A Stranger in the House of God

Usually, when someone calls you “a real piece of work,” it’s not a compliment. We say such things about those we think are odd or whose behavior is hard to understand. But in a famous soliloquy, Shakespeare’s Hamlet declares: “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!” Yet Hamlet’s opinion of humanity is mixed. He calls human beings “the beauty of the world” and “the paragon of animals.” But he also asks, “what is this quintessence of dust?”

These days it is common to treat human beings as if they were only high functioning animals. Humans are indeed creatures but the Bible teaches that we are much more. According to Genesis 1, human beings were the pinnacle of God’s creative work. Not only were they the last creatures made, but they were created in God’s image. Genesis 1:27 says, “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Made in God’s Image

Humans were not the only sentient beings God created. He also created the angels who dwell with Him in heaven. Likewise, the book of Genesis says that animals and humans have “the breath of life” in them and that this life comes from God (Gen. 1:30; 6:17; 7:17). According to the Psalmist, God made humans “a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5). Yet of all God’s creatures, it is only human beings that Scripture says are made in God’s image.

What is this image? Not everyone has the same understanding of what this phrase means. Many early Christian theologians understood the divine image to be the power to reason. Others linked the idea of the divine image with various human faculties like spirituality or immortality. In the Genesis account, humanity’s creation in God’s image sets the stage for the divine mandate to increase in number, fill and subdue the earth, and to rule over the other creatures God has made “(Gen. 1:28). However we understand God’s image, it at least means that God made us in His likeness to represent His interests in the world. To do this, He created humanity to be male and female. Each complements the other as they share the same divine calling. Both reflect the divine image equally. The task of dominion is granted to both alike but the domain in which they exercise that dominion belongs to God

The Bible’s account of human origins takes a sharp turn in the third chapter of Genesis, which describes the fall of humanity into sin through disobedience. The primary agent in this tragic turn of events was Satan, a rebellious angel who took the form of a serpent and tempted Adam and Eve to eat from the forbidden tree (Gen. 3:1–6; cf. 2:15–17). The entrance of sin fundamentally changed humanity’s relation to God and to each other. The word the Bible uses to describe its primary consequence is death (Gen. 2:17). We think of death as the cessation of physical life. It is this, but it is also, first and foremost, a state of alienation from God. Those who are dead in sin are God’s enemies.

The Nature of Sin

Just as we tend to be limited in our thinking about death, we are also narrow in our view of sin. The popular measure used to determine what constitutes sin is movable. This incomplete view reduces many of the things we used to call sins to matters of bad taste or cultural insensitivity. Contemporary culture has removed many of the thoughts and practices that we used to call sins from the category of sin altogether. They are called “choices,” “alternative lifestyles,” or simply “mistakes.” The fatal flaw in these views is their exclusion of God. Where there is no God, there is no sin. That same flaw has corrupted our notion of virtue. Where there is no God, there can be no virtue or goodness, either. There are only privately or commonly held standards.

What renders an action a sin is that it is ultimately committed against God. David understood this. In Psalm 51:4, he declared, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.” This is an astonishing statement, given the events that prompted it. David committed adultery with Bathsheba. He arranged the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, after he learned that she had become pregnant. Theologian Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. explains, “All sin has first and finally a Godward force.”

What, then, are we to do about the human problem of sin? Some people treat sin the same way they do high cholesterol. They know that if they ignore it, things will go badly. But they hope that if they take certain basic measures, it can be kept under control. Others think the solution is a matter of discipline. Those who treat sin as if it were a disease think it can be cured through treatment. Those who see sin as a lack of discipline believe it can be eliminated with education and training. But the Bible views sin differently. Sin is more than a disease or a failure of discipline. It is a condition of guilt and a deeply ingrained moral bent.

Sin is more than a disease or a failure of discipline.

Ever since Adam, human beings have been wired for sin. In his letter to the Christians in Rome, the apostle Paul explains that “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12). God’s reason for binding the rest of humanity to Adam’s one act of disobedience was to open the door of forgiveness through the one man Jesus Christ. “For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man,” the apostle goes on to observe, “how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!” (Rom. 5:17).

Just as our union with Adam in his sin had a profound effect on the human condition, union with Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection also affects us. Adam introduced the dynamic of sin into human nature with its guilt and alienation. Jesus replaces this guilt with His own righteousness and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, enables those who are His to act out that righteousness in their daily lives. The word the Bible uses to describe this new relationship is justified. Romans 5:1–2 explains, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.”

Just as If

Some have tried to explain justification by saying that it makes us “just as if we had never sinned.” Although this is a good start, it does not go far enough. Christ’s death on the cross does indeed take away our sin, rendering us guiltless in the eyes of God. But the work of Christ does more than restore us to the state Adam was in before he sinned. Because Jesus obeyed God perfectly as our substitute, His righteousness is also credited to us. It is not only “just as if I had never sinned,” but also “just as if I had perfectly obeyed.

How should we think about the human condition? The Bible tells us who and what we are. Humans are more than complex animals. They are creatures made in God’s image with a physical and spiritual nature and were created to act as His representatives in the world. Humans are also deeply flawed by what the Bible calls sin. This is both a condition of guilt and a natural inclination that alienates us from God and one another. All the ills we see in the world today can ultimately be traced to the problem of sin.

The hope of the Christian where sin is concerned is Jesus Christ. He is God’s answer for sin. Christ’s death paid the price for all our sin. Christ’s obedience earned our righteousness. His resurrection has made us “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). All those who are in Jesus Christ exchange death for life. It is only because Christ has given us new life that we can live a new life.

What is God Like?

January 23, 2021January 23, 2021 John Koessler1 Comment

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The Bible teaches that God has revealed Himself to us through creation and by His word. But what does that revelation tell us about the nature of God? Theologians have traditionally divided God’s attributes into two main categories. Some are attributes that have no analogy in human experience. These attributes, often called God’s incommunicable attributes, display the uniqueness of the divine nature. Others, called communicable attributes, are characteristics that have some analogy in human experience. God’s incommunicable attributes show how the divine nature is unlike our own. They display God’s transcendence and reveal the great gulf that exists between the Creator and His creatures. God’s communicable attributes remind us that we have been created in the image of God and, in some small measure, were designed to be like Him.

When Jesus spoke of God to the woman of Samaria, He emphasized two fundamental characteristics of God. According to Jesus, God is both a Spirit and a personal being who seeks those who worship Him in spirit and truth (John 4:24). The title Jesus uses to describe this being is Father. This label implies that God is both intimately involved with His creation while being distinct from it. Creation depends on God for its origin and continued existence, but God is not dependent on anyone or anything (Acts 17:24-25). This independence is reflected in four attributes that flow from it and reflect God’s power: Infinity, Omnipresence, Eternity, and Immutability.

God Has No Bounds

When we say that God is infinite, we are not really talking about size or distance but the fulness of His perfection. God possesses all His attributes without measure or limitation. All that God is, He is to an infinite degree. This infinite God is omnipresent. He is always present everywhere. The Psalmist acknowledged this when he wrote, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there” (Ps. 139:7–8). There is no place or situation in which we will find ourselves that God is not already present. We cannot hide from God or escape His presence.

Where time is concerned, God is eternal. He does not experience the limitations of time the way we do. As Psalm 90:2 observes, He exists as God “from everlasting to everlasting.” God’s eternal nature has implications for God’s interaction with creation. The eternal God can act within time as we know it, but He is not bound by time. Because God exists apart from time, the Bible uses our experience as a point of reference when talking about His eternal nature. 2 Peter 3:8 urges us to remember that “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” What seems to us like a delay is not a delay to God. Our physical life has a beginning and an end. God has neither. Because we are time-bound creatures, we can only experience time as a succession of events. Unlike us, God is not subject to time or to cause and effect.

This means that God’s infinite nature is also immutable. God can’t be more or less than He already is. James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” God’s character and nature do not change. Nor does He mature, grow, or evolve. His plans and purposes are fixed (Ps. 33:11; 102:27). At the same time, there are passages in Scripture that seem to attribute change to God. For example, Genesis 6:6 says that God “regretted that he had made human beings on the earth.” Jonah 3:10 tells how, after the people of Nineveh repented, God relented from the destruction He had threatened to bring upon them. As with time, the Bible speaks of these instances using human experience as their primary reference point. In these instances, it is not God who changes but humanity’s relation to God.

Omniscient, Good, Holy, & Omnipotent

The other category of God’s attributes is called communicable because they have some analogy in human experience. They describe God in terms with which we are familiar. They speak of His knowledge, righteousness, and mercy. At the same time, these attributes reinforce the Bible’s message that we are not God, even though we have been created in His image.

God’s communicable attributes include omniscience. God knows things, and so do we. But God knows everything to an infinite degree. He knows all things comprehensively. He knows all that has happened, and all that will happen. “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me,” the Psalmist declares. “You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar” (Psalm 139:1–2). God knows all that we think before we think it and what we will say before we say it. He knows our secret thoughts, even those we have hidden from ourselves (Ps. 139:4, 24). By comparison, our knowledge is as infinitesimal as God’s is infinite.

Another communicable attribute is God’s goodness. This goodness is expressed first in God’s holiness and righteousness. God is Himself the ultimate standard of all that can be deemed good. For this reason, Jesus declared, “No one is good–except God alone” (Mark 10:18). Because God is perfectly holy, His moral standard is one that demands perfect holiness. He upholds this standard by acting justly and holding all those who fall short of it accountable. God has a moral nature and created us to be moral beings. But our nature is imperfect and is flawed by the presence of sin. Our unrighteousness separates us from God and makes us liable to His judgment. This problem of sin calls forth the other dimension of God’s goodness, the love that He has shown by offering us grace and mercy through Jesus Christ.

Of all God’s attributes, perhaps the most familiar is His omnipotence. God is all-powerful. This characteristic is expressed in Job 23:13, which says that God “does whatever he pleases.” Omnipotence does not mean that God can do anything. There are some things that Scripture says God cannot do. God cannot lie. He cannot sin. God cannot deny Himself. But God can do all that He purposes to do, and all that God purposes to do is consistent with His nature. Our God is mighty to save (Isa. 63:1; Zeph. 3:17).

Unity in Trinity

Although we tend to separate God’s attributes when we analyze them, they are not separate in God’s being. God is not divided, nor is He in conflict with Himself. God’s holiness does not battle with His grace and mercy. One of the dangers of focusing on the divine attributes is that it tends to reduce God to a list of philosophical abstractions so that we lose His personal nature. The Scriptures reveal that God is a personal being and that He exists as a unity of three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Both the Old and New Testaments agree in their assertion that “God is one” (Deut. 6:4; Mark 12:32; Gal. 3:20; James 2:19). This means that there is only one God. There are not many gods. But it also means that God is one by nature. The three Persons in the Trinity are distinct from one another as persons but not in essence. Scripture does not portray God as a single divine person who manifests Himself in three different modes, nor does it speak of the Godhead as three separate divine beings. The triune nature of God has no analogy in human experience. All attempts to explain it by comparison with nature or philosophy are bound to fail. We can affirm this truth by faith, but we cannot fully comprehend it.

“Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves,” the Reformation pastor and theologian John Calvin observed. He goes on to note that one leads to the other. When we look at ourselves, our thoughts turn to the God who made us and sustains us. When we contemplate God, we can’t help being aware of the ruin that sin has brought about in our lives. “To this extent we are prompted by our own ills to contemplate the good things of God,” Calvin explains, “and we cannot seriously aspire to Him before we become displeased with ourselves.”

The Bible shows us what God is like so that we will see ourselves as we truly are. The main lesson of the attributes is twofold. First, God’s attributes show us that although we have been created in the divine image, we are not God. Second, they remind us that we need God’s mercy and grace shown to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ before that image can be fully restored in us. This is the hope of the Christian. It is the hope that “when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

The Recent History of God

January 2, 2021January 2, 2021 John Koessler1 Comment

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Where does one begin when speaking of God? A biography usually starts at the beginning with its subject’s birth and ancestry. But the God of Scripture, unlike the gods of myth, is uncreated and eternal. He has no beginning or point of origin. He has no ancestors. For this reason, God’s account of Himself in Scripture begins not with His creation but with ours. If the Bible is the history of God, it is only a record of recent history.

Why this had to be the case should be obvious. God’s existence in what we call the past is infinite. It is not possible to grasp, let alone record. God’s eternal nature is also unlimited in its power and scope. He is not bound by time or space. He is not dependent on anyone or anything but sustains everything that exists (Acts 17:25; Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:17). The full scope of all that God is and has done is beyond our view. There is too much to know and too much to write. Even if it could be written, it is doubtful that we would be able to comprehend it.

The Bible only records what we might call God’s recent history because it begins with our history. It is a mistake to think of the Bible as the autobiography of God. It is just the opposite. The Bible is God’s biography of us. From the Bible we know something about what God is like. God has shown us this through what He has said and done in our world. The Bible also tells us about ourselves. In many respects, the Bible tells humanity’s story as much as it does God’s.

The theologians have a word for this. They call it revelation. Divine self-revelation is where all knowledge of God begins. We only know about God because God has chosen to reveal Himself to us. Moreover, what we know about God is dependent upon what God has chosen to reveal. We cannot put God on a slab to dissect Him to expose all His parts. We cannot watch Him through a microscope or find Him in the world’s most powerful telescope. If we are to know what God is like, He must show us Himself.

God has done this in two primary ways. God has revealed Himself by actions and in words. The Bible also shows that God has done this in two different modes. One is broad. The other is narrow. There are some things that God has revealed to everyone. They are plain for all who are willing to see. These truths are expressed in the universal language of creation. This is what the Psalmist means when He says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1). The Psalmist goes on to describe creation as a kind of non-verbal communication that “goes out into all the earth” (v. 2).

This general revelation of God is also communicated to us internally. Because this internal message operates on the level of conscience, its function is primarily negative. The primary purpose of internal general revelation is to show us that we are not like God. The apostle Paul explains its negative function when he says: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. (Rom. 1:18–19).

Another important feature of this general revelation is its limited scope. Neither the external general revelation of creation nor the internal revelation of conscience can tell us everything that can be known about God. They do not even tell us the most important things that we should know about Him. This mode of revelation covers only a few basics. In a way, general revelation is God’s kindergarten, limiting its message to God’s eternal power and His divine nature. General revelation tells us that God exists, that He is the creator, and that we are not Him.

Fortunately, God has also chosen to reveal Himself on another band. This is a mode that the theologians call “special” revelation. Special revelation is more narrow than general revelation. While general revelation is available to everyone, special revelation was experienced by only a few. God revealed Himself to a few chosen messengers who passed what they had heard from God down to others. Special revelation is also narrow in its focus. The message of special revelation primarily has to do with God’s plan to redeem humanity from sin. Special revelation was personal and ultimately verbal. The things God said and did were written down and collected in the Scriptures. They describe His saving acts and interpret those actions for us. They tell us what God expects of us and give us a glimpse of what God will do in the future.

Divine self-revelation is where all knowledge of God begins.

When you read the Bible, you quickly discover that God did not make Himself known all at once. Instead, He revealed Himself in stages. This progressive revelation of God reaches its peak in the person and work of Jesus Christ. As the writer of the New Testament book of Hebrews observeed, “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe” (Heb. 1:1–2).

God, who dwells outside of history, entered history to make Himself known once and for all in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Not only does Jesus reveal God to us in human terms, but He also shows us what God had in mind when He created the world. If the Bible is a history of the human race described from God’s perspective, Jesus Christ is the key that unlocks that history for us. Jesus is the bridge that connects God’s story with human history. Jesus is the end toward which all God’s words and works in the world tend. Jesus is the sum of all that God has to say about Himself.

Revelation shows us what we can know about God. But the fact that God has shown us Himself in this way reveals something about us as well. It proves that there is something that stands in the way of our understanding God. The word the Bible uses for this is sin. Not surprisingly, this is where the Bible’s history of God begins. Not just with creation but with humanity’s departure from God through disobedience.

Therefore, if we want to describe God’s history with humanity in simple terms, we could probably articulate it in three sentences. God made us. We rejected Him. So God took on human nature and came to redeem us in person. The Bible’s revelation of God is not a collection of vague philosophies or abstract facts. Everything that revelation has to say about God has redemption at its center. Everything that can be said about divine revelation, the discipline that we call theology, can pretty much be divided into five categories: the nature of God, the nature of humanity, the person and work of Jesus Christ, the nature of redemption, and God’s plan for bringing this stage of His history to a close.

Where does one begin when speaking about God? We begin with God. The only way to begin with God is to begin with what God has said. Everything that we can say about God depends upon what God has said Himself. Scripture tells us that God has shown Himself both by word and action. But between these two, it is Scripture that must have the primary place. Scripture both describes and interprets God’s words and actions for us.

But why would God reveal Himself to us in the first place? It is not so that we would accumulate facts about Him. The goal of revelation is faith. We study Scripture so that we might know about God, and by knowing, that we might come to believe. For, as the writer of the book of Hebrews observed, “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).

Christmas Traveler: Why the Nativity is About the Cross

December 20, 2020December 20, 2020 John KoesslerLeave a comment

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In this year of COVID-19, the governor of my state has asked everyone to stay home for Christmas. To be honest, it feels strange. For many, Christmas is a time for traveling. The same was true of the first Christmas. The Gospel narratives of Christ’s birth are crowded with travelers. Zechariah, the priest, travels to Jerusalem to burn incense before the Lord and is struck with dumb surprise when the angel announces that he and his wife Elizabeth would have a son in their old age. Mary travels too, heading for the hills to visit her relative, Elizabeth. Then to Bethlehem with Joseph to give birth to the miracle child conceived by the Holy Spirit. Shepherds hurry into the night, leaving their flock behind to find the babe wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Magi travel from the east by caravan to lay their gifts before the newborn king of the Jews, while Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt to escape King Herod’s wrath. Everybody in the Christmas story, it seems, is on the road.

Yet of all the travelers in the Christmas narrative, none comes as far as Jesus. His is a journey that is measured not in miles but position. “Out of the ivory palaces, into a world of woe,” an old hymn says. The opening of John’s Gospel clarifies that the change was even more profound than the hymn-writer imagines. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” John declares (John 1:14). The theologians describe this in literal terms as the incarnation, the enfleshing of the Word of God. At the incarnation, Jesus Christ took a human nature to Himself without ceasing to be divine.

If the theologians express the literal sense of John’s theology with this language, the 17th-century poet Richard Crashaw captures John’s lyrical warmth when he writes,

Welcome, all Wonders in one sight!

Eternity shut in a span.

Summer to winter, day in night,

Heaven in earth, and God in man.

The poet’s phrase “eternity shut in a span” measures the distance between heaven’s throne and Bethlehem’s manger. There was both an addition and a subtraction in the incarnation. Jesus took to Himself a human nature that He previously did not possess. The babe of Bethlehem was a real infant, as helpless and dependent as any other. At that moment, the creator of all things became both actor and the one acted upon. The eternal Word was conceived by God, born of a virgin, and laid in a manger. The Son of God became the child of Mary. By this act, Jesus laid aside something as well. In Philippians 2:7 the apostle Paul says that Jesus, who was God by nature, “made Himself nothing” at the incarnation. The Greek text says that Christ “emptied” Himself.

We should not see this as an abdication. Jesus did not cease to be divine when He took on flesh and blood. Instead, this was more of a refusal. He refused to cling to the rights and prerogatives that belonged to Him because of His divinity. As one translation of Philippians 2:6 puts it, Jesus did not consider equality with God “something to be used to his own advantage.” When He was made in human likeness, Jesus took up the nature of a servant. Paul’s language in these verses is deliberate. Confinement to human form was more than a symbolic statement for Jesus. True humanity was essential for the specific task that Jesus came to perform. When Jesus was “found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Phil. 2:8). Jesus took on flesh so that He could die.

That death is the linchpin of the theology of the incarnation. Remove it, and the story of Christ’s nativity becomes immeasurably reduced, as does the rest of His life and ministry. Without His death on the cross, Jesus is only another wagging finger urging us to attempt what we cannot attain. Such a Christ may be a moral example, but He is no savior. Likewise, the resurrection of Jesus is a necessary complement to His obedience to the point of death. Without the resurrection, Jesus is merely another martyr in a long line of martyrs, and the gospel is no longer the gospel. The apostle does indeed set Jesus before us as an example when he tells us to “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5). But this is only because he presents Jesus as our savior first, the one who died for our sins and rose again for our justification. Those who do not recognize Christ as their savior cannot take Him as their example. Jesus is always a gift before He is a model.

Jesus had to be born to die. Without that death, there would be no remedy for our sin. Jesus had to be raised from the dead to make us alive to God. It is only by that resurrection that we can follow Christ’s example. This means that the manger, the cross, and the empty tomb are inseparable. Remove one, and the rest must fall away as well. It also means that the trajectory of our spiritual journey mirrors that of Jesus Christ. We move from physical birth to the cross to the empty tomb and then to glory. Only those who have been united with Christ in His death and resurrection can follow His descent into humility. All of this rests on the fulcrum of the incarnation. Without it, none of the rest would be possible. By submitting to incarnation, Jesus Christ not only placed Himself at the Father’s disposal, but He also made Himself dependent upon the Father to complete His task.

These days it is common to hear people talk about the “magic” of Christmas. Those who speak this way are usually just talking about ambiance. Christmas movies and television commercials imply that celebrating Christmas will produce a transcendent experience. Broken relationships will suddenly mend. Prodigals will come home. The broken-hearted find love at last, and all the ills of the world will be mended, at least for one day. We are foolish enough to believe this false vision, failing to recognize that what they are really selling is an atmosphere, along with the products that create it. We have mistaken the rhetoric of marketing for mystery.

What is truly missing from our Christmas is not magic but memory. We do not need more atmosphere but an understanding of the incarnation. We have forgotten what the original story was all about. In many cases, we have removed the original story altogether. We have tried to improve it by garnishing it with tinsel and lights or have reduced the original narrative to such a degree that all we have left is a string of sentimental images.

If we wish to know the wonder of Christmas, we will need to recapture a vision of “eternity shut in a span.” To do that, we must go beyond the manger. We need to travel the rest of the way with Jesus. From the manger to the cross to the tomb, and beyond. We will need to remember that Jesus did not enter the fairy tale world of soft snow and gossamer-winged angels that we sing about in carols and see on Christmas cards. He came to a world of hard roads and even harsher realities. The path our Lord traveled was not one that went from glory to glory. It was primarily, as Paul reminds us, a path of downward mobility.

Jesus began His life as a fugitive and ended it as a political prisoner. Kings and priests sought His death. His followers frequently misunderstood Him and, in His last hours, finally abandoned Him. In other words, Jesus came into our world, a broken world filled with disappointments. He came like us, in flesh and blood, yet without sin. Jesus took on flesh, knowing full well all that it would entail. Confinement to the limits of human nature. Restraint in the exercise of His divine power. And ultimately, in the Garden of Gethsemane, a refusal from His Heavenly Father to let Him escape the cup of suffering. Jesus did not do these things out of necessity but voluntarily. Nor did He do them to create a magical holiday season. Jesus did them, as the old Creed declares, for us, and for our salvation. Thanks be to God.

Awkward Conversations with God

December 10, 2020December 10, 2020 John KoesslerLeave a comment

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Casey was an abandoned German shepherd pup that we found in a box in the parking lot of the local general store on the edge of town. He looked so tiny and cute that we couldn’t bear to leave him there. But he was a bad dog. He chewed the carpet and growled at babies. When Casey bit someone, we realized we had to get rid of him. It was a difficult decision but not nearly as hard as the task of telling my two little boys that their dog was gone. I choked out the sad news between gasps and tears, trying to explain why it was necessary.

Telling someone about the loss of a loved one. Talking to the kids about the facts of life. Informing an employee that their contract will not be renewed. Some conversations are just hard. But to be honest, nothing is quite as challenging for me as trying to talk with someone who has nothing to say. You know the kind conversartion I mean. This is the sort where you have to do all the heavy lifting while the other person responds with an inscrutable silence. In a way, a one-sided conversation is an oxymoron. We might call it a monologue, a soliloquy, or a sermon, but whatever it is, it is not a conversation.

Not everyone is a good conversationalist. Some of us are shy. We have thoughts, many of them good ones, but we have trouble expressing those thoughts to others. A few like to talk so much that they do not make room for the silence necessary for another to join in. They think they are having a conversation when they are really just “holding forth.” A conversation requires an exchange of thought between at least two people to be a conversation.

I say this to make a point about God. Or be more precise, to make a point about my experience with God in prayer. I have found that God is not much of a conversationalist. He is mostly silent when I talk to Him. Not that I am such a good conversationalist either. My prayers tend to be repetitive, made up of the same requests every time. My attention span is short. I suppose that if I were the one on the other side of the conversation, I would probably be too bored to respond too. But at least I say something. God, as far as I can tell, doesn’t say anything. I pray and all I get in return is an awkward silence.

I have found that God is not much of a conversationalist.

We know from Scripture that God is capable of speech. According to the book of Genesis, the first words ever spoken were God’s words. God said, “Let there be light, and there was light” (Gen. 1:3). God spoke to Moses “face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exod. 33:11). He spoke to Abraham the same way. Yet, the Bible also demonstrates that ordinary conversation has never been God’s primary mode of communicating, at least not the kind of conversations we are used to having. Most of the time, He has spoken through others: prophets, preachers, and occasionally angels. Even then, God has never shown Himself to be what you could describe as voluble. Long gaps of years, decades, centuries, and even millennia separate the occasions where God spoke to His people.

Taken as a whole, there are enough of God’s words to fill the Old and New Testaments. But when they are considered individually, the instances where God has spoken exhibit two main characteristics. Most of the time, He has spoken through others. God used human agents who were “carried along by the Holy Spirit” to deliver His message (2 Pet. 1:21). God spoke but indirectly. The other characteristic of God’s verbal communication is restraint. Although God has spoken at many times and in various ways, He is not what you would call chatty. His words tend to be few and far between. When God does speak, He does not say everything that could be said. He does not answer all our questions. Even when God does answer our questions, He does not always tell us everything we want to know.

We are frustrated by this reserve. There is much we would like to know that we do not. Of course, there are probably good reasons for this. Would we understand God’s reasoning even if He told us? Sometimes we have a question, and Scripture bluntly tells us that the answer is none of our business (Acts 1:7; Rom. 9:19–20). Would knowing why God answered a particular prayer in a disappointing way make that answer easier to accept? We think the answer is yes. Yet any parent who has had to argue with a child will tell you that explanations, even reasonable explanations, do not always satisfy.

Whatever prayer is it is not an ordinary conversation, if only because prayer is a conversation where we seem to do most of the talking. In prayer, we approach God but do not see either face or form and cannot hear His voice. Therefore, as a conversation, prayer lacks all the normal cues we usually rely upon for meaning. When we talk to God, we cannot hear the way He inflects his voice. We do not see body language or read facial expression. Perhaps we should be grateful for this. Scripture says that God spoke to Israel “face to face out of the fire on the mountain” (Deut. 5:4). The people were so put off by His manner of delivery, coming as it did “out of darkness, while the mountain was ablaze with fire,” that they begged him to stop (Deut. 5:22–25). The prophet Elijah heard God speak in a gentle whisper, but it was a shout on Sinai. Even Moses, who was used to speaking to God “face to face, as one speaks to a friend,” found the experience terrifying (Ex. 33:11; Heb. 12:21). We assume that it would be a comfort to hear God speak to us. But Scripture suggests that we are more likely to be unnerved by the experience. Perhaps, like Job, we would want to put our hands over our ears in stunned silence (Job 40:3–5).

Prayer differs from ordinary conversation in another respect. Those who pray often talk to themselves at the same time as they are talking to God. Sometimes this takes the form of self-talk or self-encouragement. Martyn Lloyd Jones describes this as an effort to “take ourselves in hand” and proclaim the truth to ourselves. “Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?” Lloyd Jones observes. The self-talk of prayer is not a pep talk or even positive thinking. Instead, we base what we say to ourselves on what God has said in Scripture and on our experience of His faithfulness. With these things in mind, we put our expectations into words and speak them aloud to ourselves. “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?” the Psalmist prays in Psalm 42:5. “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God” (cf. Ps. 42:11; 43:5). The self-talk of prayer amounts to a confession of faith made in the presence of God.

Those who hope for response from God to their prayers are often looking for some kind of feeling or inner impression. It does not necessarily have to be an audible voice. But they seek a sense of assurance about what God will do or what He wants us to do. There are so many accounts of this sort of thing that it cannot be denied that something like this happens when people pray. But experiences like this are not constant nor are they infallible. If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that when we come to prayer it is not with a request so much as with a plan. Our prayers not only include an ask but directions about how the answers should come. In this way, what some have called “listening prayer” all too often becomes presumptuous prayer. We bring our desires and plans with us and place them on God’s lips.

If the temptation of the theologian is to reduce God to a topic, the temptation of the spiritual practicioner is to reduce God to an experience. When we objectify God this way, we go to Him not for a relationship but for an experience. Our interest in Him extends no further than the potential He offers to make us feel a certain way or give us what we want. “The essence of Christian prayer is to seek God,” John Stott has observed. “We seek him in order to acknowledge him as the person he is, God the Creator, God the Lord, God the Judge, God our heavenly Father through Jesus Christ our Savior.”

In the end it is not God who is disengaged in prayer but us. God has already spoken, but we fail take His words into account. We know only what we want. I am not saying that we have never read the Bible, or even that we have no interest in God. Just that we tend to be single minded in our interests. We have not bothered to consider God’s point of view. We are waiting for Him to respond to us when all the while He has been waiting for us. We expect Him to say something new without orienting our prayer to what He has already said. We complain that He is tight lipped and unresponsive. When the real problem is that He will not stick to the script we have already written for Him. What would we say differently, if we really believed that God was listening? It probably wouldn’t change our request. But it might change our prayer.

When God Says No

November 25, 2020 John Koessler1 Comment

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In the early days of my walk with Christ, I was taught to believe that miracles were an everyday occurrence. The Christians I knew were generous in their definition of what constituted a miracle, as likely to call a good parking spot an act of God as someone’s sudden recovery from cancer. Every situation was treated as an occasion for divine intervention. I confess that this was part of what attracted me to the Christian faith. I was not interested in a God who was merely an abstraction; I wanted to know that God was real. I was looking for a God who paid attention to me when I spoke to Him. It did not occur to me that I was the one who was supposed to do the listening.

I often prayed for God to intervene in my life. But I did not always get what I wanted. I asked Him to heal my mother when she was unexpectedly hospitalized for an illness that the doctors did not seem to be able to diagnose. She died. I asked God to deliver my father from alcoholism. He did not. I prayed to win the lottery (only once). You can guess how that turned out. I am not saying that God has never answered my prayers. Only that God refused my request often enough to know that an affirmative answer is not always a given.

“Them that’s got shall get, and them that’s not shall lose,” Billie Holiday sang. The whole world seems to be divided into a few privileged people who get everything they want and the majority who do not. Why not Kingdom of God too? We often wonder why God grants to others the thing He denies to us. The effect this has on our prayers is often an attitude of ambivalence. We conclude our prayers with a resigned shrug and interpret delay as denial. We secretly think that God is playing favorites. But the truth is we are the ones who suffer from bias. Our memory is selective, more inclined to dwell on God’s refusals than to remember the many times He has granted our requests. Impatience distorts our sense of God’s timing in His answers so that we ignore the winding and unexpected path that leads from entreaty to answer that earlier generations called providence.

Praying Like a Child

Such thinking is childish, of course. Yet there is no spiritual act that is more childlike than the act of prayer. Jesus acknowledges as much when He encourages His disciples to be persistent in their praying and asks: “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” (Matt. 7:9–10). When it comes to our most basic needs, God often grants them without our even having to ask. He “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). God “gives everyone life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:25).

God is generous by nature. But He is no pushover. Whatever our prayers are, they are not a means by which we may manipulate God. We cannot bully God or wheedle Him into granting us the answer that we prefer. The divine right to refuse our requests is necessary if prayer to be something more than a merely mechanical or transactional event. Anthony Bloom’s observation about the possibility that those who pray might still experience the absence of God’s presence also applies the answers we seek in prayer. “If we could mechanically draw Him into an encounter, force Him to meet us, simply because we have chosen this moment to meet Him, there would be no relationship and no encounter,” Bloom explains. “We can do that with an image, with the imagination, or with the various idols we can put in front of us instead of God; we can do nothing of the sort with the living God, any more than we can do it with a living person.”

Mechanical Praying

In His teaching about prayer, Jesus described this same mechanical style as the sort of approach the pagans use when they pray, “for they think they will be heard because of their many words” (Matt. 6:7). The one who piles up words in prayer has lost sight of God. When we cease to relate to God as we would a person, He might as well be a vending machine. At best, we treat God as if He were a mere functionary, the same way we might treat someone who gives us our order at the drive-through. We are hardly aware of them. We hand over our money, take our meal and drive off. We don’t know their name, and minutes after we have left the parking lot, we cannot recall their face.

unrecognizable men praying in old catholic church

Our failure to grasp this can turn prayer into an attempt at manipulation. We desperately try to gauge whether the amount of our faith is enough to trigger the desired response from God. This uncertainty, in turn, lends itself to spiritual posturing. We put on a show in the vain hope that we will somehow convince God that we have the kind of faith that warrants an answer. We fuss over our delivery, trying to sound confident and prove that we have enough faith to gain our request. Or we conclude that the weight God will give to our prayers is a function of the number of people we can persuade to take up our request. We approach prayer as if it were an oral petition drive, hoping that the sound of so many others will drown out the uncertainty of our own voice. We mount a lobbying campaign, inviting those we consider spiritual authorities to pray for us, convinced that their prayers have more influence with God than ours.

Us Miserable Offenders

November 4, 2020 John Koessler2 Comments

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Those who recite the general confession in the Book of Common Prayer, up until the 2019 edition, have traditionally prayed these words: “O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.” The Litany or General Supplication employs similar language and in the prayer it contains the church addresses each member of the Trinity, asking God to have mercy on them for several specific sins. Evil, mischief, blindness of heart, pride, vain-glory, hypocrisy, envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness– they are the sort of things that might raise eyebrows in ordinary conversation. But in this context, we are not only undisturbed by such an admission, to hear the congregation recite it in unison offers a kind of comfort.

Of course, not everyone observes the rite. Many evangelical congregations, perhaps most, worship in the low-church tradition. They do not follow the order of the prayer book. For them, the admission of sin is something that is handled by the individual. Each one prays to themselves. Or perhaps they seek out the pastor after the service and ask for counsel and prayer. When I first began attending church, it was common to invite people to come to the “altar” at the end of the service and pray. There was no actual altar, only a stage or raised platform with boxes of tissue strategically placed at each end. Those of us who came forward in response wept quietly over our sins. Usually, the same ones we shed tears over the previous week. We were miserable sinners, but not for long. After a few minutes, we dried our eyes and made our way back into the world.

Despite the language of the prayer book, us miserable sinners aren’t always unhappy in our sin. We do not pine away about it the way the monastic fathers and the Puritans did. We have come to terms with our condition, which is just another way of saying that we tend to live our lives in a state of denial. But the fact that we do not always feel miserable does not make us any less miserable, at least not in the original sense of the word. The Latin root from which the word miserable comes is one that meant “pitiable.” In his essay entitled “Miserable Offenders: An Interpretation of Prayer Book Language,” C. S. Lewis observes, “I do not think whether we are feeling miserable or not matters. I think it is using the word miserable in the old sense–meaning an object of pity.” When the Book of Common Prayer calls us miserable sinners, it is both a recognition of what we are and a reminder of God’s response. Specifically, it tells us that we are those whose moral condition is so deplorable that the only remedy is the goodness and mercy of God, no matter how we may feel.

Lewis is probably right to say that our emotional state is not the most crucial point. But that doesn’t mean that it is good to feel nonchalant about our sin, only that the emotions we usually associate with misery are not always proof of the genuineness of one’s repentance. Esau’s tears spoke more of his grief over losing the blessing he had sold for a pittance than they did of any remorse he had for his disregard of the God who gave it (Heb. 12:16–17). Judas felt remorse, but only enough to cause him to regret his betrayal of Christ. Instead of looking to God for mercy, Judas acted as his own judge and executioner when he carried out upon himself the punishment he felt he deserved (Matt. 27:3–6). Sometimes we mistakenly think that misery is what God requires of us in return for forgiveness. We wonder if we have felt bad enough or been miserable long enough to warrant the mercy we seek. Others may confuse this misery with repentance itself. They conflate misery with repentance, seeing the two as synonymous. The result is a kind of Protestant penance, where miserable feeling relieves us of our guilt and makes us feel like we have handled the problem.

It isn’t wrong to feel bad about our sins. Sorrow for sin is an element of Christian repentance but only one of its features. Feeling, by itself, secures nothing. In order to qualify as true repentance, feeling must be combined with our agreement with God’s assessment of our condition. That is, the sorrow of repentance is more than regret. It is a recognition of our guilt. True repentance also involves a turning. When we repent, we turn from our sin to God whose Son is the only true remedy for sin. Forgiveness does not come because we have agonized over our sin but because Christ suffered for them in our stead.

The nature of forgiveness is such that it can only come to us from the outside. We know this is true in human relationships. The essence of apology includes an admission of guilt. But the mere fact that we apologize does not guarantee the aggrieved one will automatically accept and reconcile with us. “No restoration or redress is possible unless the guilty person call his sin by its true name,” theologian Josef Pieper explains. “But that having been said, the person impaired by the sin must respond as well, or the relationship will never be restored.” In other words, forgiveness is never earned. It can only be given. No matter how badly we may feel after we have offended, it remains in the hands of the one against whom we have committed the offense to absolve us. We cannot compel their forgiveness

Where God is concerned, forgiveness depends upon both His willingness and His ability to extend mercy. Whatever debt we owe to those we have hurt, our ultimate culpability is to God. “All sin has first and finally a Godward force,” theologian Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. explains. Plantinga defines sin as “a culpable and personal affront to a personal God.” This means that every sin is an offense against two worlds. One world is the realm of human relationships. Each time we sin, we violate both ourselves and our neighbor. The other world is the realm of God’s dominion. As Plantinga puts it, sin is an act of vandalism against God’s peace. Sin, by its nature, is always a rejection of the rule of God. These two “worlds” also correspond to the two “tablets” of the Law and the two great commandments. But sin’s ultimate reference point is to God.

We can see this in David’s great sin. His act of adultery was more than an offense against Bathsheba. It was a sin against Uriah as well. When David ordered Joab to arrange Uriah’s death by warfare, he extended the reach of his transgression to his commander-in-chief, making Joab complicit in the crime (2 Sam. 11:15). David’s adultery eventually brought calamity to his whole family, when David’s son Absalom’s political ambitions compelled him to lie with David’s wives “in broad daylight” (2 Sam. 12:11; 16:22). This is always the way with sin. The cascading nature of transgression compounds its destructive effect. Yet when David eventually admitted his guilt to God, He said, “Against you, you only, have I sinned,” (Ps. 51:4).

To call ourselves miserable offenders is to admit that God’s pity, shown to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ, is the only thing that can save us from our sin. To confess this together is a needed reality check for those who, by nature, are prone to denial. Speaking this truth about ourselves is an act of resistance against the self-congratulatory culture in which we are immersed. It is also a kind of posture. When we admit that we are miserable offenders who have broken God’s laws by failing to do the things we ought to have done and doing things we ought not to have done, we position ourselves for grace. The point here is not that we would all be better off if we used the Book of Prayer in its old form, though it probably wouldn’t hurt us if we did. Whether we recite it together in polite unison as a part of the liturgy or weep in silent anguish at the altar, we must eventually recognize this fundamental truth: mercy begins with God and comes only to those who are miserable offenders. Jesus said it Himself when the religious professionals asked how He could stand to eat in the company of thieves and sinners. Jesus replied, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32).

A Few Serious Thoughts About God & Laughter

October 16, 2020October 16, 2020 John Koessler2 Comments

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The first thing I noticed about my wife on the night we met was her smile. It unnerved me, like a dare. I have since seen it reappear in a thousand different facets. It never fails to charm me. She has a laugh to match, pure as the ringing of a church bell and solid as iron. I have spent the forty-one years we have been together trying to elicit that sound.

Babies develop the ability to laugh before they learn to talk. They can laugh as early as twelve weeks. They do not begin to speak rudimentary words until the end of twelve months. What does this say about laughter? Is our ability to laugh more primal than our capacity for speech? Speech is learned, but laughter is not. Laughter is an emotional response. Language is the work of the intellect. Between the two, it is tempting to think that laughter is a simpler act. Words have nuanced meanings. A laugh is just noise. Or is it?

We Laugh for Many Reasons

“We laugh for many reasons” J. C. Gregory observes in his book The Nature of Laughter. “There is laughter of triumph and laughter of scorn; there is also laughter of contempt, superiority, and self-congratulation. When lovers laugh as they meet they are not contemptuous, nor are they amused. The pure laughter of play, like the laughter of greeting, is as innocent of amusement as it is of contempt.”

Psychologists suggest that laughter is the reward system people use to negotiate social relationships. Babies use it to trick their parents into teaching them how to be human. Science, which likes to reduce all human behavior to the involuntary responses of electronic impulses sent from the brain or mindless outworking of evolutionary competition, claim to see comparable responses in monkeys, dogs, and even rats. But laughter’s ultimate analog is not found in the animal kingdom but in God, who was the first to speak and the first to laugh. If the human ability for language has its mirror in God, why not our capacity for humor?

Humor is not the first thing we think of when we think about God. His thundering holiness is more likely to come to mind. The handful of statements which make explicit reference to divine laughter reinforce this impression. When the nations conspire against the Lord’s anointed, the One enthroned in heaven laughs at them in contempt (Ps. 2:4). If we must limit ourselves to those instances where the Bible explicitly mentions God’s laughter, we must conclude that His capacity for humor is limited.

Man of Sorrows

The New Testament reinforces this impression. The human face that Jesus puts on God in the Gospels is, for the most part, not a smiling face. As Isaiah predicted, He shows Himself to be “a man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3). Jesus groaned at the grave of Lazarus. He denounced the Pharisees for their hypocrisy and the Scribes because they were spiritually dull. “He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell,” G. K. Chesterton notes. Yet where humor is concerned, Chesterton points out that “there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness.” Every Chinese restaurant has its laughing Buddha, but you would be hard-pressed to find a church with an image of a smiling Christ.

This absence is, to some extent, understandable. A religion that has the cross as its main symbol is bound to be grave in its tone. Yet if we look for more than explicit instances of divine laughter, we find a thread that points to that aspect of God’s nature that Chesterton rightly calls mirth. It begins in the Garden of Eden with God’s determination to create humanity in His own image (Gen. 1:26). To accomplish this, God forms Adam from “the dust of the ground” (Gen. 2:7, 22). There is a kind of divine whimsy in act. In Scripture dust is a symbol of lowliness or humility. Dust will be the serpent’s “food” after the curse (Gen. 3:14). Other elements of the creation account might also be seen as humorous. Eve engages in theological debate with a snake. The primary actors in the fall each point fingers at one another when asked to account for their actions. If not for the severity of sin’s effects, humankind’s whole history might be deemed a tragic comedy of epic proportions.

The half-truths told by Abraham and Isaac about their true relationship with their spouses, Laban’s bamboozlement of Jacob regarding the marriage negotiation for Rachel, and Haman’s that there is no one other than him that the king would rather honor might all elicit a chuckle. These stories are not comedies but histories that include comedic elements, as all human stories do. This proximity of humor and tragedy in the Bible’s account of sin and redemption should not surprise us. The enduring popularity of slapstick comedy is visual proof that humor almost always has a tragic edge. Comedy is tragedy worked out in ridiculous circumstances. Because of this, God’s whimsical way of working out His plan is not the only reason we find occasion to laugh in the Scriptures.

The Absurdity of Sin

Sin, by its nature, is always tragic, but it is also an absurdity. Theologian Josef Peiper explains, “Sin is an act against reason, which thus means: a violation against one’s own conscience, against our ‘better’ knowledge, against the best knowledge of which we are capable.” Paul puts flesh on sin’s unreasoning nature when he describes his own experience with sin as that of going against not only what he knows but what he approves. Every sinner has his own twisted reason for justifying their actions, but sin is also against reason as God defines it. “I do not understand what I do,” the apostle laments in Romans 7:15, “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Sin is no joke, but it is ridiculous.

When we come to the New Testament, God’s good-natured humor meets sin’s absurdity head-on in the teaching of Jesus Christ. From the humorous scenarios described in many of His parables to the affectionately ironic nicknames assigned to several of His disciples, Jesus was not afraid to use humor to make His point. Without status or resources, a widow terrorizes a judge who does not care about God or man by simple persistence. Humor is so much a part of a healthy personality that Jesus’ perfect humanity would seem to demand it. From the humorous scenarios described in many of His parables to the affectionately ironic nicknames Jesus assigned to several of His disciples, Jesus was not afraid to use laughter to make His point. Without status or resources, a widow wears down by simple persistence a judge who does not care for either God or man (Luke 18:1-8). A legion of demons begs Jesus to be allowed to enter a herd of pigs because they do not want Him to cast them into the abyss and the pigs promptly stampede over a cliff (Mark 5:1-13).

The God Who Laughs

The God revealed in Scripture is not only a God who speaks but one who laughs. He is not the jolly god of pagan religion, but a being of infinite and inexpressible joy. Divine humor is a reflection of this joy. Although we have not yet experienced this joy in its full force, we have been granted a foretaste and are ourselves “filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” through the Holy Spirit (1 Pet. 1:9). Just as we need to be transformed through the grace of Christ to stand in God’s glorious presence, surely we will need to be similarly changed to grasp the humor that springs from His infinite joy.

Indeed, we must be transformed before we can even endure it. Without such a change, God’s humor must come crashing down upon us with the full force of His holiness and glory. Just as the light of dawn, “like solid blocks intolerable of solid edge and weight,” fell upon C. S. Lewis at the close of his imagined bus trip to heaven in The Great Divorce, the unmitigated humor of God would crush us. Without the transforming work of Jesus Christ, we could not bear it.

The book of Revelation tells us that when Jesus Christ comes again to take His stand on the Mount of Olives, He will be dressed in a robe dripped in blood. The armies of heaven will follow Him, and “out of His mouth will come a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations” that oppose Him (Rev. 19:15). Likewise, the apostle Paul writes that at that time, Jesus will overthrow His enemies with the breath of His mouth and the splendor of His coming (2 Thess. 2:8). I have always thought that the phrase “the breath of His mouth” was a reference to speech. In the end, Jesus will defeat Satan and the Anti-Christ with a word. But it could just as easily be a laugh.

Uncivil Discourse: Why Our Speech Matters

October 2, 2020October 2, 2020 John KoesslerLeave a comment

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Ken Myers has observed, “The Christian tradition has long placed great value on care about speech.” He notes that the sacred importance of language is signaled by the fact that two of the Ten Commandments are concerned with speech. One of them has to do with the way we speak about God. The other, not surprisingly, deals with the way we speak about others. It seems that the tongue is the primary instrument we use to fulfill the two Great Commandments, to love God with heart, soul, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matt. 22:36-38).

We don’t usually think about our words. We open our mouths, and they just seem to come out. When we do give thought to the language we use, it is out of a detached, almost scientific concern. We think of the connection our words have to the concepts we want to express. But the Scriptures (God’s words) warn that the relationship between our speech and ourselves is far more organic. It is also dangerous. The tongue, James warns, is “a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3:6). One of the surest ways to discern corruption of the soul is through speech. James echoes the words of Jesus, who warned the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart and defile us (Matt. 15:18). The tongue is both a muscle and an organ. It is not only something we use to express our thoughts. In some measure, the tongue is us, or at least a part of us.

In the same way, Jesus makes it clear that our words are just as intimately connected to our hearts: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Matt. 15:19). Our words serve both as a sign and a diagnosis. The character of our speech is evidence of the state of our hearts. But this connection means that the problem with our discourse is more than a matter of poor word choice. According to Jesus, corrupt speech proceeds from an evil heart. The examples Jesus gives of the nature of evil thoughts that spring from the heart greatly expand the definition of corrupt speech. The Christian tradition has tended to define such language rather narrowly, limiting it to what we used to call swearing. Taking the Lord’s name “in vain,” coarse language, and vulgarity are a form of corrupt speech but the lowest form. Just as lust is the only the first and lowest of the deadly sins, common vulgarity hardly exhausts the full scope of sinful speech. All the categories of evil thought that Jesus mentions and the multitude of sins that he does not ultimately find their expression in the way we speak to one another.

Our most corrupt speech is often the most commonplace, expressing those sins that we have learned to tolerate in ourselves. This is because our thinking about sin tends to be backward. We believe that small infractions are less concerning than large. We think the problem with these “little” sins is that if we let them go unchecked, they will develop into something larger. Anger will accelerate into murder. Lust will take control and lead to adultery. According to Jesus’ teaching in the sermon on the mount, sin moves in the opposite direction. It does not start small and increase. We usually treat those sins as minor infractions, when in reality they bloom from the same root as those we think of as large. They are not the cause but the symptom. Sinful anger springs from a murderous heart, not the other way around (Matt. 5:22). A lustful gaze is the offspring of an adulterous desire (Matt. 5:27–28).

The same principle is at work in our speech. Corrupted speech includes coarse language, but it also gives evidence of a deeper evil that springs from unchecked desire, selfish-ambition, rage, envy, and pride. The result is a deadly and self-reinforcing ecosystem of corruption as sinful motives infuse our thoughts, which shape our words, which justify and further reinforce our motives. George Orwell described this deadly cycle in his famous essay on politics and the English language when he observes that effects become reinforcing causes that produce the same result and intensify it. “A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks,” Orwell observes. “It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

The fact that Orwell identifies this as a trait of political speech is especially significant because it indicates that what is true of the individual is also true of society. How could it be otherwise? Civilization and its institutions are made of and made by its people. If the cells are diseased, so is the body. It cannot be any other way. Speech, by its very nature, is a communal act. It presumes the existence of another. In his book entitled Abuse of Language–Abuse of Power, theologian Josef Pieper notes that human language and human words accomplish a two-fold purpose. “First, words convey reality,” Pieper explains: “We speak in order to name and identify something that is real, to identify it for someone, of course–and this points to the second aspect in question, the interpersonal character of human speech.”

Pieper observes that public discourse, when it is separated from the standard of truth, creates an atmosphere where tyranny thrives. The primary abuse of language in such an environment is propaganda. Peiper notes that propaganda does not necessarily come through the official power structure of a dictatorship: “It can be found wherever a powerful organization, an ideological clique, a special interest, or a pressure group uses the word as their ‘weapon.’” Of particular interest is Pieper’s further observation that the threat from such words “can mean many things besides political persecution, especially all forms and levels of defamation, or public ridicule, or reducing someone to a nonperson–all which are accomplished by means of the word, even the word not spoken.” Especially poignant for this particular political moment, is Pieper’s citation of the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, who: “counted among the forms of ‘modern sophistry’, as he calls it, also the ‘lingo of the revolution’, which, ‘intent on fomenting rebellion through agitation, singles out one isolated instance, and focusing its spotlight on this, makes everyone blind to all the rest’.”

The worry that corruption of speech will lead to cultural corruption is more than the concern of a frustrated grammarian. It is the conviction of philosophers, theologians, and God’s word itself. The problem is not a matter of style but truth. The need for our words to correspond with reality is what lies behind the command not to bear false witness. Regard for truth is the root concern of the command not to take the Lord’s name in vain, a prohibition that cautions us not to use God to make cheap promises that we do not intend to fulfill. Truth is also in view in all the Bible’s cautions about the dangers of flattery and slander.

Such concerns are understandable when we consider that speaking is also a divine act, since language originated with God. God spoke the first words ever uttered (Gen. 1:3). By that word, all things are made. This original word shows the power of language not only to describe but to shape reality. The fact that sin also entered the world through speech is proof that words can destroy as well as create. The temptation that drew our first parents down into sin was a distortion of something God has said (Gen. 3:1-5). When they fell, they carried all of creation with them. We have not lost our ability to speak. But that capacity has been sorely damaged by the entrance of sin into human experience. This harsh reality prompts James to lament that “no human being can tame the tongue” and to call it “a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:8).

Orwell believed that the degradation of speech could be reversed. “Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble,” he explains. “If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.” But Orwell is only partly right.

The rudeness and violence we see in contemporary political discourse are, unfortunately, not an anomaly. Uncivil discourse is the norm in both popular and social media. It is as characteristic of the church as it is of the secular culture. Orwell may be right in saying that the way we speak to one another could improve if we gave it more thought and applied ourselves to discipline. The resulting change would be no small improvement and a desperately needed relief. But if what Scripture says about us is true, the difference would only be cosmetic. Our problem is deeper than our choice of words or even our tone. According to Jesus, our inability to engage in civil conversation is evidence of a poisoned heart.

Dangerous Virtues: Justice-Life in an Age of Outrage

September 22, 2020September 29, 2020 John KoesslerLeave a comment

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A saying attributed to St. Augustine goes, “Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.” No one seems to know where or even whether Augustine actually expressed such a thought. To be honest, it sounds more like something a modern would say. The view of the ancients was much less approving of anger than in our day. The ancient attitude was more like the one expressed by the fourth-century monk who warned: “If when you want to reprove someone you are stirred to anger, you are pandering to your own passion. Lose not yourself to save another.”

The old monk’s restraint seems peculiar to modern ears. Everybody gets angry. We’re pretty sure that some people deserve our anger. Besides, anger is just an emotion, an expression of our righteous indignation. When it is rightly employed, anger can be the fuel that energizes change. At least, that’s how we see it. Perhaps we are right in thinking this. As the words attributed to St. Augustine suggest, maybe anger really is the offspring of hope. Could anger be a fire kindled in the soul by a vision of a different world? We have removed anger from the list of deadly sins, given it a new name, and declared it to be a virtue. We call it justice.

The rhetoric of justice has become commonplace in our day, both inside and outside the church. But a common definition of what we mean by the term is hard to find. For some people, justice means racial reconciliation. For others it speaks of economic restructuring and redistribution of wealth. Those who serve meals in the homeless shelter, others who work with victims of human trafficking, and people who disrupt traffic on the expressway to protest police shootings all believe they are working for justice. Often, what we call a hunger for justice, is really only anger.

Cover of Dangerous Virtues by John Koessler available from Moody Publishers. — John Koessler’s latest Dangerous Virtues: How to Follow Jesus When Evil Masquerades as Good is now available from Moody Publishers!

Justice is a biblical virtue and a foundational requirement of law. The standard of biblical justice is righteousness, a measure that is established by God. The boundaries of what constitutes just behavior are not subject to the whims of the majority. In Scripture, righteousness is a matter for conformity, not consent. Today’s justice warriors often seem to have a very different view. We live in a vigilante culture where those who don’t like the outcome of due process take matters into their own hands. This view essentially equates justice with bullying. This is true whether it is a virtual mob, whose posts on social media endeavor to shout and shame, or a literal mob that surrounds someone whose views they oppose to intimidate.

But we don’t need to look any further than Jesus to find that there really is such a thing as virtuous anger. Jesus’ anger is an extension of the ultimate expression of virtuous anger: the wrath of God. Both testaments speak of God’s anger. Divine wrath is a measure of the distance that sin has introduced into our relationship with God. We know what it is like to be the focus of someone’s displeasure and to experience rejection. The Bible’s language of divine wrath is intended to remind us of what it is like to be in an oppositional relationship with God.The emphasis is not on God’s emotional state so much as it is on our position. Sin makes us God’s enemies. He is opposed to us because we are opposed to Him. Unrighteousness always places us at cross purposes with God so that we cannot be in harmony with Him.

As Christians, we are comfortable with the notion of grace. It is a part of our vocabulary. The nomenclature of grace is embedded in the songs we sing. But while we sing about grace, what we desire is many cases is retaliation. We are like Prince Felix, foreign minister of Austria, who was discussing what should be done with the captured rebels after the Hungarian revolt was suppressed in 1849. When someone suggested that it would be wise to show mercy toward the rebels, Schwarzenberg agreed. “Yes, indeed, a good idea,” he said, “but first, we will have a little hanging.”

A desire for justice is legitimate, as are many of the concerns of those who call for it. Unfortunately, what we call justice can also be nothing more than sentimentality expressed in the form of anger. This sentimentalized quest for justice trades on impatience. It misrepresents evil, by oversimplifying its nature. We are willing to shout, carry a sign, or post to social media. But that’s about as far as our plan of action goes. Anger is our only real contribution to the cause.

On the other hand, Micah 6:8 shows us what true justice looks like in practice: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” To act justly is to do the right thing. For the Jew, this meant conformity to the standards of God’s law. For Israel’s rulers, it involved the application of the law’s provisions and demands across all sectors of society. But the obligation to act justly was not exclusive to those who governed. In Micah’s prophecy, examples of unjust behavior include many drawn from daily life. They weren’t limited to the sins of rulers or even the rich. They involved sins of the marketplace and the family as well as the ruling powers (Micah 6:10–11; 7:5–8). Justice is the burden of the state, but it is also the obligation of the individual. Justice is a concern that stretches from the boardroom to the bedroom.

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8

The greatest obstacle facing us in our quest for justice is the fact that we are, by nature, fundamentally unjust. When the New Testament speaks of righteousness, it speaks of the righteousness that comes to us from God as a gift through person and work of Jesus Christ. God, who has established righteousness as His standard, is also the only source of the righteousness He requires. By sending Jesus Christ to be a sacrifice of atonement, God was able to maintain His standard of righteousness while providing righteousness to those who had none of their own. God is the only one who has a right to feel righteous indignation. He keeps the accounts and He alone can execute ultimate justice. The day of vengeance belongs to the Lord (Isa. 34:8; 61:2). But God is also the only one who can satisfy His wrath. He is the Just One and the one who justifies because the only righteousness God will accept is His own.

To “do justice” in this New Testament sense means much more than social activism. It means that we will reflect Christ’s righteousness in our ordinary lives by the power of Christ. Doing justice is not a matter of living up to God’s standard but one of living out that standard through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. To act justly in this Christian sense also means to act out of mercy. This includes specific acts of mercy, but it also involves more. The command of Micah 6:8 is to “love” mercy. The Lord calls for more than a practice of almsgiving. To love mercy is to cultivate a merciful disposition.

To ‘do justice’ in this New Testament sense means much more than social activism.

Not long after I started driving, I had to go to court over an automobile accident. It wasn’t a big one, just a fender bender. But it was my fault. I hit a patch of ice and slid into an oncoming vehicle. There were no injuries, and the damage to both cars was repairable. Still, the driver of the other car was angry. As the police officer wrote me a ticket and told me that I needed to appear in court, the other driver assured me that he would be there to make certain that I received the highest penalty. I was terrified as the date approached. I’d never been to court before and wondered what the punishment might be. I stood before the judge’s raised bench and shook as he reviewed the details of my case. “How do you plead?” he asked. “I stand mute,” I replied. The judge looked around the courtroom. “Is the driver of the other vehicle present?” he asked. Nobody answered. “Is the officer who wrote the ticket in the courtroom?” the judge inquired. He was not. “Case dismissed,” the judge curtly declared. The wave of relief that swept over me was palpable. It felt like mercy, but it was not. The judge dismissed my case on a technicality. He could not declare me guilty because there was nobody there to testify against me.

Mercy is something else. Mercy belongs only to the guilty. For the Christian, mercy is not a verdict. It is a person. Because Jesus took our place, God’s verdict of righteous for the believer is no mere legal fiction. When the Bible calls us righteous, it means what it says. For this reason, the word that the Bible uses to describe God’s verdict is not mercy but justice. By sending Jesus to stand in my place, God was able to be both “just” and “the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).

It is only through this lens that we can understand what it means to be just in the biblical sense of the word. Justice is not outrage. Neither is it revenge. Justice is righteousness, which is first received as a gift and then displayed as a testimony to God’s grace. It is the habit of walking with an awareness of God’s goodness, knowing that He has shown us mercy and empowered us to do the right thing. Justice is an act of faith that trusts God to look out for our interests. Justice is the offspring of hope that has two beautiful daughters. Their names are grace and truth: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

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