stricken-smitten-afflicted-sept-oct-2019 by Modern Reformation

MODERN REFORMATION VOL.28 | NO.5 | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019 | $6.95

Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted

THE POWER OF THE CROSS. T H E C R U C I F I X I O N. We say those words and immediately everyone knows what we are talking about. God used the actions of â&#x20AC;&#x153;lawless menâ&#x20AC;? (Acts 2:23) to provide atonement for his people in the broken body and shed blood of the Lamb of God given for the sins of the world (John 1:29). We have combined articles from Modern Reformation magazine, shows from the White Horse Inn broadcast, and questions for further reflection to encourage you to renew your hope in the one crucified who on the third day rose for the forgiveness of sins. Download this four-lesson devotional for a gift of any amount!

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FEATURES

“He Was Pierced for Our Transgressions” B Y J UA N R . S A N C H E Z

“Of First Importance” B Y T H O M A S PA R K

The Significance of Golgotha BY SHANE ROSENTHAL

COVER PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY JOE CAVAZOS

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. L E T U S K N O W W H AT YO U ’ R E L E A R N I N G T H I S Y E A R . Now that we’re more than halfway through our journey this year in the Gospel of John, send us a note at editor@modernreformation.org to fill us in on what you’re learning and how you’re putting it into practice in your church or community!

EDITOR@MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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DEPARTMENTS

C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

Beauty Is in the Eye of Somebody

REVIEWED BY PETER BENYOLA

BY REBEKAH CURTIS

FOCUS ON MISSIONS

10 EX AUDITU

Dead and Buried

Learning How to Live and Thrive with Post-Postcolonial Missions B Y B A S I L G R A FA S

BY RICO TICE

16 B I B L E S T U DY

When Hurting, Cling to God’s Sovereign Hand BY JOHN ELLIS

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Patricia Anders Review Editor Brooke Ventura Marketing Director Michele Tedrick

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Grounded in Heaven: Recentering Christian Hope and Life on God

The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers REVIEWED BY PAT R I C I A A N D E R S

53 BOOK REVIEWS

Keep Up Your Biblical Greek/Hebrew in Two Minutes a Day

B A C K PA G E

REVIEWED BY

He Was Already Dead

M AT T H E W E V E R H A R D

BY ERIC LANDRY

Creative Direction and Design Metaleap Creative Copy Editor Elizabeth Isaac Proofreader Ann Smith

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LETTER from the EDITOR

In this issue, we are following John’s lead and focusing on where he spends most of his time: on the cross of Jesus. To start things off, we asked Juan Sanchez, senior pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, to help us understand the suffering and death of Jesus— as described in John’s Gospel and predicted by the Old Testament prophets centuries earlier. His article traces these prophecies to their fulfillment on the day that Jesus died. The next article is by Lutheran theologian Tom Park, assistant professor of theology at Concordia University in Irvine, California. His article moves he Gospels have sometimes been from John’s account to the content of the gospel described as Passion narratives as it has been preached by the apostles and other with long introductions! Nowhere pastors down through history. Why is the death is this truer than in John’s Gospel. of Christ “of first importance,” as Paul explains He spends more time than Matthew, Mark, or in 1 Corinthians 15:3? Dr. Park answers this quesLuke on the life of Jesus. He quickly skips over tion by connecting the good news of the gospel the agony of Jesus in the Garden of to God’s promise-keeping in and Gethsemane, almost—it seems— through Jesus. in a rush to get Jesus to the cross. Finally, we conclude t his It is as if John understands that issue with an innovative and “ JESUS NOW all is for naught unless the Lamb interesting discussion by Shane LIVES AND of God—first introduced in John Rosenthal, executive producer REIGNS AT 1:29—actually dies for the sins of and current host of the White the world. Horse Inn radio show. Shane THE RIGHT Scholars have debated for centuhelps us understand the signifiHAND OF THE ries how much of John’s material can cance of the physical place where FATHER, STILL be directly traced to the Synoptic Jesus was crucified. Using some Gospels, how much of it is his own, of the latest research to debunk BEARING . . . and how much is reliant on indepenclaims for the site THE MARKS OF traditional dent sources. Since those questions of Golgotha, he encourages us HIS SUFFERING through God’s attention to every are beyond the scope of the articles in this issue, we recommend that last detail of that fateful day. AND DEATH.” readers spend time reviewing the May this issue of Modern evidence presented in D. A. Carson’s Reformation renew your hope The Gospel According to John and in the One crucified on the third Herman Ridderbos’s The Gospel of John. day for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus now lives Carson, particularly, makes the point that John and reigns at the right hand of the Father, still 18–19 (the chapters we explore in this issue) bearing in his body the marks of his suffering contain indications that John “read at least and death. one and perhaps two of the Synoptic Gospels. For various reasons, however, he chose to write his own book.” ERIC LANDRY exec utive editor

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Beauty Is in the Eye of Somebody by Rebekah Curtis

he church I attend was born 140 years ago, a classic little white clapboard. The first time I saw her, I sighed at the thought of calling her home. The front is a blocky triangle, due to the addition of bathrooms on either side of the original facade (post-Victorian weaklings decided they were needed, and there was nowhere else to put them). The steeple is another block. It once soared appropriately heavenward, but it resigned itself to a heavy upward lunge after a lightning strike took out the taper. The overall effect of the exterior is a squared-off walrus.

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Not so the inside. Past a narrow narthex, the pilgrim steps into the holy ark, upside down. The thinly boarded vault resembles the interior hull of a shapely ship. Below it is suspended an omega-shaped balcony running the full length of the nave. The spread of the great Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s feet frames the chancel. The pastor could well pray a Psalm of Ascent as he climbs nine steps to deliver his sermon from the elevated pulpit. The lectern rests on a pavement elevated by two stairs, and the altar facing ad orientem is raised another step. A high white reredos stands before a periwinkle apse on which the Holy Spirit hovers over the face of the deep. A carpet runs up the middle

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aisle, but the hardwood floor of the nave surprises the eye once more by lying diagonally, rather than at some boring dining-room longitude. Despite its charms, however, there are problems. The marvelous wooden balcony needs cleaning and refinishing. The windows are fitted with tinted plastic panels that bring some color but little else. And then there is the large painting of our Savior that draws all eyes to the reredos. He stands with hands open, but unscarred. His face could be loving or maybe a bit fed up. He is set upon a utopian field of gold shapes tangrammed into a pattern suggesting a giraffe. This painting, I learned, is dearly loved by most of the congregation. But they could see that time was turning the giraffe’s golden hide green and failing to heal other wounds. The saints of Trinity Lutheran, therefore, pledged to refurbish the Lord’s house in honor of the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation. A friend of the congregation sent me a link to a set of “before and after” photos of other remodeled churches. Although most of them looked okay “before” to me, the “after” ones were breathtaking. Mosaics, seraphim, Madonnas, glory and honor and might—they were beautiful, truly. They were also unlikely to replace the current soft and tender image of Jesus calling these locals to come home. He is the Jesus they come to behold. They therefore entrusted his restoration to the artistic group that had originally given him to them decades earlier. Providentially, a pastor at a neighboring parish was also a stained glass artist, and he was brought onboard to refit the ark’s portals. Father Dwight Longenecker argues that 1 beauty is the language of worship. Reflecting on the renovation of his own parish in Greenville, South Carolina, he maintains that “the language of beauty is universal” and “unites everyone.” Speaking specifically of church art, architect R. A. Cram says, Art, if it is worthy of the name, is primarily the manifestation of beauty of some sort, and this beauty is not, as some curiously

hold today, a variable and a personal reaction or idiosyncrasy; it is in certain ways absolute. Neither personal taste nor changing fashion can make the parabolic curve of a Doric capital or a Gothic moulding other than beautiful, or a cubist sculpture or postimpressionist still-life or an art nouveau apartment house other than ugly. In some mysterious way there is kinship or analogy between this visible beauty and the under2 lying truth of creation. At the same time, reasonable people should hesitate to demand that a winner be declared between a Doric capital and Gothic molding. It is as silly to imagine the only beautiful woman to be a slender soprano who holds a doctorate in German. How tall is she? What color are her eyes? Are we really settled on sopranos? Variance, though, is one of the simpler troubles with beauty. Among the philosophical transcendentals (truth, beauty, and goodness), beauty alone is slippery. Contemporary philosopher Roger Scruton explains: Someone charmed by a myth may be tempted to believe it: and in this case beauty is the enemy of truth. . . . A man attracted to a woman may be tempted to condone her vices: and in this case beauty is the enemy of goodness. . . . The status of beauty as an ultimate value is questionable, in the way that the status of truth and good3 ness are not. So, who’s right? The lowbrow crowd or the pretentious elites? Those with the gift to be simple or those with the gifts to be extravagant? The home-spinners or the artists? Should churches be outfitted by Gaudí or Marie Kondo? If truth is objective and beauty is truth, then we’ve got ourselves a problem. My church’s Jesus fails in the eyes of many. The sublime tableaus of other chancels stand a good chance of striking my field-and-stream neighbors as gaudy, weird, affected, or jarring. The idea of beauty as

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It is fitting that the Lord’s house demonstrate the truth about beauty. . . . A holy beauty shows forth truth and goodness and, in doing so, teaches us to know what is beautiful.

human unifier, even with the acknowledgment that style admits countless manifestations of beauty, can break down in any sanctuary. There are two questions we may ask to help our judgment of beauty in an individual house of the Lord. First, what is fitting? Second, what is becoming? The first question comes from Mr. Scruton, who offers the examples of placing a door in a wall or setting a table for guests. “You will step back from time to time,” he says, “and ask 4 yourself: does that look right?” Stepping back, however, is trickier than it sounds. The viewer might back out of the church doors altogether. He would take in the soybean field immediately behind the church, the exclusively modest dwellings of the village, and the two-block downtown where only half the buildings house active businesses. He would see the sign Population 1044. He would make ecumenical notes: Methodists, Disciples of Christ, Assemblies of God, Baptists—meaning that the Lutherans represent the only liturgical tradition in town and the most sacramental theology. He might be tempted to think that words such as apse and chancel are unfitting here, and how much more the things themselves.

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The juxtaposition of confession and culture calls for wisdom, but it can largely run on common sense. The Lutherans are among those living in these modest dwellings. We wear camo and drink Stag; we collect Precious Moments figurines; and we don’t say “ya’ll” but we do say “youse.” We are also at this church for a reason. The Table set here is one that moved our forefathers to erect an eighteenfoot reredos in a bean field. It looks right in our house of worship. Our pastor is among those who maintain that adorning oneself with the gospel does not make one glow in the dark. He wears a collar to the men’s popular Bible study he hosts at the town bar every Wednesday and dons vestments in a chancel where he would look kooky only if he didn’t. It is fitting that the Lord’s house demonstrate the truth about beauty—that it is far more than taste. The eye of sinful man must be trained to behold rightly. A holy beauty shows forth truth and goodness and, in doing so, teaches us to know what is beautiful. For the people of God to adorn the house he has given them, it is necessary to submit to each other out of reverence for Christ. The painters had a style, as did the stained glass

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artist, and neither style resembled Precious Moments. In living memory was a warning from a departed mother of the congregation: Don’t you ever get rid of that dove. No ma’am! A member of the window committee mistook the window artist’s sketch of the traditionally clean-shaven John at the Last Supper for Mary Magdalene (thank you, Da Vinci Code). A Johannine beard was judged more ministerial than tradition for our window. Nobody got exactly what they wanted, except that everyone wanted the same thing. We wanted a church that in a single glance proclaimed and taught that he who hath no comeliness is our Beautiful Savior. The second question, that of what is becoming, derives from my father. He had the good sense of any good dad to tell his daughters they were pretty, and he did it in a helpful way. “You look nice,” he would say, studying the outcome of a rookie’s bitter hour with a curling iron. “That hairstyle is very becoming.” Becoming! Who says that anymore? Too few people, which is a shame. Looking for what is “becoming” is a useful way of looking at beauty, which is always in danger of being thought useless. One lady looks nice in a sheath and another in a shift. To one, a cowl is becoming and to another, a bateau. Saint Lorenz might look a bit off if she dressed like the Shepherd of the Hills. What “becomes” Calvary in Kansas City is unlikely to fit so well at St. Paul’s in Laurium or St. Mark’s in Manhattan.

Furthermore, no one is comfortable adorned in a way that does not suit her whole person. There are ladies who are never quite at ease in an evening gown, regardless of how well the dimensions of each align. Others just couldn’t feel right in L.L. Bean’s signature poplin or a broom skirt. But everyone will be thankful if no lady shows up to a formal occasion wearing a crop top or other such things that would be becoming to no one. Even the lady who can technically get away with a crop top has poor sensibility if she appears in it anywhere but on a pontoon boat fueled by beer. Every aesthetic confesses something. A church can look like it grew out of either 1 Thessalonians or the think tank that gave the world Applebee’s. Orlando, Wall Drug, Portland, Hungry Horse, Rome, Wittenberg, and Geneva all need their churches. If only one kind of beauty were the right one, then IKEA could design our sanctuaries. But if we can allow latitude for a congregation to know what becomes her, the light of comfort and joy in her eyes will open our own. If I dress with the dress of Kate or furnish with the furnishings of Westminster, but feel like a Midwestern poser, I will look awkward and sad—which is not a good look for anyone. In Narnia, one’s dress clothes are also the most comfortable. That is the kind of insight for which we need Narnia. Latitude to find what is fitting, however, does not give us license to show up in pajamas. Nothing will be fitting if it is not becoming; even girls who love fishing off muddy banks

Looking for what is “becoming” is a useful way of looking at beauty, which is always in danger of being thought useless. 8

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with Dad wear gowns to homecoming. Although dress shopping can be tiring and even discouraging, learning to dress well is both a skill and a courtesy. Every gathering in God’s house is a little homecoming of his people, so it is fitting that the bride should graciously receive what becomes her: adornments that tell the truth of her love and the goodness of her Lord. These adornments need not be costly. The eye must guard against rule by the stomach. The beauty of God’s house is not her own, but the beauty that is rightfully hers to house tells us that something better than particle board is in order. The grace of God’s house is his gift to her. Her purity comes from his forgiveness, and her radiance is his light. To suggest that her possession of these things by his merits renders them unworthy of honor has the same odor as explaining to one’s mother that Mother’s Day is a junk holiday for the soft-minded. To date, my congregation’s refurbishing committee has deepened the color of the apse to a chromatically heftier ultramarine. The reredos gleams in contrast before it like a lighted temple in the night. The Paraclete descends among sixand eight-pointed silver stars on the advice of contemporary liturgical artist Ed Riojas (the five-pointed variety traditionally represents the Epiphany, but in cultural context can only mean 5 the USofA). Our Lord’s hands now invite us to gaze, with Charles Wesley’s rapture, on his glorious scars. The indefinite gold background was replaced with a partly cloudy welkin, echoing the apse and placing beholders at the Ascension. Windows throughout the building tell the story of the Savior’s life, death, and resurrection, and the growth of the church. I regularly take Sunday schoolers on mini-field trips to learn the depths of meaning in these careful symbols. Even geography counts: the Evangelists occupy the four windows at the church’s entrance. The myrrh-bearers make their wrenching journey in a stairwell used only by those who perform some of the church’s least seen and least pleasant tasks. Great is their reward.

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The perfect fit neither disguises a person nor flaunts her. It arrays the best of her, whoever she is, in the most becoming way.

I believe our parish has “cleaned up good” while remaining entirely recognizable as herself. The perfect fit neither disguises a person nor flaunts her. It arrays the best of her, whoever she is, in the most becoming way. That’s how you treat a lady. REBEKAH CURTIS received her master’s in exegetical theology from Concordia Seminary. She is a professional indexer for Concordia Publishing’s scholarly Concordia Commentaries, and she has written for Modern Reformation, Chronicles, Touchstone, Salvo, and Lutheran Forum, and for websites including First Things, Front Porch Republic, The Behemoth, Babble, and The Imaginative Conservative. 1. Dwight Longenecker, “Beauty: The Language of Worship,” The Imaginative Conservative, December 2, 2016, http://www .theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/12/beauty-language-worship-dwight-longenecker.html. 2. Ralph Adams Cram, introduction in Frederick Roth Webber, Church Symbolism (Cleveland: J. H. Jansen, 1927), ii. 3. Roger Scruton, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 2–3. 4. Scruton, 69. 5. Ed Riojas, “Star Gazing,” The Art Curmudgeon, January 27, 2017, http://theartcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2017/01/star-gazing.html.

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Dead and Buried by Rico Tice

hen we think of the cross, we are not immediately to think of a pretty symbol. I think that’s a great danger: to think of it as a glamorized or bejeweled symbol that might adorn a person’s neck or home. Rather, we are to associate it in our mind with torture, with unrelieved thirst, with ridicule and, of course, with blood—much blood. It was never a “pretty” thing. Note how the Roman orator Cicero described crucifixion:

It is the most cruel and shameful of all punishments. Let it never come near the body of a Roman citizen. Indeed, let it never come near his thoughts or eyes or ears or the very word pass from his lips.

To the statesman and philosopher Cicero, talking about crucifixion was rather like mentioning the gas chambers in Germany in the postwar 1950s. It just wasn’t done. This is how the Encyclopedia Britannica in its latest edition describes crucifixion, and I think you’ll agree that even the scholarly detachment of this learned volume can’t conceal the barbarous cruelty that characterized this method of execution: In the penal systems of the ancient world, it was an important method of capital punishment, particularly among Persians, Seleucids, Jews, Car thaginians and Romans. Usually the condemned man, after being whipped, dragged the crossbeam to

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the place of punishment where the upright shaft was already fixed in the ground. There he was stripped of his clothing and bound fast with outstretched arms to the crossbeam, or nailed firmly to it through the wrists. The crossbeam was then raised high against the upright shaft and made fast to it about nine to twelve feet above the ground. Next, the feet were tightly bound or nailed to the upright shaft. A ledge, inserted about halfway up the upright shaft, gave some support to the body. Evidence for a similar ledge for the feet is rare. Over the criminal’s head was placed a notice stating his name and crime. Death apparently caused by exhaustion or heart failure could be hastened by battering the legs with an iron club, but the medical reasons for death are not fully understood. It was thought to be a suitable punishment chiefly for political or religious agitators, pirates, slaves, or those who had no civil rights. There is, of course, another word derived from the Latin word crux (cross): excruciating. Has a more terrible way to die ever been devised by man’s cruel imagination? Yet the early Christians not only admitted that their founder Jesus had died in this contemptible manner; they also boasted about it. The apostle Paul says, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ.” Indeed, this was the heart of what Paul saw as the Christian message. How ridiculous that must have seemed—not only to Nero but to the average person in the street in those early days—is rather poignantly illustrated by a little drawing that archaeologists discovered while excavating the Palatine hill in Rome some years ago. Found in the former living quarters of page boys who served the imperial court, the picture depicts in rather crude and amateurish style a youth raising his hand in salute to a figure hanging on a cross. This figure on the cross bears an ass’s head, and underneath in rather poor lettering is scrawled the inscription: “Alexamenos worships his god.” It’s clearly

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The apostle Paul says, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ.” Indeed, this was the heart of what Paul saw as the Christian message.

a sarcastic jibe directed at one of the young imperial servants who had become a Christian. This crude picture is the earliest crucifix discovered so far; it is not an object of veneration but a cartoon of contempt. The very idea of a crucified god was a joke in the first century—and a sick and infantile joke at that. Nobody in Jesus’ day would have dreamed of wearing a cross around their neck as a symbol of piety or making the sign of it on their babies as they were baptized. It would have been considered in the worst possible taste. Yet the early Christians boasted in this symbol. To me, this was not an embarrassing postscript to the life of their religious hero. No, it was the very pivot of their message. They cried, “We preach Christ crucified!” So for them this universal symbol of loathing, this taboo, was somehow transformed into a badge of honor, which in time would shape Christian architecture, inspire Christian hymns, and most of

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He who raised others from the dead surrendered himself to death and made no attempt to escape it. And what a painful, agonizing death he chose.

all fire Christian preaching. How can that be? What on earth was achieved at the cross? Why did Jesus submit to such an awful form of death? It’s clear if you read through the Gospels, particularly John’s Gospel. Here we see that Jesus could have gone another way. He didn’t have to go up to Jerusalem. Although he knew that those who sought his death were waiting for him, he deliberately went there. He didn’t have to tolerate Judas Iscariot in his inner circle of disciples; he knew from the earliest days that this man was a traitor, yet he deliberately kept Judas in his confidence. He didn’t have to expose himself to the risk of easy capture. He knew his enemies would try to arrest him after dark in a secluded place, separated from the crowds who followed him. But he went to the Garden of Gethsemane, having already informed Judas where he was going, and he did all this when it was dark and there were no crowds around him. He didn’t have to remain silent before Pilate. The Gospels make it clear that he could have spoken in his own defense and that Pilate would have been willing to hear him, for Pilate seemed to have real sympathy for him. But Jesus didn’t say a

word. So why did he do all this? He who raised others from the dead surrendered himself to death and made no attempt to escape it. And what a painful, agonizing death he chose. Plainly, he planned it. Definitely, he planned it. In fact, Jesus says in John’s Gospel, “Nobody takes my life from me. I give it up of my own free will.” In fact, on a number of occasions, his disciples tried to dissuade him. They could see that he was set in some way upon dying, because he said to them, “I’m going to Jerusalem, and there I must suffer many things and the authorities will kill me.” He made that promise, and then he resolutely set out toward Jerusalem. When Peter, the most impetuous of the disciples, heard him, he insisted that it must not be so. Do you know what Jesus said to him? “Get behind me, Satan! You’re an obstacle in my way.” Jesus was clearly under some inner compulsion to die. To understand his death, I want to focus on three words here from John 19:30, “When he had received the drink, Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’ With that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” It is finished. Those are the three words, though in the Greek, it’s only one word: tetelestai.

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In our day, we like to talk about famous last words. Nineteenth-century British prime minister William Gladstone’s last words supposedly were “I feel a lot better.” The young duke of Wellington, when he was told he was on the verge of death, said, “Die? That’s the last thing I’m going to do.” (He did.) And Oscar Wilde is reported to have said as he lay dying in a Parisian hotel room, “That wallpaper is killing me. One of us will have to go.” For us, however, Jesus’ famous last words were “It is finished!” But this is not a last desperate self-pitying cry of surrender. He doesn’t cry out, “I am finished!” No, he says, “It is finished!” In excavated ancient marketplaces, archaeologists have found this word stamped across bills that have been paid: tetelestai, contract complete, done. It’s the word a builder might shout when he places the last brick on a building: tetelestai! It’s the word a painter might shout after the last brushstroke, maybe after years of work: tetelestai! It’s the word a general would shout as the last bit of enemy resistance is routed: tetelestai! It is finished! Here’s the key: This is not a cry of defeat; it is not a confession of failure; it is a statement of completion, of satisfaction; indeed, it’s a statement of triumph. By using this word, tetelestai, Jesus is saying, Yes, my life does have a plan. I came into the world with a mission to fulfill and it’s done. This death of mine, far from being the thwarting of that plan, is actually its climax. Jesus shows us time and again that the Scriptures have been fulfilled and that he is in absolute control. In this passage, we see that everything happens to Jesus according to plan. Although people think they’re attacking him, he’s actually in control. But if he’s in control, what can he possibly achieve at the cross? We find our answer in John 19:31: “Now, it was the day of preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath.” This was Passover week in Jerusalem, a special Jewish holiday, and that night every Jewish family remembered the days of Moses when the people of God, along with the Egyptians among

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whom they lived, were going to be judged in the most terrifying way. The firstborn child in every family would die that night. God had said so. Let’s stop and ponder that for a moment. My brother’s firstborn is Dalton, who is seven. My sister’s firstborn, Robby, is five. Had we been in that moment in time, both would be dead by morning. The pain is inconceivable. Our family would never recover if we lost those two little ones. They’re the heartbeat of the family. Likewise, it was a terrible judgment for the Israelites and the Egyptians. But it shows us how seriously God takes sin. There was, however, a way out. God made provision for the people of Israel so they could escape this terrible judgment. They were to take a lamb—a perfect, unblemished young lamb—and we’re told in the book of Exodus that they were to slaughter it without breaking a bone of its body. Then they were to pour out some of that young lamb’s blood and paint it on their doorposts. After that, as a family, they were to eat the lamb with, among other things, the herb hyssop. In this passage in Exodus, God says, “When I see the blood on the doorposts, when I see the blood, then I will pass over you, and no angel of judgment and death will visit you” (Exod. 12:13). So what happened that next morning? In every Egyptian home, the firstborn son was dead. In every Israelite home, the firstborn son was alive. This Passover event was then pressed into each Jewish mind for years to come when a lamb had taken the place of a firstborn son. That lamb was slaughtered without a bone broken, had lost its blood as paint on the doorposts, and finally was cooked with hyssop—that lamb had replaced a son. I wonder if you can hear the resonance from Exodus now as I read from verses 28–34. Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I’m thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he

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had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Now, it was the day of preparation and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. So when John sees the blood of the Lord Jesus running down the cross, what does he think of? He thinks of that doorpost on the night of the first Passover. He remembers this as he tells us that just as the lamb took the place of the Israelite firstborn, so on the cross Jesus—the Lamb of God—is punished in my place. He is slaughtered for me as my substitute. But why does he have to die like this on the cross? It’s gruesome. Because we owe a moral debt to God (which the Bible calls “sin”) that we could never pay off. We know it’s there, because our conscience senses that debt and makes us feel bad about it. It makes us feel guilty. Let me ask you: What would it be like never ever to have lied? Never to have drawn anyone else into a deceit from which we benefitted in the short term? What would it be like never to have nurtured bitterness or hatred? What would it be like never to have gossiped, not even once? What would it be like never to have entered into a conversation where the whole purpose was to promote ourselves before others? By contrast, what would it be like to have done always what the Bible commands? To have loved God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves— what would that be like? Instead, we hurt the people we love most.

There is something desperately wrong here. But we don’t just hurt people on this level; we do it to God as well. We push God away—the one whom we know gives us each breath; we push him away and insist that he be a footnote in our lives and we the main character. Although we can never pay off this moral debt, the Bible promises us that there will be a day when we will have to give an account. I don’t say that easily, because many of those I love most ignore this fact. In Hebrews 4:13, we read words that are chilling and make us tremble: “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.” But at the cross, Jesus, the Lamb of God, cried tetelestai, “It is finished!” It’s paid. His death has fully discharged our moral debt. We’ve been rescued. This is where Christians rest their souls. There is nothing to condemn us on that Day of Judgment if we trust in this cry. When God asks us, “Why should I let you into my heaven?,” the Christian simply replies, “Because your Son once cried out in agony on the cross, ‘It is finished’; and he, the sacrificial lamb, died in my place.” Whenever I meet Christians who are resentful about the Christian life—they’re not serving and things are going wrong—I know they have forgotten this phrase: “It is finished.” Incredible joy and gratitude should define the Christian life. That’s what I want you to remember here: the relief and the joy of “It is finished.” In verse 30 (“with that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit”), the Greek word for bow is not the image of a head collapsing onto the chest; it’s the word for laying your head on a pillow. With Jesus here, we’re not watching him collapse; we’re watching the peace that comes after victory. “It is finished.” He’s done it. He’s laid his life down for us. And now there is peace for him and for us. That’s why the Christian faith is all about gratitude. I’m sad when I meet people for whom duty is the only reason they do anything “Christian.” I want to say, “Look, have you understood that

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If you want to know the heart of gratitude as a human being, then understand this phrase: “It is finished!”

‘it is finished’? Do you grasp the wonder of those words? The debt has been canceled, the bankruptcy judge satisfied, the moral mortgage paid. Are you living in the relief and the joy of all this?” In this Gospel account at the cross, I feel that the most tragic group is the soldiers, the execution squad. In verses 23–24, John swings the camera lens round and looks at them: When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, and the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. “Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.” We look at these men who think that this is Jesus’ only legacy—that all he leaves behind

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are his shoes, turban, girdle, tunic, and outer robe. They are absorbed here at the cross with these trivialities, which will be of no importance to them on the Day of Judgment. I guess they would say, “Well, we’re just doing our job.” But they miss what is really important here and they don’t even look up. They don’t know what’s going on. They are obsessed with the materialism of that moment. They’re a tragic group. But John warns us. He says, “Look, please don’t be like the soldiers, ignoring the cross.” Instead, be like the four women in verse 25, the brave women who stayed close to Jesus. Let’s look at them if we can: “Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene.” And what did those women do? They had their eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. My great longing is that you would do that in the weeks and months ahead. Maybe you’re grappling with all of this. If so, then like John, I say to you: Please don’t miss out on the real legacy of the cross, as the soldiers did. Please don’t do that. I invite you to investigate this great figure, and most of all, I encourage you to build your life on gratitude. Grateful people are happy people. If you want to know the heart of gratitude as a human being, then understand this phrase: “It is finished!” This means two things. First, there are no masks, because Jesus knows all about our sins; and since there are no masks, we can come to him honestly. Second, he is for us. Though he knows all our wrongdoing, yet he still loved us enough to die for us. In a world that is often confusing, we can bathe in the oasis of that love. RICO TICE is senior minister of evangelism at All Souls Church, Langham Place, in London, which he joined in 1994 during the later years of John Stott’s ministry. His main role is to help the hundreds of enquirers about the Christian faith who come through the doors of the church each year. He has also developed the Christianity Explored course, which introduces people to Jesus through studying the Gospel of Mark.

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When Hurting, Cling to God’s Sovereign Hand by John Ellis

od often uses hard providences to bring forth spiritual growth in the hearts and lives of his children. As the apostle Paul famously promised to followers of Jesus, “All things work together for good” (Rom. 8:28)—and by “all things,” Paul meant all things, including hard providences. Sometimes that “all” is quite turbulent and God’s children become focused on the waves and not on their Christ. During those times, hurting Christians are frequently encouraged to read the Psalms as a means of grace to encourage their hearts, and rightfully so. Taking it a step further, however,

many of the Psalms offer a model for how we should pray during seasons of pain and despair. Over the course of several months, while stuck in a guard shack, I learned to model my prayers of distress after the Psalms. My theater career had imploded, and I found myself working third shift as a security guard at a high-end gated community. Those nights were long, yet eternally profitable. With my career crashing down around me, I struggled with feeling overlooked by God. I knew with my head that God loved me, but my heart was breaking. I felt like I was slipping farther and farther away from the eyes of my heavenly Father. Even now, years later, there

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are still moments when I feel a lack of an existential closeness to him. Serving as an elder at my church, I frequently hear hurting brothers and sisters in Christ echo those same thoughts as they agonize over their lack of feeling close to God during times of hard providences. During those times, it’s easy to feel alone. Our prideful hearts encourage us to steer into the “woe is me” mind-set. The prophet Elijah fell into that trap. After witnessing God humiliate and defeat the prophets of Baal on top of Mount Carmel, Elijah fled to the wilderness. Fearful for his life, he hid from the vengeful Queen Jezebel. First Kings 19:9 tells us that while Elijah was cowering in a cave “the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” For his part, Elijah complained that after pouring his heart and soul into ministry, he was all by himself. The implicit charge is that God had abandoned him to die alone. That, of course, is absurd, as the rest of the passage makes clear: God never abandons his own. The theme, borne out in this chapter, of God’s sovereign hand even during times of hard providences is made clear in many of the prayers found in the psalter. One thing that jumps out about Psalms 17, 22, 38, and 43 (to list just four out of many) is that these poets didn’t shy away from honesty. In Psalm 17:10–12, David reveals that the wicked have surrounded him and that they are eager to destroy him. In the great Messianic Psalm 22, David laments in the opening verse, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” Psalm 38:2–3 depicts David acknowledging the consequences of his transgressions against God, crying out, “For your arrows have sunk into me, and your hand has come down on me. There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin.” The poet’s honesty in Psalm 43 is almost stunning in its starkness. In verse 2, the poet asks God, “Why have you rejected me?” Continuing, he

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Our heavenly Father wants our honest pleas. God desires for us to open our hearts and pour our troubles out in prayer to him. God delights in hearing his children.

writes, “Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” Surely, on a sliding scale of despair, all Christians resonate from time to time with the laments of those four psalms. How often have we longed to plead of God “Why have you rejected me?” only to be stymied by rigid views of prayer that cage our relationship with our heavenly Father into that of a prim and proper “children should be seen and not heard” mind-set. Because the writer of Psalm 43 penned his anguished cry under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, this should comfort us. Our heavenly Father wants our honest pleas. God desires for us to open our hearts and pour our troubles out in prayer to him. God delights in hearing his children. When you suffer, tell God. When wracked by doubt, tell God. When confused and feeling disconnected from his presence, tell God.

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Yes, the storm’s waves may be crashing about us, but the God of these waves calls us his own. He will not let us sink, and the psalmists’ prayers point us to that truth.

Taking our cue from the Psalms, we shouldn’t be afraid to be honest with our heavenly Father who hears our cries. During those months stuck in that guard shack, I spent hours reading the Bible, followed by hours pleading with God. Wrestling with God, like Jacob who refused to let go, and pouring my hurting soul out before my Creator, I begged him to restore my spirit, heal my hurt, and provide me with faith. By God’s grace, taking my cue from the Psalms, as I prayed I clung to God’s sovereign goodness, albeit weakly. One of Jesus’ points when he spoke of the power of having faith the size of a mustard seed was that the size of one’s faith is irrelevant; it is the object of our faith that is important. Yes, the storm’s waves may be crashing about us, but the God of these waves calls us his own. He will not let us sink, and the psalmists’ prayers point us to that truth. Psalm 17 concludes with a confession that God will ultimately subdue the wicked and the oppressor. Ending with a prayer of thanksgiving in verse 15, David confesses, “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” Psalm 22, of course, is a glorious prophetic cry

about the Messiah’s ultimate triumph, and reading verses 22–31 is an exercise in joy. In verse 26, David exclaims, “The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord!” No matter our troubles, no matter our existential angst, God’s people face a future of complete satisfaction in our Savior. No amount of trials and troubles can overshadow the good things that God has prepared for his children. This is why David was able to write in Psalm 38:15, “But for you, O Lord, do I wait; it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer.” In Psalm 43:5, the writer expresses confidence that he will ultimately “hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” During moments of pain and emotional turmoil, we are not called to suppress our feelings or deny our pain. As we cry out to our heavenly Father, however, we also need to cling to his sovereign goodness, even if we don’t see or understand it in the moment. While the Psalms encourage us to be honest, that honesty is rooted in God’s character and divine plan. JOHN ELLIS is a writer for PJ Media and is currently working on a history degree at Regent University. He blogs at A Day in His Court.

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FOCUS ON MISSIONS

Learning How to Live and Thrive with Post-Postcolonial Missions by Basil Grafas

ost people I know who are engaged in missions (overseas or at home) seem to reflect one of two orientations: either they are old-school colonial-era missionaries and the nationals who work with them, or they are postcolonial missionaries and nationals. I suggest that both options are a dead end. My conviction is that the only way forward that honors the whole of biblical theology and authentically Christian mission is post-postcolonial missions.

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COLONIAL-ERA MISSIONS Colonial-era missions were the way it was when the West served as a New Jerusalem radiating into world missions and the gospel. In this world, the gospel moved from us to them, from old Christians to the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unchurched, or from old Christians to new Christians who lived in places other than North America or Europe. Westerners represented the old Reformation-era Protestant denominations,

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Roman Catholicism, or Eastern Orthodoxy. Many represented volunteer societies committed to mobilizing members of the visible church when the denominations themselves were resistant or reluctant. We mustn’t lose the main point here: The flow of missions moved fundamentally from the West. We evangelized, planted churches, and started schools or hospitals. Along the way, we transitioned from doing it ourselves to training nationals to follow our lead in taking over the work we started. One last point: In the colonial era, the intellectual heart of evangelicalism, including missions, remained within the denominational structures of Western churches. Colonial missions were enormously expansive and extraordinarily successful, and the church’s global footprint grew exponentially as the seeds planted grew into national churches. At the same time, it was an investment that needed outgrowing. Much of it was tangled with American or European colonial expansion and overseas investment. It was, at times, impossible to disentangle these varied identities. The

Colonialism often carried with it racial or ethnic bias that was ultimately foreign to the gospel itself.

gospel itself sometimes took a back seat to the economic or political interests of nation states. Colonialism often carried with it racial or ethnic bias that was ultimately foreign to the gospel itself. By now, this is a familiar story and extensively recounted by missions historians, such as Kenneth Scott Latourette and Andrew Walls. Postcolonialism still lacks and needs the same degree of scrutiny.

POSTCOLONIAL MISSIONS The postcolonial period is generally associated with missions blooming in the aftermath of the Second World War. In this period, we saw enormous shifts in the nature and leadership of global missions. We also saw, however, continuities that were often overlooked. This period saw the utter dominance of parachurch ministries in terms of fielding missions, but more significantly, in the way parachurch organizations took complete control of the innovative aspects of missions. They exercised vast control over the ways we understood missions. Missions departments in seminaries, even the very understanding of the science of missions (missiology), began to reflect the parachurch-influenced definitions that were overwhelmingly shaped by social sciences. Theology itself, when viewed through the grid of missiology, was defined by the same social science grid. Terms such as “contextualization,” “modality,” “sodality,” and even “incarnational” were defined in anthropological terms. Bible translations began conforming to community expectations rather than authorial intent or the historical church’s universal understanding. Missionaries themselves were “revolutionized” in the heady atmosphere of liberation movements and “national theologies.” They, in turn, returned from the mission field and took key positions in the parachurch organizations, seminaries, and missions journals. The parachurches, schools, and even evangelical denominations formed webs of what I term “gnostic” leadership: enlightened experts united

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with shared educational background in nondenominational schools inspired by ideas not controlled through or originating in the church. At the same time, leadership and organizations based some of their own prestige on portraying themselves as a vastly better alternative to colonialism. They were anti-colonialists advocating new ways of doing things that would boost the leadership of the national churches. Colonial missions were out of date and hopelessly connected to imperialism. The image of a brave new world of missions, however, was an illusion. “Postcolonial,” though, is not anti-colonial. In the same sense that modernism was followed by postmodernism and postmodernism is an outgrowth of modernism, not its repudiation, so also postcolonial missiologists and nationals (to some degree)—despite positioning themselves as positive alternatives to the “bad old days”—really continued much of the problems already identified from the colonial period. Missionary innovation remained fueled by Western money and Western academic theory. New national academic leadership was feted, but the reality was that the leading new academics were trained in Western ways. Publishing was overwhelmingly dominated by Western ideas, and some of these were dishonestly presented as ideas merely conveyed by Westerners but which originated indigenously. To the contrary, the truth is that these new ways were the result of Western modernist ideas in national dress. Although parachurch and denominational agencies promoted national leadership, the vast majority of this new crop of leaders was in the employ of Western organizations and paid Western salaries. Postcolonial missions were merely a morphing of colonialism, not an honest reversal. At the same time, national leaders began to emerge and start their own work, largely independent of Western coercion. These were, by definition, contextual, innovative, and often aggressive. National leaders of church planting efforts were often less afraid and far more willing to take risks than Western missionaries

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Colonial missions were out of date and hopelessly connected to imperialism. The image of a brave new world of missions, however, was an illusion.

on the ground in the same places. In many ways, however, even national Christians were still defined by colonialism. They often understood themselves as anti-colonial, and many still carry large chips on their shoulders. Although they engage in careful relationships with the West, trust is partial at best, and old resentments often bubble to the surface. For others, Western missionaries and academics are treated with excessive deference. This, however, is not a help in the largest sense, because deference and overshadowing difference are closely related. Deference does not promote unity of vision or work. Deference breeds distance, not proximity. Here is how Matt Gross, former travel writer for the New York Times, puts it in The Turk Who Loved Apples and Other Tales of Losing My Way around the World (Da Capo, 2013): It’s when you—your personality, your history, the fact of your presence—are finally taken for granted, even ignored, that you’ve truly found your place in a family. When no one notices you coming and going, when they no longer feel responsible for your

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Post-postcolonialism is a generation that largely comes of age when colonialism is relegated to history and not personal experience.

happiness, when they stop asking if you need a towel or whether youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to drink some coffee, that is when they are treating you as their own. Of course, churches are not literal, biological families. Foreigners will still receive a measure of hospitality and concern for safety. Allowing for all of this, however, I still think Gross reveals a desirable goal for Westerners and non-Westerners engaged in missions. This leads us to the third part of our expedition: a look at a better missions world to come, postpostcolonial missions.

POST-POSTCOLONIAL MISSIONS I believe this is the temporal hope for global and biblically faithful missions. If we consider this in terms of generations, it starts with the generation that comes after the loss of the previous generation with their personal memory of

colonialism. Some of us, for example, remember a directly colonial world because we are old enough. Others have or had parents who lived through a colonial experience. In this sense, post-postcolonialism is a generation that largely comes of age when colonialism is relegated to history and not personal experience. There are several components that belong to a description of post-postcolonialism. First, post-postcolonialism will include bypasses to denominational constraints. Partnerships will proliferate, but these will no longer be initiated or controlled by Western denominational or parachurch organizations. Rather, they will emerge from contact between local churches in one place and local churches in another. Agencies will begin to lose their dominance, as churches (and presbyteries) begin to recognize that other organizations no longer have to direct relationships and support. My point is not that one must eliminate parachurch or denominational missions organizations in order to move toward more productive global missions. Rather, moving the center of gravity from agencies not directly located in the Bible (such as local churches and presbytery-like structures) is essential to aligning contemporary missions with the Bible itself. Second, aligning contemporary missions with the Bible enables global missions by bypassing the organizational barriers that denominational structures represent. In that way, global churches and clusters of churches take the lead in determining the extent and nature of missions. Creating church-church partnerships also enables Western Christians to more directly learn and help non-Western bodies and do so in a two-way, equitable manner. In my next article on post-postcolonialism (see the November/December 2019 issue of Modern Reformation), we will explore the significant changes that will be thrust on us if we follow the post-postmodern direction.â&#x20AC;&#x201A; BASIL GRAFAS is the pen name for an American missionary working overseas.

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V O L .2 8 | N O. 5

FEATURES

In the same way that Christ satisfied the parched soul of the Samaritan woman, so he saturates us now with his grace and love. The gospel proclaims to our thirsty souls that Christ is for all of us, giving us everlasting life.”

“HE WAS PIERCED FOR OUR TRANSGRESSIONS”

“OF FIRST IMPORTANCE”

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF GOLGOTHA

PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY JOE CAVAZOS

“ H E F O R

WA S

P I E R C E D

O U R

T R A N S G R E S S I O N S ” BY JUAN R. SANCHEZ

ALTHOUGH THE WORLD MAY deny the reality of sin—and thus the need for salvation—as Christians, we face the reality of our own sin on a daily basis. We have come to Christ because we understand our need to be saved from God’s judgment. Sadly, though, too many of us are still tempted to address our sin in ungodly, unbiblical, and even, well, sinful ways. Like our first father Adam, we try to hide from God, foolishly thinking we can cover up our own sin—and herein lies the great gospel irony. Instead of us running away from God and covering up our sin, God promises that when we run to him and uncover it—that is, confess it—he receives us and covers our sin in the blood of his Son. This is why Jesus died.

He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed (Isa. 53:5) So rather than play hide-and-seek with God when we sin, let us run to him and plunge into the fountain of Jesus’ blood, that we may be cleansed from all our sin. This is the glorious point of John 19:31–37: Jesus died on the cross as our Passover Lamb to open a fountain of cleansing from sin, so that all who believe in him may have eternal life.

A REASONABLE REQUEST (JOHN 19:31) Behold Jesus on the cross (John 19:16–27). With his last breath he declared “It is finished” and gave up his spirit (19:30). Yet, not knowing that Jesus had died, the Jews (or rather, their leaders) asked Pilate to hurry the deaths of the crucified criminals by breaking their legs. Contrary to how it may sound to our contemporary ears, their request is not only reasonable, but it is also merciful (whether intentional or not). By all accounts, death by crucifixion was excruciating. Those who managed to survive the brutality of the torture up to this point eventually died of asphyxiation as fluid slowly filled their lungs. They struggled to survive, living breath by breath as they pushed up from their nail-pierced ankles for one more gasp. Once their legs were broken, however, and they could no longer push themselves up, they died quickly. The Jews had other, more pressing reasons for their request, however. The Sabbath was about to begin, and this raised two dilemmas. According to the Law of Moses, a criminal who was hung on a tree was not to remain overnight. He was to be buried that same day, “for a hanged man is cursed by God,” and to leave him hanging on a tree would defile the land (Deut. 21:22–23). Additionally, once the Sabbath arrived, the Jews would not be able to bring the bodies down from their crosses because they could do no work. Consequently, since it was the day of Preparation for the Sabbath during the Passover 1 week, the Jews made a reasonable request that the criminals’ legs be broken. It is this reasonable request that provides the setting for the apostle John’s eyewitness account.

AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT (JOHN 19:32–35) Clearly, Pilate granted the Jews’ request. In verse 32, John testifies to the common practice of crurifragium, the breaking of the crucified criminals’ legs. To hasten their deaths, the soldiers break the legs of one criminal, then the

other “who had been crucified with him” (v. 32). When they came to Jesus, however, “they saw that he was already dead,” so there was no need to break his legs (v. 33). Instead, to verify his death, one of the soldiers picked up a spear and pierced Jesus’ side; immediately, blood and water flowed out (v. 34). Although medical experts disagree as to what organs were pierced, that is beside the point. At issue is not specific human anatomy but the death of Jesus, which was now verified by the Roman soldiers. Because John had been there all along, he serves as an eyewitness to Jesus’ death. He was there when Jesus, while hanging on the cross, asked him to care for his mother as his own (v. 27). He was there in the final moments of Jesus’ life when he said “It is finished” and gave up his spirit (vv. 28–29). And he was there when the soldier pierced Jesus’ side and blood and water flowed out (v. 34). So, John’s “testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth” (v. 35; cf. 21:24). But he is no mere eyewitness. John admits to having an evangelistic agenda: “That you also may believe” (v. 35). Having been with Jesus during his public ministry and having witnessed his life, teaching, miracles, and now his death, John believed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. He has recorded the account of Jesus’ death in great detail that we too may believe. This is, after all, the burden of John’s Gospel: to present the evidence for Jesus’ Sonship, that those who believe may have eternal life in him (20:31). Richard Lucas argues that the key to unlocking John’s Gospel is understanding how John interweaves the three themes of evidence (testimony), faith (belief), 2 and life. John admits to hand-selecting his material as evidence that Jesus is the promised anointed king of Israel, so that through faith in him, we may have eternal life. But in order to have eternal life, we must believe that Jesus, the God-man, really died on the cross. Why must we believe in the death of Christ in order to have life in Christ? Or to ask the question another way, how does the death of Jesus on a Roman cross provide hope of eternal life? Well, ever since Adam sinned, we’ve known that all sin deserves the death penalty (Gen. 2:15).

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Everyone dies (1 Cor. 15:22). Because we are all born united with Adam—having inherited his sin, guilt, and corruption—we therefore deserve God’s punishment for our sin: death (Rom. 5:12–21). On the cross, however, Jesus died and it was he who received God’s just penalty for sin upon himself. As the first representative of humanity, Adam introduced sin into the world. To save humanity, we needed another human representative—one who would be faithful and without sin in order to undo Adam’s sin. So, as the last Adam, Jesus took on our flesh and blood, living the life of perfect obedience that God requires of every person. As our representative, Jesus went to the cross and paid the penalty of death for sin that we all owe (Heb. 2:14–15). John reports Jesus’ death in great detail to show us how Jesus saves us by his death. But to understand how Jesus’ death saves us, he offers two scriptural explanations.

TO SAVE HUMANITY, WE NEEDED ANOTHER HUMAN REPRESENTATIVE—ONE WHO WOULD BE FAITHFUL AND WITHOUT SIN IN ORDER TO UNDO ADAM’S SIN. MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

TWO SCRIPTURAL EXPLANATIONS (JOHN 19:36–37) First, all who believe in Jesus have eternal life because Jesus died on the cross as our Passover Lamb (v. 36). Like Israel’s Passover lamb, not one of Jesus’ bones was broken (v. 36). In preparation of Israel’s rescue from slavery and before the final judgment plague against Egypt—the killing of the firstborn—the Lord instituted the Passover (Exod. 12). All who trusted Yahweh to rescue them were to take an unblemished lamb and kill it (Exod. 12:5–6). They were then to take the blood of the Passover lamb and apply it to the doorposts of their houses (Exod. 12:7), so that when the Lord passed through the land of Egypt in judgment, he would pass over the houses where he saw blood on the doorposts (Exod. 12:12–13). But in making their preparations, they were not to break any of the bones of the Passover lamb (Exod. 12:46; cf. Num. 9:12). As promised, the Lord passed over the homes of those who, in faith, applied the blood of the Passover lamb to their doorposts. After this, Israel was to eat this Passover meal every year to remember their deliverance and to teach their

children of the Lord’s salvation. But this annual memorial was only a shadow that pointed forward to the fulfillment in a once-for-all sacrifice of the unblemished and unbroken Passover Lamb who would put an end to all sacrifices, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29). By testifying that not a bone of Jesus’ body was broken (v. 36), John indicates that Jesus is our Passover Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7; cf. Ps. 34:20). As with Israel’s Passover lamb, so also with Jesus. God’s judgment against our sin—namely, the death penalty—passed over us and fell instead on Jesus. Now, all who believe in Jesus are passed over in judgment because our Passover Lamb’s blood has been applied to us directly. As our Passover Lamb, Jesus was nailed to the cross, condemned as a criminal. He received the death penalty we deserve. Thus Jesus’ death was both penal and substitutionary. But Jesus’ death was also propitiatory. God would not be just if he simply passed over sin. In his death on the cross, Jesus is the Passover Lamb who absorbs God’s wrath on behalf of all repentant sinners. So, by putting Jesus forward as a propitiation for sin, God is both just in punishing sin and forgiving sin (Rom. 3:21–26). This is good news indeed! And it is confirmed in the next scriptural explanation. Second, all who believe in Jesus have eternal life because Jesus died on the cross to open a fountain of cleansing from sin (v. 37). Citing Zechariah 12:10, John adds, “And again another Scripture says, ‘They will look on him whom they have pierced.’” Zechariah 12 announces God’s salvation as beginning in Jerusalem. Although Jerusalem would be besieged by the nations on that day, the Lord strengthens the clans of Judah (Zech. 12:5–6), bringing them salvation (Zech. 12:7–8) and destroying “all the nations that come against Jerusalem” (Zech. 12:9). Then God will spiritually renew his people who had gathered in Jerusalem in victory, pouring out “a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy” (Zech. 12:10). But this spiritual renewal will lead to great mourning for one whom they have killed. Surprisingly, the one whom they pierce is none other than Yahweh himself: “When they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall

mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn” (Zech. 12:10; italics mine). In Zechariah 11, God announced judgment on Israel’s shepherds because they neglected God’s sheep and led them to slaughter. Therefore, Yahweh himself became their shepherd (Zech. 11:7); and in Zechariah 13, Yahweh provided Israel with “my shepherd,” but the shepherd was struck and the people scattered (Zech. 13:7). If in Zechariah 12:10, it is the Lord’s shepherd who is pierced, then he is so closely associated with Yahweh that it is as if they had pierced him personally. The Lord who redeems Jerusalem and Judah, then, provides them with a shepherd whom they pierce (Zech. 12:10); but because of their spiritual renewal, they grieve over their sin and rebellion in killing the Lord’s shepherd. All hope is not lost, however, for “on that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness” (Zech. 13:1). By citing this text from Zechariah, John highlights that Jesus’ death on the cross—his piercing that caused blood and water to flow from his side—opens a fountain of forgiveness for those who mourn over their sin. Jesus is God’s beloved Son, the faithful shepherd whom Yahweh provided to shepherd his people. When those who are God’s sheep look upon him whom they have pierced, they grieve over their sin, because it was their sin that put him there. But when others look on him whom they have pierced, when he returns on that last day, they “will wail on account of him,” for he will come in judgment (Rev. 1:7). Both will look on him whom they pierced, and both will mourn. One will be saved, and the other will be condemned. The death of Jesus on the cross divides humanity for all eternity.

A FOUNTAIN OF CLEANSING How do you deal with your sin? We can try to cleanse ourselves by doing good works or by turning over a new leaf, but our sin remains. The more we try to cleanse ourselves, the dirtier we become. Or we can just try to hide from

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Surprisingly, the one whom they pierce is none other than Yahweh himself: â&#x20AC;&#x153;When they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.â&#x20AC;?

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God, like Adam and Eve, but the Lord knows where to find us. Similarly, we may try to cover up our sin. We can rationalize it, downplay it, or even deny it outright. But unless our conscience is totally seared, our guilt remains; we can become so weighed down by it that we fall into despair. Yet John reminds us that the blood that flowed from Jesus’ pierced side is a fountain of cleansing from sin to all who believe in Jesus. This is good news for you. Come, believe in Jesus and bathe in this fountain. He will cleanse you from all your sins. Look upon the cross and see the Savior hanging there. By faith in Jesus, confess your sin and ask God to forgive you on the basis of Jesus’ blood. The fountain is always open; and whenever you may sin, Christian, you can come again and plunge in. Instead of running from God, run to him and wash in the cleansing fountain opened up to us by Jesus’ death on the cross. The very thing you’re trying to do in covering up your sin, God offers to do for you by covering it in Jesus’ blood. So confess your sins, knowing that God will forgive you in Christ. Confess also to those you have sinned against, because the God who made peace with you through the blood of his Son makes peace between brothers and sisters through that same blood. The good news of Jesus’ death on the cross as our Passover Lamb, whose blood opened a fountain of cleansing from sin, is so glorious and God-glorifying that we will sing of it for all eternity. We have “washed [our] robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:14). And together, with all the angelic hosts, we will sing of Jesus: “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” (Rev. 5:9) Until that day, though, we continue to look upon Jesus on the cross, not just for our salvation as the Passover lamb, and not just for our continual

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forgiveness as our cleansing fountain, but also for our perseverance. So until that day, let us remember Jesus’ death on the cross, proclaiming him as our Passover Lamb and inviting all to cleanse in the fountain of forgiveness whenever we gather as a church. Until that day, let us meditate on Jesus’ death as we sit down together at the Lord’s Table, remembering his human body (bread) broken for us and his blood (wine) spilled for us for the forgiveness of sin. Until that day, let us sing of Jesus’ sacrifice, as so many have done before us and as we will all do for all eternity. Until that day, let us sing “Rock of Ages” by Augustus Toplady: Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee; Let the water and the blood, From Thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Save me from its guilt and power. Or “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross” by Fannie Crosby: Jesus, keep me near the cross, There is a precious fountain; Free to all, a healing stream, Flows from Calv’ry’s mountain. But perhaps no hymn captures the truths of John 19:31–37 better than William Cowper’s “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood”: There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Immanuel’s veins; And sinners, plunged beneath that flood . . . Lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced to see That fountain in his day; And there may I, though vile as he . . . Wash all my sins away. Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood Shall never lose its pow’r, Till all the ransomed Church of God . . . Be saved, to sin no more.

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E’er since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply, Redeeming love has been my theme . . . And shall be till I die. When this poor lisping, stamm’ring tongue Lies silent in the grave, Then in a nobler, sweeter song . . . I’ll sing Thy pow’r to save.

CONCLUSION Jesus died on the cross as a part of God’s eternal plan to reconcile all things in his beloved Son. Jesus’ death was not an accident; it was not a hoax; it was a voluntary, saving act. Because Jesus died on the cross, all who believe in him are passed over in judgment and cleansed from sin, because Jesus is our Passover Lamb who opened a fountain of forgiveness, filled with the blood that flowed from his side. So, come, plunge beneath that flood and lose all your guilty stains. JUAN SANCHEZ (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is senior pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, Texas. Juan also serves as a council member of the Gospel Coalition, cofounder and president of Coalición, assistant professor of Christian theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and president of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. He has authored numerous books, including 1 Peter for You and Seven Dangers Facing Your Church

1. I take “the day of Preparation” to be the day of Preparation for the Sabbath of Passover week. Mark 15:42 clarifies as much: “And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath.” It is true that although John 19:14 states, “Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover,” Passover was a weeklong festival. The other Gospel accounts place Jesus and his disciples eating a Passover meal on Thursday evening. There is no reason to conclude that John contradicts those accounts by proposing that Jesus died on Thursday, when the actual Passover meal would have been eaten. “The day of Preparation” is shorthand for “Friday,” the day of Preparation for the Sabbath. Since no work could be done on the Sabbath, Friday was a preparation day. For paraskeuē tou pascha (“Preparation of the Passover”) likely meaning “Friday of Passover week,” see D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 604. 2. Dick Lucas and William Philip, Teaching John: Unlocking the Gospel of John for the Bible Teacher (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2008), 11–18.

PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY JOE CAVAZOS

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“ O F

F I R S T

I M P O R T A N C E ” BY T H O M A S PA R K

And by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you— unless you believed in vain. (1 Cor. 15:2) CHRISTIANS THROW THE WORD gospel around a lot. Based on my experiences, however, as a high school teacher, campus minister, parish pastor, and college professor, and in my work with people of different ages, languages, and backgrounds, it seems that for many their understanding of the gospel is neither clear nor precise. In particular, through my research with the Hmong people of Korea—many of whom are leaving Christianity to return to their traditional religion because their churches fail to clearly explain the core teaching of the Christian message—the gospel assumed is the gospel lost. In this article, therefore, I will focus on the basics of the gospel as represented in the Scriptures. Christians can be strengthened through knowing what the gospel is and its saving purpose, especially as they approach evangelism in a culture that no longer shares a basic Christian vocabulary. The gospel needs to be presented intentionally and liberally, just as the sower in Jesus’ parable (Mark 4:1–10). When we sow these seeds, however, it is vital that we know we are sowing

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the true seed and not some other harmful species by mistake.

WHAT IS THE GOSPEL? “Gospel” in a broad sense refers to the four biblical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). In those books, we witness Christ and encounter the gospel in the proper or narrow sense as the “good news” proclaimed by God to the world. In 1 Corinthians 15:2–3, the apostle Paul indicates that he delivered or passed on the gospel as “of first importance.” What is so special about this gospel Paul labored to share, risking his own life to proclaim this message to both friendly and hostile audiences? “Gospel” derives from the Greek word euangelion. It is the combination of two words eu, which means “good,” and angelion, which means “message” or “news” (which is also where we get the word angel). In his letter to the Corinthian church and throughout his ministry, Paul shared that Christ lived, died, and was resurrected from the dead. He demonstrated that only through Christ do people truly attain salvation and unity to serve the Lord. The Savior is the cause of justification and sanctification, because his righteousness alone makes us holy in the eyes of God. But before then, in his unconverted state, Paul had despised Christ, the gospel, and those who loved Christ; and through the authority the Jewish high priest gave to him, he possessed the power to prevent believers from proclaiming the good news. After encountering Jesus on the road to Damascus, however, Paul became a follower of Jesus and a messenger of the gospel. It now pained him to see the Corinthian church drifting away from Christ to form Christless communities, destroying one another and creating cliques centered on the personalities of different church leaders. Although Paul knew very well that trusting in sinful human beings did not grant anyone peace or salvation, some members of the Corinthian church had been attracted to oratory skills and charisma rather than looking to Christ to be their shepherd and

Savior. In order to proclaim the gospel, Paul sacrificed everything: his reputation, power, prestige, and comfort. He risked even his own physical life for the sake of Christ and his message. Therefore, Paul’s writings are devoid of anything unnecessary; because he wanted people to clearly know how they could be saved, he identified who Christ really was and is: the only way to salvation. Lutheran theologian Steve Mueller writes, “The gospel refers to the doctrine that humanity has been saved from sin and death by the work of Christ alone and that this benefit is given 1 solely by his grace, apart from human works.” Throughout the Scriptures, even in the Old Testament, one can see the gospel at work. The believers in the Lord in the Old Testament did not have the benefit of witnessing and interacting with Jesus as his contemporaries did; instead, they saw him through the eyes of faith. In John 8:56, Jesus said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” One of my students poignantly asked, “So how are the Old Testament people saved, since Jesus was born a long time after they lived?” The connecting point here is the promise of God. Interestingly, the Lutheran confessions use “promise” and “gospel” interchangeably. The Old Testament believers trusted and believed that God would provide the promised Messiah, the anointed one, to bring the kingdom of God and vindicate the righteous by punishing the wicked. The law and the prophets reminded them of God’s promise to Abraham that he would make his descendants to be “as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore” (Gen. 22:17) and of the oath he made to David that “the scepter will never depart from Judah” (Gen. 49:10). If we look at the Scriptures without contextual background, it may seem that God did not keep his promises. Abraham had only one “legitimate” son, Isaac, and David’s kingdom was separated and is now no longer in existence; David and his royal descendants died and failed to preserve the kingdom of Judah. When the Lord made his promise, however, he looked beyond what is visible. When we read the

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genealogy of Jesus, we see that seemingly random individuals and events in the Old Testament actually connect, clearly pointing to Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and David (Matt. 1:1–17). God did not forget his promises, and his love was in action—dynamic at its core. When Jesus died on the cross, he offered himself as the ultimate sacrifice for both Jews and Gentiles. Essentially, the entire world is the recipient of God’s good news. Having faith in Christ connects us to Abraham and David and to all the Old Testament believers who eagerly awaited the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise. The animal sacrifices the Jewish people offered in the Old Testament foreshadowed “the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” Those ceremonial laws are now null and void because Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of those regulations and ordinances. Jesus’ passive obedience (through pain and suffering) and active obedience (his perfect observances of the divine and human laws) bestowed his righteousness on sinners. Simultaneously, the Savior took our sins on himself (2 Cor. 5:21). This is called God’s “great exchange.” Lutherans (much like their Reformed cousins) are adamantly Christocentric and focus on justification as the material principle. Although sovereignty is a critical divine attribute, how sinners are saved always has been God’s focus. When we look at the incarnation of Jesus, we see God’s everlasting love toward his creation, especially those who were made in his image. Christ is the quintessential thread that binds the Old and New Testaments. Jesus himself testifies, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39). When Jesus was talking about “the Scriptures,” he was referring to the Old Testament. What is the function of the Old Testament? It bears witness about Christ. The disciple whom Jesus loved says of the New Testament Scriptures: “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). The Old Testament believers were saved because of their trust in

God that he would provide the Messiah. The New Testament believers recognized Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promise; through faith in Christ we receive forgiveness, salvation, and new life. Along with the Old Testament believers, we believe that “the great and awesome day of the Lord” will come (Joel 2:31; Acts 2:20–21). Christ will come again to judge the living and dead, and the Lord will vindicate the righteous. One of the reasons why many people misunderstand the gospel is because they link things to this category that do not belong to it. Because we like to organize our thoughts into different categories, we place ideas and ideologies into properly labelled boxes in our minds. If certain items do not fit our perceptions, we put them in a place called “Miscellaneous.” Likewise, we put items that do not belong into the “gospel category” and then become upset when things do not work out as we envisioned. This is the symptom of a deeprooted problem: We do not want to hear what God says; we trust in ourselves instead, seeing ourselves as gods.

DEFINING LAW AND GOSPEL Scripture is divided into two main teachings: the law and the gospel. While to the casual onlooker, these may seem easy to distinguish, it is sometimes difficult to understand how they are applied in particular contexts. This real-life application is not a science, but more of an art. According to Martin Luther, if any person can distinguish the law and gospel perfectly, then the church should give that person a doctor of theology degree! When can we apply the law and gospel in our day-to-day lives? A seasoned pastor who had served in the “trenches” of the ministry shared his encounter with a young boy. There was a preschool connected to his congregation, and one of the preschool teachers wanted the pastor to talk to an unruly child. When the pastor started to talk to the preschooler, the boy spat in the pastor’s face. According to the minister, his first reaction would have been to

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be angry with the boy; instead, he asked him whether he needed a hug and told him that Jesus loves him. The child nodded his head. When the pastor embraced this little boy, the preschooler started to cry and apologized to the minister for spitting in his face and about his bad behavior against his teachers. The pastor wanted to share this experience to point out that it is so easy to act without looking at the whole situation, and most often the real problem is not visible. This experienced pastor was thankful that God used him to comfort the boy. Later, the minister discovered that the little boy’s parents were going through divorce and that he had become the center of their custody battle. With this story, we can clearly see that there are challenges for us in correctly applying law and gospel. We human beings are not omniscient. We can mistakenly preach the law of God to someone who needs the gospel or proclaim the gospel to someone who needs the law. This leads us back to the question of what elements we need to include in the gospel and when we need to proclaim it.

THE CONTENT OF THE GOSPEL What makes the gospel the gospel? In order to answer this question, we need to define what the gospel is not. Although this may seem too simplistic, if something is not gospel, then it belongs in the “law” category. What is the difference between God’s law and his gospel? The law’s function is to show people that they are sinful, that they have not lived up to God’s standard of perfection (Matt. 5:48). The law always accuses us of having gone against God’s will. The Ten Commandments, also known as the “Moral Law,” tell all humans that they have failed. The Lord, however, does not stop there. Through the gospel, he shows us our Savior. The good news is that Christ kept both God’s laws and human laws as the perfect substitute for us. Although we deserve God’s punishment now and forever, for the sake of Jesus we are deemed righteous and forgiven. God is merciful to us, and we do not receive what we truly

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deserve—the punishment for our sins. The Lord grants us gifts we do not deserve (which is called “grace”), providing us with forgiveness, faith, and new life. The gospel always includes these two words: “for you.” Rejoice that God’s grace and love are for you. This good news targets people so they may have eternal life. Finally, the content of the gospel must include Jesus’ life, work, death, and resurrection. This goes beyond simply knowing and assenting to the facts; rather, we must embrace and trust the work of Christ to be life-giving. It is critical that we have faith in Christ, that we know he is the promised Savior. Although we are tempted to pick and choose what we consider to be the gospel, the word of God defines the gospel for us. Frankly, it is “all or nothing.” If one aspect of Christ is diluted or compromised, then other facets of Christ will be affected and distorted. Therefore, the totality of Christ needs to be addressed at church, home, and in society. The pulpit without the gospel is merely a platform for motivational speakers. Home without the gospel might falter, because of a lack of God’s divine forgiveness and foundation. A community without the gospel will be either legalistic or hedonistic. The gospel is part and parcel of Christian belief, which is what distinguishes this faith from all other epistemologies and religions. The gospel without Christ is no gospel at all; rather, it is the law of death. Christ is the sole element that makes plain words to be the extraordinary “power of God” and the true love letter from the Lord to his creation. The gospel did not suddenly appear in the New Testament; it was present from the dawn of time. Some Lutheran scholars even indicate that the gospel is the proper work of God and the law is his alien work to show that God’s desire is to love, forgive, and save. Looking at the Old Testament carefully will dispel the common misconception that the God of the Old Testament is always angry and hateful but the God of the New Testament is perpetually happy and loving. These naive caricatures of God make him out to be suffering from an identity crisis and not stable. Some even

believe those seemingly contradictory images of God to be the evidence of the evolution of Yahwistic religion. God, however, is constant. David picked up on this aspect of God, and in Psalm 18:2 he records his trust in the unchanging and reliable God: The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

THE GOSPEL IN THE OLD TESTAMENT Is the gospel evident in the Old Testament? Did the Old Testament believers know what the gospel was? How Adam and Eve named their first son and Eve’s reaction to Cain’s birth tell us implicitly that they knew what God was saying to them, which is recorded in Genesis 3:15 and also known as the Proto-Evangelium (proto-euangeliom or “The First Gospel”): “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This is the first time in Scripture that we see God lay out his plan to save his fallen creation through a man. Eve rejoiced after giving birth to Cain and said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man” (Gen. 4:1). Some Hebrew scholars indicate that the name “Cain” comes from the Hebrew root word Qana, which means “acquire” or “redeem.” Perhaps Eve and Adam looked at Cain as the immediate fulfillment of God’s promise of the Messiah. Brown-Driver-Briggs defines it as 2 “God . . . victoriously redeeming his people.” Unfortunately, Cain did not walk in the way of the Lord, and his faithlessness and fratricide serve as a warning not to neglect God’s word and promise. The gospel is not an abstraction and it is not static. It is active, and it achieves the intended purpose of God.

THE FUNCTION OF THE GOSPEL What does the gospel do? According to Paul, it is the power of God, and it can save people from sin, hell, and Satan. The word of God is efficacious, which means that it accomplishes what it promises. The word of God saves, because God means what he says. The grammar of the biblical Hebrew tells us that this important aspect of God’s word, this literary device, is called “the 3 Prophetic Perfect.” Whenever the Old Testament prophets talked about the upcoming Messiah and his accomplishments, this Hebrew tense was often used in the Scriptures. If a person is going to write about future events, which tense will he use? It would be the future tense or imperfect tense in Hebrew; but the prophets often used the past tense, which is also known as the perfect tense. Some Hebrew grammarians say that whatever God promises he fulfills; therefore, it is as good as accomplished. The Formula of Concord, one of the Lutheran confessional writings, captures God keeping his promises: “For this Lord, who is the incomprehensible wisdom and truth himself, has spoken these words, and he certainly can effect and accomplish everything that he promises” (FC SD VII:47). The other matter to consider is that God is omnipresent: he is not bound in time or space. C. S. Lewis once said that God is like an author who knows the beginning, middle, and conclusion of the book, so to him everything is happening at the same time. An example of this “Prophetic Perfect” is found in Daniel 7:13–14 when the “Son of man” is introduced and his kingdom is claimed to be everlasting. One issue here is that prophecies have multiple layers. It is like looking at a mountain from afar: when we get closer, we soon notice that it is not just one mountain, but that there are other mountains in this range that make it look as if it were one mountain. Likewise, when we look at the Old Testament prophecies, we see that some were fulfilled immediately, some were fulfilled in Christ, and some will be fulfilled on the Judgment Day or the Second Coming of Christ. The problem is that no one knows when Christ

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The word of God is efficacious, which means that it accomplishes what it promises. The word of God saves, because God means what he says.

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will come back again with angels and with the trumpet blast. In his state of humiliation, Jesus himself did not know when this would happen. We only know that the Scripture says this day will come unexpectedly, like “sudden death” at the end of a sporting event. This aspect of eschatology brings extreme urgency to share the message of Christ to the world.

THE URGENCY OF THE GOSPEL When Jesus sent out his disciples, he commanded them not to take extra provisions. One of the reasons why Jesus told them this is because excessive items would hinder people from being mobile and prevent them from reaching the greater number with God’s word. This shows Christ’s attitude toward people: “He wants all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). The disciples were instructed to share the message of the kingdom of God with whomever they encountered. Jesus and his messengers proclaimed, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is near” (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; Mark 1:15); the message itself bore the sense of urgency. The servants of God were commanded to proclaim God’s law and gospel faithfully. This also can be seen in how Jesus conducted his ministry. He spent most of his waking moments proclaiming the word of God to everyone. His miracles and “signs” were God’s word in action, drawing the people to the Word of God who created the heavens and the earth. Christ is the embodiment of God’s good news where people can truly find eternal life. Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he charged his followers to make disciples by sharing God’s word and baptism. Baptism is the promise of God; it is the gospel in a concrete form. Faithful servants of the Lord courageously ventured into remote corners of the earth to proclaim the life-giving word of God to those who had not heard it. Luther once compared the movement of the gospel to a rain cloud: it moves from place to place without a fixed position. In Acts 1:8, Jesus prophesied the movement of the word: “You are

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my witnesses from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Christ’s message spread rapidly once his frightened disciples were transformed into bold and courageous witnesses. The gospel—especially the resurrection of Jesus—changed them to be fearless evangelists, even before the threat of painful torture and gruesome death. Many apologists, such as Peter Kreeft, point to the change of attitude of Jesus’ disciples as one of the reasons that Christ’s resurrection was real and not fabricated. When they witnessed the resurrected Jesus, this changed them from frightened individuals behind locked doors to brave evangelists out in the open. Without Christ’s life-giving gospel, people perish like sailors stranded on the ocean, complaining of “water, water everywhere” but not a 4 drop to drink! As believers in Christ, we possess this water that can quench the thirst of every living soul. With great clarity, the word of God spells out to sinners that their sins are forgiven because of the life, work, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ Jesus. In the same way that Christ satisfied the parched soul of the Samaritan woman, so he saturates us now with his grace and love. The gospel proclaims to our thirsty souls that Christ is for all of us, giving us everlasting life. Human words cannot give new life to listeners. While they may be motivational, they are not the promise of God. Only the word of God can transform hardened hearts into living ones. Through the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, the apostle Paul realized the urgency of proclaiming the gospel as he embraced Christ as the Lord and the promised Messiah. As a former Pharisee, Paul knew the function of the law of God: although it is holy and perfect, he knew full well that it could not save sinners. He knew that the law accuses and reveals to people that they are sinful and unclean. The gospel, however, knocked Paul’s world upside down and changed his worldview completely. Jesus, the embodiment of God’s gospel, appeared to the once spiritually blind Saul, and so Paul (as he was now called) was transformed from the hater and persecutor of Christ to the

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lover and proclaimer of the Messiah. He saw the power of God in the gospel: It is the message of the life, work, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. That is the reason why he delivered it as of first importance to both Jews and Gentiles; he knew that the spiritual life is time sensitive. Paul knew that without Christ, people would not only die physically but also spiritually and eternally. The apostle wanted everyone to have the same confidence that he had in his Savior: that the Messiah totally annihilated death forever. It is uplifting to see Paul record an ancient hymn in his letter to his fellow believers, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55) The good news is that Christ conquered death, which is the last enemy. The gospel is the clearest transcription of God’s desire for his crown of creation: That he will be with his dear children and that “nothing can separate” us “from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” May God loosen our tongues to boldly proclaim the life-giving gospel to every5 one, as he creates faith in the hearts of sinners. THOMAS PARK (MDiv, Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary; PhD candidate, Concordia Theological Seminary) is assistant professor of theology at Concordia University in Irvine, California.

1. Steven P. Mueller, Korey Maas, Timothy Maschke, Brian M. Mosemann, and Gregory Seltz, Called to Believe, Teach, and Confess: An Introduction to Doctrinal Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005), 519. 2. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, Brown-DriverBriggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996). 3. Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), §30.5.1e, 489–90. 4. From “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 5. For further reading, see Mueller et al., Called to Believe, Teach, and Confess.

PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY JOE CAVAZOS

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T H E O F

S I G N I F I C A N C E G O L G O T H A

BY SHANE ROSENTHAL

WHEN THINKING ABOUT THE crucifixion, many people assume that since the Romans were in charge, Jesus was most likely taken to a Roman execution site somewhere outside the city wall of Jerusalem. But in John 19, we’re told that Pilate delivered Jesus over to the chief priests and that they were the ones who led him out of 1 the city. So if the Jewish authorities were the ones who ultimately led Jesus to his death, then perhaps we should stop to ask where it is they might have taken him. As it turns out, there is evidence that the Jews had a well-established execution site outside the City of Jerusalem. Thinking through the implications of this little-known fact will help us better understand the significance of Golgotha. When Judea was reduced to a province of Syria, Caesar officially removed the power of capital punishment from Judean authorities, entrusting it exclusively to the Roman procura2 tor. In John 18:31, the chief priests and rulers clearly admit this when they say to Pilate, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.” Here, of course, they were speaking of Roman law, since capital punishment was a well-established fea3 ture of the Mosaic covenant. Before the Romans took control, however, a variety of texts indicate that Jewish authorities executed criminals at one particular location for specific theological reasons. As to whether the Romans used this

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same execution site once they came into power, we can only speculate.4 After Pilate gave his consent to have Jesus crucified, John tells us that the chief priests led Jesus out of the city to a place called Golgotha (John 19:17-20). This is similar to the account recorded in Acts 7 of Stephen’s martyrdom. In Acts 7:58, we read that before Stephen was stoned to death, he was first cast “out of the city.” Hebrews 13:11–13 provides this parallel: The bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. When the writer of Hebrews used the phrase “outside the camp,” he was referring to a concept rooted in a number of Old Testament texts. For example, in Leviticus 24:13, God declared to Moses, “Bring out of the camp the one who cursed, and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head, and let all the congregation stone him.” But what’s interesting is the fact that this phrase was also used to designate the location of a sacred altar that was some distance away on the eastern side of the tent of meeting. In fact, according to Numbers 19:2–4, this was the altar in which the special red heifer sacrifice was to be performed: “Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect. . . . You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and it shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered before him. And Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger, and sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times.” This was also the place where ashes from the main altar were to be deposited: “The priest . . . shall take up the ashes [of the burnt

offerings] outside the camp to a clean place” (Lev. 6:10–11). I s r a e l’s t a b e r n a cl e w o u l d e v e nt u a l l y be transformed into Jerusalem’s temple. According to a Dead Sea Scrolls text, in the centuries leading up to the time of Christ the Jews determined “that the sanctuary is the tabernacle of the tent of meeting, that Jerusalem is the camp, and that outside the camp is outside of Jerusalem.” This document then explains that the phrase “outside the camp” specifically refers to the place where “they take out the ashes for the altar and burn 5 the sin offering there.” This appears to be the same altar mentioned by the prophet Ezekiel when he wrote that the bull of the sin offering was to be “burned in the appointed place belonging to the temple, outside the sacred area” (Ezek. 43:21). So where exactly was this separate altar outside of the City of Jerusalem located? The Mishnah (Para. 3:6–9) provides us with some additional clues: They would make a causeway from the Temple mount to the Mount of Olives, arches upon arches . . . on which the priest who burns the cow . . . [goes] forth to the Mount of Olives. . . . They bound [the cow] with a rope and placed it on the pile of wood, with its head southward and its face westward. The priest, standing at the east, with his face turned west, slaughtered with his right hand and received the blood with his left hand. . . . And he sprinkled with his right hand . . . seven times toward the house of the Holy of Holies. Another passage from this ancient Jewish text reveals that the priest who sacrificed the red cow actually stood “at the top of the Mount of Olives and [looked] directly at the door of the holy place at the time of the tossing of blood” (Mid. 1:3–2:4). By paying close attention to all these sources, therefore, we can see that this separate altar was located east of the temple, at the very top of the Mount of Olives. In short, this is the place we should think of whenever

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ISRAEL’S TABERNACLE AND (LATER) TEMPLE WERE BOTH PATTERNED AFTER EDEN, GOD’S ORIGINAL DWELLING PLACE, WHICH IS WHY THE ENTRANCE TO THE HOLY OF HOLIES FACED EAST. MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

we encounter the phrase “outside the camp” in Second Temple Judaism. As it turns out, this fits with a critical theme of the Bible that goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Once our first parents committed high treason against their Creator, they were exiled to the east, and the cherubim guarded the way back to the tree of life (Gen. 3:24). Later, after Cain murdered his brother Abel, he was sent even farther away to “the land of Nod, east of Eden” (Gen. 4:16). This is significant, because according to a variety of Jewish sources, Israel’s tabernacle and (later) temple were both patterned after Eden, 6 God’s original dwelling place, which is why the entrance to the holy of holies faced east and why God’s people were always sent off into exile in an eastward direction (2 Kings 17:23; 1 Chron. 9:1; Isa. 27:8). This also explains why animal sacrifice was to be performed on the eastern side of both the tabernacle and the temple, and why the high priest was called to sprinkle the blood with his finger on the eastern side of the mercy seat (Lev. 16:14). And it’s why those who committed high crimes were called to bear their own sin as they were sent outside the camp to the east and executed (Lev. 24:15; Num. 15:35). In fact, in the Law of Moses, capital punishment was presented as a sacred rite, which in its own way served to purify the land that had become 7 defiled by sin. With all this in mind, let’s return to the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion. In John 19:17, we’re told that Jesus “went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.” According to the ESV, the meaning of the Aramaic word Golgotha is “The Place of a Skull.” In reality, however, there are more interpretive options: in addition to “skull,” the Greek word kranion can be rendered “head,” “cranium,” or “skull cap.” As a result of these options, some interpreters have thought of Golgotha as a place near a cliff face that may have resembled a human skull, while others have imagined it as a kind of small hill or mound that was shaped like the top of a person’s head.

“Who were they the named this spot Christ the true Head As the Apostle say the body, the chu Golgotha, which st shows itself — CYRIL OF

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n, who prophetically Golgotha, in which endured the Cross? s, ‘He is the Head of rch.’ . . . This holy ands high above us, to this day.” JERUSALEM

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The ancient writer Cyril of Jerusalem gives us a hint as to how he interpreted the meaning of this word: Who were they then, who prophetically named this spot Golgotha, in which Christ the true Head endured the Cross? As the Apostle says, “He is the Head of the body, the church.” . . . This holy Golgotha, which 8 stands high above us, shows itself to this day. According to Cyril, the word Golgotha was equivalent to the word head.9 In his view, it referred not to a small hill but one that “stood high above” the place where he delivered this par10 ticular message in Jerusalem. Using the word head rather than skull as a way to define Golgotha seems to fit with what we find in 2 Samuel 15:30–32. In this passage, David ascends the Mount of Olives to “the summit where God was worshiped.” In this verse, the word summit is a translation of the Hebrew word rosh, which essentially means “head.” What’s interesting is the fact that when this passage was later translated into Greek, the word rosh was left untranslated and was simply spelled out with Greek characters. The best explanation for this oddity is likely that, at some point, the word rosh began to be used as the name for this sacred area around the summit of this mountain. In other words, perhaps this could be seen as evidence that the top of the Mount of Olives came to be known, at least in Hebrew, as “The Place of the Head.” Another intriguing fact about the Mount of Olives is that throughout the Mishnah it is commonly referred to as har ha-mishchah, which 11 literally means “the mount of anointing.” This is probably due to the fact that the olive oil produced here was the primary ingredient of the anointing oil used in a variety of sacred 12 Jewish rituals. It is this very concept that lies at the heart of the Jewish understanding of “the messiah” (ha-mashiach), since Israel had been promised that an ultimate anointed ruler would 13 one day reign on David’s throne forever. As it turns out, it was here on the eastern side of the Mount of Olives, in a town called Bethany, that

Jesus was anointed for his ultimate mission: “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28; 26:6–13; Mark 14:3–8). In his account of the crucifixion, John says that “many of the Jews read [Pilate’s] inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city” (20:19). This indicates that Jesus was executed in a public area; and the fact that the location is described as being near to the city is strikingly similar to the words Luke used when he spoke of Jesus’ descent from the Mount of Olives (19:41). Also, when we take a close look at John’s precise language, it becomes clear that Golgotha was not a small execution mound. Rather, it was a much larger area, since it included a cultivated garden or orchard expansive enough to include a large tomb recently cut into the rock of the hillside (John 19:41; cf. Matt. 27:60). This was the family tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, who in all four Gospels is described as a wealthy man and a respected member of the Sanhedrin. This important detail helps us see that Golgotha cannot be thought of as an execution mound used exclusively by the Romans. For why would a man of Joseph’s wealth and stature carve out an expensive new tomb in such close proxim14 ity to an unclean site of that kind? If we see Golgotha as referring to the head, peak, or summit of the Mount of Olives, however, then everything falls into place. This was the place “outside the camp” where lawbreakers were executed so that God’s righteous anger would be turned aside from the nation (Num. 35:30–34; Josh. 7:22–26). It was the location of that special altar where the blood of the red heifer sacrifice was sprinkled seven times toward the face of the holy of holies, and where the ashes for the water of purification were stored. This was an area that featured numerous gardens and orchards (Matt. 26:36; Mark 14:32; John 18:1), which even to this day is considered one of the most desirable locations for elaborate Jewish tombs due to its signifi15 cance in Jewish prophecy. This, I believe, is where the chief priests led Jesus once they had been given the green light

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to execute him. Because they believed he committed blasphemy (Matt. 26:65; Mark 14:64; John 10:33), they would have followed the strict procedures laid out in Leviticus 24:14, in which the people were instructed to “bring out of the camp the one who cursed.” Once they arrived at the place of execution there at the summit of the Mount of Olives, witnesses would be called 16 forward to lay their hands on Jesus’ head, so that he would “bear the consequences of his sin” (Lev. 24:15). Yet in this instance, the one charged with the crime was completely innocent. Though he was a spotless lamb, on this particular afternoon, “the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Here, we do well to remember that the temple in Jerusalem was symbolic of Eden itself, the site of our original mutiny and the place from which we’ve all been evicted. It is fitting that our second Adam would be led to this spot, “east of Eden” (as it were), in order to bear the curse of sin and death. Because the one who suffered

SHANE ROSENTHAL, executive producer of White Horse Inn, is this year’s program host for the Gospel of John series.

1. In John 19:16–17 we read, “So he [Pilate] delivered him [Jesus] over to them [the chief priests] to be crucified. So they [the chief priests] took Jesus . . . to the place called the Place of the Skull.”

topou enkephalou or “place of the head” (12:1–3). This document also indicates that victims of capital punishment were “hung up in front of the Temple” (13:7).

2. Josephus, War 2:117; cf. Ant. 20:200–3. 3. See, for example: Exod. 21:15; 31:15; Num. 35:33–35; Lev. 20:10; 24:10–17; Deut. 17:2–13. 4. Because the Jewish execution site identified in this essay was well established, and since its use was in accord with the Law of Moses, my guess is that the Jewish authorities would have insisted that the Romans continue to use this same location, just as they insisted that crucifixions be completed before sundown on the Sabbath. 5. 4Q397 (cf. Num. 1:50–53; 2:1–2, 17; Deut. 23:14). 6. For example, in Jubilees 8:19, we’re told that “the garden of Eden was the holy of holies and the dwelling of the Lord.” 7. Numbers 35:30–34. In fact, according to Lev. 24:14, hands were placed on the head of the one about to be executed, which was one of the features of animal sacrifice (cf. Lev. 1:4; 3:2; 4:4; 16:21). 8. Catechetical Lectures XIII, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2, vol. 7: 23, 39. 9. Golgotha appears to be the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew gulgulet, which is translated “head” in Num. 1:2, 22; 3:47, etc., but which can also be rendered “skull” (cf. Judg. 9:53; 2 Kings 9:35). 10. Similarly, in The Testament of Solomon, which is a text from the late first to the early third centuries, Golgotha is referred to as the

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in our place was the God-man, the blood he shed was—and is—of infinite value. As he hung there facing the door of the temple, it was his blood that sprinkled the eastern side of the mercy seat (Lev. 16:14; Isa. 52:15). And because he was exiled and executed in our place, we who stood condemned are in him declared to be innocent (Isa. 53:11; John 3:18; Rom. 8:1; Eph. 5:27). What for Jesus was a tree of death has become for us the tree of life. This is the true significance of Golgotha. Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, was exiled outside the camp, so that we who once were far off could be brought near (Eph. 2:13; Heb. 10:22). He was cut off from the land of the living so we might have life in his name (Isa. 53:8; John 20:31). “Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach that he endured” (Heb. 13:13).

11. Mid. 1:3; 2:4; Para. 3:6–7, 11; cf. Exod. 25:6; 29:7; 30:31; 31:11. There also may be a play on words in 2 Kings 23:13, since the mountain east of Jerusalem is called har ha-maschchit, meaning “mount of corruption.” This is in reference to the high places that Solomon built on the Mount of Olives in honor of Chemosh and Molech. Could it be clearer that he was not the fulfillment of the promise made to David in 2 Sam. 7? 12. The name “Gethsemane,” which is applied to one of the orchards located on the Mount of Olives, literally means “olive press.” 13. Psalm 2:2; 45:7; Isa. 9:6–7; 61:1; 2 Sam. 7:12–13; Dan. 9:25. 14. Many people claim that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher located in Jerusalem contains within its walls the true location of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial tomb. However, the close proximity between the cross and tomb in that building makes this hypothesis extremely implausible. In addition, this church is west of the Temple Mount, which does not fit with the sources already cited that situate the place of execution “outside the camp” to the east. 15. See, in particular, Zech. 14:4–5. It’s also interesting to note that the glory of the Lord appeared on this mountain after departing from the temple in the days of Ezekiel (11:23). According to Acts 1:1–12, this was also the location o f Jesus’ ascension. 16. Leviticus 24:13; cf. Exod. 29:10; Lev. 1:4; 3:2; 4:4; 16:21; Num. 8:12.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews 54

Keep Up Your Biblical Greek in Two Minutes a Day

Grounded in Heaven: Recentering Christian Hope and Life on God

The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers

by Michael Allen

by Maxwell King

REVIEWED BY

Matthew Everhard

Peter Benyola

Patricia Anders

Keep Up Your Biblical Hebrew in Two Minutes a Day by Jonathan G. Kline

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BOOK REVIEWS

Keep Up Your Biblical Greek in Two Minutes a Day: Volume 1 / Volume 2 Keep Up Your Biblical Hebrew in Two Minutes a Day: Volume 1 / Volume 2 by Jonathan G. Kline Hendrickson, 2017 370 pages each (hardcover), $39.95 each hen I turned forty years old, I crested the hill of my physical prime and immediately began to perceive my own sure-but-steady decline. My eyes began to be more sensitive to light—I need my sunglasses outside in the day and my LED reading lamp by night— and I began to notice a growing bulge in my midsection, commonly referred to in the broader culture as the “dad bod” phenomenon. My kids, now in their teens, tease me for my growing tummy and jeeringly accuse me of wearing a dorky fanny pack under my shirt. Adding insult to injury, my hairline retreated a half-inch on my birthday. So much for the prime of life! With failing eyes and my fight-weight athleticism long gone, it is no surprise that some of my mental acuity is draining out of my head as well. It has been a long time since I parsed Greek verbs in my undergraduate and graduate study programs; and while my Greek New Testament is still mostly comprehensible, I find myself needing a few more helps these days just to keep up. Enter Jonathan G. Kline and his Two Minutes a Day Biblical Language series, which includes Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. My gut reaction (no pun intended) was that nothing works that well in just a couple of minutes per day. But I

skeptically hit “buy” on Amazon and purchased both the Greek and the Hebrew editions. While there are two volumes for Greek and two for Hebrew (one for Aramaic), I decided to start modestly and tackle just the first volume of the Greek and Hebrew books. After all, I was already committing to four minutes a day if I worked on both languages! The volumes are well designed both physically in terms of form and layout, and structurally in terms of content and approach. As physical books, these items are beautiful—they are sewn instead of glued, and the paper is white and thick, making them very readable and pleasant to handle. The Greek and Hebrew fonts are highly intelligible, which (believe it or not) is not a given in many ancient language texts and grammars. (If the Greek and Hebrew fonts were less readable, I probably wouldn’t have lasted long in this program, no matter how practically the books were designed!) As icing on the cake, the books are covered in soft, real leather; all of which suggests that these volumes are built for regular use and for duration over the years. Each day’s lesson provides a similar study structure as follows: first, a key verse is given in a modern English language translation. The translation may be the NASB, ESV, NIV, NRSV, or sti ll another. Within the English verse, a key vocabulary term is given in parentheses in the original language. These words highlighted in bold become the vocabulary refresher terms for the day. Below the daily verse, the new word is given a definition, a transliteration (in case your pronunciation needs refreshing too), and a few key statistics, such as how many times the word is used. Key vocabulary words are given in the order of their numeric usage in

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the Bible, so the most important and common words are given primacy. Second, a couple of other key words from previous days are highlighted to refresh what you recently went over in prior weeks. For instance, on Day 47 the new key word is pneuma (spirit), and the review words are hemera (day) and polus (many) from Day 46 and Day 45 respectively. In this way, basic vocabulary of the important Greek and Hebrew words is rehearsed meaningfully and in order of descending use. Third, the same verse of the day is now rendered entirely in the original language. This is the tough part, when students are given their first crack at translating the whole verse alone with minimal helps. White space is plentiful on the page, so you can make your own rough go of it in pencil in the margins. The day’s key words are in bold here too, so students can see them in the text. That way, they have at least a couple of big hints when translating the text independently. Most of the verses for translation are well selected for two reasons. First, they are devotional. Verses for each day were wisely chosen, not only as good translation samples but also for spiritual formation. I found it helpful to use them for prayer and meditation, as well as for intellectual exercise. Second, they represent clear, accessible sentences (manageable in grammar and structure) that are not overly complicated or riddled with hapax legomenon (obscure words used only once). Okay, so you tried to translate the verse now without helps and managed well enough, but you couldn’t quite get through a few of the tougher phrases. No problem. That’s why Kline provides the fourth and final section, which is a parallel translation of the key verse broken down clause by clause. Here, we see how the verse should have been translated, had we been as sharp as we were in our second year of seminary. I find this part to be a helpful refresher and a general encouragement: We still know more than we think we do! If readers feel confident and ambitious and choose to do more, they can certainly go further than minimally required. Several times,

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Verses for each day were wisely chosen, not only as good translation samples but also for spiritual formation. I found it helpful to use them for prayer and meditation, as well as for intellectual exercise.

I chose to transition from the daily exercise to my Greek Testament itself to read more of the broader context of my daily key verse. In this way, I could easily go deeper into reading the original-language Bibles themselves—which is, after all, the main goal. Each volume contains 365 lessons, one per day; and so by the end of the year, students will have worked through the 365 most-commonly used words in the Greek or Hebrew (or Aramaic). After that, the second volumes in the Greek and Hebrew series pick up with the 366th most-commonly used word and the key vocabulary becomes more difficult as it continues. At this point, I should admit that the books cannot and will not be a good substitute for a

BOOK REVIEWS

Greek or Hebrew (or Aramaic) grammar. They make no intention of teaching the language with all of its tenses, aspects, and conjugations. These books will disappoint those who acquire them hoping to learn the languages from scratch. If they do have a downside, it is that they do not make any attempt to explain rules of grammar or untangle confusing idioms. On the contrary, they are what they say they are: merely for “keeping up.” So can the books do what they promise—maintain our language skills in just two minutes a day? I believe they can, assuming we learned the languages well enough in the first place. If used as directed, two minutes per day is all these linguistic devotions really require from our busy lives to help us stay sharp. Refreshing my language skills is so easy, I just might invest in “8 Minute Abs” next. MATTHEW EVERHARD is senior pastor of Faith Evangelical

Presbyterian Church (EPC) in Brooksville, Florida, and a graduate of RTS Orlando. His doctoral dissertation was recently published as A Theology of Joy: Jonathan Edwards and Eternal Happiness in the Holy Trinity (JESociety Press, 2019).

Grounded in Heaven: Recentering Christian Hope and Life on God by Michael Allen Eerdmans, 2018 192 pages (paperback), $18.00 he central message of Michael Allen’s Grounded in Heaven: Recentering Christian Hope and Life on God might be summed up in one pithy axiom: The vertical empowers the horizontal. The more those who know the Lord fixate on the pending glory of beholding him face-to-face, the more this will necessarily affect our perspective on the vale of tears of our mortal life. Counterintuitively, heavenly-mindedness grounds, frees, and

motivates us to sacrifice our own earthly comforts and deny ourselves—not just for the sake of doing so, but also for the higher purpose of serving those around us and building Christ’s kingdom. In all this, the opacity of God’s face may be reduced not only in the “hereafter” but in the “here.” The book has several goals: the recovery of the beatific vision as the Christian’s ultimate destination from the threat of “eschatological naturalism,” the retrieval of heavenly-mindedness in the ascetic way of life with God, and scripturally prescribed self-denial in the Christian life. If the goal of the Christian odyssey is to see God face-to-face, then it’s fitting we should assess our historically inherited conception of the beatific vision vis-à-vis the inscripturated revelation. The notion that “some people are so heavenlyminded that they are of no earthly good” is a bromidic criticism that Allen doesn’t openly address in the book. That would be so predictable. He admitted, however, in an informal conversation with me that it’s a platitude that has enjoyed far more use in the modern Christian vernacular than is biblically warranted. He doesn’t set out to debunk this notion of being “too heavenly-minded,” but rather to reorient readers to the temporal benefits of a heavenward gaze—the purpose being to show that longing ultimately for the beatific vision of seeing God in his glory, as he is revealed in Jesus Christ, actually enables us to more fully engage with this world. Allen demonstrates how this hope carries into the New Testament by quoting from An Exposition on the Shorter Catechism: What Is the Chief End of Man? (repr. Christian Heritage, 2004) by Alexander Whyte: The Scriptures constantly teach that man’s only true happiness is in God, and that his full happiness in God cannot be attained in this life, but that believing men have that happiness assured to them in the life to come. Commenting on John 14:6, [Frédéric

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Louis] Godet says, “Jesus here substitutes the Father for the Father’s house. For it is not in heaven that we are to find God, but in God that we are to find heaven.” In his reflections on the mundane, Allen believes that recent Christian thought on eschatology—the doctrine of the end time and last things—has sought to refocus Christians on the earthly and the material, believing that it is essential to affirm both the goodness of this world, as well as the sufferings, injustices, and inequities of temporal reality. While charitably acknowledging all the positive that has come from such recent affirmations of eschatology, he is concerned that it has failed to be a productive reform. He says that it has made the penultimate ultimate, thereby degrading the biblical vision of glory that adumbrates the revelation of God’s face and evincing our own idolatry. Th i s o v e r e mp h a s i s o n the ear thly is what Allen has tagged “eschatological naturalism”: “a bent toward the elevation of the earthy, embodied, and material as that of ultimate significance,” and “very specifically to a theological approach” that speaks of God instrumentally as a means or instigator of an end but fails to confess substantively God’s identity as our one true end (in whom only, any other things are to be enjoyed). Eschatological naturalism marginalizes the presence of God and regularly maligns the spiritual hope of earlier Christians, [and it] presents a particular vision of God’s kingdom, wherein the triune God sovereignly brings about that kingdom but then seemingly slides off stage-right upon its culmination.

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Taking a detailed historiographic approach, he elaborates on his concerns about how reforms have had both a productive and counterproductive effect within the neo-Calvinist tradition. He then discusses the Christian practice of ascetic self-denial and how it is properly carried out according to reformational principles such as solus Christus and sola fide, relying heavily on Calvin’s articulation of eschatological theology in his Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis: Since the eternal inheritance of man is in heaven, it is truly right that we should tend thither; yet must we fix our foot on earth long enough to enable us to consider the abode which God requires man to use for a time. For we are now conversant with that history which teaches us that Adam was, by divine appointment, an inhabitant of the earth, in order that he might, in passing through his earthly life, meditate on heavenly glory. Allen also confronts secular thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, who was suspicious of Christianity’s “slave ethic” and consequently unacceptable restraint of the modern spirit. Nietzsche’s heirs have seen Christianity’s heavenly focus as a distraction or opiate: focusing upward, on the mythic heavens, we acquiesce to our miserable earthly plight. The spiritual, then, preserves the material status quo. The ethereal props up earthy injustices and frustrations. He recalls C. S. Lewis’s response to Nietzsche with several examples that demonstrate that “if you read history you will find that the Christians

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“We do well to retrieve the classical, catholic commitment to heavenlymindedness that was cherished also by the early Reformed and the later Puritans.”

who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.” Allen then turns to the visio Dei debate, providing the reader with a summary of the historical background and weighing in on present discussions. The beatific vision, defined in passages such as Matthew 5:8, 2 Corinthians 4:6, and Revelation 21:3 and 22:4, is God’s people seeing him face-to-face in the new heaven and new earth. In a robust juxtaposition of Trinitarian visibility and invisibility in Scripture, he presents both attributes as being categorically true, while affirming visibility as an eschatological promise of divine sight. Allen enumerates ways that Matthew Levering, Hans Boersma, and G. C. Berkouwer all gave due attention to the visio Dei doctrine, especially Berkouwer’s treatment of the visio Dei that led him to affirm the visibility of God and, in effect, deny the invisibility of God as a divine attribute. He disagrees with Berkouwer

on several points: by identifying divine invisibility’s biblical pedigree (Rom.1:19–20; Heb. 11:7) and by showing that Berkouwer’s chapter on the visio Dei ignores his own church’s confessional standards (The Belgic Confession), which affirm it. Despite this critique, Allen agrees with Berkouwer concerning our moral fitness to see our Creator (Matt. 5:8; Heb. 12:14). He points out Berkouwer’s interesting statement, “The possibility of seeing God is the background of the fear of the consequences,” saying, “Berkouwer suggests that limits are moral, not optical, and relate to permission, not capacity” of human beings to behold God’s face. The Psalms frequently refer to the expectation and experience of divine sight, not only the longing for it (Ps. 42:2) but also the moral conditions requisite for it (Ps. 11:7): “For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.” The book is well researched, carefully presented, and thoughtful—although considering its conceptual emphasis, I felt that greater attention to definitions would have been beneficial. For example, his definition of “classical” isn’t always clear. Toward the end of the book, Allen says, We do well to retrieve the classical, catholic commitment to heavenly-mindedness that was cherished also by the early Reformed and the later Puritans so that we might confess the whole faith in a way that manifests an ordered set of loves. As we do lift up our hearts in this way, drawing even our minds also to contemplate the heavenly, we may be more earnestly compelled to go out where Christ sends us. While certainly a true statement, this implies that the classical view has been monolithic throughout catholic history, which might be mildly misleading. At another point, he alludes to “the classical view” as being “the scriptural witness of the prophets and apostles and their intellectual and spiritual reception in the history of the catholic church.” While more

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specific, it seems to assume a consensus where there has been significant debate. Even today, there is diversity in the continuum of church history on many points of doctrine, so the oversimplification of “classical” potentially can occur in as many subject areas as disagreement exists. Terminology is most helpful to people when it’s well defined, which is why indepth theological writing with its qualitative demands tends to be long. I would altogether ignore the book’s lack of clarity on the meaning of “classical” if the word was not so integral to Allen’s underlying premise. All the same, if semantics is the biggest flaw in this work, then he has succeeded in proving his fundamental points about heavenly-mindedness and its translation into the Christian walk, all of which are enriching and of tremendous benefit to the church militant. PETER BENYOLA (BA in journalism, Indiana University-Purdue

University, Indianapolis) is the author of several Reformed theological e-books and many articles at www.Benyola.net.

The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King Harry N. Abrams, 2018 320 pages (hardback), $30.00 There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind. —Fred Rogers arlier this year, PBS aired a documentary called Won’t You Be My Neighbor? I was told by a friend who saw it that it would make me laugh—and cry. She was right. I learned much about Fred Rogers in this short film, and I learned even more about him in The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred

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Rogers by Maxwell King (and I’ve heard that there’s another book on the way). I’m not sure why we’re having this sudden resurgence of attention on Fred Rogers, who died in 2003. Maybe it’s because 2018 was the ninetieth anniversary of his birth. Or perhaps it’s because of our current national and world turmoil. Years after the final episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on August 31, 2001 (just weeks before the tragic events of September 11), we apparently still need that humble, kind, loving, gentle Mister Rogers—complete with the cardigan sweater his mother knitted for him (which now hangs in the Smithsonian). Perhaps biographer and friend Maxwell King provides the best answer himself: Whenever a great tragedy strikes—war, famine, mass shootings, or even an outbreak of populist rage—millions of people turn to Fred’s messages about life. Then the web is filled with his words and images. With fascinating frequency, his written messages and video clips surge across the internet, reaching hundreds of thousands of people who, confronted with a tough issue or ominous development, open themselves to Rogers’s messages of quiet contemplation, of simplicity, of active listening and the practice of human kindness. (357) Indeed, here is what Mister Rogers still says to us today: When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers—so many caring people in this world. (6) Fred Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary specializing in children’s ministry, was there

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at the very beginning of television. Early on, he saw this as the perfect opportunity for education. He worked with child psychologists to understand the worries of small children and how best to help them. He never forgot the painful childhood he experienced as an overweight rich boy in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. He also felt out of place when he went to Dartmouth, so he transferred to Rollins College where he courted Joanne Byrd, who married him in 1952 (they later had two sons). In this book by King, there may be a bit too much information on Rogers’s early years and others who were an integral part of his life (and the writing at times can be stilted), but I do think it’s a worthwhile read. Once we get into his career with public television, I feel the book then becomes quite interesting. A highlight of Rogers’s career was when he literally saved PBS from extinction (Nixon sought to cut funds to meet ongoing expenses for the Vietnam War). In what is now a famous testimony before Congress, Rogers appeared before tough Senator John Pastore of the Senate Subcommittee on Communications on May 1, 1969 (this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of this hearing, which is still available on the Internet). After Fred shared his moving apologetic for children’s educational television, Senator Pastore said, “I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s wonderful. Looks like you just earned the twenty million dollars” (175). This secured the funds needed for public television, and soon Nixon asked Rogers to chair the 1970 White House Conference on Children and Youth. In 2017, Rogers’s testimony helped once again to secure funding for PBS when Congress wanted to cut its budget. King writes, “If Fred Rogers had lived, he might have felt vindicated

by the widespread re-airing of his testimony in early 2017. . . . Once again, he was the champion his audience remembered, and that a nation counted on” (177). There are many wonderful stories in this book, but we have limited space (so you’ll have to get a copy and watch the documentary for yourself!). I will say that throughout the documentary and this book, everyone who knew Fred Rogers agrees that he was truly the man we saw on his children’s show. He made anyone—even hard-boiled reporters or famous musicians— soften their edges as he spoke to them, making them feel as if they mattered to him (they did). He was also ahead of his time in having women in positions of authority and people of color on his show, famously sharing a wading pool with the black “police officer” in his “neighborhood,” played by François Clemmons during the civil rights movement— when t here were “whites only” swimming pools. In 1993, Rogers recreated this scene of both men cooling off their feet in a wading pool. This time, however, Mister Rogers took a towel and wiped Clemmons’s feet dry. Not only was Clemmons a black man, but he was also gay. Although this was not known while the show aired, this scene becomes more profound when we see the unconditional love Mister Rogers showed for everyone in his “neighborhood.” As Margy Whitmer, the producer of his show, said: The man you saw on the show, that’s who he was. His respect and passion for children was real. . . . What he put out to the world was so important to us. It struck a real note in our hearts and our souls. Everything he set out to do, he set out to do the best way possible.

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“He taught me to think about my neighbor . . . to step outside of myself and embrace otherness, and always try and think about what the other person’s going through.”

There’s a poem he liked called “Be the Best of What You Are.” If you’re a janitor, be the best janitor—or whoever you are. Whatever you do, do it the best way you know how. . . . He was like a father figure who allowed me to blossom and be creative. He really helped me think about other people and get a bigger global perspective. He taught me to think about my neighbor . . . to step outside of myself and embrace otherness, and always try and think about what the other person’s going through. . . . Fred wanted to nurture, and set an example as a caring adult. That was always the message. (210–11) He also knew how to talk to the children (and the parents who watched with them) when tragedy struck. King shares an excerpt from Rogers’s speech to the 1977 National Symposium on Children and Television: When President Kennedy, Dr. King, and Senator Kennedy were assassinated, I felt that I had to speak to the families of our country about grief. So many families and children were taking these catastrophes personally. Among many things, my main point in mounting such a program was to present a plea for families to include children in their own ways of coping with grief—a plea not to leave the children isolated and at the mercy of their own fantasies of loss and destruction, which tend to be much more frightening than any reality. (192–93)

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At a 1969 graduation ceremony at Thiel College in Greenville, Pennsylvania, Fred Rogers shared with the students what he would pursue until his death from stomach cancer in 2003: Our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is— that each of us has something that no one else has—or ever will have—something inside which is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness, and to provide ways of developing its expression. (236–37) Although he certainly was not perfect, he was an authentically Christian man. He read his Bible every morning and got in his laps in the local pool before heading to the studio. In real life, he was the real thing. He took seriously God’s command to love our neighbors as ourselves. Even today, he would ask of us, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” In a mad and fallen world that seems on the brink of destruction, each of us can do our part to follow suit: encourage each other and love each other. Fred Rogers would agree with Paul as he writes in Galatians 5:22–23, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. PATRICIA ANDERS is the managing editor of Modern Reformation and editorial director of Hendrickson Publishers on the North Shore of Boston.

HELP EACH GENERATION REDISCOVER AND APPLY THE GOSPEL N U M E R O U S S U RV E Y S , polls, and sociological studies have conclusively shown that evangelical Christians—that is, those who profess to take Scripture, Christ, and the gospel seriously—are increasingly unaware of or unclear about some of the most basic issues of Christian faith and practice. While many pastors and elders are faithfully devoted to their ministry, it must be concluded with a grave sense of duty as well as soberness and humility that this is the exception rather than the rule. In a time when the “nones” (or those claiming no religious adherence) are, according to pollsters, growing and when our own churches are stagnant or shrinking, it is more important than ever to identify and celebrate the gospel: the glory of God manifested in the grace he shows to those who deserve the very opposite. This is Christ-centered Christianity at its best and we want to partner with you to help inform the next generation of Reformers. Will you join us?

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He Was Already Dead by Eric Landry

he crucifixion. We say the words and immediately everyone knows what we are talking about. As Fleming Rutledge reminds us in The Crucifixion, “There have been many famous deaths in world history; we might think of John F. Kennedy, or Marie Antoinette, or Cleopatra, but we do not refer to ‘the assassination,’ ‘the guillotining,’ or ‘the poisoning’” (3). The Romans, not known for being merciful executioners, left the crucified on the cross until they died—even if it took several days. In John 19, because of the impending Sabbath, the Jewish religious leaders asked Pilate to have the soldiers break the legs of the crucified men, which prevented them from pushing themselves up so they could breathe, thus hastening their death by suffocation. In its own way, it was a severe mercy. The soldiers therefore broke the legs of the criminals crucified alongside Jesus; but when they came to him, they saw that he was already dead. Since the cross was intended to drag out suffering for as long as possible, it is a surprise to find that Jesus was already dead. But he was dead before he ever lived. In a sense, he was dead before he ever reached the cross, because every day of his life pointed to this day when he would willingly drink the cup of God’s wrath for sin. He was already dead the day he was born—this one who would save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:22). He was already dead the day John the Baptist called

him “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He was already dead when he rebuked Satan in the wilderness for offering him the kingship without suffering (Matt. 4:9). He was already dead when the crowds turned away because he told them they would have to eat his flesh and drink his blood (John 6:53). He was already dead as he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, weeping over the city that kills its prophets (Luke 19:41). He refused to retreat from the way of the cross. So, of course, he was already dead when the soldiers came to break his legs. Triumphant over the power of sin and Satan at the cross, Jesus gave up his Spirit. He completed his work and is the object of God’s special care: his tomb is prepared, his friends retrieve his body, and they bury him with honor. But we can’t rush past those four words: “He was already dead.” His death isn’t just another famous death. His death is also your death. In Christ, you are already dead, so the Accuser has no power over you when he throws your sin in your face and reminds you of your faithlessness. In Christ, you are already dead, so there is no death sentence over you when you stand before God on the last day. In Christ, you are already dead. His work is complete, and you are now the object of God’s special care. ERIC LANDRY is executive editor of Modern Reformation.

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And Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.” JOHN 12:44–46