I Peter 1: Christians Love the Brethren

Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another with a pure heart fervently; Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides for ever. I Peter 1:22-23

These verses come on the heels of, and in the context of, the text's discussion of the necessity of being holy "in all manner of conversation," and invoking the Old Testament commandment to "be you holy, for I the LORD your God am holy".

What's being holy all about? It's about loving the brethren. It's impossible to read the New Testament much at all and miss this; the New Testament brings it up time... and time... and time... and time... and time again.

But take careful note of the first part of verse 22, and in particular the leading words, Seeing you have. The verse does not implore the reader to purify their souls, like many Christian Life-type books do. The verse assumes that the reader's soul has already been purified, and how? Three things that we absolutely, positively cannot divorce one another:

1. In obeying the truth;
2. Through the Spirit;
3. Unto unfeigned love of the brethren.

It's great, because there's something there for non-Calvinists* to like and something for Calvinists to like! (The entire New Testament is like that, actually.) The non-Calvinists (or anti-Calvinists) can latch onto In obeying the truth; see, that's something I'm responsible to do! The Calvinists can sink their teeth into Through the Spirit; see, that's something God has to do for me!

So, which side is right?

They both are. So don't worry, you're allowed to fellowship with both and be close friends with both. You're even encouraged to do so!

* Many Calvinists use the word 'Armenian' to refer, erroneously and usually derisively, to anyone that is not a five-point Calvinist. It is, I promise, possible to be neither a Calvinist nor an Armenian.

But let's move on to the really important part here: Unto unfeigned love of the brethren. That was the commandment of Christ! (See John 15.) That's how the whole world can look at someone and see Jesus Christ in them--because he loves the brethren. I don't mean pretends to love the brethren so he can get something out of the deal; and I certainly don't mean pretends to love the brethren because he doesn't want to hurt their feelings; and I definitely don't mean pretends to love the brethren because he knows that's what God expects of him, but behind a brother's back complains about him and thinks about how to thwart him.

Trust me, friends: I've done that so many times that with a grimace on my face I have to admit I'm qualified as an expert on the subject. God has opened me a lot to this truth--I think that's a better way of putting it than 'he's opened a lot of this truth to me', as if it were the truth that were locked--and I'm trying to step forward by faith, drop the pretense and really love the brethren. Think of them before myself, and above myself. Be thrilled to take the lowest seat in the dirtiest corner, since it means everyone else gets a better seat, and not because everyone else will see me doing it and think better of me. Ah, how deceptive pride is!

But, back to the verse we're talking about. The Bible starts from the assumption that our souls are purified, and not only that, but purified unto unfeigned love of the brethren, and then delivers the commandment: Love one another with a pure heart, fervently.

The way it reads, it's really not so much a commandment as it is a reminder. The more I read the Bible, and I mean really read it and ponder what I'm reading, the more natural it becomes to maintain a right spirit not just with God, but with fellow men. It's the miracle the Spirit continually works in a man's soul through the powerful Word of God, actually changing his heart through the Word he's internalizing.

So, you see, the Calvinists and the non-Calvinists are both right here. Only God can really change my heart, but I have to step up and immerse myself in his Word to receive the promise of that change, worked in by its power. God's really something, isn't he?

Deuteronomy 21: Women's Rights

Right now I'm reading through Deuteronomy, and kind of in an Old Testament frame of mind, just reading through the law, taking it all in, thinking it all over. It really is an enlightening window into the character of God and of the early nation of Israel. The commentary here isn't really much in the way of spiritual enlightenment, but I'm recording what comes to mind as I think my way through these fascinating passages. -- Justin

When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God has delivered them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire to her, that you would have her to your wife; Then you shall bring her home to your house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in your house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that you shall go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. Deuteronomy 21:10-13

It has always been, and remains to this day in the less advanced world, standard for conquering soldiers to rape the women of conquered cities. It's always been considered one of the spoils that the victorious soldiers get to enjoy by right, like money and property.

God never allowed his people to do any such thing. He laid out this part of the law to specifically address this. If you're particularly attracted to a conquered (now enslaved woman) and just have to have her, then you have to marry her and give her a wife's full rights. You may not just force her and then leave her to her slavery.

These verses dictate that if you really decide you want to marry a captured slave girl, then you have to do these things. Shaving her head and paring her nails is a symbolic gesture separating her both from her former home (and its religion) and her bondage; and then she has to be permitted a month to mourn for her lost family and home, which a slave girl is not allowed to do. And verse 14 goes on to dictate that if you decide you don't want her after all after you've married her, you may not sell her back into slavery; she is permanently a free woman. You're allowed to divorce her and send her away (God also, remember, permitted the Jews to do this with a Hebrew wife, because of the hardness of their hearts), but you can't keep her as a slave or give her to anybody else to have as a slave. Once free, forever free.

It seems odd to me that God even allowed the Jews to marry captured heathen women; after all, didn't he command them not to marry outside the nation at all? Actually, I'm not sure whether he commanded that or not; I know he forbade them from marrying women from the specific nations God ordered Israel to annihilate, but whether he forbade them from marrying a woman from one of the nations God ordered them to simply conquer (and keep the females for slaves)... I don't know. Can anyone help me out on that one?

Either way, though, this strikes me as a precept God permitted Moses to give because of the hardness of the hearts of the Jews, just like the allowance for divorce (which God never approves of and which only results in a lifetime of problems) or marriage to multiple wives (ditto).

The Wrath and Love of God

But of the cities of these people, which the LORD your God does give you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes: But you shall utterly destroy them; the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD your God has commanded you: That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done to their gods; so should you sin against the LORD your God. Deuteronomy 20:16-18

This makes us all uncomfortable; I confess it makes me uncomfortable. It makes worldlings seethe in rage, but we'll come back to that.

There's a disconnect in modern Christianity between the "Old Testament God" and the "New Testament God," as though those were two separate persons. After all, the Book teaches Christians to be a relentlessly peaceful people. If someone steals your coat, give him your cloak. If someone cracks you in the face, turn aside so he can crack the other side of your face, too. If someone throws you into prison, sing in your bonds.

The Old Testament, and in particular the books of the law (Exodus-Deuteronomy) stand quite in contrast. Peace is still the goal and the end result; all the young Jewish nation is about at the time of Deuteronomy is warring so as to achieve peace and live in peace in a nation of their own. God promised them peace, if they would only obey him--and promised them war and conquest if they would not.

But first, Israel had a war to fight. Their promised land was inhabited by numerous small nations, mostly decended from Ishmael, that were not about to pack up and leave or to pay Israel to leave them alone. This was according to God's design; though the Book doesn't specify it, I have little doubt God rose up leaders of those nations and hardened their hearts just as he had with Pharoah, for God intended to destroy those nations, and Israel was the weapon with which he intended to do it. It would be a test for Israel, too; would they obey their God?

Back to the point: God commanded Israel, clearly and repeatedly, to kill everything that breathes in those heathen nations he named. The soldiers of Israel were commanded by God to kill every woman, kill every aged person, kill every child and every baby in every city they came to in those nations.

I don't know about you, but thinking about that--writing it, just now--makes my stomach turn. I don't know whether I'd have the heart to do that, even if commanded by the God I love and serve. I would hope I'd do by faith whatever God told me to do, but... honestly, I don't know. Couldn't know, unless it happened. I rejoice that God no longer requires any such thing of his people.

The world was different in 1000 BC, but God was not, and that's the point we have to understand and appreciate--this is exactly the same God that loved the world so much he gave his holy Son to die a bloody death to redeem us all from sin. The dichotomy of it is startling. God hates sin so much that these long-apostate nations... these nations did a lot of evil, especially in connection to their worship of false gods. They had made up their minds for good; they were beyond hope of redemption by that point. I know that simply because God decreed destruction upon them. They had their chance; they utterly rejected God, and God utterly destroyed them.

God hates sin. The word 'abomination' that appears so frequently in the Old Testament is a very, very strong word. Horribly disgusting. Repulsive. Sickening. These people are abominable, God told his beloved chosen nation, and I want you to kill them all, wipe them off the planet. Let's not forget that God had already done this himself; besides the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrha, God with his own hand killed every man, woman and child on Earth, save only eight, on account of how terrible their sins had become.

The same God still sits on the throne. I think it does us very well, when struggling with our own sin, to read these Old Testament passages and remember, really remember, just how much God hates sin. That same wrath that has, many times in history, laid utter waste to entire cities, nations, and once even the entire world rightly should fall upon you when you sin. Should rightly have fallen upon you long ago, when you were yet in your sins.

But it didn't. The terrible, burning wrath of God fell squarely upon Jesus Christ the Son of God, who stepped in our place and took upon himself the full terribleness of the blow. His violently shed blood redeemed my soul and made it possible for me--a heathen, abominable to God, fully deserving bloody death and fiery hell--to become once again what man was created to be: A child of God. Beloved. Accepted.
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I don't think even many fundamental Christians today really appreciate the fullness of what Christ's sacrifice is really all about, because I don't think many of us read the Old Testament much. Or if we do, we just kind of glance it over and never really think about it, and check off the chapters on our Bible calendar.

I'm not an Old Testament adherent; I'm not a Judaizer; I believe the Book is very clear (book of Hebrews, especially) that the Mosaic law, which was meant to teach us how unable and unworthy we are, is null and void to the Christian, replaced by what I call the law of Christ, consisting of two commandments: Love God, and love your neighbor. But the Old Testament is very important to our understanding of who God is. When you explain the gospel to a person that's never held a Bible before, you really can't start with John 3:16 or with ten selected verses pulled out of their contexts in Romans. You have to start with Genesis 1:1, and follow the chronology as God has laid it out for us.

How can a Christian that loves God and loves righteousness read and understand Deuteronomy and the books surrounding it, see just how God reacts to sin, and be anything but deathly afraid of sinning? This is a big reason why the New Testament Scriptures work from the assumption that Christians don't, as a matter of habit, sin. (I John 2:4, to pick one of many examples: "He that says, I know him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." That's in the Book, folks.)

You can't take the Old Testament and ignore the New, either! The very wonderful thing about appreciating the Old Testament is that it opens up whole new worlds of awe and love, when we consider what God did for us in giving Christ as the sacrifice to atone for my sins. When we say we're "saved", we mean it. Saved not just from hell to come; that's too narrow. Saved from the terrible wrath of God that comes upon all the children of disobedience.

How can we do anything but love with all our hearts the God that, even when we hated him and sinned brashly against him, loved his creation enough to give his life to reconcile us to himself?

And have you ever considered just how horrible the spectacle must be, from the point of view of an eternally holy and eternally loving God, to watch his beloved creation sin against him, hate him, spit in his face? Would God that none of us ever even comes close to knowing what that feels like.

We also do well to remember that the same God that dictated Deuteronomy 20 to Israel and for us is still God right now. The haters of God that sit in power in this world, the heathens that would kill people for being Christians or Jews--God is incredibly, incredibly longsuffering in giving them ample time to repent of their sins--but God's rage against sin is white-hot and will fall upon the nations that set themselves up as his enemies.

Monday Potpourri: 8 September 2008, Part II

This one revolves around John 16.

And you now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man takes from you. John 16:22

There are a couple possible interpretations of this statement, depending on whether you think the Lord is referring to the near future (he saw the disciples again shortly after his Resurrection) or in the far future (yet to come).

That's not what I want to comment on right now, though; it's something else this verse just happened to remind me of. You know, it's the joy of the Christian that separates him from everyone else in the world, and that joy no one can really take from him, not if he's really aware of his filial relationship to God and what Christ's sacrifice has done for him. They can take our money and our land and our safety and our freedom and even our bodies and even our children, but despite all that, they can never take our joy. God has forbidden Satan and his followers from taking that. Many martyrs have died singing.

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Jesus' last words with his disciples before his death must have had a profound effect on John. Christ's words recorded in John 15:10-12:

If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken to you, that your joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This is my commandment, That you love one another, as I have loved you. John 15:10-12

These words of the Lord's are practically quoted by John also in I John (which was written about ten years before the Gospel account); they're perhaps John's strongest theme in that letter, and his quoted purpose for writing it ("These things I write to you, that your joy may be full.")

Parenthetically... I hear people wonder aloud, 'How do I abide in Christ's love?' Well-meaning preachers constantly encourage Christians to abide in Christ. But they never really touch on how to do that; in fact, many of them explain that, really, I can't abide in Christ, on my own, but I have to just pray that Christ will keep my heart, and etc. That results in circular reasoning; Christ commanded me to abide in his love, which I do by asking him to keep me in his love, but he told me I have to keep myself in his love... it goes round and round.

The Book offers no such confusion. The Book couldn't possibly be clearer: You stay in the love of Christ by keeping his commandments. His commandments are few and not difficult or frustrating; in fact, the only commandment Christ attached to this particular statement was that of verse 12, That you love one another, as I loved you. That's the essence of the Christian life; that's the commandment to keep. Do that and you're sure to please God. It's the most godlike thing anyone can do, loving the brethren in particular and all your fellow men in general.

So, short version: Want to abide in Christ? Love your fellows. See, people all over the world, in every conceivable religion (definitely including the various strains of Christianity) are constantly looking for religious things to do to please God, because it's easier, or at least less troublesome, than changing their heart. God goes directly to the heart.

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You read the Gospels, and... well, consider the Lord's prayer, recorded by John in chapter 18.* John provided a very detailed account of the words Jesus spoke to the Father, and he's quite specific about them; and remember, when John wrote this account, he was recalling a prayer that the Lord uttered in John's hearing nearly 60 years before. That requires a wholly supernatural memory. Now, it's possible that God, when John was in his nineties, provided him a special revelation so he could record the words of God for the Book. But I wonder whether this crystal-clear memory of John's (and Matthew's) wasn't something the Holy Spirit kept constantly fresh in his mind throughout his life and ministry. What a motivation that vivid recollection would be!

Monday Potpourri: 8 September 2008, Part I

Semi-random thoughts that I wrote down as they came to mind yesterday, while I listened to preaching from James 3 and John 16, among other passages...

The tongue can no man tame (James 3). We can say that that means that we have to submit total control over our heart to God so he can control it. While technically correct, that's hard to comprehend on a practice level; how would I do that?, one may reasonably ask. (It's not helpful to suggest to a drowning man that he try treading water.)

There's a more basic reality in play that this passage and others (particularly in Proverbs) sheds light on: The tongue inevitably exposes what's in the mind. Look at Matthew 12:34, for instance:

O generation of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say to you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account of in the day of judgment. For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned." Matthew 12:34-36

Words are important. The lesson here is: No matter how hard you try to do otherwise, eventually your tongue will make known to those around you what's really in your heart. The tongue will always do this; no man can prevent his tongue from expressing what's on his mind. Don't waste your time or effort trying to hold back your tongue while you secretly entertain evil thoughts; it won't work. If you want to stop speaking evil, stop thinking evil. James 3 drives straight to that very point.

He who controls the rudder controls the ship. Even so, to control the tongue is to control the whole body. After all, nothing reaches the tongue without first going through the brain; so indeed, to gain control over your tongue forces you to gain control over your thoughts.

As James 3:2 points out, if a man doesn't offend with his tongue, he doesn't offend even within his own thoughts, either. The two go hand in hand.

Look at James 1:26, also: The man that pretends to be religious has to lie to himself before he can go and use his tongue to lie to someone else.

No fountain produces both sweet and bitter water (drinkable and undrinkable). If you're using the same mouth to bless one person and curse another, one or the other is an insincere lie - and I bet I can guess which one it is. Your mouth is going to betray what kind of heart you really have, what your outlook on life and people really is.

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On another, kind of related subject... the word "dominion" comes from the same root as "dominate." It means to have total control over something. So it is with men and animals: men are simply superior to animals in every way, and so have total control (domination) over them. There isn't (nor has there ever been) a creature on earth that man can't tame with enough effort or that man couldn't wipe off the planet if he collectively so chose.

We men should understand that animals' relationship to us in this regard is the same as our relationship to God.

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Because of sin man lost dominion over his own tongue, we might say. But because of Christ's sacrifice, he can get it back! Once again we note that taming your tongue is inseparable from taming your body and mind. The worldly man, controlled by the lusts of the flesh, has no chance at that. We need the Holy Spirit's power to really gain control of ourselves.

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From whence come wars and fightings among you? Do they not come from here, even of your lusts that war in your members? James 4:1

The source of all war, really the source of all human conflict on whatever scale, is lust. Human lust is never really fulfilled, not really fulfillable; whatever you lust for--and we all lust for something--you're going to want more and more and more of it, no matter how much you obtain.

You adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. James 4:4

He who wants to be God's friend and the world's friend is not only deceiving himself and others, he is an adulterer--the ultimate of all types of liars and deceivers, really. Men don't like it, but the Book leaves no gray area about this; if you're the world's friend, you're God's enemy. Period. Much of the book of I John expounds this same theme.