Back in my seminary days, we used to joke about certain professors and their teaching. Some of the classes taught and material covered required some serious thinking on our part and some gifted teaching on the part of our professors. At times, the language and thought of the professor were just too far beyond our ability to understand.
When this happened, we would walk out of class, bewildered looks on our faces, and say, “That professor is like a deep-sea diver: he goes down deeper, stays down longer, and comes up drier than any teacher I know.”
Warning - I’m about to do some theological deep sea-diving. I’ve extended this post to two days, and still, it’s long and nothing like most of what I write for “Church on the Edge.”
With that in mind, here are a few thoughts on yesterday’s podcast and the overall theme of Season Four’s study of Galatians entitled “Confronting Cultural Christianity.”
You and I are living in a fast-paced, fast-changing world. This is the primary reason for the so-called “culture wars,” a term given prominence by James Davidson Hunter in his 1991 book, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America.
Bill O’Reilly’s book, Cultural Warrior, published in 2006, refers to this cultural and political divide in the United States, placing what he refers to as “Secular-Progressives” on the one side and “Traditionalists” on the other.
The question facing followers of Jesus in these days is: how do we communicate the Good News of God’s Kingdom in this fast-paced, fast-changing world in which we live? Actually, a better question is: how do we communicate the Good News to people whose lifestyles, morals, and values are so often very different from our own?
I believe the answer to that question lies in Paul’s letter to the Gentile churches in Galatia, as well as in his call to be God’s ambassador to the Gentiles/nations.
Think about it. Saul of Tarsus was a “Hebrew of Hebrews.” That’s how he describes himself in Philippians 3:5, where he goes on to say he was “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin.” In other words, this guy was as kosher as kosher gets. He was Jewish to the bone.
And God called this traditionalist Jew to take the Good News of God’s Kingdom, established through the death and resurrection of Jesus Messiah, to a world of idol worshipers. That’s what Gentiles were. When Jews referred to Gentiles as “sinners,” this is what they meant. They were polytheists, worshiping many gods. (There is an example of this usage in Galatians 2:15, and we will talk about it in a future podcast.)
The Roman world of the first century was deeply religious, deeply spiritual. There was a spiritual hunger among people that made them very receptive to the message of a King and a Kingdom unlike any they had ever known. Not the harsh, iron fist of Caesar, who was called “Son of God,” but the loving embrace of Jesus, Son of the Most High God. And while Caesar conquered lands and people groups, Jesus conquered death and promised “peace on earth, goodwill to mankind” as God’s army of angels announced to the shepherds the night of his birth. (the phrase “heavenly host” in Luke 2 refers to God’s army.)
At this point, you might be thinking, “Dan, there’s a big difference between people of the first century and people in our nations and world today.” Yes and no. I believe people are as spiritually hungry today as they were in times past. Unlike the Gentiles of the first century, that spiritual hunger is not seen in the worship of wood and stone images. It is, however, seen and heard in movies, songs, television shows, and other medium.
One of the reasons for Friday’s rock ’n roll devotionals is to help followers of Jesus recognize this hunger. Consider the words of Woodstock, a song and event that defined in many ways the spirit of our age. Joni Mitchell sings of meeting “a child of God” on his way to Yasgur’s farm in New York. “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden,” she sings. That’s about as spiritual as it gets.1
The difference between Paul and the Jewish believers who were causing so much trouble among Gentile Christians is that Paul realized the way to God was not through established, traditional Jewish religion. The way to God was through Jesus Messiah.
That’s because Paul came to the realization that the covenant established with Israel at Mount Sinai was fulfilled not by the Jewish people but by the one Jew, Jesus, who did what they failed to do.
After Jesus revealed himself to Saul on the road to Damascus, this brilliant Jewish theologian spent three years in Arabia. Arabia is where Mount Sinai is located. Mount Sinai is the place where Israel entered into covenant with God.
Consider these words, spoken by God to Israel just before He gave them the Ten Commandments and entered into covenant relationship with them - “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:5)
Israel was to be God’s priests to the world. They were called to be, in the words of the prophets, “a light to the Gentiles. (nations) But they failed. This is the meaning of Jesus’s angry disruption in the court of the Gentiles located in the temple in Jerusalem. He overturned the tables of the money changers and drove them out with a whip.
As Saul, secluded in Arabia, poured over the ancient Scriptures of his people, he came to realize that God’s calling of Israel as a “kingdom of priests” and a “light to the Gentiles” was fulfilled through one Jew, and that Jew was Jesus. This is why in Galatians 3:16, Paul distinguishes between Abraham’s seeds (plural) and Abraham’s seed (singular).
“All the (God’s) promises,” writes Paul, “were spoken to Abraham and his seed.” He continues, “Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed’ meaning one person who is Christ.” (Galatians 3:16)
Jesus fulfilled Israel’s covenant agreement with God. In doing this, Christ established a new covenant. God spoke of this new covenant through the prophet Jeremiah saying, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.”
The eyes of Saul, the Jew, were opened to this new covenant established by the one faithful Jewish “seed” of Abraham. He then became Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. And he described his ministry as “written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” (2 Corinthians 3:3)
These words distinguish between the old and new covenants. The Ten Commandments were written on stone. Rules, regulations, rituals, observances, and everything else included in the covenant that Israel entered into with their God at Mount Sinai. The new covenant which comes to us through the faithful Jew, Jesus, is not found in these things. It’s found in relationship - written not on tablets of stone but on human hearts.
To reach those in our fast-changing world today, a world where values and lifestyles are often very different from our own as followers of Christ (and keep in mind that most of us grew up in the church), we need to embrace the truth that we are not calling people to our church, our denomination, our traditions, our political candidates, or even (are you ready for this?) our way of thinking about a whole lot of things, even those things that are causing the wide cultural divides in our world today.
Tomorrow I’m going to continue this post and share with you some of the things I think we need to be doing (and not doing) as Christians in our world today as we seek to reach others with the Good News of God’s Kingdom in Christ.
In Christ,
Dan
Check out my podcasts from Church on the Edge and my books on Kindle.
Woodstock took place just over 50 years ago, a short time historically speaking.
Nice post here Dan. Cultures, nations and laws change but Jesus and the Word of God do not.