Romans (entry 2)

After his introduction, Paul begins to lay it all out on the parchment. But instead of starting with the good news of “salvation,” he actually starts with the bad news. Why? Because good news doesn’t sound so good unless you hear the bad news first. Here’s the bad news:

People are and were refusing God. And in their refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either. Men to women, women to women, men to men, all hurting each other by committing sexual acts, abusive acts, destructive acts against one another. It was a terrible situation then, and it is still terrible today. When people destroy the image of God in one another, there’s no telling how far they’ll go. Well, I guess there is. They’ll go to murderous ends.

I was listening to Viktor Frankl quotes just the other morning. He’s the guy who survived a concentration camp in the Holocaust and came out with the book, Man in Search of Meaning. He has some powerful insights, and the quotes make me want to read the book in its fullness. The point of me bringing this up is that even when human beings are at their worst, God can still work. And not just that He can, but He does.

Paul tells the Romans, don’t be fooled: God is kind, but He’s not soft.

If we hear God’s message, we need to respond. And before you shut me off right there, allow me to explain myself.

Paul says doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God.

This is what worries me with modern day evangelicals and many professing Christians. We can hear God’s message more than ever. We can listen to podcasts, listen to sermons, catch clips on YouTube, read the Bible on our phones, read books, watch Bible studies and do online curriculums all about God’s message. But in the process, I think we grow dull of hearing. And we forget how to actually DO the right things–things like racial justice, mercy to the poor, and love to those who aren’t like us.

And I also think we lose the power of the message. It’s hard to hear the message that God is on the side of the oppressed and the poor and the broken hearted and the disenfranchised and the castaways, when we live in the most powerful military-industrial country of the world. The contrast is very stark. It’s hard to hear that God loves the prostitutes and the janitors and the cooks, when we’re in our comfortable suburbs and high-rise apartments and have no want. When I have everything I want, why do I need God? Especially “that God.”

Or maybe it’s hard to hear the message because we’ve been abused, guilted, hurt in the name of “that God” because the version of Christianity or Catholicism that we grew up with was terribly corrupt. So we hear the message of “that God” and respond, “If that’s what it is, I don’t want it.”

I get it. Trust me. I’ve walked away from the institutional church a few times myself.

But let me tell you, when you hear (or re-hear) the message of God, of Jesus, of His Spirit, as it truly is, you can’t help but respond in a positive and receptive way. Paul’s going to lay that out for us in Romans 3, and I’ll try to unpack it a bit, tomorrow…

Romans (entry 1)

Romans is arguably the best known letter of the New Testament. I’ve heard it takes some pastors years, almost decades to preach through it. I’ve seen commentaries on the letter that are bigger than the Bible itself. Why? Because some people are just crazy. But also because it’s the go-to letter for big doctrines, for the “road to salvation,” for Calvinist vs. Arminian debates, etc. It’s a very meaty letter. Sixteen chapters, chalked full of big ideas.

More importantly though, it’s a real letter from a real guy to real people. Paul desperately wanted to meet the Roman believers and invest in those relationships. How do I know? He spends the first couple paragraphs of the letter talking about it. [Speaking of Jesus, he says]

“Through him we received both the generous gift of his life and the urgent task of passing it on to others who receive it by entering into obedient trust in Jesus.”

That is why he wants to see the Roman believers and those who have yet to believe. He’s been sharing the message of Jesus with Jews and with non-Jews in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and Asia, but he hasn’t yet been able to get to Rome. He’s been praying for it for years, but what’s wild, is eventually that prayer will be answered. But he won’t be going on his own terms, of his own volition. He’ll be going in shackles, as a convict. But more on that in another post.

It’s almost like Paul starts out saying, “I’m excited to come see. I can’t wait to share Jesus with you, hear your reports of people coming to faith, and experience your hospitality in the great city of Rome.” But then as he gets going, he’s like, “Well shoot, I’ll just start telling you everything I want to tell you. Can’t hurt!”

Here it goes…(next post)

Acts (Entry 2)

I mentioned in the last post: I can’t help but feel sorry for Paul. Just like Joseph in Genesis, he’s left to sit and rot in prison. A man of tremendous accomplishment, with much more potential and talent to reach the masses, is sitting still in shackles.

This situation reminds me of Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. or even Moses in Exodus. These men get locked away or have to run for their lives for a period of time. All they’re trying to do is fight for justice. But the masses can’t handle it, or a segment of society can’t handle it, so the people bring all kinds of charges and false accusations to put these righteous men behind bars.

But back to the book of Acts:

I’m amazed by a few other things:

  • Paul’s dedication and complete life transformation.
  • Paul and Peter and John’s ability to heal and perform miraculous deeds.
  • The apostles and disciples ability to explain the entire Gospel from the Old Testament.
  • The Holy Spirit blocking Paul’s attempts to go north or east in Asia, and instead, he goes west and south to all kinds of cities along the Mediterranean coast. Ironically, or perhaps providentially, it’s because of this that almost all of the New Testament letters are eventually written. Paul visits these cities, then writes to these cities, and if the Spirit wouldn’t have blocked his initial attempts, it is hard telling what would have happened. Maybe Paul would have never stopped to write. Maybe we wouldn’t have the majority of the New Testament. Maybe the Roman Empire wouldn’t have been “Christianized” by Constantine. Who knows?!

I’m also struck by how many people are mentioned in passing. It’s like the entire book focuses on the apostles and their deeds, but almost no space is given to the other preachers, teachers, leaders of local churches. Almost no space is given to the number of people who supported them, prayed with them, worked with them, worshiped with them, etc.

Finally, I’m amazed, but not amazed at the same time, by the sheer apathy and inaction of the political leaders at the time. So many of the “public servants” are actually in it for themselves, are afraid to take action because they fear the crowds potentially disapproving them. Perhaps, that’s a constant throughout history, with some rare exceptions. Again, who knows?

At the end of the day, I suppose it is our responsibility — regardless of the crowds, regardless of accusations, regardless of public servants’ inaction, regardless of where we go — to act on two things:

Love God and love others

How can we do that? In the words of Tim Keller, by bridging racial divides, by caring for the poor, by forgiving others and having meaningful conversations, by saving unwanted babies, and by keeping the sanctity of marriage.

Do a couple of these sound right wing? Do a couple of these sound left wing? Yep. And that’s exactly the point.

Jesus and his followers didn’t live in 21st century America, but if they did, none of them would be aligning with a single political party. Jesus wasn’t a Republican, nor was he a Democrat. Neither were his disciples and followers. The disciples and apostles in the book of Acts aligned themselves with the things Tim Keller mentioned above. Because, throughout history, the healthiest followers of Jesus have always aligned with these things.

True Christianity is a great equalizer, between men and women, Jew and pagan, poor and rich, slaves and free. It is and always has been a subculture, a reconstructing, a redefining of all kinds of norms.

Acts (Entry 1)

For Acts, I switched to recap posts, rather than chapter by chapter.

I completed the book of Acts during the month of January. I am continually amazed at how stories slow down and speed up in the Bible. Here’s what I mean by that:

The book starts slowly. The way I understand it, chapter 1 through the end of chapter 7 barely cover a year, if that. It’s all about the disciples gathering, praying, selecting a replacement for Judas, and the Holy Spirit coming down. Peter preaches a few sermons. The number of people who place their trust in Jesus is growing day by day. Stephen preaches, but then is killed. And by that point, we’re at the end of chapter 7.

Chapters 8 through 12 are a bit of a middle ground, where we hear of the persecution of the new converts, Philip’s witness and tele-porting(?!), then of Saul’s miraculous conversion. We hear of some new developments in the church and the imprisonment of Peter. All kinds of fascinating things are happening, as the Gospel starts to expand outside of Jerusalem. But now the time is accelerating. This section covers more time than the previous 7 chapters.

By this point, things really start to speed up. From chapter 13 through the middle of chapter 21, we’re looking at decades of Saul’s (turned Paul’s) ministry. He travels to city after city, region after region, thousands of miles all along the Mediterranean coasts. It’s mind-boggling how many places he went and how many people he witnessed to during those years. He was beaten many times, chased out of town, persecuted, shipwrecked, etc. But he stuck with it, never ceasing to provide love, encouragement, Gospel-preaching, and correction to everyone who followed “the Way” and called themselves a Christian.

All of the sudden, the book slows down again. From the middle of chapter 21 to the middle of chapter 28, we barely cover 3 years, mostly full of Paul’s discourses. We hear long accounts of radical Jews bringing accusations against Paul. We hear Paul’s lengthy defenses. We hear how he went from one ruler, to another, to another as he sought to defend himself in the courts. I can’t help but feel sorry for Paul. Just like Joseph in Genesis, he’s left to sit and rot in prison. A man of tremendous accomplishment, with much more potential and talent to reach the masses, is sitting still in shackles.

As we close out the book of Acts, we see the second half of chapter 28 speed up again. Just a few verses cover at least 2 years.

To recap this (roughly speaking):

  • 7 Chapters (1-7): one year
  • 4 Chapters (8-12): five to ten years
  • 8 Chapters (13-21): ten to twenty years
  • 6 Chapters (22-28): three years
  • Half chapter (28): two or three years

You get a single discourse that can take up two chapters of text; then you get a single sentence that says someone stayed in such and such place for three months, or for two years, or for another two years, etc. It’s mind-bending. What else happened, what else was said, what other decisions were made during those times.

In the next post, I’ll cover some of my biggest takeaways from the book of Acts.

^Quick Disclaimer: I didn’t do a full-fledged scholarly study to gather this information. This is just what I could surmise from a quick and simple overview of the book as I was reading it throughout January. If there are any inaccuracies in what is written above, it is entirely my fault. I’m simply trying to show how the speed of the book changes section by section.

Jeremiah 39-40

I am stuck on these two truths:

The Lord punishes the wicked and upholds the righteous.

The Lord does whatever He pleases.

King Zedekiah watches the Chaldeans murder all of his sons. Then his eyes are poked out. The very last thing the man sees is his sons being murdered.

Jeremiah, on the other hand, is treated well and given freedom to live among the people.