All for Christ

How can you offer your life--all your life--to Christ...
in your current circumstances?

How can you give all to Him today? in the next 5 minutes?

This question is not a philosophical flight of fancy.
It is central and immensely practical.

It's the "one thing" we're called to do.

It's the meaning of life.

Give yourself anew to Him today.

The Way of a Pilgrim

My thoughts this month have been on the theme of pilgrimage. Our life is one big journey, a journey to, with, and in the Lord.

Along the way, we sometimes visit places of special significance--places that have shaped others before us, places where we have made promises or vows, places of struggle, places of joy.
But today's devotional reading focused on repentance. Repentance is an integral part of any journey. As we veer off course, we need to concede our mistakes, and make a fresh start in the right direction.

Sometimes repentance is the goal of a pilgrimage. The journey is a time to reflect on our mistakes, to take stock of our lives, to gain our bearings, to apprehend the Spirit, and to yield afresh to the Lord's ways.

Oddly enough, some thoughts have begun to come full circle for me in this area. Years ago I read The Way of a Pilgrim, the tale of a 19th century Russian peasant who wants to learn how to "pray without ceasing." He is taught the "Jesus Prayer":

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And he learns to repeat the prayer again and again, again and again, until it becomes as breathing to him.

Well, I tried it...and it just felt like I was being insincere. I felt like I was trying some magic incantation or something. And yet, I think I missed the spirit of the prayer.

It's not a prayer that demeans. It's a prayer that calls us to realize our ongoing need for course correction.

The way of a pilgrim is a repentant way. We are loved. We are empowered by grace. And we are called to keep in step with the Spirit. To do so, we are constrained to come to terms with our missteps. God illumines our darkness; He wounds us with His love so that He may bring greater healing, deeper life, and fullness of love.

Psalm 19:12--Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults.
Psalm 139:24--See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

This is the way of a pilgrim.

The Profundity of Zechariah 12:10

Zechariah 12:10 (NIV) "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son."

Maybe this verse has caught your eye. Maybe it hasn’t. I heard someone talk about this verse years ago at a conference in England (Roger Forster is his name—brilliant teacher). He referred to the Hebrew in explaining the verse, and now that I’ve had a bit of training I am finally able to see if what he said checks out.

The startling turn in this verse is the abrupt change from the 1st person (me) to the 3rd person (him) in the middle of the verse. Obviously this is God talking here, but how can we explain:

• How God can be pierced?
• Why would they mourn for “him” if they pierced “me”?
• What’s this business about an “only child” and a “firstborn son”?

I checked out the Hebrew, and though not all translators have rendered it this way (NRSV?), sure enough the change is there. (Here's my translation.)

“They will gaze toward ME, upon the one WHOM they pierced, and they will sound a lament for HIM.”

The cool thing that the teacher pointed out in his lecture that day was that there is a clue as to how the change from ME to HIM occurs. (This is not a grammatical point—only a neat observation.) Between the word that means “towards ME” and the word that means “WHOM” (or “the one WHOM”) stands one little word. It is not translatable. Its function is only to signify that what follows is the direct object.

It is only two letters...but not just any two letters. They are the letters Aleph and Taw, the Hebrew equivalent of Alpha and Omega! The First and the Last!

Could it be that God placed this little, untranslatable word here just for us, so that we could make sense of the verse as we meditated on it? The link between “ME” and “HIM” is God! The Alpha and Omega are present in both.

This insight provides an answer for all the questions above. I’m not claiming this as some scholarly exegetical point, but it sure does light my fire.

Between God and the One Whom they pierced, the Alpha and Omega is found.

Another Recommendation

Over the last few months, I've been enjoying a plugin (for Windows Media Player) that displays the lyrics of the song that you're listening to. If you listen to music on your computer, it's a great tool. Imagine--understanding what you're listening to...what a concept! It sure beats those cheesy dancing lights that are the default WMP background.

If you're interested, you can download it from http://www.lyricsplugin.com/.

A Good Word from Dr. Stone

Check out the wise advice from Lawson Stone in this posting.
It's worth the read.

Irenaeus--Defender of the Faith

I recently wrote a short reflection on Irenaeus's treatment of Genesis 2:7 in Book V of his massive work Against Heresies. Imagine...he uses this verse in his refutation of those who claimed that there would be no bodily resurrection!

Genesis 2:7 -- then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

Here's my paper:
(If you want to read the pertinent sections, check out the link to "My Google Notebook.")


In order to prove that flesh can inherit eternal life, Irenaeus returns to the Creation narrative in Genesis 2. Specifically, he emphasizes the fact that God not only formed man out of the dust, but He animated him by breathing life into him. It was not until the breath of life, proceeding from God, was united to the fashioned dust that man was animated and endowed with reason. God had the power to breathe life into mere dust.

In a similar way, says Irenaeus (V.I.3), the Word and the Spirit are being united with the “ancient substance of Adam’s formation” in the last days, thus rendering man living and perfect. Irenaeus here ties Genesis 2 to 1 Corinthians 15 (“for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ”). The giving of the Spirit (“breath”) is paralleled with the animating breath of God given to Adam. Now, concerning the resurrection, Irenaeus says that if God can create life out of dust, He is surely capable of reanimating that which had once been alive and has now decomposed into earth. “If He does not vivify what is mortal, and does not bring back the corruptible to incorruption, He is not a God of power.” (V.III.2) Precisely because He did breathe life into dust, we now know He is able to reconstitute that which has decayed. Our very existence shows that God is able to confer life on flesh, so why would anyone say that “the flesh is not qualified to be a partaker of life”?

Irenaeus goes on to show that a human being was not complete before receiving the breath, and that the breath was not a living body until it entered the dust. It was incorporeal. (V.VII.1) Just as God brought physical life through the breath, He now brings spiritual life through the Spirit. The breath, says Irenaeus, is poured out on all humanity. Meanwhile, the Spirit is given only to those whom God has adopted as His children. “The breath, then, is temporal, but the Spirit eternal.” (V.XII.2) The breath enters for a certain time, then departs. The Spirit pervades and never leaves. Irenaeus says that the first Adam forfeited life when he “turned aside to what was evil,” but because of the second Adam humans may now turn back to what is good, receive the Spirit, and find life. Just as Adam received life through the breath of God, so we may receive eternal life through the Spirit. Irenaeus refers again to 1 Corinthians 15 in his argument:
45 Thus it is written, "The first man, Adam, became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
46 But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual.
47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. (1 Cor 15:45-47)

In Adam, and in our turning aside from God, our bodies will die. In Christ, and in our turning back to Him, they will live again through the life-giving power of the Spirit.

1 Corinthians 16

The final chapter. The last of the Ben Witherington quotes. It was a rich class.

• It is seldom the case that there is great progress for the gospel without great opposition.
• If the Church is “Me” oriented, Satan’s happy. But when the Church gets serious about mission, there will be opposition!
• Just because you experience some opposition doesn’t mean you need to take the path of least resistance.
• Did Paul love his converts? Very much. He agonized over them. He loved his curmudgeonly Corinthians. He is deeply distressed at their misbehavior.
• Lesson: If you love them, then you will correct them.

Thanks to anyone who took the time to read these. I hope you were provoked to thought. I hope you were blessed.

1 Corinthians 15

More quotes from class...

• Orthodoxy matters. Jesus didn’t go to all the trouble of dying so we could believe whatever we want.
• Paul sees Christ’s resurrection as a form of vindication. God’s vindication of Jesus and His claims.
• If Christ is not raised, you’re still in your sins. Jesus’ atoning death for sin on the cross benefits nobody without His resurrection and His sending of the Spirit. It benefits noone without the appropriation of His death. Without the resurrection, there is no Christian faith.
• Christian perfection means full conformity to the image of Christ—inside & out.
• “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” We’re supposed to be acting like a new race of people.
• The first Adam was a living being—life breath animating flesh. The new race will also need an animating principle—the Holy Spirit.
• Christianity does not deny the reality of death, sin, and suffering. It affirms that however deep the Pit of evil, God’s love is greater. We are the undergoers of disease, decay, and death. But we are also the overcomers!
• The resurrection has ethical implications. If there’s no resurrection, do what you want. But if it’s real, God’s “Yes” to life is louder than Death’s “No.”
• Jesus is not just interested in eliminating the cause of the sin problem, he’s also interested in eliminating its effects—death.
• They say archaeologists are people whose lives are always in ruins.
• I would love to be an archaeologist and to find Lazarus’ tomb—“Died 29AD. Died 44 AD.”

1 Corinthians 14

From Ben Witherington's 1 Corinthians class:

• Pursue love. If you’re not intentional about it, it’s not gonna happen.
• Here Paul is talking about actions—not good intentions or warm feelings. Love is commanded.
• Teach on love.
• Love is appreciating someone, not regarding their deficiencies as higher than their assets.
• Jesus never called you to be a Lone Ranger for Him.
• We need to understand love. If a church only has a few gifts, but it has a lot of love, it stands a lot better chance. What counts is whether we love each other, whether we can relate to one another in Christ.
• 1 Cor. 14:2--For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Tongues, by definition here, is prayer language.
• Worship is corporate. It’s when we all get caught up in the love, wonder, and praise of God together. If all the preaching is needs based, there’s a problem. Most of worship is God-directed.
• Worship should be a place where insiders can be convicted, and outsiders can be converted.
• (concerning 14:26) Imagine coming to a church where everybody has something to say…You’re not getting out of there in an hour!
• You don’t impress people into the kingdom of God.

1 Corinthians 13

Ben Witherington quotes prompted by a discussion of 1 Corinthians 13:

• 1 Corinthians 13 is not a text about marital love.
• It’s about agape, something all Christians should share. It’s a way to exercise EVERY gift.
• Verses 4-7 are thought to be a description of Jesus Himself. [4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.]
• The spiritual gifts are given for us now. We’re not gonna need ‘em in the kingdom.
• There is a big difference between lovingly confronting somebody and guilt-tripping them. Confront it lovingly, then trust. Otherwise, you’re a clanging gong or a noisy cymbal.
• The Internet exacerbates our impatience. “I want it now!” Over the last 25 years, the tide of impatience has risen rapidly. Those who have loved me most in life have been the ones who have stuck by me, waiting for me to come around.
• Patience is an essential quality for most kinds of ministry.
• Only love will continue unabated into eternity.

1 Corinthians 12

Yet again...more quotes:

• “Consider the source.” The devil, not being very creative, takes that which is good and just distorts it a bit. “That sounds biblical, but am I hearing it right?”Discerning of spirits is an important issue.
• Who gets what gift is decided from the top down. God is not your cosmic bellhop. There are a lot of things Christians want, but they don’t need. There are a lot of things that Christians need, but they don’t want. God is not afraid of using the “N” word. He’s not gonna give something that the Body doesn’t need.
• Different gifts for different people. No gift hogs.
• Guess who decides who gets the gifts you have. The Holy Spirit.
• You have an internal resource within you. You have everything you need in the Spirit. Just stop quenching the Spirit, and give Him more to work with.
• God has chosen to relate to us personally. He could compel us to do whatever He wants, but He chose not to.
• The Holy Spirit guides, goads, guards. He woos, wins, and operates in you as a friend. God is love, and He relates to us in love. A loving response cannot be compelled.
• We have all been given the one Spirit, from which we drink. You don’t drink involuntarily. We have been given this well of the Spirit, but we are required to drink. Are you regularly taking time to drink?
• I need more unction to function! The source is within. That’s a great relief!
• I don’t need to pray for God to shower grace down from above. God has sent us the resources. We need to pray that God get all of the obstacles out of the way and let the Spirit have free reign in us.
• There is NO Christian without the Holy Spirit. Who joins you to the Body of Christ? The Holy Spirit! The Spirit is a person. You don’t get Him in installment plans. You don’t get Him in doses. You either have Him in your life or you don’t. You don’t get more of Him. But as you are sanctified over time, the Holy Spirit gets more of you!
• God can give or take away gifts, according to the way He wants to bless the Body.

1 Corinthians 10-11

More Witherington quotes:

• Baptism alone doesn’t make you “bulletproof.”
• You are provoking Christ, testing God’s patience, by continuing in willful sin.
• Why would you think God would require less under grace? “To whom much is given, much is required.”
• Jesus is the clearest revelation of the character of God.
• No rebaptisms. You can’t enter into Christ more than once.
• God is the owner—not only of all food, but of all things. There is no such thing as private property (or public property). It’s all the Lord’s. Secular communism and secular capitalism are wrong.
• That little word “mine” needs deconstructing. It’s not yours. You may think it is, but it’s not. It’s a gift of God. Not just gifts, talents, etc. but “personal” property as well.
• One of the problems of the computer age is that you become so dependent on technology that you make the mistake that you know it. There is a difference between having ready access and knowing something.
• Store up the word of the Lord in your heart, and it will save your life, and no one can take it from you.

1 Corinthians 8-9

Continuing to quote Ben Witherington from 1 Corinthians Exegesis...
(notice that I'm not necessarily relating thoughts about the text--I've mainly chosen snippets that are more or less applicable to life in general)

• It’s one thing to persuade someone to change their mind. It’s quite another to lead someone to violate their conscience.
• Whatever you cannot do in good faith is sin for you. Even worse is when you, through pressure, force, or brow-beating, cause someone else to violate their conscience.
• There is a problem in conservative, evangelical churches of having too many scruples.
• The grace and love of God is not like a heat-seeking missile that goes to a particular target because there’s something particularly attractive about that target. God’s love is unconditional. It makes someone lovable.
• You need to take a regular reality check about your attitude concerning money. We are supposed to be the Body of Christ, and how you relate to money shows a lot about what you really believe. Where does your ultimate security lie?
• Offer the gospel freely and trust that the Holy Spirit will move their hearts to support you. The people aren’t paying for the gospel. They’re paying to support their minister.
• Paul does not believe you are eternally secure until you are secure in eternity.

Christmas in July

This phrase usually refers to an unexpected windfall--a fortuitous felicity. In this case, however, I mean to use it literally.

This month my devotional readings are focused on pilgrimage.
One of the main themes running through the readings is that our lives are meant to be a journey. As Christians, our destination is conformity to Christ, union with the Father, fellowship in the Spirit, etc.

Yesterday's reading, however, focused on Haddington, Scotland. The author evidently came upon a scene at Haddington depicting Mary. In this scene, she is presenting her baby boy to the royal visitors who have come to adore Him.

God Himself made a pilgrimage...to a teenage virgin's womb, to a humble manger, to backwater Nazareth, to the cross, and to the grave.

Back to the scene from Haddington. These magi pilgrims came to bring an offering to the newborn King of the Jews. They brought their best...but what then happened to their hearts? Did they depart from that encounter forever changed?

Christ has come into our world as well. Many of us have knelt to worship and honor the Christ child. God not only made the pilgrimage to humble Himself in a lowly stall in Bethlehem, He has now humbled Himself enough to indwell us through the Spirit.

Kneel before Him. Adore Him. Be changed as you gaze upon the Lord of glory, He who humbled Himself to endure a shameful birth and a scandalous death.

Be humbled yourself as you adore.

This is Christmas in July.

1 Corinthians 7

Ben Witherington III quotes (continued):

• Singleness is a grace gift. So is marriage. Not everybody has the grace gift of singleness. Not everyone has the gift of marriage. In Christ, you do have one or the other. But marriage is not just a giant prophylactic. It’s about gifting. It’s sacred.
• "Abstinence makes the heart go fonder. Too much abstinence makes the heart go wander."
• Sex is dirty. Save it for the one you love. [This was the mixed message that BW3 got in his introduction to the birds and the bees. Classic!]
• How about something positive? Let people know that we think sex is good.
  There are places and times in which this is a beautiful thing. Let them know the contexts in which God has blessed it. Enough with the “tourniquet mentality” about sex—it’s not our job to tell everybody, “Just say no!” Enough with the negativity.
• Stop empowering satan and his minions—he has no street cred with you, Christian!
  Make decisions out of faith, not fear. You need to name and claim that “Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world.”

1 Corinthians 3-5

Ben Witherington quotes (continued):

• Though you belong to your congregation and are accountable to them, you are only answerable to the Lord.
• The injunction “Don’t judge” is a reminder that Jesus has final judgment. It is not a prohibition on confronting sin in love!
• Truth unites. Lies divide. Righteousness unites. Sin divides. Holy living is a lot easier. Sin can be pleasurable in the moment, but it always has consequences.
• There is a high tolerance for sin in the West. Toleration does not equal love.

1 Corinthians 2

Ben Witherington quotes (continued)

• All of us should approach the Word with trembling.
• Real humility is not an attitude about yourself, but an action word: a STRONG person STEPPING DOWN to help others.
• Humility does not equal false modesty.
• If the Spirit is not moving, you don’t have unction to function.That’s how lives will get changed.
• While you can see God’s hand in nature, natural theology won’t save you. It can give you a knowledge (& an appreciation) that God exists, but it won’t save you.
• Faith is a living thing. If you don’t use it, you lose it. You must go forward, growing in the grace & knowledge of God. When you “sign up” for Christianity, you sign up for a lifetime of spiritual growth.
• Having gifts does not equal maturity.

1 Corinthians 1

I intend to post some Ben Witherington quotes from each chapter of 1 Corinthians. Please excuse all of the exclamation points and capital letters. That's just how I got it down in my notes--it seemed to capture the passion of the moment.

Here goes chapter one:

• The one who will judge you on that day is the one who will stand up for you on that day. Your judge is the same one who died for you. When you stand before Him on that day and He raises the gavel to pronounce judgment, you will see the scars in His hands...as He says, “No condemnation.”
• This model of the pastor-superstar disables the church. What happens when he’s gone? It’s about what God does. It’s about enabling others.
• You can’t understand resurrection until you understand death.
• The cross is the ultimate critique of all human pride and pomposity. We failed, and only God succeeded.
• The only way for Him to save us was to become fully human. And yet He couldn’t do it if He was just a man. It had to be as the God-man. Only one Mediator between God and man. One for all, once for all.
• There is a mystery to suffering in life. For me to have life required the death of the only-begotten Son.
• There is a difference between common sense and Christian sense!!! What may seem to make sense to you DOES NOT NECESSARILY EQUAL God’s way.
• Greco-Roman education won’t cut it…won’t save you. Salvation comes from REVELATION, not through humanly achieved EDUCATION.
• Our world assumes that INFORMATION=TRANSFORMATION. Sadly, this is not enough. The battle is in the heart. Getting people in the pews does not make them a Christian. They may know a lot about Jesus, but do they KNOW Jesus?
• The Jews seek signs—(Remember with Jesus? “What sign will you give?”) Paul says that demanding a sign nullifies faith. “Faith seeking understanding.” Believing leads to seeing.
  Greeks demanded wisdom—they wanted it to make sense to them.
  Your people will make the same demands.You must start where they are, but you better not LEAVE THEM THERE.
• If you simply try to boil it down to where they are, you’ll end up with “pablum for the masses.” Instead, you need to boil up their minds to the level of the text.

Witherington Quotes from his 1 Corinthians Introduction

A few more jewels from this week's class:

• The past is like a foreign country—they do things DIFFERENTLY there.
• A text without a context is just a pretext…for whatever you want it to mean.
• Paul did not live in a culture of texts. Texts were documents that would make sense to only a minority of people. They did not function then as they do today.
• People in antiquity read OUT LOUD. Texts were written to be heard!
• If you don’t want “half-converted converts” you have to give them the whole Gospel. Stop watering it down; start boiling it up. Stop settling for sponges. Mind, heart, will, experience need to be renewed. Stop putting the cookies on the bottom shelf. The goal: holy people, wholly dedicated to Christ.
• You have to start with people where they are. Paul realizes that this is a process. He was satisfied with small victories, yet increasingly held them to higher standards.
• Talent does not equal maturity. Gifts should be exercised in the fruit of the Spirit. The Corinthians were engaged in spiritual gymnastics! “My gift’s better than your gift! My gift’s better than yours!” They took a fleshly approach to being spiritual.

1 Corinthians 6

This week I'm taking a class with Dr. Ben Witherington III here at Asbury. It's a First Corinthians Exegesis class. I had heard a great deal about Dr. Witherington, but now I'm getting to experience him first hand. He's a trip.

He's also extremely quotable. Here are some quotes from part of today's lecture on 1 Corinthians chapter six. They're out of context (and may well be inexact), but I think they'll do OK standing on their own.

• I’d rather be wronged than violate the basic position of Jesus—no retaliation.
• I do not think we have even begun to grasp what ‘Love your enemies’ means.
• Why would you take church matters before an unrighteous judge? Resolve your disputes in house.
• Sin enslaves. You become addicted to what you’re doing. Sin is always a form of addictive behavior.
• Food is a spiritual matter.
• There is an enduring effect when two people have sex.

I'm sure there are many more I could include, but that's a good start. I may post some of his comments from other chapters as well.

christianaudio.com

I love books on tape. I like listening to them as I drive. I like listening to something more than once. I like being able to give a CD to someone and saying, "Check this out."

Recently I added a website to this blog: www.christianaudio.com . I found it a few weeks ago, and I was really impressed. It's a place that sells Christian audiobooks...but what I really like is the free stuff they offer!

Every month they select one audiobook and offer it for free. This month's book is The Power of Prayer by E. M. Bounds. I've never read it, but I'm looking forward to listening to it!
The coupon code to use for the free mp3 download of the book is JULY2007 . I plan to download it, burn it onto a CD (or 2), listen to it, and give it away to someone.

Just thought I'd pass along a good resource.