Y Safle

Someone asked me:
>If, and I repeat, IF, one is saved by acknowledging Jesus is Lord, what
>does it matter what else we do?

The question is a good one, and one which is all too easily passed over
or muddied by a poor understanding of what the doctrine of Justification
by Faith alone truly implies.

The writer is right, that if you are indeed saved through your faith
in Jesus Christ, our LORD, then it will in no way affect your salvation
if you stay or leave your church. Nor will it affect your salvation if
you manage to dot the “I”s and cross the “T”s in your doctrine, nor will
it affect your salvation if you slip into error. If you have faith in
Jesus Christ for your salvation, and him alone, then all of these things
can never affect your salvation.

But what then is the place for right doctrine and right worship? The
question begs another, much neglected question – one which is nevertheless
found in most catechisms. What is the chief end of man? Why are we here?
What is our purpose? The answer, as given by the catechisms, and indeed
the Bible, is that we are here to glorify God and to enjoy his presence
forever.

So the question of doctrine, teaching, worship and whatever else is
one that is simply answered – none of these things affect our salvation,
but they are far more important then that – they affect the glory given
to God.

If I teach error about God then people will misunderstand him, and he
will not be glorified. If I fail to worship God, or worship him
incorrectly then I fail to ascribe to him the Glory which is his. If
I preach error regarding the doctrine of justification by faith alone
then I place a stumbling block in the paths of those who might be saved,
and as salvation glorifies God more then anything else, then
again I fail to glorify him.

If I do not care about the glory of God, then what did my salvation
mean anyway? This is where the modern day “profession of faith” can
become shallow and unreliable. If all we ask from people is that they
profess that Jesus Christ died for them and they want to be saved, then
surely our emphasis is all wrong. If we emphasise only what we can get
out of salvation then we have misunderstood what it is to call Jesus
our Lord, and we have failed to see the magnitude of Christ’s work on
the cross.

When we are concerned about the glory of God then the doctrine of
Justification by Faith alone becomes a great comforting doctrine, as
well as a great enabling doctrine (because it is only when we see that
our works really gain us nothing with respect to salvation that we can
do works from truly pure motives without self interest). Nevertheless
it is not our main goal to be saved, but rather to bring glory to
God the father, and Jesus Christ, his son, our LORD.

This is why it is important to read and understand all that God has
told us in the Bible. David said “I have written your word within my
heart that I might not sin against you”. He knew that when he sinned
God is faithful and just to forgive those sins, but forgiveness was
not enough – he wrote God’s word within his heart that he might *not*
sin. He was concerned about God’s glory, that the name of God would
be honoured and revered, not ridiculed.

Leonard Ravenhill wrote, regarding those bumper stickers: “Christians
are not perfect, just forgiven” that “some backslider must have written
that”. Quite right! It is not that Christians are perfect, but it
is through the grace of God that we have power *not to sin*.

Glorify God. Don’t make excuses, but (in the words of Mary at Cana):
“Whatever he says to you to do, do it.”

Keith Schooley has an interesting article on his blog about a new documentary (presumably released in the US as I have heard nothing about it here) about the supposed discovery of Jesus’ family tomb.

Keith argues for a presuppositional viewpoint – that clearly the claim must be false, because we know that the tomb was empty. On the other hand, his article links to Ben Witherington’s analysis which includes some very interesting comments looking at the claims in terms of actual likelihood, using among other things some statistical analysis.

The point is that this tomb is no more likely to belong to Jesus of Nazareth than the discovery of a grave in the UK of a William married to a Mary might indicate that this is the grave of William of Orange.

The problem is that these are common names.

But could we even entertain the possibility that this could be Jesus’ tomb? Should we do so?

Well clearly Keith has a point that we really shouldn’t bother. But how would we convince an atheist who presented this as evidence? Let us suppose that we felt it necessary to provide an answer to such a person, then apart from all the statistical evidence, we must also deal with both additional names that we know nothing about and the absence of others. We must also explain why the family tomb of Jesus of *Nazareth* is in Jerusalem, and with how the body of Christ that was known to have vanished managed to turn up, and then (if the disappearance were a hoax, why they saw fit to inscribe his name on an ossuarie).

But most of all, we know that the Jesus ossuarie was not actually found in this tomb! (and there is doubt about the inscription).

So really this whole story falls apart on close inspection (as described on the blogs I have linked to). Were an atheist to raise this argument, we could give it short shrift.

And that is a good thing, because when looking at the claims of Christianity, it is the ressurection of Jesus that is the "elephant in the room". Christ’s resurrection is central to Christianity both because of what it achieves, and because it is God’s affirmation of Christ’s ministry. It is central because it does not matter what evidence atheists bring to bear on the creation account, the old testament narratives or anything else: if Christ was raised from the dead then he is Lord indeed.

And it is central because there are no other plausible explanations for the events of the first century. How a world could be transformed by people willing to die for their belief in a God who had died in shame but risen again in glory.

So maybe we should discuss this family tomb, because it allows us to discuss the death and ressurection of Christ. And that can only be a good thing.

In My last post I spoke about preachers appealing to the Greek of a verse to make a point, but I used as my example 1 Corinthians 7 verse 1 (explaining the findings of Greek scholars including C K Barratt and Gordon Fee that the Greek term “to touch a woman” is idiomatic for “to have sexual relations”). What I did not do was provide an interpretation for this passage that makes sense of it armed with this knowledge.

So here is my view (which I think is quite clear once the idiom is understood).

The passage reads:

Now concerning the things about which you wrote, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”

But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband.

The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband.

The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Notice I have added some quotation marks. The Greek text has no quotation marks – they hadn’t been invented yet! So it is only conjecture, but I think it is a good one, that Paul immediately quoted from the letter that the Corinthians had sent to him.

He has dealt with many other issues in the preceding chapters – issues that had been reported to him. But now he turns to the Corinthian letter and he says:

“Now about the matters you wrote to me about. You said ‘It is good for a man not to have sexual relations’”.

And then he immediately answers this point “*BUT* because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife” and he goes on to say that husbands and wives should fulfill duties to one another.

So what is going on here?

It seems that some of the Corinthian Christians had come to the conclusion that sexual relations were not appropriate for Christians *within* *marriage*. One or other of a couple were advocating sexual fasting within marriage, and had written to Paul to commend this practice.

This interpretation fits with what we know of the Corinthian church. They were proud of their spirituality, whilst embracing practices that we would find astounding in today’s church. They also had a pre-gnostic theology that might have led them to disdain the flesh and thus God’s gifts within marriage.

We also know that some of them were sexually immoral, and it may be that part of the reason that there was sexual immorality in the Corinthian church was because one partner in a marriage was denying the other their “conjugal rights”.

So Paul’s prescription: He agrees that celibacy is a wonderful option, but argues that where couples are married, to avoid the temptation to immorality, they should not deny their partners (except perhaps for short periods, when devoting themselves to prayer).

Read the passage again with this interpretation in mind, and I think you will agree that it makes much more sense than the NIV’s interpretation that Paul is talking about marriage.

(Incidentally, the passage quoted above is taken from the NASB, which is a literal translation. The RSV and AV (KJV) which are also literal translations, read almost identically.

I have a rule of thumb when listening to a sermon. If the pastor or minister starts talking about how the original Greek of a passage says something other than what our translation says, then he does not know what he is talking about!

Before I completely offend everyone who has ever delivered a sermon before, perhaps I should go into some more detail.

My point is that one
often hears sermons in which the preacher digresses into a discussion
of why one Greek word was used over another. I think such digressions
are *always* questionable, and often completely wrong.
At best, I will look up the passage in a good commentary later to see
what others have said about the subject, but often I ignore such
points made.

But what if the different versions of the Bible translate
differently? A case in point might be 1 Corinthians 7, where my RSV
and other literal translations say “it is good for a man not to touch
a woman”, but the NIV jumps to “it is good for a man not to marry”,
and other versions say “it is good for a man not to have sexual
relations”. What do we make of this jumble of interpretations?

I think we can note several things:

Firstly, the difficulty of the passage is demonstrated by the
disagreement of Bible translators on the point. We can see the
disagreement from the English translations. No need for Greek yet.

Secondly, if the translators cannot agree, then a basic competance in
Greek is probably not going to help much. Appeal to the Greek text in
this case reveals that the literal translations (KJV, RSV, NASB etc.)
are indeed translating literally. The passage does indeed say “it is
good for a man not to touch a woman”.

Now a commentary can be of great assistance here, because appeal to a
commentary will show that the term “to touch a woman” was a first
century idiom that referred to sexual relations. When learning a
language, one must learn many idioms before one can gain fluency in
the language (One of my favourites is the Welsh “dros ben llestri”, which is
idiomatic for “over the top” – although literally it is translated as “over the head of the dishes”!).

Armed with this information about the idiom (the Greek one now, not the Welsh one!), we are able to do an
exegesis of the passage, without appeal to the Greek words used.

However, I can envisage examples where one might wish to quote what
the commentators say about the original Greek. In such circumstances,
I think the quote should be properly referenced.

If a preacher says “the original Greek actually suggests this…” I
will assume the preacher is working on their own knowledge (and
probably out of their depth). If they say “Barret tells us, in his
commentary on 1 Corinthians, that the original Greek form used was an
idiom for this…” then I can evaluate the quality of the source of
the information, and even check it out for myself later – an important
stage in the process of critical appraisal of the information we
receive.

So I am not actually saying we can never preach on what the original Greek says – but as most preachers are not experts in Koine Greek, we must acknowledge our sources and alternative interpretations when we do so.

Warren Wierbse says in his introduction to “The Best of A. W. Tozer,”

He was not afraid to tell us what was wrong. Nor was he hesitant to
tell us how God could make it right. If a sermon can be compared to light, then A. W. Tozer released a laser beam from the pulpit, a beam that penetrated your heart, seared your conscience, exposed sin, and left you crying, “What must I do to be saved?” The answer was always the same: surrender to Christ; get to know God personally; grow to become like Him

Tozer also said to an acquaintance:

“I have preached myself off of every
Bible Conference platform in the country!”

Because the popular crowds do not rush to hear a man whose convictions make them uncomfortable.

So when somebody said to me:
>It’s just too bad that the author of Born After Midnight and The Root of
>The Righteous [i.e. Tozer] never took Galatians 5:22-23 to heart and asked the Lord to
>develop the fruit of the Spirit in them. Their writings would reflected
>it.

I think the point is that Tozer did indeed take Galatians 5:22,23 to heart.
Instead of using it as a balm for a guilty conscience he understood the
underlying message as written: Those who have the Spirit of God will
demonstrate the fact with deeds worthy of repentance. Christians are called
to bring forth fruit, and we know what Jesus said of the tree that brought
forth no fruit.

Tozer’s writings are a wake up call on a par with those of Leonard
Ravenhill. His book “Keys to the Deeper Life” should be compulsory reading
for all Christians (it is only about thirty pages long after all).

Again the point is that so much that passes for modern day Christianity
would be disowned by our forefathers as carnal and ungodly. Believers take
other believers to court. Believers live in immorality but are allowed to
arrive each week at the communion table [or whatever your church calls it].
Christians step on each other in their rush to “the top”. Christians ignore
justice and mercy, and reflect in so many ways the attitude of the world
around them.

To repeat Tozer’s quote:

> We modern Christians are long on talk and short on conduct

We love to talk and debate, but how many of us are doing things practically
in our own situations? How many of us are making a difference in our own
communities, for no reward but to know that we serve our LORD?

We can talk much of working out our salvation, but our Christian faith is no
academic exercise, but a practical walk. This site is meant to be about "practical
Christian life" and the reason is that a Christian life that is not
practical is also not alive.

Faith without works is dead, being alone.

So let us examine ourselves and consider how we could better serve God in
the family of the Church. Don’t talk about it. Do it!

In Richard Dawkin’s new book, “the God Delusion”, he alludes to the mantra of fundamentalist atheism that all wars are caused by religion, and that we would be better off without religion as then wars would cease. This tired argument from an eminent scientist demonstrates that when Dawkins speaks about religion and history, he is speaking well beyond his competence.

In Dakins’ Wikipedia article, there is mention that in 2004, a self selecting and unscientific poll by Prospect magazine had selected Dawkins as the leading intellectual in the world today (last year Noam Chomsky polled over twice as many votes as Dawkins on the same poll). As useless as such polls really are, it did lead me to a review of Dawkin’s book by a non religious writer in the same magazine. He said of Dawkin’s argument:

Yet under Stalin almost the entire Orthodox priesthood was exterminated simply for being priests, as were the clergy of other religions and hundreds of thousands of Baptists. The claim that Stalin’s atheism had nothing to do with his actions may be the most disingenuous in the book, but it has competition from a later question, “Why would anyone go to war for the sake of an absence of belief [atheism]?”—as if the armies of the French revolution had marched under icons of the Virgin, or as if a common justification offered for China’s invasion of Tibet had not been the awful priest-ridden backwardness of the Dalai Lama’s regime.

Indeed, the same review starts off with this summary:

It has been obvious for years that Richard Dawkins had a fat book on religion in him, but who would have thought him capable of writing one this bad? Incurious, dogmatic, rambling and self-contradictory, it has none of the style or verve of his earlier works.

Is Dawkins speaking beyond his competence? McGrath points out (with clear examples) that Dawkins is embarrassingly ignorant of Christian theology. The writer of this review says: “One might argue that a professor of the public understanding of science has no need to concern himself with trivialities outside his field like the French revolution, the Spanish civil war or Stalin’s purges when he knows that history is on his side”.

This is a man who has fallen into the same trap that we all fall into sometimes – of failing to properly research and critically evaluate the evidence – particularly when the evidence seems to support his thesis. If he is not researching and evaluating evidence, he is indeed speaking well beyond his competence.

A straw man argument is an argument where someone characterises the position of another as being something slightly different (and weaker) than the actual position of the other person. Such arguments are often deceptive, making it look as if someone has proven their case – when in fact all they have done is demolish the straw man – the weaker argument that is not actually held by anyone!

An example. Richard Dawkins says:

“Faith means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence.”

He then takes issue with this faith for not being based on evidence. To many his argument seems convincing, but Christians do not believe his definition. A A Hodge wrote:

“Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.”

And that is the faith of Christians everywhere. There is no blind trust. Christian faith is based on evidence, experience and the knowledge of God. Thus Dawkins demolishes a straw man.

When asked for his opinion of Alister McGrath, author of “The Dawkins Delusion”, Richard Dawkins said:

Alister McGrath has now written two books with my name in the title. The poet W B Yeats, when asked to say something about bad poets who made a living by parasitizing him, wrote the splendid line: “Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?”

I note that Dawkins has written at least two books with God in the title (and nearly all his work mentions God somewhere).

Parasitizing eh?

You can download some excellent MP3s of McGrath lectures on Dawkins and other subjects.

Most work calendars these days start a week on Monday, and shuffle Staurday and Sunday to the weekend. As pragmatic solution as this may be, I find it annoying in that it does not recognise that the first day of any week is Sunday.

The UK moved to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, which involved changes to
the current day of the month, but the week days were left unaffected.
Thursday, September 14th followed Wednesday, September 2nd in 1752.

It is therefore probably best to consider the week days as divorced from the
calendar itself. They do not fit neatly into a 365.24 day year. They
are a more granular measure of the passing of time, but not truly
calendar markers.

So the question is, which day of the week comes first?

Businesses group Saturday and Sunday together on a calendar for convenience, because then you can group working week and
weekend quite easily in two locations on a calendar, but they are
strictly speaking incorrect to do so.

You see, the seven day week is of Persian/Chaldean and Judeo/Christian
origin. In all these cultures, a seven day week was observed, and the
week days were named for the seven visible heavenly bodies, starting with the
most dominant: the Sun.

Thus we have (in English and Welsh, but other languages show the same pattern):

The day of the Sun (Dydd Sul – Sunday)
The day of the Moon (Dydd Llun – Monday)
The day of Mars (Dydd Mawrth) (Tuesday is named for the Norse God)
The day of Mercury (Dydd Mercher) (Wodan is Norse)
The day of Jupiter (Dydd Iau) (Thor is Norse)
The day of Venus (Dydd Gwener) (Frida is Norse)
The day of Saturn (Dydd Sadwrn – Saturday)

In the Biblical account of creation, it can be shown that each stanza
of the creation hymn takes up the astrological significance of the
gods associated with the days, and shows that the God who is one God
created the realms considered to be the domains of these other gods.
Thus the creation hymn can be seen as being in direct opposition to
Chaldean (and later Babylonian) belief. The message of the hymn is that the almighty God is ruler high above all others.

In the first century AD, the seven day week was introduced in Rome,
under the influence of Persian astrologers. When Rome became
Christian, the Christian view of the seven days was conflated with the
Persian influence, but both had the same common root.

Thus the week began on the day of the Sun, and ended on the day of
Saturn (the day God rested). Saturday was the true week end.

However, the Resurrection took place on a Sunday morning, and in
honour of this fact, the “Lord’s day” was taken to be Sunday.
Christians thus began the practise of meeting together to worship on
the Lord’s day – the first day of the week.

Thus the weekend as we now have it conflates the Jewish Sabbath (or a
day off at the end of the week) with the Christian Lord’s day (or a
day off at the start of the week).

Secularists want to regularise the whole thing and call both days the
week end, but they might as well try and rename Monday to something
less pagan, or choose a five day week instead of seven! The fact of the matter is that weeks start on Sunday –
they always have. It is only the *working* week that starts on Monday.

However, if you want to arrange your calendar to start on the first day of the
working week, then feel free to do so. As I have said – weeks do not
strictly fit into the calendar in any case.

It is trendy these days to wear fashion accessories with the letters
WWJD written on them. The letters stand for
“What Would Jesus Do”?

This question is a pertinent one. In any situation, we should ask, what
would Jesus believe was the correct course of action? If we follow him,
then we need to know what he would do, so that we too can do it.

But I would like to add some extra letters: DWRHAC – “Do we really have
a clue”? Have we any idea what Jesus would do about the illegal and
immoral detention of people in Guantanamo bay? Do we know what Christ
would say about going to war to secure oil supplies in Iraq? Do we know
what his view would be on the destruction of our environment? Do we know
what he would say about mortgage debt? Social security? Health care?
People using the asylum system to escape economic deprivation? The EU
and U.S. trade rules and dumping of food that keep Africa poor so that
we can stay rich?

How do we know what Jesus would say on an issue? Only by studying
the message of the Bible *and* studying the situation. Even then
there is often room for doubt, which is why Christians can disagree. We
have the Holy Spirit as our guide and the Bible to teach us, but what
would Jesus do about Guantanamo bay (where no doubt the prisoners are
being tortured too)? I have no idea.

But one thing I know – he would not do nothing. It was not within him to
turn his back on injustice, and that is the Christ I would follow.