Faith

I suppose I haven't much excuse for not writing here lately. I have had some thoughts kicking around in my head about a variety of topics, and actually have a post in draft that's not ready yet.

But in the meantime, I thought I would share some thoughts on faith generated by Matthew 21.21. The text is problematic to me because it seems to imply that faith is some sort of lever we pull on the slot machine that is God, and if we have enough of it, or the right sort, it'll drop all sevens and we'll get what we wanted.

Since a fair number of people (present readership excluded, I'm sure) treat God like a genie in a bottle, I guess that such interpretations aren't surprising.

But I think perhaps that we might better reconsider the definition of faith; it is not simply believing (whether you think of it as belief in the head, or some emotionally gripping response to God's grace, or whatever), but also conforming our own wills to God's.

This is probably no earth-shattering perspective, but as I think about it more, I find it an attractive view of faith for several reasons.

First, because it immediately resolves the issue at hand: my faith no longer prompts God to do something I want, it simply confirms his will. This seems to jive nicely with the understanding that the phrase "in my name" is not a formula to end prayer but actually means "with my authority."

Second, because it speaks most dramatically to the submission of Christ to the will of the father. We read in Psalm 22 that Jesus "hoped {i.e., trusted, had faith} on his mother's breasts." It's interesting to me to consider the faith of Christ, as he also believed in his father. If we're willing to accept the notion that faith is not just a mental or emotional agreement with some proposition, but a description of how we conform our will to God's, we can see most readily in the Scripture the faith of Christ.

I like that in particular because it clarifies the link between his faithfulness ("from faith" in Romans 1) and our own ("to faith").


It's certainly something I'd like to mull over for a little while, but this could be the start of a fruitful area of study.

Genesis

Since the year has turned over, I am starting reading the Bible in a year from scratch. I've ditched the plan I was using before in favor of looking at passages in a more acceptable context rather than through arbitrary divisions.

Naturally, this means I'm looking at Genesis (and Matthew, when doing NT readings), and I have again been struck at the types of Christ that we see in the first few chapters. I mentioned these in some post awhile ago, but these are the ones I've identified so far:

• Adam as a type of Christ and Eve as a type of the church: when Adam is naming all of the animals, we see that nothing else in creation was sufficient to be his match, and so Eve was specially created not just for Adam, but also from him. In the same way, we were created for and from Christ.


• Adam again, when he chooses Eve over God. We read later that Eve was deceived by the serpent, but Adam ate knowingly, choosing to remain with Eve. In the same way, Christ knowingly chose to become sin on our behalf (2Co 5.21) so that we would be united with him (Ro 6).


• The prophecy of 3.15, while not a type, is nonetheless an important part of the narrative and reinforces our focus on Christ in the opening chapters.


• Finally, the institution of blood sacrifices is apropos. When Adam and Eve realize their nakedness (often taken as a symbol of sinfulness; compare to Revelation, the parable in Matthew of the wedding, and so on), they sew their own coverings, which nicely (and properly, I think) symbolizes our own efforts to cover up our sin. But when God throws them out of the garden, he kills two animals and clothes them in animal skin. We see that blood must be shed, first, and second, that God must do it. While this particular type probably doesn't have the "legs" of the others, it's nonetheless a poignant reminder of the death of the innocent in place of the guilty.

I've also tried to pay attention to the narrative a bit more as I've gone through here, in the sense that I've tried to see what the point is behind the story.

The murder of Abel is recorded in part to illustrate (as we read later in I John) the conflict between the righteous and unrighteous, and, I think, Satan's efforts to prevent the prophecy of 3.15 from coming to pass.

In that same vein, I think it's conceivable to view the events of 6.2 as Satan's effort to corrupt the human race. We certainly skip a lot of historical data when reading through Adam's genealogy, but in terms of the plot, we're really looking at how we got to the Flood. Noah survives, I think, not because he is somehow different than everyone else spiritually (I include him in the damning indictment of 6.9), but because God had preserved him in some fashion from the corrupting influences mentioned in the beginning of the chapter.

This is about as far as I've made it so far, but it's been profitable, both in review and in identifying some themes that I'll be looking for throughout the OT.

No More Sea

Last month was a fairly slow month here, largely due to the holidays and other pressures that took me away from blogging regularly. Since it's the new year, I figured it was about time to pick things back up.

We are nearing the end of our study in Revelation at church. This has occasioned a couple thoughts for me in the past few weeks, and I thought I'd briefly share them.


The first relates to chapter 21, where we read that there is no sea in the new heaven and new earth. This occasioned little comment during the sermon, but I thought it would be properly linked with the end of Micah:

19 He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.

It's thrilling to me to connect these two passages because it represents the absolute removal of sin in the new heavens and new earth.

The second thought is occasioned by a comment during the end of a fairly good sermon two Sundays before Christmas. The pastor said something to the effect of, "You were hoping for gospel at Christmas, but we're going to get judgment."

It was striking to me that he set the two in opposition, because judgment really is a part of the good news. We see it, for example, in Psalm one, where the wicked will not stand in judgment. For the righteous, judgment holds no fear, and instead is intended to vindicate. More apropos the text, judgment is cause for good news (cf Re14.6) because we are witnessing the final end of sin.

It is appropriate and right to use judgment to exhort—our God is a refining fire—but God's judgment is not to be divorced from his gospel. It is not merely intended to frighten man to conversion (though it very well does, I suppose), but also to encourage believers that God will cleanse not just the world of sin, but our bodies of their sinful nature.