Romans 14-15

Read Romans 14-15.

            These chapters make the most sense if we assume that the key issue in Romans is the inclusion of the Gentiles in the people of God. Chapter 14 shows a segment of the church that is struggling to understand how to live in relation to the law of Moses. Do we just give up Sabbath? Do we just give up kosher law? Newly acquired freedom can be intimidating. In college, my summer job had a bunch of men on work-release from the local prison. Many of them were recidivists (they had been imprisoned before). I talked to one—an older gentlemen—and he explained that “inside” you have three square meals a day and someone orders your day for you. After a while, you forget how to take care of yourself. Newly found freedom can be intimidating. So, Paul tells Gentile believers, who have no problem with this freedom, to exercise some patience with Jewish believers who have had dietary and Sabbath laws engrained in them from youth.

            But there’s a wider application at work here too. When my children were young, I had a conversation with them frequently, especially the older ones. When a younger sibling was being a challenge, I told them, “Big people take care of little people.” Or as Paul puts it to the Romans:

15 We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. ² Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. ³ For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”

We have a responsibility to our neighbors, to act for their good. And sometimes, oftentimes, that means curtailing our own freedom. When I was in grad school, I was around a lot of men from Baptist backgrounds. We’d go to supper, and I’d be very careful about whether or not I ordered a beer. A Lutheran understands he’s free to drink in moderation; a Baptist sees it differently. A little sensitivity on my part meant that I didn’t scandalize them by my behavior.

            In our present moment, it often feels like American Christians are more in tune to the world than to Romans 14-15. I hear plenty of Christians asserting their rights and their freedoms—which they certainly have both constitutionally and Biblically! What I don’t hear enough of is Christians talking about the necessity to love our neighbors and to do what is best for them. But Paul says that that kind of self-limiting behavior is exactly what grows of the Gospel—the Gospel that is about Christ “who did not please Himself.” May we be so Christ-like!

            You can read chapter 16 on your own tomorrow. It’s mostly a list of greetings, and while there’s some interesting things to comment on, I’ll be taking the day with my family. I hope these devotions have in some small way helped you through our days of isolation. I look forward to seeing you at church!

Romans 13

Read Romans 13.

            Paul’s statement about honoring authorities sounds extraordinary in an American context, where hating on the government is a daily occurrence. It is even more extraordinary in its context. If you flip back to the end of chapter 12, Paul had been talking about doing good to those who mistreat you. Certainly the Roman government was no great friend of the new Christian movement. When Paul wrote this letter it hadn’t erupted into violent persecution yet, but it was on the horizon. Christianity was an illicit religion and highly suspect. Yet, Paul says these authorities are established by God.

            That God would use the pagan nations for His purposes was well-established in the Old Testament. The wicked Babylonians were God’s agent to enact His covenant curses on Israel, and the unbelieving Persians were His instrument for their return to their homeland. God can use even the most unlikely tool to accomplish His purposes. (I always remember how Samson slew 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey, Judges 15.) I think American Christian sometimes need to be reminded of this. First off, it means that a government doesn’t have to be a Christian government or even a good government for God to use it. Second, even—perhaps especially—when we’re not thrilled with our government is the moment to be reminded they deserve at least obedience and even better honor as those appointed by God.

            There’s a lot more to talk about in this chapter, but in a contentious day like ours, this one point is enough to keep us thinking all day.

Romans 12

Read Romans 12.

Once we turn the page into Romans 12, the letter becomes easier because now Paul is talking directly to Christians about what the Christian life should look like. He supplants Israel’s old sacrificial system with an oxymoron: “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices.” But a sacrifice dies… That’s what a sacrifice does. We die to sin and evil desires (6:11) but we are definitely alive in the Spirit (8:4ff.)
And he makes this comment, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (12:2). I love that statement! One of the necessary tasks for the Christian is to see clearly the ways in which following Jesus, giving complete allegiance to Jesus, means having to pull away from the world, to recognize where the world demands different allegiances.
Paul gives examples. Take humility: the world encourages us to think of ourselves first, but Paul says that our new life means not thinking too highly of ourselves. The “I want” of the old nature is replaced by the Spirit’s “what do you need?” The whole second half of the chapter is a manifesto of what it means to live counterculturally, in step with the Spirit but out of step with the world. No tribalism, no personal autonomy, nothing but love for others inside the fellowship and outside it.
In a sense, this was how Israel was supposed to live—in the words of a the old King James translation, as a peculiar people. Israel was distinct in terms of how they marked time, what they ate, how they kept themselves from impurity. Christ’s people are set apart by their ethic of love, eschewing old distinctions, old animosities, old values.
It’s a beautiful thing, this new way of life. Imagine what effect if Christians every where lived up to this non-conforming vision of a transformed life!

Romans 10-11

Read Romans 10-11.

            In chapter 10, I think Paul comes to the heart of his argument. I’ve been saying that since the beginning of the letter, Paul has been answering the question, “How do we explain that God seems to have replaced Israel in His plans and purposes?” His answer has proceeded in steps. First, Israel was never better than the other nations; she was always part of God’s problem. That is to say, she was always part of sinful humanity. However, God was faithful to His promises. For Israel he kept His promises by way of Abraham, that is, by the way of faith. The law of Moses didn’t make Israel special. The purpose of the law of Moses was to make sin more pronounced; in a sense, the law of Moses irritated and provoked sin, made it worse.

            Now, in chapter 10, he makes the statement that Christ was the culmination of the law. The Greek word translated culmination means an end or a goal. Paul is saying the whole law of Moses was leading to Jesus. Consider: the story of Adam’s children went bad quickly, ending in the twin disasters of the flood and the tower of Babel. So, God embedded His promise in one family, the family of Abraham. When they had grown from a family to a nation, He gave them the law of Moses, and a stark choice, “Do this and live.” Here’s the connection to Romans 10. Paul quotes Deuteronomy 30, the very chapter where Moses challenges them, “Do this and live.”

            The problem, of course, is that Israel hadn’t kept the requirements of Moses’ law. They had faced the consequences of that failure in the Babylonian exile. Jesus had warned them they were facing the same consequences again. Paul is arguing that same argument, only Paul’s wrinkle is that the inclusion of the Gentiles is meant to provoke Israel to jealousy so that she will finally seen God’s plans and purposes correctly and regain their place.

            Some Israelites—like Paul and other Jewish believers—had believed. Paul still held out hope for others, and he warned the Gentile believers that they too could fall. What in the world he meant when he said, “In this way all Israel will be saved” (11:26), is a matter of much discussion. I think his point is simply that God will have the fullness of His people—both Jew and Gentile.

            Delving into the deep things of God is mind-boggling, and Paul concludes the section with a note of praise, extolling the wisdom and knowledge of God. It’s a good conclusion for us, too, when we are confronted with the reality that God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts aren’t our thought (Isaiah 55).

Romans 9

Read Romans 9.

            I’d be lying if I said I completely understood this chapter. It delves into matters that have plagued readers of the Scripture for centuries, especially the question, “Why are some saved and not others?” That question has been called the crux theologorum, or the theologians’ cross. Let me at least offer some thoughts.

            First, this chapter, along with 10 and 11, makes the most sense within the book’s theme is what I’ve been saying, namely, how has God been faithful to His promises to Israel, especially if most of Israel doesn’t believe in God’s Messiah? Look at how Paul sets it up: they are the race that has all the advantages (vv. 4-5), but not every biological, historical Israelite is actually the true Israel. That’s a point he’s made several times already. Those who truly belong to God’s holy people are those who receive God’s plans and purposes and promises in faith.

            I think that’s an important point. I think. Here’s why: I’m not sure the chapter is about individual salvation. That is, I’m not sure Paul is addressing the question, “Why are some saved and not others?” In verse 17, Paul brings up Pharaoh, and I don’t think he’s talking about whether the Pharaoh of the Exodus era was personally saved. I think he’s talking about the nation of Egypt, encapsulated in its ruler, Pharaoh. That would make sense of verse 22 where Paul alludes to the fact that the Gentiles, “the objects of God’s wrath,” have actually been included in His salvation.

            So, on the one hand, it seems like Paul is talking about personal salvation; on the other, I’m suggesting he’s still talking about God’s faithfulness to His promises to Israel. And God has been faithful to those promises—if you understand Israel correctly. The promises were not made just to one nation of the earth, just to one race. They were made to all who would believe. Israel was never meant to be just Israel. And that’s good news for we latter day believers, Gentiles all.

Romans 8

Read Romans 8.

            You know you’re in for something beautiful when the chapter begins: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Paul has just spent the last how many chapters telling us how there’s no excuse and no one is righteous and the law just exacerbates sin. But in Christ, there is now no condemnation! What the law (of Moses) couldn’t do (that is, provide a path to rightness with God) God Himself did by sending His Son. The rest of the chapter continues in that vein. Let me just highlight a few things.

            First, Paul emphasizes our transference from the realm of the flesh to the realm of the Spirit. I mentioned in relation to chapter 6 that the Holy Spirit is given in Baptism, so this is carrying on that theme. We are in a new situation; we are reborn; the Spirit governs us. There is freedom in that, freedom to live by the Spirit, no longer slaves to our own desires. In verse 15, Paul describes this transference as adoption into God’s family. We have the rights and privileges of natural born children. (When you consider that God only has One “natural” Son, that’s saying something!)

            Second, because we are sons and daughters, we have an inheritance, although now we suffer along in a fallen age. Paul describes the present age of the world as one in which the creation itself groans under its brokenness, a brokenness imposed by human sin. Those present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory to be revealed, and the Holy Spirit is the down payment of participation in that future. We often describe that as Christians living in the tension between now and not yet. The present age is evil, so now we live in a fallen world, a world not yet fully reborn. Yet, by faith, we are reborn and live in God’s new age by the power of the Holy Spirit. So, now we live both in the fallen age of the world and in God’s new age and we look forward to the day when Christ returns and God is all in all and the old wicked age is brought to an end and we walk by sight.

            Finally, Paul concludes this section on a grand note of defiance toward the present age. If God is for us, who can be against us? Nothing will separate us from His love in Christ Jesus. Despite current appearances, we are more than conquerors. Beautiful things, indeed!

Romans 7

Read Romans 7.

            Whether Paul means “the law of Moses” or the more generalized “law as the command and will of God” that we learned about in catechism class doesn’t matter that much in chapter 7. (I still think it’s primarily the former.) His main point stands, “Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law.” The law makes us aware of sin. It shows bad behavior for what it is. Sin takes the opportunity and becomes stronger. Because we are sinners, born in Adam’s corruption, a knowledge of right and wrong doesn’t always make the it easier to do the right thing.

            I often get questions about Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit, questions that range from, “Why’d they do it, with all the other trees to eat from?” to “Why’d God put that tree there in the first place?” To the second question, I think the answer is that untested obedience isn’t yet mature obedience. To the first, the answer is that “sin seized the opportunity afforded by the commandment.” Look how easy it was for the serpent to convince them that the fruit was “good to eat and for gaining wisdom.”

            I’ve thought about this a lot with the way we Christian parents talk about sex. We’re pretty firm with our children, “Wait for marriage!” Which is the right message. But I worry that it just makes it all the more enticing. I don’t know what that particular solution is; I don’t know how to talk about sex in a way that encourages right behavior without making the sin more intriguing. It’s just a case where I see Romans 7 playing out.

            No wonder, then, that Paul expresses such frustration over sin! “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out!” Such is the power of sin in the human life. “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Hold on to that last line. Tomorrow we’ll look at chapter 8, one of the great expressions of the Gospel in the Bible!

Romans 6

Read Romans 6.

            Not every Christian has a Lutheran view of Baptism. Lutherans, Catholics, some Episcopalians think about Baptism in similar ways, that is, they consider it a sacrament, a sacred act in which God gives a gift. Numerically, more Christians see Baptism this way than don’t. Unfortunately, in the US, at least, the most prominent voices don’t see Baptism that way; they understand it as something a person does to indicate their dedication to God. I did my doctoral work with people like that, who didn’t think of Baptism sacramentally. It was very frustrating. One time, I took a class with one of the most prominent English-speaking scholars on Romans and I thought, “At last, these men will need to engage Romans 6 and the sacramentality of Baptism.” And we basically skipped the first half of chapter 6…. Frustrating.

            In Romans 6, Paul clearly says that in Baptism we die with Christ and rise with Him. We die to sin and rise to new life. To be sure, the chapter is about the new life that we have in Christ. The main thrust of the chapter is that our situation has been fundamentally changed in Christ. We are no longer slaves to sin, but to righteousness. Lutherans are fond of saying that we are at the same time sinners and saints; Romans 6 makes the case: prior to Christ we were just sinner, but now something new has been added and we are also God’s holy people. And the decisive moment in that change is Baptism

            Two points need to be drawn out. The first is that Baptism deserves to be honored. It is the means by which God initiates His work in us. The second is that Baptism does actually initiate a change in us. Peter, in his Pentecost sermon, links Baptism with forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). Paul says the same thing in Titus 3:5, “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” While Paul clearly makes the first point, the second point is the main point of the chapter. “Sin no longer will be your master.”

            Here’s the thing: Paul is clear-eyed that sin continues to exert an influence over the Christian (we’ll see that tomorrow). But he makes an important distinction: sin is not your lord, your master.  In Baptism, you have been transferred to the kingdom of Christ. So, yes, the Christian will continue to struggle with sin, but we don’t just acquiesce to it. We fight it and recognize it as an enemy and repent it and struggle with it. We never simply accept it. We never just shrug our shoulders and say, “Oh, well. Still a sinner, I guess.” No, we cry out, “Who will rescue me from this body of death” (Romans 7:24)! But that’s for tomorrow’s chapter!

Romans 5

Read Romans 5.

            Romans 5 is an amazing chapter. It seems like every verse has something important to say: we are justified through faith (v. 1), we have access to God (v. 2), suffering (v. 3), hope (v. 4). You get the idea. Let’s highlight just a couple.

            First, verses 6-10. Here Paul gets to the nature of the Gospel. When we were powerless, sinners, enemies of God, Christ died for us. The Gospel does not depend on anything in us. It doesn’t depend on our choosing it; it doesn’t depend on our cleaning ourselves up a bit first; frankly the Gospel was accomplished when our whole race was arrayed against the will of God. (We saw that in our look at Matthew a few weeks ago: the Jewish leaders—God’s own people—opposed Jesus; Romans acquiesced in His crucifixion; even His disciples abandoned Him.) Without ever saying it, at least in these five verses, Paul has just demonstrated grace. God’s love and mercy, freely given, apart from any action on our part.

            The next section, verses 12-19 are also pretty amazing and they advance the story Paul has been telling. In chapters 1-4, he has been telling the story of Israel’s relationship with their God. Sinai has been lurking all over the place in the repeated references to Moses’ law; he just talked about Abraham. Now he stretches the story exactly as he been planning since the beginning of the letter to include Adam. His statement, “Just as sin entered the world through one man,” expands the story. We’re not just talking about Israel but about all humanity. And the salvation God has in the works is not just for Israel (no matter what they might think); it’s for everyone: “How much more did God’s grace overflow to the many!” (‘The many’ is  a figure of speech; Paul makes himself clear in verse 18, where the Gospel brings justification and life for all people.)

            Thus, the Gospel is God’s free gift in Jesus and it is given for every human being. Like I said, an amazing chapter.

Romans 4

Read Romans 4.

            In Romans 4, Paul is making a case that he makes more explicitly in Galatians 3:17. There, talking about God’s dealings with Abraham, says, that Moses’ law was given 430 years after the promise to Abraham. His point in both cases is that Israel was looking to the wrong place in their history. They were relying on the events at Sinai as the basis for their national standing. Paul wants to redirect them to the promises to Abraham.

            Israel saw Moses’ law as a privilege; Paul wants them to see it as an obligation, a burden—an obligation they and their ancestors haven’t fulfilled very well. The real privilege is to be children of Abraham, who Paul significantly notes, was declared righteous before he was circumcised. Abraham’s righteousness was declared because he trusted God’s promise.

            Israel understood Moses’ law as an ID badge. “How do we know we are God’s people?” “We were given circumcision—and Sabbath and kosher law and cleanness law. We are unique.” Paul wants them to see that those answers impose an obligation (4:4), so those answers ultimately condemn Israel.

            The real ID badge, the real answer to the question, “How do we know we are God’s people?” is faith in God’s promise. Trusting in God’s promise entails no obligation. It simply clings to the promised gift, a promise kept in Jesus: “The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (vv. 23-25). So, the key to salvation—for Israel and for us—is not what we do, but in whom we trust, namely, Jesus.

Romans 3

Read Romans 3.

            Let’s take a look at chapter 3 in the three sections the NIV suggests. First, there are verses 1-8, which continue the theme about Israel and God’s relationship to her. New Testament scholar, NT Wright, from whom I’ve learned a ton, puts it this way:

Paul saw that the Jewish problem of God’s righteousness (if the creator of the world is Israel’s covenant God, why is Israel still oppressed?) had been answered in a new and striking way in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The answer had, in fact, forced a restatement of the question, demonstrating as it did the universal sinfulness of Jews as well as pagans. The gospel, Paul declares, proves that God is in the right despite appearances: he has kept covenant with Abraham, has dealt properly with sin, has acted and will act without partiality, and upholds all those who cast themselves, helpless, on his mercy (Rom. 1:16-17; 2:1-16; 3:21 – 4:25). God has, in other words, shown ‘righteousness’ in the sense appropriate for the judge and the Lord of the covenant.

(You can read the whole article here.) I think the phrase “the Jewish problem of God’s righteousness” is a good explanation of the purpose of the letter: to show that God has kept His promises to Israel, even though when Paul writes the letter a) Israel is still under foreign domination and b) the church is starting to be increasingly comprised of Gentiles.

            In the second section (verses 9-20), Paul returns to his theme, that all alike are under the power of sin. Unspoken, but important—being Jew in itself is not the thing that saves. And having Moses’ law, while a privilege (v. 2), is not the thing that saves because Moses’ law highlights human failures to please God (v. 20), a theme he’ll return to in chapter 7.

            Finally, in verses 21-31, Paul turns his attention to the Good News, namely, that  righteousness, attested throughout the Old Testament and apart from the law of Moses, has been made known. Now here’s a trick of translation: if we translated verse 21 more literally it would read, “But now, apart from law, righteousness of God has been made known.” The thrust here seems to be that God has demonstrated His own rightness—to His covenant with Israel and to humanity—in a different way, namely, through the atoning death of Jesus. The importance of this subtle difference is that Paul is more interested in what we call objective justification than subjective justification. That is, he is more interested to show how God in Jesus saved all humanity than he is to talk about how we receive that gift. Not to say, Paul is uninterested in the latter, just that his emphasis is on the former.

            That reminds me of an encounter I had many years ago with a college group. I think it was an InterVarsity group, and one of my members had invited me to come and talk to them. Their theme that year was styled after the old “Got Milk?” campaign and was “Got Faith?” My presentation basically said, “You’ve got the wrong theme. If you start with faith, you are starting with humans, and you’re making faith into just another work. If you start with Jesus and who He is and what He did, you are starting with the Gospel and faith follows the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Paul is making the same point in Romans 3, a fact that is unfortunately obscured when we move from Greek to English.

Romans 2

Read Romans 2.

            I alluded to this yesterday, but part of what Paul is arguing in Romans is that God has been faithful to His promises to Israel. He has to make that case because as he writes to the Romans, the church is becoming more and more filled with Gentiles and Israel seems to be more and more left behind. So, he started in chapter 1 by demonstrating that all humans are in the bondage of sin. Today, in chapter 2, he addresses himself to a hypothetical Jew when you says, “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you do the same thing” (v. 1). Within the argument of Romans, this is not just a general “Don’t judge” moment, but a specific statement about the presumption of superiority of Israel. Now, it can certainly be understood in a generalized sense about anyone who presumes but understanding it in its original context explains where Paul goes next, namely, that God’s praise and judgment are dispensed on all human equally (vv. 6-11).

            It also offers us an important insight into the next verse, in which Paul uses the word “law” for the first time in the letter. This is one we Lutherans need to pay some attention to. We have been taught since catechism days that law is the opposite of gospel, and that it refers to the Bible’s overarching statement of God’s will—what we must do and not do, the message of condemnation when we don’t do it, and the ultimate judgment the sinner faces. All of that is true enough, but if we pay careful attention to Romans 2:12, we come to see that law, in this context, means Moses’ law.

            See, Israel didn’t see Moses’ law as a great burden or a condemning word. They saw it as an honor: they had been chosen to be God’s unique people! In Romans 9:4, Paul himself notes the receiving of the law as one of Israel’s great privileges. The problem was that Israel, by Paul’s day, was using the Law as a bragging point, about how God loved them more than the Gentiles. So, Paul has to demonstrate that Moses’ law does actually condemn Israel, that they’re not actually keeping it. In this way, Paul is fundamentally carrying on the message of Jesus, who continually warned the leaders of Israel that their way of understanding what God’s will was was wrong.

            The real bombshell in all of this is at the end of the chapter when Paul blows open the doors of who exactly belongs to God’s holy people: “A person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code.” He’s going to come back to this in subsequent chapters.

Romans--A Little Introduction

Read Romans 1.

            Romans. Romans is clearly Paul’s most important letter, his magnum opus. It’s a tour de force, summarizing his theology and doing it masterfully. Yet, I haven’t taught a Bible study on Romans in over a decade. That’s because it’s also a dense, complicated, difficult book.

            One of the challenges is understanding the letter’s point. I think the usual way we Lutherans think about Romans is that it’s about how a person gets saved. That’s the first of my struggles with Romans. I tend to think that our personal salvation is part of it, but I also think it’s about something bigger than that, and I’ve struggled to articulate what that bigger something is. I think the larger theme is to show how God’s relationship with Israel had always been about God’s plans and purposes for the world. So, just as much as it’s about personal salvation, it’s also about the place of the Gentiles in God’s thoughts and His plans to restore the world to its pre-Fall state and how the church is the vanguard of a new humanity.

            Consider how that is encapsulated in the first 6 verses of the book: God’s Messiah, Jesus, promised through Israel’s Scriptures and Israel’s king, who appointed Paul as an apostle to the Gentiles. Or consider the theme verses of the whole book, 1:16-17, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” Two things to note here. First, ‘by faith from first to last,’ or, more literally, ‘from faith to faith.’ I hope to show that this means something along the lines of ‘from the faithfulness of God to the faithfulness of Jesus to our faith in Jesus.: Second, the quotation from Habakkuk, which I think is more than just a simple proof text. I think Paul goes to Habakkuk because Habakkuk is a book in which God is called on to explain His actions and one of the things Paul is trying to do is explain what God has been up to through Israel for the world.

            After this introduction, Paul begins his case by demonstrating that all of humanity was struggling under sin’s curse. He says that the wrath of God is being revealed against the godlessness and wickedness of humanity. The sin of Gentiles is no different than the sin of Israel; as he will say in chapter 3:26, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That’s the key to this passage; the ‘they’ means all humans, and the description of sin is not just about ‘some’ people. It’s an indictment of all of us.

            Unfortunately, you’ll have to keep reading to hear what God has done about that problem. Hope to see you tomorrow!

Final Hope

From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead…I believe in…the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

            23 little words, but so much to say…Last things are a source of endless fascination for a lot of Christians, and most of what they think is wrong. You might never have heard of the premillennial dispensationalism, but it’s the theory of the end times that is most prominent in American Christian publishing and broadcasting. You may never have heard of it, but you’ve heard of the rapture, the antichrist, the tribulation—all key features of premillennial dispensationalism. And to put it simply, it’s a misreading of the Scriptures, which know nothing of a secret removal of Christians from the earth or a single demonic figure who ushers in the last days.

            No, everything you need to know about the last things can be summarized in four words. First, the second coming of Jesus is unexpected. Jesus Himself likens it to a thief in the night, coming by surprise (Matthew 24:43). No matter how closely you try to ‘count signs’ it will always catch you unawares. Second, it is unmistakable. Again, Jesus: “For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other” (Luke 17:24). No secret raptures here! Third, it is sudden: everything happens at once; there’s a reason the Bible constantly refers to it as a “the day.” When that day arrives, Jesus will appear in glory, the dead will be raised, Jesus will execute the final judgment, and the heaven and earth will be recreated in an instant. Finally, that day is joyful for God’s people. As Paul says, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). The last judgment holds no fear for the one whose righteousness is Christ Himself. Anyone who speaks of the last day in terms of terror and anxiety hasn’t fully grasped the Gospel.

            And there’s another common mistake that these 23 words correct. It’s an error that faithful preachers often make when we make it seem like the ultimate goal of Christianity is to die and go to heaven. Paul names death the last enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26) and the wages of sin (Romans 6:23). Now, I get that after a long suffering death can seem like a relief, even a mercy, and—full disclosure—I’ve spoken that way myself. But I prefer to speak about it the way one of my professors taught me years ago. Instead of speaking of death as a friend, I prefer to maintain the language of an enemy and simply say, “Death stopped tormenting him.” Or maybe even, “God has rescued him from death’s torments.”

            The Creed helps us with this very simply. It doesn’t confess life after death or life in heaven. It skips right past that to ultimate things: I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. See, we aren’t supposed to long for escape from this life and world; it’s Shakespeare who talks about ‘shuffling off this mortal coil,’ not Scripture. No, we are meant to rejoice in bodily life in this creation. Our longing is not for escape but for restoration, restoration to Eden itself, a restoration beautifully described in Revelation 21-22.

            That concludes our look at the Creed, and I think it ends on a beautiful note. It ends with joy and restoration, a return to the First Article, to God the Maker—and renewer—of heaven and earth, a renewal that is possible because of the work of Jesus, His only Son, our Lord.

            Bring your questions and comments to Facebook Live tonight at 7:00. See you then!

Governor Evers’ Safer-at-Home order expires on May 26, which we hope means that we can start to worship more normally on Sunday, May 31. (There are still a lot of questions; we’ll get out a congregational letter when we have a clearer picture.) In terms of these devotions, I’ll continue them until May 30. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to try to tackle Romans.

The Marks and Purpose of the Church

I believe in…the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins.

            I like to think of the next three phrases of the Third Article as going together to answer the questions, “Where and how does the Holy Spirit accomplish His work of creating and sustaining faith?”

            A preliminary issue concerns what the phrase, “communion of saints,” means. Let me lay some Latin on you. In Latin, the phrase is communio sanctorum. It’s an ambiguous form that could be translated, “the communion of holy persons,” hence “communion of saints,” or it could be translated, “the communion of holy things,” in which case it is a reference to the means of grace, God’s Word and the Sacraments. I prefer the latter translation.

            So, if we ask the questions, “Where and how does the Spirit accomplish His work?” the answer is, “He accomplishes His work—summarized neatly as the forgiveness of sins—in and through the Church, the people established and sustained by His Word and Sacrament.”

            The Spirit doesn’t work in a vacuum. He doesn’t just throw lightning bolts from heaven. It’s not like some unbeliever somewhere is just sitting there when suddenly he says, “Wow! Jesus!” No, that unbeliever needs the Church. He needs someone who will go and tell him about Jesus. The Holy Spirit works through the Church.

            Our work and our witness as the people of God are essential for the salvation of the world.

The Holy Spirit, Sanctification

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

            To confess the Holy Spirit is not just to confess the One who brings us to new spiritual life; it is also to confess Him who dwells in us and supports us throughout life. We modern American Christians are very likely to talk about Jesus living in our hearts, but the truth is that the Scripture only talks that way occasionally. The Bible generally says that we are in Christ, not that Christ is in us. When the Scriptures do talk about God dwelling in us, it is usually the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

            In a sense this indwelling of the Holy Spirit is similar to God’s creating work. Just as God didn’t create the world and then leave it to its own devices but remains active within the world as the Creator, so the Holy Spirit does not bring us to new spiritual life and then let us get after it all by ourselves. The fact that He lives in us means that we are empowered by Him in faith and practice. It is the Holy Spirit’s work to keep us connected to the Triune God, sustaining faith through the Word—the Word read, heard, considered. Think of faith as a fire: they all eventually run out of fuel and go out. But the Holy Spirit is constantly tending that fire, adding more wood, keeping it burning.

            The Holy Spirit also empowers us to holy living. Consider the matter of prayer. Paul says, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Romans 8:26). Prayer often seems like a pretty solitary aspect of the Christian life, a thing I do by myself. So, when my prayer life falters, it seems like it’s all on me. But Paul teaches that I pray in partnership with the Holy Spirit and when my prayer falters the Holy Spirit carries on.

            Or consider Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” I know that in the Gospels we read passages that tell us to produce fruit, but I like the image of fruit because a tree doesn’t will itself to bear fruit. A tree bears fruit because it’s a tree. So, yes, there is a sense in which we cultivate love, joy, peace, etc. But there is also an important sense in which the Spirit calls those forth within us.

            This process of continuing in the faith and living as God’s holy people we call sanctification (literally, “becoming holy”). And we are called to actively pursue faith and holy living. But there is comfort in knowing that the Holy Spirit who lives within us is driving everything, that there is a power within us beyond our own strength, that Someone Else is there to do the heavy lifting and to accomplish what we by our own means cannot, that we are constantly plugged into the great giver and renewer of life. We confess all of that when we confess the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, Conversion

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

            You probably noticed that I skipped the last line of the Second Article, “From thence he will come to judge the living and the dead.” I plan to write on that on Wednesday when I write on the topic, “Final Hope.”

            For today I want to look at the confession of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is often the forgotten Person of the Trinity. We don’t talk about Him very much, and that’s ok with Him. The Spirit’s work is to bring us to Jesus, who in turn offers us as the fruit of His cross to the Father. The Spirit is a lot like John the Baptizer in John’s Gospel, confidently pointing at Jesus and saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”

            One of the uniquely Lutheran ways that we talk about that work of the Spirit is in the way we talk about conversion. The first week of my doctoral classes back in 2007 or 2008 was like the set up to a joke, “A Lutheran, a Methodist, and a Pentecostal walk into a restaurant…” And they wanted to talk about conversion. They just didn’t understand our theology of baptismal regeneration (that baptism creates faith and its new life) and conversion. They were flabbergasted (politely so) that we have no place for ‘decisions for Jesus’ in our theology or practice.

            So, first, an observation: until the late 1500s and the work of Jacob Arminius, a Dutch Reformed theologian, no one talked about decisions for Jesus. There conversations, debates, arguments about what, if anything, a man might contribute to his salvation, but the idea that a human chose to become a believer just wasn’t on the table. So, although that language of decision and choice is so prevalent in American Christianity the fact is most Christians in most ages gave the Holy Spirit credit for conversion, more or less exclusively.

            Lutherans are among those Christians who teach that the human contributes absolutely nothing to his own conversion. The reasoning goes like this: the Scripture teaches that the unregenerate human is dead in transgressions and sins (Ephesians 2:1), ignorant of the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:14), and hostile to Him (Colossians 1:21).  To summarize, we are by nature ignorant of what God wants, unable to accomplish what God wants, and disinclined to do it anyway. Our natural lives are thoroughly oriented away from God.

            But the Holy Spirit, working through Word and Sacrament, calls us to faith, creating that faith within us. Think of it like this: the unbeliever hears objective justification proclaimed—that is, that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world—and the Holy Spirit leads them to the recognition, “He did that for me.” That’s it; that’s conversion. Sometimes the Gospel is proclaimed in words; sometimes it’s proclaimed in the word embedded in water (that is, Baptism); but the Word comes first, and the Holy Spirit works through it to create new lie within us.

Ascension and Coronation

 He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

            Ascension Day is two weeks away—Thursday, May 21. I’m thinking about recording a service for it. In terms of the church’s calendar, it’s kind of a big deal. Unfortunately, in practice, it’s a bit overlooked. (We usually just sort of mush it together with the seventh Sunday of Easter.)

            What is it that makes the Ascension a big deal? It’s a strange little celebration. I mean, why would you celebrate Jesus going away? In this weekend’s Gospel lesson (John 14:1-14) Jesus tells His disciples why His going away is a good thing. “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” Jesus goes away because He has work to do—not the work of saving us, that was accomplished on the cross—but the work of preparing a place for us.

            That’s more than a housekeeping task, though! It’s not like He’s just getting clean sheets on the bed and making sure the dusting is done. Paul describes it in Ephesians like this:

That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church (Ephesians 1:19-22)/

Jesus’ ascension is His coronation day. He returns from His exile away from the Father and takes His rightful place as king of the universe. (I think technically we might want to describe Him as prime minister or grand vizier, but that gets us into the complexities of Trinitarian theology.)

            The point is that to sit at the right hand of God is to share all of His power and authority. The song that we know as “This is the feast” is a quote from Revelation 5, and it describes Jesus’ ascension but seen from a heavenly perspective. For Jesus to sit at the right hand of God is to be declared “worthy…to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” (Revelation 5:12) in the same way that the Father received them in a similar song in chapter 4.

            So, on Ascension, Jesus takes His place as king and receives the adulation of heaven and earth. But one more detail from Ephesians: He exercises that rule for the sake and benefit of His church. He is preparing the heaven and the earth for the great day when in His person heaven and earth are brought back together, when all evil is eradicated, when the curse of Genesis 3 is ultimately undone and all things are made new. Surely that is a big deal! Surely that’s worth a celebration!

The Resurrection

The third day He rose again from the dead.

            We Lutherans are very good at preaching the crucifixion. And good for us. Paul himself resolved to know nothing among the Corinthians except Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). But consider for a moment, the same apostle’s statement in the same letter: “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17).

            So, here’s the thing. Without the resurrection, Jesus’ death is just another death. But the resurrection is God’s declaration that Jesus’ death was not just another death. The resurrection is God’s great act of vindication. It says Jesus did not deserve to die, so God righted the wrong. And if Jesus did not deserve His death, then His death had another meaning, namely, that He had died as the substitute for a race under an ancient death sentence. It was the fact of the resurrection that caused Jesus’ first disciples to reconsider His death; it was the fact of the resurrection that cause Paul, after the incident on the Damascus road, to reconsider everything he thought he knew about the Messiah and His work. It’s the resurrection that shines a light on what God has been up to since before the foundations of the world (Ephesians 4:4).

            The Creed makes clear: this is not a matter of either/or. You are not either a believer who emphasizes the crucifixion or a believer who emphasizes the resurrection. If you are going to get it right, you have to say that the Crucified One is the One whom God raised from the dead. And, of course, you can’t have resurrection without a death. There’s no Easter without Good Friday, and Good Friday isn’t good without Easter. Paul says in best in Romans 4:25, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”

            Leave it to the Creed to say exactly what has to be said to give voice to the fullness of the faith!

The Descent into Hell

And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.

            “He descended into hell…” is perhaps the single most misunderstood line in the Apostles’ Creed! A lot of folks just assume that Jesus descended to hell to continue His suffering. That’s what hell is, after all—a place of suffering.

            The fly in that ointment is Jesus’ own saying from the cross, “It is finished.” By Jesus’ own words, His redemptive work was accomplished on the cross. And with His dying breath, Jesus commended His spirit into His Father’s hands—hardly the words of one who is still suffering.

            So, what in the world is the descent into hell? We have three passages that can help us understand this strange point of teaching. First is Ephesians 4:8-9, “This is why it says: ‘When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.’ (What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions?)” I think most scholars understand this as a reference to the incarnation not to the descent into hell, but if it is an obscure reference to the descent into hell, the important words are that He took captives. Hold onto that for a second.

            The other two passages are in 1 Peter.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits—to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built (3:18-20).

For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit (1 Peter 4:6).

In the first passage, notice that Jesus went and preached to the souls in prison and He did it after He was made alive.

            So, what is the descent into hell? Some time, between the moment when Jesus was made alive in the tomb and the moment when He came out of the tomb, that is, sometime after nightfall on Holy Saturday, Jesus went to hell. He did it on the model of an ancient king who, having defeated his opponent, would hold a parade through the conquered foes capital city, often with the king and his nobles in chains as part of the procession. That is to say, Jesus descent into hell is part of His glorification. The victorious and risen One goes into His enemy’s capital and proclaims His triumph over His foe.

            As you can see, far from a moment of continued suffering, the descent into hell is part of Jesus’ Easter celebration. We can talk more about this tonight on Facebook Live. Hope to see you there!

Suffered, Crucified, Buried: Jesus’ Work

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.

            I often tell young Christians that there are three things you need to know to really understand the Gospel: who Jesus is, what Jesus has done, and for whom He has done it. We covered the first in previous days. Jesus is uniquely fully God and fully human in one person. The second, what Jesus has done, is even more straightforward, even familiar, to us. Jesus is the One who died for my sins. Now, there are complexities, to be sure. I think I mentioned them in Bible study last week: are we supposed to think of Jesus as the sacrifice for the day of atonement or for the Passover, that is, are we supposed to think of Him primarily in terms of atonement (paying for sins) or liberation from our enemies. Clearly, they’re related ideas… Anyhow, the point is: there’s a lot to think about, but the facts are pretty simple. Jesus died for my sins.

            There’s really no more basic fact about the faith than this one. Jesus does not come primarily to shower material blessings on us—otherwise every Christian would be healthy, wealthy, and successful. He doesn’t come primarily as self-help guru, to help us get our lives back together. He’s not some wise man, spouting good advice about the good life. Sure, He tells us to pray for all manner of blessings; He brings all kinds of healing, including emotional healing; and He says some incredibly wise things. But, as we saw in Matthew, the whole story climbs to the climax of His suffering and death. I have a commentary on Mark called Apology for the Cross, the whole thrust of which is that the Gospel of Mark exists to defend the necessity of the Messiah’s death. Or as St. Paul puts it: “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst” (1 Timothy 1:15).

            Of course, He didn’t stay dead. The resurrection must be mentioned, too. If He had stayed dead, He would have just faced the same fate that awaits every human. But Jesus rose from the dead. At the very least, the fact of His resurrection says something about His death. That God vindicated Him in this way says that Jesus did not deserve to die. It also says that the Father accepted Jesus’ death, not as the wages of His own sin, but as paying the price for the sins of others.

            So, the answer to the second question, “What did Jesus do?” He died for my sins and rose for my salvation.

            The Creed doesn’t directly answer the third question, “For whom did He do it?” But the answer is implicit in the death and resurrection of Him who is truly God and truly human. He did it for every human. In Lutheran theology, we call this objective justification or universal atonement. The fact is that regardless if anyone ever believes it or not, the condition of our forgiveness has been met. And, here’s the twist—if He did it for everyone then He did it for me. For Lutherans this is faith. Faith is simply the realization that all of this is for me. (We call this subjective justification, the application of what’s objectively true to me.) There’s incredible freedom in this: I cannot doubt it, if it’s true for every human and I’m a human, it must be for me.

            All of this tied up in a few words: “He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.”

The Great Omission

And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.

            If you’ve been following these devotions throughout our time of quarantine, you spent almost a month thinking through the Gospel of Matthew. And if you are thinking that exercise through as we go through the Apostles’ Creed, you might be thinking that the Creed’s description of Jesus doesn’t bear much resemblance to Gospel’s. After all, Mark and John don’t talk about Jesus’ birth at all, and Matthew and Luke glance over it in 2 chapters apiece. Yes, all four Gospels spend about a quarter of their length on Jesus’ last week, but again, His suffering, death, and resurrection only occupy three chapters each. So, what about all that stuff from Matthew 3 to Matthew 25, for example? Where is Jesus’ life and ministry reflected in the Creed?

            To be frank, Jesus’ life and ministry are nowhere in the Creeds—the great omission. If we wanted to be critical of the Creeds, we’d have to say that they missed important aspects of Jesus’s identity and work.

            I think, however, there’s a more helpful way to look at: the Creeds are summary statements. The Apostles’ Creed, in particular, has been the baptismal creed in the western church. That is to say, the Creed gives the new Christian just the most basic introduction to Jesus. No one ever imagined that if you knew the Creed, you knew all there was to know about the faith. Just as the Great Commission in Matthew 28 says that disciples are made through Baptism and teaching, so the Creed assumes the Christian will eventually hear and read the Gospels and ponder Jesus in all His fullness.

            So, yes, the Creeds skip a lot about Jesus, just as they necessarily skip a lot about other teachings of the faith. That’s not because the Creeds take a minimalist approach to the faith. It’s because they’re a starting point. I hope our little study of the Creed prompts you to deeper reflection on the faith, too!

Conceived and Born, A New Adam

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.

            It took me a long time to figure out whey the Virgin Birth of Jesus was so important. Historically, I guess, I just thought it was a miraculous birth.

            Then, I came to see that He was the first human who was not directly Adam’s son. Here Genesis 5:3 is interesting: “When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.” Previously in Genesis Adam and Eve had been made in God’s image; now Adam’s children were born in his fallen image. And let us not forget that in the two major passages dealing with the fall (Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15), Paul assets that sin and death entered the world through Adam. So, not being one of Adam’s children means that Jesus is not an inheritor of Adam’s corruption, that is, original sin, nor is He subject to death.

            Only lately have I seen another layer in the Virgin Birth, and it has to do with the manner of creation. Remember Genesis 2? The Lord God made the man out of a lump of clay and breathed the breath of life into him, and the woman was made from the man’s rib. Every other human since has been born in the natural way, as a result of the union of husband and wife, with the Lord God invisibly guiding the process. Every one—except Jesus. He is born in a manner more like Adam. His birth is a work of special creation, with the Holy Spirit, the very breath of God, bringing life in Mary’s womb.

            Not only is Jesus born without Adam’s corruption but also He is born in the way Adam was—by God’s direct action. In both ways, the Virgin Birth tells us that in Jesus, the story of humanity is getting a reboot. In Jesus, the story is resetting to Genesis 2 again—this time with the possibility of avoiding the disaster of Genesis 3. Jesus is the new Adam, the Adam who cannot sin, the Adam who will be everything God intended humans to be.

His Only Son, Jesus’ Divine Nature

            In the earliest days of the church, believers grappled with Jesus divine nature. That He had been human seemed straightforward and obvious enough. Take a look at the Nicene Creed for evidence: look how much time the Nicene Fathers spent explicating how it was that Jesus was divine.

            It strikes me that in our day we have the opposite experience. We instinctively think of Jesus as divine and struggle to understand Him as fully human.

            But the Apostles’ Creed boldly confesses Jesus as fully God and fully human. Yesterday we saw how His human nature made Him a fully appropriate substitute for us. As we think through His divine nature, we recognize that that makes Him a fully sufficient substitute. I don’t know if you remember high school English, but I had to read Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, in which the hero takes the place of another man at the guillotine during the French Revolution. The two men are virtual look-a-likes, and the other man has more reasons to live. So, the hero dies in his place. Think about that for a second, and you will realize that the hero can only take this course of action once. A human life can only substitute for another human life once. Wasn’t it the Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale who famously said, “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country”?

            If Jesus were just a human, His substitution wouldn’t get us very far. But the One who died on the cross was also in His very nature God—eternal, inexhaustible God. So, His death counts not just for one person, but for all people. His death is limited in no way. It is sufficient to forgive the sins of a whole race, to rescue every last human being from death.

            So, as we reflect on the two natures of Christ, we see they are both integral to God’s project of saving humans—each and every one. And if we can see that God has redeemed humans in the God-man Jesus, we can take comfort in this one fact: God has redeemed me.