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Purposeful Passion

Tuesday, February 12th, 2013 | Author:

And He said to them, “Elijah does first come and restore all things. And yet how is it written of the Son of Man that He will suffer many things and be treated with contempt?  Mark 9:12 NASB

Suffer – When did Yeshua ask this question?  The context is critical.  He asks this question as He is descending from the mount of transfiguration.  Do you see the irony?  Immediately following the moment when the disciples witness His glorious divinity, He asks them about the necessity of suffering.  The moment after they see for the first time that He is the manifestation of God and is fully endorsed by God, He connects His witness of God with suffering.  To be the Christ, the Messiah, is to be the one who suffers.  There is no glorification without humiliation.

The Greek verb is pascho.  It is basically a verb about experience.  But the kinds of experiences that are described by pascho are those that come over someone.  They are from the outside.  They “attack” the person.  That’s why this verb is almost always used for evil experiences.  In the Greek world, “passion” was a terrible thing.  It meant that the suffering of others, the plight and tragedies of life, could turn toward you and you would fall prey to their indiscriminate punishment.  We have the same idea in our culture today, except that we call it “fate.”  The Greeks took two different approaches to the wiles of fate.  The first was to be hedonists.  Throw yourself into all of life’s pleasures so that when life turns on you at least you have something good to remember.  The second was stoicism.  Do your very best to remove every possibility of emotional disturbance.  Go through pascho with resolve.  Don’t feel anything!  Those two approaches are alive and well today.  How many of us either run to addictive cover when things get bad or grit our teeth and pretend it isn’t happening?  Greeks through and through.

But what does the Bible say?  Ah, now we encounter something quite unusual.  There is no Hebrew word for pascho.  In the New Testament, pascho occurs 42 times, almost always in connection with the sufferings of Yeshua.  It never occurs in citations from the Tanakh.  Of course, the Tanakh has a lot to say about suffering.  It uses hamal (to feel compassion – Ezekiel 16:5) and halah (to be affected – Amos 6:6) most of the time.  But the view of the Tanakh is very different than the Greek idea of an outside attack on a person. That’s why pascho doesn’t fit.  In the Tanakh, suffering is usually the result of the inherent consequences of an evil act.  In other words, evil doesn’t attack from the outside.  It shows up as a result of inner actions.  And it is not always individual.  Entire nations can experience the inherent consequences of national disobedience and rebellion.  But none of this is gratuitous.  Evil doesn’t just happen.  In the biblical world, God is behind all actions in history.  God uses all history to accomplish His purposes.  Providence is the final explanation of all suffering, and that explanation is usually clouded in mystery.

We suffer.  We suffer because we sin.  We suffer because others sin.  We suffer because the world is filled with sin.  We are responsible for much of our own suffering.  But when we cannot see the connection between our suffering and our actions, we are assured that God is behind all of it.  How He is behind it we do not know, but that does not diminish the insistence that He is behind it.  Why He does what He does we do not know, but that does not diminish our requirement to trust Him.  We are not privileged to see the big picture, but there is a big picture and it is seen by a God who cares for His creation.  And that will have to be enough for the time being.

There is a very good reason why Yeshua ties glorification to suffering.  In this world, suffering vicariously is the path to glory.  It is of little righteous consequence when we suffer for our own disobedience.  Such suffering only proves that we are not immune to the structure of the universe.  But vicarious suffering, the willingness to take on the consequences that belong to another, has righteous effect.  That models God.  And that is the purpose of being His servant.

Perhaps you could spend a minute sorting out the suffering in your life that is the consequence of your own disobedience or the disobedience of others from the suffering that you willingly take on in place of another.  Then you will know where you are acting like a Greek and where you are serving God.

Topical Index:  suffer, pascho, hamal, halah, Mark 9:12, glory

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Doxology

Saturday, February 09th, 2013 | Author:

“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.”  John 17:22  ESV

Glory – Certainly every Christian believer is familiar with this Greek word – doxa.  In days past, it was incorporated into a ritual of Sunday worship.  We sang the doxology.  But I wonder now if we ever really understood the idea of glory.  Yes, I am sure we realized that God is glorious, that His splendor is manifest in all that He does, that His reflection is found in holiness, justice, mercy and compassion.  But how is it possible that Yeshua could say this doxa has been given to us?  Are we filled with splendor?  Are we reflections of holiness?  Do we manifest goodness, justice and mercy?  It’s hard for me to see this in His followers.  It’s even more difficult when I notice that the verb here (dedoka) means that what Yeshua has given in the past has continuing result in the present (the perfect tense in Greek).  The two verb tenses are the same.  God gave glory to Yeshua (an action in the past with continuing results in the present).  I can understand that.  Yeshua put aside divinity and became a man, but the Father glorified Him – gave Him back what He put aside – and He has that glory now and forever.  But you and me?  How did Yeshua give us glory and how does it still show up today?

Leon Morris provides this explanation:  “Just as His [Yeshua’s] true glory was to follow the path of lowly service culminating in the cross, so for them [the disciples] the true glory lay in the path of lowly service wherever it might lead them.”[1]  Morris amplifies this comment by adding that “the apostles are right with God and therefore they are supremely significant.  They have the true glory.  They are walking in the way of God.”[2]  That all sounds so nice, but it doesn’t seem to be true.  Yeshua spoke these words just before His arrest.  None of the apostles remained loyal to Him after that event.  Is that “walking in the way of God”?  Did they “take up the cross and follow”?  It seems to me that Morris’ comment is only accurate after the resurrection, but Yeshua says that He has already given them the equivalent glory of what He received.  The perfect tense does not imply that they will receive it at some later point in time.  It implies that the gift has already been given.  Morris considers the “way of the cross” to be the “way of true glory.”  We might agree, but how can this be true of the apostles when Yeshua makes this statement?

Maybe we just don’t understand what “glory” means.

One thing is certain.  Yeshua wasn’t speaking Greek when He uttered these words.  So examining the meaning of doxa is not going to help much.  Doxa is used as the translation of twenty-five different Hebrew words in the LXX.  But primarily it is associated with the Hebrew kavod.  Rooted in the language of the land, kavod is about what is heavy, what has weight – and therefore has importance and significance.  But since YHWH is invisible, kavod is used as a description of His manifestation.  He reveals Himself as glorious.  We find this sense of the word in the description of the Shekhinah falling on the Tabernacle, the vision of Ezekiel, the illumination of Moses’ face and the transfiguration of Yeshua.  Kavod is a description of the revelation of God in His acts in creation and salvation.  Above all it speaks of God’s honor, exhibited in His self-revelation.

What does this mean to us for understanding Yeshua’s statement?  “The manifestation, self-revelation and honor you have given me, I have given to them.”  Has Yeshua passed to us the manifestation of YHWH?   Have we become the vehicles of His honor?  If we think of “glory” as a kind of possession, as a state of being that is somehow attached to us in the way that we acquire a gift when it becomes our property, then I am afraid we will misinterpret Yeshua’s declaration.  We will think of “glory” from a Greek paradigm, as though receiving glory is an expression of a quality that is now ours.  “Glory” becomes an adjective in much the same way that “saved” becomes an adjective.

But if we think in Hebrew, then we notice the kavod is not something we possess.  It is an act that we participate in.  We become the manifestation.  We become the honor and the revelation.  We don’t have it.  We are what it is as it is displayed through us.  Glory is a description of Yeshua as He fulfills the purposes of the Father because in that process He manifests the truth of YHWH.  It is the same for us.  Yeshua gives us the means and the opportunity to become the process of God’s self-revelation.  We are glory, the glory of the Father, precisely as Yeshua was the glory of the Father, when we manifest the Father in our actions.

Now go sing the doxology.

Topical Index:  doxa, glory, kavod, manifestation, John 17:22

[1] Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John, NICNT, p. 734.

[2] Ibid., p. 734-735.

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A Woman’s Doxology

Saturday, June 02nd, 2012 | Author:

For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.  1 Corinthians 11:7  NASB

Glory – What an exegetical disaster we have made of Paul’s off-hand remark!  What nonsense, what heresy we have perpetrated upon women as a result of the male proclivity to power!  As Ellul rightly observes, this passage “has often been misconstrued as teaching a hierarchy from God to man and from man to woman.  But this is not its point or purpose.  The question is that of the relation between powers, and of mediation.  . . .  I have often recalled that glory is revelation.  God glorifies himself when he reveals himself as he is.  Jesus Christ glorifies God when he reveals him to us as the God of love who is also the Father.  We ourselves are called upon to be the glory of God as we are his image, as we show by what we are who is the God to whom we bear witness.  In this passage Paul then adds that the woman is the glory of man: she reveals him; she shows what a human being truly is.”[1]

We already know that the rabbis taught that Woman is the final formative act of creation, the capstone of God’s design.  We already know that the serpent attacks the Woman because she is the relationship manager of the unity of the two.  We already know that Adam acknowledges her place as the director and protector in his excuse before the Lord.  Certainly Paul knew all that we know – and much more.  Ellul is right.  God designed the woman to glorify the man; to reveal to him what it means to be fully human.  Rabbinic teaching concludes that the Woman is the first truly human creature since she comes from (finds her source in) the man.  Rabbi Sha’ul (Paul) teaches nothing different.  If you want to see what it means to be fully human according to God’s design, look to His deliberate blueprint in Woman.  Any interpretation that ignores or intentionally misinterprets this passage in order to justify a non-existent hierarchy in the Kingdom is not only erroneous, it is salacious.

We are fortunate to have had thinkers like Ellul.  It’s too bad that the majority of Christian teachers didn’t listen to him.  It’s not simply a tragedy for proper biblical exegesis.  It is a tragedy for all those couples who were seduced by the power-hungry Church of male prominence.  This false hierarchy has destroyed more marriages (intended to be billboards of unity, not hierarchy) and ruined the contribution of more women to the Body than just about any other blasphemy of the Church.  It’s time to overthrow such patent error, regardless of the supposedly learned Christian theologians who continue to proclaim such foolishness.  It’s time for every husband to realize and appreciate the representative of God’s glory given to him in his wife.  It’s time for every unmarried man to search for the woman who reveals what it means to be truly human, and to settle for nothing less.

It’s time for the Church to repent.

Topical Index:  glory, doxa, woman, 1 Corinthians 11:7


[1] Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, p. 76.

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Old Testament Heaven?

Thursday, May 03rd, 2012 | Author:

You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.  Psalm 73:24  ESV

Glory – This verse certainly appears to support an afterlife in heaven, doesn’t it?  If this is so, it is one of the few verses in the Tanakh that indicates a heavenly reward for the righteous.  Of course, there’s just one small problem.  The translation is more about what we think than it is about what Asaph says.  If we want to know what Asaph means, we will have to back up to the 10th Century BC before we add a heavenly afterward.

Some parts of this verse are clear enough.  God guides (naha – to lead, guide) with His counsel (‘atsat).  The Tanakh is consistent in its claim that the counsel of the Lord is eternal, unchangeable and reliable.  Asaph can do no better than this.  “Listen and obey” is the only secret to life’s fulfillment.

“Afterward” is our familiar Hebrew word ‘ahar (remember ‘aharit?).  Asaph reminds us that rowing a boat requires alignment with where God has been, not vision-casting about the future.  After following God’s counsel (instructions), Asaph says he will be rewarded.  There is no question that this takes time and perseverance.  The only question is what kind of reward he expects.  And to answer that question we must investigate kavod tikaheni.

Let’s start with the verb, laqah (in our sentence, tikaheni – “you take me”).  The verb has a wide range of meanings.  “To take, get, fetch, lay hold of, seize, acquire, buy, bring, marry and snatch.”  Do you notice something about all these meanings?  Not one focuses on heavenly subjects.  Everything about laqah is right here in this environment.  It would be inappropriate to say that I fetch, lay hold of, seize, acquire, buy, marry or snatch kavod (glory).  The only possible application of laqah would be the meaning “take.”  But no man can “take” glory for himself.  Glory belongs to God alone.  Asaph’s use of laqah requires us to be very careful about its application to kavod.  While the ESV translation pushes us to think of “glory” as a substitute place name for heaven, the Hebrew context isn’t quite that clear.  The problem is the introduction of a preposition that isn’t in the text.  ESV adds “to” (“receive me to glory).  Alter adds “toward” (“toward glory you took me”).  Notice that the ESV puts the statement in the future tense (you will receive me), but there is no justification for this.  The Hebrew tense is preterite, a past tense form.  Alter is correct.  It should read, “You took me.”  But this makes things even more confusing.  Asaph uses the opening word ‘ahar (afterward), so how can the tense be in the past?  Clearly Asaph is not looking over the horizon.  He is saying that after he was grasped by God and listened to His counsel, kavod came.  Somehow God was responsible for this kavod, but it seems clear that it has already occurred.  There is no suggestion here that Asaph awaits some heavenly future reward.  Listening and obeying changed his life and he experienced kavod.

If it’s not about heaven, then what is this all about?  The Hebrew kavod means a lot more than glory.  In fact, its primary meaning is “heavy.”  It expresses something of weight, of value.  Almost always it is used figuratively to describe importance, honor or glory of someone or something.  This is the sense of kavod applied to God.  While the glory of all creation fades, God alone retains final honor and importance.  Perhaps Asaph is saying nothing more than what he will later summarize in the last verse.  He has been drawn into the presence of the King and in His presence, Asaph has experienced a taste of glory.  That happens right here on earth.

But I think Asaph is a bit more clever.  Certainly he is not an evangelical.  He isn’t looking for a heavenly reward.  That would be out of character with the rest of the Tanakh and with all we know about the cultures of the ancient near-East.  We have seen Asaph employ double meanings time and again, and here he may be doing the same because kavod is also associated with what is great, with reputation and with abundance.  Asaph’s entire concern is with the wealth and power of the wicked.  They seem to have kavod, that is, prestige, honor, riches, importance.  But Asaph recognizes that the counsel of God leads to another kind of kavod, the kind that has true honor and glory.  Perhaps Asaph is drawing us into a comparison.  Which kind of glory are we after?  Which kind matters?  Which kind lasts?  Asaph isn’t telling us that after a life of obedience we will be ushered into heaven.  He is telling us that rescue followed by attention to divine counsel produces kavod now!  It’s not “to glory bye-and-bye” nor is it “toward glory.”  It is “glory You took me.”   Reputation, honor, abundance, importance – all those things that he envied in the wicked – have become his because God took him there.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe Asaph.  Sometimes it looks like all the glory goes to those who pursue it.  Sometimes it feels like lent all year long – what else do we have to give up.  Asaph tells us it is a matter of choice.  Not to be driven by the seduction of the yetzer ha’ra is to be taken into the presence of the King.  But sometimes we are seduced by the edge.

Topical Index:  take, laqah, glory, kavod, Psalm 73:24

 

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Magnificent Obsession

Saturday, November 20th, 2010 | Author:

“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 5:16

Good Works – Imagine that you are sitting on the hillside with the disciples of Yeshua.  You hear him say, “ma’aseykem hatovim.”  Now what do you suppose He meant by “good works’?  If you were in the crowd that day, you wouldn’t have any doubt in your mind.  God’s Word tells you what qualifies as “good deeds.”  In three broad categories, they are prayer, charity and fulfilling the commands of Torah.  These are not options.  They are the expectations and obligations of those who claim to follow the King.  In fact, without them we are pretty useless to God.

Notice what Yeshua says about these good works.  First, he comments on their purpose.  They are designed to cause others to glorify the Father.  There is no credit given to the ones who actually do these good works.  Why?  Because these good works are done in such a way that no credit can be given to the ones who perform them.  In other words, ordinary men recognize that our good works don’t come from our own nobility or altruism.  Ordinary men see us for what we are – selfish, self-centered and sinful.  But somehow we do things that reflect the nature of God.  We don’t act on the basis of commonly understood human values.  We go beyond this natural frame of reference and do things that can’t be explained in human terms.  Ordinary men simply shake their heads in disbelief and say, “ God must have done something in that man or woman because there is no other way to explain why they would act like that.”

Secondly, notice that we perform these good works in such a way that they point toward God.  The big arrows attached to what we do never point toward us, or our churches, to our organizations or our communities.  They glorify YHWH.  This step should cause some serious reconsideration of even our most noble actions.  It implies that there is a right way to do good works and a wrong way.  It isn’t the moral character of the action itself that is at issue here.  Charity is charity – or is it?  It is only charity that meets the biblical standard if it points away from the one who gives and toward the great Giver.  Yeshua implies that it is entirely possible to do many great and wonderful things that ultimately have no value.  You and I may keep the commandments, follow the rituals, say the prayers and practice good deeds and yet entirely miss the objective.  Sha’ul says virtually the same thing.  “If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, if I have the gift of prophecy, if I have faith that moves mountains, bestow all my goods to feed the poor, if I give my body to be burned, but I don’t have ahav [love], it doesn’t make any difference at all.”  Good things done the wrong way don’t matter.

What does matter?  That your heavenly Father is glorified by others.  Notice the goal assumes a personal, intimate relationship.  Notice the measurement of success is determined by others.  Self-assessment doesn’t cut it.  What is required is a relationship with the Father that is so pure that our actions are manifestations of His awe and wonder.  We are the invisible carriers of His honor.

Topical Index:  glory, good works, Matthew 5:16, ma’aseykem hatovim

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Super-Superlative

Sunday, March 15th, 2009 | Author:

and proclaimed, “YHWH, YHWH God, compassionate, gracious, long-suffering and great in goodness  Exodus 34:6

YHWH, YHWH – Do you remember doubled giving (nathan used twice – March 12)?  Did you know that Isaiah uses shalom shalom to speak of “perfect” peace?  In Hebrew, doubling the word calls attention to the superlative form.  So, what happens when God Himself doubles His name – Yahweh Yahweh.  Well, for one thing it means that we better pay very close attention to this very unusual verse.  When YHWH decides to give Moses a personal introduction to His character, He starts by proclaiming His absolute and total superiority over every other existing thing in the entire universe.  He is not simply God.  He is THE ONLY GOD, the Mighty One, the Highest of all, the Unsurpassed, the Magnificent, the Holy One of Israel.  There is none who can compare to Him.  Not one!

For the children of Israel, even for Moses, this declaration is extremely important.  These people were being re-educated.  They just spent more than 200 years in a culture of multiple deities.  They were saturated with Egyptian thinking.  God needed to brainwash them clean.  He started with a demonstration of His superiority over every one of the Egyptian gods (that’s what the plagues are all about).  Then He exhibited His power and majesty at Sinai.  Now He provides Moses with a personal announcement of His character.  It is starts in BOLD type.  This is the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the One and Only God of all creation.  This is proclaimed, not deduced.  This is direct confrontation, not inner feelings.  This is overwhelming holiness.

Are you trembling yet?  Are you struck numb?  Are you on your face before Him?  Are you afraid for your life?  The sheer audacity of Moses’ request to see God’s glory is mind-boggling.  Moses must have had an unconscious death wish.  He had no idea what he was asking, and it was only through YHWH’s gracious protection that Moses didn’t die on the spot.  But that gives us a clue about the insensitivity that 200 years of wrong-thinking produces.  Even Moses didn’t really understand the terrifying nature of God’s holiness.  And if Moses didn’t get it, how much less aware are we?

Take a moment out of your oh-so-important life to put yourself in Moses’ place on that day.  Reflect for just a second (you have that much time, right?) what it was like to have the glory of God pass by.  Imagine the power of that voice proclaiming His utter uniqueness.  Push aside the seeker-friendly, “God is my best friend,” white-beard Santa Claus caricature we have come to embrace and let your soul (not your mind) tremble before His awesome majesty.  Let Him invade your carefully constructed chronos calendar.  You will experience nuclear soul-fission.  Your world will be blown apart, demolished, devastated.  You will suddenly see your own total insignificance.  It’s all about Him.  It has always been all about Him.  It will always be all about Him.

OK, one moment is enough.  Any more would kill us.  But one moment is all we need to re-set the compass of our lives.  Forget the 200 years of seductive preoccupation with our plans and purposes.  Listen to Him proclaim, “YHWH, YHWH” – and tremble.

Topical Index:  YHWH, glory, Exodus 34:6, doubled, superlative

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