Violence of God and the Love of Jesus

By Jeremy Myers

violence in Old Testament This is a summary post from much of what I have been writing over the past two weeks or so about the violence of God in the Old Testament. The reason I am summarizing it is because I want to begin looking at some of the key biblical passages which are affected by my proposal to see how we can read and understand these texts.

I know that most of your questions and objections to this view have not been answered, but hopefully as we look at some the key texts of Scripture, what I am proposing will make more sense.

So here is the summary…

Violence of God in Light of the Love of Jesus

When we read about God telling Israel to go slaughter men and women, the natural, right, and godly response is to read such depictions with revulsion, loathing, and disgust. Neither Jesus nor God ever wanted such things to occur. Jesus never laid a hand on anyone to harm or hurt them, nor did He ever command His disciples to do anything of the sort. To the contrary, Jesus always helped, healed, comforted, restored, fed, loved, and forgave, and He always commanded His disciples to do the same.

In previous posts (see the list below), I have argued that since Jesus fully reveals God to us, we can also be certain that God never actually commanded the Israelites to kill and destroy, or to go to war with their enemies. But when Israel set out to do these things, God took the blame for their actions by inspiring the biblical authors to lay the guilt fully in His hands. The violent things that God commanded the Israelites to do in the Old Testament were not actually His will or His commands. The Israelites set out to do such things because this is how nations and countries behaved at that time (and still sometimes today). When God saw that their heart was set on doing these things, God issued the command for it to happen so that later generations could lay the blame for these bloody deeds directly on God Himself.

Though God is not directly guilty for these actions, He knows that He is indirectly responsible, for He created a world where these sorts of actions are possible. So He takes the blame by commanding human agents to carry out the violent actions which they had already set their hearts and minds to doing.

In When God Pled Guilty

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Let the Condemned God Die

By Jeremy Myers

Have you ever heard someone say that God cannot be near sin? That sin cannot be in God’s presence? That the reason sinners are separated from God is because God is so holy and since we are sinners, we cannot be in the presence of God?

Sin Cannot be in God’s Presence

Doesn’t this seem strange? How is it possible that sin could have this much power over God? Can one sin really do God in? Doesn’t it seem stranger still that if this were the case, God would allow Satan into His presence (Job 1:6)? And more strange still, if God cannot even be near sin, how then did God come to earth as a human being?

No, I think that we have severely misunderstood what the Bible teaches about sin and the holiness of God.

Condemned God God is an eternal ocean of grace, mercy, love, and righteousness and knows that no amount of sin can diminish or overcome His holiness. Sin does not taint God, but rather, God soaks up all sin. When, in the person of Jesus Christ, God steps into the evil of the world, it does not overpower Him, but He overcomes it.

Sometimes we get this crooked view of God where He cannot be near sin because sin would somehow taint His holiness. Such a view gives sin way too much power and gives God way too little.

God is not like a pristine white couch upon which no one can sit for fear of it getting soiled. No, sin cannot be in the presence of God because whenever God draws near to sin, the raging inferno of His love and holiness washes all sin away. God can no more be tainted by sin than the ocean could be dyed red with a single drop of food coloring.

This is why God takes all sin upon Himself in Jesus and in the Old Testament.

Sin crushes, enslaves, and destroys humanity, but it vanishes away into nothingness at the smallest touch of God’s blazing holiness.

God Takes Our Sin and Guilt

This helps explain some of what I have been arguing in recent posts, that just as Jesus became sin for us (2 Cor 5:21) and took the curse and our guilt upon Himself (Gal 3:13), God took the guilt and sin of Israel upon Himself as well.

In recent posts, I have argued that God does not try to acquit Himself from guilt for the sin of the world because God knows that in a way, He is guilty.

He knows that the only reason there is sin, wickedness, and evil in the world is because He created a world where such things were possible. He created a world in which genuinely free agents could possibly do horrific things. And when they did fall into horror, though they themselves were responsible for the decisions and choices they made, God does not let Himself off the hook.

We tend to think that God created us with freedom, and then when we used that freedom to disobey God, God blames us for it.

In When God Pled Guilty

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Is God Lying about Violence in the Old Testament?

By Jeremy Myers

old testament violence I have been saying in my posts on the violence of God that God inspired the biblical writers to say that He told them to do the violent things they did, even though He did not. The reason God did this was to take their sin upon Himself. Just as Jesus became sin for us (2 Cor 5:21), so God became sin for Israel. This doesn’t mean God became guilty, nor does it mean that God became a sinner. It simply means that God took their guilt upon Himself just as Jesus did upon the cross. To read more about this line of thought, see the list of posts at the bottom of this article.

One of the possible objections to this view is that it makes God out to be a liar.

Yet we know that God does not lie.

So how can God inspire biblical authors to write that He commanded Israel to do things that He did not actually command them to do? I believe it is because that although God is not guilty for these things, nor did He want them to happen, He nevertheless views Himself as ultimately responsible for what goes on in this world. Why? Because He created a world where such sin and horror was possible.

In a way, God truly is guilty. It is not that He sins or is a sinner, but He made a world where horrible sin and nightmarish tragedy was possible. So when the nightmare began, God took the blame, and through divine responsibility, took it upon Himself to make the nightmare stop. Ultimately, God pled guilty for the sins of the world, and paid the penalty on the cross by dying a sinner’s death. One of my favorite theologians put it this way: Jesus “dies as a criminal, under the curse of the Law—as if to say, ‘Look, I’m as guilty as you are in this situation because I set it up in the first place; let’s just forget about blame and get on with the party;” (Capon, Mystery of Christ, 34).

And this actually reveals the primary problem with all other theories about the violence of God in the Old Testament.

In previous posts we surveyed various proposals about how to understand the violent portrayals of God in the Old Testament in light of Jesus Christ. All of those proposals were rejected for various reasons, but the main problem with all those views is this: they all try to get God off the hook. They all try to wash God’s hands of evil. They all try to explain why a good God can command such horrible things and still be good.

The problem, of course, is that in Scripture God never tries to get Himself off the hook. To the contrary, if He inspired Scripture to contain the information it does, God seems to go out of His way to put Himself on the hook. God seems intent in Scripture on laying the blame for all the sin and violence of the world directly at His own feet.

In When God Pled Guilty

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5 Ways to Break the Ice with Your Neighbors

By Jeremy Myers

This practical post on getting to know your neighbors is by Sam Riviera. Sam is a frequent contributor to this blog. See the bottom of this post for more articles in this series about getting to know your neighbors.

As I mentioned in the a previous post, most of us do not know many of our neighbors. We assume they’re unfriendly. Otherwise, they would have introduced themselves.

Or could it be that we have neglected to introduce ourselves? Perhaps most of our neighbors know each other, and somehow we’ve been left out. Hmmmm! Shouldn’t we at least check this out?

But how should we go about it?

How do we actually get to meet some neighbors and find out what is going on in our neighborhood?

It all begins with taking walks in the neighborhood.

walking the neighborhood

Even though many neighborhoods often appear to have no people, the people are there.

But when do they come out of their houses and into the street? We have discovered that many people like to take a short walk, clean out their car or do something in their front yard at the end of a nice day. Just about anytime Saturday, Sunday afternoons and early evenings are usually the best times to find people in front of their houses or in the street.

If we’re going to meet them, we have to be out there also. Our solution? We walk around the neighborhood (and the two adjoining neighborhoods) at the times when we know we’ll find people out of their houses.

As you walk the neighborhood, there are numerous things you can do to break the ice in getting to know your neighbors. Here are five:

1. Give Compliments

As you walk, maybe you see someone standing in their yard, looking at their new landscape job, paint job, car, or whatever. What should you say? People love sincere compliments… so give them a compliment!

Say “We love your new landscape job” (or whatever it is). “It looks so nice.” Then ask “Did you design it?” (or paint it or do the work). Most people smile, say thank you, then introduce themselves and ask us who we are.If you have been going on walks for a while, they may say, “I see you walking all the time,” and then proceed to tell you all about whatever it was you complimented them on. Sometimes they may invite you into their garage, backyard, or house to show you what they’ve done.

2. Take a Friendly Dog

take a dog walk neighbood Another great icebreaker is to take a friendly dog along as you walk the neighborhood.

Our dog died a few years ago, but we have discovered that several neighbors have dogs that rarely get walked. The neighbors and especially the dogs are delighted when we offer to take the dog along on one of our walks. In addition to doing something nice for one neighbor, it gives us an opportunity to meet more neighbors.

Lots of people like dogs, and if you take yours (or a neighbor’s), they may stop you to ask questions about the dog you’re walking. We have even had people see us out of their window, come out of their front door and ask us how many dogs we own, which always ends up in all of us getting to know each other.

3. Garage sales

Some people who never seem to come outside their doors will occasionally decide to clean out their garage and have a garage sale. When they put their stuff on their driveway and sidewalk for sale, this is a great time for you to go talk with them.

Where we live, garage sales are usually done on a Saturday morning on the driveway. Since we’re not really looking for things to buy, we wait until the serious garage sale crowd has thinned out, and walk to the sale. We make a comment, such as “What a nice day for a garage sale,” then add that we live nearby. The homeowners or renters then usually comment that they frequently see us walking and ask us questions. (What happened to your dog? How many dogs do you have? How many miles do you walk every day?) With few exceptions, they introduce themselves and we introduce ourselves.

4. Trash Pickup

neighborhood trash pickup Some neighborhoods have trash that builds up in various empty lots or along the sides of the streets. As you walk, carry a garbage bag to collect any stray garbage lying around. This not only helps improve the appearance of your neighborhood and cleans up the environment, but is another way to break the ice with your neighbors.

Two or three times throughout the year my wife and I take some garbage bags and “trash pickers” (long-handled “grabbers” that can be purchased for ten to twenty dollars at swap meets or Walmart) and pick up trash in the street and on the sidewalks in the neighborhood. We do it on Saturdays or Sundays. Some people thank us, and some offer us a drink. Some ask us where we buy the pickers. We have met several people when picking up trash that we had never seen previously.

5. Handing out Flyers

When something of community interest is happening, we volunteer to hand out flyers in our neighborhood. If you want to maintain good relationships with your neighbors, you probably should not hand out political or religious flyers. These are almost never welcome. Also, do not hand out flyers for sales events. But invitations to community events and parties are often good ways to meet neighbors. People like to be invited to parties.

This could be the city festival, art walk, community fair, and so on. As you do this, try to be very respectful of other people’s property. Never cut across the lawn, jump over a fence, post a flyer on their car, or place it in their mailbox. It is generally best to hand out flyers only on weekend afternoons, when many people are home. As we walk up their front sidewalk, it is common for people to meet us at the door, and often they initiate a conversation with us.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of icebreakers. There are many others. In the next post, we will look at some ideas for taking our relationships with neighbors we have met a step further.

This "Getting to Know Our Neighbors" series is by Sam Riviera, a frequent blog contributor. This series provides concrete, practical suggestions for loving others like Jesus.

Getting to Know Our Neighbors - Introduction
5 Ways to Break the Ice with Your Neighbors
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In Mission

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111 Charts on the Apostle Paul

By Jeremy Myers

I have a love/hate relationship with the Apostle Paul.

On the one hand, I love the guy. He is probably the greatest missionary the world has ever seen, he wrote a large percentage of the Christian Scriptures, he was a champion of God’s grace and of the Gospel for the Gentiles, and he had a theological mind and loving heart like none other.

And yet… I find his letters to be some of the most boring in the New Testament. Maybe boring isn’t the right word. Tiresome? Repetitive? Dry?

I don’t know. Maybe it is just the season of my life I am in right now (and have been in for 15 years).

I know, I know. Bible teachers shouldn’t say such things. Most Bible teachers seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in the letters and writings of Paul. When I was a pastor, I did too. I preached through Philippians and Ephesians. And while I enjoying doing so, and learned a lot, and believe the people who heard these sermons learned a lot, it was always a relief to leave Paul and get into one of the narratives of Scripture (such as Genesis, Esther, or Jonah–which I have also preached), or my favorite of all – one of the Gospels.

Don’t get me wrong. I do love Paul. I love what he has written. When it comes to theology and the practical outworking of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for our life as Christians, Paul’s writings are among the best.

Maybe it is just that Paul is sometimes hard to understand. I know his letters are fairly well organized, but sometimes he goes off on rabbit trails, and other times he says things which don’t make a whole lot of sense, or which seem to contradict what he said in a different letter.

All of this is to say that I was thrilled when Kregel Publishers recently sent me a book which is filled with 111 Charts on the Life, Letters, and Theology of Paul. If you like studying the letters of Paul, and you like charts, this is the book to buy. This book contains a chart for almost every aspect of Paul.

It begins with 9 charts about Paul’s background and context. If you want to understand Paul’s thinking and theology, it helps to first understand the historical and cultural settings in which Paul lived and taught. These charts are extremely helpful in this regard.

Following this are 25 charts on Paul’s Life. While many of these charts were helpful, such as the parallels between Acts and the letters of Paul, and the chart on Paul’s missionary journeys, I did not find the charts about all the Men and Women mentioned by Paul to be necessary. These two charts seemed to be charts just for chart’s sake.

Next are 43 charts on Paul’s letters. These charts are very helpful for understanding the various letters of Paul.There are charts here which provide out outline for each of Paul’s letters, including charts for key words, ideas, and themes in each letter. There were also charts for OT quotations and allusions, and even a chart of all the Hapax Legomena in Paul’s letters (words or phrases that are used only 1x in the Bible). If you preach or teach the Bible, many of these resources will prove helpful, as it is always important to get a big picture overview of any letter of Paul before breaking it down to teach various pieces.