Pontius Pilate famously asked Jesus a rhetorical, and probably cynical, question: “What is truth?” 

The context of this episode in John 18 is important.  Jesus was being tried on trumped up charges by the religious leaders of the day.  They knew they needed to charge him with a capital crime but nothing he had done came even close to being worthy of death.  Nothing except his power to lead people.  Jesus had all the makings of a great political leader.  He was charismatic, determined, clear-sighted, and devoted to his followers and to his mission.  Remember how often the gospel writers state that the authorities were unable to confront or arrest Jesus “because of the crowds”.

It was this powerful appeal to the public that Jesus used to stymie his religious opponents again and again.  When no one else was ready to stand up against the hypocrisy of self-concerned spiritual rulers—John the Baptist excepted—Jesus exposed them to the crowds.  To the power-sensitive religious leaders this was tantamount to leading an insurrection—the issue implicit in the ironic “prophesy” of Caiaphas [John 11:48-53].  Caiaphas and his clan were control junkies and Jesus was not under their control.  Nor was the local Roman ruler, Pilate. 

So it was that they hatched a plan that would rid themselves of one enemy—Jesus—by manipulating the other—Pilate.  Their strategy was to charge Jesus with sedition.  If they could show that Jesus was aiming to become the “king of the Jews” they had a charge that would stick.  And, given the tenuous military-political occupation of Judea by the Romans, it was a charge worthy of capital punishment.  Yet it was more than obvious that Jesus was not a political power-broker—he had already dismissed some who tried to recruit him to lead a Jewish resistance movement.  Still they charged Jesus with ambitions to become a king.  And they knew that if word ever got back to Rome—and they would be sure that it did—that Pilate had refused to quash a potential political rival to Roman power, that would lead to a quick end to Pilate’s career.  So the high priest’s party settled on charging Jesus with rebellion against Rome, a charge based on his obvious power over the crowds and his occasional comments about a coming kingdom.

Which brings us back to the question about truth that Pilate expressed to Jesus.  Pilate—a politician himself—understood in a nanosecond that he was being manipulated by the priestly party of Caiaphas who was working in league with the Jewish Sanhedrin.  So, for the sake of full investigation—and for his eventual report back to Rome, if needed—he had asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

Today that would be a bit like the governor of a given state—let’s say Oregon—asking “are you the ruler of Oregon?”  Any governor worth his pay would know already of any serious insurrectionist, so asking the question would be nonsensical.  The question was strictly pro forma. 

But Jesus answered, “Yes”!  And that answer certainly sealed his fate.

Jesus was too honest for his own good—perhaps he could have avoided crucifixion by insisting, “Oh, no, sir, I’m not a king and never plan to be one!”  Instead he answered in a way that caused a startled Pilate to respond, “So you are a king?”  What Jesus had said is that “My kingdom is not of this world.”

I’m intentionally ironic here about Jesus being too honest—he was in control in the entire situation, and death on the cross was his self-appointed destiny.  But we must not lose the point that Jesus had, indeed, talked about his rule of a coming kingdom.  Earlier he had answered questions about his future cabinet ministers—those seated on his right and left hand once he entered into his kingdom—without a pause.  So Jesus answered Pilate with the truth about himself.  He already was a king . . . or, more accurately, The King!  But not a king in immediate competition with the Roman emperor, or with Pilate as the local Roman ruler.

The context for Pilate’s question holds one additional feature that calls for special attention in the rest of this post.  As Jesus offered his ‘self-incriminating’ answer to Pilate he explained the basis for his bold and dangerous honesty:

My kingdom is not of this world.  If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews.  But my kingdom is not from the world.  … You say that I am a king.  For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth.  Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

So Jesus is, indeed, king.  And his kingdom represents and reveals the truth.  And his followers are people of truth.  The magnetic attractiveness of Jesus for truth seekers is located in this fact: he can be trusted!  Everything he says and does is always true.  He never lies, falsifies, bifurcates, distorts, or rationalizes away the truth.  Because to do so would be to deny his own being as the ultimate source of truth, something he expressed in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life . . .” 

So let’s broaden our frame of reference for a moment in light of what Jesus claimed for himself.  The broader frame was used by later Bible writers as they spoke of him.  In Paul’s terms, for instance—see Colossians—Jesus is the God-man through whom all things are created and hold together.  That sets up a basis, in our modern terms, for the “truths” of science to be seen as derivative and reflective of his ongoing creative task of ruling the universe in the terms he determined.  Truth is centered in Christ’s very being.

Truth is also the touchstone of salvation.  Life under Christ’s rule is truth-centered so that Jesus used truth to discriminate true disciples from pseudo-disciples in his blunt statements of John 8:31 and following, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

What Jesus was saying there anticipated what he told Pilate.  Some people will be drawn to Christ’s teachings—represented today in Scriptures—and some “Christians” won’t be.  Which tells us—unless Jesus was speaking nonsense—that those in the church who are not deeply attracted to the word are not true disciples.  Truth attracts those who love truth.  Lies—including self-deceptions of the sort found among Christ’s often extraordinarily religious opponents—will dissolve any appetite for relational Bible reading.

The bottom line for Jesus—what he touched on in the John 8 confrontation—is that truth is actually an affective quality of new birth: “If God were your Father,” Jesus told his so-called disciples, “you would love me, for I came from God and I am here.”  The sole alternative is another paternity:

Why do you not understand what I say?  It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.  You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.  He was a murderer from the beginning, and has no truth in him.  When he speaks the Lie, he speaks from his own character, for he is a liar and the father of It” [i.e. the ultimate Lie that God can be displaced as in “you can be like God”].

So Pilate’s question of “What is truth?” would have better been expressed as “Who is truth?”  And the answer to that question was standing in front of him, awaiting crucifixion for having told Pilate the truth.

I’m ready to admit, in line with my earlier confession of sin, that I’m not as honest as many people might expect.  I like to shape things in my favor—to always offer a self-rescuing spin on things.  I tell half truths—the “I’m too busy” when, in reality, I should say, “that’s just not a priority for me”—and so on, ad nauseum.  The truth is, that apart from Christ I’m nothing . . . and all too often I operate apart from Christ. 

But I love the Truth.  I want him more and more.  And I find myself disgusted and shamed by my self-deceptions as the Spirit gently illuminates my heart.  And I realize that a love for the truth is critical to all that I do and all that I am.  Paul, drawing on Christ’s radical bifurcation, warned our current generation about the issue—as we approach the time of Christ’s return—with incredible bluntness in 2 Thessalonians 2:

The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refused to love the truth and so be saved . . . . but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

This is such weighty truth.  And truth has incredible power, in a world accustomed to falsity, wherever an appetite for truth is alive by God’s mercy.  Jesus, once again, gave us the answer we need to hear (linking some of the “abide” uses in John’s gospel): “If you abide in my word” and “in me” and “in my love” you . . . we. . . will be set free by our growing love for the winsome presence of Truth himself.

I’m a sinner. 

I shared that last week.  And I thank God that I now know I’m a sinner.  That awareness was his gift to me that unblocked a logjam keeping me from faith.  And who could have guessed that sin would be the gateway to relationship with God!  What’s more, I now realize that by God’s grace my ongoing sin offers a pathway to greater spiritual maturity.

This sort  of talk is counterintuitive, I know.  Which is why we need to talk about it.  Let me do that in two stages.  First by recalling how salvation is accomplished.  Second, by considering what grace is.

So how is salvation accomplished?  A good place to go to for an answer is Ephesians 2:8-9.

For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

There’s lots to that.  We see that faith is the basis for salvation, and faith depends on God’s grace.  The entire event is not our doing, but a gift of God.  And an important counterpoint Paul makes is that any human “boast” is precluded.

Let’s start with the issue of boasting.  The word has a wide range of meaning and applications.  My first thought when I hear the word is of a person who likes to broadcast his or her latest achievements—the student who waves around an “A” paper, or those who tell stories that make them the star of an event.  But Paul normally uses the word in a distinctive spiritual sense—as anything that elevates human initiative over God’s initiative.  We see that in his reference to “works” as a follow-up to “your own doing” in the Ephesians passage.  That human-centered combination sets out a false alternative to God’s grace.

I wrote in an earlier post about what we mean by an identity.  For Paul boasting is an identity indicator.  Think, for instance, about the more subtle forms of boasting that come with the notion of having an identity.  Just ask people to say something about themselves as an entry point to their identity.

“Oh, I do quilting” or “I’m a barista at Starbucks” or “I’m the assistant shift supervisor at the Portland Airport UPS airdock” or “I’m a mom.”

Some are more revealing than others.  An identity has an outward form based on a complex set of priorities, duties, desires, and values—a constellation of motivations.  And common to such motivations is a person’s sense of standing—their place in the pecking order of life.  That standing might be measured by job awards, salary, bits of encouragement or praise from friends, offices held, and so on.  So the outward identity—like a job title—is usually only the first step into a person’s deeper set of identity cues.

At the core of their identity is something they love or need—their source of defining security or pleasure.  It’s what motivates them to take a job or to give up  a job.  It is what presses someone to take on remarkably demanding tasks or duties—as in the steps required of medical doctors.  It’s not the joy of living on very little sleep while being pushed by work necessities.  Rather it’s the outcome of a demanding residency that makes it worthwhile.  Something inside the budding physician drives them to do it—is it status?  A compassion for the needy?  A parental expectation?  Whatever it might be, it is this drive that Paul thinks of as boasting when someone answers, “I’m a doctor.”  Even if the motives are complex—perhaps beyond finding out—the outcome is a product of their “own doing.”

Why does Paul exclude any of a person’s “own doing” from being a basis for their faith-and-salvation experience?   Because the status of a person before salvation is one of spiritual death.  He says as much in verses just before the text we’ve considered, in Ephesians 2:1-5, that concludes, “he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, [and] made us alive together with Christ”.

That death—a carryover from Adam’s declaration of independence from God who is, in himself, “life”—means that the basic identity of a non-saved person is always self-concerned.  The imagery of a branch and vine connection in John 15 is crucial here.  Salvation is the event of being grafted into the vine of life—into God’s life in Christ through the Spirit’s ministry of union with our own spirit.  Of our being born not merely physically, “of the flesh” but of also being born “of the Spirit” as Jesus proclaimed to Nicodemus in John 3.

With that as context our “faith” is the renewal of what Adam abandoned in Eden when he decided to trust the serpent’s words rather than God’s words.  Trust in God was lost and a new but ill-fated trust in self-accomplishments—of being “like God”—took over.  That’s certainly what Paul had in mind when he dismissed any form of boasting.  Boasting, at its core, is self-based and is antithetical to life as a branch that has all of its life flowing from its presence in the vine.  Unless the boast is in Christ.

So my realization that I was and am a sinner became the basis for salvation.  In sin all roads lead back to self.  And the autonomous self is an empty cul-de-sac that God refuses to treat as a legitimate home.  Instead he comes to us and draws us into relationship—first with himself and then with others.  He calls to us, “I love you!”  He tells us in a thousand ways, “Trust me, I made you for good works that will fulfill you and bless others!”  It says as much in Ephesians 4:4—offering the motivation behind the verse, verse 5, that we cited above: “But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us . . .”  Sin is a terribly lonely place to live.  So in that aloneness the invitation of his love became compelling.  He offered not just a simple love but the greatest and most satisfying of all loves—entry into God’s triune love!  And it was only when I saw my self-concerned efforts as bankrupt that I looked away from myself to see his inviting arms.

This theme was made tangible in the disturbing yet winsome story of Jesus at Simon’s house for dinner in Luke 7.  Simon, a Pharisee, invited Jesus to his home for a meal and an interview.  If we read between the lines it’s clear that Simon was not ready to offer Jesus the status of an equal—a pecking order issue—as seen in Simon’s oversights.  He ignored the normal courtesies of giving Jesus a welcoming formal kiss and of having a servant offer Jesus a footwash.  Then later in the event a prostitute carrying her trade perfume slipped into the house and started to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears, kissing them and dabbing her perfume on him before wiping his feet dry with her hair.  Simon was appalled that Jesus allowed this to go on.  In response Jesus gave an account of two indebted individuals—one modestly in debt and the other in a desperate state.  Each is forgiven his debt by the gracious lender.  Which one, Jesus asked, would be most responsive to the lender—“which one would love him more?”

By the end of the story it is clear that the prostitute—whom Jesus pronounces as forgiven of her sins—rather than Simon, is fit for eternal fellowship with Christ and his Father.  Yet by any measure of cultural standing it was Simon rather than the prostitute who would be seen to be fit for heaven.  The same point is made throughout the gospels—that Jesus came to heal those who are sick, to heal those who are blind, and not to rescue those who don’t see any need to be healed, rescued, or forgiven.  It is in this sense that sin is the gateway to salvation.  And it is in our continued awareness of remaining sin that we regularly flee back to him for more cleansing care.

Let me turn now, briefly, to the second point—what is grace?  The answer comes in the story of Simon.  Grace is Christ’s willingness to have his feet bathed in our tears, to be swabbed with the best fragrances of our broken life resources; and grace is his gift of drawing us into a status far above any position the world offers and exalts.  It is to be forgiven even though we owe him everything.

Am I proud to be a sinner?  No, it shames me.  But in 1964 it made me aware of my deep need for salvation and now of my continuing need for cleansing.  It gave me ears to hear the wonderful invitation out of the cul-de-sac of sin and into “the great love with which he loved us”.  May many other sinners join me there!

I’m a sinner.  And there’s no caveat coming to make it any less serious than it first sounds . . . a fact that shames and grieves me.  If it weren’t for God’s mercies in Christ I would be buried by the pain of that reality.  Yet in his mercy I find comfort and relief. 

So let me ask you, dear readers, for your own mercy as I say more about both my sin and God’s response of mercy.

About my sin: I’m mostly blind to the problem.  But the Bible tells me that my blindness is a personal preference.  How so?  Because sins are the fruit of willful blindness as we prefer darkness instead of light.  Jesus in John 9, for instance, exposed the blindness of a group of local spiritual leaders who condemned him for healing a blind man.  Those leaders—physically sighted but spiritually blind—denied a reality that the newly healed blind man saw clearly.  In such cases a heart directs the mind to defend attitudes and actions at all costs—thus offering self-protective “rationalizations” or “excuses” for broken attitudes and actions.

So how do I get over my blindness and see my sin?  By a changed heart.  And then by simple observation . . . as I begin to hear and see what others are constantly telling and showing me!  If I’m ready to notice I begin to see their hurts, their disappointments, their grief as my sin hits them and causes pain.  Their loss of trust in me and respect for me is a clue.  The absence of our continued fellowship and care is another.  Another source is my conscience as I sense flashes of grief and guilt that invite me to pause and reflect.  But mainly in the Spirit’s small nudges as I read the Bible and see a dissonance between what it offers and what I experience.

I know, given the title of this post, that a dangling question is waiting to be answered: “So, what is your sin?  Is it the pornography thing?  Or some other sexual misconduct?” 

No.  It has a common root but it’s different. 

Is it an issue of lying, or cheating, or stealing? 

No, it’s different, though it shares the same heritage.  That is, it’s similar in that it’s an addiction.

Do I mean, by using the “A-word”, that it’s a drug or alcohol issue?  No, it’s not that, although the power it has over me is certainly similar.  I know this because the Bible calls all of these issues, mine included, slavery.  I sin because I’m enslaved to sin—just as Jesus taught in John 8 and Paul unpacked in Romans 6—and I’m only able to escape that slavery through his higher, greater power.

So here it is.  I’m enslaved to self-love. 

It’s also called pride, arrogance, and selfishness.  It displays itself in a dismaying host of behaviors: in anger, snide comments, arguments, gossip, careless choices, and in a full-orbed devotion to self protection and personal advancement.  I always want what I perceive is best for me. 

I’m able to avoid most of the disapproval that comes from being seen as a sinner.  I do that by avoiding the overt features of simple narcissism, but only because in my personal pride I want to be seen by others as altruistic and noble.  And there are other effective rationalizations I often use.  For one, I’ve learned to love others as long as they love me, so it looks as if I’m unselfish even if my apparent selflessness is merely conditional and contractual (as in “I’ll care for you just as long as you satisfy my wants”). 

And I’m also sheltered by a very co-dependent culture.  That is, my sin is shared by so many others that it’s actually seen as a virtue in some circles, as in “he’s very self-directed” or “she certainly knows what she wants!”  Martin Luther even talked about it as the basic problem of sin in all of humanity by describing it as the soul being “curved in” on itself.

But my sin is being exposed more and more as I grow in faith.  One example of the continuing collapse of the “kingdom of Ron” came with the recognition that I needed to get away from my former addictive hideouts.  Jeremiah, especially, was used to expose the area where my own sin prospered most: in the love of wisdom.  Or, to be more exact, in the kingdom where wisdom is royalty—in the academy.  When, in Jeremiah 9:23-24, he warned readers not to “boast” in wisdom, might, or riches, but to boast in God alone, it dawned on me that my own selfish susceptibility was not in might or in riches but in the glory of knowing and teaching truth.  In the status of being a protestant “Rabbi”, “Professor”, and “Dr Frost”. 

As an addiction that holds social status it feels almost impossible to avoid regular relapses.  Yet Paul—as one who held some of the highest academic credentials of his day—offers me hope by his status as another recovering addict.  Specifically in 1 Corinthians 1 Paul cited Jeremiah (in verse 31) as his basis for preaching only about the simplicity of the cross even though he knew he was being demeaned for it by his “brilliant” former classmates.

Let me add, quickly, that a repentance from the love of wisdom and a growing embrace of Christ crucified is not the same thing as a pursuit of ignorance or a dismissal of education.  Hardly!  It actually allows a new and spiritually productive wisdom to emerge in which God is honored and Christ is central.  There’s no end to learning once that occurs.  Indeed, every era and wing of learning is useful for that growth . . . as long as it serves the “lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness” in which God delights (referencing Jeremiah 9 again). 

Some of the greatest of Christian scholars turned their backs on the glory offered by their own academic generations and in the end became the strongest beacons of truth and spiritual substance in their day.  Not just Paul, but Augustine, Wycliffe, Hus, Luther, and Calvin are exemplars of this.  Even Christ’s apostles were so clear in their thinking and awareness that their opponents were “astonished” by the power of their testimonies of Christ as risen from the dead [Acts 4].  True wisdom is all about who we know, not just in what we know.

How dangerous is my sin?  Enough to be devastating if it isn’t broken by a Spirit-birthed repentance.  I recall the “woes” Jesus spoke to the first-century near equivalent of the today’s seminary professors at Bible-believing institutions, namely the “teachers of the law”: “Woe to you lawyers!  For you have taken away the key to knowledge.  You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering” [Luke 11:52].  So, too, the most rigorous of the Bible enthusiasts of Christ’s day were exposed by Jesus as they promoted moralistic themes that featured spiritual minutiae.  What was his charge?  They had corrupt desires: “inside you are full of greed and wickedness” [Luke 11:39].  And “Woe to you Pharisees!  For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces!”  It’s not that their teachings were necessarily wrong . . . but that they were sinners who portrayed themselves as godly by associating themselves with God’s words.  And while charging others with superficial behavioral sins they cuddled their own sinful self-love.

The question of what Jesus meant in Luke by the “key to knowledge” being withheld by these teachers isn’t unpacked in that gospel, but my own tender conscience and hard experience takes me to John’s gospel for the answer.  Recovery from addictive self-love comes only through turning to a true and proper love.  Only then does real wisdom come to life.

In John 5 Jesus had expressed his own equality with God after healing a lame man.  In that setting Jesus noted his bond with God: “For the Father loves the Son . . .”  But his audience, and the religious leaders in particular, were having none of it.  So Jesus exposed the missing key in their theology:

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life: and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.  I do not receive glory from man.  But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.  [John 5:39-42]

So the “love of God within you” is the key to offering any reliable truth about God.  And an appetite for mutual human glory—the stuff that academic communities live on through giving grades, honors, wearing gowns and competing for academic standing—is utterly ungodly for an addicted person like myself.  Jesus continued his charge against me:

How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?  [verse 42]

Again, later in John’s gospel, the same destructive sin of loving human approval is again noted by the gospel writer.

Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.  [John 12:43-43]

So, my friends, I’ve opened my soul to you.  I’m in recovery right now.  Yet I still take up the various types of mirrors that society and well-meaning church friends offer me that give me glimpses of self-centered glory.  But now I know better.  And my determination is to know Jesus, and to know him as crucified for my sin . . . and risen to a new life in which he embraces me before the Father.  And I love him because he first loved me, even while I was dead and blind in my sin.  So please don’t quit praying for me, and I’ll be praying for you.  Let’s repent together and then go on to enjoy God’s glory rather than our own.

Social misconduct in the 1980’s—such as a man walking away from his marriage—was often linked to the notion of identity, as in “he’s having an identity crisis.” 

I’m not sure what light the label of ‘identity crisis’ actually shed on the man’s decision except to lift the onus a bit.

“Not much to be done,” they seemed to be saying, “his shaky identity explains it all.  It’s so sad.”

That’s not to say the expression has disappeared altogether, but I don’t hear it so much these days.  That may reflect a shift away from seeing an identity as an impersonal force that controls us, or allows others to control us.  Maybe because a comedian made the point seem silly by excusing every sort of sin with a tag line, “the devil made me do it!”

We should remember that it takes a combination of some element of truth mixed with nonsense to make a lie work.  In this posting I want to reflect on how we humans certainly do live on the  basis of having an identity but not in the manner suggested so far.  In particular I want to consider how our status as ‘individuals’ both fits and then doesn’t fit with the identity we have as authentic Christians.

In the Bible Paul talked about turning away from the “flesh” by now setting our minds on the Spirit [see Romans 8].  And of getting rid of the “old man” by replacing it with the “new”.  The narrow point I’d like to draw from such texts is that sin has somehow shaped—or, given Adam’s fall—reshaped our personhood.  We would be very different people if sin had not captured the world through Adam.  And now salvation takes us to a new place.  But what constitutes this new place?  How does a ‘new’ status in Christ relate to our popular notions of identity?

To answer we need to start with God.  Or, more precisely, with the nature of God’s being.  And, for that, I need to dive into a fair amount of history—so please be patient! 

In some parts of the world, both in the past and present, we find people speaking of ‘gods’ rather than of God.  What sets the Western world apart from that approach is her heritage of monotheism.  In the 4^th century BCE the classical Greek philosophers crystallized a growing sense that the notion of god’s, plural, pointed back to a singular source—to an ultimate deity who moves everything else but who is himself unmoved.  That coincided nicely with the Jewish version of God as “one” and only one.  Islam came on the scene in the 8^th century and blended the notions of Judaism and Aristotle in their expositions of Allah as the one true God.

The question of how Christians fit within this growing consensus of God’s necessary singularity was and still is huge!  It was what set off the debate in the 4^th century over the place of Christ in relation to God the Father.  If God is “one” then Jesus either needed somehow to be merged within God, or to be seen as separate from God and in some sense subsidiary to him.  Never mind asking how the Spirit fits in!  Suffice it to say that the so-called ecumenical councils of the early church (e.g. at Nicaea and Cappadocia) worked to clarify teachings in the Bible as in Christ’s statement to Phillip, “whoever has seen me has seen the Father . . . . Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” [John 14:9-10].

The answer of the collective Church was that God’s being is triune—that God exists as One whose being is manifold.  They were careful not allow any form of tri-theism to be affirmed, as if three god’s met to form a divine council called God.  Nor did they accept Arian claims (now held with slight variation by Jehovah’s Witnesses) that just one true God exists with two lesser offspring emerging as his first-created extensions—i.e. the Son and Spirit.

There’s much more to be said here, but I’ll leave it to the curious to do their own homework by chasing down works such as J.N.D. Kelly’s text on Early Christian Doctrines.  Another historical figure will launch the balance of our consideration: Augustine, the 4^th-5^th century bishop of Hippo.

Augustine wrote a monumental work on the Trinity.  In the main he was fully aligned with what the earlier ecumenical councils had concluded.  He also expressed those convictions in terms his own people could grasp.  One picture that emerges from him is that God’s being is One in love: the Father loves, the Son is beloved, and the Spirit communicates that love between the Father and the Son.  This was a relational understanding of God rather than a physical image.  That is, Augustine understood that the Arians were certainly correct in rejecting the Trinity if by “three Persons” Christians meant that God exists in a committee of three.  So he turned to the notion that the ‘relation-between’ persons is the basis for understanding how God exists.  That is, God’s being is the “I-and-you” reality of relationship in the Godhead, and not an “I, then you” pairing.

That may boggle our minds at first, but think about it for a moment.  First, we need to recall that God—as Father and Son, bonded by the Spirit—existed eternally without any “physical” being of the sort we now presume to be crucial to personhood.  So, given our present “identity” as those who live in localized bodies, we tend to think in numerical terms: “me, and you, and them” i.e. as “one, and two, and many other numbers”.

Augustine, on the other hand, understood the Trinity to be truly “one”.  Which takes us to the question of what it means to be created in God’s image.  I attended a wedding recently in which the preacher spoke of both the man and the women as separate representatives of the trinity.  That is, the preacher presumably assumed that we exist as representative ‘segments’ of God’s image—by sharing some of his communicated qualities (his ‘attributes’).

But where did that assumption come from?  We can’t be sure, but a number of arrows point to the promiscuous presence of classical Greek notions of a singular God sneaking back into Christianity. 

One connection is Boethius, a 5^th century scholar who specialized in Aristotle’s works.  He famously defined persons as “thinking-choosing individuals”.  That is, a person is defined by independent operations of mind and will.  Then in the 13^th century Thomas Aquinas, with others, rediscovered Aristotle and then merged much of the Greek philosopher’s notions with Christianity in order to have a “sum of all truth” to teach his students.  The problem he faced was in merging the singular, monadic God of Aristotle with the triune God of faith.  The outcome was an awkward affirmation of the Trinity that began with extensive discussions about the core qualities of God—his attributes—that were shared by each person of the godhead.  But the outcome arguably left students with a sense that God, the Father, is the real “source” of God’s essences and the Son and Spirit are subsidiary recipients.  

Here’s the big point: any focus on the relations between the Father-Son-Spirit was lost as the explanation of God’s being.  Instead God’s shared qualities, seen as emerging from the Father, came to be the focus instead.  And Aristotle would have lived with the list of those essential qualities, because, in fact, he articulated the basis for many of them in his writings on Ethics and Metaphysics.

There were also the Platonic Christians who through a 3^rd century non-Christian writer, Plotinus, embraced Plato’s version of God as one.  This came to both the Greek Orthodox church and to the Catholic mystical tradition by way of Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite who was taken to be Paul’s convert in Athens, but was actually an unidentifiable 6^th century figure.  Then, as now, that tradition features God as the “one” from whom the Son and Spirit emerge only as emanations.  Given this basis of divinity the ambitions of such mysticism is to purge, illumine, and then unite with God as the “one”.  The fruit of that tradition is a very modest interest in Scriptures and an interest in the Son and Spirit as mere instruments to achieve an ineffable experience of union with the non-communicative One.

But enough of history.  I offer all this background in overly broad strokes only to ask the question of our identity with an awareness that history helps to reinforce different views of identity.  Let me wrap up by suggesting that Christians are facing an identity crisis, with one identity bearing the weight of a God who operates on the basis of contracts; another who is an unknown end; and yet another identity centered on a God whose ultimate contract is a marriage covenant reflecting his eternal spreading goodness. 

Option one: If we view ourselves as Godlike individuals—that is, as individuals who are “one” in the Aristotelian-Christian version of a capacity-defined God—our tendency is to treat other individuals as godlike centers of thinking and choosing, with each measured by personal capacities.  With this identity the secret of success is to grow our personal capacities in order to be as ‘great’, i.e. as godlike, as possible.  How?  By setting up contracts or covenants with others that allow for the exchange of goods and services.  If, for instance, a professor has a PhD in academic capacities, and a student has a BA level of capacity, the latter pays money to gain more academic capacities in order to gain higher degrees.  So, too, a covenant relationship with God is mainly pragmatic—gaining his benefits by offering whatever we have that he might want from us, e.g. glory and obedience.

Option two: If we take on the quietist themes of Platonic mysticism and pursue an identity based on an impersonal merger with God’s being—a ‘pure experience’—we will spend our lives increasingly purging our contacts with others, seeking illuminations not through conversations with God—since encountering God’s being is not word-based—in order to achieve a self-absorbed-and-God-absorbed union.  The call to be “in the world but not of the world” and the warnings against ascetic spirituality in Colossians will be displaced by an ambition to achieve the ultimate autonomy that this ultimately non-relational version of God offers.

Option three: If we see ourselves as relationally defined—as in “let us make man in our image . . . male and female he created them”—our tendency is to see ourselves as parts of an organic whole.  The only sense in which we are individual-like is in identifying our distinct roles of participation, as serving “in the body”—as in the analogy of feet, hands, eyes—in order to make the whole body effective.   We take verses that tell us we are “in Christ” to be speaking of our true union with him as his eternal, collective bride, as we are his “body” and his “beloved”.  This is accomplished by the Spirit’s union with our spirit (as in 1 Corinthians 6 and Ephesians 5).  We take on the vine and branch imagery of John 15 as crucial: “for apart from me you can do nothing”.  That is, our identity as Christians is defined by our repentance from being individuals so that our new union with Christ displaces old visions of life.  We realize that “eternal life” is a reality that God alone “is” and “has”—so that our own entry into eternity comes only by our being “sons of God” and “known” by God in the intimate terms of biblical love.

So, to wrap up this reflection, we have three identities before us.  One exists in a state of semi-autonomy, with God offering us resources we need and want for our own security and success.  The second seeks the relative independence of inner self-absorption.  The third exists in a state of full devotion to a speaking God who becomes our beloved companion. We love him because he first loved us and sent the Son to embrace us in the Spirit’s ministry of poured out love.  The third option gets my vote . . . because of a new identity in Christ that he alone offers.

I’m writing this at the beginning of December as a nudge: New Year’s day is coming and it’s a great time to launch a Bible read-through!  So let me encourage you to pray and plan accordingly.

Here’s my unsolicited advice: be very ambitious!  A six-week reading of the entire Bible will have a dramatic impact on you and on any reading partner who takes up that pace with you.  I’ve done it twice myself and was startled both times by the rewards it offers.  But if you’re not that bold, then a three-month pace still offers a remarkable benefit.  Or, for steady joggers like myself, take on a four-month pace.  It’s easy to maintain—reading about 35-40 minutes a day—and still offers the outcomes we’ll explore below.

I realize, of course, that for most of us that amount of Bible exposure is a category shift.  It certainly was for me the first time Sam raised the possibility some years ago!  I almost spilled my coffee as he talked offhandedly about regularly reading through the Bible between two and three times a year.  When I asked how he had time for that he just smiled, “Well, you take time for what you think is important.”  Ouch.

Then and now the “high” standard most often promoted is to read through the Bible in a year.  Good.  That’s useful.  But, in practice, it only involves about 10 minutes of daily reading.  And, to be blunt, ten minutes doesn’t have much impact on us, given its small footprint in a typically busy day.  Maybe it’s more for conscience relief than for building a strong bond with the Author, but it’s still not to be dismissed if no greater ambition is in play.  Even a verse or two a day can be a starting point for the spiritual infant who needs some first tastes of a new delight.

My friend, Mark, on the other hand, loves to pinch about 5 pages of the Bible between his fingers while offering his challenge.

“This much,” he say with his warm but compelling gaze, “is all you need to read each day to get through the entire Bible in 4 months!  It’s not that hard!”

So, why do it?

First, because Bible reading provides us with God’s preferred way of sharing himself in the present era.  Eternity lies ahead which ensures so much direct exposure to him that we’ll hardly look back on this era except to have an angel or two tell us stories about how God accomplished the heart transplants we all needed to get into eternity.  But for now God seems to be more interested in offering himself more indirectly than directly—by written words and by his self-displays and interventions in the creation rather than by coming to us in direct visits.

Why?  God only knows.  But let me offer an informed guess.  God does it this way because sin captured the hearts of Adam and Eve while God was physically absent.  The enemy, given this brief window of opportunity, first questioned and then denied God’s words to Adam of, “don’t eat or you’ll die.”  The serpent promised, instead, “you won’t die!” And, remarkably, Adam and Eve adopted the enemy’s words as true rather than God’s words.  So, in a powerfully ironic reverse symmetry, God now captures our hearts by offering his equally simple words to the now “dead” offspring of Adam: “believe in me and you shall live.”  Notice, once again, that God offers this promise while he’s physically absent from us.

To say more on this conflict-of-words I think of a similar exchange between Satan and God in the book of Job where the serpent was saying, in effect, “God, you really aren’t that compelling a figure.  If Job had half a chance to rely on himself rather than on you, he’d jump at the chance!  He’s only loyal to you because you offer him physical and spiritual shelter!”  Job, of course, proved Satan to be wrong.  And, when we believe God’s word, we join Job in shaming Satan—proving him to be the self-deceived Liar that he is.  So, given God’s words of truth and love, we love him even when we haven’t seen him.  For that the loyal angels celebrate.

Second, we read the Bible boldly because it’s the best way to see how brilliantly God shows himself to be “wonderful”—that is, “full of wonder”—throughout the collective books.  If we only nibble at the Bible or cherry pick our favorite books and verses, this God of wonder almost never shows up.  It would be like watching an epic movie in limited daily doses of four or five minutes.  The story line would only become evident after many months, with most of the important early parts largely forgotten by the time the climax is offered.  But once we read the Bible in flow—in very big chunks—we start to see the same sort of miracle that the infant Jesus represented.  Both the written Word and the living Word appear through humble people, in humble circumstances, and in unpretentious forms.  But, over time, both the Scriptures and the Son come to be unveiled as brilliant self-disclosures of God’s heart. 

This mystery of transformation is crucial in enjoying Christ for who he really is!  As a testimony, my own conversion was like the day when three apostles saw Jesus transfigured—that is, disclosed to them with his true glory.  Until then he was, to all appearances, only a humble-looking itinerant, rural preacher.  Then on the mountain he showed off the “real” person that he is: the living God in human form!  Similarly, as I was reading the Bible—with all its awkward and human features—the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew became a living conversation between Jesus and me.  God’s Spirit took over the simple words of Jesus and made them into divine words, into transforming words, and he bred new life in my soul as I read!  It was there that I first heard that he actually loves me!

Third, we read the Bible because we still stink of our former fallenness and a good shower is in order.  The “washing of the water of the word”—to paraphrase Paul’s words in Ephesians 5—is needed to clean us up!  The world’s point of view in living life is utterly different to God’s point of view.  It’s “upside-down” different!  What the world promotes most, the Bible dismisses most.  Think, for instance, of the themes of self-advancement we hear on television, on the radio, in our books and magazines: “You need to visualize your own potential, then reach out and achieve it!”  Yet the Bible invites us to self-giving: that just as Christ himself showed us, “count others more important than yourself.”  Consider, too, the world’s invitations to gain more and more security, more and more status, more and more beauty; then compare them to the Bible’s calls for us to be crucified with Christ and to live by faith in him for as long as we live in this body.  The world gives us mirrors to gaze on ourselves: at our opportunities for self-enhancement and self-fulfillment.  The Bible is a lens that shows us Christ as the author and finisher of our faith, the one to whom we now gaze as we run the race of life without getting our feet tangled up in the snares all around us.

So our daily times of Bible reading are the water, the soap, and the scrub brush God uses to make us more holy and blameless—turning us into people fit for eternity.

I’ll stop here.  But there are more metaphors that can be at least noted.  The Word, for instance, is like milk for the young, and meat for the mature.  The Bible like a light on the highway of life as we travel through a very dark section of road.  The Bible is like yeast that begins a work in us and spreads in us in ways that startle others.  The Word sets us free from enslavement.  The Word brings peace and joy.

But the key to being captured by the Bible, and to finding that Bible reading is truly life-changing, is to have a companion.  A human companion is good, but the Spirit himself is the one we really need to have with us in order to make real sense of the whole.  Not that he comes to offer us esoteric new ways of reading the Scriptures—of the sort the serpent used in his Genesis 3 question, “Did God really say . . ?”—but he comes to pour out God’s love in our hearts [Romans 5:5] which gives us the proper context for Bible reading.  Be sure to invite him to join you in your read-through.  And remember: be bold!