A Matter Of Procedure

Recently a reader posted a comment on one of my blog entries from a couple of months ago, and although I replied there in the comments, the reply was getting long and I wanted to develop it into something more in its own post. The original comment (which oddly seemed to have little to do with the original blog entry) is:

Your verse in john 3:16 has a miss print "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved " there are plenty if others here's a couple mark 16:16 Jesu says it again ,acts 2:38 the whole bible is inspired by God not just what we edit for what ever reason Billy Gramm once said he don't preach baptism because he wouldn't have as many followers oops I give anyone $500 if they can prove you don't need baptized

My reply was as follows:

Acts 16:30-31 - the Philippian jailer asked "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Paul and Silas simply replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." Although the jailer did ultimately get baptized, Paul and Silas, in a simple answer to a simple question, did NOT include it as a requirement. He was saved as soon as he believed in the Lord Jesus.

Romans 10:9 states the requirements for salvation this way: "...if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Again, no requirement of baptism is included.

I've matched your Mark 16:16 and your Acts 2:38, which seem to include baptism as a requirement, with two verses that absolutely do not include it as a requirement. Maybe the "misprint" you're talking about is in your two verses? I'm feeling pretty safe in saying that John 3:16, which is probably the most popular Scripture verse in the whole entire Bible, has been gone over with a fine-toothed comb any number of times. Do I get $500, or since I proved it twice do I get $1,000?

I don't expect to hear back from commenter "Mark" - at this writing I haven't. If I do, I expect it to be mostly an argument containing a lot of Theological hair-splitting. In fact, I can split some of those hairs myself... if you look at the two verses I cited, they say that if you believe in the Lord Jesus, you will be saved. It doesn't say you immediately are saved. So there's room for bullying people into getting baptized with those two Scriptures too, if you want. But I don't see things that way.

In 1 Samuel 16:7, it is recorded that God said to Samuel "For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." God's not as interested with the procedures we follow as with what's in our hearts when we follow them. The Old Covenant provided tons of procedures that you could follow to bring you nearer to God, and I truly believe that if someone had been able to follow them perfectly, they would totally not have needed the salvation that Jesus brought. They would have been made righteous by the Law alone. The fact is, though, that until Jesus, nobody was able to do it. Everyone had the disadvantage that they were creatures hindered, let's say, as if by a birth defect. We couldn't walk straight, because we were born with a lame leg. No matter how hard we try, we simply are unable to live up to the rules and regulations which, if we had been able to live up to them, would have provided righteousness to us. That's what the Law was given to teach us: we just can't do it. Rules and regulations don't work for us. We needed someone to finish the work for us and give it to us as a gift. That person was Jesus.

Which brings me back around to my point. God spent thousands of years driving home His point that we are unable to obtain righteousness through performing the correct activities. Why would God turn around and load another activity on us as a requirement to come to Him? Wasn't Jesus' work sufficient? Didn't God tell Samuel that He looks at the heart, not on outward appearance? Baptism is an outward act, there to be a sign to other human beings. It's an "outward appearance" thing; it happens to your body, not within your heart.

I am a firm believer in baptism. I think baptism is a wonderful sign of the change that has happened to the believer. I do think that there is something spiritual that happens when you are baptized. But I do not think it is a requirement for Salvation. I just don't think God is looking for excuses to keep people out of Heaven. "Hello, Mr. Jones. I see here in the Book of Life that you believed in the Lord Jesus in your heart... very good, very good... and you even confessed Him as your Lord with your mouth, that's wonderful! Oh... oh no. Mr. Jones, I'm afraid you never were baptized. I'm sorry, but even though you made a heart decision to choose Jesus as your Savior and follow Him, because you did not get baptized, you're going to have to go to Hell instead of Heaven. Too bad for you." The idea just seems kind of ridiculous to me.

I've been baptized. I recommend that everyone who becomes a Christian get baptized. It's a very special, valuable experience. But I think that people become Christians immediately, as soon as they allow the Holy Spirit to change their hearts. I think Jesus did the job completely. I think he purchased the gift, wrapped it up and put a bow on it, and offered it to anyone who would accept it. I just don't think there's any extra requirement for Salvation after that.

Heroes: Fictional, Past, and Future

I've been reading a story about a bunch of monsters.

Well, technically, I wasn't reading it; I was listening to an audiobook. And technically, it's not about the monsters; it just has a lot of monsters in it. It's called The Lost Hero, and it's the first book in the second series of books about Percy Jackson.

Well, technically, Percy Jackson's not even in it, so I guess it's not about Percy Jackson, either.

Anyway, I've been listening to the audiobook version this time (I read it last year) because now I have about a 40-minute drive in to work, and I don't have as much time to read now as I did when I rode the bus for the same amount of time. But I wanted to refresh my memory on where the series had left off, because the sequel (The Son of Neptune) just came out and I wanted to remember where the plot was going when I get around to audiobooking that one.

The Percy Jackson novels take place in a world where the gods and goddesses from Greek and Roman mythology actually exist, along with lots of other beings, some nice and some monsters. As in those old stories, the gods and goddesses sometimes get a little bit hot and bothered, and wind up producing children with human mortals; these children are called "demigods" because they are half-god, but they are not immortal. (Remember Hercules? In the ancient myths, he is a demigod whose father was Zeus.) The demigods in the Percy Jackson stories are teenagers, but they go on quests, battle monsters, and generally do a bunch of heroic stuff, just like the demigods in the legends. It's a very exciting fantasy world, and the books are quite popular.

A key plot point in this second story arc is that the gods and demigods find that they have to work together in order to defeat their enemies. In one pivotal scene (mild spoiler here, BTW, in case you haven't read the book), one of the demigods is able to defeat an almost invulnerable enemy by praying to Zeus and then attacking the enemy, knowing that if Zeus doesn't back him up somehow, he will be killed. Zeus does send lightning to assist him, and the enemy is defeated. Isn't that interesting? The boy prays to a god, acts in faith even though he cannot see his solution yet, and then the god backs him up. Isn't that so much like what the Bible asks us to do? Pray in faith and don't doubt, knowing that what you are praying is God's will and not just yours, and God will do His part and the answer will be there when you need it.

Music Inspired by The Story

The book series that begins with The Lost Hero is called the "Heroes of Olympus" series; a demigod who goes on quests and succeeds at them is known as a Hero. When I've been between audiobooks lately, I've been listening to a music CD called Music Inspired by The Story which is a series of songs performed by a pretty amazing group of Christian rock, pop, and even rap artists, sung not about Bible characters, but in their voice. These songs imagine what thoughts might have gone through the mind of David, or Paul, or Moses, or Mary the mother of Jesus, or about a dozen more Bible characters. Characters? Let's call those guys what they are: they are also Heroes. Except these Heroes didn't battle cyclopes and storm spirits; the Heroes in the Bible fought the fight that each Christian faces every day. They trusted, and they doubted. They succeeded, and they messed up. They got confused, nervous, frightened. They didn't understand what was going on sometimes. But ultimately, when their lives were done, the Holy Spirit saw fit to inspire someone to write their stories out for future generations to read. And because of that, I can have Joshua or Daniel or Esther or Joseph, who lived thousands of years ago, as an inspiration. A role model. A Hero.

Do you ever wonder if somewhere, God's still writing our stories into the Bible? What if the Acts of the Apostles actually isn't finished, and won't be finished until this world ends and all of us who follow Christ cease to do our "acts"? What if what we have in our Bibles is the very first few pages of a scrapbook God's been keeping about His children ever since? What if thousands of years from now, someone gets to read in the Bible about... me? What if God is recording my quests... I mean, my "acts"... in a sequel to the Acts of the Apostles? One day I might get to be a Hero!

You know, though, if you let God speak through you, you are a Hero. When I lead my household in a Godly way, I am a Hero to my family. When I share something from the Word with someone by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I am the Hero that person needed to deliver that message to them. When I pray in faith and God adds His power to the situation, incredible, impossible things happen. It's not because I'm a powerful human; it's because He is the powerful God.

I'm not a demigod. Both of my parents are human beings, and I'm pretty sure yours are too. Mine aren't from Olympus; they're from Louisiana. Demigods aren't real, but Heroes of the Faith are. And today is your chance to be one! Accept the quest you are offered today, and be the Hero God has created you to be. Like Esther, you were created for just this time, just this situation. The challenge isn't too hard, because God equips you. Get out there and do something worthy of God's scrapbook! Maybe one day, weeks or years or decades or centuries or eons from now, your acts will be an inspiration for others!

While They Sleep, Redux

Remember this post where I talked about a time when God provided what I needed through the love and kindness of friends while I went to sleep thinking there was no hope? Guess what... I realized that there's a situation just like that in the book of Acts! Check out Acts 12:1-17 in which Peter is thrown into jail and sentenced to execution, and his friends spend the whole night praying for him while he's asleep in the jail cell. You'll love the comedy when he shows up at the house where his friends are praying for his release, and they initially don't believe it's him. They figure it can't be Peter... because Peter's in prison... so it must just be an angel that looks like Peter. Just goes to show you the lengths to which we will inexplicably go sometimes to explain away the miracles of God!

Restoring the Kingdom

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
(Acts 1:6-8 ESV)

It seems like every time Jesus turned around, His disciples were trying to get Him to lead some kind of revolt against the Romans. They even argued about which one of them was better than the others, and who would be Jesus' second in command when He was king. I imagine they kept thinking back to the glory days of the Kingdom of Israel, when David and then Solomon were king and Israel was a superpower in the ancient world. Jesus was the promised heir of David's throne, and they all believed it meant that He would overthrow the Roman empire and once again make Israel a political force to be reckoned with. Jesus kept shutting them down, telling them that His Kingdom was "not of this world" (meaning, maybe, that it wasn't the kind of kingdom this world produces?) but that it was a kingdom that is "of Heaven" and "among you." It wasn't the kind of political kingdom they were expecting, and it wasn't the kind of political kingdom that was in their nation's history. In fact, if they had thought about it, they would have realized that the kind of kingdom that was in Israel's past was the result of their own human desires, not what God desired (God himself said that they had "rejected [Him, God] as their king"). Eventually the disciples got it... but it took them a while!

I was thinking about all that this morning, and suddenly the present day came into sharp focus. The founding fathers of the United States of America were, history tells us fairly clearly, believers in God and in the Bible. They were highly moral people, and principles from the Word of God guided their work in founding this nation. In recent decades there has been a significant hybrid political/religious push to force certain issues into the forefront of politics; call it the "moral majority" or the "religious right" or the "evangelical movement" or whatever you like. Now please don't get me wrong; I believe morality should be at the forefront of every law we make, and the Bible is the place to find your moral compass. But Jesus clearly wasn't training His disciples to become political leaders in the world's system of "kingdoms." Jesus was teaching His disciples to bring people into the Kingdom of God, which exists right in the middle of all of the kingdoms of this World. When you change the hearts of the people, the kingdoms of this world automatically begin to become more like the Kingdom of God. Israel didn't need a new David or Solomon as king, and maybe we don't need a new George Washington. Maybe we need to transform the hearts of the people, and when that happens, Godliness will begin to show up in lots of unexpected places!

One day, “The kingdom of the world [will] become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” Until then, we have our rights as citizens of this nation to be active politically, and as Christians we will act according to what we believe the Bible teaches about fairness and morality, but when we are doing that, we are not necessarily doing the work of God's Kingdom. The Bible teaches us to pray for our leaders, and that authority is given to them by God. And if your God-appointed vocation is to be involved in politics, or if you enjoy it and want to be involved, that's wonderful and important. My vocation is programming computers. I do my job as unto the Lord, but at my job, I am not building the Kingdom of Heaven... I'm building computer programs. Political leaders should not see themselves as building kingdoms for God - Jesus could have obtained a chariot and horses and an army and approached His ministry using the political tools of the day. He didn't do that, because He wasn't building a kingdom of the kind the World builds. Jesus, our example, built His kingdom on foot, right in the middle of huge crowds of people, teaching them about God, laying hands on them and healing them. Maybe as Christians we should look on ourselves the same way - we live in two worlds, one of Earth and one of Heaven. Our vocation and our politics are of the kingdoms of Earth. Those kingdoms need building, and we should be interested and involved in that process. But our ministry to others is of the Kingdom of Heaven. We need to make sure we don't think we're building God's Kingdom when we are actually building a kingdom of this World, because when it all comes down to it, every kingdom of this World (including the United States of America) will one day dissolve and be no more, but God's Kingdom is forever.

Why Read Isaiah?

In Acts chapter 8 there is a story of a man, an "Ethiopian Eunuch," who is reading the book of Isaiah and is supernaturally visited by Philip, who explains to him that the passages are about Jesus. Recently I was listening to this chapter in audio form and I wondered something. Why was this guy reading Isaiah in the first place? He said himself that he didn't have any idea what it meant:

...Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?”

Not only was the Ethiopian reading Isaiah, he was reading it out loud. Now, most Christians I know don't do much muddling around in the Old Testament. I imagine I've spent more time there than most, but even I don't just sit and read Biblical prophecy out loud to myself when I don't understand it at all. And yet here's a guy who is reading Biblical prophecy, to himself, out loud, without knowing what it meant, and knowing that he could not understand it unless someone explained it!

Why would someone do that? I can't say that I can read the Ethiopian's mind, but I can hazard a couple of guesses:

1. The text was beautiful to read. Some sections of prophecy are, I understand, written in poetry in the original languages, and even in English, Isaiah 53 (the chapter he was reading) is quite beautiful to read. Maybe he was a lover of poetry.
2. Maybe he actually understood more than the book of Acts lets on. This passage is widely understood to be about Messiah, and was even then. Maybe the Ethiopian knew it was about Messiah but couldn't understand what it meant about Messiah.
3. Maybe the Ethiopian was a believer in God and had such a desire to know about God that he was just plowing through, hoping that something would stick for him, even though most of it was just looking like black words on a white page.

My money is on #1 and #3, but #1 specifically because otherwise why would he read it out loud? I think he was enjoying the beauty of the passage. Is it bad to read the Word for aesthetics's sake? I don't think so. The Word is "food" for a believer, yes, but when we eat, we enjoy the flavor of our food, don't we? If God wanted it to be only about meaning and never about beauty, He would not have inspired guys like David to write pages and pages of poetry, and Jesus would probably have not delivered a lot of his teaching in entertaining story format (A LOG in someone's EYE??? hehe!!) I appreciate my ESV so much partly because the translators worked hard to balance fidelity to the originals with beauty in English... or, rather, they sought to preserve the beauty and character present in original languages when they brought it across into English.

Read your Bible today. And don't just read it for meaning alone. Read it for meaning, but while you're getting the meaning that God is speaking to you through the text, enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it, stop by a bookstore and look into an ESV or some other translation that makes it a joy for you to read. Make it part of your life, like the Ethiopian was doing. God has provided it for you to enjoy!

See?

This morning I was listening to Max McLean reading John Chapter 1 ESV, and something struck me from the final few verses:

Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!" Nathanael said to him, "How do you know me?" Jesus answered him, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you." Nathanael answered him, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" Jesus answered him, "Because I said to you, 'I saw you under the fig tree,' do you believe? You will see greater things than these." And he said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

-John 1:47-51 ESV, emphasis mine

As I listened to the passage, it occurred to me that Jesus, who was operating in His capacity as Man, had received a vision of Nathanael by the Holy Spirit, Who had descended on Him at His baptism earlier in the chapter. Then Jesus told Nathanael that he would "see greater things than these." It's interesting how Jesus' statement is broken up at the beginning of verse 51, "And he said to him..." as though Jesus were making a separate statement. I always assumed that Jesus meant that the "greater things" were the same thing as "heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man," but to me the way the sentences are written leaves that open to another interpretation.

This chapter, in my ESV, contains the word "see," "seen," or "saw" fifteen times, beginning with the idea in verses 14-18 that although no one has seen the Father, we have seen Jesus and thus have seen God's glory. Then we find out what John saw, what Jesus' soon-to-be disciples saw, then what Jesus saw. And when Jesus saw something, He immediately said that Nathanael would one day "see" greater things. It's almost like the point of Chapter 1 is to emphasize that God purposefully reveals things to people. Maybe Jesus was speaking of the day when His disciples would also be filled with the Holy Spirit and would be able to see prophetic visions like Jesus did (see Acts 2:17 and Joel 2:28). "Do you believe I am the Messiah because of a little vision? Even YOU will see visions one day!" Jesus seems to be saying. Receiving prophetic visions, apparently, is not a valid sign that you are the Son of God!

So what is the significance of verse 51? I looked it up in Matthew Henry, and his explanation is that Jesus meant that Nathanael would see more valid indicators that Jesus was the Messiah, which also makes plausible sense in context. I think there is a little mystery left there, a little bit of ambiguity. Maybe Jesus meant a little of both... that Nathanael would see valid indicators of His Messiahship, and also that Nathanael would one day see and understand things by the Holy Spirit. After all, Peter did, even before the Holy Spirit was given.

Giving God A Lift

It's always bothered me a little when I'm in a worship service and someone says, "Let's lift up Jesus! He said if He was lifted up He would draw all men to Him!" Do these people realize that when Jesus said that, He was talking about his crucifixion?

[Jesus said,] "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. -John 12:32-33 (ESV)

Jesus may have been quoting from the prophet Isaiah, who in talking about the suffering of the coming Messiah said:

Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you-- his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind-- -Isaiah 52:13-14 (ESV)

Elsewhere in the Gospel of John Jesus compared His future experience of being "lifted up" on a cross to Moses lifting up a serpent on a pole in Numbers 21:4-9:

No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. -John 3:13-15 (ESV)

Also see John 8:21-30 for another incident where Jesus used this "lifted up" phrase to describe his crucifixion. Anyone who read through the book of John with his eyes open and brains switched on should have understood this; it bothers me that people seem to not be paying any better attention than that. It's almost like saying "Let's crucify Jesus this morning! Hooray!" and of course that would be totally unbiblical.

I do realize that people mean "worship Jesus" when they say "lift up Jesus." And granted, there is (kind of weak) Scriptural precedence for this usage as well:

And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. -Acts 1:9 (ESV)

But even if you intend "lift up" to mean "exalt," so you're saying that by "lifting Him up" you're exalting and glorifying God, giving Him an honor, then you risk taking credit for something God has already done:

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. -Philippians 2:9-11 (ESV) (italics mine)

In the long run, worship comes from the heart. You can probably sing "Yankee Doodle" if you want to, and if worship is truly in your heart God would accept it. But it pays to actually know what you're talking about even as a leader of worship, and especially if you are a preacher. There are people out there who listen to you and never actually crack open an honest-to-goodness Bible; if you feed them flawed theological images, it will only lead to confusion in the end.

ESV: Our fathers, their yoke, and their faith

A few interesting spots I ran across while reading my ESV as my pastor preached from the NIV.

Acts 15:10-11: KJV - ESV - NIV

I seem to remember verse 11 being a point of contention anyway, because some translations say that we "are" saved (NIV, for example) while others say we "will be" saved (KJV, ESV, others). But the thing that actually caught my eye was that my pastor said that the "even as they" referred to the "fathers", not the "disciples." Many of the translations in my e-Sword leave it ambiguous, but the ESV by saying "will" has made it less ambiguous than the KJV and even the NIV (in the ESV it pretty explicitly refers to the disciples, not the fathers), which would seem to go against their stated goal of being ambiguous where the text is ambiguous. Or maybe it's not that ambiguous in the original and all those other translations got it wrong.

Romans 1:17: KJV - ESV - NIV

Most translations say "from faith to faith" in this verse. Seems like the ESV, RSV, and NRSV are in lonely territory with their use of "for" there: ESV "from faith for faith" RSV & etc. "through faith for faith." Seems like the "to" would indicate a timing concept or a sort of travel metaphor, and the "for" indicates a reason that something is done. (Notice, however, that both the ESV and the NIV have the more traditional rendering in a footnote.)

I wish I could get inside the translators' heads and find out why they settled on what they did in these kinds of cases. They may be right, but to find out WHY they did certain things would be fascinating!