The God of Reality

We often speak of doing the Lord’s work, working for the Lord, and the Lord working in our lives or in the world. In Psalm 127, we have a picture of God and humans working together; a divine and human collaboration.

Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain.  2 It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved.  3 Sons are indeed a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.  4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth.  5 Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127 NRS)

The Hebrew word house (bayit) is often used to mean the household or the extended family of a patriarch, or a clan. The building of the house may be a metaphor for raising a family. It is also used for a temple, the house of God, and by extension, the people of God. In antiquity, the Greek word for synagogue (synagogē) and for church (ekklesia) come from verbs to assemble and to congregate, and referred to the gathered people, the assembly or the congregation. Only later did the words mean the buildings in which people assembled or congregated. God is interested in people, not cement blocks.

Like the word house, the word city often refers primarily to the inhabitants. In the biblical tradition a city can be said to cry (1Sam 4:13), be stirred (Ruth 1:19); it can be called righteous (Isa 1:26), faithful (Zech 8:3) and holy (Isa 48:2). A city can be proud (Zeph 2:15), oppressive (Zeph 3:1), and bloody (Ezek 22:2). All these descriptions refer to the people, not the buildings. The difference between a city and a town or village was that a city usually had a wall. People felt safer when protected by city walls, but everyone knew that walls and guards could not ensure safety. There is no such thing as total security. Even Jerusalem, the holy city, was sacked and burned when the protection of God departed.

Ultimately we are helpless. Ultimately we need God. Scripture reminds us over and over that the struggle to live, “eating the bread of anxious toil,” is not the purpose of life. The city walls are standing, the house is intact; so why am I spending long hours in anxious labor? When it comes to survival, most of us need more sleep than money. This poem was written back in a time when even putting bread on the table required daily work for daily bread. In his model prayer Jesus said simply: give us today our daily portion of bread. And then he taught us how to live. Life requires balance.

Like the walls of a city, to be surrounded by stalwart sons is a good thing when confronting one’s enemies at the gate. It is a bit like the saying: “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.” In antiquity, and to some extent still today, children provide security in one’s old age. Family remains a defense. Even a church family is a source of strength and support.

The psalm speaks of collaboration between God and his people. We build households, we guard walls, we have children, but we are to do these things in partnership with God, not independently of God.

God does not normally work with his people by miracle from afar. The whole providential scheme of existence is that God and his people form a love relationship—a covenant, like a marriage. This relationship requires trust. The psalmist reminds us to invoke divine favor as we labor throughout life and to trust in God for the aid we need. We work with God and God works through us. God provides what we need, and we must always thank and acknowledge God for his collaboration in our lives, his labor of love for us.

We see here in the wisdom of ancient the covenant of Israel a foreshadowing of the later new covenant collaboration between God and his people. Jesus said, “The Son can do nothing by himself, but only what he sees the Father doing” (John 5:19). Paul says: But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me (1Cor 15:10).

In the new covenant there is a more intimate understanding of the relationship between God and his people. Psalm 127 anticipates the collaborative labor with God in contrast to labor on one’s own found in the New Testament in places such as Ephesians 2:9–10.

Ephesians 2:1–10 contrasts the life of Gentiles before and after they have entered into the covenant of God. The main contrast is between death apart from God and life in God.

Eph 2:1–3 You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. 3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.

The metaphor of death and life is fundamental to Christian theology. We were dead to true life in the way we lived according to the way of the world. If we use the metaphor of two kingdoms, we were subjects of the ruler of the passions of the flesh; we are ruled by desires oriented toward the body, the animal aspect of our existence. Our normal actions are directed toward the self, and self-gratification. The phrase “children of wrath” is a Hebraism, similar to the phrase “son of Gehenna” used by Jesus to describe the converts of some Pharisees (Matt 23:15). We are sons and daughters of God, or we are children of wrath. We live either in the will of God, or we live contrary to the will of our maker, and therefore we deserve the wrath of God.

Eph 2:4–7 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us  5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—  6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

The other half of the contrast is true life—eternal life. God, who is love because he loves us, has redeemed us and made us alive with Christ. Always using metaphor, we have been raised up spiritually with Christ, and because we are in Christ, we are now spiritually seated in heaven. Because God has done this, the ultimate goal of salvation, the glory of God, will be realized. The full glory that surrounds the creator of the universe will be manifest forever.

Eph 2:8–10 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Salvation by grace through faith is a central thesis of Paul. Grace and faith are two sides to the coin of salvation. Because it is so common to our ears, it sometimes helps to use synonyms. Salvation is by divine favor and through human trust. We have done nothing to achieve salvation, and therefore no one may boast about having received divine favor. Nevertheless, we must trust God to carry though and save us. If we trust him, we will not go unrewarded. Grace is the ground of salvation and faith is the means. It is a relationship of love: God loves us first, and shows us favor; we love him in return and trust him.

Now, how did Israelites enter the covenant with God? They were born into it. Does anyone seriously take personal credit in our conception, and having managed to work our way out of our mother’s womb? Did you even make a decision to be born? In a similar way, Gentiles entered the covenant with God by being born again, a metaphor of the new life in Christ. There is no personal merit in one’s birth.

Those in Christ are born into a new reality. We were alive in one reality but at the same time, we were dead to another reality. Now we are alive to the reality of salvation, the reality of being in Christ. Therefore, within our present reality, we are created in Christ Jesus for good works; that is, living as God created us to live. Or, to use a metaphor given by Jesus and accepted by Paul, we are to produce the good fruit, the fruit of the Spirit, namely love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22–23). These are the good works that result from being created anew in Christ.

The final statement: “which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life,” is subject to various interpretations, depending on what questions are being asked. It is used for an argument of determinism; that we are predetermined to do what we do. In the context of the letter, however, especially in chapters 4–6, it is clear that we are called to do the good works, and that assumes we might not do them. There is no thought here that we are automatons, robots programmed to function in a certain way. No, God has prepared the way in which we are to walk. The great theologian Karl Barth explained it this way: “we do not have to do any carrying without remembering that we are carried” (Ethics, tr. G. W. Bromiley [T & T Clark, 1981] p. 516).

We know the way of life that God has designed and ordained for his people; let us walk in it. In a sense, we are called to realize in this world what will be manifest in the next world. There is a theological phrase that describes this: Realized Eschatology.

The phrase “Realized Eschatology” was coined by a British scholar (C. H. Dodd) to account for the way in which Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God as something that will come, and yet something that is already here among us. How can the kingdom be coming in the future and yet be in our midst? In what sense is the future reign of God already present in the world?

The word eschatology comes from the Greek word eschatos, meaning “final” or “last” and therefore eschatology is teaching about “the last things” or “the end times.” It refers to a future time when God will intervene and usher in a change in existence so great that we can speak of an entirely new state of reality.

To realize eschatology is to make the new state of reality present before its time. In the mind of Jesus, it appears he was taking a future reality and making it a present reality. If we translate kingdom of God as “kingship of God” or the “reign of God”, which in fact is more literal, it means that Jesus realized the full reign of God in his life and taught others how to live that way, as if God reigned over Israel in reality. Since God is king, his kingship is made evident, or realized, by the lives of his subjects. Jesus subjected himself fully to the rule of God, both to fulfill his own mission and to be an exemplar to all who follow him; namely, Christians. The full and future rule of God was made historically real in Jesus of Nazareth.

But the entire concept of the rule of God rests on the historical foundations of biblical Israel. The Old Testament foundation of eschatology rests on three pillars.

1. Promise to Abraham & Patriarchs: a people through whom all the earth will be blessed

2. Mosaic covenant: a way of life for the covenant people resulting in blessings or curses

3. Promise to David & house of David: a throne from which God will rule

God chose a people through whom all the earth will be blessed. He formed a covenant people. He chose subjects for his kingdom. Why did God choose Israel? “It was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors” (Deut 7:8). Through the Mosaic covenant God established a way of life for the covenant people that included blessings or curses, the consequences of obedience or disobedience. He established the laws of the kingdom. By the Promise to David & house of David, God set up a throne from which he ruled his people.

Israel was the central picture of God’s relationship to all the earth, but in reality God’s relationship to his creation was a process in the making. It was historical. It would take time. As human understanding grew, the divine goal became clearer and he end came into view. The vision of the end included the Messiah as God’s representative, and a perfected people of God. Jesus came and realized the foundations as well as the goal. He realized the people of God in himself, in his subjection to God by his obedience, and he exemplified the rule of God to Israel. In the fullness of time God realized the entirety of the universe for all time as he became part of it.

This process may be exemplified by the symbol of the serpent of bronze. According to the story of the wilderness wandering, the Israelites were weary of walking and sick of eating manna (like coriander seed). They complained to Moses. The Lord sent fiery serpents to torment them. They repented and asked for mercy. God told Moses to make a serpent of bronze. “So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live” (Num 21:9).

Leap over a few centuries and we find the serpent cult established in Israel. The Israelites had treated the bronze serpent as a god of healing. The symbol had become idol worship. “[King Hezekiah] removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred pole. He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan” (2Kings 18:4).

Nothing could be more natural than to treat a sacred object as a means for continued divine aid. As far as we can tell, this practice went on during the reigns of David and Solomon and all the other kings of Judah, until finally, the reformer King Hezekiah (715–687), in the year 715 BC, finally destroyed the symbol. It was part of the maturation of Israel, the removal idolatry from its midst as they attempted to distinguish themselves from all other peoples and learn to worship the God of no images.

We leap over 7 more centuries. The tradition and symbol have now become a renewed symbol of salvation. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:14–16). The symbol is not only for healing, but for salvation, and not just for Israelites, but for all the earth.

Would it have been better had the Israelites not complained about the food and rebelled against Moses? Yes. Would it have been better if the descendants had treated the bronze serpent as a museum piece, a reminder of the mercy of God, rather than treat the snake as a healing god? Yes. But God is not in a hurry and God will not be thwarted. God can use all things for his purpose.

In the context of the God of Reality, God dealt with the Israelites in a way they could understand. They responded in a way that was normal, but did not always rise to the demands of God. This happens quite a lot. It happens quite a lot today. God asked his people to reach out to him in trust. They faltered. But God continued to love them and draw them on with their faltering steps. God used it all. The failure became a symbol of what God was yet going to do, and no one knew it until it happened.

Likewise, the author of psalm 127 wrote his poem to God for his own generation. They still viewed life to be all the existence there is. Israel was to build the household of God with the help of God according to the will and desire of God. For them, there was no eschatology, or even a hope of eternal life. At most, the Israelites hoped to be remembered honorably by those who would come after. That was their hope and their reward.

The point I wish to make is that the God of Reality is the God of history. God deals with us where we are in the long trek of human existence. We are but the present generation, one of thousands in the past and we know not how many yet in the future. The God we worship, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, loved and was loved by his people 3000 years ago. So God dealt with pre-Israel people 6000 years ago, and with humans across the earth 9000 years ago, and so forth as far back as humanity may be traced. Placing our generation in the context of all generations ought to help us see ourselves more clearly—more realistically, more humbly. And the smaller we see ourselves, the greater God will appear to us.

To see ourselves in the big picture, including the end of time, is to realize ourselves in a new state of reality. Three steps should be taken.

1. See the world as it is (eyes wide open)

2. Live as if you see the big picture, the end goal

3. Do the good works God has prepared for you

Life in Christ is not complicated. It is not easy, but it is simple enough. God is accomplishing what he set out to do. How long do you have? You don’t know. When will Jesus come? You don’t know. You get one life to live, one chance to be part of the grand scheme, one opportunity to contribute to God’s purpose. You are a single piece in the celestial mosaic of existence. Let us take care to make the most of life.

The Lord will build his house. Am I building it with him? The Lord will be King of the Universe. Am I now subject to him as if all were accomplished? Whether we think in terms of a family household, a church household, of God’s people, we share one common goal: Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10).

Within the God of Reality theme, we look now at the reality of Christianity. Why do we bear the name Christian? Why didn’t Paul use the word? What does Christian mean? Why should we qualify the noun Christian by the adjective authentic?

After Jesus was gone, his followers saw themselves simply as disciples of Jesus. Everyone who joined them became another disciple of Jesus. Sociologists and historians call this the Jesus movement. According to Acts, this Jesus movement soon called their movement the Way. “Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:1–2).

These believers were just Jews who accepted that Jesus was the Messiah, raised up from the dead by God. Synagogues formed the way Jewish believers saw their own community organization, and this was later taken up by the Gentiles.

The Way also bears a curious similarity with the rabbinic word halakhah, translated as law or custom, but probably comes from the verb “to walk,” hence the way in which Israel should walk. The Way for the followers of Jesus may derive from his own version of the way to walk versus the way of the Pharisees. Its use in Acts, however, seems to reflect the way of salvation, rather than strict observance of law, and might come from Isaiah 40:3, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.” Finally, in John 14:6 Jesus says, “I am the Way” and that too may lie behind the name the Way.

In Palestine the followers of the Way were eventually called Nazarenes by other Jews, who associated them with Jesus of Nazareth. Paul was called a ringleader of the sect of Nazarenes (Acts 24:5). The name Nazarenes continued to be the Hebrew designation of believers in Jesus, and remains so today. In Israel Christians are Notsrim, Hebrew for Nazarenes.

The name Christian

“Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for an entire year they met with the church and taught a great many people, and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians’” (Acts 11:25–26).

The name Christiani was given to followers of Jesus Christ by others. Because the name has a Latin ending, we think Roman officials made up the name to distinguish this new group of partisans who followed the Christ from Jews who did not. It may be compared to groups of enthusiastic supporters of Nero called Augustiani, or perhaps similar to the Herodians mentioned in the New Testament.

The name was probably meant to be derogatory, something like “Jesus-Freaks.” The churches that Paul founded or wrote to did not use the name Christian. Paul does not seem to know the name. If he did know of it, he rejected it. He simply calls believers “holy ones” which is usually rendered as “saints” in the New Testament.

Apart from the two examples of the name Christian in Acts, the only other place the name is found in the New Testament is in 1 Peter: “Yet if any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name” (4:16).

The name Christian began as a slander and quickly became the object of persecution. Christians suffered for the name. Early in the second century that we find followers of Jesus speaking of themselves with pride as Christians. And this is by Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch who was on his way to martyrdom in Rome sometime around 117 AD.

“Just pray that I will have the strength both outwardly and inwardly so that I may not just talk about it but want to do it, that I might not merely be called a Christian, but actually prove to be one. For if I prove to be one, I can also be called one, and then I will be faithful when I am no longer visible to the world” (Ignatius, Letter to the Romans 3:2).

Ignatius is saying, yes, I am a Christian, one who suffers, and I pray that I will be faithful to the name I bear. And so it remained. For nearly three centuries the name Christian drew persecution and martyrdom from a hostile world.

Christianism / Christianity

The noun Christianity is the Latin based English translation for the Greek Christianism, which like Judaism or Hinduism, represents the beliefs and practices of a group of people. The word first occurs in the letters of Ignatius.

“It is utterly absurd to profess Jesus Christ and to practice Judaism. For Christianism did not believe in Judaism, but Judaism in Christianism, in which ‘every tongue’ believed and ‘was brought together’ to God” (Ignatius, Magnesians 10.3).

Christianism was a distinct set of beliefs and practices that marked Christians from Jews within what was understood to be a single covenant tradition with God. Jewish believers argued that Gentiles who entered the new covenant in Jesus were still required to follow the Mosaic laws of the covenant; specifically circumcision, the Sabbath rest, and keeping a kosher diet. Paul argued against them. According to Paul, Gentiles did not need to take on the laws of Moses that served as identity markers for Jews. As he says: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). This particular conflict was the purpose of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and was the cause of the first church council described in Acts 15.

From a strictly historical perspective (with God working in the background), Christianity is due largely to Paul’s tireless effort to preach his gospel. Its validity rests on the acceptance of Paul’s claim to have received his understanding of the gospel from Jesus. “For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:11–12).

Ignatius is speaking either to Jewish believers, or Gentiles who were trying to live like Jews. He notes that Jews embraced Christ, and therefore their Judaism should become Christianism. It is a matter of historical debate whether Paul thought Jews should no longer keep their covenant rules, but he certainly believed that Gentiles need not, and Ignatius is following Paul. This conflict continued for centuries, and has arisen in our own times in Messianic assemblies.

The history of early Christianity is a history of conflict in the church on how to define the practices and beliefs of Christians. On Paul’s own testimony, his ministry was in a perpetual state of conflict. He confronted Peter publically in Antioch, which we may assume went down very poorly with the Jewish believers. Barnabas broke from Paul. Later, Paul sent away John Mark. In his letters Paul mentions a variety of opponents. In 2 Corinthians (11:5, 11), Paul defends himself against the super-apostles, who were far more prestigious than he.

After the apostolic age, more conflicts followed. In the late second century, we had the first great controversy over the Christian calendar. Christians in the east, from Turkey to Israel, thought we should celebrate Easter on the Jewish Passover, while Christians in the west wanted to choose the date for Easter independently from Judaism. It caused a split in fellowship between the churches.

Then came Constantine and the imperial organization of the Universal (Catholic) Church. Something happened to Christianity when Constantine became a Christian. Suddenly being a Christian was an advantage, a way to climb the golden ladder, a way to attain political power and influence over others. Pagans flocked to the church and became demi-Christians, or cultural Christians. Within a generation, the percentage of Christians in the Roman Empire went from about 10% to 50%. In 381 the Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the empire, and paganism became more and more outlawed. Then something happened to Paganism. It went from being a cultural religion to a religion of conviction. Now you could lose your land or even your life for believing in the ancient Greek gods. What a transformation of religion.

Meanwhile, the authenticity of Christianity continued its dissolution into a culture. Individuals here and there were still men and women of strong faith and firm principle. But being a Christian within a Christian culture requires a different mindset than it does in a culture hostile to your beliefs. Disciples of Jesus are harder to identify.

Christianity Today

“Christianity is greatest when it is hated by the world” (Ignatius, Romans 3.3).

There are millions of Christians in China, worshiping in underground cell congregations, still under the scrutiny of a suspicious dictatorial government. In Muslim countries and in North Korea, Christians are still persecuted. In these lands, to be a Christian reveals a commitment that goes back to the roots of our faith. For them, Christianity is far more real, or authentic, than for us. American Christianism is a cushy Christianity. Even though there is a rising hostility to traditional Christian faith, our culture is still satiated by Christianity, and most Americans identify themselves as Christian. How do we express authenticity in our Christian culture?

Europe used to be like America—a Christian culture in which most people were Christian. Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a misfit in the Christian Denmark of the 19^th century. Christianity was the culture of Denmark and for Kierkegaard that was worse than no religion at all. In his journal he mused: “A View of Christianity which, so far as I know, has never been proposed before, is that Christianity is the invention of Satan, calculated to make human beings unhappy with the assistance of the imagination.” (Cited in J. Garf, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, [Princeton U. Press, 2005] 714.)

Kierkegaard is not making the case that Christianity is the invention of Satan, but that looking around at Christianity, the case could be made. In this sense, he anticipated a great deal of the modern critique of religion, by intellectuals such as Freud, Karl Marx, and all the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and the like). None of these critics of Christianity would admit to the existence of Satan, but their verdict is the same: Christianity has been conjured up by human imagination and serves mostly to make people unhappy. Most Europeans agreed. Now, Europe is secular, and less than 5% of Europeans attend churches.

Kierkegaard spent his brief life in his frail body fighting against the culture of Christendom and for an authentic Christianity, in which the individual’s life is lived in response to the knowledge of God that he has. For him Christianity was all about a vital, existential relationship: that means, our existence is lived to the fullest in relationship to God. Once upon a time, Christianity was a deeply personal attachment to God through Jesus Christ. Kierkegaard’s legacy: don’t pretend to be a Christian. That is what Satan wants: pretending Christians.

As England slid into secularity, another great Christian intellectual, C. S. Lewis, made his case for authentic Christianity: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.” (C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, ed. Lesley Walmsley [HarperCollins, 2000] 10–21, p.21.)

This is the last sentence in his essay “Is Theology Poetry?” a paper read in 1945 before the Socratic Club at Oxford University. In the talk he contrasts the world view of Christianity with the world view of humanistic naturalism, and concludes that Christianity makes more sense than any other world view. Humanistic naturalism is the view that lies behind much of our scientific way of thinking, and is essentially atheistic because science does its work apart from any reference to God. The problem is that when you make naturalism a world view, it becomes inherently irrational: random energy and matter congeal to produce intelligent beings that seek meaning in a meaningless universe.

For C. S. Lewis theology, like mythology, often is poetry, but it is not merely poetry. It is truth in that it tells us what existence is really like. And once we have grasped the truth of Christianity, we see the universe and our place in the universe through the eyes of truth. Or as I like to put it, we see from the divine point of view.

Authentic Christianity

Here are two reasons why I trust God. One reason is from the head, and the other is from the heart.

1. Christianity (as I understand it) gives me the most coherent picture of reality that I have found. It satisfies the questions of my mind better than any other explanation of existence. To use the analogy of a vast jigsaw puzzle: there are thousands of little pieces and most of them seem to fit, but if some do not fit not so well, I am still confident that I will find the right fit. Why? Because I am confident that God is the creator of the universe and of me. Because God is the Rationality of the universe, everything will fit. I’ll have to wait for some of the answers, but I am eager to find as many pieces now as I can. We need not fear anything we may discover about God’s universe.

2. Some force beyond my “self” has a grasp on my soul and it will not let me go. I know that it is some form of love, because I don’t want to be separated from it, even when my head at times may doubt the nature of it. I credit the Spirit of God who dwells in us; the love of God that calls us to him, our creator, our Father. There is nothing else out there that satisfies my soul. I can’t explain it, but it is real. It is, to me, the sign of authenticity.

Christianity is authentic when its Christians are authentic. For an authentic Christian, the head and the heart have to walk hand in hand.

The word authentic comes straight from the Greek authentikos, which means genuine, of undisputed origin. In the world of art, there are many forgeries floating around. Experts evaluate the art, running a battery of tests for dating of the cloth, the frames, the paint, and of course, the style of the painting. Is it from the master? Some forgeries fool everyone for a long time, resulting in millions of dollars being paid out by collectors. Eventually an expert will prove a painting is a forgery, and the value collapses like a burst balloon.

Are we authentic Christians? Not to worry, we will find out the next time we are tested.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble (Matthew 6:28–29).

Within the overall theme “The God of Reality,” here we focus on personal reality: my reality and your reality in the context of divine reality. How real is God to you? How real are you to you? How real is your trust in God?

When Jesus told the crowd to consider the lilies of the field and not to worry about food, drink, and clothing, life was rather more basic than it is for us in America today. People lived much closer to a subsistence level, or as we say, hand to mouth. Hunger is a real problem for real people in many parts of the world, but within our opulent society, we have a hard time relating to the worry over finding food and drink and clothes. If we do worry, it is over what to wear, or how many calories in the dessert. And yet, life is full of anxiety. Therefore, the words of Jesus remain relevant. Don’t be anxious. Consider the lilies of the field. So, let us consider the lilies.

The lily is a flower. The lily is content to be a flower. The lily just is. The lily is beautiful. The lily does not care about beauty. The lily is beauty. The lily enjoys the dew, the rain, the sunshine, and perhaps the breeze. All these feel good upon its face. The lily accepts what it is; or if you allow it, who it is. The lily accepts its existence as coming from the creator. In its own way, the lily praises the creator by just being a lily. After all, God made the lily. The lily is an expression of the divine character. God could have made the lily differently, but God made it as it is. The lily accepts its existence from God and glorifies God by being a lily.

Sometimes the rain is very heavy, or the wind very strong, or the sun very hot. The lily endures without complaint. It is, after all, only a lily. It is what God made it. It is who it is. The lily blossoms in its season; the lily blossoms where it is planted. The lily lives its brief existence in peace. If it suffers, it suffers silently. And when its season has ended, the lily wilts and sleeps contentedly. Consider the lily, says Jesus. We will do so under three headings: Beauty, Identity, and Anxiety. And lest we forget, this is a way of looking at our own reality.

Beauty

What is beauty? Definitions have been attempted, but we do not need a definition. Beauty, like inspiration, is a mystery. We experience beauty through all our senses, but mostly by sight. Beauty is delight of the eyes, a personal surprise. Yes, the maxim is probably true: beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or in the mind’s eye of the beholder. When a sufficient number of eyes agree, then we have a consensus. But a consensus has no power to convince me that something is beautiful if it is not beautiful to me. I have to see beauty for beauty to exist for me. Is there an ultimate eye of beauty? Indeed there is. It is none other than God’s eye.

The universe is full of beauty. Or perhaps we should say the universe is beautiful. We are told that mathematical equations like E=mc² are beautiful. There is a harmony in the mathematical language of physics; some physicists argue that the more elegant a theory, the more likely it is to be an accurate description of reality. In short, there is something profound to the belief that God created a beautiful universe, even at the quantum level, so that beauty and truth lead inevitably to the harmony found within mind of God. The existence of evil on a world-wide scale undermines or tarnishes the beauty, but the beauty is still there.

In 1970 Ray Stevens published a song called “Everything is beautiful.” He makes the simple point that everything is beautiful in its own way, and everyone is beautiful in their own way. And this is true. Because we are part of God’s creation, everyone is beautiful in their own way. Our beauty is determined by who, or what, we are. Our beauty is within the context of, and our relationship to, nature. We have a natural beauty. By that we mean, a God-given beauty. Our appreciation of natural beauty is governed by the nature of the object of beauty. Whatever we are looking at, we have to see it for what it really is. Reality is beauty, and beauty is reality. Appreciation of beauty is a response to the identity of the object of beauty. A live oak tree is beautiful, but only as a live oak, not as fence post. A lily is beautiful only as a lily, not as a seashell. Beauty and identity cannot be separated. You are beautiful only as you.

Identity

Identity is not something we gain on our own. We form an identity within our social context. If we are raised in a church environment, we think of ourselves as Christians. For better or worse, we are mostly American Christians. Those of us who have had the opportunity to live in other cultures have a clearer picture of what American Christian culture is, because we have a broader perspective.

As children, we see ourselves through the eyes of others. We are told we are good, or bad, depending on how we act. Babies and little ones do not know beauty. They do not know ugly. A bearded man might frighten a child who is not familiar with beards, but the child does not think, “What an ugly old man.” As the child grows, a sense of beauty develops. The child will begin to see itself as beautiful or ugly based on its awareness of what beauty is. Children have to be taught what natural beauty is because they are inundated from the earliest years with commercial materialism that tries to convince them that beauty comes with one thing or another. Young people who are esthetically endowed, or to put it crudely, who are sexy, have an inherent disadvantage in discovering their natural beauty, and above all, their true inner beauty. Society tries to trick them into becoming the object of desire of others, not an inner spring of divine or natural beauty.

In order for us to express our natural beauty, we must know who we are, and accept what we are. So much of life is expended in trying to be someone we are not, or to be something we are not. That is not to say that we cannot improve what we are. We have natural (God-given) talents and abilities. Or perhaps we should say, we are naturally talented in God-given ways. In order to be beautiful, we have to know who we are. Identity and beauty go hand in hand.

We should find our identity within the natural order because we are part of the natural order. Fortunately, the beauty of nature is virtually free. There is the occasional entrance fee, but overall, the beauty of nature is still free. We should spend much time alone, in communion with nature. You will find yourself if you give sufficient time to your solitude in nature. Appreciate the beauty of creation and see yourself as one more example of God’s creative beauty. Think of yourself in the Garden of Eden. Is that not the divine ideal? Think of the simplicity of Eden. Be simply yourself. See yourself simply as God sees you. What is your beauty like? How can you blossom to your fullest? Don’t be anxious. Just be beautiful.

Anxiety

Søren Kierkegaard, one of the most influential thinkers of modern Christianity, wrote a book in 1844 entitled The Concept of Anxiety. The concept of all anxiety begins with awareness of our existence and our awareness that we will cease to exist. “Man is a synthesis of the psychical and the physical”; that is soul/psyche and body. The synthesis, or joining, is what he calls the spirit. The spirit holds my psyche in union with my body. The spirit then is an ambiguous power that is holding my self-awareness and my body together in tension. That tension expresses itself as anxiety.

We become aware of this lingering anxiety in little examples of our existence. Will I be healthy and happy as long as I exist? Will I find my true love while I exist? Will I keep up with the Joneses while I exist? Will I have all the money I want until the day I die? Our anxieties stem from our imagination of what a perfect existence should be like, what we want life to be like, while we exist. But anxiety is all in our heads. Anxieties are mostly imaginary problems. Most of our problems in life are mental problems. Most of our genuine difficulties are the result of poor choices. So here we are: hysteria, insomnia, stress, neuroses, all disguised beneath a clever use of cosmetics and Botox.

As human beings, we are in this absolutely helpless condition from birth to death. There is nothing we can do about the ultimate condition of ultimate helplessness. We will strive individually to live as long as we can, yet knowing death awaits us. As the human race, we will try to prolong life by better medicine and replacing body parts. It is said that the first people to live to 150 years have already been born, but even for them, death awaits. It is hard to know where the human race is going with its science, but our children will find out. Besides the confidence that God will love them and raise them up, our most valuable gift to the next generation is to teach them how to live without anxiety, in harmony with nature and with God. Ultimately we die, and ultimately we rely on the love and power of God to revive us in his image. We are absolutely helpless.

Anxiety is evidence for the failure of trust in God, and in Jesus. Can we live life in imitation of the lily: simply, acceptingly, contentedly, without anxiety? It will help if we simplify our desires. If we reduce our desires to far less than our income, peace of mind follows. If our hearts do not value things that rust, or what moths destroy, or that thieves break in and steal, anxiety fades of its own accord. What could a thief have stolen from Jesus—the shirt off his back? But he would have given it.

Jesus contrasts Solomon with the lily: “yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” (6:29). In the eyes of Jesus, the grandeur of Solomon pales beneath the simplicity of the lily, and by extension, the simplicity that Jesus is calling us to follow. Jesus calls us to a life of simplicity that is beautiful in God’s eye. We should strive for it. Contemplate and imitate the lily as best you can.

Who did Jesus think he was—God? How should we think about the Jesus of history within the Christian doctrine that Jesus Christ was both human and divine? To address these questions, we shall review how the followers of Jesus saw him as a human being and eventually saw him as God. Then we will look at how Jesus saw himself. And finally, we tackle the paradox of human and divine.

Elevation of Jesus Christ

Faced with the empty tomb and appearances of the risen Jesus, his disciples realized that God had done something important. They reasoned that God must have told the prophets; as it is written in the book of Amos, “Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets” (3:7). They searched the scriptures and found prophetic hints to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that showed God had elevated Jesus to be the Messiah. Within a short while, a primitive theology of Jesus, which we call a Christology, was developed.

It begins in Peter’s first sermon in Acts 2, which followed the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the assembled disciples. After explaining the purpose of the covenant between God and Israel, and the promise to David that a descendant would sit on his throne forever, Peter demonstrates that David himself prophesied the resurrection of Jesus when he said: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’” (Ps 110:1). Peter concludes: “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Act 2:36).

Paul, our historically earliest testimony, describes the primitive Christology: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: 1) that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,  2) that he was buried, 3) that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures”  (1Co 15:3–4). Always working within a strict theology of monotheism, Paul translates an early Aramaic creed that Jesus “was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 1:3–4). The resurrection was the divine declaration that Jesus is Lord.

Gospel magnification

The four gospels offer abundant evidence of how Jesus rose in the estimation of his followers. Mark, the earliest gospel, portrays the most human figure of Jesus. Matthew and Luke view Jesus more highly, and John gives us a very elevated theological and devotional recollection of the impact of Jesus, with only slight reference to the other gospels.

The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist is a good example of the unfolding perception of Jesus. The one who baptizes is superior to the one who is baptized. Therefore, John the Baptist is inherently superior to Jesus, who is baptized.

Mark states matter-of-factly: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan” (1:9).

By the time Matthew wrote, 10–15 years later, the problem posed by Mark’s account had surfaced; namely, Jesus was inferior to John the Baptist. Matthew corrects the scene: “John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness’. Then he consented…” (3:14–15).

A few years later, Luke mentions the baptism only in passing, “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened… (3:21–22).

John, written last, does not mention the baptism of Jesus at all, only the testimony of John the Baptist to the superiority of Jesus. “And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him’” (1:32).

It was not long before some followers of Jesus thought that he was not human at all. This view was later declared a heresy known as Docetism, which comes from the Greek word dokeō, to seem or appear as. Jesus was a divine being who only appeared to have a body, and only seemed to be human and suffer. We see early refutations of this view in the literature of John. “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus [in the flesh] is not from God (1 John 4:2–3).

By the start of the second century, within 100 years since the resurrection, Ignatius, the Gentile bishop of Antioch, spoke of Jesus as “our God, Jesus (the) Christ” (Eph. 18:2; Rom. 3:3). Christology was well on the way toward the creedal statements of the church councils.

Two millennia after the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, how do we think of Jesus? Is it worth asking, how did Jesus see himself? Many Christians do not think we should probe the historical Jesus. The risen Lord, as he now sits beside the throne of God in heaven, is all we need see.

And yet, we have the four Gospels which tell us of the life and ministry of Jesus. He speaks to us as he spoke to others: person to person. If we read the Gospels as if they are written to us, and written about us, we commune with Jesus of Nazareth, the teacher and healer, who walked the paths of Palestine. When Jesus says, “Follow me,” he is speaking to us. Who is this man we want to follow?

Most Christians think of Jesus in ways that are mildly docetic; that is, Jesus is a divine being going around in a human body. Jesus of history has been swallowed up in a caricature: an infinite being pretending to be finite. Jesus pretended to trust in the God of Reality, but since he was the God of Reality, he only pretended. But why would the Word of God take on flesh that hungers, tires, itches, stinks if not washed, vomits when ill, and yet, not take on ignorance, curiosity, anxiety, temptation and doubt? Why is the body of Jesus more or less like our bodies, but the mind of Jesus is unlike our minds?  Who is the Jesus of Reality?

Jesus of historical perception

There are three titles applied to Jesus in the Gospels, and all refer to a human being.

1. Prophet. Both John the Baptist and Jesus were seen primarily as prophets. When Jesus asked his disciples what folks were saying about him, they answered: “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets” (Mark 8: 27–28).

2. Messiah: When Jesus asked who the disciples thought he was, Peter declared:  “You are the Messiah.” Then Jesus sternly ordered them not to tell anyone (Mark 8:29–30). There was probably scattered speculation that Jesus was “a Messiah,” a man anointed by God, but that title meant different things to different people. Part of the reason for secrecy was that the title of Messiah could be a political threat to the Jewish and Roman rulers of Palestine. In any case, the Messiah was a mere mortal anointed by God for a specific task.

3. Son of God: The description and title “Son of God” that was applied to Jesus was associated with the title of Messiah, but not identical. In antiquity, the kings of the Near East were enthroned as a Son of God. King David and his descendents were likewise enthroned (Ps 89). God said: “Israel is my firstborn son.” (Ex 4:22). Angels and righteous men were called sons of God. When used of Jesus, it was an honorific title, either with messianic overtones, or simply to acknowledge him to be a righteous man.

Jesus the Enigma

Despite the broad category of prophet, with possible messianic overtones, Jesus was an enigma. Jesus did things prophets normally did not do. Unlike the prophet John the Baptist, Jesus healed people and exorcised demons. Jesus was not an ascetic like John, living sparsely on locusts and wild honey. The disciples of Jesus did not fast, as John’s disciples did. Jesus dined with the wealthy, with prostitutes and tax collectors; he ate their food and drank their wine. Some people were even accusing Jesus of being a glutton and a drunkard (Matt 11:19). This was a curious prophet indeed.

From prison John sent disciples to ask if Jesus was the one he was awaiting, or if they should look for another. Jesus replied: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me” (Matt 11:4–6).

Meanwhile, in Galilee, those who had known Jesus in his youth thought he had gone out of his mind. “And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, “He is beside himself” (KJV/RSV); “He has gone out of his mind” (ESV/NRSV).

Why did people think Jesus was out of his mind? It could be that Jesus had seizures of religious ecstasy. But this was prized, and authenticated a claim to prophesy. It seems more likely that people thought he was crazy because of his claim to divine authority, his attitude of standing in place of God, as if acting on behalf of God. Of course, Moses himself had carried such divine authority. God said to Moses, “See, I make you as God to Pharaoh; and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet” (Ex 7:1). Did Jesus think he was as great as Moses?

Like ambassadors today, envoys of a king in the past carried the full authority to speak for the king. It appears that Jesus believed he was anointed by God to preach the good news (Luke 4:18–19), and anointed by the Spirit of God to perform miracles and exorcisms (Matt 12:28). It is from this sense of anointing and sending from God that we may begin to see how Jesus saw himself. In a remarkable early tradition, reported by both Matthew and Luke, Jesus said: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt 11:27; Luke 10:22).

Jesus the Son of Man

Besides calling God father, and acknowledging that he was his son, the one title Jesus applied to himself was ‘Son of Man’. Of the 86 times the title appears in the NT, 82 of them are in the Gospels, exclusively on the lips of Jesus. The title has three distinct meanings.

1. Sometimes Son of Man seems to be a circumlocution for “that man,” by which Jesus would have referred to himself in the third person (Matt 8:20).

2. Jesus may have used Son of Man to reflect the biblical use by Ezekiel, in which a ‘mere mortal’ is sent by God to speak for God (e.g. Ezekiel 2:3, 6; and throughout the book).

3. But, there is also the eschatological use (referring to the End Times), which comes from the book of Daniel. “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him” (Daniel 7:13). Jesus clearly refers to this when responds to the high priest: “I am; and ‘you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,’ and ‘coming with the clouds of heaven’” (Mar 14:61–62).

Why did Jesus choose such an ambiguous title? My answer is that Jesus would have used the term precisely because of its ambiguity. Nobody knew what to make of the Son of Man. Jesus defied categorization as he followed the Spirit of God wherever it led.

In my view of the life of Jesus, at some point he realized that God expected him to give his life in service, to give his life as a ransom. Jesus saw himself as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Because he kept his enigmatic Son of Man identity, Jesus pressed on, following the Spirit of God, obedient unto death. He may have wavered, but he did not stumble, he did not fall. He was a man who kept his trust in God. This is the Jesus of Reality who calls us to follow him.

Jesus: Human and Divine

But was Jesus only a human being? John says that Jesus was the Word of God incarnate (Jn 1:14). How can we mentally grasp this paradox? Jesus was not an infinite mind running around in a finite body. And yet, the creeds of Christianity have determined that Jesus is God. In the third century, while our theologians were still grappling with the paradox, the brilliant church father, Origen, proposed an analogy by which to think of the trinity: God was the sun, Jesus the light, and the Holy Spirit the heat. Despite its attractiveness, this hierarchy was eventually declared heretical.

By the year 451, the Council of Chalcedon declared Jesus Christ to be one Person in two Natures, the Divine of the same substance as the Father, the human of the same substance as us, which are united unchangeably, unconfusedly, indivisibly, inseparably.

It is difficult for us to think of Jesus as both human and divine. It is a paradox we are asked to accept. We search for analogies that might help us reconcile the paradox, but they are inadequate, because nothing combines elements that cannot be combined. But in recent times, theologians have noted that our study of the physics of light grapples with an almost identical paradox of combining two aspects of light that cannot be combined.

Physicists have studied the nature of light over the centuries, and found it to behave like a wave and like a particle. A wave requires a medium through which to travel, like a sound wave. A particle, however, can travel through a vacuum and in a straight line. At various times, one model or the other has been the dominant way of understanding light. By the 1920s, however, physicists began to see that both models were equally valid and equally necessary. You can look at light as a wave, or you can look at light as a particle, but you cannot look at light in both ways at once. The acceptance of this paradox goes by the name of complementarity: two mutually exclusive ways of looking at things are required to fully describe their nature.

The Jesus of Reality, the Light of the World, is both human and divine, but we can only see him in one way or the other, not both ways at once. Creation is far more mysterious than we know. And shall we understand the Creator?

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isa 55:8–9).

We only know spirit by its manifestation. As Paul says: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1Co 12:7 NRS). To manifest is to make something clear or obvious to the eye or mind. Spirit is a manifestation of presence or power. The Holy Spirit is the manifestation of divine presence and power. The Holy Spirit is the presence of God, and because God is personal, the Holy Spirit is personal.

In our desire to be comfortable with God, we often invert the entire relationship between our spirit and the Spirit of God.  We imagine the Holy Spirit is our personal assistant, a pocket-size Holy Spirit. We use it to speak with the little god of our imagination. It comes in several colors, and yes, it can surf the world wide web of spirituality; but no, it does not have GPS. We don’t want our little gods keeping track of what we are doing all the time, do we?

In reality, we don’t use the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit uses us. So, if someone claims to be guided by the Holy Spirit, how shall we respond? Concerning claims upon the Spirit, Paul says: “test everything” (1 Thess. 5:21). The claims Christians make to the guidance of the Holy Spirit must be tested by the manifestation of the Spirit that is evident in their lives. The Spirit of God always manifests itself in the spirit of holiness.

Nature of spirit (ruach) in the Hebrew Bible

The very concept of spirit comes from the movement caused by air, which though invisible, has power. The earliest uses of the word now translated as spirit, whether the Hebrew ruach, the Greek pneuma, or the Latin spiritus, all come from a verb to breathe or blow.

In the human mind of antiquity, breath and wind were invisible power. We knew we breathed, and we could blow out a lamp, or blow a leaf off an arm. But who blows through the trees? The gods do. In Genesis 1:2 we read: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the ruach Elohim was moving over the face of the waters.” How shall we translate ruach Elohim? It can be: 1) the Spirit of God (King James Version); 2) a wind from God (New Revised Standard Version); 3) a divine wind (New Jerusalem Bible). At the time Genesis 1 was written, ruach almost certainly meant ‘wind’ or ‘breath’.

In Ecclesiastes 3:19 we read: “For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same ruach, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity.” Here almost all Bible translations read “breath” for ruach. But in verse 12:7 we read: “The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the ruach returns to God who gave it.” The KJV reads ‘spirit’ while the NRSV is consistent, reading ‘breath’.

What we can take away from this is that our two distinct concepts, breath and spirit, were not distinct in antiquity.

Psalm 104 is a poem in praise of the majesty of the Creator, describing poetically how God reveals himself in his creation. The technical word for this is theophany, the visible manifestation of God. In verses 3–4 we of God: “you ride on the wings of the ruach, you make the ruach (pl. ruchot) your messengers, fire and flame your ministers.”

Verse 4 tells us that God sends messages by the winds (or spirits), and fire and flame serve him as ministers. The second century BC Greek translation (Septuagint) of the Hebrew verse 4 reverses the subject ‘winds/spirits’ and object ‘messengers/angels’. Greek: Who makes his angels spirits (pneuma), and his ministers a flaming fire.

Here the subject ‘messengers/angels’ becomes the object ‘winds/spirits’. The sense in the Greek is that God can transform angels into winds or spirits for his purpose. We might pass over this curious Greek translation of the Hebrew, but for the fact that the Greek translation is taken up by the author of the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews in chapter 1, verse 7: “Of the angels he says, ‘He makes his angels winds (pneuma), and his servants flames of fire’.”

The thinking behind the verse assumes that angels are made of physical elements that can be refashioned: ‘Shape shifters’ of the first order. The appearance of divine servants is at God’s discretion. Or we may say that God uses the elements to do his will. One may say spirit, or one may say breeze. The manifestation will be seen in what God accomplishes by this exercise of his power.

In Scripture, we are looking back at how human beings thought about the involvement of God in the affairs of humanity. At the same time, we are looking at the progress of God’s revelation to us. The depth of human understanding and depth of divine revelation go hand in hand.

The Spirit of God

As Hebrew thought developed, we find the ruach of God is the ‘power’ or ‘influence’ of God at work. The power may be like a rushing wind, or a gentle breath. The Rauch comes upon Balaam and puts him into a trance during which he hears the words of God (Num. 24:2–4). The same ruach is in the nostrils of Job and prompts him toward righteousness (Job 27:2–4). Again, ruach may be translated as ‘spirit’ or ‘breath’.

By the first century and the writing of the New Testament, the translation of the Hebrew ruach into the Greek pneuma meant that all the meanings of the word pneuma were brought to bear on the way Jews in the Mediterranean world thought about the Spirit of God (pneuma theou). In Greek literature, spirit retains its meaning of wind and breath, and it is equated with life and the soul. Spirit it is used figuratively as the spirit that blows in relationships, such as folks of a kindred spirit. Spirit stirs priests, poets, and prophets; in other words, inspiration. Stoic philosophy, which had a great impact of Jewish thought, including that of Saint Paul, understood pneuma of God to be a cosmic power or substance that could be the manifestation, or the very essence, of deity itself. But for the Greeks, spirit was not personal as it was for Jews.

Jews also began to modify the Spirit of God by the word ‘holy’ (qodesh). The phrase Holy Spirit (ruach haqodesh) occurs only twice in the Old Testament (Isaiah 63: 10–11; Ps 51: 11). But ruach haqodesh (literally, ‘spirit of holiness’) is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it was highly developed rabbinic tradition. While the Greek speaking Jews preferred Divine Spirit (pneuma theion), early Jewish Christians who spoke in Aramaic undoubtedly spoke of the ruach haqodesh, which in Greek (pneuma hagion) became popular among Gentile Christians.

The only place where all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) agree that Jesus used the name Holy Spirit is in response to those who accused him of casting out demons by the prince of demons. Jesus explains Satan casting our Satan is irrational, and then speaks to the unpardonable sin. In the Mark tradition, Jesus replies: “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit” (Mark 3:28–30).

The opponents of Jesus said the work of the Holy Spirit was the work of Satan. That is to blaspheme God. The normal interpretation of this saying is that God will forgive all kinds of blasphemies and offences; but if you oppose the work of God’s Spirit you are pushing God beyond his inclination to forgive. Blasphemy against the name of God in the Old Testament was punished by death.

The Christian theology of the Spirit of God, known as pneumatology, is based largely on the writings of Paul. He devotes a good deal of energy helping the church in Corinth to regulate their enthusiasm in worship in which they spoke in tongues, and prophesied in the Spirit (esp. 1 Cor. 12–14). Two points are worthy of note:

1) The same Spirit of God is involved in the traditional manifestation of prophecy, speaking for God, and the more recent exercise of speaking in tongues, or ecstatic utterances, which is speaking to God. Because it is the same Spirit at work, there is a common spiritual goal.

2) Paul inserts in his discussion on spiritual gifts the higher way, chapter 13: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1Co 13:1).

The Spirit of God communicates the love of God; the Holy Spirit communicates the holiness of God. All speech or activities on our part that claim any relationship to or from God must bear the characteristics of love and holiness. That is our evidence of the existence of the Spirit of God.

Spirit of Holiness

We know what love is, but what is holiness? Holiness is a characteristic of God. The root idea of the holy is that which is set apart and belongs to God. In ancient Israel all things associated with the tabernacle or temple rituals were holy. Priests and Levites were holy servants; utensils, furniture, oil, water and incense were holy. Purity and impurity, cleanness and uncleanness, was a highly developed distinction with ancient roots and elaborate rituals. All Jews who entered the temple mount performed a ritual bath beforehand.

There were degrees of holiness in the sense of drawing nearer to the Holy of Holies. Places were holy whenever God appeared or manifest his presence. Jerusalem is the holy city, Israel is the holy land. The Sabbath is the holy day. God’s people are set apart and the Sabbath is set apart. The holiness of human existence is brought to a climax on the Sabbath in the spirit of holiness.

As we noted, Holy Spirit in Hebrew, ruach haqodesh, is literally the ‘spirit of holiness’. In the opening address of Romans (1:1–4), Paul most likely translates an early creed from the Aramaic in which he says that Jesus was “designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead…” Paul clearly refers to the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Greek Holy Spirit and the Aramaic Spirit of holiness are two different ways of referring to the Spirit of God.

Paul often speaks of all believers as saints, which in Greek is ‘holy ones’. We are made holy in Christ, and like Israel, we are devoted to God. The separateness that applied to ancient Israel is spiritualized. We are to be spiritually, or morally, pure, in the place of being ritually pure. But like ancient Israel, we are to maintain our holy status, separated from sin, devoted to God.

The translation Spirit of holiness better emphasizes the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, especially when seen in the lives of the saints, the holy ones. The evidence of the Holy Spirit is the spirit of holiness. That is how we test for the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Long ago God said to the people of Israel: “Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exo 19:5–6). Israel was to mediate between God and all the earth.

Gentiles of all places were granted entrance into the covenant of Israel with God through the atonement of Jesus Christ, and upon entrance they become part of the holy nation. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9).

To be in this holy nation, we cannot sin with a clean conscience; the Holy Spirit will not give us peace. If we refuse to repent, or refuse to forgive a brother or sister in Christ, the Spirit of holiness may depart. Repentance and forgiveness restore the presence of the Spirit of holiness. You cannot be at enmity with anyone in this congregation and be holy. You don’t have to like them, but you must be at peace with them. There are no exceptions. There is only one Spirit, and one spirit of holiness.

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Eph 4:4–6 ESV)

Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior. (Isa 45:15 ESV)

In our continuing exploration of the God of Reality, we come to the concept of God, which is the subject of theology proper. All theology is basically human thinking about God. There are three common ways of doing theology: 1) Biblical-Systematic Theology; 2) Natural Theology; and 3) Personal Theology. Our understanding of God comes from the Bible, the sacred record of God and his people, and from the universe which is God’s creation, and from our own encounters with God. All of us have some theological framework for understanding our faith. An important distinction of personal theology is that God deals with us based on our own heart, soul, and mind. We should not imagine God will deal with everyone in the same way, or that we will think about God in the same way.

Theism and Atheism

Prior to the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), the Israelites relied on sacred traditions and those who claimed to speak for God, or see the will of God. These men and women were known as seers and prophets (1 Sam. 9:9). People also developed a natural theology, reasoning about God from their observations of the world. Over the centuries, we can trace the development of their theology about God, known as theism. Polytheism: belief in and worship of many gods. Henotheism: worship only one god among the many gods. Monotheism: belief that only one God exists, or is truly supreme. There are other forms of monotheism (deism, pantheism, panentheism) that do not concern us here.

In antiquity, as far back as we can peer across the millennia, all the earth was polytheistic. Families, tribes, and kingdoms had their gods, and usually paid respect to the gods of others when they entered the lands of a different god. The Israelites, who were called to be henotheistic and worship only their god, still believed the other gods existed, and idolatry was a constant temptation. Jeremiah’s call to worship only Yahweh was rebuffed by some Israelites who thought their difficult times had come upon them because they did not properly worship the Queen of Heaven (Jer. 44:16–17).

During the Babylonian exile, the vision of monotheism emerged in the voice of an anonymous poet-prophet whose oracles are preserved in Isaiah 40–55. “Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god’” (Isaiah 44:6). Over the next few centuries, all Jews became devotedly monotheistic.

During this time, the idea of atheism emerged in Greek culture: the Greek atheos means “without god.” We think of the word today as a formal statement that no supernatural beings exist in reality. In antiquity that form of atheism was extremely rare. There were at least six ways in which the concept of atheism was viewed:

1) Practical atheism of ignorance or indifference to the gods; 2) Secularized religion, emperor worship; 3) God replaced by fate, magic, astrology; 4) God replaced by philosophical enlightenment; 5) Faith in God shattered by cognitive dissonance in which beliefs are at odds with reality; 6) Denial of the existence of God or the gods.

Greek polytheists considered Jewish and Christian monotheists to be atheists because they did not acknowledge all the gods, and Jews and Christians saw all polytheists as atheists because they did not worship only the one true God. Everyone in antiquity, however, viewed atheism (being without god) in the practical ways of how one lived. If you lived as if God or the gods did not matter, then you were an effective atheist, regardless what you thought about the deity. In antiquity behavior mattered far more than what beliefs you claimed to hold.

The God of Israel

Despite the fact that Israelites evolved in their thinking about Yahweh along with the development of religions worldwide, there is something unique about how Israel viewed God, and as believers in God, we attribute the uniqueness to God himself. Despite the social factors at work in Israel, we also see the subtle inspiration of God at work. According to our sacred narrative: Moses said to God, If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” (Exo 3:13 ESV)

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM (Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh).” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM (Ehyeh) has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14).

This is utterly astonishing for antiquity. God does not use his name Yahweh, but the Reality behind the name— Self-Existence. This is the God of Reality. Our existence depends on Self-Existence. God is the Ground of Being. Yahweh refers to himself as a verb, and no image represents a verb. This may contribute to the second commandment against making any carved images of God (Exodus 20:4–5).

The God without an image was also unique in antiquity, and it was difficult for the minds of the Israelites to handle this. Everyone else had gods we can imagine, and represent; see, touch, feel. Not Yahweh. The reality of Yahweh may be expressed only by words, and even then, there are limits. As one OT scholar has noted, “To construct, by theological propositions, a definition of the nature of God and then to claim adequacy for that definition, would be to construct an image as real as any wooden image.” [P. C. Craigie, Deuteronomy, NICOT, p.154]

When we try to explain the essence of God, we are shrinking God down to something we can handle. We make mental images, which may become idolatry in modern guise. Naturally, small minds require small gods. The danger comes when we then think the God of Reality is the same as our imagination conceives. The danger comes when we pretend to have figured out God and God’s ways. It was the same great monotheistic poet-prophet of Israel who also declared: “Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior” (Isaiah 45:15). The context of this profound statement is the same oracle in which Yahweh declares that Cyrus, the new king of Persia, is the Lord’s anointed (messiah), even though Cyrus does not know it.

The hidden God (Deus Absconditus) is an important concept in biblical and systematic theology. The book of Job explores the concept, and Psalm 22, so important to the passion narrative of Jesus, is a cry of admission that God has hid himself: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It admits that God works subtly, hidden from view…in mysterious ways. In the death of Jesus God was redeeming the world, and no one knew.

The only image of God that God allows is the image he bestowed upon humanity. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27 ESV). The image of God in us allows us to respond in love to God. Our whole purpose is to be loved by God and love him in return. Theologically, the entire universe hangs on that hook.

Jesus was well aware that God is beyond human understanding, and Jesus acknowledged the hiddenness of God in a distinct way. He chose a term of relationship, Father, to refer to the hidden God (see especially Matthew 11:25–27).

Conclusion.

There are various attempts to explain the origins of religions across the earth. We have religious artifacts of humanity that date back thousands of years. At the bedrock level of Jericho, 11,000 years ago, we have found decorated skulls that most archaeologists interpret as ancestor worship. In the Outback of Australia, we find stick figure paintings on rock walls of apparently religious rituals some of which are dated as old as 20 years ago. Whatever religious sentiments the Aboriginals had, they were developed independently from the culture of Palestine and the Middle East. The same may be said of all Native American cultures.

The ubiquitous presence of religion across the earth has led to the notion of homo religiosus, religious mankind. This, of course, fits in well with the biblical story that mankind is created in the image of God. Saint Augustine put is very well in the opening passage of his Confessions.

“Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is thy power, and infinite is thy wisdom. And man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation…. Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.” [Saint Augustine, Confessions 1.1.1; Ps 145:3 & 147:5]

Whatever we learn about the past history of humanity, we must acknowledge the sovereignty of the God of Reality over the earth. We will be guilty of atheism if for a moment we imagine that humanity, as far back as it goes, is beyond the power, beyond the love, of the Creator. We don’t have to answer every conceivable dilemma that may arise. Our trust in God must override our lack of understanding. We must believe that God created the universe and God can handle it.

And what of the future? Reality is not going to go away. It rises before dawn and will keep staring us in the face, day after day. Reality is relentless, it is God’s way, and it will win. We are discovering greater mysteries of the universe at an increasing speed. Atheists will explain existence without God, as they should. But we, who begin with the necessity of divine existence, will see the handiwork of God everywhere we look.

If you raise your children believing in an imaginary world, they will worship an imaginary God, and some will depart the faith when they get out on their own, particularly in university life. Hopefully, they will find it again in the God of Reality, but you can help them avoid the trauma by teaching them of the God of Reality. Teach them to explore reality. All that we discover about reality will ultimately point to God.

One of the great difficulties for religious people is distinguishing our religion from our culture, or more accurately, our religious expression from our cultural expression of religion. In the university, there are courses on Religion and Culture, and entire PhD tracks of study devoted to it. Usually religion is seen as a sub-set of culture, and assumes that all religion has always been part of a culture, expressed and performed within a cultural setting.  That means the entire history of religion is an expression of culture. That means the entire Bible is set within a cultural context.

This does not mean God is not involved in the religious life of people, but the way the relationship is developed and expressed changes with time according to the change of culture. We looked at a number of laws or customs in the Bible that portray the culture of the day, but that have ceased to be observed, or even be meaningful. Examples:

1. Levirate law (Deut 25:5–10).

2. Do not trim edges of the beard, no tattoos (Lev 19:27–28).

3. Gleanings: do not reap to the edges of the field, nor strip the vines bare (Lev 19:9–10).

4. Polygamy: condoned and regulated (Deut 21:15–17).

5. Capital punishment: Apostasy, Blasphemy, Adultery, Sorcery, Violation of the Sabbath, etc.

By the first century, Jews had spread over the Mediterranean world and they had replaced the word law (nomos) for many of the biblical practices by the word custom (ethos). Many laws of the Hebrew Scriptures were no longer observed. Rabbis legislated away the law of the stubborn and rebellious son in Deut 21:18-21 by defining the crime so narrowly that a conviction could never be gotten.

Saint Paul argued for a law-free gospel that liberated Christians from most regulations of the Old Testament, such as eating shrimp and succulent pork ribs. Yet, we see rules of behavior and dress in churches that were meaningful in the first century, but less so today (1Ti 2:9; 1 Cor. 11:4–16). Because of the great change in the status of women since the first century, we have to deal with the contentious command that women be silent in the church (1 Cor. 14:34).

The exercise of Sunday worship is purely a cultural phenomenon. There is no biblical command to meet once a week. The custom of church attendance grows out of the Jewish custom of synagogue attendance. Synagogues evolved from Jewish life in the Diaspora. Today Christians meet on Sunday, Jews on Saturday, and Muslims of Friday, all according to customs.

Paul was very familiar with the cultural aspect of life and religion, as he tells us in 1 Corinthians 9:19–27. He had a foot in Greco-Roman culture and one in his native Jewish culture. He could live like a Jew, or like a Gentile, in order to proclaim the gospel and win both Jews and Gentiles. We may amplify his claim as follows: “For though I am free from all religious culture, I have made myself a servant to all religious cultures, that I might win more of them in any religious culture” (v.19).

But there was a line that Paul would not cross because he was under the law of Christ (v.21). He would not, for example, have visited temple prostitutes even to witness for Christ. Or, if eating meat that had been dedicated to idols damaged his reputation as a servant of Christ, he would never eat meat (1 Cor. 8:13; 10:23–33).

In our 21^st century American culture, we have to decide how to honor Christ in the exercise of our freedom. For example, we very involved in the sport of professional football, which is played on Sunday, called the Lord’s Day as early as the end of the first century. A century ago, many of our ancestors in the faith would have found this game and our participation in it on Sunday to be sacrilegious. In the film Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell refused to play football on Sunday, which they still called the Sabbath, or to run race in the 1924 Olympics on a Sunday. Today, few Christians would take that stand. Tim Tebow, for all his commitment to God, has no apparent qualms about playing football on Sunday. Did Eric Liddell take his stand for Christ in vain? I think not. He did what honored Christ in his day. And we are called to do the same in our day, but in a different culture. Culture changes, but the responsibility of serving Christ remains the same.

There is a danger in our navigation between religion and culture when we confuse culture with obedience to Christ. It is one thing to honor God by obedience to what we believe is the right thing to do within our culture; it is something else to insist that it is a matter of obedience for everyone. Seventh Day Adventists worship on the Sabbath as a matter of conscience, in the belief that this is what God demands or prefers. Most Christians worship on Sunday. There is a wide variation in the celebration of the Eucharist, and different ways churches baptize new Christians. God may very well have a long list of preferences, but we are not privy to it.

All religion is clothed in culture. So what is the core that dresses up in culture? It is the covenant relationship with God, guided by the two great commandments: 1) love God; 2) love neighbor. How we do that is largely our call within our culture. We gather together as local churches and do things one way or another. We should worship with people of like mind in order to facilitate the two commandments. But we must be wary of erecting our own little fences within the kingdom of God.

As Paul navigates between cultures, he emulates the discipline of athletes to keep himself worthy of the calling of the gospel. But where athletes strive for a perishable wreath, his goal is an imperishable wreath (1 Cor. 9:25). I do not know what the imperishable wreath represents, except the words from Jesus, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master” (Mt 25:21, 23).

In our continuing effort to better know the God of Reality, we need a clear understanding of the Bible. As Christians, we believe the Bible is unique because it is inspired by God. But what do we mean by divine inspiration? I have dealt with the views of biblical inspiration in a previous message, but we need to review the two models of inspiration. (For the evidence and arguments see the message of October 23, 2011.)

1. The prophetic model states that just as God gave the prophets the precise words to speak, so God gives every author of biblical texts the precise words to write down. This model views inspiration of the Bible as divine dictation.

2. The dynamic process model assumes a much subtler form of inspiration in that God inspires individuals to respond to his love in specific ways, and these inspired individuals then write books and letters to the best of their ability. This model views inspiration the Bible as a human response to the divine prompting of God.

The dynamic process model of inspiration (which may go by other names) better reflects the reality of biblical literature than dictation. It helps us understand the nature of the Bible and God’s relationship to his people. In short, God did not dictate Scripture. God has always preferred to work with and through his people, to persuade them rather than dictate to them, because love is relationship. The exception to the rule is found in prophetic oracles, so identified by “Thus says the Lord.” Wishing or believing that the Bible comes to us by divine dictation is more a crutch for weak faith than an eye-wide-open trust in God.

The Bible provides a record of the covenant relationship between God and his people: inspired by God, written by his people. It has just the sort of human character that God delights in using. We know this to be true from our own experience in the covenant relationship with God, who uses us in our imperfection. Biblical literature was written to a people at a specific point in history. Because we understand both God and the world differently across the centuries, God naturally accommodates himself to us according to our ability to understand. This introduces both statements and changes in the Bible that may appear as errors. Yet, we affirm that the Bible is without error. So, what do we mean that this?

The Bible is without error because it omits nothing we need to achieve his goal for our lives. It has no false information on matters of faith and practice. Therefore, the Bible is without error on all matters of faith and practice.

The Bible contains a variety of genres of literature: Torah (law, instruction), narrative (including records and prophecies), wisdom, poetry (psalms, songs, poems).

1. Torah in the Hebrew Scriptures, means instruction, but is usually translated law in English. The Torah of Moses is the Law of Moses, but should be understood as the Instructions of Moses on how to live in the covenant of God. In the New Testament, this genre includes the teachings of Jesus, Paul, and other authors on how to live correctly, and understand important beliefs, in the covenant of God.

2. Narrative is the recollection of the past told in a way to help us in the present. Narrative is highly selective and easily remembered, but may rely on records of events, especially court records of the kings of Israel and Judah. Apocalyptic literature is a special kind of narrative that contains visions of future events.

3. Wisdom describes the art of living, describing principles that will lead to the good life.

4. Poetry includes the Psalms and other forms. Much of the biblical literature, including the oracles of God in the prophets, is written as poetry, which has always been considered a higher form of speech than prose.

At the time of the writing, the literature was contemporary, but now it is quite ancient, and it is our challenge and responsibility to read the text within its original context, and then apply the messages to our own day.

We associate truth and reality with a literal interpretation of Scripture. Yet, we have universally recognized that deeper truths than literal words can express require poetics. And the great value of poetic speech is that it never becomes obsolete. People in antiquity conveyed truth in symbols and stories; they conveyed sacred truth in sacred symbols and sacred stories. Even the prophets spoke as poets and their words from God are often poems, usually following the rules of poetry at that time. It was beautiful speech, worthy of God.

An important poetic technique is the metaphor. In a metaphor, one thing is regarded as symbolic of something else. Here are two examples of a single metaphor.

You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land (Psalm 80:8–9 NRS).

I am the vine, you are the branches (John 15:5 NRS).

The vine is the metaphor that speaks of Israel and of Jesus. The word metaphor means to speak above the words. A metaphor tells us something in an instant, in a mental picture, that abstract words can only do laboriously, if at all. Very often, the translation of thoughts from God’s mind to our minds requires that we speak above the words, in symbols. Metaphors are symbols that convey truth where words just get in the way.

The Bible is an ancient collection of ancient books that makes use of poetics to convey divine truth. Given these two facts about the Bible, it is our challenge to read the Bible as it is, not as we would like it to be. This is part of taking the God of Reality seriously. You may like to imagine that the Bible fell from heaven the day after Gutenberg invented the printing press, but it did not. The Bible is what it is, and God has chosen to use it as the vehicle of his continuing inspiration of his covenant people.

It should be apparent that if the literature is poetic, then a literal reading will be a very limited, or even a false reading. And to insist that a parable is historical is not only to miss the point of the parable, but it is to falsify the nature of the divine record, and in the long run that cannot bring glory to God. The best way to read the Bible for the glory of God is to read the Bible for what it is, and read it in order to receive the message it has to give us.

Rather than constantly defending a literal interpretation of Scripture, I propose a plain reading of Scripture. We should not burden ourselves with questions the Bible is not meant to answer; especially questions of science and history. Read the Bible for the sake of learning what it can tell us about how to glorify God. Read the Bible with ears to hear what God will say to you.

Søren Kierkegaard urged Christians to read the Bible as if it were a mirror. When we gaze into a mirror, we do not study the mirror, but we study our face. When we read God’s Word, we should say: “It is I to whom it is speaking; it is I about whom it is speaking” (For Self-Examination [First Series] 1851).

All Scripture was written by people of the covenant to the people of the covenant about people of the covenant. The Bible is the inspired sacred story of God and his people. We have entered this vast cloud of witnesses. This is our time, our day, and our opportunity to forge another generation in the long trek of God’s people. They hand on the record. We must fulfill their hopes and dreams. When you read the Bible, they are calling out to you. Listen. Listen. This was written to me; this was written about me. And just as God inspired them, so God will inspire you. Just as God spoke to them, God will speak to you.

So far in our study of the God of Reality, we have addressed three fundamental questions:

What is Truth?

What is Man?

What is Love?

All knowledge and questions of existence must begin with some postulate which is accepted without proof to be true. In the case of the existence of the universe, the Big Bang began either as a natural phenomenon that remains mystery of nature, or as an act of a creator outside the natural universe.

To begin with a mystery of nature leaves us in the curious condition of self-aware beings seeking meaning from a meaningless universe of a random movement of atoms. This is the conclusion of many learned existentialist philosophers in the past century, and of nearly all the “New Atheists” of our modern day. It leaves us in the dark as to how this could possibly have come about.

A more profitable path is to begin with the creator, and all our questions assume the truth of Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The advantage of starting with the biblical creator is that we can pursue the meaning of life with hope of a meaningful answer. The disadvantage of starting with Genesis 1:1 is that we confront many difficult theological questions to which atheism is blissfully unconcerned.

So, we have a choice of postulates: a meaningless life in quest of meaning, or a meaningful life beset with theological challenges. It’s all about meaning…if you know what I mean.

What is Truth?

A verse that quickly comes to mind in answer to the question is in the Gospel of John; Jesus says: “I am the way, the truth, the life” (Jn 14:6). But we are not asking about “the truth” with the definite article, because definite questions and answers require a defining context. We pose the question in the abstract, what is truth that we might seek an answer? The question was made famous by Pontius Pilate. When confronted by one who claimed to be the truth, Pilate asked: Truth? What is Truth? (Jn 18:38). That is the question at hand.

The bedrock answer to the question “what is truth?” is “truth is reality.” And reality is what is. Reality is all there is, but we cannot possibly know all there is. My reality is what I can perceive and know. Reality is there to be perceived, but we are restricted to a perception of reality, and this perception is necessarily limited by our ability to perceive, and by our ability to make sense of our perception. The human effort to make sense of existence, or make life meaningful, follows a path from Ultimate Reality to my reality: Reality > Perception > Knowledge > Understanding > Me. Each category is distilled from the one before it. The result, once I have organized my understanding, is my world view.

The ultimate perception of Reality is, of course, God’s perception, sometimes called “God’s Eye.” I know my understanding is only a part of the whole, but I continue to seek a greater understanding, to get as close to God’s Eye as I can. I’ll never get there, but I can get closer than I am today. Meanwhile, I have to accept that in this life, my existence is, and will remain, something of an enigma, a riddle.

Saint Paul, an energetic philosopher and theologian, arrived at this conclusion, so beautifully expressed in his poem on love. “Now we see only reflections in a mirror, mere riddles [Greek, enigmas], but then we shall be seeing face to face. Now I can know only imperfectly; but then I shall know just as fully as I am myself known” (1Cor 13:12 New Jerusalem Bible).

Until then, we seek as much truth as we can grasp, confident that a small part of a meaningful whole is better than a whole lot of meaninglessness. The axiom of confidence is this: truth cannot undermine truth. Whatever we discover about the universe to be part of reality, therefore true, we may be confident that this truth is to be traced to the Creator of the universe, the source of all truth. If we cannot trace our discoveries of reality to God, then either we have not understood creation, or we have not understood God.

Alister McGrath puts the matter clearly. “We are not talking about a blind leap of faith in the dark, but the continuation of an intellectual trajectory beyond the thresholds of the scientific method. Faith may go beyond reason and evidence; it does not go against them, but continues their lines of thought” (Surprised by Meaning, Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p. 40). For this reason, faith must be grounded in reality so that it builds on what is provided by the God who is, not on what is not. If we ground our faith in an imaginary universe, we will end up worshiping an imaginary God.

What is Man?

This question is posed by the psalmist in Psalm 8. “What is man that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man that thou dost care for him?” The context of the psalm is a comparison between the insignificance of man in view of the creator of the universe, and the importance of man as the caretaker of God’s creation. In one respect, mankind is insignificant nothing, while in another respect, mankind represents God’s dominion over the earth. Just as God made Moses to be like a god to pharaoh (Ex 7:1), so God made humans to be like a god to the rest of the earth.

Today we have exercised our dominion, for better or worse, over the earth. Through human technology we understand the earth and the universe in a far greater depth than the ancient Hebrews could ever know. The Hebrew people thought the sky was a solid dome of ice or crystal, with openings in the celestial roof for rain and snow to fall through from vats above. And the sun came into the sky dome through an eastern portal every morning, arched across the sky dome, and exited through a western portal. The naked eye could see countless stars in the night sky, but not a lot more than a thousand. The vastness of the universe through the eyes of the Hubble telescope would boggle the ancient mind.

So what is man…really? The Hebrew word adam (mankind) is cognate to the word dam (blood) and adama (earth). Man comes from the blood red earth. Today we measure that a person is mostly water, at least 70%, and composed mostly of six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus that make up 99% of the body. An average human of 70 kg (154 lbs) contains 6.7 x 10²⁷ atoms; that is 6.7 trillion, trillion, trillion give or take a billion. And according to our current understanding of the human genome, the human species is genetically related to all members of the animal kingdom.

From a strictly physical evaluation, that about sums up what we are. But, because of the Creator of the universe we know (OK, we believe) that we are animals created in the image of God (Gen 1:26–27). Therein lies the essential distinction between the animal kingdom and the king of the animals, man. The image of God is of a different essence than mere biology or physics. The image of God tells us we are meaningful to the Creator. The image of God gives us a moral standard for which to strive. Because God is eternal, beyond time and the universe, the image of God provides a hope in life after death. The image of God is the divine decree that mankind is the apogee of creation. The image of God allows the human animal to commune with the creator in a love relationship.

Christians know (i.e. believe) that humanity is the point of the universe because we believe God became man. “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14). The Word became 70% water. The Word was composed of six elements, and comprised of trillions of atoms. The Word became genetically related to the animal kingdom. That’s how much God loves humanity. In Jesus, God joined in his own creation. As it is written: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created…” (Col 1:15–16).

What is Love?

From the strictly physical point of view, love is a chemical state of mind. We interpret this state of mind as intense feelings of affection. The verb love in everyday usage means is to feel a deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone. In Hebrew the main word for love is ahava (noun), ahev (verb). Like English, this verb ranges widely from God’s love for his people to every human attachment to a person, abstract idea (justice), or thing (wine, sleep, silver). The Greek language developed four words for love, which C. S. Lewis made popular in his book The Four Loves (1960).

1. Romance (eros): physical and emotional attachment. (not in NT)

2. Affection of familiarity (storgē): mostly within a “family” (Rom 12:10).

3. Friendship (phileo): a strong bond of affection with a common focus (Mat 10:37; Jn 11:3)

4. Love (agapē): unconditional love, independent of circumstance (1 Cor 13).

A key difference between phileo and agape is that phileo is love based in the emotions; agape is love based in the will. Phileo and eros happen to us, but we choose to exercise agape love. By far the most common word for love in the Greek Old Testament and the New Testament is agape. The Bible also develops this love in a distinct context that differs from normal use, namely, covenant love.

Jesus epitomized covenant love in the two great commands: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Mat 22:37–40 NRS)

The command to love requires this love to be agape, based in the will, not a love like phileo based in emotions, over which we have little or no control. Covenant love of the Bible is best expressed by the metaphor of marriage. A covenant begins with oaths of allegiance: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone” (Deut. 6:4 NRS). A marriage begins with vows of allegiance until death.

Within the covenant, we are commanded to love God with all our being, and to love those in the covenant as ourselves on the principle that we are equally in the covenant and created in the image of God. Jesus also calls us to love our enemies as best we can under given circumstances, and pray for them (Mat 5:43–44).

The essence of the agape love we are commanded to give is summed up in the metaphor “love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1). Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher developed Paul’s thought in his work entitled Works of Love (1847). To build someone up requires the firm foundation of the covenant with the Creator who made us and loves us. To build up means we want the person we love to be perfected as the image of God. We know that we are correctly obeying the command to love others if our love is the effort to build up the one we love. As Kierkegaard puts it so well: “Love is the ground, love is the building, love builds up.”

To sum up Covenant Love:

Love is loyalty.

Loyalty is obedience.

Obedience is to love in every perfect way by building up those we love.