Ethan R. Longhenry's Blog, page 13

The Limitations of Wisdom

This is what I also observed about wisdom on earth, and it is a great burden to me: There was once a small city with a few men in it, and a mighty king attacked it, besieging it and building strong siege works against it. However, a poor but wise man lived in the city, and he could have delivered the city by his wisdom, but no one listened to that poor man. So I concluded that wisdom is better than might, but a poor man’s wisdom is despised; no one ever listens to his advice.
The words of the wise are heard in quiet, more than the shouting of a ruler is heard among fools.
Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner can destroy much that is good (Ecclesiastes 9:13-18).

The Greeks sang of the tragedy of Cassandra. She was a princess of Troy; the god Apollo fell in love with her and gave her the gift of prophecy. When she spurned his advances, he cursed her: she would prophesy, but no one would believe her. According to the Preacher, wisdom often finds itself in Cassandra’s position.

Throughout Ecclesiastes 1:1-9:12 the Preacher meditated upon the hevel of life under the sun: all is vain, futile – truly absurd. He compares most human endeavors toward meaning as “chasing after wind”: people pursue pleasure, wealth, wisdom, or other things looking for ultimate purpose and satisfaction and will be disappointed and frustrated by all of them. To rage against such truths is itself futile and striving after wind. God understands better than we do. In Ecclesiastes 8:17-9:12 he has been meditating on the finite nature of humans and the universality of death. He thus commended enjoying relationships, food, and work, to not take them for granted, and to resist seeking to find immortality in any aspect of life “under the sun.” And yes, it not only can happen here and to you; at some point, it will happen here and to you.

Throughout his discourse the Preacher continually returned to the condition and standing of wisdom. He recognized its value and importance but also proved frustrated with wisdom, for it cannot ultimately deliver on its promise, and human wisdom remains finite (cf. Ecclesiastes 1:16-18, 2:12-17, 26, 7:11-25, 8:1, 16-17, 9:10).

In that same vein the Preacher continued in his theme of “observations” with some observations about wisdom in Ecclesiastes 9:13-18. He found the substance of these observations difficult (Ecclesiastes 9:13): they ran against the grain of what he had been instructed and what he hoped about wisdom. The Preacher considered a small town with a few men in it besieged by a strong king and his army (Ecclesiastes 9:14). Two interpretive options present themselves for the core of the story. The verbs in Ecclesiastes 9:15 can be read as in the indicative, as in the ASV and many other translations; thus, a poor wise man knew how to deliver the city and did so, but no one remembered him. This might be understood as the “literal” reading of the Hebrew and prove satisfying for that reason, and it would contain an important observation about wisdom: it might be valued at the moment but it is easily overlooked, forgotten, or neglected. Yet such a “literal,” indicative reading would make understanding the Preacher’s concluding observation in Ecclesiastes 9:16 more challenging to understand: from his story the Preacher granted wisdom is greater than strength but the wisdom of a poor man is despised and not heeded. If the verbs in Ecclesiastes 9:15 are understood as modal or potential, the story is then told as translated in the NET above: the poor man could have delivered the city by his wisdom, but no one listened to the poor man. The Preacher elided the conclusion of the matter: the city was not preserved, but fell to the enemy. The poor man and his city became as Cassandra and Troy, and this proved to be the Preacher’s burdensome observation.

The Preacher continued with two “follow-up” observations. The words of the wise are heard in quiet, and better than the shouts of a ruler among fools (Ecclesiastes 9:17). Likewise, wisdom remains superior to the weapons of war, but one sinner can destroy a lot of good, be it good will, good precedents, good relationships, good works, etc. (Ecclesiastes 9:18). Any observer of modern political discourse can fully affirm the Preacher’s observations.

The Preacher never considered wisdom useless or worthless: he heartily confessed wisdom as stronger than might and weaponry. Throughout time it has been the reckless, foolish, often authoritarian ruler who impetuously ran to the sword in order to succeed, and far more failed than truly succeeded. Wise rulers have always recognized the true strength of force is in its prospect but not in its execution; it is always better to use diplomacy and seek to persuade rather than to attempt to coerce by force. Such wisdom is not restricted to the domain of kings and despots; in any relationship diplomacy and persuasion prove wiser, more effective courses than raw exercise of force or power. If you have to assert dominance, you have probably already lost it.

Yet, like Cassandra of Troy, wisdom remains only as good as it is heeded. Part of wisdom is recognizing how wisdom will manifest itself in what we might imagine to be the unlikeliest of places, and is often entirely absent where it proves most needed. Do we have to wonder why the wisdom of the poor man is disregarded? His wisdom is disregarded because his entire existence is disregarded. Those with privilege and standing, in their insecurity, often blithely dismiss and disregard those whom they imagine to be of lesser standing as inferior. Such forgot what the Preacher knew well: poverty does not mean a lack of humanity. If anything, the poor often have greater insight and wisdom than the privileged and wealthy; they have had to learn how to navigate and survive in the world in ways which prove unnecessary to those with greater privilege and wealth.

True wisdom remains quiet and modest and proves difficult to ascertain and hear amidst the clanging percussion of foolishness and puffery. It takes a lot of time and effort to build up well in wisdom, be it physical infrastructure, a network of relationships, and, for that matter, a local congregation; but it does not take much time for foolish and sinful people to tear it all down. We hear the news; we know the stories; perhaps we have even suffered and endured participation in such a story.

Thus the Preacher recognized and proved frustrated by the limitations of wisdom. As a man of wisdom speaking and writing in the wisdom tradition, his observations prove an important counterweight to a facile, uncritical embrace of wisdom as expressed in Proverbs; not for nothing is Solomon reckoned as the author of both. Solomon can extol and praise the value and virtues of wisdom while also recognizing its limitations in human weakness. Solomon recognized there could be no ultimate deliverance or salvation in wisdom, and we should confess the same; we will only find ultimate deliverance and salvation through what God has accomplished in Jesus Christ. May we trust in Jesus and obtain in Him the resurrection of life!

Ethan R. Longhenry

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From Bethany to Cana

The “disciple whom Jesus loved,” known as John, either John the brother of Zebedee, the Apostle, or John the Elder, was writing his recollections of his experiences with Jesus so that those who hear or read would believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and would find eternal life in His name (cf. John 20:31). He began by speaking of the Word of God, the Creator, the life and light of men, who took on flesh and dwelt among us as Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:1-18).

John the Evangelist had spoken of John the Baptist as one sent by God to testify regarding the light and the One who was greater than he (cf. John 1:6-8, 15). John the Evangelist then set forth John the Baptist’s testimony (John 1:19-28). In Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John the Baptist was doing his baptizing, the Jewish leaders asked John whether he was the Christ, Elijah, or the prophet; John denied it all; instead, John would only affirm himself as the voice shouting in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord, the fulfillment of Isaiah 40:3 (John 1:19-24). Jesus Himself would later consider John to be the Elijah to come, just as the angel Gabriel had predicted John would come as the Elijah to fulfill the word of YHWH in Malachi 4:5-6 (Matthew 11:7-15, Luke 1:11-18). Jesus’ and Gabriel’s testimony are enough to prove the case; perhaps it was not revealed to John that he was Elijah.

The Jewish religious leaders wanted to understand why John was baptizing if he was not the Christ, Elijah, or the prophet, and it was a good question. Jewish people of the Second Temple Period valued ritual washings highly; the places for such ritual washings, known as mikva’ot, can be found in all kinds of dwellings of this period. A baptism of repentance, however, was not something commanded or even spoken of as part of the Law of Moses or a ritual in Judaism. John baptized because God told him to do so; it would symbolically represent repentance, a changing of the hearts and minds of the people; he looked forward to One coming of whom he was unworthy to even untie His sandal (John 1:25-28).

The next day John the Baptist saw Jesus walking toward him; John then testified to Jesus as the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Lambs were not the standard offering as sin offerings, but the lamb was the offering made for the Passover which led to the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage (Exodus 12:1-27). It was revealed to John how Jesus would thus be sacrificed to liberate the creation from its bondage of sin. John testified regarding how he had come believe Jesus was the Chosen One of God: God had told him the One whom he baptized upon whom the Spirit would descend like a dove would be the One who would baptize with the Holy Spirit; lo and behold, when John baptized Jesus, the Spirit descended upon Him (John 1:30-34). Thus John the Evangelist did not directly narrate the story of Jesus’ baptism, but provided John’s testimony regarding that baptism. Furthermore, according to John, Jesus was baptized by the will of God as a sign to John to confirm who He was.

The day after that John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples, and Jesus again walked by him. John again spoke of Jesus as the Lamb of God, and those two disciples began following Jesus (John 1:35-37). John the Evangelist would then narrate the call of some of the disciples in a whimsical way. One of the disciples was Andrew, brother of Simon; the other disciple is left unmentioned, but since we are reading this story as part of the witness of John the Evangelist, we have reason to assume he is that other disciple. They ask where Jesus is staying, and He said they would see; they stayed with Him for a while, and Andrew then went out to find his brother Simon and told him they had found the Messiah of God (John 1:36-41). Andrew brought Simon to Jesus, and Jesus named him Peter (John 1:42).

The next day Jesus intended to go to Galilee. He saw Philip and called him to follow. Philip found his friend Nathanael and told him how he had found the One whom Moses and the prophets had written: Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:43-45). Nazareth was a very small village in rural Galilee; Nathanael thus asked if any good thing could come out of Nazareth, and Philip told him to come and see (John 1:46). When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, He spoke of him as an Israelite in whom there was no guile: that is, he has no filter, and said what he thought (John 1:47). Nathanael wondered how Jesus could know who he is; Jesus said he saw Nathanael under the fig tree before Philip called him (and thus, ostensibly, gave indication He knew exactly what Nathanael had said; John 1:48). Nathanael immediately confessed Jesus as the Son of God, the King of Israel; Jesus responded he would see greater things than these, and then evoked Jacob’s ladder, saying they would see heaven opened up and angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man, thus foretelling His death, resurrection, and ascension (John 1:49-51).

“On the third day,” an idiom indicating a few days later, Jesus and His disciples had made it to Galilee and attending a wedding to which they were invited (John 2:1-2). Jewish weddings were extravagant affairs hosted by the groom’s family and which would last for many days. The host family, however, experienced a scandal: the wine had run out. While we might experience such a situation as embarrassing because of poor planning, the host family would be experiencing it as a shameful demonstration of poverty. Jesus’ mother Mary was at the wedding, and sufficiently well-known to the host family to be able to give commands to the slaves; she told Jesus they were out of wine (John 2:3). Jesus asked her what she wanted from Him, for His time had not yet come; she knew who was His Father and what He could do, but He had not yet begun His active ministry (John 2:4). Mary knew her Son would honor her subliminal request, and told the slaves to do whatever Jesus told them to do (John 2:5). Jesus told them to fill to the brink with water six stone jars of purification: they would be ritually clean, and by virtue of their purpose, would have only held water (John 2:6-8). When the head steward of the wedding tasted the wine, he summoned the host family: for understandable reasons hosts begin feasts with the best wine and reserve wine of lower quality for later after everyone’s taste buds had been dulled; yet the host family had kept the best wine until later (John 2:9-10)! John the Evangelist identified Jesus’ turning the water to wine as His first miraculous sign, and His disciples thus believed in Him (John 2:11). Jesus spent some time with His mother and disciples in Capernaum (John 2:12).

Jesus’ first miraculous sign at the wedding in Cana has caused a lot of difficulties for many who profess to follow Jesus. They have a hard time understanding how Jesus could have done such a thing and enabled people getting drunk. They thus imagine to themselves Jesus would have not really turned the water into wine but alcohol-free grape juice. Such represents a complete misunderstanding of ancient practice and Jesus’ purposes. Greek oinos means alcoholic wine by default; there are some uses of the term to describe grape juice in the process of becoming wine, but such a context is explicitly identified when speaking of oinos in that way. Both Jewish and Greco-Roman people consumed wine in prodigious amounts; it was the standard beverage of the time. They would have consumed wine cut with water; to consume wine uncut was considered barbaric.

No one at the wedding in Cana would have understood Jesus’ behavior as enabling drunkenness or dissipation. Instead, they understood what was at stake. If there was no more wine, there was no more wedding feast. The host family would be shamed and the marriage of the young couple would begin under inauspicious circumstances. By turning the water into wine, Jesus allowed the party to continue. Jesus made much of celebration and festival. When the Pharisees asked Jesus’ disciples why they did not fast, Jesus told them they could not fast while the Bridegroom was present (cf. Matthew 9:14-15). Jesus spoke of His return as the Bridegroom entering the wedding feast (Matthew 25:1-13). One of the seven blessings in Revelation come to those invited to the wedding banquet of the Lamb, which, as we can see from John 1:29, 36, is Jesus (Revelation 19:7, 9). Many in cold, dour, and sterile contexts imagine Jesus to be cold, dour, and without much joy; such is entirely inconsistent with the portrayal of Jesus in the Scriptures. Jesus is the Life of the party. Jesus’ first miracle in John’s Gospel kept the party going. There are indeed circumstances which call for lamentation, mourning, and bitterness; but there are also circumstances which call for excitement, joy, and celebration. Jesus well navigated both; but we do well to never forget Jesus lived, died, was raised, reigns, and will return in order to throw a huge party, and understand Him appropriately.

Thus John the Evangelist narrated how Jesus had gone from Bethany to Cana and the beginning of His active ministry in Israel. May we follow Jesus so we might be able to celebrate with Him for all eternity!

Ethan R. Longhenry

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Emphasis

With what should I enter YHWH’s presence? With what should I bow before the sovereign God? Should I enter his presence with burnt offerings, with year-old calves? Will YHWH accept a thousand rams, or ten thousand streams of olive oil? Should I give him my firstborn child as payment for my rebellion, my offspring – my own flesh and blood – for my sin?
He has told you, O man, what is good, and what YHWH really wants from you: He wants you to carry out justice, to love faithfulness, and to live obediently before your God (Micah 6:6-8).

We understand well how the truth of God in Christ through the Spirit involves the witness of God regarding Himself and His people in the Scriptures. We recognize the importance of insisting on the “whole counsel of God” (cf. Acts 20:27). We seek to discern this whole counsel of God by means of the substance of what has been revealed. Yet we tend to expose much about ourselves in terms of what aspects of that truth we emphasize.

Emphasis involves placing special value or importance on something, or an aspect of something. Emphasis is related to focus and priority: that upon which we focus is something we tend to emphasize, and our priorities tend to define that which we emphasize.

Ironically emphasis has often been neglected both in terms of how we understand what God has made known in Christ and how we embody and proclaim the faith. We have reasoned how truth is truth whether much or little is made of it. We have seen how some have attempted to justify beliefs and practices not consistent with what God has revealed in Scripture by undermining aspects of the truth on which little, if any, emphasis was placed in the New Testament. Furthermore, emphasis seems subjective, and thus at variance with the quest to ascertain and uphold objective truth. We do not want to be seen as “playing favorites” with the truth and imagine we can consistently and fully uphold everything which is true in God in Christ through the Spirit.

Any attempt to deny the existence and presence of emphasis in Christian faith and practice proves a fool’s errand. We might imagine we uphold the full truth of God in Christ through the Spirit in a consistent and equal manner, but in this we deceive ourselves. We are all finite created beings; our sense impressions and our brains can only discern and process so much. We only have so many hours in a day and so much effort we can expend on anything and everything in our lives. We tend to understand this better in terms of focus and priority than emphasis. By definition, if we focus on something or some things, we comparatively neglect that upon which we do not focus. Prioritization, by definition, represents a judgment by which certain things are reckoned as more important or are to be privileged over other things. Thus, by definition, we cannot focus on or prioritize everything. Likewise, we do not, and cannot, represent the faith and practice which embodies Jesus without emphasis.

Yet even within the witness of God in Christ through the Spirit as witnessed in the Scriptures we find emphasis. Not only that, we find God condemning His people for maintaining misplaced emphases.

In Matthew 5:19 Jesus, in indicting the Pharisees, condemned anyone who would violate the “least” of the commandments; if there are “least” commandments, there also exist “greater” commandments, and “greater” and “least” are judgments of emphasis. In Matthew 23:23, He condemned the Pharisees for tithing in minutiae while neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness, deemed that which was more important in the Law. Yes, Jesus did say the Pharisees were right to tithe in the matters of minutiae; recognizing emphasis by no means commends or justifies disobedience in more comparatively minor matters. Yet the force of the indictment remains: the Pharisees had made much of little and little of much, or, as Jesus would put it, they were straining gnats while swallowing camels (Matthew 23:24).

Christians often make much of Micah 6:6-8, and for good reason; in it Micah recognized a trend which bedeviled Israel for generations. As far as we can tell, throughout the period of the kings, Judah was fastidious about offering the requisite sacrifices before YHWH. The rulers, priests, many of the “prophets,” and the people thus imagined they maintained full standing before YHWH because they continued to offer the sacrifices YHWH commanded them. Micah asks if such sacrifices are sufficient to really obtain YHWH’s favor: what is good, and what YHWH really wants from His people, is to do justice, love faithfulness, and live obediently before God.

Samuel similarly rebuked Saul in 1 Samuel 15:22. Amos told Israel how YHWH was tired of their sacrifices and songs and reminded them how they did not offer sacrifices and grain offerings in the Wilderness; what YHWH really wanted was justice to run like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream (Amos 5:21-27). Isaiah had a similar word for post-exilic Judah who imagined their fasting would get YHWH’s attention: Isaiah made it very clear how the “fast” YHWH wanted was for them to remove chains, to tear away the yoke, to set free the oppressed, to share food with the hungry, shelter the homeless and the oppressed, and clothe the naked (Isaiah 58:1-9).

The Pharisees, therefore, were doing just what their ancestors had done: they focused on, or emphasized, what was “objective,” easily discernible and measurable, and were satisfied. In the process they had entirely missed the point, just as their ancestors had done. They had imagined God was not only pleased with their fastidious observance of certain laws but that such would justify them in the end, just like their ancestors imagined God was pleased with their sacrifices and that such would justify them. In both instances God provided almost entirely the same rebuke: you have misplaced your emphasis. God wanted them to uphold what was just, right, fair, and good, and to use what they had to alleviate the exploitation and oppression of the powers around them. Sacrifices, fasting, and tithes had their place. Yet they were not YHWH’s intended emphasis, focus, or priority.

To this very day the same critique can be leveled among the people of God. The people of God today focus on and emphasize what is “objective,” easily discernible and measurable, and are satisfied. Assembling with the saints, giving on the first day of the week, and wearing approved clothing styles are today’s versions of sacrifices, fasting, and tithes. And, at the same time, justice, mercy, and faithfulness do not receive the emphasis.

Such is not restricted to matters of practice; even in terms of beliefs and doctrines the people of God have maintained misplaced emphases. Much is made regarding preaching “the distinctives,” and much emphasis, focus, and priority is placed upon the plan of salvation, the organization of the church, the nature of the acts of the assembly, and upon where others have either fallen short of or have gone on beyond what God has made known regarding the Kingdom of Jesus through His Apostles. Not a few equate “the Gospel” with such issues.

We do well to instead consider how Paul himself approached matters. In every letter he returns to what God has accomplished in Jesus to anchor and ground all of his concerns, doctrinal or practical. Paul’s emphasis is on the Christ of God crucified and risen, and everything else flows from that source.

Thus, for Christians, what should be our emphasis? Jesus should be our emphasis, and we should emphasize what Jesus would have us emphasize. Even if we all want to take it for granted, the Gospel for the past two thousand years has been the good news of what God has accomplished in Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and preparation for His imminent return, and that will remain the Gospel until He returns and God is made all in all. Jesus’ emphasis was on love, humility, and compassion, and such motivated true faithfulness and obedience. Such love was not pretense but substantive, and it bore the appropriate fruit.

Does this mean we should entirely neglect or suppress that which was not emphasized? Absolutely not! Israel was to fast, offer sacrifices, and tithe in everything; Christians should assemble with the saints, give on the first day of the week, wear clothing which glorifies God in Christ, and seek in all details to uphold God’s purposes for individuals and congregations in the Kingdom of Jesus. Yet in emphasizing and focusing on the details, Israel was found lacking and guilty before God; we run the same risk as Christians, and we should be no less concerned about the prospect of the judgment of God than they were.

Thus we do well to recover a healthy sense of emphasis in our Christian faith and practice. We must understand how emphasis is a matter of truth: if we say we follow God, but we maintain misplaced emphases, we easily deceive ourselves and will find ourselves as liable to judgment as did Israel of old. It is not for us to determine what should be emphasized, or the framework through which we should understand all things; it is for us in humility to submit ourselves to the emphases laid out for us by God in Christ through the Spirit, to emphasize Jesus and the Gospel over all things: to recognize and accomplish the weightier provisions of faithfulness, justice, love, and mercy over the more “objective” and easily definable yet comparatively more minor aspects of faithful observance of the Lord’s purposes, and to remember what makes us “distinctive” has far less to do with matters of church polity and much more about being transformed by the good news of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, lordship, and the prospect of His imminent return, and understanding all things through that prism. May we not only uphold the truth of God in Christ through the Spirit but also maintain appropriate emphasis in our faith and practice so we might obtain the resurrection of life!

Ethan R. Longhenry

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John and the Word

He had experienced astounding, amazing, and wonderful things. His time on earth was growing short; perhaps encouraged by those who honored him, but certainly prompted by the Spirit of God, he would record his witness so many more might gain insight from his experiences.

Who is he? He did not come out and explicitly name himself. He identified himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 20:20-24). Christian tradition considers this disciple to be “John.” “John” is a common name in Second Temple Judaism: there is John the Baptizer, who came before Jesus; John ben Zebedee, brother of James, an Apostle; and early Christians also spoke of “John the Elder.” Our author is generally associated with either John ben Zebedee or John the Elder. Peter and this “disciple whom Jesus loved” were the ones who ran to the tomb when Mary Magdalene reported it empty (cf. John 20:2-8). In the book of Acts Luke recorded how Peter and John ben Zebedee would visit the Temple together (cf. Acts 3:1): thus, John ben Zebedee might be the “disciple whom Jesus loved.” Papias of Hierapolis, who lived from 60 to 130, considered John the Elder the author of the Gospel and Letters of John as well as Revelation. Good arguments, therefore, can be made for either.

Whichever John wrote this Gospel did so as an eyewitness of these events which so transformed him, and he wrote so that people who heard it might believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and would have life in His name (John 20:31).

Where did John decide to begin his Gospel? Naturally, he chose the beginning; yet not the beginning we might imagine. John began before the beginning with the Word (Greek Logos). The Word was in the beginning; the Word was with God; the Word was God; all things were created by and through Him; the Word was life; the Word was the light of mankind (John 1:1-4).

There was no end of philosophical speculation regarding the Logos in the first century world, but John was no philosopher. John was attempting to communicate the profound mystery which he had encountered. The Scriptures testified to how God made all things by speaking them into existence (Genesis 1:1-2:3); the Psalmist provided confidence such was no mere rhetorical flight of fancy (Psalm 33:6-9). Moses had told Israel how YHWH had fed them with manna so they might learn how people do not live by bread alone but by everything which proceeds from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3).

Thus we can understand John’s witness in John 1:1-4. By what means did God create all things? Through speaking His Word. What provided life for every created thing? God’s Word. What created thing sustains all life? The energy which comes from light. And so the Word of God is life and light.

The beginning of John’s Gospel, therefore, is the beginning of all things, the beginning of the revealing of God, for his Gospel testified to this Word who created and spoke all such things. John will continually evoke these themes throughout his Gospel.

We speak of light as a source of energy but also light as a source of illumination, or understanding; its contrast, darkness, would bring death, and would represent a source of confusion and ignorance. The story of humanity might lead one to conclude that the forces of darkness have overcome the light; but John testified to the contrary. The light of the Word has shined in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:5).

John then introduced his first witness. God sent a man, John (the Baptizer); he testified regarding the Light to come (John 1:6). He readily confessed he was not the light; he wanted people to be ready to believe in the true Light who was coming to give light to all (John 1:7-9).

John then lamented how this Light, the Word, came into the world which had been created through Him, yet it did not recognize Him (John 1:10). For that matter, He had even come to His own people, the Jewish people, the people of God, did not receive Him (John 1:11). Yet John had experienced and knew the promise: those who received Him by believing in Him were granted the right to become children of God, not by genealogy, parentage, or any other human means, but by God (John 1:12-13).

John then simply declared the most profound expression of this great mystery: this Word – the Means of creation, the Life, the Light – became flesh and dwelt, or “tabernacled,” among mankind. John and those who were with him saw His glory, the glory of the One and Only Son of God, full of grace and truth, who had come from the Father (John 1:14).

How could it be? How can the magnitude of divinity be confined to a human body? We do not know; we likely cannot know. Yet our inability to know does not mean it did not happen.

The Incarnation of the Son of God thus remains one of the most profound mysteries and essential tenets of the Christian faith. The Word becoming flesh (as Jesus of Nazareth, whom John will not identify by name until John 1:17) truly is the miracle which leads to all other miracles, as C.S. Lewis attested. Unless Jesus was born, He could not die; if He could not die, He could not be raised from the dead. Everything Jesus will do flowed from His Incarnation.

John’s language remains quite deliberately chosen and maintains a powerful effect. In the Wilderness YHWH made provision for Israel to create and erect a tent, known as the Tabernacle; in the Tabernacle YHWH would maintain His Presence among His people Israel (cf. Exodus 40:34-38). The Tabernacle was retired when the Temple of Solomon was built (cf. 1 Kings 8:1-11), and the Presence of God remained in that Temple until it departed in the days of Ezekiel (cf. Ezekiel 10:1-22). After the exile the Jewish people returned and built another Temple, yet no one ever testified they saw the Presence of God return to it. Yet YHWH did return to Israel as He had promised; He did so by taking on flesh and tabernacling among them as Jesus of Nazareth!

John and his associates perceived His glory. They experienced the power and majesty of God working through Him. They had every confidence in His promise that they would receive the glory of God if they remained faithful to Him (cf. Romans 8:17-18).

John then returned to the testimony of John the Baptizer, for he spoke of how the One who would come after him was greater than him because He existed before him (John 1:15). Ostensibly John waited until here to provide this testimony because it would be otherwise difficult to understand how the One who came after the Baptizer had existed before him.

John then testified how he, his associates, and likely his audience had received all kinds of gifts, grace upon grace, from His fullness (John 1:15). The Law came through Moses; grace and truth came from this Word made flesh, whom John now names as Jesus Christ (John 1:16). “Christ” is Jesus’ title: the Anointed One, the king. It is not as if grace and truth were entirely absent from the Law of Moses, or that in Christ there are no commandments. Instead John spoke of framing and emphasis: Israel had been given the Torah and the Torah defined the covenant between God and Israel, but now our lives in faith are defined by Jesus. Gifts come through Jesus; Jesus is the embodiment of the truth.

John then confessed how no human had ever seen God (John 1:18). No human being has ever perceived the fullness of God with any of the five explicit senses, nor could anyone. Yet John testified how Jesus, the Word made flesh, who is God and in fellowship with the Father, has made God known (John 1:18).

Thus John concluded what is deemed the “prologue” of his Gospel. He has set the tone and the framework for all which would then be related. We can understand how and why John was completely transformed by his experience of Jesus of Nazareth. He had encountered God in the flesh, communicating all the relevant characteristics of God, the embodiment of the means by which God created and sustained all things. John had heard the words of God as his ancestors had heard for untold generations; but John would then be able to experience the embodiment of God’s Word and could share in Him and follow after Him. And now he invites all of us to learn of Jesus, the Word made flesh, so we might also share in Him, follow after Him, and find life in His name!

Ethan R. Longhenry

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Time and Chance

Again, I observed this on the earth: the race is not always won by the swiftest, the battle is not always won by the strongest; prosperity does not always belong to those who are the wisest, wealth does not always belong to those who are the most discerning, nor does success always come to those with the most knowledge – for time and chance may overcome them all.
Surely, no one knows his appointed time! Like fish that are caught in a deadly net, and like birds that are caught in a snare – just like them, all people are ensnared at an unfortunate time that falls upon them suddenly (Ecclesiastes 9:11-12).

Why do things take place as they do? Are they all actively determined by God? How much is due to simple happenstance, and what does that say about God in our lives?

Throughout Ecclesiastes 1:1-9:10 the Preacher meditated upon the hevel of life under the sun: all is vain, futile – truly absurd. He compares most human endeavors toward meaning as “chasing after wind”: people pursue pleasure, wealth, wisdom, or other things looking for ultimate purpose and satisfaction and will be disappointed and frustrated by all of them. To rage against such truths is itself futile and striving after wind. God understands better than we do. In Ecclesiastes 8:17-9:10 he has been meditating on the finite nature of humans and the universality of death. He thus commended enjoying relationships, food, and work, to not take them for granted, and to resist seeking to find immortality in any aspect of life “under the sun.”

The Preacher continued with more relevant observations. The person with the best skill may not always win the race; battles are not always won by the side with material and numerical advantages. The wisest and most discerning may not be the most prosperous and wealthy. Knowledge is no guarantee of success. Despite all the best training and preparation, one may still prove unsuccessful in their endeavors. In short, life does not come with guarantees; time and chance happen to everyone (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

Time and chance do not only feature in terms of human exploits; they also affect our very existence. We do not know the appointed time of great misfortune and/or our death; just like the fish or bird were going about their lives until they got caught in the net or snare, so are we when misfortune and/or death comes (Ecclesiastes 9:12).

The Preacher has thus exposed two of the most pernicious lies we tell ourselves: “it might happen there, but it will never happen here,” and, “it may happen to them, but it will not happen to me.” We certainly understand why we might want to believe these lies; we all want to avoid and escape disaster, misfortune, and death. If we can create some kind of distance between ourselves and unfortunate events and circumstances, we can assure ourselves we are fine and well.

Yet time and chance can overcome any of us. We can treat our body well and do those things which should support health; we might get sick or suffer a heart attack and die anyway. We can invest much in education but still not succeed in our endeavors. All kinds of athletes prepare and train well, perhaps becoming acknowledged as the greatest, or one of the greatest, athletes of their discipline; and yet they might still lose their competitions. Military history is filled with the stories of large armies brought low and defeated by far smaller groups; likewise, the news often features stories of people going about their lives, perhaps even enjoying a moment of great success, only to then suffer some grievous loss or death.

Furthermore, much of our judgmentalism and resistance to mercy toward others stems from our anxieties and fears about disaster, misfortune, and death. When we are informed about the miseries or misfortunes of others, we often look for reasons to justify or rationalize why it is happening to them in such a way as to create that distance between them and us. People are in poverty? It must be their fault: they must have made bad decisions. People are sick? It must be their fault: they must have not maintained the right diet, or did not appropriate use the correct essential oil or medicine. What is left unsaid, but absolutely implied, in all such statements is, “and so it won’t happen to me.” Such thoughts and feelings rooted in anxieties and fears leads to behaviors rooted in anxieties and fears: it is easy to want to avoid helping the poor and blaming the poor for their poverty, or to avoid the ill, if one is imagining one might suffer something similar by being in proximity to such people.

Now there were some present on that occasion who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.
He answered them, “Do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered these things? No, I tell you! But unless you repent, you will all perish as well! Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them, do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who live in Jerusalem? No, I tell you! But unless you repent you will all perish as well!” (Luke 13:1-5)

In the ancient world it was assumed people suffered because they had sinned: after all, if God blesses the righteous and curses the wicked, and someone suffered some great malady or misfortune, therefore, they must have been wicked and deserved it. The Preacher questioned that logic: everyone has sinned, and there are times when the righteous suffer evil and the wicked prosper (cf. Ecclesiastes 7:15, 20, 8:14). In Luke 13:1-5 Jesus would entirely overthrow such logic: while sometimes people will reap misfortune because they sowed iniquity, the suffering of misfortune does not automatically mean such a person is a worse sinner than anyone else. Jesus instead warned how, without repentance, everyone would perish.

Such is the ultimate lesson also of the Preacher’s words, perhaps expressed best in the adage “but by the grace of God there go I.” We cannot blame others for their misfortune in order to prove why we will not suffer the same. We might not suffer the same right now, but we might suffer it in the future. Furthermore, if we had found ourselves in the same circumstances as the person we are blaming, we would most likely end up making the same or similar decisions. Misfortune and suffering should never become excuses to become alienated from others; instead, such are invitations to show compassion and mercy toward others just like we would hope others would show compassion and mercy to us in similar circumstances (cf. Matthew 7:12). Ultimately, it can happen here. It can happen to us.

But what does this say about God and His sovereignty? Many have taken great theological comfort in a particularly exacting view of God’s sovereignty, imagining God actively decrees everything which happens down to the smallest movements of the universe, and thus anything we suffer is God’s direct, explicit, specific will for us. Such “comfort” is very much like the “comfort” conspiracy theorists take in their conspiracies: no matter how awful, terrible, or ugly things get, they are still yet being actively controlled and managed, be it by God or by the secret cabal behind the scenes. What would be the terrifying prospect which would cause distress to people who take comfort in such theology or in conspiracy theories? The prospect of time and chance happening to us all. That current circumstances are as they are because of the bumbling and often incompetent behaviors of people in elevated stations does not engender confidence about the future. The idea wealth tends to flow to those who already have it and our prospects are already mostly defined by the circumstances of our birth does not seem fair or just to most people. That any of us, despite our best efforts, might come down with some terrible illness at any time, and there is not much we can do about it, causes a lot of anxiety. And is not the point of believing in God to maintain confidence in a higher power who can provide blessings and keep us from misfortune anyway? If time and chance happen to all of us, why bother?

The Creator God who manifested Himself in Jesus is sovereign; but He also is love, and thus does not seek His own, and does not coerce or compel. Under the sun we will all suffer from the vicissitudes of time and chance; how and why we suffer in particular ways in this life, or, for that matter, how we might escape certain forms of suffering in this life are mysteries which God perceives but remains beyond our understanding. But in Christ we have the hope of incorruptibility and immortality in the resurrection, and will no longer be caught in the snares of the Evil One and the powers and principalities. Let us therefore maintain our confidence in God in Christ through the Spirit and obtain that resurrection!

Ethan R. Longhenry

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The Benefit of the Doubt

Abraham replied, “Because I thought, ‘Surely no one fears God in this place. They will kill me because of my wife'” (Genesis 20:11).

Abraham is often recognized as a champion of the faith; indeed, he is reckoned as the “father” of all who believe in God after him (Romans 4:12, Galatians 3:8-9). Nevertheless, there are times when his faith was not as strong as it should have been, and this often involved his relationship with others around him.

In Genesis 20:1-18 the story of Abraham and Abimelech is recounted. Abraham is sojourning in Abimelech’s land, but has no confidence in Abimelech or the people. He is convinced that they are so ungodly as to choose murder over adultery (Genesis 20:11)! He tells a half-truth to Abimelech that could have led to disastrous consequences had God not intervened (Genesis 20:1-7). Ultimately, Abimelech looks more righteous than Abraham, since he, at least, acted with integrity (Genesis 20:8-16).

Sadly, this was not even the first time Abraham had done this very thing: he did it in Egypt years earlier with, no doubt, similar motivations, and it led to similar results (Genesis 12:10-20). One would think that Abraham would have learned his lesson!

What motivated Abraham’s tragic and faithless behavior? He did not know the people of Egypt or the south of Canaan, and he therefore assumed the worst about them. He was certain that there was no fear of God or intention of acting honorably among them. Therefore, despite God’s promises and God’s ability to protect him, he continually acted in worldly ways in counter-productive attempts to preserve himself.

These stories of Abraham illustrate for us the necessity of giving others the benefit of the doubt.

As human beings, it is easy for us to focus on the negative and think the worst about other people. This is why Paul commands believers to do the contrary: to focus on the positive (Philippians 4:8) and to think the best about others, especially those of the household of faith:

Be devoted to one another with mutual love, showing eagerness in honoring one another (Romans 12:10).

We might honor one another in various ways, but giving the benefit of the doubt proves significant. If we automatically prove skeptical or suspicious of each other, are we really honoring one another?

Giving others the benefit of the doubt is critical to healthy, functioning relationships. We all like to think that our judgment about others, their actions, and their motivations is sound, but we all know of plenty of times in our lives when we have misread and misinterpreted what others were doing. This is why there are so many exhortations to not judge or to watch one’s judgment (Matthew 7:1-5, Romans 14:10-13, James 4:12). We do not know people’s hearts: we can only see their actions, and actions can have different motivations!

This can be illustrated in every kind of relationship. Consider the husband and wife who are sincerely well-intentioned in their love for one another, and yet often act in unloving ways. What if they thought the worst about one another and the motivations for each others’ actions? A miserable relationship or divorce is in their future. Churches are often torn apart because Christians assume the worst intentions or worst attitudes in one another. Tension often exists among family members or co-workers in a business for similar reasons. And then we have the larger conflicts between segments of a population or between people of different nations, based in part on the assumption of the worst motivations and intentions on the part of the other.

This issue ultimately boils down to trust. As Christians, we are to be full of faith: both trusting in God, being willing to trust in one another and others, and being dependable in turn (Acts 6:5, Galatians 5:19-22). When we assume the worst motivations or purposes in one another, we demonstrate a complete lack of faith in them. But if we give others the benefit of the doubt we show that we trust in their better nature, and our relationships with them can grow and prosper!

If we give others the benefit of the doubt there will be times when the worst motivations are true and we will be disappointed and hurt. However, if we do not give others the benefit of the doubt, we should not be surprised when we have many relationships that have become toxic. We also should not be surprised when our actions are seen in the worst possible light, for why should others give us the benefit of the doubt when we do not give it to others (Luke 6:31)? Abraham, the father of the faithful, rarely looks as foolish as when he has failed to give others the benefit of the doubt. Let us learn from him and be willing to have faith in one another, giving the benefit of the doubt!

Ethan R. Longhenry

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The Tyranny of the Present

The story is told of the man who believed that God would tell him exactly what to do by opening his Bible to a random page and placing his finger on a text. This went quite well for him until the day he opened his Bible and placed his finger upon Matthew 27:5: “and he went away and hanged himself.” He was sure he made a mistake, and so he tried the procedure again, and this time his finger fell on Luke 10:37: “go and do thou likewise.” Quite concerned, he tried a third time, and this time the Bible opened to John 13:27: “what thou doest, do quickly.” So he went and hanged himself!

We certainly hope this story is fictitious, yet it well illustrates the difficulties present in haphazard forms of Bible interpretation. While most people see the fallacy in attempting to ascertain God’s will for their lives through opening the Bible randomly and putting their finger on a passage, many fall prey to its near relation: interpreting the Bible without any regard to its original context as if everything found in its pages were written directly to them. We can call such a phenomenon the “tyranny of the present.” The present is “tyrannical” inasmuch as it is the default means by which we attempt to understand things. We naturally seek to understand all things according to our own perspective; in order to understand what a given text would mean to those to whom it was originally written takes more time and effort.

Much of what is written in the New Testament, especially in terms of moral exhortation, is universal; we have as much a need to avoid the works of the flesh and to manifest the fruit of the Spirit as the Galatians did 2,000 years ago (cf. Galatians 5:17-24). We can make sense of most of Jesus’ teachings in our own day and time as well. Even when we understand a text in its context, we ought to then seek to understand how we can apply the message to our own time and place, as has been done for generations (Nehemiah 8:1-8, Romans 15:4, 1 Corinthians 10:1-12). Nevertheless, we must avoid the temptation to immediately start thinking of how Bible texts may apply to us without first respecting its context; not a few false doctrines have been perpetrated on account of the tyranny of the present!

Distortions in the interpretation of Daniel, Matthew 24:1-25:36, and Revelation throughout time provide the clearest warning regarding the tyranny of the present. Many among dispensational premillennialists today are convinced, in all sincerity, that Daniel, Jesus, and John are speaking about an upcoming tribulation involving helicopters, nuclear weapons, and the armies of Russia, China, and Israel. Each successive President of the United States is reckoned by some to be the Antichrist. Jesus was supposed to return in 2000 or 2012. Yet this is nothing new: Hitler, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Napoleon, the popes, and many others before them were considered the Antichrist in their own day and age. Jesus was supposed to return in 1975, 1914, 1843-1844, 1000, and many other dates that have come and gone as well. Each successive generation is convinced that the end of the world is happening in their own day; whereas one generation will be right by default when the Lord returns, all generations since the first century have been wrong. Yet that has not stopped people from being firmly convinced that current events represent the end of time, and that John saw what would happen in their own generation!

The tyranny of the present is not just found in eschatological matters. Many read the Law of Moses and other aspects of the Old Testament as if they are still subject to that legislation despite the change in covenant and law under Jesus (Ephesians 2:11-18, Colossians 2:14-17, Hebrews 7:12-9:26). Many see the work of the Spirit empowering believers to speak in tongues and prophesy in the first century and believe that they should be able to receive the same abilities, despite the completion of the revelation regarding the Gospel of Jesus and our ability to learn of Him from the written Word, a privilege not yet realized at that time (1 Corinthians 13:8-10).

As Bible students we always do well to remember that nothing in the Bible was written directly to us; Peter and Paul did not write to the churches of America, nor did they speak or write in Elizabethan or modern English. Likewise, if our interpretation of a text cannot make sense of what the original author would be writing to his original audience, then our interpretation has not come to a good understanding of the text. We must resist the tyranny of the present, somehow confident that the Bible is really written to us today, and instead seek to understand what God was communicating to Israel and then the early church and ascertain how we may apply those messages appropriately to our own time and place. Let us seek to understand the Bible in its own context, and learn of God from its pages, and serve Him in the Kingdom of His Son!

Ethan R. Longhenry

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Truth

Pilate asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:38)

The question Pilate asked Jesus is one many have asked: What is truth?

The dictionary provides only a little understanding; many of its definitions of “truth” are tautological (“the state of being true”), but it provides us with a good starting place: the property of being in accord with fact or reality. We often understand “truth” according to its antonym “falsehood”: truth represents reality and fact, while falsehood presents some level of fiction, often with the motive to deceive in order to gain an advantage over the deceived.

Definitions and comparisons give voice to what we intuitively understand about truth even if we may find it challenging to explain it as such. Yet definitions do not help us answer the question about what is truth: what is fact versus what is fiction? What is real versus what is imaginary? And how can we have any confidence in our apprehension of what we believe to be true?

In the Western world, we are children of the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, and positivist thinking. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Western people developed great confidence in our ability as humans to perceive that which is absolutely and objectively true and in our capacity to reason regarding what is true. Exaltation of knowledge and reason has led us very easily into the life of the mind and ideas, thinking about “truth” in terms of propositions which we formulate, analyze, dissect, dispute, and/or defend. Our ancestors maintained great confidence in not only the existence of absolute truth, that which is valid beyond any parameters or context, but also of our ability to come to a firm understanding of such truth or truths. Such exaltation of human reason, along with skepticism about any and all things metaphysical and supernatural, led many to believe certain absolute truth claims could be proven or verified: such is positivism. Even many who believed in God and affirmed the truth of God in Christ devoted themselves to such positivist rationalism and have made much of God as the Absolute Truth whose existence we can “prove” or “verify” based on the nature of the creation, and have made much of various propositions they affirm as “the truth.”

And then that world died in the cataclysms of the twentieth century. After the unimaginable horrors of two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the prospect of nuclear annihilation, it was hard to have a lot of confidence in human progress and reasoning. After millions of “civilized” people eagerly accepted demonic, inhuman propaganda and acted upon it, it was hard to have a lot of confidence in human ability to apprehend truth. When millions upon millions had died, and the prospect of nuclear winter seemed imminent, it was easy to fall into existentialist despair. Thus the Western world saw the rise of postmodernism and a return to Pilate’s question, bitter in despair: what is truth?

Pilate’s question to Jesus, of course, was less than sincere. Nothing in anything which has been preserved about Pontius Pilate would give us any reason to believe he was on a noble quest for what is true. Pilate was a man of the world, the dog-eat-dog rat race in which “truth” is only as good as it proves advantageous. Such is the world Machiavelli would well describe 1500 years later: it is better to be feared than loved. Ethics and morality are necessary for a society to function, but to obtain and maintain power one will have to breach them continually. Along the same line of thought, if you say something often enough, you can get people to believe it, and thus you can create and impose your own truth.

Our Enlightenment ancestors proved naïve and overly optimistic about human capacity for reason and ascertaining truth. We are finite, created beings: there is only so much we can perceive and understand. Our brain receives sense impressions from the world around us through our five senses; the abilities these senses provide are amazing and wonderful, but none of them are absolute. All of them involve active construction work by the brain. We cannot but miss seeing some things in our field of vision; some sounds our ears will sense but will be filtered out by the brain; we will not perceive some smells or tastes, and we cannot sense all things by touch. Furthermore, we can learn things about our environment, history, and the like, but we can never come to a full understanding of any of it. We will not have everything preserved; scientists continue to learn more about all kinds of things, even those things we think are basic to reality. Our memories are not static; according to the best evidence we presently have, in order to remember an event or experience our brains will recreate the event and have to re-archive it, and will almost invariably adapt and change that memory. We can never escape being “us”: pure objectivity is impossible. We have perceived or learned everything through the framework and prism of our own perspective, context, and background. We can never fully escape ourselves. And none of this even begins to speak of the corruption we have experienced on account of sin: our sense faculties and memory have been corrupted by sin and death, and we experience all kinds of motivated reasoning in how we perceive the world.

Thus many of the postmodern critiques of modernism remain quite valid. It was never a good idea for Christians to have been caught up so fully in the spell of Enlightenment rationalism and positivism. We have come to expect too much from humanity and have not been skeptical enough about our abilities. We did not take sophists and their sophistry seriously enough and naively maintained confidence that truth will prevail over error despite all the evidence throughout history to the contrary.

Yet is all lost? Is truth completely beyond us? What is truth?

What motivated Pilate’s question to Jesus?

Then Pilate said, “So you are a king!”
Jesus replied, “You say that I am a king. For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world – to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37).

Jesus said He came to testify, or bear witness, to the truth, and those who belong to the truth listens to His voice. So what was this truth to which He bore witness? How can anyone belong to the truth?

Jesus replied, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

What is the truth? Jesus is the Truth. The Word of God is truth (John 17:17); Jesus is the Word of God which took on flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1, 14).

Then Jesus said to those Judeans who had believed him, “If you continue to follow my teaching, you are really my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).

How could Israelites know “the truth” so that “the truth” would set them free? One can “know the truth” only like one can “belong to the truth”: one must believe in Jesus and come to know Jesus.

According to the Christian faith, therefore, Jesus is the Truth. Jesus came as God in the flesh, lived, suffered, died for our sins, and was raised on the third day in power by God, ascended, and now reigns as Lord. One day He will return to judge the living and the dead and all will be raised and transformed for eternal life or condemnation. We can communicate and speak of these truths as propositions, but their fact or reality is not in the proposition itself but in Jesus as ultimate Reality.

Jesus, therefore, is Truth. If the human category and conception of “absolute truth” has validity, “absolute truth” is God in Christ. God is our Creator, and He created us through His Word, and in His Word we have life, and that life is now manifest in Jesus (John 1:1-18. 1 John 1:1-4).

It has always been a fool’s errand for humans to imagine they could stake any substantive claim to capture the absolute, objective truth of anything. Our perception of reality is mediated by the senses and constructed by the brain; thus we can apprehend what is factual and real to some degree or another, but never fully absolutely. Even the most basic truth, like we exist, or Jesus is the Word of God made flesh and is the Truth, we can accept but never fully apprehend or understand. In our finite perspective there will be some things we will miss, however consciously or unconsciously; our perception and interpretation of reality do not absolutely, objectively reflect reality. If the standard to which we are held is full understanding, we will all fail miserably.

Thanks be to God, therefore, that the standard is not comprehension, but confidence. We are to maintain confidence in God in Christ through the Spirit and entrust ourselves to Him. As we seek to better understand the creation, we ought to do so not in order to manipulate and master but to better enjoy what God has made and glorify Him because of it. We can come to an understanding of what is true as we follow Jesus and become more like Him; the more we follow Him, the greater we are aware of the profound love of God displayed in Christ and how much greater God is than we are, and thus we learn greater humility and to hold our perceptions more lightly.

Jesus, therefore, is the Truth. We can come to a better understanding of all things when we understand them in and through Him. In Christ we are relieved of the burden of the expectation to come to full apprehension of truth as well beyond us and well entrusted in God our Creator. Let us therefore pursue Jesus the Truth and find eternal life in Him!

Ethan R. Longhenry

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Walking Worthily of Our Calling

Paul’s powerful presentation in Ephesians 1:1-3:21 no doubt had its effect, overwhelming the Christians who heard or read it. Paul had set forth the spiritual blessings with which God has blessed Christians in Christ: election; a great salvation, not by works but through grace and faith displayed generously in Christ; access to God in Christ, provided equally to Jew and Gentile who were made one man in Christ; the presence of the Spirit, in whom they had been sanctified; joint participation in the church of which Jesus was the head, a temple for the Spirit, in which all have equal standing before God as members of His household. Paul had wished for them to come to an understanding in the heart of the greatness of the love God has displayed in Jesus; God was able to do well beyond whatever Christians could ask or think.

God had done all of these things or had provided for them in Christ. Paul then turned to speak of how Christians ought to respond in light of all of these wonderful blessings. In short, Paul expected Christians to walk worthily of this calling they had received from God (Ephesians 4:1). He would set forth what walking worthily looked like in Ephesians 4:2-6:20, the “exhortative” or “practical” half of the letter to the Ephesians.

Paul began with a strong emphasis on unity (Ephesians 4:2-6). He had already explained how God secured unity among Christians through the reconciling work of Jesus on the cross (Ephesians 2:11-3:12); Christians must strive to maintain that unity (Ephesians 4:3). They do so by remaining humble and meek, patient and tolerating one another in love, as if constrained by the peace secured for us through Jesus’ work (Ephesians 4:2-3; cf. Ephesians 2:11-18). Paul stressed the “oneness” of Christianity: one God, one Lord, one Spirit, one faith, one body, one baptism, one hope (Ephesians 4:4-6). Polemically this unity can be used to argue against factionalism and divisiveness; yet Paul’s point is to reinforce the importance and power of unity. God is one in relational unity; God has provided one sufficient sacrifice on our behalf; God has set forth one way for salvation: thus Christians must strive to maintain that unity in the Spirit in the bond of peace. Sadly, for the most part, “Christendom” is far from the unity Paul here emphasizes. Too many are content with a surface-level unity which is really declaring victory in defeat. Real unity takes hard work, humility, and trust in the Lord Jesus, and we do well to strive to be Christians only, preserving the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and upholding the one faith in the one body of the one Lord from the one Spirit to obtain the one hope.

But maintenance of unity is not only the responsibility of the individual Christian. God has freely given gifts in Jesus as is written in Psalm 68:18: Jesus descended in death and ascended far above the heavens to fill all things (Ephesians 4:7-10). Within the church God has given various people fulfilling different roles, apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers (Ephesians 4:11). They serve the body of Christ, equipping Christians for the work of ministry (and accomplish their work of ministry themselves), building up the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:12). This work would continue until all would obtain maturity in Christ, no longer troubled by various teachings and doctrines, but having grown up into Christ the head from whom all the body is joined together, would work together to build up one another in love by speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:13-16). No more beautiful passage can be found in the New Testament regarding the work of the church than Ephesians 4:11-16: we have the words of the Apostles on which to ground our understanding of Christ and His purposes, the words of the prophets to exhort us to faithful conduct, evangelists to encourage people in the Gospel, and shepherd teachers to provide instruction to apply the Gospel to life, allowing for all Christians to grow and mature and build each other up in their most holy faith to glorify God and strengthen one another.

If one would walk worthily of the calling in Christ and seek to maintain unity and build up the body of Christ, one must give thought to how one is living and how they relate to others, and Paul continued in Ephesians 4:17-32 to this end. Christians must no longer walk as the people of the nations do, alienated from the life of God, hard of heart on account of sensuality; such is not how the Ephesian Christians learned Christ and the truth in Him (Ephesians 4:17-20). The Ephesian Christians were mostly Gentile; Paul uses “Gentile” in Ephesians 4:17 as we might use the term “pagan,” with all of its negative connotations. The Ephesian Christians could not follow Jesus and live according to their former patterns; instead, they were to put away that previous way of living, reckoned as an “old man” corrupted in deceit, and to instead be renewed in the spirit of their mind, putting on the “new man” created in righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:20-24). Paul then shifts to speak of specifics: since Christians are now one body, they should stop lying to each other and speak truth to one another (Ephesians 4:25; cf. Zechariah 8:16); they may have cause to be angry at times, but they should not allow it to fester into sin and give an opportunity for the devil (Ephesians 4:26-27; cf. Psalm 4:4); those who stole should cease and instead work to have something for those in need, to cease being a drain on others and become a source of support (Ephesians 4:28). Paul addressed matters of conversation and relationship: Christians must not speak corruptly but to speak well to edify and give grace to those who hear; not grieving the Spirit of God in whom they were sealed; putting away bitterness, wrath, anger, and slander, being kind to one another, disposed to feel for one another, and to forgive one another, as God has forgiven in Christ (Ephesians 4:29-32). The Spirit is grieved when we do not work to maintain unity in Him, speaking that which is false, giving vent to anger which destroys relationship, undermining trust, and refusing to grant the forgiveness to others we so desperately seek for ourselves.

Christians do well to walk worthily of their calling, striving to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Such requires great effort in love, humility, compassion, and kindness, looking for opportunities to build up and strengthen, and resisting the impulse to vent spleen and corrode relationships. May we walk worthily of the way of Jesus, putting on the new man, renewed in the spirit of our minds!

Ethan R. Longhenry

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Living Dogs and Dead Lions

So I reflected on all this, attempting to clear it all up. I concluded that the righteous and the wise, as well as their works, are in the hand of God; whether a person will be loved or hated – no one knows what lies ahead.
Everyone shares the same fate – the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the ceremonially clean and unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. What happens to the good person, also happens to the sinner; what happens to those who make vows, also happens to those who are afraid to make vows. This is the unfortunate fact about everything that happens on earth: the same fate awaits everyone. In addition to this, the hearts of all people are full of evil, and there is folly in their hearts during their lives – then they die.
But whoever is among the living has hope; a live dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead do not know anything; they have no further reward – and even the memory of them disappears. What they loved, as well as what they hated and envied, perished long ago, and they no longer have a part in anything that happens on earth.

Go, eat your food with joy, and drink your wine with a happy heart, because God has already approved your works. Let your clothes always be white, and do not spare precious ointment on your head. Enjoy life with your beloved wife during all the days of your fleeting life that God has given you on earth during all your fleeting days; for that is your reward in life and in your burdensome work on earth. Whatever you find to do with your hands, do it with all your might, because there is neither work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, the place where you will eventually go (Ecclesiastes 9:1-10).

We are all going to die. So how should we live?

Throughout Ecclesiastes 1:1-6:12 the Preacher meditated upon the hevel of life under the sun: all is vain, futile – truly absurd. He compares most human endeavors toward meaning as “chasing after wind”: people pursue pleasure, wealth, wisdom, or other things looking for ultimate purpose and satisfaction and will be disappointed and frustrated by all of them. To rage against such truths is itself futile and striving after wind. God understands better than we do. In Ecclesiastes 7:1-8:9 the Preacher seemed to have set forth a series of aphoristic exhortations not unlike the proverbs for which he is well known loosely organized around the theme of wisdom. In Ecclesiastes 8:1-17 the Preacher would continue in the same aphoristic vein and loosely organized his exhortations around wisdom in terms of the exercise of and submission to power and observations about life but the ultimate limitations and failures of knowledge and wisdom.

We always do well to remember how chapter and verse divisions were added to the text at a far later period; even when they prove helpful for reference purposes, we should hold them lightly. In this way the Preacher’s observations in Ecclesiastes 9:1-6 flow directly from Ecclesiastes 8:14-17. Just as no human can truly comprehend what happens on the earth (Ecclesiastes 8:16-17), so humans also do not know their future (Ecclesiastes 9:1): their works are in God’s hands, whether wise or wicked, and whether they will experience love or hostility. While the Preacher has been confessing all he did not and could not know, he then returned to one of the things which he did know, and the reality which seemingly has informed and undergirded much of his fulminations: everyone dies. A person who is good and righteous, clean, and offers sacrifice? He or she dies. A person who is bad and wicked, unclean, and does not offer sacrifice? He or she dies. A person can make a thousand vows or be afraid to make any vowels at all: either way, they die (Ecclesiastes 9:2). Furthermore, since all are subject to corruption and decay (cf. Romans 5:12-21, 8:17-23), the human heart is full of evil and folly, and then they all die (Ecclesiastes 9:3).

The Preacher has rightly observed the condition of humanity “under the sun.” The universality of death has no doubt animated the Preacher’s sense of existential despair: everything is hevel, breath or vanity, because human life ultimately is but a breath or vanity. You can be the best and wisest person; in your wisdom you might delay the inevitable, but death will still come for you. Humans have been morally outraged for generations when people who have tried their best and have done well have died young and/or in poverty while many others who were wicked and depraved yet lived for quite some time in relative wealth. We all rail against the coming night; we all attempt to find something in which to invest our hope of life beyond this life, whether by building monuments, investing our time and energy in some kind of institution or power, through our influence on others, and/or through perpetuating our genetic line. No matter; we will all die regardless, and most of us will be all but forgotten within a few generations. We do everything we can to deny or suppress this bitter truth. The Preacher has been devastating all such pretense and ignorance and forces his audience to see their condition plainly.

Yet the Preacher can find a glimmer of hope in the situation of the living: they are alive and are conscious. He declared a live dog is better than a dead lion (Ecclesiastes 9:4): the lion has always been a symbol of power and elevated status, while dogs in the ancient world did not share in much esteem at all. Yet the live dog, even in his degraded status, is better than the dead lion; perhaps once majestic, but now a mere corpse rotting in the sun, picked over by scavengers. Thus the Preacher reckoned the living as in a better condition than the dead: the living have knowledge, while the dead know nothing, have no reward, have generally been forgotten, everything regarding which they cared has perished, and they have no active role in the existing creation (Ecclesiastes 9:5-6).

We do best to understand Ecclesiastes 9:5-6 in its own time and place and, as with Ecclesiastes 9:7-10, as encouragement for the living to enjoy life as long as they have it, and not succumb to existential despair. We have no reason to doubt or question the Preacher’s sincerity in his viewpoint regarding the finality of human death; the Psalter at times expresses a similar view of oblivion in Sheol (cf. Psalm 6:5). Oblivion might well be the fate of many souls on the final day, and it may end up being a grace for them. Many scholars understand the Preacher to represent a school of thought very much opposed to the developing confidence of many in Israel regarding life in the afterlife and the hope of resurrection. Yet we can also understand all such things in terms of progressive revelation: the focus of the covenant between God and Israel involved this earthly life, and the importance of life after death would become a far greater part of the life of Israel in the Second Temple Period and fully embodied in Jesus. At the very least, the Preacher’s observations about death stand at variance with Jesus’ solemn exhortation of God being the God of the living, not the dead, and explicitly in terms of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (cf. Matthew 22:31-32). We should also be able to appreciate the dangers of decontextualized proof-texting from this experience: the Preacher spoke based on his understanding and in terms of the understanding of his audience, and while he saw rightly in terms of life “under the sun,” God understands more than he did, as he himself confessed, and no doubt the Preacher himself has come to know the power of God over sin and death in Jesus.

In the face of imminent death and oblivion, what should people do? The Preacher unironically counsels to “eat, drink, and be merry” (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:32): people should enjoy their food and wine, of which God has approved; they should wear clean clothes and anoint themselves, and thus enjoy the little pamperings of life; a man should enjoy his conjugal relationship with his wife, for such is what God has given people to enjoy in their fleeting lives; and whatever they do for work they should do diligently, for there is no energy or work where they are going (Ecclesiastes 9:7-10).

Thus the Preacher again reinforces the core of his exhortation: everyone dies. Everything you hold dear in this creation will fade just like you fade. You cannot build up for yourself any kind of immortality on the earth. Our great frustration and our railing against these realities expresses the profound levels of delusion we maintain about our grandeur. The Preacher does not thus diminish the power or value of life; instead, he enhances it by reminding people of what they do have and what they can enjoy. The things we often consider the “little things” — enjoying a great meal with family and friends, enjoying romance and sexuality, working in ways we find meaningful and expending our energy in ways we find profitable — these are what make life worth living, and we should find some level of enjoyment in them. Wasting away our hours and years to construct a future which will never come and/or investing in schemes for immortality which will themselves fade away would prove to be the real tragedies. Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” hits hard for this very reason. We say “no one on their deathbed wishes they had spent more time in the office” for good reason. Thus the Preacher has said his own version of these things; we can find similar thoughts in the Epic of Gilgamesh which is one of the earliest pieces of literature and wisdom ever recorded. None of this is new. And yet each successive generation still rails against the coming darkness and vainly attempts to invest their hopes of immortality in things which will ultimately perish. We are all Sisyphus; our quest for meaning in life “under the sun” is our heavy rock. We all know better, and yet we struggle to do better.

We consider 1 Corinthians 15:32 in order to demonstrate the tension Ecclesiastes 9:5-10 provides for the Christian, since the Preacher essentially commends an epicurean lifestyle. Not for nothing has our modern secular consensus ended up settling on a form of Epicureanism, because whenever you have limited your perspective to the material plane of existence, and create little if any space for the work of the divine, what else is really left as a viable philosophy of life? Do what you can to avoid pain; pursue what you find pleasurable in ways which cause the least amount of harm. The Preacher remains undefeated: there truly is nothing new under the sun, and what we deem new or modern is most likely something recycled from the past.

Paul wrote as he did in 1 Corinthians 15:32 because if there is no resurrection from the dead, then the Preacher and the Epicureans are absolutely correct. Yet Paul had seen Jesus in the resurrection, the firstfruits of the dead; and since Jesus is risen, Paul maintained great confidence He would return and all who share in Jesus would also share in the resurrection of life (1 Corinthians 15:1-58). Jesus is the most powerful testimony of how God is the God of the living, not the dead.

As Christians we should enjoy food and drink, giving thanks to the God who has given it and blessed it (1 Timothy 4:4-5). Christians who have been joined together by God in marriage should enjoy their romantic and conjugal relationship which is to be held in honor among everyone (1 Corinthians 7:1-4, Hebrews 13:4). During this life Christians should work diligently in order to provide for themselves, to have something for those in need, and to facilitate quiet and godly lives (1 Thessalonians 4:10-12, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15, 1 Timothy 5:8). We do well to heed the wisdom of the Preacher, which is itself wisdom understood by humans in almost every age and time: you cannot take it with you; your pretensions for immortality on this earth are delusional; a life entirely lived for a future which will never arrive is the ultimate tragedy. Yet we do not lose hope, for our hope was never supposed to be in this life alone. God is the God of the living, not the dead; in Christ our future is not oblivion, but incorruptibility and immortality in the resurrection, and a new heavens and earth which will never fade or decay. May we serve God in Christ through the Spirit and obtain this resurrection of life!

Ethan R. Longhenry

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