Author: Christopher R Smith

The Rev. Dr. Christopher R. Smith is an an ordained minister, a writer, and a biblical scholar. He was active in parish and student ministry for twenty-five years. He was a consulting editor to the International Bible Society (now Biblica) for The Books of the Bible, an edition of the New International Version (NIV) that presents the biblical books according to their natural literary outlines, without chapters and verses. His Understanding the Books of the Bible study guide series is keyed to this format. He was also a consultant to Tyndale House for the Immerse Bible, an edition of the New Living Translation (NLT) that similarly presents the Scriptures in their natural literary forms, without chapters and verses or section headings. He has a B.A. from Harvard in English and American Literature and Language, a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell, and a Ph.D. in the History of Christian Life and Thought, with a minor concentration in Bible, from Boston College, in the joint program with Andover Newton Theological School.

Was Dietrich Bonhoeffer justified in joining the plot to kill Hitler?

Q. I just finished reading Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas. It is an outstanding book about an inspiring Christian (with fascinating history to boot). The author describes—often in Bonhoeffer’s own words—how he came to believe that, as a Christian, it was his duty to do anything possible to stop Hitler, including killing him. It seems to me that this is a very slippery slope. Bonhoeffer, for instance, also thought that abortion was murder. I wonder, therefore, if he would have approved of killing abortion providers. What biblical basis is there for humans intentionally taking the life of another human (even capital punishment)?

I, too, have read this book by Metaxas, and like you I found it fascinating, informative, and challenging. I had my own questions and concerns about Bonhoeffer’s decision to join the plot to kill Hitler, even after listening to him make the case in his own words.

My first concern was just like yours—this is a very slippery slope. Even if we decide that somehow, under extreme and very extraordinary circumstances, Bonhoeffer was justified, this could open the door for others to conclude that they, too, might be justified in killing someone, in circumstances that are actually nowhere near to being as extraordinary as Bonhoeffer’s.

So it’s very important that we appreciate the context of his decision. The book does a superb job situating it in its historical context; let me try briefly here to review the biblical-theological context, as I understand it (not that this is absent from the book, either).

We need to recognize that Bonhoeffer’s deliberations came within the centuries-old tradition of reflection within Christianity about whether there can be such a thing as a “just war.” (The other longstanding and respected tradition in Christian theology is pacifism.) Among those who believe that there could be a just war, almost all agree that the war to defeat Hitler was one. It was a defensive war of self-protection against an unprovoked aggressor who had attacked peaceful countries and was oppressing their conquered populations, including systematically committing genocide against millions. So Bonhoeffer and his fellow plotters, many of whom were senior German military officers, saw themselves as joining the justified side in a just war.

Given this, the question then arose as to whether assassination was ever an appropriate tactic within a just war. It could be that in most cases of a just war (assuming there is such a thing), assassination would still not be valid. But in this case, Bonhoeffer concluded, it was a means proportionate to the desired end that would not have wider unacceptable consequences. (These are some of the tests that are applied to means within just war theory.) This was true even though the plotters recognized that some of Hitler’s senior staff might be killed along with him; the person who delivered the bomb in a briefcase was prepared to die himself in the process if necessary.

And this leads us into the second part of the biblical-theological context for the decision: Bonhoeffer’s own theory of ethics. Part of this theory held that if you could recognize, “Somebody ought to do such-and-such,” then you ought to do such-and-such, because we are answerable to God not just for our actions, but also for our inaction. This was because God, in Bonhoeffer’s understanding, accomplishes his purposes through the free acts of human moral agents.

He therefore took seriously what the book of James says: “Anyone who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.” He saw too many German Christians effectively giving Hitler a free hand by appeal to “obeying the law” or “submitting to authorities,” when they ought to have been resisting oppression and protecting the weak. According to Bonhoeffer’s ethics, it was better to act on your beliefs and convictions and be prepared to answer to God for your actions than it was not to act out of fear of doing something wrong. I believe this is one reason why he’s such a fascinating and inspiring character.

I think our takeaway needs to be, however, that anyone who’s prepared to act as boldly as he did should also be prepared to reflect as carefully as he did, in community, about ethical actions, both generally and specifically. This was not a simple matter of “I think God is telling me to kill Hitler.” It was a meticulously deliberated decision, made in the context of a close community of committed believers in his own day, in the larger context of Christian moral and ethical reflection over the centuries. The fact that the jury is still out on this decision shows how difficult and complicated it was, and therefore what moral courage it took for him to act upon it and be prepared to answer to God for his actions (not to mention answering to the verdict of history, which I guess we’re working on here).

Your ultimate question is too large for me to address in a single blog post: “What biblical basis is there for one human intentionally taking the life of another?” But I hope I’ve sketched out the beginnings of an approach to that question, at least.

Do the Scriptures teach that sin is innate to us?

Q. Do you understand the Scriptures to teach that sin is innate to us? Is sin or the sinful nature more than an old “pattern” that we slip back into under the influence of spiritual forces external to us? Thank you.

I think that according to Scriptural teaching, the concept of sin needs to be understood in two senses. We might refer to “sin” and to “sins.” Sins are specific actions that are contrary to what we know to be God’s wishes and intentions for our lives. In that sense they incur guilt and we need to forsake them (stop doing them) and ask and receive God’s forgiveness for them.

“Sin,” on the other hand, is a power that influences us to commit “sins.” Much of its hold over us comes from the fact that it works to blind us, i.e. we aren’t aware of its presence because it leads us to rationalize wrong actions, telling ourselves we’re doing them for some good reason that justifies them.

A person who has not yet been made a new creation through saving faith in Jesus is under the power of sin in this sense. But I would not say strictly that sin is a power within them. It’s something that they’ve admitted into their life and allowed to operate from the inside. It’s “innate” in the sense that they are born under the power of sin (and so they likely begin to allow it to operate from within before they’re even aware of doing this). But it’s not innate in the sense that it doesn’t reflect the image of God in them, which they still bear because they’ve been created in God’s image.

A person who has been made a new creation, on the other hand, is no longer under the power of sin. This is the triumphant proclamation that Paul works his way forward to in the first part of Romans: After declaring that “Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin,” he ultimately explains that “sin will not have dominion over” those who have become “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

So I would say that for followers of Jesus, sin is an external force, working in connection with the patterning of this present age, to try to make us continue conforming to its ways. This is the sense in which I understand the “sinful nature”; for more on that, please see this post. From the discussion there, you’ll see that I don’t believe sin remains an innate force in the believer.

 

What is the “sinful nature”?

Q. Could you please define “sinful nature”? I am becoming more and more aware of my shortcomings and character flaws and am attempting to correct these behaviors. (I didn’t realize I was so sassy.) Are these flaws (bitterness, selfishness, directed by self-will, etc.) and defects a part of my “sinful nature”? Thank you.

First, let me say that you should actually be very encouraged by the way  you’re realizing that you’re sassy, bitter, selfish, etc. (along with the rest of us who need God’s grace and mercy each day). If we have a growing awareness of the sin in our lives, this is actually one evidence that the Holy Spirit is at work within us to make us more like Christ, and so this is also one grounds for our assurance of salvation. So be encouraged (even if paradoxically)!

As for your specific question, in recent years Bible scholars and translators have been reaching a new perspective about what the “sinful nature” actually is. Previously it was held that when a person trusted Christ for salvation, this gave them a “new nature” or “redeemed nature,” but at the same time, they still had a “sinful nature.” This was considered to be a part of them that could continue to lead them into sin.

In other words, the believer was considered to have a double nature, and so growth in Christ-likeness was considered to be a matter of strengthening the redeemed nature so that its influence would be greater than that of the sinful nature. The example was used of the Inuit man who’d become a follower of Christ and said that there were “two sled dogs” fighting with him. When he was asked, “Which one wins?” he replied, “The one that I feed.”

But more recently, especially through comprehensive studies of Paul’s teaching on the Holy Spirit such as Gordon Fee’s massive volume God’s Empowering Presence, a new view has been coming into favor. The phrase “sinful nature” was formerly used in versions such as the NIV to translate the word sarx in Paul’s writings.* But that word simply means “flesh.” Many times it’s used to describe the human body, for example, when Paul says that Jesus “appeared in the flesh” (that is, he became human). But sarx can also refer to a spiritual force or influence. However, it’s now being recognized that this is not a force inside of us that’s part of us, but rather a force outside of us that tries to make us conform to a certain way of life.

Specifically, the “flesh” tries to make us conform to the way of life that corresponds to this “present evil age,” when God’s authority is not acknowledged and so people are “directed by self-will,” as you aptly put it. To live by the Spirit rather than by the flesh is instead to follow the way of life that corresponds to the “age to come,” when God’s authority will be universally acknowledged and honored, so that people will act as Christ did, in a way that’s loving and considerate towards others, not thinking of themselves first. There’s actually an overlap between the two ages, and we’re living in that overlap now, which is why we can choose to conform our behavior either to the present age or to the coming age (which has already started to arrive).

A good way to illustrate this is to think of what happens when we as adults go back and spend several days with the family we grew up in. Many of us find that we revert unconsciously to the way we related to them while we were growing up, perhaps even taking on the “family role” we had then, even though we don’t play it any more in our own household or among our friends. This is not because there’s an active force within us that’s causing us to behave this way again. Rather, there’s an external patterning that takes effect once we get back into that context. The challenge is to recognize that this is happening and choose to behave as the person we have become, even though the social interactions may be influencing us to behave as the person we used to be.

In the same way, the “flesh” as a spiritual force is the patterning of this present age that influences us to act in sinful ways. We need to welcome the influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives to create new patterns that will enable us to live instead as the persons we have become in Christ. This is what Paul means when he talks about putting off your old self with its practices and putting on the new self, “which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” (The language here is not that of sarx vs. Spirit, but of the old self vs. the new self, but it’s expressing the same concept.)

For me, one very encouraging aspect of this new perspective is that it shows there’s no significant part of me that will always resist God. I can surrender my entire being to God in devotion, trusting that all of me will become more and more like Christ through the Spirit’s influence. See how this difference is expressed when we translate the word sarx in a key passage in Galatians using first the old, and then the new, understandings of this term:

The sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want [because part of you is always going to resist God].

The present way of life desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the present way of life. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want [because you’re still being influenced by the old patterning].

So I would encourage you to recognize that the Holy Spirit is at work within you to help you develop new patterns of life. The first step, from what you say in your question, seems to be that the Holy Spirit is helping you recognize that there are still some old patterns there that are hurtful to others and not honoring to God. But the Holy Spirit will also give you the power to adopt new patterns and not be held back by the old ones, as you choose on a daily basis to “put off the old and put on the new.” Don’t be discouraged if progress feels slow and intermittent at first; every choice you make will have a cumulative effect and you will see solid and lasting change over time. May God bless you as you seek to “walk by the Spirit and not carry out the desire of the flesh.”

*For the record, in the latest update to the NIV (2011), the translators have changed almost all of the places—nearly 30 of them—where sarx was previously rendered by “sinful nature.” Here’s their explanation for those changes:

“Especially in Paul, sarx can mean either part or all of the human body, or, the human being under the power of sin. In an effort to capture this latter sense of the word, the original NIV often rendered sarx as ‘sinful nature.’ But this expression can mislead readers into thinking the human person is made up of various compartments, one of which is sarx, whereas the biblical writers’ point is that humans can choose to yield themselves to a variety of influences or powers, one of which is the sin-producing sarx.”

You see the difference here between the older view, in which human beings, even after they have trusted Christ, have a component within them that’s known as the “sinful nature,” and the newer view, in which it’s recognized that sarx is instead an external power or influence and that we can choose whether to yield ourselves to it.

The NIV has retained the reading “sinful nature” in only two places, and in each case there’s a footnote saying, “Or flesh.” These are the two places where Paul says “my sarx,” rather than “the sarx,” which could be taken as a reference to something within him, though I think the way he uses the term sarx everywhere else in his writings suggests that he’s talking about something outside of himself in these cases as well.

Does Paul say that we need to obey all authorities, or only “duly constituted” ones?

Q. In my daily devotional time, I’m reading Romans. I read each chapter twice, once with the New International Version (NIV) and once with The Message. It seems to help my understanding. Today I read chapter 13. It didn’t help. It confused me. Verses 1-7 in the NIV don’t seem to jibe with the same verses in The Message. If I am to believe the NIV, it would seem that Martin Luther King, Jr. (to name just one) would have been violating Paul’s teaching here. But if one believes The Message, he would not have been, since this version includes qualifiers (“insofar as there is peace and order,” “duly constituted authorities”). Help.

Are leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela examples for us to follow of using civil disobedience to oppose injustice? Or were they violating Scriptural teachings?

First, let me commend you for reading the Bible daily, and for comparing two different versions as you do. This usually helps a great deal in understanding the Bible, as you’ve found. One version will say things in such a way as to bring out certain emphases, and the way another version puts them will help fill out the complete picture.

But I can see why you would have been confused in this particular instance. The NIV and The Message seem not to be saying the same thing in different ways, but actually to be saying different things. Here are some examples, with the NIV in purple and The Message in blue:

There is no authority except that which God has established.
Insofar as there is peace and order, it’s God’s order.

Whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted.
Live responsibly as a citizen. If you’re irresponsible to the state, then you’re irresponsible with God.

Rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.
Duly constituted authorities are only a threat if you’re trying to get by with something.

If you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.
If you’re breaking the rules right and left, watch out. The police aren’t there just to be admired in their uniforms. God also has an interest in keeping order, and he uses them to do it.

So what is Paul saying here: that God uses the police to keep order, or that rulers are God’s agents of wrath to bring punishment? That we must live responsibly as citizens, or that we must not rebel against authority? That God has established duly constituted, peaceful, orderly authorities, or that God has put all rulers in place?

Here we see clearly the difference between the methods behind the NIV and Message versions (although I think there’s something further going on, as I’ll discuss shortly). Every translation of the Bible requires a trade-off of some degree between reproducing the words of the original Greek or Hebrew and capturing the meaning of those original words in fluent, current English (or whatever the target language may be).

Versions such as the New American Standard Bible (NASB) strive intentionally to represent the original words. The NIV is generally considered to occupy something of a middle ground between reproducing the original words and expressing their meaning in equivalent words. The Message is so far over on the “meaning” side that it’s technically a paraphrase rather than a translation: It seeks to speak in a very contemporary idiom (“the police,” for example) at the necessary cost of choosing one possible meaning of the words and losing other possibilities.

So that’s one explanation for what’s happening here. But I think there’s an additional one.

This passage in Romans provides an excellent example of why we need to “compare Scripture with Scripture” in order to arrive at the “full counsel of God.” It’s true in general that followers of Jesus can obey governing authorities and not worry about suffering at their hands so long as they don’t do wrong. (Paul probably needed to reassure the Romans of this because they lived so close to the center of power in their world, and their rulers did not acknowledge the true God; instead, they often wanted to be treated as gods themselves!)

However, in specific situations, sometimes followers of Jesus are persecuted by the government specifically because they are followers of Jesus; in other situations, they need to challenge unjust practices and laws by breaking them (as in the cases of Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and others who resisted racial segregation).

We see examples of disobedience to authority at other places in the Bible. For example, when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem forbid Peter and John to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus, they reply, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” And in the book of Revelation, believers are warned that they must resist the spreading cult of emperor worship even at the price of their own lives if they want to be faithful to Jesus.

What I think is happening here in Romans is that The Message is drawing the “whole counsel of God” from throughout the Bible into the passage, as if Paul were saying all of it: “In general, this, but in particular cases, there are exceptions.” I believe that instead Paul was simply saying, “For where you are in place and time right now, this is how you need to live.” The vast majority of the Bible is written from that standpoint, and I think we do well in our versions of the Bible to capture, as best we can, what was said to particular people in particular times, and then encourage readers to “compare Scripture with Scripture” to arrive at more general, nuanced, and comprehensive understandings.

In other words, while it’s very helpful to compare different versions of the Bible to get the fuller meaning of a given passage, it’s also helpful and necessary to compare different passages on the same subject to get the Bible’s full counsel about it.

Have I committed the unpardonable sin?

Q. Curses against God crossed my mind and this made me think I’d committed the unpardonable sin. I decided to look at the passage in the Bible about that. As I was reading it, curses once again swarmed my mind. An absolute feeling of despair came over me.  Was that the Holy Spirit leaving me?

I met with a minister and he said that the unpardonable sin was attributing the work of Jesus to Satan. I felt relieved by his words but the worry was not all gone. To this day I have not found genuine lasting peace. I don’t remember the vast majority of my thoughts, but I’m almost certain that one of those evil thoughts was me committing the unpardonable sin. I do not agree with those thoughts, but I’m afraid I allowed them to enter my mind.

I spoke with another pastor and he believes I have not committed the unpardonable sin simply because I’m worried about it. He is also convinced that God has a big plan for me. But I’m afraid God has given up on me.

It sounds to me as if you have already been getting some very good pastoral counsel, and I encourage you to take it to heart. But let me add some reassurance of my own, as a biblical scholar and a pastor myself for 20 years.

• If you’re concerned that you’ve committed the unpardonable sin, you haven’t.

The “unpardonable sin” that Jesus talks about (as recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke) is indeed the act of attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan. The reason this sin “can’t be forgiven” is not because the person has done something so bad that it’s beyond the reach of God’s forgiveness. The Bible stresses that Jesus’ death on the cross is sufficient for the forgiveness of any and all sins that any human being might commit.

Rather, if we attribute the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan, then this will make us resist the work of the Holy Spirit, and His gracious influences will not be able to bring us to repentance and salvation. In other words, Jesus isn’t saying that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. He’s saying that it can not be forgiven, because it separates us from the very influence that’s meant to lead us to forgiveness.

• God does not hold us morally responsible for every thought that pops into our heads.

As human beings, we think all kinds of things, for all kinds of reasons. Thoughts are suggested to us by our surroundings; by things we read, hear, and watch; by things that other people say; and, I truly believe, by spiritual forces that are trying to lead us either towards God or away from God. (More about this shortly.)

It is actually not within our power to keep thoughts from popping into our heads. So you should not consider yourself guilty of anything for “allowing” particular thoughts to enter your mind.

What truly matters is what we do with the thoughts that occur to us. And you have said yourself, “I do not agree with those thoughts” (i.e. the curses against God). To the extent that you had any moral culpability at all for those thoughts—and I don’t think you do—this constitutes repentance, and you can believe and trust God’s promise that “whoever confesses and forsakes his sins will find mercy.”

• We are in the midst of a spiritual battle, and one of the main battlefields is the human mind.

From the story you’ve shared with me (which I’ve edited down here for length and confidentiality), I agree with the pastor who said that God has a big plan for your life. One reason I say this is that it appears to me that you have been under fierce spiritual attack.

Now I know we’re not supposed to see the devil under every sofa cushion. I’m very careful about what I attribute to evil spiritual forces. Anxiety can have emotional and psychological causes, and I encourage you to pursue those as appropriate. But the fact that the onslaught of dark thoughts you’ve described has deprived you of peace and the assurance of your salvation, and caused you such great anguish and trouble, says to me thatsomething additional is going on here. I’m convinced that spiritual forces are real and still operating in our world, and this appears from your description to be a case where they are having an influence.

“By their fruits you will know them,” Jesus said. The “fruits” of these thoughts are so destructive, I don’t see them coming from your own mind and will. I recognize you as a person who sincerely wants to serve and please God. So I believe the thoughts are coming instead from the spiritual enemies of God, who want you to be paralyzed by false guilt and worry instead of serving God eagerly and energetically with all of the gifts and zeal that God has given you.

You need to fight back.

The best way to do that is to believe, once and for all, the Bible’s promises that Jesus is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (that would be all the sin, of every kind) and that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” And in that confidence, discover your gifting and your calling and serve God with boldness, as a beloved son who has been freely forgiven and accepted in Christ.

Get out there and cause some trouble for the devil. You’ve let him cause enough trouble for you.

 

Does everyone have God’s moral laws innately stamped on their hearts?

Q. Does everyone have God’s moral laws innately stamped on their hearts regardless of whether they know Scripture or have access to it? Paul wrote to the Romans that “since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” But he also wrote that “when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they . . . show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts.” Does that mean we are not only cognizant of the existence of God, but also without excuse concerning obeying His laws?

Does nature speak not just of a Creator, but of that Creator’s intentions for human life? (Photo courtesy Wikipedia.)

God did say through Jeremiah, in a passage later quoted in the letter to the Hebrews, “I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts.” But this promise was made specifically to those who would become part of the new covenant by trusting in Jesus. And in context, it refers to people not just knowing God’s laws, but obeying them willingly and eagerly, because they are being transformed within by the Holy Spirit.

The comment you quote from Paul’s letter to the Romans about the Gentiles keeping the law is actually talking about something different. It says literally in Greek that the work of the law is written on their hearts—not the specific requirements of the law, but what it looks like to “do” (live by) the law. Paul talks immediately afterwards about the conscience bearing witness along with the heart, i.e. at the same time—not “also” or “in addition,” as many translations have it. I therefore think these two versions capture his meaning pretty well:

“The conscience is like a law written in the human heart.” (CEV)

“In their hearts they know what is right and wrong, the same as the law commands, and their consciences agree.” (ERV)

Similarly, when Paul writes just before this that at times Gentiles “do by nature what the law requires,” he’s using a phrase that’s synonymous with “conscience.”

The whole point of Paul’s argument here is to respond to the claim of the  church in Rome, to which he’s writing, that the Jews have a greater right to the gospel. (“To the Jew first” seems to have been their motto.) Paul is working to transform this claim into a recognition that Jews and Gentiles have an equal need for the gospel. (“To the Jew first, but also to the Gentile.”)

And so, he argues, the Jews have the law, but they haven’t kept it; the Gentiles have conscience, but they haven’t followed that, either. (Most of the time, that is; they are capable of following it). Both groups have failed to follow the means of moral guidance that God has given them, and as a result, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” but all can and must be “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

So in this statement about the Gentiles, Paul is basically saying that everybody has a conscience that enables them generally to know right from wrong in their hearts. If they don’t follow their conscience, they can’t plead that they didn’t know any better. They need to admit that they’ve done wrong and come to God for forgiveness and justification by grace.

In short, while everybody may not have God’s actual moral laws innately stamped on their hearts, the Bible does say here that everybody has a conscience. However, we should recognize that a given person’s conscience, and thus their sense of right and wrong, will be influenced by their own family, society, and culture. Nobody starts out with a “blank slate,” the conscience they would have simply by understanding about God through the creation.

In addition, unfortunately, it’s possible to disregard or resist our conscience to the point where it becomes hardened and is no longer a reliable source of moral guidance. As Paul puts it in a vivid phrase in his first letter to Timothy, the conscience then becomes “seared as with a hot iron.” This frightening possibility should make us all eager to maintain a tender conscience before God!

Does anyone has been born of God really not sin?

Q. John writes in his first epistle, “Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.” Does this imply that if I fail to be perfect in every way after having passed through the waters of baptism, I am therefore fooling myself about my salvation?  Does that mean I have not really been born of God?  I understand that we are called to “be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect,” but where does one draw the line insofar as recognizing that, once saved, my propensity to sin has transformed into a propensity to actively, daily, turning from my sin nature and identifying with Christ’s righteousness?

I think it’s important to recognize the context of John’s statement. His first epistle was written to counteract the influence of false teachers who were causing divisions within the community of Jesus’ followers. Under the influence of Greek philosophy, which valued spiritual realities but denigrated physical things, they were denying that Jesus Christ had “come in the flesh” (that is, in a real human body). John is writing to give his own eyewitness testimony that Jesus was truly human and that God had sent him into the world as the Savior: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us..”

So John is able to offer eyewitness testimony to dispute the claim that Jesus was not truly human. But John also points out that the false teachers and the people they are influencing are also discredited by their own sinful lives. They seem to have been indulging in sin because they believed that what was done in the body didn’t affect a person’s spirit. “Whoever claims to live in [God] must live as Jesus did,” John insists. “Whoever says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.”

So what John is saying, in essence, is that we shouldn’t live as if what we did in our bodies didn’t matter. We will not continue to live that way if we have been truly born of God.

And so I think your summary is quite accurate: The idea is that our propensity to sin is transformed into a propensity to turning away from sin and leading a Christ-like life of holiness. Many English translations now reflect the understanding that John is talking about a process, not an instant result. For example: “No one who is born of God will continue to sin” (New International Version); “God’s children cannot keep on being sinful” (Contemporary English Version); “Those who have been born into God’s family do not make a practice of sinning” (New Living Translation).

So, you are not fooling yourself about truly being a Christian if you’re not perfect in every way. Look at the trajectory: Are you moving steadily forward into “living your life as Jesus did,” by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit within you? If so, rejoice, and set your mind at ease.

Why are there two different (not duplicate) versions of the Ten Commandments in the Bible?

Q. I saw an interesting video about God telling Moses to write some additional commandments on stone tablets. The first version was given to Moses when the Israelites got to Mount Sinai. We call these the Ten Commandments, and they’re what’s etched on all the stone monuments we see. But Moses broke those tablets in anger. The Lord called him back up onto the mountain and told him what to chisel on some new stones. The Bible also calls these the “Ten Commandments.” But most of them are different. Why?

You’re absolutely right. I never noticed this until you asked about it, but there is a second version of the Ten Commandments that’s different from the first! (Moses repeats the first version word-for-word in Deuteronomy, but there’s a second, quite different version in Exodus.)

Here’s  the first list:
1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make images and bow down and worship them.
3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not kill.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.

And here’s the second list:
1. Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land.
2. Do not make any idols (=#2 above).
3. Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread.
4. The first offspring of every womb belongs to me.
5. No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
6. Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest (=#4 above).
7. Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year.
8. Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Festival remain until morning.
9. Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.
10. Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

Here’s what I think is going on. The first version of the Ten Commandments provides a prelude or overture to the whole body of law that God delivers to Moses at Mount Sinai. In Exodus, this body of law is described as the “Book of the Covenant.”

When God renews the covenant with Moses after the people have broken it and Moses has smashed the original tablets, God gives Moses a “new” set of Ten Commandments. These summarize the whole “Book of the Covenant” by citing specific laws drawn from all parts of it. So the new Ten Commandments are no longer an overture to the Book of the Covenant but a summary of it, offered through representative items. Here are links to the representative laws, scattered throughout the Book of the Covenant, that these “new” Ten Commandments are based on:

1. Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods.
2. Do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold.
3. Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread.
4. You must give me the firstborn of your sons, your cattle, and your sheep.
5. No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
6. Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work.
7. Celebrate the Festival of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops . . . celebrate the Festival of Ingathering at the end of the year.
8. Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast. The fat of my festival offerings must not be kept until morning.
9. Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.
10. Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

(Note that the two laws that are also in the original Ten Commandments, about not making idols and not working on the seventh day, are quoted not from the Ten Commandments themselves, but from later laws within the Book of the Covenant that repeat their admonitions.)

There’s really nothing that mysterious happening here, once you understand the principle behind each version of the Ten Commandments. As I’ve just said, the first version is an overture to the Book of the Covenant, while the second version is an overview of the Book of the Covenant, consisting of a selection of representative laws.

But it is interesting to observe that it was this second version of the Ten Commandments that was actually placed within the ark of the covenant, carried around through the desert, and finally safeguarded within the tabernacle and the temple. Nevertheless, the first version was preserved through the telling of the story of the encounter with God at Mount Sinai (as we see, for example, when Moses re-tells that story in Deuteronomy).

So we can consider that both versions are actually the heritage of God’s covenant people and that  we can continue legitimately to make use of the first version. That’s a good thing, because it expresses foundational moral principles that transcend time, place, and culture. It would be a bit strange if we had replicas of the Ten Commandments in our homes or churches that said, “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk”!

Rembrandt, “Moses with the Ten Commandments.” The front tablet bears commandments 6–10 in the original version, written in Hebrew, and the suggestion is that the back tablet contains commandments 1–5. However, biblical scholars generally believe that all ten commandments were written on each of the two tablets. In keeping with the practices of the time, there was one copy for each party to the covenant, God and Israel. Both copies were kept together in the ark of covenant.

Wasn’t the Messiah supposed to be named Emmanuel?

Q. In Isaiah, the Messiah’s name is Emmanuel. Why did Gabriel say to call the baby Jesus?

“The Annunciation” (detail), Bartolomé Murillo, 1665-1660. The angel Gabriel appears to Mary, announces that she’s going to give birth to the Messiah, and tells her to name the baby Jesus.

This is a bit of a puzzle, particularly since the Bible calls direct attention to the difference in names.

According to Luke, the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her, “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David.” In other words, he will be the Messiah.

According to Matthew, an “angel of the Lord” also appeared to Joseph and told him, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.” The angel refers to Joseph as “son of David” to show that he’s in the royal line of Judah and that as his legal (though not biological) son, Jesus will be in that line as well and so can be the Messiah.

But Matthew then adds, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel.'” So how could the prophesy have been fulfilled that said a virgin would bear a son named Emmanuel if the Virgin Mary instead named her son Jesus?

The issue depends on what it means for a Scripture to be “fulfilled.” Let me quote here from another post on this blog that addresses that specific question:

The very first book of the New Testament, in its very first claim that a prophecy was fulfilled, rules out the understanding of “fulfillment” as a foreseen future coming to pass.  Matthew writes that when Mary had borne a son, and Joseph had called his name “Jesus,” the prophetic word was fulfilled that said, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.” We would expect that if the passage quoted from Isaiah here really were a future foreseen and described, Mary would have actually named her son “Emmanuel,” not “Jesus.”  So something different is going on.

The necessary conclusion is that when Matthew speaks of “fulfillment,” he does not mean that a foreseen future has come to pass.  Instead, he means that words spoken at an earlier time in redemptive history have taken on a fuller and deeper meaning in light of later, more developed redemptive-historical circumstances. This, to me, is actually a much more powerful concept:  not that humans were given an advance glimpse of what was going to happen in the future, but that the God who superintends and overrules human affairs has demonstrated His unchanging character consistently through time and has revealed more and more of his purposes while reaffirming the earlier-revealed ones.

We may appeal to American history for an illustration of this sense of “fulfillment.”  When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” he said this to dispute the premise that kings ruled by divine right and that their subjects therefore owed them the kind of unquestioning loyalty they would offer to God.  (That is, he said this to justify a revolutionary independence movement.) 

But when Abraham Lincoln observed in his Gettysburg Address of 1863 that our nation was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” he meant instead that slavery was incompatible with the fundamental premises of American society. 

And when Martin Luther King said, in his “I Have a Dream” speech of 1963 (appropriately delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial), that he longed for the day when our nation would “rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:  ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal,’” he explained that in such a nation, people would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”  This is how the “true” or “fulfilled” (fullest and deepest) meaning of Jefferson’s words would be realized, according to King.

By this same analogy, when Matthew says that Isaiah’s words were “fulfilled” when Mary bore her son and named him Jesus, he means that those words have taken on a fuller and deeper meaning.  The Greek translation that Matthew quotes has helped this happen:  Isaiah uses a Hebrew term that arguably can best be translated “maiden,” while the Greek reads, more intensively, “virgin.”  Moreover, “Emmanuel” is no longer the boy’s name, but rather an explanation of his identity—“God with us.” These two intensified aspects of meaning are brought out when the original statement is heard in the light of later developments as the plan of God unfolds.

So, to summarize, instead of being named Emmanuel, which means “God with us,” Jesus actually is “God with us.” That’s the deeper meaning of the earlier statement that can be recognized as God carries out the plans he announced.

And the name “Jesus” itself is not without significance. Mary and Joseph were told to choose this name precisely because of its significance. It’s the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua, or more specifically Yehoshua, which means “Yahweh saves” or “Yahweh is salvation.” That’s why the angel said to Joseph, “You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

So Jesus is “God with us,” as the prophetic name Emmanuel indicates, and he does save us from our sins, as his actual proper name describes.