Ashamed of the Gospel

Continuing with misunderstood passages from the Bible…

Today’s passage is Romans 1:16–17.

The meaning of these verses seems rather straightforward. John MacArthur speaks for the popular interpretation in his book, Ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church Becomes Like the World. This is, in essence, that we are often afraid to proclaim the gospel in its stark reality. Instead, we must stand with Paul and declare the blunt truth of the gospel. The alternative is compromise and accommodation.

I want to suggest that Paul is saying something rather different.

The word translated “ashamed” is epaischúnomai. According to the Analytical Greek Lexicon by Friberg, Friberg & Miller, this word has three possible meanings: To feel guilty and remorseful, to be embarrassed because one’s expectations have been (or might be) proven false, to be afraid of being humiliated.

In this letter (Romans), Paul uses this word and another word formed from the same stem in several places. Here are some of them.

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us (Romans 5:5).

As it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame” (Romans 9:33).

As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame” (Romans 10:11).

In the first instance, Paul is saying that hope does not let us down. In the second instance, Paul is saying that those who trust in the “stone” will never be let down. Paul is saying essentially the same thing in the third instance.

(Notice that this is meaning #2 from the Analytical Greek Lexicon.)

In the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Old Testament) Jeremiah 2:36 uses one of these words: “You will be disappointed by Egypt as you were by Assyria.”

I would suggest that what Paul is saying here is that he is not concerned about being disappointed by the Gospel “because it is the power of God.”

In the verses immediately preceding, Paul says that he hopes to come to Rome and preach the Gospel to them. There is no hint in this passage that he (or the Romans) has any inclination to compromise the truth of the Gospel or to accommodate the Gospel to popular culture.

The problem is that the word “ashamed” has such strong associations for us that once we read it we think we understand what Paul is talking about. But a look with fresh eyes reveals something very different.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Curses Curses

This misunderstanding may be even more controversial than Romans 7.

Most people who read Genesis 3:14–19, see the “curses” issued to the serpent, Eve and Adam as punishment that God dishes out because he is angry with their respective sins. But I want to suggest that this is a gross misunderstanding of what is happening here.

God is explaining what they have brought upon themselves. These are not punishments, but consequences that directly result from their rebellion.

God had warned them of the deadly consequences of disobedience (Genesis 2:17). This was not a threat, but a compassionate forewarning.

Dorothy Sayers expresses this well:

The fashionable habit of calling the prohibition of the Fruit of Knowledge an “arbitrary taboo” is a quite unjustifiable travesty of the Bible story. There, God is represented as saying to Adam and Eve: “Do not eat: if you do, it will kill you”—and I do not know what else one could reasonably say to anybody when begging him to refrain from taking strychnine or prussic acid (Dorothy Sayers, Introductory Papers on Dante, p. 63).

And so when the sin was committed, God sits them down and tells them what they’ve done.

Why does this matter?

It prevents the too-common caricature of God as the “angry old man” who lashes out at his creatures for doing what “he enticed them” to do.

[God] puts an apple tree in the middle of [the Garden of Eden] and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting “Gotcha.” It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it.… Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end (Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe).

It also resolves the question of whether we should seek to reverse the effects of the fall. If these “curses” are punishments handed out by God, then we shouldn’t interfere with his discipline. (Have you ever tried to console an unhappy child only to find out that he had been put in “time out” by his parents?)

We seem to understand this when it comes to the resistance of nature to man’s effort to cultivate the land. We also seek to lessen the pain of childbirth. But we get confused about woman’s subjection to man. We pass this off as God’s ordained “chain of authority.”

Some go so far to say that original sin is “the woman taking over authority from the man, and the man saying and doing nothing to stop it” (Michael Harper, Equal and Different, London, 1994). (The complete article can be found here.)

Besides, these pronouncements by God are presented in poetic language. A woodenly literal interpretation misses the point. Take verse 15 for example. God says that there will be “enmity” between the offspring of the serpent and the woman. Couched within this reference to the nearly-universal abhorrence for snakes is the first prophecy of the coming Messiah who would crush the head of Satan once and for all. (See Romans 16:20.)

So tell me what you think.

Bonus: Notice that work is not Adam’s curse. The consequence for Adam was that his work would be now be burdensome. Adam performed work before the fall and experienced fulfillment and satisfaction in it (Genesis 2:15).

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Struggle with Sin

Continuing with my series of misunderstood Bible passage, it’s time to deal with Romans 7.

The common view is that Paul is describing his personal struggle with sin. However, there are two opinions about whether this is a normal state of the Christian life (“I knew that deep down inside, Romans 7:14–25 is describing me.”) or a state than is replaced by what is described in chapter 8 (“This moment, therefore, we may be emptied of sin, filled with holiness, and become truly happy.”).

I don’t want to get caught up in this particular battle right now.

I do want to suggest to you that both of these camps have misunderstood what Paul is saying in Romans 7.

Notice what he says before chapter 7:

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin (6:6–7).

For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace (6:14).

You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness (6:18).

So we can see that Paul clearly considers the life of a believer to be a life that is free from slavery to sin.

So what does Paul mean by this lament in Romans 7:14–24?

The key to understanding this complex and confusing chapter in found in reading Romans 5:20, “The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,” along with Romans 6:6, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”

Paul’s argument in Romans is that God gave the Law in order to “call out” sin. But this Law did not have the ability to eliminate sin. In fact, it had the effect of increasing sin. Rather than freeing humans from sin, the Law made their slavery to sin even more obvious.

But this was not a mistake on God’s part. Things must often get very much worse before they can be “fixed.” Ignoring a problem seems less disruptive than facing up to it. But facing the full brunt of a terrible situation often makes the solution more obvious and easier to accept.

Here’s how N. T. Wright explains this passage in a Bible Review article:

In Romans 7:1-8:11 Paul declares that the renewed people are given the Spirit to do “what the law could not” (Romans 8:3). He argues (through the device of the “I,” speaking of himself as the embodiment of Jewish history) that when the Law was originally given Israel recapitulated the sin of Adam (Romans 7:7-12, looking back to Romans 5:20), that in her continuing life under the Torah Israel finds herself simultaneously desiring the good and unable to avoid the buildup of sin, and that Israel, despite her great vocation, remains “in Adam” (Romans 7:1-6, 13-25). God, however, has dealt with sin and given new life, to those who share the resurrection of Christ through the Spirit (Romans 8:1-11).

Scot McKnight expands on this:

Israel struggled with the Torah to do it, and couldn’t get the job done. (Or, for others: everyone failed to do the Torah.) God sent Christ. Paul is thinking of death: those who are in Christ are those who have died with Christ and his death becomes their death. The condemnation that death is has been dealt with when Christ died on the cross.

Here are a few scattered statements from Wright’s article, “Romans and the Theology of Paul”:

The way through the complex little argument of 7:1-4 is found by reading 5:20 in the light of 6:6 and 6:14f.: Torah binds “you” to Adam; Adam, the “old you,” dies in baptism; “you” are therefore free to belong to another—namely, Christ—without Torah having anything to say about the matter.

The chapter is a defense of Torah against any suggestion that it is identical with “sin” (7:7-12) or that by itself it was the ultimate cause of death (7:13-20).

[T]he Israel that lives under Torah continues to carry
about the mark of sin and death that results from being the child of Adam.

Torah, Paul said in 5:20, came in in order that sin might abound. That is, the divine purpose in the giving of Torah was in order to draw Adam’s trespass to its full height precisely in Israel.

God’s covenant purpose, it seems, is to draw the sin of all the world on to Israel, in order that it may be passed on to the Messiah and there dealt with once and for all.

So we see that Romans 7 is not describing a personal experience of Paul’s. (If you need further evidence, check out Philippians 3:6.) It is rather a description of the predicament of Israel under the Law.

To say that Romans 8 is only talking about the legal standing of a believer in Christ is to emasculate Paul’s argument. On the other hand, to say that “life in the Spirit” is only for some Christians is to completely miss the point of verse 9.

But when we pay close attention to the narrative flow of Paul’s letter, we see that he is making a very specific argument based upon the history of Israel. Even Romans, Paul’s most theological letter, has a story line. We get ourselves into difficulty when we read the Bible as a theology textbook or as a collection of facts and propositions.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Born Again, part 2

Now, for another misconception from the passage in John 3.

When we hear the phrase “born again,” we think of something very specific, how a person “becomes a Christian.” But that is clearly not what Jesus has in mind here.

First, let’s look at the phrase. “Born” can mean “born of a mother” or “begotten of a father.” “Again” can mean “again” or “from above.” (In John’s gospel words often have double meanings.)

So here’s the context: Nicodemus says, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

As I mentioned in the previous post, Nicodemus has just made what he considers a generous statement. There has been much debate about “where Jesus has come from.” Some have argued that Jesus could not come from God because he does not follow the rules of the Pharisees. So Nicodemus expects Jesus to respond in gratitude to this acknowledgement.

But Jesus turns the tables on Nicodemus. He twists his words around and uses them against him. He says, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again (from above).” (Notice the repeat of “no one” and “can.”)

So what does Jesus mean? Does he mean that Nicodemus needs to pray the “sinner’s prayer” and “ask Jesus into his heart”? Doesn’t make much sense, does it? The atonement has yet to be made. The New Covenant has yet to be established in the blood of the Messiah.

What Jesus is telling Nicodemus is something more generic. He is saying that no one knows the first thing about the kingdom of God unless he has been enlightened to spiritual realities. And that can only happen through the work of the Spirit. (Later, Christian theologians would analyze the process of spiritual transformation and identify various stages they would name “regeneration,” “sanctification,” and “glorification.”)

Nicodemus has come to check out Jesus, and Jesus has put him on the defensive. Jesus has told him that he doesn’t know the first thing about the kingdom of God. (See verse 10.)

Bonus: Your Bible probably has verses 16–21 in quotations. The original Greek text did not have such things as quotation marks. In fact, the idea of a direct quotation is a very modern idea. It is my opinion that this paragraph is a commentary by John, not a quotation from Jesus. These words make much more sense from the pen of John after the death and resurrection of Jesus than they do from the mouth of Jesus near the beginning of his ministry.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Born Again

Our next misunderstood passage is John 3.

The first misunderstanding is the overall perception of what is happening in this exchange between Nicodemus and Jesus. It is commonly believed that Nicodemus was obtuse and unable to understand what Jesus was getting at.

Here’s how the conventional interpretation goes.

• Nicodemus visits Jesus at night.
• He says that Jesus must be a teacher from God because of the miracles that he does.
• Jesus answers that one must be “born again” to see the kingdom of God.
• Nicodemus, thinking that Jesus is speaking literally, asks how that is possible.
• Jesus repeats his statement in more detail saying that one must be born of the Spirit.
• Nicodemus asks how that can be.
• Jesus chides Nicodemus for his lack of understanding.

I want to suggest to you that this view misses what is really happening between Jesus and Nicodemus. To understand this encounter, we must remember that Jesus is an eastern teacher and that he uses methods different from those we are used to.

• Nicodemus comes to Jesus with a conciliatory statement that he must be from God. There is a debate about this among the Jewish leaders. Any other teacher would have seen this statement as generous. But in saying this, Nicodemus has put himself and his colleagues in a position to judge Jesus.


• Rather than respond in gratitude, Jesus makes an outrageous statement. “You haven’t the first clue about the kingdom of God. You can’t even see the kingdom of God unless you are ‘born again.’ You must start over from the beginning.”


• Nicodemus is taken aback. He came here to investigate Jesus, albeit with a friendly disposition. Instead, he is being put on the defensive. He understands perfectly well what Jesus is saying. He is somewhat insulted that this itinerate teacher without any credentials is instructing him about the kingdom of God. So he replies in kind. “Surely you don’t expect a man of my age to start all over from the beginning as if he were a Gentile convert?”


• Jesus explains that the kingdom of God is spiritual and that only those who have been “born of the Spirit” can perceive it.


• Nicodemus expresses his confusion.


• Jesus then chides him for his lack of understanding. The one who can to investigate Jesus is now being grilled without mercy. If he doesn’t understand the simple things how is he ever going to progress to the advanced material? And he calls himself a teacher?

So what do you think? Once you see this encounter from this perspective it is hard to ever interpret it the old way. (Try reading Matthew 15:21-28 using this same approach. See if it doesn’t make more sense.)

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Preaching to the Imagination

I’ve discussed the problems with Expository Preaching pointed out by David Fitch in his book The Great Giveaway. I also suggested that one of the reasons that most people resist acknowledging these problems is that they have a hard time imagining an alternative to expository preaching that doesn’t have even more inherent problems.

I made a feeble attempt to sketch out some possible alternatives in this post. Fortunately, David Fitch has made an excellent post at his site that gives a much more complete answer.

I’ll give you a summary here along with a few of my comments. He makes four suggestions for finding an alternative to expository preaching.

1.) QUIT EXPLAINING AND START PROCLAIMING.

The primary task of the preacher is to proclaim the truth, not to explain it. It is interesting to know the details behind the making of a movie (as in a director’s commentary on a DVD), but we cannot enjoy a movie while someone is explaining how and why everything was done. The explanation gets in the way.

“Instead of dissecting the text making it portable so as to be distributed to isolated Cartesian selves for their own personal use, the preacher renarrates the world as it is under the Lordship of Christ and then invites people into it.”

2.) PLEASE, LET’S COME TO SCRIPTURE AS DRAMA NOT A TEXTBOOK

We tend to see the Bible “as a propositional textbook of religious facts.” Instead, we should see it as “living and active” (Hebrews 4:12). The Bible is properly seen as a great drama.

3.) FORGET THE APPLICATION POINTS! GO FOR THE LITURGICAL RESPONSE

Instead of giving individuals a list of steps, principles or lessons, we should be giving the assembled congregation an opportunity to respond liturgically to the Word. One of the best forms of response is the Eucharist (Communion).

“Each time I respond, each time I submit, each time I affirm the truth about the reality as it is under Christ, I am changed and I grow. Slowly I am formed over time through the faithful preaching of the Word and the ever hearing, responding, submitting, obeying, confessing, affirming and acting in faith.”

4.) THE ACT OF PREACHING CAN ONLY BE THE TIP OF A COMMUNAL ICEBERG

If preaching is disconnected from the community, it encourages each individual to handle the sermon as another commodity to be taken home in the form of notes or an audio recording. We take what we find helpful and set aside the rest.

“The violence comes when we put our own meanings or agenda onto Scripture. The violence comes when the preaching of the Word separates us as individuals over against one another armed with the interpretation we want because we do not come together in mutual submission to discern the Scripture’s meaning for our lives today. If preaching is to avoid this violence, it must foster communal practices among us that allow us to submit to one another in the work of the Spirit to interpret the Scriptures.”

I think David is on the right track. We read Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost and see it as a long explanation of why Jesus was the true Messiah. But Peter was, in fact, telling the story of God’s dealings with the descendants of Abraham. And he was proclaiming the truth that Jesus of Nazareth fit into that story in a surprising way. Stephen’s message to the Sanhedrin is even more obviously a retelling of the story of Israel.

Of course there are facts behind the story. And those facts are of ultimate importance. But we have been called to proclaim the story, not to give a commentary on the facts.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings works because it is a great story, a great story build upon the foundation of an abundance of facts. But those facts are not engaging; just ask anyone who ever tried to read the Silmarillion.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Foolishness, part 2

A second common misunderstanding of 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 is found in verse 21. Here’s how it reads in the King James Version, “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”

This sounds like God is saying that he has ordained preaching as the method of saving those who believe and that preaching is a foolish method from a human perspective.

But here’s how this reads in the NIV, “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.”

Here’s one more version (The English Standard Version), “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.”

What Paul is saying is that God has confounded human wisdom by proclaiming a message that seems foolish by human standards. What is that message? Paul says that it is “Christ crucified” (Verse 25). Of course there is more to the message than these two words. But this is the essence of the gospel message.

Paul is not saying that when he preaches the message of the gospel that “those who are perishing” have no idea what he is talking about. Rather he is saying that they think his message is unsophisticated, simplistic and reckless.

This is not a statement about human reasoning ability. It is a statement about human pride.

And Paul is not saying that human reasoning is unable to process truth about God. He is talking about something very specific here. He is talking about the foolishness of saving creation by the Messiah dying the humiliating death of crucifixion.

Let’s follow this through. In verse 18, Paul says that the “message of the cross” is how God unleashed his power in defeating sin and death. It was in the apparent defeat of Jesus that God won over his enemies.

Paul then quotes from Isaiah 29:14 where God says that he will “destroy the wisdom of the wise.” When Isaiah wrote this, God was talking about those who sought protection from Egypt (Isaiah 30:2), who tried to make their own arrangements and hide them from the Lord (29:15). But now, Paul is giving these words a new meaning. While God’s plan for protecting his people was “counter-intuitive” because it involved them being carried off into exile, the ultimate “foolish strategy” was allowing the Messiah to be crucified. In this apparent failure God demonstrated his power.

No wise man, biblical scholar or flashy orator could have come up with this plan.

But God’s seemingly foolish plan is superior to man’s most cunning strategy. God’s apparent weakness is far stronger than the greatest power humanity can muster. Paul is not saying that God is foolish or weak. He is only saying that he appears to be. He will pick this up again in chapter two.

So Paul is not saying that God has ordained expository preaching (or any other type) as the ultimate means of proclaiming the gospel.

Paul is not saying that “those who are perishing” are unable to logically process the claims of the gospel.

He is saying that God works through weakness and humility. And if that is so they should not be jockeying for prestige and power within the church. (Notice the context of this passage.) “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Misunderstood Passages

Many things that are commonly believed are wrong.

• Swimming within an hour after eating is dangerous.


• Mussolini made the trains run on time.


• Cinderella’s slippers were changed from fur to glass because of a mistranslation.


• “Ring Around the Rosie” is about the Black Death.


• Northern Europe’s mild climate is caused by the Gulf Stream.


• Before Columbus, it was believed that the earth was flat.

There are also many things believed about the Bible that are not so.

• The Bible says, “God helps those who help themselves.”


• Eve ate an apple in the Garden of Eden.


• The word “Trinity” is from the Bible.

In the following series of posts, I want to address some commonly misunderstood passages in the Bible.

In some cases there are passages that are misunderstood by people without a deep understanding of the Bible. (The misconceptions listed above would fall into this category.)

In other cases there are passages that are misunderstood by people who believe that they have an excellent grasp of the Bible and what it teaches. This latter group would take issue with my interpretation. But I intend to show how their interpretation is misguided.

Let’s start with one of these passages from 1 Corinthians 1:18-31.

This short passage has several misconceptions.

The first one is found in verse 18, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

This has often been understood to be saying that a non-believer cannot understand the things of God and the gospel in particular. It is coupled with 1 Corinthians 2:14, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

But if one reads the passage carefully, it becomes clear that what Paul means is not that an unbeliever is unable mentally to process the statements about Jesus and the gospel. He is saying that the unbeliever thinks they are silly.

This is made clear in verse 22-24, “Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

The Jews wanted some miraculous proof that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. (The irony is that he gave them plenty of proof, but they did not recognize it.) A Messiah who gets crucified is a blatant contradiction to a Jew of Paul’s day. That would be like saying the Chicago Cubs are the world champions even though they are 20 games below .500.

In the Greek world, there was a group of itinerate philosophers (turned orators) known as Sophists. They boasted that they could convince anyone of anything. To them it was all about the skill of the person presenting the argument.

But Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:1, “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.” In verse 4 he continues, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words.”

Rather than denying their ability to understand what he was saying, Paul is claiming that he came with a simple message that was perfectly clear: “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (verse 2).

Paul is not saying that unbelievers cannot understand the gospel. He is saying that they can understand it all too well and that they dismiss it as foolishness.

(To keep this post from getting too long, I’ll save the second misconception for later.)

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Same but Different

At the heart of the Pharisees “separatism” was the idea that they were different than other people. Of course, by “different” they meant “better.”

Jesus seems to accept the “sinners” and even identify with them. However, this wouldn’t have much significance if he wasn’t clearly different from them in some important way. If Jesus were just another “sinner,” his presence would be unremarkable. So Jesus identified with “sinners” (“I am the same as you.”) while maintaining his distinctiveness (“I am different than you are.”).

This theme of “same but different” runs throughout the Bible. (A more technical term could be “continuity and discontinuity.”) The Gospel is the same as the Law in many respects, yet something entirely different. The resurrection body has several things in common with the earthly body, but is something brand new. (Jesus’ resurrection body had scars from his crucifixion.) Those who are in Christ are called “saints” (literally, “holy ones”) even though they still exhibit many characteristics of “carnality.”

So what does this have to do with radical hospitality?

If we are going to practice the radical hospitality of Jesus, then we must identify with the outcasts while exhibiting qualities that clearly show we are significantly different.

What should these qualities be? Some Christians have defined these qualities by what they wear (or don’t wear). Other Christians have defined these qualities by the things they don’t do.

I would suggest that the only important visible difference between those in the Body of Christ and those outside should be the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

Unfortunately, many outside the Body of Christ have more of these qualities than many within the Body of Christ. This should not be!

• We have Christians who think that defending the truth (as they see it) is "being kind" even if it involves personal attacks and harsh language.
  
• We have Christians who think that beating people over the head with the truth of the gospel is "being compassionate" because "their eternal destinies are at stake."
  
• We have Christians who think that fighting the culture wars is more important than loving people the way they are right now.

But on the other hand, some Christians have taken relevance so far that they engage in crude and unwholesome behavior themselves. (They use language that Paul condemns in Ephesians 5:4, for example.) They have become like undercover cops who break the law in order to win the trust of the criminals they are trying to arrest.

As Christians we must love people with God’s radical love. And we can do that without copying every one of their behaviors. We must be the same, yet different.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Jesus the Radical

What was the nature of Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees?

Most Christians would answer that the Pharisees saw keeping the Law as the way to earn God’s favor and that Jesus was proclaiming a new means of attaining God’s favor, namely grace.

But this is to misunderstand what was at the heart of Jesus’ problem with the Pharisees, to misunderstand the nature of the Old Covenant and to misunderstand the character of the Gospel itself.

In the Old Covenant, keeping the Law wasn’t the means by which a person participated in the covenant. It was rather the sign that a person was a member of the covenant community. Failure to keep the Law would result in a withdrawal of God’s blessings. But the Old Covenant was rooted in God’s loving-kindness and faithfulness as much as the New Covenant would be.

The Pharisees valued a strict observance of the Law, especially concerning ritual purity and tithing, as an essential sign of God’s presence and blessing. This was so important that they developed an oral tradition that was more strict than the written Law. This was to provide an extra level of protection against unwittingly violating the Law.

One of the key components of this ritual purity was the manner in which the Pharisees ate their meals. They applied the purity regulations, which were given specifically for the priests serving in the temple, to themselves. They were scrupulous about maintaining ceremonial purity for all meals. And this included avoiding contact with those who did not maintain ceremonial or moral purity.

But Jesus had different values.

Jesus saw the value of individuals as greater than the value of ritual purity. He saw the “outcasts” as the very people God was seeking, the “lost sheep of Israel.”

We are faced with a similar choice today. There are many modern-day Pharisees who see their purpose as defending the “pure” doctrine of the church. One such person in a very lengthy post decries the statement of Promise Keepers that believers should stand together on the key doctrines and not divide over secondary issues. He says that this kind of thinking is unbiblical for the following reasons:

(1) True Christian unity requires oneness of mind (Rom. 15:5; 1 Cor. 1:10; Phil. 1:27). This is a very narrow basis of unity. True Christian unity is not “unity in doctrinal diversity.”

(2) In 1 Tim. 1:3, we see that our doctrinal position is to be extremely narrow. Timothy was to allow “no other doctrine”! A stricter stand toward doctrine could not be imagined.

(3) In 1 Tim. 6:14, Timothy was instructed to keep the
apostolic doctrine “without spot.” That refers to the smallest things, the details, the things typically considered insignificant and “non-essential” today.

(4) In Christ’s Great Commission, the churches are
instructed to train the converts “to observe ALL things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Mat. 28:20). This means the preachers are to have an “all things” attitude toward anything clearly taught in Scripture and they are to impart that exact attitude to every believer under their watchcare.

Now, I’m sure his heart is in the right place (when it comes to doctrine). But is this the mind of Christ? Is this closer to the example of Jesus in the Gospels eating with “sinners” or of the Pharisees who were scrupulous to avoid any contact that might defile their purity?

Another person seems to capture more the spirit of Jesus:

How would our ideas about discipleship be different if we reached out to the marginalized of our communities today? What if instead of treating outsiders as threats we practiced radical outreach in love?

Jesus’ willingness to associate with persons such as Matthew brought the abuse and criticism of the Pharisees. Jesus’ response is classic and worthy of deep reflection. Jesus calls upon the words of the ancient prophet Hosea in replying, “Go and learn what this means ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice’ for I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Radical Hospitality

Let’s open a different can of worms.

In some parts of the church, the term “radical hospitality” is a code word. For some it means openness to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-gender individuals. For others it means taking a specific position regarding immigration.

But this biblical concept is too important to allow it to be narrowed to one or two issues.

Hospitality was an important value in Israelite culture and was built into the Mosaic Law (Exodus 22:21, 23:9; Leviticus 19:10, 19:33-34, 24:22; Deuteronomy 10:18-19, 26:12-13, 27:19). The Letter to the Hebrews calls for a generous hospitality, “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2).

But the most compelling argument for radical hospitality comes from the example of Jesus himself. In contrast with the Pharisees, Jesus associated with social and religious outcasts. He spoke publicly with a Samaritan woman (John 4) crossing two barriers at once. He welcomed children (Mark 10:13-16). He made physical contact with people suffering from skin diseases, which made them unclean and potentially contagious. He ate with tax contractors and “sinners.”

He told his followers to show hospitality to those who would be unlikely and even unable to repay it (Luke 14:12-14). In his parable of the sheep and goats (Matthew 25:31-46), Jesus says that all the people of the earth will judged by how they treat those who are poor, those who are sick, those who are in prison and those who are strangers. He identified himself with the outcast.

So what does it mean to show hospitality? Bruce Malina, in the journal Semeia, explains, “Hospitality might be defined as the process by means of which an outsider’s status is changed from stranger to guest” (“The Received View and What It Cannot Do: III John and Hospitality,” Semeia, vol. 35, p. 181).

In contrast, a common way of dealing with strangers is to drive them away with force or by social pressure (by ignoring them, ridiculing them or attacking their worth). But Jesus calls his followers to welcome the stranger as a guest. Of course, this is not to be done blindly or without caution. And it must also be done with discernment (2 John 7-11).

This tradition of hospitality was not only practiced in the early church, but it also had a rebirth in the monastic life.

At Paradoxology there is an extended quotation from The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West...Again, by George Hunter.

The Abbot has no higher priority than ministry with guests. You would learn that the monastic community's highest commitment is hospitality to strangers, seekers, pilgrims, and refugees.

Lonni Collins Pratt, a Catholic laywoman, and Daniel Homan, a Benedictine monk, have written Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love. It outlines the role of hospitality which is at the core of the Benedictine, monastic life. In this book, “They discuss some of the challenges of hospitality: guests sometimes have different values than their hosts; they can intrude upon the routines of daily life; they require intimate companionship when hosts might rather be alone” (Publisher’s Weekly).

Why is it called radical hospitality?

This is radical because it is not a calculating hospitality. It is not performed as a form of manipulative pre-evangelism. (But any hospitality that is true will have the desire for the other to find life in Jesus Christ.) It is hospitality for the sake of hospitality. It is not the means to an end (even such a noble end as evangelism).

As followers of Christ, we have an obligation to extend hospitality to the outcasts in our neighborhoods and in our world.

But we can take this one step further. If Jesus ate with the outcasts, should we not also exhibit a radical hospitality in inviting the outcast to the Table of the Lord?

So what do you think?

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

But what else is there?

I have been exploring the problems with expository preaching. This has prompted the reaction, “But what else is there?” Most people have a hard time imagining an alternative to expository preaching that doesn’t have even more inherent problems.

Andrew Jones suggests one possibility. He writes about a sermon he heard more than 20 years ago. Many people have trouble remembering what they heard last Sunday.

The sermon was given by Dr. Walter Martin, one of the most prominent apologists of the late 20th century. What made this sermon different was that it was a narrative (without the obligatory three points and a conclusion).

Another guy, who calls himself Preacher Mike, suggests, “The goal isn’t to make points but to arrive at a point (destination). The message, like Christian discipleship itself, is a journey — informed by the text, shaped by the text. Instead of seeing myself as the one who explains the Bible to everyone, I see myself as a leader in the journey who escorts people into the messy, marvelous, unbelievable, life-altering world of scripture.”

David Mahfood adds his voice, “The kind of narrative I'm talking about means going deeper, telling a story that does more than merely highlight a point. Communicating using narrative is a challenge because it requires us to be so immersed in the text that we can recognize its truth as it plays out in our lives. It is also challenging because it requires that we actually be living lives that could demonstrate such truths. But I believe that these are the challenges that we are supposed to have in talking about Christianity.”

[One of the problems lying behind this discussion is that some systems of theology depend more upon correct belief than upon “being transformed into his likeness” (2 Corinthians 3:18). “These people believe in justification by faith in justification by faith.” Doctrine is important, but Christianity is not faith in a doctrine. It is faith in a Person.]

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

100

We have reached the 100th post.

Thanks to all who have visited and especially to those who have taken the time to add their voice to the conversation.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Musical Interlude

I just read an interview with Ken Medema and his wife (ht: BHT). He had some rather provocative things to say.

He thinks most churches have too much music:

The church is obsessed with music. The church has this false idea that if you have the right kind of music you will bring the people in, you will suck them in! And that came right out of the 14th and 15th centuries when the church was doing organs.

Organs were a Roman circus instrument. When the church started doing organs, the cathedral with the biggest organ would draw the most people. That’s why they started writing organ pieces, as interludes between the chants. If your church had a big new organ, you’d draw the people.

We do these music shows to draw the people in, and we call it worship, and what it is is just emotional manipulation. Too much music in the church.

He does, however, think that music is important to the church:

Music is for us [my wife and me] a vehicle. A tool. I learned that as a music therapist. I worked with mentally disturbed kids, and the whole philosophy was that music was a tool for accomplishing some other things, whether it was to help kids to get back into reality, or developing muscle groups. Whatever it was, music was a vehicle to get us there.

[The songs] need to be an expression of people’s devotion and discovery, an aid to discipleship, teaching tools for theology and helping to conceptualize our task. When I look at what I consider to be the best of hymnology, or even contemporary Christian music, there is always the component of challenge in it. There’s always the component of helping me grow, helping me discover something new, helping me find something that I need to know.

He longs for more depth in the music of the church:

In any musical style, whether it is traditional hymnody, folk music, country, rock 'n’ roll, heavy metal, classical, there is music that is the product of the best thinking, the most conscientious effort, and then there is music that is much less carefully done. There are bad hymns. When I was growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, there were a lot of scholcky hymns, and I can’t really say what made them that way, except that they were made without the greatest care, without a desire for excellence.

The churches that do it best, are the churches who don’t ask the question, “What kind of music do we need to draw people in?” but the question, “What kind of music would help my people express their devotion in their mother tongue?”

I’ve seen teens sitting in the front row, on the edge of their seats singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” with incredible passion. In that same church, there’s a 70-year-old woman, with a cracked voice, singing “In times like these, you need a savior.”

He also has some things to say about preaching:

Now, sometimes I want that kind of carefully wrought, elegant, every single word in place experience. And then there are times when I want my pastor to just be a witness. To just sit down, and say, “You know what, you know what happened to me?” and just talk to me like anyone else would. I want all of that.

There are moments when you need the work of art. You need that carefully written script where every single word is in place. And then there are moments when your pastor simply needs to sit down and say, “Okay people, here’s what’s on my heart today.” And there are times when a gathering feels that way.

Be sure to read the touching story (which he made into a song) about the 14-year-old girl who coerced him into dancing even though he said that he didn’t know how.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Outline for Preaching

I have been describing some of the problems with the virtual canonization of expository preaching as “the only method of preaching that preserves the purity of Scripture and accomplishes the purpose for which God gave us His Word” (John MacArthur, Rediscovering expository preaching, p. 24).

While many still cannot see the problems, it is time to move on and answer the question, “Exactly what kind of preaching should we be doing?”

Let’s start with the Old Testament. For many pastors preaching from the Old Testament is problematic. Some avoid it almost entirely. Others treat passages from the Old Testament as morality lessons.

Then there are those who apparently have never read Hebrews 8:13. They teach about tithing from Malachi. They promote Sabbatarianism. They manufacture artificial distinctions between the moral, civil and ceremonial Law given through Moses.

Until recently, I struggled with some of these same problems. But through the influence of N. T. Wright, Tim Keller and Peter Enns, I have finally understood how to treat the Old Testament with respect and from a Christian perspective.

The key is Luke 24:27, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” Jesus reinterpreted the Old Testament in light of what God had accomplished in the life, death and resurrection of his Son. Through the book of Acts we see the Apostles doing the same thing. Paul proclaimed from the Scriptures (Old Testament) the good news about Jesus.

When we preach from the Old Testament, the ultimate focus must always be on Jesus Christ. We can preach about Joseph and talk about how faithful he was, about how God’s providence was displayed in his life, and about how he held to his faith right down to the end by making them swear to take his bones back to the Promised Land. But in the end we must shift the focus to the One who was faithful to the point of death on the cross, to the One who God providentially used to provide the Bread of Life, to the One who did not waver in the Garden and trusted God to fulfill his promise of resurrection.

I now find preaching from the Old Testament more exciting, more appealing and more powerful as every text is reinterpreted in the light of what God has accomplished in the person of Jesus the Christ.

The Old Testament is more than just background for the Gospel. It is an important part, an essential part, of the grand narrative that finds its key moment in the resurrection of Jesus. And this narrative continues today.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Official Definitions

Some have argued that I have no real understanding of what expository preaching is. So I have quoted from the official arbiter of all things expository:

“The only logical response to inerrant Scripture, then, is to preach it expositionally. By expositionally, I mean preaching in such a way that the meaning of the Bible passage is presented entirely and exactly as it was intended by God.”
John MacArthur, Rediscovering expository preaching, (p. 23).

“What does it matter that we have an inerrant text if we do not deal with the basic phenomena of communication, e.g., words, sentences, grammar, morphology, syntax, etc.? And if we do not, why bother preaching it?
John MacArthur, Rediscovering expository preaching, (p. 24).

Preaching is first and foremost a service to the mind as groundwork for a service to the heart. The will and emotions are influenced in a lasting way only in proportion to the degree that the mind has learned correct biblical teaching and the level of behavior consonant with that teaching.
John MacArthur, Rediscovering expository preaching, (p. 149).

“The expositor depends on the power of the text itself when rightly explained, and is assured that application of the truth in a personal and individual way is ultimately the responsibility of the listener, in concert with the Holy Spirit, of course.”
John MacArthur, Rediscovering expository preaching, (p. 356).

MacArthur believes that it is the job of the expositor to explain the text and that this is the only purpose worthy of a preacher.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Sacred Hamburger

In many churches Expository Preaching is a sacred cow. But David Fitch has reduced it to hamburger in his book The Great Giveaway.

I have made several posts in an attempt to explain his argument. (Here is the initial post.) But the discussion has taken several turns and had become somewhat confusing. So I thought that I would do a quick summary.

First, expository preaching assumes that the text has an obvious, objective meaning once the work of exegesis is done. Because of this assumption, those who take a different interpretation are considered ignorant or heretical. (If you need examples of this look here, here, here, here, and here.)

Second, expository preaching gives the false security of objective truth. There are several subjective elements that are hidden to the producers and the consumers of expository preaching. There is cultural bias read into the text. There are modernist assumptions built into the method. There are personal agendas that seem to be “right there in the text.”

Third, expository preaching treats the text as an object. The preacher operates on it through exegesis. The listeners consume it as a lecture or a motivational speech. This has the effect of robbing the Bible of its authority.

I also presented the case that the historical-grammatical method is not the “perfect method” for discerning biblical truth. It most certainly has its place. But the writers of the New Testament did not use this method when interpreting the Old Testament. And meaning cannot be calculated by plugging grammatical and etymological data into an equation.

I also argued that the meaning of the Bible must always be determined within the context of the Church. This is not to say that individuals should not be doing interpretation, but it is to say that they should not be doing it as “Lone Rangers” disconnected from participation in the Body of Christ.

All this is to describe the problem(s) with expository preaching. I haven’t yet begun to suggest a solution to the problem(s). One reaction might be, “But what other reliable method is there?” Another might be, “So anyone can make up any interpretation he wants without reference to the objective meaning of the text?”

I’ll do my best to answer these and other questions.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

One more voice

Alastair adds his argument to this issue:

The most essential training in biblical interpretation that we will receive is not that provided by a theological degree, important though that is, but the training provided by belonging to a faithful Christian community under wise and faithful pastors.

Those who have not undergone and are not undergoing the paideia of the Christian Church, living as a community of discipleship under the Word of God, have no right to interpret the Scriptures.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Keller Weighs In

Here are some excerpts from an article by Tim Keller that has something to say about this issue:

If you know how to do Christ-centered preaching, then you turn every single sermon into a kind of story. The plot of the human dilemma thickens, and the hero that comes to the rescue is Jesus. Christ-centered preaching converts doctrinal lectures or little how-to talks into true sermons.

Edwards taught that a sermon should not only make truth clear, but also should make truth real.

Here are some quotations from a series of posts at Eucatastrophe explaining Keller’s concept of “Christ-centered preaching”:

The gospel is news about what God has already done for you, rather than instruction and advice about what you are to do for God…. The gospel brings news primarily, rather than instruction.

Typical preaching only distills “Biblical Principles” which do not see the text in its redemptive-historical context. Thus it is only natural that the application part of such a sermon will tend to merely exhort people to conform to the principles. Only Christo-centric preaching can produce gospel holiness

Another article by Tim Keller at the Redeemer Presbyterian Web site:

In Luke 24 we learn that every single part of the Bible is really about Jesus. The Christ-centric preaching approach sees the whole Bible as essentially one big story with a central plot: God restores the world lost in Eden by intervening in history to call out and form a new humanity. This intervention climaxes in Jesus Christ, who accomplishes salvation for us what we could not accomplish for ourselves. While only a minority of Biblical passages actually give the whole storyline, every Biblical text must be placed in the whole storyline to be understood. In other words, every text must be asked "What does this tell me about the salvation we have in Christ?" in order to be understood.

This understanding of preaching, then, turns all preaching into narrative preaching, even if it is an exposition of Deuteronomy, Proverbs or James. Every sermon is a story in which the plot of the human dilemma thickens, and the hero that comes to the rescue is Jesus. Christ-centric preaching converts doctrinal lectures or little how-to talks into narrative preaching, but it is still careful, close Biblical exposition of texts

The “informational” view of preaching conceives of preaching as changing people’s lives after the sermon. They listen to the sermon, take notes, and then apply the Biblical principles during the week. But this assumes that our main problem is a lack of compliance to Biblical principles, when (as we saw above) all our problems are actually due to a lack of joy and belief in the gospel. Our real problem is that Jesus’ salvation is not as real to our hearts as the significance and security our idols promise us. If that’s our real problem, then the purpose of preaching is to make Christ so real to the heart that in the sermon people have an experience of his grace, and the false saviors that drive us lose their power and grip on us on the spot. That’s the “experiential” view of preaching.

I hope this helps tie together the various issues we’ve been talking about regarding “expository preaching.” (I've added all the bold.)

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Understanding Meaning

Tim Enloe has a post that might help us out at this point.

Here are a few highlights (bold added):

Protestant hermeneutics, born in the fires of controversy between a (then) emerging and fresh “Modern” way of thinking and the forces of an ancient and (apparently) decadent Scholasticism, has always been attracted to “the grammatical-historical” method. This method is generally defined as interpretation which pays close attention to the original language and cultural context of the text being interpreted. By following this method, it has been assumed for centuries, the meaning of a text (primarily biblical texts) can be authoritatively determined without recourse to factors lying outside of itself. Assuming for the moment that over time the appeal to “grammatical-historical exegesis” has not shifted its meaning as Science and Technology have increasingly dominated, and transformed, our entire way of thinking and living, I think we should ask the question: Are questions of meaning really so simple as this?

If the goal of interpreting a text is to discover its meaning, it would seem to be a more fundamental question to discover what meaning itself means. Once, perhaps, asking such a question would have seemed bizarre, since everyone “knows” that meaning is to be simply equated with “what the original author intended to say.” However, since the 1946 paradigm-shaking work of two literary critics, W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, it has been widely recognized that trying to define the “meaning” of a text as merely “what the original author intended to say” is naive and fallacious.

At the very least, it may sometimes be more difficult than we think to establish what the original author meant, and what he meant may not be what we would expect if we were to imagine that the text has a “literal” meaning “at face value.” But beyond that, it is not clear that the meaning of a text should be limited to what the original author meant. One may reasonably advocate Hirsch’s distinction, and maintain that texts can have significance beyond their grammatical-historical meaning–even though that meaning never changes and should be considered foundational for evaluating different claims to significance.

In other words, other fully legitimate modes of meaning exist outside of a bare grammatical one, and the process of interpreting a text properly involves much more than merely mastering grammar and proclaiming the results of such a study a “timeless truth” outside of which can only exist “error” and “eisegesis.”

Notice carefully that he is not “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” He is simply trying to get us to see that there is more to biblical interpretation that determining the “grammatical-historical meaning.”

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

The Old in the New

When the writers of the New Testament quoted from the Old Testament in support of their message, they did not use the historical-grammatical method. Instead they used a hermeneutic most Evangelicals would find disconcerting. They clearly interpreted Old Testament passages in ways that the original writers could never have intended them to be read.

Peter Enns addresses this in his book, Inspiration And Incarnation: Evangelicals And The Problem Of The Old Testament.

There is also an article, Apostolic Hermeneutics and an Evangelical Doctrine of Scripture: Moving beyond a Modernist Impasse, online which contains the heart of his thesis. Here are a few quotations (emphasis added):

The manner in which the Apostles handled the OT seems unexpected, strange, even improper by modern conventions. The Apostles do things with the OT that, if any of us were to do likewise, would be criticized as deviations from “normal” hermeneutical standards.

Grammatical-historical exegesis insists that the interpretation of texts must begin with the words in front of us understood in the context in which these words were written. Even with the caveats that pure objectivity is an illusion and that the author’s intention is essentially unrecoverable (or better, recoverable only on the basis of the words in front of us, which places the modern interpreter in a hermeneutical circle), it is nevertheless a fundamental notion that meaning must be “anchored” somehow in something beyond the mere will of the interpreter. Any writer (including this one) who wishes to be understood will have a deep-rooted sympathy for such a hermeneutical principle.
A problem arises, however, when we observe how the Apostles handled the OT. Despite protestations to the contrary, grammatical-historical hermeneutics does not account for the New Testament’s use of the Old. However self-evident grammatical-historical hermeneutics may be to us, and whatever very important contributions it has made and continues to make to the field of biblical studies, it must be stated clearly that the Apostles did not seem overly concerned to put this principle into practice.

And it should be self-evident that, for various portions of Scripture, we have in our minds pre-existing interpretations of the Bible that reflect what we have come to think the Bible contains…. These views are sometimes held so deeply (and unwittingly) that it is only through considerable argumentation that someone can be shown that what they may consider part of the Bible really is not.

Paul did not begin with Isa 49:6, which speaks of Israel’s return from Babylon, and conclude grammatical-historically that this speaks of Christ. Rather, it is the reality of the risen Christ that drove Paul to read Isa 49:6 in a new way: “Now that I see how it all ends, I can see how this, too, fits; how it drives us forward.”

To put it another way, it is the conviction of the Apostles that the eschaton had come in Christ that drove them back to see where and how their Scripture spoke of him. And this was not a matter of grammatical-historical exegesis but of a Christ-driven hermeneutic. The term I prefer to use to describe this hermeneutic is Christotelic…. To see Christ as the driving force behind apostolic hermeneutics is not to flatten out what the OT says on its own. Rather, it is to see that, for the church, the OT does not exist on its own, in isolation from the completion of the OT story in the death and resurrection of Christ. The OT is a story that is going somewhere, which is what the Apostles are at great pains to show. It is the OT as a whole, particularly in its grand themes, that finds its telos, its completion, in Christ. This is not to say that the vibrancy of the OT witness now comes to an end, but that—on the basis of apostolic authority—it finds its proper goal, purpose, telos, in that event by which God himself determined to punctuate his covenant: Christ.

The church instinctively wants to guard against such a misuse of Scripture by saying, “Pay attention to the words in front of you in their original context.” What helps prevent (but does not guarantee against) such flights of fancy is grammatical-historical exegesis.

But this does not mean the church should adopt the
grammatical-historical method as the default, normative hermeneutic for how it should read the OT today. Why? Because grammatical-historical exegesis simply does not lead to a Christotelic (apostolic) hermeneutic. A grammatical-historical exegesis of Hos 11:1, an exegesis that is anchored by Hosea’s intention, will lead no one to Matt 2:15. The first (grammatical-historical) reading does not lead to the second reading. This is a dilemma. The way I have presented the dilemma may suggest an impasse, but perhaps one way beyond that impasse is to question what we mean by “method.” The word implies, at least to me, a worked out, conscious application of rules and steps to arrive at a proper understanding of a text. But what if “method,” so understood, is not as central a concept as we might think? What if biblical interpretation is not guided so much by method but by an intuitive, Spirit-led engagement of Scripture with the anchor being not what the author intended but by how Christ gives the OT its final coherence?

The more I reflect on the nature of biblical interpretation throughout its long history as well as in today’s world, the more I am convinced that there must be more to the nature of biblical interpretation than simply uncovering the “meaning of the text,” as if it were an objective exercise.

But biblical interpretation is a true community activity. It is much more than individuals studying a passage for a week or so. It is about individuals who see themselves in a community that has both synchronic and diachronic dimensions. Truly, we are not islands of interpretive wisdom, degrees in hand and off to conquer the Bible. We rely on the witness of the church through time (with the hermeneutical trajectory set by the Apostles as a central component), as well as the wisdom of the church in our time—both narrowly considered as a congregation, denomination, or larger tradition, and the church more broadly considered as a global reality. Biblical interpretation is not merely a task that individuals perform, but it is something that grows out of our participation in the family of God in the broadest sense possible.

You may wish to read the entire article or, better yet, buy the book.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Bereans

In Acts 17:11 we read, “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”

First, notice the attitude of the people. They “received the message with great eagerness.” They allowed the gospel to be good news to them. This wasn’t seven steps or three principles that they were to apply to their lives.

Second, it is tempting to think of them examining the Scripture individually. They probably did this as a group. As individuals they did not sit in judgment of Paul and his message. They most likely were asking each other, “Do you think this is what the Bible is really saying?”

Third, we must remember that their Bible was the Old Testament and that Paul’s message was the gospel. What they were doing was rereading the Old Testament to see if in fact it did talk about a Messiah who would reconcile man and God, who would defeat the powers that be, who would set the world to rights, who would overcome death and rise in victory. This is a situation very different from a modern Christian congregation hearing a message from its own pastor.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Problem 3

To understand this aspect of the problem, you have to put on your post-modern glasses. (I’m not suggesting that you keep them on so long that you get a headache. But you need to see how the post-modern person is able to expose some serious flaws in the modernist view.)

First, let me make some “quick-and-dirty” definitions. By “modernism” I mean the philosophy that grew out of the Enlightenment. Most Christians are so deeply immersed in modernism that they cannot imagine any other way to view reality. They can’t imagine Christianity without a modernist foundation. (And some theologies are so entwined with modernism that it may not be possible to extract the modernist assumptions without “killing” the theology.)

And “post-modernism” is the reaction against the assumptions of modernism. The extreme expression of post-modernism proclaims that there is no objective truth (except, of course, this objective truth).

The modernist view is that a text is an object that can be examined objectively by a scholar and then explained to a listener or reader. The post-modern view takes the other extreme and says that a text has only subjective meanings that change with each new context: the culture, the examiner, the student, etc.

While the post-modern view is essentially self-refuting, it does help us to see that modernism has some glaring problems.

Here is Fitch’s analysis:

“The text becomes an object in the hands of the preacher as it is broken down into three points to be given out as something the listener can use. Once the sermon is given, the text becomes an object to be consumed by the parishioner, who in turn listens, analyzes, takes notes, and goes out to be a doer of the information just heard, which consequently distances the listener from the text” (p. 137).

As long as the text is an object, it has no authority and no power to transform lives.

Here is the great irony. While the preacher and the congregation are proclaiming the superiority of their high view of the Bible, they are shifting the control of the meaning of the Bible from the Bible itself to the autonomous (Cartesian) minds first of the preachers and then of the listeners.

The listeners are able to keep their egos firmly in place as they manage their consumption of God’s Word. They return home with what they think they heard or what they wanted to hear.

The method that was devised to give authority to the Bible has deftly robbed it of its authority and power.

So what do you think?

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Problem 2

The second problem with expository preaching grows out of the first one.

Because the expositor believes that he is proclaiming the “true meaning” of God’s Word, he does not realize that he is bringing to the text his own agenda. Because he sees exegesis as a straightforward, “scientific” process, he is not aware of the subjective element he adds to the “equation.”

Or even worse, he may believe that his personal agenda is God’s agenda.

I addressed one variation of this some time ago. Going sentence by sentence, or even paragraph by paragraph, is no guarantee that the preacher is presenting a faithful interpretation of the text. Rather, it can lead to false confidence and even laziness.

Again, the objection could be raised that this is just bad exegesis and bad preaching. And I agree. But the important point is that expository preaching gives preachers and congregations a false sense of security that faithful interpretation is being presented. It also does not facilitate a healthy resolution when there is a disagreement over the “true meaning” of God’s Word.

I really appreciate your interest in this issue and all the tough questions you’ve been asking. (Some of you lurkers may want to ask your questions.) I believe this is a very important issue. It would be good to struggle with it for a while.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Problem 1

There was some surprise over my previous post about expository preaching. And I admit that not long ago I would have reacted the same way.

There are several issues addressed in this critique of expository preaching. I’ll deal with them one at a time to make this less confusing. It will also allow you to agree or disagree with each point of the argument.

The first point seems to me to be rather uncontroversial. One of the problems with expository preaching is that it assumes that the text has an objective meaning that is self-evident to every individual.

While this is sometimes true, there are many texts that intelligent, spirit-filled, skilled Christian expositors disagree about. They find different meanings in the same text.

Whether one takes a post-modern position and says that an objective meaning does not exist is irrelevant to this argument. (I personally do not accept the post-modern view. I believe that a particular text of the Bible has a single objective meaning, at least in most cases.)

The key word here is “self-evident.”

One person quotes a text as “proof positive” of his particular theological distinctive. Another person reads the text with an entirely different meaning. In some cases, a text may have four or five competing interpretations. In any case, there is (not always) an objective, self-evident meaning that is obvious to any serious student of the Word.

Expository preaching starts with this assumption, which I think we have seen is clearly false.

So why is this a problem?

The major problem here is that whenever there is disagreement over the meaning of a portion of Scripture, people assume that the “other side” is either ignorant or guilty of heresy. We’ve seen this play out again and again in the blogosphere. There are even self-appointed watchblogs who spend all their time and energy trying to stamp out “heresy” and “biblical ignorance” wherever they think they find it.

In a local church, serious disagreement about the meaning of the Bible usually leads to a church split.

With expository preaching, individuals sequester themselves in their studies and use “scientific tools” to determine the precise meaning of a text. Then they emerge with the interpretation etched in stone to proclaim to the church as “the true meaning” of God’s Word.

Consequently, there is little opportunity to develop humility about one’s interpretation. It is self-evident after all. A child of six could see it.

Now, if you’ve followed the argument this far, you might be inclined to say, “Good exegesis is not arrogant. Good expository preaching does not act this way.”

I would respond that good preachers do not act that way. But this arrogance is the inevitable result of the assumption that the text has an objective, self-evident meaning. Besides, there are other problems with expository preaching that I will address in further posts.

I welcome your comments.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”