Faith Recovery Podcast: Recent Episodes
Three Failed Pastors
Three failed pastors seek to recover from bad ideas about God and recover what is truly good and wonderful about the Gospel and the Christian life.
In this episode, “The Fountain Free”, we learn from the Gospel of John how access to God’s immediate presence is now guaranteed to all through the Holy Spirit.
The post “The Fountain Free” – Living Water Part 2 – Themes in John #10 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we examine the pattern of suffering followed by exaltation as seen in the prophet Isaiah and later in the Gospel of John.
The post The Messianic Pattern Part 2 – Themes in John #8 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we explore the gospel as depicted in the ministry of John the Baptist and as embodied in Christ’s Passion.
The post The Messianic Pattern – Themes in John #7 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we continue our discussion of the role of Israel in the salvation of the world, as seen in the Gospel of John.
The post “An Israelite Indeed” Part 2 – Themes in John #6 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we explore the role of Israel as a nation in the salvation of the world, as seen in the Gospel of John.
The post “An Israelite Indeed” – Themes in John #5 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we continue our discussion of the Gospel of John’s emphasis on knowing by personal encounter.
The post “Come and See” Part 2 – Themes in John #4 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we discuss personal testimony as the invitation to personal encounter. We explore the Gospel’s epistemology as hearing, seeing, knowing.
The post “Come and See!” – Themes in John #3 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we examine how the image in Isaiah 55 of God’s word going forth provides a backdrop to the Gospel of John’s presentation of Jesus.
The post Christ as the Word Sent from God – Themes in John #2 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we range across several passages in the Gospel of John, exploring an understanding of God as a self-existent community–and an understanding of Christ as the expression and agent of that relationship sent to bring humans into it.
The post The Fellowship of Life – Themes in John #1 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Today we just check in to let you know we’re working on a new series on John, beginning next week.
The post Fooled ya! – Checking in between Series first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Continuing our discussion of how the Gospel shapes all the facets of our lives, in this episode we discuss how the Gospel directs us to rest and restoration. This may challenge our culture’s emphasis on achievement, on the one hand, but it may also confront another cultural idol of self-indulgent leisure.
The post Lazy Days – The Voice of the Shepherd #17 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In today’s episode we explore how the freedom we have through the Gospel can enable us to use technology in ways that are helpful, rather than be enslaved to it in ways that are harmful.
The post Slave to the Machine – The Voice of the Shepherd #16 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we explore how the Gospel enables us to strike a healthy balance between our culture’s dueling obsessions with pleasure, on the one hand, and fitness and heath, on the other.
The post Health(y?) Obsession – The Voice of the Shepherd #15 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In today’s episode we explore what the Gospel tells us about managing money. Are we supposed to sell it all for Jesus? Are we supposed to make as much as we can for Jesus? As we face decisions to make money, save money, give it away, we can look to the Gospel story for guidance.
The post The Gospel as Financial Advisor – The Voice of the Shepherd #14 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In today’s episode we ask what it means to train our kids “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord”. What is the nature of a child? How does raising kids with the gospel in mind change the way we parent?
The post Gospel-shaped Parenting – The Voice of the Shepherd #13 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we discuss how the Gospel speaks to career planning. How does the Gospel inform our decision-making about job opportunities and earning potential? Often the Gospel is seen as directing us to more seemingly spiritual careers like ministry. But are there other considerations and a bigger picture that it offers?
The post Designing your Life, Gospel-Style – The Voice of the Shepherd #12 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we contrast practicing religion with practicing the faith of Christ. Religion prescribes a set of beliefs and practices to bring us closer to God. According to that definition, is the true Christian faith a religion or not?
The post When Religion Gets in the Way – The Voice of the Shepherd #11 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we explore how the Gospel informs our relationships in church when we find that we hold different political views from one another. In our culture today churches divide over political ideology, but the Gospel unites people who are different if they’ll truly follow Jesus as Lord.
The post Politics in the Church? – The Voice of the Shepherd #10 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we continue our discussion of marriage and explore how a Gospel ethic might apply to the challenging question of gay marriage inside the Church?
The post Gay Marriage in the Church? – The Voice of the Shepherd #9 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Following on the previous episode about divorce and remarriage, in this episode we begin a discussion of the nature and historical development of marriage as it relates to the questions of gay marriage and the Bible’s condemnation of homosexual practice.
The post What is Marriage? – The Voice of the Shepherd #8 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Today we discuss a question about Jesus’s teachings on divorce and remarriage, as it relates to our series on living under the law-free (but not lawless) ethic of the gospel.
The post A Legal Loophole? – The Voice of the Shepherd #7 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we examine the ethical implications of membership in the body of Christ.
The post The Body Ethic – The Voice of the Shepherd #6 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
The gospel teaches that believers have experienced a death and resurrection by the power of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, they are a new order of humankind remade through the indwelling Holy Spirit in the likeness of Christ, who is the exact representation of the Father. Ethically, we should express our new nature in our attitudes…
The post Holy Vessels – The Voice of the Shepherd #5 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
If you’re free in Christ, then does that freedom look like following your desires? Or were you set free from slavery to your desires, just as you were set free from slavery to rules and regulations?
The post The Freedom Ethic – The Voice of the Shepherd #4 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In our series we’re claiming that the Christian’s way of life is not determined by any written code. But does that mean we are lawless? Does it mean we have no defined ethic?
The post Law-free but not Lawless – The Voice of the Shepherd #3 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Paul told the Colossians that if they have died with Christ — and have been raised with him — then that means they should (and they can) live a new way. What’s that mean? It means the gospel provides us with an ethic. In this episode we explore what it means to live differently, not…
The post “If then…” – The Voice of the Shepherd #2 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this series we seek to understand the gospel as the ethical standard for the Christian life. As distinct from the Bible generally, or traditional morality, can the message about Christ provide the culturally flexible, yet objectively clear pattern that we need for living a life that glorifies God?
The post The Voice of the Shepherd #1 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we compare differing visions of “the end of the world.” In the biblical vision, rather than being the end of God’s creation followed by an immaterial eternity, it’s actually the beginning of a new creation where the redeemed will live (and work!) in new bodies with God in a renewed universe.
The post Kingdom Come – Redefining Faith #14 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Today’s discussion ranges from demonic possession to the difference between Hades and Hell. We also explain how the gospel changes the after-life experience for those who believe.
The post To Die is Gain – Redefining Faith #13 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we take a second look at the typical teaching that hell is eternal conscious torment and ask whether this view is actually biblical, or if in fact there is different understanding available to us — one that is both more biblical and more satisfying.
The post Hell? No! – Redefining Faith #12 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we redefine church, moving from a consumeristic model where we transact with the institutional church to provide us with goods and services, to a relational model, in which we worship God by mutually serving one another and doing good in the world.
The post Here is the Steeple – Redefining Faith #11 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we redefine the person and work of the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity who indwells Christians to incline and empower them to become like Christ in their actions and character.
The post Living Water – Redefining Faith #10 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we redefine sanctification, arguing that instead of reducing sins and increasing good deeds, it is instead our ongoing salvation from the way of the world through the faith of Christ we received by believing the gospel.
The post God’s Gym – Redefining Faith #9 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we redefine salvation as liberation from sinful society and from its destination.
The post From What I’ll Do To You – Redefining Faith #8 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Jesus did not merely appear to be a human — a view of Jesus many Christians implicitly hold. No, he had to be fully human in order to live by faith and thus become the “pioneer and perfecter of faith” that the New Testament says he is for us.
The post Not Just a Skin Suit – Redefining Faith #7 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
As we continue our series that seeks to redefine Christian doctrines, today we explore whether predestination could mean something different from what we have been told.
In this episode we examine a view of sin as a fundamental approach to life which, while demonstrated in transgressions, runs deeper than transgressions. In fact, we see that God orchestrated the transgressions in order to bring about Sin's demise.
In this episode we examine the literal readings of Genesis 1 and 2 and ask whether these passages actually require…
The post Working for the Weekend – Redefining Faith #4 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode we explain why the Trinity matters. We argue that it's not just a matter of right doctrine, but rather that God must be a fellowship if he is a loving God.
In this episode we revisit the idea of interpreting Scripture literally, arguing that obeying whatever seems to be a "plain sense" reading of Scripture can be harmful, ignoring the context and the literary aspects of the Bible. But the gospel is our guide to reading Scripture the way it was meant to be read.
In a post-Christian world, clarifying the gospel will require the correction of misconceptions. In this episode, we redefine the notion of biblical inerrancy.
We conclude our series on Simple Church by discussing how mutual ministry — our topic from last week — requires…
The post Women in Ministry – Simple Church #8 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
As a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, we are also called to practice mutual ministry where every member contributes for the encouragement of the church.
As a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, we are called to gather as multicultural congregations united by Christ.
The post Multicultural Congregations – Simple Church #6 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode Nathan explains how the gospel resumes God’s calling on his people to be a kingdom of priests…
The post Kingdom of Priests – Simple Church #5 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In this episode Nathan describes how spiritual authority and positional authority operate in tandem together in the church.
The post Spiritual and Positional Authority – Simple Church #4 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
To further unpack what it means for the church to operate under the authority of the gospel, we explore what…
The post The Gospel Mandate of Freedom – Simple Church #3 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
As we continue our series on Simple Church, we explore what it means for the church to operate under the…
The post The Gospel Our Authority – Simple Church #2 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Today as we begin our series on Simple Church (not house church, not a traditional church, but a simple church),…
The post What is a Simple Church? – Episode 1 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Now that Jesus is not physically present, what can it mean to follow Jesus? Is it following his teachings? His…
The post How Can I Follow Jesus? first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Nathan fields a listener’s questions on Mormonism’s view of God and helps us understand how essential to our faith is…
The post The Lord is One – A Discussion on Mormonism and the Trinity first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
What you get when you mix together dead-defying faith and self-giving love, is peace.
The post Curated from the Archives – The Recipe to Make Peace first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
What happens after we die? Most Christians would say that believers go to heaven and lost people go to hell.…
The post Eternity Now – According to Scripture #20 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Israel as fruit producer and Jesus as the TRUE vine.
The post The Fruitful Vine – According to Scripture #19 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Elijah and Elisha as tandem prophets pointing to Christ.
The post The Two Witnesses – According to Scripture #18 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
The story of Mephibosheth as the foil to performance-based religion.
The post At the King’s Table – According to Scripture # 17 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
The Messiah as eschatological king. God will rule the nations as the Son of David.
The post The Lion of Judah – According to Scripture #16 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
The bronze serpent as means to a healing recognition of sin.
The post Lifted Up – According to Scripture #15 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
The Levitical ordinances preserved a people that prefigured the holy community in Christ.
The post The Holy Nation – According to Scripture #14 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Moses’ successor as the type for the Christ.
The post Joshua the Successor – According to Scripture #13 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
The tabernacle was designed as a chronometer of sorts for God’s plan with humankind.
The post According to the Pattern – According to Scripture #12 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
The Passover Feast as living history points to our place as an exodus community.
The post Let Us Eat the Feast! – According to Scripture #11 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
God calls Moses with a paradoxical manifestation of a paradoxical person. That person continues with Israel through her history until…
The post Take Off Your Shoes – According to Scripture #10 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In “Branches on an Ancient Tree”, Kent and Nathan discuss the idea of predestination. Is there a way to understand…
The post Branches on an Ancient Tree first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Winners don't need to fight, they just need to keep what they have. In "Winners Don't Need to Fight," Kent and Nathan examine the idea of spiritual warfare. What is the nature of the spiritual realm? What does it have to do with our lives? What difference does the gospel make in our spiritual standing? Why don't the New Testament letters talk more about deliverance and how to perform it?
The Gospel cuts through our denial by blaming an innocent for our wrongs.
The post Hidden and Harsh – According to Scripture #8 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
The only way to know God is through a face to face confrontation.
The post Wrestling with God – According to Scripture #7 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
What we're trying to do.
The post Faith Recovery Trailer first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In "Let there be Light!" Nathan explores how natural beauty symbolizes the beauty of God's nature now encountered in Christ.
Before he raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus gave his disciples a lesson in how to live forever. In "How to Live Forever" Nathan contrasts Jesus' promise to keep his sheep safe with the subsequent death of one of them.
Christian nationalism is an example of when making good is bad because we must use fallen tactics to make people "good." In "When Making Good is Bad," Kent and Nathan explore what the Bible has to say about Christian Nationalism.
"When Making Good is Bad" Episode Notes
Christ leads through the wilderness way while Christian nationalists serve the spirit the antichrist. In the Wilderness Way, Nathan critiques the Christian Nationalist movement from John 10:22-42 and Jesus' confrontation with nationalistic Jews on Hannukah.
Nathan and Kent discuss how Christian growth is from good to excellent. In "From Good to Excellent," Kent and Nathan discuss the Christian doctrine of sanctification. It's not what you may think.
"From Good to Excellent" - Episode NotesLast week we discussed the justification that is by the faith of Christ. This week we’ll discuss the sanctification that is by the faith of Christ. Here are my questions for Nathan today:
In your view, what does it mean to become righteous, or to be sanctified? And is that the same as what people are calling spiritual formation in Christ? What would it mean to become “like Christ”?I think someone becomes righteous through faith. That is, the person who lives by the faith of the son is righteous according to God’s standard.
The notion that justification and sanctification are different stages in the Christian life presumes an anemic gospel. It presumes little change at the point of faith with a slow progression across the divide between imputed righteousness and actual righteousness. Every place in the NIV where “sanctified” is used refers to something a Christian receives at the point of faith. I think “justified” refers to a person’s moral standing while “sanctified” refers to their spiritual status. They’re really two sides of the same coin.
I’m not sure if “spiritual formation” as commonly used is a biblical concept. The phrase comes from Paul’s indictment on the Galatians in 4:19.
I plead with you, brothers and sisters, become like me, for I became like you. You did me no wrong. As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you, and even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. Where, then, is your blessing of me now? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?
Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may have zeal for them. It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always, not just when I am with you. My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you,
Galatians 4:12-19 NIVNotice that Christ isn’t formed through growth but through birth. Notice that he’s in birth pains “again” until Christ is formed in you. He wants them to get back to the way they were when Christ was formed in them, not go forward through a process of spiritual disciplines until Christ will somehow imperceptibly develop within them.
So, if we’re going to use the phrase “spiritual formation” as Paul did, it more closely equates to the common use of the term “regeneration.” This was Peter’s understanding of what happens when a person believes the gospel according to 1 Peter 1:23-25.
For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For,
“All people are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord endures forever.”
And this is the word that was preached to you.
NIVWhat does it mean to become like Christ? The person who has the faith of the Son is like the Son.
And secondly, what is the mechanism of that transformation? What about spiritual disciplines as practices for formation in Christ?Excepting prayer and corporate worship, the spiritual disciplines are only incidentally mentioned in scripture.
Paul mentions exercise in godliness as paying off some dividends but to what end? In most cases, prayer and worship seem to result in immediate benefits such as a change of circumstances, the receiving of wisdom, or direct insight from God such as through a prophetic word, or divine empowerment.
The mechanism of spiritual growth comes from the exercise of the new life.
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:7-14 NIVHow does sanctification relate to “eternal life”? Is eternal life what we get at the end when we die? Or is it life now in Christ? Romans 5:21 “so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life Jesus Christ our Lord.”Yes!
In that Romans 5:21 dichotomy, Paul contrasts two things with three. Grace contrasts with sin while righteousness and eternal life contrast with death. 1 John 5:11-13.
Romans 8:11-17 integrates the concepts in a process that he equates to resurrection from death.
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of[fn] his Spirit who lives in you.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Through the gospel, God gives the gift of right living to everyone who believes. In "The Gift of Right Living," Kent and Nathan examine the Christian doctrine of justification. We compare traditional Protestant teaching about "imputed" righteousness scripture.
The Gift of Right Living - Episode NotesIs justification a legal standing of righteousness before God? Is it more than legal?It seems to include a legal standing, but it also supersedes it.
According to Paul in Romans 1:18 the wrath of God is manifest on the ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who hide their truth in their unrighteousness. Then he goes on to describe the false worship and idolatry of the pagan world. They didn’t know the law, but they still had behaved unrighteously. So, a person can be unrighteous without breaking a law.
In Romans 5:13, Paul says that sin isn’t imputed where there is no law. Based on that we could say that until Moses, everyone had imputed righteousness if the only definition of unrighteousness is the breaking of a law, but Paul goes on to say that “death reigned from Adam to Moses even over those who hadn’t sinned in the likeness of Adam’s transgression.” If simply being absolved of legal culpability was enough, then all those people would have been just fine, but they weren’t.
It seems that not only were they not righteous, but they needed to acquire some legal guilt for their own good.
The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:20-21 NIV)
It would seem that legal guilt is secondary to a basic unrighteousness that precedes legal guilt and is manifested by it.
At the same time, we could say that it’s legal standing if we understand the nature of the law we’re under. More on that later.
Bottom line: The justification provided in Christ is more than, “counted to have performed the law.” If that’s all it was, then God in giving the law would have made us guilty only to absolve us in Christ. This would make God’s standard of righteousness pretty low and arbitrary.
“Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? 8 Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? 9 Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ ” (Luke 17:7-10)
The best the law can make anyone even as a standard we’re declared to have fulfilled is “unworthy.”
Is it the verdict of the final judgement, brought forward into the present, declaring believers to be righteous?If you mean “once saved always saved,” I don’t think so.
Back to the legal aspect of justification, it doesn’t seem that judgment will just be on the basis of external performance of a written code but on the condition of a person’s character.
For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
Romans 2:12-16 NIVWe’re reckoned righteous like Abraham was on the basis of faith. It’s the entrance into a relationship with God based on grace and faith as his was. Now, his faith wasn’t perfect and neither was his moral performance. But he believed enough and God accepted it. And at the same time we might say that God advanced Abraham the righteousness based on faith trusting that he would come to have and express saving faith in time.
What is the meaning of "righteous"? (righteousness)It seems to refer to character in conformity with the nature of things. Appropriate disposition and action.
This is why Paul puts “ungodliness” and “unrighteousness” together.
It’s why Jewish judgmentalism was the same sin as pagan idolatry.
Paul makes a distinction between the righteousness that is according to the law and the righteousness of God. Surely they can’t be the same since God doesn’t follow law. And those who follow law are looking to hit the minimum requirement. In fact, law presumes unrighteousness.
Paul says that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel - that suggests it’s not revealed in the law.
Is it Christ’s righteousness imputed to us? If not, then what?This has to do with the notion of merit, but wouldn’t that make God a debtor to a person who lived a certain way?
Could any human life merit God’s favor? If it did, could it be favor?
God isn’t gracious because Christ earned grace.
Christ came and died because God is gracious. Christ graciously died because he is God.
It wasn’t Christ’s perfect legal compliance that is counted to us, but his grace:
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men[fn] because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. 16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. 17 For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.18 Therefore, as one trespass[fn] led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness[fn] leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
Romans 5:12-19 NIVIn Christ, humankind has been woven into the grace and faith of the Trinity. By the faith of the son we’ve come to fit in this austere community and our belonging we have become empowered to minister the grace flooding into our lives.
In Romans 5:12-19, grace is the echelon we inhabit through Christ but it’s also the mechanism whereby we actually become righteous.
Justification is progressive as we live by the faith of the Son.
That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” 23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
Romans 4:22-25 NIVIs it a permanent status? Can you lose it? Does it come and go as we vacillate in our faith?
No, it’s not permanent.
Yes, you can lose it.
No, it doesn’t come and go as we vacillate in our faith. When we act outside of faith we find ourselves to have violated the covenant. The good news is that if that happens, we only need to resume a life of faith to know we’re justified by grace.
Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. 21 It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.[fn] 22 The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. (Romans 14:20-23)
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.[fn] 13 And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. (Gal. 2:11-13)
I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified[fn] by the law; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. (Gal. 5:3-5)
See the big picture so you can get ready for death and life. In "Get Ready for Death and Life," Kent and Nathan compare popular notions about hell and judgment with what the Bible really says. Spoiler: They're not the same.
Christians might want to extinguish the doctrine of hell, but it's a fire that burns for good. This is the first of a two-part conversation about the doctrine of hell. In "Fire that Burns for Good," Kent and Nathan answer the question, "Why the hell?" What possible reason could there be for a loving God to threaten people with a fiery judgment?
"Fire that Burns for Good" - Episode NotesWhatever position we take on hell must be demonstrably consistent with the ancient revelation of the gospel. We can’t take a position on any Christian doctrine because it fits cultural sensibilities.
If the gospel does, indeed, save us from cultural conformity, we must be hyper-critical of the unrelenting pressure of inculturation. While human authority is overt, cultural pressure is insidious:
"Obedience and conformity both refer to the abdication of initiative to an external source."
"Subjects deny conformity and embrace obedience as the explanation of their behavior."
Milgram, Stanley. "Obedience to Authority"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Christ remains the same but culture continues to shift.
Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
(Heb. 13:7-8)All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.
(John 16:1-2 NIV)If we redact scripture, we concede the argument to the skeptics.
We’ve been saying that the gospel is the final revelation of God but that doesn’t mean the scriptures are misleading.
The concept of God’s wrath and his readiness to punish sinners isn’t incidental in scripture. There are 206 mentions of the word, “wrath” in the ESV Bible. Places that describe God as wrathful, punitive, and deadly are critical to the Old Testament narrative.
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of Egypt, and go up to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ 2 I will send an angel before you and drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 3 Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.”
And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
(Exodus 33:1-3; 34:6-7)They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols. I will make them envious by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding. For a fire will be kindled by my wrath, one that burns down to the realm of the dead below. It will devour the earth and its harvests and set afire the foundations of the mountains. “I will heap calamities on them and spend my arrows against them. I will send wasting famine against them, consuming pestilence and deadly plague; I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts, the venom of vipers that glide in the dust. In the street the sword will make them childless; in their homes terror will reign. The young men and young women will perish, the infants and those with gray hair.
(Deut. 32:21-25)Jesus in the gospels warns repeatedly of God’s judgment.He said: “A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. ‘Put this money to work,’ he said, ‘until I come back.’ “But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’ “He was made king, however, and returned home. Then he sent for the servants to whom he had given the money, in order to find out what they had gained with it. But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.’ ”
(Luke 19:12-14; 27)It’s not out of character for Jesus to kill his enemies. The pre-incarnate Christ appeared to Joshua as the “Commander of the LORD’s armies” in Joshua 5 and in 2Kings 19:35:
“That night the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies!”
Of the 13 mentions of “hell” specifically in the New Testament 11 are made by Jesus. Including:
“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? 34 Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. 35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.
(Matt. 23:33-36)Not only will there be an eschatological judgment, but Jesus will be the judge, jury, and executioner according to Paul’s teaching in Acts 17:31; Romans 2:16; 2 Thess. 1:4-10:
Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.
All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.
Attempts at whitewashing the bloodier elements of scripture undermine Christian credibility.If we say that Bible is time-bound, then we must admit God had no role in its creation or that he engineered a misrepresentation of himself.
If we say certain sections are authoritative while others are not, then we make ourselves or our culture the arbiter of Scripture making it altogether superfluous.
Any suggestion that we revise our understanding of the Bible must come from the Bible or scripture is undermined entirely.
The gospel itself implies lethal judgment.If Jesus died for our sins, then we must understand that sin is lethal. If God could redeem us from sin apart from Christ’s death, then the crucifixion becomes nothing more than theater.
That it was a violent death suggests a need for retributive justice of some kind.
The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.
(Gen. 4:10-11)But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”
(Heb. 12:22-29 NIV)The very notion that we are saved from the “present evil age” implies a pending judgment.For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.
(Eph. 5:5-10 NIV)Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God. For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.
(Phil. 1:27-29)Hell is God's fire that burns for good because it provides our “will be saved” moment.
In "The Full Disclosure of God," Nathan shares why the cross is the only logical way to ever fully know God who is Yahweh.
The post The Full Disclosure of God first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In "One Seat on the Throne," we look at God's plan for leadership under the gospel and conclude that God doesn't need human control to protect his people.
The post One Seat on the Throne first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
We talk about a church mission statement that requires no interpersonal control. It's our job simply to win friends and love people for his sake who loved us.
The post Win Friends and Love People first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
How do we minister the living experience of the gospel to one another? There are probably several good answers, but here are three tips for growth.
The post Three Tips for Growth first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In "From Seed to Fruit," Alex, Kent, and Nathan demonstrate how the gospel is the only legitimate evangelistic method and discipleship tool.
The post From Seed to Fruit first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
The gospel illuminates scripture and scripture confirms the gospel as the believer is enabled to the image of Christ who is the spirit of the law.
The post The Spirit of the Law first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In "Obey the Gospel," the Three Failed Pastors discuss the Christian system as guided not by a written text but by an oral announcement.
The post Obey the Gospel first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
God saves people from the way of the world so they will live together in the economy of worship. When they do, his nature is revealed to the rest of creation.
The post The Economy of Worship first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
In "Conjugating Salvation" the Three Failed Pastors explore salvation as the past, present, and future reality of Christ-followers.
The post Conjugating Salvation first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Our second conversation with our esteemed listener, Mike Harper.
The post Listener Interview with Mike Part 2 first appeared on Faith Recovery Podcast.
Our listener, Mike Harper, has some questions.
This week, we three failed pastors get to field some feedback from an esteemed listener!
Here are Mike's questions for your reference:
Hey Guys,
Here's a couple precursor comments to set a little context. First, I hope you know that these questions originate out of not knowing you all very well, except for Kent, and not listening to everything you all have talked about. So, I want to remain open and humble to ask and receive your feedback.
- The bible - If the bible is not a reliable way to define the Christian faith, what is reliable to do it? Meaning, what sources, people, experiences, fill in the blank do we rely upon to define the Christian faith.
- The gospel - in many podcasts the gospel was often referred to and probably clearly defined, but let's try to help me, by clearly expressing it. If it is what I remember, it is captured by an holistic and deep understanding of Jesus as the God-man who willingly took on humanity, lived a sinless and exemplary life and taught on and introduced the kingdom of God, willingly embraced his mission to lay down his life for us demonstrating God's love and selfless sacrifice and rose from the dead to
- With something like this view of the bible as background and passages and verses often used throughout the podcast for teaching and our learning...How do you get a gospel or a subsequent gospel ethic, without the bible being a reliable way of defining the Christian faith?
- What is your all's view of inspiration? How do we apply the bible or what place does it have?
- Sometimes the show criticized how it was difficult to draw good application or good ethics from the bible because it does not address contemporary issues and addresses issues that we do not face currently, This is essentially a scope issue with the bible and questioning its sufficiency to handle the extent of the moral or good life. What's wrong with drawing general principles from the bible to apply to life? If we cannot do this, how can a generalized gospel handle very specific moral issues?
- I might add that I remembered the "faith acting in love" ethic that Nathan advocated for as a Christian ethic to me continues to cry out for further explanation, what is "faith"? To me there continues to be the chicken and egg discussion. In early podcasts the comment that the NT scriptures support or confirm the gospel, and something like they authenticate the authority of the gospel, yet the gospel remains the authority. Both the gospel and faith seem contentless without the context of the what the text brings to the table to truly flesh out what those things are.
Share your thoughts or questions below:
The Three Failed Pastors continue their pursuit of the simple gospel and stumble across the recipe to make peace.
In "The Recipe to Make Peace," we continue our exploration into how the gospel saves people. Spoiler alert: It's by faith.
A unique take on Romans 7
Spoiler: It's not supposed to describe the normal Christian life.
In "The Right Faith Works," the Three Failed Pastors begin to unpack the "how" of salvation.
Martin Luther helped free Christendom from the papal system, but he left a legacy of detached faith. Another look at the New Testament will reveal that while we're not saved by works, the right faith works to save us from this present evil age.
In this episode, we talk about salvation as the need to be integrated.
Salvation is from our corrupt society. That means Jesus sets us free from subjugation to the dynamics of interpersonal control. But corruption doesn't reside in society except as it inhabits each member. Everyone's personhood is degrading under the corrosive influence of sin. The need to be integrated has been observed by psychologists as well as theologians. To be saved is to be cured of personal deterioration.
Episode Notes for "The Need to be Integrated"
Salvation requires a reversal of the corruption spreading within each person.
In our vernacular, we almost exclusively use the word, “corruption,” to describe self-serving governments or government officials. When someone describes a politician as corrupt, we can imagine them taking bribes or kickbacks in exchange for special treatment. Political corruption is an abuse of power as well as a moral deficiency within the participants. We think of corruption as a type of white-collar crime, but that’s not the essential meaning of the word.
The English word, “corrupt,” came from a Latin word meaning “to rot or decay.”[i] That’s also the root meaning of the New Testament Greek word for “corrupt.” The ancients didn’t know about microbes; they only knew that something invisible broke down the dead bodies of humans and animals. Corruption started small and invisibly overtook formerly living tissue.
Even though we’ve lost this word picture when we speak of political corruption, the term retains its basic meaning. Political corruption happens in secret and undermines the integrity of governments. When corruption fully spreads through an entire government the society edges near collapse. Bribes are dishonest and immoral, but they’re also corrosive to the fiber of society.
When the Bible talks about corruption on an individual level it describes personal decay. It’s easy for unbelievers to dismiss “sin” as a religious construct, but the psychological fracturing that results from moral compromise can’t be denied. As far as I know, everyone values integrity, but real integrity requires complete consistency between the self we project and our private selves. Even the atheist, Sigmund Freud, observed the existence of competing drives toward selfishness and responsibility within every person.[ii] As long as the “Id” and the “Superego” pull the “Ego” in opposite directions every person undergoes some level of personal disintegration.
People who recognize the need to be integrated often seek out religion to bolster their virtuous side.
An alcoholic joining AA is a case in point. Step One in the AA Twelve Steps is, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.” As anyone who’s been in recovery will tell you, that first step is first for a reason. Most people live in some degree of disintegration, but they’ve learned to rationalize it away. I once had a woman come to the church where I work asking for money as her body convulsed under delirium tremens. She was clearly lying when she said she wanted the money to pay her water bill. Hoping for a moment of honesty, I asked her, “What do you see when you look in the mirror?”
She responded, “I see a basically good person.”
Brennan Manning in his seminal book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, tells the story of a man named Max who had checked into rehab. When one of the members of his group therapy circle asked him to give an example of a time when he had been unkind to one of his kids Max responded:
“Well, I was as little thoughtless with my nine-year-old daughter last Christmas Eve.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t remember. I just get this heavy feeling whenever I think about it.”
To get the details, the therapist called Max’s wife and put her on speakerphone. Over the phone, she told the group that Max had taken his daughter out to buy some shoes for Christmas. On the way back home, he stopped by a bar and told his daughter to wait for him because he would be right out. She went on:
“My husband met some old Army buddies in the tavern. Swept up in the euphoria over the reunion, he lost track of time, purpose, and everything else. He came out of the Cork ‘n’ Bottle at midnight. He was drunk. The motor had stopped running and the car windows were frozen shut. Debbie was badly frostbitten on both ears and on her fingers. When we got her to the hospital, the doctors had to operate. They amputated the thumb and forefinger on her right hand. She will be deaf for the rest of her life.”
Max appeared to be having a coronary. He struggled to his feet making jerky, uncoordinated movements. His glasses flew to the right and his pipe to the left. He collapsed on all fours and sobbed hysterically.[iii]**
We humans have a mighty ability to deny the distance between our self-image and the person we really are. Sadly, that distance continues to widen the longer we ignore it. Maybe that’s why so few committed romantic relationships endure. We love the people who believe the lies we tell ourselves. Once they spend a couple of years really getting to know us, though, they begin to reflect the image of our true selves. Rather than face the lie, we reject our partner and move on to someone else who doesn’t know us quite as well.
We love the people who believe the lies we tell ourselves.
We want to believe we’re at least close to as good as we should be, and we want others to believe it too. This personal dishonesty creates a code of silence that strongly discourages interpersonal honesty.
Even if we must confront someone with their shortcomings, we usually understate the problem. Take the wording of the AA Step One as an example: “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol…” That’s never been true for anyone. Alcohol is an inanimate substance that has never had the least power over anyone. A truer statement would be, “We admitted that we were powerless to control ourselves…” As hard as it must be for an alcoholic to repeat the wording of Step One, it also excuses their actions. It makes the alcoholic a passive victim of something outside of themselves.
Could it be that some people benefit from the help of a higher power because one exists? Maybe only God can fix human brokenness.
And yet, even an approximate admission of inner corruption has value.
In the case of AA, that Step One admission leads to Step Two: “(We) Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” To the chagrin, I’m sure, of the skeptical community, a 2020 Stanford School of Medicine study concluded that AA is the “most effective path to alcohol abstinence.”[iv]** Could it be that some people benefit from the help of a higher power because one exists? Maybe only God can fix human brokenness.
Someone might object that AA isn’t Christian. But, isn't God free to help someone who calls on him without fully understanding his nature? Really, those are the only people who ever call on him. No, AA isn't Christian, but that’s why it doesn’t work better than it does. AA approximates Christian conversion by calling on addicts to become poor in spirit and to call on God. AA fails in that it remains a system of rules which can never bring a person from “recovering” to "recovered."
AA only has one rule, “don’t drink,” but that’s one rule too many. That one rule forever ties the AA member to her addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous celebrates what a person hasn’t done and for how long they haven’t done it. But what about all the good we aspire to do? Surely a person needs to move beyond the goal of sobriety to reach their God-given purpose and potential.
Addiction is just one manifestation of the corruption within the human person. Everyone has their issues. Maybe it’s a hated habit. Or it could be serial neglect. Whatever the specifics we suffer from shame, regret, and self-loathing that indicate the disintegration of our being. Just like with AA, Christian conversion has been known to offer serious relief to many people from the oppression of their own compulsions. Also like with AA, those converts often continue to hang in the balance between bondage and freedom because of rules.
Religious people often suffer more from the need to be integrated.
Suppose a man has been unfaithful to his wife. To secure her forgiveness he might promise to go to church. A sermon one Sunday resonates with him, and he comes to faith in Christ. He becomes zealous for God and wants to read the Bible. There he discovers a whole host of sins he’s been committing. Not only should he not cheat on his wife, but he also can’t even look lustfully at a woman.[v] While he may have become a better husband on the outside, the distance between his values and his behavior has become even wider. He might be more respectable but he’s less integrated than ever before. He’s more conscientious but just as spiritually dead.
For Paul, personal corruption arose from a spiritual principle that he called, “the law of death.” The Bible describes death as the separation of the spirit from the body.[vi] Paul, like Freud, saw humans as triune, but the apostle spoke of flesh, mind/self, and spirit instead of Id, Ego, and Superego. While Freud would have spoken of the Ego pulled between the urgings of the Id and Superego, Paul spoke of the mind/self at the center of a battle royale between the flesh and the spirit. Rather than think of this division of the self as integral to the human animal, though, Paul recognized the polarization of flesh and spirit as a kind of living death. He recognized it in himself:
I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.
(Romans 7:9-10 ESV) This state of spiritual death clutches its victims as tightly as does physical death:
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
(Romans 7:9-10; 21-24 ESV) As far as we know, Paul hadn’t been an especially bad man.[vii] In the immediate context of this passage he evaluates himself as “wretched” based on the victimless sin of lust. His wretchedness didn’t arise so much from the damage his sin caused but from his helplessness against it. He was a respected religious man who was disintegrating according to spiritual law just as a corpse decays according to natural law.
...it stands to reason, this unnamed law is the law of death. It decrees, “When I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”
Notice there are three spiritual laws mentioned in the passage above. They are the law of God, the law of sin, and an unnamed law interacting with the other two. This law opposed Paul’s moral imperative and enslaved him to the law of sin. Since he calls his tendency to obey sin while aspiring inwardly to obey God, “death,” it stands to reason, this unnamed law is the law of death. It decrees, “When I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”
We live under the law of death because God’s warning to Adam was, “on the day you eat from it (the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) you will die.” According to Genesis 5, Adam didn’t die physically until 930 or so years later. Did God back off his promised punishment or did Adam die in some other way on that fateful day? It looks to me like his actions and his moral center went separate ways. He did surely die according to Paul’s concept of spiritual death.
Paul saw himself as one of the walking dead.
He could think and plan and move, but his flesh would always resist his inner yearning to do right. Since his physical self, his flesh, resisted God’s spiritual law, that was the part of him that was spiritually dead. Paul walked around in a dead and decaying body. So, he cries out to be saved from “this body of death,” also known as the “dead body.”
There’s a fungus in the rainforests of Brazil referred to as “the zombie-ant fungus.” Here’s how it got that name:
When the fungus infects a carpenter ant, it grows through the insect’s body, draining it of nutrients and hijacking its mind. Over the course of a week, it compels the ant to leave the safety of its nest and ascend a nearby plant stem. It stops the ant at a height of 25 centimeters—a zone with precisely the right temperature and humidity for the fungus to grow. It forces the ant to permanently lock its mandibles around a leaf. Eventually, it sends a long stalk through the ant’s head, growing into a bulbous capsule full of spores. And because the ant typically climbs a leaf that overhangs its colony’s foraging trails, the fungal spores rain down onto its sisters below, zombifying them in turn.[viii]**
This phenomenon almost stretches credulity. It’s both fascinating and horrifying in equal measure but would surely tip the balance toward the latter if it took place in anything larger than an ant. And yet, it accurately illustrates the spiritual death endemic to every human since the first of us became self-aware. Paul was compelled by sin to act against his will in ways that were harmful to the human collective.
The zombie-ant fungus further illustrates our need to be saved. If that ant could talk as she was ascending the plant stem, what would she say? I think she would share Paul’s plea – “Someone, save me from this dead body!” Neither the ant nor Paul suffered from a lack of willpower. The problem in both cases was a loss of executive function. An alien presence animates the hapless carpenter ant while leaving its brain untouched. The law of sin animated Paul even as his mind longed for the law of God. Paul was no more able to overcome sin than the infected ant could refuse to climb.
If Paul needed saving, what about the rest of us?
See if you relate to Paul’s experience of waking death:
For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
(Romans 7:15-20 ESV) If you’ve ever done something you’ve regretted, doesn’t that suggest something foreign within you is influencing your actions? We even tend to undermine our own best interests. Forbidden fruit makes us salivate while we despise wholesome fare. I’ve personally never met anyone who subscribes to “Do evil,” as a mission statement, and yet people still do evil. Doesn’t everyone want to be basically good? So, how does society continue to corrupt? Because despite our best intentions we still climb that stem and rain down sinful spores on family members, friends, and acquaintances.
We need to be saved from corruption because we’re dead and dead people can’t save themselves. All they can do on their own is rot and stink. Self-help strategies might mask the smell, but they don't stop the decay. On our best days, we might overcome one besetting sin only to find three others pop up in its place. Religion can’t save us because its very prohibitions intensify the effects of death on us.
We, like Paul, need a “who” to save us. We need a deliverer who’s greater than Moses because we need to be set free not only from political and social bondage but from existential bondage.
"The Need to Be Integrated" References:
[i] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/corrupt
[ii] Sigmund Freud on the three selves
[iii] The Ragamuffin Gospel p. 127-129
[iv] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/alcoholics-anonymous-most-effective-path-to-alcohol-abstinence.html
[v] Matthew 5:27-30
[vi] Ecclesiastes 12:6-7p; James 2:26
[vii] By his accounts he had been exemplary according to Philippians 3, Galatians 1, and Acts 23:1.
[viii] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/how-the-zombie-fungus-takes-over-ants-bodies-to-control-their-minds/545864/
In "Healers with Dirty Fingers" the Three Failed Pastors caution the church.
Leaders in the church should be more concerned about the use of power than the use of porn. When they resort to worldly methods to gain compliance they become healers with dirty fingers.
"Healers with Dirty Fingers" Episode Notes:
The notion that we Christians must be free from the dynamics of control has urgent implications for the church.
A person who seeks to mold the behavior of others will always come under the sway of Satan. I’m not saying we shouldn’t want justice to be done. That desire is part of the divine image in us. Efforts to achieve it through interpersonal control become snake venom in our veins. They stroke our egos while blinding us to our faults. We confuse our personal ambition to be significant for concern for the “right.” Here’s what Jesus’ brother, James, had to say about the justice warriors in his church:
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.
(James 3:13-15 NIV)
Can’t you just hear this guy complaining?
“I’ve got a lot of good ideas, but nobody listens because I’m not in the right clique.”
“I guess it’s about who you know, huh?”
“Why should we listen to _____? I’ve never heard him say anything remotely impressive.”
“They don’t want me in leadership because they know I’ll shake things up.”
We might not think James’ warning applies to us because we think we’re free from “envy and selfish ambition.” But what was the surface-level ambition of the people he was warning? Look at the next three verses:
For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.
(James 3:16-18 NIV) Notice what James promises them at the end of this section – “a harvest of righteousness (actually “justice” in Greek).” James wrote this letter to Christians who wanted to apply their faith toward making their society fairer. They wanted to reap a harvest of justice, but we can’t plant justice in other people. That is, we can’t convince them they’re being unjust. Even if we can force them to behave justly, they will believe they’ve been treated unfairly and so injustice perpetuates. The only way to harvest justice is by planting peace. That will require us to retain a posture of humility even as we’re being treated unfairly. It’s a divesting of power back into the hands of God where it belongs. Christians don’t fight for justice because they become corrupt in the process. Instead, we absorb injustice in pursuit of peace trusting that justice will spring forth.
The Satanic voice doesn’t say, “Do evil,” but “How can you do nothing when everything is so bad?”
That was the voice Jesus heard in the mouth of his own dear disciple Peter:
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
(Matthew 16:21-23 NIV)
Skeptics criticize Jesus for not doing more to alleviate suffering in the world because they assess Jesus according to worldly standards.
Jesus came to save us from the corrupt society by setting us free from the elementary principles of the world. He certainly wouldn’t have resorted to using them to make people do the right thing. In dying, Jesus divested himself of all human power. By ascending to heaven, he rules above the elementary principles of this fallen world. Hear Jesus’ words as quoted by John:
“They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.”
(John 17:16-19 NIV) When Jesus said he was going to sanctify himself, he meant that he would be set apart from this world. From heaven, he rules over the hearts and minds of each subject. As his subjects on earth, we reject the worldly principles and so are set apart as well. Christ’s disciples must never enslave one another under the elementary principles of the world because Christ has set his people free from them.
Healers with dirty fingers can't offer pleasing worship to God.
Leaders must reject the temptation to resort to them for the “greater good.” Charisma can’t appear among the qualifications for leadership, not even the unwritten ones. Surely our insistence on “hip and cool” or “relevant” does a disservice to him of whom it was written:
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
(Isaiah 53:2b NIV) People want to be accepted by competent and attractive leaders. That’s just the way of the world. You can build a church that way and it will probably become large. But it won’t represent the gospel of Christ and it won’t be predicated on faith. Worldly methods work, but they corrupt those who use them. No wonder scandal emerges from within so many megachurches and international ministries.
It seems to me the avoidance of these methods is at least part of what James meant when he said that pure religion includes keeping oneself unspotted from the world. It’s surely no coincidence that he goes on to forbid interpersonal favoritism beginning in the very next verse.
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
(James 1:27-2:4 NIV)
It’s my hope that anyone who attempts to employ the elementary principles in a church setting would come under strong conviction or that those under their leadership would offer them a loving rebuke.
Share your thoughts on "Healers with Dirty Fingers."
In "New World Now" Kent and Nathan take a long-form deep dive into some traditionally troubling topics.
According to the gospel, Jesus has begun the new world now and will make all things new upon his return.
In "Be Free or Be Evil" the Three Failed Pastors discuss the potential of the elementary principles of the world to unleash untold evil.
Stanley Milgram's experiments on obedience demonstrated, "the capacity for man to abandon his humanity...into the larger institutional structures." In other words, when we must be free or be evil. So, Christ died to set us free.
In our previous episode, we discussed the role of law as both a facilitator of the elementary principles of the world and as a limiter of their potential for harm. This week, we'll consider what happens when the elementary principles come under the control of wicked people.
"Be Free or Be Evil" Episode Notes:
Laws are supposed to mitigate corruption, but they frequently serve it.
I recently read about how Johnson and Johnson created a dummy company to absorb losses from a class action suit related to asbestos in their talcum powder products. Once that company was formed it filed chapter 11 bankruptcy nullifying the hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments against Johnson and Johnson. Consequently, thousands of women suffering from ovarian cancer and mesothelioma received zero compensation from the company. This whole maneuver was entirely legal.
Laws exist because people are inherently corrupt and yet it’s people who write, interpret and enforce laws. The best any legal system can do is stop more corruption than it facilitates. Even a law given by God becomes corrupt through human handling. Matthew 23 depicts Jesus barraging the teachers of the Mosaic law with a series of indictments. We saw the one about their being “whitewashed walls” earlier. Here’s another one:
“Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?”
(Matthew 23:16-17 NIV)
Why would someone stipulate which oaths are binding and which are not? I can think of no other reason than to deceive someone into thinking you’re dealing with them honestly when you’re not. So, the teachers of God’s law used it to sanction fraud. Those who learned this doctrine would not only have continued shady dealings but done so under the presumption of divine endorsement. How much harder would it have been to call such a person to repentance? Back to the example of Johnson and Johnson, how many of those executives salved their conscience with the justification that their actions were legal?
The elementary principles don’t just endorse personal corruption, they also breed it.
Authority and conformity are the means to power and the pursuit of power tends to corrupt. Proud people think they know best, and they come to feel entitled and/or compelled to bring their inferiors in line. Once they’ve begun to pursue power, they find the path littered with moral compromise. By the time they can influence the actions of other people they’ve become masters of coercion and manipulation. Power and corruption have correlated throughout human history.
Under the elementary principles, people are capable of anything.
Paul confessed that in his pre-converted life he’d served human authority and cultural conformity under the guise of religion. Rather than falling in behind God’s Messiah, he became his enemy. His own recap bears repeating here:
For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
(Galatians 1:13-14 NIV)
I imagine Saul of Tarsus as he fasted for three days in Damascus[ii] asking, “How did this happen?” According to Galatians 1, his answer emerged, “Because I was seeking to please people. Never again!”
If a deeply pious, conscientious Jew like Saul of Tarsus was capable of mass murder, where does that leave the rest of us? Conformists and rule-followers will conscientiously exterminate their fellow humans under the right circumstances. When laws are civil and society polite, we often fail to recognize our own moral bankruptcy. We retweet a virtuous-sounding platitude and pat ourselves on the back. We work hard, pay our taxes, and keep to ourselves, so we celebrate our status as societies contributing members. None of these actions say one word in favor of our real moral fiber. All that is needed for evil to triumph is for evil to move slowly or for it to appear as the only solution in a time of crisis. Once evil has passed into law it will quickly become a necessary evil and almost everyone will participate.
We must be free to become good. When we do good under external influence, it no longer counts as good. The person who does good under external influence will just as easily do evil under the same master.
I’ve quoted a lot of Bible verses to make my case here, but the moral hazards of serving the elementary principles are plain to the observant eye. About the transition in his subjects from moral individuals to agents of evil Stanley Milgram notes:
Specifically, the person entering an authority system no longer views himself as acting out of his own purposes but rather comes to see himself as an agent for executing the wishes of another person.[iii]
Milgram goes on to term this transition, “the agentic shift.” He goes on to discuss its moral implications:
The most far-reaching consequence of the agentic shift is that a man feels responsible to the authority directing him but feels no responsibility for the content of the actions that the authority prescribes. Morality does not disappear but acquires a radically different focus: the subordinate person feels shame or pride depending on how adequately he has performed the actions called for by the authority.[iv]
In his epilogue to the book, Milgram allows himself a philosophical analysis of his findings. His words speak poignantly of the need for each person to be set free from the elementary principles of the world:
Men do become angry; they do act hatefully and explode in a rage against others. But not here. Something far more dangerous is revealed: the capacity for man to abandon his humanity, indeed, the inevitability that he does so, as he merges his unique personality into the larger institutional structures.
This is a fatal flaw nature has designed into us, and which in the long run gives our species only a modest chance of survival.
What is the limit of such obedience? At many points we attempted to establish a boundary. Cries from the victim were inserted; they were not good enough. The victim claimed heart trouble; subject still shocked him on command. The victim pleaded to be let free, and his answers no longer registered on the signal box; subjects continued to shock him.
The results, as seen and felt in the laboratory, are to this author disturbing. They raise the possibility that human nature, or – more specifically – the kind of character produced in American democratic society, cannot be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority.[v]
Milgram, as disturbed as he was by his findings, offers no solutions in his book. His work only served to raise an alarm that to my knowledge has yet to be heeded in any way.[vi] Nearly 2000 years before Milgram, Saul of Tarsus saw this capacity for brutality in himself. He became aghast at it and at himself in the blinding light of Jesus. He knew he needed to be saved and he knew exactly what from.
Our choices come down to be free or be evil.
Milgram’s findings and Saul’s reveal the destructive ramifications of living under the elementary principles of the world. Saul’s example further demonstrates the enslaving and corrupting potential of religious belief. People already abdicate their humanity to authority and conformity, but those effects become more pronounced when the supposed authority is divine, and conformity is to a holy norm. I think the apostle Paul would have wholeheartedly agreed with this quote from the late Christopher Hitchens:
Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.[vii]
Mr. Hitchens's words point more clearly to the human need for salvation than any I’ve heard from most pulpits on Sunday morning. Hitchens blamed religion for what Milgram demonstrated to arise from human nature. No doubt religion often intensifies those corrupting influences. But that observation proves the human inability to escape the corrupt society even through our loftiest pursuits.
References:
[i] Article on Johnson and Johnson lawsuit.
[ii] Paul’s conversion story from Acts 9:1-19
[iii] Milgram p.133
[iv] IBID p.145-146
[v] Excerpts from Milgram p.188-189
[vi] A similar study in 2009 confirmed Milgram’s findings
[vii] God is Not Great
In "Disarmed and Dangerous" we say that living saved is living above rules.
The elementary principles of the world are disarmed and dangerous. Jesus disarmed them by nullifying the law and with it rule-based living. Even though this is so, we must beware of them since we tend to resort to them again.
Episode Notes:
Point: We encounter the elementary principles of the world through rules.
The elementary principles of the world don’t need to be codified to operate, but rules facilitate their reign. Laws define the extent to which authorities can control the actions of the citizens under their purview. Laws facilitate the operation of authority by prescribing governmental power over the citizens. For instance, a person driving over the posted speed limit will have a ready answer for the traffic cop’s, “Do you know why I pulled you over?” Laws governing every detail of this type of interaction reduce the need for force in enforcement. Laws facilitate the operation of authority, but they also limit it. Police officers, judges, representatives, and even the president are all subject to the laws in the United States. We need authority, but it can easily become oppressive, so legal codes attempt to mitigate oppression while retaining the social order.
Rules also streamline the process of conformity. Institutions produce bylaws and policy guides to prescribe acceptable behavior for their participants. POA covenants detail cultural conformity regarding the appearance of individual property within a neighborhood. Employers produce handbooks and work to produce a corporate culture that reflects their brand. I’ve lived most of my life in the shadow of the Walmart home office and I’ve seen firsthand the impact of insisting that everyone in management refers to employees as “associates.” People naturally conform to unspoken norms but when they do get spoken in the form of rules, it helps everyone conform more quickly.
Religions prescribe taboos and rituals for their adherents. These prescriptions can take the form of laws in theocratic societies, or they can be enforced by social censure in more secular ones. The Hebrew scriptures outline civil and cultic requirements in tedious detail. These instructions informed jurisprudence even under a monarchial rule which helped Israel maintain a level of equality and justice for all its people. Ultimate civil authority resided with the Mosaic code. The cultic elements such as in Leviticus produced a vivid cultural salience among Jewish society. The law, as Paul called it, helped the Jews remain a distinct people even through centuries as a dispersed nation.
Rules are so ubiquitous in human society that we might fail to recognize the elementary principles hiding behind them. In our highly litigious and individualistic society, we might come to assume that we obey the law simply because we don’t want to go to jail. Or we might tell ourselves that we obey the policy manual at work just because we don’t want to get fired. Our relationship with rules could make us miss the fact that we obey laws that we could safely ignore or that we buy in to the company line when the boss isn’t around. If Paul is right that rules serve these elementary principles of the world, then the fact that we continually produce rules is proof positive that we live under the sway of invisible social forces.
Point: Christ has nullified rule-based systems, but the basic principles of the world remain disarmed and dangerous.
If rules merely represent the dominion of the elementary principles of the world and yet we’re supposed to be free of them, then we must be free from rules as well. Remember that in Galatians 4:1-3 Paul called the elementary principles of the world a guardian over humankind until the coming of God’s Son. A few verses earlier, he speaks of the Mosaic law as guardian over the nation of Israel “until faith came.” Later in Galatians 4, he warns these Gentile converts that submitting to the law would be a return to subservience to the elementary principles of the world. In chapter 5, he exhorts them to remain in freedom by not submitting to the requirements written in the Old Testament. In other words, rule-keeping is a reversal of the gospel of Christ.
In Colossians, Paul described religious rules as weapons used by the elementary principles of the world to oppress God’s people:
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
(Colossians 2:13-15 NIV)
Since Jesus has “disarmed the powers and authorities,” we mustn’t allow them to influence our actions. As Paul went on to write,
If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?
(Colossians 2:20-22 NASB)
Point: We must be free of the guardian to become moral adults.
Freedom from external pressures and enticements is mandatory to the Christian because Christ died to set us free from the elementary principles of the world. But if these basic principles are essentially benign and if laws aim at keeping them that way, what need could there be for such radical freedom? Why would God pay such an awful cost to free us from our guardian?
We can’t stay under the guardian because God wants grown children. Rules can be comfortable. Religious people often swing towards legalism because they’re looking for structure. They want to know what they should do without having to go through the pain of decision-making. In other words, they want to be treated like children. Unfortunately, such people never develop an authentic ethic beyond, “Do what you’re told.” That might work for small children, but it surely shouldn’t characterize God’s full-grown image bearers.
The elementary principles of the world and the rules they wield work to keep humankind from facing the self-destructive consequences of their own defiance. Their proper role is to restrain human wickedness. According to Paul:
We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers…
(1 Timothy 1:8-9 NIV)
Laws exist to constrain unrighteous people. The application of laws to righteous people is a misuse. It suggests to them that they would do such things if unconstrained and they come to believe it. They become moral infants afraid of their own character. When they encounter the least bit of freedom, they flee to the familiar folds of their nanny’s apron. There, they are once again absolved of tension to make good decisions. This tendency can affect even people we consider very spiritual.
In Galatians 2 Paul recounts a time he had to rebuke the apostle Peter in front of the whole church.[i] It seems that Peter had been eating with Gentiles in Antioch but shunned them after other Jewish believers arrived from Jerusalem. We’re told that Peter’s hypocrisy was due to fear of this Jewish contingent. I assume it regarded the Jewish practice of avoiding ceremonial defilement which would always be present at Gentile feasts. It seems the defilements might have gone beyond ceremonial, though. Paul seems to suggest that Peter may have compromised his morals in some way at one of these Gentile banquets:
“But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.
(Galatians 2:17-18 NIV)
As an observant Palestinian Jew, Peter could rest assured in his personal performance of the law. However, that performance owed greatly to living in an observant society. The real test of Peter’s character would come while surrounded entirely by pagans with their raucous indulgence and casual inter-sex interactions. Did Peter get drunk? Was he acting a bit too familiar with one of the female dinner guests? Whatever he’d done, he felt ashamed enough to cease eating with Gentiles when he came under Jewish scrutiny. Maybe he was afraid to scandalize the name of Christ through his own actions. Paul puts that concern to rest by saying, “Hey, if you messed up, that’s on you.” Then he tells Peter that the real transgression is to build again the law-driven religion which kept Jews and Gentiles apart.
I relay all of this to point out that only those who come out from behind authoritarian religion can discover and develop their true moral core. Children need directives and supervision, but the application of those same controls on adults infantilizes them. Attempts to shelter young adults in the home, youth group, and Christian college retard their moral/spiritual development. In many cases, they come to resent the authority over them and rebel (only to find themselves in the custody of conformity). If they don’t rebel, they will become morally hollow puppets of their church. Such religion produces cowardly conformists. We must be free to become truly conformed to the image of Christ through and through.
Point: Religious rules incubate hypocrisy.
Servants of the basic principles not only lack moral fiber, but they grow an immoral alter ego behind the veneer of compliance. Laws and social norms can only address actions. This brings the focus entirely on behaviors and especially the ones which signal insider status with the group. I’ve seen whole churches of people who would never use an instrument on Sunday morning but who were secretly having affairs even with each other.
Jesus called down this curse on the hypocrites of his day:
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
(Matthew 23:27-28 NIV)
I’ve been around long enough to see this illustration as an immutable spiritual law. Wherever you find a shiny behavioral veneer, you can be assured of moral rot hiding just under the surface.
The best that people will become under the elementary principles of the world is outwardly obedient. The worst they’ll become is moral deviants hiding from public scrutiny. We don’t celebrate “yes men,” or conformists. And every kind of hypocrite is universally disdained. We must be free from external control if we are to have any hope of genuine moral development.
Point: Religious rules dilute pure motives.
Maybe you’re thinking of a good legalist you knew. I’d suggest that you probably didn’t really know them, but let’s pretend you did. Even if a rule-driven person comes to obey from the heart, their morality will always be in question. For instance, suppose they remain faithful to their spouse in thought, word, and deed their entire life. Will that faithfulness be due to a genuine love for their spouse or will it be merely enlightened self-interest for fear of divine retribution? Perhaps they could say that it was both, but wouldn’t that dilute the pure love their spouse would prefer to receive?
References:
- Churches of Christ in America and what they teach.
- Some of the dynamics associated with tithing in Mormonism.
- Nathan mentioned this show on the Unabomber.
Christ calls us to live above the dynamics of control.
We need authority and conformity to keep society on the rails, but we must also rise above the dynamics of control to escape our corrupt generation.
In our previous discussion in this series we said that to qualify as the power of God to save, we must face a clear and present danger. These dynamics of control which the apostle Paul called, "the elementary principles of the world," are part of that clear and present danger.
Episode Notes:
Point: We must be saved from social control which is human authority and cultural conformity.
These can be seen in the introduction to Paul’s freedom polemic, the book of Galatians:
Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead…
(Galatians 1:1 NIV)
Two things strike me as odd. First, he begins by telling his recipients who he doesn’t represent before telling them who he does. Simply telling them he was an apostle of Jesus Christ, as he does in other letters, would have been plenty to establish his bona fides. Second, he refers to human influence twice – first in the plural, “men,” and then in the singular, “a man.” This sounds uncharacteristically redundant.
Could I suggest that these anomalies indicate the Galatians’ need to be reminded that the gospel saves from society? It might seem implicit that entering the service of God would preclude allegiance to humans, but not everyone connects those dots. Sometimes they need to be explicitly told we must renounce human influence before coming under Christ’s. Not only must they be told to renounce human influence, but the types of influence must be specified lest they think they can straddle the fence. Paul wasn’t being redundant in saying that his apostleship wasn’t from men or a man. He was disassociating himself from both types of human influence – from people as a conforming collective and from any authoritative individual. His apostleship was free from the two principles of interpersonal control - conformity and obedience.
In analyzing the results of his groundbreaking study on obedience to authority, Stanley Milgram[i] named these two principles as the means of interpersonal control. He wrote, “Obedience and conformity both refer to the abdication of initiative to an external source."[ii]While Milgram studied the influence of authority, his analysis names conformity as a second influence. Milgram’s observations seem to indicate that authority and conforming pressure are empirically recognizable forces in society.
While distinct, these two principles apply continuous pressure in tandem. According to Milgram:
“Conformity”…(means) the action of a subject when he goes along with the peers, people of his own status, who have no special right to direct his behavior. “Obedience” will be restricted to the action of subject who complies with authority. Consider a recruit who enters military service. He scrupulously carries out the orders of his superiors. At the same time, he adopts the habits, routines, and language of his peers. The former represents obedience and the latter, conformity.”[iii]
Point: Authority and conformity work in tandem to ensure that nobody escapes their grip.
Dr. Milgram also notes that sometimes conformity and authority oppose one another such as in cases of nonviolent civil disobedience or prison riots.[iv] Group dynamics might help a person resist unjust authority but that doesn’t mean the person becomes free. They’ve just come under new management since conformity to a group requires that individuals abdicate “initiative to an external source.” The pressure to conform can be just as oppressive as a jack-booted authority, but those in its grip often fail to recognize their enslavement. According to Milgram, "Subjects deny conformity and embrace obedience as the explanation of their behavior."[v] Authority and conformity work together to bring people under the influence of the corrupt society even in their defiance.
For us to be saved from a corrupt society, we must be free from all forms of external control. So, before even mentioning to the Galatians the name of Jesus Christ, Paul dissociated his apostleship from cultural conformity and human authority. He couldn’t represent human interests because his gospel set him free from them. Because of this, his autobiography contains an autopsy of a life under the sway of authority and conformity. Let’s analyze a short description of his pre-converted life, line by line:
- For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, (cultural conformity)
- how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. (human authority – see Acts 9:1-2)
- I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people (cultural conformity)
- and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. (human authority)
Though Paul had been extremely religious and conscientious, his true allegiance was to his society. If you think I’m reading into this description, consider the thesis of his previous life: “If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10b NIV emphasis mine)
I used to read this sentence as an axiom, “He who would seek to please people cannot be a servant of Christ.” That’s probably true, but it’s not Paul’s intention here. He’s not speaking theoretically. He’s saying that he had continuously lived for the pleasure of other people until he met Christ on the Damascus Road. His “Judaism” was just another manifestation of the corrupt society. Religion can’t provide a refuge from the way of the world since religious systems just produce alternative hierarchies and subcultures.
Point: Even if we could escape the double bind, we’d be no better off.
In a post-religious world, some have attempted to escape society’s oppression through political ideologies. Anarchism has endured despite its seemingly fanciful ideas and often violent expressions. Over the past few years, I’ve had several interactions with thoughtful anarchists. It seems there may be more anarchists than ever in the US.[vi] Anarchism persists because it correctly diagnoses a major cause of perennial oppression. According to one modern anarchist website:
The political State exists to uphold a class-divided and settler-colonial society. We believe that a better world can be created in its place, organized from the ground up, where power is spread out horizontally, with human labor going towards human needs, not profit. We act in the spirit of autonomy, mutual aid, and direct action. We have no allegiance to representational, Statist politics.[vii]
Anarchists aren’t wrong about the net result of political states. They always eventually uphold oppression. Unfortunately, revolutions have always empowered new oppressive regimes. Since there’s never been a successful anarchic state or even community for that matter, I’m not optimistic about their chances.
Here’s the dilemma: we need to be saved from interpersonal control, but without it we must either live in isolation or trust others to always behave unselfishly. Milgram, who attributed the holocaust to obedience, wrote:
Submission to authority is a powerful and prepotent condition in man. Why is this so?
Let us begin our analysis by noting that men are not solitary but function within hierarchical structures. In birds, amphibians, and mammals we find dominance structures, and in human beings, structures of authority mediated by symbols rather than direct contests of physical strength. The formation of hierarchically organized groupings lends enormous advantage to those so organized in coping wit dangers of the physical environment, threats posed by competing species, and potential disruption from within.[viii]
So, the forces which threaten our souls exist to preserve our bodies. Authority maintains order and order maximizes our collective efficiency. But authority alone can’t maintain order since that would require enforcers to continuously supervise each person as well as other enforcers to supervise those enforcers and so on. Societies can’t function on authority alone so conforming pressures further encourage individuals to behave according to established norms. Countries that rely heavily on honor and shame don’t tend to be as litigious as those which are more individualistic. We might say that authority and conformity operate along a continuum to ensure full control of the individual by the group.
Point: The dynamics of control, though corruptible, are inherently benign.
While Paul’s gospel called for liberation from them, he also lauded them. Consider this advice he gave the Roman church:
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.
(Romans 12:17-18; 13:4-5 NIV)
Paul calls on his fellow Christians to carefully conform to their society’s idea of praiseworthy behavior. Then he tells them to obey the pagan authorities for God’s sake. God ordained authority and conformity to keep society on the rails. In the fall narrative from Genesis 3, the man and his wife naturally feel shame (a conforming pressure) over their rebellion. In proclaiming his curse on the woman, he called forth the principle of authoritarian control: “And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16b NLT)
These dynamics of control entered the world early and ubiquitously operate within all human interactions. They are inherent to the fallen human condition and cannot be avoided so long as we live in a fallen world. They are essential to mitigate individual evil. These are what Paul referred to as “the elementary principles of the world.”[ix]
Point: We can’t rise above the dynamics of control on our own because they are the Elementary Principles of the World
So far, we've said that the gospel saves us from the dynamics of control. We've also said that those same dynamics keep society from imploding under the collective demands of every individual. These ideas may seem contradictory, so Paul gives an illustration of something that is both benign and controlling:
I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.
(Galatians 4:1-3 ESV)
Paul describes the “elementary principles of the world” as household servants employed to train and supervise wealthy children until they come of age.
This phrase which is translated from three Greek words has caused a lot of debate among New Testament scholars. It has been thought to describe angelic powers. The New International Version for example translates it as “elemental spiritual forces of the world.” This understanding however doesn't seem to consider the overall context of the Galatian letter or of Pauline salvation doctrine. Until this point in the Galatian letter, Paul has not described some sort of esoteric threat but has dealt at length with the threat of human authority and social pressure. It seems more in line with Paul's gospel to understand the elementary principles of the world as something akin to the laws of human interaction. To better understand this phrase and its significance to the gospel, I will unpack its constituent words individually.
There are several words in Greek that refer to some aspect of the world. The one used here originally meant “order.” In the 6th century before Christ a philosopher named Heraclitus began using it to refer to the world. That usage stuck and was employed by the writers of the New Testament. While this word is often translated as “world” it doesn't necessarily refer to the planet or to the natural universe but to the social order. We use the word “world” similarly when we talk about someone being worldly or someone following the way of the world.
In the prevailing thought of the New Testament era, nature and human nature were somewhat enmeshed. For instance, Heraclitus used observances about nature to infer advice on how human beings ought to conduct themselves as individuals and within society. To the ancients, there was a way of conducting oneself that aligned with pre-existing laws just as water evaporates and stars appear at prescribed intervals.
“Elementary principles” is a translation of one Greek word which literally means, “basics” or “fundamentals.” The insertion of “principles” can be readily inferred even in English. When we encourage someone to “stick to basics” we mean they should avoid sophisticated methods for a proven set of best practices. We might, then, think of the elementary principles of the world as the givens or constants upon which all other human interactions are based – a kind of interpersonal inertia.
Point: The elementary principles of the world are the clear and present danger.
Even though they are benign in and of themselves they ultimately become the vehicle for interpersonal control. This threat doesn't need to be identified or even acknowledged to impact individuals. Just like inertia the elementary principles of the world affect every person whether they understand them or not. Neither do these laws need to be enforced because they come with their own set of consequences.
Paul curiously describes the elementary principles of the world in Galatians chapter 4 as having enslaved the pagan Galatians as well as the kosher Jews. For the Galatians to attempt to keep the Torah would be a return to bondage under the same elementary principles of the world even though they had come to believe in Yahweh. Consider the following passage:
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?
(Galatians 4:8-9 ESV)
I'd like to notice a couple of things about this passage. First, it seems to preclude the interpretation taken by the NIV translators that the elementary principles of the world are spiritual entities. It may have been that those who were outside of Israel were subject to spiritual forces or demonic powers. However, it doesn't seem that observant Jews would have been subject to the exact same powers.
Whatever the elementary principles of the world are, both Jews and gentiles were subject to them. This would make sense because these principles are fundamental to all social interaction.
Like physical laws, the elementary principles of the world carry their own consequences and do not need to be enforced. The principle of inertia cannot be violated even if all the speed limit laws were immediately repealed. I remember driving an RV on a two-lane highway in East Texas a couple of years ago. The speed limit was 70 mph, but this road was dotted with driveways and blind intersections. I could just see myself summiting a blind hill to encounter a vehicle that had just pulled onto the highway. I could almost hear the shattering of glass and the crunching of metal. It was the first time in my life that I chose to drive under the speed limit. At that moment I was no longer following the laws legislated by the state of Texas but the law of inertia. The penalty for violating that law was way too high for me to risk paying. The same can be said for the elementary principles of the world.
The Bible book of Judges ends with two horrific vignettes. In the first, armed men from one of the Israelite tribes rob a fellow Jew and then murder all the inhabitants of a peaceful city. The second vignette descends even further as a man from another Israelite tribe attempt to rape a traveling member of the priestly tribe almost exactly as the citizens of Sodom had with the angelic visitors to Lot’s house. From here the story digresses further into rape, murder, dismemberment, genocide, and more rape. The book of Judges closes with this commentary, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25 ESV)
Like modern anarchists, we might want to shed human authority, but the outcome will be the same. The elementary principles of the world can’t be violated without consequence to the individual and society. The call to defund the police, for example, doesn’t need to be refuted. It’s self-defeating because we need authority to make society work.
While they may not admit it to themselves, most people know this to be true and they wouldn’t want it any other way. In fact, we’re so accustomed to living under the elementary principles of the world that we default to them when we want to get something done. Churches, though keepers of the liberating message, often insist upon believers signing covenants that stipulate obedience and conformity as requirements for membership. Practical-minded church leaders know that grace might get someone into heaven, but you need an obligation to get them to serve in the nursery. On the other side of the aisle, progressives eagerly assassinate the character of those who fail to sufficiently advocate their own ideology. Most people don’t like being controlled but it’s a price they happily pay to ensure others will fall in line.
"Above the Dynamics of Control" References:
[i] https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html
[ii] Obedience to Authority, p. 114
[iii] IBID p. 113
[iv] IBID
[v] IBID p. 115
[vi] https://www.csis.org/blogs/examining-extremism/examining-extremism-us-militant-anarchists
[vii] https://itsgoingdown.org/about/
[viii] Obedience to Authority, p. 123-124
[ix] Galatians 4:3; Colossians 2:20 NASB
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