The God-Charged World | SL 3.5 (February 2022)
In this newsletter
- The God-Charged World
- Work & Ministry Update
- God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins
- How to be Holy in Christ (Part 1): Does the Old Testament Law Still Apply to Christians?
- Pray With Us
You can always read this newsletter in your browser.
Greenland, photographed by Joël Tettamanti (photos from Aesthetica Magazine)
The God-Charged World
Winter has been largely clear and cold in Durham this year—a bright blessing. We've still not been out as much, but the crisp sun and blue skies have been daily an encouragement and reminder of God's presence. We all had COVID last week—very mild, but definitely COVID. Seemed like about half of Durham had it. In a way this too is a blessing, that we made it this far into the pandemic before we got sick. Of all the COVIDs, Omicron is the one I like best.
Last week I finished the new biography of Eugene Peterson by Winn Collier. It was a lovely read, although perhaps a little thin and uncritical at times. Eugene definitely emerges as a saint and you cannot help but be drawn to him. Collier is intent not to make him perfect, though, and there are honest moments of speaking to his struggles. Still, overall, the point is to commend and celebrate Peterson's life, ministry, and legacy.
One idea from the book that I'll keep with me is the deep sense that the real world is not the world we see around us, the world that we think we are living and moving in, but instead a deeper world that is formed by God's word and the movement of the Trinity. People who visited Peterson in his later years at his home on Flathead Lake in Montana often reflected that it felt like they were in the presence of a saint. What they were feeling was this quality of living into God's world, this deeper world, that Peterson exuded. Although it might sound detached from reality, when you were with Peterson in God's presence you could tell you were in a deeper reality, a reality where God's presence and his word formed your experience.
A story from earlier in the book first bottled this for me. Jim Dresher was a successful business man who had an on-again, off-again relationship with Eugene's church in the 1980s. More devoted to building his business than to his relationship with God, he was intermittent in worship. He went through a divorce, fell away, and eventually found himself back in Eugene's office for regular meetings.
"Eugene looked through biblical glasses," Jim remembered. "It was as if Eugene would say, Here, look through my lens and see what I see. He'd convert my story into a biblical story, into a more loving and forgiving perspective. I would sit in his study and say, 'This is the world and culture I live in.' And Eugene would say, 'That's actually not the world you live in. You live in a world of faith and Christ.' Eugene was a conduit between me and Christ. Eugene centered my life. He changed me life" (Collier 2021, 156).
It is a noble goal to try to live into this reality. I want to meditate more on how to foster this attitude in my own heart and the world.
You might get a kick out of this short, well-produced video of Bono (famously a fan of Eugene Peterson/The Message) visiting Eugene at his home in 2014. They discuss the Psalms. The video includes the now legendary story of Bono reaching out to Eugene for a meeting because he loved The Message so much. Eugene turned down the invite to hit a writing deadline, saying, "Who's Bono?"
Here's a few things I've been listening to:
J. S. Bach's Cello Suits are high on my list of best music ever written and this album of recomposed cello suits by Peter Gregson is gorgeous and fresh. I've been listening to it on eternal repeat while researching and writing the last month or so.
Finally, I've discovered a new band (this never happens anymore!). The Staves are three sisters from Watford (suburb of London), who write folksy soft rock songs and sing in perfect three-part harmonies (think Simon & Garfunkel). Their Tiny Desk (Home) Concert is a charming intro. And The Staves' album, "Good Woman," has been steady growing on me. Maybe I am just partial to bands of three sisters.
Greenland, photographed by Joël Tettamanti (photos from Aesthetica Magazine)
You are Strengthening the Global Church by Training Pastors to be Faithful to Scripture
- I'm committed to three teaching trips with Training Leaders International so far this year: Moldova in April, the Dominican Republic in June, and Ethiopia in September (in partnership with William Tennent School of Theology). All three of these locations will have me in on the ground floor of new site launches. Exciting to see things moving again.
- Last Tuesday I presented a paper, "Will the Real Agur Please Stand Up? Construing Tone, Voice, and Theology in Prov 30:1–5," In the Durham Old Testament Research Seminar. This was a portion of my penultimate chapter which I am working to finish up over the next two weeks. Still a long way to go before May/June, but it's coming together.
- Meghan and I have both been getting involved in student ministry at our church here in Durham. For the most part this has just been showing up and getting to know some of the kids, but we have a few "adopted" students as well and are looking for more significant ways to engage, especially as the dissertation winds down. We're very excited about this—its a dynamic student ministry with as many as 220 university students turning out for Thursday night Bible studies and Sunday night worship. Some say it could be the largest evangelical student ministry in the UK. Pray for this work. I'm looking forward to preaching in the student service on Mar 13th.
Thank you. Your prayers and support empower everything we do.
God's Grandeur
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889), photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images from Poetryfoundation.org
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Greenland, photographed by Joël Tettamanti (photos from Aesthetica Magazine)
How to be Holy in Christ (Part 1): Does the Old Testament Law Still Apply to Christians?
(Part IX in The Theology of the Pentateuch)
All the way back in October I gave you the first part of a two-part series on Leviticus. Here's the long-awaited follow up in which we think about what Holiness in Leviticus means for us in Christ. We'll conclude the mini-series next time.
Jesus Upholds the Law
As Christians, most of us feel at some liberty to disregard Old Testament laws that seem restrictive or strange. After all, it's the Old Testament. But, if that is our approach, there are more than a few passages in the New Testament that should make us uncomfortable.
Rom 3:31
Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
Matt 5:17–20
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Of course, there are other New Testament texts that seem to diminish the importance of the law, for example, Gal 3:24–25: “The law was our guardian until Christ came. . . . But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.” How do we hold these things together? What does it mean that the law is “upheld,” that Jesus “fulfills” it, and that we are not “under a guardian”? These questions are far too big to deal with here, but I hope I can sketch out a helpful framework for thinking about the law as Christians.
Jesus Reframes the Law
First, we need to let Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount change our perspective. I’ve come to understand Jesus’s statement about the righteousness of the Pharisees differently recently (thanks to Jonathan Pennington's excellent book The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing). Matthew 5:20 is often presented as if there is, at least theoretically, a legalistic path to salvation. A path where you are even more perfect than the Pharisees and therefore earn God’s favor (but they were "perfect," Phil 3:6!). But what Jesus is saying is more subversive and counter-cultural. He is actually undercutting the Pharisees’s righteousness. He’s saying that the Pharisees are not in fact righteous at all—you think those guys with their fixation on external law-keeping are righteous!? Look, you’re gonna have to be more righteous than that if you want to find the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus goes on to unpack the heart-deep significance of the Law (Matt 7:21–23). In Matthew 5, for example, Jesus walks through representative commands and emphasizes their ongoing relevance by drawing out their true significance. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt 5:27–28). I used to think that Jesus was intensifying these laws—raising the bar on law keeping so that even the Pharisees can’t keep them all—but I don’t really think that is quite right. Rather, I think that Jesus is diving to the heart of the law and showing that the Pharisaical understanding just misses the point to begin with. It's always been about whole-hearted devotion to God (Deut 6:4–5).
When you think of the Law of Moses, do you understand it as 613 itemized, legally binding commands? Or do you understand the law as an organic whole that is communicating God, his character, and how to live with him? Jesus is not presenting a new law, i.e., “the law of Christ” as opposed to “the law of Moses.” But rather he is presenting a new interpretation of the law, i.e., the law of Christ as opposed to the law as understood by the scribes and Pharisees (Matt 23:23–24; 15:1–20).
According to Jesus’s interpretation, the Old Testament law was never meant to be a legalistic system, but rather heart-deep holiness and holistic law-keeping has always been required of God’s people.
Jesus Fulfills the Law
Second, we need to understand that Jesus hasn’t just reframed our understanding of the law—he lived it and accomplished its purpose in his life and death so that whole-hearted law keeping is unlocked for us in the Spirit (Gal 3:1–14). Through Christ’s work in his active obedience (sinless life) and passive obedience (innocent death) both the moral and ceremonial aspects of the law are fulfilled in the sense that they achieved their eschatological telos, their typological goal (Gal 3:23–4:7). Christ embodied the law. The law stands completed. It's like a diploma hanging on a wall, none of the requirements of that degree go away but none of them apply because all have been fulfilled. The degree stands completed and we are the honorary recipients. We all get to hang the diploma on our wall by faith, all its requirements having been accomplished for us by Christ.
So, with our perspective on the law changed and the benefits of the law unlocked by Christ, we can ask three questions when we read Scripture to help us live into the world of God's law.
- How does this law teach me about God and myself?
- How has Christ fulfilled this law?
- How might I live in Christ’s fulfillment?
Because the law has been accomplished by Christ, all of its commands and accomplishments are filtered through him. To draw on another analogy, Jesus is like a unique prism that the light of the law passes through on its way to our hearts. Everything gets refracted by Christ. Some of the light gets absorbed and its trajectory radically altered as it passes through the prism. The sacrificial laws, for example, stand completed “once and for all” as the author of Hebrews puts it (Heb 10:5–14). The light they shine on us comes in at a totally different angle and perhaps even in a different shade.
Other beams of light hit the prism and pass though to us on a more-or-less straight trajectory. The so-called moral laws (e.g., the Ten Commandments) are the prime example here. “Thou shalt not lie” still means don’t tell lies. God is characterized by perfect trustworthiness and we reflect his nature in Christ (Eph 4:25).
But other laws get refracted in substantial and perhaps unexpected ways. My favorite example here is where Paul takes the law about muzzling the ox when it is treading out the grain and applies the principle of the law to ministers who make their living by the gospel (1 Cor 9:8–12; cf. Deut 25:4). Does this law still “apply”? Of course, but its significance is far greater than good animal husbandry—although it is certainly not less than this. Instead, the law about oxen shows us something about God’s benevolent character to care for his servants and in Christ we reflect his character.
God's law creates a perspective on the world that frames all of life in light of his character. Jesus upholds the law; it all still applies because it teaches us about God and points toward the work of Christ. Christ doesn't change the heart of God's law at all, but its expression often changes in light of his work. Our task is to join Christ in the Spirit by living out this whole-hearted devotion to God.
In my next newsletter, I’ll give an example of how to think through these three interpretive questions with some particularly “irrelevant” Old Testament laws from Leviticus 19. Stay tuned!
LORD, we thank you that you shape our world through your word. Give us eyes to see the world charged with your grandeur. May this vision of whole-hearted life in you transform our perspective so that we might live the law, not as a set of rules but as a dynamic reflection of your presence.
Greenland, photographed by Joël Tettamanti (photos from Aesthetica Magazine)
Pray With Us
- Pray for wisdom as we continue to make plans for the year—the broad shape is there, but much is up in the air. Pray the LORD would give us energy and help us pick the right things to invest in.
- Pray for these three new sites/opportunities to teach at the launch of new cohorts with Training Leaders International. May the logistics work smoothly and the right students turn up. Again, I just want the LORD to make our efforts fruitful in ways we won't even know.
- Pray for student ministry at ChristChurch Durham. There are huge opportunities here and also some major challenges. May the LORD use Meghan and I in effective ways beyond what we even know.
- Pray for health and energy. We continue to feel clobbered by illness, lack of sleep, etc., like we're operating at maybe 65% capacity. We just want to feel like we have some strength and energy and can just do things.
- Pray for my efforts to finish the dissertation by May/June—still feels like more than I know how to accomplish, at least in that time frame.
Notes:
-
Collier, Winn. 2021. A Burning in my Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene Peterson. Bletchley, UK: Authentic.
-
Pennington, Jonathan T. 2017. The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.