Tag-Archive for » life «

The Thin Red Line (1)

Sunday, February 03rd, 2013 | Author:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.  Leviticus 17:11  ESV

Blood – Christian apologists often claim that the blood of Christ shed on the cross is the reason for the forgiveness of sin.  Prior to Leon Morris’ study of the concept of blood atonement,[1] some theologians referred to the idea that “life is in the blood” and therefore the cross represents atonement given through the life of Christ.  But since Morris’ study, this position has been untenable.  Morris has conclusively demonstrated that in both the Old Testament and the New, the term “blood” is most commonly used to describe “death by violence,” and this idea is paramount in its association with sacrifice.  Morris shows that even the Leviticus passage so often used as a proof text (Leviticus 17:11) cannot be understood in the Hebraic worldview as a claim that life exists apart from physical blood.  It is simply not possible to think of the sacrifice as presenting “life” on the altar.  “Blood shed stands, therefore, not for the release of life from the burden of the flesh, but for the bringing to an end of life in the flesh.”[2]  Morris points out that in Hebraic thought there is no immaterial principle of life apart from the body.  This is why the Hebraic worldview has no concept of an immortal soul but rather looks for the resurrection of the body at the Day of Judgment.[3]

Atonement is not accomplished by offering life but rather by giving up life, and this is the meaning of “blood” in the sacrificial system.  A blood sacrifice is a death sacrifice.  But a blood sacrifice is not the only means of atonement available in the Hebraic worldview.  Atonement may be achieved by anointing with oil (Leviticus 14:18), by offering incense (Numbers 16:46), through the scapegoat (Leviticus 16:10) and other means.  When atonement involves the termination of life, even here it does not always demand a blood sacrifice.  Atonement may be accomplished by “blotting out” a name from the Book of Life (Exodus 32:30-32), by zealous execution (Numbers 25:13), by delivering up enemies for proper punishment (2 Samuel 21:3 ff) and by slaying the red heifer (Deuteronomy 21:1-9).  None of these require a blood (death) sacrifice although every one of them involves death in some sense or another.  Morris concludes, “In each case it is the termination of life, the infliction of death that atones”[4] although the means by which death comes is quite different in each case.  “[T]he evidence afforded by the use of dam [blood] in the Old Testament indicates that it signifies life taken violently rather than the continued presence of life available for some new function.”[5]  Perhaps we must revise Heschel’s evaluation of the difference between Judaism and Christianity.  Heschel pointed out that Judaism is a religion focused on life whereas Christianity is a religion focused on death.  But Morris’ study demonstrates that the idea of death is not too far removed from the Hebraic worldview either.

Morris makes the observation that the use of blood in relation to Christ in the New Testament is predominately a circumlocution for the death of Yeshua.  Morris notes, “[F]or a cross has no place in the sacrificial system, and stands only for a particularly unpleasant death.”[6]  The conclusion:

“Thus it seems tolerably certain that in both the Old and New Testaments the blood signifies essentially the death.  It is freely admitted that there are some passages in which it is possible to interpret the blood as signifying life, but even these yield a better sense (and one which is consistent with the wider biblical usage), if understood to mean ‘life given up in death’.”[7]

Consider the impact that Morris’ study has on theological claims like the ones by Ridderbos, “the propitiatory sacrifice enters in substitutionally between the holy God and sinful man, because the life given up in the sacrifice through the attendant shedding of blood covers sin before the face of God and in this way atones.”[8]  If the blood refers not to giving up of life but rather to violent death, how are we to understand the idea of substitutionary atonement that is so much a part of Paul’s thinking?

Another question for another day.  Perhaps it is enough just to ask, “Did I think that the blood was about life or about death?”  Does this change your view about what is happening on the cross?

Topical Index:  blood, dam, death, cross, life, Leviticus 17:11, atonement

[1] Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Eerdmans, 1955), see in particular Chapter III, “The Blood.”

[2] Morris, Apostolic Preaching, p. 113.

[3] Cf. Morris, p. 113.

[4] Morris, Apostolic Preaching, p. 115.

[5] Morris, Apostolic Preaching, p. 117.

[6] Morris, Apostolic Preaching, p. 119.

[7] Morris, Apostolic Preaching, p. 122.

[8] Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Eerdmans, 1975), p. 188.

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , , , ,  | 26 Comments

Life in the Noose

Friday, October 19th, 2012 | Author:

“Your life shall hang in doubt before you.  Night and day you shall be in dread and have no assurance of your life.”  Deuteronomy 28:66  ESV

Hang – What picture does the word tala paint?  Tala is defined as “to be suspended in the air with the minimal amount of hooks, to be in an emotional state of future anxiety and dread, with a focus that the object of horror has not actually occurred.”[1]  In pictographs, the sign of control over strength.  We have similar metaphors like “hanging by a thread.”  You probably know the experience.  But you might not recognize the connection between the noose around your neck and the absence of Torah obedience in your behavior.

This verse comes in the midst of God’s declaration of the consequences of rejecting His path for living.  It describes perfectly the state of mind of those who dismiss God’s instructions.  When you and I don’t follow God’s directions, it is as if our lives are suspended in front of us, dangling in the breeze.  No wonder God describes this as terror.  Anything might happen!  The possibilities of tragic ends present themselves with every sway of the body.   The noose pulls tighter the more we fight our inevitable demise.  There is no relief from this fear day or night.  We may attempt to submerge it in distracted living, but it will not be excised.  Underneath it all is the sound of the oarsman on the river Styx.  We might only catch fleeting glimpses of the flailing spasms of our bodies, but we feel the reality of the rope.

Why would God prescribe such torture for those who sidestep His ways?  In truth, He does not.  God is interested in life and all that promotes life.  We are the ones who bring about this suicide.  God clearly reveals His path, designed only to bring us to the place of full humanity in perfect harmony with our Creator.  We are the ones who construct the gallows, fasten the noose, insert our own heads and spring the trap door.  We do it in the name of self-interest, self-fulfillment and the right to choose.  We do it because we listen to the heartthrob of the yetzer ha’ra, actually convincing us that our acts of “freedom” are acts of genuine personal development.  We seduce ourselves with our desire for control, for fulfillment, for deciding what is good and what is evil.

“Yes,” you say.  “I see that God desires life for me.  I see that His ways are instructions in righteousness.”  But you hesitate.  Why?  Because the yetzer ha’ra convinces you that God’s motives might be questioned, that perhaps you won’t find the satisfaction you seek.  You doubt His purposes.  And so, night and day you dread the choices.  Assurance evaporates because it can arrive only through acting, not contemplating.  “Choose this day,” says Scripture.  There is only one way to overcome the enticement of the yetzer ha’ra, enticements that would turn us against ourselves in flights of fancy.  That way is choosing obedience, flinging ourselves on to the promised protection of God even if we fall!  It is a choice: the yetzer ha’ra with all its cunning conditioning or the Word of the Lord – bare, harsh, demanding.  The man who chooses God’s way does not do so because he is assured of comfort.  He does so because he sees himself as he truly is – hanging.

Topical Index: hang, tala, assurance, Deuteronomy 28:66, life


[1] Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains

Additional note:  The ESV and NASB translations add the words “in doubt” to this text.  There is no Hebrew equivalent for these words.  The Hebrew verb could be translated “anxiously hang,” but the introduction of “doubt” is a misplaced paradigm shift.  As we shall see in a few days, this kind of doubt doesn’t exist in Hebrew thought.

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , ,  | 12 Comments

Relationship Consumer

Thursday, September 20th, 2012 | Author:

“He who has found his life shall lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake shall find it.”  Matthew 10:39  NASB

Lose – “But what about my needs?”  That’s the problem, isn’t it?  We treat relationships in the same way we treat any other possession.  We are relationship consumers.  Our culture trains us to think in terms of personal benefits.  It constantly parades in front of us all of the added attractions we can consume.  From food to sports, from beauty to furniture, we are taught to desire and to satisfy that desire by consuming what is offered.  The absolute key to marketing success is to create a desire, and in this world, we have refined that success key to a fine art.

The problem is that when we apply this same tried-and-true logic to relationships, we focus on the same marketing key – the desire to have our needs fulfilled.  In other words, we view relationships in terms of their addition to us.  The bottom line is this:  we expect relationships with others to provide benefits to us.  If these relationships don’t provide what we need, then we consider them less valuable, less attractive and ultimately useless.  We have been trained to expect the rainbow, and we won’t stop consuming others until we find that multicolored dream.  But just like chasing real rainbows, the speed of retreat of the goal is precisely equal to the speed of approach.  We never get there.  The reason we never get there is one of the great paradoxes of life.  If you seek your own ends, you cease being human and as a result, you never find yourself.  But if you stop seeking benefits for yourself and put your effort into what serves and benefits another, you discover that you have improved your own humanness quite by accident.

Yeshua described this principle in terms of losing and finding life.  The man who thinks that finding life is acquiring what it takes to meet his needs will discover that his life is lost, not because there is anything wrong with the things he wishes to possess, but rather because desiring to possess them turns him away from what it means to be human.  To be human is to be devoted to someone other than myself.  When I make myself the center of my life, when my needs become the focus of my existence, I choose a path that leads to the destruction of my humanity.  In the end, I discover that I have lost my own life.  I have, but I have not.

Yeshua tells us that if we choose to lose the life that we think we must have to meet our needs, if we give up the quest of self-fulfillment and take up the challenge of living for others (and for Him), we will find the life that satisfies.  Of course, we can play the game of pretending we are living for others in order to find this “new” life, but that is nothing more than existential fraud.  The only man who finds his life is the one who has truly given himself away.  The design of the universe can’t be fooled by sub-text motives.

Most of us concur with Yeshua.  We believe His words.  But do we practice them?  I’m not so sure.  If we applied this principle to the marriage covenant of Genesis 2:24, we would have to ask ourselves, “Am I truly committed to the shalom of my spouse or do I still expect something in return?”  “Am I with this person because of what I get from the relationship or am I married because this relationship gives me the opportunity to live as a servant of my spouse?”  “Who is the most important person:  me or my spouse?”

We live in Babylon, the culture of personal consumption.  All of our lives we are taught to seek what rewards us.  It is only a small step to see my personal relationships in the same light.  In fact, I would be surprised if we didn’t see personal relationships in terms of consumer benefits.  Today you can decide to act in opposition to this animal craving.  You can step toward being human.  You can decide to live for another, not because you feel like it, not because you expect reward but simply because it is the right thing for humans to do.

Topical Index: lose, life, relationship, Matthew 10:39

 

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , ,  | 11 Comments

The Game Plan

Sunday, August 21st, 2011 | Author:

And He said to him, “Why are you asking Me about what is good?  There is only One who is good; but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.”  Matthew 19:17  NASB

To enter into life – So what do you want out of life?  What are the things that really, really matter?  If The Man came to you to grant one wish, and only one, what would it be?  Such a man came to Yeshua.  This man appeared to have it all.  He was young.  He was righteous.  He was wealthy.  But he asked for one more thing.  “What one thing should I do to guarantee my eternal well-being?”  He had it all here.  What he wanted to know was how to have it all there too.

In our Christian world, we think that this young man’s request must be answered by a statement of the gospel.  We think that what he really, really needs is forgiveness and a personal relationship with Jesus.  Then he will have the guarantee he seeks.  But a deeper look at Yeshua’s answer suggests that this is not the needed response.  Yeshua does tell him how to have “eternal” life.  He tells him what he needs to do to enter into life itself.  The Greek phrase is eiselthein eis ten zoen.  The verb is eiserchomai (to go or come into, to enter).  In Yeshua’s statement, it is preceded by the Greek word thelo (to wish, desire).  Some grammar is needed before we examine the actual meaning.

First, let’s look at thelo.  It’s a present tense, active verb.  That means Yeshua recognizes the immediate expression of desire.  But we know that both boule and thelo mean “to wish or desire.”  The difference is that boule means to desire and plan something but not necessarily to carry it out while thelo means not only to desire but to accomplish, to make it happen.  Yeshua indicates in His answer to the young man what it will take to make it happen, not just to wish that it would happen.  “Here’s what you need to do right now,” is the sense of it.

Now we encounter something odd about the next verb, “to enter into,” is not in the present tense.  It is an aorist verb, a tense form that has no real English equivalent.  It means something that has been completed in the past but without specifying whether the action was completed in a moment or over a long period.  This verb is also an infinitive.  That means it doesn’t tell us if it applies to one person or many.  In other words, the Greek text indicates that Yeshua’s answer was something finished in the past but we don’t know how long or who or how many were involved.  But this just doesn’t make sense.  Here is the young man waiting for an assignment that he is ready to accomplish; an assignment that will insure eternal life.  There is no question that this man used the Hebrew expression olam ha-ba, life in the world to come.  Yeshua doesn’t seem to answer this question at all.  Instead, He directs the man toward life that has already come.  The young man is looking toward the future.  Yeshua points him toward the past.

What?  You mean this isn’t about entering into a life in heaven?  Look what Yeshua actually says.  He says, “If you desire and are ready to bring about life.”  Notice that He does not qualify the word zoe (life) with the adjective aionios (eternal, everlasting).  Yeshua talks about life itself, not about life in the olam ha-ba.  Yeshua’s answer implies that whatever zoe aionion is, it is found in the past, already finished.  Life has already arrived.  If you want to enter into it, then there is something you can do.  What is that?

Keep the commandments.

That’s right.  The young man asks about his future well-being.  He is told to look at what God has already done.  If he wants to enter into the life God has already provided, a life that implies continuance in the olam ha-ba, then all he has to do is keep the instructions God has already given.  The manifestation of “eternal” life is to be found in the Torah life.

Topical Index:  life, eternal, enter in, eiserchomai, desire, thelo, olam ha-ba, Matthew 19:17

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , , , , ,  | 56 Comments

The Bloods of Your Brother

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011 | Author:

And YHWH Elohim formed Man out of dry, loose earth dirt, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living person. Genesis 2:7 (my translation)

Breath – Once we realize that this word, hayim is plural, we are forced to ask why, especially since the preceding word, nishmat, is singular.  It’s like saying “he breathe” rather than “he breathes.”  But it’s no mistake.  We suggested that there must be a connection between the unity of God, manifest in His animating power, and the diversity of His creation in all the forms that His outpouring word takes.  But maybe there is something else here, something unique to the dry, dust earth-to-heaven bridge God forms called nephesh haya.

Heschel puts his finger on this nuance.  “There can be no nature without spirit, no world without Torah, no brotherhood without a father, no humanity without attachment to God.”[1] When God tells Israel that they are His witnesses, He is not talking about their superior theological understanding.  He is talking about their legacy.  Just as God decries the spilling of the bloods of Havel (Genesis 4:10 – the word is plural), so we see that we are never individuals standing apart from humanity.  “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not principles to be comprehended but lives to be continued.  The life of him who joins the covenant of Abraham continues the life of Abraham.  For the present is not apart from the past.  ‘Abraham is still standing before God’ (Genesis 18:22).  Abraham endures forever.  We are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.”[2]

When YHWH Elohim breathed hayim (lives) into the ha-adam, He brought about the existence of a legacy; a legacy that stretches forward to each and every one who is in covenant with YHWH, who is coming to nishmat haya – a legacy that stretches back to the first ha-adam, the one who began the red blood transformation covenant with El Shaddai.  To be human is to be connected to this transforming becoming.  In once sense, no one of us will be truly human until we all reach the end of the process.  And that end has been revealed to us in Yeshua HaMashiach, the one who is fully human, fully nephesh haya because He is the completed nishmat hayim.   Perhaps Paul had something far more profound in mind when he spoke about the Body.

Now the question:  Who is your blood legacy?  Who has been your covenant connection?  Who carries your nephesh haya back to the ha-adam and who are you equipping to carry it on after you?  Succession planning is a big deal in the corporate world, but it is insignificant when compared to God’s succession plan.  You are human insofar as you take the nishmat hayim and pass it to the next one becoming a person.  Will you rob God by ignoring the plural hayim?  Will you steal from those who are waiting for your gift?

Today’s Word: hayim, life, Genesis 2:7, Heschel, legacy

[1] Abraham Heschel, I Asked For Wonder, p. 128.

[2] Ibid., p. 136.

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , ,  | 5 Comments

Trading Places

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 | Author:

“The thief comes only to steal, and kill, and destroy; I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly.” John 10:10

Abundantly – A few days ago Oswald Chambers’ devotional provided some sobering questions:  “Is our attitude today an attitude that springs from our vision of God?  Are we expecting God to do greater things than He has ever done?  Is there a freshness and vigour in our spiritual outlook?”  As I read those questions, I realized that my pursuit lacked the purposes of God.  God’s purposes are life – abundant, delightful, fulfilled, exuberant, expectant, confident in His unwavering care.  Boman reminded me, “According to Plato man achieves his acme when he absorbs and realizes in himself as much of the eternal world as possible; according to the Bible man achieves his acme when he becomes as he was in the beginning . . .”[1]

It seems a noble thing to participate in the eternal.  It’s just not biblical.  The Greeks looked forward into the mist, hoping to discern the ideal reality.  Contemporary culture and scientific atheism turned that Greek hope for the eternal into a quest for planned progressive utopia.  But the Bible looks in a different direction.  It looks back to the Garden.  “I came that they might return to the beginning where life was abundant.”  The Garden of God’s delight is the end of the trail.  Back to the beginning.  If I am not moving back to the beginning, I am not moving biblically.  I am lost on my way to a future that doesn’t exist.  Genesis is my goal because I have already been there and I have no delusions about its purpose.  I want to walk with Him again.

Biblical history is the story of one man in the company of God.  All of us are in that place of perfect harmony when Adam walks with the Creator.  We are not completely disconnected from this man who experienced God’s delightful life even if our relationship suffers corruption.  We know what it means to yearn for the beginning.  There is an emptiness, a purposelessness, in each of us.  It has been there since we stopped conversing in the Garden.

In Hebrew thought, the world is not a container, a space to be filled with things.  The world is an event in God’s purposes.  It is the temporal manifestation of His conversation with us, on the way from beginning to beginning.  God always starts what He finishes.

What, then, is this life that the Son offers?  It is not filling ourselves with noble ideals, lofty insights or admirable values.  We are not containers needing to be stuffed with divine ideas.  We are sojourners in need of companionship.  We are manifest conversation, listening to and obeying His speaking, becoming human.  We travel toward the way back home.  All freshness must come from this walk in the Garden where we know Him and are known by Him.

Topical Index:  abundantly, life, delight, John 10:10

[1] Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, p. 175

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , ,  | 6 Comments

A Passion For Good Living

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 | Author:

Who is the man who desires life and loves length of days that he may see good? Psalm 34:13 (numbered according to the Hebrew text)

Life – Are you a person who desires life and yearns for what is good?  Before you answer, you might want to take a careful look at this verse.  While even a superficial reading of the text lets us gather the general idea, there is a lot more below the surface.  Some patient inquiry is needed in order to see just how different the Hebrew view of life really is.

On the surface the inquiry seems clear enough.  This looks like one of life’s basic questions.  But we tend to read it as if it said, “What kind of man desires life and loves many days?”  In other words, we think that the answer to this question is a description of the attributes of a person who has a passion for living.  We look for the characteristics of such a person – a list of adjectives about this person.  But the Hebrew word here is mi, not ma.  Mi is a question about identification, not characterization.  Ma is the question “What?” but mi is the question “Who?”  In other words, it is as if I asked you to point to a particular person.  “Who is this man?” is not a question about describing him to me.  It is a question of identifying him to me.

We also discover that there is no “is” in Hebrew.  The text actually reads “Who the man desiring.”  In Hebrew it is not as if there is a man and he is being described as one who desires.  In Hebrew I am asking you to point to this particular man, the man desiring.  I already know his description.  He is the desiring man.  What I don’t know is his name!

This shift is important because it assumes that I can identify the man without knowing his name simply by his actions.  He exhibits purposeful behavior that shouts out his love for life.  I see this and I want to know who he is.  He is the man determined to seek good for many days.  Ah, but that’s not quite all.

The Hebrew word for life is hayyim.  Notice that it is plural, not singular.  Technically, it should be translated “life(s)” but we don’t have a word for that except “lives” and “lives” is attributed to many individual people, not to plural life(s) of one person.  This is particularly odd since the rest of the sentence structure is singular.  “Who is the man (singular) desiring (singular verb) life (plural).  In other words, Hebrew does not conceive of life as singular.  David wants to emphasize the quality of life and so he uses the intensive plural.  It is as if he wants us to see that life, real life, needs repeating.  Life is plural, just as heaven and Jerusalem are plural.  The life man experiences is not confined to one level, one experience, one dimension.  There is more going on here than meets the eye.  Who is the man desiring life so full, so rich that it is multiplied every moment?  This man I must know.

So, let’s ask the question again, as a Hebrew:  “Who the man desiring life(s)?”  What is the name of the man whose every action points toward life here and life somewhere else at the same time?  Tell me who he is so that I might know him.  Is he you?

Topical Index:  who, mi, life, hayyim, Psalm 34:13

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , ,  | 17 Comments

Principal Principles

Thursday, September 24th, 2009 | Author:

For the law of the Spirit of life in Yeshua HaMashiach set me free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8:2

Law – Sometimes it seems like Sha’ul could have written about Alice in Wonderland.  One pill makes you bigger (one law gives you life) and the other pill makes you small (one law gives you death).   Of course, Sha’ul isn’t speaking like Alice or singing like Grace Slick. He’s talking about two different principles; two types of nomos (rules). One lets you live; the other kills you. The principal difference between these two is life and death. One held us captive to inevitable death. The other set us free to live. These two are the most important governing rules of human existence. But if we don’t know what they really are, we will flounder around trying to come up with our own principles for living, and that is almost always disastrous.

Sha’ul sets these two principles in opposition: freedom and life on one hand; sin and death on the other. We know Sha’ul’s thinking about the sin and death principle. It’s the attempt to operate on our own terms. It’s being disobedient to God’s revealed instructions. It’s turning away from the source of life. Of course, with all the activity in the world it certainly doesn’t appear as though the law of sin and death holds so many hostage. It looks like they are just doing the best they can, accumulating what fulfills their desires and trying to be happy. The reality of sin and death is disguised as an angelic expression of light. Only God can remove the blinders and when He does the world looks like a very tragic place.

On the other hand, Sha’ul rejoices in the law of the Spirit of life in Yeshua. This law sets me free. It has the power to transform my tragic existence into a journey with Yeshua and peace with God. But did you notice that it does not set me free from rules? It sets me free from the rules that kill me, but it doesn’t set me free from every rule. I still am under the law of the Spirit of life. And what is that law? It should be obvious what Sha’ul has in mind. He is a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a Torah-observant follower of the Messiah, a scholar of the Tanakh, a sinner saved by grace, a citizen of the commonwealth of Israel. What law provides life to his community? It is Torah, of course. That’s what God said it would do, and that’s what it does. When we live according to Torah, God uses us to fulfill His purposes and we are filled with the Spirit – all because Yeshua redeemed us.

Sha’ul does not say the law of sin and death is removed because all law is removed. He does not say that the principle of “love one another” has replaced all of God’s previous instructions. He does not say the Torah was deficient and needed to be replaced, or it was temporary and has now been superseded. He says Yeshua got us out from under a rule that was killing us so we could live according to a rule that will fulfill us. How does the saying go? “If it’s good enough for Paul, it’s good enough for me.” Apparently, the law of the Spirit of life in Yeshua HaMashiach was pretty good for Sha’ul.  Keeping the rules results in life.  That’s what you think too, right?

Topical Index: law, principle, nomos, Torah, life, death, Romans 8:2

Today’s photo?  Click here – Abaco

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , , , ,  | 5 Comments

FINDERS KEEPERS

Friday, February 06th, 2009 | Author:

You know how it goes:

“Finders keepers, losers weepers”

I heard it often enough as a child to know just how painful that little rhyme can be.  I think the event that anchored those words forever in my mind was about marbles.  My favorite cat’s eye was forgotten after recess.  When I remembered, it was too late.  Rushing back to the chalk circle on the pavement, I saw another boy using my cat’s eye as a shooter.  “It’s mine.  I forgot it”, I pleaded.  Then I heard those awful words.

You might not realize just how Biblical this childhood excuse for robbery is.  Jesus had a lot to say about marbles – and everything else that we count as precious in life.  He said,

“For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it” (Matthew 16:25).

Jesus also said something about the second half of this rhyme except in Jesus’ words the losers do a bit more than weep.  They also gnash their teeth.

“in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth”  (Matthew 8:12)

But this is not a picture of rage or torment.  It is an image of wailing loss and remorse that involves the entire body in a paroxysm of despair.  These losers have lost quite a bit more than the cat’s eye.  They have lost permanent fellowship with God in heaven.

Notice the exact wording in the statement in Matthew.  It’s a little different than the parallel in Mark and Luke.  In the other accounts the opposing ideas are the same pair reversed:  save – lose, lose – save.  But not in Matthew.   In Matthew’s gospel Jesus draws our thoughts to two sets of opposites:  save – lose, lose – find.  While I am not inclined to argue technical issues on this difference, I do find it interesting that Matthew uses a different Greek word in the second pair.  Apparently Matthew thought there was enough of a difference in Jesus’ Aramaic words to warrant this change.  If we ask why we may discover something worth thinking about.

What is the difference between “save” and “find”?  Well, something that you save indicates that it was in jeopardy of being lost but was rescued.  If we save a life, it usually means that the life could have been lost but was pulled back from death in the nick of time.  This implication applies even to those cases where the person dies but is somehow brought back to life.  The intention is that the life is rescued from a permanent state of loss.

Isn’t this the implication behind the first group of terms (save-lose)?  Jesus says, “Those who put all their effort into trying to save their own lives will actually end up losing the very lives they try to save.”   Jesus clearly means that a life like this will be permanently lost.  It won’t be rescued.  It is gone for good.

Then Jesus says, “But if you are willing to lose your life for my sake, you will find it.”  Now that doesn’t mean quite the same thing as “you will save it”.  I would not say to a man who had drowned but was brought back to life that he was “found”, although obviously I would say that he was “saved”.  The first pair makes it clear that we are talking about permanent loss.  What is permanently lost is bought back to life.  It is saved.

So why would Matthew depart from the term used by Mark and Luke?  Why would he say, “find”.  Finding implies that you never had it before or that you lost it completely and discovered it again.  When we speak about possessions, we do use the term “find” for something that was once ours but was lost.  But when we speak about living, we don’t say “find” when we mean “rescued from loss”.  Life is not something that you misplace.  You either have it or you don’t have it.  If I “find” life, the implication is that I never had it before.  It is this implication that becomes clear in Matthew’s account.

Jesus’ imagery is a bit stronger than the idea of rescuing a life that I was losing by changing my focus from self-serving to serving Him.  This imagery in Matthew could imply that those who thought they were saving their own lives never really had life in the first place.  They lost what they did not have, not because they were going about it the wrong way but because true life does not belong to anyone who seeks it in a self-serving manner.  Jesus could be saying that you “find” life when you give up what you think is living for his sake.  When you make the decision to stop self-striving and turn over to him what you think is life, you discover that you really never had life at all.  Then you find life.  And this is the great mystery of “finders-keepers”.  You can only keep what you never had.

If we apply this thought to the introduction to John’s gospel, we see that true life exists only because of and in the Son.  Those who are presently animated without a personal self-sacrifice to the Son are alive because of His gracious long-suffering, but they do not have life anymore than any believer has life.  Life is not something that I own.  It is a borrowed relation entirely dependent on God’s graciousness.  Only those who give up the illusion of ownership realize that life was never theirs.  They make the happy discovery that they now participate in real life because they have life in Him.

Losers really are weepers.  They discover too late that what they thought they possessed turns out to be pseudo-zoe (false life).  It looked like the real thing.  It tasted like the real thing.  It behaved like the real thing.  But under the skin it was all imitation, fake, synthetic.  When the real test came, it was shown to be nothing more than illusion.  They never had life in the first place.  Their eventual discovery of loss is simply the result of pulling back the veil of true existence.  Without participation in His life, there is nothing to be saved.

(See Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24 and the parallel in John 12:25)

Category: Articles  | Tags: , , ,  | Comments off