Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Holy War and the Gospel

First, let me apologize for taking a couple of weeks to continue this series. I had meant to post these devotionals and sermons once a week, but the past couple of weeks have been really busy for my family and I. However, we are back in the swing of things now, and so here is the next devotional, with the next sermon coming on Sunday.

As I have alluded to a few times throughout this series so far, there are some difficult issues that come up in the book of Joshua that often get attention in from Christians and non-Christians alike. Well, the one that Joshua 6 brings up is probably the biggest: holy war. In the episode we will consider on Sunday, God commands that all living things be killed in Jericho, and v. 21 tells us, "Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword." This is simply a result of the commands God gave to them in the book of Deuteronomy, like 7:1-2:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.

This should bother us or at the very least make us pause when we read that, and we need to know how to think about it within the whole context of Scripture and what it teaches us about God.

So, what about the "holy war"? How does "show no mercy to them" square with Jesus' teaching about loving our enemies? Well, I want to argue that most often our main hangup here is that we do not have a high enough view of God's holiness. As Christians, we have encountered the grace of God in Jesus, which allows us to enter into God’s holy presence with boldness (He. 10:19-25), because of the promise that we are being remade after the pattern of that same holiness. But, in that grace, we may sometimes forget what holiness looks like to someone who is not so covered by Christ. And, non-Christians, generally do not have a very high or realistic view of sin, thinking of God more as a "smiling grandfather" than a holy, upright, perfect, and just God. However, both those views of God are not true to His being.

God is supremely holy, which means He cannot abide sin without a response. God is a consuming fire (He. 12:29), a purifying power that cannot abide the unholy to remain in His presence without destroying it. God, however, is also a gracious God who does not desire the complete destruction of the works of His hands (cf. Eze. 18:32)--who holds back the consuming fire like a dam holds back a flood. (For more on this balance, see this excellent article by John Piper.) With that tension in mind, I think the conquest of Canaan is best understood as a profound and temporary in-breaking of God’s holiness into an unholy world for a specific redemptive purpose. Let me explain.

In creation, God created the world and humans holy--in perfect communion with Him. Yet, we fell from that holiness and therefore incurred the wrath of the holy God. God's holiness consumes unholiness just as light consumes darkness, and that is what we all deserve in our natural state. Only God can hold back the consumption for a time. And, at the fall of Adam and Eve, God, in His grace, temporarily suspended His full wrath until the day of Final Judgment (cf. Mt. 25:31ff), otherwise Adam and Eve would have been judged and sent to hell on the spot. So, common grace--God's forbearance of final judgment--became a part of the world in which we live.

This has bearing on the conquest of the Promised Land (henceforth referred to as "the Conquest"). The ethics of the Conquest are ultimately those of a completely holy and good God calling the rebellious people, the illegal aliens on His property into account for their sins. And, since the Fall affects all of us as equally as it affected the Canaanites, the implication is that we all deserve, always and everywhere, what they got then and there in Canaan from the Israelite armies. In light of this reality, we must admit that the sheer fact that the Conquest was confined to only one very geographically limited area at only one point in human history is a sign of God’s mercy.

What? A sign of mercy? Yes: one of the purposes of the Conquest is for us to see what must be the inevitable result of our natural standing with God as the sinful human race. Without Christ, we all deserve what they received. The ethics of the Conquest can be seen as a type of what is called "intrusion ethics" (a term coined by Meredith Kline)—a temporary intrusion into history of the ethics of the Final Judgment, i.e. that moment when God finally brings the created order to account so that He can judge all evil and create the new heavens and new earth. That is to say, the Conquest reveals in history, however briefly, what the end of history will look like when Jesus returns in glory to reclaim in total His land and create the true Promised Land.

As we talked about in the devotional a couple of weeks ago, this is an Old Testament type. A type is a real person, place, event, or object that God ordained to act as a visible pattern of Jesus' person (who He is) and/or work (what He does). Just as the OT Promised Land (a type) ultimately points to the true Promised Land--new heavens and the new earth; just as Joshua is a type of Jesus Himself, the Conquest (another type) points to the judgment where God ultimately judges and punishes evil through Jesus as the Judge (2 Pt. 3:10)--the punishment He stayed/delayed at the Fall--and creates the new heavens and the new earth (the true Promised Land). One purpose of seeing such a thing in history is, therefore, to bring mankind to repentance, so that we might be spared that fate when the Day arrives. Not only will God have given humanity the whole of their history of time to turn back to Him, He will have also made it abundantly clear by the Conquest what is to come. But, still many "stiffen their necks" against Him.

All of this has profound ramifications for how we square the goodness of God, as we have encountered it in Jesus, with the severity of God, as we see it in the Conquest. In many respects, they are two sides of the same coin. They both show the extreme lengths to which God must go in order to get humanity's attention. The sad history of Jesus' rejection by His own people only reinforces the point that humankind's fallen hearts are so hardened that we do not respond to God, even when He comes in meekness. Such a sorry state of affairs, such a clear example of our rebellion, makes the extreme ethics of the Conquest seem all the more justified. Further, it illustrates with vivid clarity how, in not getting always and everywhere what the Canaanites got then and there, humanity as a whole has seen merciful forbearance (common grace) on God’s part.

And, we also need to note that God's use of the Israelites of the instrument of His judgment was not because of their goodness. In fact, this is explicitly laid out in Dt. 9:4-5:

“Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

God chose the Israelites (and us) simply because of His unmerited, free grace. The Israelites were very wicked and just as deserving of judgment as the Canaanites, just like all mankind is without Jesus. One commentator explains:

Hence Israel must not assume a holier-than-you-all attitude, for Yahweh will not bring his people into the land because they are righteous and deserving; ‘it is because of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh is driving them out before you’ (Deut. 9:4–5). The conquest is not a bunch of land-hungry marauders wiping out, at the behest of their vicious God, hundreds of innocent, God-fearing folks. In the biblical view, the God of the Bible uses none-too-righteous Israel as the instrument of his just judgment on a people who had persistently reveled in their iniquity.

God, in His sovereignty, chose to satisfy His holy wrath against the Canaanites by judgment and against the Israelites by redemption (cf. Ro. 9:14-21).

Perhaps a typological chart would be helpful when thinking about OT types and the true, spiritual reality in Christ to which they point:

Old Testament Type	True, Spiritual Reality in Christ
The Exodus	Christ’s redemption
The wilderness wandering	This present life
The Promised Land	The new heavens and the new earth
The conquest of the Land	The Final Judgment
King David	King Jesus
Solomon’s kingdom	Jesus’ rule in the new heavens and the new earth

Before I end this discussion, though, there is one more intrusion ethic that we need to mention: the cross of Christ. Just as the Conquest was a temporary in-breaking of God's final-judgment, holy wrath into history, so was the cross, but in this case, God's final-judgment, holy wrath fell not on the culpable human race that deserves His wrath but on His perfect, innocent Son. Christ did not deserve anything but full reward from God, and yet, on the cross, Jesus took the full wrath of God that He would have poured out on His elect in the Final Judgment. That means that all God's holy wrath against His people has been satisfied. Even though He is completely holy and we do not really even understand the depth of that holiness or our sinfulness in comparison, He has satisfied His holiness by pouring out His wrath on Christ for all His elect. This is how the faithful Israelites and all true Christians avoid what the Canaanites got. We deserve the Final Judgment, but since Christ came into space and time and lived as one of us, since He fulfilled the law perfectly, and since He withstood the intrusion of final judgment on the cross, we can have eternal life in the true Promised Land forever.

So, the Conquest is a sad, hard part of Scripture to read, but it is a perfectly just action of the holy God. Yet, we should not look at it mechanically as that but in two ways: 1) as a warning that causes us to pray for and seek the conversion of the lost so they do not get what the Canaanites did and 2) to praise God for sending Jesus Christ to take the holy wrath that we deserve so that we can live with God forever in the true Promised Land. That should lead us to praise as Paul praised God in Ro. 11:33-36 after he finished detailing out these gospel truths about God:

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Solus Christus: A Branch from the Stump

I know we’ve looked at a lot of prophecies from Isaiah. It may seem like he’s the only one through whom God spoke to the Israelite people about their Redeemer, but Isaiah was not the only prophet to prophesy about the coming Messiah. Prophecies of the coming Christ are all over the Old Testament. There are more than I can write about in these short devotions, but we have time to look at some of them. For today’s devotion we’re going to look at how both Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied that the coming Messiah would be a branch from the stump of Jesse—the house of David—and would be our righteousness before God:

¹ There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
² And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him,
    the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and might,
    the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
³ And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
    or decide disputes by what his ears hear,
⁴ but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
    and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
    and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
⁵ Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,
    and faithfulness the belt of his loins. (Is. 11:1-5)
⁵ ”Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. ⁶ In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’” (Je. 23:5-6)

Both Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied that the Messiah would come from the line of Jesse (David’s father), and both likened him to a shoot or a branch. Both declared that He would save God’s people, and both proclaimed that He would be a man of righteousness. Then, of course, centuries later Jesus came and was exactly that. He’s the one through whom we have righteousness (cf. Ro. 5:12-21). Indeed, as Jeremiah prophesied (above) and Paul declared the Corinthian believers: Jesus is our righteousness (1 Co. 1:30). God demands righteousness from humanity and He provides it for His people in Jesus—the shoot and branch from the stump of Jesse. As the Westminster Confession of Faith states in 11.1:

Those whom God effectually calls, He also freely justifies; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God. 

As Moses reminded the Israelite people, “The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty.” To stand before God, we must be righteous. To be judged by Jesus in righteousness and not be sent to hell at the Final Judgment, we must be righteous. We can’t do that on our own, but God knew that and provided a Messiah whose is Yahweh Tsidkenu—the Lord is our righteousness (Je. 23:6). Thank God for that branch—that shoot from the stump of Jesse—for we have no righteousness of our own that would ever be acceptable to God.

By the way, did you notice the Messiah arose from the stump of Jesse? He didn’t come from a thriving tree or even from a sickly tree. He didn’t come from a people who just needed a little extra help to be acceptable to God. He came from the stump, i.e. spiritually dead humanity (Eph. 2:1). Indeed, He arose from the very same dead humanity that He came to save and give new life.

On this day of Advent remember where God found you, where God found all humanity when He sent His Son to be our sacrifice and our righteousness. We weren’t just sick in our sins. We weren’t just a “basically good” people who just needed a good example to follow. As Paul tells us in Eph. 2:1, we “were dead in the trespasses and sins in which [we] once walked.” Dead men have no hope of life except by a miracle. Remember on this day of Advent that the Miracle was born two thousand years ago in the little town of Bethlehem from the stump—dead humanity. Praise Him for coming down to walk amongst those dead in their sins so that they might have life again in Him. Praise Him for giving you new life and for giving you righteousness when you deserved the exact opposite. Praise Him for being the Lord your righteousness.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Solus Christus: A Branch from the Stump

I know we’ve looked at a lot of prophecies from Isaiah. It may seem like he’s the only one through whom God spoke to the Israelite people about their Redeemer, but Isaiah was not the only prophet to prophesy about the coming Messiah. Prophecies of the coming Christ are all over the Old Testament. There are more than I can write about in these short devotions, but we have time to look at some of them. For today’s devotion we’re going to look at how both Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied that the coming Messiah would be a branch from the stump of Jesse—the house of David—and would be our righteousness before God:

¹ There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
² And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him,
    the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and might,
    the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
³ And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
    or decide disputes by what his ears hear,
⁴ but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
    and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
    and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
⁵ Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,
    and faithfulness the belt of his loins. (Is. 11:1-5)
⁵ ”Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. ⁶ In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’” (Je. 23:5-6)

Both Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied that the Messiah would come from the line of Jesse (David’s father), and both likened him to a shoot or a branch. Both declared that He would save God’s people, and both proclaimed that He would be a man of righteousness. Then, of course, centuries later Jesus came and was exactly that. He’s the one through whom we have righteousness (cf. Ro. 5:12-21). Indeed, as Jeremiah prophesied (above) and Paul declared the Corinthian believers: Jesus is our righteousness (1 Co. 1:30). God demands righteousness from humanity and He provides it for His people in Jesus—the shoot and branch from the stump of Jesse. As the Westminster Confession of Faith states in 11.1:

Those whom God effectually calls, He also freely justifies; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God. 

As Moses reminded the Israelite people, “The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty.” To stand before God, we must be righteous. To be judged by Jesus in righteousness and not be sent to hell at the Final Judgment, we must be righteous. We can’t do that on our own, but God knew that and provided a Messiah whose is Yahweh Tsidkenu—the Lord is our righteousness (Je. 23:6). Thank God for that branch—that shoot from the stump of Jesse—for we have no righteousness of our own that would ever be acceptable to God.

By the way, did you notice the Messiah arose from the stump of Jesse? He didn’t come from a thriving tree or even from a sickly tree. He didn’t come from a people who just needed a little extra help to be acceptable to God. He came from the stump, i.e. spiritually dead humanity (Eph. 2:1). Indeed, He arose from the very same dead humanity that He came to save and give new life.

On this day of Advent remember where God found you, where God found all humanity when He sent His Son to be our sacrifice and our righteousness. We weren’t just sick in our sins. We weren’t just a “basically good” people who just needed a good example to follow. As Paul tells us in Eph. 2:1, we “were dead in the trespasses and sins in which [we] once walked.” Dead men have no hope of life except by a miracle. Remember on this day of Advent that the Miracle was born two thousand years ago in the little town of Bethlehem from the stump—dead humanity. Praise Him for coming down to walk amongst those dead in their sins so that they might have life again in Him. Praise Him for giving you new life and for giving you righteousness when you deserved the exact opposite. Praise Him for being the Lord your righteousness.

By His Grace,

Taylor

The Imago Dei and Human Dignity

"The concept of an 'image and likeness' plays a critical role in historic Christianity's view of humankind. The Bible reveals that all human beings are created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27, NIV) and, though marred by sin, all people—believer and nonbeliever, male and female alike—reflect the image of God. This foundational biblical teaching launches the Christian view that each individual possesses inherent dignity, moral worth, and genuine value. The imago Dei (Latin: the image of God) lays the foundation for the sanctity of human life. It is this image that makes human life unrepeatable and worthy of respect." ~ Kenneth R. Samples, "Ethical Alternatives on Life and Death"

In my previous post I wrote about the Gosnell murder trial but took a little bit of a different approach. I did not discuss the Gosnell case in great detail, nor did I talk much about how the major media organizations have avoided covering the case. There are many good articles already written from this perspective (check out The Aquila Report for a good number). Instead, I asked the question, "Why or how can someone think aborting a child or murdering the newly-born child can be acceptable?" I talked briefly about how we cannot really know what would cause someone like Gosnesll (or any other abortionist) to murder a child, but we can look at the context and motivations in which those gruesome actions are taken. Then, finally, I argued that the context for abortions and infanticide is the philosophical move away from inherent value in humans (i.e. because we are made in the image of God) to functionalism. After a brief discussion of functionalism, I made the assertion that we could make abortion illegal, but no progress will be made in relieving the demand for abortions until culture starts seeing humans as made in the image of God and inherently deserving of "unalienable rights" which have been "endowed by their Creator." Now, do not get me wrong. I do hope and pray that one day abortion will be illegal (though, to be honest, I am not very optimistic), but a fundamental change in how humans are viewed is needed to lessen the demand for abortion. We need to see the inherent dignity and value in humans simply because they are made in the image of God. Any other definitions will exclude a class, race, or development stage from the category of "persons" and open the door for any number of atrocities (indeed, this has happened many times in human history). I did not, however, talk about the doctrine of the image of God (the imago Dei, in Latin) itself, and that is the subject of today's post.

Before we get into what it means for humans to be made in the image of God, it is worth making a couple of general statements about this doctrine. First, it is worthy of note that the terms "image" and "likeness" used in Ge. 1:26, et al do not indicate separate ideas or distinct ways in which man was created. They are used synonymously, not additively, and when used together or separately, they suggest that God was the archetype and man the ectype. There are several reasons for holding they are synonymous: 1) there is no waw (the Hebrew conjunction translated "and") between the terms indicating they are not two different things; 2) Ge. 1:27, 5:1, 9:6; 1 Co. 11:7; Col. 3:10; and Js. 3:9 all employ only one of the two terms to discuss man bearing God's image, which suggests that either sufficiently expresses the quality; and 3) Ge. 5:3 uses both terms but reverses the order and prepositions, again showing synonymous usage. Second, it is also worth of note that Ge. 1:26 suggests that humans do not simply "bear" or "have" the image of God but are the image of God. It is not something that was added to an otherwise complete humanity or something which applies to only part of man. It constitutes his very being. This also means it is something which may have been marred or damaged in Adam's fall but has not been lost or removed in total (cf. Ge. 9:6; Js. 3:9).

So, what does it mean to be the image of God? What constitutes God's image in man? This is something which has been debated throughout the history of the Church because Scripture contains an implicit rather than an explicit explanation of the image of God. For the purposes of this post, I am simply going to detail what I believe to be the biblical account of man as the image of God. (If you want a history of the doctrine, I would suggest Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, pp. 530-62.)

Before I get into the details about the image of God, I would like to make a quick comment about God giving of dominion over the earth to man. It has been argued that dominion over the earth is part of what it means to be made in the image of God, but Ge. 1:26-28 suggests that man stood before God as a complete image before God bestowed dominion on him. It is more accurate to say, like Bavinck, that "the image of God manifests itself in man's dominion over all of the created world (cf. Ps. 8; 1 Cor. 11:7)." (Reformed, p. 533) The exercise of dominion is what God's images do, not a part of what they inherently are. Just because a human does not have the ability to exercise dominion (e.g. an infant, an unborn child, or a person with a severe mental handicap) does not mean they are not the image of God. With that said, let us move on to several aspects of the image of God in man.

First, the Reformed confessions and catechisms focus particularly on the "original righteousness" aspect of the image of God in man (cf. WSC #10, #18; WLC #17,#25; WCF 4.2; BC 14; HC #6). "Original righteousness" is defined by the historic Reformed confessions as knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, to which the fall brought great damage. Man is no longer holy or righteous (Ro. 3:10) because he is dead in sin (Eph. 2:1), and his knowledge of God and creation has been seriously distorted but not completely demolished (i.e. creation makes God plain to man and man still has the sensus divitatus (Institutes, 1.3.1; cf. also Warranted, pp. 170-86) but man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness, cf. Ro. 1:18-32). However, in Christ the image of God is being restored, and in particular Christ's work in this aspect of the image draws the focus of Paul (Eph. 4:21-24; Col. 3:10). Now, when thinking about how man's sin as affected this part of the image of God in man, it is helpful to make a distinction between the image of God as direction and the image of God as structure. Man as God's image was created for God and to be moving towards Him always, but man by his rebellion is now running away from God in sin, so the image of God as direction has been lost. But, man still retains the image of God as structure, though it is also marred by sin, and he still deserves the dignity due God's images (cf. Ge. 9:6; Js. 3:9). It is the image of God as structure that we will discuss next.

With the second aspect that I would like to bring out we get into the image of God as structure. As Louis Berkhof states in his classic Systematic Theology, "But the image of God is not to be restricted to the original knowledge, righteousness, and holiness which was lost by sin, but also includes elements which belong to the natural constitution of man." (p. 204) This second aspect is man's soul. When God created man He "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." (Ge. 2:7) The Hebrew word that the ESV translates "creature" is the word nephesh, which is literally "soul." The breath of life was breathed into man and he became a living soul. This soul is the essence of man's life, and it reflects God's spirituality, invisibility, and immortality (for though our present bodies die, our souls live on forever). With respect to the soul's relation to the body, Bavinck has these helpful words, "But man is 'soul,' because from the very beginning the spiritual component in him (unlike that of angels) is adapted to and organized for a body...." (Reformed, p. 556) The soul can exist apart from the body, for the souls of all humans who have died are either in heaven or hell, but man, who became a "living soul" when the spiritual was breathed into the physical body, is incomplete without both. The soul was designed for a body and the body for a soul. To kill a human, then, is an attack upon his very soul, and since a human cannot be without this part of the image, he always deserves the dignity due God's images while he is alive.

Mentioning the soul's relationship to the body brings us to the third aspect of the image of God in man (also under the category of the image as structure), and it is the body. When the breath of life was breathed into Adam's body, his being became a "living soul" created in God's image. Man, not merely the soul of man, was created in God's image. Man's essence is the soul, but that soul was psychically organized for a body. Therefore the body is not a prison and not without inherent value, but it is a beautiful creation of God; created to exist in harmony with the soul as man reflects God's image. To put it another way, it is not the material substance of the body that is the image of God for God has no body, but the body is the image of God in that it is organized for the soul—is an organ of the soul. As Berkhof puts it, the body was created "as the fit instrument for the self-expression of the soul." (Systematic, p. 205) Furthermore, the body may be marred by sin and susceptible to death because of sin but even it, like the soul, is destined for immortality. In the final resurrection all bodies (those of believers and non-) will be raised from the dead (Dn. 12:2; Ac. 24:15) and spend eternity in either the Lake of Fire (Re. 20:15) or the New Heavens and New Earth (2 Pt. 3:13). Therefore, the Bible presents murder as the destruction of the body (Mt. 10:28) and as the destruction of the image of God in man (Ge. 9:6). To cause the death of a human, at any stage of development, is to murder a being made in the image of God—a being that deserves the dignity due God's images. (There are obviously ethical implications here, like withdrawing care from a terminally ill human, which I do not have the time or space to discuss. For further reading on such ethical issues, I would suggest Bioethics and the Christian Life by David VanDrunen.)

With the fourth aspect of the image of God as structure in man we get to what we could call "human faculties." Even though the image of God in man is much more than the faculties possessed by man (as shown above), it does include the basic faculties of the heart, the mind, and the will or, as Berkhof puts it, the natural affections, the intellectual power, and moral freedom. While the soul is the essence of man's life, the Scriptures present the heart as the organ of man's life, not only in the physical sense but also in the metaphorical sense, i.e. as the ultimate source of man's emotions, desire, willing, thinking, and knowing. Indeed, as Solomon put it, from the heart flows "the springs of life." (Pro. 4:23) But, the heart of man, from which all these things flow, is organized by the mind. Bavinck explains, "The heart is the seat of all emotions, passions, urges, inclinations, attachments, desires, and decisions of the will, which have to be led by the mind...." (Reformed, p. 557) In these things, man images God by reflecting His faculties of affections, intellect, and will, and there may even be a trinitarian reflection in these faculties. Augustine saw these three as an analogy mirroring the Trinity. In his work On the Trinity, he compares God the Father being the fountainhead of the Godhead to the heart being the fountainhead of the mind and will, and he likewise argues that the mind and will are analogous to God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (respectively). While that might be reading a little too much into this aspect of the image of God, it is clear from Scripture that man images God in his unique abilities of heart, mind, and will, and, again, deserves to be treated with the dignity and respect due God's images.

The fifth and final aspect of the image of God in man (again, the image as structure) is what some have called the "covenant theology account of the image of God" or the "representative aspect." In the twentieth century a lot of research was done on the covenants of the cultures of the Ancient Near East (ANE), of which the Israelite culture was one. When those covenants were compared to the biblical covenants that God made with His people there were many striking similarities (much of this research was done and applied to biblical covenants by Meredith Kline). It should not surprise us that God would pattern His covenants after covenants that His people would know for He generally relates to us in ways we can understand. And, the covenants of Scripture (particularly the book of Deuteronomy) are patterned after a common type of covenant made between kings known as a "suzerain-vassal treaty." A suzerain was a powerful king and a vassal was a lesser king. In these treaties, the suzerain pledged to protect and establish the vassal, and the vassal pledged submission and allegiance to the suzerain. (We do not have the time or space to talk about these treaties in detail, so for more reading I recommend this essay by Kline as a good place to start and perhaps follow it up with his book Treaty of the Great King.) In such a relationship, the suzerain had an ambassador whom he would send to the far countries of his vassals to represent him, and this ambassador was called "the Image." The Image would have the authority of the suzerain among his vassals. When the Image came, it was as if the suzerain himself had come. This was the context in which Moses wrote that humans are the images of God. This historical context shows us that being the image of God means that man is God' representative here on earth and should be treated with due dignity. And, there is another important piece of information that the studies of ANE covenants have revealed. When the Egyptian Pharaohs were the suzerains (and remember, Moses was raised as the grandson of a Pharaoh, cf. Ex. 2:10), they would intentionally choose an Image who was deformed or had some other major physical flaw that would normally put them at the bottom of society. They did this to see if their vassals would treat their Image (who in himself would have been valued as less than nothing by society) with the same dignity and respect as they would treat the suzerain himself, which would be a test of their loyalty. Now, the implications for us are clear. Humans are God's images—His representatives. God puts before us the weak and vulnerable, the afflicted and handicap, and the inconvenient and burdensome as His images in the forms of unborn children, infants, the mentally handicap, and the degenerating elderly. How will we treat them? Even if a human being does not have the full or higher use of his heart, mind, and will, it does not mean he does not bear God's image. He is still God's representative. Perhaps he was put before us as a test from our Suzerain as the Pharaohs tested their vassals. Will we treat them with the same dignity and respect as is due the Suzerain of whom they are the Image?

So, those are the aspects of the image of God in humanity: original righteousness (knowledge, righteousness, and holiness); the soul; the body; the human faculties of heart, mind, and will; and representation of God on earth. And, I believe the last one is of particular importance. The other aspects may be more or less visible; they may vary in degrees. All humans, however, represent the Great Suzerain King. Society may be tempted to look at its inconvenient and burdensome members and try to say they are "sub-human" or "non-persons," but God, our great Suzerain, has put them before as His images. Will we treat them with all the dignity and respect they are due?

There is one more loose end to tie up, and that is how sin has affected the image of God in man. As stated above, it is helpful to distinguish between the image of God as direction and the image of God as structure. Since man is fallen and dead in sin, the image of God as direction is basically lost. His original righteousness is all but gone (see above where I discuss this aspect), and he is in rebellion against God. Man, however, still retains the image of God as structure. He still has his soul, body, faculties, and representation. Now, these too have been wholly defiled because of sin (Ge. 6:5; Jer. 17:9; Ro. 3:10-12; 8:7; 1 Co. 2:14; Eph. 2:1-3; Tt. 1:15), but the image of God is still there and God still commands that it be given the respect and dignity it is due (cf. Ge. 9:6; Js. 3:9).

As stated in my previous post on the Gosnell case, only returning to the biblical view of man as created in the image of God will place us in a context where abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia are unacceptable. All other definitions of "human" or "person" will always exclude some class, race, or developmental stage of humanity and open the door for any number of atrocities (history has shown us this and at present such atrocities are performed every day in abortion clinics across the world). As is almost always the case: right thinking and right doctrine begets right action, and wrong thinking and wrong doctrine begets wrong action. When defending the sanctity of life, let us defend it not just because it is life but because it is life that bears God's image and deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Humans, Persons, and the Context for Infanticide and Abortion

"Of course, sin ordinarily tries to bag a good of some kind: people want power or pleasure or wealth or self-esteem or happiness. Their sin consists in seeking these things in hurtful ways or excessively or preeminently or even exclusively. But as human life degenerates, as people explore deeper and deeper recesses of evil, they begin to seek pleasure not in such created goods as sex or material plenty or the exercise of dominion. They seek it instead in the very dynamics of sin.... They take satisfaction from showing who is boss, from showing that no one else will legislate for them. Or they take the vandal's pleasure in the destruction of beauty and wholeness. This contrariety, as opposed to blank carelessness, is the first ingredient of sin done 'for the hell of it.'

"People who joy in evil show that some wire has gotten crossed in them; their moral polarity has switched. Such corruption climaxes, as the Roman historian Livy says in a famous statement, in the transforming of human love from a benevolent disposition to a fatal attraction. Livy is describing the debauchery of the last century of the Roman republic, but he might just as well have been describing the hunger that makers of slasher films are trying to feed. What Livy describes is the inevitable destination of uninterrupted human evil. 'Of late years,' he says, 'wealth has made us greedy, and self indulgence has brought us, through every form of sensual excess, to be, if I may so put it, in love with death.'" ~ Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (pp. 50-1)

When my son was born, I must admit, I was not prepared for how much I would love him. I have never been a person who was fascinated by children or even had much of an interest in them. I did not hold babies, dote over them, or volunteer for the church nursery (okay, I worked it once but it was under duress). Do not get me wrong, I thought children were great, just from a distance. I actually felt guilty while Erika was pregnant because I was not as excited as I thought I should have been. Again, do not get me wrong, I was happy to know my first child was coming, but I was not nearly as excited as most other people I knew. I kept telling myself it would all change when he is born and others told me that too. And, while I knew that was true, I was still unprepared for how much I would love him and the power that love would have over me. Now, even when I go a few hours without seeing Gabriel, I want to be with him, to see his beaming smile, and to give him a hug (to all my family and friends, yes, I said it, a hug).

I say all that to attempt to demonstrate why I do not want to write this blog post right now. I do not want to think about Kermit Gosnell. I do not want to think about the atrocities he performed. I did not want to think about the atrocities performed in abortion clinics all over the world in the name of "women's rights" or "family planning" or "women's health." I have avoided writing about the Gosnell case because it hurts too much to think about someone killing my son right after he was born. Thinking about it makes my chest physically hurt, and I cannot help but think about it whenever I hear about this murderous rampage. I think about babies born, crying and terrified of this new, cold world, and then I think about someone taking that helpless human and killing them. I think about babies who need immediate care, just like my son needed immediate care when he was born, and their cries bringing instruments of death instead of nurturing love. I think, "What if that were my son?" and "How can someone be so cold and cruel to helpless, needy babies?" It hurts, and I have avoided writing about it because I want to avoid thinking about it. It is easier to avoid thinking about it. However, if I stick my head in the sand, then I am no better than the cowards in the majority of mainstream media who have avoided reporting this story. Fortunately, social media (one of its few redeeming uses) has spread this case across the Internet, even though many media outlets have been avoiding it like the plague (here, here, and here are few who have the courage to report it).

In my unwilling but persistent thoughts about this case, I have often come back to the question of why or how someone can think aborting a child or murdering the newly-born child can be acceptable. Murder is always atrocious but when it is a helpless child that needs the world to nurture it (not kill it), that question becomes even more acute. What would cause someone to take a crying, helpless baby and severe its spinal cord? What would cause someone not to feel remorse when they hear a baby's cries immediately stop and their body go limp because of an action they took? What would cause them to do it over and over again? As Plantinga says in the above quote, when unchecked, the corruption of sin eventually leads to pleasure sought in the very dynamics of sin. It led to the Roman citizens to become "in love with death," and one could say the exact same thing about America. Sure, we do not have gladiator battles anymore, but we have legalized abortion, sanctioned the death of over 40 million babies, and continue to defend it under the guise of "women's health" or "family planning." But, why is America in love with death? Why would Gosnell casually murder babies "precipitated" (i.e. born) in his office? What is the cause? I have not been able to come up with an answer. And, Plantinga is helpful here too:

Inquiring into the causes of sin takes us back, again and again, to the intractable human will and to the heart's desire that stiffens the will against all competing considerations. Like a neurotic and therapeutically shelf-worn little god, the human heart keeps ending discussions by insisting that it wants what it wants.

The trouble is that this is only a re-description of human sin, not an explanation of it--let alone a defense of it. Our core problem, says St. Augustine, is that the human heart, ignoring God, turns in on itself, tries to lift itself, wants to please itself, and ends up debasing itself... the person who curves in on himself, who wants God's gifts with God, who wants to satisfy the desires of a divided heart, ends up sagging and contracting into a little wad....

Moreover, even when we have sorted and classified the motives of a sin, we still haven't fully explained it. Why not? The reason is that to identify a motive is to discern only what pushes a person in the direction of some act, not why he actually commits it. We still do not know why a person succumbs to the motive. After all, lots of people feel motivated to steal others people's possessions but manage to avoid giving in to these motives.... The fact is that we know more contexts than motives of human evil, and we know more motives than causes, we almost never know all three... Only God knows the percentages in these matters. Only God knows the human heart. (pp. 62-3)

Only God knows the deep, dark recesses of Gosnell and other abortionists' hearts. We can identify motives and contexts in which these people might make their decisions, but why they choose to act when others do not is a mystery. Even Paul admits this, calling it the "mystery of lawlessness." (And, if I am honest, I have to admit that it is only by God's grace that I have not moved in the same direction as Gosnell or any of the others. God knew my deep, dark sin--indeed, He still knows it--and replaced the stone I mistakenly called a heart with the true thing. One thing I need to remember in my rage is that Gosnell is not beyond the power of the gospel. If God could move my heart, He can move his.)

Even though an actual cause may beyond my ability to assess, I think I can give the context, or at least part of the context, in which these decisions take place. In short, it is the philosophical move away from inherent value in humans (i.e. because we are made in the image of God) to functionalism. Functionalism is the idea that rights come from a set of criteria that a human (or something else like dolphins) has to meet in order to be considered a person. The argument proceeds like so: First, the assertion is made that persons (not humans) deserve rights. Second, a distinction is drawn between "humans" and "persons" based on a set of criteria (e.g. rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness), which is, of course, debatable and largely determined by the opinions of a few. Finally, if the human (or something else) meets the set of criteria, then they are said to be a person and deserve rights. If they do not, then they have no rights (or at least no rights equal to the rights of persons). This distinction between "human" and "person" based on a set of criteria gives us the context for abortion. One can (and indeed our culture has) narrow the criteria for personhood to exclude the unborn. When something is a "fetus" and not a "baby" (which suggests personhood), then the rights of the person (the mother) trump the rights of the non-person (the baby) and it becomes okay to "terminate" the pregnancy. As Mary Elizabeth Williams (about whom I have written in the past) has argued, "...a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She's the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always." (Emphasis added) She calls the unborn baby a "human life" but did you catch the adjective at the end (I hope so; I italicized it)? The "non-autonomous entity" does not have the same rights as the mother. Why? Because of the distinction drawn by functionalism. Being human is not enough.

Unfortunately, functionalism does not stop at the general abortions pro-life advocates are used to protesting. This road leads right to Gosnell and beyond. Peter Singer (professor of bioethics at Princeton!) has argued that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood and, therefore, "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person." Singer is not the only one. A few Australian ethicists have argued for "after-birth abortions" on the basis of functionalism and newborns lacking personhood. This, of course, is the logical extension of pre-birth abortions because there is no moral or personal distinction between the unborn child and the newly-born child. Moving down the birth canal does not change the personhood of the baby. (Of course, this logical extension should lead our culture to realize killing the unborn is wrong, but we are a culture "in love with death.") According to functionalism, babies still lack the criteria necessary for personhood. They are, at best, "potential persons."

If you make a distinction between "person" and "human" and then set up a (arbitrary) set of criteria to qualify as a person, then you end up with Gosnell, Singer, and others like them. And, do not make the mistake of thinking these ideas are simply in the "high academic" circles. Planned Parenthood has argued that the fate a baby born in a botched abortion (i.e. breathing, crying, and fighting for life just like the ones Gosnell murdered) should be determined by the mother and physician. "Personhood" is a linguistic sleight-of-hand used to exclude some humans from the protected class, and it does not stop with infants. When a list of criteria has to be met and that criteria is determined by society, then anyone is in danger (especially the inconvenient, like the mentally handicap and degenerating elderly). This move has been done in the past and has been used to defend genocide, slavery, sex-trafficking, and all other sorts of human atrocities. The Nazis had a word for it: Untermensch, "sub-human." And, it leads cultures into downward spirals, like Plantinga describes above, which eventually end with a people who are "in love with death." Only a philosophical and presuppositional commitment to the inherent rights of a human because they are made in the image of God will place us in a context where abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia are unacceptable. Oh sure, we could make abortion illegal, but no progress will be made in relieving the demand for abortions until culture starts seeing humans as made in the image of God and inherently deserving of "unalienable rights" which have been "endowed by their Creator."

Now, about now you might be thinking, "What exactly does it mean for a human to be 'made in the image of God?'" That is a good question and it is one that I will address next week, for this post is already too long.

By His Grace,
Taylor

In Christ You Can Be Completely Honest

"In this solemn confession, it is pleasing to observe that David plainly names his sin. He does not call it manslaughter, nor speak of it as an imprudence by which an unfortunate accident occurred to a worthy man, but he calls it by its true name, bloodguiltiness. He did not actually kill the husband of Bathsheba; but still it was planned in David’s heart that Uriah should be slain, and he was before the Lord his murderer. Learn in confession to be honest with God. Do not give fair names to foul sins; call them what you will, they will smell no sweeter. What God sees them to be, that do you labour to feel them to be; and with all openness of heart acknowledge their real character." ~ Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, evening April 7

In this devotion, Spurgeon was referring to David's confession in Ps. 51, where he brought his sin of murder before God. If I might be so bold as to add to Spurgeon's statement: for in Christ you will always find forgiveness. Before the throne of God we must always be honest about our sin and not try to "soft petal" anything, for He knows the truth whether we try to hide it or not. Yet, that is not a labor, for we know that before the throne of God in Christ--on the basis of His sacrifice and clothed in His righteousness--is the only place where we can be completely honest and still be accepted. Our closest friends and family my reject us, eventually. They might grow tired of our depravity. They might find our sin too heinous to be forgiven. They might never be able to look at us the same way again. But, the Christian has no such worry before God in Christ. We cannot expect to stand before the throne of God without Christ, but in Him we cannot be unaccepted for any sin. There are no stipulations on His promise: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 Jn. 1:9) There is no time when our Advocate (1 Jn. 2:1) is not before the throne defending us against any and all condemnation. That is why Paul can say, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Ro. 8:1)

Christian, you can be completely honest before God with your sin. You can pour it out in repentance with all candor. You are free to go to Him not matter how dirty you may be, and He will not reject you. He will not unaccept you. He will not be angry. You can cry out, "Wretched man that I am!" (Ro. 7:24), and He will not look at you any differently, for when He sees you, He sees Christ (2 Co. 5:21). You are safe, in Christ. Never forget that, and go to God always as you are.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Show Them No Mercy: The Conquering of Canaan

"When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them." ~ Dt. 7:1-2 (Emphasis added)

In a few previous posts about the imprecatory psalms, I have written about some of the troubling statements in Scripture. A few weeks ago I wrote a short article for a Bible study I lead. We are studying Judges and studying Judges requires talking about the conquering of the land of Canaan, which is another troubling part of biblical history. Below is what I wrote:

What about the "holy war"? How does "show them no mercy" (Dt. 7:2) square with Jesus' teaching? The main problem here is that we do not have a high enough view of God's holiness. As Christians, we have encountered the grace of God in Jesus, which allows us to enter into God’s holy presence with boldness (He. 10:19-25), because of the promise that we are being remade after the pattern of that same holiness. But, in that grace, we may sometimes forget what that holiness looks like to someone who is not so covered. God is a consuming fire (He. 12:29), a purifying power that cannot abide the unholy to remain in His presence without destroying it. God, however, is also a gracious God who does not desire the complete destruction of the works of His hands, who holds back the consuming fire like a dam holds back a flood. The Conquest of Canaan is best understood as a profound and temporary in-breaking of God’s holiness into an unholy world for a specific redemptive purpose.

In creation, God created the world and humans holy. We fell from that holiness and therefore incurred the wrath of God. God's holiness consumes unholiness just as light consumes darkness. Only God can stay the consumption for a time. God, in His grace, has temporarily suspended His full wrath until the Day of final judgment, otherwise Adam and Eve would have been consumed and sent to hell on the spot. Common grace, God's forbearance of final judgment, became a part of the world in which we live.

This has bearing on the Conquest. The ethics of the Conquest are ultimately those of a completely holy and good God calling the rebellious people, the illegal aliens on His property into account. And, since the Fall affects all of us as equally as it affected the Canaanites, the implication is that we all deserve, always and everywhere, what they got then and there in Canaan from the Israelite armies. In light of this reality, we must admit that the shear fact that the Conquest was confined to only one very geographically limited area at only one point in human history is a sign of God’s mercy.

What? A sign of mercy? Yes; one of its purposes is for us to see what must be the inevitable result of our current standing with God as a race. The ethics of the Conquest can be seen as a type of what are called "intrusion ethics" (a term coined by Meredith Kline)—a temporary intrusion into history of the ethics of the final judgment, i.e. that moment when God finally brings the created order to account so that He can restore it to its original state of holiness. That is to say, the Conquest reveals in history, however briefly, what the end of history will look like when God returns in glory to reclaim in total His land, the eschatological (end-times) Promised Land. This is what is called Old Testament typology/study of "types." A type is an Old Testament event or person pointing to an eschatological/end-times reality (we are in the end times and have been since Pentecost, cf. Acts 2:14-24). Just as the OT Promised Land (a type) ultimately points to the eschatological reality of the new heavens and the new earth, the Conquest (another type) points to the eschatological judgment where God ultimately punishes evil (2 Pt. 3:10), the punishment He stayed at the Fall, and creates the new heavens and the new earth. One purpose of seeing such a thing in history is, therefore, to bring us to repentance, so that we might be spared that fate when the Day arrives. Not only will have God given humanity the whole of their history of time to turn back to Him, He will have also made it abundantly clear by the Conquest what is to come. But, still many "stiffen their necks" against Him.

All of this has profound ramifications for how we square the goodness of God, as we have encountered it in Jesus, with the severity of God, as we see it in the Conquest. In many respects, they are two sides of the same coin. They both show the extreme lengths to which God must go in order to get humanity's attention. The sad history of Jesus' rejection before His own people only reinforces the point that humankind's fallen hearts are so hardened that we cannot respond to God, even when He comes in meekness. Such a sorry state of affairs, such a clear example of our rebellion, makes the extreme ethics of the Conquest seem all the more justified. Further, it illustrates with vivid clarity how, in not getting always and everywhere what the Canaanites got then and there, humanity as a whole has seen merciful forbearance (common grace) on God’s part.

If we assume, as all Christians ought, that God is the sole creator of all that is, seen and unseen, it is not a leap to give to Him the authority to decide when that created order has gone right and when it has gone wrong (Ro. 9). When we truly grapple with the magnitude of our rebellion against God’s infinite, eternal, and unchangeable holiness, we must concede that we have dug the proverbial hole underneath us. In that light, the intrusion of God’s holiness into our thoroughly unholy world makes events like the Conquest a sad inevitability. The further problem arises that even our own sense of "goodness" has been undermined by our rebellion. Seeing through the broken lens of our sinfulness, it is often difficult to see how what seems to be the severity of God towards humanity is in fact consistent with His eternal goodness. In both respects, our current condition impairs us from easily understanding the Conquest. However, when we have laid the foundations of intrusion ethics and God’s great holiness, a clearer picture of the Conquest as a type of final judgment, and other parts of the Bible, emerges. 

Perhaps a typological chart would be helpful when thinking about OT types and end-times realities:

Old Testament Type	Eschatological Reality
The Exodus	Christ’s redemption
The wilderness wandering	This present life
The Promised Land	The new heavens and the new earth
The conquest of the Land	The Final Judgment
King David	King Jesus
Solomon’s kingdom	Jesus’ rule in the new heavens and the new earth

Hope this helps you wrestle with the ethics of the Conquest of Canaan. May be it something that allows you to see God's majesty for clearly, for His glory and your good. 

By His Grace,

Taylor

Unconditional

"If we could fix each other we would never understand unconditional love. You having trouble loving people? Say, 'God show me my sin and then hug me and then maybe I can go out and hug some others.'" ~ Steve Brown

I like this quote from Steve because it reminds me of one of the ways that sin is a blessing in disguise. When we really understand our sin we can really understand how incredible Christ's love is. To say, "Jesus loves me" is great, but if we do not remember what condition we were in when Jesus loved us then that statement has no depth and no real comfort. When we really see and know our sin then we really understand what Jesus did for us and only then can we really love others the way He has called us to love others. Steve also gives a principle: "You can't love until you've been loved and then you can only love to the degree that you have been loved."

By His Grace,

Taylor

Expectations

"We should not expect a 'fair fight' in a secular world that is hostile to God and uncomfortable around the truth of Christ. Therefore, our response to abuse or distortion or slander should not be angry resentment, but patient witness to the truth, in the hope and with the prayer that returning good for evil may open hearts to the truth." ~ John Piper, Tolerance, Truth-Telling, Violence, and Law

This is something I have to remind myself of often when I am frustrated with a politician, writer, journalist, or anyone else who seems to have an overwhelming hatred for Christians. I find myself shocked at times by what I read, hear, or have said to me, but then when I am by myself and really think about it I ask, "Why does this shock you? Christ told you this is what you should expect (Matt. 10:22)."

When I really think about it that way it makes me also think about where I came from. Were it not for grace and God's work of salvation in me, which is "of the LORD" (Jonah 2:9) from start to finish, my heart would harbor that hatred as well. It is not as if I did something to change my heart. Stepping back and thinking about it that way makes it easier to respond with patience and "witness to the truth" though I still am not very good at that. Fortunately grace is not finished (Phil. 1:6).

By His Grace,
Taylor