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In this morning's Worldview lecture, I made a few remarks about deism among America's Founding Fathers, then I began my lecture on naturalism. Once again, I'm using The Universe Next Door, 4th ed., by James W. Sire as the outline for my lectures.

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Listen to The Daily Word online. 

During my first year of graduate school, I read A Black Theology of Liberation by James H. Cone. For me—a conservative, white, suburban kid—reading Cone’s book was an unsettling experience. Cone thought about God and society very differently than I did. Indeed, he argued that my theological methodology and conclusions served racist purposes. One of the most formative moments in my theological education happened when I stopped and asked myself whether he was right. 

Why am I telling you about my unsettling experience? It’s not because I came to agree with Cone’s specific conclusions about white theologians. In my opinion, his conclusions were driven more by quasi-Marxist assumptions than by biblical imperatives. On the other hand, Cone was on to something. Sometimes, not always, but nevertheless all too often, we let our cultural assumptions shape our theology rather than the other way around. 

An interesting case study of this tendency can be found in the September 18^th cover story of Time magazine: “Does God Want You to Be Rich?” For some well-known television preachers, the answer is undoubtedly yes. And they have a point. I sincerely doubt that God wants anyone to be poor. That’s why the Bible contains so many commands to be generous to the poor and to do justice by them. But is the so-called “prosperity gospel” really biblical? Or is it, as the article suggests, “the latest lurch in Protestantism's ongoing descent into full-blown American materialism”? Do we emphasize what the Bible teaches us about prosperity because we—as a nation—are so rich, and we want to justify our lifestyles? Perhaps. I certainly like reading what the Bible says about God blessing me more than I like reading about (or actually putting into practice) what the Bible says about helping the poor. 

The problem is that our culture’s way of thinking easily becomes our way of thinking. And then we—Christians, anyway—find creative ways to read our way of thinking onto the pages of the Bible. The end result is that we deceive ourselves into thinking we’ve acted biblically about some issue when in fact all we’ve done is found those verses in the Bible that validate our preconceived notions about God and society. 

Romans 12.1 talks about offering our bodies as living sacrifices to God. Romans 12.2 goes on to explain how that living sacrifice applies to our minds: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” 

The purpose of sound thinking is godly living. In order to live a godly life, we need to think like him, to let his thoughts become our thoughts. That can only happen when we are alert to the subtle ways in our which our thinking about God conforms to our social prejudices, rather than our society being transformed by what the Bible teaches us about God.

Here's the audio for my lecture on deism.

Download lecture MP3.

Listen to The Daily Word online. 

In August 1991, I traveled to the Qinghai Province in northwestern China with my family. We visited various cities where my missionary grandparents had planted churches prior to the Communist Revolution of 1949. While in the city of Xining, I saw a butcher kill a goat on the sidewalk in front of his store. Until then, I’d never seen a butcher at work. But now I had, and it gave me a new perspective on Romans 12.1. Here’s what Paul writes: 

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 

The work of a priest and the work of a butcher are very different. In the Old Testament, a priest killed an animal as a sacrifice to God. A butcher, by contrast, kills an animal in order to sell its meat to customers. The ends a priest and a butcher pursue may differ, but the means to those ends are the same. Either way, as sacrifice or meat, the animal must be killed. 

But the necessary death of a sacrificial animal renders Paul’s remarks oxymoronic. How can something be a “living sacrifice”? It’s helpful to remember that Paul is speaking metaphorically here. He’s talking about us, not animals, although he uses the language of sacrificial animals to make an important point about us. 

That point can best be illustrated by Pastor Mung, a remarkable Christian leader I met in Xining. Pastor Mung had been a colleague of my grandparents. He was an exceptionally gifted pastor and evangelist. Because my grandparents were American citizens, they fled the Communist Revolution and returned stateside. But as a Chinese national, Pastor Mung had no place to go. 

The Communists were not kind to Chinese Christians. They viewed them as ideologues of the non-Communist West. So, the Communists confiscated Pastor Mung’s church buildings, they banned him from holding meetings, they imprisoned him, and even when they paroled him, they curtailed his ability to find good housing and a job. Throughout those very hard years, he soldiered on, ministering to his congregation in secret, encouraging small handfuls of believers through home visits. 

Pastor Mung lived sacrificially. I’m sure he could have said a few words or performed a few actions that would have somewhat alleviated his situation. But before God, in his conscience, he knew that he could not compromise his calling. He subordinated his own interests to the greater interests of the kingdom of God. 

Pastor Mung’s living sacrifice was effective. When I met him in 1991, the Communists had relaxed their attitudes, restored his church buildings, allowed him to openly gather a congregation, and even paid him a retirement pension. (He was in his early 80s at the time. He died a few years ago.) Most importantly, nearly 10,000 people had become baptized members of his church. 

In the Old Testament, a priest killed an animal, and it provided atonement for a time. On the streets of Xining, a butcher killed a goat, and it fed people for a meal. But Pastor Mung’s ministry will stretch throughout eternity, as only living sacrifices can do.

Today, in New Testament Survey, I lectured on the Gospel according to Luke.

Download lecture MP3.

Listen to The Daily Word online. 

Today, I would like to meditate with you on ten words from Romans 12.1: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy….” 

Whenever you read the word therefore in Scripture, you should ask what it’s there for. In Romans 12.1, therefore connects religion and ethics. According to Gordon Fee, religion in the New Testament is grace, while ethics is gratitude. Romans 1-11 is a powerful exposition of the doctrine of justification by grace through faith. Romans 12-15 is an equally powerful exposition of the spiritual and moral work of the justified.  

In the Christian worldview, the relationship between religion and ethics is never either/or, but always both/and. Grace begets gratitude. Faith works. 

Therefore is a connecting term. In deductive logic, it links the premises of an argument to a sound and valid conclusion. For example: 

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal. 

Is that how Romans 12.1 connects religion and ethics? Does Paul provide a logical syllogism showing why the proper conclusion to grace is gratitude? Or that the premise of works is faith? 

Perhaps, although it’s difficult to pick out what precisely that syllogism might be. In my opinion, therefore in Romans 12.1 is less logical than psychological. Notice that Paul says, “Therefore, I urge you…,” not, “Therefore, the sound and valid conclusion is….” The connection between religion and ethics is personal, not philosophical. Ethics arises out of a specific kind of relationship to God. Notice that Paul says, “I urge you in view of God’s mercy.” Religion and ethics go together because grace and gratitude go together. 

Did you know, in fact, that grace and gratitude derive from the same Latin word, gratia, meaning “grace” or “favor”? Gratitude, to coin a phrase, means having a “graced attitude.” Healthy individuals respond to a favor with thanks. When that favor is forgiveness for an offense, the gratitude grows in proportion to the enormity of the sin that has been forgiven. 

In Matthew 18.21-35, Jesus tells the parable of a man who is forgiven by his creditor of a great debt but nonetheless turns right around and tries to niggle pennies out of his own debtor. He gets caught in the act and thrown into jail. “Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” the creditor asks. The debtor in Jesus’ parable didn’t understand the personal connection between religion and ethics. He didn’t realize that God’s goodness flows to you (that’s religion) and then through you (that’s ethics). He didn’t have a graced attitude. 

But a graced attitude doesn’t just mean doing the right thing. It means doing the right thing with the right motivation. Had the debtor in Jesus’ parable forgiven his own debtor out of begrudging obligation to his own creditor, he still would have missed the point. Grace doesn’t entail duty. It entails opportunity. We don’t have to forgive others or do them good works. We get to. 

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy to __________. I’ll let your graced attitude fill in that blank.

Listen to The Daily Word online. 

About halfway up the 286 spiraling stone steps of the Oleviste Church tower, I began to wonder whether the view it afforded of Tallinn, Estonia, was really worth the heart-pumping, lung-burning, knee-buckling effort. Construction on the Oleviste Church began in the 13^th Century. At one time, it was the tallest building in Europe. And the only way to the top was one unevenly sized, medieval stair at a time. 

I thought about the Oleviste Church tower when I read Romans 11.33-36. Romans is Paul’s most theologically systematic and rigorously argued letter. About halfway through it, in chapters 9-11, we encounter some of the most difficult theologizing ever put by pen to paper. The heart pumps, the lungs burn, and the knees buckle as we climb the spiraling steps of Paul’s argument about his fellow Jews’ rejection of Christ.  

The theology of these three chapters is intrinsically difficult, but the sociological issue behind them is difficult too. Honestly, when was the last time you—a Christian—thought theologically about the first-century Jewish rejection of Jesus? In Paul’s day, that was an important theological issue. Two millennia of Gentile Christianity have mostly pushed it out of our minds. But still we climb Paul’s steps anyway, one at a time. 

More than once, I have grown frustrated with Romans 9-11. I haven’t known what to write. Sometimes, I have wanted to give up, skip the entire section, and move directly to Romans 12-16, which are very practical in orientation. But Bible reading—like stair-climbing—is a discipline. You have to take the steps as they are, not as you want them to be.  We might wish that Paul would skip directly from Romans 8.39’s assertion that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” to Romans 12.1’s conclusion, “Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices.” But that’s not the way Paul built the staircase. And anyway, how could we ever reach the top by skipping the middle of the climb? 

When I reached the top of the Oleviste Church tower, the panoramic view of Tallinn’s old town made the climbing worth every palpitation, wheeze, and cramp. If you ever get the chance, climb the tower. Tallinn is beautiful. 

So is God, only more so. We do the hard work of theologizing so that we get a better sense of who God is. Romans 9-11 teaches us, in essence, that God is faithful even to the faithless, whether Jew or Gentile. “God has bound all men over to disobedience,” Paul writes in Romans 11.32, “so that he may have mercy on them all.” And when we get that breathtaking view of God’s universal mercy, all we can do, like Paul, is excitedly exclaim: 

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!  

"Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?"    

"Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?"    

For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.

 If your theology of God doesn’t result in heart-pumping, lung-burning, knee-buckling worship, then buddy, you’re probably climbing the wrong stairs.

My friend Ron emailed me the following video. It's about a 65-year-old dad and his 43-year-old son who run marathons and triathlons together. The kicker? The dad pushes his son in a wheelchair. It's entitled, appropriately enough, "Can."

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryCTIigaloQ[/video]

Today, in New Testament Survey, I lectured on the Gospel according to Matthew.

Download lecture MP3.

Listen to The Daily Word online. 

I have made a pilgrimage to Israel several times. First-time Christian pilgrims inevitably come away with an epiphany and two questions. The epiphany: Jesus was here! He walked and talked then where we can walk and talk today. The questions: Why didn’t the Jews believe in him then? And, by extension, why don’t they believe in him now? Those are very good questions, and Romans 9-11 is Paul’s very good answer. 

Over the past several weeks, I have walked you verse by verse through Paul’s argument about the unbelief of his fellow Jews. In Romans 11.25-32, Paul weaves the complex strands of that argument into a conclusion. Here’s what he writes: 

I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:  

"The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins."    

As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. 

The first strand of Paul’s argument is expressed in the word hardening. “Israel has experienced a hardening.” Jews in Jesus’ day rejected Christ because, for whatever reason, they hardened their hearts against him. Of course, this is not a uniquely Jewish failing by any means. All of us—Jew or Gentile—have hardened our hearts against God. That’s why he sent his Son into the world to save us. Our hearts may be hard toward God, but his heart toward us is not. 

And Israel’s unbelief had good results for us Gentiles. That’s the second strand of Paul’s argument: The good news of salvation began to spread among the Gentiles because of Jewish unbelief. In God’s way of doing things—and he never wastes even bad experiences—our belief in Christ is possible because of Jewish unbelief. You and I are part of “the full number of the Gentiles” Paul wrote about.  

But God is still not done with Israel. That’s the third strand: “All Israel will be saved.” Paul prophetically foresaw a day when modern-day Jews would come to Christ in droves. You see, God doesn’t give up on his prodigal children. “God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.” What are those gifts? What is that call? To “have mercy on them all.” 

Is your heart hard toward God? Then soften it up. Only a soft heart can receive God’s grace.