Be in Awe of Jesus and Love Yourself

"It is impossible to love God "with all our heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" until you are captivated with God's love for you."

Wade Burleson

Love

Guest Post by Wade Burleson (link)

I have a two-fold request for you. First, read again the title of this post.

Second, mentally set aside any preconceived notions you have of what it means to be a Christian. I am about to blow away everything you've ever been taught by mainstream religion. You should know my standard of truth is God's word, not religion or the opinions of man. My allegiance is to Jesus the Anointed One, Emmanuel Himself, God among us, and not to a church, a denomination, a religion, or any confession of faith, historic or current.

So here we go.

Contrary to what you've been taught in church, the measure of your adoration of Jesus, and the only way you will ever truly love others, is to love yourself.

Now I know that most Christian teachers try to make you think that you are nothing but a worm; a vile, wretched sinner that causes God to want to puke when He thinks of you. I know that the institutional church has sought to ingrain within you a feeling that you must perform to get God to like you. Because of the dogmatic assertion that you are worthless, churches define spirituality,  preachers claim spiritual authority, and both churches and preachers demand your conformity. 

Yet when Jesus was approached by a young Jewish attorney and asked "Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus responded, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matthew 22:36-40).

According to Jesus, if you do not love yourself, you will be unable to love your neighbor. More importantly, it is impossible to love God "with all our heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" until you are captivated with God's love for you. Everyone knows from personal experience that real, genuine heartfelt love is drawn from a heart that is being loved!. The soul that is loved unconditionally, radically, faithfully and steadfastly is magnetically drawn to love in return. Until a human being comprehends God's radical love in Jesus, a human being will never radically love God because of Jesus.  We love Him because He first loved us.

Don't misunderstand. There is a subtle difference between loving yourself and demanding others love you. Loving yourself means you are free from the pressure that others love you. What does it matter if others reject you if Jesus loves you and you love yourself?  Demanding others love you is a tell-tale sign that there is actually no self-love. Crazy as it may seem (I call it "upside-down-wisdom"),  the more you seek love the less you self-love.

I propose to you the reason the institutional Christian church often leads members to personal bondage is because followers of Jesus have never been captivated by God's love in the remarkable truth of an obscure verse in Hebrews.  Many would say John 3:16 is the most important verse in the Bible (and, without doubt, that verse is beautiful!), but I propose that Hebrews 8:13 is the most important verse of Scripture because you can't fully appreciate the love of God mentioned in John 3:16 until you comprehend the glorious truth of Jesus in Hebrews 8:13. 
 

"When He (Jesus) said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear." (Hebrews 8:13)

The night before Jesus died, He took a cup of wine and said to His disciples that this wine represented His blood which is shed so a "a new covenant (agreement)" might be made between God and His people. Jesus came to shed His blood to cause"the first (covenant)" to become "obsolete" and "disappear."

Wow. Think about that. The first covenant, that is the Old Covenant with Israel (found in the OLD Testament), Jesus caused to become obsolete and disappear. Everything in the Old Covenant–Temple worship, the male priesthood of Israel, sacrifices, the feasts and festivals of Israel, the Law, and all other things associated with Israel's ritualistic worship of God in the Old Covenant– became obsolete and disappeared because of the person and work of Jesus.

Jesus Christ "fulfilled the Law," every jot and tittle of it, and then abolished it. There are no longer any Temple rituals. The Law of Israel is obsolete. There is no Sabbath day any more. Believers find there rest every day in Jesus. The people of God are no longer the Hebrew people only; every ethnicity forms His people. The priests of God are no longer just males, for females share in the eternal priesthood. The Temple of God is no longer in Jerusalem, for "you are the Temple of the Holy Spirit." The festivals are no longer in effect for Jesus fulfilled the festivals. Jesus abolished and caused to disappear the "Old Covenant" with Israel.

Then what good purpose does the Law (Old Covenant) serve? The Old Covenant is the shadow that points you to the appearing of Jesus Christ,  and it is the "schoolmaster" that takes you by the hand and leads you to be taught by the Teacher. Jesus' miraculous birth, sinless life, substitutionary death, and powerful resurrection cause you to see HE fulfilled the Law for you. You come to see your absolute inability to be righteous before God by your conformity to any Law, and you come to rest by faith in Jesus! If you read the Old Testament and see a set of laws for you to keep, then you have missed Christ and the New Agreement He instituted with His blood. If you ask, "But what motivates a believer to love people (and therefore not steal, not envy, not lie, etc…)?" I respond, "It is the comprehension of the love of God for your soul through Jesus which translates into loving yourself,  which spills over into loving others as you love yourself" (II Cor. 5:14). Being in awe of Jesus leads to loving yourself.

Any pastor who takes Old Covenant rituals and practices and brings them into the New Covenant, slapping Christian terminology on those Old Covenant rituals and practices, is deceiving believers and leading them away from 'the rest' that comes through faith in Jesus Christ's work. For example, if you've been taught that the church building is "the Temple of God," then you have been misled. The person who comes to rest in the work of Christ is the Temple of the living God. Everywhere you go, God is, because the life of God is in you. If you've been led to believe that if you don't give 10% to your church then you are "stealing from God," the pastor of your church is misleading you. God actually owns all that you have, and you are but a steward of it all. Give as the Spirit of God leads you, wherever He leads you, because the institutional church this side of the cross is not the Old Covenant Temple of God prior to the cross. If you have been led to believe that only males can be teachers and proclaimers of truth and that only men can lead, then you have been duped into believing that the Old Covenant principles of male priesthood are still in effect, and you have missed the New Covenant principle that every believer, whether male or female "is a priest unto God." If you have been taught that there are people with "spiritual authority" over you, then you have never seen the truth that Christ alone possesses all authority in the New Agreement and dispenses His authority through the gifts of the Spirit and the servant acts of His people, not the positions and titles bestowed by fellow man..

Jesus Christ ended the Old Covenant and initiated a New Agreement.  That's the purpose for which Jesus came. 40 years after the first Passover, Israel entered into Canaan. 40 years after the Lamb of God died at Calvary at Passover (fulfilling the Law of Passover in His death)  the Temple in Jerusalem and all Old Covenant rituals were destroyed so that believers in Jesus entered totally unhindered into their spiritual rest. The Law that was "soon to disappear" in Hebrews 8:13 God officially became obsolete in 70 AD with the destruction of the Temple. Daniel (in his scroll), Jesus (in His Matthew 24 prophecy) and John in the book of Revelation all predicted the same thing: The Old Covenant would come to an end through God's judgment and divorce of the Hebrews for their infidelity. But the wonderful Good News is that God did Himself what no sinner can do. To be a Christian simply means you enter into an eternal rest through faith in what Jesus did for you and become so overwhelmed by the love of God, that you love yourself BECAUSE God loves you and you begin to love others as you love yourself in Jesus.

Hang your hat on this: If God Himself came to die for you, if God Himself gave His life for you, if God Himself shed His blood to redeem you, if God Himself–the God who flung the stars and holds the earth in its orbit–if this God deemed you worthy of coming to earth, fulfilling the Law in your place, dying in your stead because of your sin, then the love of this God in the death of Jesus should be sufficient enough to convince you that you are indeed someone very, very special. I propose to you that only when you are utterly captivated by what Jesus has done for you will you become overwhelmed with the value, worth and dignity of your person.

If God loves you, then nobody and nothing can separate you from His eternal love. If God loves you, then it is truly unbelief to deny His love. If God loves you, then to hate yourself is to hate God. God died for you while you were yet a sinner, but it is the love of God for your sinful soul that makes you valuable. God loves sinners, not the self-righteous.

Therefore, the man or woman that hates himself cannot love others. But the man or woman that becomes captivated by the love of God in Jesus Christ cannot help but love himself. Ironically, when you love yourself deeply, you are able to love others radically. 

Therefore, stop performing and start trusting Jesus. Stop condemning yourself and start loving yourself. Stop slapping Christian terms on Old Covenant rituals and start wrapping your arms of faith around Jesus. The radical love of God is seen in Jesus coming to make the Old Covenant obsolete and causing it to disappear.

He's done that – so now rest in Him and love yourself.

Lydia's Corner:   Jeremiah 19:1-21:14   1 Thessalonians 5:4-28   Psalm 82:1-8   Proverbs 25:9-10

Comments

Be in Awe of Jesus and Love Yourself — 213 Comments

  1. Wade,

    You talk ten times more about love than most Calvinists do in their lifetime. They are so hung up on the power and glory of God, that they seem to miss the importance of love. It IS an awesome love, and I really value your exposition of it.

  2. 40 years after the Lamb of God died at Calvary at Passover (fulfilling the Law of Passover in His death) the Temple in Jerusalem and all Old Covenant rituals were destroyed so that believers in Jesus entered totally unhindered into their spiritual rest. The Law that was “soon to disappear” in Hebrews 8:13 God officially became obsolete in 70 AD with the destruction of the Temple. Daniel (in his scroll), Jesus (in His Matthew 24 prophecy) and John in the book of Revelation all predicted the same thing: The Old Covenant would come to an end through God’s judgment and divorce of the Hebrews for their infidelity.

    A couple of questions related to what is said in this section. Do you believe that the “end time” prophesies have already been fulfilled? What is your take on the return of Jesus? I was saturated in pre-trib/rapture teaching when I was growing up and have slowly been seeing that it is not really in the Bible. But I’m not sure where that leaves the church concerning the return of Christ.

    Next question-I know God divorced Israel but I see nothing in the Bible about him divorcing Judah. Could you point out the scriptures if there are any? If it is not in the Bible could you point me to early church teachings on this?

    I am really impressed with this teaching overall. Thank you, Wade.

  3. This is radical, but not. So simple really. And how I need to hear it over and over.

    One aside, I was at CLC when they started teaching the “worm” theology. I left CLC and went to a church that was full of much more grace, and I invited a good friend of mine from CLC to a service, having no idea that the pastor was preaching that day how we are not worms, but precious in God’s sight. His whole sermon destroyed the basis of CLC’s theology, and my friend was so mad. It was funny!

  4. @ Wisdomchaser:

    God has not divorced Israel. Pastor Burleson’s message is good, but he is incorrect when he says that God “divorced” the Hebrews. The New Covenant was made “with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,” and He says that “I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sin.”

    Also, He says that “Israel’s descendants will cease to be a nation before Me forever” *only if* the sun, moon, and stars depart from their fixed order.

    Jeremiah 31: 31-37

  5. Wisdomchaser,

    As you can tell from JeffB’s comment above this one, not everybody will believe that God divorced Israel, abolished the Old Covenant and caused the Law to disappear, but I am utterly convinced this is the message of the Kingdom of Christ. Now, as to your questions:

    When Assyria conquered the northern Kingdom (Israel), the 10 tribes of the north “scattered.” Judah, the southern Kingdom, became the Kingdom of Israel for it was the ONLY Kingdom of the Jews left. When God put an end to the Old Covenant, he divorced Israel (Judah). By the way, the prophecy given to Daniel is all about Judah, the southern kingdom, though after 722 BC there is no distinction between Judah and Israel.

    I am definitely NOT a pre-tribulational, dispensational advocate, but do believe in the ‘return’ of Jesus to the earth where the curse of sin will be reversed by Him! The only difference is I believe when He returns, that’s it! 🙂 Heaven on earth in all its fullness for all of eternity.

    Keep on researching. Keep on thinking. Keep on loving people and the Lord!

  6. “A bruised reed he will not break,
    and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” Isaiah 42:3

    Thank you, Wade, for reminding us of the love of Jesus, which brings healing to the broken and fans the injured flames of our faith.

  7. Wade – may I respectfully disagree with part of what you say?

    It’s using Matt 22 : 39 to teach us to love ourselves. There are only two commandments here, to love God and to love our neighbour. We are to love our neighbour AS ourselves, not love our neighbour AND ourselves. Self love is our natural, sinful tendency, to put “me first”. To think what our country can do for us rather than what we can do for our country, to echo Kennedy. It’t not something we need to be commanded to do, it’s the natual thing to do in a fallen world. In the sense I am using it here, it is the very essence of sin.

    In the secular world this is phrased as building your self-esteem, which is contrary to Phil 2 : 3 “that in meekness of mind every man esteem others better than himself”. The problem is with the world self, which traditional translations usually render as ‘the flesh’ in other passages, knock off the h and turn it round to get the meaning.

    Also for your thinking is 2 Tim 3 : 1f “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money … ”

    As ever, the context of these verses is important.

    It is not that we should despise ourselves or not have a legitimate interest in looking after our own needs, rather love is always directed outwards, towards God and our neighbour. The loving yourself doctrine is deeply entrenched, and I’ve come across it in both the UK and Germany many times.

    To ward off 400 posts putting me right on this, I totally agree with you in your aim of getting Christians to stop thinking of themselves as ‘worms’ and sinners – as they used to be, and start seeing themselves as God now does, saints, forgiven, adopted into the royal family, the King’s kids. To get them to be secure in the love of God rather than tending to doubt it, especially when they don’t feel loved. To relax. 100% in favour of that!

    The trouble if you try express this in terms of loving yourself is that this makes us look inside rather than to the objective, glorious truths of the gospel, which are really what set us free. I’ve got the postcard and T shirt on this one!

    I certainly wouldn’t want to argue over semantics, perhaps God starts to give us some self-respect back when he saves us, the foundation for this again not being in us, but in God.

  8. Hi Wade. I actually understand this, like Patti, experientially. And one of the steps preceding finding myself in the safe place of God’s unfailing love (and those aren’t just words anymore) was getting honest with myself about my anger at how I was treated by “the church.” I followed the rules and it didn’t work. When I redirected my anger at God, because I had nowhere else to put it (and it wouldn’t go away just because I chose to forgive), he did not hide his face from me. I look back and see Jacob wrestling with God, God winning, and Jacob battle-scarred but forever changed. Don’t know if my theology is correct, but I was astounded that my filthy mouth, my blaspheming words, my accusations toward a holy god, and my absolute poverty of any innate goodness would be the means by which God drew very near. I can’t say I recommend this to anyone but I now know firsthand that there is no depth to which I can descend that he is not already there. Thanks for the great message.

  9. Ken wrote:

    I certainly wouldn’t want to argue over semantics, perhaps God starts to give us some self-respect back when he saves us, the foundation for this again not being in us, but in God.

    Ken, very well said. In my inadequate writing abilities, I am trying to say the same thing. Those without Christ have deep, inner disrespect for self – no matter what they may claim. Those with Christ come to a place of loving self because of His great love for us. Thanks!

  10. Ken wrote:

    For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money

    There is a difference between selfish love of self and loving who God created us to be. Note how that verse you quoted ties into money: making it all about me and my comfort. The Bible shows us how the followers of God gave up selfish love in order to love God and love others- in other words, selfless love.

  11. Wade Burleson wrote:

    Those without Christ have deep, inner disrespect for self – no matter what they may claim.

    Hi Mr. Burleson, I must say that’s quite an insulting thing to put down. And it completely shuts down any interaction or discussion since you claim that any non Christian is lying, to themselves and others. Sad, it makes this place much less welcoming then our blog hostesses have made it to be.

  12. @ jkpvarin:
    This is really good. And I have found it to be true as well, that we are unable to comprehend everything, yet we are able to take our frustrations and wrestle through them with God. Finding His comfort and assurance there is evidence of His love 🙂 Amen

  13. jkpvarin wrote:

    Hi Wade. I actually understand this, like Patti, experientially. And one of the steps preceding finding myself in the safe place of God’s unfailing love (and those aren’t just words anymore) was getting honest with myself about my anger at how I was treated by “the church.” I followed the rules and it didn’t work. When I redirected my anger at God, because I had nowhere else to put it (and it wouldn’t go away just because I chose to forgive), he did not hide his face from me. I look back and see Jacob wrestling with God, God winning, and Jacob battle-scarred but forever changed. Don’t know if my theology is correct, but I was astounded that my filthy mouth, my blaspheming words, my accusations toward a holy god, and my absolute poverty of any innate goodness would be the means by which God drew very near. I can’t say I recommend this to anyone but I now know firsthand that there is no depth to which I can descend that he is not already there. Thanks for the great message.

    I really appreciate your comment.

  14. Albuquerque Blue wrote:

    Wade Burleson wrote:

    Those without Christ have deep, inner disrespect for self – no matter what they may claim.

    Hi Mr. Burleson, I must say that’s quite an insulting thing to put down. And it completely shuts down any interaction or discussion since you claim that any non Christian is lying, to themselves and others. Sad, it makes this place much less welcoming then our blog hostesses have made it to be.

    Alburquerque Blue,

    Thanks for your comment. I do not wish to offend you. In my experience, and I only speak of my experience, I find that those who do not know the immeasurable love of God in Christ struggle internally. When circumstances are good, they are happy, but when circumstances are difficult (i.e. “the process of dying”) there is often inner turmoil.

    I only speak of my experience. And of course, my experience may not be truth for every person. I am more than happy to dialogue with someone who says I’m wrong and would not enjoy a breach in relationship, even if it is an on-line one.

  15. I’ve seen Christians who really fight against what is discussed in the original post, and I think that’s sad.

    I noticed a few years ago that the verse reads “as yourself,” which would seem to say it’s okay to love yourself / have self esteem.

    But when I’ve listened to sermons, Christian radio shows, or read blog pages that mention it, and some Christians insist the verse doesn’t mean what it says.
    Some Christians hate the concept or phrase “self esteem” or the idea that the Bible is assuming it’s natural and okay for you to love yourself / have self esteem. Some go so far as to say no, you have “Christ esteem,” which never made a lot of sense to me.

    Even odder to me are some Christians, like one radio host I listen to, who sounds to me as though he has conflicting views about this topic.

    On the one hand, he scolds various seeker friendly preachers for preaching too much law and not enough grace (which is sometimes skewed towards teaching people they are dirty, filthy worms not deserving of God’s love, etc), but then he criticizes the warm and fuzzy seeker friendlies for teaching that Jesus loves you, it’s okay to accept yourself, you are not a worm, etc.

    He will turn around and say seeker friendly preachers need to be telling people they are dirty worms and nothings and then hit them over the head with the Gospel.

    My mom was raised in a home where she was abused, so she grew up codependent, and raised me to be that way. As a result, I grew up believing God and Jesus loved everyone but not me. (Or, God and Jesus loved everyone way more than me and only included me because they had to, I was part of the package.)

    Lately, I’ve been having doubts if there is a God and if He’s there does he care and stuff, but a couple of years before those doubts, I was starting to think, maybe God loves me equally to everyone else, and that realization started to make me feel better. It was about that time I noticed the “(love your neighbor) as yourself” in that verse, and that meant something to me.

    But then, I started hearing/ seeing Christians saying it’s wrong to read the verse that way. It’s almost like some Christians want people to stay trapped, they want Christians to have no or little self esteem, and to doubt if God really cares about them.

    Isn’t there a verse that says people repent because of the goodness of God? Romans 2:4,

    Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

    I have seen some Christians (including famous apologists) who think you need to really hit someone over the head with the information they are a wormy, dirty sinner before giving them the Gospel, because you don’t want a false convert – maybe there is some merit in that, I don’t know.

    But I see preachers who stand in front of congregations who I think you can safely assume most are “saved,” but they act like everyone in the room is the worst of worst sinners, who mug granny women for fun, and they sermonize about how filthy wormy everyone in the room is. I don’t see how that helps someone who is already truly saved who has no self esteem and doubts God’s love for them.

    Which brings me to the preachers who yell “God hates you!” at people (even people who are professing Christians).

    I read somewhere that preacher Mark Driscoll walked into a service (or somewhere) in front of a bunch of people doing a twist on the children’s song “Jesus Loves You” to sing “Jesus Hates You,” which I think is absolutely demonic and disgusting.

  16. Ken wrote:

    Self love is our natural, sinful tendency, to put “me first”.

    No, not for everyone. For some, it’s the opposite. See my post above for some of my personal history. My mother had the same problem.

  17. Wade Burleson wrote:

    I find that those who do not know the immeasurable love of God in Christ struggle internally. When circumstances are good, they are happy, but when circumstances are difficult (i.e. “the process of dying”) there is often inner turmoil.

    That can happen to true blue followers of Jesus too. A person can accept Christ as Savior and still grapple with “does God really love me or not” as I discussed a few posts above.

    When posting or lurking at boards for Christians who have depression, for example, you will come across a lot of Christians who doubt if God loves them.

  18. @ Wade Burleson:

    For the record, I *do* believe that God “abolished the Old Covenant and caused the Law to disappear” in the sense that the Jewish people are no longer under it (Gentiles never were) to obey, with blessings or curses as consequences. However, as God’s perfect standard of righteousness, it is not to be totally ignored – there is it’s “third use,” and it can cause non-believers to seek the mercy of Jesus when they realize that they can not keep it perfectly (or even imperfectly). It is sad when believers feel they have to return to the Law to be accepted by God. (Of course, some parts of the Law exist also in the New Covenant – 9 of the 10 Commandments – excluding the Sabbath, which is now the “Sabbath rest,” as you correctly said – for instance.)

    God divorcing Israel: It’s interesting that you quote Heb. 8:13 concerning the obsolescence of the Old Covenant, but ignore Heb. 8:8-12, which quotes most of the verses I referred to in Jer. 31 that make it clear that God has not and will not divorce Israel. And whether or not there is now no distinction between Israel and Judah, the text clearly says that the New Covenant was given to Israel and Judah and will not be taken away from them. It was part of God’s plan, of course, to include Gentiles into the Covenant, but the distinction between Jews and Gentiles, even among believers, is maintained throughout Scripture. This doesn’t mean that there must be antagonism between the two, not that you implied this.

    I am a Calvinist and dispensationalist – I don’t think Calvinism requires a non-dispensationalist viewpoint. It is a weakness of Calvinism, I think, that it tends to allegorize many passages that have to do with Israel, maintaining that they have to do with the church.

  19. Daisy wrote:

    Wade Burleson wrote:

    I find that those who do not know the immeasurable love of God in Christ struggle internally. When circumstances are good, they are happy, but when circumstances are difficult (i.e. “the process of dying”) there is often inner turmoil.

    That can happen to true blue followers of Jesus too. A person can accept Christ as Savior and still grapple with “does God really love me or not” as I discussed a few posts above.

    When posting or lurking at boards for Christians who have depression, for example, you will come across a lot of Christians who doubt if God loves them.

    Very good point Daisy

  20. Wade Burleson wrote:

    Alburquerque Blue,
    Thanks for your comment. I do not wish to offend you. In my experience, and I only speak of my experience, I find that those who do not know the immeasurable love of God in Christ struggle internally. When circumstances are good, they are happy, but when circumstances are difficult (i.e. “the process of dying”) there is often inner turmoil.
    I only speak of my experience. And of course, my experience may not be truth for every person. I am more than happy to dialogue with someone who says I’m wrong and would not enjoy a breach in relationship, even if it is an on-line one.

    Ah, so true Christians don’t struggle at all in times of adversity. Good to know. Thank you for your response.

  21. JeffB wrote:

    I referred to in Jer. 31 that make it clear that God has not and will not divorce Israel.

    Jeff, how do you understand these two verses?

    Isa_50:1 (NASB) Thus says the LORD, “Where is the certificate of divorce By which I have sent your mother away? Or to whom of My creditors did I sell you? Behold, you were sold for your iniquities, And for your transgressions your mother was sent away.

    Jer_3:8 (NASB) “And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear; but she went and was a harlot also.

  22. Daisy wrote:

    I was starting to think, maybe God loves me equally to everyone else, and that realization started to make me feel better. It was about that time I noticed the “(love your neighbor) as yourself” in that verse, and that meant something to me.
    But then, I started hearing/ seeing Christians saying it’s wrong to read the verse that way.

    If I might add my own dulcet tones to the cacophony of clamouring voices all claiming to tell you what to do… 🙁 🙂

    When you read something in a verse of Biblescripture, and it speaks to your current circumstances in a way that is constructive and brings God closer, then to my mind that has all the hallmarks of the Holy Spirit speaking. He wrote the Bible, and personally owns it; and he will say whatever he hears Jesus and/or the Father (who also personally own it) saying through it. Whereas christians telling you the “right” or “wrong” way to read a verse do not own it.

    I think you’re quite right to have doubts about the existence of a “God” who drew up his will in written form, then died and left the building. I don’t pray to that God, mind you. (Nor do I worry about “angering” him. What’s he going to do – decompose at me?) The God who became human, died, rose, lives for ever including (but not limited to) in us; well, that’s a whole nuther matter.

  23. JeffB wrote:

    However, as God’s perfect standard of righteousness, it is not to be totally ignored – there is it’s “third use,” and it can cause non-believers to seek the mercy of Jesus when they realize that they can not keep it perfectly (or even imperfectly).

    I’m of the belief that Jesus is God’s perfect standard of righteousness and not the Law. Jesus fulfilled the Law.

    I quote John 16:8-11 where Jesus explains regarding the Holy Spirit (Counselor)- And when he comes, he will convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in me;

    I understand verse 9 to mean that the lack of belief is sin and not the realization that they can not keep it (Law) perfectly or even imperfectly.

  24. Nick Bulbeck wrote:

    When you read something in a verse of Biblescripture, and it speaks to your current circumstances in a way that is constructive and brings God closer, then to my mind that has all the hallmarks of the Holy Spirit speaking. He wrote the Bible, and personally owns it; and he will say whatever he hears Jesus and/or the Father (who also personally own it) saying through it. Whereas christians telling you the “right” or “wrong” way to read a verse do not own it.

    That is how I view it, too. But I sometimes had doubts and got confused because I would see a lot of Christians who don’t feel that way.

    I even see theological opponents agree with each other on this, which I find so weird. I see left- of- center and right- of- center Christians who normally are at each other’s throats on other issues declare separately that, “you can’t read thus- and- so a verse that way.”

    One of the current things (that is similar to that view) is for them to say to Christians that verses and promises in the Old Testament are only for the original audience (being the Jews way back when) and not for Christians today, so, they say, Christians should stop claiming that promises in the OT are for them today. My mind boggles at this.

    Some of the people teaching this (even the right of center guys, the conservatives) claim to be sola scriptura adherents, so presumably, they would believe in, I think it’s 2 Tim. 3:16 (the entire Bible is God breathed and useful for Christians – meaning the OT too, not just the NT, I would take it, etc), and Romans 15 : 4.

    Every time Jesus quoted Scripture to correct or rebuke people, He was quoting from the Old Testament. He didn’t have a NT to quote from.

    So why am I seeing all these Christians today (both liberals and conservatives, it’s remarkable) saying stuff like, “the Bible is not about YOU (or for you),” or “thus- and- so a verse in the Old Testament was for the Jews only, not for Christians today” etc?

  25. Wade,

    That was a kind article. Your good heart comes through.

    Having said that…

    “Why should we love ourselves?”

    “Because God loves us.”

    But notice how that doesn’t answer the question. That makes our love for ourselves a direct function of God’s love…which means we don’t really love ourselves, God loves us FOR us. Why? Because Total Depravity tells us that we have no AUTONOMOUS worth as human beings. Thus, to love ourselves autonomously is sin.

    The real question isn’t “Why should we love ourselves?”, but “What value do I bring to God?” The answer is: YOU; your life, your SELF.

    So the real answer to “Why should we love ourselves?” is: “For the same reason God loves you and died for you. Because you have inherent worth to God as a human being.”

    The problem isn’t that we haven’t thought about why we should love ourselves; the problem is that Reformed doctrine is completely rooted in why we shouldn’t.

  26. When I read love your neighbor as yourself, or that no one ever yet hated their own body (another scripture) I don’t see it as in either of two ditches. One ditch is the very current trend of assuming everyone not functioning well in the world just doesn’t love themselves enough and must learn to do so. The other ditch is the assumption that it means all people have an unhealthy degree of selfish self love.

    Seems to me Jesus (and Paul) just sort of assumed people do love themselves, and wants us to treat others as well as we want to be treated.

    Even in codependency there seems to be a level of either wanting to be the “good guy” or “hero” taking care of and saving others, or else deep deep resentment for the maltreatment they receive from their codependent. Which of course suggests a level of esteem for oneself, otherwise the foul treatment would be seen as fair.

    I can only speak from personal experience, but it seems to me the happiest people I have known don’t spend a whole lot of time focused on either abasing or elevating themselves. They seem to be outward or other focused, but without the martyr complex of the codependency.

    Maybe what we need more of today is healthy balance.

  27. Oh boy. So much here. I agree with a lot. There’s no tithing requirement. True. No Sabbath requirement. True. However, Jesus didn’t “abolish the law.” He fulfilled it. Saying he fulfilled and then abolished it is incorrect. Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

    It is disappearing only because it is fulfilled, not because it is abolished.

    There are so many parts of the new covenant which are fulfillments of the old covenant. We receive the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist because that is a fulfillment of the old testament sacrifices. John 6:54 “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
    Yes, male priests still exist, and we also have a priesthood of believers.

    Nowhere in the Bible does it say to “love yourself”? It doesn’t. Honestly, it says the exact opposite.
    Luke 9:23-24 ” And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.”

  28. I think maybe my comment wasn’t clear.

    “Love yourself because God loves you” begs the question WHY does He love you? Meaning: What inherent value do you bring to God that He loves you?

    Too often we hear that we have no inherent (autonomous) value. But a thing which has zero value cannot be loved because it possesses no capacity to receive it. A thing with NO worth is precisely that which must be despised, not loved; for a worthless thing is antithetical to love. In the Bible, do we ever see God being aclover of worthless things? No. Never.

    Why are the wicked condemned at the final judgment? Is it because God cannot love them; because God could not save them? Of course not. It is because they have rejected their inherent human worth by willfully integrating themselves with evil; that which is antithetical to life. Thus, they have made themselves worthless, and as such, they have destroyed their own ability to be a receptacle for love. Their value has become zero, or nothing. And that which is nothing, which is valueless, cannot by definition possess anything of value, especially God’s love.

  29. linda wrote:

    Which of course suggests a level of esteem for oneself

    Um, no. I didn’t have any self esteem, neither did my mother.

  30. linda wrote:

    They seem to be outward or other focused, but without the martyr complex of the codependency.

    Also, I wanted to say this is not a fair or accurate way of depicting it.

    Churches (and Christians) actually push people like my mother to be codependent, by teaching that having healthy boundaries is wrong, getting one’s own needs met is wrong, it is only “Christ like” to help others all the time, even if one is depleted, etc.

    My mother got her codependency from being abused as a kid, but it was further instilled by typical Christian teachings and so forth.

    I think it’s kind of mean to depict codependents as being self-involved, in that, to suggest they are egotistical – it’s a very cruel thing to do. They have the opposite problem.

    They don’t have any self worth. Many codependents think people will only love them for what favors they do for other people. (My mother did not think people would love her for her alone, for who she was, but what she could do for them.)

    It’s the same thing with clinical depression.

    Christians, in a most cruel manner, depict depression as being a form of egotism (self focus), when it’s not like that.

    People with either problem (depression and codependency) need help and compassion, not to be scolded, or to have it implied they have a brand of, or type of, egotistical self-absorption.

    Telling them to just think about Jesus more or to think of others is not helpful – especially not for codependents, as they already do too much to help other people. They need to be told it’s okay to get their own needs met and to not help others if they truly do not want to.

    During all the years I was depressed, “getting the focus off myself” by helping other people (soup kitchen work etc) did not help at all.

  31. Daisy wrote:

    Christians, in a most cruel manner, depict depression as being a form of egotism (self focus), when it’s not like that.
    People with either problem (depression and codependency) need help and compassion, not to be scolded, or to have it implied they have a brand of, or type of, egotistical self-absorption.

    I agree, Daisy. Well said.

  32. @Daisy and Victorious – I totally agree! I was accused of that in CLC, since I struggled with depression for a lot of the time I was at the church. It was very disheartening to me to be told that my problem was being selfish and self-focused.

  33. I believe the basis of true love is God Himself, and since we have been placed in Him, the perfect love God enjoys within Himself is fully available to us. We love because He first loved us, and His love is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

    The only part of this that gave me pause was the whole context in which this was shared. I may be wrong but I think the motivation, at least in part, was to focus our attention on the Lord as the source of our healing since many here are broken or damaged due to abuse we’ve suffered in one form or another. And it’s been well documented that victims of abuse often struggle to love themselves in wholesome, natural ways that come easily to those who have never been violated. They are much more prone to engage in activities that are damaging to their selves and their bodies.

    Yes, let’s embrace God’s love and do our best to appropriate it all the time, everyday, in every situation and circumstance we find ourselves in. But let’s not feel bad if we’ve developed habits that stem from our abuse or neglect; habits that we know aren’t reflective of God’s love yet remain resistant to change. Reminding ourselves of God’s love is certainly key, and we know doing things to ourselves that could be described as “hateful” certainly isn’t going to help us become those temples of God where His glory dwells. Ultimately, though, I believe love is a relevation more than something we intellectually subscribe to, or work to achieve. It’s spiritual in nature and is activated in our lives through faith, just as our salvation was. The more we open ourselves up, by God’s grace, to believe in and receive His love, the more we are transformed by it. And since God is love, and the bible says love is the greatest thing of all – coupled with the fact God didn’t hold anything back but demonstrated His love through His own self-sacrifice – He naturally wants us to be free from any obstacles that stand in the way of His love being poured out upon us and into our hearts.

    I appreciated this message and the reminder to keep God’s love at the forefront of our thinking, and for His love to be the reason why we should love ourselves. It goes along with the verse I’ve been meditating frequently on and that is, “Be still and know I am God.” It reminds me that He is God, who is Love, and that whatever is going on, that love never changes or fails but is full of as much efficacy now as when I first believed.

  34. Dee wrote:

    Seneca “j” Griggs wrote:
    i think my biggest problem is with damnable pride.
    You mean selfish love as opposed to selfless love?

    Someday, you ‘me and Jon Card will have to do lunch. You can’t wear your stilletos though. I have tender feet.

  35. @ Victorious:

    I believe that those two verses deal, respectively, with God’s separation and divorce from Israel. But the divorce is not final. God will re-marry Israel by making a “new covenant” with her (Jer. 31:31), which will not be like the “covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them…”. (Vs. 32, NASB) Ezek. 16: 60-63 speaks of the same thing.

    Is. 54:1-8 also speaks of God as a husband who will re-unite with Israel (see esp. vss. 7 and 8.) The same thought is in Is. 62: 4-5.

  36. @ Joe:

    Yes, Jesus fulfilled the Law by keeping it perfectly, which means that every second of His life He loved God with all of His heart, soul, mind, and strength, and His neighbor as Himself, which is the summation of the Law. Jesus is the embodiment of the righteousness of the Law. As Nancy says, Jesus and the Law are not at odds with each other.

  37. Wade Burleson wrote:

    I am definitely NOT a pre-tribulational, dispensational advocate, but do believe in the ‘return’ of Jesus to the earth where the curse of sin will be reversed by Him! The only difference is I believe when He returns, that’s it! 🙂 Heaven on earth in all its fullness for all of eternity.

    Keep on researching. Keep on thinking. Keep on loving people and the Lord!

    Much agreement here Wade. I believe that the Almighty is far more concerned with how we treat each other and the world at large rather than what we believe or don’t believe about ‘end times’, ‘rapture theology’, and dispensationalism.

  38. JeffB wrote:

    I believe that those two verses deal, respectively, with God’s separation and divorce from Israel. But the divorce is not final. God will re-marry Israel by making a “new covenant” with her (Jer. 31:31)

    Jeff, at least we’re in agreement that God did, in fact, divorce Israel. Now according to the Mosaic Law, if a husband finds some indecency in his wife and sends her away, hands her a certificate of divorce, he cannot take her back. God would not act contrary to the law.

    Deu 24:4 then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the LORD…

    Jer 3:1 God says, “If a husband divorces his wife And she goes from him And belongs to another man, Will he still return to her? Will not that land be completely polluted? But you are a harlot with many lovers; Yet you turn to Me,” declares the LORD.

    Jeremiah 31:31 is a different covenant than the one He made when He was a husband to Israel. This covenant will include Israel as God’s “people” but not the same as when He was a husband to them. He is not abandoning them in His mercy and will continue to provide correction, mercy, compassion, and ultimately forgiveness for their adultery with pagan nations.

  39. I actually commented on Burleson’s blog with not agreeing with his amellinial position. There is a lot I like about his sermon above about Christ’s love being deep and that we should follow Christ’s example but instead believe the Old covenant is fulfilled and brought into a better covenant. Christ admonishes the Jews in not understanding the Torah’s true intentions and admonishes them in their abuses like he did in Matthew 23. History reveals a lot and when the church turns away from Jewish wisdom andthe model of Christ’s life it does fall into Gentile patriarchalism.

  40. In essence the term Torah means instructions or teachings. Burleson is actually correct that Christians dont understand how to properly care for themselves. Jordan Ruben points out how understanding biblical food laws helped him with healing his digestive Crohn’s disease. Perhaps Enid just really does not enough Jews living there to consider biblical food laws. What’s interesting about studying some Jewish sects is that they really would be not able a Gentile diet because of the type of food allergies they have developed over the centuries.

  41. Domitian actually built statue and altar to himself in Ephesus during his reign this explains as to why John is exiled at this time.

  42. I appreciated much of what Wade Burleson said about the New Covenant, and how truly loving ourselves when we get a glimpse of how deeply God loves us, can spill over to loving God back and loving others. I have to disagree on the divorce thing, though.

    Christianity was a sect of Judaism for around the first 200 years, and I have heard estimates of 20-30,000 Jewish believers in Jerusalem after the time of Pentecost, the Greek term for the Feast of Weeks. The Greeks preferred allegorical thinking to literal interpretation, Augustine was heavily influenced by Plato, and there were human natures and human cultures causing division between Greek and Jew even in the early church. Paul dealt with it, adamantly opposed it. After 70 AD, the Greek believers scattered into their respective cultures, the Jewish believers into their enclaves. At first Rome recognized Judaism as a grandfathered-in religion and there was not as big a problem for Jewish believers in Rome because of it. Not so for Greek believers, many were horribly persecuted, as we know from history. They resented what they considered favoritism and with the love of allegory, Replacement Theology, the idea of Supercession, took root. Near 350 AD, when the RCC took form, the Greek believers had convinced Rome to renounce their position toward Judaism officially, and the RCC embraced the change in their theology. Persecution has resulted in the name of Christ. Read some of the crazy stuff Plato believed, trace his philosophies to Augustine, keep going forward and you even see the twisted interpretations in Luther and Calvin, even Arminian camps. Check out John Immel’s site, Spiritual Tyranny, for some eye openers about how the Church as we know it for the most part today, came to believe and practice what we do. I even think this same allegorical, gnostic, dualism is connected to the convenient idea that man remains totally depraved and utterly helpless to know or do good even after salvation (5 point Calvinism).

    I believe that God keeps His promises, one of those is found in Romans 11. Someday, the whole nation of Israel will see Yeshua for who He really is, and will receive Him as their true Messiah. I long for that day and hope it comes soon. I also recommend Israelogy, the Missing Link in Systematic Theology, by Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum, and The Mystery of Romans by Dr. Mark Nanos. As a believing Jew, I can still empathize with modern non-believing Jews, who for the most part, can only associate the name of Jesus with pograms or worse, for the last 1800 years.

  43. Picking up on the notion, discussed in several comments here, that answers are found in God.

    What we often mean by this is that answers are found in church, or that answers are found in religion. I.e. attending church meetings, praying, reading our bibles, or some other formula that has worked – or appeared to work – for the person giving the advice. I think our natural love of quick, pat answers and photocopied solutions is at least a part of what lies behind the Church’s fragmenting into isolated “churches”. “A church” is – at least in part – a group of believers for whom a particular approach to life works. To stick with my own familiar theme – unemployment – you might well hear a Christian say, it’s not my job that gives me significance; it’s God’s love. But what he doesn’t realise is that actually a great deal of his personal significance comes to him through his job, the relationships, challenges and successes it brings, and the fact that he is not dependent financially in the way he was as a child. And actually, this is not sinful – his job is God’s chosen means of giving him significance. It’s simply that he has not been taught to recognise this; God is on Sunday, not during the week. But his religious satisfaction is really just the icing on the cake; and if you took his job away, not just for a few days but for years – perhaps, for life – he would realise that “God’s love gives me significance” sounds good but means nothing in practice.

    A widespread weakness in church culture is that we’ve lost the ability to recognise diversity. Specifically, diverse encounters with God. So I have god-given needs, but you have “sinful cravings”. God speaks to me in such-and-such a setting; but you are stubborn and keep fighting him. And so on.

  44. @ Nick Bulbeck:
    Nick:

    It seems to me that in too many churches the leaders desire to give pat answers when if they were honest-the correct answer in many instances from the leaders is that there is not just one answer.

  45. Wayne is right about racial Israel. The new covenant has made the old obsolete. There is no righteousness to be found in the law. None. Never has been, never will be! Those who attempt to marry the law to the grace offered through faith in Christ have misinterpreted everything. The old covenant was simply a time of preparation for what would be revealed in Christ and the new covenant. The old has passed away, the new has come!

    So, for example, if Casey wants to keep kosher or whatever because he thinks a kosher diet is healthier for him, then great. But keeping kosher doesn’t commend him to God anymore than the next guy because food doesn’t commend us to God. What we choose to eat or drink makes no difference in terms of our righteousness before God. None, whatsoever. Nor does following any of the old covenant laws. That’s Christianity 101

    But the carnal nature will always be magnetically attracted to the law because the flesh will always look to find a way around the grace of God and look to be justified by virtue of itself. But salvation is a gift which did not result from the works of the law, nor do we remain in Him through the works of the law. And some think the Jews have a leg up somehow, as though God favors a particular race or place. Well, He doesn’t! Just like he doesn’t favor a particular gender. We are all one in Christ, and nobody gets in on the basis of some favored nation status or what-have-you. If that what you think, even in the slightest, good luck with that!

  46. Dee wrote:

    Note how that verse you quoted ties into money: making it all about me and my comfort.

    The putting of ‘me’ at the centre is what I am getting on about with self love. There is a false gospel around from a psychological God whose main aim is to make us feel good about ourselves, say yes to yourself, you are special etc. You then get precisely what you say, it’s all about me and my comfort.

    This new gospel is propagated to some extent in the local church we don’t go to, and the fruit of it – especially amongst the youth group – is to produce ‘believers’ who are more worldly than the world, who are full of themselves, with an inflated sense of their own importance. An ego trip if you like – and I am sure you have had enough exposure in dissecting Christian trends of preachers where this self-love is precisely the root problem.

    This all goes wrong when there is trouble, as it then morphs into self-pity.

    I think Linda got the balance right, in that there is a legitimate need for us to look after ourselves, but that must not be where the focus is, or else you get the impossible situation where, to change the wording slightly, someone will claim ‘you cannot be focused on God and your neighbour unless you focus on yourself’, which is patently absurd.

  47. Daisy wrote:

    Some Christians hate the concept or phrase “self esteem” or the idea that the Bible is assuming it’s natural and okay for you to love yourself / have self esteem.

    I’ve encountered something very like that, not in church, but in a book I skimmed through once. It’s called “Psychobabble” by Richard Ganz. (Not the more recent book by Dr. Stephen Briers — similar titles.)

    I remember that at one point, Ganz equates the modern notion of self-esteem with the hubris and self-worship of Nebuchadnezzar, as depicted by Daniel. As soon as I read that, it struck me as ridiculous. As I understand it, “self-esteem” has nothing to do with imagining oneself as a god, or invincible, or the centre of the universe. It means no more than an awareness of our own worth and intrinsic value, whatever our circumstances and no matter what any human being think or say about us.

    It saddens me terribly that you and your mother were robbed of this sense of worth, Daisy. And it horrifies me that (as you say) some Christians and their leaders find the notion of self-esteem threatening, and try to drive it out of others at all costs.

    Ganz wrote his book in support of nouthetic counseling, and in opposition to modern secular psychology. I find myself wondering whether Ken and linda (based on their comments above) also look on psychology with suspicion. It would make sense — in that profession, establishing a healthy sense of self-esteem is often considered essential for treating some conditions. So why else would they deny essential treatment to the emotionally distressed, unless they find the treatment itself to be suspect?

    (P.S. to Ken and linda: Please feel free to respond to me if you like. I’ll be signing off soon though — bedtime.)

  48. @ Ken:
    Yes Ken, of course you don’t want people feeling too good about themselves. They are much harder to manipulate by leaders who understand that suppressing people’s positive thoughts about themselves makes them much easier to control. Just like it’s much easier for you, for example, to think you’ve got an advantage over your wife because you’re a guy. If she believes that then of course she’ll relate to you out of a submissive mindset, and yield to your supposed authority.

  49. Victorious wrote:

    JeffB wrote:

    I believe that those two verses deal, respectively, with God’s separation and divorce from Israel. But the divorce is not final. God will re-marry Israel by making a “new covenant” with her (Jer. 31:31)

    Jeff, at least we’re in agreement that God did, in fact, divorce Israel. Now according to the Mosaic Law, if a husband finds some indecency in his wife and sends her away, hands her a certificate of divorce, he cannot take her back. God would not act contrary to the law.

    Deu 24:4 then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the LORD…

    Jer 3:1 God says, “If a husband divorces his wife And she goes from him And belongs to another man, Will he still return to her? Will not that land be completely polluted? But you are a harlot with many lovers; Yet you turn to Me,” declares the LORD.

    Jeremiah 31:31 is a different covenant than the one He made when He was a husband to Israel. This covenant will include Israel as God’s “people” but not the same as when He was a husband to them. He is not abandoning them in His mercy and will continue to provide correction, mercy, compassion, and ultimately forgiveness for their adultery with pagan nations.

    Victorious, a very perceptive, biblically astute response.

  50. Ken wrote:

    I think Linda got the balance right

    Not entirely, no, and I disagree with some of your views in your post.

    If you read my second reply to linda, you will see I corrected one of her mischaracterizations of my comments about codependendcy, and it seems you share some of those same views.

    BTW, I view linda as the female version of Seneca and/or Glen, and I rather wish she would refrain from responding to my posts altogether.

    About every time I post on a topic, it sure seems to me she deliberately twists my views or comments, or attributes views to me that I do not hold, e.g.,

    Me: I’m so tired of married Christians treating us single ladies like we are all temptresses who are out to steal married men.

    As if we single ladies do not already have enough problems and negative stereotypes to deal with! Churches isolate single women and shun them, and it’s sad and frustrating.

    linda: Stop hitting on married men, you Jezebel, harlot single lady!
    Why do you only talk to married men, anyway?? Stay away from married people.
    —–
    Me: What’s the name of that show, “Married and with 45,634 Kids and Counting,” or whatever?

    linda: Stop disrespecting motherhood and women with many children like that!
    —–
    Me: People with depression and codependency often wonder if God really loves them or not, and they lack self esteem.

    linda: If people with depression and codependency would stop being so egotistically self-involved and self-absorbed and think of Jesus more, they’d not be so unhappy.
    —–
    That this is an on-going habit with her regardless of whatever subject I’m posting about leads me to believe she’s behaving this way on purpose.

  51. Serving Kids in Japan wrote:

    It saddens me terribly that you and your mother were robbed of this sense of worth, Daisy. And it horrifies me that (as you say) some Christians and their leaders find the notion of self-esteem threatening, and try to drive it out of others at all costs.

    I’ve seen some of that on this very thread from a person or two.

    I’ve also seen it among preachers on TV, in their sermons, and in books.

    People who have depression and codependency and other problems which make them doubt God’s love for them are hurting, but they are being depicted as self-absorbed egotists. These kind of people do not sit around intentionally focusing on themselves all day.

    It does not feel good to have negative self-thoughts. Back when I had depression, I sought treatment for it, because I did not want to have it.

    I didn’t even realize until a few years ago that I had codependency and my mother did. When I did, I began reading books about the subject to figure out how to put a stop to it.

    I think it’s appalling for anyone to portray depressed people or codependents as though they are sinfully, intentionally self-absorbed, secretly enjoy “thinking about themselves” and that the cure (which is simplistic) is to think about other people or God more.

    People with low self esteem who doubt God’s love or who feel badly about themselves are not in the same category as sociopaths and narcissists and garden variety arrogant people who truly do only think of themselves in the classic, selfish sense.

  52. You have to remember I’ve spent time with both those in the far right wing of evangelicalism and the far left wing of mainliners. Among the former, people are just worms. Among the latter, there is no such thing as sin because if you say something is sin, and I do it, it might hurt my feelings. Healthy isn’t in either ditch. Healthy can preach, teach, sing, and live the truth that every human being is of inestimable worth to God, and yet we can do things that hurt ourselves and others and thus we…sin. Then we can give the remedy for sin, which will include the forgiveness of God, but also the idea God can and indeed will change our hearts if we allow. Big if on the last part.

    You see the same thing over time in education. For a time, children were treated with cruelty and ridicule if they were not straight A students. Then came the idea (still current many places) that they just needed more self esteem, so reward every child equally no matter how they perform their tasks. Well, that didn’t work out all that well. Some educators still argue for it, but the better schools now blend the two ideas. They reward achievement–even tiny steps–liberally, but realize true self esteem for students comes from accomplishing good things.

  53. @ Evie:

    To be fair, Evie, I really don’t think that’s what Ken was saying.

    There’s a perennial pitfall in topics like this which, like many issues addressed in the Bible, hold two ends of the same truth in tension. That is, the discussion falls into a false either/or. So, and exaggerating to make a point here:

    EITHER you love God (in which case you hate yourself and do everything you can to prove it by hurting, depriving and starving yourself physically, emotionally and spiritually)…
    OR you love yourself (in which case your every waking act is a deliberate spitting in God’s face as you strive ceaselessly to slake your perverted and carnal lusts)

    Actually, of course, neither of the above represents anything Jesus ever exemplified.

  54. linda wrote:

    Among the latter, there is no such thing as sin because if you say something is sin, and I do it, it might hurt my feelings.

    And I never said that. I actually agree that some churches some of the time are too “easy” or laid back about sin.

    But sticking codependents and depressives in the same category as run of the mill arrogant, self absorbed egotists, as you and Ken and about as 90% of Christianity does, is not accurate or loving, and it only keeps people trapped in the depression / codependency.

  55. Jesus commanded us to love God with all our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves. He surely did not mean that we are to hate our neighbor b/c we hate ourselves!!!! So we are to love ourselves too. That is the point of Wade’s post. Some people seem really dedicated to making something out of it that is not there. There is no contradiction between loving and serving God and loving oneself. And there is clearly a contradiction between loving one’s neighbor and not loving oneself. In fact, I do not think if possible to love God and not also have love for oneself.

    Now love for oneself can go overboard! But that is not Wade’s point and he is on firm scriptural ground with his post.

  56. Daisy, I did not–expressly did not!–stick depressed people and codependent people in the same category as narcissists. What I SAID was that EVEN codependents are acting from a self preserving coping mechanism, it just isn’t functioning well for them. And having been through one meds caused clinical depression, and having sought treatment for codependency in dealing with one child we adopted, I stand by that. Therapy is often group therapy and one gets to see situations up close and personal. Breaking through denial can be terribly difficult. A dear friend once struggled with the fact her son’s psychiatrist had set up a meeting with her and told her unless she stopped enabling her son’s drinking, he would die. Soon. Her response was that she “couldn’t turn him out on the street to live under a bridge. I’m not that kind of person.” She didn’t listen to the shrink, his prediction was accurate, and she lived the rest of her life convinced she had done the right thing because “it would have hurt me so much to turn him out.” She never did see that while she THOUGHT she was concerned for his well being, she was REALLY concerned that she maintain her self image as the wonderful, all loving mother.

    Self esteem or self love seems to be something we are all born with, otherwise we would never develop either healthy OR unhealthy coping mechanisms or defense mechanisms. Sometimes, and having raised children abused by birth families I strongly believe, that self esteem does indeed get damaged and need rebuilding.

    The only caveat I offer is that it has to be genuine rebuilding. One of the symptoms of that damage IS excessive self focus. You’ve probably run into some of those people, easily offended and over sensitive to slights. But I can pretty much state that if they get into effective treatment, the time frame for focusing on what has hurt them and how hurt they are (and this MUST be done!) will be limited if the shrink is a good one. He or she will begin moving them toward HEALTHY coping mechanisms rather than getting stuck just naming or diagnosing the problem and using it as an excuse to continue hurting themselves.

    My opinion of Pastor Wade’s post is that it is an excellent one, but only covers one side of the issue. I’d like to see him give us one keeping us out of the other ditch, excessive self love, as well.

    Health and joy are in the middle.

  57. Nick Bulbeck wrote:

    A widespread weakness in church culture is that we’ve lost the ability to recognise diversity. Specifically, diverse encounters with God. So I have god-given needs, but you have “sinful cravings”. God speaks to me in such-and-such a setting; but you are stubborn and keep fighting him. And so on.

    The Sure Sign of Salvation: Whatever *I* Do That YOU Don’t!
    The Unpardonable Sin: Whatever YOU Do That *I* Don’t!
    Smackdown and One-Upmanship and Counting Coup with a Christian(TM) coat of paint.

  58. @ Nick Bulbeck:
    Not sure what you mean by that’s not what Ken is saying. Could you break that down for me a bit?

    As for what he said, let me break that down a bit:

    “False gospel” – What exactly does he mean by this. Why so vague?

    “psychological God” – Huh? Does he mean there’s too much of an emphasis on the individual and how they think? This makes no sense considering how we think is vital. Again, he doesn’t elaborate so we’re left to guess what he’s saying.

    “whose main aim is to make us feel good about ourselves” – now here I think we have our answer to the vagueness, at least in part. He calls this a “new gospel” but let’s examine this. The gospel is about us, right? It’s about the fact God so loved us that He sacrificed Himself to reconcile us relationally, and deliver us from the bondage of sin and death. Not only that, but to make us joint heirs and full participants in the Kingdom of God. All of that has to do with us. The gospel directly benefits us personally and individually.

    “new gospel” – is this code for “not Calvinism”?

  59. @ Evie:

    Evie: I think you illustrated my point earlier on when you said “But the carnal nature will always be magnetically attracted to the law because the flesh will always look to find a way around the grace of God and look to be justified by virtue of itself. But salvation is a gift…” This is an example of the ‘flesh’ or self-life esteeming itself. It’s too proud to accept a gift, it has to be in the centre, earn its way.

    Another way of expressing this is how the grain has to fall into the ground and die before it can bear fruit. Jesus himself said this, and added “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” Did Jesus command us to love ourselves, build up our self-esteem, or did he say to deny self and follow him?

    Nick is right in that there is a danger here of arguing semantics. To go back to your marriage illustration, Paul said “Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, …” He is echoing the same teaching as Jesus, a man legitimately loves himself in taking care of himself with food and clothing, but the command to love his wife turns the direction away from self and to his wife. He should provide for her just as much as he would for himself, and put her interests before his, and esteem her very highly (rather than esteem himself).

    The kind of patriarchism (is there such a word?) described in some of the earlier threads imo perfectly illustrates what happens when a man begins to esteem and love himself, thereby neglecting and damaging his wife and family. He has to choose between putting his family first or putting himself first. And in the case of the latter, I am sure you would not what such a man to feel good about himself!

  60. Ken wrote:

    his new gospel is propagated to some extent in the local church we don’t go to, and the fruit of it – especially amongst the youth group – is to produce ‘believers’ who are more worldly than the world, who are full of themselves, with an inflated sense of their own importance.

    That is the “old” gospel. The “new: gospel is the Calvinista battering rams who promulgate a view of mankind as disgusting slimy worms . They have also turned the love of God into slapping around believers for sins du jour while studiously overlooking their own garbage and frankly, I am getting sick of it.

  61. @ HoppyTheToad:
    I have added this situation into our post queue and will discuss it in the near future. I could not believe what some reports claimed that the officials were saying.

    To add to that: they issued on of the most arrogant official statements that I have ever read. They basically said that the reports are full of garbage and that they are as our as the driven snow.

  62. linda wrote:

    excessive self love,

    The latest “thing” amongst the Calvinistas is to turn the word “love” into an excuse for garbage “discipline.” I love you therefore I will slap you around. The pendulum, in the hands of certain Neo-Cals has swung waaaay to far.

  63. @ An Attorney:
    Good points, I agree. And I really think when Calvinists get ahold of this it all runs amuck. Because of course the goal and the purpose of the Gospel is that we would love God, ourselves and others. Calvinism liked to come in and take the “ourselves” part out and interject a gospel that is entirely focused on God, as though He is the aim and goal of the gospel. Um, no WE were the aim and goal of the gospel! Jesus came to die for us! We were the focus of His sacrfice. Yes, in doing so God was glorified, but God is fine. He’s pretty much ok. We were the ones that were destroyed by sin. Of course he wants us to love ourselves and in doing so demonstrate that we believe in Him! That is key to our showing the world because John 13:35 says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

    But the Calvinists seem to think the main idea behind evangelism is to preach the gospel in order to warn people about God’s wrath and so they better get saved because God is coming and He’s going to destroy their cities and their towers like in Dubai! (ref. John Piper’s video announcing the Cross Conference)

  64. dee wrote:

    The latest “thing” amongst the Calvinistas is to turn the word “love” into an excuse for garbage “discipline.” I love you therefore I will slap you around. The pendulum, in the hands of certain Neo-Cals has swung waaaay to far.

    Isn’t that the ABUSER’s definition of Love(TM)?
    “Mommie Dearest is doing all this to you because I LOVE(TM) YOU!”

  65. HoppyTheToad wrote:

    The above article is about the way Patrick Henry College ignores rape reports and takes victim blaming to the extreme. For example, one official told a woman that if she had really been raped (as compared to regretting consensual s*x), that God would’ve kept her conscious during her attack (she kept passing out).

    Isn’t Patrick Henry the training ground for Future Commanders of Gilead after We Take Back America and Make It A Christian Nation? (Right next to DC so they don’t need to move after the Coup.) If so, Future Commanders of Gilead must practice the Godly(TM) way to treat Handmaids, and Future Handmaids of Gilead must learn their place. “WOMAN, SUBMIT!”

  66. dee wrote:

    To add to that: they issued on of the most arrogant official statements that I have ever read. They basically said that the reports are full of garbage and that they are as pure as the driven snow.

    P.S. God’s Anointed Can Do No Wrong.

  67. I don’t assume people are going to fall onto one ditch or the other, unless someone explains that there are ditches on both sides. We don’t always have to be worried that people are going to go off the deep end of a concept if we don’t write a 1,000 page book to explain every crack in the pavement and the dangers of each crack. The truth is we can find people in both ditches and God might be speaking to those in one of the ditches. Personally, I’ve heard many more sermons and teachings about pride, than about loving your neighbor as yourself.

  68. @ dee:
    The local church I am talking about is heavily into Willow Creek, it’s precisely the opposite of a strict Calvinist church.

    It tends to avoid sin altogether because sin would damage the listeners’ self-esteem, their inflated view of their ‘worth’ – Selbstwertgefühl, our feeling of self-worth for those who like speaking in tongues. I heard what must be a translation of Robert Schuller’s ‘sin is anything that would lower my self-esteem’ into German, unthinkingly downloaded from Willow. A gospel that denies the sinfulness of man (even if it doesn’t use that jargon which may be fair enough if you want to be sensitive to what unbelievers can actually understand) has to be another and false gospel.

  69. Excessive self love is loving myself to the point I would injure you to do so.

    Examples: the pedophile who believes he has the “right” to act upon innocent children. The person who robs the local liquor store and believes that he has the right to shoot the owner to avoid capture and arrest. Those are obvious types.

    The less obvious types, and equally lethal, range from the far legalistic parents that are so absorbed in appearing “godly” that they “discipline” their children to the point of physical, mental, emotional harm or even death. And they can be folks to the other end of the spectrum, that will continue giving money to a child even when they know the money will be used to buy meth or crack so that they don’t have to be the big meanie, saying no.

    Normal self worth accepts the idea that one is a person created by God, under His laws, loved by Him, and deserving of decent treatment by other people.

    Unhealthy self love would twist each of those: the idea I am created by God, loved by Him, and therefore deserve to be treated BETTER than anyone else. His laws apply to you, not to me.

    That type of person may be the raging psychopath, yes, but is more likely to be the person than can never be loved adequately, or treated adequately, by anyone and how dare they try. Or they can be the quiet humble little mousy type that gets angry when mistreated–REALLY ANGRY–but fails to insist on proper treatment. They tend to turn the anger inward, causing health and mental health trouble.

    One of the things the agency stressed to us back when we were adopting special needs/abused ones was this: acting out CAN be just what it sounds like. Tantrums, stealing, drinking, drugging, illicit sex, fighting, hitting, cussing, etc. OR it can be quiet despair, depression, illness, all the symptoms of “poor little old me.” Pop psych says those folks, either the active or quiet, don’t love themselves enough. Real psychs say nope, they are showing self love that due to horrific circumstances may have become excessive in order to survive. They wouldn’t even try to cope unless they had some degree of self love. So the task at hand is to teach them HEALTHY ways of coping. In the case of abused kids, learning it is ok to run from physical abuse, to report physical/emotion/sexual abuse, to scream no at the top of their lungs, etc, is key. They have to learn to cope with situations since we cannot ALL be 100% safe 100% of the time. But they have (and we adults have!)to learn to cope in a healthy manner.

    So say my darling hubby gets up cranky and starts nipping at me. Healthy self love tells him nicely what he is doing, and that he needs to quit. If it doesn’t, healthy self love will be more forceful, or even leave the room. Unhealthy self love just absorbs the negative vibes and gets the blues. Excessive self love will focus on that one bad morning literally for years, and offer him no hope of redeeming himself.

  70. @ Ken:
    Ken, I think you’re still confused. How did what I shared about the carnal nature an illustration of what you were saying? In general we’re not talking about the carnal nature in terms of love – you are. You keep saying a focus on loving oneself is more or less carnal.

    Yes, some people depend upon themselves and their own efforts to justify themselves and excuse away sin. When it comes to God, whom they may or not believe in, the bible says they see the message of the cross as “foolishness.” But that’s the unbeliever.

    As far as referencing “my marriage” illustration, again I think you’re confused. You use the grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying, in would seem, in this context to illustrate self-denial and also to support what you’re saying as regards a de-emphasis on “self love” as you call it.

    Personally, where I get frustrated here is when you blend two realities and addressing them as though they co-existed.

    For example, lets take your grain of wheat example of self-denial and as a support of your argument against self-love.

    What self are you talking about?

    It seems the self you are referring to is the carnal self, as though the Christian is defined by carnal nature. But it’s important to read all of scripture and bring it to bear upon individual verses so they are understood in context.

    As Christians, it is a reality that our lives are dead and hidden with Christ in God. That is a fact, and by faith we appropriate this reality into the way we think of ourselves everyday. Further, we are told that the old man has been crucified, dead and buried. We have been raised in newness of life and we are now New Creations in Christ Jesus – born again. We bear fruit because we have been grafted into the Vine, our source of Life and our only head Jesus Christ.

    So, the “grain of wheat” in it’s natural state in the parable isn’t referring a believer. It’s referring to the need to be born-again. Once we are regenerated we are able to bear fruit because we have fallen into the ground and died (past tense) because we are in Him. That’s not something we need to keep doing, that’s something we need to believe in and appropiate the truth of by faith.

    But in so doing that, we’re not to be thinking of ourselves individually as worthless individuals who need to need to put themselves in the ground and crawl around like worms. No! We’re to be living in the reality every day of all that God has accomplished for us in Christ – which involves rejoicing in his love and in the freedom we have to love ourselves!

  71. @ Evie:

    The other error I hear is that the main reason God is interacting with man at all is to bring glory to himself. To many, this makes God appear to be an imbalanced self-love egotist. God has many characteristics, love included. Love was the one Jesus focused on when he responded to the question about the greatest commandments. God’s reason for creation certainly includes all of what makes God, God and not one attribute over another.

  72. @ Bridget:
    Exactly! As though acknowledging WE were the objects of the Gospel! It’s like they take us out of the picture and say our entire focus is to be on glorifying God, because he is the chief end of man, and become total hedonists wrapped up everyday in our focus on God! As if focusing on ourselves is prideful. It’s not being ‘humble.’ So be a good little believer, would you, and give all your time, energy and money to the church because that is what glorifies God, (you worm). Ha!

  73. Sorry I meant to write, “As though acknowledging WE were the objects of the Gospel somehow detracts from God.”

    I usually have to go back over my posts and edit them because when I write my comments they don’t normally fly off my fingers in a way that would pass an english exam, although I wish they did!

  74. @ Ken:
    Willow Creek is just one group in a vast panoply of churches. I am saying that the Neo-Calvinists downplay and change the definition of the word “love” because church discipline is so much cooler.

  75. @ Evie:

    It would be nice if all our comments passed an English exam. I don’t expect that on a blog, myself. If passing an English exam were the requirement for commenting on blogs, I fear it would suppress many voices. That would not be good. Unfortunately, I have seen blogs where only the hyper educated are welcome to comment. Others are ignored or dismissed.

  76. Wade wrote:
    “Now I know that most Christian teachers try to make you think that you are nothing but a worm; a vile, wretched sinner that causes God to want to puke when He thinks of you. I know that the institutional church has sought to ingrain within you a feeling that you must perform to get God to like you.”

    Thanks for addressing this. We’ve lived in several different places and I’ve been in churches over the years where Christians would talk about how they were such sinful, wretched people and they struggled with how God could love them. I used to think there was something wrong with me because I never felt like that and I would second guess myself, wondering if perhaps I was SUPPOSED to feel like that.

    When I became a Christian, I felt overwhelmed with the love of God. And after I had children of my own, I especially felt like I had my eyes opened to how much God loves me. I think about how much I love my kids and how as a human, my love is so imperfect. I knew if God loved me with a perfect love that he must think I’m AWESOME.

    As for what you (Wade) wrote about loving ourselves, I haven’t really thought about that, so I’ll have to mull that around in my head for awhile.

  77. If: God is love–biblical statement; note the verb

    Then: it is not possible to have too much love.

    It is entirely possible, however, to fail to understand what love is. It seems to me that, in these comments, there are various understandings of what love is, and that is part of the basis for various disagreements.

    Of course, love is whatever God says it is, based on His own self-revelation as being love. But we have tried to jerk the word and the concept away from Him and define it however we want it to be. The result is that we can’t agree, at this point, to even “speak the same language” about love.

    We have a long way to go yet, babeee!

  78. @ JeffB: thank you. those lines made me cringe; similar ideas have been used for well over a thousand years to justify anti-semitism.

    Many people I grew up with (in my neighborhood) still suffered discrimination and verbal attacks due to such thinking. And some of my HS friends were children of Holocaust survivors.

    I wish this whole argument had been phrased differently, and I even wish it had not been posted here.

  79. Ken wrote:

    A gospel that denies the sinfulness of man (even if it doesn’t use that jargon which may be fair enough if you want to be sensitive to what unbelievers can actually understand) has to be another and false gospel.

    The Devil sends temptations in matched opposing pairs, so in fleeing one we embrace the other.”
    — either C.S.Lewis or G.K.Chesterton

  80. n.b.: I cannot abide “replacement” theology, and believe it comes from profound misunderstandings of/prejudice against Jews and Judaism.

    I am frankly dismayed by such bald statements about God casting anyone aside, especially given the horrific record of wrongs committed against Jewish people by so-called xtians.

    It all reminds me of Bob Dylan’s song With God on our Side.

  81. Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

    The Devil sends temptations in matched opposing pairs, so in fleeing one we embrace the other.”
    – either C.S.Lewis or G.K.Chesterton

    Whilst waiting to meet my daughter at the school gate today, and pondering God’s provision as distinct from “prosperity teaching”, the following occurred to me:
    As often as not, the devil gets two deceptions for the price of one, because we think embracing one extreme will protect us from the other.

    Posterity will judge whether mine’s better.

    (Well – it could happen..!)

  82. linda wrote:

    One of the things the agency stressed to us back when we were adopting special needs/abused ones was this: acting out CAN be just what it sounds like. Tantrums, stealing, drinking, drugging, illicit sex, fighting, hitting, cussing, etc. OR it can be quiet despair, depression, illness, all the symptoms of “poor little old me.” Pop psych says those folks, either the active or quiet, don’t love themselves enough. Real psychs say nope, they are showing self love that due to horrific circumstances may have become excessive in order to survive. They wouldn’t even try to cope unless they had some degree of self love. So the task at hand is to teach them HEALTHY ways of coping. In the case of abused kids, learning it is ok to run from physical abuse, to report physical/emotion/sexual abuse, to scream no at the top of their lungs, etc, is key. They have to learn to cope with situations since we cannot ALL be 100% safe 100% of the time. But they have (and we adults have!)to learn to cope in a healthy

    This is appalling! If someone, especially an abused child, is showing despair, depression, or illness, a real psychologist will never call those things symptoms of ‘poor little old me.’ Psychologists have empathy. They will work with social workers to find those children a safe home and then they will work with the children and the caregivers so that the children will feel safe, which is the foundation for normal child development. They will never call this excessive self love; there aren’t any psychological theories based on this concept at all. They will work with the child to develop self esteem and effective ways to communicate.

  83. numo wrote:

    I cannot abide “replacement” theology, and believe it comes from profound misunderstandings of/prejudice against Jews and Judaism.

    I just got in and heard your message. I am going to disagree on this one. Lots of things can be used for evil, this included. The Inquisition and the Crusades were horrible. And as you know, I love all people, no matter race, religion, etc.

    Simple replacement theology is this. Until Jesus, God’s chosen people were the Jews and the very few who converted to the Jewish faith like Rahab. The rest of the human race were on the outs. When Jesus came, that changed. Now all mankind would be chosen if they believed in the Messiah.

    Before I continue, this is not meant to be a treatise on the salvation of those who never heard about Jesus/God. I am like John Stott, optimistic in that area. I want to focus on replacement theology.

    The early church was made up of converted Jews.In fact, the apostles had to be given a kick in the rear end to evangelize the Gentiles since some of them believed that Jesus had come primarily for His chosen people.

    So, in fact, early on, Christianity was considered a Jewish sect. But Jesus turned that upside down. Now the chosen people were those who followed Jesus who was, of course, Jewish.

    Now all mankind has the opportunity to come to Him. God replaced a small group of insiders with the possibility of the entirety of humanity coming to him. (For our Reformed friends-I know you believe in predestination-I am not there at this point).

    Replacement, then, is replacing one small group of people with the entire world-people from every tribe, tongue and nation. Jews are welcome into this group as anybody else.

    Any Christian should never, ever interpret Scripture as condoning the persecution of the Jews or any other people group. Racism is any form is disgusting.

  84. @ Marsha:

    Is there anybody on here who is actually a PsyD with clinical experience in this matter who can speak to this issue?

  85. JeffB wrote:

    God has not divorced Israel. Pastor Burleson’s message is good, but he is incorrect when he says that God “divorced” the Hebrews.

    But, in some respects He has done this with a caveat. One no longer is a child of Go simply because of the correct blood line. Now, God says all mankind can come to him. He is no longer devoted to His chosen race, the Jews. He is devoted to all of mankind.

    The Jews have the same opportunity that the rest of mankind has-accept Jesus as Messiah. We are all now the Bride of Christ-not just the Jews. So, in some respects, they do not have the same standing as before-they are not the chosen people now. Those who follow Christ are the chosen ones.

  86. Nancy wrote:

    @ Marsha:

    Is there anybody on here who is actually a PsyD with clinical experience in this matter who can speak to this issue?

    I hope so. I have a bachelor’s in psychology and a Ph. D. In sociology.

  87. @ linda:
    That is narcissism the symptoms of a sociopath. Love do not describe these perversions of health. How can one love too much? 1 Corinthians 13 well defines what love is.

  88. @ Dee:
    Which doesn’t quite work with Paul’s message in the closing chapter of Romans, about gentiles being branches that are grafted in, rather than being the roots, trunk and all of the branches, does it?

    The exclusivity of supercessationism/”replacement” theology started *after* the church went from being primarily Jewish-gentile to almost entirely gentile. Some pretty weird things began to happen immediately, in order to supposedly justify the innate superiority of those who professed belief in Christ. Jews became hated, feared and oppressed.

    I challenge you to read good studies of anti-semitism in Western history and *not* see the direct link between so-called replacement theology and anti-semitism within the church/so-called “xtian” countries. It’s still a major thread within large parts of Eastern xtianity (especially in Russia, fwiw). And it’s on the rise again via neo-fascist movements in Greece, Russia, Poland and Hungary, to name just a few. (The Hungarian extremists are also extremely anti-Roma.)

    I cannot accept the explanations that Wade gives. Nor can I fully agree with your statements above. Keep in mind that I come from a church tradition whose founder produced one of THE most horrible anti-semitic screeds ever (Luther’s “On the Jews and their Lies”), which has been wholly repudiated by my synod (ELCA) and by a number of other Lutheran synods, both here and in Europe. The German fascists used huge parts of Luther’s writing wholesale – it even prefigured Kristallnacht and other atrocities.

  89. @ Dee:
    The early church was made up of converted Jews.

    Made up *of Jews* is more accurate. They were not “converted” to anything at that point; I doubt any of them would have viewed themselves as being “converted” in the sense that evangelicalism and much other xtianity uses it, not even Paul – maybe *especially* not Paul, who saw himself as being fully Jewish, with a belief in Jesus as Messiah.

    The big thing isn’t “conversion,” it’s belief that Christ is the Redeemer of *all* people – as Paul says, first the Jews, then the Greeks (Samaritans, Scythians, et. al.).

    I think it takes spending some time in real dialogue with Jewish people – plus maybe some study of Judaica – to get where I am coming from. If one has lived in a gentile world and not heard another side of this, it’s easy to embrace “replacement” theology. Spend some time in that world, and it will change the way I think, I guarantee it. (fwiw, I am not a fan of most American xtian attempts at philo-semitism, because I believe them to be wrongheaded and very often profoundly anti-semitic, underneath all the window-dressing and many words. Am not a political Zionist, either, but I absolutely *cannot* accept the statements about God’s supposed “divorce” of the Jewish people, etc.)

    Have you ever considered asking someone with a scholarly background in this – Jewish and/or xtian, or both – to write about it all? Might be something for the future, because if there is one group of people who have been abused by the church, it’s the Jews. (Since a little after A.D. 300, and especially after Constantine drafted xtianity into being a part of the state machinery of the Roman Empire.)

    The book Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, a History by James Carroll (who is Catholic) is a good starting point for anyone wishing to start looking into this – but I really do mean “starting point.” A comprehensive history of xtian anti-semitism would be a many-volume work.

  90. @ numo: err, should be “change the way you think,” not “I.”

    This much I’ll admit: my upbringing was somewhat unconventional, for all that I was/am Lutheran. 😉

  91. numo wrote:

    Made up *of Jews* is more accurate. They were not “converted” to anything at that point;

    According to Paul they had converted. There was the martyrdom of Stephen who was a Hellenistic Jew who followed Christ. Paul( Saul) was there for his stoning because this was heresy. The followers of Christ were not considered part of the Jewish faith any longer.

    So, if you don’t like the word “converted” just substitute any word that means no longer recognized by Jewish leaders as being part of Judaism.

    As for being anti-semitic, my beliefs in this area are not anti-semitic. That people misused them for their evil intent is wrong.

  92. linda wrote:

    Real psychs say nope, they are showing self love that due to horrific circumstances may have become excessive in order to survive. They wouldn’t even try to cope unless they had some degree of self love.

    But these are not “real psychs”. For one thing, they confuse self-love with self-preservation and that is a rather fundamental concept in the field.

    One might become psychotic to preserve life yet also hate one’s self. The voices in many a schizophrenic’s head are packed full of self-hate.

    One might become so dissociated that the world becomes far far away and the body is literally numb. It is an involuntary defense set up purely for endurance. People who dissociate in such ways are also dissociating from the self who they see as also corrupt.

    These counselors are incorrect and they do a lot of damage because of it. They need to study their field, and not set themselves up as qualified because they oppose “pop psych” which is always silly and shallow, as is also “pop theology”, “pop music”, “pop science”, etc.

  93. linda

    I don’t know if you understand depressed people/ codependents don’t intentionally ruminate on themselves. Maybe you’re just wording things strangely or something.

    All I know is that during all the years I used to have depression and codependency, having each/both condition depicted as willful sin and deliberate self-focus (as though I’m on the level of a narcissist) did not help me – it did more damage.

    I learned to get past both the depression and codependency by accepting certain truths, not by “thinking about Jesus more” type rhetoric, but other means.

    I did not enjoy having depression or codependency and did not want to be stuck in either mode, which is why I continually sought treatment and read a lot of related literature on both by counselors and psychologists.

    I even read Christian material about depression/codependency, but a lot of the Christian material was very victim-blaming, or gave simplistic advice, some of it similar to some of the things you were saying in your earlier post.

  94. Dee wrote:

    numo wrote:

    I just got in and heard your message. I am going to disagree on this one. Lots of things can be used for evil, this included. The Inquisition and the Crusades were horrible. And as you know, I love all people, no matter race, religion, etc.

    Simple replacement theology is this. Until Jesus, God’s chosen people were the Jews and the very few who converted to the Jewish faith like Rahab. The rest of the human race were on the outs. When Jesus came, that changed. Now all mankind would be chosen if they believed in the Messiah.

    Before I continue, this is not meant to be a treatise on the salvation of those who never heard about Jesus/God. I am like John Stott, optimistic in that area. I want to focus on replacement theology.

    The early church was made up of converted Jews.In fact, the apostles had to be given a kick in the rear end to evangelize the Gentiles since some of them believed that Jesus had come primarily for His chosen people.

    So, in fact, early on, Christianity was considered a Jewish sect. But Jesus turned that upside down. Now the chosen people were those who followed Jesus who was, of course, Jewish.

    Now all mankind has the opportunity to come to Him. God replaced a small group of insiders with the possibility of the entirety of humanity coming to him. (For our Reformed friends-I know you believe in predestination-I am not there at this point).

    Replacement, then, is replacing one small group of people with the entire world-people from every tribe, tongue and nation. Jews are welcome into this group as anybody else.

    Any Christian should never, ever interpret Scripture as condoning the persecution of the Jews or any other people group. Racism is any form is disgusting.

    Dee,

    That, kind diva, is one heck of a theological treatise!

    And I could not agree more with your last sentence. A true Christian loves a Christ-rejecting Jewish neighbor as he loves himself, for a Christian is overwhelmed with the love of God (that’s the point of the post). To reject the biblical truth that God divorced Old Covenant Israel (see Jeremiah 3:8) on the basis is leads to anti-Semitism is a red herring. No Christians rejects any human being on the basis of race. God divorced the Jews because they broke their covenant with Him (see Jeremiah 31:31-32).

  95. linda wrote:

    OR it can be quiet despair, depression, illness, all the symptoms of “poor little old me.”

    Depression is not a case of “poor little old me.” I can tell from that characterization alone you don’t truly grasp depression or what it’s like to have clinical depression.

    I would not even classify illness or despair as “poor little old me” issues.

  96. @ dee: I did not intend to imply any antisemitism on your part, Dee. But keep in mind that Bible translators make word choices for many reasons; further, that “converted” as used and understood in American evangelical circles is more than likely *not* what Paul had in mind!

    Plus, there’s still the conundrum of that big argument he makes about gentiles in the closing chapters of Romans, and that he certainly hints at elsewhere.

    I would bet that conversion has to – in the ancient Mediterranean context – have a great deal to do with belief in one God rather than many, and *then* in Jesus as Messiah (where gentiles are concerned, at least). And I highly doubt Paul and the other writers could have imagined their little band being turned into the state religion of the Roman Empire and of subsequent states! That changed SO much about.out the character and practice of xtianity, and not for the better, imo.

  97. @ Marsha:

    Depression is not even coping, I don’t know who told her that. Depressed people often stay in bed all day, with the blankets pulled up to their ears, shades drawn. Some depressed people commit suicide, as one friend of mine did several years ago.

    It’s sort of the absence of coping, it’s avoidance.

    Codependents are the same way. They are afraid to confront people and be assertive, so they almost always avoid people altogether and/or avoid arguments and disagreements if having to deal with people.

    Depression and codependency are not manifestations of “self love.” They’re the opposite – the person lacks self love and self acceptance. It’s very twisted to teach it’s the opposite.

  98. @ Wade Burleson: I think it is super-important to see where those “divorce” quotes are used, and their context – in the writings of the prophets prior to/during the Exile.

    A lot of Jewish people ultimately went back, under Persian rule, and I cannot in ANY sense accept those texts as being some kind of permanent decree regarding God and the Jewish people.

    Do you remember, back in the 70s, when one of the heads of the SBC literally said “God does not hear the prayer of a Jew?” That was, rightly, the cause of a great real of outcry. As for whose prayers God hears, I suspect he sees and knows the thoughts and intentions of all people, and that ethnicity and an individual’s professed beliefs matter little, compared to what is in their (our) hearts and minds.

  99. @ Dee:

    I think she meant Protestant Christians who have a system of belief called “Replacement Theology” whose adherents believe that God rejected Israel, and all the Old Testament promises to Israel now go to Christians (the Church).

    What is replacement theology?

  100. @ dee: Paul was also a very Hellenized Jew, from a cosmopolitan port city that was a Greek colony, and learned in Greek thought and lit as well as in current rabbinical thought.

    I think that xtianity was viewed as a Jewish sect for quite some time – certainly by gentile Roman writers, if not by some Jews as well. It was not the 1st messianic movement, nor was it by any means the last. Keep in mind that there was an intense belief in Messiah on the part of many (then as now), but the *understanding* of who that will be and what his role will be was and is different in Judaism and xtianity. The claim that Christ is God as well as human is one of the big sticking points, then and still.

  101. @ numo:

    Maybe I was wrong, but it seemed to me perhaps Dee had never heard of it before, not realizing that it’s an actual thang, a school of thought, not a term you made up in your post.

    Replacement Theology gets into Bible prophecy and such.

    My prophecy views still lean toward pre trib, futurist, pre-mil, dispensationalist, and other Christians who share those views also usually are very pro-Zionist and do not like Replacement Theology at all.

    The pre mil, pre trib, dispensationalist view is that God still has plans for Israel (Jewish people who have not accepted Christ), that God has not completely turned His back on them.

    I still believe that the New Testament teaches that all humanity must come though Christ to be saved, however, and that includes Jewish people, but God still cares for Israel.

    (There are some Christians today who subscribe to the idea that Jews don’t need Jesus at all because God still is into his Covenant with them, so they don’t believe that Christians should witness to Jews.)

    It’s always interesting to hear Jews who do accept Jesus to hear of how they viewed Jesus, Christians and Christianity prior to.

  102. @ Dee:
    Dee, I’ve not heard of “replacement theology” until today. Why, if Christ’s work broadened the promises to the entire world, is it called “replacement”? Why wouldn’t it be, I don’t know, ummm, expansion or amplification or inclusion theology?

    The “entire world” can’t supplant a small group in that world, but does include it.

    Moreover, I would be mortified to think that I’m replacing a small group of humans because God divorced them. If God did that to them, there is no hope for such as me, who am just like them. Shifting from correct blood lines to “All God’s Children” has nothing to do with divorce, a term that describes relational collapse and breaking apart.

    I know you believe as I do on this, but I think the formal terms are dubious.

  103. @ Daisy: I am not exactly a fan of attempts to convert Jewish people, *especially* because few who do it have any idea of how xtianity has persecuted and oppressed and killed Jews in the name of Jesus. Any dialogue has to start with a clear realization of that, and of why attempts to convert people are so deeply offensive and painful. And a recognition of Judaism as a religion in its own right is also crucial.

    I think replacement theology has been around in one firm or another ever since the church was recognized by the Roman state; probably began much earlier. But you’re absolutely correct about the sense in which I was using the term, which ius where Wade appears to be coming from. (The church as the “new Israel,” etc.)

  104. Patrice wrote:

    Why wouldn’t it be, I don’t know, ummm, expansion or amplification or inclusion theology?

    It is now different. Back in the OT, you were born into the Jewish faith and were therefore, by virtue of birth, a member of the chosen people. The New Covenant replaces the Old in which all people, not by virtue of birth but by virtue of faith can become a member of the chosen people.

    You are no longer “born” into the faith by virtue of DNA. There is no DNA based chosen people. That has been replaced by an offer to all of mankind to become a member of the chosen people by faith alone in Jesus Christ.

    That offer extends to all people, including the Jewish people who were formerly chosen by virtue of DNA. In fact, salvation is no longer racially based but faith based.

    So, in no way does the New Covenant resemble the Old Covenant since the choosing is done differently. The new way replaces the old way and for that I am grateful.

    Also, the new way is called “The Bride of Christ.” All those chosen people who had gone on before are in heaven. We shall see Moses, Joshua, David, etc.

    However, the old way had to be supplanted in order for Christ to have His bride the church which is chosen in a completely new way.

    No one is deliberately left behind. Everyone now must choose for Christ or not. It is a level playing field.

  105. Mk@ dee: if the old cov is superseded, then why does the writer of Hebrews refer to Christ being the surety of a *better* covenant, I wonder?

    Still musing on Paul’s comparing gentiles who were part of the very early church to branches from wild olive trees being grafted onto *the* tree of Judaism…

  106. @ numo: “better” as in “good, better, best.” I wonder about meanings in the Greek here, and what is being translated as “better.”

  107. Discussion about the Abrahamic covenant is seriously important now, what with the happenings in the middle east, because people need to know what they think about the promise of the land to the descendants of Abraham. As in, who, at this time, constitute the descendants of Abraham? As in, is the entire covenant null and void? If the Abrahamic covenant is no longer valid, except perhaps in some spiritual sense, then when the middle east explodes, where do we stand–as a nation and as individuals?

    I have a feeling that we all are going to have to research this as much as possible and come to some opinion. In the meantime, it seems to me that there are well thought out and strongly held opinions on both sides of the argument.

  108. @ dee: do you truly think there is “no resemblance” at all? If so, then it is all too easy to make the argument that the God of the OT is, in fact, not the same as the God of the NT.

    But if, as Patrice (and, I also believe, Paul) said, it is a further continuation of – an expansion of – God’s love as seen in his care for the people of Israel, then the focus shifts. Perhaps were talking about the same picture viewed from differing angles? God’s people are God’s people, then and now. If God does not change in his fundamental nature, then I think it is very much a case of inclusion, as Patrice said, and as Paul said in a number of his general epistles.

  109. @ Nancy: I don’t personally believe that the primary focus is whether or not the modern state of Israel is some kind of fulfillment of prophecy, but what it is about God’s love – and his covenants – that does not change.

    Paul stated in Romans that the gifts and call of God are irrevocable (in attempting to clarify a number of points to gentiles who were part of the church in Rome in his day). He argues that case pretty strongly, I’d say!

  110. Men and women of the OT (Jews or Gentiles) were counted righteous by their faith in God, and this was before the Messiah. Their faith was counted as righteousness.

    Faith in God seems to be the common factor that crosses both the Old and New Testaments and Covenants.

  111. @ dee:
    I see. Well, then it might be better called transformation or renovation theology or something. There are deep traces running from the Old to New Covenant. God spent a lot of energy in relationship with a particular group of humans and the bulk of the OT is about that. It has pertinence, yet.

    There is a supplanting of OT law by Christ’s act, showing us that the living hinge of all those old laws is love: loving God above all and neighbor as self. But even here, it’s not a divorce but a superceding through love’s ultimate action, which is opposite of divorce, ISTM.

    I distrust those terms, that’s all. I don’t think they are accurate descriptions of what I see in your words.

  112. @ numo:

    Well, regardless of historical and/or theological and/or what should or should not be some primary focus and regardless of whatever Paul did/did not mean by this or that–all of which is at some level important, the current situation is what it is and that situation will not change just because we had rather not deal with it. Some doctrinal position, whatever it may be, will not make this current problem go away. “They” believe it is their land based on that part of the Abrahamic covenant. The fact that they believe that, regardless of whether or not other people believe it, is hugely significant right now in the wold situation.

    I am just saying that each person needs to inform themselves of the multitude of opinions and arguments and form some sort of opinion that person can live with during potentially difficult times. Personally, I have one child in the National Guard. If he goes off to war, I sure want to be straight in my own mind whether or not I think the cause is just. What parent would not? And whether or not I think this or that is just depends on what I think the answer is to the issue of the Abrahamic covenant as regards the people and the land.

    And no, we will never all agree. This may well be brother against brother as we had in the mid nineteenth century. People just about don’t get over that when it happens. I do not want to see that happen.

  113. dee wrote:

    That offer extends to all people, including the Jewish people who were formerly chosen by virtue of DNA. In fact, salvation is no longer racially based but faith based.

    If you think about it, that was even true for the Jewish people in the Old Testament. Paul said guys like Abraham were justified by faith.

    Also, there were Gentile people like Rahab in the Old Testament who were accepted by God on the basis of faith.

    Luke 3:8
    John the Baptist speaking:

    … And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.

  114. @ Patrice:
    In the end, I am not hanging my hat on the way I see things at this time. All theories are open to change. Plus, I believe there will be all sorts of surprises in heaven.

  115. dee wrote:

    Plus, I believe there will be all sorts of surprises in heaven.

    Oh, yeah. And not just surprises—answers. I am so ready for lots and lots of answers.

  116. dee wrote:

    @ Patrice:
    I believe there will be all sorts of surprises in heaven.

    Oh yeah! And won’t it be fun because it’ll all be exactly right and even more wonderful than our best imaginings. Sooo looking forward to it!

  117. @ Nancy: but not all Israelis believe that God has done that. The seriously hard line people who believe settlements are right and that they have the absolute right to displace the people who are still living in what the term “Judea and Samaria” do, though. By which they mean all Arabs (Muslim and xtian) and also the tiny remaining Samaritan community that worships at Mt. Gerezim. A few years ago, a book by an ultra-right wing rabbi who claimed that it is permissible to even kill the infants of non-Jews gained a *lot* of traction, and caused no small amount of noutcry (both for and against). The state there is a mosaic, not homogeneous (except in its insistence that no gentile can gain full citizenship) by any means.

    I grew up in a very pro-Zionist climate; many of my views have changed since then (per political Zionism, that is). It is a separate issue, at least as far as the Zionist movement is concerned, though goodness knows, there have been plenty of gentile supporters from the get-go. Their reasons for claiming to support Israel (as a political entity) have historically been all over the place, though.

    This is complicated stuff – and you know, most of the Orthodox who live in Israel are *not* Zionists, even though they (quite ironically) benefit greatly from living in a Jewish state. Their children are even exempted from military seerrvice, which is compulsory for all other Israelis.

  118. @ Daisy: yep. Plus one of the big early controversies, per Acts, was whether gentiles who professed faith in Jesus as Messiah had to convert to Judaism, observe Jewish laws (dietary and otherwise), etc.

    Paul is always emphatic about salvation being “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek [gentile].” He also unequivocally states that “salvation isj from the Jews.”

    How carefully people started proof-texting during the early centuries of the church! It’s as if all the many passages that I’m alluding to just weren’t there. For many, they still aren’t.

  119. First of all, I was mistaken when I wrote that God had not divorced Israel. What I meant was that the divorce was not final. God will re-marry Israel in the future.

    It is legitimate to use these terms because one of the symbolic illustrations of Israel is as the Wife of God (or Wife of Yahweh). Among other things, Deut. can be seen as a marriage contract between God and Israel. As the church is the Bride of Christ (Jewish and Gentile believers), Israel is the Wife of Yahweh.

    I don’t have the time to cite the passages, but, as the Wife, Israel was unfaithful to her Husband. This led to separation, divorce, and punishment. In the future will be re-marriage. This necessitates a new contract, the New Covenant, based on the shed blood of Jesus. There seems to be a present and future aspect of this covenant, the present concerning individual believers (Jews and Gentiles), and the future concerning a time when all Israel shall know God (cf. Rom 11:26-27).

    There are so many passages in Scripture concerning the restoration of Israel (for instance, passages in Jer. 30-33), that I do not understand why so many people insist that God is through with Israel. Mr. Burleson writes: “God divorced the Jews because they broke their covenant with Him (see Jeremiah 31:31-32).” But that passage says this: “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, *“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,* not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. (My emphasis) Why does he mention the breaking of the old covenant but not the making of the new?

    Actually, I think I do understand. It’s probably the belief in supercessionism, or Replacement Theology. (Note: This is NOT synonymous with anti-Semitism, though, of course, it’s possible that some supercessionists are anti-Semites.) This is the belief that all of the promises made by God to Israel are now fulfilled in the church because Israel is no longer part of God’s plan. (At least, the blessings are transferred. The church is reluctant to claim the curses.)

    Briefly, Israel, beginning in Genesis, was given two types of promises: Spiritual ones and physical ones. Some of the spiritual were meant to be shared with Gentiles; the physical ones, such as promises of land, were for Israel only. Supercessionists, by means of allegorical interpretations, believe that all of them have been appropriated by the church. For instance, physical promises have been “spiritualized” as promises for the church.

    To my knowledge, supercessionists have never believed that, before Jesus, only Jews could be saved, and only on the basis of being Jews; and, after Jesus, both Jews and Gentiles could be saved by faith. Abraham was the model for individuals being saved by faith only (Gen 15:6).

    Ask Christians: “To whom or what was the New Covenant given?” At least 9 out of 10 times, the answer will probably be: “The church.” Wayne Grudem, in his Systematic Theology, after discussing Jer 31:31-34 (as quoted in Heb 8:8-10), writes: “Here the author quotes the Lord’s promise that he will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and *with the house of Judah,* and says that this is the new covenant that has now been made *with the church.* That new covenant is the covenant of which believers in the church are now members. It seems hard to avoid the conclusion that the author views the church as the true Israel of God in which the Old Testament promises to Israel find their fulfillment.” (His emphases; p. 862)

    Huh? Where in the text does it say that? Nowhere. His emphases seem to imply that the House of Judah has become the church. But there’s nothing to back that up.

    God makes it clear in Deut. 7:6-8 that He did not choose Israel because it was great in number; actually, it was the fewest in number. He would show His strength through its weakness. There was nothing intrinsically special about Israel or its people. However, God’s favor to Gentiles was rooted in His covenant with Abraham (Gen 12:3), and His blessings through Jesus for Gentiles (and Jews) are rooted in His covenant with Israel and Judah. Even if we don’t understand it all, let’s at least be faithful to what the Bible says.

  120. @ JeffB: I appreciate your thoughtful reply.

    If you read way back in church history, earlier versions of contemporary replacement theology *did,* in fact, serve as a pretext for the spread of antisemitism within the church. John Chrysostom, a notable Byzantine divine, was one of the first people to preach antisemitism openly. (He was, imo, also extremely misogynistic, and his writings on both Jewish people and women are very painful reading.)

    As for the context of the passage from Jeremiah, it is so closely related to the Babylonian conquest and subsequent exile that I believe it is very important to look at it and its appearance in Jeremiah in light of the entire book plus other related prophets and the historic books of the OT. I’ll be the 1st to acknowledge my own lack of comprehension here, though, as I find it very difficult to read Jeremiah and Ezekiel and have never made it all the way through either book. The judgemernt imagery (and the strangeness of much of Ezekiel) are awfully tough going.

    I wonder, though, about the marriage imagery in re both the covenant at Sinai and the new covenant. In the Pentateuch, the Sinai segments follow the Exodus so closely that I think they emphasize God as deliverer, as well as the One God who judges the false gods of Egypt and, by extension, other nations. There is no bethrothal imagery that I can see – that seems to come from much later, in times immediately prior to the Exile as well as during the Exile.

    Honestly, I’m at a loss to understand where this idea comes from in evangelicalism, as it is something I never encountered during my own years in that territory, and it is no it, to the best of my knowledge, taught in the Lutheran synod that I belong to. However, it *might* be something that comes up in some Jewish mystical traditions, as well as in the Western church, though AFAIK, there was much more of an emphasis on bridal imagery as related to *individuals* there, during the medieval period.

    This discussion is making me want to do some research!

  121. @ JeffB: Well, some of us come from places where Wayne Grudem’s name would provoke quizzical looks… In fact, I betcha most American Protestants would draw a blank. I had never heard of him until I started reading this blog, though I’m probably not the best person to poll on such questions. (And am a sample size of one, anyway. 😉 )

  122. Nancy wrote:

    Oh, yeah. And not just surprises—answers. I am so ready for lots and lots of answers.

    Off topic a little, but… I too!

    One reason I’ve often struggled to fit in within some charismatic circles (much as I love being part of them) – I’m “trying to work it out in my intellect”, you see.

  123. @ Former CLC’er:
    It’s good that you were able to share what you have been learning about the grace of God with your friend. The pastor at the church I am in now pointed out that we can’t begin to extend God’s grace to others until we truly accept it ourselves, not in our heads as an intellectual proposition, but in our hearts and minds and lives. This post by Wade Burlesson also speaks to an area in my own life. For years, because Dad was physically and emotionally abusive, I subconsciously had the same view of God, and the fundamentalist preaching I heard confirmed that view. This article is one I will keep as a reminder when I need it.

  124. Bridget wrote:

    Men and women of the OT (Jews or Gentiles) were counted righteous by their faith in God, and this was before the Messiah. Their faith was counted as righteousness.
    Faith in God seems to be the common factor that crosses both the Old and New Testaments and Covenants.

    ……………………
    Agree. Not all entered the Promised Land either, even though they (collectively were regarded as the Chosen. Even in the Exodus it was not enough to have Jewish DNA to escape death. It was necessary for the Jew to put the lamb’s blood on the doorposts .
    Old or New Covenant, faith not DNA, is what brings salvation to the soul.

  125. @ Wade Burleson:

    Huh? God didn’t divorce the Jews. Jeremiah 31:3, which you cite says, “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…” And If you read to the end of the chapter the New Covenant promises the reconciliation of Israel to God forevermore to an unequivocal degree.

  126. Evie wrote:

    Ken, I think you’re still confused.

    Evie – I enjoyed reading that line. 🙂

    i) At the risk of repetition, my central argument is that there is no command to love ourselves. Love God, neighbour, and self make three commands and in Matt 22 Jesus said there are two commands – love God and neighbour. The mode of loving our neighbour is ‘as’ we love ourselves, this is assumed. To make this into a command to love ourselves is reading something into it that isn’t there.

    ii) There has also been discussion of how legitimate loving ourselves is in this context, and there are examples where this is legitimate. We should indeed look after ourselves, but the point Jesus is getting at is to direct this into action for others.

    iii) The discussion then moves on to self-love that is not legitimate, which I defined as putting me first. Far from being commanded, the NT writers tell us to deny ourselves. None of us like this language, but it’s there. The wheat falling into the ground is symbolic of Jesus’ death, which had to occur before the fruit of salvation could grow. If Jesus had been under a command to love himself, he could have spared himself the cross (“save me from this hour”), but the very definition of love in this context is putting the interests of others first. Similarly, we need to die to self.

    iv) We live in an age where the esteeming of self has produced a mind-bogglingly selfish society. This cult of self, aided and abetted by pop psychology, is not something the church should follow, but it is very deeply entrenched. The NT, however, is more honest and does not flatter us with what wonderful people we really are underneath.

    v) Unlike Luther, I do not live on a Diet of Worms, and am not into the false self-abasement of worm theology nor a devotee of miserable, po-faced Christianity, where no-one should ever be encouraged or built up, or smiling is a sign of apostacy.

    Confusion can come in where you are talking about point ii) and I am talking about point iii).

  127. @ numo:

    Thanks. I’ve appreciated all your comments on this thread.

    Yes, some of the church fathers could be pretty vicious concerning Jews. I believe Marcion was another one.

    I agree that Jer. and Ezek. are tough to plow through.

    Israel as Wife of Yahweh: Whether or not Deut. is written in the form of a marriage contract as well as an ancient treaty, the imagery of love, jealousy, and faithfulness in parts of Deut. 6 and 7, for instance, bespeak an intimate relationship between God and Israel. The imagery of Ezek. 16:8 is highly intimate. And the entire book of Hosea reveals God as a faithful husband and Israel as an unfaithful wife.

    The important thing, as you no doubt realize, is that the relationship between God and Israel in Scripture is too strong for God to cast her away forever. Especially when there are so many passages that say that this will not happen.

    AFAIK, though evangelicals are generally favorable toward Israel, they are relatively ignorant about Israel’s place in Scripture, and, frankly, about the Old Covenant itself. I am a Jew who had the advantage, shortly after becoming a believer, of becoming a member of a solid Messianic Congregation, where these things were taught.

    A book that RB recommended has also been helpful for me: Israelology: The Missing Link In Systematic Theology, by Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum.

    I mentioned Grudem because he’s an egregious example of someone who, despite being solid on so many doctrines, completely misses the mark on God’s future plans for Israel.

  128. Ken wrote:

    i) At the risk of repetition, my central argument is that there is no command to love ourselves.

    There may be not out right command, but the Bible assumes that you already do when it says “as yourself.”

  129. Loving oneself is assumed, as in feeding, clothing, housing, med care, etc., are assumed. And not harming oneself. So to love another as oneself is to see that the other is fed, clothed, housed, etc., if that is not otherwise happening. See also Matthew 25!

  130. Argo wrote:

    @ Wade Burleson:

    Huh? God didn’t divorce the Jews. Jeremiah 31:3, which you cite says, “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…” And If you read to the end of the chapter the New Covenant promises the reconciliation of Israel to God forevermore to an unequivocal degree.

    I don’t despise the Jews. I love them. God divorced the kingdom of Israel (the nation of Israel) and all that went the first “Covenant” He had with them (ceremonial laws, sacrificial laws, etc…) and entered into a NEW Covenant with Jews AND Gentiles. The Old Covenant involved only Hebrews and land (Canaan), the New Covenant involves Jews AND Gentiles and land (the earth, as in, “the meek will inherit the earth.”).

    All I’m saying is God loves the world, every tribe, kindred and tongue – not just Jews, and what God divorced Himself from is Israel as a nation. Israel is like any other nation today – accountable to natural law and laws of society and humanity.

    I cannot prevent anyone from alleging anti-Semitism when one believes the Old Covenant has ended, but I can sure stiffly challenge such ludicrous thinking.

    🙂

  131. Wade Burleson wrote:

    I don’t despise the Jews. I love them. God divorced the kingdom of Israel (the nation of Israel) and all that went the first “Covenant” He had with them (ceremonial laws, sacrificial laws, etc…) and entered into a NEW Covenant with Jews AND Gentiles.

    Yes.. Amen. The relationship changes.

    Again, He did not abandon or reject them (Rom. 11:2) but the relationship changed from one that mirrored a husband/wife mutual respect relationship to one on different terms. (the New Covenant) They must accept the relationship with the Savior on an individual basis and the relationship is offered to others (Gentiles) But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous.(Rom. 11:11

  132. Jeff B. writes: “First of all, I was mistaken when I wrote that God had not divorced Israel. What I meant was that the divorce was not final. God will re-marry Israel in the future.”

    Let me give an illustration that I believe will help people understand why I believe the above statement by Jeff is illogical. The writer of Hebrews tells us that the Law (the Old Covenant between God and Israel) was a “shadow of the good things to come” (that is, a ‘shadow’ of the New Covenant between God and the world). To say that God “divorced” Israel (and the covenant He had with them), but will remarry Israel (in the future), means that Jeff believes God will ordain the reestablishment of the Temple, reconstitute the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament, and sanction the Feasts and Festivals and every other ordinance of the LAW (the Old Covenant) once again!

    Yet, the Jesus Himself told us that He came to fulfill the Law – every jot and tittle. In His birth, life, death and resurrection Jesus fulfilled EVERYTHING about the Law- Passover, Tabernacles, the Sheaf of first fruits, the Feast of Trumpets, the animal sacrifices, the Temple rituals, etc….—so that now the believer “rests” in Christ through faith. To go back to the Old Covenant (God remarrying Israel) and believe that God will reinstitute the shadow (the Law) when the Substance (Jesus Christ) has “made the Law obsolete and caused it to disappear” (Hebrews 8:13) is, for lack of a better term, logically absurd.

    For God to “remarry Israel” and reestablish the Old Covenant Law would be like me going to the airport to greet my wife after a long absence, see her walk down the hall toward me, and then pull out my BILLFOLD, take out her PICTURE, and KISS THE DANG PICTURE! 🙂

    When dispensationalists try to tell us that God is all about “remarrying” Israel, we lose the power of Christ’s person by pulling out the Old Testament Law WHICH PICTURES CHRIST and embrace that again rather than kissing Christ Himself!

    Just my opinion! 🙂

  133. @ Argo: Well, he had assumed when younger that Jewish people would flock to the church once it had been freed of many of the problems that brought about the Reformation in the 1st place. As an older man, he turned very bitterly against them, in part because they didn’t convert, as he’d naively assumed they would.

  134. By the way, God is not through with the Jew (Romans 11). He’s through with Israel as a Kingdom. The eternal Kingdom is a kingdom where every believer is a “priest” unto God (male and female) composing a “royal priesthood”, a chosen nation of every ethnicity (JEWS and Gentiles), and a lawgiver named Jesus – who writes His Royal Law of love on our hearts, not ordinances in stone. 🙂

  135. @ Wade Burleson:

    Wade,

    I never have, not would I ever consider you an anti-Semite. Goodness…I apologize if that’s what you took from my comment.

    I was simply disputing your interpretation of Jeremiah 31:31-32.

  136. @ JeffB: the thing to keep in mind is that is *is* imagery – one way of picturing the relationship between Israel and God, but by no means the only image of same presented in the OT.

    Also, keep in mind that the 10 commandments starts with “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” His role as deliverer from bondage (in this case, literal servitude) is made very clear, right upfront.

  137. BTW, millions of Jews have found the Messiah worldwide. They don’t refer to themselves as God’s wife to my knowledge.

    Rom 11:14 if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them.

    Paul responds to apparent objections by the Jews that God had not rejected them. Paul, himself, is proof that He has not abandoned them as he has found mercy in the Savior.

    Rom 11:1 I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
    Rom 11:2 God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew

  138. @ JeffB: Thanks for the book rec, etc.! While not a believer in systematic theology as such, I’ll look for this title.

    btw, Walter Brueggemann [sp?] has written some excellent books on the OT (intro/survey type things) that might be something readers here would want to look into. Am not saying that he’s got the last word on this by *any* means, but he’s good, and he focuses (in part) on overarching themes in the OT – most especially God’s covenant and his love (hesed, I guess, is one of the words for it?)

    Also, my apologies for forgetting that you’re Jewish! I did know that, but was drawing a blank on that yesterday.

    Marcion: yeah, though I’d need to go back and double-check. His name certainly rings that particular bell, but again, I’m foggy on details.

  139. Wade Burleson wrote:

    and believe that God will reinstitute the shadow (the Law) when the Substance (Jesus Christ) has “made the Law obsolete and caused it to disappear” (Hebrews 8:13) is, for lack of a better term, logically absurd.

    I’m not sure that won’t happened, Wade, but it won’t be sanctioned or ordained by God. It may be the effort of Orthodox Jews who reject Jesus as the Messiah and still believe the OT system (the shadow) is the way to obtain God’s blessings and forgiveness.

  140. @ Wade Burleson: Wade, I think you just attributed a whole lot of things to JeffB without knowing what he really believes.

    Probably not the best way to go about this discussion, especially since he is Jewish and has a different take than you do. (Which is cool; we all have differing perspectives here, coming from diverse backgrounds as we do.)

    I still think we will have to agree to disagree; further, I *do* believe that the view of the church as the New Israel has, in many ways, opened the floodgates for a whole lot of anti-semitic beliefs and actions on the part of xtians post-300 A.D. (give or take some decades either way). I also think you are according an incredibly outsize amount of importance to a short (though admittedly powerful) passage from Jeremiah, without putting it into the overall context of that book and of contemporaneous writings. My view is that you are mistaken in so doing, and I think it is a very important thing, but … that’s just my view. I don’t expect to convince anyone via what I write here, or anywhere else on the internet, for that matter. 🙂

  141. numo wrote:

    especially since he is Jewish and has a different take than you do.

    I was unaware of that numo. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Wade has implied that the church is the new Israel or aligned himself with Replacement theology. Nor have I. For my part, I’m simply sharing my understanding of Bible history from the Genesis prophecy of a Savior to the NT fulfillment along with it’s implications as I see them.

    My sincere apologies if I have offended anyone by providing it.

  142. numo wrote:

    @ Wade Burleson: Wade, I think you just attributed a whole lot of things to JeffB without knowing what he really believes.

    Probably not the best way to go about this discussion, especially since he is Jewish and has a different take than you do. (Which is cool; we all have differing perspectives here, coming from diverse backgrounds as we do.)

    I still think we will have to agree to disagree; further, I *do* believe that the view of the church as the New Israel has, in many ways, opened the floodgates for a whole lot of anti-semitic beliefs and actions on the part of xtians post-300 A.D. (give or take some decades either way). I also think you are according an incredibly outsize amount of importance to a short (though admittedly powerful) passage from Jeremiah, without putting it into the overall context of that book and of contemporaneous writings. My view is that you are mistaken in so doing, and I think it is a very important thing, but … that’s just my view. I don’t expect to convince anyone via what I write here, or anywhere else on the internet, for that matter.

    Numo, I understand. I have no problem agreeing to disagree. If you sense a firmness in my writing on this issue, it is only in response to a written conjecture by a couple in this forum that any view that “God divorced Israel” and ended the Old Covenant (which is precisely and explicitly taught in Scripture) leads to anti-Semitism. I appreciate Argo’s acknowledgement that this is not what he was implying. Thanks for your words as well.

    I would love to hear Jeff chime in and tell me if I misrepresented his views in my comment (i.e. that God one day in the future will lead the Jews to rebuild the Temple, that God one day in the future will sanction the reinstitution of Old Covenant sacrifices, etc…). If so, I will definitely apologize.

    Blessings!

  143. This post has me thinking now as I’m struggling with self esteem issues now as I’m being bullied at work. Today one of the guys who pick on me at work even pointed out my low self esteem, but I told him I wouldn’t sound so “whinny” if he stopped picking on me. It’s hard for me to love myself as I’ve got tons of anxiety,and one problem is I’m afraid to have a self esteem as I see self esteem=pride=sin. When I used to listen to Christian radio the psychologists on the programs would say you must earn a self esteem through accomplishing goals. But no matter what I accomplish (I have two college degrees) I still feel stupid. However, at church I was told that low self esteem is sinful as it means you hate the way God has created you. This is all so confusing to me,especially when a workplace bully says I don’t have a self esteem.

  144. @ linda:

    “Seems to me Jesus (and Paul) just sort of assumed people do love themselves, and wants us to treat others as well as we want to be treated.

    Even in codependency … Which of course suggests a level of esteem for oneself, otherwise the foul treatment would be seen as fair.

    … it seems to me the happiest people I have known don’t spend a whole lot of time focused on either abasing or elevating themselves.”
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++

    interesting discussion.

    I agree with what you’re saying, Linda. the healthiest people I know, with the healthiest & most balanced self-esteem/image, have no religion (Christian or otherwise).

    On the other hand, in my experience, Christians tend to always be evaluating themselves and everyone else against some kind of motives criteria. Talk about neurotic self-image/esteem. Christians are good at being nice & helpful…. but not at relaxing into who they are as individuals.

    those healthiest people I was talking about — it would be great if they met God, Jesus, Holy Spirit. Were they to embrace Christian church culture, I would expect their healthy sense of self-esteem/image & common sense approach to life & relationships to begin to erode into a habit of over-analysis, second-guessing themselves, overspiritualizing what is perfectly normal & neutral and placing it somewhere on the good-to-evil scale.

    love isn’t complicated at all. Christians make it complicated.

    teach people to be kind & to simply treat people the way they themselves would want to be treated. then leave them alone.

  145. @ Wade Burleson: again, I do not see that the NC has anything to do with God “divorcing” the Jewish people. I am from a different background than you and have never, ever heard this stated as you’ve been stating it here. If you could help me understand where this comes from (is it a common view in the SBC? Or does it originate elsewhere? etc.) I would be most grateful.

    I think that to some degree, we might be talking past each other. My points seem clear enough to me, but I am not sure if I’ve clarified anything for you, and vice versa.

  146. @ elastigirl: indeed. Being immersed in evangelical/charismatic culture really messed with my mind and emotions and sense of self in a very unhealthy way. I am SO much better off these days, and will give credit to a couple of good shrinks for their help, but really, I had to make the choice(s) to leave these self I destructive ways of thinking behind. In the process, ive learned to actually *like* myself, for the very first time, ever.

  147. numo wrote:

    @ Wade Burleson: again, I do not see that the NC has anything to do with God “divorcing” the Jewish people. I am from a different background than you and have never, ever heard this stated as you’ve been stating it here. If you could help me understand where this comes from (is it a common view in the SBC? Or does it originate elsewhere? etc.) I would be most grateful.

    Numo,

    You keep saying God divorced the “Jewish people.” He divorced “Israel” (i.e. – “the kingdom of Israel”) in terms of His COVENANT with the NATION of Israel. The Jews are as much the people of God in the NEW COVENANT as Gentiles. So, let’s talk on the same page. Israel as a “favored nation” is no more. Jews, however, have as much love from God IN CHRIST (through the New Covenant) as any other ethnicity.

    Where are the verses that speak of God “divorcing” Israel?

    “I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery.” (Jeremiah 3:8).

    “But now bring charges against Israel–your mother–for she is no longer my wife, and I am no longer her husband. Tell her to remove the prostitute’s makeup from her face and the clothing that exposes her breasts” (Hosea 2:2)

    Daniel the prophet was told by God that “70 weeks (490 years)” were left for his people and the Holy City of Jerusalem. Jesus prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the Old Covenant (Matthew 24), and John did the same in Revelation.

    The writer of Hebrews says that “the first covenant” (with Israel) “was made obsolete” by Jesus Christ “and was ready to disappear” (Hebrews 8:13). When the Romans surrounded Jerusalem and destroyed the city and the Temple in 70 AD, the Old Covenant came to a complete end, just as Jesus prophesied it would (see Matthew 24:36).

    Notice how Jesus fulfilled the Old Covenant when He established the New Covenant with the people of the world. Jesus died on Passover – the first Passover occurred when Israel left Egypt. Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world fulfilled the Old Covenant Passover when a lamb was slain for a Hebrew house. 40 years after the first Passover, the Jews entered Canaan, their land of rest, flowing with milk and honey. 40 years after Jesus died, the Temple was destroyed and all of God’s people rested in Christ for all of eternity.

    The reason it is important to see that God relates to INDIVIDUALS in the New Covenant and not a NATION like He did in the Old Covenant, is because EVERTYHING about your life changes when you see what it means to REST in the person and work of Christ.

    What I’m writing is not new! It seems to be the teaching of the Apostles, the theme of the New Covenant Scriptures, and is the hope of all men and women everywhere.

    Blessings!

  148. @ Wade Burleson: OK, part of the confusion is a problem with nomenclature, but I think that the passages you cite are as much about the *people* as they are about the ancient nation. Am also puzzled as to how you see the Babylonian exile/captivity in this context – and the return of some, as in Ezra and Nehemiah.

    In other words, I think there is more complexity here than you do, but I am still puzzled as to where this view re. divorce comes from *theologically.* I can tell you for certain that it ain’t Lutheran, Anglican or Roman Catholic! (I’m Lutheran, btw.) Of course, the RCC had their charge of deicide against the Jewish people up until Vatican II…

  149. @ Wade Burleson: to be direct, I think that these passages relate directly to the Exile, and that skipping over their original context is not at all a good idea. Nor do I think it does justice to the depth and breadth of the narrative aspect of Scripture, and of history.

    Again, though, that’s just me.

  150. @ Wade Burleson:
    Hmm….I step into this conversation with trepidation. I really don’t care to join in a debate. This subject is one filled with pain and frustration for me due to familial and church fights I have witnessed.

    That said, I just want to throw this into the mix for thought. I probably won’t continue in the conversation for my own mental health’s sake…

    But, re Matthew 24, Jesus was responding to his disciples’ awe of the temple. What he said was that ‘not one stone would be left standing on another.’ Here’s the thing. That didn’t happen in 70 AD when Titus mostly destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. There is still a part of that temple standing. The Western Wall is part of that temple and there are very definitely stones one on top of another.

    Again, as I said, just something to think anout. I am of the opinion at this time, that any time we feel like we have a total lock on what God meant by any group of prophesies, we are in danger of missing the actual truth when it shows up.

  151. @ Wade Burleson:

    “I would love to hear Jeff chime in and tell me if I misrepresented his views in my comment (i.e. that God one day in the future will lead the Jews to rebuild the Temple, that God one day in the future will sanction the reinstitution of Old Covenant sacrifices, etc…). If so, I will definitely apologize.”

    I appreciate your attitude. Yes, you have misrepresented my views. By “re-marriage,” I never intended to say or imply that God would re-institute these things. God said explicitly that the “new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah [will] *not* [be] like the covenant…which they broke, although I was a husband to them.” I even wrote earlier that I thought that it was sad when believers feel they have to return to the Law to gain acceptance with God. Possibly when you saw the words “God re-marrying Israel,” you assumed that I meant that He would re-institute the Old Covenant.

    I vehemently disagree with your contention that God is through with Israel as a nation. I wish I had time to quote more passages, but this one is strong enough to stand on its own:

    Thus says the Lord,
    Who gives the sun for light by day
    And the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night,
    Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar;
    The Lord of hosts is His name:
    “If this fixed order departs
    From before Me,” declares the Lord,
    “Then the offspring of Israel also will cease
    From being a *nation* before Me forever.”

    Thus says the Lord,

    “If the heavens above can be measured
    And the foundations of the earth searched out below,
    Then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel
    For all that they have done,” declares the Lord. (my emphasis; Jer 31:35-37; NASB)

    I ask this seriously: How can one read this and believe that God no longer deals with Israel as a nation?

  152. @ numo:

    Absolutely, there are different sets of imagery picturing God and Israel. Husband and Wife is only one of them.

    I’ve heard of that author – will check up on him.

    There is certainly no need to apologize for forgetting that I’m Jewish! For one thing, it’s been quite a while since I mentioned it. In any case, you are not required to remember it!

  153. @ Victorious:

    I think the important thing is that God is still dealing with Israel as a nation, whether or not the imagery of Husband and Wife is used.

    BTW, I really appreciate the courteous way everyone is dealing with this subject.

  154. @ numo:

    “Wade, I think you just attributed a whole lot of things to JeffB without knowing what he really believes.

    Probably not the best way to go about this discussion, especially since he is Jewish and has a different take than you do. (Which is cool; we all have differing perspectives here, coming from diverse backgrounds as we do.)”

    I agree with you about the first paragraph, which I elaborated on in an earlier comment to Wade.

    I appreciate your consideration in the second one. It’s true that we all bring our biases to the discussion, but my hope is that we will all do our best to read Scripture as much as possible for the plain meanings of the words, even if this entails some study of the original languages, regardless of our backgrounds.

  155. JeffB wrote:

    I think the important thing is that God is still dealing with Israel as a nation, whether or not the imagery of Husband and Wife is used.

    My first thoughts this morning involve the confusion between the words, people, Jews, nation, etc.

    I think when we say God is not finished with Israel as a “nation” we are referring to a people within a particular locale. But in reality, the Jewish people are not confined to one locale but rather reside worldwide. So isn’t the “nation” of Israel we speak of comprised of Jewish people regardless of where they live physically?

    Ray Stedman, for example, uses a funnel to explain how the various tribes were eventually funneled from a variety of locations to a particular one so that Israel now becomes a “sample nation” of sorts. He says:

    Israel becomes the sample nation, the sample people. Through the rest of the Bible, whatever is true of Israel is true of everyone; their story is our story — your story and my story. Their stubborn rebellion is the same rebellion that we display, and their spiritual blessing under God is the same kind that we can expect if we open ourselves to respond to the grace of God.

    Check out the Table of Nations http://www.ldolphin.org/ntable.html

    So my conclusion is that one can considered the nation of Israel regardless of where one lives just as Americans are of the United States but living in Rome, for example.

    Make any sense? Nations are comprised of individuals.

  156. Jeannette Altes wrote:

    @ Wade Burleson:
    Hmm….I step into this conversation with trepidation. I really don’t care to join in a debate. This subject is one filled with pain and frustration for me due to familial and church fights I have witnessed.

    That said, I just want to throw this into the mix for thought. I probably won’t continue in the conversation for my own mental health’s sake…

    But, re Matthew 24, Jesus was responding to his disciples’ awe of the temple. What he said was that ‘not one stone would be left standing on another.’ Here’s the thing. That didn’t happen in 70 AD when Titus mostly destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. There is still a part of that temple standing. The Western Wall is part of that temple and there are very definitely stones one on top of another.

    Thank you for jumping in Jeannette. Everyone’s comments are welcomed and appreciated.

    Titus and the Romans pulled down every stone so that not one was not left standing on top of another.

    The Western Wall is the FOUNDATION wall which was underground in Titus’ day. It’s been excavated.

  157. Jeff B.

    You write: “Nations are comprised of individuals.”

    Yes, that is so. But within every NATION on the face of the earth is a CHOSEN PEOPLE, a royal priesthood, a HOLY NATION (I Peter 2:9) of people called ‘the Bride of Christ.’ This eternal NATION is composed of Jews and Gentiles, every ethnicity on the face of the globe (Revelation 5:9), and all I am advocating is that no United States citizen hold their citizenship on earth ABOVE their citizenship in this eternal Kingdom and that no Jew in Israel esteem their nation of Israel MORE IMPORTANT than belonging to the holy nation of Christ.

    When you say God is not through with the Jews, I agree!! Like Paul, I believe a great revival of faith in Jesus Christ will come among the Jews (Romans 11). However, I do not believe the earthly NATION of Israel has any more favored status than the NATION of Syria, or the NATION of Jordan, or the NATION of the US. The favored status in this age is found in the HOLY NATION of the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ.

    So, the gospel trumps politics. The good news of Jesus Christ is more important than the economics of the European Union. “Silver and gold” have I none, but what I do have “the good news of Jesus Christ” I give you freely.

    I truly appreciate the dialogue JeffB and am grateful to call you a brother in Christ, a member of the holy nation that is led by our King Jesus Christ, and would consider it an honor to spend more time with you.

    Blessings!

    Wade

  158. Victorious,

    Just noticed you wrote in RESPONSE to Jeff: “Nations are comprised of individuals.”

    Thank you. You are saying what I’m attempting to say. The focus in the New Covenant is on the INDIVIDUAL, not any nation, and those INDIVIDUALS from any earthly nation who come to faith in Jesus Christ compose the eternal Kingdom or ‘holy nation’ as Peter calls is (I Peter 2:9)

  159. I guess this discussion is over, but just wanted to add that I did not intend to be contentious in asking questions of Wade.

    My 1st “real” Bible (that I read for many years) was a copy of the Harper Study Bible, with book introduction and notes by a conservative Protestant scholar (edited from diverse sources) that were hugely helpful to me in beginning to get a grasp on parts of both the OT and the NT, though I’m not claiming to *understand* either. At any rate, the annotations on Jeremiah and related books/passages focus on both the historical and literary context of it, as well as on overarching themes. So that was kind of a primer for me.

    Hope that helps explain where I’m coming from.

    Best to all,
    numo

  160. I think (and it must be right if I think it–OK?) that we need to spend more time listening to the Jews, messianic or not, tell us what they think and less time trying to tell them what they ought to think.

    We should do that if for no other reason than the fact that we already know more about what we think (but cannot agree, of course) than we know about what they think; and how can we learn if we do not listen with open ears.

    And Wade is not being ant-semitic. Come on now, folks.

    BTW, there is a whole body of work out there under the general heading of the new perspective on Paul. Some of it is quite interesting. Just saying.

  161. @ Wade Burleson:

    Again I want to say that I appreciate your graciousness in this discussion.

    So there is no confusion, I did not write “Nations are comprised of individuals”; as you pointed out later, Victorious wrote this.

    The discussion is winding up, but I’d just like to make a few more points.

    First of all, I do not think any Jewish person has or will be saved because that person is a Jew. Saving faith must be exercised by any individual in order to be saved.

    Given that, though, I believe Scripture is clear that God has a role for ethnic Israel. By ethnic Israel, I mean all of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob living on earth at a particular time, whether or not they live in Israel. Much of this role will be lived out during the thousand-year Millennial Kingdom on earth, which will begin after Jesus returns. I realize that you and many others probably do not believe such a time will exist.

    The word “Israel” is used 73 times in the New Covenant. It is clear that in the vast majority of these instances, ethnic Israel is meant. There are only 2 or 3 times when there appears to be some ambiguity, but I believe even these refer to ethnic Israel, which means the same as the “nation of Israel,” which, again, is all Jews, not just the ones living in Israel.

    Israel being a “favored” nation is a double-edged sword. One-third of the world’s Jews perished during the Holocaust. During the Tribulation, two-thirds will die (Zech. 13:8).

    For better and worse, God chose Israel and is still choosing her (Jer. 31:35-37), just as God chose the church and is still choosing her. I don’t expect to convince you or anyone else of this. I only hope that all of us will do our best to see what Scripture actually says.

  162. @ JeffB:
    ……………….

    Thanks for your contribution to this discussion. While not a popular position to espouse these days, I agree with your beliefs.

  163. @ Partyhamster:

    Just coming out of hiding to respond to you 🙂

    I want to say how sorry I am about the bullying you are experiencing at work and about your anxieties. Yes, the topic of loving yourself can be confusing!

    Congratulations on holding two degrees! Goals and achievements are great but as you have experienced they aren’t a firm foundation to give a lasting sense of self-worth. We need something unchanging and unshakeable to do that. For me, that was the truth that God totally accepted me (warts and all) in Jesus. I was then able to start to accept myself as I am and had hope that God would help me change where needed.

    Partyhamster, as a Christian, irrespective of how others may judge you or even how you see yourself, God accepts you totally and loves you with an unchanging, perfect love. The Holy Spirit also abides in you so you aren’t left to struggle alone.

    May your heart be filled with peace.

  164. JeffB wrote:

    @ Wade Burleson:

    Again I want to say that I appreciate your graciousness in this discussion.

    So there is no confusion, I did not write “Nations are comprised of individuals”; as you pointed out later, Victorious wrote this.

    The discussion is winding up, but I’d just like to make a few more points.

    First of all, I do not think any Jewish person has or will be saved because that person is a Jew. Saving faith must be exercised by any individual in order to be saved.

    Given that, though, I believe Scripture is clear that God has a role for ethnic Israel. By ethnic Israel, I mean all of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob living on earth at a particular time, whether or not they live in Israel. Much of this role will be lived out during the thousand-year Millennial Kingdom on earth, which will begin after Jesus returns. I realize that you and many others probably do not believe such a time will exist.

    The word “Israel” is used 73 times in the New Covenant. It is clear that in the vast majority of these instances, ethnic Israel is meant. There are only 2 or 3 times when there appears to be some ambiguity, but I believe even these refer to ethnic Israel, which means the same as the “nation of Israel,” which, again, is all Jews, not just the ones living in Israel.

    Israel being a “favored” nation is a double-edged sword. One-third of the world’s Jews perished during the Holocaust. During the Tribulation, two-thirds will die (Zech. 13:8).

    For better and worse, God chose Israel and is still choosing her (Jer. 31:35-37), just as God chose the church and is still choosing her. I don’t expect to convince you or anyone else of this. I only hope that all of us will do our best to see what Scripture actually says.

    Jeff, thank you for the discussion. I’ve learned from you and appreciate your gracious and detailed responses as well.

    Blessings,

    Wade

  165. @ JeffB:
    The problem that we all have is the interpretation of coming events that have yet to happen. Within the Christian community there are four main positions (and probably a gazillion minor held positions) on what the Bible says about the coming times.

    The problem with the differences is that one of them encourages a hands on, support Israel at any cost, approach. Those folks tend to be the dispensationalists- a position that I held until a decade ago. I am now an amillennialist which means that I believe the the age of the church since its founding by Jesus is the millennial age.

    It can get rather messy as we discuss this issue since the beliefs can affect how we view things. For example, you might be interested in the Temple project in Israel.

    https://www.templeinstitute.org

    Many Christian support this effort because they are dispensationalists and believe that the Temple must be rebuilt before Jesus’ return. Although I do not believe that literally, the recreation of many of the Temple implements is sure cool. I love to read this site even though I disagree with the premise.

    I truly think that the disagreements in this area are difficult because no one can prove, conclusively that they have the lock on the correct interpretation although all sides believe they do. I heartily recommend the following book to everyone-no matter their persuasion to better understand the varying views that ft within the pale of orthodoxy. It is called Four Views of the End Times by Timothy Jones.

    http://tinyurl.com/ky59l3h

    In the end, I think this old saw says it the best. “I am a panmillennialist. i believe it will all pan out in the end.

  166. @ dee: I’m blanking on the formal name for the belief held in common in Lutheran, Catholic and Episcopal circles, but here’s my translation of it:

    Christ returns. The end (and beginning of new heavens/new earth/whatever it really will be, since our minds probably can’t comprehend what it’s all about and that affects the way it was all worded).

  167. @ Victorious:

    Sorry, I should have replied earlier.

    I agree with your comment, as you see if you read my last comment to Wade Burleson.

    I pointed out Wade’s misattribution of your remark (“Nations are comprised of individuals”) to me because, out of context, it could be misunderstood.

    @ Lin:

    Thank you.

    @ Wade Burleson:

    Same here.

    @ dee:

    With all due respect, your saying that you don’t believe a fourth temple will be “literally” built is an example of the type of allegorical or symbolic interpretation I earlier criticized. Ezekiel 40-43 describes in minute detail how the temple will be built. The building of Solomon’s Temple was described in the same way. I would imagine that you believe that Solomon’s Temple really existed. Why not, then, this future temple?

    A cardinal rule of Bible interpretation is to first look at the plain meaning of the text. If it’s clear that there is no plain meaning, only then should we go beyond it.

    Thanks for the links. I earlier recommended “Israelology: The Missing Link In Systematic Theology,” by Arnold Fruchtenbaum, for a detailed examination of the dispensational view of Israel. For those who do not want to plow through it, I recommend “Fast Facts On Bible Prophecy,” by Thomas Ice and Timothy Demy, for a briefer view of some of the same material. Of course, all books have to be checked with Scripture.

  168. JeffB wrote:

    A cardinal rule of Bible interpretation is to first look at the plain meaning of the text.

    If this was the case, we would not have a gazillion denominations filled with Christians as well as thoughtful theologians who disagree on everything from baptism to communion, to “fill in the blank,” The Bible is filled with difficult passages that need interpretation. You can throw out your theologians and I can throw out mine.

    In case you think that I do not understand your position, let me tell you about a saying my husband and I have. Whenever anyone says “of course this is exactly what the Bible says” (about secondary issues) we call it “The Ice Package.” Why?

    We have listened and read Dr Ice on a number of subjects. We watched a sermon given by Ice and he said, as best as we can remember it-i asked my husband as well, “Of course all Christians agree on a literal 6 day creation, 6000 year old earth, a global flood and a premillenial/pretribulation rapture.” We were both stunned and have talked about his statement at length.

    All Christians believe in the essentials that are outlined pretty well in the Apostles Creed. The plain reading of the text tells me
    -God is the Creator,
    -that there was some sort of flood as punishment for wickedness(remember the mustard seed is not the smallest in the world- a lily seed in the Amazon is but it is the smallest in that part of the world)
    -The Fall and the Cross and Resurrection
    -Jesus is coming again and is going to make a whole new creation

    The plain reading of the text gives us the essentials and people meet Jesus through the pages of the narrative but in the end, He is the true Word (digression: thank you Bridget).

    Do I believe in Solomon’s Temple? Of course.There is archaeological evidence and it is history with eye witnesses who saw the Temple.

    Prophetic texts that look at the future are far more difficult to understand as evidenced by the confusion when Jesus showed up and most people didn’t get it although there were clues throughout the OT.

    Take a look at the Book of Revelation (all references from NIV Bible Gateway)

    Chap 4 “Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings.”
    Chap 9 The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. 10 They had tails with stingers, like scorpions,
    Chap 12 When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach. 15 Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river,
    Chap 13 And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2 The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion.
    Chap 1 The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.

    Now go to Daniel and look at similar descriptions.

    We do not know what any of these mean. I do not think that there will be literal pearls for gates.I think it is possible that the pearls are symbolic for the pearl of great price found in the parables.

    For example, God gave Daniel the wisdom to interpret the king’s dreams. Those dreams were symbolic of event to happen. It made sense after the event but for sure there wasn’t an actual statue in the future.

    Finally, I believe that Tyndale said: by translating the Scriptures into English the would ensure that the ploughboy knew more Scripture than the clergy of the Church of England! The Bible is clear for the issues surrounding the problem of man and the solution of Jesus but it is not perfectly clear down to every jot and tiddle and that is why we disagree. The simple ploughboy might have great difficulty apprehending the subtle nuances of Scripture but he can sure get salvation from it.

    Also, the current popularity of the pretrib stuff became popular with john Darby’s works in the 1800s. It was not crystal clear to all those who came before.

    Also, the Temple is no longer necessary. The sacrifice has been made once and for all. God’s temple is here on this earth in the life of his people. The desecration of the holy of holies is not the same as in the time of the Maccabees. God dwells in His people and the holy of holies, his presence is within each one of us. The desecration of His temple could mean the persecution and the martyrdom of the saints.

    S0, I disagree that there is an easy plain reading of the text. But, I do believe it will pan out and perhaps you will be right. We’ll know soon enough, Lord willing. And I will be waiting for you to come and greet me in the beautiful place and say “Told ya so” and I will give you a great big hug!

  169. @ numo:
    I agree. Our minds are incapable of comprehending it. I heard one guy say it is something akin to us describing our world to a mollusk.

  170. @ JeffB:

    Did not one of the Herods build a temple in Jerusalem? Was there no temple built after the exiles returned?

  171. Was a temple not there when Jesus drove out the money changers? That would have been after Ezekiel was written!

  172. @ dee:

    Thanks for taking the time to write a lengthy reply.

    First of all, I mistakenly thought that you were referring to the possible Fourth Temple (after Jesus’ return) when you were actually talking about the possible Third Temple (before Jesus’ return). However, regarding the Fourth Temple: *Assuming* for the moment that it is described in Ezek. 40-42, here is a representative passage: “And he measured the width of the gateway, ten cubits, and the length of the gate, thirteen cubits. There was a barrier wall one cubit wide in front of the guardrooms on each side; and the guardrooms were six cubits square on each side. He measured the gate from the roof of the one guardroom to the roof of the other, a width of twenty-five cubits from one door to the door opposite. He made the side pillars sixty cubits high; the gate extended round about to the side pillar of the courtyard. From the front of the entrance gate to the front of the inner porch of the gate was fifty cubits.” (40:11-15)

    There are three chapters written this way. May we agree that a real building is being described? Wouldn’t this be an incredible amount of detail if everything is meant to be symbolic, as are the passages you quoted from Revelation?

    Concerning the possible Third Temple, you wrote, in your last comment: “Also, the Temple is no longer necessary. The sacrifice has been made once and for all. God’s temple is here on this earth in the life of his people. The desecration of the holy of holies is not the same as in the time of the Maccabees. God dwells in His people and the holy of holies, his presence is within each one of us. The desecration of His temple could mean the persecution and the martyrdom of the saints.”

    Admittedly, the building and measurements of this possible Temple are not described, but Rev. 11:1-2 says: “Then there was given me a measuring rod like a staff; and someone said, “Get up and measure the temple of God and the altar, and those who worship in it. Leave out the court which is outside the temple and do not measure it, for it has been given to the nations; and they will tread under foot the holy city for forty-two months.” (NASB) This seems to me to be a real building, not a description of believers.

    2 Thess. 2:1-4: “Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.” (NASB)

    I suppose it’s possible that here the “temple of God” could refer to believers, but I think it’s a stretch.

    If your eyes haven’t glazed over – One explanation for the sacrifices described as taking place in the Fourth Temple is that they will serve a similar function as the ones in Solomon’s Temple: Ceremonial, external cleansing. But, unlike the First Temple, they’ll have nothing to do with the covering of sin or as a foreshadowing of Messiah. If there is a Fourth Temple, it will exist during what I believe will be the Millennial Kingdom, when Jesus will be on earth ruling from Jerusalem. Obviously, this will be a theocracy, as ancient Israel was.

    “Also, the current popularity of the pretrib stuff became popular with john Darby’s works in the 1800s. It was not crystal clear to all those who came before.”

    The belief that physical baptism provides salvation was taught in the early centuries, but that doesn’t make it true. Age doesn’t necessarily make a concept correct.

    Also, dispensationalism focuses a lot on eschatology, and eschatology wasn’t really concentrated on by the church until after the Reformation.

    Finally, the belief that God’s revelation is progressive in different dispensations of time was taught by many of the early church fathers.

    If Thomas Ice said, “Of course all Christians agree on a literal 6 day creation, 6000 year old earth, a global flood and a premillenial/pretribulation rapture,” that is unfortunate. None of those are primary issues.

    Neither are the ones we have been discussing. But discussion of Israel and the Jewish people take up much of the Bible, and not all of it is so difficult that we should despair of understanding it.

    I’ll hold you to that hug (no pun intended).

  173. @ An Attorney:

    “Did not one of the Herods build a temple in Jerusalem? Was there no temple built after the exiles returned?”

    “Was a temple not there when Jesus drove out the money changers? That would have been after Ezekiel was written!”

    After the exiles’ return from Babylon, the Second Temple was built, later enlarged by Herod. This was the one where Jesus drove out the moneychangers.

    Yes, the Second Temple was built after Ezekiel was written. I’m not sure of your point.

  174. That was the temple prophesied to be built after the destruction. The temple Ezekiel prophesied was built and destroyed!

  175. @ An Attorney:

    The construction of the Second Temple is described in Ezra 3:7-6:18. The one described in Ezekiel is different. It is much larger and is to be situated on top of a high mountain (Ezek. 40:2).

  176. dee wrote:

    Take a look at the Book of Revelation (all references from NIV Bible Gateway)
    Chap 9 The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. 10 They had tails with stingers, like scorpions…

    Oh, that was obvious to biblical literalist Hal Lindsay — helicopter gunships armed with chemical weapons and piloted by long-haired bearded hippies! 🙂

  177. elastigirl wrote:

    On the other hand, in my experience, Christians tend to always be evaluating themselves and everyone else against some kind of motives criteria. Talk about neurotic self-image/esteem. Christians are good at being nice & helpful…. but not at relaxing into who they are as individuals.

    I wonder if this is an update of Puritan sin-sniffing Scrupulosity, charged by a Gospel of Personal Salvation and ONLY Personal Salvation? Gotta pass that Great White Throne Litmus Test! (Or Rapture Litmus Test!)