Tag: Jesus

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Hope Beyond the Headlines

In times of extremely dangerous threats, it can be hard to see hope.

The time of Isaiah the prophet was one such time (8th century B.C.). For a long time, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah had enjoyed relative prosperity without major threat of invasion. Now, the Assyrian Empire was brutally subjugating the territories around them and menacing the nations of Israel and Judah.

As this threat arose, Isaiah called on the people to consider the state of their lives. Were they living the right way? What were they living for? Had they forgotten the needy around them? Were they living for luxury and sensual pleasure rather than finding their enjoyment in God? This was a time for introspection (see Isaiah 1).

But it was also a time in which the people needed hope. Scary times don’t seem like times to hope. They seem like times for fear and fear. It’s very easy in those times to see only the threats and not see the things that are above them and beyond them.

So, Isaiah preached hope. He preached about a time when a descendant of their kings (from the house of David, see Isaiah 11:1, 10) would rise and create a glorious, prosperous, and peaceful kingdom. Isaiah describes this kingdom using different pictures, like those of the animal world. In this kingdom, for example, the lion will lie down with the lamb. This is the emblem under which he represents the amazing peace of the kingdom of the future King.

Not only that, the nations would actually submit to this King, and this would usher in peace and justice throughout the world. “In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious” (Isaiah 11:10). It would be a glorious worldwide kingdom of peace and justice.

The Apostle Paul was a Jewish Rabbi who was nourished on those promises and looked forward to their fulfillment. He was looking for God to intervene and set up that kingdom. In Jesus, Paul saw a threat to this future kingdom. He was so upset by people following Jesus that he sought to imprison anyone who followed Jesus.

Then, all of a sudden, Paul shows up in Damascus, Syria arguing with everybody that Jesus was in fact the very King Isaiah was predicting! What in the world happened?

According to Paul, Jesus was alive, though crucified, and he met the risen Jesus on the way to Damascus. As he explains it, Jesus spoke to him in a vision so convincing that it changed his life forever. In addition, he was convinced that Jesus was not only the King for the Jews but for the entire world. He saw it as His mission to tell everybody about this risen King.

Years later, Paul wrote a letter to the followers of Jesus in the great city of Rome. As he reflected on Jews and Gentiles coming together to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, he realized that all that Isaiah had prophesied was coming to fulfillment. He writes, “And again, Isaiah says, ‘The Root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations; in him the Gentiles will hope'” (Rom. 15:12).

And we are still seeing it fulfilled in our day. In the past 100 years, we have seen more people from more nations become followers of Jesus and submit to His reign than ever before. In places where the name of Jesus was unknown, prayers and praises to Him ring out all over the world. There is much more to come, but Jesus is reigning now.

So, we have more reason to hope than Isaiah did. Isaiah could only see the kingdom far off. We have seen it fulfilled in Jesus who said that the kingdom of heaven was here because He was here. We have seen it fulfilled in people submitting to His reign all over the world.

It’s easy to lose sight of that hope in the midst of a dangerous threat. We need to remind ourselves and one another of the reality that Jesus is now reigning and His kingdom is expanding over all the earth. That is the hope beyond the headlines.

It’s not always easy to see and feel this hope. To see and feel it more clearly and fully, we need God’s help. That’s why the Apostle Paul told the followers of Jesus in Ephesus that he continually prayed that God would enlighten their eyes to see the greatness of Jesus’ power and reign (see Eph. 1:18–23).

The more they could see it, the more they would become what Richard Lovelace calls “a new center for the reordering of life on earth as it is in heaven” (Dynamics of Spiritual Life, 47). Jesus wants His reign to manifest itself in how we live as people of His kingdom in every sphere of life: family, business, school, state, the arts, and everywhere else.

But we don’t have to do it alone. God has given us the church to help us. One of the major purposes of the church is to equip people to make an impact on the world, living out Jesus’ reign in all of life (see my explanation of the four major purposes of the church here). How do we help each other do that?

  1. We pray for each other to see the reign of Jesus more clearly like Paul did for the church in Ephesus.
  2. We seek to make the church look more like the kingdom of God. We accept one another and “make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification” (Romans 15:7, 14:19).
  3. We help each other think through what it means for us to live out our lives, marriages, parenting, work, and play in light of Jesus’ reign.
  4. We pray for God’s leading and working in each aspect of our daily lives, not just the so-called “spiritual” parts.

If we do this, we can really become a people who live in light of the hope that comes from the reign of Jesus, even in the darkest hours. This is the day of Jesus’ reign. God will help us and answer our prayer, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

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Explaining the Mystery of Who Jesus Is and Why It Matters

It no doubt seems strange to us today to talk about a human being as also being God, and yet that is what we celebrate at Christmas time. We must also remember that this might not have seemed strange to the people of Jesus’ time and day. They believed that human beings were gods or became gods or were appearances of the gods (see Acts 14:8–20 for an example).

The problem for the early Christians was that they believed that there was only one God, so Jesus could not be a sort of lesser god that appeared in human form. The early Christians emphatically rejected that possibility at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. Its conclusion was that Jesus was “begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father.”

One possibility, then, was that Jesus was the appearance of God in a different role, just as I am a son, a father, and a brother. The problem is that the Bible clearly presented Jesus as interacting with the Father as another person and as sending the Spirit as another person. So, they rejected the idea that there was only one person in God. In the words of the ancient Athanasian Creed, “we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.”

With that cleared up, the question became: how are the human and divine united in Jesus? One possibility was that there were two persons in Jesus. The trouble with this is that the Bible clearly teaches that the eternal Son of God became a human being. Jesus is a “He” not a “they.” So, there is one person in Jesus, the second person of the Trinity.

By the end of the 4th century, there was little dispute that Jesus had a divine nature, but what about his human nature? Was it a real human nature? Did it become a sort of mixture of divine and human when Jesus became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary?

The early Christians saw that it was necessary that Jesus be a real human in order to represent us, sympathize with us, and carry out our salvation. They also knew that Jesus had ate, slept, wept, walked, and talked as a real human being. So, they insisted that Jesus had a real and full human nature, body and soul.

At the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, the leaders of the church adopted this explanation of the incarnation as capturing the fullness of the biblical testimony. Jesus was “recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ.”

The Church gradually gained clarity on the truths we confess today that Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, who became a real human being in order to bring us to eternal salvation.

What is the significance of all this? Charles Hodge says it well in his Systematic Theology:

Although the divine nature is immutable and impassible, and therefore neither the obedience nor the suffering of Christ was the obedience or suffering of the divine nature, yet they were none the less the obedience and suffering of a divine person. The soul of man cannot be wounded or burnt, but when the body is injured it is the man who suffers. In like manner the obedience of Christ was the righteousness of God, and the blood of Christ was the blood of God. It is to this fact that the infinite merit and efficiency of his work are due. This is distinctly asserted in the Scriptures. It is impossible, says the Apostle, that the blood of bulls and of goats could take away sin. It was because Christ was possessed of an eternal Spirit that He by the one offering of Himself hath perfected forever them who are sanctified. This is the reason given why the sacrifice of Christ need never be repeated, and why it is infinitely more efficacious than those of the old dispensation. This truth has been graven on the hearts of believers in all ages. Every such believer says from his heart, “Jesus, my God, thy blood alone has power sufficient to atone.”

Martin Luther explains the same point from a slightly different angle:

We Christians must know that if God is not also in the balance and gives the weight, we sink to the bottom with our scale. By this I mean: If it were not to be said, God has died for us, but only a man, we should be lost. But if “God’s death” and “God died” lie in the scale of the balance, then He sinks down, and we rise up as a light, empty scale. But, indeed, He can also rise again or leap out of the scale; yet He could not sit in the scale unless He became a man like us.

The point is that Christ’s humanity enables Him to take our place and suffer in our place and His divinity gives Him the power and merit to overcome what our sin deserved.

When properly understood, the implications of Jesus’ incarnation are wonderful beyond compare. It calls us to understand that God wants to connect with us. It also warns us that our sin and separation from God is no small problem, since it required the God-man to solve it. But it also assures us that since the God-man is the solution to our problem, then the solution is complete. We have a full and complete restoration and salvation that we merely need to receive by faith.

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Accepting the Most Important Relationship You’ll Ever Have

At Christmas time, we celebrate the greatest gift that God has ever given: His own Son. But what does that gift have to do with us? We need to receive that gift. What does it mean to receive the gift of Jesus?

First, to receive Jesus means that we accept the claims Jesus makes about Himself. He claims to be the Savior of the world. Do we believe that this is true? That’s not an easy decision. It’s something we have to think about deeply.

Why would anyone believe that this Man is the Creator and Savior of the world? One of the most powerful arguments is from the fact that so many agree that Jesus is a good and valuable teacher of humanity. It would be easy to put him alongside all of the teachers of humanity and say that He is just another great one.

The trouble is that Jesus has not left that option open to us. As C.S. Lewis, himself an atheist who eventually received Jesus, said:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

How can we put together His astounding influence and the positive good that He brings with the seemingly wild claims about His own power, authority, and divinity? I would encourage you to consider this for yourself.

Second, to receive Jesus means that we want Jesus to save us. We believe that He is the source of light, life, forgiveness, and eternal blessing. We accept Him as the one who will give that to us.

John describes this in a variety of ways to help us understand it. For example, he quotes Jesus as saying, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). Again, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). Jesus also said, “I am the gate for the sheep, whoever enters through me will be saved” (John 10:9). All these are ways of saying that we have to receive Jesus and commit ourselves to Him by an act of faith.

Third, to receive Jesus means to accept His leadership. In John 8:12 He says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” In the days in which Jesus was on earth, people would follow Jesus around and listen to Him. We cannot literally do that now, but we can accept His guidance and teaching through His Word together with His people. That’s what it means to receive Jesus.

Accepting Jesus is about accepting Him in all that He is. One of those things is the Lord of the Universe. When we receive Jesus, we are saying that we accept that leadership.

That’s what believers mean when they say that we receive Jesus. In many ways, it’s a very simple act that anyone can do at any time. At the same time, the implications of receiving Him are staggering and life-changing.

Wherever you are in your journey, I hope that you will consider Jesus’ claims this year and the hope that He provides that we remember in the Christmas season.

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Jesus as Logos (the Word)

When the early Christians tried to reflect on the man Jesus, they knew they could not describe Him as a mere man. They believed that this man born of a woman had existed long before He came into the world. At the same time, there were not polytheists. So, how could they think and explain what Jesus was? When John, a close associate and follower of Jesus, thought about it, he found a word ready at hand “logos” or “the word” (used interchangeably in this article).

Logos is a Greek word that was commonly used in the ancient world to describe the principle of existence or most basic form of reality. The Greek word can refer simply to a “word,” but it was also used as a specialized philosophical term. According to D.A. Carson, the Stoics, as one example, “understood logos to be the rational principle by which everything exists, and which is of the essence of the rational human soul. As far as they were concerned, there is no other god than logos . . .” (The Gospel According to John [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991], 114). This is similar to what other philosophers taught throughout the Mediterranean world.

At the same time, this use of “word” is not alien to the biblical revelation either. Reflecting on the beginning of the world as described in Genesis, we have God speaking the world into existence. His word makes the world. As the Psalmist describes it, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth” (Psalm 33:6).

Another possible reference of logos is found in the wisdom literature of the Bible. In Proverbs 8, wisdom is personified as being present with God at the beginning of the world: “I was there . . . when he marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was constantly at his side” (Prov. 8:29-30, NIV).

So, this word was in use by Greeks and Jews to describe the basic principle of the world and the means by which creation came into existence. Commentator Albert Barnes concluded based on this: “The term was therefore extensively in use among the Jews and Gentiles before John wrote his Gospel, and it was certain that it would be applied to the Second Person of the Trinity by Christians. whether converted from Judaism or Paganism.”

One thing that is significant about the choice of this term is that John had no problem taking a term used by pagan philosophy to explain who Jesus was. For the many in his day who were familiar with the idea of the logos, the use of this word would have had a rich connotation indeed.

At the same time, John did not feel bound to use the term in the exact way used by the philosophical schools. In his use of the word logos, he went on to explain what he meant by the term.

He said that the logos was with God in the beginning. Lest someone think that the logos was something distinct from God or created by God, he immediately adds, “The Word was God,” or, in the order of the Greek: “God was the Word.”

John emphasized the divine nature of the Word in what He said next. The Word created all things. All things were made by Him, and, without Him, nothing was made that was made. Every created thing is made by the Word.

The Word also did not simply create and then leave the world. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of human beings” (in terminology very familiar to Greek philosophy). He is not only the Creator, He is also the Sustainer of all life.

This is an astonishing claim. What John is saying is that Jesus who came as a human being is the very God of the universe who created all things and sustains all things. Even if a person had not met Jesus as a man, they are aware of Him because He created them and is the source of their life.

For those who did know Jesus as a man, they could take comfort in the fact that He was already at work in all places. Every good thing they encountered in the world was the result of Jesus as Creator and Sustainer of human life. “In Him was life, and that life was the light of human beings.”

The words of John are deep and profound. They challenge believer and unbeliever alike to consider the challenge and wonder of Jesus. When John used the word Logos to describe Jesus, His listeners would have leaned in with curiosity. It can still make us do the same, if we have ears to listen.

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How to Find Lasting Joy

Life can so easily get us down. Most of the time we ask, how can we survive? Lasting joy seems utterly out of reach.

The Stoics were a group of people in the ancient world who sought to find lasting joy while living a normal life. They wanted to move past depression, anxiety, anger, worry, and all the other negative emotions that often dominate our lives.

The Stoics were not, contrary to the common misconception, proposing that we be emotionless. They wanted to experience the blessing of positive emotions and minimize the impact of negative emotions. As the Stoic Seneca (4 B.C.–A.D. 65) wrote in his Letters to Lucilius: “Above all, my dear Lucilius, make this your business. Learn how to feel joy” (Letter XXIII, 55).

In this article, I want to explain how the Stoics suggested that you could find joy and then compare and contrast it with a biblical view of joy based on 1 Peter 1:3–9.

With so many hard and even awful things, how did these ancient writers think that you could find joy?

1. Let go of unnecessary negative emotions. According to the Stoics, there are many things that keep us from lasting joy that do not need to. For example, most of the things we worry about never happen and are not even likely to happen. We get nervous even when things are going well. As Seneca said: “The mind at times fashions for itself false shapes of evil when there are no signs that point to any evil” (XIII, 28). Even if bad things could possibly happen, “It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time” (XXIV, 57).

2. Don’t seek your joy in changeable things. People, pleasures, and places can bring us joy. However, if they are the ultimate source of joy, then we will inevitably lose that joy when we lose those things. Seneca put it this way: “For his joy depends on nothing external and looks for no boon from man or Fortune” (LXXI, 190). For example, if our joy depends on our business doing well, we will lose our joy when our business fails. If our joy depends on laboring honestly, then we have a source of joy that is independent of circumstances (or fortune).

3. Re-interpret suffering and hard things. The Stoics did not seek out suffering. They believed that one could live a virtuous life in spite of suffering. They also saw that living rightly in the face of suffering could actually strengthen a person. Seneca compared learning to live virtuously in the face of suffering with training to fight well:

The only contestant who can confidently enter the lists [i.e., engage in the conflict] is the man who has seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent’s fist, who has been tripped and felt the full force of his adversary’s charge, who has been downed in body but not in spirit, one who, as often as he falls, rises again with greater defiance than ever (XIII, 26).

Responding well to suffering strengthens our character, and that is just one of the many ways we can reinterpret suffering to de-fang it.

4. Find a source of joy independent of fortune or circumstance. For the Stoics, that source was within oneself. Seneca said: “Do you ask me what this real good is, and whence it derives? I will tell you: it comes from a good conscience, from honourable purpose, from the right actions, from contempt of the gifts of chance, from an even and calm way of living which treads but one path” (XXIII, 55). Living rightly and responding well to what happens is something you can always do and that fortune and circumstance can never take away.

I think there is much to commend the Stoic perspective. We should let go of unnecessary worries, not found our joy on changing things, see the benefit of suffering, and find a joy independent of our circumstances. In my view, there is a large overlap with the Christian perspective, but there are important areas where our faith takes up the good insights of Stoicism and provides a much more solid context for lasting joy. Consider this in light of 1 Peter 1:3–9.

1. Christianity like Stoicism calls us from placing our joy in changeable things. Peter recognized that this world would bring us suffering and take away from us things that we value and find joy in: “You may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials” (1:6).

2. Christianity reinterprets suffering in a way similar to Stoicism. Suffering builds character. 1 Peter 1:7 is a bit difficult to translate, but the point is that suffering is like fire that makes your faith shine forth. When Jesus Christ is revealed, it will result in praise, glory, and honor.

3. Christianity finds joy in our character. We rejoice in the salvation of our souls, of who we are as human (1:9). We are being re-made, and this is something the world cannot take away from us. What is truly valuable that we possess? Our faith. It is of greater worth than gold (1:7).

4. Christianity finds joy in a relationship with Jesus. Here is where Christianity puts us on much better ground than Stoicism in finding lasting joy. There is a relationship with someone that is not changeable and is a source of continual affirmation and love. “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy . . .” (1:8).

5. Christianity finds joy in the hope that all things will turn out well. Again, Christianity here redeems the insights of the natural world. It promises a world where the suffering we experience will be eliminated. It provides us a certain and unalterable hope that does not change based on circumstance. We have been born again into a new hope and an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. “In this, you greatly rejoice” (1 Pet. 1:6).

Stoicism represents one of the best human attempts to find lasting joy, and it is one from which we can learn much. As the Church Father Tertullian said, “Seneca is often one of us.” However, our faith provides us with a source of joy that is far better than anything the mind of man could have imagined: virtue based on God’s powerful transformation, a relationship with someone who will always love us, and a hope that will not disappoint. That is a sure ground for lasting joy, if we can learn to see it.

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