Christ’s Authority to Give Eternal Life to All People: Thoughts on John 17:2

I was reading in Jesus’ prayer from John 17 this morning and came across a phrase my Reformed friends often use to point to election, “For you (the Father) grant him (Jesus) authority over all people* that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.” (NIV)

I’ve heard John Piper and others talk about this phrase as incontrovertible evidence that the writer of John’s gospel was, indeed, a Calvinist.

I think this verse can be read that way. And in that sense, I wan to be respectful to my Reformed friends.

Nevertheless, I don’t think it has to be read that way. I fact, I think this very verse helps us see an alternative interpretation.

The sentence is divided into 2 phrases: 1. For you grant him authority over all people, and 2. that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.

If I understand them right, my Reformed friends essentially say that phrase 2 refers to a specific subset of phrase 1. In other words, there’s almost a sort of contrast between the two phrases. They could paraphrase the verses like this, “For you, Father, gave him, Jesus, authority over all people, but specifically, Jesus will give eternal life to only those the Father gave him.”

In this sense, my Reformed friends can maintain that Jesus is the lord of the world, while only being the savior of those whom God unconditionally elected.

But…

…as I said, I don’t think this has to be the only option. In fact, I see no reason to see these phrases as contrasting. Nor do I think phrase 2 refers to a specific subset of phrase 1. And I see no reason to assume the “all” in phrase 2 refers to anything less (qualitatively or quantitatively) than the “all” in phrase 1.

Instead of a contrast, I see a synonymous parallelism.

The parallelism is established by the usage of two key words used in both phrases:  “gave/di,dwmi,” and (as already noted) “all.”**

If the statements are synonymous parallels and not in contrast, then the two phrases essentially become equal: God gave all flesh = all those the Father gave Jesus.

Let me paraphrase John 17:2 like this, “For you, Father, gave him, Jesus, authority over all flesh in order that he might give eternal life to those over whom the Father gave him authority.”

Or, let me say it one other way…

“For you, Father, gave Jesus authority over all flesh in order that he might give eternal life to all flesh.”

The authority Jesus has is SPECIFICALLY FOR THE PURPOSE of bestowing eternal life. That’s the point Jesus is making. And assuming I’m right in this, why in the world would God give him authority to give eternal life to all, but then not give him all for the purpose of eternal life? That just would not make sense.

In other words, I think this verse only makes coherent sense of Jesus’ authority and God’s gifting if, and only if, the statements are intended to by synonymous parallels.

 

So, there you go. I’m not sure if I’m right. I haven’t found a commentator to agree with me…which is always a good sign and a bad sign. So, tell me what you think.

 

* “People” is not John’s word in the Greek. John’s word is sa,rx – flesh.

*Two different Gk. words are used for “all,” but both refer to an all encompassing or holistic reality. In other words, I don’t see any exegetical significance to the word choice here. I think it’s just to break up the monotony. John does that sometimes.

Five Guys in the Next Life

I’ve been intrigued the last week or so with The Rich Man and Lazarus parable in Luke 16:19-31.

The parable mostly makes sense. It falls in line with Luke’s larger themes of great eschatological reversals whereby the people who experience good things in this life will not in the next (unless they leverage their privileges for the sake of the poor and outcast), and those who do not experience good things in this life will receive good things in the next. This is an incredibly countercultural message, both in Jesus day and in ours. But I can make sense out of it.

What I’m having difficulty making sense out of is the conversation between the Rich Man and Abraham at the conclusion of the story. In what follows, I’ll posit some possible interpretations, but mostly this blog piece is a call for help.

After Abraham denies the Rich Man’s request for water, the Rich Man understands that his own fate is sealed. The chasm is too wide for him to cross. The eschatological reversal is permanent.

But this realization reminds him that he has five brothers, still alive, who need to be warned about coming to this place of torment. So the Rich Man implores Abraham to send Lazarus back, to raise him up from the grave, so that his brothers, seeing a person risen from the grave, will turn from their ways and avoid eternal torment.

Abraham denies this request, too, saying that these five brothers have access to Moses and the prophets and that access should be sufficient. The Rich Man, however, argues that a person rising from the grave is a greater revelation (and therefore will be more likely to elicit faith from his brothers.) But Abraham denies this logic, too, arguing, instead, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.”

At this point, my skepticism comes into play a bit. Is this really true or am I misunderstanding Jesus? Are Moses and the prophets at the same revelatory level as a man rising from the dead…and in particular, since later Jesus will rise from the dead, are they on the same revelatory level as the resurrected Jesus?

And another question comes about at this point. To what, specifically, does the phrase, “Moses and the prophets” refer? Unless these five brothers were exceptionally rich and also priests or religious leaders, they would not have had access to the scriptures, right? The printing press didn’t’ come around for centuries after this parable. So I think Jesus must be referring to either, the oral recitation of Moses and the prophets in synagogue on Saturdays or Jesus is simply referring, generally, to the witness of persons who live faithfully (and therefore proclaim by their actions and words) the message of Moses and the prophets.

I’m not sure what to make of this. However, here are some thoughts as to how these questions serve the larger purpose of the parable.

First, the issue here is, again, one of hospitality. The context demands that we keep this in mind. For several chapters now, Jesus has been discussing hospitality to the poor, the sinner, and the outcast – Lazarus. The Rich Man is in Hades because he does not take this seriously.

With this in mind, two things can be said. A. The ultimate question for these five brothers is not “belief” or “faith” in general, but specifically, it is whether or not they will welcome the Lazarus at their own gates. This is not a parable about justification by faith apart from works of the law. No, the whole point here is that works of the law (Moses (!) and the prophets) are part of the justification of these men.

And this leads me to point B. Moses and the prophets unambiguously direct those who are privileged in Israel to care and welcome for those who are not. To ignore the Old Testament’s ethic of hospitality is to intellectually and practically ignore the revelation of Moses and the prophets. One cannot sell the poor for a pair of shoes, as one prophet says it, and still claim to be a follower of Moses and the prophets.

So, second, no matter if Moses and the Prophets (whatever medium they are presented in) are on an equal revelatory level as a resurrected persons, the fact remains that the same message is conveyed in both: To listen to Moses, the prophets, and a man raised from the dead is to do what these mediums of revelation say. And in this instance, they are all three saying, leverage your status, your privilege, your wealth, and your very self for those traditionally viewed as “outsiders” to your society, your economic class, your family, your religion, and your church. If you do that, the eschatological reversal will work in your favor.

Idolatry: Both Horizontal and Vertical

I don’t know if I’m right in the following thoughts. These are just some connections I’ve been making in my own mind and blogging seemed to be a good place to lay them out there. As I’ve been reading in Romans 1, the thought occurred to me, the problem with idolatry isn’t just giving allegiance to another deity (bad as that is). The problem of idolatry in Paul’s perspective is that the idols imprison the truth in injustice.

That is, idolatry is the manifestation and cause of a world where both individuals and communities practice injustice against one another and thereby deny the truth of one another’s humanity. It is the manifestation and cause of a world where neither individuals nor communities can challenge or change (or even desire to change) these unjust practices and structures that dehumanize people created in God’s image.

The truth, both on an individual and collective level, becomes imprisoned within the unjust practices and agendas of various human cultural systems. And therefore the truth is not readily obvious – for we have traded what could be known about God for gods made in our own image, gods that will support rather than challenge our unjust hearts and communities.

Wrath then becomes God’s response to human injustice. Wrath is not the unbridled passion of a heartless God. It is the inevitable outcome of a God who values just relationships both on vertical (human to God) and horizontal (human to human) planes. Wrath exists because human injustice is so grave and terrible, and our hearts so apt to imprison the truth in injustice such that we can never see the truth about ourselves or God, that creation itself becomes perverted and inverted.

And this inversion of creation takes us back to idolatry, specifically the collective idolatry of the entire human race. It is an idolatry which perpetuates and is perpetuated by injustice.

Even in the OT, idolatry wasn’t just about the differences between Yahweh and the pagan deities. Rather, in scripture, idolatry always carries with it the practical implications of unethical behavior, specifically blood shed unjustly. In other words, idolatry is both a violation of a person’s vertical relationship with God and also a violation of their horizontal relationship with other persons. When we imprison truth in injustice, this is not just a violation of our relationship with God, but is a violation of our relationships with those created in his image.

Idolatry is thus dehumanization of my neighbor (among other things).

I therefore maintain, that even if one calls on Jesus and then uses the name Jesus to dehumanize another person, or somehow uses Jesus to promote injustice, then that person is participating in idolatry even if they are using the right language. The God of scripture cannot be reduced to my ideological agenda, he will not be shackled to anyone’s unjust causes, and he will not be associated with the dehumanization even of my enemy. Idolatry is, therefore, both a horizontal and a vertical injustice.

 

So, what do you think? Do you have anything to add to this random collection of thoughts? Where have you seen idolatry and injustice combined in obvious ways? How does this change the way we talk about the gospel?

Musings on the Message #3: The Greatest Story Ever Told

Despite what many of us have been taught, preaching is primarily narratival.

By “Narratival” I do not mean that preaching is primarily about story telling or great illustrations – beneficial as those tools might be. What I mean here is that Christian preaching that seeks to be faithful to the witness of Scripture must not abstract principles from the Scriptures and redemptive history. The Triune God did not give us abstracted rules and logical syllogisms. The Triune God gave us a story of creation, brokenness, law, redemption, cross, resurrection, ascension, and eschaton. Trinitarian preaching places the listeners and the preacher within the story of God’s redemptive work in the world, emphasizing the work of God, lifting up the person of God, and exalting the cross of Christ above all humanity.

Christian preaching proclaims this narrative of redemptive history as an alternative narrative to every other allegiance demanding story in our fallen world. Christian preaching does not proclaim the narrative of nationalism, the story of psychology, or the myth of modernity. Our story is not the story of the nations; it is the story of the Triune God made flesh in the cruciform Messiah who has come to reconcile the entire cosmos to the divine order first established in His creation (Gen. 1-2, Eph. 1:10).

Finally, it should be noted that Narratival Christian preaching emphasizes the contemporary church as a participants in and extensions of salvation history, as opposed to either being mere observers of redemptive history, the climax of salvation history, or the leftovers of salvation history. The narrative of redemption did not die with the apostles – it continues in us. But while we are participants, it does it find its ultimate fulfillment in those of us in the postmodern age (in this, the residue of Modernity seems to still influence our assumptions).  Contemporary Christian preaching needs to recover a sense of the continuation of God’s saving purposes in our day. It needs to recover a sense of the contemporary church as participants in God’s grand narrative. God still speaks today and Christian preaching proclaims that present word.

For the details of narratival presentations (and, yes, preaching is a presentation) check out this fantastic book by Nancy Duarte.

And what I’d really like is for JR Forasteros to write a piece on how Duarte’s book and sermonizing come together.

HUCKABEE AND THE BIG HOLE IN THE AMERICAN SOUL

This is not my post. This is written by Dr. Jerry Walls on his Facebook wall. 

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In the aftermath of the tragic mass murder in Connecticut, Mike Huckabee made some comments that incited considerable controversy and criticism. I cited part of what he said in a favorable vein, and it generated a lively debate on my Facebook page, with many taking a negative view of his comments.

I would like to clarify what I think the issue is, and where I think Huckabee is dead right. Before doing so, it will help to make clear what I am NOT saying, and what he did not say either. First, as he clarified in a later statement, he did not mean to say the shooting happened because prayer was removed from school, as if there was some sort of simple cause-effect relationship here. Second, he did not mean to say we have the power literally to expel God from school, or anywhere else. Indeed, he eloquently described some of the many ways God was present in the tragedy and will continue to be.

But where he was spot on was in his observation that it is odd to say the least, if not profoundly confused, to wonder where God is in moments like this tragedy, when we as a culture have been marginalizing God for the past fifty or more years. The attitude he cites is manifest in everything from lawsuits over Christmas trees to vociferous opposition to the very suggestion that biology classes should at least examine the possibility that our world was created by an intelligent agent. God is never discussed in history class, or psychology or biology. In public schools, things must proceed as if He either does not exist, or is utterly irrelevant to making sense of everything from the laws of nature to human history.

So here is a good way think about the issue. What must God be like for a tragic event like the one in Connecticut to generate even a question about his whereabouts when it happened? The answer is He must be assumed to be something like traditional theists believe He is. If he is not, if he is either impotent, or senile, or morally indifferent, there would be no mystery in the occurrence of evil. It is precisely the lofty claims about the nature of God that generate the problem of evil. If there is no such God, evil is not a problem in THAT sense, namely, that certain types of evil seem to be sharply inconsistent with the existence of such a being. And if there is no such God, there is little reason to believe this tragedy will be rectified and redeemed. The lives that were lost will not continue beyond the grave, and there will be no judgment day to bring ultimate justice.

Or think about the issue this way. Invariably when these sorts of tragedies occur, newscasters, celebrities, and everyone else on TV remarks that “our thoughts and prayers go out to these hurting people.” So here is a similar question: what must God be like for prayer to make sense? Again, if prayer is a rational activity, God must be something like the God of traditional theism. If there is no such God, “prayer” is little more than collective empathy.

So what I am suggesting is we need to decide whether we want to continue to believe evil is a problem in the deep sense, and continue to believe in ultimate justice, and continue to pray in the belief that Someone is really listening and has the love, the power and the wisdom to know how and when to answer.

But here is precisely where the ambivalence/inconsistency/confusion arises that Huckabee put his finger on. Any God whose attributes pose a problem of evil, any God who is worth praying to cannot be trivialized, domesticated, sidelined, ignored ninety-nine percent of the time, and only half-heartedly (usually churches see a spike in attendance for a week or two) acknowledged when tragedy or other trouble shows its face. Any God who is great enough to give us hope that terrible tragedies are not the last word, that such horrors will finally be redeemed and made right, any God who is worthy of serious prayer demands to take the central place in our lives.

While thinking about this, it struck me that perhaps this is the deep reason why the issue of prayer in schools has become such a lightning rod. If there is really a God anything like traditional Christianity says, then prayer must be at the very heart of our lives if we are to be rational beings. Prayer acknowledges not only his existence, but our utter reliance upon him as our only hope if evil is to be defeated and our deepest aspirations for meaning are to be satisfied. Moreover, we cannot hope to truly understand human history or the ultimate nature of the physical world if we do not take Him fully into account. On the other hand, if there is no such God, prayer is deeply illusory and misguided, however emotionally comforting it might be. And “God’s” role in human history is only the role of an idea (an idea that is “all too human” as Nietzsche would have it) that is no longer viable for thoughtful people. Either way, one of these positions is radically and utterly misguided and out of touch with reality. No wonder the issue stirs such passions.

(Of course, there are complicating factors for such prayer in our pluralistic society. But for most of American history, no one thought the Constitution ruled it out, and I suspect if we took God more seriously as a culture, we could find more creative ways to deal with our pluralism than by simply leaving prayer out of the picture. And this is not to suggest that public prayer is any guarantee that we are taking God seriously. What taking God seriously looks like in the public square is not easy to say. So I grant the practical complications here.)

But back to the main point. The deep incoherence in our soul consists in the fact that we want to hold onto the idea that prayer makes sense, and that evil is a problem that we may hope will be solved, but we do not want to take seriously the God that gives substance to these convictions. This hit me again this morning as I was listening to a performance of “The Messiah.” What struck me was how this great piece of music begins with words of comfort and ends with words of triumphant hope. But in between, there are word such as these: “But who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiner’s fire.”

I have no doubt that God’s mercy endures forever. I have no doubt that God welcomes all sincere prayers, including those elicited by tragedies like the one we have just witnessed. He is always ready and willing to give grace to those who seek it. As the Messiah states the invitation: “Come unto Him, all ye that labour, come unto Him, ye that are heavy laden, and He will give you rest.”

But the God who is truly capable of giving comfort is the God who will reign forever and ever. If we want the comfort, if we want to pray for His Kingdom to come, we must understand who we are dealing with. But if we want a God who can safely be ignored and trivialized except when trouble strikes, there is no reason to think such a “god” is worth praying to or even invoking when we are baffled by shocking evil. But we cannot have it both ways.

Total Depravity in Genesis 6:5?

*Before I jump in here, I want to make clear it is not my intention to deny the doctrine of Total Depravity. Rather, I want to show that this verse (Genesis 6:5) does not, itself, touch of on the subject of Total Depravity.*

Genesis 6:5:

The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.

From John Wesley to John Calvin to John Stott, Genesis 6:5 has been used to argue for the doctrine of Total Depravity. Total Depravity affirms human persons are, because of the Fall, totally corrupt in our entire nature. Sin has touched every one of our faculties – spiritual, emotional, psychological, and physical – and because we are totally corrupted in our sin, we cannot, in our own will, make a decision for God without his prior actions of grace toward us.

It’s easy to see how this doctrine can be derived from Genesis 6:5. It’s easy.

But easy doesn’t make it right. 

The larger context of Genesis 6:5 demonstrates why utilizing Genesis 6:5 out to prove the doctrine of Total Depravity is a mis-use of the text.

Genesis 6:5 is concerned with a special, extensive, particular form of wickedness directly tied to the Nephalim (6:4) – offspring of the Son’s of God (evil angelic beings?) having sexual relations with the daughters of men (human women).

In other words, according to Genesis 6, itself, we’re not talking about normal, run-of-the-mill human sin(fulness). We’re talking about an extreme (and odd!)  form of sin(fulness).

Indeed, the passage claims that humanity’s wickedness had become great, not that it always was great. And then later the passage describes God’s grief for having created humanity because of how wicked they had become.

Furthermore, the Nephalim wickedness was so extreme in form that Genesis 6:5 posits it is the direct, causal factor for the subsequent flood narrative. In other words, we have an extreme form of judgment (the flood) because of an extreme form of sin (Nephalim wickedness). And if this wickedness is extreme, then we’re not talking about normative, universal human nature existing in all times, all places, and within every human heart.

In fact, if the words of Genesis 6:5 were universal to humanity, and therefore relevant to the doctrine of Total Depravity, then God would have destroyed the world long before Genesis 6.

But since God doesn’t, this leads me to the conclude that Genesis 6:5 is an irrelevant text in the Total Depravity discussion, except insofar as it illustrates how far human sinfulness can go. But let’s be clear that it cannot prove the Total Depravity of non-Nephalim peoples.

Again, I am not challenging the doctrine of Total Depravity here. That’s another discussion altogether. But I want to argue that we shouldn’t be using this passage.

What do you think? Have I completely missed the boat? Have any of you ever wondered about the use of this passage to prove Total Depravity?

Delighting in the Gift, Not the Packing Paper

Dora the Explorer is my daughter’s favorite show. Cassie and I love it because it’s educational (man, has it helped her vocabulary expand!), and because it’s not schizoid and random like Sponge Bob Square Pants.

Today Cassie and I were on our weekly lunch date and while walking through the mall we saw a “Backpack,” Dora’s trusty companion backpack that has his own special song and carries all the items Dora needs during her adventures. The price of Backpack is normal nearly $30, but its sale price was down to $4. So we got it…fully expecting the Phoebus to get really, really stoked.

About 5 minutes ago we gave it to her. She looked at it. Got a smile on her face. Pulled the packing paper out. Then threw Backpack on the ground, taking absolute joy in the packing paper!

Immediately, with a smile on my face (because, after all, I could smile – I only spent $4, not $30), I realized that this is exactly what I do with God.

In the cross of Jesus, God gave the world the greatest gift it could ever receive – Himself! And for free, no less!

But in so many ways we are prone to look at God’s gift, throw it down on the ground, and get distracted by the “filling”: Blessings are good, but they are not the God who gives them. Feelings are good, but they are hardly ever consistent. Theology is good, but theological pronouncements can never fully represent or take the place of the God to whom they point. Material possessions are good, but they can distract from God. Love is good, but when pursued for itself, it leaves us lacking.

These things are mere “filling” when compared with the real gift. We are permitted to delight in them, but often we throw down the gift and trade it for something that, well, ends up being nothing more than a bowl of soup compared to the family inheritance, the packing paper when compared to the Backpack.

The real gift is the God who blesses us even when we don’t see it; the real gift is the God who is present even when we lament his absence; the real gift is the God who cannot be shackled by our systematic theology but seeks always to draw us deeper and deeper into Himself (a place no systematic theology can fully comprehend); the real gift is the God who can call us to give all our possessions away in order to have eternal life; the real gift is the God who is Love in the flesh, in it’s purest form – self-giving love that serves others and seeks them above Itself.

So let’s delight in the gift, not just the packing paper. After all, when the gift IS the Giver, delighting in the gift IS delighting in the Giver.

 

 

What are some other ways we trade the Gift for the packing paper? Is there a time where God showed you this was exactly what you were doing? How did He redirect your focus?

The Word of the Lord Came to Jonah…

As I study through the book of Jonah, I’m going to start writing little reflection pieces here and there about different things that catch my eye. This won’t be anything too serious or deep, just some reflections based on the text.

Jonah 1:1: And the word of Yahweh came to Jonah…

I’m intrigued by this phrase, “the word of Yahweh came to Jonah.”

This same “word” was the agent of creation in Genesis 1, when Yahweh spoke everything into existence.

It is by this word that Yahweh created the sea: the sea that will eventually get violent and try to destroy Jonah’s ship (1:9).

It is by this word that Yahweh creates all the creature of the sea: one of whom swallows Jonah and takes him into the depths of the earth (1:16).

It is by this word that Yahweh creates plant life: plant life that would eventually give shade to Jonah only to die off later by the mouth of a worm that Yahweh also created through this word (4:6-7).

It is by this word that the Holy Trinity decided amongst themselves to create humanity in God’s image: a humanity which would later not recognize their Creator, would pray to their own gods (1:5), and hate rather than celebrate God’s redemptive desires (3:10-4:1).

And it is by this Word that even Jonah, in spite of all his faults, will eventually be redeemed by the God who created everything and therefore loves everything…including self-righteous sinners (John 1).

There’s just something beautiful and intriguing about Yahweh’s providential care  and love for His creation. From the beginning of Jonah’s story, the narrator wants us to know that the God who created by His word is the same God who sends his word out to his creatures that they might not be destroyed…de-created by their Creator under the weight of their own sin.

“30 for 30″ #5: The Little Guy Always Wins

My brother Travis and I are always in the mood for a good dog-pile. We’ve been known to dog-pile my dog Jet, sometimes toddlers, and quite often my wife.

The funny thing about my wife is that when she gets dog-piled, she keeps on mouthing…in her own Cassie sort of way. Even when she’s on the bottom of a Fuerst Brother’s Dog-Pile, you can hear her screaming, “THE LITTLE GUY ALWAYS WINS!!!!”

It always makes me laugh because clearly the little guy is losing.

Yet over time I have realized there’s a bit of truth to what she’s saying: the gospels teach us that the little guy does always wins. From the beginning of the New Testament, the message has been that God will overthrow the mighty and uplift the broken, the arrogant cannot stand and the poor in spirit are blessed.

The Little Guy Always Wins slogan was best embodied by Jesus, who taking on the form of a human being, died on a cross under the weight of Roman power, only to resurrect 3 days later and proclaim, “Death has no hold on us! We need not be afraid of the bigger, more powerful guys! The little guys always win!”

It is the Apostle Paul (whose name literally means “the little guy”) who tells us of Jesus’s humility in Philippians 2. I won’t bore you with the Greek grammar, but the point he’s making is that central to God’s character, before the foundations of creation, was the fact that God is humble. The incarnation of Jesus is just the logical and natural manifestation of God’s humility.

“THEREFORE,” says Paul, “HAVE THIS MIND IN YOU!”

It may not look like the little guy is winning when he’s hanging on a Roman cross. But 3 days later, when death could not hold him, the truth became earth shatteringly clear:

THE LITTLE GUY ALWAYS WINS!!!

God, justice, and the other

This is a short, 12 minute, homily by my long-time friend, Bryne. I think you will find her intellectually engaging and spiritually challenging. But most of all, I think you will be moved by her passion for justice.