Death, particularly in our American culture, is a subject of great fear and, at the same time, fascination. No one wants to talk about it until death strikes close to home, and even then the conversation is often laced with uncertainty and anxiety. As Christians, we worship a God who doesn’t shy away from the subject. In fact, death is integral to following Jesus (the conqueror of death). Dying is what we are called to do every single day. However, the modern atheistic mindset has no category for death other than being the instant one “ceases to be”. Death serves no other purpose, and life is but a dot on the global map of purposelessness.
“Ceasing to be” in death begs the question of what it is to “be” at all – a question atheistic philosophers have stumbled over for centuries. Death, for them, cannot be understood, because there is no meaning to “being”. For the Christian, death isn’t “ceasing to be”; rather, death is the gateway to true being. Or, I suppose one could say, death is the gateway to the true Being.
The purpose of “being” (existence) is life in union with the Creator of beings. That is to say, the meaning of life is to be united to God in order to glorify and enjoy Him forever. True man, or true being, is only found in union with God. After Adam’s fall in the garden, man was severed from this true humanity. Since then, this true being is only found in union with the new Man, Jesus Christ, who, being very God and very man, is perfect humanity. This “being” in Christ is only found in the cross of Christ, a place of suffering and death for the life of others. One must lose one’s life to gain it.
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. – Galatians 2:20
In order for a tree to sprout and bear fruit, a seed must be buried; a seed must die. When you understand that, since Adam, death and glorification go hand in hand, there is no fear in death. This isn’t to say there is no pain. You must pass through the fire and cherubic sword to return to the garden of God where the Tree of Life dwells. Of course, our Lord suffered more than any on His path to His death on the cross. However, He knew that death would bring glory, that He would be crowned King of all creation, because the last shall be first.
In Christ’s death on the cross, death’s purpose is flipped on its head. Death is no longer an undefeatable adversary, but a passage to glory and life in Jesus. The cross is a unique position where one’s feet are nailed toward the earth, hands are stretched out eastward and westward, and head is lifted toward the heavens. This place is where our Lord demands us to go, and go joyfully. A place where one is stretched out between heaven and earth; a place of vulnerability and humility. Isn’t that what death does to the proud, it humbles them? Instead of tirelessly striving to either combat death at all costs or avoid the issue entirely, our Lord demands that we embrace it in faith, knowing that death in Christ leads to new and more glorious life. God gives grace to the humble and opposes the proud; He glorifies the saint who gladly dies in faith, but He humbles the proud with justice.
Atheists know that death is a passage to glory in every way save physical death. For example, an atheist businessman works hard and sacrifices himself (death) for the success (life) of his business so that one day he can retire on the beach for the remainder of his life (glory). He must wake up early and work long hours (denying self) in order to achieve a fleeting glory (comfort until death). This understanding is built into the human experience; it’s a design feature. Everyone knows that sacrifices lead to glories.
However, when you are in rebellion against God, you are attempting to attain glory without death, without humility. This is impossible, because to truly “be”, to truly exist and live, one must be in union with the Creator of life itself. Union with Christ is dying like He did, and loving Him all the way there. This means we have to die every day. This means that we need to look to our own baptisms, our own deaths in Christ, because in it is the promise of resurrection. This means we must deny ourselves and sacrifice for others in love. “Ceasing to be” in the death of Christ can only mean eternal and abundant life. In Christ, death has lost its sting, and life only truly begins when you cease to be.
To imitate, according to the bible, is simply to follow. Jesus tells His disciples to follow Him, and in doing so His disciples did as He did. The disciples, imitating Christ, performed works of mercy (healing, feeding, etc.), and it is always the case that imitation necessarily includes works or acts. As Aristotle put it when speaking of “Poetic imitation”, the objects of our imitation are “men in action“. You must have an object that does something in order to imitate, that is to behave in a similar way. This seems to be tediously simple, does it not? Of course, imitation is acting as or following the object of our imitation, but is imitation in the Bible just a mindless mimicking of actions? When it comes to following Jesus, it is not.
In fact, as Christians, we must receive the ability to imitate Christ before we can act upon that imitation. The disciples, for example, received authority and blessing from Jesus before they could perform miracles that He had performed (Matt. 10:1, John 20:21-23). We must be chosen and given authority for the task. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (20th century Christian, social philosopher) argued that “Imitation of Christ” is the possession of “Christ’s acquired faculty”, that is to say, the possession of the Spirit. It was the Spirit who empowered the disciples to imitate Christ wherever they went, and it is the same with us today. Imitation, according to the Bible, is the Spirit-empowered following of Jesus Christ.
What sparked my interest in the idea of imitation was an email I received that contained an essay on the status of children within the Church. One of the arguments, or warnings, provided in support of a later age for the administration of baptism was that children often want to please their parents by imitating the faith of their parents without actually possessing it themselves. According to this essay, the innate action of child-like imitation was to be viewed skeptically rather than embraced as a natural response of faith in Christ. Now, this assumes a lot about faith (cognitive maturity being necessary to receive faith being one of the assumptions), but it seems to me that a child’s natural imitation of his or her parents actually assumes faith in the child. That’s what a disciple does, he or she follows.
“Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” – 1 Cor. 11:1
Following parents in the Faith is really an act of faith itself. Would anyone accuse an adult of insincerity if they imitated Paul as Paul imitated Christ? Of course not, because it is commanded in Scripture. It is also commanded of children, and our God speaks to us as a Father to His children. In the book of Ephesians, Paul counts children among the “saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus” (1:1). In chapter five, he goes on to state, “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children”, and he then speaks directly to children in the church in order to exhort them to “obey [their] parents in the Lord” (6:1). If children in the church are saints and faithful in Jesus Christ, it makes sense that Paul would exhort adults to imitate God as little children imitate their parents. Obey God as your children obey you.
Even more, King David sings in Psalm 22:9-10:
“But You are He who took Me out of the womb;
You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts.
I was cast upon You from birth.
From My mother’s womb
You have been My God.”
David was made to have faith in God while on his mother’s breasts (through an act with the parent), and from the womb Yahweh was David’s God. All of Israel sang this song together and believed it of themselves. Even a covenant child’s act of nursing is counted as an act of faith in God! David trusted God for nourishment through his mother, and the same acts of faith are seen in our children when they trust us in imitating us. Imitation is an act of faith.
Our little ones, baptized into the body of Christ and possessing all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places, act in accordance with the faith they received when they lift up their little arms to mimic their parents on Sundays, clasp their one-year-old hands in prayer, scream when the congregation says “Amen”, or even giggle at the sight of a bottle from their mother. We are relational beings; we respond to and imitate those around us. This isn’t a design flaw, but a feature. As said elsewhere by the social philosopher quoted above, “’I’ is the last pronoun a child learns to use.” We were born trusting, relating to, and communing with each other. We were made to imitate.
In short, if we are to view our children’s imitation as just mindless aping rather than natural acts of a present faith, then an adult imitating God like a child would not be an act of faith, and we should look at every disciple (no matter how small they may be) with skepticism. But our covenant children are children of the Faith, children of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When we stifle their acts or don’t believe their imitation is sincere, we misunderstand the definition of imitation. We tell them that they are not God’s children. We tell them that they cannot be one of us until they are old enough to be taken seriously. This isn’t how God treats our imitation of Him. No, He sings over us with joy (Zeph. 3:17) and is pleased at the mimicking sounds of our little voices. Be imitators of God. In other words, be children of God.
MargaretAnn Leithart volunteers at the North Jefferson Women’s Center in Fultondale, Alabama. This essay is dedicaed to the Center’s Director, Julie McLendon. This article originally appeared at Theopolis
I have the privilege of being able to counsel a lot of women who are seeking abortions. I can tell you that the majority of them are seeking to end their pregnancies not because they feel like it would be a fun thing to do, but because they are scared out of their minds and feel that they have no other option.
Alastair Roberts (PhD, Durham) is one of the participants in the Mere Fidelity podcast and is also the contributing editor of the Politics of Scripture series on the Political Theology Today blog. He blogs at Alastair’s Adversaria and tweets using @zugzwanged. This post was originally posted on his blog and reposted at Theopolis as ‘What Pastors Could Learn From Jordan Peterson’
Last night, along with a few online friends, I watched this debate on the meaning of life between William Lane Craig, Rebecca Goldstein, and Jordan Peterson, hosted by Wycliffe College. While watching it, and reflecting upon Peterson’s work more generally (about which I’ve writtenin the past), I was struck by some of the lessons that preachers can learn from Peterson. (more…)
Guest post by Michael Spalione, a Ph.D. student at Trinity College, Bristol.In my previous post, I highlighted the sacraments as the point of convergence between evangelicalism and ecumenism arguing that baptism and communion are presented in the New Testament as signs of the gospel that simultaneously enact and remember union with Christ and the unity of Christ’s body. I concluded that post by appealing to evangelical’s passion for the gospel as the reason for participating in ecumenism. (more…)
My first title for this series of posts was “Evangelical Sacramental Ecumenism” – not exactly a clickbait title. But those three words, evangelical, sacramental, and ecumenical, say a lot: The centrality of the gospel; a focus on baptism, bread, and wine; and the quest for visible unity among diverse churches. When they are put together they say even more: The visible unity of the churches is located in our shared participation in a common baptism and in the Lord’s Supper precisely because baptism and communion are signs of the gospel. Still a mouthful and we haven’t even gotten to the problem yet—and it’s a big one. Evangelicals tend to be somewhat indifferent to the sacraments, and largely suspicious or unaware of the ecumenical movement.1 For diverse reasons, evangelicalism has coexisted in the larger Christian world alongside sacramentalism and ecumenism with minimal interaction for over a century. (more…)
Sam is an Anglican Priest in the Anglican Church in North America. He holds a Bachelors in Music from Covenant College and an MDiv from Covenant Seminary. He is currently a Biblical Worldview Teacher at Little Rock Christian Academy. He and his wife Susan have eleven children and twenty-one grandchildren.
Nothing that I am about state should be construed as my advocating for people of different ethnicity to worship separately. Nothing I say here should be understood as an advocating of what is commonly referred to as ‘racism’. The Body of Christ is one, and the Church should visually reflect the reality of that ‘oneness’ to the degree that the world yearns for what they observe that we are enjoying. It is unfortunate that, for far too long, the Church has followed the lead of the world when it comes to recognizing and addressing hatred amongst the various tongues, tribes and nations.
Years ago, I participated in my first ‘racial reconciliation’ worship service. It was a well-integrated gathering of black and white folk. The service, while very moving, left me feeling very awkward as white strangers approached me to confess their racism toward me and “my kind”. It wasn’t that I had never experienced unfairness or injustices because of the tone of my skin. On the contrary, the issue was that the confessions came from people who had never done any wrong towards me in particular. So, I was left not knowing what I should do for them in response to their confessions; I was young and so chalked my discomfort up to my inexperience. Since that gathering, I recall participating in at least two other instances of worship services that were focused primarily on racial reconciliation. And I have actually worked for a church where “intentional racial reconciliation” was part of the mission statement. Over the years, I have come to a greater sense of clarity regarding my uneasiness with such event. Here, in no particular order, are the few reasons that I no longer take part in “racial reconciliation” services:
Too often, the premise of the worship service is that Whites are guilty because they are White. This is evident in the fact that the white people present at such events are expected, even pressured, to confess the sin of racism even if they cannot recall any specific instances of racist action that they have perpetrated. The assumption is that because you are white then you must have knowingly, or unknowingly, caused offense towards Blacks (and maybe other ethnic minorities too). An example of this guilt-by-association is that, although you may be unable to find any instance of slave ownership in your genealogy, you are held accountable for the history of slavery in the United States of America. The black person stands as representative of the innocent victim of so-called racism and thus serves a priestly role for the white confessor who is guilty because of a lack of melanin in the epidermis. The white person’s pigmentation carries with it a privilege, and that is enough to require repentance.
In contemporary parlance, the word ‘privilege’ is employed by the offended group as a weapon against the other. Once someone is labeled as ‘privileged’ he is supposed to realize his rightful place in the ‘race’ conversation is as the silent observer whose liberty to speak has been revoked. The accused and the accuser are no longer equals. Recently, a major Reformed Seminary hosts a conference on ‘race’ and actually advertised that they were inviting Whites to come and to listen but not to speak or interact. Such is not biblical reconciliation but rather a warped form of penance and one that cannot be paid fully, thus being reconciled, as the person of whom the penance is required can never cease to be as God created them: white or black. He can never undo the fact of slavery or systemic hatred in America and, therefore, he must embrace a life of spiritual self-flagellation as a result of the unwarranted whiteness that has allowed him to live such a life of comparative ease. What is most disturbing is not that the world would think this way but that such thought has been embraced by the Church.
Words Matter. As people of the Word, language is important and I believe it is time the Church gave up the common use of the word ‘race’ and all of its cognates. They only help to perpetuate an untruth about the nature of mankind. In the anthropology of Scripture, race is an alien concept. Scripture does not speak of ‘the races’ as subsets of humanity, but it does speak of ‘tongues (which can be translated as religions), tribes and nation’. As long as the Church concedes to the terminology of a Darwinian worldview we will never get closer to modeling the oneness of the Body of Christ for the world that is spoken of in Scripture. The Church must not capitulate to the secular world on this matter and put words into our mouths, and in doing so perpetuate a false reality. God’s Word has this right; there is one ‘race’ and many scattered tongues, tribes and nations. Many anthropologists agree that the 19th-century idea of many ‘races’ is not a biological reality but rather a myth. My point here is not to argue the science but to emphasize worldview. When discussing biblical anthropology we should insist on biblical language, and there is no Scriptural basis for diving mankind among the so-called ‘races’. The illusion of racism is not where the discussion should lie, and as long as the Church discusses issues of pre-Christian tribal and ethnic allegiances from the perspective of so-called racism then we will not see any real progress as we are led by the nose by every new social-justice group that comes along to claim their place as the new prophetic voice of a downtrodden minority.
Identity madness is a current hot topic. People question their identity as man rebels against the boundaries of a biblical anthropology they seek in vain to invent their own explanation. This radical subjectivity results in daily re-definitions. God’s people need to understand their true identity. As a Christian, what is my preeminent identity? Am I a Black Christian, or a Christian who is black? We must not give priority to tribal or ethnic loyalties in place of fidelity to the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have found nothing in scripture that affirms that I am allowed to believe that old tribal devotions neither can nor should take precedence over my identity as a member of the Body of Christ, the nation of the New Israel come down from heaven. We give lip-service to this reality, but do we walk in this truth consistently? The only way is to manifest the truth of the Gospel of King Jesus. The Church cannot continue to trail along behind the world attempting to sprinkle ‘holy water’ on the latest iteration of Marxism and call it ‘social justice’.
Racial reconciliation services are founded upon a lie from Satan. The whole motivation behind them is a false anthropology. Allow me to nuance my previous point. These worship services focus on corporate confessions by the white section of the congregation. And once the service has ended it is expected that the white brother will now go forth and sin against his black brother no longer. Recall here that for many they are expected to repent of being made white which is not a sin. If the white brother does eventually cause offense against black brother, and he will and vice versa, his former repentance, based upon a false premise, will then be viewed as being disingenuous. How is that justice? The line of thought is that, had his confession been genuine, then his offense would be unrepeatable. The offended Black then may accuse the White of ‘racial insensitivity’, latent racism, ‘racial privilege’ and a host of other insults. But rarely is the individual treated as a fallen human being, struggling with a fallen nature, who is wholly incapable of living up to God’s expectation of loving his neighbor as himself. If the person were to be treated fairly, we would seek to follow Jesus’ mandate that, if you offend me, I am to forgive you. Period.
“He said to His disciples, ‘It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble.’
” ‘Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive
him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I
repent,’ forgive him.’” Luke 17:1-5
The message is clear that the offended brother must forgive if so asked. This is repeated several times in the Gospels, for example, Matthew 6 wherein the Lord instructs His followers to pray to God asking that we are judged as we judge others, to be forgiven just as we forgive. We can all relate to the apostles’ response, “…increase our faith!” In own of strength, we cannot possibly hope to be the people that God has called for us to be, nor can we love the way that Jesus says to love. So, when my brother sins against me in prioritizing his ethnic, social, political and economic tribes over mine I am to forgive him. It is not my place to accuse him and therefore all who look like him of being hopelessly lost, nonredeemable and less than me because of some new ‘Mark of Cain’ in his skin that looks different than mine. I pray for him. I talk with him. I seek to help him grow beyond the limitations of his tribe, ethnic or otherwise.
In Summation
The Church of Jesus Christ should stop attempting to address the mythical issue of so-called ‘race’ as to do so would be to spend time and energy chasing after an imaginary dragon. There simply is no such thing and the Bible offers our proof. Biblically speaking, mankind is of one human race. We are all saved the same way, we will all be judged by the Christ according to the same standard of righteousness that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and not one has been tested and found in the right in His eyes.
The call of the Church is to love one another. This means that I must deal with you personally when you sin against me personally. I cannot hold you accountable for sins committed by past generations, nor can I regard you as a pariah because I perceive that God has blessed you differently than He has me.
No ethnic group has the market cornered on any particular sin. The Church does mankind a disservice when she disciplines them to believe the lie that skin color makes them immune from the accusations of hating or discriminating against others of a different tribe. Many blacks have been sold the lie that their identity as an oppressed minority renders them exempt from being found guilty of tribalism. In the Marxist worldview, such may be lauded as a foundational truth, but when life is seen from a biblical perspective that simply does not pass the smell test. Christ has commanded us to love one another. That call can only be fulfilled on His terms.
God’s people are a missionary people, and this is not true only of the New Testament church. God called Abraham to bless the Gentiles through him, and one of Israel’s recurring sins was her failure to carry out this mission. Israel was supposed to evoke praise from the Gentiles, but instead , er idolatries and sins caused the Lord’s name to be blasphemed. (more…)
We are made to be happy. Created to enter into the eternal joy of God, our whole being inclines to that end, but the fallen world has put forth barriers and by our own sin we bar ourselves from that endless delight, and death blinds us to that reality. Yet laughter breaks through.
This tendency for all things to bend to joy is seen in memory. Nobody in recalling an injury feels its pain again, but at the slightest invocation of a joyous event laughter spills out. Pain is forgotten yet joy soars on, achieving greater heights at each remembrance. Faith and hope join hands in laughter, for it is a bold declaration that though this world is fraught with terror, evil and ills yet we can delight in it because we know its comedic end.
Laughter is a powerful weapon. It is a divine act and a powerful contrast between Yahweh and Allah, who does not laugh. But for all that is praiseworthy in laughter there is the laughter of fools that should give us pause. What is the difference between foolish laughter and the laughter of the wise? (more…)
Another journey around the sun is almost complete and some of our contributors have compiled a list of book recommendations just in time for Christmastide. Be sure and plunder the Egyptian’s After-Christmas sales before Twelfth Night. (more…)
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
Sam is an Anglican Priest in the Anglican Church in North America. He holds a Bachelors in Music from Covenant College and an MDiv from Covenant Seminary. He is currently a Biblical Worldview Teacher at Little Rock Christian Academy. He and his wife Susan have eleven children and twenty-one grandchildren.
