faith for faith

The true light, which enlightens all men, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:9-13).

In the opening verses to his Gospel, the apostle John gives us some of the most well-known verses in Scripture. And though they are well-known by themselves, they point to a text that is even more well-known, namely the first verses of the Scriptures found in Genesis 1. And what I believe the apostle is doing in writing these verses is that he is giving us a commentary upon the Genesis 1 account of the Creation in light of the revealed Person of Jesus Christ. And I say commentary and not revelation, because what the apostle is saying is not something that is new, but it is something that is seen more clearly in Jesus Christ.

To explain what I mean, let’s consider the first verses of the Genesis account in light of John 1. In Genesis 1, Moses writes, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). One thing I love about this text is the way by which the Holy Spirit had revealed it to Moses. For the phrase, “In the beginning” (which has been argued by non-Christian Jewish scholars before and after the coming of Christ), is a purposely ambiguous phrase in the Hebrew. For while it does convey the meaning of “In the beginning,” the same words are used later in the book of Genesis to refer to Jacob’s firstborn son, Reuben. These Jewish scholars, ironically, have shown that these first words in Genesis can be alternately rendered, “Through the Firstborn, God created the heavens and the earth.” Now, granting that is true and granting what the apostle Paul has written elsewhere concerning Jesus Christ, namely that he is the Firstborn of all creation, we have in the Genesis account precisely what the apostle John is saying in his Gospel, namely, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:1-3).

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I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your rational service (Rm. 12:1).

Seemingly, we are instructed from our births that the only way by which we will find true fulfillment in our lives is by becoming someone who is great and laudable—someone who is esteem-able. Implanted in our young minds are the society’s virtues of self-esteem and self-aggrandizement, wherein countless sources from parents to teachers, preachers to presidents, cheer us on to be anything that we desire to be, as long as we put our minds and our energies into it. We are inspired to dream dreams, to reach for the pinnacles of human existence, and to loathe whatever evil thoughts might step in our way that tell us, “You’re not good enough, you’re not smart enough, and dag-gone-it, people don’t like you.”

We are taught to become our own cheerleaders and our own advocates to society, and the only thing that holds us back from making our dreams realities is our own lack of positive thinking. And granting the short span of our lives and our preoccupation with them, our dreams nearly all consist of becoming well-to-do, staying healthy, and securing our future by investments so that we will not have the spend the entirety of our days toiling under the sun.

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In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it (John 1:4, 5).

There are few things in creation that are as beautiful as a sunrise. At its beginning, a faint glow emanates on the eastern horizon so that that which was unseen starts to take a faint shape and form by the new light. Colors burst forth in the east, revealing an array of reds, blues, and purples. It is a most beautiful sight to behold, but, more than that , it is a foretelling of that which is to come—the sun. And once the sun breaks through and is fully revealed in the sky, the colors that marked its coming disappear, and we are left with a light that is so bright and powerful that we can scarcely look upon it, yet by it the rest of world is shown in a vivacity and clarity not known to us in the night.

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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:1-3).

Each of the Gospel accounts has its beginning. Matthew finds its beginning at the birth of Jesus Christ, Mark at the beginning of Christ’s earthly ministry and the proclamation of the Kingdom, and Luke at the beginning of Christ’s forerunner, John the Baptist. For John, however, his beginning is the Beginning. Through John and its language we are taken back to the creation account of Genesis 1 and given a glance not only of the beginning of all things created but also of the purpose for their creation.

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Repost: A brother asked this question of me, and I think it is an excellent question: “What did Christ mean when he cried out upon his death, ‘My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?’ (Mt. 27:46).” It is an excellent question biblically, and it is also an excellent question because of modern interpretations of it–some of them helpful and true, and others just plain strange. And the question boils down to two interpretive questions: Was Christ making some sort of commentary upon his crucifixion by crying out those words, or was he crying out a reality that was true of the time when he was crying it out, namely that God the Father had in reality forsaken him?

Before we seek to interpret what Christ was meaning when he spoke his famous last line before his death, it is important that we understand the words themselves and how a witness to the crucifixion (either at time of Christ’s crucifixion or through the lens of Scripture) who knew his Bible well would understand the cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

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In Joshua 10, it is hard come down from the incredible manner by which God fights for his people and destroys his enemies. On that day when God prolonged Israel’s advantage at Gibeon by causing daylight to be extended for an entire day, we learn that Yahweh, the God of Israel, is able to do anything for the sake of his people and for the execution of his justice. Why did it happen? We may never know on this side of the grave, but we do know that God did it for his good pleasure, and that its record in the book of Joshua was not intended to be a figurative statement, for the author appeals to an outside work called The Book of Jashar that records this same Anomaly.

And it is from this mountain that we come to Makeddah–literally, the Place of Shepherds. Little is known of this place except that after Joshua and Israel had fought the armies of the five united cities, their five kings fled to Makeddah and hid themselves in a cave there. Their place of hiding was not long kept from Joshua, and he commanded that large stones and guards be placed in front of the entrance of the cave to hold the kings until the pursuit against the armies of their cities was completed. After Israel had struck the majority of the armies in battle, they returned to Makeddah to meet the camp of Israel there.

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When we think upon the declaration of Romans 8:28, namely that, “For those who love God, all things work together for good,” its implications are staggering. “All things work together for good, you say? Do you mean all things?”

Well, when we think upon the all things in Romans 8:28, we must understand it in its context. The apostle Paul is speaking there particularly of the suffering of the saints, manifesting itself in tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, danger, nakedness, and death (v. 35). These things seem to come to the saint from external sources, such as from those whom the apostle labels, “Life and death, angels and rulers, things present and things to come, powers, height and depth, and everything else in all of creation (vv. 38, 39). None of these things, the apostle says, “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 39).

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It is a great pity the yoke that the legalists and self-righteous have often put upon those who are going through times of suffering and hardship. They are precisely like the religious “friends” of Job, who, when God had in his good pleasure smote Job, circled around him like vultures seeking to pick the depths of his heart for some sin so that they could explain his sufferings according to their works-based theology. However, after God was pleased to remove his hand from the head of the righteous Job, he rebuked those fools who sought to explain the ways of God by the philosophies of men, and he, after sufficiently humbling Job, raised up his righteous servant in renewed splendor.

The case with us who are in Christ is no different than that of Job. Because of what Christ has done upon the cross and because of his righteous life, we who are in him are likewise counted righteous. For this reason, when we suffer as God’s children, it is never because we are being judged for some sin that we may have committed or some duty that we may not have fulfilled, for all of our sins, all of our shortcomings, and all of our judgment has been cast upon Christ fully and finally. Therefore when we suffer, it always has a much grander purpose.

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After it was dark one evening, a Pharisee named Nicodemus came to Jesus. He was a ruler and a teacher of the Jews, and his coming by night to speak to Jesus reveals a bit of the sincerity of his heart behind his coming. For while the rest of the Pharisees were notorious for conspiring together and then questioning Jesus during the day so as to attempt to trap him in blasphemy, Nicodemus came at night to Christ so that he would not to be seen by the other Pharisees and associated with their trickery.

Upon coming to Jesus, Nicodemus said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him” (Jn. 3:2). Nicodemus’s confession to Christ is an astounding one, and it places him in direct opposition to his Pharisee brothers. Yet, despite the greatness of Nicodemus’s confession, Christ does not respond to his confession with a “Thank you,” or a “You are right,” or even the response he gave to Peter upon his confession, “Blessed are you!” Christ does none of these things but seems to ignore the Nicodemus’s statement altogether.

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For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened (Rm. 1:22, 23).

I heard Douglas Wilson at one time give an argument for the existence of God from the existence of God’s gifts. He argued this way: that if a man were walking through a deserted forest and along the way found a gift neatly wrapped, he would likely think it odd to find such a thing on a path going through such a forest. He might receive the gift, though he might consider it a sheer and freak coincidence that this one solitary gift was laid in the path of his footsteps. However, if that same man walked further and started to find gift after gift laid along the path that he alone was walking, he would by necessity conclude that someone had placed these things ahead of him and for his enjoyment. He would know from the string of gifts that there was a giver, and that giver, whoever he is, is deserving of thanksgiving.

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