“The trumpeters and singers joined together to praise and thank the LORD with one voice. They raised their voices, accompanied by trumpets, cymbals, and musical instruments, in praise to the LORD: ‘For he is good; his faithful love endures forever.’”

2 Chronicles 5:13 (CSB)

Today, Christian unity feels as fragile as ever… until we sing.

I just returned from Sing! 2021, the Getty’s annual Christian music conference in Nashville, and am grateful for the three days of singing, studying, and fellowship I enjoyed with my brothers and sisters there. I’m writing this post because I don’t want a profound dynamic of this conference to be passed by without mention. It’s a truth we need to hear. Specifically, I want to encourage you as you head to church this Sunday to remember this repeated refrain from the conference this week. Here it is:

Singing together about Christ strengthens our unity in Christ.

Or, put another way, the Christians that sing together stay together.

Or, put in an even broader way, singing strengthens harmony.

If you’ve not been to a Sing! Conference before, it’s like a multi-day concert interspersed with preaching, interviews, and a handful of new songs from the Getty Music team. Along with lots of singing led by Keith, Kristyn, and their long-time band members, the conference features frequent appearances from Matt Papa, Matt Boswell, Matt Merker, Jordan Kauflin, and other collaborating hymn writers. The conference is aimed at equipping music leaders and pastors for their ministry while also debuting some of the Getty’s newest hymns.

This year, Keith and Kristyn Getty used the conference to emphasize how singing strengthens unity. Let me point out a few:

• The plenary sessions feature special guests from all over evangelicalism, from preachers to seminary presidents to hip-hop artists to astronauts to cellists to radio hosts to visual artists and on and on. In one night, the Getty’s shared the stage with Christ Tomlin, Bill Gaither, Sandra McCracken, David Platt, and Trillia Newbell. The Getty’s broad scope of friendships themselves say something about singing and Christian unity.
• Almost all the speakers this year made a point to deal directly with division in the Church, applying the truths of the gospel to our strained ecclesial moment. Though they disagree in plenty of areas, they are powerfully about the gospel truths that they sang together those three days.
• Jeremy Begbie, a Duke University professor and musician, spoke precisely about the uniting power of singing. Referencing a harmonious multiethnic orchestra with members from warring countries, Begbie observed that “you can no longer demonize someone you’ve just been playing [music] with.” Begbie went on to discuss how chords themselves can be an apt metaphor for diversity in unity, calling the church’s singing “the sonic unity of the body of Christ.”
• The Getty’s introduced a new gospel-style hymn all about Christian unity. Without stealing their thunder before its release, note the lyrics in the bridge: “Look at what the Lord has done/Now we love with the love of Jesus/Look at what the Lord has done/Made us one by the blood of Jesus.”

You get the idea: this song-filled conference was also filled with calls to unity, and the intersection of those two things is no accident. As H. B. Charles put it in the first session, speaking about 1 Peter 2 and the Church, “Living stones aren’t loose stones… they’re singing stones.”

Isn’t it interesting that when Israel came together to worship God at the dedication of the temple, the chronicler notes that “the trumpeters and singers joined together to praise and thank the LORD with one voice.” Multiple singers, multiple instruments, multiple notes, and yet one voice. What a beautiful picture of the unified worship of God’s people, an image that was recaptured in part by the conference this week. When God’s people sing together, we stay unified together.

Now, to be clear, our unity as Christians only and ever comes from our supernatural union with Christ. Jesus alone has the power to unite and sustain the unity of his Church. However, we are commanded by Paul to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace” (Eph. 4:3). And it’s only one chapter later that he tells us that to be filled with the Spirit looks like “addressing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” (Eph. 5:19). Therefore, Paul seems to be saying that one of the ways the unity of the body of Christ is strengthened is by singing truth together. Music has a powerful ability to melt our hard hearts and bring us together in four-part harmony.

So, when you go to church this Sunday, and you open your mouth to sing the same words in the same chords at the same time as the people around you, praise God for the ways he keeps his people together. Look to your left, look to your right, and bless the Lord for his marvelous gift of melody, meter, and truth that can point us to the most profound similarity anyone can have with another: to be together in Christ.

Martin Luther loved music for many reasons, especially its unifying power. On that note, I’ll let Luther have the last word.

“When man’s natural ability is whetted and polished to the extent that it becomes an art, then do we note with great surprise the great and perfect wisdom of God in music, which is, after all, His product and His gift; we marvel when we hear music in which one voice sings a simple melody, while three, four, or five other voices play and trip lustily around the voice that sings its simple melody and adorn this simple melody wonderfully with artistic musical effects, thus reminding us of a heavenly dance where all meet in a spirit of friendliness, caress, and embrace.”

Luther, “Preface to Georg Rhau’s Symphoniae iucundae,” LW 53

Have you ever gone home after a long time out, looked in the mirror and found that you had something in your teeth?

I once came home after a full day out and found something green in my teeth. Immediately I began thinking about all my so-called friends who had to have seen this forest growing in my mouth and said nothing!

I mean the “friend” I had lunch with who was a witness to the catastrophe happening decided that he was more embarrassed to tell me I had a forest growing between my teeth than for me to have the forest in my teeth for the rest of the day!

All jokes aside this is the feeling I get when someone tells me that they’re afraid or embarrassed to share the Gospel!

You’re not the one with the problem! You’re the one with the solution to the problem!

A simple reading of scripture will show you just how “shameful” the condition of the unbeliever is. 

Ephesians 2:1-3 describes a group of dead men who are making their way towards hell.

2 Timothy 2:26 describes people who are out of their senses, and like a dog on a leash being carried around by the Devil himself!

And we look at people who are in this terrible condition and we are the ones who act embarrassed! Obviously, Paul doesn’t point this out to us for mocking purposes, rather he does so to elicit compassion in our hearts. But it is remarkable that we can know this is their spiritual condition and yet, look at them and talk to them with shame in our hearts.

I think that 2 Timothy 2:25 and Romans 1:18 are sister verses. Obviously, they are written by the same person. But it is notable to me how they are perfect mirrors of each other. Because they both explain in slightly different terms the reason why people will not believe the Gospel. 

2 Timothy 2:25 tells us what people are missing. Right before telling us that they are controlled by the devil as we saw earlier in verse 26, It says, 

…if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.

In other words, Paul says that the evangelist shares the Gospel, with the hope that God would grant the listener repentance. Then the repentant sinner will come to the knowledge of the truth. It’s not truth first then repentance. It’s not convincing evidence that God exists then repentance. It is God granting the person new eyes to see the horror of their sin and then they will believe the truth. 

Paul says to Timothy that in order to become a Christian a person needs God to grant them repentance.

The reason they will not believe, the reason that they are “out of their senses” and in the grip of the devil (2 Tim. 2:26) is that they love their sin and won’t repent.

Romans 1:18 similarly tells us that unbelievers know that God exists but suppress the truth in unrighteousness. 

Sin is the reason they are unwilling and unable to recognize the clear existence of God. They are “out of their senses” because of how intoxicating sin is for them. 

This is a shocking situation. But sadly, we forget just how terrible their situation is. We get caught up in life, moving from meeting to meeting, from sports practice to sports practice, crossing paths with folks all around us, who are “out of their senses” and on the “leash of the devil” and we are too embarrassed to let them know how they can be saved. 

I say it again, we don’t mock. If anything, we cry. But we must not live life as if this is not the situation we find ourselves in. We are surrounded by people who are under the wrath of God. Who are on the precipice of hell. And the reason that they are is because they desperately love their sin and do not want to give it up. 

It is silly then, or even better, it is blindingly asinine for the believer to be the one who is ashamed. I don’t mean to offend you. But it is time to for us to really ask ourselves what we believe. Do we believe what the Bible says about the condition of the people around us?

A clear understanding of this will lead us to humility and not pride. Humility because not only were we in the same condition that they are currently in, but because we recognize that it is God is His rich mercy that grants Repentance (2 Tim. 2:25). We would not believe if it weren’t for God’s mercy to open our eyes, either directly through his word, or through some faithful preacher who unashamedly declared the truth to us. 

The next time you see someone with something in their teeth put yourself in their shoes, let them know there’s a forest growing there. More importantly the next time you are tempted to selfishly be ashamed of the Gospel, picture the unbeliever the way the Bible presents them, as the ones who are under the wrath of God and who are the only ones who should be ashamed, and gently and with humility warn them about their condition without any shame.

Last week, we looked at five ways to tackle regaining and retaining lost Greek. One of the options was to try the living language approach. A “dead” language is one that is read and studied but no longer spoken. Latin is probably the most widely known dead language. Koinē Greek is a close second.

But all that is changing. There are those who believe it’s time for the resurrection of this formerly dead language. This is the living language approach, where students are encouraged to speak and think in Greek. In the words of Miracle Max in The Princess Bride, it’s only mostly dead.

Which is better, to study a fossil of a dinosaur, or an actual, living, breathing dinosaur? Well, languages were never meant to be only analyzed and dissected; they are living and dynamic. Until they aren’t.

Once a language morphs to a point that no one speaks it, it dies. I studied Chaucer and Shakespeare in college.

When I watched Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet (the Leonardo DiCaprio & Clare Danes movie), I was pleasantly surprised that I could fully understand what they were saying. I could understand and perhaps mimic speaking Elizabethan English, but not have a conversation fluently.

But there is a reason there are no Chaucer plays or movies (A Knight’s Tale with Heath Ledger, is done in modern English for obvious reasons). I could read Chaucer, and understand only some of what was being read aloud in class, but I could never speak it.

Koinē is to Modern Greek what Chaucer is to English.

Thousands of people read the New Testament in Greek, and maybe even the Apostolic Fathers and the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament), but there hasn’t been much need or interest in speaking Koinē. And yet, our brains are wired to listen to and speak in a language, so it follows that if a person tries to speak it, naturally it will be easier to read it and understand what’s written. This is the point of the living language approach. The problem is that since no one has spoken Koinē for centuries, no one knows exactly how it was pronounced. But do you think that would stop a determined Greek nerd? Not on your life…

There are three main schools of pronunciation of Koinē Greek: Erasmian, Modern, and Reconstructed.

1. Erasmian.

This pronunciation is attributed to Desiderius Erasmus, a Renaissance scholar who described it in 1528. That was 1300 years or so after anyone actually spoke the language. Erasmus knew this is not how Greek ever sounded, but it made for a very effective way to teach students to pronounce it. Each letter and each letter combination has a distinct sound, so when a word is read aloud, everyone in the classroom could write it down correctly. If you learned Greek at seminary, this is the pronunciation you were taught.

The two advantages of this system: it’s easy to learn, and almost everyone who knows Greek knows this pronunciation. It’s like American English compared with South African English. Since we all learned American English from TV and movies, South Africans and Australians and New Zealanders all know how to put on an American accent, but most Americans can’t fake a South African accent (though the best job I’ve heard was Leonardo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond).

The objection to the Erasmian system is: we know it’s definitely wrong! It’s like pronouncing the Tetragrammaton as “Jehovah.” Of all the possible vowel pointing options, we know that Jehovah is definitely the wrong one, since it is based on the pointing of Adonai, used by Jews to avoid pronouncing the ineffable name.

As one feisty opponent of this system said,

People say that they use and teach with the Erasmian pronunciation because its easier for students for learning vocabulary, spelling, and what not.

What if Biology professors decided to start teaching their students that whales were fish because it would be easier for students to remember?

Why does Greek succumb to such cop outs for the sake of their students when no other discipline or field of study would accept such a thing?

2. Modern.

As the name suggests, this is when we use the Modern Greek pronunciation applied to Koinē. Since there are millions of people who speak modern Greek, and the pronunciation is easily learned, we can just apply this to ancient Greek, as they use the same letters and many of the same words. The advantage of this is that the language sounds good, is easy to find resources to learn, and makes speaking more attainable.

The downside is that modern Greek has lost the nuance of diphthongs and letter combinations in such a way that makes it difficult to distinguish between various sounds. Many of the letter combinations are pronounced “ee” and “oo” so words start sounding like other words and you need to know the context really well and be pretty well-acquainted with the language to make sense of what is being said.

Personally, I don’t think that objection is a reason to reject this system. The better reason is that very, very few people use this pronunciation for Koinē since it is not taught in seminaries.

I really hope that changes. It would be great if we all spoke the same way, and this is the easiest of the pronunciations (though it is harder to learn Greek at first with it). The same objection can be made for Modern as was made for Erasmian: we know the Greeks in the New Testament did not speak this way.

A.T. Robertson, the godfather of Greek grammarians said,

Few even among professional scholars are aware how small the difference is between the Greek of the N.T. and a contemporary Athenian newspaper.

We should concede that real Koinē certainly sounded closer to Modern than it did to Erasmian.

Which brings us to a very interesting approach…

3. Reconstructed.

This is a more sophisticated and nuanced approach to pronunciation. The leader in this field is undoubtedly Randall Buth. Those who have embraced this idea closely examine manuscripts from the time period when Koinē was spoken (roughly 300 BC to 300 AD) to sniff out spelling errors. This clever technique reveals what different letter combinations sounded like.

Here’s an example in English. Imagine I was dictating to a room full of scribes, and I read out loud, “Please tell me there were no fleas in the cheese.” If some (but not all) of the scribes wrote “Pleez tell mee their were no flease in the cheese,” we could construe that “me” is pronounced “mee” and that “there” and “their” sounded the same, and the “ee” and “ea” letter combination sounded the same, and the “s” and “z” sounded the same in certain conditions, then future scholars could “reconstruct” the pronunciation of these words if English ever ended up a dead language.

Erasmus would say we should pronounce “please” as “plee-as” while we know it actually sounds like “pleeze.”

So, the reconstructed Greek is likely the closest we can get to how it actually sounded back in the day. The downside is that very, very, very few people use this system. If one is going to catch on to replace Erasmian’s dominance, it will probably be the Modern, not the Reconstructed.

It’s times like these I wish there was a Protestant Pope who could declare: “We are all switching to Reconstructed Greek.” Then the debate would die down and we could all get on the same page. On the other hand, being Protestants we would probably react to a Pope by doing the opposite. So there is really no hope of consensus until we all arrive in Heaven and know how to say “worth is the Lamb” in perfect unison. Or perhaps even then “every tribe tongue and nation” means that every camp of Koinē speakers will have its own pronunciation represented.

I recently heard Pastor Tom Joyce (whom I serve with at Immanuel) describe being in the Pentagon on 9/11 when the plane hit the building. He was evacuated and funneled down a powerless escalator out of the structure. On his way out, he could hear people shouting for help from inside the fire, begging somebody to save them.

The fire was too hot for anybody to go in and actually try a rescue—except for the first responders, who were able to save most. But the pleas of people needing rescue have stayed in the minds of those who have heard it ever since.

Today marks the 20^th anniversary of the attack. I was struck by Tom saying that to mark this anniversary, he doesn’t want to surrender this day to the terrorists. Instead, he reminds himself that in this world he is still surrounded by those who need rescuing. They are lost, and they need somebody to come and show them how to escape the judgement that awaits them.

Only unlike 20 years ago, as believers we have the knowledge to withstand the flames and bring the rescue to those who cry out.

This year, as you commemorate September 11, let it provoke you to seize the moment for evangelism. Don’t let your neighbors or co-worker’s cries for help be in vain—if you know the gospel, you can bring the rescue to those who need it.

I first started listening to hip hop music in the late 80s. If there’s one thing that characterized the hip hop I listened to from then through the 90s, it was filled with musically gifted, but lyrically vile, musicians. For that reason, I’m grateful for brothers like Omri Miles, and his latest album, “GGCW” (Glory Gospel Church World).

Born and raised in New Orleans, Omri came to faith in Christ in 2008. Since then, he completed the Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling program at The Master’s University in 2016, became a certified biblical counselor with the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, then finished the Master of Divinity degree at The Expositors Seminary in 2020. Omri currently serves as an elder at Grace Bible Church in Tempe, Arizona. He is married and has four children. In the midst of all that, he’s been making music since 2008.

Omri’s purpose of the album is to present four pillars which support a biblical theology of missions (Glory, Gospel, Church, World). And he accomplishes that purpose. GGCW is theologically loaded. It’s impossible to take it all in after just one listen. And the theological edification is not accomplished at the sacrifice of musical skill.

The song C.H.U.R.C.H is one example. It’s a brilliant song. In each verse, Omri uses words that begin with the letter from the word “church” to feed listeners a musical ecclesiology. In that sense, it’s sort of like a Psalm 119 version of ecclesiology. Here’s an excerpt:

First C verse: Her [the church] covenant’s credible, her chaste commitment can’t change. And her concerns are consumed with something celestial. The cross created a clearly complex complexion, consisting of contrasting colors that craft connections.

R verse: A royal race, robed in regal raiment. Raised and rallied from the rest, rose then relocated. Rapidly racing, but rests in the Rock she reveres. Rescued from wrath when her royal Ruler reappears. Her Redeemer is really rather remarkable. Redeemed and released from the reaper to reach in the rawest role. Refusing to retreat, she’s restless and wrestles. Remaining to retrieve rebellious, resident rebels.

The song Instructed kicks off the album with lyrics like this:

Since the Son died, one Guide controls our substance. Not the trends, men, melanin or social justice.

Away With Words is another great and needed song today. Here’s an excerpt:

Twitter trending don’t mean He isn’t offended. Or that you’re with him on mission, He’s shown us before. First, you lower substance, then give ‘em social justice.  Without the Lord of justice, of course it’s opening doors. What you expect, fam? You’re telling the sons of the dirt their indignation is just, but not that they hate the Judge of the earth.  When, in truth, compared to that hypocrisy, nothing is worse. Add to that your habit that you think it’s cute shunning the church. Imagine me being in public without my wife, highlighting all of her flaws. You would say I’m a terrible husband. But when these rappers diss the church, we quickly applaud. See the contradiction? You trying to win ‘em and not offend ‘em…

The album is filled with so much gold, it’s hard to nail down a favorite song. Salvation Reflection is excellent. Instructed is great kick-off. The Booktable provides a chuckle. But if I had to pick one, I’d say C.H.U.R.C.H. Pastorally, it shepherds people in how I want them to think about the church. Lyrically, it’s brilliant and edifying. And musically, it features all the excellence of the hip hop genre.

As a bonus, Omri has included valuable accompanying resources to the album called “Bar for Bar.” Found here on the Wrath and Grace website, he includes a lyric and resource guide, and a few teaching videos. The lyrics guide contains lyrics for each song, as well as Scripture references for just about every line in every song. There is also an edifying, three-episode break down of the GGCW album on both the theology and artistry of the project. Think of this like a great Bible study on missiology and ecclesiology, accompanied with explanation on the musical complexity of the album. He devotes an entire episode to addressing the social justice issue. The resource guide is packed full of references to blog posts, sermons, and books on missiology, ecclesiology, and a section of resources geared to Christian Hip Hop Artists.

You can buy the album here. While there, you’ll find other helpful resources on the Wrath and Grace website, including a number of Omri’s videos. And, you can listen to the album on the Wrath and Grace app.

Praise Him with timbrel and dancing; Praise Him with stringed instruments and pipe. Praise Him with loud cymbals; Praise Him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the LORD, Praise the LORD!” (Ps. 150:4-6)

Last week I plugged the idea of an intensive, in-person, Greek review course. But I also realize not everyone has a life situation that allows for absconding from parental and career responsibilities to pursue the nerdy pleasures of language acquisition and retention.

So, for all the Greek nerds who can’t get away, here are five ways to bring the Greek review course to you…

1. The Daily Dose of Greek.

Dr Rob Plummer offers a free service that is truly invaluable for retaining Greek. It’s a 2-3 minute daily segment that gets mailed to your inbox (there’s also an app and a website, dailydoseofgreek.com) in which Dr Plummer reads a verse in Greek, translates it, and points out tidbits about the grammar and syntax to remind you of what you learned. It’s like physical therapy for an atrophied muscle. It will take longer than the immersion of a week-long course, but it can have the same ameliorating effect on your language skill. The website also has video lessons that start with the alphabet and progress through the same material as the course. If you have the discipline and determination to stay consistent, you can save the price of a ticket to Kentucky.

2. The Greek for Life book.

I found this helpful as a tool to inspire and motivate me to tackle the task to begin with. It also provides help with time management, and ideas and strategies to regain and retain what you’ve learned before. It’s not going to teach you any Greek, but it will remind you of why you want to, and how to pursue the task.

3. Take an online exegesis course.

Before I went to the in-person course, I took an 8-week online class on Exegesis of the Book of James, also with Dr Plummer (I realize I sound like a fanboy, but I don’t know of anyone else doing this). This took about a half-hour a day, and involved watching videos about the passage, and a lesson that was like an extended version of the Daily Dose method, reading assignments in commentaries, online discussion forums with other students, quizzes, and a weekly Zoom meeting with the teacher and other students. I found this class helpful with Greek, with the Book of James, and with the Lord, as Dr Plummer added a devotional element to his teaching. It made me want to preach James!

4. Join an Online Community.

Many have found Mastering New Testament Greek with Dr Darryl Burling very helpful. The bonus with Darryl is that he has that exotic Kiwi accent (the next best thing to a South African accent). MNT’s free videos are a place to whet your appetite, but for the real gold you will need to sign up for the whole system. There are various membership options that include live online instruction, weekly calls, community interaction and accountability, and much more. It comes with a ton of valuable resources and focuses on learning the vocabulary that you need for one New Testament book at a time, rather than lists of vocabulary in order of frequency in the whole New Testament. It’s an excellent approach. Membership options start at $25 per month and come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

5. Try the Living Language Approach.

Koinē Greek is technically a “dead” language, meaning it is not spoken by a community anymore. But recently the spoken language part of Koinē has received a revitalization. Biblingo offers excellent online courses that I used for a couple of months and found very effective and fun. The membership I chose was $18 per month for as many lessons as you can find time for. That is a very reasonable price for how much you get from them. It also relies on your discipline and commitment, but their methods of teaching are so engaging and effective that you want to keep learning. This method focuses on learning to understand, read, and think in Greek. If your desire is to parse and analyze Greek for exegesis, then the online course I mentioned above is a better path, but if your goal is to enjoy Greek and use it in your devotional life, then Biblingo.org is all you need.

(You should read the comment Nick Messmer of Biblingo left in the previous week’s post in answer to a commenter’s question about “schools of thought” when it comes to learning Greek, which I found insightful).

If you poke around the living language approach you will quickly encounter this question: Which pronunciation system should I use? I’ll talk about that next week.

This week Los Angeles County and the State of California both agreed to settle their lawsuit with Grace Community Church—the church pastored by John MacArthur and the home to The Master’s Seminary– and pay their legal team $800,000. This was the settlement reached as a result of the County of Los Angeles taking the church to court over COVID restrictions.

If you recall, March 2020 the State of California (along with just about every other state) declared a state of emergency as a result of COVID. That declaration allowed Governor Newsom to impose restrictions on all kinds of commerce and activities, limiting attendance and banning gatherings. However, he said that his orders were not designed to infringe upon “essential activities,” but then specifically applied them to churches.

In light of that, Grace Church closed its worship service to the public and streamed its services for eight weeks. However, Pastor MacArthur had said that he was doing that because not much information was known about COVID and it seemed appropriate to honor the government’s request for the sake of public health. However when June of 2020 rolled around, so did the George Floyd protests, which the government in California deemed “essential activities,” and exempted them from capacity restrictions.

When that happened, Grace Church opened their worship services. At first they were simply opened to law enforcement, but then the congregation returned. Then the LA County Health Department intervened, and gave the church a cease and desist letter.

It is essential—and here I use that word both carefully and ironically—to understand what the church’s position was as a result of that letter. Some have misconstrued Grace Church (and John MacArthur) as saying that it is “essential” for the church to meet indoors vs. outdoors, or that it is “essential” to not wear masks during worship. But those were never the sticking points.

The reality is that Grace Church was making a simple point—in California, the government does not have the right to regulate church worship. If they are going to say “this law applies to all but essential activities” then make a list of “essential activities,” that list better have church worship on it.  The Constitution of California is even more explicit than the US Constitution in this regard. It says, “Free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference are guaranteed.” Thus, Grace Church sued in California State Court, not in Federal Court.

Their legal case was straightforward: the government does not have the right to regulate the worship of the church.

 But there is a theological case behind that as well; obviously this is not the case made in court, but it is the case made to the church. When Jesus said, “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:22), he was teaching that the church does not need to subject their worship to the laws of the state. Money belongs to the state. Christians are to pay their taxes, even if their tax money is used for corrupt purposes. But Christians are not to give to the state to right to regulate the worship of the church. Grace spelled out their logic in a document titled “Christ, not Caesar, Is Head of the Church.”

Now, there were many Christians that disagreed with the church’s approach to this, arguing that a failure to comply with government restrictions on corporate worship was a violation of Romans 13 (I blogged on that here). But the church consistently maintained that Romans 13 compels Christian obedience to laws, but does not cede the authority to regulate church worship to the government, and that when the government claims that authority for itself, it is not necessary to comply. Or, to say it differently, Romans 13 doesn’t compel obedience to an unjust, illegal, or unconstitutional law.

Now in most countries in the world, and in fact in most countries throughout church history, orders like the ones given in the US would have driven the church underground. But in the United States, our laws say that those kind of government “health orders” are not valid if they curtail worship (or the press). But a person cannot just go around saying, “I reject that law because it conflicts with my religion.” Once the city or county or whoever declares they are going to enforce an illegal law, it falls to the person to go to court for a reprieve. This is why I don’t understand those that criticized Grace Church for going to court—that is what you are supposed to do when confronted with an unconstitutional order. It is not “disrespectful to government” (as some have said) to appeal to good government to shield you form bad government.  

Anyway, last week the State and County both agreed to pay $800,000 to the attorneys who represented the church. In a separate lawsuit with a separate church, they had already agreed not to restrict church worship again. The State has realized their actions were contrary to the State Constitution.

I have read people wrongly thinking this case was about “can you worship with a mask?” or “can you worship outside?” or “is the pandemic real?”

But this case was not about any of those things. It was not about whether or not masks work—although had they gone to trial, the county would have had to produce their evidence about masks, which they were obviously unwilling to do. This was not about worship indoors vs. outdoors. This was not a case about Romans 13, or about if singing really spreads COVID. This was not a case about “couldn’t the church have just complied and met in groups of 15 like every other compliant church in Los Angeles?” Nor was it a case about “is COVID a hoax?”

No, this case was about one simple thing—does the government have the right to regulate church worship? In much of the world, the State does claim that right for itself, which puts them at odds with Scripture. But in the US, thankfully, that is not the case. While lawyers spent a year trying to explain why protests were protected but not corporate worship, eventually even the government itself had to come to terms with the fact they had overstepped their bounds.

A final twist in the settlement—Los Angeles County is going to pay their fees from their “public health department” budget. Here is what Grace Church pastor (and former C-gate author) Mike Riccardi said on that:

“That payment is on top of the nearly $1,000,000 the county paid for their own legal representation. This is good. It 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be expensive to attack religious freedoms in violation of the protections afforded by the Constitution.

But it is also worth noting that Grace Church’s decision to defy these unconstitutional public health orders did not 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 legal 𝘵𝘰𝘥𝘢𝘺, with the announcement of this decision. This decision was simply the public 𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 that our actions have always been consistent with the supreme governing authority of our land, the U.S. Constitution. Though acting in defiance of public health orders, we were never acting illegally.

What this means is, contrary to what has been so often alleged, we were never acting in disobedience to the principles in Scripture which call for submission to governing authorities. Romans 13 cannot and does not bind the consciences of Christians to submit to unlawful governmental orders under the pretense of fidelity to lawfulness. The command to submit to lawful authority cannot and does not bind one to obey a command which that authority has no lawful authority to issue (cf. Matt 22:21). According to God’s great mercy, that principle is enshrined in our Constitution’s disallowing of the State to prohibit the free exercise of religion.

What this also means is, “Romans 13” was never, is not now, and never will be a biblical justification for churches to modify the terms or circumstances of their worship according to the dictates of civil authorities. Christ, not Caesar, is the head of the church. We’re thankful to Jesus Christ, King of all kings, for a decision that vindicates that truth.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Last week I wrote a post laying out ground rules for biblical engagement of the racial justice debate. In light of that post, today I want to apply those principles and engage with Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black, and I want to focus specifically on how his book interacts with Scripture. This is a critical review, but I hope it is done with charity and clarity.

McCaulley, a Wheaton professor and Anglican theologian, has recently risen to ecumenical prominence for his work on race and justice in a variety of formats. McCaulley’s widely read, award-winning book, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope, deals at length with the text of Scripture, and so provides a valuable opportunity to engage directly with textual arguments about race and justice. Instead of more talking about talking about justice, we can get into the brass Bible tacks of definitions and exegetical conclusions. The goal of this review is to both understand and respond to McCaulley’s interpretation of Bible texts about ethnicity and justice.

But, as a pastor, I have another objective with this review: I want to clarify for the flock of God why the main arguments in Reading While Black are, in fact, unhelpful distortions of the biblical teaching on hermeneutics, ethnicity, and justice. I intend for this review to be read as a warning. Reading While Black is not a useful resource that can help Christians understand God’s Word better. On the contrary, McCaulley frequently plays fast and loose with the intent of the biblical authors and promotes arguments not found in the pages of Holy Scripture. McCaulley teaches a skewed hermeneutic to justify misreading the text in favor of his stated agenda. I say all of this not to be unkind, of course, but to be forthright and clear. As much respect as I have for Esau as a fellow image bearer and a fellow believer, and I truly do, I don’t want others to embrace his unbiblical approach to the Bible. And that approach is where the review needs to start.

Interpreting by Demand

McCaulley names his approach “Black ecclesial interpretation” (5). This hermeneutic, in many ways, is the central argument of the book. To develop his understanding of “Black ecclesial interpretation,” McCaulley takes readers on his journey toward this interpretive method and explains the need for it today. And he starts in Chapter 1 by outlining what this interpretive grid entails.

First, we need to hear how McCaulley himself defines “Black ecclesial interpretation.” McCaulley says that this interpretive paradigm is not his invention, but an old form of “dialogue, rooted in core theological principles, between the Black experience and the Bible…” (20). It depends on McCaulley’s definition of the “Black experience” to generate unique questions to ask of the text, questions like “What about the exploitation of my people?” and “What about our suffering, our struggle?” (12). Then, he asserts, “the Scriptures also pose unique questions to us” (20). Essentially, it’s a way of reading the Bible that intentionally focuses on the cultural and social concerns of African Americans according to Esau, and certainly many others as well.

McCaulley anticipates the obvious objections. He states that “everybody has been reading the Bible from their locations, but we [black people] are honest about it” (20). This approach, he says, is just a transparent accounting for the way “social location” and in particular the “Black experience” necessarily shapes Bible interpretation. McCaulley advocates, then, “asking questions of the text that grow out of the reality of being Black in America” (20). Hence the subtitle “African American Biblical Interpretation.”

The rest of the book shows how McCaulley applies “Black ecclesial interpretation” as a framework to understand specific Bible passages. Chapter 2 looks at Romans 13:1-7 from the perspective of policing. Chapter 3 looks at Jesus’ statement in Luke 13:32 as a justification for political resistance. Chapter 4 sees Luke as “the Gospel writer for Black Christians” because of his concern about hope amidst oppression. And so on. McCaulley asks questions of the Bible that have been asked throughout African American history and arrives at his exegetical conclusions based on those questions, the historical background, and the text.

So far, I’ve attempted to summarize McCaulley’s “Black ecclesial interpretation” in such a way that he himself would agree with the representation. Now, I want to point out the deadly errors of this hermeneutic.

The biggest problem with McCaulley’s interpretive approach is that it’s not, biblically speaking, interpretation. In Luke 24:27, Jesus “interpreted to [the two on the Emmaus Road] in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” The word “interpreted” means either to translate (not the case in Luke 24) or to explain, to make understandable (BDAG, 244). To interpret a written work, then, means to accurately discover and articulate the author’s intent. The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia says it this way,

“A person has interpreted the thoughts of another when he has in his own mind a correct reproduction or photograph of the thought as it was conceived in the mind of the original writer or speaker. It is accordingly a purely reproductive process, involving no originality of thought on the part of the interpreter. If the latter adds anything of his own it is eisegesis and not exegesis.”

ISBE, 1489

So, what’s wrong with McCaulley’s “Black ecclesial interpretation?” The problem is that he’s asking the wrong questions. In fact, there’s only one right question in biblical interpretation: What did the author intend? That’s not a 21^st century question, that’s a 1^st century question. In interpretation, I don’t need the text to enter my world; I need to enter the world of the text. It’s not that we shouldn’t bring our circumstantial concerns to God and His Word. Of course we should! But that’s not part of interpretation. Maybe our honest questions are part of forming our systematic theology, certainly a part of application, or even developing a worldview. But if we let our personally pressing demands leak into the process of interpretation, then they will inevitably contaminate our exegetical conclusions. Put another way, when we come to the Bible requiring it to answer our “socially situated” concerns, we’re not looking for what God has said but what we want God to say.

Now, having heard Esau respond to these concerns in an interview, I’m aware of what he would say to my objection. McCaulley says, “That’s the reason why I talk about truth emerging in community. We need one another to balance out our inadequacies so that together we might discern the mind of Christ.” In the context of that conversation, those “inadequacies” arise from our “social situation.” So, to use McCaulley’s example, slave masters misread the Bible because they were going to it looking for a justification for slavery. Therefore, according to McCaulley, what they needed, as do we, are people who don’t have the same blind spots as us. Or, as McCaulley says it in the book, “I need Ugandan biblical interpretation, because the experiences of Ugandans mean they are able to bring their unique insights to the conversation” (22).

Here we can see the second huge problem with McCaulley’s interpretive approach: it functionally denies the clarity of Scripture. If Scripture is clear, able to be understood on its own merits, then it doesn’t require diverse ethnic perspectives to understand correctly. Biblical interpretation requires that we understand the original language and the original context, that’s it. Note that McCaulley equates “Ugandan biblical interpretation” with the enabling of “experiences” to bring “insights to a conversation.” In so doing, he has added a requirement to biblical interpretation that the Bible never does.

To use a farfetched example, where in the Bible do you see Paul relying on Ephesian questions to better understand Genesis 9 so he can rightly relate to the Roman government? Or for that matter, how could Christians be expected to rightly interpret Scripture for the first 1600 years, long before there were American colonies, European Americans, or African Americans? The Bible never presents interpretation as necessarily a group project because the Bible presents itself as fundamentally clear to every person. Here’s how Moses says it:

“For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” (Deut 30:11-14)

If the Bible is clear, then we don’t need an international forum to understand it. You can read the Bible for yourself and interpret it rightly. Of course, we want to be humble and teachable, which means that we’ll seek out help from past illumination to arrive at the right exegetical conclusions. But what we’re looking for to aid our study of Scripture is not a cultural perspective but attention to textual details. Differing cultures don’t explain the text better to us, but faithful exegetes from any culture can. And ironically, the slave master eisegesis error that McCaulley cites is McCaulley’s own error: bringing a question from a cultural agenda to the biblical text rather than asking what the biblical authors intended. In interpretation, we don’t need more perspectives but more insights from whatever perspective.

If all this talk about hermeneutics sounds too confusing, let me simplify. The problem with McCaulley’s “Black ecclesial interpretation” is that it leads him to ask questions like this: “Put simply, is the Bible a friend or foe in the Black quest for justice?” Do you see the issue? The question is totally reversed from what is should be. We don’t assert ourselves over the Bible or even put ourselves beside the Bible. The question should be, “Is our quest for justice a friend or foe of the Bible?” Interpretation is not, as McCaulley asserts, a “dialogue” but a monologue. God is the only one speaking, and he’s the only one we want to hear.

Stretching the Text Until It Breaks

My second concern is the way that McCaulley uses his hermeneutical principles as a cover for unwarranted exegesis. Throughout the book, he undermines the meaning of multiple texts by drawing specious connections, by mistranslating words, and by asserting his conclusions without proof. These are the fruits of an arbitrary interpretive root.

Here’s a survey of just a few of the exegetical stretches in Reading While Black:

• In chapter 2, McCaulley acknowledges that Paul doesn’t address evil rulers in Romans 13:1-7, so he says, “that in the absence of that explanation of Romans 13:1-7, we are free to use Paul’s reference to Egypt and the wider biblical account to fill in the gap.” What does he mean by “fill in the gap?” According to McCaulley, “Paul’s focus on structure” implies that “the Christian’s first responsibility is to make sure that those who direct the sword in our culture direct that sword in ways in keeping with our values” (30-41). That is, the passage that reads, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” (Rom 13:1) is about demanding that governing authorities apply Christian ethics. Of course it’s true that Romans 13 tells us what governments are there for, but the application of the text is clearly submission to that government. To redefine submission as protest is to undermine Paul’s exhortation in this text.
• In chapter 3, McCaulley contends that the church must have a robust “political witness” and cites the Beatitudes as support. He quotes the introduction to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount with the following: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled” (Mt 5:4, 6, my translation; p.65). Apparently, McCaulley doesn’t find the usual translation of “righteousness” adequate, so he supplies his own translation, “justice.” You can imagine where this is going. “Hungering and thirsting for justice… is a vision of the just society established by God that does not waver in the face of evidence to the contrary” (66). He follows this up by redefining “Blessed are the peacemakers” to “calling injustice by its name,” including “an honest accounting of what this country has done and continues to do to Black and Brown people” (68). These are simply incorrect definitions for these Greek words, which reference not the desire for political reform in America but the desire for personal righteousness and peace like that of the preacher, Jesus.
• In chapter 4, McCaulley sees in Mary’s “Magnificat” (Luke 1:46-55) a call to participate in political change. Specifically, he contends that Mary’s phrase “strength with his arm” is a reference to Isaiah 51:9-10, which is about the second exodus (a common theme in Reading WHile Black). Then connects the second exodus to the end of slavery, which “touches on that historic link between African Americans and the God of the Bible.” He concludes, “The testimony of Mary is that even in the shadow of the empire there is a space for hope and that sometimes in that space, God calls us from the shadows to join him in his great work of salvation and liberation” (88-89). That is a stunning leap in exegetical logic. He assumes that the virgin birth is intended as a paradigm for future salvation, but also assumes that Mary’s part in bringing the Christ to earth is a kind of “joining” in the purposes of God that meaningfully parallels political protests. The Magnificat is not about Mary’s participation but about God’s sovereign salvation.

The list of exegetical gymnastics could go on. These are not responsible hermeneutics, but warped principles of interpretation that undo the intelligibility of the Bible. We simply can’t reshape the text to fit our questions and agendas in this way. Instead, our goal in Bible interpretation must first and always be to know what the author meant by what he said. Any secondary objective smuggled into the interpretive process will eviscerate the text of meaning and make it a canvas for our purposes, not God’s.

_____

So, what are you supposed to do with this book review? Well, first, be warned that McCaulley’s Reading While Black distorts Scripture at the most fundamental level – the clarity and intelligibility of the Bible. While McCaulley tows the line of theological orthodoxy at points, his hermeneutical approach does serious violence to sound biblical interpretation. If you’re hoping to find help in thinking through interpretative issues, this isn’t your book.

Second, know that Reading While Black does not speak for all African American Christians. McCaulley paints with a broad, monolithic brush about the concerns and perspectives of African Americans and does so without a consensus. For other African American Christian perspectives on hermeneutics, justice, and ethnicity, see here, here, here, and here.

Third, be prepared to defend a biblical hermeneutic. Reading While Black has received almost unanimous acclaim in the evangelical world, and McCaulley is not the only evangelical espousing these views. If you haven’t come across a similar challenge to biblical hermeneutics, my guess is that you soon will. So, be prepared to stand on the clear, authoritative, sufficient Word of God to explain how to rightly read the Word of God.

Finally, a note: My point in this review is not to be unkind towards McCaulley or anyone who agrees with him, but rather to point out the error in interpreting God’s Word according to our demands. This kind of Scripture-twisting does not honor God, it does not unite the church, and it does not give the kind of hope that McCaulley says it gives. Instead, it teaches Christians to use the Bible to confirm their biases and assumptions, rather than to be instructed and corrected by God’s Word. My prayer is that whatever your ethnic and cultural background, your aim would be to honor God by rightly interpreting to his Word and proclaiming his gospel for the sake of his eternal purpose, to glorify his Son, Jesus Christ. That would do justice to the text.

After discussing many different strategies for regaining and retaining previously learned Greek, one professor said to me, “And if all that fails, you’ll need the nuclear option.” What he meant was, the most drastic strategy of all: start from scratch!

Well, not entirely from scratch, but pretty much.

If you have been following the mini-series about retaining or re-acquiring the Greek you learned in seminary, and have subsequently lost, I hope this post will be helpful. I used the nuclear option to jump-start my Greek reading fluency after it stalled due to neglect.

As I said, it’s not that I wasn’t using Greek at all, in fact, I was using it weekly… but weakly. I was relying heavily on Bible software that parses the words for me and provides a gloss (a simple English translation).  What I wanted was to be able to read quickly and in Greek, comprehending what I was seeing, and I wanted to think in Greek, not ‘speed-translate’ each word into English. That is what I covered last week. Here is what I did to defibrillate the stopped pulse of my flatlining reading fluency…

I got on a plane. No, I didn’t fly to Greece to immerse myself in Modern Greek, though I think that would have helped too, but with the cost, the visas, and the pandemic, I found a place cheaper than Greece: Kentucky.

I bit the bullet, carved a week out of my schedule, and enrolled in an in-person, five-day Greek review course at Southern Seminary, taught by Dr Rob Plummer, followed by the two-day “Greek for Life” conference. And it worked.

Monday to Friday, from 8am to 5pm, with a few caffeine breaks, all we did was (re)learn Greek. On day one we literally started with the alphabet, and by day five we were reading, out loud to one another with no tools or helps, John chapter 3. And we were doing so confidently, fluently, with intelligible pronunciation, and with full comprehension. Granted, John’s gospel is some of the easiest Greek in the Bible, but for only five days of review, I was happy with the results. The course also involved targeted vocabulary memorization, translation homework, and prepping paradigms for a daily quiz.

This course was not for people who had not learned Greek before; it was for those who had learned and lost it.

Also, let me say that everything we did could have been done by self-study, but wouldn’t have. What I mean is that, yes I could have worked through a beginner’s Greek grammar for an hour a day over a few months, and memorized vocab and paradigms, and read out loud to my dog. But I wasn’t doing that, and I know myself well enough to know I would never do that consistently enough to see results. There was something about the comradery of the other students (there were about 80 of us in the class), the pace, the sense of urgency to memorize before the quiz, the pressure to read aloud to someone who knows if you’re getting it right, and the ability to ask clarifying questions of the professor instead of being distracted by having to look it up oneself. It was the intense learning environment that made the work fun, and helped the lessons stick.

Now what? Now, I will lose my reading fluency all over again, unless I keep up the use of it. That’s where last week’s post was helpful. Building a daily habit of reading without interruption or distraction (including looking up unknown vocabulary and verb forms), has proven extremely beneficial to my retention. I not only retained what I learned but I am actually improving at an encouraging rate.

If you want to do CPR on your Greek, I highly recommend this drastic option. But I also understand it is a luxury to have a job and a wife that allow me the ability to take a week out of town for language study. What if you aren’t able to get away? What is the option just shy of the nuclear option?

I’ll tell you what to do to bring the Greek review course to your own home… next week.

In the contentious, Christian conversation about racial justice, we’ve talked more about talking than about biblical justice, and that needs to change.

Think about it: How many books and blurbs and blogs have you read lamenting our language about race, qualifying statements about race, or demanding a certain kind of discussion about race in the church? Our screens have spilled over with mantras, quips, and hashtags about other mantras, quips, and hashtags, which at some point I assume were actually about racial issues. The familiar names – Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, among many others – have become the stuff of slogans rather than precious people made in God’s image. We’ve stopped talking about the right way for people to be treated and occupied ourselves with who deserves the label “woke.”

My point is that if you survey the Christian landscape from the last two years, we’ve done a whole lot of uncharitable talking about talking about racial justice (from every perspective) when what we need to hear is God’s Word on justice. Not that talking about talking is wrong, of course – the Bible does a fair bit of it (James 3:1-12). But if we never clarify what we mean according to Scripture, then we’re in danger of talking right past each other over and over again.

That’s Esau’s point, too. At least, until it’s not.

In his recent article for Christianity Today, Wheaton professor and Anglican canon theologian Esau McCaulley observes the need for charitable reading in the racial justice debate. His insight here is truly helpful and clarifying – charitable debate implies shared definitions. However, the good doctor then goes on to violate his own helpful principle. McCaulley’s article, entitled “The Racial Justice Debate Needs Civil Discourse, Not Straw Men,” ironically sets up more straw men, mischaracterizing those who disagree with him. What begins as a move toward biblical clarity ends with more uncharitable talking about talking, and the Bible gets lost in the shuffle.

McCaulley’s article is worth meditating on for a moment because it reveals what’s most needed in Christian conversations about race, or any topic: not a disguise of civil discourse but gracious biblical clarity. We need to biblically define justice if we would then do justice. Does the Bible support the ideas of “racial guilt,” “implicit bias,” or even the category of “whiteness?” Wherever you land on those questions, it would be disingenuous to assume agreement where there isn’t agreement or to call to action without a consensus on the call. What does “justice” mean according to God? Biblical clarity is not a non-sequitur in the racial justice debate, it is the essential need.

Given that need, I want to engage directly with McCaulley’s arguments from his article and then bring this discussion before the bar of Holy Scripture. This post will do more of the former. A second post will do more of the latter, particularly in response to McCaulley’s own exegetical conclusions in his book, Reading While Black.

But first, a caveat. I’m aware that in responding to McCaulley’s article, I’m talking about talking. I intentionally chose this way to approach the issue because this is where many of us find ourselves in our thinking about racial justice. We’re watching an on-going ping-pong match and have lost track of whose turn it is to serve. So, I start with a conversation about our conversations because I’m not deaf to the cacophony surrounding us, but I want to move as quickly as I can to the Bible. I hope you do, too.

So, with a spirit of love and meekness, I offer my critique of McCaulley’s article in the hope of helping us think more biblically and charitably about race and justice.

McCaulley’s Helpful Principle – Charity Implies Shared Definitions

“Fundamentalist!” “Woke!” “Racist!” “Marxist!” If these epithets didn’t sound so familiar you might think these accusations belonged to a high school lunchroom. Unfortunately, these labels belong to the adult world of our day, and even to Christian conversations about race. Online and offline, insult hurling has replaced rational dialogue and our increasingly polarized churches demonstrate it.

That’s why I found McCaulley’s advice to be remarkably lucid and helpful. McCaulley writes,

“We are simply not allowed to go and find a definition that we dislike and attribute it to a fellow believer. At bottom, that is slander and the epitome of a straw man. Instead, we must do the necessary and hard work of understanding writers, preachers, and communicators who speak to these issues.”

Amen and amen. How many pastors and writers have been pilloried as “Critical Race Theorists” who themselves disavow any connection with the legal theory? They may be as Marxist as the Manifesto, but if they won’t claim that label then what’s accomplished in applying it? I understand that these kinds of terms are shorthand for worldviews and making the connection may even be true to an extent, but their imprecision becomes their undoing. One man’s “woke” is another man’s “gospel-centered.” If we don’t agree on the definitions of the words that we use, then we’re talking past each other and accomplishing little.

Let me give an example from the world of evangelism. A few years ago, I spoke with an atheist student on a local college campus about evolution. He believed in it, I did not and do not. So, I told him my reasons for rejecting evolution as an explanation for human life, and he said I was way off base because I wasn’t accurately describing his viewpoint. I was functioning from a generally accepted definition for the theory of evolution (primordial slime to vertebrate to ape to human), but he had a whole different family tree in his mind. It didn’t matter to him that I was using a more publicly accepted definition of the term; because I wasn’t talking about what he believed, my comments were irrelevant.

Something similar happened a few years ago between Thabiti Anyabwile and Tom Ascol in a discussion about race. Thabiti wrote a post arguing that social justice was not infiltrating evangelicalism, as such. Tom responded that social justice ideologies, like Critical Race Theory, were infiltrating the church, and cited a number of examples. Thabiti responded that while Ekemini Uwan’s “comments have much in common with the fields of whiteness studies and CRT,” they really are “rooted much more firmly in the Black sojourn in the United States than errant academic disciplines.” Do you see the issue? Tom may have been spot on about the large overlap between CRT and Ekemini Uwan’s comments, but since there was no agreement between the two sides on some basic definitions, they swooped right past each other and didn’t deal with the substance of each other’s arguments. And then, more talking about talking about race.

McCaulley’s principle would breathe fresh air into a conversation like that. Charity necessitates shared definitions. Imagine how establishing points of agreement on the meanings of terms could transform our conversations about race and justice! That’s where McCaulley starts his article, and I’m thankful for it. And McCaulley goes on to clarify,

“… when we claim to be building upon these definitions and accounts [of justice, injustice, and liberation], Christian charity demands that our opponents meet us on the ground where we have chosen to fight, not somewhere else.”

Though I’m curious what he means by “building upon” in that sentence, I totally agree with McCaulley’s articulated principle: Christian charity in a debate means talking to someone, not past them.  Generosity compels us to engage in dialogue using the terms and definitions that the other person would affirm. It would be unkind and potentially slanderous to, instead, assume a mischaracterization of their position and attack that. Christians should start by taking others at their word, then reason biblically from there. That may mean challenging their definitions with Scripture, but it doesn’t mean ignoring their stated positions altogether.

So, if someone says that they don’t believe in Critical Race Theory, well then, great! You can choose to believe the best about their self-evaluation, then go on to have a conversation about the substance of what they have said they believe rather than trying to establish an ideological association. Again, it may be true that their ideas line up almost on-to-one with CRT, but if they won’t claim it as their own, don’t bother with the label. Work with the words you’ve got, not the best ones for your case. Our goal in biblical debates should never be to lump and label but to understand and engage.

As I understand the article, that’s basically McCaulley’s argument, at least in the first half: charity requires shared definitions. I warmly agree with that sentiment. The trouble comes, however, when McCaulley takes a second step.

McCaulley’s Straw Man – Christian Fear of Non-Christian Insights

Rather than immediately apply his helpful principle to the racial justice debate, as you might eagerly expect, McCaulley unfortunately goes in the opposite direction. Here’s the sentence where it happens:

“Sadly, this fair-minded form of debate is rarely practiced. Here’s the reason why, as I see it: There’s a newfound fear of common grace.”

“A newfound fear of common grace.” What does he mean by that? Well, let’s start with a definition for common grace. John Murray, the eminent Princeton Theologian, is widely regarded for his definition of common grace found in Westminster Theological Journal, Volume 5: common grace is “every favour of whatever kind or degree, falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God.” Essentially, all good things that aren’t saving grace are common grace. They’re available to all (hence the word “common”) and they’re undeserved because of our sin (hence the word “grace”). That includes rain on the just and unjust (Matt 5:44-45), the restraint of God’s wrath (1 Pet 3:20), the restraint of sin through families, governments, and conscience (Rom 2:14-15), and the ability for unbelievers to, in some sense, reason and relate rightly (Matt 5:46; Luke 6:33). Given McCaulley’s article, I think he would agree with this definition of common grace, and it seems like that’s how he uses the term.

So, then, what does he mean by “a newfound fear of common grace” that’s keeping Christians from being charitable in talking about race? In his own words, he means that there’s a fear that “One does not have to be a believer to discover truths about the human condition.” If I’m understanding his argument rightly, then he’s saying that a big problem in the racial justice debate is that some Christians fear the truths that non-believers have discovered about the human condition.

The rest of his article seems to confirm this understanding. According to McCaulley, Christians need to have “a certain confidence in Christianity and other Christians” while engaging in a “careful give and take of ideas.” He goes on to say that “there are truths and ideas not explicitly addressed in Scripture that cohere with a Christian way of viewing reality.” And he says it’s only “When Christians view their interlocuters in the context of common grace, [that] they’re more prone to interpret words charitably, and discussion moves forward rather than backward.”

Given his lack of direct example or clarification, I have to assume that McCaulley means this: A significant barrier in the racial justice debate is a Christian fear of secular insights.

And that, friends, is a straw man.

Are more conservative Christians “afraid” of CRT, or Marxism, or any of its attendant ideas because they originated in the minds of non-believers? As in, if it doesn’t come directly from the Bible, we fear it? Maybe I need to get out more, but I don’t know a single pastor or theologian who has said or would say as much.

So, what’s really going on here? It seems like Esau’s pulled a bit of a bait-and-switch. By making a veiled reference to some secular ideas as “common grace,” he’s assuming his conclusion in the premise, which is an informal fallacy known as “begging the question.” What I mean is this: By calling the non-Christian concepts that he presumably agrees with “common grace,” he’s essentially saying that they’re right. But the problem is, that’s the whole debate!

The racial justice debate is, at least, a discussion about whether or not certain secular ideas about race are right; whether they’re common grace or just plain old error. It’s about whether the secular frameworks that outline racial oppressor and oppressed, racial identity politics, and racial systemic injustice are legitimate frameworks to understand our interracial relationships. That’s the unsettled issue at hand, so it’s an awfully sly and unhelpful move for Esau to call his position “common grace” and call the other position “fear.” It’s like saying that God is behind his arguments, while irrational defensiveness is behind his opponents. Then, having established that he’s right, he says, “Let’s debate!” The way he has framed the discussion, there’s no debate to be had.

To illustrate, what McCaulley does in standing up the straw man of a “fear of common grace” is like a Pepsi person saying that Coca-Cola people are just opposed to the objectively superior flavor of Pepsi. That’s not the kind of approach that engenders fruitful conversation, it just asserts your rightness from the beginning. But the debate over racial justice isn’t about preference or taste – it’s about whether certain articulations of justice fall into the category of grace or error. To define one side’s sources as “grace” from the beginning is to fail to apply the principle of shared definitions, and so to engage without the charity that McCaulley himself calls for.

And in case this is what McCaulley means (though, again, he doesn’t give examples, so he may not), let me be clear: Critical Race Theory, as narrowly defined by its secular framers, is not common grace but a system of unbiblical assumptions about human relationships that fundamentally opposes a biblical understanding of man, sin, and salvation. Those ideas are not a good gift from God; they’re lies from man. And lies are not grace.

The fact of the matter is that Christians like me who despise the false gospel of liberation theology, who abhor the racist rhetoric of Ibram Kendi, who reject the concept of “racial guilt” and “white repentance,” and who long for true, biblical ethnic harmony in the body of Christ are not afraid of what non-believers have to say about racial justice. In fact, there are a good many non-believers who see the same dangers that Christians see in the divisive statements of Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, for example. There are “common grace” insights on both sides of this conversation. Nobody is afraid of common grace; they’re simply concerned about its abuse. Or, to put it more simply, we all want to know what’s true and to live in light of that truth. Putting more emphasis on biblical truth isn’t a fear of secular insights, it’s just knowing which source is most reliable.

What we need isn’t more straw men, it’s more biblical clarity.

Our Conversations

So, what do you do with all this? Two applications for us to take away from McCaulley’s article:

• Being charitable means using shared definitions. If you plan to talk to someone about race and justice, then make sure you talk to them. Per McCaulley’s wise counsel, don’t cram the worst offenses into someone else’s mouth, but listen to what they say and engage with that. Ask them to define their terms. If they don’t have a definition, offer one from Scripture. As much as it depends on you, be at peace with your brothers in Christ by being clear, honest, and transparent about what you mean by what you say (Rom 12:18). In fact, let’s work on applying all of Romans 12:9-21 to our conversations, especially about a contentious issue.

• Being charitable also means being consistent. If you’d like for those you disagree with to represent you fairly, then show them the same kindness. Don’t create straw men of an opposing viewpoint if you wouldn’t want that done to you. Or, as Jesus himself said it, “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 7:12).

If I’ve unfairly represented Esau McCaulley in this post, I’m open to correction. My hope is to engage charitably and consistently with what he’s saying, as much as I may disagree with it. But that’s not where this discussion ends. In the next post, we’ll stop talking about talking, and we’ll get into the biblical text. May God’s truth rule our hearts and our tongues in every conversation, and may he do it by his amazing grace.

Samuel Sey tweeted something recently that came as a shock for many christians. A church in Canada is going to reopen next month (after being closed since covid began) but with a twist, they will be requiring a vaccine passport for people to come in the doors.

The writer of the article, who is the pastor of the church, said that if Jesus been alive today, he would have done the same. 

After appealing to science for his decision, the pastor made a shift into theology. He said Jesus would agree with him.

Theologically, the argument is stronger. To be a Christian is to model one’s life after Christ. Jesus always put others first. He gave up his individual rights for the common good and sacrificed for the sake of the weak. He loved others as he loved himself and would have surely done anything to best protect the unvaccinated children in his neighbourhood. A Christian ethic always puts the vulnerable first.

Not only is this argument not strong it is actually quite foolish.

Jesus consistently exposed himself to sick people. People with Leprosy (Matt. 8:2), fevers (Luke 8:38-40), blood discharges (Luke 8:43), demons (Matt. 5:1), and even dead people (Mark 5:21, Luke 8:40) were constantly approached by Jesus without regard for his own safety.

He could have healed everyone he came in contact with yet he didn’t. There were times where he chose not to heal people who needed it. (Mark 6:5) In fact, Jesus could remove not only Covid from this world in a split second, but all pain and suffering whenever he wants. But doesn’t.

Jesus’s mission was not to eradicate suffering in this world, but it was to suffer himself for the sake of the elect. (Heb. 2:9-10) He was willing to die for the sake of the lost! And He expected his disciples to follow suit! (John 15:20)

The only reason you might require proof of vaccines for entrance to a church service is because you have lost sight of the cost of discipleship and are controlled by the fear of death.

You should be willing to die for people to hear the gospel.

Jesus said very clearly that we should be willing to suffer and even die for His sake. (Matt. 10:38, Matt. 24:9)

Paul said that for the sake of his people, Israel, he would be willing to be accursed in their place, if it meant that they would get to go to Heaven. (Rom. 9:3) And Paul believed in a literal eternal hell.

Every follower of Christ should be willing to suffer and die for the sake of expending our energy and our whole entire lives for the lost. 

It is for this reason that it is shocking that there are churches that are forbidding people from coming to church. I know that this is a hot topic and that many people are sensitive about this. I am not against being careful and using wisdom, after all unlike Jesus, we don’t have the ability to heal people. But under no circumstance are we allowed to turn away people from hearing the Gospel and gathering with the saints.

We should be begging people to come, not banning them!

We truly need to pray for pastors around the world. These situations are not easy to navigate. We need to pray for churches to not be afraid. 

We need to pray that elders who are afraid of dying, would remember their high calling and either repent or resign. 

Sadly too many shepherds right now, instead of fighting away the enemy of their sheep, are dropping their staffs and running away, afraid to die.

If you should be willing to be speared in the chest to bring the Gospel to a tribe in Equador, you should be willing to be exposed to a respiratory disease that you have more than a 99% chance to survive.

This is not to minimize the fact that this virus does harm some people in a significant way, but it is to say that if the fear of death is driving you to make your decisions then you are not being a faithful shepherd.

We need to pray for much wisdom from the Lord. Obviously we don’t want to have a martyr complex where we expose ourselves and those around us to unecessary risks, but we must, if we desire to follow our Lord’s example, be willing to expend ourselves for the Lord. 

I can’t help but think of Peter who was told by Christ that he would die on a cross, (John 21:19) yet boldly declared Gospel, each and every time he had the opportunity, without compromise or concern for his own body.

By all means get vaccinated if you want, protect yourself as best you can, but never forbid people from hearing the good news. Elders, (and really every member of the church) go and preach boldly the word of God, leaving your life in God’s hands.

^{By Clint Archer}

Translating Greek to English is not the same as reading Greek. We covered that last week.

Today I want to suggest some practical strategies for improving fluency of reading Greek. I gleaned most of this from an inspiring and helpful break-out session offered at the Greek for Life Conference in Louisville, Kentucky last month.  These insights were offered by the energetic, knowledgeable, and delightfully candid Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor, Dr Brian Vickers. At times it wasn’t clear if he was tailoring his advice for language students or cyclists training for the Tour de France. But these strategies obviously work for any grueling endurance endeavor.

Fernando’s Secret.

Dr Vickers told us about a former student of his, who we’ll call Fernando. This young man came to seminary with absolutely no knowledge of Greek, but as soon as he learned the alphabet he began to read, and read, and read. At first he recognized nothing but common conjunctions and words that sounded like their English cognates (kardia sounds like “cardiac” and means “heart”). As his Greek classes started filling in the blanks with vocabulary lists, lessons on grammar and syntax, and explanations of morphology, Fernando’s base was solid and his fluency accelerated. Before the end of formal Greek training at the MDiv level, he could read Greek significantly more fluently with higher comprehension, than any Greek PhD candidate. His secret? He just read Greek. All. The. Time.

Vickers was clear that the strategies that follow don’t work if this is all you do. But he avers that to become proficient in reading and thinking in Greek, you need to be doing at least this. It is the base, the foundation on which all your vocabulary and grammar studies will stand. I realized as he was talking that this is what I had neglected in my studies. I had memorized for the quiz and exam, the paradigms, vocabulary, and rules of translation. But I wasn’t reading Greek; I was analyzing it. And that was enough for years. But now I want to read, think, and enjoy New Testament Greek. If that describes you, read on…

Assess the Damage.

Start with an honest assessment of where you need to begin. Do you need to relearn the alphabet (quick test, what letter comes before and after Xi?).

How many minutes of Greek did you read this past day, week, and month? If you did that for the next twelve months, how would your skill improve? My honest answer was that the amount I was reading daily and weekly was not enough to produce improvement, no matter how long I did it. I needed more volume.

When he qualified that “reading” doesn’t count if you’re using helps or doing it for sermon preparation, my number fell to zero. For someone who wants to read the Bible for enjoyment and devotion, I realized I had been doing nothing to attain that goal.

Resist Buying an App.

Vickers showed us a picture of an Olympic cyclist with medal, and another picture of him as a teenager, with his first bike. It had no tires. But he rode it everywhere. He did what he could with what he had at the time. Most Greek students will spend time on Amazon and the app store looking for the perfect new grammar book, laminated paradigm charts, flashcards, learning apps. It is a black hole of futility this early in the process.  Use what you have. All you need for the first month is a Greek New Testament. If you have Machen on your shelf, that’ll do. If you have a coffee-stained, Dana & Mantey… that’ll do! Just start reading.

Build a base.

The point of this is to build a habit on which to add other studies. Vickers swears that if you start with seven minutes a day, five days a week, for a month, you will experience success. Why seven? Because it’s not ten, but it’s also not only five. In other words, it’s enough to get a chunk done, but not that much that you will be tempted to skip a day.

7 minutes x 5 days = 35 minutes a week. That’s nearly two and a half hours a month, which is a zillion times more than I was doing before.

What counts as reading? Just mouthing the sounds (preferably aloud, unless you have to do it on the subway or in your cubicle at work), and not stopping to look up anything. Just read. You are hardwiring a sense of the syntax, the sounds, the cadence, the structure of the language. You might not understand 80% of what you are reading, but your brain is learning something. The scaffolding is going up. Just trust the process.

Be Consistent.

Show up. Just do your seven minutes every day for a month and see what happens. Don’t break the habit before it begins. Pick a regular time and place, set a timer on your phone, put it on airplane mode, and start reading until it tells you you’re done.

Add work.

After your seven minutes is done, and those unfamiliar vocab words or verb forms are driving you nuts, now is the time to add study. It’s optional. The base is non-negotiable. It’s a duty. But the extra work will be a delight now, not a chore.  It will feel so satisfying to look up a word and when you read the same verses tomorrow you will know more and more and you will want to read more and more. That is why I read the same passage each day. As I read faster I get more verses in. Every few days I change to a new passage by a different writer, so I get a feel for the different styles.

When your base is solid, you can start to increase the time incrementally. So instead of seven minutes, spend nine, and then fifteen, and shoot eventually for a half-hour a day or more. Just take it slow. Or spend more time looking up words after your seven minutes. Just don’t stop the bare minimum of seven.

Add to your plan the memorization of a verb paradigm, maybe one a month to start. You will start to see the endings and augments all over the place. When it’s stuck in your mind, add another.

Be patient.

You are not translating yet, you are first learning to read. Comprehension will come. Remember “Fun with Dick and Jane”? Slow, faltering, leads to fluency over time. Measure your progress over long periods of time; months not days. Six months from now you will compare your first week of stuttering incoherence with less than 10% comprehension, to an unprecedented rapidity of recognition, improved pronunciation, dexterity with accented emphasis, and noticeable growth in reading comprehension.

Be merciful.

It’s okay to skip a day or two. No need for self-flagellation. If you get down about missing a day, you may resign your efforts. You will not lose what you’ve gained in 48 hours. But get back on the horse as quickly as you can, lest it leave you in the dust. Again. 

As elementary school students return to school this year, many states are requiring them to wear masks unless they have a religious objection to such a mandate. I have already been asked by several parents for my thoughts on such a thing. Now, generally I want to leave medicine to doctors, science to scientists, and politics to politicians (and in the case of mask mandates for little children, it honestly is hard to tell where one of those groups ends and the other begins). However, since the government is allowing religious opting out, that is my wheel house.

This post is an argument for why, if you are in a state that allows religious opting out of mask mandates for children, you should opt out—even if you want your kids to wear a mask. It is not a post denying the reality of COVID, nor is it a post about vaccines. It is not a post that is comparing persecution by the Taliban to mask mandates.

It is a post meant to help parents think through the religious implications and convictions behind ceding to the state the authority to tell little kids to wear a mask all day at school.  

Let me start by asking in religious terms, what is the purpose of education? How you answer that question will help you understand the nature of a potential religious objection to mask mandates.

I answer that question by saying that the purpose of education is to “study reality as a manifestation of God’s glory, to speak about it with accuracy, and to savor the beauty of God in it.” That definition is not mine, but borrowed from Piper’s God’s Passion for His Glory (p. 43; link takes you to a free PDF version). That kind of devotion to reality is at odds with world systems. The world’s approach to education is to dissuade people from finding their satisfaction in the gospel, and instead promise safety and satisfaction through politics, work ethic, or personal self-worth. Thus, the world’s education will be “wrong, because [it] knows neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Mark 12:24).

A Christian approach to education should give children the foundation they need to grow up to be different than the world. We want to make Daniels, who disregard the king’s edict and throw open the window to pray. We want to make people like Moses, who count it a privilege to suffer with God’s people rather than enjoy the comforts of home. We want Rahabs, who are willing to defy the mandates of the city in order to side with God’s people. We want Abrams, who receive more joy from God’s glory than they do from familiarity with their world.

Now, if you have that as the goal, how you get there is key. It is a critical component of Christian education that children learn that the world view that they are being taught is more significant—indeed more true, if that is such a phrase—than the world views of society. Cultural conformity is not a virtue.

Mask mandates don’t correspond to reality

With that said, consider mask mandates for children. They do not appear scientifically based. I know scientists say “masks are an effective way of stopping the spread of COVID,” but that is very different than saying what the scientists say corresponds to reality. This requires nuance. Do you understand the difference between science says and scientists say?

I don’t want to tread too far into verboten territory here, but the idea that mask mandates for little children are political theatre should be evident. I am not talking about mask mandates for adults, and I am not talking about mask mandates for airplanes. I’m talking about places like Virginia, where initially the mask mandate was for kids over 12, then it became 7, then it became 2. Those changes did not come with any corresponding “science.” There were not studies on the spread of COVID to arrive at the age of 12. When COVID was rising a year ago, many states adopted mask mandates for age 12 and up, and we were told that if we complied, they would go away. But rather than COVID going away, it raged out of control despite the mask mandates. How did governments respond? Well most of them simply lowered the mask mandate’s age, as if those unmasked 7 year-olds were why it was out of control. In Virginia it dropped from 12 to 7, then finally to 2. It did so without research, studies, or any evidence whatsoever other than the assertion that “science says.” That’s what I mean by “political theatre.”

Speaking of politics, these mandates are becoming more and more evident in blue states, but not in red states. Why? I am not asking that question from a “mask-denying” perspective, but am literally asking that question: why do mandates for little kids follow the political make up of an area? Could it be that these mandates are more world-view oriented than scientific?

And, while we are on that question, it is also worth asking if mask mandates have been effective at “slowing the spread.” There is plenty of research showing that COVID rates follow patterns, and those patterns are pretty much consistent regardless of masking. Nations without masking follow the same patterns as nations with. Hawaii (strict masks) and Texas (no mandates) follow the same curves. To reference back to how we described the purpose of education, mask mandates for children as a means of slowing the spread of COVID does not match reality.

Again, let me stress the nuance here. I’m not arguing overtly against masks, but against mask mandates for children. That is a huge and critical difference that I hope is clear, and leads to the next part of this religious objection to mandates. I visited one school recently for a sports practice that required masks on little kids. But when the kids went to recess, all the students put their masks in a shared basket. Then, after recess, they all fished their masks out to go back to class. It was an incredible scene to watch, and if you think your kindergartener’s mask is more sanitary than that…well, if you have a kindergartener, you already know it isn’t.

My point is that these mandates, despite all of the “experts” agreeing on their efficacy, don’t actually correspond with the world as it is. Some parents might say “I don’t think the mask mandates for kids do anything, but at the same time, we should just go along with it, because we don’t have a religious objection.” But I’m saying that is a huge problem in Christian education. If you are teaching kids to comply with a mandate that does not correspond to the real world (especially when the state lets you opt out), that in and of itself is the big deal. I’m not saying it should be a matter of martyrdom—don’t die over masks. Don’t’ get thrown out of stores (or schools, for that matter). But if the stores (or schools, for that matter) allow you to opt out for a religious conviction, then the mandate’s lack of correspondence to reality is that religious conviction. The uniquely Christian purpose of education to teach kids a vision of the world that corresponds to reality.

Ephesians 6:4 teaches that it is the family’s job to raise their children, not the state’s

In the Christian family, fathers are supposed to “raise [their] children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord,” and children are supposed to “obey [their] parents,” so that they may “live long in the land” (Ephesians 6:4, 1). While the phrase “discipline of the Lord” may sound benign, there is an entire world view behind it that is relevant today.

In the Greco-Roman world, that word translated in Ephesians 6:4 as discipline was a critical world-view level word. In the New Testament era, the Romans continued the Greek tradition of believing that it was the state’s job to “discipline” children. Don’t confuse this with parents spanking their children—that’s not what this word describes. Rather, it describes the kind of cultural discipline required to function well in society. Think “discipline” as in “military discipline.” In the Greco-Roman world, it was the state’s function to instill those social norms in children. TDNT (a Greek dictionary) describes the word translated discipline this way:

“Even ideas about family education in the classical period are mostly presented as demands of the legislator. For strictly all education is a public affair. At issue in discipline is the relations of man to the polis (political element of society), and…the indissoluble tension between man’s freedom and the claim of society… Political education (in the Greek Empire) is introduction into the political relation created by the legislator. Thus the state attains to radical superiority over the individual; [in this vision] education is fully a matter for the state.”

TDNT paideuo

Into that world, Paul tells fathers the opposite. He pierces the loyalty educators have to the state, and instead claims that it falls to the family to instill into their children the kind of discipline that will prepare them to function well in the world God created. My eyes often just glide through Ephesians 6:4 but it is helpful to remember that Paul is saying “Fathers, it falls to you to make sure your family understands reality for the glory of the Lord. Don’t give that burden away to the state!”

To be clear, I’m not even particularly arguing against masks. If you have done the research, and you want your children to wear a mask at school, then by all means have them wear a mask at school. If they are the only kid in a mask, tell them that it is a good reminder that they are being obedient to their parents, and that obedience will give them a longer life than the mask will (Ephesians 6:3). Own your decision, and teach them that they can be a Daniel by doing what their parents tell them to do, not because the state says so, but because Mom and Dad say so. Religiously opt out of the mandate, and then have your kid mask up.

But whether you want your kids to mask up or not, I hope you agree that it falls to parents to say “God has made me responsible for my children’s wellbeing and safety; I do not want them to be pawns in some sort of political game. God gave my children to me, I will decide if they should mask up at school, according to the authority God has given me in Ephesians 6:1-4, and for that reason I have a sincerely held religious belief that precludes me from having my kids participate in this mask mandate.”

If you are in a place with a mask mandate and God has providentially provided a way for you comply without violating your conscience or neglecting your parental responsibilities, and without provoking the state, then you should avail yourself of it.

At the advice of attorneys from the Liberty Counsel, if you are opting out for religious reasons, and you are in a state that allows you to opt out for religious convictions (like Virginia), then a simple notification to the school should suffice: “I have a sincerely held religious belief that, in accordance with the governor’s emergency order, allows my child to decline to wear a mask while at school.”

I once received a phone call from another elder from a church not far from the one I was serving at. He told me that a member of his congregation owned a business, and a member of my congregation had been injured at work. There were no denials about what happened, nor was there any dispute about the blame. There was, however, a catch.

The business had workman’s comp insurance, but the insurance company was requiring that the injured worker’s personal insurance company file a claim in court in order to compel payment. The bottom line: in order to get covered, a believer (or his insurance company) would have to sue another believer (or his insurance company).

The elders at the other church reached out to the elders at my church (at the time I was at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles). We all wanted to apply 1 Corinthians 6, but we also all wanted to make sure the injured worker was covered. In other words, nobody was trying weasel out of anything, and we were trying to apply the scriptural principle that two believer’s shouldn’t sue each other. Here is the relevant passage:

1 When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? 2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! 4 So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? 5 I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, 6 but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? 7 To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? 8 But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!

1 Corinthians 6:1-8

So, what is an injured worker at a company owned by a Christian supposed to do? Is he out of luck?

Well, a careful study of this passage reveals that Paul was not giving a blanket prohibition on Christians using the court system, but instead was laying out a much more profound principle: it is better for Christians to count themselves as wronged than it is to be right in a way that brings shame to the church.

First, verse 1 rebukes those who go to court over a “grievance” against another believer. In fact, the word “grievance” is intentionally broad. Paul is not covering a limited kind of Greco-Roman law. Rather he uses a word that includes any kind of division or issue with another believer. In Luke 1, this word is used to cover all the “matters” or “events” of Jesus’ life (Luke 1:1). In Hebrews 6:18 it is just translated “things.” In 1 Corinthians 6:1, Paul is saying “if you have anything” dividing you, then apply the rest of this passage.

Then in verse 2, Paul calls any kind of division between brothers a “trivial matter.” This too is a fascinating word. It is used for the “smallest” of a ship’s rudders (James 3:4), or for Paul himself, as in “I am the least of all the saints” (Ephesians 3:1). Paul is saying that compared to the surpassing weight of glory, any division with another believer is certainly trivial.

Then verses 3-6 get to the problem. Going to court reveals that there are not elders competent enough to mediate a dispute. There could be lots of reasons for that. The elders might not be impartial, the congregants may not trust the elders, or the elders may not be sufficiently versed in biblical wisdom to navigate a complex issue. But behind all of those reasons is the reality at the elders in the church are not properly functioning.

So if you are confronted with a “trivial” matter (and remember, trivial in comparison to the glories of salvation), and it involves division with another believer, and your elders cannot handle a trivial matter, the temptation would be to go to court. Yet, Paul’s point in verse 7 is that by going to court a Christian is exposing the church’s dysfunction for the world to see.  The angels see it (vs. 3), the world sees it (vss. 4, 6), and believers ought to be embarrassed by that. When believers sue other believers, it is like Ham exposing his father’s nakedness. Instead, believers should count themselves as wronged, pretend they’d lose in court, and call it a day (vs. 7). They should be like Shem, and instead of exposing their elders for the world to see, they should cover them by not drawing attention to their dysfunction.

Now, this does not mean that believers should never use the court system. In Acts 25:11, Paul appealed to Caesar, which was his right as a Roman. In so doing, he exposed the truth that Festus could not protect an innocent person in Israel. That was Paul’s right as a citizen. But it did not bring shame on the church because it did not involve division with another Christian.

So what about in the worker’s comp issue above? A few elders from each church got together and talked. We decided that the insurance company’s insistence on a lawsuit was simply part of living in this world, and that nobody who heard about it would think “those elders don’t know what is going on.” Instead, both sets of elders agreed that allowing the lawsuit to go forward was the best way to get the medical expenses covered, and that it would not bring shame on the church. Key for us was realizing that even though this would result in a lawsuit, the lawsuit was not connected to division between believers. The elders, worker, and owner all left the meeting rejoicing in our common faith.  

That relationship between the two churches was important, because years later a person in one church was scamming somebody from the other church, and swindling them out of thousands of dollars. Now, this is a case where the elders should be involved! So the person doing the swindling was confronted, she refused to repent, and so she was disciplined out of the church. Then, of course, the victim could sue to get her money back, as she was no longer suing someone in the church, but rather someone who had been put out of the church for exactly what she was being sued for.

I share those examples because they both show the nature of applying biblical principles to life. The principle is taught in 1 Corinthians 6—it is better to count yourself as cheated than it is to sue another believer—and it encourages elders to be involved in using wisdom to apply that principle (vs. 5). When the principle is rightly applied, the church is protected, people are confronted, and God is glorified.

But if elders run from their duty to mediate, if they lack wisdom, if they turn away from conflict resolution, or if they simply don’t care about biblical church membership and discipline, then they are exposed as being unqualified. When that happens, immature believers (like the Corinthians were) will be tempted to run to court. First Corinthians 6 is an appeal to those believers to grow up, and count yourself cheated for the greater good of glorifying God.

So, should believers sue each other over a “trivial” matter? No. It is better to be wronged than it is to disregard the Bible’s teaching, and in a quest to be right, end up wronging the church.

When a healthy 70-year-old man is bedridden for ten days, he can lose up to 10% of lean muscle mass in his legs, according to Dr D. P. Jones of the University of Texas. Likewise, if you don’t use a learned language at all, or if you rely too heavily on tools like software, your fluency will atrophy like unused muscle. That is what we looked into last week. Next week I will supply some strategies for regaining reading fluency of Greek.

Today I want to clarify what we are trying to do. We need to understand the difference between reading Greek, and translating Greek.

These are two distinct skills, and each has its place. You will need to adjust your approach at retention, based on which of these skills you are aiming to improve.

Translating Greek refers to the ability to render a Greek word, phrase, or sentence into a suitable English equivalent. Now, of course, you can just skip this step by reading your English Bible, which people a lot better at translation than you will ever be, already did.

But for preachers digging for exegetical insights or nuances in the Greek, translating the passage yourself is the way to go. Or at the very least looking at the Greek words one at a time with your helps, to get a feel for what is lying beneath the veil of translation.

Greek words are made of parts, for example, the lexical stem (which is the definition of the word given in a lexicon), the augment (an added vowel on/near the front of some verb forms that indicates something about which English tense to use in the rendering), and the ending, which are letters on the end of the stem that signal the case (nominative/accusative, etc.) gender (masculine/feminine/neuter), the number (singular/plural), etc.

So, to translate a sentence from Greek to English you need to be able to figure out (“parse”) what’s going on in the words, OR… you can consult a tool to parse it for you. The most helpful “helps” are interlinear Bibles (that put an English gloss above the Greek word), analytical Greek texts (that list the parsing), and Bible software, like Logos, BibleWorks, or Accordance, which allow the user to float a mouse pointer over the Greek word and have the parts and gloss supplied.

I put “helps” in quotes because they certainly do “help” with translation… but they do not help you to improve your reading skills. That is why you need to know the difference between translating and reading—so you know which skill you want to improve.

Reading is the ability to look at the letters, words, phrases, and sentences of the New Testament, and recognize enough of what is going on with the forms so that you know what is being communicated without help. Reading is not analyzing, it is grasping the sense of the letter, the story, the poem, or prophecy without the help of English. A good reader of Greek is literally thinking in Greek as they read, even if they don’t know every word’s meaning or its exact form.

Think of it this way. If you know no Afrikaans (a dialect of Dutch spoken only in South Africa), and I type a paragraph of this blog post in Afrikaans, and you wanted to know what it said, you could use Google translate to tell you, and you would have a pretty good idea of what I said. You would be trusting entirely on the software. Or you could look up every word, one at a time, in an Afrikaans-English dictionary. And yes, you could figure out what I was saying, especially if you had had a semester or two of Afrikaans studies, so you would understand the changes you see that are different from the dictionary entry.

But that’s not reading Afrikaans. That’s translating.

If you want to try that, here is a sample:

Want so lief het God die wêreld gehad, dat Hy sy eniggebore Seun gegee het, sodat elkeen wat in Hom glo, nie verlore mag gaan nie, maar die ewige lewe kan hê.

Translating would feel like this…

Want (Because) so (thus) lief (love) het (have) God (God) die (the) wêreld (world) gehad (had), dat (that) Hy (He) sy (his) eniggebore (only-born) Seun (Son) gegee (gave) het (did), sodat (so that) elkeen (each one) wat (that) in (in) Hom (Him) glo (believe), nie (not) verlore (lost) mag (may) gaan (go) nie (not), maar (but) die (the) ewige (eternal) lewe (life) kan (can) hê (have).

Pretty cool, huh?

You can understand that a word at a time. But a fluent reader of Afrikaans would have a different experience taking it all in as it flows into their understanding, and they would have a different appreciation for how powerfully and beautifully it is being said.

Translating is not immoral.

If you took Greek in seminary, and then, after five years of using software and an interlinear, you can translate the passage you are preaching on into English a word at a time (or just compare it carefully to the ESV, NASB, LSB or another more literal translation), then that’s great—if that’s your goal.

However, if your goal is to read Greek, to think in Greek as it streams into your consciousness, then you will need some strategies to help you acquire that reading fluency.

And for some suggested strategies, sien julle hier weer volgende week! (see y’all back here next week!)

Greek is a hard language to master, even for Greeks. My Greek ethnic heritage helped diddly-squat in the acquisition of the reading and writing of Koinē, or “common” Greek, the language of the New Testament. There’s a reason “It’s all Greek to me” is a by-word of resignation expressed at any encounter with incomprehensible speech or indecipherable script.

And yet, hundreds of thousands of diligent students over the centuries have tackled and mastered the language in pursuit of a deeper love for, and understanding of, the Word of God. It is possible to acquire a working knowledge of Greek in less than a year and mastery in a few years. It’s a lot easier to lose it.

Martin Luther called the original languages of the Bible, the scabbard of the sword. And reading the New Testament in English instead of Greek has been compared to kissing your bride through a veil. All seminaries worth their salt require Greek in preparation for a preaching ministry (and hopefully Hebrew too, since the first two-thirds of the Bible came to us in that language).

The great grammarian, A. T. Robertson said,

The real New Testament is the Greek New Testament. The English is simply a translation of the New Testament, not the actual New Testament. It is good that the New Testament has been translated into so many languages. The fact that it was written in the koine, the universal language of the time, rather than in one of the earlier Greek dialects, makes it easier to render into modern tongues. But there is much that cannot be translated. It is not possible to reproduce the delicate turns of thought, the nuances of language, in translation. The freshness of the strawberry cannot be preserved in any extract.”

-The Minister and his Greek New Testament

But there is a discipline more difficult than learning Greek that seminaries often neglect to mention, let alone prepare us for:  retaining the Greek you learned.

As soon as you pass your comprehensive final exam, you will walk out of that academic oasis into the desert of real life, and immediately start to leak knowledge like a water bottle with a hole in it. Unless you keep topping up that skill every day, it will run dry within a couple of years.

No one told me this. Maybe it was obvious (I mean, I passed trigonometry in high school and now can’t even remember what that is.) Perhaps our professors assumed that the weekly use of Greek in sermon preparation would be enough to keep the bottle filled. But the use of Bible software like Logos (which is awesome) makes preparation in Greek easier, but also less demanding on memory. Why know how to parse when a mouse click does it faster and more reliably anyway, right?

Maybe it would be discouraging to be told how ephemeral your skill is while you’re slogging in memorization of vocabulary and paradigms, and wrestling with irregular verbs, –mi verbs, liquid consonants, periphrastic constructions, zero-vowel gradation, and contract vowels.  Eventually, those terms will be like “sin, cos, tan waves” from trigonometry—a fading memory of former academic dexterity.

And for many pastors the ability to understand enough Greek to make use of exegetical commentaries, and use Logos or BibleWorks, is sufficient for them to be faithful in understanding and outlining the text they are preaching. But for some of us, we miss the fluency of reading, the joy of daily devotions in the original languages, the color of idioms, and the specificity of the syntax. If you are one of that breed, I have some encouragement for you: it’s not too late. Dead language skills can live again!

I used Greek just about every week that I prepared a New Testament sermon, for 16 years. And yet, I found that if I flipped open my GNT when away from my computer screen, I was not able to read with any alacrity, without getting stumped by vocabulary, unrecognizable verb forms, and even common connecting words, including certain ubiquitous prepositions. How can this be? I had grown used to walking with crutches, and my fluency had atrophied. I used my Bible software and interlinear so much that I floundered without the help. I could translate, but not read!

So, on January 1 of this year I made a resolution to recover what I had lost. And 8 months into my journey, I can see what I tried that didn’t work, and what has helped significantly. I haven’t arrived yet, but I am seeing such steady improvement that I got excited about sharing it with others so they could start now and not wait a moment longer. Okay, well, they’ll have to wait til next week. Today is just an introduction to the mini-series I am planning for the next couple of weeks.

I’ll present some guidance I have received, practiced, and found helpful. In the meantime, make sure you can recall, with instant recognition, the alphabet’s symbols and sounds and order (I still hesitate at “Xi”), and bust out the old flashcards to learn the words that occur more than 200 times. That will put you in good stead for the rest of the regimen.

Here’s what to expect…

– The difference between reading and translating, and the place of each skill.

– Realistic goals and real motives.

– Strategies for Reading Greek. This is intended for those who have had classes in the language, know how to look up vocab and grammar, but can’t read a page of the New Testament without getting distracted by the need to fill in the gaps of word recognition.

– The value of a 5-day refresher course, and the Daily Dose. This will cover my experience taking a course to jump-start my stalled fluency and what I use to maintain translation skills.

– Tools you need and tools you don’t need (as much as you think you do).

– A word about pronunciation debates, reading aloud, memorization of verses versus memorization of paradigms, and a fellow Greek-geek to partner with.

That’s all for now. Please don’t mention Hebrew… I’ve already thought what you’re thinking. I’ll get to that.  

How many takes have you seen about Simone Biles and her decision to drop out of several events at the Olympics?

Everyone seems to have an opinion. 

There are people that are angry at her. There are people that are thankful for her. There are people calling for more discussions about mental health. There are people blaming the horrid sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of Nassar. It seems like everyone is talking about it.

I happen to be re-reading Hamilton’s brilliant biography on Eric Liddell called “For the Glory” right now. And though Eric Liddell has always been a favorite missionary of mine, and his biographies have brought me often to tears, I never truly grasped the vitriol his country leveled at him after pulling out of the Olympics, as much as this week, after watching the response to the Biles situation.

The biographers tried to make it clear in their writing. They explained that he was called a traitor. They explained that he received death threats. They explained that every single newspaper had the front page dedicated to him. They explained that everyone in Scotland became a biblical scholar overnight trying to prove from their dusty Bibles that the Bible doesn’t say you can’t run on Sundays. But I think this Simone Biles situation gives a little insight on exactly how impactful his decision was.

And it helps us see how faithful Eric Liddell was to Christ.

Not only did he give up a potential medal for the sake of his love for God, but after the Olympics he decided to give up his life for His sake. He gladly gave up his own glory for the glory of God.

One biographer, I read years ago, recounted the story of Liddell’s first speaking opportunity. Though a known introvert (some, even his own parents! questioned his love for Christ as he never spoke openly about his faith), he was asked to speak at a rugby outreach (he was on the Scottish national Rugby team). When asked, the story goes, he sat down on a chair and cried as he thought about it for several minutes, before finally raising his head and saying, “I’ll do it”. He went on to become a sought-after speaker who was unashamed of the Gospel and even preached in Paris on the Sunday he was supposed to run his 100 meter race at the Olympics. 

It was clear that for Liddell, running for gold came second to running for Christ. And it was this eternal mindset that caused so much uproar in the minds of those living for this life.

A different biographer, remarked that he pictured Eric Liddell, leaving Paris with a medal around his neck (remarkably won in the 400-meter race) on a train back home, wondering to himself how Scotland would react this time when they find out he had purchased for himself a one-way ticket to China.

Obviously, I’m not trying to compare Eric Liddell and Simone Biles as their situations were very different, but the incredible number of opinions about her actions this past week helps us grasp how monumental Eric Liddell’s decision was less than a hundred years ago and helps us grasp how incredible his love for Christ was.

I hope that you are reminded about how pointless it is to live for this life. 

Eric gladly gave up fame and fortune in this life to gain it in the next. He set aside his comfort for the sake of seeing Chinese souls exalt Christ. He was willing to have his whole country turn against him (twice!) for the sake of trying to turn a country to Christ.

I am reminded about Jesus’ words in Matthew 16:26,

For what good will it do a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul?

I’m sure Eric had these verses reverberating in his heart as he made his eternal minded decisions not so long ago. And I pray that we too pick up his baton and like him are willing to give up the world for the sake of our soul and the souls of many lost around the world.

“Is it too late for me to begin pursuing a seminary degree to equip me for full-time ministry?” This is an age-old question (if you’ll pardon the pun). Since the advent of the Young, Restless, Reformed resurgence, youth is (back) in fashion. For now. The jury is still out on how effectively the sneakered, tattooed, v-neck generation will serve the gospel cause in the long run.

But in a real sense, age is just a number. For every story of a Charles Spurgeon, who hatched early to preach full-time from age 18, there is a corresponding Charles Simeon testimony, whose post-sixty-year-old accomplishments eclipsed his first four decades of ministry in their effectiveness.

The most common objection is, “I haven’t been in the school environment since the Reagan administration.” The task is understandably daunting: the late nights hunched over theology tomes, the incessant assignment deadlines, memorization of foreign vocabulary in Greek and Hebrew, papers you poured your heart into eviscerated by a genial, yet merciless professor. And yes, young men tend to cope better with the pace. But while younger students enjoy that short-lived edge, the older graduates have the lasting advantage…

At age 23, I was one of the youngest seminoids in my class, and it showed. But what I observed of my hoary-haired classmates after we graduated, was that the later in life they make the decision to enroll in seminary —in general— the more they would thrive in the ministry. And of course, their chances at a suitable placement straight after graduation tended to be higher. After all…

The glory of young men is their strength, the splendor of old men is their gray hair (Prov 20:29).

The real question you should be asking yourself is simply this:

“Am I called to the full-time ministry as a pastor, or not?”

Once you have done battle with that conundrum, then the answer to your initial question evaporates. If you are called to ministry, then you are not too old to be trained for that ministry.

God doesn’t give grace before you need it. But he is lavish with his grace when you need it. So don’t worry about the next four years, for they will have enough worries of their own.

[P.S. If you want a bit of motivation about how longevity and faithfulness will always outperform the “quest for the cool” check out episode 4 of the Expositor Podcast at The MacArthur Center for Expository Preaching.]

Sitting in my in-laws’ living room, I felt a fresh conviction from the barley fields of Bethlehem.

If you’ve read through the four homely chapters of the book of Ruth, then you’ve no doubt taken note of God’s providential provision, his surprising sovereignty, and the messianic anticipation woven throughout this little book in the Bible. Certainly, those themes should be foremost in our thinking when we read Ruth. How else do you explain a Moabite widow nestled into David’s ancestry but by God’s mysterious, guiding hand? And, as others have noted, Naomi features prominently in the narrative as the recipient of God’s providence, whether through a famine, through a redeemer, or through a grandchild.

But I’d like to offer one more application from the book of Ruth that has been precious to me in recent days. Ruth teaches us that godly, loyal love will compel us to care for our in-laws, or more broadly for our families.

The narrator of this tender short story means for us to see both Ruth and Boaz as living examples of the kind of loyal love (in Hebrew hesed) the Torah commanded. They stand in stark contrast to their setting, the selfish days of the judges, and epitomize the statute to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18). Boaz follows the law, in spirit and letter, to provide food for the sojourner and the widow (Deut 24:19-22). And Ruth, by all appearances, does everything she does to provide for her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi.

It’s Ruth’s example that I want to highlight so that we might consider how a loving son- or daughter-in-law cares for his or her in-laws. I don’t know what your situation is, whether you have in-laws, and if you do, whether they’re more out-laws than in. But I trust that these principles of familial, loyal love that we see in Scripture will encourage you to love your family with more sacrificial, Christ-like love.

Here are three ways that Ruth teaches us to care for our in-laws.

Ruth teaches us to embrace our in-laws

As the story begins, a triple tragedy strikes. Three early graves, three grieving widows, and three women looking for “rest” (Ruth 1:9). Naomi tells her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, to leave her and go back to their families in Moab where they would no doubt find a warm welcome and maybe even a husband (1:8-13). Orpah, understandably, returns. Ruth does not. The narrator tells us that Ruth “clung to [Naomi].” (1:14)

What Ruth goes on to say in her famous speech explains what her physical embrace represents.

But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” (1:16-18)

It would have been so simple for Ruth to just go home to Moab. Surely staying with Naomi would be costly. Ruth would likely have been tempted to let her Jewish mother-in-law fend for herself back in Bethlehem. But she doesn’t abandon Naomi, and her reason is that she has decided to embrace her mother-in-law as her own. They say blood is thicker than water, but Ruth proves that love is thicker than blood.

Consider your own family. Are there those from whom you’d like to keep your distance? Would it be simpler to just let them go their own way, to fend for themselves, to let them be someone else’s problem? But what does loyal love do? Our ultimate example is God, whose words Ruth echoes.

I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God. (Exodus 6:7)

Loyal love embraces those we are connected to, even if only by covenant and not by blood. Ruth refuses to treat Naomi as Mahlon’s mom but takes her as her own. Can we say the same in our families?

Ruth teaches us to provide for our in-laws

Notice that when Ruth and Naomi return together to Bethlehem, it’s Ruth who initiates the plan of provision, saying, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor” (Ruth 2:2). Ruth takes the lead in providing for her vulnerable mother-in-law.

Now, we don’t know Naomi’s situation entirely, so it’s hard to say what she could or could not have contributed herself. Maybe she was too old to go gleaning in the fields. Maybe she was afraid because, as she notes later, this is the kind of era where working in the fields could easily end in assault (2:22). It’s not clear either way.

However, what is clear is that Ruth doesn’t wait for Naomi to ask for help. She initiates and offers to provide, even putting herself in potential danger to do so.

Paul picks up on this provisionary family dynamic in 1 Timothy when discussing what kinds of widows should be financially cared for by the church. Paul delivers this strong rebuke:

But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Tim 5:8)

Did you catch the underlying principle? According to God’s common grace, even unbelievers realize that they should provide for their relatives. Ruth puts this principle into working boots.

Would you be willing to do the same for your family members? When your in-laws need help, do you offer it before they even have to ask? Are you eager to be generous with your family? Will you work hard to provide for your relatives?

Ruth teaches us to sacrifice for our in-laws

Now, you may be fine with Ruth’s example so far. “I love my in-laws, and I’m glad to take care of them whenever a need arises.” Wonderful. But Ruth takes this one step further, demonstrating the extent to which loyal love will go. Loyal love is also willing to make costly sacrifices.

Chapter 3 in the book of Ruth opens with Naomi suggesting that Ruth provide for herself by, essentially, asking Boaz to marry her. Commentators differ on how to take Naomi’s suggestion – I think it’s relatively innocent and not as suggestive as some want to make it – but the point is that Naomi is trying to care for Ruth, to help her find “rest” in the care of a husband (Ruth 3:1). Ruth, however, has a different motive.

After Ruth arrives at Boaz’s threshing floor, she uncovers his feet, wakes him up, and responds to his question with her request.

He said, “Who are you?” And she answered, “I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer.” (3:9)

Now, how you understand Ruth’s statement here depends on the bigger questions about whether you understand this to be a case of levirate marriage or not. Without getting into the weeds on that issue (that’s for another post), my understanding is that when Ruth says, “you are a redeemer,” she’s referencing Boaz’s redemption of the land, not only his marriage to her. And I think Boaz realizes that she is being motivated by a desire to provide for her mother-in-law because of his response:

And he said, “May you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter. You have made this last kindness greater than the first in that you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich. (3:10)

You should ask the question, “Kindness to who?” Well, what’s the first kindness? It’s a reference to Ruth’s return to Bethlehem with Naomi to care for her, which he already said he knows about (2:11). So, what’s “this last kindness?” Choosing to marry Boaz, an older man, rather than a young man, in order to secure the redemption of Naomi’s land (and family name) through that marriage (4:9-10). At least, that’s what Boaz says.

If all that is too complicated, then here’s a simplified explanation: Rather than pursuing a young dude to serve her own desires, Ruth pursues an older man because she knows that he can take care of his mother-in-law. At least in Boaz’s eyes, that was a meaningful sacrifice that once again demonstrated Ruth’s loyal love for Naomi. She was willing to choose the husband that most benefitted her mother-in-law, not necessarily herself. She was willing to sacrifice for her in-law. And because of Ruth’s self-sacrificial love, the women of Bethlehem tell Naomi that she has found in Ruth a “daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons.” (4:15)

My guess is that you’re not going to find yourself in the midst of a land redemption/marriage contract situation quite like this, but there will be lots of opportunities in your life to sacrifice for the sake of your family. Where you choose to live, how you spend your time, whether you pick up the phone and call when you’re tired… those big family decisions and little passing moments offer us countless potential demonstrations of loyal love or of indifference. Of course, we need to weigh all things with wisdom, and I’m not saying that only people who live next to their in-laws are loving (I dearly love my in-laws and they live across the country). But I am convicted by Ruth’s powerful example to evaluate my own motives when making those decisions. Do I take my in-laws’ interests to heart? Am I willing to sacrifice to serve them over myself? In what ways am I actively demonstrating my love for my in-laws, my immediate family, and my relatives?

If gospel-driven love is self-sacrificial love (1 John 4:7-11), then Ruth gives us a foretaste of that love by doing the rather ordinary and hard work of caring for her mother-in-law. There are bigger issues in the Christian life than this, to be sure, but this one hits close to home, doesn’t it? Ruth challenges me to love my family practically, purposefully, and ultimately more like Christ.

Oh, to be a son-in-law who is more than seven sons!

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill is a podcast produced by Christianity Today that relives the car crash of Seattle/Albuquerque’s Mars Hill Church. If you are a new believer, or if you have successfully blocked out the early 2000’s from your evangelical hippocampus, here is your refresher: In the late 90’s,  Seattle Pastor Mark Driscoll, who had been loosely associated with the emergent church, left the world of hippies and doubt and instead embraced Calvinism and certainty. What Rick Warren was to Orange County or Bill Hybels was to the Chicago burbs, Driscoll became to Seattle. He planted one church, then expanded to other sites, and eventually even put a church in Albuquerque (the Seattle of the Southwest). He built up an evangelical empire, started Acts 29 as a church planting organization, and was a board member of The Gospel Coalition. In short, he was a big deal.

Until he wasn’t.

Driscoll eventually left Mars Hill, and the church imploded. He left Calvinism faster than he could leave Seattle, and overnight was scrubbed from evangelicalism.

Earlier I used the term “car crash” to describe it, and that was intentional: with Mark Driscoll at the wheel, Mars Hill became less than a church—it became a cultural phenomenon—and in front of the watching world it crashed spectacularly. Listening to this podcast is like watching the highlights of that car crash, wondering how anyone was able to walk away.

Christianity Today’s Mike Cosper, who produced this podcast, is one who walked away. Five episodes have been released so far, and his love for what the Lord did through Mars Hill is evident. Cosper is careful in his retelling of the Mars Hill story to never lose sight of the fact that people got saved through this mess. Of course that doesn’t justify the crazy and unbiblical things that took place there, but as a Christian it is important to understand that even in evangelicalism’s darkest moments, God was still at work. I’m very appreciative of Cosper’s tone in that regard.

But that brings me the point of this post. There is one glaring Los Angeles-sized hole in Cosper’s narrative. It was evident in episode 1—“Who Killed Mars Hill”—and I thought of blogging on it back then, but I decided to wait to see if a later episode would circle back to the hole and fill it in (or at least point at it and say “there is a hole here, and I don’t have time to fill it up, but you be careful not to fall in”).

However, this week episode 5 was released and the hole only got bigger. In fact, unless Cosper gets back to it, the entire podcast is going to fall into that hole, and the wrong lessons will be both taught and learned. What is that hole?

The podcast’s first episode was titled “Who Killed Mars Hill?”Cosper, like a jury in a wrongful death case, portions out blame for the death of Mars Hill. Of course, most of the blame goes to Driscoll. His arrogance, ego, and manipulative posture toward his congregation is what was ultimately responsible for its implosion.

But Cosper makes clear that apart from Driscoll, there is still enough blame to go around. Internal critics share some of the blame. External critics, the media, and changing politics on a national level all receive their share of responsibility. In episode 2 (my favorite of the first five), even Rick Warren, Bill Hybles, and Robert Schuler are blamed. After all, they designed the “philosophy of ministry” that Driscoll would use to build his church. They created the evangelical environment that was ready to accept a Mark Driscoll.

Which leads to the hole: in episode 1, Cosper also blames John MacArthur. While it was not completely clear what direction the show was going, Cosper did make it clear that MacArthur’s criticisms of Driscoll helped create a storm of opposition to his ministry, and that storm is eventually what took him out.

What was not clear is if Cosper was implying that MacArthur’s warnings against Mark Driscoll were good or bad. Was it good that an evangelical leader saw the Mars Hill Church on fire, and pulled the fire alarm? I’d argue that it was a positive for the body of Christ that someone was willing to call out the immoral and unbiblical conduct at Mars Hill. Had more people exited the building when the fire alarm sounded, fewer would have been burned. I was hoping Cosper would go down that road, but he just left that question unasked.

Which is fine. Maybe, I thought, he’ll circle back around to it in a latter episode.

But then Episode 5 dropped. “The Things We Do To Women.” This episode looks at Driscoll’s view of sex and marriage. It examines Driscoll’s handling of the Song of Solomon, as well as other sermon series on that topic. Cosper shows how integral the idea of sex as a form of male fulfilment was to the entire philosophy of ministry at Mars Hill. He then, quite correctly, shows how horrible that was. To choose just one of many examples, it created a culture where, from the pulpit, Driscoll told reluctant women that they had to pleasure their husbands with oral sex because Jesus (through Driscoll) told them to. The end result of all this, Cosper points out, is that women were little more than props for Driscoll’s manhood tirades.

Then Cosper asks a question: how could evangelicals let Mark Driscoll get away with this? I mean the things he said were crazy and wildly inappropriate (and Cosper leaves the worst examples off the podcast). Driscoll not only bragged about this kind of thing, but he wrote about it. He preached about it. He preached in other churches on it. He literally went on a speaking tour around the country teaching on Song of Solomon! Given all this, how could he be made a board member of The Gospel Coalition? How could Grudem endorse his sex book? How could Family Life Radio have him speak at a conference on biblical manhood? In retrospect, it is absolutely INSANE!

And then the episode ends.

Do you see the hole?

If you were around in 2000’s you remember that contrary to the podcast, not every evangelical was quiet. For the most obvious example, consider John MacArthur, who often warned people about Driscoll. He warned people about his church, he warned people about his church model (multi-site) and he warned people about Driscoll’s penchant for saying that the Lord gave him visions and spoke to him about how to lead his ministry.

But more than all that, MacArthur repeatedly warned whoever would listen about how Driscoll handled Song of Solomon. For MacArthur, Driscoll’s main problem was that he spoke about sex in a way that was vulgar, demeaning to women, unbiblical, and ultimately spiritually harmful.

This was not a niche part of the Driscoll story either. MacArthur ran a four-part blog series called “The Rape of Solomon’s Song” where he detailed the danger of that approach to ministry. He wrote of Driscoll’s approach to Song of Solomon:

“That is not exegesis; it is exploitation… It is spiritually tantamount to an act of rape. It tears the beautiful poetic dress off Song of Solomon, strips that portion of Scripture of its dignity, and holds it up to be laughed at and leered at in a carnal way. And Mark Driscoll has boldly led the parade down this carnal path.”

How did people respond to MacArthur’s warning? Well, the week after he gave it, Driscoll was a keynote speaker at The Gospel Coalition’s annual conference (where he was assigned the topic of a pastor and pure speech—some things you cannot make up!). John Piper said that while he was concerned about Driscoll’s sex sermons, all pastors say things they regret, and Driscoll has shown himself to be quick learner (after listening to the podcast, going back and re-reading Piper’s excusing of Driscoll’s sex language is frankly even more incredible now than it was back then, a feat I didn’t think was possible; Desiring God has since taken it down, but you can read it here).

Jonathan Merritt even ran a column picked up by The Washington Post (!!!) calling Driscoll’s demeaning attitude toward women “a gaffe,” and said that the Christian thing to do is to accept his apologies. He specifically referenced the feud between Driscoll and MacArthur, and I can’t help but wonder if Merritt regrets that column today.

Allow me an analogy: It is as if there is a man outside yelling “your house is on fire, your house is on fire, everybody run!!!,” and instead of running, the leaders of the house come up with fanciful excuses for ignoring the man. Later, when the house has indeed burned down, those who escaped get together to talk about what went wrong. It is, at the very least, disingenuous for them to ask, “how come nobody warned us?”

My advice to Cosper is that he should spend an episode on that. How come some—Grudem, Piper, Carson, etc.—made excuses for his misogyny, while at the same time blasting MacArthur for warning against it? How come MacArthur was able to see what The Gospel Coalition could not? If this podcast is going to keep up the “speak truth to power” motif, that would be a great direction to go. Instead, episode 1 said—and I’m not joking about this—that MacArthur’s concerns are not worth addressing because MacArthur later went on to advocate for President Trump. Frankly, that’s an insane copout, and it’s a glaring omission in this otherwise very well done podcast.

There are many lessons that can be learned from Mars Hill. Some of them are ecclesiological and pertain to the dynamic of a multi-site church. Some are philosophical, and pertain to how the church should relate to the culture. But certainly some are theological—when pastors mishandle the word of God, people get hurt.

So, Christian: do you remember the rise and fall of Mars Hill? If so, listen to this podcast. You will love it and learn from it.

And then ask yourself who warned me about Mars Hill? Now, ten years later, who was right, and who was wrong?

Wisdom, Jesus says, is vindicated by her children.