A People for His Name

Christianity is Not Just For "Weak People"

July 22, 2011

Many unbelievers think that people who become Christians do so because they are weak people who need some kind of crutch to make it through their lives. The conversion account of Cornelius seems to refute this common false assertion.

Cornelius was a powerful governmental official in the Roman army (Acts 10:1) of whom everyone in the Jewish nation spoke well (10:22). He thus seems to have been highly successful in his life from a worldly standpoint.

Moreover, he was a very devout and upstanding man who “feared God with all his house” and cared for the indigent in his midst (10:2, 4, 22, 31). The passage thus gives no indication that he was lacking in money, having serious family troubles, disappointed with his life in some psychological sense, or facing some life-threatening physical problem that led him to turn to God.

He did have a fearful encounter with an angel of God (10:4) prior to his conversion, but lost people typically do not have such an experience in mind when they assert that people who get saved do so because they are weak. We who are believers would seemingly do well to use this aspect of the Cornelius account to refute the false notion that Christianity is just for “weak people.”

In Interpretation

Upcoming Publications (D.V.)

July 21, 2011

If the Lord wills, I hope to publish two books in the next 1-2 years:

Christ as God’s Judicial Agent: An Important Element of Apostolic Doctrine and Practice — Summer/Fall 2012; A heavily revised and expanded version of my dissertation

A People for His Name: Profiting Fully From Gentecost — Spring 2013; A thorough treatment of the accounts of Gentecost, the premier evangelistic encounter in Scripture concerning Gentiles

As God directs, if you are a regular reader of this blog, I would appreciate your praying with me and for me that I would be able to produce these resources in a timely manner and that they would be greatly used to advance the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

In Uncategorized

An Easily Overlooked Aspect of Paul's Conversion Accounts

July 20, 2011

Scripture provides information about Paul’s conversion in five passages (Acts 9, 22, 26; Gal. 1; 1 Tim. 1). Christ’s judging for God is an easily overlooked aspect of his conversion.

Paul was traveling to Damascus to persecute believers when Christ appeared to him to judge him by confronting him with his sin and by blinding him (9:3-9).[1] Statements in parallel accounts by Ananias (22:14) and Paul (Gal. 1:16) show God’s ultimate agency and Christ’s intermediate agency (cf. 9:17, 26:16) in His appearing to Paul. Through His judging Paul, Christ provided salvation for him.[2]Hence, the conversion accounts of Paul evidence the soteriological importance of Christ’s work as the God-appointed Judge.

[1] Jesus as the Son of Man judged Paul by showing him that he had been persecuting Jesus Himself and by blinding him (9:4-5; cf. Ezek. 22:2). “The risen Lord’s encounter with Paul on the Damascus Road, places under judgment his life of persecuting believers out of zeal for God. Luke highlights the overpowering nature of the divine encounter by noting that in the brightness of the midday sun a divine light flashed around Paul. Blinding at noontime and being cast to the ground picture the spiritual judgment under which Paul found himself (Is 25:12; 26:5; 29:4).” William J. Larkin Jr., Acts in The IVP New Testament Commentary, ed. Grant R. Osborne (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 319. Christ’s restoring Paul’s sight through Ananias also testified to His judicial agency (John 9:39; cf. Isa. 35:4-5).

[2] James M. Hamilton Jr. argues, “The glory of God in salvation through judgment . . . is the center of the theology of the book of Acts.” “The Center of Biblical Theology in Acts: Deliverance and Damnation Display the Divine,” Themelios 33 (2008): 36.

In Dissertation, Interpretation

Praying For God to Avenge Us

July 17, 2011

In Luke 18:1-5, Luke records Jesus’ parable about the repeated appeals of a widow to an unrighteous judge. Jesus gave the parable to convey the necessity of continual prayer in the midst of circumstances that tend to make people lose heart (18:1). Since the widow persisted in her appeals to the judge that he avenge her against her adversary, he gave her the relief that she requested (18:2-5).

Christ demanded that His teaching concerning the words of this unrighteous judge be heard (18:6). He then emphatically asserted through the use of a rhetorical question that demands a positive answer that God, the righteous Judge, in stark contrast to the unrighteous judge in the parable, will certainly avenge His elect who are crying out to Him day and night (18:7a). In the same question, He also taught that God would do so in spite of delays in His response (18:7b).

Furthermore, He proceeded to declare directly that God would quickly give them justice (18:8a). Christ followed up with a question that points to the necessity of faith in God’s ultimate vindication of His own at the coming of the Son of Man (18:8b). The flow of thought in the passage shows that Christ, as the Son of Man, is the One who will execute that vengeance as the Father’s agent.

By giving this parable and its application, Christ validated appeals to God to avenge His own of their adversaries. The emphatic teaching in this parable strongly implies that believers’ crying out to the Father to avenge them of their oppressors is a righteous practice. Such appeals are in keeping with many similar appeals in the Old Testament (for example, Ps. 10) as well as related content in the New Testament (Rom. 15:31; 2 Thess. 3:2).[1]

Furthermore, Christ’s teaching here accords with His own supreme commitment to entrust Himself in His sufferings to the Father as “the One who judges righteously” (1 Pet. 2:23; cf. Luke 23:46). Moreover, this parable underscores that through unfailing prayer to God, faith in Christ is essential for properly handling injustices that believers are powerless to overcome (cf. Acts 7:59-60).[2] Luke’s inclusion of this account in his Gospel argues for the importance of this dimension of the scriptural teaching about Christ as God’s judicial delegate.[3]

[1] Martyred saints in heaven cry out to God for Him to judge and avenge their blood on those who dwell on the earth (Rev. 6:10).

[2] “When the fullness of time has arrived, God will suddenly and without delay put an end to the distress into which His chosen ones will be plunged by a hostile and evil world. There is no doubt about the certainty that Jesus will come again and that God will then make the righteous cause of the faithful triumph completely and forever. . . . [At Christ’s coming], God’s own elect will still continually be praying to Him that justice should be done to them. . . . He concludes the parable with a powerful summons to His followers to maintain true belief in Him, through whom the Father will give final victory.” Geldenhuys, Luke, 447.

[3] Apart from its context, the use of Luke 18:1 as a proof text for encouraging perseverance in prayer, while of some value, does not furnish the people of God with the real substantive teaching of the passage. For example, although he makes many helpful remarks about prayer in general, Warren W. Wiersbe hardly deals with the teaching of the passage about God’s avenging His elect and makes no specific mention of the Son of Man. The Bible Exposition Commentary, 1:247-49.

In Dissertation, Interpretation, Prayer

God's Avenging of the Blood of His Servants through His Anointed Kings

July 15, 2011

Second Kings 9:6-10 relates how a prophet sent by Elisha anointed Jehu to be God’s anointed king over His people at that time for a specific task:

He poured the oil on his head, and said unto him, “Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, ‘I have anointed thee king over the people of the LORD, even over Israel. And thou shalt smite the house of Ahab thy master, that I may avenge the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the LORD, at the hand of Jezebel. For the whole house of Ahab shall perish: and I will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel: And I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah: And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel, and there shall be none to bury her.'”

God chose Jehu to be His judicial agent to avenge the blood of His servants (9:6-7). At the hands of Jehu, Ahab and Jezebel would reap fierce judgment from God (9:8-10) because they failed to repent of their wickedness.

Throughout human history, wicked people have shed the blood of millions of God’s servants. The same God who avenged on Ahab and Jezebel the blood of His servants that they had slain will one day avenge on unrepentant evil people the blood of all His servants that they have shed (Rev. 6:10; 18:20; 19:2). God will do so through His ultimate anointed King, Jesus of Nazareth.

Let all hear and fear the wrath of God to come upon those who will not repent of the blood that they have shed. The God who delights in mercy will forgive all those who will repent toward Him and believe in His Son.

God’s people who have suffered the loss of loved ones at the hands of evil people must be assured that He will avenge their blood on any people who have shed their blood and refused to repent. Such bereaved saints must rest in God, pray for the repentance of these murderers, and leave it to the God-appointed King to render vengeance on murderers who refuse to repent (cf. Rom. 12:19-21).

“Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).

In Discipleship, Interpretation

"The One Who is Judging All the Earth"

July 14, 2011

In the account of Abraham’s intercession for Sodom (Gen. 18:16-33) and the subsequent judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah (19:1-29), God’s work of judgment through agents is clear. Genesis 18:1-15 shows that the Lord appeared to Abraham with two other men. After two of the group departed (18:22), Abraham interceded with the Third (18:23-32), the Lord, “the One who is judging all the earth” (18:25, my translation).

The two who left were angels (19:1). Later in Sodom, they supernaturally turned away the attempt of the men of the city to molest Lot (19:9-11). They made clear their mission as emissaries of the Lord both explicitly (“the Lord has sent us to destroy it,” 19:13) and by stating that the Lord was the One who was about to destroy the city.

The subsequent account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, however, makes no mention of the activity of the angels in destroying those cities (19:24-29). It states that the Lord who appeared to Abraham destroyed them by raining “brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven” (19:24). This verse shows that the One who destroyed those cities was the preincarnate Christ, and that He did so as the agent of Another, the Lord who was in heaven.

Verse 24 also shows that the righteous Judge of all the earth with whom Abraham interceded (18:25) was the preincarnate Christ. Genesis 18-19, therefore, presents that His divine working as the Lord, the righteous Judge who spares and destroys (18:23-32), was yet as the minister of God’s judgment. This passage that presents the deity of the preincarnate Christ and presents Him as the Lord, the righteous judicial agent of Yahweh, testifies, therefore, to the importance of His judicial agency with reference to His being the Lord. Moreover, in view of the abundant use of κύριος in Genesis (in the LXX) to present God as the Judge,[1] its use in Genesis 18-19 in explicit connection with an emphatic use of the verb κρίνω to speak of work of the preincarnate Christ establishes an important judicial significance for its subsequent reference to Him as κύριος.[2]

Many later Old Testament references to this account further support viewing this passage as an important one.[3] In addition, the New Testament writers’ extensive use of Genesis 18 and 19 (three quotations, twenty-nine allusions and verbal parallels, UBS3) further validates the assessment of these chapters as important to the teaching of the New Testament. Of particular significance are the several New Testament references to the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah that show that this is an important account for understanding apostolic teaching concerning Christ as God’s judicial agent.[4]

Genesis 18-19 shows Christ’s rendering judgment for God. Because Genesis 3:15 prophesied of His future work of judgment, Scripture begins with testimony about Christ’s judging for God both in history and in the future.

[1] Genesis in the LXX repeatedly speaks of κύριος or κύριος ὁ θεός as the One who warned of judgment or rendered judgment (2:16-17; 3:1, 8-24; 4:4-16; 5:29; 6:3, 5, 8, 12, 22; 7:1, 4-5, 16; 8:21; 9:12; 11:5-6, 8-9; 12:3; 15:14; 18:17, 19-20, 22, 25-26, 33; 19:13, 14-16, 20, 24-27, 29; 20:18; 38:7).

[2]ὁ κρίνων πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν (“the one who is judging all the earth,” my translation); the present participle here stresses the ongoing nature of His judging. For data showing the nearly universal use of κύριος in the LXX to speak of God as the Judge, see my article, Interpreting the Word “Lord” in the NT.

[3] Deuteronomy 29:23; Isaiah 1:9; 13:19; Jeremiah 23:14-15; 49:18; 50:40; Lamentations 4:6; Ezekiel 16:49-50; Amos 4:11; Zephaniah 2:9.

[4] Matthew 10:15; 11:24; Luke 10:12; 17:29, 32; 2 Peter 2:6; Jude 1:7.

In Dissertation, Interpretation

Better Health through Using Selected Supplements

July 13, 2011

Over the years, I have studied a lot of information about health and fitness. I have generally been skeptical of what I have read about supplements that tout themselves as “miracle” cures for all kinds of different problems.

I have benefited from using the following supplements:

Flaxseed oil – helped me overcome digestive system problems that I was having a number of years ago

Vitamin B-12 – after doing a vast amount of research when I came down with Bell’s palsy, I used very high amounts of Vitamin B-12 to help treat my condition. God granted me a speedy recovery with minimal lasting damage.

Vitamin C + E + Antioxidants – I came across information several years ago that suggested increasing antioxidant intake shortly after hard exercise to decrease the soreness. I have been using this protocol for some time now and have found a dramatic decrease in the soreness that I experience after hard exercise or other strenuous physical activity.

Vitamin D – I read quite extensively about the benefits of increased intake of this vitamin before trying it to help me recover from upper respiratory conditions. I have found increased vitamin D intake to be of great value in dealing with colds, sore throats, etc.

In Health

Renewed Strength through Weight Training

July 12, 2011

I first began weight training in my late teens. Because I wanted to be an ice hockey player, I trained intensely for some time and received some encouraging benefits as a result.

Over the years, I have continued to weight train. I do not remember, however, ever quite attaining fully the same levels of strength that I had in my early 20s.

This year, I have been weight training consistently once or twice a week for much of the year. It has been very encouraging to see my strength levels on many exercises increase.

I praise God that He has given me renewed strength at such a high level that I am now approaching strength levels that I had in my early 20s in some exercises! The added strength has made some of my daily tasks easier, and I hope to add more strength still.

In Health

Better Health through Regular Stretching

July 11, 2011

I have been using stretching exercises for more than 30 years now. Over those years, I can attest to having benefited greatly from those exercises.

I have used a series of stretching exercises numerous times after long car and plane trips and other activities that have caused stiffness in much of my body. The relief and lessening of fatigue has often been dramatic after taking just 10 or so minutes to stretch out.

I once stepped off a curb unexpectedly because I was not paying attention to what I was doing. Although my back was twisted awkwardly, good flexibility in my hips, back, and trunk saved me from experiencing a potentially serious injury.

Similarly, I have stretched my back out carefully a number of times when it has been sore and received quick and lasting relief.

By regularly stretching my calves a few years ago, I recovered from an injury to my heel that had troubled me for some time.

Through a series of stretching exercises that I have done regularly for many years after hard exercise, I have been able to limit soreness after such activity.

Regular stretching is an inexpensive and highly effective way to better your health. I highly recommend such a program.

In Health

Praying For God's Light and Truth

July 10, 2011

Over the years of my being a Christian, I have probably prayed Psalm 43:3-4 (with varying slight modifications) many hundreds of times before studying the Bible:

O send out Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy tabernacles. Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God.

I can attest to God’s having answered that prayer numerous times by granting me insight into many passages, even passages that I had previously studied many times in the past. Because I believe that the Bible is an infinite book, I believe that we should expect God, as He sees fit, to show us wondrous things that we have not seen before, even from familiar passages.

I encourage you to believe in a similar manner and expect God to answer such prayers for you as well.

In Bible reading, Prayer

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