Aaron that he was ready to destroy him.”

“The Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord.”

“He has cut down in fierce anger all the might of Israel; he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob, consuming all around.”

But the consequences of God’s anger (not to mention its duration) are not always precisely the same.

New Songs and Ultimate Mouth-Stoppers

From a literary perspective, I find the resolution of the book of Job perfectly satisfying. Sure, it’s a whole other world culturally, it’s translated from another language, and it’s incredibly ancient, which means the uncertainty of the Hebrew text for this word or that figure of speech is footnoted more often than in other scriptures. That said, it’s a tremendous piece of writing, and God’s four-chapter response to Job’s perplexity and distress is its epic and poetic climax.

From a theological perspective, however, modern Christian readers may walk away from the book’s conclusion feeling something significant about the problem of human suffering still needs addressing.

119: Tsadhe

The letter Tsadhe [צ] symbolizes justice and righteousness in both man and God. In Hebrew, tṣadîq [צַדִּיק] is the word for righteous, and the very first word in this stanza of Psalm 119. A writer at Hebrew Today says a righteous man is “a person who safeguards and protects his eyes from evil things and protects his mouth and speech from saying bad things”.

That’s certainly part of it, though it leaves out the positive aspects of righteousness.

Anonymous Asks (306)

“Is it really possible to be overly righteous or too wise?”

New Christians may be inclined to exclaim, “Of course not!” How could one have too much of a good thing? But those who have read the complete works of King Solomon may find the wording of this question familiar. He speaks of both.

Anonymous Asks (190)

“What’s the difference between righteousness and holiness?”

New Christians may hear these two biblical words as pretty much synonymous. After all, both qualities are on regular display when a believer is living a godly life, and we may be forgiven if we sometimes find them difficult to distinguish.

Nevertheless, the writers of the Bible do use these words differently, and we should probably make the same careful distinctions they do.

Relative Righteousness

“She is more righteous than I …”

Judah’s wife had died. He wasn’t exactly a young man at this point, but as they say today, “He had needs.” The cult prostitute he encountered on the road to Timnah was an admittedly sinful but pragmatic way of managing those very normal human impulses so he could get on with the necessary business of shearing his sheep undistracted.

What Judah didn’t know was that the veiled “prostitute” was actually his daughter-in-law, the former wife of his eldest son. She provided her services to him that day in exchange for a young goat from Judah’s flock, which she never received.

Technically, then, not actually a prostitute. Perhaps not a role model exactly, but nobody in this story really is.

How Not to Crash and Burn (27)

We are 27 posts into this series, and I should point out (a bit late, perhaps) that this is not going to be my attempt at a commentary on Proverbs. It’s quite a bit longer than I planned or expected, sure, but nothing remotely approaching comprehensive in scope. There are just way too many bits of sound advice in this book to touch on even a tenth of them. Most must await your own consideration and meditation to reveal their wisdom and impact your life.

The best I can hope to do here is offer a few thoughts and bits of research that seasoned readers of the Old Testament may not yet have encountered, and to offer the occasional incentive for younger Christians to make Proverbs part of their regular Bible reading regimen.

And of course I can tell you which verses jump out at me. Your mileage will surely vary.

How Occasional is Occasional?

I have a Christian acquaintance of many years who is morbidly obese at the very high end of the spectrum. No quasi-medical justification (hormones, glands, depression, etc.) can fully account for her inability to lose weight. While there are certainly other factors involved, one is surely the consumption of large quantities of superfluous calories.

It is well established in scripture that gluttony is a sin, like any other out-of-control behavior. While obesity and gluttony are not synonymous (one can be thin and voraciously gluttonous), it is hard to argue that the inability to say no is normal, healthy Christian behavior.

My simple question: is she saved?

Christian Confession: An Elaborate Fabrication?

Is it really necessary for Christians to confess our sins in order to be forgiven them?

Peter Ditzel says no, that being forgiven for the sins we commit from time to time as believers does not depend on regular confession. That, he says, would be working for our forgiveness.

He is also not a fan of John MacArthur’s take on 1 John 1, which draws a distinction between judicial and parental forgiveness that Ditzel thinks is an “elaborate fabrication”. He sees the ongoing search for MacArthur’s “parental forgiveness” as a Protestant form of penance.

The judicial/parental distinction probably did not originate with MacArthur. I’ve been hearing it my whole life. It is a very common explanation of what the apostle John has to say about forgiveness.

But is it correct?

Too Convenient

I was out last night with an unsaved friend.

I’ve written about him before. Like many others, he knows just enough about Christianity to think he understands it; just enough to think the decision that faith in Jesus Christ is not for him is a choice he has made intelligently on the basis of years of shrewd observation of Christians and our various failings. And believing his understanding adequate, he has little interest in hearing any more. He’s reluctant to get into the subject with me because he has a fairly good idea where I’ll be going.

He believes in God, he tells me, and I have no reason to doubt it. But his version of God is vastly different from the God of the Bible.