Month: May 2013

444 years ago today…

Dirk Willem was a Christian who opposed infant baptism, believing people should only be baptized on confession of faith.  In those days which were dark and dangerous to Europe’s Anabaptists, the law caught up with Willem in his home town in the Netherlands.  In prison knowing his inevitable fate, Dirk tied strips of cloth together into a rope and escaped.  Crossing the moat’s thin ice surrounding the prison, he made it safely to the other side.  The guard chasing him was not as fortunate.  As the frigid waters pulled him under, he shouted for help.  Freedom was within his grasp but Dirk believed a Christian helped his enemies.  He turned back and pulled the struggling man to safety.  Grateful, the drenched man lay on shore and was prepared to permit Dirk to flee.  But a sheriff on the other side brusquely reminded him of his oath and duty.  The guard reluctantly prodded Willem back to the prison.

For being rebaptized, holding secret church services in his home, and for allowing rebaptisms there, Dirk Willem was condemned to the stake by the judges.  On this day, May 16 in 1569, he died in the flames for his faith.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds believers, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

In a sermon several weeks ago I denounced all Christian harshness towards homosexual people.  Because it exposes a blindness to the fact that sinners of any kind and all kinds are saved in exactly the same way: grace through faith.  In other words, sin is sin is sin, and for sinners of any kind, arrogance towards other sinners of any kind is outrageous.

I find it just as outrageous that some Christians are accepting homosexual conduct/marriage as just “another way” instead of sinful.  For decades, gay apologists have been relentlessly twisting the Bible’s plain criticism of same-sex relationships.  They’ve had little success explaining away Romans 1: 26-27, but their attacks on the Old Testament are now paying off–especially among Christians who don’t know their Bibles well.  When they hear that the church is inconsistent in endorsing Old Testament sexual practices, but not its dietary and farming practices, some believers think, “You know, that doesn’t sound right.”

It’s true that the OT says you can’t wear clothes made out of different types of cloth like cotton and polyester, that men aren’t to trim their beards, and farmers aren’t to plant two different crops like corn and wheat, in one field.  But every Christian needs to understand the nature of the OT–and not just to answer homosexual activists.  A gospel will be garbled without a grasp of what changed between the testaments; and we’ll remain confused about the nature of sanctification (are we to keep the law or not, and if so, what does it do for us?).  In the article below, Redeemer Presbyterian pastor Tim Keller brilliantly and simply explains why we practice some of what the OT says, but not all.

by Tim Keller  [June 2012]

I find it frustrating when I read or hear columnists, pundits, or journalists dismiss Christians as inconsistent because “they pick and choose which of the rules in the Bible to obey.” What I hear most often is “Christians ignore lots of Old Testament texts—about not eating raw meat or pork or shellfish, not executing people for breaking the Sabbath, not wearing garments woven with two kinds of material and so on. Then they condemn homosexuality. Aren’t you just picking and choosing what they want to believe from the Bible?”

It is not that I expect everyone to have the capability of understanding that the whole Bible is about Jesus and God’s plan to redeem his people, but I vainly hope that one day someone will access their common sense (or at least talk to an informed theological advisor) before leveling the charge of inconsistency.

First of all, let’s be clear that it’s not only the Old Testament that has proscriptions about homosexuality. The New Testament has plenty to say about it, as well. Even Jesus says, in his discussion of divorce in Matthew 19:3-12 that the original design of God was for one man and one woman to be united as one flesh, and failing that, (v. 12) persons should abstain from marriage and from sex.

However, let’s get back to considering the larger issue of inconsistency regarding things mentioned in the OT that are no longer practiced by the New Testament people of God. Most Christians don’t know what to say when confronted about this. Here’s a short course on the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament.

The Old Testament devotes a good amount of space to describing the various sacrifices that were to be offered in the tabernacle (and later temple) to atone for sin so that worshippers could approach a holy God. As part of that sacrificial system there was also a complex set of rules for ceremonial purity and cleanness. You could only approach God in worship if you ate certain foods and not others, wore certain forms of dress, refrained from touching a variety of objects, and so on. This vividly conveyed, over and over, that human beings are spiritually unclean and can’t go into God’s presence without purification.

But even in the Old Testament, many writers hinted that the sacrifices and the temple worship regulations pointed forward to something beyond them. (cf. 1 Samuel 15:21-22; Psalm 50:12-15; 51:17; Hosea 6:6). When Christ appeared he declared all foods ‘clean’ (Mark 7:19) and he ignored the Old Testament clean laws in other ways, touching lepers and dead bodies.

But the reason is made clear. When he died on the cross the veil in the temple was ripped through, showing that the need for the entire sacrificial system with all its clean laws had been done away with. Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice for sin, and now Jesus makes us “clean.”

The entire book of Hebrews explains that the Old Testament ceremonial laws were not so much abolished as fulfilled by Christ. Whenever we pray ‘in Jesus name’, we ‘have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus’ (Hebrews 10:19). It would, therefore, be deeply inconsistent with the teaching of the Bible as a whole if we were to continue to follow the ceremonial laws.

The New Testament gives us further guidance about how to read the Old Testament. Paul makes it clear in places like Romans 13:8ff that the apostles understood the Old Testament moral law to still be binding on us. In short, the coming of Christ changed how we worship but not how we live. The moral law is an outline of God’s own character—his integrity, love, and faithfulness. And so all the Old Testament says about loving our neighbor, caring for the poor, generosity with our possessions, social relationships, and commitment to our family is still in force. The New Testament continues to forbid killing or committing adultery, and all the sex ethic of the Old Testament is re-stated throughout the New Testament (Matthew 5:27-30; 1 Corinthians 6:9-20; 1 Timothy 1:8-11.) If the New Testament has reaffirmed a commandment, then it is still in force for us today.

Further, the New Testament explains another change between the Testaments. Sins continue to be sins—but the penalties change. In the Old Testament things like adultery or incest were punishable with civil sanctions like execution. This is because at that time God’s people existed in the form of a nation-state and so all sins had civil penalties.

But in the New Testament the people of God are an assembly of churches all over the world, living under many different governments. The church is not a civil government, and so sins are dealt with by exhortation and, at worst, exclusion from membership. This is how a case of incest in the Corinthian church is dealt with by Paul (1 Corinthians 5:1ff. and 2 Corinthians 2:7-11.) Why this change? Under Christ, the gospel is not confined to a single nation—it has been released to go into all cultures and peoples.

Once you grant the main premise of the Bible—about the surpassing significance of Christ and his salvation—then all the various parts of the Bible make sense. Because of Christ, the ceremonial law is repealed. Because of Christ the church is no longer a nation-state imposing civil penalties. It all falls into place. However, if you reject the idea of Christ as Son of God and Savior, then, of course, the Bible is at best a mish-mash containing some inspiration and wisdom, but most of it would have to be rejected as foolish or erroneous.

So where does this leave us? There are only two possibilities. If Christ is God, then this way of reading the Bible makes sense and is perfectly consistent with its premise. The other possibility is that you reject Christianity’s basic thesis—you don’t believe Jesus was the resurrected Son of God—and then the Bible is no sure guide for you about much of anything. But the one thing you can’t really say in fairness is that Christians are being inconsistent with their beliefs to accept the moral statements in the Old Testament while not practicing other ones.

One way to respond to the charge of inconsistency may be to ask a counter-question—“Are you asking me to deny the very heart of my Christian beliefs?” If you are asked, “Why do you say that?” you could respond, “If I believe Jesus is the the resurrected Son of God, I can’t follow all the ‘clean laws’ of diet and practice, and I can’t offer animal sacrifices. All that would be to deny the power of Christ’s death on the cross. And so those who really believe in Christ must follow some Old Testament texts and not others.”

If God is sovereign and directing every affair in His vast universe, are we just passive robots?  Incidental machines programmed to perform like lifeless marionettes?  Since puppets have no sway over their handlers, maybe we should just forget prayer–or at least not be too hopeful about it.  Maybe just casually and passively say in our best French, C’est la vie?  Abraham might have responded with something like this: “You can’t be serious!”

Listening to what was ahead, horror twisted Abraham’s stomach into knots.  It was his nephew’s home–and home to the nephew’s married daughters.  Sodom was an evil place and Abraham knew it.  But dear God, his nephew!

Speaking of “Dear God”, Abraham was face to face with Him.  Appearing as a man that day, God was traveling with 2 angels and the three had dropped in unexpectedly for a visit.  Following a fine lunch Sarah that had hurriedly prepared for them, God confided that Sodom and Gomorrah were in His cross-hairs.  Fighting nervous cramps, Abraham asked if the city could get a second chance if God discovered 50 people there who worshiped Him.  “Yes.”  What about 45, would 45 righteous people be enough to avert your justice?  “Yes.”  Ok, what about 40?  “Yes.”  Uhm…, what about 30?  “Yes.”  20?  “Yes.”  Even 10?  “Yes, even 10 would change things.”

In Genesis 18, the difference between Abraham and the customer negotiating with the used car dealer, was that Abraham knew exactly who he was dealing with: he was asking a just God to be just (“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”).  As his suggested numbers got lower and lower, Abraham began pleading with a merciful God to be merciful.

God listened to Abraham–not a robot, but a man of faith whom God had chosen to bless the entire world.  James says, “You do not have because you do not ask” (4:2).  Isn’t that true?  At times we don’t think to ask for something because of a bad memory: last time God didn’t answer.  We gave up then and don’t want to be disappointed again.  Yet this is the very spirit Jesus says to run from (Lk.18:1).  If we don’t bother to pray, Satan wins the day.  We ask God to be good, because He is.  We ask Him to be merciful, because He is.  We ask Him to be generous, because He is.

Ask God.  Pray big, bold prayers.  No, not the prosperity gospel kind (You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.  James 4:3), but the kind that only He can do, that are perfectly suited to His nature, and are the kind of things daddies love to do (Matt.7:11) for their children.