Love God by Celebrating with Friends!

Examining notions of piety, Robert Kolb notes that western culture has, at times, made the definition of ‘devotion’ unnecessarily narrow.

When the distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ is understood as unreal, and when implications of God’s ownership of everything in creation are fully calculated, then any task is a part of divine service.

Washing the dishes or managing a global corporation, studying algebra or pulling weeds from a garden, all these activities are, and can be conceptualized as, divine service.

The Western world has generally thought piety consists above all in sacred works, in works which make a display of religiosity and holiness of an external sort.

To the contrary, Kolb informs us, people who follow Jesus

have exercised their piety in child care and making good shoes, in helping fellow workers and neighbors meet crises and endure hardships, in celebrating births and weddings.

‘Good works’ might be a much broader category than some traditions allow. Attending a party could in fact be an act of personal devotion to Jesus.

Properly construed, one’s entire life and all the activities of daily living could, and should, be acts of service to God. Shopping for groceries and washing clothes, playing a game of golf or balancing one’s stock market portfolio are acts of stewardship.

If the earth and everything in it (Psalm 24:1) are God’s property, than every action we take is an interaction with God’s property. God has assigned the stewardship of His property to us (Genesis 1:28).

We are continually interfacing with God’s world, which makes every act a potential act of worship. Our challenge to move from ‘potential’ to ‘actual’ and see every moment of our lives as a moment of piety and devotion.

Lydia’s Heart: Jesus Does What We Can’t

The mystery of the human heart was captured by Jeremiah: “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things. It is incurable. No one can understand how deceitful it is.”

The respective Hebrew words for ‘heart, mind, soul, spirit’ have semantic fields which vary somewhat from their English counterparts, but Jeremiah’s point is made, whether it be about the ‘mind’ or the ‘heart.’

Jeremiah’s analysis about the intrinsic sin found in people is confirmed by other texts. Ecclesiastes notes that “the hearts of mortals are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live.”

The ‘madness’ in Ecclesiastes is less about rationality and sanity, and more about morality.

It is clear, then, that human beings cannot overcome themselves and their nature. Happily, Jesus intervenes, as we see in Luke’s account of Lydia’s conversion:

On the day of rest — a holy day we went out of the city to a place along the river where we thought Jewish people gathered for prayer. We sat down and began talking to the women who had gathered there. A woman named Lydia was present. She was a convert to Judaism from the city of Thyatira and sold purple dye for a living. She was listening because the Lord made her willing to pay attention to what Paul said. When Lydia and her family were baptized, she invited us to stay at her home. She said, “If you are convinced that I believe in the Lord, then stay at my home.” She insisted. So we did.

Luke indicates that Lydia received the Gospel because “the Lord opened her heart.” This is the activity of the Holy Spirit.

So it is that Luther, commenting on Psalm 51, writes that “the forgiveness of sins depends simply on the promise which faith accepts - not on our works or merits.” Forgiveness is contingent upon God’s promise, “not on our works or merits.”

Without God’s promise, there is no forgiveness, and His promise alone suffices to forgive. The promise is a precondition which is both necessary and sufficient. We do not accept His promise, but rather the faith which the Holy Spirit implants in us accepts the promise.

God’s activity is grace: God is not an immobile object, but rather constantly in action - and much of that action takes place inside people. As Luther phrases it,

Grace is the continuous and perpetual operation or action through which we are grasped and moved by the Spirit of God so that we do not disbelieve His promises and that we think and do whatever is favorable and pleasing to God. The Spirit is something living, not dead. Just as life is never idle, but as long as it is present, it is doing something - for even in sleep life is not idle, but either the body is growing, as in children, or other works of life are felt in breathing and the pulse - so the Holy Spirit is never idle in the pious, but is always doing something that pertains to the kingdom of God.

As God says, in the present tense, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” This statement, in Isaiah’s prophecy, indicates a perpetual present (cf. the letter to the Hebrews: “as long as it is called ‘today’”).

Keeping our focus on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2), we see that He is always doing something, both inside us and in the world at large. Peter reminds us that God’s work is done through us, not by us: the followers of Jesus are “carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

Jesus at Work in Us: He Does the “Heavy Lifting”

As a follower of Jesus, I am constantly reminded that not only am I unable to do ‘good works,’ but also that I can’t even want to do good. Born as I am with a flawed and imperfect human nature, my best efforts are impure, and my most noble desires are still somehow subverted by my innately selfish tendencies.

The Good News (note the capital letters!) is that God sends His Holy Spirit into me - into my heart, mind, soul, and spirit - to override my human nature. So it is that Paul, writing in his letter to the Philippians, indicates that actions that seem to be our actions are actually God’s actions. It is God who produces in us the desires and actions that please Him:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

It is God, and not me, who first creates the sanctified “will” inside me - the desire to what is good - and then who is working within me that I act in order to fulfill His good purpose. So it is not me who desires to do good, but rather God causing that desire within me. It is not me who does actions that please Him, but rather God causing me to act thus.

As Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, “I no longer live, but” Jesus “lives in me.” Therefore anything good - desires or actions - is attributed to God.

Likewise, in the letter to the Hebrews, the author of that text informs us that when we “do His will,” it is not only because He has first “equipped us,” but also because He is “working in us.”

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight.

First God equips me, then He works in me that which is pleasing in His sight.

When Paul writes to the Ephesians that God “is over everything, through everything, and in everything,” and when he writes to the Colossians that Jesus “is everything and in everything,” these texts show us that God is everywhere and always active: when Paul writes that God is “through” everything, it means that He is active “by means of” everything.

So it is that the Psalmist sees God as active. God has “pity on me,” wipes “out my rebellious acts,” washes “me thoroughly from my guilt,” cleanses “me from my sin,” hands “down justice,” teaches “me wisdom,” purifies “me from sin,” washes me, wipes “out all that I have done wrong,” creates “a clean heart in me,” renews “a faithful spirit within me,” restores “the joy of” His “salvation to me,” provides “me with a free spirit,” and rescues “me from guilt” (cf. Psalm 51).

Commenting on this Psalm, Luther writes:

Grace means the favor by which God accepts us, forgiving sins, and justifying freely through Christ.

God accepts us - even though we are unacceptable. We do not accept God because we cannot accept God: we lack that ability. God plants the good impulse into us. It is a gift from Him.

Powerfully and Consistently Proclaiming God’s Grace

The early church - even the earliest church, as recorded in the New Testament and the in the writings of those who personally knew the Apostles - wrestled with some of the same questions which face modern Jesus followers.

One riddle, then and now, is the apparent tension between Ezekiel 18 and Exodus 34. The former chapter argues that God does not punish children for their father’s sins, while the latter passage seems to imply precisely that. Ezekiel writes:

The word of the Lord came to me: “What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge’? As I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.

Several questions are in order: Is it more accurate to say that God ‘punishes’ or that He ‘allows the consequences of one’s sin to be felt’? Can we say that God habitually ameliorates the just and proper consequences of sin?

In chapter 34 of Exodus, God speaks of Himself in the third person:

Lord, Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.

Does this passage from Exodus indicate that God allows the natural consequences of sin to spread beyond the sinner? If one individual sins, will the negative effects of his transgression spread beyond himself and impact others?

One may imagine here various concrete scenarios: one in which a parent neglects his child. The parent sins and the child suffers the consequences of the parent’s sin. But this would not mean that God is punishing the child or holding the child responsible for the parent’s sin.

Indeed, the central idea for all of Ezekiel chapter 18 is that God holds each person accountable for his own sin, and not for the sins of others, and that therefore, death is inevitable (cf. Gen 3:3, 3:19; Romans 6:23). While Ezekiel is clear in this chapter that all must die, the next question is whether the New Testament regards this as the physical death which everyone must endure (Hebrews 9:27) or an eternal death.

All humans receive a physical death, both as the natural consequence of their own personal sin, and as an effect of the sins of others. The latter heading includes both injury done directly by a concrete identifiable sin (the neglected child) and injury done by the circumstance of being a member of a fallen race living in a broken world.

Ezekiel chapter 18, then, sets the stage for the Gospel. It explains (cf. Romans 3:23) that we need a Savior, and why all humans are lost without Jesus: we are unavoidably mortal. God defends His stance: death is a reasonable consequence for sin. But He also indicates that He will ameliorate this consequence.

Both the New Testament church and the modern church face, in this interpretive question, various common misunderstandings. Ezekiel would have in no way considered himself to be stating that humans can work themselves up into a state of perfection, and thereby avoid either this world’s physical death or the next world’s eternal death.

Ezekiel’s command to “turn and live” (i.e., repent and live) plays on the messages of both judgment and messianic salvation in the preceding chapter. In Ezekiel 17, God recounts the consequences of the people’s sin - that they were taken into the Babylonian captivity - and His messianic plan to rescue them - the messianic images of the dry tree and the green tree.

That one may suffer the consequences for the sin others is seen in the Babylonian Captivity, as those who had been faithful to the Lord were taken along with those who’d worshiped idols. God’s amelioration of His sentence upon mankind - His lessening of the natural consequence of sin - is also seen in the messianic promise.

The text of Ezekiel chapter 18 is not, then, a denial of the doctrine of original sin, but rather an explanation and example of that doctrine.

Among the many heresies confronting the early church and the modern church is the denial of original sin. This error can take various forms, but remains essentially the same. So it was that the early church (Acts 2:23) proclaimed that it was “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” that Jesus died and rose again, in order to fulfill “the promise of the Holy Spirit” which the prophet Joel had explained.

So it is that Peter quotes David, who “saw” that God’s plan caused it to be that “my flesh also will dwell in hope.” David understood that the only natural fate was for God to “abandon my soul to Hades.” But a supernatural fate arose through God’s messianic intervention, when God ameliorated the natural consequences which David so clearly saw.

The modern church, likewise, understands that natural law predicts temporal or eternal death as a natural consequence, both for committed sin and as an effect of other sin. Scripture rejects any argument which attempts to use natural law as a justification for denying original sin and its effects: hence God’s defence of His justice in Ezekiel 18.

The New Testament church spoke from Scripture and it spoke to its contemporary circumstances, as Jaroslav Pelikan writes:

When the church confessed what it believed and taught, it did so in answer to attacks from within and from without the Christian movement. The relations of the church fathers to Judaism and to pagan thought affected much of what they had to say about the various doctrinal issues before them.

The New Testament church initially saw itself as an extension of Judaism, and when it spoke to Judaism, sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing, it saw such a conversation as intramural. As a Jewish institution, the New Testament church saw its conversation with pagan philosophers as one with “others,” sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing.

The modern church similarly carries on conversations, agreeing and disagreeing, with a variety social and cultural patterns.

At all times, the followers of Jesus see in Scripture an analysis of the human condition (Jeremiah 17) which sees man as broken beyond any natural repair:

The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart
and test the mind,
to give every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his deeds.”

The Lord calculates the fitting consequence for our actions. Our actions emerge from our heart and its status: what we do emerges from who we are. We are sinners. The only natural or reasonable consequence is death.

God violates both nature and reason. He gives us a supernatural rescue because no natural rescue is possible. He saves us when any rational calculation would reveal that we deserve no salvation. God’s lavish generosity is unreasonable in the extravagance of the powerful love which He pours out on broken and undeserving people.

Truth and Doctrine

The simplest way to understand the word ‘doctrine’ is to know that it is what is believed. If you answer the question, “What do you believe?” then you’ve stated your doctrine.

To make the answer slightly more complex, we can say that ‘doctrine’ is what you ‘believe, teach, and publicly state.’

Your doctrine is correct to the extent that it corresponds to reality. The reader will recognize the correspondence theory of truth at work here. There are other ways to explore the truth, or lack thereof, behind a doctrine.

According to ‘coherence’ view of truth, a proposition is true to the extent that is does not contradict another proposition which is part of the same body of propositions. This understanding of truth is founded upon the idea of a consistent system of propositions.

The coherence theory of truth might perhaps work well for academic disciplines like mathematics, which, especially when reduced to a pure formalism, essentially is a systematic set of propositions which do not contradict each other and which sometimes imply or entail each other.

But for the academic discipline of theology, or any discourse about spiritual topics, the ‘coherence’ theory of truth might not be well-suited. If it is axiomatic to spiritual thought that some of its subject-matter may well be beyond the ability of the human mind to grasp or understand, then ‘consistency’ may be difficult to define or detect.

What it means to ‘cohere’ and what it might mean to be ‘consistent’ could become unclear when dealing with persons and things which exist outside of time and space. Seeming contradictions - paradoxes - might arise when a finite mind attempts to understand an infinite one.

In addition the correspondence theory of the truth and the coherence theory of truth, a third understanding of truth is commonly found in introductory lectures on philosophy. The ‘pragmatic’ approach to truth explains that a proposition is true to the extent that it is useful, to the extent that an individual mind can apply it to concrete situations and thereby gain predictable significant results.

This ‘pragmatic’ view of truth, however, is less helpful when dealing with metaphysical entities, and ‘practicality’ might obtain variant definitions in spiritual contexts.

The correspondence theory of truth, then, is most useful for dealing with doctrine. Doctrine changes over time, and these changes might imply that it becomes hopefully more, but sometimes less, accurate, i.e., that it corresponds more or less to the reality which it claims to express.

As the propositions of natural science change over time, when attempts are made to refine its statements and bring them into closer correspondence with the physical phenomena which the science hopes to both explain and describe, so also doctrine can be refined. In neither case does a change in the proposition assert a change in the state of affairs.

A certain momentum or inertia of ideas accumulates over time. In the context of an official ecclesiastical institutional doctrine, as contrasted with private individual beliefs, such inertia can be seen as ‘tradition.’ As Jaroslav Pelikan writes,

To interpret the development of doctrine in the ancient church, it is necessary to pay primary attention to the condition and growth of the church’s faith and worship, to its exegesis of the Bible, and to its defense of the tradition against heresy.

While the understanding of truth is understood as an abstract principle, its change, development, and growth are subject to historical conditions: personalities, events, discoveries, and even emotional reactions.

Like truths of geometry, which are timeless and pristine in their abstraction but subject also the vagaries of physical concreteness and to the finite minds of their discoverers, so also theological truth, in the words of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, is “known in part” and “seen dimly.”

We must learn to be content with an imperfect and incomplete knowledge, which, however, is as good as it can be in this world, is promised to be sufficient, and is well worth preserving and defending.

Maranatha - Past and Present

The word ‘Maranatha’ is a linguistic oddity. Appearing only once in the text of the New Testament, it can be interpreted as an appeal: “Lord, come quickly!” But it can also be read as an indicative: “The Lord has arrived!”

This word has a broad semantic field, like the phrase “Prepare the way for the Lord!” (Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1), and applies to multiple situations in salvation history - Heilsgeschichte - and to the personal life of the contemporary believer as well as to the community of Jesus followers today and in the future.

Luther notes that “The kingdom of God certainly comes by itself without our prayer, but we pray” (Jude 1:14; Revelation 22:20) “that it may come to us also.” The arrival of God and the arrival of His kingdom are largely synonymous, and are not one-time events in the history of the world, but happen at various times, at various places, and in various ways.

Luther also writes that “God's kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity.” So the followers of Jesus, motivated by the Holy Spirit, worship God who has already arrived and yet who is to come (Revelation 1:8, 4:8).

When God arrived, and when He arrives, what are the results of His advent? This is described at length: new life, wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, and judicial decisions favoring the poor (Isaiah 11:1-9); and an assertive response to injustice and evil (Revelation 19:9-16).

The past and present of ‘Maranatha’ parallel the proverb that Jesus followers live in the ‘already’ and simultaneously in the ‘not yet.’ For this reason, the liturgy features ‘Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again’ and ‘Proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes’ again.

So we have three thoughts which are tightly connected: ‘Maranatha’ as past and future; the ‘not yet’ and the ‘already;’ and ‘prepare the way’ as a leitmotif throughout the Heilsgeschichte.

From the Israelites leaving the Babylonian Captivity, to John preaching in the Judean Desert prior to the public ministry of Jesus, to the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, to the annual observation of the season of Advent, to the daily welcoming of Jesus into the hearts of individuals, to missionary work around the globe and around the corner, to the arrival of Jesus at the end of time, these three concepts shape the entire history of the world.

The range of imagery associated with Jesus asks us to envision receiving Jesus as a Lion and as a Lamb, on a horse and on a donkey, as peaceful and warlike, on clouds and on a dusty Judean road, as a teacher and as a counselor, and as personified wisdom. This mind-boggling spectrum of concepts is the result of trying to capture the idea of an infinite God in the finite language of human reason.

Our waiting is not a mere passive existence; Malachi (3:1) tells us that we “seek” the Lord, an active verb. As Greg Finke writes:

So wherever you go, whether to the ends of the earth or just to work, if there are people there, you can be sure Jesus is up to something redemptive. His purpose is to redeem. His goal is full restoration. This is what Jesus does. He doesn’t get distracted. He doesn’t veer off course. His timing is always precise because his redemptive mission is always what he’s up to. Different people. Different timing. Different stories and pathways. Sure. But this is what he is up to all the time.

So Jesus has already arrived, and He’s going to arrive. But in both the past and the future, His arrival serves His larger purposes of saving, redeeming, and forgiving.

Hosanna - Advent and Lent

The word ‘Hosanna’ originally meant “help us!” but later came to be an expression of praise. This paradoxical dialectic reflects a moment when desperation turns to celebration: when our ugent panicked need dissolves as we see our salvation approaching.

In the history of nations, as well as in the story of each individual human life, symbols of great distress become symbols of great joy, when that distress is relieved.

The ultimate instance of this two-sided symbolism, when what could have been the worst disaster becomes the greatest triumph in a pivotal moment, is the cross: it is a symbol of shame and horrific pain; but after the resurrection, it is the symbol of liberation and forgiveness.

The word ‘Advent’ means ‘arrival’ and points simultaneously to the birth of Jesus, two thousand years ago, and to His future “advent” at the end of time. For this reason, Jesus followers speak of living in the “already” but at the same time in the “not yet.”

Between these two advents, Jesus arrives many times, in the hearts of individuals, and in the grand events of history. The notion of preparing a way for the Lord (Isaiah 40:3) applied first when He rescued the captives from Babylon, then for the start of His public ministry at the time of John the Baptist, and later for His celebrated entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

Preparing the way for the Lord continues every year during the season of Advent, and every day in the hearts of individuals. Finally, the way is being prepared for the His arrival at the end of time.

Advent was originally a season of fasting, but in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has become also a time of celebration. Both are appropriate; both are contained in the concept of Advent.

God is so great, filling time and space, that He encompassses opposites - or what seem to our finite minds like opposites. (One might say that God is a Hegelian.) Jesus rides on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9), symbolizing peace; He also rides on a horse (Revelation 19:11), symbolizing war.

The dialectic continues as we read that God is “mighty in battle” (Psalm 24:8), but brings a peace which means that men will not “train for war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4).

Crowds wave palm branches for Jesus, a symbol of royalty (John 12:13); but Jesus is also a servant (Matthew 20:28).

Lent, which leads up to Maundy Thursday, and therefore up to Passover, again embraces these opposites. The observation begins with the misery of being slaves in Egypt, with the harrowing experience of the “angel of death” moving about, and with narrow escapes at several points during the Exodus narrative. But anguish and fear turns to joy as the celebration puts these events into a retrospective, and the celebrants thank God for the gift of freedom.

God’s liberating action is not limited to the Exodus from Egypt. He freed the captives from Babylon. He frees people from sin and its consequences. Liberating language permeates Scripture: “I will set your prisoners free” (Zechariah 9:11).

Psalm 118 is part of a Passover liturgy. The Hebrew language allows for a marvelous understanding: “This is the day which the Lord has made, and we will rejoice and be glad in” Him. The common translation of being “glad in it” is correct; we can often be glad “in” a day. But it is also true, and sometimes preferable to say, that we can be glad “in” God.

Some days are filled with suffering and pain, and it is unlikely that we would be glad “in” those days. But even in such days, we can be glad “in” God. This is another dialectic of opposites: we can have peace even when we are grieving - a peace that will ultimately lead to joy - a “peace that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) - a peace that comes only from God.

In the life of each human, there are phases of captivity. The metaphor of captivity includes economic, psychological, relational, and other types of imprisonment. We cry “Hosanna” begging for liberation; we cry “Hosanna” celebrating that liberation. At a pivotal moment, our cry for help turns into a shout of praise.