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.

As Christians, what should our relationship be with the Law?

Q. Jesus repeated that we are to follow His ways and obey God. Jesus’ law and ways were largely found in the OT and the Torah. As Christians today, what is our relationship to be with the law as it is written out in the Torah? Are we to follow it—not to put our hopes of salvation in it, but as a means of obeying Jesus?

The apostle Paul wrote much in his letters about how Christians are to relate to the Law. He said, for one thing, that “the law is good if one uses it properly.” Paul made clear in many of his letters, as you say yourself, that we are not to look to the Law as a means of salvation. That is, we are not to try to become or remain acceptable to God by following the rules in the Law. So how are we to use the Law “properly”?

I would say that the Law has a role for the Christian in both teaching and restraint. Simply stated, the Law teaches us what is and is not in keeping with God’s intentions for human life; knowing that can keep us from doing things that are contrary to the Law. As a pastor, I sometimes had the occasion to ask people who were considering a particular course of action, “Would it make a difference to you to recognize that this would be breaking one of the Ten Commandments?”

The Law, however, is not able to give us the power to do what it commands. As Paul also makes clear in his letters, it is the Holy Spirit who must give us that power. And once the Holy Spirit is living inside us and transforming us (as is the case with everyone who has genuinely trusted in Jesus for salvation), then we can concentrate on positively doing things “against which there is no law,” as Paul writes in Galatians, rather than on negatively avoiding things that are against the Law.

Those things against which there is no law are the “fruit of the Spirit,” the character qualities that God wants to build into our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Jesus is our example of living out these qualities, and the Holy Spirit inside us encourages us to grow into them. Instead of asking “what rules should govern my conduct here?” we ask “how can I show love here?” or “how can I remain joyful in this situation?”

If we consistently do the things against which there is no law, we will never be breaking the Law; instead, we will be keeping it in its truest sense. The ideal is to reach the place that St. Augustine once described: “Love God, and do what you will.” In other words, nothing that is contrary to God’s wishes will ever proceed from a deep and genuine love for God. The more we grow in our love for God, the more we can act freely and spontaneously as his child, not checking our actions against a set of rules but simply doing what we know will bring him joy.

Why are Cain and Abel not listed in the “generations of Adam”?

Q. In Genesis 5, why are Cain and Abel not listed in the “Generations of Adam”?

The genealogy that the book of Genesis describes as the “Generations of Adam” is not intended to list all of his descendants. Rather, it traces one line of his descent, the one that leads to Noah, who becomes the main character in the narrative right after this genealogy. After the story of Noah, there is another genealogy, the “Generations of Shem” (Noah’s son), which traces one line of his descent, the one that leads to Abraham, who who becomes the main character in the narrative right after it. And so forth. That is how the book of Genesis is structured. I hope this explanation is helpful.

How are Muslims and Christians related to Ishmael and Isaac?

Q. Good day to you. I am just curious. Are Muslims/Arabs the descendants of Ishmael, while the Christian Church is the descendants of Isaac? Did God promise kings and princes under the race of Isaac only? Is the division of Muslims and Christians because Sarah didn’t believe right away that she can have a child? Thank you for answering these questions. Thank you and God bless you.

Thank you for your question. We should distinguish between people of a specific faith and people with a specific ancestry. While Arabs traditionally trace their ancestry back to Ishmael, a person can be a Muslim without being an Arab, and a person can be an Arab without being a Muslim. There are, in fact, Arab communities that have been Christian for many centuries. Similarly, while Jesus Christ was descended from Isaac, a person can be a descendant of Isaac without being a Christian, and a person can be a Christian without being a descendant of Isaac.

God did not promise specifically that there would be kings and princes in the race of Isaac. Rather, God renewed to Isaac the promise he had made to his father Abraham, that through his “seed,” all nations on earth would be blessed. The initial meaning of the word “seed” in this promise is “descendants,” but Christian interpreters in the New Testament understand it as a reference to one particular descendant, Jesus Christ, whom they believe brought blessing to all nations when he came to earth as the Savior of all who would put their faith in him. So we may expect that there will be kings and princes in many different races of humanity.

Since it is not the case that Muslims in general are descendants of Ishmael and that Christians in general are descendants of Isaac, we should not see the division between them as the result of Abraham first having a child, Ishmael, through his concubine Hagar and then having another child, Isaac, through his wife Sarah. That would be the origins of an ethnic rivalry, not a religious division. However, we should note that while there was some rivalry between Ishmael and Isaac while they were growing up, they seem to have reconciled by the time they were adults. The Bible records that when Abraham died, “His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him.” This gives us hope that any ethnic rivalry between the descendants of these two sons of Abraham can similarly be resolved and the groups reconciled.

We can also hope that the same will be true of the religious division between Christians and Muslims. I do respect Islam as a great historic religion that, when followed in its true spirit, leads its followers to live good lives. Beyond that, as a Christian, I want my Muslim friends to meet my friend Jesus. The Quran describes Jesus as a great prophet and miracle-worker and even calls him the Messiah. So my hope is that my Muslim friends will want to find out more about who Jesus is and what he has done. This can and should be a matter of dialogue, not division, between Muslims and Christians.

How can I fully believe and not doubt?

Q. Please help! I have struggled so hard to believe. I have begged God to take away my doubt and give me the faith and belief in him that He desires. I have done all of this with a truly sincere heart and I have asked all of this in Jesus’ name. Yet no matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I pray and beg God to take away my doubts, I just can’t fully believe.

I hope it will help you to hear that believing fully does not mean having no doubts.

The capacity for faith and the capacity for doubt are the same. If you did not have any doubts about what you believe, you would not be believing it by faith.

Faith is the reasonable belief in something that we cannot prove. Because we cannot prove it, there will always be some doubt about it. But that does not mean that it is not true or that it is not a reasonable thing to believe.

So please stop tormenting yourself for having doubts. They come with the territory of being a Christian. All believers have them. As we grow in our faith, more and more of our doubts are resolved. We come steadily to have more faith and less doubt. But this is a process—a natural process—and we can’t rush it. But that’s okay with God. He knows that we humans are finite and need to grow into our faith.

Here’s how I know that this is okay with God. The gospels record how a man asked Jesus to heal his child: “If you can do anything, help us,” the man said. “‘If you can’?” Jesus responded. “All things are possible for one who believes.” The man replied, “I believe; help my unbelief!” Jesus did not rebuke him and say, “Well, if you really believed, without any unbelief, I would help you, but since you have doubts, you don’t really believe, and so all things are not possible for you.” Instead, recognizing that the man had genuine faith, even though it was still mixed with doubt, Jesus healed the man’s child.

Some ancient manuscripts say that this man “cried out with tears” when he told Jesus that he believed but needed help with his unbelief. Certainly it was very distressing to him to think that he might not believe fully enough for his child to be healed. But Jesus treated him with kindness, mercy, and compassion. And Jesus regards you in the same way that he regarded this man. He does not condemn you. He sympathizes with you and will walk with you on the path to greater and greater faith. Please show yourself the same kindness that Jesus is showing you. Thank you.

Are Christians supposed to love even the Antichrist?

Q. Christians are supposed to love everyone, but would that include even the Antichrist mentioned in the book of Revelation? Are Christians supposed to pray for the salvation of everyone, including the Antichrist? Does God love or hate the Antichrist?

I think the answer to your question lies in our understanding of the terms “love” and “hate.” It has been well said that, in a biblical sense, “love is not a feeling, it is a commitment.” Specifically, it is a commitment to act consistently in the best interests of another person.

Conversely, but in a complementary way, in a biblical sense, “hatred is not a commitment, it is a feeling.” As I say in this post, godly hatred is “that feeling of strong antipathy towards anything dishonoring to God that makes us want to have nothing to do with wrongdoing and not join in with wrongdoers. … But if instead we are ‘out to get’ somebody, that is, if we are committed to acting consistently contrary to their best interests, then this is not really ‘hatred’ in the sense that the godly psalmists use the term. It is instead bitterness or vengefulness—something we cannot in good conscience indulge.”

So to speak in light of this to your question, I would say that Christians should not harbor bitter, vengeful feelings even towards the Antichrist. In the best interests of that person, we would still need to oppose his efforts to destroy the worship of Jesus on earth. For his own sake, we would need to try to keep him from doing such a thing that was so opposed to God. (And for the sake of our own Christ-likeness, we should not be bitter or vengeful either.) At the same time, we would need to recognize that the Antichrist had made a series of choices that had led him to become the arch-enemy of Jesus, and that should fill us with a strong antipathy that would make us want to have nothing to do with him or his purposes.

While God knows what is in the depths of the hearts of people, other human beings don’t. Christians have various understandings of how the prophecies in the Bible about the end times will be fulfilled. But suppose, for the sake of discussion, that there were believers alive on earth during the time of the Antichrist. I’m not sure they they would know definitively that this was indeed the Antichrist. For all they knew, with prayer and sacrificial love, this person might turn from the path of opposing Christ. So I would say that, given the limitations of our knowledge as finite humans, we can’t really ever give up on anybody. We should pray for the salvation of everyone, knowing that “God is not willing that any should perish, but wants all to come to repentance.”

We also need to recognize, however, that God has given people the freedom to make moral choices, and that a long series of wrong moral choices may lead a person to the place where he or she becomes definitively opposed to God. But that is something we would recognize only in principle. In the case of any given person, we could not know whether they had reached that point. So we pray with realism but also with hope.

I would say that God loves the Antichrist in the biblical sense I have described: always wanting what would have been the best for him, always wishing that he had made different moral choices. And I would say that God hates the Antichrist in the biblical sense I have described: not wanting to have anything to do with someone who opposes love, peace, and justice to the extent of oppressing people cruelly and even trying to exterminate the worship of his beloved Son.

What made Lucifer turn away from God?

Q. What made Lucifer turn away from God?

There are two passages in the Bible that are addressed, in the first instance, to pagan kings, but in which many interpreters see a further reference to Lucifer (the “light-bearer”), the angel who has now become known as Satan (“the accuser” or “the adversary”).

One passage is in Isaiah, and it is a “taunt against the king of Babylon”:

How you have fallen from heaven,
    morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
    you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart,
    “I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne
    above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
    on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
    I will make myself like the Most High.”
But you are brought down to the realm of the dead,
    to the depths of the pit.

The second passage is in Ezekiel, and it is a “lament concerning the king of Tyre”:

“‘You were the seal of perfection,
    full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden,
    the garden of God;
every precious stone adorned you:
    carnelian, chrysolite and emerald,
    topaz, onyx and jasper,
    lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.
Your settings and mountings were made of gold;
    on the day you were created they were prepared.
You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
    for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
    you walked among the fiery stones.
You were blameless in your ways
    from the day you were created
    till wickedness was found in you.
Through your widespread trade
    you were filled with violence,
    and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
    and I expelled you, guardian cherub,
    from among the fiery stones.
Your heart became proud
    on account of your beauty,
and you corrupted your wisdom
    because of your splendor.
So I threw you to the earth;
    I made a spectacle of you before kings.

I agree with the interpreters who caution that these passages should be understood, in the first instance, in their original context, as references to pagan kings whom God is going to judge. However, the prophets announce these judgments through what might be called an extended metaphor. They draw a series of comparisons between these kings and the “morning star, son of the dawn,” the “guardian cherub.” This means some mighty angel who fell from a glorious state into ruin, just as these kings are going to do. The description of this angel’s rebellion and judgment fits what is said about Satan in the rest of the Bible.

So we can infer from these passages—I am convinced this is a legitimate use of them—that the angel formerly known as Lucifer turned away from God because of pride. He did not regard his created power and beauty as gifts from God to be used in the grateful service of God. Rather, he thought that because he was so powerful and beautiful, that meant he was like God or even greater than God, and he rebelled to try to take the throne of the universe away from God. But his power was created and so finite, meaning that it was inconsequential compared with God’s infinite power. God effortlessly crushed his rebellion and expelled him from his former position. For reasons that we do not fully understand (which I discuss in various other posts), God has allowed this being, now known as Satan, to continue to exist and to have some freedom of operation. But we know from the Scriptures that in the end God will judge and punish him definitively.

In the meantime, the example of Lucifer is a clear warning to all of us. Ideally we will all become aware of the talents and capabilities that God has built into our lives. It is important to know how God has gifted us so that we can concentrate on serving him with those gifts and not try to do something else at which we would be less effective. But our mindset must be, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” We should see all of our abilities as gifts from God to be used in grateful service to him.

So, the short answer to your question, “What made Lucifer turn away from God?” is: “Pride.” This raises a further question: How can we escape the dangers of pride, which clearly are very great? Through the humility that comes from gratitude. Whenever we become aware of any capability, whenever we achieve any success, we should say, “Thank you, God, for this gift. Please enable me to use it humbly and gratefully in service to you.”

Is it all right to read the book of Enoch?

Q. The Nephilim, or the offspring of fallen angels and humans, mentioned in Genesis and 1 Enoch are very confusing to me. Are these so-called giants actually real, like Og, the king of Bashan, or are stories like Enoch similar to modern day fan-fictions or spin-offs? I am reading Enoch currently and it is deeply spiritual and I hope so much that it holds water like the rest of the Bible. Why was Enoch and other gnostic gospels and apocrypha considered heresy, and would it be harmful for my faith to read these, as they may not be God’s word? Would God want me to read these ancient texts? Are they intended to be taken literally?

Regarding the identify of the Nephilim, please see this post:

Who were the Nephilim?

Regarding reading 1 Enoch and similar books, please see this post:

Why were some books removed from the Bible and is it a sin to read them?

In that post, I say, “If you belong to a community of Christians, and if this issue is important within that community, you could explain to anyone you told about reading these books that you were not reading them as Scripture, but as edifying literature that has come down to us from within the tradition of our faith. I hope no one would be upset about that.”

I might note that while 1 Enoch is not part of the apocrypha, so it is not found within the Bible that Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox Christians read (which has a few more books than the Bible that Protestant Christians read) it is accepted as canonical by one Christian communion, the Church of Ethiopia. For more information about these differences, see this post:

Do different Christian communities really consider different books Scriptural?

Will we know our loved ones when we get to heaven?

Q. Will we know our loved ones when we get to heaven?

Yes, I am convinced that we will. The Bible depicts heaven as a place where individual personalities are still distinct and recognizable. Jesus said, for example, that “many will come from the east and the west and take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” A hymn that I like very much (“Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand”) sums up this idea well in what I consider to be biblical language:

Then oh what glad reunions on Canaan’s happy shore,
What knitting severed friendships up, when partings be no more.
Then eyes will shine with gladness that brimmed with tears of late,
Orphans no more fatherless, nor widows desolate.

Do the apocryphal books mention reincarnation?

Q. Do any of the books from the Dead Sea Scrolls or any of the apocryphal books that were left out of the Holy Bible ever mention anything like reincarnation? Thanks.

Reincarnation is not mentioned in the apocrypha. This is also true of the books of the Old and New Testaments. (The Dead Sea Scrolls are not an additional source of works. They contain mostly Old Testament books and three apocryphal books.)

The idea of reincarnation does not figure in the Christian understanding of this life and the afterlife. Christians believe that God creates each soul individually and that each person enters his or her eternal destiny after leaving this life. Christians also believe that it is not necessary to go through a long cycle of reincarnations in order ultimately to enter heaven. When Jesus died on the cross as the Savior of the world, he brought forgiveness of sins and opened the way to heaven for everyone who trusts in him.