Apostolic Lenses

Apostolic Lenses

There are a lot of lingering questions out there regarding the Law. I think most Christians are not at all clear regarding what our relationship to the Law ought to be. We know we don’t want to sacrifice bulls and goats anymore. And we are pretty sure we’re not required to eat Kosher and just because God says in the Old Testament that certain things were an abomination to Him (like women wearing men’s clothing [read: pants]) that doesn’t necessarily mean it is still an abomination to Him … does it?

We all know we’re not supposed to lust after our neighbor’s wife, but what about the fourth commandment: Sabbath-keeping. I mean, Sunday is not the Sabbath. It’s Saturday. Who said you could switch days? Maybe our Adventist friends have it right.

As one alert reader put it: What’s the deal with the Law? Rationalists need to know.

Well, my answer - and I know this answer would have gotten me excommunicated at various points in history, and I know that Christian-moron-hate-bloggers would like to see me drawn and quartered and have the pieces boiled in oil, if they only knew me, which they don’t, happily - my answer has to do with what I call “Apostolic Lenses.”

I think we are supposed to view all scripture through these “Apostolic Lenses.” I will try to explain.

I think there is a priority to the parts of scripture. Some parts explain other parts. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus changed the way we are to look at all of scripture.

When the Christian message first began (see Acts 2) the message was quite primitive. It was raw, undeveloped. “We thought He was the Messiah, and you killed Him but God raised Him from the dead.” That was it. That was the message.

We are told that the early disciples gave themselves over to “the Apostle’s teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” At this point the full meaning, the whole interpretation of what the Jesus event meant, was not clear. Twenty-some years later, however, just listen to Paul, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible … for God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things … (Colossians 1)” and so on. And that’s just the abridged version.

After twenty years of living in the Spirit and being taught by the Lord through the Spirit the Apostles were actually led into “all truth, ” or at least more truth than you or I are going to be led into in our lifetimes. The Apostle’s doctrine is the Gold Standard for us. They explain what the Jesus event means. In other words, we look at Jesus through the lens of the Apostle’s teaching – and that’s a good thing. John, Paul, Peter, James et al tell us what it means! Likewise we look at the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus. John 5, “…it is they (Torah) that testify of me.”

All of scripture is about the gospel. All of scripture is about Jesus. All of scripture is about the Apostolic interpretation of what it all means.

Okay, baseball metaphor. Let’s say there is a game between two professional baseball teams – the Owls and the Pussycats. The Old Testament is the league office that scheduled the game-to-be back in January of the year. Jesus is the game that gets played on July 4th at the home of the Owls. And Ray Ratto and Lowell Cohn are the super-smart pundits that tell us what the game means to the pennant race, who needs to get traded, and why the manager has to be fired. And they tell us these things the day after the game was played after they had put some thought into it, we hope.

But confusion abounds regarding Torah nonetheless. Many current theologians dissect the Law, Torah, into three parts: civil, ceremonial and moral. They reason that since we are not Israel, a nation, the civil law part does not directly apply to us. Likewise, they conclude that the ceremonial part of Torah (the sacrifices and so forth) was fulfilled in Christ so it no longer applies. But then they come to the moral part (read: the ten commandments) and say that this is neither outdated nor is it fulfill-able therefore it remains binding on the believer.

And this makes a lot of sense to the rational mind. It’s just that the Apostles never, ever made that distinction, that breakdown. For them, Torah remains a whole. It remains the covenant between God and Israel, the covenant whose time had run out.

Finally, I point to Luke 24. On the famous Road to Emmaus Jesus sets us all straight by co-opting the Torah. He owns it. It’s about Him. Its value is that it foreshadows Him and His work. The Torah is a model of the gospel; at least it would be if we were not fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

The Gospel Crank

the law and a frozen lake

in a book by n.t. wright he opens a chapter in reference to the law of God and its place or season in his will for followers...

"The lake freezes over for four months in the winter, to a depth of at least ten feet. People drive not only snowmobiles across it, but even cars and vans. It's exciting - and also quite convenient - to be able to drive across the water to the village on the opposite shore.

But there comes a time, in late March or early April, when spring comes even to the lakes north of Montreal. Suddenly the ices is not so firm. Wise drivers don't attempt the crossing any more. The villagers leave an old car on the middle of the ice; when it begins to sink, they know the time has come to stop driving across the ice. Soon the lake will be unfrozen; boats will be operating again; and anyone who wants to take the car to the other side will have to put it on the ferry.

Paul's point is this: spring has come to the people of God. For over a thousand years their fellowship with God has been established through the law. This was always essentially a winter regime, a time of waiting. There are, so to speak, modes of travel which are appropriate during that winter season. But if you become so keen on them that you don't want to abandon them in spring, you're going to be stuck at the water's edge - or maybe will even risk trying to get across when the ice will no longer hold your weight." (Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians, 61)

spring has arrived. through Christ a new season of fellowship with God has arrived. it is through the Spirit that we live in this new season allowing the Spirit to be the wind that fills our sails as we negotiate the season and life on the water.

td

Why the Law in the First Place?

Alert reader, Wayne Cannon, writes in with a question regarding the study in the book of Galatians that seems to reveal a flaw in Paul’s Abrahamic argument of grace over law. Why law at all? Why not just skip it? It doesn’t save anybody and apparently causes the entire nation of Israel to run down the wrong track altogether. Why not just cut to grace first and last?

Good question.

In answer let me start by saying I don’t know and neither does anybody else. I hate trying to answer those questions that start, “Why did God…?” I mean I wasn’t invited to the meeting where the Triune God discussed instituting the Law. Anything we say here is mere speculation. On the other hand speculation can be fun and even rewarding, and not knowing the answer has never kept me from faking it before, so here we go.

First of all I am going to avoid the more obvious explanation of needing the Law of Moses to provide us with moral conviction which shows us our need for a savior. Mostly I will avoid the argument because I don’t believe it. I didn’t know a ding-derned thing about Torah or the Jewish law as I was growing up but boy, I sure got a clear moral standard impressed upon me. Nothing Jewish about it. Well, okay there was some Old Testament stuff mixed in there with other moral sources such as Walt Disney and the U.S. Marines.

So I didn’t know squat about Torah, couldn’t have listed the Ten Commandments (what’s harder the Ten Commandments or the Seven Dwarves?), let alone any of the other 603 commands of the Law of Moses. But I certainly did know about guilt, sin, the need to be good, getting in trouble, needing forgiveness, and wishing I could be different but wasn’t. I didn’t need the Law of Moses to let me know I was frequently in deep do-do; I figured that out on my own.

So I am going to let that part of the answer to our main question slide on by.

My real answer to Wayne’s question is this: God needed to institute the Law because He wanted to establish a nation for Himself. The Law created Israel. Without the Law there could be no Israel. It’s what made Israel different from all other nations. It put the “us” in the “us and them” and gave Israel its identity. It was the label or stamp of God. Plus you can’t underestimate the strategy that giving Israel a list of commands as long as three or four arms just might keep them out of trouble for the next fifteen hundred years or so until Jesus arrived.

You could challenge that last assertion by saying that Israel got into plenty of trouble, what am I talking about? And I would reply by saying you should have seen the trouble they would have ended up in if they had had no Law.

I think the point is that Jesus needed to come from the Jews, the chosen people. And in God’s mysterious economy the Jews needed to be found fumbling in legalism and missing the point nearly altogether. Somehow, that was an important part of the plan. And even more oddly, the fact that the Chosen People played a major part in the death of the Messiah squeezes irony out into the entire world like a lemon slice over the iced tea, or like a wedge of lime being squeezed over an authentic Mexican taco. And I think that’s important.

There is a kind of right-brained left-handed reach-out-with-your-feeligs logic to it all. Paul hints at it in 1Corinthians 1 when he says, “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are.”

Wayne, my friend, I realize that that may be a completely unsatisfactory answer to your question but as Sir Thomas More summarized in the play A Man for All Seasons,
More: I trust I make myself obscure.
Norfolk: Perfectly.

Any thoughts?

The Gospel Crank

crucified

"There is no military battle, no geographical exploration, no scientific discovery, no literary creation, no artistic achievement, no moral heroism that compares to it.

It is unique, massive, monumental, unprecedented, and unparalleled. The cross of Christ is not a small secret that may or may not get out. The cross of Christ is not a minor incident in the political history of the first century that is a nice illustration of courage.

It is the center."

when eugene peterson says this statement he is stating something that is true about Jesus and the cross and is supposed to be true about us. the gospel must be at the center. this is essential. it is at the center of our theology and our thoughts, it is at the center of beliefs and behaviors, it needs to be at the center of our understanding of grace and the center of our self-understanding.

if the grace of God through the work of Christ on the cross is at the center...then other items are de-centered...my ego, pride, preferences, opinions, actions, ambitions, prejudices, among other items are put in a different place. those things that are both good and the bad about those things are not significant enough to be at the center. they are the sand the foolish man built his house on, as opposed to the wise who built his house on the rock (Jesus)...everything else is sand.

td

children of God

"Suddenly we are free with God, like a child is free with a parent. We are not involved in stiff, formal protocols in relation to God. We don't have to be afraid lest we put our foot in our mouth, or embarrass ourselves, or get sent out of the room because we didn't use the right title. We can address God as freely as we address our parents. It is the kind of freedom that combines intimacy and reverence. We are still award of the majesty and awesome glory of God. We do not try to reduce God to the level of coziness where we can manipulate him. The intimacy is a freedom to share ourselves, to express ourselves fearlessly in God's presence. We are free to be spontaneous, personal and uninhibited. Faith is not a formal relationship hedged in with elaborate courtesies; it is a family relationship, intimate and free."

i really like this paragraph from peterson.
it reminds me of family...i wonder does it remind others of their own family?
paul uses family here so we can connect to a vital truth.

is it possible that if one has not experienced family like this in any way, or a parent like God that we might miss the point of God as loving father/parent and his acceptance and our freedom?

td

baptism in galatians according to scot mcknight commentary (a covenant guy)

in the galatian text 3:26--29 mcknight makes these comments in regard to baptism...

"Some will no doubt have problems with the observation that faith and baptism are parallel expressions for Paul. Among many free churches in the world, baptism has taken a secondary importance and is too often confined to 'nothing more than an entrance rite' into the church. While it is clear that Paul makes a fundamental difference between external rites and internal reality (cf. Rom. 2:25-29; Phil. 3:3; Col. 2:11; cf. Gal. 5:6), and can even suggest that baptizing was not his purpose (1 Cor. 1:13-17), baptism was in the early church the initial and necessary response of faith. To be sure, their world was more ritual-oriented than ours and consequently got more out of rituals than we do. Nonetheless, we dare not make baptism "nothing more than a ritual of entrance," for it was for the earliest Christians their first moment of faith, and we know of no such thing as an "unbaptized believer." Baptism was not necessary for salvation, but faith without baptism was not faith for the early church. The Galatians knew this, and so Paul appealed to their experience."

he goes on to say:

"The early baptismal ceremony was, in effect, a dying with Christ and a rising with Christ (Rom. 6:1-14). This was its symbolic virtue: it dramatized salvation. Furthermore, the ceremony was frequently associated with two moral ideas: the putting away of sin and the putting on of a new life (cf. Rom. 13:12, 14; Eph. 4:24; 6:11-17; Col. 3:5-17). To be "clothed with Christ" perhaps refers to the early Christian practice of stripping and then reclothing oneself in a white, liturgical robe after the baptismal ceremony, thus symbolizing disrobing oneself of sin and then putting on the virtues of Christ."

and before you can say enough already:

"One more connection needs to be observed. As noted above, "sons of God" in verse 26 parallels the expressions "united with Christ" and "have been clothed with Christ" in verse 27. I would also suggest that the baptism of the Galatians (v.27) was the moment in which they all learned to call God "Abba" (cf. 4:6-7) and so, in effect, learned that they were all "sons of God" (3:26). Paul is now ready to make his point: the Judaizers are wrong because they do not realize that at their baptism the Galatian converts learned that they were sons of God."

it has always been a challenge to say enough in the weekend service and there are always things that we don't have time for...thought this might be an interesting extra...

td

remember the poor

i was thinking about this one line in galatians that is tacked on to paul explaining a summit with the jerusalem leaders concerning his ministry out on the edge of the map....

the jerusalem church asked him to, "remember the poor." (2:10)

they have been discussing and exploring paul's ministry and theology and as they affirm his calling to follow God into the mission to reach as many people as possible with the gospel of grace...then there is this one thing they request...remember the poor.

paul was completely comfortable carrying that concern and doing something about it (see 1 Corinthians 16, 2 Corinthians 9, Romans 15).

i am thinking how important it is to understand that theology must get practical. theology must be lived. beliefs will give birth to actions; so can we embrace the preoccupations of Jesus and his church for the poor.

only someone who is blind or is looking at the bible through a broken or cloudy lens won't see God's concern for the poor. it is talked about so much in the bible as to be a little disturbing how it can be overlooked or devalued.

paul was eager to help.

td