Category: Resurrection

Ode To Joy

What difference can one life make? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I was going to write something today for a friend in response to a Mormon video, but I must put that one on hold for a day now. As listeners of the podcast know, and I hope you all are listening, my grandmother-in-law passed away Saturday. This is the grandmother on Mike’s said, in other words, the mother of Michael Licona, for those wondering which Mike. His daughter is my wife after all. Right now, Allie is up in Baltimore for the funeral of Grandma Joy.

If you are a fan of Mike, and many of you are, you need to consider that this woman was the main woman in his life before his wife that shaped him, and give thanks. Joy was in turn a great influence on my own wife, helping her through her own personal crises. In the midst of all her pain, she had only joy and concern for other people.

Joy had had breast cancer that was stage four. It disappeared sometime around last September for awhile, and I think this was a gift from God to allow her to have one more Thanksgiving with us all. This was the second time I had got to meet Joy. The first was at the wedding and I did not get to interact with her that much. At this Thanksgiving, Allie and I stayed at her house and got to meet her and regularly speak with her.

Joy was a delight whose Christian faith showed through and her simple laughter in everything. For instance, two of her grandsons came over every day. One was especially interested in Mike’s doing magic tricks with a deck of cards. When Mike was gone one time, I asked this grandson if he would like to play a card game. This one was either an early teenager or about to be one.

“Yeah!”

“Ever heard of 52 pick-up?”

“No!”

“Wanna play it?”

“Yeah!”

To which, I of course threw the deck in the air and watched all the cards land telling him to pick them up. Joy watched and smiled delighting in such a prank.

Joy was active the whole week being in the kitchen helping to prepare meals. She offered advice to Allie and I and I don’t remember her ever being negative about her past experiences. Joy was quite good at living out her name.

Allie and Joy would quite often talk to each other. There was a special bond there between the two of them which made the loss so much harder for Allie. I have even been told that when Joy was not really responsive to anyone, that she still cried when she heard Allie’s voice on the phone.

During the past month, we had been waiting in limbo expecting the end to come any time. We actually expected it the first week in June, but Joy was always a fighter and hung on for a long time. On Saturday, I received the call from Allie while I was out doing some shopping. On the show, I asked for prayer at least twice for the situation.

Through her Christlike actions, Joy helped shape society. Those of you who have appreciated Mike’s work should give thanks for Joy, for one could easily question whether he would have done his resurrection work if it had not been for the influence of a godly mother. Those of you who are mothers out there. Never underestimate the influence that you can have on your children.

Those of you who like my work, and I hope that’s all of you, need to have the same consideration. Because of Joy’s influence, Mike married a Christian woman and together they raised their children to be Christian. One of them is my wife today who has Joy’s Christianity in her. My wife is, aside from Jesus Christ, the greatest influence on my life. It is her that has been the greatest change in my apologetic career really giving me the confidence to go further. Joy’s actions reached far beyond herself. They reached to those who would come after her and even to those who were in no way part of her family at first.

It is said that when we are born, we cry and the world rejoices. We should live so that when we die, the world cries and we rejoice. The world has much to cry about today. Joy, meanwhile, has much to rejoice about. As of now, she is matching her name more than she ever has before. Though not in the body at the moment, she is nevertheless in the presence of Jesus.

In fact, as I drove home from the store, I kept thinking that Joy was in the presence of Jesus, and I could not help but smile. As Paul says in 1 Thessalonians, we do mourn, but not like those without hope. The mourning is not for Joy. Joy is far better off than we are. In her state right now where she is, the happiest she has ever been here is like stark depression in comparison.

It is definitely a time like this that I can even more appreciate the meaning of the resurrection. The study of the resurrection is not an isolated point to prove that Christianity is true. It is something that changes the course of history entirely. I do agree with the claim that apart from the resurrection of Jesus, there is no other hope for mankind.

While we will mourn for a season, especially when the funeral takes place and the reality sinks in the most, we mourn not for Joy, but for ourselves. We are at a loss for not being able to directly interact with her any more for now. There can be no tears shed for Joy. Her battle is over. Her pain is gone. She is in the presence of her Lord. There are tears for those of us left behind and a reminder of why we do what we do. We look forward to the day when the curse will be broken and God will make all things new.

Until then, there will always be an empty part in those of us who knew Joy as we await the time when God will right all the wrongs and reverse all the sufferings. Let us live our lives in a far greater light now realizing the impact that one life has made and will have throughout the centuries. Joy was impacted by those who came before her. Mike has his own impacts through his work. I in turn will have my own impact and if Allie and I have children, they will get the legacy of their great-grandmother. What we do and what happens in the future will be done in part from the work of a simple woman who just sought to honor Christ in her life and set Him first. We in apologetics do far less if we only seek to prove Christianity but do not set Christ first.

Joy’s pebble has already landed in the pond of our timeline, but the circles that go out will go far beyond what she had ever thought and may we do the same and give Christ all that we have and let him see what He will do with the circles that come forward.

May the memory of Joy be eternal and may we always carry it in our hearts.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Is God a SadoMasochist?

Is the cross just a sick and depraved act? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Recently, this video was brought to my attention. Be warned that it does contain strong profanity for all interested as well as some disturbing images. I put it up here just so that readers can make sure I have given an accurate representation of the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXXgUpv7APE

Now lately, I’ve spent much time blogging about how we have the gospel wrong. We have taken a part of it, forgiveness, which is an important part, and made it the whole deal.

When John the Baptist and Jesus showed up teaching the gospel, most people were not thinking about forgiveness. The Jewish system already had a way set up where you could receive forgiveness and there was no major need to replace it. Of course, some did come for forgiveness as Jesus was showing how forgiveness would work in the Kingdom, but Jesus did not preach an unheard of concept. All the Jews knew about forgiveness.

Jesus taught something greater. He taught that the plan of Israel was coming to a fruition. God was about to act to rectify the problem. What problem is that? It is the problem of sin and evil and death. Our teaching today tends to ask about the cross “What does it do for me?” It is foreign for us to think about the rest of the world.

So in replying to the producer of the vid, who based on his name I will just call BD for short, we will need to keep this in mind. Nowhere is there any material about the kingdom of God in the video, or about the problem of evil, or anything about the story of Israel.

Note also something else important that never shows up in the video. Never do we see an argument against the existence of God. We do not see an argument that shows that the resurrection did not happen. It is as if BD just wants to hit us with an emotional attack and make us not think about the real claim. If God exists and if Jesus did rise, then Christianity is true and that must be dealt with.

So let’s deal with some errant concepts that show up.

BD has a terrible rendition of the Trinity where the Son is the reincarnation (How can there be a reincarnation without a first incarnation) of the Father. However, he also uses the classic Bill Maher type of argumentation where God sends Himself to sacrifice to Himself, Himself to solve the problem that He Himself created.

If BD does not want to be a Christian. Fine. If he wants to think the Trinity is nonsense. Fine. Yet in all of this, at least get the concept right. If someone wants to be an atheist, at least seek to be an informed atheist. When I see a misrepresentation of the Trinity in this way I automatically know this is someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. A good library would have volumes that would help give BD some understanding of the Trinity even if he doesn’t believe in it.

BD also wishes to point out that some people have suffered worse than Jesus. This is not being denied. But so what? BD assumes the worst part of the crucifixion was the pain of the cross. Of course the cross was physically painful, but it was more designed to be socially painful. It was designed to shame the criminal before others and thus give the notion to anyone else watching that “Maybe you don’t want to do what this guy did.”

Furthermore, Jesus being shamed was said thus to be a traitor to Rome and to be under the curse of YHWH. This is what makes the resurrection so important. The resurrection is the vindication of the claim of Jesus to be the King of Israel. It is God raising Him up so He can rule, since a dead king cannot rule the Kingdom of God. It is a reversal of the shame and God giving Jesus the place of highest honor.

So what about that sacrifice? How could it be a sacrifice if Jesus knew He was coming back? When something was offered to God, God could do with it what He wanted. Jesus had to face shame and death as it was entirely to take on the full curse for us. (If you remember, Genesis 3 has a little something about a curse) In facing death and shame head on, Jesus is able to overcome them for us. He is able to rectify the problems of evil, death, and sin.

This is why the story of Israel is so important. Genesis 3 is not an accidental test. It sets the whole tone of the Bible from then on. It’s not the case that the story of Abraham has nothing to do with that. The story has everything to do with it. Abraham’s role is to help restore that which was lost. Over and over, man fails at the attempt to rule as God desires, until finally Jesus comes who is able to do that.

Well couldn’t God just forgive? Not exactly. God is the greatest good and thus has the greatest honor. If God decides He won’t punish sin, then He is not treating Himself as the greatest good. He is being inconsistent. If He does this just for us, then it is akin to idolatry.

God must be just. That must mean there must be some punishment given for sin. BD wishes to make it be that God delights in punishing us. If that was the case, then one wonders why forgiveness would be offered at all. If God just wanted to punish us, He could have been eternally just and never sent Jesus and no one could say “You’ve done wrong.” God is under no obligation to forgive anyone or even provide a way of forgiveness.

Of course, BD has the idea of Hell as a torture chamber. Is he truly unaware that there are many different views of Hell, including ones that see it as eternal conscious torment, that are not torture chamber motifs? This includes my own view that sees Heaven and Hell as not physical locations, but as relational realities. The same sun that melts wax hardens clay. The love of God that melts the hearts of the repentant hardens the hearts of those opposed.

In conclusion, we note that BD has not given any arguments against the central truths of Christianity but has chosen to speak (Quite ignorantly) of the parts he does not understand. Once again, if someone wants to be an atheist, be one, but at least be informed in your atheism.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Return of the King

What does Easter tell us about Jesus? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Yesterday, Christians all over the world celebrated Easter, the event that commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. For this post, I am going to be assuming that the resurrection is true, though I will also be putting up a link to an interview I did with Gary Habermas on the topic on the Deeper Waters podcast.

The resurrection’s ultimate message is “Jesus was right.”

When you look at what he was on trial for, we find the charge of blasphemy. We find the charge of planning to destroy the temple, which would be saying God was no longer working there, we find the charge that He was the King of the Jews. The last one was in mockery, but notice that Jesus never before Pilate denied having a Kingdom and being a king. He just denied it the way Pilate understood it.

Note that these charges are either true or false. Jesus had indeed stated that the temple system was corrupt. He had pointed to His unique identity a number of times. He had made messages indicating that He was a king, although certainly not a king the way the Jewish people thought He would be.

Jesus’s desires were far grander. They wanted liberation from Rome for themselves. Jesus wanted liberation for the world from sin. They wanted to have a foreign army kicked out of their land. Jesus wanted the devil to be kicked out of the world of His Father. As C.S. Lewis said, our desires are far too small. Whatever we desire for ourselves, we should realize God desires greater, namely union with Him.

In crucifying Jesus, the rulers of the day all said Jesus’s claims were wrong. This was a serious move for them to make. If Jesus’s claims were right, there would be serious repercussions. It would mean they had crucified the Messiah of God, the king of Israel, and the Son of God. They were ready for God to come as they thought He would. They were not ready for God to come as He had planned to come.

What was their greatest proof that He was not the Messiah? He did not act the way they thought He would. Fortunately, we are past this today. We never expect God to act the way we want Him to. We never have talks about the problem of evil. We never say that a good God would do this if He existed. We never say God must act on our terms instead of us acting on His.

Could it be that in many ways, we today are still crucifying the Son of God? We can speak about the evils that the people of the time did to Jesus, but we have to stop and ask ourselves if we’re any better.

Chances are, we’re not. It’s easy to speak from hindsight, but many of us could be just as guilty of the crime if we had been there and we would have called it righteous zeal. After all, many of us know the way God will perform and the way He will act.

It is more often the case that the real truth surprises us. Hence, we should always be open to the possibility that we could be wrong about something.

The people of the time did kill the Son of God, but the resurrection is God’s vote on the matter, and that one alone counts as a majority. It is saying “Jesus was right.” Jesus is the king. Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the Son of God. The temple system is corrupt.

It’s like the shot heard round the world.

This was the greatest shot of all. This was the beginning of the revolution. If the creation was a symphony, this is where the crescendo to the finale begins. If it was a movie, this was where the major plot twist took place. If it was a video game you were playing, this is where you would want to save. It would be like the second quest taking place.

The resurrection changes everything.

By the resurrection, we know that Jesus is the king of this world. By the resurrection, we know that all will bow down before Him. By the resurrection, we know that He will judge us all. By the resurrection, we know that a new covenant has been declared. By the resurrection, we know evil will be dealt with. By the resurrection, we know that we will live again after we die and live forevermore.

By the resurrection, we know God is in charge of the story, and as earlier, God has greater desires for us than we can realize. If what has happened so far has been the incarnation of the Son of God in our midsts, we can only wonder at what lies around the corner and being Easter people, eagerly anticipate it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

My interview with Gary Habermas on the resurrection can be found here.

Was Good Friday Good?

Why do we call the day of crucifixion Good Friday? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Today, we Christians celebrate what we call Good Friday. Looking over at my calendar (Might I add, my Smallville 2013 calendar) I see that it is indeed called Good Friday on there. Yet we acknowledge today in history as the day in which Jesus Christ, the most holy of all, was crucified.

Let us consider first off what happens this day. YHWH is essentially put on trial. Jesus, the one who is God in human flesh, stands before the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin wishes to use the Law that YHWH gave them not realizing who the one standing before them is. Will YHWH meet their standards of the Law of YHWH? Could it be possible this is what Dostoyevsky had in mind with his Grand Inquisitor who had Jesus brought forward for charges of heresy?

Jesus is sentenced for blasphemy. Yet beyond blasphemy, He is said to be claiming to be a king, and indeed this is right. In fact, if Jesus’s being YHWH was not right, the blasphemy charge would have also been right. The Jews were not mistaken on what Jesus said. They were mistaken in their not believing it.

So in doing so, the people have rejected Jesus as their king and have sentenced Him to be crucified. Of course, this was all part of God’s great plan for the world. To go back to Dostoyevsky, Ivan in the book asks his brother if he would be willing to create a world if he had to build it on the suffering of one innocent person. Apparently, God’s answer is “Yes.” That one suffering person is the Son.

Keep in mind what it means about Jesus in the crucifixion. With Jesus making the claims that He was making, the crucifixion was one of two things. It was either the most wicked act of all that put to death the most righteous man who ever lived, or it was the most righteous act of all that put to death the most wicked man who ever lived. Jesus, once again, reminds us that there is no neutrality with Him.

So why do we call it good?

Is it that Jesus was crucified and the action then is good? No. The Jews and Romans did a wicked thing. It is called good because this evil act became the means of salvation for the world. This is something found throughout the Bible. Joseph’s brothers intended something for evil and God meant it for good. Romans 8 is the key text on this. God is in charge of this world and if He allows something to happen, even the crucifixion of His own Son, then we can be assured that He will use it for good.

This gets us to the importance also of personal application. Whatever is going on in the world today and in our own personal worlds, we can know that if the crucifixion of the Son of God can be used in such a way that we call it “Good Friday” today, why do we doubt about everything else? Do we honestly think the God who can use the crucifixion of the Son for good cannot use what is going on for our own good as well? In fact, if we realize this point, we will be unstoppable.

Years ago, I got a Game Genie, which essentially allowed for cheating on games. You play a game very differently when you can’t die ultimately. Now at times you could play flippantly to be sure, but you could also play with great confidence. You knew in the end you were going to win.

We can also play the game with great confidence. In the end, we will win.

Never lose sight of that. Good Friday was just one day, but the promise of it is eternal.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

What Must Be Shown

What is required to give the good news to someone? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Recently, I’ve been given a column in the local newspaper here in Knoxville, that will be a monthly feature. It’s not much of a shock that when it is published, all the trolls come out to play. A friend on Facebook had recommended I not check the comments but personally, the comments are a good deal of fun!

It amazes me when I see what we’re up against. I have the claim that if I had done some real research, I’d know that Jesus never even existed. Most people just make assertions and don’t have any arguments to them. Interestingly, none of them seem to want to go after the resurrection itself.

Instead, it’s a desperate hope to hit it from another angle. If we can show miracles never take place, then we can disprove the resurrection! True, but that is a tall order and attempts to do so today only succeed at begging the question. Not to mention that since Keener has written his work on this, there’s a whole lot more evidence to deal with.

Also is the idea that if we can demonstrate one story is false, then all the stories are! If we can show a problem with the virgin birth, then we have no reason to accept the resurrection! If we bring up Matthew 27 as hard to believe, then we have no reason to believe Matthew 28!

Yet to directly go after the resurrection? Not happening.

What is happening is in fact our fault largely.

When we are out there teaching Christian doctrine, we are out there trying to demonstrate that Jesus rose from the dead. That is what one believes in order to be saved. One is to trust that God has given His support to Jesus of Nazareth and has demonstrated this by His resurrection.

Let us state some things the gospel is not.

It is not “You must believe in a 6-10,000 year old Earth in order to be saved.”

It is not “You must believe in a pre-trib rapture to be saved.”

It is not “You must believe the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. was the fulfillment of the Olivet Discourse to be saved.”

It is not “You must believe in the Inerrancy of Scripture to be saved.”

It is not saying “You must believe in speaking in tongues to be saved.”

It is not saying “You must believe in predestination or free-will to be saved.”

Now that is not to say these other issues are unimportant, but they are not essential. We can and should discuss them, but we make a mistake if we present them as if they’re part of the gospel. They are aspects that matter if the gospel is true, but they are not the message.

If there is no resurrection, these opinions don’t matter for salvation or they’re outright false. It is only if the resurrection matters that either these can be true or that they matter. If we make them part of the message, then we are adding to the gospel.

This harms believers in that we convince them they have to believe one of these in addition to the resurrection. When the lesser belief is knocked down, then the resurrection also goes down with it. How many Christians have apostasized because they concluded the Earth was old or that there was an error in the Bible?

It also harms our testimony to unbelievers. After all, they too are of the opinion that every Christian has to believe this and if you can knock down this belief, you don’t have to take the resurrection seriously. Why should someone go after the resurrection when they can just keep tossing out Bible contradictions left and right and know that if any one of them hits, then their case is made?

By all means of course, have opinions on these other issues. Feel free to study them and make a case for them, but don’t confuse them with Christianity! The truth of Christianity does not depend on these claims! The truth of Christianity only depends on the claim that Jesus is risen! That is the claim that is absolutely essential that we must defend. Let us make sure we are majoring in the majors and minoring in the minors and not going the other way.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Death of Death

The last enemy to be defeated is death. Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Let’s sum up our resurrection series by looking at death being the last enemy to be defeated. Last time I wrote about this topic, I wrote about how a great reversal has taken place. What we read in the Bible is that the last enemy to be defeated is death. What this means for us is right now the conflict is going on and more and more ground is being claimed by the Kingdom of God. We must realize that there is not one part in this world that each side of the battle wants to make a claim and say “Mine!” as C.S. Lewis said.

The great enemy that we have in this world is death. Most of us spend our lives trying to avoid it. If we are eating, drinking, exercising, trying to sleep well, etc. we are doing so to avoid death. We avoid pain because it can be a reminder of who we are. We don’t really like to think about our own mortality. It can seem amazing to us sometimes to think about all that went on in this world before we showed up. It is something to think about as well that the world will go on just fine without each and everyone of us after we’re gone.

This does not mean that our lives are meaningless. The world does not depend on us, but that is different from saying we have no impact. We are all to spread the message of the Kingdom of God. In fact, if my understanding of 2 Peter 3 is correct, this is one way that we can indeed hasten the return of Christ. We will all have some kind of impact. Everything you do is shaping you in some way and some of those actions will shape others. The kind of person you are will also affect how you are with everyone else.

Nevertheless, our light will end at one time. That will be in death. Depending on how you live your life, you could still have an impact after your death. Aristotle died over 2,000 years ago, and yet he still lives on in his teachings today. Who else lives? All the people we don’t know about who were a part in shaping Aristotle to be the person who he became. We speak of Jesus having the greatest impact of all, which He did, but His parents helped shape Him. Who shaped them? Several people lived their lives in anticipation for the one who was to come and in living a holy life, were preparing for Him.

Death ultimately is not the end, but there is still the problem of separation. At the time being, my wife and I live in my grandmother’s old house. There are times that I can think that this is her house and wonder what it would mean if she could see how Allie and I are living now. With what I wrote about Jonathan in my post on Jonathan’s Impact, I can wonder the same thing about him.

When it came time for my grandmother’s funeral, I knew that it was coming. Her death was not a shock for me. She’d been very sick and it was only a matter of time. I was sad when I heard about it, but I did not break down. I was being strong and had left Charlotte with Allie preparing for the service. It wasn’t until I walked into the funeral home and saw her that I just broke down. The reality hit me. I can never call her up again, tell her what’s going on, get to hug her, etc.

Death is incredibly saddening to think about.

Now as a husband, it is something I think about more and a reason I want to take good care of myself. What would happen to Allie if something happened to me? It makes me want to take care of myself, especially since I’m nearly a decade older than she is. Statistically, my time would come first. I still have the hope that my ministry partner has that she will die the day before I do.

We can be thankful then that death does not have the final word.

Jesus promised us in the resurrection that he had taken on death and that He had won. This means not just the resurrection of our bodies, but the resurrection of everything. Everything is moving towards resurrection. Our entire cosmos is to be resurrected in Christ. When we resurrect, we will resurrect in a way that death will be no longer capable of hurting us. It will be an old memory. We will live in a world where we will never have to say good-bye.

Death is dead at that point. It is no more. The life you live with the one you care about now will be one that is never-ending. I do not know what that means entirely. None of us do. That’s something I find fascinating about the biblical picture of eternity. There’s very little detail. Other systems often try to tell us exactly what we will be doing. For instance, in Islam, we have the one man with seventy virgins. From my perspective, this is just taking a great earthly pleasure and making it a heavenly one. In a sense, it is a heavenly one, but the true pleasures of heaven will fully transcend the greatest pleasures on Earth.

I look forward to the day when death is dead. I look forward to the day when I will never have to say good-bye. I look forward to the day when life will be a never-ending journey of knowing more about God. That last line reminds me of the continuity. I am shaping and preparing for that now. This life is not accidental. It is the preparation for the heavenly community. I intend to be ready. I know that if death cannot have the last laugh, nothing else is worth worrying about.

Isn’t that good news?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Great Reversal

Are we going backwards, or forwards? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I once had a job as an arcade attendant. On my breaks, I would often play some of the games I was watching as when times were slow, we had our regulars come in and we would watch them play games. One game that was our most popular was Tekken and all the sequels and such of it and when I played the game, I was quite good at reversals. For those who don’t know, Tekken is a kind of street fighting game like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Only certain characters could do reversals and it would involve stopping your opponent in his attack and instead taking him down with one of your own.

It was an effective way to deal with an opponent and would follow with my taunt of “Bad X” with X being whatever character they were playing.

What about the resurrection of Jesus? If anything would count as a reversal, it would have been that. We need to step back and realize the shock that took place on the cross. The cross was not just a painful way to die. It was a shameful way to die! Consider for instance today we have the idea of Darwin Awards. In these awards, someone wins the prize when they die from some act of idiocy on their own part. Their death is said to further improve the gene pool. When reading the Darwins, one can quickly be amazed at how dumb humanity can be.

In a crucifixion, one sees a death of a person who is totally rejected by society and told in no uncertain terms “Do not be like this person.” For the Jew, such a person was a blasphemer to YHWH since they were hung on a tree. For the Greeks, they were dying a form of death that is not even one that will be mentioned in polite company. This is not the way any king of any type would die. Yet when it comes to Jesus, we contend that this is exactly how Jesus died. In fact, this is unavoidable! Throughout the NT, one finds references to the cross or the crucifixion of Jesus. That which should have been the ultimate embarrassment and death knell of Christianity became their proclamation.

Throughout the gospels, we find dark powers at work against Jesus using the Pharisees, Sadducees, and chief priests. We are told that satan enters into Judas for the final betrayal. All along, the plan had been that if Jesus wants to come here and the devil sees that, well let’s just see what happens to the plans of God when He dies. The idea was that this would bring the ultimate shame to God and destroy any plan that He had. The reality was that this was what was expected all along.

Then, at the moment of the greatest conquest, we get the ultimate reversal.

My wife often corrects me when I say something about this in a message. It is not that the world was turned upside-down at that point. It was turned right-side up. We are on the up and up now. We have reached the climax point and now we’re moving towards the denouement. We have reached the crescendo in the symphony and now we’re moving towards the conclusion. Shame has been turned into honor. Death itself is being undone. Creation is being restored. The gospel of the Kingdom is spreading.

Today, we live so much in the time that has seen Christianity that I doubt any of us fully understand what the change is that Christianity has brought to us. Many think that if you remove Christianity from the society and all other religion, that it will improve, but I will contend that nations where this is tried for the time being still have a latent Christianity in the background with its moral framework and when that finally is forgotten, we will see the real face of atheism emerge from that.

When Christ comes and brings about the Kingdom of God on Earth, nothing remains the same. We are living in the age of the reversal and we can expect that as we spread the Kingdom, we will only see more of this reversal taking place. Let us go and turn the world from a state of shame and death to a state of honor and glory.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The New Age Has Come

Does it involve Eastern thinking? Kind of. Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

We’re talking about the difference the resurrection makes and one aspect we’re looking at today is that the new age has come. Now when we hear about the new age, we often think of those in the east. In a sense, we are correct. However, to talk about the true new age movement, we need to stop long before we get to areas like India. We need to stop at the Middle East. The modern new age movement has us going back to the old lie of “You shall be as gods.” The real new age movement began in the area of Jerusalem. Our modern movement is simply behind on the times and living with an old view that has been replaced.

Many Jews believed in a coming age of the Messiah that would have the reign of the Messiah. There are many references in the Bible that some think refer to the end of the world but in reality, they refer to the end of the age. For instance, in the Olivet Discourse, Jesus is not giving signs of the end of the world. Instead, he is giving signs that the age is coming to an end. What would be the next age? It would be the age that has the ruling of the Messiah. The Jews had something else wrong. Jesus would not be ruling in Jerusalem creating just another earthly monarchy. Instead, he would be ruling from Heaven by the side of the Father over all the Earth and His kingdom would be spreading. (This is something we will be touching on later on.)

This means that everything has changed. When Paul converts on the road to Damascus, he does not just have a worldview where the idea of “Jesus is not the Messiah” has changed to “Jesus is the Messiah.” He has to change his view on creation, Israel, the Law, righteousness, justification, forgiveness, the Messiah, suffering, etc. The reason for this is that the action of God in history was central to Jewish thought and they based their identities on it. They spoke of God who brought them out of Egypt. They spoke of God who rescued them from exile. The next new movement then would be to speak of God who acted in Christ.

Picture it as if you had a set of beliefs that could be seen as a spider web. Suppose one of your beliefs is “The grocery store is 20 miles from my house.” Then, you do some measurements in your car with your odometer and realize that the store is actually 18 miles away. Okay. That’s a small belief that you can change and it doesn’t affect you too much. You realize your math was off and that’s that. Now suppose instead that you come to the conclusion “The grocery store never even existed.” This is a belief that would more likely have you check into the mental hospital wondering what was wrong with you.

It’s the same today with people who often apostasize from Christianity and don’t change their worldview much. If you leave the faith, the degree to which your worldview changes is the degree to which Christianity affected your worldview prior. If it played a small part, it will not change your worldview as much. If it played a major part, you will have to totally change everything that you see in your worldview. This is something that explains how serious the situation was for Paul. Everything changed.

If the resurrection of Jesus does not change everything, then something is wrong.

Now to be fair, this could be more difficult for us in America since we have grown up in a society where Christian theism has always been in the background at least and we live in an age where the resurrection has normally been seen as the reality. We can find it hard to appreciate how different the world was before Christianity came along. This is why we need to often drop our modern Americentric understanding of the world and try to see how it was before Christ came. It’s also why we should be doing reading in other areas relevant to biblical studies.

For now, let us rejoice. The new age has come, the age of Christ. Hopefully the modern new age movement will learn to keep up with the times.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Resurrection and Joy

Do we have reason to rejoice? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

We’ve been looking at the resurrection lately and what a difference it makes for the Christian. For tonight, I think of what N.T. Wright has said about comparing Judaism of the day before Christ to the time of Christianity. The Jews lived in a time of hope. It was the question of if God was going to come and bring about the promises that He said He would do. Would God conquer their enemies? Would God rescue His people? When would God fulfill His end of the covenant?

Nothing wrong with that of course. In the time before Christianity, one could have joy of being a member of the community of God, but it still was looking forward to something important. One was still in bondage. As we know from John 8, Christ did come to set us free and that was what we had really been waiting for. Christ did not come for a patch of land. He did not come for one group of people. He came first of all for God. He came to do the will of the Father. He came second for the world. He was not interested in a land but the planet. He was not interested in a group of people but every tribe and nation.

That hasn’t changed.

Now the Jews and their land was the means to that. For the Jews, everything revolved around the Temple. Consider it if you will a gateway between Heaven and Earth. This is the best analogy I can think of, but some of us who grew up in the gaming sphere know about a scene where someone enters a place like a temple and ends up finding a gateway that leads to the place where the really good being or the really evil being lives. It is the idea that there are two worlds and this one place is the connection point between both worlds.

I want to be sure that you know I am not saying God lives in another dimension as it were and that that place is physical. I do not think that as God is not physical. I am saying that there was a place that He did make His presence known especially for the Jews and that was in the temple. As long as the temple was there, YHWH was there. God did not reveal Himself to everyone but made a plan to reveal Himself to everyone starting with a particular people in a particlar place.

For we Christians, this hope has been fulfilled and it was fulfilled in Christ. Now our lives are to be dominated by joy. I plan to get into this more in future blogs but let’s consider some points. First off, we have the ultimate reversal. When Christ resurrects, what happens is that death itself starts to work backwards. Christ is the first one to experience this but we are told that not only we, but all of creation will experience that resurrection. (There is nothing conclusive about animals in the new world, but the thought of something like this would be one of my main inclinations to think that God will redeem the animal life of His creation as well.)

Second, we have been set free. The Jews wondered when they would be set free from Rome, but their goals were too small. God was not coming to set them free from Rome but to set them free from sin. The problem is we Christians often make the same mistake. It is not that our wishes for our lives are too great for God to fulfill. They are often way too small. In Luke 12:32, we are told that God has given us the Kingdom for instance. It is quite amazing how much we ask for forgetting we have the Kingdom. We think that God does not give us anything when in reality, He has given us everything, namely Himself. What more can He give?

Finally, this means that we are forgiven. This is something else I will expound on later and I thank a good Christian friend for pointing this out to me in a similar sermon he did on the resurrection. It had the interesting thought experiment in it of imagining what it would be like to live in a world without forgiveness. None of us would want to live in that world, but to an extent, we all act like we do, though we don’t do so as seriously. We think of some sin that is so heinous to us that we cannot imagine that God would ever forgive it, all the while going through our lives committing X number of sins regularly that are smaller sins but still thinking “It’s no big deal.” If there is no forgiveness, there is no sin that is “No big deal.” If there is forgiveness, every sin is also in its own way a big deal when you consider the price that it took to grant that forgiveness. In the first world, we say mercy is not great enough. In the second, we try to say our sin is not great enough.

Consider this then as an entryway into a subset on the resurrection at this point and how the resurrection leads to Christian joy. I hope you’ll continue coming along. Also, for those interested, I am looking into upgrading the blog site talking to some people who know a lot more about this than I. I already know about the issue with the date of the blog entries. Feel free to let me know about anything else you’d like addressed.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Resurrection And Sex

Can there be any connection between these two? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Generally today, if you talk about religion, you won’t get people’s attention too much. However, once sex enters the picture, people are suddenly interested. At a job I once worked at, I came into the break room one day reading the book “Smart Sex: Lifelong Love In A Hook-Up World” by Jennifer Roback Morse. The books I’d read hadn’t got too much attention but suddenly that day the talk in there was “Nick’s reading a book about sex!”

So what does the resurrection then have to do with the national obsession?

The first place is that as we learned recently, our bodies matter. That means that what you do with the body matters. Paul tells us about this in 1 Cor. 6. Some people were of the mindset that the body will pass away so it does not matter. What you do sexually is not much different from what you eat. Paul is aghast at the very notion! He tells the Corinthians that their bodies are part of the body of Christ. How can one join Christ with a prostitute?

In other words, in the resurrection, one’s whole being is to be caught up in the identity of Christ. It is not just that you give Christ your soul, spirit, what have you, and then your body doesn’t really matter. Your body matters because Christ rose in His body and your body is to rise one day and to be transformed to be fully like His body. Your body should be being prepared for that day just as your soul, spirit, etc. are being prepared. (I use different terminology since I’m sure people have different beliefs on the nature of man in that area. I do not wish to argue for any one at this point)

If your body is to be the body of Christ, you are not to join them with a prostitute. It is important to notice that right after this, Paul does go on to address questions on marriage and despite what some people say, he is not a prude. He does not condemn the coming together of the man and woman. In fact, he says that the husband and wife should only withhold themselves from one another by mutual consent and then to devote themselves to prayer and come back quickly lest they be led astray. In other words, Paul knows how strong the desire is between husband and wife and he does not condemn that desire.

Even more radically, he says that a man’s body belongs to his wife. Of course, that goes the other way as well, but such a thought would have been unheard of in Paul’s time. It was the man alone who were in charge. Now I do hold to the position that a man does lead his household, but the man does not live for himself alone. The man is to live for his wife and that includes living bodily. His sexual energies are to be spent on her.

Just shortly before writing this, I was even debating this with someone who was telling me I should not worry about fantasizing and looking elsewhere. Faithfulness should be a choice and not an obligation. If you are married, faithfulness is an obligation you have chosen. It is not an added bonus. It is essential to your marriage. What good is it for you to say “I have remained sexually faithful to my spouse” in your body, but have not done so in your mind and fantasy life?

Does this take hard work? Absolutely, especially for us men who tend to look for many partners by nature. When we are out together, the Mrs. knows that I will regularly look away at times just so I can make sure that my mind stays pure. I have to be very careful with what I watch on TV and if a program is getting to be too showy at one scene, I can look away or else just cover my eyes at that point. Faithfulness is a choice, it is an obligation, it is a battle, and it is totally worth it.

The resurrection also shows us that sex is not to be avoided as a punishment like the Gnostics would have thought. There is no harm in bringing new life into the world. This does not mean that every married couple will do so or even want to do so, but it certainly means that the Gnostics were wrong in their position. Even those Christian couples who choose to not have children would not say that other couples are ipso facto wrong for wanting to do so.

It also means that since this is part of the creation, and since God is in the business of re-creating through the resurrection, a point we will get to lately, we should celebrate the good gift that He has given. Christians are not to be prudes about sex. There is a time and place to talk about it of course, but we Christians have often acted like we cannot say anything about it. The reality is the non-Christian world has a message about sex just as much as we do and if we do not share our message, then a questioning world will only get one message and it is a message they will be quite eager to hear and obey.

If anything, we should be leading the world in this just as we should in environmentalism. I am not saying we go to results alone, but if the message is true from Christ, the results should be good. If we are the ones that uphold sex as the good gift of the creator, then we should be the ones who treasure and value it the most and treat it as the sacred activity that it really is. We often can watch TV and movies thinking the world is really getting in some exciting sex. Would that they heard about what goes on in our marriages and thought “Dang. The Christians really know how to get the most out of sex.”

If the body is good, then what is done with the body in marriage is also good when done rightly. (No. I am not talking about technique here, although I am not objecting to that) Keep in mind however that this requires more than just the physical aspect of sex. It has been said that sex begins in the kitchen. What this means is that a marriage that enjoys God’s gift of sex should be shown in all aspects of that marriage. It should be the case that the husband is seeking to love and honor the wife in all ways and the wife is seeking to honor and respect the husband in all ways. (Men appreciate more the language of respect than love. Vice-versa for women)

We dare not have the idea that we are just to have sex and not worry about everything else. Being a faithful spouse as has been said is more than just something that happens in one room of the house. It’s more than just something that happens in the house. Being a good spouse is something that takes place wherever one is and no matter how far away the other person might be at the time. If I, for instance, am one day speaking at a conference while my wife is home for some reason, and though I cannot call her or receive a call from her at the time, I am still to be a good spouse just as she is to be to me.

For those of us today who are concerned about defending true marriage and seeing what the world has done to it, let me say as I’ve said several times before, that if we complain about the way the world is treating marriage, I firmly believe it is because the church led the way. We dropped our guard and made our own justifications and what a shock that the world around us followed suit. (For those who wonder about how the new atheists abandoned rationality as another example, it is also because the church abandoned its intellectual grounds first)

Perhaps the world will treat marriage more seriously when the church does the same thing?

For now, celebrate sex as if the body matters, because it does, and your body and the body of your spouse are good things. Both of you will enjoy resurrected life together some day. You might as well enjoy your life together right now!

In Christ,
Nick Peters