Something has gone terribly wrong with the world. Everyone who has ever hoped in a politician, gotten sick, wept at injustice, become angry at evil, tried to help someone, or just felt like giving up knows it and despite all the wars that have been fought, money that has been spent, and good works done in the history of the world sin, death, evil, tyranny, sickness, poverty and the like continue to reign and will to varying degrees until the Kingdom of God is fully established on the earth.

In the Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe series week 3 we studied how God made the heavens and the earth in perfection, and in week 4 we studied how God made us male and female in his image and likeness. In week 5 we studied how sin has stained, tainted, marred, and affected all of creation – every person and thing that is made. In weeks 7-9 we then studied how God came into history as the man Jesus Christ to defeat sin at the cross and triumph over it through his resurrection to usher in a new world through his victory. This week, as the final sermon in the Doctrine series, we will study the kingdom of God.

In so doing, you will see that the Bible is in many ways a beginning – middle – beginning story. Unlike many of our western stories told in beginning – middle – end fashion, the Bible is more eastern in its storyline. As we have traced the storyline of the Bible to its culmination in God’s eternal kingdom we see that the story begins Genesis with God creating in perfection, human beings sinning against God, humanity and creation suffering the effects of sin, and God punishing sin which includes casting sinners away from the tree of life, and pursuing sinners in love. In the closing chapters of Revelation which conclude the Bible we see God’s final judgment upon sinners, final cleansing of all creation from the effects of sin, and God renewing and expanding his creation intentions with humans receiving resurrected glorified bodies patterned after Jesus, a new heaven, a new earth, and the return of the tree of life.

To better understand the Kingdom we will answer some of the more common questions regarding it.

What are some false views of the afterlife?

There are many false views of the afterlife with contradict the Bible’s teaching about the kingdom. While each could merit more lengthy study, for the purpose of brevity I will explain each briefly.

Universalism teaches that in the end, everyone will wind up in heaven forever and that no one will spend eternity in hell. Annilationism teaches that no one will spend forever in hell as in the end they will simply cease to exist at some point following death. But Daniel 12:2 refutes both saying, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Simply, Daniel says that Christians will be in heaven just as long as non-Christians will be in hell; forever. Furthermore, Jesus speaks of hell more than anyone else in the Bible and is clear that not everyone will be saved when speaking of the eternal life he offers as a narrow path on which few travel and narrow gate through which few pass.

Both reincarnation and purgatory say that there is further opportunity for salvation following death. Hebrews 9:27 refutes both possibilities saying “…it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment…”

“Soul Sleep” is the teaching that following death our body and soul both lie dormant until the resurrection of the dead. Philippians 1:21-23 refutes this by saying, “For to me _to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and _be with Christ, for that is far better.”

Lastly, perhaps the most commonly held false view of the afterlife is that we will never again occupy physical bodies and live a physical existence. This is perhaps most commonly seen as the cartoon picture of heaven where people sit around on cottony clouds in diapers with little wings strumming little harps which seems more hellish than heavenly.

The Bible teaches that we are both material body and immaterial soul that are united in this life. For Christians, following death the body and soul are separated so that while our body rests in the grave our soul goes to be with Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:8). One day the body and soul of Christians will be rejoined upon our resurrection patterned after Jesus resurrection (1 Corinthians 15). For non-Christians, following this life their body rests in the grave while their soul goes to a place of just punishment called Hades where conscious eternal torment is experienced until their body and soul are rejoined for final sentencing into the endless pain of hell (Revelation 20:13-14). Jesus speaks of the fact that all people will rise for a physical eternal life in John 5:;25-29 saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”

Who is the king?

Because a kingdom is equivalent to the jurisdiction to the rule of a king, before proceeding to examine the Kingdom we must first establish who the King is. Of course, the King is Jesus. It as prophesied of him in Genesis 49:10 that he would rule with a king’s _scepter, in Matthew 21:25 we read of Jesus coming as the humble King writing a donkey, and when his enemies pressed a crown of thorns into his head they were in fact revealing the truth despite their mockery. Following his resurrection and ascension to heaven Jesus is revealed throughout Revelation to be seated upon a throne ruling and reigning as sovereign Lord over all creation. And, in Revelation 17:14 we read of Jesus crushing of all other enemy kinds and kingdoms saying, “They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.”

Richard Bauckham describes the theocentric vision of heaven depicted in Revelation 5: “In this worship of God and the Lamb by the whole creation (Revelation 5:13) the eschatological goal of God’s purpose for His creation is already anticipated. Appropriately, therefore, the living creatures, who continually express creation’s worship with this goal in view, join their own ‘Amen!’ to it when the goal is reached. (5:14). It is worth noticing how far from anthropocentric is this vision of worship. Humanity is radically displaced from the center of things where human beings naturally tend to place themselves. At its heart and in its eschatological goal the creation is theocentric, orientated in worship towards its Creator.” (Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 33.) Simply, the vision of the closing book of the Bible is Jesus as King ruling over all creation and receiving all glory.

What is God’s kingdom?

Sadly, some poor teachers are prone to reduce the kingdom of God to simply good works done to help the poor and needy, or merely the Christian church. The kingdom of God includes the church, and the church is commanded in Scripture to do good works and help those in need as demonstrations of gospel grace and mercy. But, the kingdom is bigger than aspects of the kingdom such as these.  
Dr. Gerry Breshears and I deal with this issue in our forthcoming book Vintage Church due for release at the end of January and available for presale at Re:Lit  and the following is a quote from that yet unfinished manuscript that is undergoing editorial revision,

“In recent years many theologians have come to a consensus that the kingdom is to be thought of as the reign of God and the exercise of his authority. The church, by contrast, is a realm of God, the people who are under his rule. George Eldon Ladd, a leader in forging the consensus, says, “The church is the community of the Kingdom but never the Kingdom itself.” (George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, Eerdmans; Revised Edition, 1993, p. 109.) This consensus is called inaugurated eschatology, the idea that the kingdom is both here now in some senses and still to come in its fullness.
Some connect church and kingdom too closely, believing the kingdom is here in its fullness now. This is called an over realized eschatology which virtually identify kingdom and church as many Roman Catholics and some amillennialists do. Others see the kingdom exclusively future, something Jesus will establish when he returns. This is an under realized eschatology which disconnects kingdom and church completely as in older dispensational premillennialism.
God’s kingdom work is the dynamic activity of the sovereign, triune God to manifest His authority in His sin-alienated creation, by redeeming it from the domain of evil, judging all enemies, and bestowing the blessings of His reign on and through His people to the praise of His glory. The relation between kingdom and church can be summarized in a seven basic points:

1. Jesus, who came as king, inaugurated his kingdom in the New Covenant (Acts 2:16-21) and in the Church (Acts 2:41-47).
2. Jesus spoke of a coming kingdom (Mark 13; Luke 19:12-27; 21:5-38; Acts 1:6-7)
3. Jesus is now in heaven as anointed king; He will appear as reigning king (Acts 3:20-21; 13:33-41)
4. Believers are faithful members of the present and coming kingdom (John 14:14-16; Rom. 8:19-21; 1 Cor. 7:29-31; Phil. 3:20; 1 Pet. 2:11)
5. The church witnesses to the present and coming kingdom (Acts 1:3-8; 8:12; 19:8; 28:23, 31).
6. Church is an outpost, a parable, a forerunner, the first fruit of the coming kingdom
7. The church does battle against the kingdom of darkness using the weapons of Light (Rom. 13:12; 2 Cor. 6:7; 10:4-5; Eph. 6:10-20; 1 Thess. 5:8)

Practically, this world still has sin, sinners, the devil and demons, but does not yet have Jesus ruling on the earth with a rod of iron (Psalm 2:9: Revelation 2:26; 12:5; 19:15). Subsequently, a naively optimistic over realized eschatology that thinks we can fix all of the world’s problems and usher in utopia is an extreme error. Conversely a gloomy pessimistic under realized eschatology that thinks we can’t make a difference in the world as the church by the power of the gospel is also an extreme error. This tension of the kingdom being already present in the church but not yet fully unveiled with the return of Jesus allows us to labor in hope until he returns by working on both the spiritual and physical needs of people which includes caring for the whole person including their food, shelter, education, water, clothing, etc. “
According to the Tyndale Bible Dictionary the Kingdom of God (or Kingdom of Heaven as it is sometimes referred to in Scripture) is,
The sovereign rule of God, initiated by Christ’s earthly ministry and consummated when the kingdom of the world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ (Rv 11:15).
According to the testimony of the first three Gospels, the proclamation of the kingdom of God was Jesus’ central message. Matthew summarizes the Galilean ministry with the words “Jesus traveled throughout Galilee teaching in the synagogues, preaching everywhere the Good News about the Kingdom” (Mt 4:23, nlt). The Sermon on the Mount is concerned with the righteousness that qualifies people to enter the kingdom of God (5:20). The collection of parables in Matthew 13 and Mark 4 illustrate the “mystery” of the kingdom of God (Mt 13:11; Mk 4:11). The establishment of the Lord’s Supper looks forward to the establishment of the kingdom of God (Mt 26:29; Mk 14:25).
The NT reports two different forms of the expression: “the kingdom of God” and “the kingdom of the heavens.” The latter is found only in Matthew, but Matthew also has “the kingdom of God” four times (Mt 12:28; 19:24; 21:31, 43). “The kingdom of heaven” is a Semitic phrase that would have been meaningful to Jews but not to Greeks. The Jews, out of reverence for God, avoided uttering the divine name, and contemporary literature gives examples of substituting the word “heaven” for God (1 Macc 3:18, 50; 4:10; see Lk 15:18).
The key to an understanding of the kingdom of God is that the basic meaning of the Greek word basileia, as also of the Hebrew malkut, is rule, reign, dominion. We frequently find in the OT the expression “in the year of the kingdom of …,” meaning in the year of the reign of a given king (e.g., 1 Chr 26:31; 2 Chr 3:2; 15:10; Ezr 7:1; 8:1; Est 2:16; Jer 10:7; 52:31). When we read that Solomon’s kingdom was firmly established (1 Kgs 2:12), we are to understand that his authority to reign was settled. To “turn the kingdom of Saul over to [David]” (1 Chr 12:23, kjv) indicates that the authority that had been Saul’s was given to David. As a result of having received legal authority, David became king. This abstract idea of malkut is evident when it is found in parallelisms with such ideas as power, might, glory, and dominion (Dn 4:34; 7:14).
When malkut is used of God, it almost always refers to his authority or to his rule as the heavenly King. “They will talk together about the glory of your kingdom; they will celebrate examples of your power …. For your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. You rule generation after generation” (Ps 145:11, 13, nlt).
Further, if a king rules, there must be a realm or sphere over which he reigns. This is also called malkut. “So the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet, for his God gave him rest round about” (2 Chr 20:30, rsv; see Est 3:6; Jer 10:7; Dn 9:1; 11:9).
This same twofold use of basileia is found in the NT. In fact, basileia could be translated by the expression “kingly power” in Luke 23:42 (niv mg) and by “kingship” in John 18:36. When a nobleman went into a far country to get a “kingdom” (Luke 19:12, nasb) he went to the governing authority to get an appointment as king. When Jesus said, “My kingship is not of this world” (Jn 18:36, rsv), he did not mean to say that his rule has nothing to do with the world but rather that his kingship—his dominion—does not come from man but from God. Therefore, he rejects the use of worldly fighting to gain his ends.
This central meaning of basileia makes it easy to understand many sayings in the Gospels. In the Lord’s Prayer the petition “Thy kingdom come” (Mt 6:10) is a prayer for God to manifest his reign so that his will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. When we read that we are to “receive the kingdom of God like a child” (Mk 10:15, rsv), we must open our hearts and lives to the rule of God.
Also in the NT are sayings about being in the kingdom or of entering the kingdom (Mt 8:11; Mk 9:47; 10:23–25; Lk 13:28). There is no philological or theological objection to understanding “the kingdom of God” first as the divine reign or rule and second as the sphere of blessing in which that reign is experienced.
Walter A. Elwell and Philip Wesley Comfort, Tyndale Bible Dictionary, Tyndale reference library (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001). 775.

How is God’s kingdom manifest in hell?

Jesus speaks of hell more than anyone else in the Bible. Furthermore, eleven of the twelve occasions that hell is spoken of as Gehenna in the New Testament are on the lips of Jesus.

The Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible explains Gehenna saying,

English transliteration of the Greek form of an Aramaic word which in turn is derived from the Hebrew phrase “the Valley of [the son(s) of] Hinnom.” The name properly designates a deep valley delimiting the territories of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah (Jos 15:8; 18:16). It is commonly identified with the W?di er-Rab?bi which runs from beneath the western wall of the Old City, forming a deep ravine south of Jerusalem.
The place became notorious because of the idolatrous practices which were carried out there in the days of Judah’s kings Ahaz and Manasseh, especially involving the heinous crime of infant sacrifice associated with the Molech ceremonies (2 Kgs 16:3; 21:6; 2 Chr 28:3; 33:6; Jer 19:56; 32:35). The spiritual reformation of King Josiah brought an end to these sinister proceedings (2 Kgs 23:10). The prophet Jeremiah referred to the valley in picturing God’s judgment upon his people (Jer 2:23; 7:30–32; 19:5, 6)…
Subsequently, the valley appears to have been used for the burning of the city’s refuse and the dead bodies of criminals. Interestingly, a well-established tradition locates the scene of Judas’ suicide and the consequent purchase of the Potter’s Field on the south side of this valley.
The ravine’s reputation for extreme wickedness gave rise, especially during the intertestamental period, to use of its name as a term for the place of final punishment for the wicked (Enoch 18:11–16; 27:1–3; 54:1 ff.; 56:3, 4; 90:26; 2 Esd 7:36; cf. Is 30:33; 66:24; Dn 7:10). Jesus himself utilizes the term to designate the final abode of the unrepentant wicked (Mt 5:22; 10:28; 18:9). Since Gehenna is a fiery abyss (Mk 9:43), it is also the Lake of Fire (Mt 13:42, 50) to which all the godless will ultimately be consigned (23:15, 33), together with Satan and his hosts (Mt 25:41; Rv 19:20; 20:10, 14, 15).
Gehenna must be carefully differentiated from other terms relative to the afterlife or final state. Whereas the OT “Sheol” (cf. NT “Hades”), uniformly designates the temporary abode of the lost between death and resurrection when referring to the place of the departed spirit of man, “Gehenna” specifies the final place where the wicked will suffer everlasting punishment (cf. Ps 49:15, 16 with Mt 10:28). “Tartarus” occurs only in 2 Peter 2:4 and identifies the particular abode of the angels who fell in the primeval satanic revolt.

(Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1988). 844)

Wayne Grudem defines hell as follows: “Hell is a place of eternal conscious punishment for the wicked.” (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 1148.) Grudem also observes that the denial of the traditional view of hell often indicates a movement away from orthodoxy. “Because the doctrine of eternal conscious punishment is so foreign to the thought patterns of our culture, and, on a deeper level, to our instinctive and God-given sense of love and desire for redemption for every human being created in God’s image, this doctrine is emotionally one of the most difficult doctrines for Christians to affirm today. It also tends to be one of the first doctrines given up to people who are moving away from a commitment to the Bible as absolutely truthful in all that it affirms. Among liberal theologians who do not accept the absolute truthfulness of the Bible, there is probably no one today who believes in the doctrine eternal conscious punishment.” (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 1151, n. 16.)

In the closing chapter of our book Vintage Jesus Dr. Gerry Breshears and I spoke of hell in this way:

Not only will Jesus judge with perfect justice, he will also sentence the unrepentant to perfectly suited punishment in hell for their sins. (Eccl. 12:14; Matt. 12:36; Luke 12:2–3, 47–48; 20:47; Rom. 2:5–7; Rev. 20:12–13) Some who wince at the doctrine and find it incompatible with the loving nature of Jesus may be surprised to discover that Jesus spoke of hell more than anyone in Scripture. (Matt. 8:11–12, 29; 13:40–42; 18:8–9; 22:13; 24:50–51; 25:30, 41, 46; Mark 9:43–48; Luke 12:46–48; 16:19–31)  In fact, British philosopher Bertrand Russell said, “There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell.” (Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957), 17) Tragically, unless he turned to Jesus before his death, Russell came to agree with Jesus, discovering in the most painful way that Jesus rules even in hell, over Satan, demons, and unrepentant sinners…(Rev. 14:9–11)
God is literally holy, we are literally sinful, Jesus literally died to forgive our sin, and if we fail to receive his forgiveness, we will literally stand before him for judgment and be sentenced to a literal hell as an act of literal justice. To be honest, the doctrine of hell does not bother me. It makes perfect sense that guilty people would be sentenced and punished for their evil. What has always bothered me is heaven. How could a holy God allow any sinner to enter heaven? Furthermore, how could a loving God allow evil to continue without stopping it forever and bringing justice to all of the victims before wiping all their tears? Indeed, the joys of heaven and not the pains of hell are more difficult for me to reconcile with the character of a good God. The cold, hard truth is that for those who do not love Jesus, this life is as close to heaven as they will ever get. Hell awaits them.

Lastly, perhaps the most haunting verse regarding hell in all of Scripture is Revelation 14:10 which shows Jesus ruling and reigning over hell ensuring that Satan, demons, and sinners are punished as Scripture says “according to their work.”

How is God’s kingdom manifest in heaven?

Both Revelation and Romans 8 speaks of the day when, finally and forever, the curse and its effects will be no more. Instead, following the resurrection of the dead there will be a new heaven and a new earth for God’s people to dwell in together forever as God’s physical heavenly kingdom.

The Tyndale Bible Dictionary speaks of the new heavens and the new earth saying it is,

“…first found in the book of Isaiah. God declares, “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind …. For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before me … so shall your descendants and your name remain” (Is 65:17; 66:22, rsv)…
That God is Creator of the heavens and earth is basic to all biblical theology. “In ages past you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands” (Ps 102:25, nlt). If God created the heavens and earth, then it is entirely appropriate that, once they have served their purpose, God may do with them what he wishes. “Even they will perish, but you remain forever; they will wear out like old clothing. You will change them like a garment, and they will fade away” (v 26, nlt). The same metaphor is found in Isaiah 51:6, which speaks of the earth wearing out like a garment.
Scripture (quoted below from the nlt) gives considerable attention to the passing away of the old order, speaking of a future time when heaven and earth will disappear (Is 34:4; 51:6; Mt 24:35; Rv 21:1). A number of related phrases portray the same idea: “And this world is fading away” (1 Jn 2:17); “They [the heavens and earth] will wear out like old clothing” (Heb 1:11; cf. Ps 102:26; Is 51:6); “But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and everything in them will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be exposed to judgment” (2 Pt 3:10). This consummation by fire will take place at the time of final judgment. It will be “the day when God will set the heavens on fire and the elements will melt away in the flames” (v 12).
This judgment, which brings to a close the old order, clears the way for new heavens and a new earth. Peter continues, “But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world where everyone is right with God” (2 Pt 3:13). It will be so wonderful that no one will even remember the old (Is 65:17). Peter, preaching in Solomon’s Colonnade, says that Jesus will remain in heaven until the time comes for establishing all that God spoke by his holy prophets (Acts 3:21). This recovery or renewal is eagerly awaited by the created order. Paul writes, “For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are” (Rom 8:19) because “all creation anticipates the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay” (v 21).
The heaven that will be renewed is not the heaven of God’s presence, but the heaven of human existence, the starry expanse that constitutes the universe. In the book of Revelation we learn that the new Jerusalem comes down from heaven to earth (Rv 21:2, 10) and forms the eternal dwelling place of God and his people. The new earth will be a place of perfect righteousness (Is 51:6), divine kindness (54:10), eternal relationship to God (66:22), and total freedom from sin (Rom 8:21).

Walter A. Elwell and Philip Wesley Comfort, Tyndale Bible Dictionary, Tyndale reference library (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001). 949.

Beautifully, the Bible ends with God’s purposes for creation satisfied and expanded. Together forever with him in joy by grace is the resurrected kingdom longing of all who trust in Jesus.

This week, we are in week 12 of our 13 week series Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe series. This week we are studying the doctrine of stewardship and fact that all that we have (time, talent, treasure) is ultimately entrusted to our stewardship by God. This issue will be dealt with in greater thoroughness when the book based upon the series is published in 2009, but until then this blog from Pastor Jamie Munson and I is intended to serve as a study tool for those in Mars Hill Community Groups that gather each week to discuss the sermons as well as anyone else wanting to grow in their biblical understanding of stewardship.

Before we begin, stewardship is undoubtedly one of the subjects that people are often least enthusiastic to study. Yet, Jesus devoted roughly 25% of his words in the Gospels to our resources and our stewardship of them. This includes some 28 passages in the Gospels. And, in the Old and New Testaments combined there are over 800 verses on the subject on topics ranging from planning and budgeting, saving and investing, debt and tithing. Furthermore, money and wealth and possessions are the greatest idols in our culture and there is simply no way to be a disciple of Jesus who does not learn to worship God with our stewardship.

Defining what is meant by wealth is important. Everything we have, given to us by God, including our finances, jobs, houses, products of our land, businesses, automobiles and personal items is part of our wealth.

This sermon coincided with the end of our fiscal year forthcoming at the end of June. For those wanting to know where we are going into the leaner summer months we offer the following report to help notify our people where we are at and how our stewardship is going, beginning with some common practical questions about tithing at Mars Hill Church:

How Can I Tithe At Mars Hill?

At Mars Hill there are a variety of different ways that a person can tithe.  None is better than the others it is simply a matter of individual conscience or preference.  Those methods are:

• Cash or Check During the Sunday Services – either as you come forward for communion in the baskets or in the giving boxes located in each foyer.
• Check Mailed to the Offices – 1401 NW Leary Way, Seattle, WA 98107 – there are addressed offering envelopes available at the giving boxes in the foyer.  Please do not mail cash.
• By Debit or Credit Card Online at marshillchurch.org – obviously we don’t want people going into debt to tithe but we do allow credit card payment and ask that you do not tithe in this fashion if you do not plan to pay off your balance each month
• By Electronic Withdrawal from your bank account (ACH) – many people like this secure tithing method as it safely withdraws an exact amount from your account on either the 5th or the 20th of the month depending on how you want it to be set up.  Please call or email the office (206) 706-6641 if you are interested in signing up for this.

How is Mars Hill doing financially?

Our church budget year concludes at the end of June and after that time we will have a full annual financial summary. At present, the following data details where we are:

Giving Summary (2008 YTD)

Average ADULT Attendance (January–May 2008)

• Total MHC: 5,454
• Ballard: 3,182
• Shoreline: 474
• West Seattle: 747
• Wedgwood: 279
• Bellevue (Formerly Eastside): 522
• Downtown: 249

Average Giving Per ADULT (January–May 2008)

• Total MHC: $35/week; $1,800/year
• Ballard: $29/week; $1,533/year
• Shoreline: $48/week; $2,517/year
• West Seattle: $39/week; $2,042/year
• Wedgwood: $39/week; $2,053/year
• Bellevue (Formerly Eastside): $43/week; $2,240/year
• Downtown: $37/week; $1,918/year

Number of Donor Households* (January–May 2008)

• Total MHC: 3,495
• Ballard: 1,852
• Shoreline: 350
• West Seattle: 489
• Wedgwood: 210
• Bellevue (Formerly Eastside): 350
• Downtown: 245

*Campus breakdown based on actual donation percentages for April and May; these numbers represent the best estimate possible based on the information available.

Number of People That DON’T Contribute

From January through May 2008, there were 3,495 Donor Households contributing to Mars Hill Church, which equals 4,771 adult donors. There are likely 8,000-10,000 people who call Mars Hill home and attend at least once or twice a month. This means there are thousands of people who do not give anything to Mars Hill.

Average per capita ADULT income in Seattle: $45,369 (2006 U.S. Dept. of Commerce)

Average % of income given per adult at MHC: 4% (based avg. per capita income)

Current Deficits

• Budgeted giving deficit – $499,630
• Actual deficit – roughly $400,000

*If we do not make budget by the end of June, it will be the first time in the 11- year history of Mars Hill Church that we do not make budget during a fiscal year.

How is Mars Hill leading financially?

• Tithing: MHC gives 10% to church planting
• Internal Controls: Extensive accountability systems govern the receiving and spending of money by the staff
• Board of Directors: Provides governance, oversight, and approval of budgets and capital projects
• Elder Compensation: An audit committee of the Board approves all elder salaries based on a pre-determined compensation system, biblical principles, and national research.
• Bank: Quarterly reporting and additional accountability measures provided to our bank.
• Audit: An independent, external CPA firm conducts a full annual audit. Every audit thus far has given us the “highest evaluation possible according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.”
• Financial Coaching: Email money@marshillchurch.org for free help in putting together a budget and basic financial plan.

Can I Get A Tax Deduction For Tithing?

Yes. If you give in a way that we can record (i.e. check, online or cash in a marked envelope) then our church bookkeeper will keep accurate totals of your giving and send you a receipt at the beginning of the year, certifying the amount of your total contributions that are tax deductible for the previous calendar year.

Having now concluded the reporting from the church, we will shift to answer common questions about stewardship from the Scriptures.

What does the New Testament teach about wealth?

A summary of Craig Blomberg’s book Neither Poverty Nor Riches: A Biblical Theology of Possessions that was compiled for me said, “The following is a summary of the NT teaching on wealth.  First, it warns again the desire to be rich (1 Tim 6:9, 18, 19; Hebrews 13:5-6).  Second, it gives some general guidelines for what the rich should do (1 Tim 6:17-19; Matt 6:19-21; Luke 12:32-34; Luke 14:13-14).  Third, it explains why God has given us so much: Ephesians 4:28 says, “The thief no longer steals, but rather let him work, doing honest work with hands, so that he may be able to give to those in need.”  In other words, there are three levels of how to live with things: 1) steal to get, 2) work to get, or 3) work to get in order to give.

Too many Christians live on level two.  Almost all the forces of our culture urge them to live on level two. But God pushes us to level three and critiques level two.“

Who owns everything?

Essential to the doctrine of stewardship is that everything ultimately belongs to God.  The great myths are that we own anything, that we deserve anything, that we can do anything good apart from God and that we are sovereign over our own lives.  Nothing good that we have or do originates with us, it all comes from the hand of God as the Scriptures repeatedly and emphatically declare (Deuteronomy 8:17-18;Psalm 50:10; Haggai 2:8; James 1:16-18).

What is stewardship?

A steward is a person, who by God’s grace, belongs to God.  And, because they belong to God they recognize that ultimately everything they are and have belongs to God and has been given to them as a gift.  Therefore, they then seek to both enjoy the gifts God has given them as well as invest those gifts in others and the future by distributing them wisely. We have 3 categories that we must steward: our time, our talents and our treasure or wealth. The fact that God owns everything and we are to steward it faithfully also explains why when people fail to do so God charges them with robbing or stealing from him (Malachi 3:8-10).

Should Christians tithe?

• Tithing literally means “tenth”. In the Old Testament the tithe referred to God’s people giving the first ten percent of their gross income (also called firstfruits) to God to fund the Levite priests’ ministry (Numbers 18:21-29, 27:30). In addition to that there were other tithes and offerings that were required of God’s people:
• 10% paid for festivals to build community & for celebration (Deuteronomy 12:10-11, 12:17-18, 14:22-27)
• 3.3% of the church tithe was given to help the poor (Deuteronomy 14:28-29)
• Crop Gleanings collected for poor and alien (Leviticus 19:9-10)
• Occasional additional tithes above and beyond regular giving (Nehemiah 10:32-33)

Therefore, the total “mandatory” OT tithe resulted in over 25% of a family’s gross income going to God and ministry. In the New Testament financial giving among God’s people focuses on grace, generosity, and the heart. The word “tithe” is rarely used in the New Testament, and when it is it is usual mentioned negatively in conjunction with the Pharisees who had sinful hearts when they gave. Perhaps the most thorough teaching in all the New Testament on giving is found in 2 Corinthians 8-9 where we discover the following principles regarding giving:

• Giving is a joy and an honor.
• Giving is a heart issue, there is no standard.
• Giving should come from your first fruits.
• Giving should be done regularly, cheerfully and sacrificially.
• Giving is tied to your proportion of faith
• The amount is between you and God.
• Giving is a spiritual gift – (Romans 12) some have a greater measure of this gift, coupled with faith.

Therefore, God’s people are today not required to tithe. But, as like everything else in the New Covenant our grace giving is to exceed Old Testament requirements of the law. Therefore, 10% should be for God’s people a floor and not a ceiling and a place to begin but not a place to end. Lastly, since God is ultimately the owner of all of our wealth the question is never how much should I give to God, but rather how much of God’s money should I keep?

Is Money Related To Worship?

Jesus said that we cannot worship both God and money, but we can and should worship God with our money (Matthew 6:24). Our money is inextricably linked to our worship both corporately and individually (Deuteronomy 16:16; Philippians 4:18).  As a body of believers, we worship corporately by contributing financially to our local church.  We respond to God’s gifts and kindness by giving in return, so that the Gospel can continue to reach others through the work of the church.  As scattered individuals we worship by loving our family and loving others with our money. This may take the form of sharing your home and a meal with friends, loaning your truck to a neighbor or buying a bible for your unbelieving co-worker.  Our whole lives are to be marked by worship – and how you use your money plays a role in this every day.  Worship does happen on Sundays, but does not end there. The following principles are helpful to guide worshipful stewardship:

• More stuff won’t make you more happy (Ecclesiastes 5:8-12)
• Jesus is a generous giver (2 Corinthians 8:9)
• It is more blessed to give than receive (Acts 20:35)
• We should grow in our giving (2 Corinthians 8:7)
• When we give, we are storing up treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21; 19:29; Philippians 4:7).
• Our life follows our wealth (Matthew 6:21)

In closing, this final point is poignant. Stewardship does include all of our life, but the first priority is to get our financial stewardship and church giving in order. Once we do, we will be invested in our church and it’s well being thereby compelling is to pay attention to  our church, helping to serve to improve it, and taking ownership in its well being so that it is for us more like a home than a hotel.

For Further Study:

A great, simple, brief, and biblical book on all of this is Randy Alcon’s book The Treasure Principle.

Sadly, worship has too often been considered merely a style of music or event such as a Sunday church service. And, while worship is big enough to include these things it is by no means reduced only to them. In many ways, to speak of worship is to speak of all of life in its fullness lived to God’s glory and our joy. Therefore, in my sermon on worship this week, which is part of the Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe series, my hope is to give a comprehensive biblical understanding of this most important doctrine by answering some of the more common questions related to worship. At Mars Hill Church this theology of worship is the guiding ideology in both our worship and biblical living departments and therefore absolutely essential for us as a church. As an aside, much of the content in this chapter is taken from Chapter 9 of the book Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions that I wrote with my friend Dr. Gerry Breshears.

Where does worship originate?

In his magnificent book Unceasing Worship Harold Best states his thesis saying: “The burden of this book develops the concept of continuous outpouring as the rubric for our worship. As God eternally outpours within his triune self, and as we are created in his image, it follows that we too are continuous outpourers, incurably so. ” (Page 10)

As we studied in the Trinity: God Is sermon, we saw that God is a community of ceaseless outpouring. Although there is one God, the three persons of the Trinity continually exist with a ceaseless outpouring of love, communication, and joy. And, as we studied in the Image: God Loves sermon we saw that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. As such, we too are ceaseless worshippers pouring ourselves out for someone or something.

In the Fall: God Judges sermon we examined how through sin our worship is bent toward people and things other than God who is our Creator in favor of created things. Subsequently, we need God to seek us out as we studied in the Covenant: God Pursues sermon and Incarnation: God Comes sermon to save us from sin and free us to worship as we studied in the Cross: God Dies, and Resurrection: God Saves sermons. In many ways, these theme of worship is a major thread that weaves the entire storyline of the Bible and our Doctrine series together.

Summarizing this thread Best says,

“We begin with one fundamental fact about worship: at this very moment, and for as long as this world endures, everybody inhabiting it is bowing down and serving something or someone—an artifact, a person, an institution, an idea, a spirit, or God through Christ. Everyone is being shaped thereby and is growing up toward some measure of fullness, whether of righteousness or of evil. No one is exempt and no one can wish to be. We are, every one of us, unceasing worshipers and will remain so forever, for eternity is an infinite extrapolation of one of two conditions: a surrender to the sinfulness of sin unto infinite loss or the commitment of personal righteousness unto infinite gain. This is the central fact of our existence, and it drives every other fact. Within it lies the story of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation or final loss.” (Page 17-18)

What is worship?

Quoted from Vintage Jesus Chapter 9

“Worship is living our life individually and corporately as continuous living sacrifices to the glory of a person or thing. This connection between glory and worship is clear in verses like Romans 11:36–12:1, which says, “To him be the glory forever. Amen. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” …First, we hold a person or thing in a place of glory. Second, we then worship that person or thing. Third, our worship of that person or thing we hold in glory is done by means of making sacrifices.

Glory means weightiness, importance, preeminence, priority, or that which is our greatest treasure, deepest longing, and fountain of hope. Functionally, what we hold in the place of glory is in effect our real god…Practically, worship is making sacrifices for what we are living to glorify.

The biblical word for worship is also sometimes translated “sacrifice.” This insight is helpful because what we make the greatest sacrifices for reveals what we truly live to glorify and worship. For example, if we eat and drink in excess, we are worshipping our stomach and sacrificing our health. If we sacrifice relationships with God and people for a hobby (e.g., sport, music, craft), then we are worshipping that hobby. If we are giving our bodies to sexual sin, we are worshipping sex and/or another person whose glory is our highest aim, sacrificing holiness and intimacy with God in the process. In short, we give our time, energy, body, money, focus, devotion, and passion to that which we glorify most and make sacrifices to worship that person or thing. Because we were made for the express purpose of worshipping God, everyone is a worshipper. The only difference is who/what we worship.”

Another definition is found from Harold Best who says, “I have worked out a definition for worship that I believe covers every possible human condition. It is this: Worship is the continuous outpouring of all that I am, all that I do and all that I can ever become in light of a chosen or choosing god” (Page 18, Italics in original).

What is idolatry?

Idolatry is one of the most frequent and most frequently misunderstood themes in all of Scripture. When thinking of idolatry, images of a primitive person bowing down to a statue or something akin to it come to mind. But, when the Bible speaks of idolatry it does so in a broad manner so as to reveal it as corrupted worship in contrast with true worship. Perhaps the most succinct definition of idolatry is found in Romans 1:25 which says, “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” God is our Creator and our worship is to be directed to him alone. But, as sinners we are prone to worship created things rather than our creator God and that is by definition idolatry. In the context of Romans 1, this idolatry can be things God has made such as the human body and its pleasures (especially sexual), or things we have made such as human ideas about God and life that dominate philosophy and spirituality.

How can I find my idols?

As a general rule, it is easier to see the idols in someone else’s life than our own. This is because our idols tend to be seen by us as simply comforts, pleasures, habits, aids, and the like. Biblical counselor David Powlision says, “Idolatry is by far the most frequently discussed problem in the Scriptures.” This is because idolatry is the root that nourishes every fruit of sin. This also explains why the last line of 1 John says, “keep yourselves from idols.” Why, because if we do then we will live in victory over temptations to sin. Therefore, the following categorical questions are offered to help you seek out any idols in your life.

Who/what are your external idols?

• Who/what is my Lord that rules over my life determining how I live?
• Who/what is my Judge I am living to earn the approval of?  
• Where do you give the firstfruits of your wealth?
• Where do you give the firstruits of your time?
• What people and things take the majority of your life?
• What do you plan and pray for?

 Who/what are your internal idols?

• What false beliefs do you hold about God?
• Which parts of Scripture do you deeply doubt or even disbelieve?
• Deep down in your heart who/what do you love, cherish, treasure, long for the most?
• Deep down in your heart who/what do you despise and hate the most?
• Who/what makes you happiest? Why?
• Who/what makes you saddest? Why?

Who/what is your mediator between you and God?

• Who or what other than Jesus do you use to get closer to God?
• Who or what if taken from your life would cause you to not walk as faithfully with God?
• How do you define yourself, especially when introducing yourself to others?

Where is your functional heaven?

• When daydreaming about escaping this life, what does your functional heaven look like and how is it different from the real heaven?
• On earth, where do you run for your safety or comfort as your hiding place (e.g. the fridge, alcohol, the television, a person, a place, a hobby)?

Who/what is your functional savior?

• What is your picture of hell in this life (e.g. being single, not having children, being poor, etc.)?
• Who or what do you use to save you from what you fear (e.g. a relationship, children, money, shopping, sex, etc.)?

What good thing has become a god thing?

• Which idols are in your life that when appreciated and/or stewarded correctly are means of worship but have become objects of worship (e.g. work, family, health, friendship, pleasure, leisure, hobby, etc.)?
• If you could obtain or change one thing/person in your life what would that be?
• What idols am I selling to others?

How can I nurture my worship?

The pattern for our worship is the redemption that occurred in the book of Exodus. There, God’s people were enslaved for all of their lives and then redeemed and liberated to be free to worship God. The picture of the Exodus is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus who is greater than Moses and conquered our Pharaoh Satan and redeemed us from slavery to sin and death. But, like God’s people in the Exodus we who have been liberated must walk with God all the days of our lives trusting him by faith as a lifestyle of ceaseless worship if we hope to have our lives be lived for his glory and our joy. Sadly, we often like the Israelites build golden calves of idolatry, grumble against God, and long to return to our sin and slavery while walking around in a circle.

The key to getting out of this horrendous loop is found for God’s people at Mount Sinai where God gave to them the 10 Commandments as the heart of his law. And, God begins the 10 Commandments by declaring that he alone is God and that nothing and no one is to be worshipped in place of or alongside him. The rest of the 10 Commandments go on to then illustrate how if these first two commandments are obeyed it will transform the rest of our life into opportunities to worship God with our desires, relationships, possessions, etc. Simply, if we worship God alone we will not worship sex and commit adultery, worship possessions and commit thievery or coveting, worship people’s perceptions of us and lie, worship unrighteous anger and murder, worship our job and never Sabbath etc.

In closing, the key to nurturing our worship of God is ongoing renewal. In a recent time I had with Pastor Rick Warren in California he gave a very insightful talk for pastors on stages of renewal. I share it with you because I find it helpful for this subject of worship. His point is that renewal happens in a pattern of six stages and that without the first the others are impossible. And, people who do not have the first tend to blame the others for their spiritual lethargy or dissatisfaction which is not the real source of their troubles.

Stages of Renewal

1. Personal renewal (love God) – simply everything begins with a renewed passion for Jesus as our greatest treasure and object of worship. Personal renewal occurs as we take time each day for mini-Sabbaths to do such things as pray, read Scripture, and connect with Jesus as well as taking a Sabbath day every week, day or days out of town unplugged from technology to renew every month, and take non-working and spiritually renewing vacation every year. The key for personal renewal is to unplug from all that drains us to plug into Jesus who renews us to be and do what he asks of us in all of life by his strength. Personal renewal does not fix everything in our life, but it sets our hearts and minds aflame with hope to press forward in life.
2. Relational renewal (love others) – once we have personal renewal with Jesus the first effect is that we have new hope for people and pursue them in love. If married, relational renewal begins with our spouse. And, if we are parents our children ensue. Relational renewal allows us to be authentic around others, stop pretending and performing, and simply be in loving community where we are known and know others thanks to the work of Jesus gospel.
3. Missional renewal (love the mission) – once we have personal and relational renewal, the result is that God’s people want to be on mission together doing what God commands of the church. Without personal renewal, a church cannot have relational renewal. And, without both a church has no life or unity that allows them to press forward on mission with God together.
4. Church renewal (love the brothers and sisters) – the fruit of personal, relational, and missional renewal is that a church that has a new culture of grace internally and new passion for lost people externally. In a church this results in people trusting their leaders and one another more, wanting to spend more time together, hanging out longer after services, and singing together more loudly as they see themselves as a unified community.
5. Structural renewal – once the personal, relational, missional, and church renewals have been established so much has changed in how a church operates and people interact that new structures must be built so as to accommodate God’s renewing work. This includes new policies, procedures, and ways of managing the affairs of the church so as to enable further renewal.
6. Institutional renewal – institutions (e.g. denominations, seminaries, publishers, record companies, conferences, etc.) are always the last places of renewal because they function to preserve and sustain the renewal of a previous move of God. Subsequently, they become the equivalent of a trunk on a tree while new growth happens out on the ends of the newest limbs.

The key to a life of worship is ongoing personal renewal with Jesus. Without this, you will be prone to accept mediocrity and even idolatry while blaming your state on the people in your life and church you attend rather than repenting of your own failure to connect with God as he has made possible through Jesus Christ. On this point Best says, “Authentic worship is a continuous outpouring of all that we are and can ever hope to become in light of the saving work of Christ. It reaches into every quarter of our living, informing all of our actions and safeguarding them within the arena of Spirit, truth and sacrificial living.” (Page 111)

So, in closing, how is your ceaseless worship and what needs to change for you to begin with personal renewal?

This sermon blog is intended to supplement the sermon Church: God Sends as part of the ongoing series Doctrine: What Christians should believe.

The big idea in the sermon is that Jesus is God come into human culture as a missionary. And, that Jesus earthly missional ministry was empowered by God the Holy Spirit. This is perhaps most clearly seen in the gospel of Luke where Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit, prophesied over by Simeon who was “in the Spirit” at his Temple dedication, later anointed by the Holy Spirit who descended upon him in the form of a dove at his baptism, promised to baptize people in the Holy Spirit by John the Baptizer, and is elsewhere said to be “fully of the Holy Spirit” and “lead by the Spirit.” Furthermore, Jesus began his public ministry by reading from Isaiah 61:1-2 which says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…”

In the chapter I contributed to the book The Supremacy of Christ in the Postmodern World I spoke of Jesus Spirit lead earthly mission saying:

Jesus… came into a culture and participated in it fully by using a language, participating in various holidays, eating certain foods, enjoying various drinks, attending parties, befriending people, while never crossing a line into sin. Jesus’ life is the perfect and model missionary life lived for God in culture that we are to emulate, without falling into the pitfall of liberal syncretism or fundamental sectarianism. It deserves to be noted, however, that for those who were fundamental and separatistic in their thinking, Jesus simply went too far. In their eyes, though not the eyes of God the Father, his actions were sinful and they falsely accused him of being a glutton, a binge drinker, and a good tipper at Hooters. (Matthew 11:19) In his magnificent High Priestly prayer Jesus in fact prayed against us becoming either liberals who sin by going too far into culture and act worldly, or fundamentalists who do not go far enough into culture and act pharisaically: “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:15–18)

Jesus prayed that we would not leave the sick and dying world and huddle into a safe subcultural ghetto of Christian nicety, but that we would stay in the world. In the same way, Jesus himself did not remain in the comforts of heaven but rather entered into a sinful culture on the earth as a missionary. Jesus also prayed that we would not simply go with the flow of sin and death in the culture but rather swim upstream against the current of worldliness by living countercultural lives like him, guided by the timeless truths of Scripture intended to be lived out by missionaries in every culture.

Furthermore, in John’s gospel alone, Jesus told us no less than thirty-nine times that he was a missionary from heaven who came to minister incarnationally in an earthly culture. (John 3:34; 4:34; 5:23, 24, 30, 36, 37, 38; 6:29, 38, 39, 44, 57; 7:16, 28, 29, 33; 8:16, 18, 26, 29, 42; 9:4; 10:36; 11:42; 12:44, 45, 49; 13:20; 14:24; 15:21; 16:5; 17:3, 8, 18, 21, 23, 25; 20:21) Furthermore, Jesus also commands us to be missionaries in culture as he was: “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:18) He also said, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” (John 20:21)

To do that we must follow the example of Jesus by being Spirit filled and Spirit lead which sets the stage for the advent of the New Covenant Church. And, Luke follows his gospel which is the record of the Spirit empowered ministry of Jesus Christ with the record of the Spirit empowered ministry of Jesus people the church who worship Jesus as God and continue his mission. Following his resurrection and just prior to his ascension in Acts 1:4-9 we read of Jesus, “And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Acts 2 then records God the Holy Spirit descending upon the early Christians to anoint and empower them for missional ministry in the same way that he descended upon Jesus following his baptism. In that chapter we read of the sermon preached by Peter, the conversion of 3,000 people evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit, and ensuing activities of the church saying in Acts 2:42-47, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

In our forthcoming book Vintage Church due out in January, Dr. Gerry Breshears and I use Acts to define the church saying:

The local church is a community of regenerated believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord. In obedience to Scripture they organize under qualified leadership, gather regularly for preaching and worship, observe the biblical sacraments of baptism and communion, are unified by the Spirit, are disciplined for holiness, and scatter to fulfill the great commandment and the great commission as missionaries to the world for God’s glory and their joy.

In the book we then go on to examine the nine marks of the true local church (which are also the main points of my sermon this week) as:

1. Regenerated church membership
2. Qualified leadership
3. Gather for preaching and worship
4. Sacraments rightly administered
5. Unified by the Spirit
6. Disciplined for holiness
7. Obey the great commandment to love
8. Obey the great commission to evangelize and make disciples

 
Lastly, in regards to what qualifies as a church Dr. Wayne Grudem helpfully summarizes the uses of “church” saying:
A “house church” is called a “church” in Romans 16:5 (“greet also the church in their house”), 1 Corinthians 16:19 (“Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord”). The church in an entire city is also called “a church” (1 Cor. 1:2; 2 Cor. 1:1; and 1 Thess. 1:1). The church in a region is referred to as a “church” in Acts 9:31: “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was built up.” Finally, the church throughout the entire world can be referred to as “the church.” Paul says, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25) and says, “God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers . . .” (1 Cor. 12:28). . . . We may conclude that the group of God’s people considered at any level from local to universal may rightly be called “a church.” (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 857.)

For those wanting to study this issue more fully I do have a book titled Church Leadership due out in a few weeks and if you pre-order it from their web site, Crossway will send you a free copy in PDF format immediately and a hardcopy when the book is published. The book is intended to be read in roughly one hour and covers the following subjects:

• Chapter 1 – Pastor Jesus
• Chapter 2 – Elders
• Chapter 3 – Women in Ministry
• Chapter 4 – Deacons
• Chapter 5 – Members
• Chapter 6 – Leadership Teams
• Appendix I – Answers to Common Questions about Church Leadership
• Appendix II – Further Reading on Church Leadership
• Appendix III – Sample Church Membership Covenant

Also, last Friday Dr. Gerry Breshears and I sent in the manuscript for our forthcoming book Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods to Crossway. It is very packed lengthy book (roughly 400 pages at present with edits forthcoming) covering the following topics to be published in January 2009:

• Chapter 1 – What Is the Christian Life?
• Chapter 2 – What Is a Christian Church?
• Chapter 3 – Who Is Supposed to Lead a Church?
• Chapter 4 – Why Is Preaching Important?
• Chapter 5 – What Are Baptism and Communion?
• Chapter 6 – How Can a Church Be Unified?
• Chapter 7 – What Is Church Discipline?
• Chapter 8 – How Is Love Expressed in a Church?
• Chapter 9 – What Is a Missional Church?
• Chapter 10 – What Is a Multi-Campus Church?
• Chapter 11 – How Can a Church Utilize Technology?
• Chapter 12 – How Could the Church Help Transform the World?
]]> http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/06/09/church-god-sends/feed/ 0 http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/06/02/resurrection-god-saves/ http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/06/02/resurrection-god-saves/#comments Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:08:40 +0000 Pastor Mark Driscoll http://voxpopnetwork.com/vision/2008/06/02/resurrection-god-saves/

This article is a summary of the content from my sermon on the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from death as part of the Doctrine: What Christians should believe preaching series. Much of the content of this chapter is from Chapter (Did Jesus rise from death?) of the book Dr. Gerry Breshears and I wrote together called Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions. I will quote it throughout this book to both serve you and whet your appetite to purchase the entire book for yourself at Amazon.

To begin with, the importance of this issue can hardly be overstated. Paul himself said as much declaring in 1 Corinthians 15:17 “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” Simply, apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ there is no savior, no salvation, no forgiveness of sin, no hope of resurrected eternal life, and Jesus is reduced to yet another good but dead and therefore of no considerable help to us in this life or at its end. Plainly stated, without the resurrection of Jesus the few billion people who worship Jesus today as God are fools and their hope for a resurrection life after this life ends is the hope of silly fools. Thankfully, there is good warrant to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from death which I now share with you in hope that your faith would be in the fact of the triumph of Jesus over Satan, sin, and death.

What is resurrection?

In his impressive 700 page tome The Resurrection of the Son of God, notable New Testament scholar N.T. Wright provides a most helpful definition of resurrection which he repeats throughout the book as one of his main points. A researcher who summarized the book provided me the following:

Wright proposes that in the first century “resurrection” did not mean “life after death” in the sense of “the life that follows immediately after bodily death.” (page 31) According to Wright, “Here there is no difference between pagans, Jews and Christians. They all understood the Greek word anastasis and its cognates, and the other related terms we shall meet, to mean… new life after a period of being dead. Pagans denied this possibility; some Jews affirmed it as a long-term future hope; virtually all Christians claimed that is had happened to Jesus and would happen to them in the future.” (page 31) In other words, “resurrection” was a way of “speaking of a new life after ‘life after death’ in the popular sense, a fresh living embodiment following a period of death-as-a-state.” (page 31)

According to Wright, the meaning of resurrection as “life after ‘life after death’” cannot be overemphasized. This is due in large part because much modern writing continues to use “resurrection” as a synonym for “life after death.” Belief in “resurrection” meant belief in what Wright calls a “two-step story.” Resurrection itself is preceded by an interim period of death-as-a-state. “Where we find a single-step story – death-as-event being followed at once by a final state, for instance of disembodied bliss – the texts are not talking about resurrection. Resurrection involves a definite content (some sort of re-embodiment) and a definite narrative shape (a two-step story, not a single-step one). This meaning is constant throughout the ancient world.” (page 31)

What is the biblical evidence for Jesus resurrection?

The following is summarized from Vintage Jesus chapter 7:

1. Jesus’ resurrection was prophesied in advance.
   
   Isa. 53:8–12
2. Jesus predicted his resurrection.
   
   Matt. 12:38–40; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34; John 2:18–22
3. Jesus died on the cross.
   
   Matt. 27:45-54; Mark 15:33-39; Luke 23:44-48; John 19:28-42
4. Jesus was buried in a tomb that was easy to find.
   
   Matt. 27:57–60
5. Jesus appeared physically alive three days after his death.
   
   John 20:17; John 20:20–28; Luke 24:36–43
6. Jesus’ resurrection was recorded as Scripture shortly after it occurred.
   
   1 Cor. 15:3–4
7. Jesus’ resurrection convinced his family to worship him as God.
   
   Acts 1:14; 12:17; 15:12–21; 21:18; 1 Cor. 15:7, Gal. 2:9; Jm. 1:1; Jude 1
8. Jesus’ resurrection was confirmed by his most bitter enemies, like Paul.
   
   Acts 7:54–60; Acts 9; Phil. 3:4–6

What is the circumstantial evidence for Jesus resurrection?

The following is summarized from the book Vintage Jesus chapter 7 where the big ideas are explored in detail:

1. The transformation of the disciples from cowards to men that no longer feared death and died as martyrs.
2. The disciples stayed loyal to their Messiah in the face of great suffering and persecution.
3. The character of the disciples negates the prospect that they lied about the resurrection.
4. The day of worship changed from Saturday to Sunday in honor of Jesus resurrection and in contrast to thousands of years of observance according to one of the 10 Commandments.
5. The object of worship became Jesus as God.
6. Theological changes in the church included the sacraments of communion and baptism in honor of Jesus death and resurrection.
7. Women discovered the empty tomb according to the Scriptures and if the story were fabricated they would not have been included since they could not legally testify as witnesses.
8. Early church preaching continually emphasized the fact of Jesus resurrection as the central truth of Christian faith.
9. The tomb of was not enshrined like so many religious leaders in that day for the simple fact he was not there but rather risen.
10. Growth of the church can only be explained by the fact of the resurrection of Jesus as its cause.

What is the historical evidence for Jesus resurrection?

Thomas Arnold (professor of Modern History at Oxford): “No one fact in the history of mankind . . . is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort” than the fact that “Christ died and rose from the dead.”

The following is quoted from the book Vintage Jesus chapter 7:

1. Josephus (AD 37–100)
   
   Josephus was a Jewish historian born just a few years after Jesus died. His most celebrated passage, called the “Testimonium Flavianum” says:

   Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. (Flavius Josephus, “Jewish Antiquities” in The New Complete Works of Josephus, trans. William Whiston (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel, 1999), 18.63–64)

2. Suetonius (AD 70–160)
   
   Suetonius was a Roman historian and annalist of the Imperial House. In his biography of Nero (Nero ruled AD 54–68), Suetonius mentions the persecution of Christians by indirectly referring to the resurrection: “Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition [the resurrection].”(Suetonius Vita Nero 16.11–13)
3. Pliny the Younger (AD 61 or 62–113)
   
   Pliny the Younger wrote a letter to the emperor Trajan around 111 describing early Christian worship gatherings that met early on Sunday mornings in memory of Jesus’ resurrection day:

   I have never been present at an examination of Christians. Consequently, I do not know the nature of the extent of the punishments usually meted out to them, nor the grounds for starting an investigation and how far it should be pressed. . . . They also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day [Sunday in remembrance of Jesus’ resurrection] to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honor of Christ as if to a god . . .(Pliny the Younger Letters 10.96.1–7)

4. The Jewish explanation

   The earliest attempt to provide an alternative explanation for the resurrection of Jesus did not deny that the tomb was empty. (Matt. 28:13–15) Instead, Jewish opponents claimed that the body had been stolen, thus admitting the fact of the empty tomb. But this explanation is untenable for the following reasons. One, the tomb was closed with an enormous rock and sealed by the government, and there is no explanation for how the rock was moved while being guarded by armed Roman soldiers. Two, if the body were stolen, a large ransom could have been offered to the thieves and they could have been coerced to produce the body. Or, if it had been taken by the disciples, then the torture and death they suffered should have been sufficient to return the body. Third, even if the body was stolen, how are we to account for the fact that Jesus appeared to multiple crowds of people, proving that he was alive? In conclusion, the theft of the body is unlikely and still fails to account for it returning back to life.

For further study on the resurrection:

• A brief but good article from Dr. Normal Geisler can be found at: http://www.equip.org/site/c.muI1LaMNJrE/b.2548567/k.FFA4/I_Believe_In_The_Resurrection_of_the_Flesh.htm
• A very helpful and lengthy article from N.T. Wright can be found at: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jesus_Resurrection.htm
• A thorough book by a solid evangelical apologist is The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona
• And, ambitious book readers will enjoy, N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright
]]> http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/06/02/resurrection-god-saves/feed/ 0 http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/05/19/cross-god-dies/ http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/05/19/cross-god-dies/#comments Tue, 20 May 2008 03:49:47 +0000 Pastor Mark Driscoll http://voxpopnetwork.com/vision/2008/05/19/cross-god-dies/

This article is a summary of the content from my sermon on the atoning death of Jesus Christ, titled Cross: God Dies, as part of the Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe preaching series. Much of this content is from Chapter 6 (What Did Jesus Accomplish on the Cross?) of the book Dr. Gerry Breshears and I wrote together called Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions. I will quote it throughout to both serve you and whet your appetite to purchase the entire book for yourself. You can order it online at Crossway.

Also, these themes of atonement will be more thoroughly covered in our next book Death by Love due out at the end of September. In it, each chapter tells the story of someone who has sinned or been sinned against, and I include a pastoral letter explaining how Jesus’ death on the cross makes the difference in their life. The tone of the book is exactly the opposite of the more comedic Vintage Jesus and reflects more of my pastoral role one-on-one with people I love. Dr. Breshears and I have poured many hours into this book and believe it is an important and practical contribution to the study of Jesus’ death. Pre-orders of Death by Love are now available online at Amazon.

Lastly, in the media library at Mars Hill’s website you will find a full set of 12 sermons and sermon notes from a series I did on Jesus’ death titled Christ on the Cross, all available free for those who are interested. We will now proceed to answer some of the more common questions about Jesus’ death on the cross.

What is crucifixion?

Quoted from Vintage Jesus Chapter 6

Crucifixion was invented by the Persians around 500 BC, perfected by the Romans in the days of Jesus, and not outlawed until the Emperor Constantine, who ruled Rome in the fourth century AD. In the days of Jesus, crucifixion was reserved for the most horrendous criminals. Even the worst Romans were beheaded rather than crucified. The Jews also considered crucifixion the most horrific mode of death, as Deuteronomy 21:22–23 says, “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God.”

How did Jesus die?

Quoted from Vintage Jesus Chapter 6

To ensure maximum suffering, scourging preceded crucifixion. Scourging itself was such a painful event that many people died from it without even making it to their cross. Jesus’ hands would have been chained above his head to expose his back and legs to an executioner’s whip called a cat-o’-nine tails. The whip was a series of long leather straps. At the end of some of the straps were heavy balls of metal intended to tenderize the body of a victim, like a cook tenderizes a steak by beating it. Some of the straps had hooks made of either metal or bone that would have sunk deeply into the shoulders, back, buttocks, and legs of the victim. Once the hooks were sunk deeply into the tenderized flesh, the executioner would rip the skin, muscle, tendons, and even bones off the victim as they shouted in agony, shook violently, and bled heavily. Hundreds of years prior, the prophet Isaiah predicted the results of Jesus’ scourging: “many were astonished at you—his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.” (Isa. 52:14)

Jesus then had a crown of lengthy thorns pressed into his head as onlookers mocked him as the “King of the Jews.” (Matt. 27:29) With that, blood began to flow down Jesus’ face, causing his hair and beard to be a bloodied and matted mess, and his eyes to burn as he strained to see through his own sweat and blood. Jesus’ robe was then used as the pot in a gambling dice game.

Jesus was then forced to carry his roughly hewn wooden crossbar of perhaps one hundred pounds on his bare, traumatized, bloodied back and shoulders to his own place of crucifixion. The cross was likely already covered with the blood of other men. Timber was so expensive the crosses were recycled, so Jesus’ blood mixed with the layers of blood from countless other men who had walked that same path before him.

Despite his young age and good health, Jesus was so physically devastated from his sleepless night, miles of walking, severe beating, and scourging that he collapsed under the weight of the cross, unable to carry it alone. A man named Simon of Cyrene was appointed to carry Jesus’ cross. Upon arriving at his place of crucifixion, they pulled Jesus’ beard out—an act of ultimate disrespect in ancient cultures—spit on him, and mocked him in front of his family and friends.

Jesus the carpenter, who had driven many nails into wood with his own hands, then had five- to-seven-inch rough metal spikes driven into the most sensitive nerve centers on the human body in his hands and feet. Jesus was nailed to his wooden cross. At this point Jesus was in unbearable agony. Nonetheless, Hindus are prone to deny that Jesus suffered at all.

Why did Jesus die?

Quoted from Vintage Jesus Chapter 6

The Bible teaches that in perfect justice, because Jesus was made to be our sin, he died for us. The little word for has big implications. In theological terms, it means that Jesus’ death was substitutionary (or, as some used to call it, vicarious). His death was in our place solely for our benefit and without benefit for himself. Just to be perfectly clear, this means that Jesus took the penalty for our sins in our place so we do not have to suffer the just penalty ourselves. The wrath of God that should have fallen on us and the death that our sins merit fell on Jesus. This wasn’t something forced on him. Rather, he took it willingly (John 10:18; Phil. 2:8; Heb. 12:2). Scripture repeatedly stresses this point, which theologians call penal substitutionary atonement [emphases added]:

• Isaiah 53:5 “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.”
• Isaiah 53:12 “. . . he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.”
• Romans 4:25 “[He] was delivered up for our trespasses . . .”
• Romans 5:8 “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
• 1 Corinthians 15:3 “Christ died for our sins . . .”
• 1 Peter 3:18 “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God . . . “
• 1 John 2:2 “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
• Galatians 3:13 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us . . .”

What did Jesus’ death accomplish?

In our book Death by Love, due out at the end of September, Dr. Gerry Breshears and I will answer this question in great detail, as the entire book is essentially a series of answers to this question. For the time being, I will simply stress that many things were accomplished on the cross. It is a great and tragic error when reductionism occurs and all of what Jesus’ death accomplished is not fully appreciated. When this kind of error occurs usually Jesus becomes merely a great moral example among liberals, or a defeater of Satan among Charismatics and Pentecostals. In an effort to briefly show some of the many aspects of what Jesus accomplished, I will outline these aspects of his accomplishments as well as the penal substitutionary atonement that we covered in the previous question. That point is the central, essential, and guiding principle for understanding what Jesus’ death accomplished on the cross, according to theologians such as John Stott and Leon Morris.

1. Jesus is our Propitiation

   1 John 4:10 – “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

   In this we see that while God justly and rightly hates our sin, he also is so loving that he poured out his wrath upon himself so that it would be propitiated, or diverted, from guilty deserving sinners. In propitiation Jesus fulfills the role of the first goat slaughtered every year on the Day of Atonement in place of guilty sinners. Tragically, most modern English translations of the Bible translate this word with words including expiation or sacrifice or atonement, which change the meaning of God’s inspired Scriptures. But, thankfully my friends at Crossway have preserved this and other significant theological words in the English Standard Version of the Bible, one of the reasons why I have chosen the English Standard Version as my primary preaching, teaching, and writing translation, although there are other versions I appreciate in varying degrees.

2. Jesus is our Expiation

   1 John 1:7 – “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

   When we sin and are sinned against, the Bible says (particularly in many Old Testament ceremonies, cleansings, and metaphors) that we are defiled, dirty, filthy, and unclean. But on the cross Jesus took away our sin so that we could be cleansed from the presence and power of defiling sin. In expiation Jesus fulfills the role of the second goat, or scapegoat, who was not slaughtered but rather sent away from the people, showing how God alone can take our sin away.

3. Jesus is our New Covenant Sacrifice

   1 Peter 1:18–19 – “. . . you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”

   Blood is mentioned some 450 times in the Bible and is associated with death that is the penalty for sin. Many of the references to blood in Scripture are found in the Old Testament, foreshadowing Jesus coming as our High Priest, he whose body was the Temple, he who bled and died as a sacrifice so that we would be admitted into New Covenant relationship with God.

4. Jesus is our Victor

   Colossians 2:13–15 “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

   On the cross Jesus seemed to have suffered the worst defeat in history. But in fact he was triumphing over Satan and demons by destroying any claim they had to his people because of their sin. Therefore, Jesus is the only Victor over Satan and demons, and in Jesus we can live free of demonic control.

5. Jesus is our Redemption

   Titus 2:13- 14“. . . our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”

   Sin enslaves us and rules over us as a cruel taskmaster, much like the Pharaoh who ruled over God’s people in the days of Exodus. In that day, God crushed Pharaoh and liberated his people into freedom to worship him. That event is spoken of repeatedly throughout Scripture as a day of redemption, and it is the pattern of how Jesus liberated us from Satan, sin, and death on the cross. That was the day of our great Exodus.

6. Jesus is our Justification

   Galatians 2:16 – “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”

   2 Corinthians 5:21 – “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

   Because we are all by nature and choice guilty sinners, we have no right to stand before God and be declared righteous. But on the cross Jesus accomplished our justification through what Martin Luther rightly called “the great exchange.” On the cross Jesus took our sin and gave us his righteousness. The result is that by grace alone, through faith in Jesus alone, we can be justified and declared righteous in the sight of God.

7. Jesus is our Ransom

   1 Timothy 2:5–6 – “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom . . .”

   Our sin includes both omission (not doing what God commands) and commission (doing what God forbids) so that we accrue an ever-mounting debt to God. To resolve this debt, Jesus came as fully God and fully human to mediate perfectly between God and us. In his death, Jesus paid our debt to God, described as our ransom.

8. Jesus is our Example

   1 Peter 2:21 – “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.”

   While on the cross suffering and dying in our place for our sins, while remaining obedient to the Father and loving to his enemies, Jesus gave for us the perfect example of how to live, especially in the face of the unjust, evil, atrocity of sin. In so doing, he trusted the sovereignty of God to bring good out of evil. Jesus is our example that life in this world is marked by the pains of sin and we have opportunities to demonstrate the glory of Jesus to the world by following in his example and embracing our suffering without questioning the goodness of God.

9. Jesus is our Reconciliation

   Ephesians 4:31-5:2 – “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

   Sin breaks our relationship with God and others, as we first see in Genesis 3, where immediately following sin our first parents hid from God and from one another. But by dying for our sin, Jesus takes our sin away so that we can be in a loving, reconciled relationship with God and one another.

10. Jesus is our Revelation

    John 1:18 – “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”

    Colossians 1:15 – “He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God.”

    Because of sin, the Bible says we are spiritually ignorant and blind concerning God. But in Jesus God made himself visible. And at the cross the character and nature of God was revealed, unlike anywhere else in all creation, because it was there that God’s wrath and mercy were one. Therefore, for God to be known, the cross of Jesus must be understood, because it was there that God’s person shown forth in perfect glory.

Doesn’t the cross contradict God’s love?

Some research has been gathered on this question that may be particularly helpful. I would like to share some of that research with you in the following section.

Brian McLaren used the term “cosmic child abuse” (coined by Steve Chalke) to describe the idea of penal substitutionary atonement. McLaren puts this phrase on the lips of one of his most attractive characters in The Story We Find Ourselves In. McLaren quotes Chalke:

“The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offense he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement: ‘God is love’. If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil.” (See Steve Chalke and Alan Mann, The Lost Message of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), pp. 182-183.)

A brief excerpt from the article “Interview with Brian McLaren about previous ‘A letter to Friends of Emergent,’” from McLaren’s own site is helpful. The anonymous interviewer asks McLaren:

Q: You wrote, “Which reminds us that none of us has a complete grasp of the gospel…. It’s very dangerous to assume you’ve perfectly contained the gospel in your little formula.” I think with all the other change going on, one thing we’ve got to hold firm on is the gospel.

A: What do you mean when you say “the gospel”?

Q: You know, justification by grace through faith in the finished atoning work of Christ on the cross.

A: Are you sure that’s the gospel?

Q: Of course. Aren’t you?

A: I’m sure that’s a facet of the gospel, and it’s the facet that modern evangelical Protestants have assumed is the whole gospel, the heart of the gospel. But what’s the point of that gospel? (Online at www.anewkindofchristian.com/archives/000133.html.)

McLaren’s reference to “cosmic child abuse” is on page 102 of The Story We Find Ourselves In. In this book, fictional characters drive the plot line and have theological discussions. On page 102, there is a conversation between a character name Kerry and another named Neo. Kerry is talking about the atonement, saying: “I know that’s supposed to mean something to me, and I suppose I can see it, but it raises so many questions. . . . For starters, if God wants to forgive us, why doesn’t he just do it? How does punishing an innocent person make things better? That just sounds like one more injustice in the cosmic equation. It sounds like divine child abuse.”

McLaren’s character refers to Steve Chalke, an advocate of the “Christus-Victor” theology of atonement, as opposed to penal substitution. Chalke mocks the God of Jonathan Edwards (Lost Message of Jesus, page 56) and argues that the Bible “never defines him [God] as anything other than love” (Lost Message of Jesus, page 63). This is simply false as revealed in both 1 John 1:5 (“God is light”) and Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 (“God is holy”).

Much more can and will be said when the chapter on this point is published in the Doctrine book following the conclusion of this preaching series. But for now I will close with a quote from Vintage Jesus Chapter 6:

Some will protest that a loving God could not possibly pour out his wrath on Jesus. Yet this is precisely what Scripture says: “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief.” (Isa. 53:10) Others will protest that a loving God would never sanction the bloody, unjust murder of Jesus. Scripture plainly states, however, that it is at the cross of Jesus that the love of God for us is most clearly seen. Jesus himself said precisely this: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.” (John 15:12–13) Other Scriptures echo the words of Jesus—his death on the cross is the place where love is most clearly seen in all creation. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 5:8 says, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Finally, 1 John 4:9–10 says, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

Clearly, Jesus’ bloody death on the cross is about love and everyone who loves Jesus should know that.

]]> http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/05/19/cross-god-dies/feed/ 0 http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/05/11/incarnation-god-comes/ http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/05/11/incarnation-god-comes/#comments Mon, 12 May 2008 06:34:03 +0000 Pastor Mark Driscoll http://voxpopnetwork.com/vision/2008/05/11/incarnation-god-comes/

This week (Sunday, May 11) I preached the sermon Incarnation: God Comes as part of the Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe sermon series. This post is intended to help serve those in Mars Hill Church and those listening or watching online who wish to learn more about the doctrine.

Much of the content posted here is from Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions, written by my friend Dr. Gerry Breshears and myself. To further understand the person and work of Jesus, we would commend to you our book, which is now available in both print and audio form. I narrated the complete audio book, and it also includes some of my wandering commentary and quips that Crossway, our publisher, was kind enough to leave in for your enjoyment.

What Does Incarnation Mean? (see Vintage Jesus, p. 50)

The common jargon for the second member of the Trinity entering into history as a human being is the incarnation (from the Latin meaning “becoming flesh”) (John 1:14; Phil. 2:5–6; Col. 2:9; 1 John 4:2). John 1:14 says the Word, the second person of the Trinity, became flesh. John’s point is that the eternal, invisible God took on a totally physical body so that we could see him. . . . It says he became “meat.” Much like “chili con carne” where carne means “meat,” the incarnation teaches that Jesus took upon himself a literal human body. Subsequently, incarnation (“in” plus “carne”) means “in flesh.”

How Did People Know God Was Coming? (see Vintage Jesus, pp. 57–60)

1. 4000 B.C.: Adam and Eve receive the prophecy that the Messiah (Jesus) would be born of a woman (without reference to a father, intimating the virgin birth).
   • Promise: “‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel’” (Gen. 3:15).
   • Fulfillment: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law . . .” (Gal. 4:4).
2. 700 B.C.: Isaiah prophesies that Jesus’ mother would be a virgin who conceived by a miracle and that Jesus would be God who became a man.
   • Promise: “‘Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel’” (Isa. 7:14).
   • Fulfillment: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (Matt. 1:18–23).
3. 700 B.C.: Micah prophesies that Jesus would be born in the town of Bethlehem.
   • Promise: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days [eternity]” (Mic. 5:2).
   • Fulfillment: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. . . . And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” (Luke 2:1–7).
4. 400 B.C.: Malachi prophesies that Jesus would enter the temple. This is important because the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70 and no longer exists; subsequently, the prophecy could not have been fulfilled anytime after A.D. 70.
   • Promise: “Behold, I send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord whom you seek will come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts” (Mal. 3:1).
   • Fulfillment: “Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law . . .” (Luke 2:25–27).

How Did God Come? (see Vintage Jesus, pp. 100–101)

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. (Luke 1:26–38)

Mary is not to be our object of faith but rather our example of faith in Jesus. Imagine her emotions when she’s told that she will be pregnant without being married in a society that shamed, humiliated, exiled, or even killed such women. Tradition says they would take her to the gate of the city, rip off her clothes, dress her in rags, tie her up, and bring all the women to see her and learn the lesson of shame through her suffering. Joining them as witnesses would have been the worst kind of vile men who simply enjoyed watching women getting stripped and beaten.

But Mary knew the promises of Isaiah. She lived by the power of God. So instead of saying, “Count me out. I just want a nice life,” she immediately accepted God’s very difficult call on her life, saying, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Hers is a faith for anyone to follow.

The first snapshot of the early church singles out Mary for mention as a woman of prayer. She is pointed out among the one hundred twenty people in the Upper Room worshiping Jesus as the only God before the Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost (Acts 1:13–14).

Mary is a wonderful example for all Christians, particularly women, and especially young women. She obviously loved God, and, while not sinless like her son, she did live in holiness as marked by her virginity until marriage. She is an inspiring example that our sexually promiscuous culture desperately needs to have modeled through women like her. We all need to follow her example of humble faith that fully trusted God’s will for her life.

Martin Luther deftly commented that while the virgin conception was God’s greatest miracle in Mary’s life, the fact of her faith in God was perhaps her greatest miracle of all (Bloesch, Jesus Christ: Savior and Lord, 86). It is our prayer that you would, by God’s grace, follow in the wonderful example of a remarkable teenage girl who was honored by God with the birth and raising of the Lord Jesus Christ, Immanuel, God with us, who came to save us sinners from our sins. Beautifully, our new birth through Jesus is patterned after the birth of Jesus in that both are miracles wrought entirely of God to be received in faith.

Was Jesus Fully God? (see Vintage Jesus, pp. 21–22)

Jesus clearly, emphatically, and repeatedly said he is God. If his statements were untrue, it would have been a blasphemous violation of the first commandment. The belief that Jesus is God is not something that Christians made up, but rather something that Christians believe because it was taught by Jesus himself. Many cults wrongly deny that Jesus is God or ever claimed to be God. For example, the Jehovah’s Witnesses Watchtower Society says, “Jesus never claimed to be God” (“Is God Always Superior to Jesus?”). Bahá’ís say that Jesus was a manifestation of God and a prophet but inferior to Muhammad and Bahá’u’lláh. Buddhism teaches that Jesus is not God but was rather an enlightened man like the Buddha. Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy flatly states, “Jesus Christ is not God.”

Some key Scriptures illustrate how Jesus clearly said he is God and his hearers clearly understood his unparalleled claim. Mark 14:61–64 reports, “He remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ And Jesus said, ‘I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.’ And the high priest tore his garments and said, ‘What further witnesses do we need? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?’” John 8:58–59 reports that Jesus said, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’ So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.”

Jesus claimed eternality in saying that he existed before Abraham, who lived roughly two thousand years prior. Furthermore, in naming himself “I am,” Jesus was declaring himself to be the same God who revealed himself by the title “I am” some fourteen hundred years prior when he spoke to Moses through the burning bush. As a result, those who heard Jesus rightly understood him as declaring himself to be the eternal God who saved Abraham and called Moses. Consequently, they called him a blasphemer for being a man who claimed to be God and sought to impose the death penalty on him for it.

In John 10:30–33 Jesus also said, “I and the Father are one.” Then, “The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, ‘I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?’ The Jews answered him, ‘It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.’”

On this point, New York’s Judge Gaynor once said of Jesus’ trial at the end of his earthly life, “It is plain from each of the gospel narratives, that the alleged crime for which Jesus was tried and convicted was blasphemy” (Quoted in Charles Edmund Deland, The Mis-Trials of Jesus (Boston, Mass.: Richard G. Badger, 1914), 118–119).

Throughout the history of the world, numerous people have claimed to speak for God. Yet there is a surprisingly short list of people who have actually claimed to be God. For example, such religious leaders as Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad, and Gandhi did not claim to be God. In fact, they assured their followers that they were not God. Jesus, in contrast, clearly and repeatedly said he is God.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. (John 1:1–18)

The Hebrew people at the end of the first century clung tightly to their proud religious heritage extending from Abraham to Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and a host of priests and prophets. At the center of their theology was a devotion to the Word of God. The sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament were penned in their native tongue by their Hebrew brothers with nothing less than the authority of God as his divine voice through appointed men. To the Hebrews, the Word of God was the presence and action of God breaking into human history with unparalleled power and authority. God’s Word was a happening, such as creating (Gen. 1:3, 6, 11), and was never given without accomplishing its purpose (Isa. 55:11). For the Hebrew, God’s speech and action were one and the same.

The Greek people living at the end of the first century also clung tightly to their proud heritage, a philosophical heritage extending from Heraclitus (540–480 B.C.), to Socrates (470–399 B.C.), Plato (428–348 B.C.), Aristotle (384–327 B.C.), Cicero (106–43 B.C.), and a host of philosophers, poets, and playwrights. At the fountainhead of Greek philosophy was Heraclitus, who was known as the “weeping philosopher.” His image could be found on the coins in Ephesus for several centuries following his death. In his three-volume work On Nature covering cosmology, politics, and theology, Heraclitus taught that the world was created by fire and maintained an intricate balance between constant flux and overriding stability. He illustrated this point by penning the now famous claim that a person never steps into the same river twice because of its constant change. For Heraclitus, the creation of the world, the ordering of all life, and the immortality of the human soul were all made possible solely by the word (or logos) that was the invisible and intelligent force behind all that we see in this world. Also, it was the word through which all things were interrelated and brought into harmony, such as life and death, good and evil, darkness and light, and the gods and people. He went so far as to say that truth could only be known and wisdom, the great aim of Greek existence, could only be found not in a knowledge of many things, but instead a deep and clear awareness of one thing—the word, or logos.

Jesus Christ was born of a virgin as the one true God who became a man during a time and place in which the Hebrew and Greek worlds collided. John’s missionary move was pivotal at that time in the development of the early church. John sought to remain loyal to the Hebrew heritage and the Old Testament Scriptures, priests and prophets, and Jesus himself, while still seeking to further the fruitful work of the gospel into the larger world dominated by Greek philosophy and language. Complicating things all the more was the fact that, according to William Barclay, “By 60 AD there must have been a hundred thousand Greeks in the church for every Jew who was a Christian. Jewish ideas were completely strange to the Greeks. To take but one outstanding example, the Greeks had never heard of a Messiah. . . . The very category in which Jewish Christians conceived and presented Jesus meant nothing to them.” The obvious dilemma was how to faithfully and accurately present Jesus to the Greek world.

So, John wrote his biography of Jesus in the Greek language and began with the concept of the word, which was common ground in the presuppositions of both Hebrew theology and Greek philosophy.

Logos is from the Greek word meaning “word, or reason.” It was used by the ancient Greeks to convey the idea that the world was governed by a universal intelligence, similar to pantheism. In Johannine literature, John used “logos” differently than other writers, to refer to the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. John’s meaning of logos has been greatly disputed and interpreted by a host of scholars fearing the implications of it proving the deity of Christ.

The Jewish philosopher and historian Philo also taught his understanding of the logos around A.D. 25. Dualistic, and much like early Gnosticism, Philo taught that God is spirit and good, but that all matter was evil. Therefore, God could not have created or taken on the material lest he sin. He concluded that both God and matter were eternal, and that an intermediary existed that permitted God to interact with the material world. This he called the Logos.

In the New International Commentary on the New Testament on the Gospel of John, Leon Morris gives insight into the Jewish concept of “the Word” from the Jewish Targums (Old Testament paraphrases) where Jews substituted “God” for “the Word of God” out of reverence for his name. For example, where the Bible says, “Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God” (Ex. 19:17), the Targum reads “. . . to meet the Word of God.”

Also, in the Old Testament, the “word of God” indicated action, an agent accomplishing the will of God. Some examples include God bringing things into existence by his word (Gen. 1:3, 6, 9, 14, 20, 24; Ps. 33:6), and God’s word being sent out to accomplish the purposes of God (Isa. 55:11).

John begins with a declaration that both Hebrews and Greeks would have agreed with, that before the creation of the world and time, the Word existed eternally. He then scandalizes both groups by stating that Jesus is the Word and was with the one and only God, and in fact was himself God, and was face to face with God from eternity (John 1:1–2). This thundering declaration would have been stunning to both Jews and Greeks who had vigorously argued that a man could never become a god, though John’s eyewitness testimony that God had become a man they may have never considered.

John then explains that the word is not merely the invisible force of the Greeks, or the agent of God’s action for the Hebrews, but a person through whom all things were created (John 1:3; cf. Col. 1:16), and a person in whom is life and light for men (John 1:4). This light that exposes sin and reveals God has come into the darkness of this sinful, cursed, and dying world and the darkness has opposed his light but was unable to understand or overcome him (John 1:5; cf. 1 John 1:5–10; 2:8–11).

He then writes that Jesus was the Word of God who came in human flesh to dwell among people and bring both grace and truth from the Father in the same way that God’s glorious presence dwelt in the tabernacle tent among the tents of the Hebrew people in the wilderness wanderings of the Exodus (John 1:14). John the Baptizer cried out that Jesus was greater than he and worthy of greater honor because though John was born first, Jesus had existed from eternity past (John 1:15).

John then concludes by describing the gifts given to those who believe, such as grace, blessings, grace, truth, and a perfect window through which to see God the Father (John 1:17–18).

It is important to note that John was fully monotheistic in his understanding of God. He would have understood that magnitude of what he was saying, and as a result, very clearly outlined his position. John was acutely aware and intentional in his revolutionary teaching regarding the five aspects of this Logos.

First, the Logos is eternal (John 1:1–2). According to Ron Rhodes, “‘In the beginning’ (Greek, en archei) refers to a point in eternity past beyond which it is impossible for us to go. Moreover, the verb was (‘in the beginning was the Word’) is an imperfect tense in the Greek, indicating continued existence” (The Counterfeit Christ of the New Age Movement, p. 215).

Second, the Logos has always been with God (John 1:2).

Third, the Logos is a person distinct from, yet equal to God (John 1:1–2). As Rhodes has said, “the Greek preposition pros implies two distinct persons.” Therefore, while the Father and the Logos are not the same, they do belong together as one.

Fourth, the Logos is the creator (John 1:3)

Fifth, the Logos became flesh (John 1:14). In refutation of the Gnostics and dualistic teachings of Philo, John clearly taught that matter is not inherently evil and that God does involve himself with the material. It is also noteworthy that the Logos “pitched his tabernacle among us.” This imagery relates to the tabernacle that God had the Israelites build as his sanctuary so that he might dwell in their midst (Ex. 25:8). Implicitly, we are told that the Logos that was present in the sanctuary became physically present in the space and time world.

How John uses the word Logos elsewhere in his writings is also insightful. First John 1:1 indicates that John and others had heard, seen, and touched the Logos, “which was from the beginning.” Again, this seems to be a clear reference to Jesus Christ. Revelation 19:12–13 also pictures Christ as the conquering general, the Logos of God.

As George Eldon Ladd observes in his Theology of the New Testament, the Logos became flesh for five reasons. To reveal to man life (John 1:4), light (John 1:4–5), grace (1:14), truth (1:14), glory (1:14), even God himself.

In summary, the Logos is one of the strongest arguments for the deity of Jesus as the eternally existing, personal creator of the universe distinct from, yet equal with, God who came in the flesh to demonstrate his glory in grace and truth to reveal life and light to men.

Was Jesus Fully Human? (see Vintage Jesus, pp. 33–36)

In sum, Jesus looked like a normal, average dude. Or, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isa. 53:2). Indeed, when we examine the life of Jesus as told in Scripture, we see a man who does not appear at first glance to be God. Conversely, Jesus appears as a radically normal and average human being experiencing normal life events like the rest of us:

• Born of a woman (Gal. 4:4)
• Had a normal body of flesh and bones (Luke 24:39)
• Grew up as a boy (Luke 2:52)
• Had a family (Matt. 13:54–58; Mark 6:3; 1 Cor. 9:5)
• Obeyed his parents (Luke 2:51)
• Worshiped God (Luke 4:16) and prayed (Mark 1:35; 6:46)
• Worked as a carpenter (Mark 6:3)
• Got hungry (Matt. 4:2; 21:18) and thirsty (John 4:7; 19:28)
• Asked for information (Mark 9:16–21; John 11:34; 18:34)
• Was stressed (John 13:21)
• Was astonished (Mark 6:6; Luke 7:9)
• Was happy (Luke 10:21–24; John 15:11; 17:13; Heb. 12:2, 22)
• Told jokes (Matt. 7:6; 23:24; Mark 4:21)
• Had compassion (Mark 1:41; Luke 7:13)
• Had male and female friends he loved (John 11:3–5)
• Gave encouraging compliments (Mark 12:41–44)
• Loved children (Matt. 19:13–15)
• Celebrated holidays (Luke 2:41)
• Went to parties (Matt. 11:19)
• Loved his mom (John 19:26–27)

There are two general ways in which various thinking has erred regarding the humanity and divinity of Jesus. The first is to deny the full divinity of Jesus in favor of his humanity; the second is to deny the full humanity of Jesus in favor of his divinity.

The denial of the full divinity of Jesus has been done by heretics such as the Ebionites, Dynamic Monarchianists, Nestorians, modalists, monarchianists, Sabellianists, Unitarians, Social Gospel proponents, “death of God” theologians, liberals, Arians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, functionalists, Adoptionists, Kenotics, Apollinarians, and more recently by the popular book and film The Da Vinci Code. According to the Jehovah’s Witnesses cult, Jesus was created by God the Father billions of years ago as the archangel Michael and is not God equal to the Father (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, “The Truth About Angels,” What Can Angels Do for You? Watchtower Society online edition, November 1, 1995, http://www.watchtower.org/library/w/1995/11/1/article_02.htm). The Mormon cult teaches that Jesus was born as the first and greatest spirit-child of the Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, and is also the spirit-brother of Lucifer who became a god but whose deity is no more unique than many people’s. Some New Agers say Jesus was not fully God and fully man, but rather half man and half alien. Oneness Pentecostals falsely teach that there is no Trinity but rather that Jesus appears in the roles of Father, Son, and Spirit. . . . .

The denial of the full humanity of Jesus has been done by heretics such as Docetists, Gnostics, Modal Monarchianists, Apollinarian Paulicians, Monophysitists, New Agers, and Eutychians. . . .

In A.D. 451, the Council of Chalcedon met to wrestle with the confusion that surrounded the divinity and humanity of Jesus. They issued the Chalcedonian Creed, which cleared up many heresies that wrongly defined the humanity and divinity of Jesus. In sum, the creed declared that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures (human and divine) who is both fully God and fully man. Theologically, the term for the union of both natures in Jesus Christ is hypostatic union, which is taken from the Greek word hypostasis for “person.” The renowned German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The Chalcedonian definition is an objective, but living, statement which bursts through all thought forms” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center (New York: Harper, 1978), 92). The Chalcedonian summary of the incarnation is the position held by all of Christendom, including Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians.

How Could God Become a Man? (see Vintage Jesus, pp. 36–37)

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:5–11)

This amazing section of Scripture reveals to us that the second member of the Trinity came into human history as the man Jesus Christ. In doing so, Jesus exemplified perfect and unparalleled humility. The Creator entered his creation to reveal God to us, identify with us, and live and die for us as our humble servant. Saying that Jesus “made himself nothing” means that he set aside his rights as God and the rightful continual use of his divine attributes, with the occasional exception such as to forgive sin, and though he was still God, he chose instead to live by the power of the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that Jesus in any way ceased to be God, but rather chose not to avail himself of his divine rights and attributes while on the earth.

In keeping with the biblical position of Chalcedon, we must retain both the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus Christ. To accomplish this, we must conclude that when Jesus became a man, he did not change his identity as God but rather changed his role. According to the church father Augustine, “Christ added to himself which he was not, he did not lose what he was” (Quoted in G. C. Berkouwer, The Person of Christ, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1954), 94).

Jesus, who was fully equal with God in every way, who was the very form of God, did not see that as something to keep in his grip, but emptied himself of that equal status and role to take the status and role of humanity. He who was and is God took the likeness of humanity. God became the “image of God” for the sake of our salvation (Gen. 1:27; 2 Cor. 4:4).

Theologians capture this laying aside of the divine equality, the divine lifestyle, with the phrase he laid aside the independent exercise of his divine attributes. What this means is that he didn’t continually exhibit the so-called incommunicable attributes such as his immortality, omniscience, or omnipresence, except at the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, while Jesus remained fully man and fully God during his incarnation, he maintained all of his divine attributes and did avail himself of them upon occasion, such as to forgive human sin, which God alone can do (Mark 2:1–7). The Bible is clear, however, that even when not availing himself of his divine attributes, he did in fact retain them. For example, in 1 Timothy 1:17, Jesus is the King who has the divine attributes of eternality, immortality, and invisibility and is called “the only God.” According to other Scriptures, Jesus’ other divine attributes possessed by him during his life on earth include omnipresence (Ps. 139:7–12; Matt. 28:20), creator (Isa. 37:16; 44:24; John 1:3; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2), savior (Joel 2:32; Rom. 10:9–13), and deity as the only God (Isa. 45:21b–23; Phil. 2:10–11). In summary, Jesus did not in any way cease to be fully God while on the earth, but rather as Philippians 2:5–11 shows, he humbly chose not always to avail himself of his divine attributes.

]]> http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/05/11/incarnation-god-comes/feed/ 0 http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/05/06/covenant-god-pursues/ http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/05/06/covenant-god-pursues/#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 17:57:22 +0000 Pastor Mark Driscoll http://voxpopnetwork.com/vision/2008/05/06/covenant-god-pursues/

This week (Sunday, May 4) I preached the sermon Covenant: God Pursues as part of the Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe sermon series. This post is intended to help serve those in Mars Hill who are discussing the doctrine in their Community Groups, and also serve anyone else who desires to study the issue further.

What Is a Covenant?

Being God’s people is a repeated theme throughout both Testaments: “I will live among them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they will be my people” (e.g., Lev. 26:12; Jer. 32:38; Ezek. 37:27). The Christian story begins with creation in harmony, unity, and peace; it ends with a restored creation. Between these two bookends is the drama of redemption. The covenants are major dimensions (or acts) of this drama. The goal is to see the work and person of Christ in light of the Old Testament and to highlight aspects that we have possibly overlooked. Christ’s work is intimately related to and fulfills each of the five covenants (with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David) that God initiated in the Old Testament. New dimensions are brought to light when Christ’s covenant is understood in the context of the previous covenants. Covenants are about God’s activity and intention to redeem us, and the covenants tell us about ourselves—our condition, our brokenness, our dignity, our role as images of God, our suffering, and our calling.

God entered into covenantal relationships with his people. There are explicit references of a divine covenant established with Noah (Gen. 6:18), Abraham (Gen. 15:18), Israel (Ex. 24:8), and David (Ps. 89:3). Israel’s prophets anticipated the coming of a “new covenant” (Jer. 31:31), and Christ himself spoke of the last supper in covenantal language (Luke 22:20).

The word for covenant is berith in Hebrew and diatheke in Greek. A covenant is “a bond in blood that is sovereignly administered” (O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, p. 4). When God enters into a covenantal relationship with humanity, God sovereignly institutes a life-and-death bond. Thus, a covenant is a life and death relationship with God on his terms.

1. A bond—This implies relationship. It commits people to one another, God to God’s people, and people to God. Oaths, promises, and signs accompany the bond or commitment.
2. A bond in blood—There is an ultimacy or intensity in the covenant. By initiating covenants, God never enters into the relationship casually or informally. Covenant relationship signifies the life-and-death intensity of the bond. This intensity is seen in all three types of covenants—human to human (Gen. 21:27, 32; 2 Sam. 3:12, 13), God to human (Abraham—Gen. 15:18; Moses—Ex. 24:8; Deut 5:2; David—2 Chron. 21:7; Ps 89:3; the New Covenant—Jer. 31:31; Ezek. 37:26), human to God (2 Kings 11:17; 2 Kings 23:3; 2 Chron. 29:10). The establishment of a covenant is called “cutting a covenant.” It usually entails the slaughter of an animal. This symbolizes or represents the curse that the covenant-maker calls down upon himself or herself if they should violate the commitment that was made.
3. A bond in blood sovereignly administered—There is a unilateral form of covenantal establishment. There is no bargaining, bartering, or contract negotiations. The sovereign lord of heaven and earth dictates the terms of God’s covenants. It is God’s covenant in that it is conceived, devised, determined, established, confirmed, and dispensed by God himself: “Behold, I am establishing my covenant with you.”

God makes six major covenants in the Bible:

1. Adam and Eve (Gen. 1:26–2:3)
2. Noah and his family (Gen. 9:8–17)
3. Abraham and his descendants (Gen. 12:1–3; 17:1–14; 22:16–18)
4. Moses and the Israelites (Ex. 19:5–6; 3:4–10; 6:7)
5. David and the Kingdom of Israel (2 Sam. 7:8–19)
6. Jesus and the Church (Matt. 26:28; 16:17–19)




The purpose of these covenants was to address the problem of the human race. The claim that God has, in principle, solved that problem with the establishment of his covenants is echoed across the Old Testament. The covenants are the story of God’s uncaused, gracious, and generous love. God is under no obligation to rescue humans and the world from their plight, but chooses to do so and takes the initiative to bring it about.

As the story develops throughout the Old Testament, this covenant love is referred to in various terms, but the main one is hesed. According to Vine’s Expository Dictionary, “The entire history of God’s covenantal relationship with Israel can be summarized in terms of hesed.”

Hesed is God’s loving kindness—the consistent, ever-faithful, relentless, constantly pursuing, lavish, extravagant, unrestrained, one-way love of God. It is often translated as covenant love, loving kindness, mercy, steadfast love, loyal love, devotion, commitment, or reliability. Hesed turns up regularly in the Old Testament, particularly in the Psalms. It is typically translated “love” and sometimes translated as “mercy” (Ps. 23:6). However, hesed has a much narrower definition than the English term “love” conveys. In the Hebrew Scriptures, hesed refers to a sort of love that has been promised and is owed—that is, covenant love—as in Hosea 11:1: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” Covenant love is the love God promised to give to his covenant people, and which they in turn were to respond to in kind, loving God with all their hearts, minds, and strength. Hesed does not suggest some kind of generic love of everyone.

Malachi 1:1–5 is a clear presentation of hesed. Malachi opens with the declaration of the word of Yahweh: “I have loved you.” This affirmation of God’s choice of and affection for the nation provides a powerful beginning to the message to be given. On the one hand, it will soften the tone of the messages—they will be delivered in love. On the other hand, it will underscore the nation’s ingratitude.

The people were not immediately convinced of this declaration; to them, because of their state of spiritual rebellion, it sounded good but was not convincing because things had not worked out to their satisfaction. “How have you loved us?” they asked. And the prophet’s response reminded them of their status as the chosen people of God: “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother? . . . Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated.” The point that Malachi was making to his audience was that their existence as the people of God was the clearest evidence of the love of God. God chose the Israelites to be his kingdom of priests in the world. He gave them the Scriptures, the temple, the priests, the prophets, the covenants, and the Messiah. And his love for them was an everlasting love—even though they failed him again and again, he still retained his covenant with them.

Not only did God choose Israel (“Jacob”), but he also cared for the Israelites whenever they were in trouble. The simple fact was that Israel was protected throughout the ages. This should have told Malachi’s audience that the love of God was genuine. Not only had God protected Israel from the treatment they received from Edom, he also restored Israel to her land and left the mountains of Edom a wasteland. This was a clear demonstration of God’s love for his people.

For each of these covenants, it is helpful to highlight five special features (see Scott Hahn, A Father Who Keeps His Promises: God’s Covenant Love in Scripture):

1. The covenant mediator (the person God makes the covenant with) and his covenant role (whom the mediator represents).
2. The blessings promised in the covenant.
3. The conditions (or curses) of the covenant.
4. The “sign” by which the covenant will be celebrated and remembered. 
5. The “form” that God’s family takes as a result of the covenant.

What Is the Adamic Covenant?

The covenant with Adam (Gen. 1:26–2:3; Hos. 6:7). The word “covenant” isn’t used, but the story of Adam and Eve is told in covenantal language. Adam is the covenant mediator in his role as husband. God promises blessings—that their union will be fruitful and their offspring will fill the earth and rule over it. God establishes a sign by which the covenant will be remembered and celebrated—the Sabbath, the seventh day of rest. And God imposes one condition that they must keep to fulfill their obligation under the covenant—that they not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God attaches a curse for disobedience—that they will surely die. By this covenant, God’s family assumes the form of the marriage bond between husband and wife. 


What Is the Noahic Covenant?

The covenant with Noah (Gen. 9:8–17). The word “covenant” is used in the case of Noah, as God promises never again to destroy the world by flood. The covenant is made with all humanity, through the mediator, Noah, in his role as the father of his family. The covenant includes blessings to Noah and his family (that they will be fruitful and fill the earth) and conditions that must be obeyed (not to drink the blood of any animals, not to shed human blood). The sign of the covenant is the rainbow in the sky. By this covenant, God’s people assume the form of a domestic household, an extended family.

What Is the Abrahamic Covenant?

The covenant with Abraham (Gen. 12:1–3; 17:1–14; 22:16–18). God swears to give Abraham a great land and to bless his descendants, who will become a great nation. God makes the covenant with the mediator Abraham in his representative role as chieftain. God promises the blessings of land and great nationhood for his descendants, and through them to bless all the nations of the earth. The sign of the covenant is the mark of circumcision. Circumcision is also the condition that Abraham and his descendants must obey in order to keep the covenant. By this covenant, God’s family takes a “tribal” form.




What Is the Mosaic Covenant?


The covenant with Moses (Ex. 3:4–10; 6:7; 19:5–6). By this covenant, made with the mediator Moses in his representative role as the judge and liberator of Israel, God swears to be Israel’s God and Israel swears to worship no other but the Lord God alone. The blessings promised are that they will be God’s precious and chosen people. The conditions of the covenant are that they must keep God’s Law and commandments. The covenant sign is the Passover, which each year commemorates Israel’s birth as a nation. By this covenant, God’s family assumes the form of a “holy nation, a kingdom of priests.”


What Is the Davidic Covenant?

The covenant with David (2 Sam. 7:8–19). God promises to establish the mediator David’s “house” or kingdom forever, through David’s heir, who will also build a temple to God’s name. To David in his role as king, God promises to make David’s son his son and to punish him if he does wrong but never take away his royal throne: “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever.” Through the blessings of this kingdom God promises to give wisdom to all the nations. The sign of the covenant will be the throne and temple to be built by David’s son, Solomon. By this covenant, God’s family grows to take the form of a royal empire, a national kingdom. 


What Is the New Covenant?

The New Covenant of Jesus (Matt. 16:17–19; 26:28). The sixth and final covenant is made by the mediator Jesus, who by his cross and resurrection assumes the role of royal high priest and fulfills all the promises God made in the previous covenants. The prophets, especially Isaiah and Jeremiah, had taught Israel to hope for a Messiah who would bring “a new covenant,” through which God’s law would be written on men’s and women’s hearts (see Jer. 31:31–34; Heb. 8:8–12). The conditions of the covenant are that men and women believe in Jesus, be baptized, eat and drink his flesh and blood in remembrance at communion, and live by all that he taught. The Lord’s Supper is the sign of the New Covenant. By this covenant, God establishes his family in its final form as a universal (katholicos or “catholic” in Greek) worldwide kingdom, which Jesus calls his Church.

For Further Study

• Clark, R. Scott. “A Brief History of Covenant Theology.” 2001. http://www.wscal.edu/clark/briefhistorycovtheol.php .
• Hahn, Scott. A Father Who Keeps His Promises: God’s Covenant Love in Scripture. Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Publications, 1998.
• Robertson, O. Palmer. The Christ of the Covenants. Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 1981.
]]> http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/05/06/covenant-god-pursues/feed/ 0 http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/04/28/fall-god-judges/ http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/04/28/fall-god-judges/#comments Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:40:40 +0000 Pastor Mark Driscoll http://voxpopnetwork.com/vision/2008/04/28/fall-god-judges/

This week (Sunday, April 27) I preached the sermon Fall: God Judges as part of the Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe sermon series.

Before examining the fateful day that forever altered the course of human history in Genesis 3, we must first examine that which preceded it. In Genesis 1–2 and related biblical texts we have learned a great deal about God through the doctrines of Trinity, Revelation, Creation, and Image. We have learned that God is our Creator, and that we and all of the rest of creation are dependant upon him. In making humanity and everything else originally “very good,” we saw that God is holy and altogether good. In learning that God made us male and female in his image and likeness, we witnessed the loving and kind nature of God. In seeing God make creation for us and then attentively prepare it (including a beautiful garden) for human occupancy, we saw the humility of God to serve us. In seeing God speak to mankind, we saw that God is personal and initiated a relationship of love and communication with us. In blessing creation and our first parents, we saw the generous nature of our gracious God. In sum, God is perfectly perfect. Subsequently, the human rebellion against God that began with the first sin is altogether foolish, tragic, and mad. As we study the doctrine of the fall this week, it is incredibly important that we see things, as much as possible, from the vantage point of God so as to sympathize with him over and above sinners, including ourselves. Simply put, what would you do if you were God and were treated as he has been? 






Where did sin originate?


Genesis 3 is one of the most important chapters in the entire Bible because it explains the source of and solution for sin and death. The scene is the beautiful and perfect garden made by God for our first parents to live in together without sin and its many effects. There God lovingly and graciously speaks as a Father to Adam and Eve, giving them complete freedom to enjoy all of creation except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which was forbidden.

The entrance of the Serpent marks the beginning of chaos in creation. The Serpent is Satan according to Revelation 12:9 and 20:2. Satan began by tempting Eve to mistrust God’s Word by changing its meaning, just as he did when likewise tempting Jesus in Matthew 4:1–11. Rather than rebuking Satan, Eve entertained his lies (John 8:42–47) and was subsequently deceived by his crafty arguments (2 Cor. 11:3; 1 Tim. 2:14). Satan was so bold as to accuse God of being a liar and tempted the pride of Adam and Eve by declaring that if they disobeyed God they could in effect become his peer and gods themselves. Eve believed Satan over God and chose pride over humility by partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in sin against God.

Tragically, we further read that while all of this occurred Adam stood by silently, failing to lead his family in godliness. Adam then joined his wife in sin, which brought shame, distrust, and separation between Adam and Eve, and between our first parents and God. Adam was the representative and father of all mankind, and when he sinned and fell out of favor with God so did every person who would ever live (Rom. 5:12; 1 Cor. 15:21–22). Consequently, every person since Adam and Eve, other than Jesus, is a sinner, both by nature and choice (Pss. 51:5; 58:3; Isa. 53:6; 64:6; Rom. 3:23; 1 John 1:18).

God then came looking for the man, holding him responsible for the sinful condition of his family as its head. Rather than repenting of his sin, Adam essentially argued with God by blaming Eve for his sin, and blaming God for making Eve. Eve, too, failed to repent of her sin and blamed the Serpent for deceiving her.

God then cursed the parties involved as penalty for their sin. The serpent was cursed for what he had done and was told he would be defeated one day by the “seed” of the woman, who is Jesus according to Galatians 3:16. Theologians have long called the promise of Jesus in Genesis 3:15 the protoevangelion (first gospel), as God preaches the gospel for the first time, whereas his angel will the last time (Rev. 14:6).

The woman was given increased pain in childbirth and God notes that she will struggle with the feminist tendency to rule over her husband rather than submit to his leadership as God intended (note that the language here for Eve’s desire to rule over Adam sinfully is the same as sin’s desire to rule over Cain in Genesis 4:7). The man’s work became toil for him because God cursed the ground. This means that as men seek to work their jobs and pay their bills, they will continually be as frustrated with that which is supposed to be under their dominion as God is with the rebellious man who is likewise supposed to be under his dominion. Adam was then given the privilege of naming his wife as he did the animals, and he called her Eve, which means “life-giver.”

God then dealt graciously and kindly with the man and woman though they had sinned. God lovingly clothed Adam and Eve to protect them. God also banished the couple from the tree of life otherwise they would have lived forever in sin with no hope of redemption.

Today, though we still bear the image of God, it is marred and twisted by our pride and sin, which accounts for the tragedies and evils in the world that proceed from us. Our only hope is redemption through Jesus who was God and became a man to live without sin in our place, die in our place, and rise as the pattern for our future, when one day the seed of rebellion in us from Adam will be forever removed as we re-enter the second Eden in the new creation that will exceed that place in which Adam and Eve enjoyed perfect communion with God.






What is sin?


God created this world in a perfect state and upon the creation of the man and woman God declared his entire creation “very good” (Gen. 1:31). This intended state of perfect beauty in all things is described in the Old Testament as “Shalom” (Isa. 2:2–4; 11:1–9; 32:14–20; 43:1–12; 60:1–22; 65:17–25; Joel 2:24–29; 3:17–18). Surveying the condition of our planet and human life (including death, suffering, injustice, boredom, annoyances, miseries, fears, illness, pain, sorrow, grief, despair, nuisances, tragedies, etc.), it is obvious that something has gone terribly wrong. All of the individual and corporate shortcomings of God’s perfect intentions for all of creation qualify as sin itself, and/or the effects of sin.

Ecclesiastes 7:29 says it well, “God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.”

Sin includes both omission (where we do not do what we ought) and commission (where we do what we ought not do). Sin includes our thoughts, words, deeds, and motives. Sin includes godlessness, which is ignoring God and living as if there were no God, or as if one were God. Sin is invariably idolatry, which is the replacing of God with something or someone else—most often 
oneself. Sin includes individuals, communities, networks, and the like as individuals labor together for the cause of sin. Sin includes entire ways of thinking and acting such as racism and pornography. Sometimes a sin is also a crime, such as murder, and sometimes it is not, such as adultery. Sin can be done deliberately or in ignorance. The practice of a particular sin can occur once, regularly, or even frequently. Sin includes the breaking of God’s laws, just human laws, godly authority such as parents or pastors, and the violation of one’s own Spirit-led conscience. Sin includes perversion, which is using good things for evil purposes. Sin includes pollution, which is infecting good things with evil. Lastly, sin is the turning of a good thing (e.g., sex, work, money, comfort) into an ultimate thing so that it is worshiped as a god in place of God.

The Bible uses a constellation of images to explain sin: rebellion, folly, self-abuse, madness, treason, death, hatred, spiritual adultery, missing the mark, wandering from the path, idolatry, insanity, irrationality, pride, selfishness, blindness, deafness, a hard heart, a stiff neck, delusion, unreasonable, and self-worship.






How does Adam’s sin affect me personally?


Adam was both our father and representative. Subsequently, his sin affects us all. This includes inheriting a sin nature that leads to our sins as part of our corrupted nature that begins in our mother’s womb (Pss. 51:5; 58:3). As a result we are by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:3), all sinners (Rom. 5:12, 19), and destined to death (1 Cor. 15:21–22). The key New Testament text on this point is Romans 5:12–21. There Paul contrasts two categories of humanity—those who are under Adam in sin and those who are under Jesus in salvation. Paul’s point is that through Adam we die and through Jesus we live, through Adam we inherit damnation and through Jesus we inherit salvation, and through Adam we inherit guilt and through Jesus we inherit grace. Everyone is under Adam by birth or under Jesus by new birth.






What is total depravity?


Utter depravity is the erroneous belief that fallen human beings are as sinful as they possibly could be and in essence are no longer God’s image bearers but rather something more akin to an animal or a demon. Despite the fact we are sinners, the Bible repeatedly states that after the Fall we do retain the image of God (Gen. 5:1–3; 9:6; 1 Cor. 11:7; James 3:9). Included in this is a vestige of moral sense because of the conscience that God has given us as his image bearers (Rom. 2:14–15). Because people are made in God’s image with a conscience, the Bible does speak of some non-Christians who, while not holy and living to God’s glory, do some “good” things. Examples would include Abimelech (Genesis 20), Balaam (Numbers 22–24), Rahab (Joshua 2), Artaxerxes (Ezra 7; Nehemiah 2), and the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–37).
While people are not absolutely sinful (they could do evil things with greater degree and frequency), all people are totally depraved in that their every motive, word, deed, and thought is affected, stained, and marred by sin. This includes the mind (Eph. 4:18), the will (Rom. 6:16–17), the emotions (Titus 3:3), and the physical body (Rom. 8:10). The totality of a person is affected by sin and there is no aspect of their being that is not negatively impacted by sin.






How does God respond to sin?


Like a loving Father, God warned our first parents of the consequences of sin. Nonetheless, they and we have each chosen to sin against God. Because God is holy, he must deal with our sin, but because he is loving, he has chosen to do so in a way so that we could be forgiven and restored to right relationship with him. In so doing, God is honoring us by showing that we are made for more than sin and he expects more from us. A theologian named Plantinga has said that we should learn from God’s example: “We ought to pay evil doers, including ourselves, the ‘intolerable compliment’ of taking them seriously as moral agents, of holding them accountable for their wrongdoing. This is a mark of our respect for their dignity and weight as human beings” (Not The Way It’s Supposed to Be, 66).

In Genesis 3:15 God preached the first gospel to our first parents and promised the coming of Jesus, who would be harmed by Satan but would ultimately crush him and bring salvation to sinners. God then cast our first parents out of the Garden in love so that they would not live forever in a state of sin. Later in the storyline of the Bible we learn that Jesus did in fact come to save people from their sins, as Matthew 1:21 says. He did this by becoming the one who succeeded where the first Adam failed (1 Cor. 15:45). He died in our place for our sins and rose for our salvation. Amazingly, God not only judged sin in righteousness, but also bore its penalty himself as an act of love. He offers forgiveness and reconciliation by grace even though he is the offended person against whom we have all sinned. In so doing, he remains perfectly perfect and we are more wicked than we ever feared yet more loved than we ever hoped.


 



For Further Study


Plantinga, Jr., Cornelius. Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995.

Blocher, Henri. Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999.


]]> http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/04/28/fall-god-judges/feed/ 0 http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/04/20/image-god-loves/ http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/04/20/image-god-loves/#comments Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:35:15 +0000 Pastor Mark Driscoll http://voxpopnetwork.com/vision/2008/04/20/image-god-loves/

This week (Sunday, April 20) my sermon for the Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe sermon series examined the doctrine of imago dei, which means “image of God” in Latin. The question of human life is among the most important because it has implications for seemingly everything, from theology to sociology, history, biology, psychology, and the like. It is this doctrine that answers questions regarding how mankind is different from God the Creator and his creation. It also reveals why we can believe in such things as compassion and equality—truths that an evolutionary worldview simply cannot bring about.

By way of preface, it is important to note the historical development of the Western understanding of the human person, which is nearly entirely seen in terms of an autonomous individual rather than a member of a community. This is due to a historical transition in thought as outlined below:

• Augustine – the importance of the individual as demonstrated in his Confessions
• Rene Descartes – the autonomous, reasoning individual by his statement “I think therefore I am”
• Jonathan Edwards – the autonomous, reasoning individual improved by grace to God’s glory
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau – the autonomous, reasoning individual improved by self-acceptance and self-love so that we are to look in to self and not out to God
• William James – the autonomous, reasoning individual improved by self-acceptance and self-love aided by scientific psychology so that a trained professional and not God is ultimately our savior
• Abraham Maslow – the autonomous, reasoning individual improved by self-acceptance and self-love aided by scientific psychology to self-actualization/glory so that the purpose of my existence is not that God saves me to his glory but rather I save myself to my own glory

What does the Bible reveal about the origin of human life?

Ludwig Feuerbach (19th century) was an atheist who declared that God did not make us, but rather we made God as a figment of our imagination. Students of his thinking include Karl Marx (who applied this politically), Sigmund Freud (who applied this psychologically), and Friedrich Nietzsche (who applied this philosophically). Conversely, in Genesis 1–2 we see that we did not create God, but rather God created us with the following features:

• The Trinity created us.
• A personal God personally created us as persons (e.g., by his hands and not his words like the rest of creation).
• God’s creation of us was loving.
• God made us male and female, which means that while the genders are distinct they are equal.
• God made us originally very good (Gen. 1:31 cf. Eccles. 7:29).
• God blessed us.
• Unlike the animals made according to their “own kind,” we were made in the “image of God.”
• Because God is Trinity and made us in his image and likeness, we were made for relationships in the following categories:
  1. With God (theological)
  2. With self (psychological)
  3. With others (social)
  4. With creation (environmental)

What is the place of humans in relation to God and creation?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. (Ps. 8:5–8)

• Below God as a worshiper
• Above lower creation in dominion

Generally speaking, nearly every error in anthropology involves putting us up to be divine like God or pushing us down to be animals like the rest of creation. Only by seeing ourselves between God and the animals do we have both our humility and dignity.

Where does the Bible say that we are the image of God?

• Pre sin and fall

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” . . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:26–27)

• Post sin and fall

When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. (Gen. 5:1–3)

Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. (Gen. 9:6)

With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. (James 3:9)

What does it mean that we are God’s image?

• Moral likenesses – decision-making power, dominion over lower creation, social ability, emotions, communication, etc.
• Non-moral likenesses – intellect/reason, immortal, spirit, ability to create, etc.

Unshared Attributes that belong to God alone (called incommunicable)

• Omnipresence
• Omniscience
• Omnipotence
• Immutability </li
• Eternality
• Sovereignty

Shared Attributes that belong to God and us (called communicable)

• Spirit
• Holiness
• Love/Goodness
• Truth
• Justice/Righteousness
• Mercy
• Beauty

What are some common errors regarding the image of God?

The most common error regarding the image of God is to think that somehow we bear the image of God in only some part of us. We do not have a part of us that is God’s image while the rest of us is not. Instead, we are in totality (mind, body, soul, etc.) the image of God. When a part of us is thought to be the image of God, it is lifted up above the rest of our person in the following ways:

• Body alone – Atheism
• Mind alone – Rene Descartes
• Environmental victim – B. F. Skinner
• Soul alone – John Calvin
• Emotions alone – pop psychology and self-love

The problem with each of these is Romans 1:25, which says idolatry is worshiping anything created. By taking an aspect of our being over and above the rest, we are guilty of worshiping created things such as our body, mind, emotions, soul, or culture instead of the Creator God who makes all things.

Who has best imaged God?

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Cor. 4:4)

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. (Col. 1:15)

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. (Heb. 1:3)

How do we image God?

• In Life
  

  For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (Rom. 8:29)

  Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Eph. 4:22–24)

  Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. (Col. 3:9–10)

• In Death

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Cor. 15:49)

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. (Phil. 3:20–21)

What is a life that images God?

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Cor. 3:18)

A life that images God literally mirrors the glory of Jesus in the way that Moses mirrored the glory of God in the Old Testament.

1. By submitting to God and godly authority – e.g., 1 Cor. 11:7 (“For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.”)
2. By worshiping God – receive revelation, interpret, worship
3. By representing God – e.g., Daniel 3
4. By serving God – advancing his kingdom and making culture
5. By loving all races and peoples, including our enemies, because we are all from one set of parents
6. By respecting all human life, especially the weak, oppressed, sick, elderly, and unborn
7. By refusing to live autonomous lives and contending for community

For further study on the doctrine of imago dei:

• Grenz, Stanley J. The Social God and the Relational Self: A Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.
• Hoekema, Anthony A. Created in God’s Image. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986.
• Smail, Tom. Like Father, Like Son: The Trinity Imaged in Our Humanity. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006.
• Volf, Miroslav. After Our Likeness: The Church As the Image of the Trinity. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997.
]]> http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2008/04/20/image-god-loves/feed/ 0