Would a person encounter spiritual harassment for going to church?

Q. I went to church Sunday. When I got home, everything went wrong.
Could Satan be messing with me?

The Bible teaches clearly that all those who seek to follow and obey God in this life will encounter opposition from “the world,” “the flesh,” and “the devil.” These phrases refer, respectively, to the worldwide system of interests opposed to God; to that part of us that wants to live without regard to God; and to evil spiritual beings who hate God and work to defeat those who believe in him. It is often difficult to determine exactly which part of this evil triumvirate we might be up against, and so I find it helpful to think of them as a collective and not try to parse things any more finely. We can just say, “I think I’m up against the world, the flesh, and the devil here.”

However, it is also true that we human beings are perfectly capable of creating problems for ourselves! So when things go wrong, we shouldn’t automatically conclude that we are facing spiritual opposition. Nevertheless, sometimes, through spiritual discernment, we do get a sense that it is happening. Recently I suffered a minor injury right at a time when I needed good health and strength to do some important work for God. I was speaking to my pastor about this, and I said that I suspected the injury could be the result of spiritual opposition, although I also acknowledged that accidents do happen in this world. “We don’t need to blame the devil every time somebody stubs their toe,” I observed. “No,” my pastor replied, “but you can tell.”

I think that often we can indeed tell. The fact that you made a connection between going to church and “everything going wrong” when you got home suggests that perhaps, by spiritual discernment, you did recognize that “Satan was messing with you.” (That is, that you were up against the world, the flesh, and the devil.) I don’t know whether you meant that you had returned to church after some time of not attending, but if that was the case, then it would surely be likely that you would encounter turbulence as you moved from one set of commitments and activities to another set that reflected a renewed resolve to follow God. But even if you were already attending regularly, there might have been something in the experience of attending worship that day that had inspired deeper and stronger devotion, and it would not be a surprise if you encountered turbulence after that as well.

I would say that the most important thing to keep in mind in such situations is that the main goal of the forces opposed to God is to get you to act unlike a child of God. As one of my professors in seminary used to say, for as long as God has purposes to accomplish through you on this earth, “you are immortal.” The forces opposed to God cannot take you out. But if they can make you act unlike the son or daughter of God that you are, then that is a partial victory for them.

So even if one thing after another goes wrong and you are getting very frustrated, ask yourself, “How can I act as a child of God in this situation?” Recently an online vendor cancelled an order that I had placed and paid for, and the vendor only refunded a small part of the purchase price. Several weeks later, I am still trying to sort this out. But it dawned on me, when I first recognized the problem, “This is my chance to be nice.” I have made an effort to be very courteous with every person I have spoken with on the phone about this. They have noticed and thanked me for my patience. Will I eventually get the rest of my money back? I certainly hope so! But in the meantime, I want to act in this situation like a son of God.

So, I encourage you to continue attending church. Don’t let the turbulence keep you from that. Instead, you can say, “If the world, the flesh, and the devil are so upset about this, I should really keep doing it!” And if everything goes wrong again when you get home, see that as your chance to live in the situation as a son or daughter of God. God bless you!

Were the commands about kosher food and circumcision for health reasons?

Q. Why were certain foods considered unclean in the Old Testament? What was the reason/purpose for this? Why was circumcision required? What was the reason/purpose for this? I know these were based on God’s commandments, but I’m not sure of the reason/purpose. Was it for health reasons? Or something else? If it was for health reasons, doesn’t that imply we should follow these commandments today too?

Both being circumcised and keeping kosher were “insignia,” that is, signs that the people who did those things belonged to God as members of his covenant community.

Regarding circumcision, God said to Abraham, “This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. … My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant.” The Hebrew idiom for making a covenant was to “cut” a covenant, since this often involved a ceremony in which sacrificed animals were cut up and the parties to the covenant walked between the pieces to indicate, “If I break this covenant, may this happen to me!” Circumcision also involves cutting, and in that way it was a symbol for covenant membership. (But note that the Bible only envisions male circumcision. It does not provide any warrant for so-called female circumcision. Women belonged fully to the covenant even though only men were circumcised.)

Distinguishing between “clean” and “unclean” animals (that is, between those that could be eaten and those that could not be eaten) was also a covenant sign. God said to the people of Israel through Moses, “I am the Lord your God, who has set you apart from the nations. You must therefore make a distinction between clean and unclean animals and between unclean and clean birds. … You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.” (The phrases “set apart” and “make a distinction” translate the same Hebrew verb.)

So these provisions in the law were ultimately ways by which the people of Israel were to identify themselves as God’s people. There are some similar “insignia” for the New Covenant, particularly being baptized and observing the Lord’s Supper, but the most important markers of God’s people now are the “fruit of the Spirit,” the character qualities that the Holy Spirit builds into the lives of believers: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the things we should be most careful to build into our lives as God’s people today. I believe we are free to make our own choices about circumcision and kosher.

Why did Saul of Tarsus want to murder the disciples?

Q. Luke tells us in Acts that Saul of Tarsus, who later became known as the apostle Paul, “was breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples.” Why did he want to kill them?

Later in the book of Acts, as Paul is on trial before King Agrippa, he explains that before he became a follower of Jesus, “I was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the Lord’s people in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. I was so obsessed with persecuting them that I even hunted them down in foreign cities.”

So basically, as Paul himself describes here, he did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. He specifically did not believe that Jesus had risen from the dead, which his followers claimed was proof that he was the Messiah. Paul felt that anyone who made these claims about Jesus was a threat to true religion, and he was so zealous for the Jewish religion that, as he describes, he hunted down followers of Jesus and persecuted them.

But Jesus revealed himself personally to Paul, and from then on Paul knew that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead. This made him a committed follower of Jesus. He always regretted how he had harmed believers, but he trusted that God’s grace could nevertheless make him an effective worker for Jesus. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “I am the least of the apostles, and I do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”

Do the persons of the Trinity have distinct personalities?

A reader of my previous post, “In what sense is Jesus God’s Son?” (in which I mentioned the Holy Spirit briefly in the context of the Trinity), commented, “I’d like to hear your thoughts on the Holy Spirit.” Here are some thoughts.

In light of the themes of that previous post, I would emphasize primarily that the Holy Spirit is a person, not an impersonal force. As this article by Don Stewart documents well, in the Bible we see the Holy Spirit demonstrating all the attributes of a person: thinking, feeling, choosing, speaking, interacting with others in relationship. So the Holy Spirit is one of three persons who make up the single being of God. This means, as I said in the other post, that “at the essence of God is community and relationship in which individuality is nevertheless affirmed and flourishes.” We should aspire to the same kind of community and relationships as humans.

Since the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons, an interesting question is whether they have distinct personalities, and if so, whether we can tell that we are interacting with one of these persons rather than another from the personality of the person with whom we are interacting. Christian theology affirms that all three persons of the Trinity do everything together. They have been eternally characterized by the same co-operation that existed between Jesus the Son and God the Father when Jesus was on earth. But does this mean that as Christians, we could not also interact with one of them individually, for example, by praying to the Son or to Spirit rather than to the Father? And might we recognize a distinct personality if we did?

I’m not sure that this question can be answered through theological discussion, but let me attempt an answer by telling a story—by retelling one, actually. Here is a brief episode from a post on another of my blogs, Endless Mercies. That blog tells the story of God’s faithfulness to my late wife Priscilla and me during her courageous four-year battle with ALS. She had reached the point where she could no longer stand up, meaning that she could no longer dance even to a slow song with me holding her up. We had done that for the last time at a wedding, and some time afterward …

“Priscilla found herself half-dreaming as she woke up one morning about what it would be like to dance with the various persons of the Trinity. She imagined that with the Father it would be a more formal ‘daddy-daughter’ waltz. Jesus loved a party, she knew—hadn’t he changed water into wine to keep a wedding reception going?—and so he would probably lead her, and everyone else who was anywhere nearby, in a Mediterranean line dance. And the energetic and creative Holy Spirit, she decided, would definitely do hip-hop.”

You can read the rest of the story here. It doesn’t prove that the persons of the Trinity have distinct personalities. But it suggests that they might.

In what sense is Jesus God’s Son?

Q. What does it mean to say Jesus is the Son of God? In what sense is Jesus God’s Son? What does it mean to say Jesus is the Logos?

The Bible speaks of Jesus as God’s Son in two different senses.

The first is what I would call the minor sense. The title “Son of God” means “Messiah.” The phrase in this sense comes from Psalm 2, a royal enthronement psalm, in which a king of Israel, presumably David, says, “I will proclaim the Lord’s decree: He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have become your father.'”

Even after Israel was no longer a kingdom, this language of being God’s Son was applied to the expected Messiah, who would resume the royal house of David. In his sermon in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, Paul applied this language to Jesus. He said: “What God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm: ‘You are my son; today I have become your father.'” So to say that Jesus is the Son of God means, for one thing, that he is the Messiah.

But there is also what I would call the major sense. In a way that is difficult for the human mind to appreciate fully, there is an organic relationship between Jesus (the second person of the Trinity) and the first person of the Trinity. Since that relationship can be well understood, according to the Bible, along the lines of the organic relationship between a child and a parent, the first person of the Trinity is called God the Father and Jesus is called God the Son.

However, there is an important difference here. An earthly parent has a child at a given time. Before that, the child does not exist. But in the case of Jesus, he has existed from all eternity, even though he is also in an organic relationship with the first person of the Trinity that can well be described with the language of a father-son relationship. That is why Christian theology speaks of Jesus being “eternally begotten” of the Father.

This brings us to the question about what it means to say that Jesus is the Logos. In his gospel, John uses the language of logos, a complex Greek term, to describe Jesus and his relationship to God the Father: “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was with God in the beginning.” The word logos could mean an inward thought, or speech that expressed an inward thought, or just speech. Therefore it was particularly well suited to describe the relationship between the second person of the Trinity and the first person of the Trinity, since in one sense they are separate persons (“just speech”), in another sense they are part of the same Godhead (“an inward thought”), and in yet another sense they have an interdependent relationship (“speech that expresses thought”).

This is admittedly complicated. The relationship of the persons of the Trinity (I haven’t even brought up the Holy Spirit yet!) is certainly a mystery beyond human comprehension. But I think the take-home message for us can be the reassuring conviction that at the essence of God is community and relationship in which individuality is nevertheless affirmed and flourishes. Making that the model for our own lives is enough of a welcome challenge that we do not need to try to sort out any other issues definitively.

But to summarize, the second thing we mean when we say that Jesus is the Son of God is that while he became fully human on earth, he is also fully God, eternally begotten of the Father.

Is it correct to say that the Holy Spirit has preserved the Bible throughout history?

Q. Is it correct to say that the Holy Spirit has providentially preserved (and will continue providentially to preserve) the Bible throughout history?

Yes, I would agree with this statement. I cannot think of a specific passage in Scripture that says this explicitly. But certainly we see throughout the Bible how God wants people to have his word and how God wants his people to treasure and safeguard his word. We can also see in history that while there have been continual widespread attempts to wipe out the Bible, it has not only been preserved, it has been translated and distributed to more and more groups of people. (The organization I am currently working with, unfoldingWord, states as its purpose, “The church in every people group, the Bible in every language,” and that goal could be reached in our own generation.) While the agency of the Holy Spirit in preserving the Bible is not literally visible in history, I believe that we can discern it by faith.

How many covenants are there in the Bible?

Q. How many covenants are there in the Bible? If there are too many to list, what are the main ones?

Hebrews 8:7 talks about the first covenant and the second covenant. Is that the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant? If so, wouldn’t be more accurate to call the Abrahamic (or Adamic Covenant) the first covenant? How can the Mosaic Covenant be the first covenant and the New Covenant be the second covenant if there are other covenants before and after the Mosaic Covenant (and in between the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant)?

Why do we call the 39 books of the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament? Which covenant is the Old Testament a reference to? Is it the Mosaic Covenant or the Abrahamic Covenant? Is it the Mosaic Covenant because that was the main Covenant in those books?

Thank you for your excellent questions. I will answer them according to the way I understand the biblical covenants.

While various people make covenants with each other over the course of the Bible’s story (for example, Jonathan and David), there are five covenants between God and humans, and those provide the framework for the biblical narrative at its highest level:

First, the covenant between God and every living creature, mediated by Noah, in which God promises unconditionally that a flood will never again destroy all life on earth.

Second, the covenant between God and Abraham, unmediated, in which God promises unconditionally to give Abraham descendants, to give those descendants a land in which to live, and to make Abraham a blessing to all nations. God extends this covenant to Isaac and Jacob.

Third, the covenant between God and the Israelites, mediated by Moses, in which God promises, conditional on obedience to his law, to give the Israelites the land of Canaan in which to live and to show their “wisdom and understanding to the nations.”

Fourth, the covenant between God and David, unmediated, in which God promises unconditionally that a descendant of David will always be on the throne of Israel. (Christians believe that while Israel ceased to be a kingdom, this promise is nevertheless being fulfilled in the reign of Jesus the Messiah.)

Fifth, the covenant between God and people of all nations who believe, mediated by Jesus, in which God promises unconditionally to forgive their sins and put his law in their minds and write it on their hearts so that they will know him.

It is clear from the context in the book of Hebrews that when the author refers in 8:7 to “that first covenant,” he is referring to the covenant mediated by Moses and contrasting it with the covenant mediated by Jesus. The word “first” can be well translated as “former.” Many English Bibles say “another” rather than “a second.” So the author of Hebrews only has two covenants in view and is contrasting them. He is not saying that these are the only two covenants or that the covenant mediated by Moses was the first one that God made with humans.

The meaning is the same in the title Old Testament, which means Old Covenant. I like the title in other languages such as French, Ancien Testament, or Spanish, Antiguo Testamento. That suggests the idea of Former Covenant or Covenant of Antiquity. Such titles acknowledge this covenant as one step on the way towards the ultimate covenant between God and humans, the one mediated by Jesus. It is important to recognize, as the book of Hebrews particularly stresses, along with Paul’s writings, that believers are no longer bound to keep the law of that covenant as a law. In that sense it is “old,” meaning no longer in effect. But believers nevertheless keep the law as the Spirit leads them to live according to what God has put in their minds and written in their hearts. So in that sense, it is “of antiquity.”

I hope these responses are helpful.

A reader responded through the “Ask a Question” option:

I found your answer here to be very helpful. I just wanted to ask for clarification on one or two points. You said, ‘The meaning is the same in the title Old Testament, which means Old Covenant.’ So the meaning of Old Testament is the covenant mediated by Moses, correct? Also, does the Hebrew Bible have this name ‘Old Testament’ because the covenant mediated by Moses was the main Covenant in the Hebrew Bible?

In response, I would say yes, the title Old Testament refers to the covenant mediated by Moses, using the word “Old” in the same sense that the book of Hebrews uses the term “first” or “former.” We might also think of this as “old” in the sense of “the covenant that was in effect when Jesus brought the new covenant.” And yes, the covenant mediated by Moses is the main covenant in the Hebrew Bible. It is the focus of most of the writings in the Old Testament.

How do we reconcile the biblical presentation of a young earth with scientific findings?

Q. I cannot reconcile the earth and the entire universe as being only 6,000 years old, and the scientific findings that the “big bang” happened billions of years ago. According to Genesis they were created within the same week. And while on the subject, surely, the all-powerful God did not have to REST on the 7th day. Fact is, He could have created all that He created in 6 days, with a snap of His fingers, if He had wanted to. What gives? Thanks.

Regarding reconciling the biblical presentation of a young earth with scientific findings, let me refer you to another blog of mine, Paradigms on Pilgrimage, which is actually a book in blog form. I wrote it with Dr. Stephen J. Godfrey, curator of paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum, to address precisely that issue. In the book, we each tell our own story of coming to a satisfying understanding of it.

Regarding God resting, let me refer you to this post, in which I say, in part, commenting on what Exodus says about God, “on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed“:

In what way could an infinitely powerful God be refreshed, if by definition He could never get tired in the first place? Many interpreters consider the “refreshment” of God to be, in effect, the “aaah” feeling He got when He surveyed “all that He had made” and saw that it was “very good.” While God first got this overview at the end of the sixth day, He devoted the entire next day to contemplating and admiring the beauty of the entire finished creation.

If we love everyone, is our love not worth anything?

Q. I came across the following quotes: “If you love everyone, your love isn’t worth anything,” and, “When you’re taught to love everyone, to love your enemies, then what value does that place on love?” How should we respond?

The logic behind the first quote seems to be this: If you love everyone, that means you can only love any given person in a way in which it would be sustainable for you to love every person. Since humans are finite, it is not sustainable for a person to love everyone heroically; therefore, if you love everyone, you cannot love anyone heroically.

One problem with this logic is that it does not recognize that our love for most people is potential. It is potentially heroic, as in the case of people who sacrifice their own lives to save the lives of strangers in situations of disaster. But ordinarily, we are responsible to make a small group of people the recipients of our actual love: our family and friends. It is sustainable for us to love them deeply and sacrificially—heroically. And this will only make us readier to love even strangers heroically should a situation call for that.

Another problem with this logic is that it conceives of love as finite. Human love is certainly finite. But divine love, even as it flows through human beings, is infinite. We do not have to worry that we are diluting divine love to the point where it “isn’t worth anything” if we spread it around among as many people as we encounter as “neighbor” (to use the term that Jesus used). Thomas à Kempis wrote about divine love flowing through humans: “Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, pleads no excuse of impossibility, attempts what is beyond its strength. While one who does not love grows weary and gives up, one who loves continues on and brings all things to completion.”

The logic behind second quote seems to be that if we treat our family and friends no better than we treat our enemies, then we are not doing anything special to show our family and friends how much they mean to us. The inference is that we should distinguish through our behavior between our enemies and our family and friends, in order to show our family and friends that we truly love them.

Once again there is a problem with this logic. A person who is merciful, gentle, and generous even to enemies will certainly be merciful, gentle, and generous to family and friends. Those qualities, expressed towards enemies, show what is inside that person, and family and friends will be very grateful to be in a close relationship with such a person. But if those qualities are expressed selectively, only towards friends and family, then they are instead indicators of restraints or constraints on behavior. Such selective expression suggests that the person might actually act in an unloving way towards family and friends if not for the social conventions governing behavior towards them.

Indeed, the principle that one should distinguish through behavior between friends and enemies suggests that as soon as a friend or family member falls out of our good graces, we can and should treat them in a less loving way, correlating with their new relational standing. If we become pleased with them again, then we will treat them well again. That is not love. That is manipulation.

So I would respond to these quotes by saying that as Christians, we have the amazing privilege of being channels of infinite, inexhaustible divine love to everyone we meet. Ordinarily we will make our family and friends the focused recipients of the active expression of our love, but honoring Jesus’ example of how to “love our neighbor as ourselves,” we will unleash our potential sacrificial love to all we encounter. We will cultivate the character qualities of a genuinely loving person so that we can naturally and spontaneously be gracious, generous, and merciful to everyone, no matter what relational standing they have with us. In this way, we can turn enemies into friends, and then not even have to ask whether we should treat them any differently.

How are the NT books not written by apostles inspired?

Q. If Luke was not an apostle, how do we explain why we view the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts as inspired? And who is the author of the book of Hebrews? If the author of the book of Hebrews is unknown, how do we explain why we view the book of Hebrews as inspired?

How do we know the apostle Matthew was the author of the Gospel of Matthew? Also, was the Gospel of Matthew originally written in Greek? Or was the Gospel of Matthew originally written in Hebrew/Aramaic?

The premise behind these questions is that apostolic authorship is the criterion for NT canonicity. In other words, that only books demonstrably written by apostles are inspired and so should be included in the New Testament. But this is actually not the criterion for NT canonicity.

For one thing, as the questions show, it is not possible to apply this principle consistently to all of the NT books that Christians collectively accept as inspired. In addition to Luke, who was not an apostle (although he was a ministry partner and traveling companion of the apostle Paul), the NT authors include James and Jude, who were brothers of Jesus but not apostles. (Paul speaks of these as two different groups in his first letter to the Corinthians, “the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers.”) The NT authors also include Mark, who was not an apostle (although he was Peter’s co-worker and likely composed his gospel from Peter’s memoirs). And then, as noted, there is an anonymous book, Hebrews. If authorship is the criterion but we don’t know who the author of a book is, then such a book certainly does not qualify.

But as I said, authorship is not the criterion. Rather, the principle of canonicity is that the Holy Spirit bore witness to the church corporately, over a period of centuries, about which books were inspired. The books we currently have in the NT, along with some other books, were used widely in worship, teaching, and devotional reading in many different Christian communities throughout the Roman Empire. Over time, a consensus emerged among these communities about which books should be added to the Hebrew Bible to form the Christian canon.

The first complete list we have of the New Testament books as we know them today is in the Easter letter that Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, wrote to the churches in A.D. 367. He wrote this list very intentionally, to distinguish canonical books from others with similar titles (some purporting to be apostolic, but actually not written by the supposed authors), to make sure that believers would not be “led astray.” Athanasius speaks of these books as “the divinely inspired Scripture, concerning which we have been fully persuaded, as they who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word, delivered to the Fathers.” (So the criterion is not apostolic authorship, but the books nevertheless have to preserve eyewitness testimony of Jesus.) Athanasius describes these books as “handed down” and “accredited as divine.” He is speaking of the process by which the Christian communities received these books, test-drove them (so to speak), and recognized their inspiration. After listing the books, Athanasius concludes, “These are the fountains of salvation, that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone the teaching of godliness is proclaimed. Let no one add to these; let nothing be taken away from them.”

So there was a clear, thoughtful, thorough process that led to the recognition of the New Testament canon. But the principle behind that process was not apostolic authorship; it was the principle of the Holy Spirit’s witness to the church corporately.

(Regarding the authorship and composition of the Gospel of Matthew, I have studied it closely in Greek, and personally I can only conclude that it must have been written in Greek. Its use of the forms and terms of that language strikes me as original, the kind of thing we would not find in a translation from another language. The authors of most of the NT books give their own names, but that is not the case with this one, so we do not know for certain who wrote it. The apostle Matthew is considered the author by tradition.)