The Cross is Not Enough: Why the Christian Story Needs Easter

Five years ago yesterday, the reality of human mortality pierced my soul like a dark, cursed knife that causes no physical harm, but mortally wounds, nonetheless. Before dad died, death was an abstraction, a thing to be vaguely aware of, a philosophical problem to be discussed. Death was a rabid dog, sure, but one who lacked fangs.

Some of us are graced with a life that avoids the pain of death for decades. Some of us face it much earlier. But if there is one thing true about death, it is that none of us can escape it. Before our own deaths, we will all experience that deep puncture of the soul, that knife twisting and doubling us over in pain.

All of us.

We cannot hide.

And great art calls us out of our hiding…even if, at times, it has no solution.

For authors in particular, and therefore for we who enter their stories, death is the great narrative driver. Always the ultimate Dark One, death creates and destroys characters, manipulating plots, and at times leaving us in awe of its power. And so, in any great narrative, it is the one thing that must be defeated if the story is to progress. The grave cannot be the end of our stories.

In the narrative of contemporary Christianity, we are too quick to jump on Christ’s cross as that which secures the afterlife for us. We are waiting for eternity, waiting for the halos and the angels. We are waiting for, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

But what good is the afterlife if death is not defeated? What good is a Messiah who stays in the grave? What difference does forgiven sins make if death still reigns? If we merely go to heaven when we die, then this world is not set right…it’s just forgotten. And if this world is not set right, then God loses! 

This is why the cross is not enough. This is why the Christian story needs resurrection. Because the resurrection says the Dark One cannot win. The cursed knife will be blunted…no, destroyed. The rabid dog with the deadly fangs will be put down. Evil and injustice will not merely cease to exist, they will be put to rights. Justice will prevail in the end, not merely because there will be an absence of evil, but because evil will be defeated.

We are waiting, not for an afterlife where we get to forget about this life. We are waiting for resurrection. A defeat of death, itself. An elimination of it’s power. A memory renewed so that all the death that ever was will be swallowed up in life…not forgotten, but set in a better context. In the context of a God who took on human skin, lived a life of justice in confrontation with evil, died at the hands of that evil, then resurrected from the grave in defeat of the powers of evil. He defeats death. He defeats evil, something we could never do on our own. And then enables us to turn around, and in the power of his Spirit, work for the defeat of death and the defeat of evil in our world.

Death is no abstraction. It is no philosophical concept. It drives our narrative as the great antagonist. But the resurrection of Jesus, soon to be seen, means that the grave is not the end of our stories. Because resurrection is also no abstraction or philosophical concept. It is the great protagonist. Or rather, the One who resurrected is the great Protagonist.

Your days are waiting…to end. But the end is now. Five years ago death became real to me. But in the five years since, resurrection life has become even more real.  Easter Sunday means there is more to the Christian story than the cross. In a sense, the cross is not enough. Without resurrection, our story goes nowhere…it’s a permanent tragedy.

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.

Winning Friends and Losing Social Status

This morning I came across a verse in Luke that I’ve never noticed before. Jesus has just finished his parable of the Shrewd Manager (16:1-8) and he makes a statement that seems to go against Luke’s otherwise extreme teachings on wealth.

He says, “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will  be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” (16:9)

I was confused at first. I mean, Jesus has previously, in Luke’s gospel, been incredibly critical of the wealthy. And he will continue to be critical of the wealthy in chapters to come. So why would Jesus say this?

Fortunately, I can’t read my Bible without having my Inductive Bible Study lenses on. And while I’m not sure this is the answer, what I came up with is as follows:

Back at the beginning of chapter 15, Luke sets the context of Jesus confrontation with the wealthy Pharisees regarding the issue of who they refuse to eat with. That theme carries through Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son (the father throws a banquet for the returned son, but the oldest son refuses to participate), and I think right into the parable of the Shrewd Manager.

While the Shrewd Manager doesn’t have any overt discussion of who we are supposed to eat with, the point Jesus makes in that parable still has to do with one’s wealth and how it is to be used. He interprets the parable for his listeners by talking to them about the importance of being faithful and trustworthy with what they have. And warns them that they cannot serve God and money – they will hate one or the other.

So my thought is, Jesus is essentially saying, the “friends” one is supposed to be winning are not others like you, who share your social status. The “friends” are the very people no one else would sit with at the dinner table.

The implications of this go right along with Luke’s larger themes. Wealth is not a tool to sustain or acquire a certain social status. Winning friends with one’s wealth, as traditionally done, for the purpose of securing one’s popularity or high esteem misses the point of why God trusts you with wealth to begin with.

Wealth is to be used to gain friends who can’t pay you back. It is to be used to gain friends who can’t give you social status. Wealth is to be used on people no one else would eat with. So that when it’s gone, what stands in the end is not your position in life, but the fact that you have no position in life and therefore have a position in the Kingdom of God.

 

A Radical Review: The Really Bad, Pt. 1

This is part 10 in my review of David Platt’s Radical. Previously, I have looked at the really good aspects of his book, the good aspects of his book, the bad aspects of his book, and now I’m discussing some things I thought were really bad…bad enough for me to not recommend this book to anyone in my church. (Please see the prior sections of my review to get a balanced understanding of the book. If you only read this section, you’ll come away with a much more negative view than I intend). 

God hates people: I knew I was going to have some problems with this book when on page 29 Platt makes this statement, “And in some sense, God also hates sinners. You might ask, ‘What happened to ‘God hates the sin and loves the sinner’? Well, the Bible happened to it. One psalmist said to God, ‘The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong.’ Fourteen times in the first fifty psalms we see similar descriptions of God’s hatred toward sinners, his wrath toward liars, and so on.” 

I know Platt and others (Piper, Driscoll, Washer) think they’re profound when they say this stuff. But it’s terrible biblical interpretation to pull a couple Bible verses out of their context in order to prove your point and add some shock value to what you’re saying. A point, in my opinion, which is shocking precisely because it goes against the grain of the thrust of scripture.

You can’t just say God hates people and then when people ask about it say, “Well, the Bible happened to it….the Bible says God hates us.” That’d be like me saying, “What happened to Unconditional Election? Well, the Bible happened to it.” In other words, such an approach does nothing to actually prove the point. It merely assumes it.

No. Sorry. That won’t do. Preachers, theologians, and Bible teachers need to be better handlers of Scripture than that.

This approach to these texts is a cheap version of biblical interpretation that charades as deep spiritual truth, but is actually deadly.

How Would I Interpret the “God Hates You” Passages?

The first rule you learn in Biblical Interpretation 101 is that genre is the first thing you need to determine when reading a Bible passage. The psalms are part of the literary genre called “poetry.” A unique part of poetry’s very DNA is that it is filled with symbols, emotion, and exaggeration. As Platt acknowledges, most of his citations of scripture come from the Psalms, which means that knowing/acknowledging the psalms are poetry is an essential part of understanding what the psalms mean: By their very nature they’re not to be taken literally. To miss this point leads to all kinds of grave interpretation errors…like the one represented by Platt when he says God hates people.

Furthermore, we must also recognize that words like ‘love’ and ‘hate’ don’t translate 1 to 1 into our culture. God’s love and hate are covenantal words in the OT, not strictly emotional words (like in our culture). The point being that the exaggerated language of ‘hate’ combined with the cultural context and genre give us a good indication of the psalmists point: Those who are wicked fall outside of God’s covenant (which is Paul’s point [and Malachi's] when he writes of the same thing concerning Jacob and Esau in Romans 9…he’s building on a covenant theme he’s been talking about the entire book.).

And on one more note, our individualism goes awry in our interpretations of these passages because we read these words like they’re for ‘me’ or ‘you’ individually. But if these words are covenantal words, then they’re necessarily about a community of people, not individuals. Even in Malachi and Romans 9, Jacob and Esau represent nations not individuals (and an interpretive case could be made for the same thing in Genesis, “There are two nations in your womb.”).

If we miss the genre of the passage we’re reading, if we miss the cultural context of the passage, and if we read our Western individualism on to them, then we miss the interpretation. To say that God hates all individual sinners not only goes against the main thrust of Scripture (For God so loved the world!), but is to cherry-pick verses out of their context to prove our pet-points. This is really bad interpretation. This is really bad theology. This is really bad pastoring.

A Radical Review: The Bad, Pt. 4 (False Dichotomy 3 and 4)

Here is post 8 of my review of David Platt’s Radical. Please see the previous posts in this series if you wish to get a more full understanding of my thoughts on the book…good and bad. 

Listening to the Holy Spirit vs. Plotting and Strategies: Platt argues that when he reads the pages of the New Testament, he doesn’t see a group of people who are plotting and strategizing for the Kingdom of God. Rather, he sees a group of people radically dependent upon the Holy Spirit for guidance and discernment. “They are not plotting strategies. They are ‘joined together constantly in prayer.’ They are not busy putting their faith in themselves or relying on themselves. They are pleading for the power of God, and they are confident that they are not going to accomplish anything without his provision. (51)” 

I appreciate Platt’s desire to be dependent upon the Spirit. Indeed, I desire the same thing! And so does everyone else who works in the kingdom of God. Just because people strategize, research, and make plans doesn’t mean they’re not relying on the Spirit. Why can’t the Spirit be involved in strategizing? Why can’t the Spirit be active in our demographic research? Why can’t the Spirit be leading us as we make plans? Why can’t we rely on the Spirit to change even our good plans if God wants something else (See Paul going to Greece instead of Asia in Acts)?

This dichotomy between planning and being led by the Spirit sounds really spiritual the way he says it. But in the end, it’s a false dichotomy. These two things are not antithetical. It reminds me of the preachers who don’t prepare their sermons and just trust that God will guide them when they step into the pulpit. They think they’re super spiritual because they’re relying on God and they look down on people who study, prepare, and practice. But all the while they miss the fact that the Spirit can and is active not only in the ends, but in the means of sermon preparation, not only in the ends, but in the means of all kingdom work. 

Talents, Resources, Leadership vs. The Leading of the Holy Spirit: This false dichotomy is closely related to the previous one. Whereas previously Platt created an unnecessary division between church strategizing and following the Spirit, on pg. 54 he unnecessarily separates talents, resources, and leadership from the Holy Spirit.

Again, at the root of what he’s saying, I’m in agreement. “It doesn’t matter how many resources the church has. The church I lead could have all the man-made resources that one could imagine, but apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, such a church will do nothing of significance for the glory of God.” 

Yes. He’s right. And he’s right that God can use the least of the least for his kingdom. 

But there’s also a sense in which God has gifted us and graced us with talents and abilities unique to us. These gifts give us unique perspectives, abilities, and clout that we wouldn’t otherwise have. To disregard these things as outside the realm of being lead by the Spirit is stupid. I’m not saying Platt is doing this, but he needs to know that his audience will hear it that way, especially in the context of the aforementioned false-dichotomy. 

Talents, resources, and leadership are not the enemy of listening to the Holy Spirit. Arrogance, pride, and fear are. Let’s keep these things straight. 

A Radical Review: The Bad, Pt. 3 (False Dichotomy 1 and 2)

Gospel Preaching vs. Entertainment: On page 49 Platt rightly criticizes that most people are just looking for a good show that won’t put them to sleep when they go to church. Obviously this should be criticized. But Platt goes so far as to create a false dichotomy between true gospel preaching and entertainment. I’m sorry, but since when did entertainment become the enemy of the gospel? Since when did holistic experiences become the enemy of the God who created us with 5 senses? And if well written sermons, dramas, and music are so terrible, why in the world is the Bible one of the most well articulated, well crafted, symbol-laden, entertaining books in the history of the world? 

Let me be clear: There are churches that let entertainment rule the day and be an end in itself. This is sin. But that doesn’t mean that we must resign ourselves to passionless preaching and terrible music. Growing, dynamic churches are churches that appeal to people at all kinds of levels (because God created us with so many different levels). The Gospel preaching vs. entertainment dichotomy is one we must carefully consider, but the two are not, in my opinion, ultimately antithetical…unless of course you believe truth should be dull, irrelevant, and eye-gougingly boring. 

God has a plan for your life vs. You’re a sinner who can’t save yourself: One of Platt’s primary points of pontification is when he sets up this false dichotomy. He wants people to believe that the way the gospel is often presented (God has a plan for your life) is a false gospel that should be replaced by You’re a sinner who cannot save yourself. 

The problem I have is that I don’t see these two things as necessarily contrasting. Again, I think we can take the former too far – American individualism has hijacked this idea and suggested that God’s plan for people’s life is prosperity and comfort. But we need not overreact to that misunderstanding of the gospel. After all, is “You’re a sinner who can’t save yourself” equal to, “God doesn’t have a plan for you life”? 

No.

The fact is, God does have a plan for you: his plan is that you be conformed to the image of Christ, that you participate in his renewal of all creation which is happening in the present. But in order to do so, we need to understand that this is his work, and we are only participants because he invited us. We do not save ourselves. We cannot save ourselves. But, yes, God has a plan for us: to save us, so that we might work with him to save all of creation! 

In other words, Platt needlessly separates these two ideas. 

 

A Radical Review: The Bad, Part 1

After 5 posts examining The Really Good and The Good aspects of David Platt’s Radical, we are moving on to some of the less positive aspects o my review. This, too, will take 4 or 5 posts as we examine The Bad and The Really Bad.

The Bad….

 

A Limited Gospel: 

One of my frustrations with much of the evangelistic efforts of modern Evangelicalism is the ingrained assumption that the gospel is primarily about getting people into heaven. All other things serve that purpose. The Southern Baptists are largely the spearheads of this understanding of the gospel, and David Platt, in general, fails to break free from the mold. While I am excited about Platt’s push for justice for the poor and marginal (something rarely discussed in Southern Baptist churches), Platt still falls into the assumption that the gospel is primarily about preparing people for the next life instead of teaching them that heaven is being brought to earth in this life when the church lives out the ethics of Jesus.

Platt spends the entire 7th chapter of his book discussing what ‘the gospel’ is. His outline is as follows (The parenthetical statements are my brief summaries of the sections):

1) All People Have a Knowledge of God (God has revealed Himself to everyone…even people who’ve never heard his name)

2) All People Reject God (All persons have rejected God because of their sinful hearts)

3) All People are Guilty Before God (No one is innocent)

4) All People are Condemned for Rejecting God (The law cannot save anyone, it only condemns)

5) God has made a way of Salvation for the Lost (Jesus is the only way, not other religions)

6) People cannot come to God Apart from Faith in Christ 

7) Christ Commands the Church to Make the Gospel Known to All Peoples

Now, if you’re paying attention to the outline, you’ll notice that Platt is following the typical Evangelical formula for “getting someone saved” by leading them through Paul’s epistle to the Romans. But my biggest beef with this approach is that it fails to take into account Paul’s intentions in the book of Romans, itself, and substitutes, instead, the Evangelical agenda for the book of Romans. Such an approach reduces Paul’s greatest letter to a series of proverbial proof-texts designed to “lead someone to the Lord.” 

But Paul’s intention was quite different. After all, he wasn’t writing to unbelievers, but to believers.  

In Romans, Paul’s primary concern is not establishing a bunch of proverbs intended to lead unbelievers to faith in Christ. Paul’s intention is to write to Christians about how God has put them in right standing with His covenant purposes and how God has shown himself to be faithful to His covenant promises in sending Jesus as both the representative of humanity (Israel) and God. Jesus fulfills both sides of the covenant obligations in his death and resurrection. And through faith in Jesus (and the faithfulness of Jesus!), all people can be put in a right relationship with God, no matter if they are Jew or Gentile. 

But none of this is mentioned in Platt’s recounting. Platt’s primary concern in citing Romans lies far from Paul’s primary concern. In pursuit of his own agenda for Romans, Platt consistently cites scriptures outside of their context to reinforce this pre-established agenda. Paul’s point about all people having a knowledge of God, all people rejecting God, and all people being guilty before God are not primarily about teaching unbelievers they’re sinners. Rather, Paul’s primary point is to teach Jewish and Gentile Christians that neither party is morally or spiritually superior to the other. Paul’s not writing a handbook of soul-winning, Paul’s writing a handbook on ethnic diversity in the early church – especially ethnic diversity that dealt with the status of the Jewish people in relation to the Gentiles who are newly grafted into the story of Israel. 

In short, Platt uses Romans to “get people saved,” but Paul was writing Romans  in order to tell “saved people” how they are to understand their new-found relationship to each other and God. Platt is concerned for the billion people in our world today “who will not go to heaven because they have never heard of Christ” and are “dying and going to hell without ever knowing there is a gospel.” But Paul mentions neither heaven nor hell in the book of Romans! Because his point is elsewhere. 

Add to this the fact that for all Platt’s talk of the gospel being “God-centered,” I’m a bit disappointed that he spends most of his time in this chapter discussing humanity and our falleness (which Platt, by the way, attributes to the sovereign determination of God, which acted prior to human free will!). Even under point 5 where he talks about what God has done to make a way for us, he gives all of two or three lines discussing the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the rest of the time he spends pounding the gavel of exclusivism in a pluralistic world. Another subject Paul doesn’t discuss in Romans, though he has a ton to say about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Platt’s discussion is lopsided because his theology is lopsided. And his exegesis is lopsided because he fails to do the hard work of biblical interpretation in Romans. Rather, he just assumes he knows what the book is about. 

In the end, when we reduce the gospel to nothing more than “getting people saved” by taking them through Platt’s 7 points, we are left with no conception of the recreation of all things beginning in the present age, no conception of how the gospel brings heaven to earth in the present age (in fact, quite the opposite, on page 179, Platt contends this world is not our home, which is the opposite of what the NT writers claimed!), no conception of how resurrection life begins in the present age. Instead, what we get is a lot of guilt, a brief mention of a God who died and rose for us, and then a commission to go out to the world in order to make them feel guilty with our proof-texts and then mention at the end that they, too, can be saved because Jesus died and rose again….that is, they can be saved if God doesn’t hate them (but we’ll get to that in a bit).  

For all our arguments over the bodily resurrection of Jesus, if we do not offer a salvation to the world that actually means something to their physical, this-worldly existence (not denying, of course, that there’s a next wordly aspect to our salvation…but even it is physical!), then our cognitive assent to the bodily resurrection of Jesus is meaningless act of the intellect. 

While there is truth to Platt’s understanding of the gospel (we are all, indeed, sinners who cannot save ourselves!), I merely contend that it is not a robust enough understanding of the gospel. If Evangelicalism is to have a powerful voice in our culture, then we need a deeper, more biblical understanding of the gospel and how the scriptures speak of the gospel. 

Platt is writing for the church in this book. He’s not writing for non-Christians. Thus, I contend that he missed an opportunity to do exactly  what Paul did in Romans – preach the gospel to the church and show her how it matters to how she lives her everyday life. Platt had an opportunity to spell out, for the church, what words like ‘gospel,’ ‘justification,’ ‘atonement,’ etc. mean in the context of Romans. But Platt  assumes (a faulty assumption, in my opinion) that the readers of his book already understand these terms and goes on to reinforce the old Evangelism-technique approach to Romans. Such an approach, unfortunately, leaves Paul’s intentions in Romans behind and leaves the modern reader lacking a fuller understanding of Scripture. As a pastor who happens to believe these words matter to our everyday lives, Platt’s approach genuinely saddens me. I wish he had used his platform better. 

This is not a matter of me complaining Platt is not scholarly enough. And, really, this is not a matter of me singling out Platt for his reduced gospel. This is a frustration I have with the larger Evangelical community in general. Our gospel is reduced to “getting sinners into heaven” instead of making disciples of Jesus who bring heaven to earth. We all, not just David Platt, need to repent of this.

The Incarnation is Why I’m a Christian

Someone* asked tonight why I’m a Christian. Here was my response….

The incarnation. It’s amazing and beautiful and tragic and joyful and the ultimate expression of love. It is the whole of human history summed up in a person. It is the ideal humanity lived by one of us. It is the lover seeking out his bride. It is the full manifestation of Triune self-giving love. It is what it means to be fully alive…fully human…fully real. It is death and resurrection, humility and exaltation, shame and glory. 

Without it, Christianity doesn’t make sense. My draw to it is NOT just that I see it because of the (historical) evidence. Rather, it is through the lens of the incarnation that all other things make sense…especially love.

The person who asked this is a Christian, so I wasn’t afraid to use Christianeese in my answer. They know the conceptual language of Christianity. That always makes it easier

Receive the Spirit? What Spirit? Huh?

Reading through the book of Galatians the other day, I came across this interesting question Paul asks in 3:2:

I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?

Now, Paul’s larger concern here is that this church not be deceived into thinking their salvation or sanctification has anything to do with obedience to the law. They did not enter covenant with Jesus Christ, nor are they sustained in that covenant, because they were/are circumcised.

But the thing that caught my attention in this question has little to do with that larger theological discussion he’s having. Rather, it’s the one he’s NOT having…the one he’s assuming…the one even the Galatians are assuming: That the Spirit’s activity and dwelling among the Galatian church is an objective reality.

When Paul asks this question about the Spirit, his assumption is that the answer will come back unanimously, “by believing what we heard.”

In other words, both Paul and the Galatians are assuming the objective reality of the Spirit in their midst. It is so objective that it is assumed.

This is quite the contrast to the present day church. If someone were to ask the American church, “Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?” we would probably say, “Receive the Spirit? What Spirit? Huh?”

I’m not sure that I have anything theologically profound to say here. I’m in awe of the Spirit’s obvious manifestation to the Galatian church and Paul. And I feel a bit of sorrow that such a manifestation is not nearly as objective in my life…and that so many of us would feel the same way I do.

I would like to be clear here, though. I DON’T think the seeming lack of objective movement by the Spirit in our midst is because we don’t believe the gospel as much as the Galatians did. In fact, quite the contrary, Paul’s problem with the Galatians here is that they don’t believe it like they should…they’ve abandoned it. And yet, even in the midst of it, he can still appeal to the objective reality of the Spirit in their midst.

So why does it seem so different with us? Is the Spirit an objective reality in your life? Your church?

God is Not Strong Enough

Here’s my sermon from on the Problem of Evil: Is God strong enough to eradicate evil?

http://www.mylhumc.net/502652.ihtml

The sermon should be near the top of the player’s list, but if not, click on the tab that says, “speakers,” click on my name (Tom Fuerst) and it’s the sermon titled, “God is Not Strong Enough.”