*Called to Follow

If there is one great principle of Christian living, it is walking in Christ's footsteps (I John 2:6). Sounds easy, but putting it into practice is one of the most difficult tasks of a Christian's life. If we succeed, however, we will be one of those to whom He says in the resurrection, "Well done, good and faithful servant." We will have not only lived as He did, we will have put on His character image, the great goal of the Christian life (Romans 8:29).

In Matthew 4:18-22, Jesus begins to call His disciples, particularly the pairs of brothers, Peter and Andrew and James and John:

And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. Then He said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." They immediately left their nets and followed Him. Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately, they left the boat and their father, and followed Him.

The sparse prose of the gospel account makes it seem as if the four of them just dropped their nets, jumped off the boats, and never looked back!

Evidently, this was Jesus' first command to each of His disciples. Maybe He did not say these exact words to each one, but it seems that Matthew gives this account as an example of Jesus' pattern in calling them: He commanded them, "Follow Me." And they immediately left what they were doing and followed Him.

On the surface, "Follow Me" may appear to mean simply, "Go where I go," but there is far more to it. The disciples would learn over the next three and a half years that "Follow Me" meant a great deal more than just "Walk behind Me." It also means "Do what I do," "Live as I do," and "Experience what I experience." Ultimately, it also means "Suffer and die like Me." Yet, on the other hand, it also means "Share eternal life and My rewards, too." That simple command runs the entire gamut of Christian life and potential.

From a negative perspective, Luke 9:57-62 considers the costs of being a follower of Christ:

Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, "Lord, I will follow You wherever You go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." Then He said to another, "Follow Me." But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God." And another also said, "Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house." But Jesus said to him, "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."

Clearly, following Jesus is neither easy nor risk-free. Its sacrifices and hardships are sometimes severe. It involves a commitment that most people are just not willing to make because true discipleship involves absolute devotion and dedication to Christ Himself. Thus, Jesus said these things, testing these men, finding out what was really in their hearts—if they were willing to commit themselves to Him, to His way of life, and to His purposes.

In the final verse, He lets us know the bottom line of what is required: One who is fit for God's Kingdom is willing to give all. German clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who lived under the Nazi regime, wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship. In it, he sums up the Christian calling with a now well-known quotation, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

In this passage, Luke records three instances in which someone gives an excuse to refuse Christ's calling to follow Him, illustrating three general areas in which people fail. The first reason is that the Christian life is one of discomfort. Jesus tells the man that He did not have a place to lay His head. In God's Word, Christians are often called "strangers" and "sojourners." We are travelers going through a land or residing only temporarily. In a spiritual sense, we are not citizens of the lands in which we live (Philippians 3:20). So, as travelers along the road of life toward the Kingdom of God, we cannot expect to have all the comforts of home.

We cannot allow the accoutrements of this world and of this life to hold us back in our devotion to Christ. Our homes, jobs, vacations, clothes, pastimes—none of these things compare to the importance of this Christian life. We must be willing to forsake all of these things if they inhibit our relationship with God. It may make life uncomfortable, but the rewards are wonderful.

The second reason some fail is because the Christian life is sacrificial. The man asks Jesus if he could first bury his father, but He answers, "No. You go and preach the Kingdom of God." We, because of our calling, must often forsake the customary duties, privileges, associations, and activities of normal life. The Christian's focus, Jesus says, is on the living, those whom God has called and given the truth, whose focus is also on God's work (see John 6:29).

When God calls a person, His will comes first. We may end up "missing out" on many of this world's activities. Some people miss them so much that they feel short-changed by God. Whether we pass or fail on this point depends on our priorities. If our ties to the world and its ways are too strong, we will be unwilling to sacrifice them to follow Christ. To be a true disciple, He says, we have to cut many or most of those ties.

The third reason people refuse Christ's call follows from the second: The Christian life demands new loyalties. The third man wanted to say farewell to his close friends and family. Jesus' reply is that once we commit to God's way, we cannot turn back, or we will be considered unfit. Many Christians are the only ones called from their particular families. They often find that, over time, they must forsake their own blood to a degree because they discover that they have little in common with them. Their ways of life are so dramatically divergent that separation becomes natural. In the church under a new and better way of life, they find a new identity, a new family, and a new purpose.

It is said that blood is thicker than water, but Jesus warns that our devotion to Him and God's way of life must be stronger. It requires an act of will to make our devotion to Him stronger than our blood ties. The Holy Spirit will not just infuse us to be totally committed to God. We have to set our wills to believe and follow through with making God our first priority in life, to go where He says to go. This is the new loyalty that Christ's calling demands.

In this way, we begin to live the life of Christ.

*The Bible's Claims About Itself

It is almost impossible for a Christian to have a meeting of minds with an atheist on any subject anywhere in the neighborhood of religion. As soon as the "conversation" moves to the source of the Christian's belief, the Bible, the atheist summarily rejects what the Christian says. In an incredulous voice, he will say something like, "You're telling me that you believe what you read in a book that is thousands of years old over the findings of modern science?" When the Christian answers, "Of course!" the atheist will ask, "Why?"

The only proper response is, "Because it is the Word of God," and the conversation can logically go no further. The determined atheist will accept no argument based on Scripture, and the faithful Christian will accept nothing that contradicts it. The conversation must end unresolved and unsatisfying—unless God Himself intervenes to open the atheist's mind or the unprepared Christian withers under the other's arguments.

In one sense, Christianity begins and ends with the Bible. All we truly know about God is found in its pages, as it is the only permanent record of God's revelation of Himself to mankind. In it, we find all of our instruction on doctrine, law, and morality. It reveals the standards by which human beings can live in harmony. It shows the miserable depths of man's depravity and the incomparable heights of his potential—and how God can take him from the former to the latter. In reality, a converted Christian bases every aspect of life on the words written in it.

Billions have seen the need to own this book we call the Holy Bible. It continues year after year to be the world's bestselling book, and millions of free copies are distributed around the globe. One would think that, with the Bible so accessible, humanity's moral fiber would be strong, but just the opposite is true. What a paradox! A major key to successful and abundant life lies in our hands, yet most reject it as quaint, outdated, and invalid for our times! The fact is, few people really study it, much less believe it. When polled, many give it lip-service, but increasingly, people do not consider it authoritative—it is just another possibility among many.

Accepting the Bible on faith may be noble, but God instructs us through the apostle Paul, "Test all things; hold fast what is good" (I Thessalonians 5:21). We must challenge the Bible to verify its claims, and conversely, we must take up the challenge to put its instructions to the test in our lives. We must make proving God's Word a personal matter that will forever erase all doubts about its validity. This takes time and work. It also takes the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit to open our minds to its richness and truth (I Corinthians 2:6-16; John 14:16-17, 26; 16:13-14). Only then can we really understand and believe.

New Bible students are struck by the Bible's authoritative claims about itself. For instance, Paul writes in II Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God." The phrase "inspiration of God" is in Greek theopneustos, literally "God-breathed." Scripture, then, is a direct product of God's mind and being. The words "all Scripture" (pasa graphe) can be rendered "every text," "every scripture," "the whole scripture," "all the writings," etc., meaning the whole canon of Scripture. In other words, nothing crept into the Bible that God did not want there, and conversely, nothing He wanted to be in it has been left out.

This is backed up by II Peter 1:21: ". . . for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." God employed His Spirit to inspire His servants, the prophets and apostles. At some point, they wrote down what God had revealed through them, passing His Word on to successive generations.

Hebrews 1:1-2 informs us that God's inspiration occurred in a number of ways: "God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by His Son." God is not limited to revealing Himself in any one manner. Sometimes, He spoke directly (see Genesis 12:7; 16:7; Exodus 3:2; etc.). At other times, He spoke in visions and dreams (see Isaiah 1:1; Ezekiel 1:1; Daniel 2:1, 19; Acts 10:10; Revelation 1:10; etc.). He once even spoke through a donkey (Numbers 22:28)! On one occasion, He spoke through the casting of lots (Acts 1:23-26), much as He did through the Urim and Thummim to Israel (Numbers 27:21).

Most importantly, He spoke through His Son, Jesus Christ, who came to reveal the Father (see John 1:18; 14:7-11; 17:25-26). He is uniquely qualified to speak for God because, as the apostle John describes Him in John 1:1-2, 14, 17, He is God! As the Word (Greek logos), He is the Spokesman for God, communicating to humanity, and specifically to His people, the will of God and the way to live in a relationship with Him.

Since He came to reveal the Father, Jesus must have been the God Being that the Israelites worshipped in Old Testament times, who spoke to them and led them. In this vein, John 1:3 specifically claims that the Word is also the Creator (see also Colossians 1:16; Ephesians 3:9). The Being, then, who made all that exists is the same One who inspired the words of Scripture! Since we owe our existence to Him, we also owe obedience to His Word in our Bibles.

As for its content, the Bible claims that it provides truth to humanity. Jesus Himself says in His great prayer to His Father on the night He was arrested, "Your word is truth" (John 17:17). This an echo of Psalm 119:160: "The entirety of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever." God considers every word He speaks or inspires to be true. It is His guarantee that we receive only the best instruction from Him. In fact, He would not be God if He spoke anything other than the truth (Numbers 23:19; Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18).

The Bible also claims, "Every word of God is pure" (Proverbs 30:5). David writes in Psalm 12:6, "The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times" (see Psalm 19:8; 119:140). The Hebrew word behind "pure" means "tested," "refined," or "proven of the highest quality." Our God has given us only the best information to propel us along the path to His Kingdom. We can take great confidence in that.

Jesus comments on the authority of Scripture in Matthew 5:18: "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled." The jot (iota) and the tittle (keraia, "little horn" or "point") are the smallest parts of written Hebrew. Christ was so sure of Scripture that He claimed that all of it would be fulfilled—down to the minutest parts. He affirms in John 10:35 that "the Scripture cannot be broken," which means its authority cannot be "loosened," "unbound," "destroyed," "annulled," or "taken away." Our Lord and Savior says that no one can diminish the authority of God's Word!

The Bible presents many proofs of its validity and authority; what we have seen so far only scratches the surface. The most convincing and most lasting proof, however, resides in the relationship we build and foster with God. In a way, we can say that our proving of Scripture extends throughout our Christian lives as we see God in action, working in and through us to bring us into His Kingdom. The real proof is in the doing.

*Dating Christ's Birth

Despite the continuing secularization of our society, people remain fascinated and curious about the historical basis for the life of Jesus Christ. This curiosity becomes apparent especially around the traditional holidays of Christmas and Easter, when Jesus is supposed to be "the reason for the season." The Internet provides a wide-open window into the things people are thinking about, and questions about Jesus' birth and death are frequently asked on search engines and answers are posted on social media sites. For instance, a quick inquiry on Google or Bing about the date of Jesus' birth returns literally millions of pages of material.

As the world just experienced, the vast majority of mainstream Christians celebrate Christmas on December 25 or January 6 (Eastern Orthodox), depending on their denominational allegiance. While a minority of these Christians insist that December 25 is the correct date of the Nativity, most people realize that proof for this early winter date is quite scanty, which we will see presently. Even so, very few of them think that the date is significant as long as one is celebrating the advent of the Son of God into the world for the salvation of mankind—and one experiences good cheer with family and friends and receives the expected number of presents under the tree. I know, my cynicism is showing.

In the run-up to Christmas, it is not uncommon for newspapers, magazines, and online news sites to publish articles revealing the errors and inconsistencies in the supposedly Christian holiday. A person would be ignorant indeed if he did not know that erecting Christmas trees, burning yule logs, hanging mistletoe, and putting up twinkling house lights have no biblical foundation, and in fact, hail from paganism. Santa Claus blends the fourth-century Saint Nicolas with old Germanic and Scandinavian traditions that probably have their roots in Odin worship, and his eight reindeer likely derive from Odin's eight-footed horse, Sleipnir. (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the ninth reindeer, was added in 1939, thanks to the poem of that name by Robert L. May written for the Montgomery Ward department store chain.) Santa's modern look comes courtesy of a Coca-Cola advertising campaign in the 1930s.

The more serious-minded publications, however, tend to focus on the date, the place, and the biblical and historical sources of Jesus' birth. In 2012, "Bible History Daily," an online publication of the Biblical Archaeology Society, published "How December 25 Became Christmas," written by Andrew McGowan, Warden and President of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Writing for the general public, McGowan collates the findings of numerous scholars who have looked into the issue, concluding that, frankly, no one can really be sure how Christmas came to fall on December 25.

In typical scholarly fashion, McGowan brushes over the biblical information, mentioning only the detail of the shepherds being out with their flocks at night (Luke 2:8). He snootily dismisses it, writing, "Yet most scholars would urge caution about extracting such a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical." He quickly hurries on to extra-biblical findings, clearly believing them to be more credible.

In spite of his less-than-comforting dismissal of what the Bible says on the subject, McGowan rounds up the historical facts with rigor. He shows that Christian leaders well into the late-third century did not celebrate Christ's birth, citing the well-known "Early Church Father," Origen: "Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as 'pagan' practices—a strong indication that Jesus' birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time." Note that Origen lived into the latter half of the third century.

Earlier, around the year 200, Clement of Alexandria had written that Christian teachers had proposed various dates for the Nativity, but December 25 was not among them. In fact, most of them fall in the spring. But by the fourth century, December 25 in the Roman West and January 6 in Egypt and the East had become widely recognized as competing dates for that unique day in Bethlehem. How had the people of that time come to decide on these dates?

McGowan posits two theories—and that is all they are. The first is the one most members of God's church are familiar with: that December 25 is borrowed from Roman paganism, particularly the Saturnalia festival kept in late December. As the author notes in support of the idea, "To top it off, in 274 C.E., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25."

While collecting the facts assiduously, he stumbles in interpreting them. Finding no historical proof that the Roman church in the late-third or early-fourth century intentionally syncretized the pagan holiday into Christianity, McGowan fails to see any plausibility in this theory. However, he later contradicts himself: "From the mid-fourth century on, we do find Christians deliberately adapting and Christianizing pagan festivals." For this, he blames Constantine, who "converted" in AD 312. We can only conclude that he is being either naïve or purposely disingenuous about the Roman church's penchant to ignore God's Word in its quest for converts.

The second theory makes a great to-do about the date of Passover (Nisan 14) when Christ died, which at the time was believed to have occurred on March 25, exactly nine months prior to December 25. The ancients apparently considered such symmetry to be divinely ordained. "Thus," McGowan writes:

Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25. . . . Connecting Jesus' conception and death in this way will certainly seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings of the whole of salvation being bound up together.

Despite this theory being based on supposition and "divine symmetry," McGowan considers it more likely than deliberate syncretism—before the mid-fourth century, of course.

Belief in the general historicity of God's Word would solve his dilemma, but trusting the Bible is rare among critical scholars these days. Our article, "When Was Jesus Born?" uses the biblical details to narrow the possible dates to a two-week period in the early autumn, aligning well with the fall holy days, particularly the Feast of Trumpets. It is far more likely that the divine symmetry would align Christ's birth with God's feasts than with the short days of early winter.

*How Jesus Reacts to Sin

The episode in John 8 of the women caught in adultery offers a stark contrast between the scribes and Pharisees and Jesus Christ in terms of their reactions to sin. The gospels contain several examples of Jesus having to deal with a sinner—a harlot, a tax collector, even whole crowds who only wanted to get something for themselves from Him. Jesus, however, almost always treats such sinners the same way, unlike the scribes and Pharisees. We know the story:

Now early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him; and He sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to Him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?" (John 8:2-5)

We can imagine that, despite the early hour, quite a crowd had already gathered there in the Temple precincts, and this is precisely what the Pharisees wanted, an audience to witness what was about to take place. The Pharisees had probably been watching the woman for quite some time, planning to use her to discredit Jesus before the multitudes. When she stole away to her tryst with the unmentioned man, they were ready. Barging into the room, the Pharisee's drag her out—leaving the man—and haul her to the Temple to display before Jesus.

Then they ask a leading question, testing Him, as verse 6 plainly states, to frame Him when He spoke against God's law. It was a "gotcha" situation. They knew that He "consorted" with sinners, and having questioned Him or criticized Him about it at other times (Mark 2:16; Luke 7:34, 37-39; 15:1-2; etc.), they expected to use His compassion for them against Him.

Jesus, though, does not react as they planned: "But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear" (John 8:6). He ignores them and their question, treating the latter with the disdain it deserves. What He wrote on the ground matters little. His action says that their silly attempt to entrap Him is hardly worth His notice, that He is not going to jump at their bidding, that He would not be baited into error. They were, in effect, playing "the accuser of our brethren," one of Satan's roles (Revelation 12:10), and we can imagine that this is often Christ's reaction to him when he accuses one of the saints.

The Pharisees, not liking or accustomed to being ignored and disdained, nag him for an answer. After letting them stew for a while, He answers in a way that totally disarms them of their "righteous" indignation: "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first" (John 8:7). Their consciences' pricked, the Pharisees from oldest to youngest, slip away, melting into the crowd, overcome once again by the Teacher from Galilee.

Yet, Jesus' reaction to the situation is not finished. What He does next is even more astounding:

When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, "Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said to her, "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more."

Consider that she is an obviously sinful woman; she had a reputation as a loose woman. The Pharisees had caught her in the act of adultery, and that was probably only one of many sins. We would likely not be wrong in calling her a wicked woman.

In every way opposite to her is Jesus Christ, sinless and perfect. The Pharisees, themselves sinful, attempted to force Him, a Man of unimpeachable character, to condemn a sinner—to them, a foregone conclusion. However, Jesus' approach to the situation is poles apart; His reaction and attitude throughout this vignette is completely contrary to that of the Pharisees.

To them, reading the Old Testament law concerning the punishment for adultery (Leviticus 20:10-11; Deuteronomy 22:22), this was an open-and-shut case: The woman had been caught in the act, they had two or three witnesses, the law was clear, so there should be a stoning! This appears to be unequivocal. The law does indeed proscribe the death sentence by stoning. What more proof does Jesus need?

Despite everything weighing against the woman, Jesus approaches the matter differently. He clearly understands that the woman had sinned. He realizes there were witnesses to that effect. He knows the law and the penalty, but He does not leap to a verdict of condemnation.

Recall that, for some time, He does nothing but write on the ground. He lets the matter simmer. While the carnal Pharisees agitate for answers and demand action, Jesus patiently waits. God works with us in the same way. We can become infuriated when God fails to answer us immediately after we say, "Amen," but giving us time for things to work out is a consistent pattern with Him. We can be certain that He does this when we are accused before Him, even when we are guilty as charged, as the remainder of the passage in John 8 shows.

Because we are so familiar with the character of Jesus, we do appreciate how shocking His statement in John 8:11 is: "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more." One would expect a righteous God to say, "This is the law. This is your infraction, so this is your punishment." But we understand that God is love and that He is gracious and merciful, so when He does not say, "I condemn you to be stoned," we tend to pass over it without thinking.

However, first-century Jews would have been astounded to hear such a thing! They may have been the most judgmental people who have ever lived on the face of the earth. One little infraction of the law was enough to condemn a person. Excommunication was so common a practice that people stood in great fear of the Pharisees (see John 9:22). What Jesus says was a radical concept, one that contradicted everything they had been taught.

Moreover, Jesus had every right—as God in the flesh, to whom the Father had committed all judgment (John 5:22)—to condemn her to death, but He shows mercy. He does not react in anger to reinforce how bad her sin was. He does not even preach at her. He simply commands her not to sin like this anymore, and He lets her go to work it out for herself.

However, He does not pass up an opportunity to teach the crowd: "Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life" (John 8:12). He teaches that He, being that Light, has given us an example to follow in situations like this. A sinner condemned to die produces nothing. Only with further life and light will he or she have the chance to repent and grow in character.

That is how God works with us, and are we not happy that He reacts to our sins with patience and mercy? So we should forbear with our brethren (Colossians 3:12-13).

Like a Growing Seed (Part Two)

Part One introduced and explained the Parable of the Growing Seed found in Mark 4:26-29:

The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.

The parable is clearly about the process of growth, comparing the development of a plant from sowing to harvest to the spiritual maturation of a citizen of the Kingdom of God, a Christian. What sets this parable apart from other similar parables is that its emphasis is on the invisible and miraculous nature of growth. The sower may put the seed in the ground and do some cultivating, but "he himself does not know how" real development happens. God is behind the scenes, bringing His children to spiritual maturity in preparation for their harvest to eternal life.

Like its physical counterpart, spiritual growth happens slowly and incrementally. We should not expect a newly baptized Christian to be able to produce self-control as easily and to the same degree as one who has been in the church of God for several decades. In the parable, Jesus compares the Christian to a growing seed, and no one expects a sprout to produce ripe fruit immediately. This process takes time and steady progress through a series of stages of learning and experience.

This should be comforting, especially to those who are new in the faith. It should also set a goal or series of goals for each of us to strive toward. We do not want to remain a spiritual sprout like the wicked servant with one talent in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:24-30). Fearful and lazy, he squandered all of his opportunities for growth by burying his talent while making excuses and blaming his master for his own shortcomings. Instead, we should desire to fulfill by the end of our spiritual lives the awesome goal Christ Himself gave us, to "be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).

As we continue to develop under Christ, we must accept that we may not see a great deal of improvement at any given time. It is not as some Christian pollsters try to tell us, that spiritual growth is easily quantifiable, whether we read so many chapters of the Bible or pray for x hours each day. Because it is of a spiritual nature—by definition, something that is beyond our physical senses—Christian growth can be difficult to determine, discernible only when a person's godly speech and actions reveal a marked improvement. We may be able to see growth somewhat crudely in certain stages, but most of it will occur unnoticed and unheralded.

The actual mechanics of spiritual growth are beyond understanding, like trying to fathom the infinite depths of the mind of God. As hymnist William Cowper wrote, "God moves in a mysterious way/His wonders to perform." We might as well ask how a kernel of grain becomes a fruitful stalk of wheat. All we really know is that God is faithful, continuing to work in His people to bring His crop of firstfruits to harvest (I Corinthians 1:4-9). He will make sure that every plant that He has chosen for His field has what it needs to grow, produce pleasing fruit, and enter into the fullness of His Kingdom.

The apostle Paul may have drawn upon this Parable of the Growing Seed in his analogy recorded for our edification in I Corinthians 3:6-9:

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one [united in their work], and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, you are God's building.

He changes the metaphor at the end of the passage to God's building because he is progressing toward describing His people as the Temple of God (verses 16-17). However, the idea in his analogy is the same as in the parable, that God is the One who gives the increase to the crop in His field. He has provided the ministry to help things along (see Ephesians 4:11-16). He will give His sons and daughters whatever is needed to bring them to maturity—the best resources and experiences to cause real growth.

As he continues the building analogy, Paul cautions in I Corinthians 3:10, "But let each one take heed how he builds on it." He is speaking specifically to the ministry here, but this care also applies to the individual. In other words, returning to the growing-seed metaphor, the plant has some work to do too; it does not just stand in the soil and do nothing. Even though God provides the bulk of the resources for growth—water, nutrients, sunlight, etc.—the plant has to absorb them and use them to maintain itself and to grow.

In the illustration, the seed, activated by water, puts out roots and a shoot. Continued use of those resources causes it to put on height, develop a head, display flowers, and eventually produce fruit. God could spend eternity supplying sun and water to the earth, but if the seeds never responded to His blessings, not one sprout would ever break the soil's surface.

In the same way, God provides the knowledge, environment, energy, gifts, and whatever else is needed for a Christian to grow and produce spiritual fruit, but the Christian must consistently respond to God's providence to make them happen. Paul goes a step further and cautions us that, not only must each Christian respond, but he must be careful how he responds.

A plant that does not respond well to what God supplies withers and dies, and so does the improperly responsive Christian. Jesus addresses this in His Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23), speaking of seed that "fell on stony places" and that "fell among thorns." These fail to grow due to "tribulation or persecution" or "the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches." In effect, they let external troubles and the stresses of living in this world halt the growth process. Such a Christian, Jesus says, "stumbles" or "becomes unfruitful."

Obviously, an analogy can be taken too far, but this one holds up well. God has planted us in His field, and He is looking for spiritual growth so that He can harvest us for His Kingdom. For our parts, we can cling to the promise in Malachi 4:2: "But to you who fear My name the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings; and you shall . . . grow. . . ."

RBV: John 4:10

Jesus answered and said to her,  “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” 

—John 4:10

This statement, of course, is spoken to the woman at Jacob's Well in Sychar, a city of the Samaritans. Jesus had come to the well, and against tradition, asked her, a Samaritan woman, for a drink of water from the well. Rather than comply with His request, she questions it, wanting to know why He, being a Jew, would ask such a thing. “For,” as verse 9 explains, “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.”

We could say that Jesus answers her question, but not in the way she may have expected. His reply can be boiled down to, “But I'm no ordinary Jew. I have a gift to give of which you have no clue.” Yet, He says so much more than that, and from her reply in verse 11, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water?” we realize that she still had no clue as to what He was talking about.

There is a mild rebuke in what Jesus says to her as well. He had asked her for water, yet she had hesitated, questioning His motives. But He says that, if she had asked Him for a drink of the living water that He could give her, He would have done as she had requested, no questions asked! It shows the marked difference between humans and God. When someone asks a favor of us, we immediately want to know why and “What's in it for me?” But when we ask God for help or a blessing, He is happy and willing to bestow it—and certainly if it is something as spiritually beneficial to us as this living water!

Admittedly, the woman had no background to understand the leap that Christ had made, going from physical well-water to spiritual living water. Like Nicodemus in chapter 3, the woman's mind was stuck in the physical world. To her, “living water” was refreshing spring water bubbling up from the ground. The well that she and Jesus were standing next to had a spring at its source, but it was in no way a fountain. The freshest water lay deep in the well where their buckets could not reach. So she asks, “How are You going to fetch that water?”

She had no spiritual foundation to realize that the living water that Jesus offered her was within Him. It was an offer of the Holy Spirit and eternal life, which He later describes as abundant as a flowing river (John 7:38). We should also not forget that Jesus begins His reply with the words, “If you knew the gift of God.” There is a double meaning here as well. The Holy Spirit and eternal life are gifts of God, but His phrasing, linking “the gift of God” with the next phrase, “and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,'” suggests that He wants us to understand that He Himself is the gift of God.

He does not elucidate on this wonderful revelation, and in fact, this phrase is mentioned nowhere else in the gospels. But the idea appears frequently in the sense of John 3:16, that the Father gave His only begotten Son so that believers among humanity could have everlasting life. Jesus Christ is the greatest gift that the Father could give, His only beloved Companion for all eternity, and in that sacrifice, all other gifts—including grace, the Holy Spirit, salvation, and eternal life—became possible.

So, do we know the gift of God? Does His “living water” abide in us to refresh us and flow out in service to God and other people? “For the Father is seeking such to worship Him” (John 4:23).

*Whither the Holy Spirit?

Most Bible students realize that most of the New Testament books are letters—epistolé in Greek and our "epistle," which is a written communication between parties. Paul's epistles, as well as those of James, Peter, John, and Jude, are written primarily to church congregations, although a few, such as those to Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Gaius (III John), are written to individuals. Many consider the book of Hebrews to be an epistle, but it is technically a treatise (a systematic argument about a subject) with a letter-like conclusion.

A typical letter during New Testament times followed a fairly strict format. It began with the writer's name, followed by the recipient(s) and a greeting to him/her/them. The body of the letter ensued, and at the end, the writer closed with additional greetings and perhaps a date. Occasionally, other material is attached to the full salutation, either within or after it, but such material may not technically be part of the formal greeting (see, for example, II Peter 1:3-4). In many cases, the writer makes parenthetic remarks about the recipients (see, for example, I Peter 1:2).

Thumbing through the salutations of the epistles brings out a curious fact: The greetings are all essentially the same. Time after time, the authors write something akin to this from Romans 1:7: "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Almost all of Paul's epistles follow this wording—perhaps with the word "mercy" thrown into the mix—and some of the other writers' greetings follow suit. This shows how standardized this part of the letter format was during the first century.

Of the four other epistle writers, James pens a workmanlike, "James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad: Greetings" (James 1:1). Peter's first epistle simply states, "Grace to you and peace be multiplied" (I Peter 1:2), to which he appends in his second letter, "in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord" (II Peter 1:2). John dispenses with the standard greeting altogether in his first epistle (which may suggest that, like Hebrews, it is not technically an epistle), while in the second he writes one of the longest: "Grace, mercy, and peace will be with you from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love" (II John 1:3). In his third letter, his greeting to Gaius is terse but kind: "To the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth" (III John 1:1). Finally, like II John, Jude includes a longer greeting: "To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ: Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you."

The most curious—and theologically significant—facet of these epistolary salutations is the wholesale absence of greetings from the Holy Spirit. In nearly every greeting, the writer sends greetings from God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ. A Bible reader brought up in traditional Christianity would expect that the so-called Third Person of the Trinity would get equal billing with the Father and the Son from the apostles, but the biblical text omits all mention of the Holy Spirit in terms of personal greetings to the churches. Is this just a mistake? An embarrassing omission? A slight?

If greetings from the Holy Spirit were absent in some but not all the salutations, we might make a case for any of these explanations, but because they are entirely absent among the greetings of twenty epistles (not counting Hebrews) from five apostles, they make an implicit theological point: The Holy Spirit sends no greetings because there is no Third Person in the Godhead to send them! Put simply, the Father and His Son are the only divine Persons, and in grace, mercy, and peace they send their personal greetings to the church. Not being an additional, distinctive entity, the Holy Spirit does not send any greetings.

The clearest biblical explanation of this truth appears in John 14, where Jesus Himself provides the correct understanding:

. . . I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. . . . If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. (John 14:16-18, 23)

Jesus teaches here that the Holy Spirit is not another personality but the divine essence of both the Father and the Son that comes to and resides in each of God's chosen sons and daughters.

Since Jesus Christ is the One who most often interacts with humans, the apostles single Him out most frequently as "the Spirit." In II Corinthians 3:17, Paul states this plainly, "Now the Lord is the Spirit. . . ." It does not get much clearer than that! The apostle also equates "the Spirit Himself mak[ing] intercession for us" (Romans 8:26) with "Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us" (verse 34). The "Christ in you" statements (see Romans 8:10; Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 1:27; etc.) also have this sense: The Spirit of the Son lives, abides, or continues with us.

Broadly, the Holy Spirit is the personality, mind, and power of God to do His will throughout His creation. But for those of us who believe and love Him, it is also the means by which the Father and the Son live in us, interact with us, empower us, and enable us throughout our developing relationship with them. In a way that we as humans cannot fully fathom, the Spirit is both of them in us, uniting us with them, as Jesus explains in His prayer in John 17:20-23:

I do not pray for these [disciples] alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.

Because the Father and the Son are fully united in all things, when Christ is in us, the Father is in us also, and we are thus united with both of them in spirit and growing to become united with them in character. There is no need for a Third Person of a Trinity. It is truly amazing what can be learned from realizing that we must live by every word of God—even what the salutations of the epistles do not say is instructive!

RBV: Matthew 24:12

"And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold."

—Matthew 24:12

That this verse "randomly" came up in the random verse generator seems none too coincidental today. Yesterday saw the senseless massacre of twenty kindergarten children an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, plus six other adults. A day later, we still have not been informed of the shooter's motives, although we have been told that he was "troubled" and perhaps "autistic" and "weird." His grade school classmates and neighbors are not surprised at all that his life ended this way. He seems to have been a time-bomb just waiting to go off.

Obviously, his actions in killing so many people--and children especially—show no love at all. One would have to be "cold," without feeling, to do such a thing. It brings up another verse, II Timothy 3:2, where the apostle Paul prophesies that the last days would be dangerous because "men will be lovers of themselves," and in verse 3, "without self-control, brutal." It seems we are seeing this prophecy fulfilled in ever-greater frequency, as people seem to have less and less compunction about terrorizing and taking the lives of their fellow human beings. Under the grip of a merciless narcissism, many are losing their humanity.

Even so, Matthew 24:12 is not speaking about such people; it is not addressed to the people in the world at large but directly to Jesus' disciples and their spiritual descendants. How do we know this? Jesus uses the word agape for the love that grows cold. Such spiritual love, godly love, is unattainable by those driven by the spirit of this world. This agape love—the love of God—is the kind that is "poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit [which] was given to us" (Romans 5:5). Jesus, then, is warning His church that the wickedness of the world will increase to such an extent that it would sap the spiritual heat out of His own people, causing their love to grow cold.

This has two major ramifications: 1) People in God's church will love Him less, and 2) they will love each other less. These are the two recipients of godly love. We will see the effects of this drop in the temperature of our love in reduced time and respect for God and in deteriorating relationships between brethren. We will ease off in our prayer and study, relax our formality before God, and behave carelessly ("sin in haste and repent at leisure"), assuming that He will forgive us our every trespass. Yet, we will gossip about our church friends, take advantage of their kindness and forgiveness, betray them when convenient, and judge them mercilessly even for their most minor faults. None of these things express godly love; they all portray love growing cold.

Late in his life, the apostle John wrote almost exclusively about agape love. Most of his audience probably thought it was an obsession with him, and they likely turned a deaf ear to him, complaining that the old man was ranting about his pet subject again. But perhaps John remembered hearing these words from Jesus' lips decades before and realized that love was what the church needed to be reminded about. "This is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another" (I John 3:11). "If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?" (I John 4:20).

Clearly, he saw the practice of godly love in the church as critical to those living in his day. How much more critical is it to those of us who live so much nearer to the horrors of the end time and the return of Jesus Christ? The horror of the murders in Newtown, Connecticut, should remind us that we need to stoke the fires of God's love as we see the Day swiftly approaching.

RBV: Hebrews 3:6

". . . but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end." 

—Hebrews 3:6

This verse appears at the end of a paragraph in which we are asked to "consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus" (Hebrews 3:1). In the intervening four verses, the author of Hebrews, probably ultimately the apostle Paul, makes a comparison between Christ and Moses in terms of their faithfulness. Jesus is, of course, superior to Moses in many ways, but in the area of faithfulness, He is far greater because He is no mere servant, as Moses was, but the Son and Heir of His own house, the house of God.

A second distinction that the author makes is that, while Moses functioned as a faithful servant or steward of the house, Christ built the house. In other words, while Moses dutifully followed orders concerning the running of the house during his time of service, Christ gets all the credit for planning, designing, building, and maintaining the house, as He is its Creator. The author makes this plain in verse 4: "He who built all things is God." 

So the author makes two major points: 1) Jesus Christ is the faithful Son of God and Heir of all things, and 2) He Himself is the Creator God, the One who made everything (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16). For these reasons, He is worthy of all glory and honor.

In verse 6, the object of our comments, the author brings Christians, the church, into the argument. We are the house of God that Jesus has been building and that Moses faithfully served. The Son of God has been faithfully working on us both individually and collectively since the beginning to fit us into His house—whether we wish to look at it as a building or a family—in the place that most suits us and where we will function the best for His purpose.

The emphasis here needs to be on the fact that He, appointed by the Father to this task, has executed His responsibilities faithfully in every respect. He never shirks a job, never does shoddy work, and never fails to finish what He starts. Jesus Christ always does perfect work.

So, as the verse implies, we should have perfect confidence and joy in our Creator in bringing us to salvation and eternal life. We have no reason to doubt! Our responsibility, then, is to "hold fast," to stand firm, to endure to the end, through whatever assails us in the meantime.

There is nothing that can stop Christ from finishing His work perfectly—except us. We can fail Him (see Hebrews 6:4-8; 10:26-31); we can prove unfaithful, which is why the author's next section is an exhortation to be faithful and a warning not to follow the unfaithful, unbelieving example of the Israelites in the wilderness.

To this end, he repeats his encouraging remarks in Hebrews 3:14, "For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end." We have to keep hanging on, faithful and trusting that God, in His perfect work, has everything under control. So Jesus Himself tells us in Matthew 24:13, "But he who endures to the end shall be saved."

Divine Intervention

On Thursday afternoon's show, Rush Limbaugh joked about Hurricane Frances bearing down on Palm Beach County, Florida, where he lives. He said, paraphrasing, "Since Palm Beach County has voting irregularities like a Third World nation, maybe God decided Palm Beach County should be devastated to be, in fact, Third World."

Many in his audience probably laughed and promptly forgot about it. His observation, however, has a serious side that modern, sophisticated, and predominantly secular Americans never consider—at least seriously. They snicker at insurance policies that refer to hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and other natural disasters as "acts of God," when they, in their scientific arrogance, prefer to call them "acts of nature" or "weather events." Even those who are moderately religious, like the Deists of the Enlightenment, do not believe that God is active in earth's events, whether natural or human. To them, He may be watching, but He certainly is not involved in human affairs.

This points out how utterly blind to God most people are, even Christians. For starters, because they are not looking for God's hand of intervention in their lives, they are certainly not going to see it. Having become so secular and scientific in their outlook, the miraculous is totally off their radar. They consider those who report of miracles to be medieval in their thinking and the miracles themselves to be mere coincidences of natural phenomena or overstatements of what actually occurred. To them, miracles are impossible because, by definition, they are unverifiable by scientific methods and therefore do not and never have happened.

Today's thoroughly modern Christian does not derive this negative view of God's intervention from His Book. In the Bible, divine involvement in human affairs occurs from cover to cover—in fact, it is the central fact of human existence, which the Bible takes great pains to reveal. At every critical point in man's history, God has been involved. At Creation, before and after the Flood, at the dispersal of the nations from Babel, in the history of Israel, among the great empires of ancient history from Egypt to Rome—God was instrumental. God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, came to this earth and lived among us, bringing us the good news of His Kingdom and dying for our salvation. Then He sent His apostles to the four corners of the globe to spread the word among those He would call.

That sounds as if God is active and involved in human affairs.

As Creator, He certainly has power over the various elements of His creation. Manipulating the weather is like child's play to Him. He can send rain or drought anywhere, anytime. He flooded the entire earth to a depth greater than the height of the tallest mountain, so flashfloods, coastal floods, and river floods are easy. Spinning tornadoes is like breathing to Him, and earthquakes rumble and tumble at His command. The Bible makes many claims about His power over the elements (Job 26:7-12; Psalm 147:15-18; Nahum 1:3-6; etc.). Jesus Himself calmed the storm with a word (Matthew 8:24-26).

In the book of Amos, God shows that He uses "natural" disasters to teach people lessons, to bring them to repentance, to correct their ways. In this passage, He also admits that most people fail to make the connection between the disaster and their sins. Notice Amos 4:6-13:

"Also I gave you cleanness of teeth [famine] in all your cities, and lack of bread in all your places; yet you have not returned to Me," says the LORD. "I also withheld rain from you [drought], when there were still three months to the harvest. I made it rain on one city, I withheld rain from another city. One part was rained upon, and where it did not rain the part withered. So two or three cities wandered to another city to drink water, but they were not satisfied; yet you have not returned to Me," says the LORD. "I blasted you with blight and mildew. When your gardens increased, your vineyards, your fig trees, and your olive trees, the locust devoured them; yet you have not returned to Me," says the LORD. "I overthrew some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, . . . yet you have not returned to Me," says the LORD. "I sent among you a plague after the manner of Egypt; your young men I killed with a sword, . . . yet you have not returned to Me," says the LORD. "Therefore thus will I do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!" For behold, He who forms mountains, and creates the wind, who declares to man what his thought is, and makes the morning darkness, who treads the high places of the earth—the LORD God of hosts is His name.

He also says He will continue to do this in His Millennial Kingdom: He will send drought on areas that refuse to keep His feasts (Zechariah 14:16-19). Are we to assume that, for some reason, He does not punish for sin now?

Maybe Rush was right.

Who Gets Jesus' Vote?

On Wednesday morning, news outlets carried the story of the Texas Faith Network conference in Austin attended by "religious leaders" on Tuesday. The Associated Press reported:

James Moore, co-author of "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George Bush Presidential," drew laughter and applause when he offered his view to the moderate to left-leaning crowd of about 250 clergy and lay leaders. 

"If ever there were a bleeding-heart liberal, it was Jesus Christ," Moore said at Congregation Agudas Achim synagogue. "I think the carpenter from Galilee was the original Democrat."

Obviously, this was intended as a laugh line in Moore's speech, but "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). Partisans on both sides of the political aisle claim Jesus' support for their policies, but as far as can be told, none of them has truly studied Jesus thoroughly and honestly enough to determine what initiatives He would indeed support. The article quotes a handful of clergy regarding their views of Christ's "political ideology":

• Timothy Tutt, pastor of United Christian Church in Austin: "As I read the Scriptures and as I understand faith, God's side is the group that's feeding the poor, caring about children, making sure that people have enough food to eat—not killing others."
• Michael Jinkins, a pastoral theology professor at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary: "Based on my reading of the Gospels, I think Jesus might surprise us all on his voting record. He was far less 'religious' than the people who criticized him most."

One says He was all about social responsibility, another opines that He was less fundamentalist and more secular than the Pharisees, who were by all accounts conservative and nationalistic in their politics. Yet, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, and other conservative ministers would point to Jesus' moral teachings and claim He would support life (anti-abortion), virtue (pro-morality), freedom (patriotic and pro-Democracy), and strength (pro-business and pro-war, particularly Iraq and the War on Terror).

What side would Jesus endorse? Neither.

The article surprisingly ends with a proper conclusion on this point:

In fact, Jesus might not support Bush or Kerry or anyone else, for that matter.

"Jesus was not one to take sides on political issues," said Derek Davis, director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University in Waco.

While there were obviously no Democrats or Republicans during the time of Jesus, different groups vied for attention, including the fundamentalist Pharisees, the aristocratic Sadducees, the spiritually devout Essenes and the revolutionist Zealots.

"Interestingly, Jesus never sided with any of these groups but remained above such earthly disputes," Davis said.

Jesus never said anything remotely political. The closest He came was in His adroit answer to the Pharisees' crafty question regarding paying taxes to Caesar: "Why do you test Me? . . . Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Luke 20:23-25). To paraphrase, he tells us to give government its due—but God or religion is an entirely different matter. The politics of this world and the true religion of God do not mix well.

At His trial before Pilate, the Roman procurator asks, "Are You the King of the Jews?" (John 18:33). Jesus replies, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here" (verse 36). Jesus' Kingdom is still not of this world, as its King remains in heaven at His Father's right hand until the appointed time for His return. Therefore, His servants still should not be involved in the political battles of this world either.

It is interesting to notice that when Jesus returns, He does not join the "right" or "correct" political party, but "in righteousness He judges and makes war. . . . Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God" (Revelation 19:11, 15).

It seems clear that Jesus does not think highly of any human government of any political stripe. In fact, He seems to be for, in today's terms, total war, worldwide imperialism, and installing Himself as benevolent dictator for eternity. The question, then, is not, whose side is He on, but who is on His side?