Category Archives: Thoughts

Sustained in the Beautiful Hard

Family, Thoughts, Travels, , , ,

The first time I heard it was Sept 6, 1999. In the wee hours of the morning through the jet lag as newlyweds who naively landed ourselves on assignment in Kenya, the dawn was alive with the exotic melodies of birds. Their songs heralded the beginning of a fresh new day, bathing it in beautiful anticipation, proclaiming God’s glory to all. Through all our years in Kenya, Uganda and Congo these morning songs were a constant joy.

Landing in Cameroon two weeks ago, I subconsciously expected everything to be similar to our life in Congo. Sure enough, some of our favorite things about our previous home – morning birds, huge juicy mangoes, choirs singing in church in colorful fabrics – were similar. Oh how I missed those morning songs!! Cameroon has the same freshly roasted peanuts, red clay roads, long handshakes and strong hospitality. To focus on all the beautiful things, I am tempted to reflect on our Spring Break trip as a fabulous success.

But that would not be the whole story. It was certainly not my success. And it would skip the testimony of God’s power in our lives this past two weeks to stop there. Let us never skip an opportunity to tell of his mighty works even when it costs us something. So we will share the detailed truth that it may bring God even more glory.
Each day several friends ask, “How was Cameroon?”
The short story is: “It was beautiful. And it was hard.”
Vibrantly beautiful and
terribly hard
at the same time.
Complex.

Spiritual opposition often feels like all the cards are stacked against you. Nothing went very smoothly, and God intervened over and over and over to keep us moving forward. He sustained us. Our first obstacle was the denial of visas that left uncertainty over our departure like a cloud until God miraculously delivered new visas the exact day we needed them. Secondly, the 24 hours of flights did not always include foods we could all eat, but God brought a flight attendant to bring us special treats from First Class.

Upon arrival in Cameroon, we realized we had left our Yellow Fever vaccination cards in America. They are required for entry into many African countries and some will even vaccinate you in the airport if you don’t have your yellow card! We were stuck at the mercy of the health department officials. They could have refused us entry or forced us into shots then and there. God gave us favor with one of the officials who decided against protocol to accept our photo images of yellow cards on Kent’s laptop. (Later one woman would try to stop us from leaving the country on the same grounds, but pass us because of the work we do.) God’s intervention for the win!

We settled into our guesthouse rooms and crashed. We had not been prepared for the heat and humidity. We knew there would not be air conditioning. What we didn’t know is that March is the hottest month of the year. So 90-degree days don’t sound too hot, until you factor in 95% humidity with a ‘Real Feel’ of 117 degrees! We were sweating through 3-4 sets of clothes each day, which didn’t help us hydrate after the airplanes. We couldn’t drink enough and we had to focus on filtering enough water for the 5 of us to keep up. The heat sapped our energy and melted our brains, putting us in a fog. Sleeping under mosquito nets seemed to make the heat worse. God kept our filter working quickly, gave us a fridge that worked, a fan to sleep by, and sustained us in a way that doesn’t make sense to me even in retrospect.

Within 48 hours, I was not recovering energy or health from jet lag, I was actually getting worse each day knocked down with the flu. Kent left for his conference out of town. While he was away, I was not sleeping much at night. I think I was allergic to the dusty, lumpy mattress. One night, my lungs began to fill to the point where I felt out of breath to walk a few steps. I am familiar with walking pneumonia, and knew I was in trouble. God intervened. One of my friends was taking me shopping the next morning and I asked her to help me buy an inhaler and allergy meds. She just ‘happened’ to have meds and an extra new inhaler sitting in her house that another missionary had given away! Within 2-3 days with the meds and inhaler my lungs cleared and I could breathe again. I haven’t had allergic asthma like that in maybe 10 years, but it hunted me down on this trip.

Kent’s conference was productive and fruitful, but not without difficulty. He was staying in hotel that some days had water and some days not. God got him through and got him home. He returned safely back to us after 4 days and promptly came down with the flu. For a few days we were both down at the same time. I had a horrible stomach ache that wouldn’t go away. God gently reminded me what the enemy was trying to steal, kill and destroy on our trip. He would love us to call it ‘ruined’ and only remember the ‘bad’. We gathered our family to sing and pray. My stomach ache left and never returned. It was a turning point in my full recovery. Kent had enough of the dusty, lumpy mattress and got a ride to bargain for a new one. God granted him favor with the shop and he bought a wonderful new mattress for 70% of the asking price! We started to sleep so much better!

Through the fog of heat and illness, we were trying to tour available houses for our move this summer, but our time and energy reserves were so low. One hour out of the house required two more recovering. This was made only more complicated by the fact that there were no known houses available big enough for our family. The unrest in outlying areas had many displaced colleagues moving into the city in the past years, so there is a housing shortage. We met one Cameroonian colleague who has 25 family members staying with him! We also had no car, the heat was unbearable and we needed to walk everywhere in the muddy clay. Hour by hour, God gave us the strength beyond understanding to get something done.

Our last 2 days in Cameroon were wonderful. We had strength again. And good friends had planned to come and spend time with us. We hadn’t lived in the same country in 14 years. Sweet fellowship. Time to smell flowers, dry laundry on the line, enjoy the first spring mangoes. In the midst of a minefield of obstacles, James, Joel and Anna enjoyed everything! They enjoyed the foods they remembered from their younger years. They enjoyed meeting new friends and attending their new school. Teachers let them jump right in. Joel chased agama lizards and played in the dirt with the little kids. Anna picked her favorite tropical flowers. James immediately clicked with other teenagers who “get him” as a missionary kid. So much glory. So much beauty. The calm before the return storm.

Our last night in Cameroon, I had a horrific nightmare. I can count on one hand the number of times I have been tormented by a dream like that. It had zero connection to reality. It was pure evil. We fought back with prayer and I began to sing praises to Jesus, which our enemy hates. God carried me through. He is victorious!

Our return home was odd in that every single airport was frought with more obstacles. It seemed that we would never make it home. There was a 2-hour delay leaving Cameroon due to trouble with the fuel truck (?!). There was a strike in Brussels for air traffic controllers, so we boarded and sat on the tarmac another 2.5 hours. This meant we missed our connecting flight in Washington DC by 5 minutes and were stranded. All the while, Anna’s health continued to decline. She was sick to her stomach more and more often and hadn’t eaten much in 2-3 days. We were rescheduled, overnighted in Houston and finally made it home (without bags) the next day. The fingerprints of Grace followed us. Airport personnel cleaning up barf for us. A stranger giving us a plastic bag when we needed one. The airport shop having a ‘sale’ on Tshirts and toothbrushes when our kids needed something else to wear. A hotel with free breakfast enough to feed our boys, and free airport shuttles that run at 1am. God’s grace followed us. (Anna has a parasite and is recovering well at home.)

He sustained us. We would not have survived this trip without his help. We not only survived, we accomplished almost all our goals for the two weeks! So how was our trip?

The verse that comes to mind is Paul’s testimony in 2 Corinthians 4:8-
“We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed.
We are perplexed, but not driven to despair.
We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God.
We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.
Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus
so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.”

If you read this all the way to the end, I pray you have seen the life of Jesus in this story. I pray this post is like the beautiful birds’ song which proclaims God’s glory to all who will listen. If He can comfort, guide, protect and sustain me when I feel like I can’t breathe in a foreign country with flu and malarial mosquitoes at 117 degrees… He can comfort, guide, protect and sustain you where you are too. He sustains in the beautiful hard.

“But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.”
Psalm 3:3

 

Participatory Research Methods

Linguistics, Missiology, Thoughts, , , , ,

I just realized I don’t have an article to refer to on this topic, while I’ve been using and talking about these methods for some years, so I’ll briefly describe what I mean here.

The term comes from “Participatory Research in Linguistics”, by Constance Kutsch Lojenga (1996). Others have used it, but the basic idea is to involve people in the analysis of their own language, as much as possible.

While this may seem a weird thing to have to say, many Field Methods courses in linguistics involve asking a naive speaker how to say things (or if saying something is grammatical), while the researcher takes notes. Those notes are not typically shared with the speaker, and it is relatively unimportant whether the speaker has any idea what is going on.

This is the paradigm that we are turning on its head, when we want to involve as many community members in the analysis, as much as possible.

Involving as many people as possible is good for our data, because it means we aren’t basing our analysis of the language on what just one person says. I join many in believing that language is a community property, not that of a single person. Yet it is not uncommon to have claims about a language made on the basis of a single person’s production. Involving more people can only increase our confidence that our data represents the language as a whole.

Involving as many people as possible is good for our analysis, as well. When I sit on the other side of a clipboard, and leave the “naive speaker” out of my thinking entirely, I’m looking at only half the problem. Sure, I can see how things look from the outside (etic), but I cannot see how things look from the inside (emic) anywhere near as well as can a native speaker of the language. Even if my analysis could be completely right without that inside perspective, its presence can confirm the rightness of that analysis. But working from both inside and outside the language allows more perspective to push the work forward faster, and on a more sure footing.

Involving as many people as possible is also good for the community of people who speak the language. I have no interest in finding out a lot of cool things about a language, publishing them and becoming famous (as if), and leaving the people who speak that language ignorant of the work. On the contrary, I think the community is best served by being as involved in the work as possible, so that as the work progresses, those who are most closely involved in the work can explain it to those around them —and typically in terms that might escape my attempts to do so. This accomplishes two things: it builds a cadre of people who are able to teach the analysis to others, and it increases the number and kind of people within reach of that teaching.

Consider the implications for literacy work. The above might not mean much to you if I’m dealing with some obscure syntactic phenomenon that you couldn’t even point out in English, like “Successive Cyclic Movement and Island Repair” (which is a real topic of conversation between some linguists, btw). But if I’m producing a booklet that should help literacy teachers teach people how to read, but no one understands the booklet, how will they teach people to read? On the other hand, when I finish a workshop, anywhere from three to fifteen people have a good idea what we’ve done, and could explain it to someone else. Maybe they’re not ready to be literacy teachers yet, but they are at least on their way there.

So involving as many people as possible is good for our data, for our analysis, and for the people we work with. Because I am strongly invested in all of these,  I use these methods almost exclusively.

There is a caveat: I’ve put “as much as possible” hedges above intentionally. I have a couple graduate degrees in linguistics, and I shouldn’t assume that everyone can understand everything I have figured out in a language, or even what I’m trying to figure out, or why. There are times where I have to accept the limits of the people I’m working on, and use what I can get from participatory methods. There are lots of things in my dissertation that I wouldn’t bring up with almost anybody, without some serious background conversation (and for some not even then). Rather, as I consider what is possible, I seek ways to simplify and explain what we’re doing so a subsistence farmer might be able to grasp it. This is why we use papers in workshops, rather than computers. This is why we stack them in piles, organizing them visually on a surface to show the differences between them. To invite and enable more participation, will only increase the value of our work.




Changes to our Communication

Anthropology, Church, Thoughts, , , ,

We have been communicating about our Wycliffe ministry for almost two decades, and during that time we have tried to communicate well in both content and form. Our first newsletter was very plain, with a small picture and lots of text:
Header from the first newsletter we sent

By our next newsletter, we had a title, header, tagline, the Wycliffe logo, and those cool marble bars that came standard with Publisher:
Header from our first Philologos newsletter

Later on, we went minimalist, removing some of the busyness to focus more on verbal and pictorial content, with more white space:
revamped philologos header

Even later, we used pictures as header backgrounds, allowing more visual appeal, but also another place to put a picture, without crowding the rest of the newsletter:

Header for Philologos XIII number 3

In all these reworkings of our newsletter, one thing we had not really re-evaluated is the quarterly two page production itself. Since we joined Wycliffe 17 years ago, we have seen blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and other media platforms come (and go). Today our friends and family are more connected by social media than by Email. Similarly, people are more connected by phone than by computer.

Given these changes, it seems that we’ve been writing too much and too little. A two page newsletter is longer than most people seem to read in a single sitting. At the same time, hearing from us each quarter means that an eternity (in social networking time) passes between each newsletter. So, with your permission, we are going to try putting out shorter updates more often.  Don’t worry, those of you who fear missing out on my wordiness will find links to longer articles (like this one) here on our blog. 🙂

I say “with your permission” in all seriousness, because we want to help you be a real part of our work. The last thing we want is to spam anyone, or stuff your inbox with more mail than you asked for. This is one of the reasons we now use Mailchimp, because they don’t allow spam, and because they have a simple unsubscribe function in each footer. But we would love to hear from you if you have any questions or concerns about this change —or about just about anything else. :-)

Our Email address is on each of our Emailed newsletters; if you don’t have one handy, you can also send us a message through our Wycliffe ministry page, through the “Finances/Write Us” link above right (or below on mobile devices), which goes here.

We welcome your feedback! Tell us what you think, and we’ll see what we can do.
Our goal, after all, is to communicate well.

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always
in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy,
because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
—Philippians 1:3-5 (ESV)

What is the use of the Law?

Church, Romans, Thoughts, , , ,

Going through Romans 7, I find a lot of our discussions could use more background than we have. When talking about “the Law”, there are two questions I have found very helpful in finding my way through Biblical texts, as well as conversations about them with others. The first I talked about here, under the polysemy of the phrase “(the) law”. In short, this phrase can refer to different things, so the question I like to ask is What does “(the) law” mean here? That is, if you assume it refers to the mosaic law (as it often does), you will get mixed up if a particular use actually refers to natural (i.e., not codified) law, explicit laws given to others (before or after Moses), or to a general principles without any particular moral value —all of which I have found in scripture.

The second question that I find helps clarify texts on the law is What is/are the purpose(s) of the law? I was in a conversation lately where someone talked about an unintended consequence of the law, which sounded like God intended one thing, then had to go to plan B later. This problem is particularly relevant if you think that in the Old testament the purpose of the law was to make people righteous. Given that we know this is clearly not the case in Christ, it would seem to be a change, something of a Plan B for God. But does God have plan B’s? I don’t think so. So I think it helps to ask if it ever was the purpose of the law to make us righteous. Or to declare us righteous. Or to completely remove our sin, even after the fact. Rather, the scriptures tell us

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins..…And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. (Heb 10:1-4,11 ESV)

There are other passages, many in the epistle to the Hebrews, which deal with this question of the purpose or value of the law and sacrificial system it contains. But rather that try to summarize it all myself, I’ll include here a couple paragraphs from the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), in the Modern English Study Version (1993). I think it provides a great starting point to think about the purpose(s) of the law, whatever you think about what this confession says elsewhere. I got the text here, and the prooftexts here (plus a few of my own). This is the sixth and seventh paragraphs of Chapter 19, “The Law of God”:

6. Although true believers are not under the law as a covenant of works by which they are justified or condemned (Romans 6:14; 7:4; Galatians 2:16; 3:13; 4:4-5; Acts 13:38-39; Romans 8:1, 33; Heb 7:19,10:1-4,11), nevertheless the law is of great use to them as well as to others. By informing them —as a rule of life— both of the will of God and of their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly (Romans 7:12, 22, 25; Psalm 119:1-6; 1 Corinthians 7:19; Galatians 5:14-23). It also reveals to them the sinful pollutions of their nature, hearts, and lives (Romans 7:7, 13; 3:20). Therefore, when they examine themselves in the light of the law, they may come to further conviction of, humiliation for, and hatred of their sin (James 1:23-25; Romans 7:9, 14, 24), together with a clearer view of their need of Christ and the perfection of his obedience (Galatians 3:24; Romans 7:24-25; 8:3-4). The law is also useful to the regenerate because, by forbidding sin, it restrains their corruptions (James 2:11-12; Psalm 119:101, 104, 128). By its threats it shows them what their sins deserve, and, although they are free from the curse threatened in the law, it shows the afflictions that they may expect because of them in this life (Ezra 9:13-14; Psalm 89:30-34; Galatians 3:13). The promises of the law likewise show to the regenerate God’s approval of obedience and the blessings they may expect as they obey the law (Exodus 19:5-6; Deuteronomy 5:33; Leviticus 18:5; Matthew 19:17; Leviticus 26:1-13; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 6:2-3; Psalm 19:11; 37:11; Matthew 5:5), although these blessings are not due to them by the law as a covenant of works (Galatians 2:16; Luke 17:10). Therefore, the fact that a man does good rather than evil because the law encourages good and discourages evil is no evidence that the man is under the law rather than under grace (Romans 6:12-15; 1 Peter 3:8-12 with Psalm 34:12-16; Hebrews 12:28-29).

7. These uses of the law do not conflict with the grace of the gospel, but are in complete harmony with it (Romans 3:31; Galatians 3:21; Titus 2:11-14); for it is the Spirit of Christ who subdues and enables the will of man to do freely and cheerfully those things which the will of God, revealed in the law, requires (Ezekiel 36:27; Hebrews 8:10 with Jeremiah 31:33; Psalm 119:35, 47; Romans 7:22).

The most important point, for me, is that there are a number of legitimate uses of the law, none of which is to make us right legally (i.e., justification) or in fact (i.e., sanctification). We can therefore conclude that legalism (attempting to accomplish either justification or sanctification through the law) is and has always been an abuse of the law.

Romans 1:14-17 thoughts

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This passage contains what is almost unanimously agreed to be the thesis of the book of Romans. It has a couple ambiguities, perhaps because multiple readings each contain aspects which will be brought out in more detail later.

First, I’m not sure about the three for‘s in this passage. The first is clear enough, and the second connects the next part to it, but it is unclear if the third for connects the third section back to the first, or to the second. That is, when he says

16For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

It is clear that he is not ashamed because the Gospel is God’s power, etc. but does the righteousness of God revealed by faith in it further ground his not being ashamed? This would make sense, as parallel grounds to the one statement, but it would also make sense to see the three for‘s as nested. In the nested reading, the righteousness of God … revealed by faith is the grounds for the gospel providing salvation to everyone who believes. In other words, the gospel is not just for Jews, but for everyone, and for a very specific reason. This has nothing to say against Abraham, but he isn’t the ground for this power of God. This power of God is based on faith, and that is why it is available regardless of ethnic identity.

Both readings make sense, so maybe Paul meant this to be ambiguous, to include them both. But I think the second (nested) interpretation fits better with where he is going with regards to faith and Abraham/Moses, etc. I’ll have to think through this some more.

Second, as I talked through this passage with other teachers, it came out that some differed on the reading of the quote from Habbakuk: “The righteous shall live by faith (or, The one who by faith is righteous shall live)“. This footnote in the ESV (in parentheses) contains a second reading; other translations pick one or the other, e.g., the NIV “The righteous will live by faith” and the NET “The righteous by faith will live”.

The question seems to surround whether Paul is talking about those that are righteous by faith, who live, or whether he is talking about how the righteous live, i.e., by faith. In the first, Paul would be talking about justification (i.e., that people are legally righteous by faith, not some other means), while in the second sanctification would be in view (i.e., that people who are righteous live by faith (not by some other means).

But again, I think this might be an intentional ambiguity. Given where Paul will ultimately go in Rom 8:28-30, I don’t think he has a strong distinction between those who are justified and those who are sanctified. They are one group of people, even if we can talk about two distinct things happening to them. So to say that the righteous live by faith is true, but they are also only by faith that they are righteous at all. On the other hand, it is true that any true righteous is obtained by faith, but the fruit (and expectation, or reward) of that righteous standing is life. Once God has justified you, you get to really live, not afraid of the wrath that would otherwise be due to you. But you are also expected to live, as a natural outpouring of what God has done for you. That is, a holy life is possible on the grounds of the right standing (justification) God has given you in Jesus. But Paul will get there eventually. In any case, I think it likely that when Paul talks about salvation in v16, he has the whole package in mind. This power of God calls people out of the kingdom of darkness, into the kingdom of light. It gives people a right standing with God, and it also provides the strength and motivation for right living. And it will ultimately bring us into the eternal presence of God, free from the power and presence of sin, forevermore.

One last point I thought interesting in this passage, is the reference to Barbarians. Typically, Paul talks in terms of Jews and non-Jews (Gentiles), as in v16. But in v14,  he refers to barbarians, those beyond even the ancient boundaries of Alexander the Great’s Empire (which spread the Greek language and culture. So this is not just a Jew/Gentile thing, the fact that faith is the ground of our salvation. It is also a culture/uncultured thing, and a civilized/uncivilized thing. There is no distinction that the ground of faith does not reach across. This is the word of God that is easy, in our mouth. But we’ll get there in Ch 10.

Our church is taking a week off of Romans next week (not sure why), so we’ll pick up on v18 next week.

This is Love

Re|engage, Thoughts,

Last week in Re|engage, we talked about Love, and how God defines it in the Bible. One thing we looked at was 1 John 4:7-21; my map of the passage follows:

This is another passage I’ve seen many times before, but I was struck by the beauty of how it is all put together. There is an encouragement, a definition, an impact, and a rationale. Or, we should love, this is what that means, this is what will happen if we do, and this is why we do.

Rather than base our ideas of love on Hollywood (or Bollywood, as the case may be), we see that Love comes from and is defined by God, and finds it’s pinnacle in Jesus’ incarnation and propitiatory death on the cross for our sins. If we love like that, it will be evident that God is working in us, since otherwise that kind of love is impossible. The more God’s love shines through us, the more God gets the glory for any good we do,  and the more confidence (and less fear) as we consider facing God at the end of our days. Loving our tangible, physically present brother right now is practice for the love we claim to have for the God who is unseen –yet eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Introduction: Romans 1:1-7 thoughts

Church, Romans, Thoughts, , , , , , , , ,

Introductions are somewhat like genealogies to many of us; we have a tendency to just blow them off, and skip to “the good stuff”. But this introduction has plenty of Good stuff in it. It introduces Paul, the Gospel, Jesus, and the Christian, all of which are very relevant to us today, and which will be relevant as we go through the rest of this book.

Paul is a servant, yet also an apostle. How is one sent in authority also a servant? Yet this reflects Jesus’ teaching in Mark 10:42-45 (ESV):

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.43But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servantd, 44and whoever would be first among you must be slavee of all. 45For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Paul is also set apart for the Gospel, to the end of the “obedience of faith”. Interesting that those who are in Rome (v7) are “called to be saints”; holiness is also essentially being set apart. So the one is set apart to preach the gospel, and the others are set apart to live it.

These verses also pack in a lot about Jesus, the point of the Gospel (and of everything else, truth be told).  Jesus in the gospel fulfills promises made by men who spoke for God, whose words were written down and kept for us to read.

The gospel is about Jesus, the Son of God (putting together vv1-3: the gospel of God, which [God] promised beforehand … concerning his Son), but it is also about Jesus the Son of David (v3). But He is also Jesus, the Son of God in power… by his resurrection (v4), and finally, Jesus is the source of both grace and apostleship (v5).

This last one I find interesting, given the bilateral nature of lordship. That is, a Lord and a subject have a two way relationship, the one providing protection and other resources necessary for life, and the other providing service and fealty. In the same way, Jesus provides us Grace, which we need for (eternal and any other) life, but he also gives us a job, to represent him before a fallen world.

Rephrasing the above, in five short verses we see Jesus as the eternal Son of God, the human Son of Man, the glorified Son of God, and the Son our Lord.

These verses also talk about what it means to be a Christian. That is, the purpose of the Gospel is to bring about the obedience of faith (v5), and that purpose is to be fulfilled in the readers (v6). Some have argued about the meaning of “obedience of faith”, given the linguistic ambiguity of the construction. Does it mean that faith is obedience? or that obedience that comes from faith (e.g., NIV)? Or obedience that is in some other way characterized by faith? My understanding of the construction is that it doesn’t require or exclude any of these, and that we must interpret it from the larger context.

Why is this question important? One conversation I had recently asked whether Paul here is talking about a single act of faith, which produces justification (as will be treated at length later in Romans), which is thus itself obedience, but not intrinsically tied to any other obedience? Or is Paul talking about obedience that flows from faith, i.e., sanctification, the act of Christians being made more holy subsequent to their trusting Jesus. And most critically, is it possible to have the one and not the other? Is it possible to trust Jesus, then never produce any concrete life change?

I have heard this question debated ad nauseum, and I think it is important for scholars to wrestle with it, but I think here it is enough to say that even if it is possible to have faith without obedience, that would in no way be a good thing, and that in no way is the point of the Gospel. That is, for Paul (and I hope for us), we want to see lives changed because people trust Jesus (and thereby have a right relationship with God, and go to heaven, etc), but we also want to see lives changed here and now as people live more rightly (and thereby glorify God more in their bodies, here and now). If you’re promoting either one without the other, you’re cheating people, IMHO. And perhaps this is why Paul used an ambiguous phrase here. Perhaps the Gospel is there to make people obey by placing their faith in Jesus. Perhaps it is also there to make people more like Jesus, once they have placed their faith in him, and tasted and seen how good he is.

And this is affirmed in Paul’s description of hearers in v7: loved by God and called to be saints. We are not just loved, we are called to be holy. And we are not just called to be holy, but we are loved. This is a package deal, and we get it all in Jesus.

I was somewhat surprised to hear called to be saints this morning used in reference to unbelievers. I’m not sure if Paul meant it that way. But it does make sense, given that those whom he predestined he also called (8:30) is a part of the golden chain that predates conversion, and given that this predestination happened before the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8 & 17:8). So while we who believe are called to be holy, it stands to reason that there are some who have not yet converted, but who are nonetheless also loved by God and called to be holy. If so, how does God show this love? And how does he call them to be holy? Paul tells us his thoughts on this in ch 10:

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?c And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

So we share the Gospel, and that calls people out of darkness into the kingdom of Light, and it shows people the love of God, as they hear what meets their greatest need.

And this is why grace and peace (v7) are distinctively Christian greetings. We proclaim grace to one another, because we know that it is by grace that we live and breathe. And we proclaim peace to one another, because this is what God has accomplished for us.  And this is not just the sit-down-and-rest-awhile peace of a half time show; it is the complete fulfillment of all our needs in Jesus. It is peace with ourselves and peace with others because we have peace with the creator and sustainer of the universe –and everything else is secondary.

Once More into the Breach

Church, Romans, Thoughts, ,

Some time in the last couple months, I got wind that our local church would be studying through Romans in 2018.  Some may have groaned, but I have now looked forward to it from that time, and can’t wait to get started.  Some have said that God repeats lessons you don’t get the first time; and perhaps this is what God is doing with me and Romans. But despite the number of times I’ve been through this book, I still find something new that blows my mind each time, and I haven’t had enough of it yet.

My first formal Bible study, with Campus Ambassadors, was in Romans. They have a to-with-through model of ministry, so I co-taught the first quarter (by the school calendar at Oregon State University), then taught the second quarter myself (IIRC), then grabbed another student to do the third quarter.  We had gone through different materials by Howard Hendricks, like this more recent publication on inductive Bible study.  While Howard Hendricks has taught a lot of seminary students, his contribution to myself and my peers was to encourage and enable us to make careful study of the Bible a part of our normal layman lives. So it didn’t scare me to lead this study, since we were just looking at the text to see what it said.

My first formal Bible study in French was also the book of Romans, in Chambéry, France. The local church where we fellowshipped (while there studying French) started the study, and we joined.  It felt like trying to watch a ping-pong match without being able to follow the ball, but the difficulty of trying to understand French people discussing Romans in real time forced me to learn French more fluently, as well as being a part of encouraging their growth, and growing myself. By the end of our time there, I noticed that I was following and contributing more fluently, mostly because we were joined by another anglophone couple, who felt as lost as we had when we joined.

Near the end of our first term with Wycliffe, I led a (very) small group Bible study in our church in Nairobi, again in Romans. Most weeks we only had three of us, and we didn’t make it past chapter six or so, but it was good fellowship, and we got to take it as slow as we wanted (which I’ve found is critical to not feeling like you’re drinking from a fire-hose, in studying this book).

Earlier last year, DTS started an online class on Inductive Bible study, which I followed up with another online class on Romans 1-8. These were both pretty short courses, but could be a helpful overview if you are looking for that.

And in the spring of last year, a group of men from our local church finished a formal study (on manhood, of course), and decided to keep meeting, as they often do between official church classes. We decided to do a book, and that book was Romans. So I got to compile the questions I’d developed for the study in Nairobi, adapt it to a one-chapter-a-week (i.e., breakneck) pace, and extend it to the end of the book.   And I got to make a nice chart for chapter 5, and a genealogy to help follow chapter 9. But one thing I really enjoyed about this time through was that I basically came up with questions, and did some discussion leading, but it was mostly a bunch of guys studying God’s word. One of those guys even credits his conversion to follow-up on the first few chapters in that study. So I have been privileged to see God work through his word, without really being able to take credit for it myself.

Somewhat parallel with this last study, and something of a break from inductive Bible study, I started working through John Piper’s set of sermons on Romans, which he preached from April 1998 to December 2006. The 225(!) sermons are available as a single download as described here and here. This is a very careful exposition, spending sometimes multiple weeks on a single verse. And there is the added benefit that he continues to pastor his church through this series, so there are a number of tie-ins to church life (like one on small group Sunday, and another on an outdoor evangelism event), which grounds the study in realistic application. So it’s a bit like a multi-year marathon with a microscope in your hands. But I find that the long view requires a different perspective, which I have enjoyed. There is lots of digging down into a verse, then coming back up to remind us what it means in the broader perspective, before digging back down again, etc. Having not yet finished this, it remains the occasional backdrop to my exercise and road trip regimen.

Then this fall, BSF began a year in Romans. While I am not a fan of BSF, the guy who came to Christ in our Romans study earlier this year asked me to join him in doing it, and I couldn’t say no. Which meant that our whole family would be doing BSF this year, which is not a bad thing. And I also have been mindmapping it as we go (with freeplane, based on  freemind), so that has been a fun addition to the study. We’re about half way through the year now, as our local church is starting a year-long series on Romans.

I like this news not just because I get to do Romans again, but because we don’t just do sermons in our local church. We publish material with material and questions aimed at helping people do inductive Bible study, individually, in small groups, or in our community group Bible studies (aka Sunday school). You can follow along and download those studies as they come out here (or pick up a printed copy at church any time the week before the sermon, if you’re in the area). Practically, this means not only do we have sermons on Romans all year, but we also get to go through Romans in our Sunday morning Bible studies, and in our home groups whenever they meet throughout the week. We all get to think about Romans together, for the whole year!

Which brings me to why our local church is doing this, and why I’m so excited about it. Our pastor has been casting a vision to have the Gospel presented in each meeting we have, throughout all church ministries. While I can see that scaring some, I think the Romans focus will really help. Because Romans is focused on the Gospel, and hits hard what it is, and what it isn’t. Sometimes I hear people say things, and I wonder how clearly they understand the Gospel. With this study, we’ll be able to address these issues head on. Those who already have the Gospel can only get a firmer grip on it, and hopefully some people will grasp it for the first time. In all, saturating more people with the Gospel can only be a good thing.

And as an added synergy benefit, I got my son the first volume of Tim Keller’s Romans for You, his accessible non-commentary on Romans. I’m hoping to go through that with him this year, both to build on what we’re doing as a church and as a family, but also as a part of his discipleship leading up to a public testimony for him. Just another reason for me to be excited about what God has for us in Romans this year.

And to be clear, one thing I love about lay Bible study is that it doesn’t take a graduate degree to get something life-changing out of the Bible. Yes, I have a graduate degree, but it’s in linguistics, not theology, nor Bible. I took one quarter of Greek in college, which I didn’t finish (the quarter of Greek, not college). I have never taken a seminary class (unless you count the online ones mentioned above). So my point is that you can get a lot out of Romans (and again and again) without needing to be an expert first.

So the Gospel is “good news”, but is it just any good news? As Christians we talk about the Good News of Jesus Christ, which is a particular good news, and not just any news that might seem good from our perspective. So what are these things I hear, you ask? Rather than prejudge the multitude of opinions out there, I’ll pose a number of questions that I think Romans will help with:

  • Is the gospel about helping me live the way I want to?
  • Is the gospel about giving me blessing (materially, socially, and/or spiritually)?
  • Is the gospel about making me look good?
  • Is the gospel a card I sign, or a prayer I pray?
  • Is the gospel a set of teachings I should accept (or teach)?
  • Is the gospel a means to another end, like baptism or church membership?
  • Does everyone need the gospel (if not, who doesn’t)?
  • Is the gospel required for salvation (if so, from what)?
  • Does the gospel make me free of judgment, so I can sin as I like without consequences?
  • Will the gospel make me a better person?
  • Will the gospel make me accepted by people at church?
  • Will the gospel make me have more friends (or lose them)?
  • Will the gospel keep me from being poor (or from being rich)?
  • How does the gospel interact with what I do, feel, or choose?
  • Does the gospel require that I obey God?
  • What happens if I accept the gospel, then screw up something really bad (like cheat on my spouse)?
  • If I have screwed up something really bad (like cheated on my spouse), can I accept the gospel?

Anyway, I could go on, but I’ll not trifle with your patience. If any of the above questions are interesting to you, I encourage you to join us in studying through Romans this year. You can find the pace I’ll be taking in the scrolls (here again), and I’ll try to put some sort of drivel here on something like a weekly basis. I’d love to hear your thoughts as we go in the comments.

Epiphany 2017

Family, Holidays, Linguistics, Thoughts, , , ,

the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
the LORD loves the righteous. (Ps 146:8 ESV)

I took two days off altogether from writing, for Sunday worship and rest, then Christmas day, and yesterday I got back to putting edits into my manuscript. While doing this somewhat mundane work, God opened my eyes to see something in my analysis that I’ve been looking for for over a year.

Last week, when meeting with a mentor in Canada, he encouraged me to rethink something I’d decided to leave out of my dissertation, since I simply couldn’t get it to work. And also, I had plenty of other things to write about, including a fairly important theoretical issue in the development of new tones.

But yesterday I took another crack at it, made an assumption that I hadn’t liked (and still don’t really like, honestly), and the rest of the pieces just started falling into place.

So in the middle of the afternoon on Boxing Day, God opened my eyes. I thank God that he still does that. And thank you for your prayers for us, and especially for my ability to do my work. We really can’t do this without your support, and we’re grateful that you’ve joined us in this work.

Merry Christmas!

Just and Justifier

Church, Personal, Thoughts, , ,

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (Rom 3:25-26 ESV)

These have long been favorite verses of mine, but they hit me with fresh power this morning. I’m going through Romans now in BSF, after going through the whole book in a men’s study in church earlier this year. All the while I’ve been listening to Piper’s 225 sermons on Romans, and it has been great to be saturated in this hard-work-but-very-much-worth-it exploration of the Gospel. But until this morning, I hadn’t ever gotten the connection of these verses with what comes before it in Romans. Sure God is just and our justifier. That’s poetic, and cool, and beyond what we could do. But as I seem to find more often than I thought, Paul is not just making this pithy point, he’s putting that pithy point as the pinnacle of his proposal: the propitiation of the wrath of God, while accomplishing his purposes for our pleasure in Jesus.

To set up more fully why it doesn’t normally work to be both just and a justifier, it may help to remind ourselves of what Paul has said so far. Almost everything up to 3:20 could be summarized as “we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin” (3:9). In consequence, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven” (1:8). So on the one hand, we are all under sin. On the other, God’s wrath is being revealed against that sin. Put those together, and God’s wrath would seem to be revealed against all of us.

Looking at God’s justice, I hope most of us would agree that not punishing sin would not be just. A judge who throws out a charge against a criminal without good reason is not a good judge. Even if he really likes him. Even if the criminal knows his son, and has eaten at his house — and perhaps especially so, as that perversion of justice would result from a conflict of interests.

Considering God’s power to justify, we wouldn’t normally see executing wrath as a corrective measure. I guess some people look at prisons as institutes of reform, not punishment, but I’m not sure there’s evidence of that actually working. And given God’s power, and the extent to which his justice and holiness have been violated, he isn’t going to rain brimstone down on you (or turn you to a pillar of salt), then say, “would you please do better next time?”

So as we see the sinfulness of humanity laid bare in the first three chapters of Romans, it becomes clear that God’s wrath is not only justified, but necessary to satisfy any kind of real justice. But that very wrath puts at jeopardy any possibility of reconciliation, so how could God do anything to help us?

On the other hand, if God chooses to forebear his wrath (despite the sin as Paul has laid it out in such painstaking detail), that puts in jeopardy any claim that God is just.

I’ve heard a number of variations of this “Problem of sin” or “Problem of evil” in the world. If God is all powerful, how come he doesn’t remove evil from the world? Others would say why doesn’t he punish evil? Some would say where was he during that last hurricane? Others would say why did he bring that hurricane? It’s like we can’t decide which is worse: believing that God is all-powerful and causes things we don’t like, or that he’s not all-powerful, and is up there wringing his hands at all these horrible things going on (either by accident, or by some competing and/or greater power). Either God really is the Just Judge of all creation, or he is our Faithful Friend; he can’t be both.

 This is, I think, the problem set up by Paul in Romans up to this point. But in these verses he shows us the beauty and elegance of God’s plan in Jesus. When he talks about Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross in vv24-25, he says God “did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.” Paul recognizes that God’s not punishing sin is a problem, so he clarifies that God was only postponing punishment, he wasn’t absolving sin willy-nilly. Rather than leave himself open to a charge of injustice, he does punish sin, though he does it at the right time, after much patience and endurance (9:22), and in the right way.

And this is where “to demonstrate his righteousness” can have a double meaning. On the one hand, God is showing that his judgment is right; he is a just judge, punishing sin. On the other hand, he is making his righteousness clear, plain, and available to us in Jesus. This is the sense of “the righteousness of God” that the Holy Spirit used to open Martin Luther’s eyes. It is not (only) that God is showing how right he is by punishing us, but it is (also) that he shows us Jesus, the right one, who calls to be reconciled to God, and who provides his righteousness to us – “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2Cor 5:21)

So “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement… to demonstrate his righteousness” in these two senses. The one allows God to show that he is just in punishing sin. The other allows God to show that he is faithful to us calling us to be right, by showing us the only one who ever was, and by providing that righteousness for us. This is how God can be “just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus”.

In the end, it becomes clear that this is our only hope. One resolution to the problem of God not punishing all sin now above is to point out that if he did, we would all be condemned. We must understand that Romans 1:18-3:20 applies to us as individuals. If you don’t have that yet, I encourage you to read it again. You can’t complain that God didn’t strike Hitler down (sooner), without also complaining why you are still alive yourself –unless you’re willing to maintain an inconsistent standard yourself.

The only way for God to be just is to punish sin. And the only way to reconcile us to himself is to not punish us (or not as much as we deserve, anyway). Which is where Jesus comes in. At one point he basically asked the Father to find another way, but there apparently wasn’t one, and so Jesus went through with it (Matt 26:37-46). He showed us a perfect life, then took our punishment, so we wouldn’t have to. This allowed for justice to be satisfied, since sin was punished, but it also allows for us to see true righteousness face to face in Jesus, to fall in love with him, and to thereby be reconciled to God.

This is how “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven” (1:18) and “the righteousness of God has been made known” (3:21), allowing God “to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (3:26). God is just, and I am saved, in Jesus.