Bible

Can your theology survive a tragedy? Should terrible difficulties and irreversible losses come into your life, will your theology – your understanding of God – be able to withstand the existential reality of suffering and pain? Even grow stronger and fuller? Or will you abandon God, or perhaps be forced to “reinvent” God because the theology you held to previously could not now withstand the present adversity. 

Rabbi Harold Kushner is an example of the latter, one who reinvented God because of tragic suffering.  The author of the popular book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Kushner had a son who suffered a rare disease which caused him to rapidly age, dying in his teenage years with the body of an old man. Kushner surmised that while God was indeed good, he lacked the power to prevent bad things. He wants to help us but can’t. He thus concluded: “There are some things God does not control…Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect?… Can you learn to love and forgive him despite His limitations?” In another place, Kushner writes, “faced with evil, God has his powerlessness as his excuse. He aims, intends, seeks, works and ‘tries his best’ to overcome evil: rather than blame, he deserves sympathy, even pity.” Quite obviously, Kushner’s theology could not survive a tragedy.

Another leading Jewish theologian, Richard Rubenstein, has argued that in a post-Holocaust era, Jews can no longer believe in an omnipotent, omni-benevolent Creator. Rubenstein’s theology could not survive the unforgettable tragedy of the Holocaust. And while his view does not represent the views all post-Holocaust Jewish theologians, his reinvention of God as less than all-powerful and all-good certainly fits well with the majority viewpoint.  Similar examples could be provided from Christian theologians, many of whom, on the basis of the so-called “problem of evil,” have likewise abandoned resolute belief in the classical divine attributes, such as God’s omnipotence and/or omnibenevolence. 

A few years ago, an influential evangelical pastor in Texas publicly declared that “he is sick of sermons.” He wrote a book about his growing impatience with the preaching of the word of God, a book which receiving glowing endorsements from many fellow prominent evangelicals. “The gospel is being Jesus to the people you meet.” No, the gospel is the good news that Jesus died for our sins and was raised again on the third day. Or worse, “You are the gospel.” Sorry, pastor, I am not the good news that others need to hear and respond to. I am called to be a herald of the gospel, but I am not the gospel, emphatically. Rather:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand,  and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,  that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,  and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

1 Corinthians 15:1-5 (emphasis mine)

Contrast the counsel of one endorser of the book who urged the readers to “stop talking about your faith. Start living what you believe” with the apostles Peter and John:

Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”

Acts 4:19-20 (emphasis mine)

Or another cheerleader pastor who thus endorsed the book as being “for anyone who is tired of talking about and hearing about God and wants to really experience God.” One wonders what the people of Pisidia would say instead. Well, we don’t have to wonder:

As they went out, the people begged that these things might be told them the next Sabbath.

Acts 13:42

Regardless of any good intentions, this book and those who heartily endorsed it are tragically misguided, and the church suffers for their failure to be careful watchmen on the wall. Even a cursory reading of church history would easily demonstrate that the church has thrived only when and where the proclamation of the word of God has been rightly prioritized. The church will not grow into Christ because I go around saying “I am the gospel.” As a whole, the evangelical church is a train wreck of superficiality. Look no further for the number one reason than our pitiful neglect of the living word of God, that word which Peter urges us to long for like a baby longs for milk. From 1 Peter 1:22 – 2:3 we find four convictions we must affirm about the Word of God, convictions that are indispensable to the life and health of the church. In this post we will look at just the first of those four convictions.

The Word of God is Truth

having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth…

1 Peter 1:22

It is not hard to understand what truth is, even if we have to work harder to know what is true. Truth is “that which corresponds to reality.” In fact, any attempt to deny that statement is self-refuting. But as George Orwell famously observed, “We have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” It is the sense of “corresponding with reality” that we stand upon the axiom that the word of God is true in all it affirms.

One serious problem with American Christianity is the impatience we have with any abstract theological or philosophical reasoning about the faith. We crave only the “immediately applicable.” We just want someone to tell us “how to do this, how to do that” and we don’t really want to think too deeply about anything, least of all the Triunity of God, the Person of Christ or the Holy Spirit, the mysteries of the faith, or essential doctrinal concerns. We are intellectually lazy, and if we could, we would skip right over the first three chapters of Ephesians in which Paul lays down the doctrine of salvation, and jump right to the last three chapters, which Paul draws out the practical implications of those doctrines. We are addicted to pragmatism in the church, but there’s no point in knowing “what works” if we don’t even know what’s true. The two are not always the same.

The Bible testifies internally to its own truth. This is not necessarily circular reasoning as some have charged. We’re not simply saying “The Bible is true because it says so.” After all, we wouldn’t accept that argument for the Book of Mormon or the Q’uran or the Bhagavad Gita. In addition to a mountain of external evidence testifying to the truthfulness of the Scriptures, the internal witness is crucial because the Bible is not just one book but (depending on who’s doing the counting) sixty-six books written by forty different authors on three continents over a period of 1500 years, bound together in one volume. But even setting that aside for the present purposes, just as a murder suspect is allowed to testify to his own innocence in a court of law, the Bible is allowed to testify to its own character.

“O Lord God, you are God, and your words are true.” (2 Sam. 7:28)

“The sum of your word is truth.” (Ps. 119:160)

“Every word of God proves true.” (Prov. 30:5)

“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17)

Furthermore, we affirm that the Bible is in fact the word of God, not merely the word of man (though it is that as well). Thus, what the Bible says, God says. The chart below is a comparison of verses from the Old and New Testaments in which God is the designated speaker in one reference, and the Scripture in the other, indicating that God and the Scriptures speak as one. What God says, the Bible says:

If we fail to prioritize the word of God in the congregation of God’s people, then we will deprive ourselves of the ability to hear from God, for God speaks primarily through His written word. God is true, and therefore every word of His is true. And Peter tells that it is through obedience to the truth, which he identifies as the word of God, that we purify our souls. The urgency of emphasizing the Scriptures in our individual and corporate lives as those who have been born again by that very living and abiding word of God can hardly be overemphasized.

The book referenced above is Be the Message by Kerry Shook. My commentary is based on the author’s interviews and personal summaries of the book’s contents, in addition to the written endorsements by others.

And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.

1 Peter 1:17

The first chapter of 1 Peter underscores several “positional” realities that the Christian enjoys. One, God has caused us to be born again to a living hope. Two, we have an inheritance guarded by omnipotence. three, though tested, our faith is proven to be authentic. Four, we were literally gifted salvation, something that is the envy of the prophets and the angels. The fifth comes from the present verse, and is a startling reality: because of election, we call Almighty God our “Father.” These positional realities call for a practical response on our part, and that is to what we are exhorted in 1:17: “live throughout the time of our exile in the fear of the Lord.”

Fear is not some leftover vestige from the Old Covenant, but the studied conduct of the wise, the Christian who knows that while God’s revelation is progressive, He Himself is unchanged and unchangeable. He is the eternal, immutable, and infinite holy God. No wonder sinners are condemned when it says of them that “there is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom. 3:18).

We are to approach God with neither a casual familiar nor with a cowering fright. The former does not describe true faith and the latter does not describe true fear. Those who walk in cowering fright do so out of neglect of Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Those who walk in casual familiarity neglect 1 Peter 1:17. The Father’s election is by unmerited favor, but His judgment is without favoritism. A healthy fear of God’s categorical, penetrating, incorruptible, and definitive judgment of our lives should be basic to us as the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 1:7).

Neither carelessness nor indifference becomes those who, through infinite grace, are privileged to call God, Father, but reverent fear, lest we grieve His heart and reflect discredit upon His name.

H. A. Ironside

Further informing the wisdom of humble reverence toward God (“fear”) is the realization of the price that was paid for our redemption. That is Peter’s very point in the next two verses:

knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

1 Peter 1:18-19

Peter speaks of the Christian’s “inherited futility.” For the Jews among his readership, that might be Pharasaic Judaism. For the Gentiles, pagan idolatry. Both are futile. Neither self-appointed nor false religion provides us with the slightest merit before God (Col. 1:20-23). Religion without Christ is not man’s sincere attempt to do his very best to seek and find God. On the contrary, manmade religion is a flight from God resulting from the willful suppression of what we know to be true (Romans 1:18ff).

We were, however, ransomed from these futile ways. And not by a bag of gold or silver coins, but with the innocent blood of Jesus, the Son foreknown by the Father (1:20a) but “made manifest in the last times for [our] sake” (1:20b). Note that Jesus was “made manifest” or as Jesus said of Himself repeatedly in the Gospel of John, He was “sent” (see also Gal. 4:4). That is, the existence of the Son of God did not begin with the incarnation. True, the incarnation is the moment in which the Son of God (permanently) took on a human nature. But the Divine Son of God, the Word who existed at the beginning, has no beginning Himself. So he was “made manifest” for our sake, to redeem us from our futile way of life, the broad road leading to our everlasting destruction, and so that He may now be known by us.

Godly fear is not some “mere” Old Testament reality. It is the considered wisdom of the one who takes the time to soberly and carefully consider the grace and mercy of God in Christ on us perishing sinners, what Hebrews calls “so great a salvation.” To God be the glory, great things He hath done!