jesus-the-great-i-am-may-june-2019

MODERN REFORMATION VOL.28 | NO.3 | MAY-JUNE 2019 | $6.95

Jesus: The Great I Am

DOWNLOAD THE GOOD SHEPHERD. “ M Y S H E E P H E A R M Y V O I C E .”

There are many competing voices in a culture full of wolves. For over twenty-five years, White Horse Inn and Modern Reformation have been trusted voices—creating resources loaded with faithful gospel teaching and encouraging the sheep to connect with faithful shepherds. Help us continue this important work with a donation of $50 or more and receive “The Good Shepherd” collection.

WHITEHORSEINN.ORG/SHEPHERD

V O L .2 8 | N O. 3 | M AY-J U N E 2 0 1 9

FEATURES

20

“I Am the Bread of Life” B Y R I TA F. C E FA L U

28

44

“I Am the Light of the World”

“I Am the Resurrection and the Life”

B Y J O N AT H A N K . D O D S O N

BY ERIC LANDRY

32

48

“I Am the Door”

“I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”

B Y N I C H O L A S DAV I S

BY DAV I D ZAD O K

38

54

“I Am the Good Shepherd”

“I Am the True Vine”

BY SHANE ROSENTHAL

B Y N I C H O L A S B AT Z I G

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY PETER VOTH

1

KNOW WHAT YOU BELIEVE. MEMBERSHIP IS FREE. With over twenty-five years of radio broadcasting and magazine publishing, and our Campaign for Core Christianity, our mission is to help Christians “know what they believe and why they believe it.”

Create a free account at whitehorseinn.org to access free content.

WHITEHORSEINN.ORG/MEMBER

V O L .2 8 | N O. 3 | M AY-J U N E 2 0 1 9

DEPARTMENTS 5

61

EX AUDITU

A King’s (Palm Sunday) Speech

BY SINCLAIR B. FERGUSON

BOOK REVIEWS

11

Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America

B I B L E S T U DY

The Speech and Kingly Presence of God in the Old Testament

R E V I E W E D B Y D. G . H A R T

Educated: A Memoir

B Y C O D Y S. E D D S

REVIEWED BY NANA DOLCE

A Gentleman in Moscow 15

R E V I E W E D B Y PAT R I C I A A N D E R S

FOCUS ON MISSIONS

Ships Passing in the Night: Bible Translation and the Evangelical Church B Y B A S I L G R A FA S

72 B A C K PA G E

The Joy of Failure

BY ERIC LANDRY

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

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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

Modern Reformation © 2019. All rights reserved.

ISSN-1076-7169

Modern Reformation (Subscription Department) P.O. Box 460565 Escondido, CA 92046 (855) 492-1674 info@modernreformation.org | modernreformation.org Subscription Information: US 1 YR $32. 2 YR $50. 3 YR $60. Digital Only 1 YR $25.

US Student 1 YR $26. 2YR $40. Canada add $10 per year for postage. Foreign add $9 per year for postage.

3

LETTER from the EDITOR

light, doors, shepherds, resurrection, the way, and vines. But like the parables of the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus doesn’t use these familiar word pictures to make himself more accessible. By using the predicate statement “I am,” Jesus draws our attention, as New Testament scholar Leon Morris puts it, to “something otherwise unknown and inaccessible.” The wonder of John’s Gospel is that this unknown and inaccessible deity has drawn near in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.

People in our own day are still trying to answer the question first posed to Jesus: “Who are you?” hroughout John’s eyewitness account The responses are just as varied as we find in of Jesus’ life and ministry, one key John’s Gospel. Some say he is a great teacher, a question is asked of Jesus again and prophet, a miracle worker, a divine figure. Few again: “Who are you?” From of our contemporaries, however, the Samaritan woman to the Pharisees take Jesus at his word. Few allow to the crowds in Jerusalem, everyone Jesus the exclusivity he claims is trying to understand who Jesus is. in his seven “I am” sayings. They “ THE WONDER Sometimes the answer is given by prefer their “own personal Jesus” OF JOHN’S those around him. John the Baptist to the one attested to by John.

GOSPEL IS told his disciples that Jesus was the Sadly, Christians are not Lamb of God who takes away the sins immune to the temptation to THAT THIS of the world (1:29), and the crowds on redefine Jesus. Like our unbelievUNKNOWN Palm Sunday declared that Jesus was ing friends and family, we often AND INACCESthe king of Israel (12:13). More often, imagine a Jesus who grants our however, Jesus answers that question wishes, comforts our sorrows, or SIBLE DEITY by declaring emphatically who he is inspires our life, but who bears HAS DRAWN through his “I am” statements. little resemblance to the one who NEAR IN THE In this issue, we turn to that disproclaims himself to be the Son tinctive feature of John’s Gospel, the of God enfleshed.

PERSON AND seven “I am” sayings. These stateAs you work your way through WORK OF ments, so familiar to those who love this issue, prepare to be reinJESUS OF this Gospel, are clearly implied declatroduced to Jesus—on his own rations of divinity—familiar, scholars terms. If you have an unbelievNAZARETH.” tell us, to anyone in Jesus’ time who ing friend or family member, had read the Septuagint (the Greek invite them to read along with translation of the Old Testament). you. Jesus shattered the illuThey would have heard Jesus’ words and immesions of the religious and nonreligious alike. diately connected them to the covenant name of May he do so again!

God, who had declared it to Moses this way: “I Am Who I Am” (Exod. 3:14).

The seven “I am” sayings all refer to something known to Jesus’ original audience: bread, ERIC LANDRY exec utive editor

T

4

01

EX AUDITU

A King’s (Palm Sunday) Speech

by Sinclair B. Ferguson

W

hen our Lord Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday (see John 12:12–33), there was already a plot against his life and a price on his head.

From that day on, the Jews made plans to put him to death. . . . The chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where Jesus was, he should let them know so that they might arrest him.

(John 11:53, 57) We need to understand fundamentally, as we approach such a well-known passage as this, that Jesus rides into Jerusalem as someone regarded as a criminal. Not only is there a plan to murder

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

him, but there is also a plan to murder Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead. Those are the circumstances in which Jesus rides into Jerusalem.

In this passage, John is clever artistically.

Imagine him as the producer of a narrative of Jesus: he has his cameraman focus in three different ways on the scene so we can see the depth and the riches of what is actually going on here, because this—for John as for Jesus—is a hugely significant moment.

John’s camera is first of all on the crowd. He makes it fairly clear that they saw this as a time of great nationalistic fervor. What are palm branches? A palm branch is a palm branch, but not to these people. John tells us that the people in Jerusalem carefully and deliberately got palm branches and came out of the city to

5

EX AUDITU

join this crowd. Palm branches were national flags. If you want to catch the atmosphere here, it’s a great national occasion, and the children and their parents stand in the streets, watching the cavalcade come through the streets, waving their flags, caught up in the excitement and the enthusiasm. That’s exactly why John tells the story in such detail, and why he includes words that are essentially treasonable words you would never say in public if you were a Jew: “Here comes the king!”

What on earth possessed them to think that this gracious Jesus had come to liberate them from Rome? If you had asked them why they said this, I think many of them would have been bound to say, “Well, everybody else is saying it.

They’re marvelous words, and we got caught up in these aspirations and these hopes.” So you see, John is helping us to understand that, for the crowd, this was really no more than a moment of nationalistic fervor and not a moment of real understanding of the gospel.

But then his camera moves to the disciples.

You see this in verses 15 and 16, as John cites Zechariah 9. He says that the disciples didn’t understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified—that is, after Jesus had died on the cross and been raised from the dead and was in the presence of his heavenly father— then they remembered that these things had been written about him and been done to him.

He doesn’t say, “Do you remember the two who went on the road to Emmaus and Jesus accompanied them and taught them about himself from the Old Testament Scriptures?” He doesn’t say that this is how they found this out. He doesn’t even say, “Do you remember those days between Jesus’ resurrection and his ascension—those six weeks when he kept coming back to the disciples and teaching them about the kingdom? Jesus taught us this after his resurrection.” What he says, you notice, is that they didn’t understand these things at that time.

When Jesus was glorif ie d, t hen t hey remembered these things. They had what the psychologists call an “aha moment” or a “eureka

6

moment.” It’s when, without thinking with clinical logic to a conclusion, something dawns on you and you see it in a new light or the puzzle is solved. That’s what John is speaking about here.

None of these disciples had a Bible of their own.

They either had it memorized or at best they had bits and pieces they could hear or see in the synagogue. Perhaps one of them had memorized the book of Zechariah and remembered this passage (Zech. 9–11, 13): Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!

Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!

Behold, your king is coming to you; . . . humble and mounted on a donkey. . . .

[H]is rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit…

For I have bent Judah as my bow; I have made Ephraim its arrow.

I will stir up your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece, and wield you like a warrior’s sword.

As the disciples hear these words, one says to another, “That’s the meaning of what happened on Palm Sunday! He was fulfilling these Old Testament prophecies. Now we see—because, after all, he sent us into the whole world with the gospel message. Now we see that he was riding into Jerusalem in such a way that we would learn from the prophecy of Zechariah! He came to be the king of the nations!”

And lest he be misunderstood, Jesus came in meekness and lowliness. He came to bring in a new covenant by the shedding of his blood.

You notice that, don’t you? The people had no understanding of Zechariah’s prophecy, nor did the disciples at the time grasp what Jesus had come to do. Then, finally later on, the Holy Spirit opened their eyes and it dawned on them: “Oh, that’s who Jesus is!” This is an enormously

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

insightful statement, I think. It’s about discovering who Jesus really is. Someone told me just the other day how in going through the Christianity Explored course, a total stranger to Christ said, “I think I’m beginning to see.”

As they were going through the Gospel of Mark, this man said:

But has it ever dawned on you who Jesus really is? Is he as “real as real could be”?

That’s what the disciples were discovering.

I think I’m beginning to see that he came because of my need, that he is the Son of God sent by his Father in order to take my sin—the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many. And I see that he’s not just the character in this book—he’s real, he’s alive! He is as real as real can be!

And I can come to know him and trust him!

And he’s not just locked up in the Apostles’ Creed, but he is Jesus himself!

This is who Jesus is and this ancient prophecy.

I suppose many of the disciples had been forced in synagogue school to learn Zechariah by heart.

That was what synagogue school was all about— learning the Bible by heart. Now it dawns on them that these are not distant words that have no relevance to their lives. This is Jesus, and he has every conceivable relevance to their lives.

Well, this raises a question. Where are you in the disciple trajectory? You probably wouldn’t be here unless you were somewhere in a disciple trajectory. It could be that you’re here because you have respect for somebody who’s a Christian, or you’re here because you won’t get your Sunday lunch with your folks unless you’re here. But has it ever dawned on you who Jesus really is? Is he as “real as real could be”? That’s what the disciples were discovering. They were beginning to piece all the bits of the Bible together and see how they helped to explain the Lord Jesus to them. It was their “aha” moment—oh, that’s who he is, that’s what he was doing! He was fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah.

It’s interesting that Zechariah’s prophecy specifically mentions the Greeks. As a parenthesis, the Greeks are not frequently mentioned in the Bible.

And don’t you think it’s at least striking that Philip

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

and Andrew come to Jesus and say, “Jesus, there are some Greeks here, and they want to see you.”

These words are actually hidden in many Scottish pulpits. The congregation never sees them, but they’re hidden here. They’re words directed to the preacher: “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Here they are, the Greeks. The disciples come and say, “Jesus, there are these Greeks here.”

This brings us to the third camera angle, because Jesus seems to have seen this as a signal from his Father. The crowds by and large see it as a moment of nationalistic fervor. The disciples understand it only somewhat later. But Jesus understands it fully, because this to him is a signal from the Father. This is the dividing moment in the Gospel of John. Up until this time in this Gospel, a little expression has punctuated the story: “his time had not yet come,” or “his hour had not yet come.” But what does Jesus

7

EX AUDITU

say in verse 23 when he is told that the Greeks have arrived? “The hour has come.”

So what is this hour? Well, he tells us that it’s the hour of his glory. The time has come, he says, for the Son of Man—that’s his favorite way of describing himself—the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. He’s going to be lifted up. He says later on in verse 32, “When I am lifted up from the earth.” Now that’s a double entendre, isn’t it? That’s a statement that’s got two meanings wrapped up in the same statement. He’s going to be lifted up on the cross to die, but that’s also the way he’s going to be exalted as the Savior of men and women among the nations. So this hour of his glory is also going to be the hour of his agony, which he describes in verse 27: “Now is my soul troubled.”

Jesus only infrequently speaks about what is going on in his emotional life, and this is one of

[Jesus] knows this is the hour when Gethsemane is near, when the shadow of Calvary falls fully upon his soul; the moment is about to come when he will cry out with that awful sense of God forsakenness.

8

them: “My soul is distressed,” he says. This is not some ancient Greek hero going to his death as a macho man. This is Jesus going to his glory, realizing how costly it will be for him to be lifted up so that he may draw men and women and boys and girls to the forgiveness of their sins and to grace and mercy. He knows this is the hour when Gethsemane is near, when the shadow of Calvary falls fully upon his soul; the moment is about to come when he will cry out with that awful sense of God forsakenness. So the hour of great glory is also an hour of intense agony. But I think it’s important that we also notice that Jesus describes it in verses 31 and 32 as the hour of spiritual victory.

I suppose if I were to ask you why Jesus died, I think, for all of us, our instinctive answer with respect to the blessings of the Christian gospel would be, “He died that we might be forgiven.” Notice that this passage says nothing, however, about Jesus dying for our forgiveness. It’s true, but it’s not the point Jesus is making here. He doesn’t say, “I’m going to be lifted up from the earth in order that I may be the source of the forgiveness of sins”—true though that is. Here, he concentrates on something else: “When I am lifted up, what will happen is that the judgment of this world will take place and the ruler of this world will be cast out.” What is he saying? He’s saying that our sins are not our only problem. Our sins are only a horrific symptom of a problem: that by nature we are not only sinners, but we are also in bondage to the one John here describes as the ruler of this world.

No matter how respectable my life may look, no matter what position I may have, Jesus teaches us—and the apostles teach us over and over again—that my problem is not only that I’m guilty of sin, but that I’m dead in trespasses and sins, as Paul says in Ephesians 2; my life is in the grip of the evil one. You actually can’t remove that from the Gospels or from the New Testament teaching and have very much of a gospel left. That’s what Jesus focuses on, and there are all kinds of indications of it. I find that

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

the simplest and clearest indication of it is that people will say to me, “When the time comes, I’ll entrust my life to Jesus and I’ll be able to do that.” And I say, “Well, reassure me, because I care about you. Do it now.” And, of course, they can’t because they’re in bondage.

Actually, I find that people are quite content to recognize that, yes, of course they sin. But very few of us are prepared to acknowledge that we are slaves to an alien power—that we’re not free, free to love God, free to serve God. If you meet a non-Christian who says he is free, you say, “Show me how absolutely free you are by loving and worshiping the Lord Jesus and following him with all your life.” Whatever excuse they give is because they are in bondage to the ruler of this world! But Jesus, by going to the cross, wrests from the hands of the evil one all the dominion and power he had over men and women. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Lord Jesus Christ set us free.

One of the things the evil one uses, Paul tells us in Colossians 2, is our guilt. He trades in guilt-edged stock, if I may put it that way. He blackmails us. Isn’t this true? Can you imagine the hidden sins in this room? For example, if somehow or another, when we came into this room, our hidden sins were all enumerated on a huge screen at the back of the church, how many of us would be able to stay for the whole of the service as those sins flashed up before the people?

But it is true of us. Please, God, we’re not so foolish to pretend it isn’t. If God were to mark our sins, as Psalm 130 says, none of us could stand. So Satan comes along and does his little deals with us, doesn’t he? Just let’s try and keep these things polite, under control; nobody else need know; we’ll all accept them. You play into his hands, and then he’s got you exactly where he wants you. But Jesus comes and bears all our guilt, and by bearing our guilt—our fear of judgment and death—he snaps the chains by which the evil one has bound us to himself. So I can say when Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the wrong within,

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

I find that people are quite content to recognize that, yes, of course they sin. But very few of us are prepared to acknowledge that we are slaves to an alien power—that we’re not free, free to love God, free to serve God.

Upward I look, and see [Christ] there, Who made an end of all my sin.

Because the sinless Savior died, My sinful soul is counted free.

For God the just is satisfied To look on Him and pardon me.

Or, in other words, when Satan comes and accuses me of sin and guilt, I’m able to say to him, “But Christ has died for my sins to set me free from your grip and to draw me to himself.”

Then Jesus says something very interesting.

It may seem difficult to follow his logic here, but when he speaks about his death, he then goes on to speak about our death—not our physical death, but another kind of death: “Whoever loves his life, loses it, but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (v. 25). What

9

EX AUDITU

Once your hand has been pried open by grace and dropped into the safe hand of Jesus Christ and you’re holding onto him, then at last you will be free to enjoy the gifts he’s given you, without that gnawing insecurity—all because, in his grace, he rode into Jerusalem that day as king.

does he mean? He means this: If you’re not trusting fully and joyfully in Jesus Christ, then there is something else in your hands. It’s as though he’s asking, “What so fills your hands so that there’s no room in your hands for me?” And it will differ from one person to another. It may be yourself, another person, a possession, ambition, power, money, influence, or your profession or job. It could even be your family. “Those of you who are parents, do this with your children,” Jesus says as he pries open that clenched fist.

“This keeps you from entrusting everything to me and letting whatever it is fall into my hand for safekeeping. Place your hand in my nail-pierced hand and come and love and trust me.”

My dear friends, for some of us, there is an almost excruciating pain in coming to trust in Jesus Christ, because so much else has been glued to our hearts in which we find our security and hope for our salvation. Is your family the great idol in your life? My dear friend, you’re not big enough to secure your family. Let them drop into the hands of Christ. Is it your possessions, your influence, somebody you love, or your driving ambition? You’re not able to secure any of these, and you only become a prisoner to whatever it is. But once your hand has been pried

10

open by grace and dropped into the safe hand of Jesus Christ and you’re holding onto him, then at last you will be free to enjoy the gifts he’s given you, without that gnawing insecurity—all because, in his grace, he rode into Jerusalem that day as king. Just as one day, which John sees in the revelation given to him, a great multitude that no one can number from every nation, all tribes and peoples and languages, will stand before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands.

For some of you, the ones you loved most dearly in this world are already there, clothed in white and waving their palm branches. You want with all your heart to be where they are, because the Lord Jesus opened your hands, and now he has filled you with himself. Oh, may our hearts say in this sense: Ride on, ride on, Jesus, in majesty!

SINCLAIR B. FERGUSON is a Ligonier teaching fellow and

distinguished visiting professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. His many books include The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance­—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (Crossway, 2016).

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

02

B I B L E ST U DY

The Speech and Kingly Presence of God in the Old Testament

by Cody S. Edds

he book of Hebrews begins with a divine self-exposure in which the God who “spoke to our fathers” by the prophets of the Old Testament reveals himself to be the God who “has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1–2). That is to say, the Christ of the New Testament is not only central to the Old Testament but is its very purpose and consummate goal. Therefore, to read the Bible is to read a book about a God who is self-revealing, and self-revealing ultimately in the person and work of Jesus Christ. This Christ is central and present in the Old Testament through foreshadowing literary elements, covenantal promissory acts of God, and the triune theophanic presence of God. These

T

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

can be seen by highlighting two central motifs of the Old Testament: the creative speech of God throughout the covenants, and the kingly presence of God in the temple of Israel.

THE SPEECH OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT The story of the Bible opens with a presumed existent God who “created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1) through speech: “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Ps. 33:9; cf. Heb. 11:3). The first act of God in history is the very act of him creating history by the word of his power. God’s creative

11

B I B L E ST U DY

fiat not only shapes the world according to his will but brings the material itself into being. Just as God’s word is his effective instrument in creation, it remains so throughout the Scriptures as God continues to create a covenant people for his name.

THE SPEECH OF GOD IN THE COVENANT “Now the Lord said to Abram” (Gen. 12:1). As creation began with the very speech of God, so do the covenants. God’s call to Abram was not merely calling him to covenant service, but was rather a covenant-creative speech that “made” Abraham into “a father of many nations,” calling him into the state of existing in covenant service with a new name fitting that new existence (Gen. 17:5). God continues to sovereignly administer and uphold these promises throughout history according to the creative consequence of his word: from the covenant words of Mount Sinai (Exod. 19:1–6) and speaking the covenant of David into existence through “the word of the Lord” (2 Sam. 7:4), to upholding the remnant of Judah through the prophetic speeches of the exiled prophets (Ezek. 1:3). This is the God of Scripture who speaks and it is done, for “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Num. 23:19). This covenant-creative speech of God continues in the New Testament: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).

THE SPEECH OF GOD IN WISDOM As the covenant speech of promise made to David continues its creative consequence from David to Solomon, the covenant-speech of wisdom begins to shape the everyday life of the covenant people. Both the books of Psalms

12

and Proverbs are central to Wisdom literature, and both begin with the fear of the Lord (Ps. 2:11; Prov. 1:7), proving that all Wisdom literature has its purpose and results in guiding the covenant people to “fear God and keep his commandments” (Eccles. 12:13). God’s speech is not just a covenant-creative act in the relational founding of the covenant. Rather, God’s speech is also a covenant-creative act that impacts, inspires, and sustains trusting reverence in the covenant king of Israel (Prov.

3:6)—whether through sufferings and trials as in the book of Job, or in the foundations of marriage as in the Song of Solomon.

THE SPEECH OF GOD IN THE PROPHETS But this wisdom of God did not remain the foundation of Israel’s piety before the Lord, and therefore God spoke against them: “Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O people of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt” (Amos 3:1; cf. Mic. 6:9). The pre-exilic prophets are concerned with God’s covenant lawsuit as it is spoken against the people of Israel (Amos 3:1–2, 13; Hos. 4:1–3) and Judah (Mic. 6:1–2). The covenant speech of God is not only creative and sustaining, but it is also destructive in judgment.

Due to Israel’s and Judah’s covenant unfaithfulness, God speaks judgment upon them that swiftly comes to pass through their exile. This judgment is a famine not “of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11).

From the voice of God in Genesis 1:1–3 that created all things, to the silence of God in Amos 8:11, the Old Testament tells a story of a God who once spoke to a holy people but who remains silent at the close of its canon. Therefore, the speech of God is a central theme for the Old Testament Scriptures, from its first verses to its last, where God promises “a decree of utter destruction” (Mal. 4:6) that leads to four hundred years of judgment in silence.

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

THE KINGLY PRESENCE OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT The kingly presence of God is a central theme throughout all of Scripture, and it is most clearly associated with the temple of God. Even the Garden of Eden, with its guarding cherubim found in both the garden and the temple (Gen. 3:24; 1 Kings 6:27), is seen throughout Scripture as a tabernacle of the presence of God in which he walked “back and forth” (Gen. 3:8; cf. 2 Sam. 7:6–7). Furthermore, as the Spirit of God “hovered” over the face of the earth that was “without form” (Gen. 1:2), so this same Spirit “hovered” over the people of God throughout the exodus in the “wilderness” (Deut. 32:10–11).

Therefore, beginning with the Garden of Eden, the earthly temple of Israel was representative to a supernatural condescension of the heavenly temple-presence of God the king (1 Kings 8:11; cf. Isa. 6:4; Ezek. 1:4). As all creation began with the kingly presence of God “in the beginning” (Gen. 1:2), so the narrative ends with the kingly rest of God (Gen. 2:1–3). This Sabbath rest of God is the divine self-enthronement, announcing God’s kingship over all creation.

THE PRESENCE OF GOD IN THE KINGDOM Although God would rule and reign through Moses (Deut. 33:4–5) from his tabernaclethrone (Exod. 40:34), God knew that someday Israel would beg for an earthly king “like all the nations that are around” them (Deut. 17:14–20).

That day did come, and just as God had promised David (2 Sam. 7), his son Solomon built the temple of God in Jerusalem. Upon its completion, “a cloud filled the house of the Lord . . . for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord” (1 Kings 8:10–11). This cloud, a theophanic presence of God in his ruling glory—which was present in the garden, at the institution of the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 15:17), and which led Israel out of Egypt and filled the tabernacle—now finds a permanent

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

As all creation began with the kingly presence of God “in the beginning” (Gen. 1:2), so the narrative ends with the kingly rest of God (Gen. 2:1–3).

dwelling in the temple of Jerusalem. Here in the temple, God’s glory-presence once again implements the self-attainment of sabbatical rest, proclaiming as he did in creation his own kingly rule. But as seen above, the prophets warn Israel of forfeiting this presence by not heeding the voice of God.

THE PRESENCE OF GOD IN THE EXILE AND AFTER “Then the glory of the Lord went out from the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted up their wings and mounted up from the earth before my eyes” (Ezek. 10:18–19). Ezekiel saw the glory cloud of God depart the temple and vacate his presence from the nation of Israel.

Due to Israel’s continual covenant unfaithfulness, God brought full judgment upon them by removing his presence and by removing them from the presence of the Promised Land. But even in judgment, God, “the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel,” remained present (Jer. 29:4), preserving a remnant and promising that “he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem

13

B I B L E ST U DY

will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem” (Isa. 4:3). This promise of a remnant seems fulfilled in Ezra and Nehemiah, as the people of God return to their land and to Jerusalem. Yet, while the Hebrew Scriptures close with Cyrus of Persia’s decree for the return (2 Chron. 36:22–23), Malachi shows that this return does not bring a full realization of the promised return of God or the piety that describes a royal priesthood, a holy nation (Mal. 1:6).

Beginning with Adam’s exile from the garden and ending with God’s glory cloud departing the temple, the Old Testament points to a day when the promise of a remnant is truly fulfilled: “In that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel” (Isa. 4:2). Yes, on that day, the presence of God will be “over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies” in the form of “a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory will be a canopy” (Isa. 4:5). This is the day of Jesus Christ, the coming of the true branch of the Lord.

THE PROMISED CHRIST AS THE THEME OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Adam’s failure to speak righteousness and holiness to Eve as she gave him the fruit was a failure of Adam’s duty as prophet to speak on behalf of God (Gen. 2:20). The Old Testament depicts the seed of Adam following in the steps of their father, failing to heed the voice of God (Zech.

7:11). Just the same, Adam’s failure to “work and keep” the garden, leading to the presence of the serpent, was a failure of Adam’s duty as priest to guard the temple-garden of God from unrighteousness (Gen. 2:15; cf. Num. 3:7–8; 8:25–26; 18:5–6). Once again, the seed of Adam follows in his steps, failing to work and keep the temple (Mal. 1:7). Finally, Adam’s failure to subdue creation, including the serpent, was a failure of Adam’s duty as king to rule with dominion

14

over creation (Gen. 1:28). Continuing the story, Adam’s seed fails to have dominion over creation as vice-regent kings (2 Chron. 36:11–16).

From the beginning to the very end, the Old Testament undoubtedly manifests the need for a better prophet, a better priest, and a better king.

This promised “Anointed One” of God (Dan. 9:25–26) would not only prophetically speak on behalf of God but would be the very “Word of God” (John 1:1–5) as promised (Deut. 18:15–18; cf. Acts 3:22–23; 7:37). He would not merely work and keep the temple of God as priest, mediating God’s presence, but would be the very presence of God himself: Immanuel, “God with us” (Matt.

1:23; cf. Isa. 7:14). Finally, this promised child, born of the seed of David, would be a great king over every nation whose kingdom would have no end (Ezek. 37:25; Rev. 11:15).

This prophet, priest, and king is Christ, the “last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45) whom God promised would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15), the very wisdom of God “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). He is the promised one of God who is “Lord of the Sabbath” (Matt. 12:1–8), and he is our Sabbath rest. He lives forever to proclaim God’s kingly presence over the re-creation that is the church, offering true Sabbath rest as the tabernacle of God and the holy Word from heaven (Matt. 11:28–30), and promising final rest in the presence of God for all those “who have believed” (Heb. 4:3). Ultimately, Christ is the very heart of the Old Testament, as he himself revealed to his disciples when “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Here is the purpose and consummate goal of the Old Testament, the very voice of the Lord, and his eternal kingly presence in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

CODY S. EDDS holds an associate’s degree in mass communication and a bachelor’s degree in biblical studies with a focus in redemptive-historical hermeneutics. He and his wife, Amber, are members of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee.

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

03

FOCUS ON MISSIONS

Ships Passing in the Night: Bible Translation and the Evangelical Church

by Basil Grafas

h e n i t c o m e s t o We s t e r n Protestantism, there are usually a lo t o f p la t es spinnin g. If Zygmunt Bauman is correct (and I think he is), we are living in a “liquid-modern” rather than “postmodern” age. Rapid change is Western society’s only real constant. Despite postmodernist boasts to the contrary, we are still in the grip of modernism—but of a modernism that moves much faster, seeking freedom from anything that slows it down. It is the age of fads, of the star for a day.

That background plays a tremendous role in how evangelicalism continues to change.

As many have noted, evangelicalism is not

W

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

a monolith, a coherent whole, or a thing. It sometimes resembles a loose collection of overlapping identities and interests. As modernism accelerates, the most structured and welldefined outposts of Christian modernism, such as denominations, lose ground to faster-moving Christian entities that are less encumbered by highly defined doctrine, polity, or tradition. The leadership of parachurch bodies in the advance of liquid-modern Christianity is no accident.

We have several problems, however, associated with liquid-modern Christianity. At one end of evangelicalism, we have a progressive embrace of academic disciplines that were themselves children of modernism. Sociology, psychology, history, and linguistics represent

15

FOCUS ON MISSIONS

four fields that emerged from the modern age.

In each case, premodern people, particularly Christians, attempted to answer the same questions addressed by each of these new disciplines, but in different ways. Our problem is not that premodern ways of understanding the Bible and our faith have given way, wholesale, to modern approaches. Our problem is that contemporary Protestants divide over how we approach the Bible and our faith. Modernism becomes another form of Lessing’s “ugly broad ditch” that divides Christianity. Lessing meant to demonstrate the unbridgeable divide between eternal truths and empirical history. Reason, therefore, exists on one side and our beliefs on the other. My point is that Christianity, to include the evangelical Protestant world, divides over whether it follows the lead of modernism or not. This conflict reaches into every aspect of Christian life to include missions.

Contemporary Protestantism, particularly the versions of it that emerged right after World War II, embraced new ways of thinking. Some of these responded to the call of the social sciences. I do not mean that only part of Protestantism accepted the presence of sociology, anthropology, ethnographic studies, and so on. These are now universal disciplines used in every aspect of Christian ministry.

What I mean, rather, is that for many, these new disciplines entirely rewrote ministry.

Today, for example, it is virtually impossible to distinguish between missiology and anthropology. Just as significantly, the ministry of Bible translation has become an increasingly technical discipline that is dominated by modernist ideas about language, speech pragmatics, semiotics, contextual frames of reference, relevance, and so forth. Bible translators are at home with the ideas of Noam Chomsky, Eugene Nida, C. R. Taber, and E. A. Gutt. The average Christian knows nothing about any of these concepts or people; they are almost entirely foreign to the visible church.

While this may not apply to all translators, it is fair to say that translation in support of

16

missions is fundamentally a modernist enterprise. Modernism pervades every aspect of the translation process. While conservative scholars and church members increasingly attempt to connect what they think and do today with the practices of the historic church, translation agencies and other missions organizations drill down into the tools created in the aftermath of the Enlightenment. That movement determines the hermeneutics used by translators/missionaries and the linguistic theories that drive how words and texts are understood linguistically.

Let’s briefly examine each area. How do missionary translators and missiologists interpret the Bible? First, here is a general observation (I will allow myself that, because subsequent articles will investigate our points more thoroughly and carefully). It is virtually impossible to ascertain a coherent hermeneutic in the vast majority of missiological literature being published today. Much of what passes for biblical rationale amounts to proof-texting, so that it is hard to locate a metanarrative in the text. In other words, the meaning of words or small literary units often appears to cater to cultural, contextual concerns of the reading community at the time, rather than provide bridges that connect these local interpretations to the canonical text, or even simply to what comes immediately before or after the words being translated. Scholars once leaned hard on historical-critical, modernist, secular interpretations of texts. Today, historical criticism is joined by a host of postmodernist readings that often appear to ignore God as the author of Scripture. I will address, as a layman, some of the more technical aspects of translation theory and practice in a future article. Suffice it to say now that missions agencies and missionary translation are firmly entrenched in modernist approaches.

Other Christians, however, are profoundly unsettled by modernism. These are not Luddites who despise science and technology. Many are concerned that as the Western

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

church drifts with the modernist tide, it leaves its roots behind. We can see this in the relatively recent phenomena of evangelical Protestants rejoining Rome or taking the big plunge into Eastern Orthodoxy. For them, the rush into the frenetic world of liquid modernity simply moves them farther and farther away from authentic Christianity.

So, we have one group of Christians reaching forward to a better future with liquid modernity and another group (or groups) seeking to find a way forward by rediscovering their past. To make things more urgent, those who choose the latter are every bit as sophisticated as their translation equivalents. To be more accurate, many of these theological interpreters are persuaded by the practices of the historical church because it, in fact, had a highly sophisticated, nuanced approach to interpretation. In other words, the idea that modernism introduced precision and accuracy into the examination of the Bible is false.

At this point, you might be tempted to think that we are addressing two separate fields: translation and hermeneutics. Many of the translators I know think this is entirely appropriate; so do many of the church leaders and seminarians engaged in biblical studies or theology. In fact, all are wrong if that is what they think. Translators attempt to create translations that speak accurately to people who do not speak Koine Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic as living languages. The criteria for accuracy, however, do not entirely rest on reader responses. Asking whether or not this text has meaning to me here and now is not the only basis for determining the success of a translation. Accurate translation depends on an accurate understanding of what the Bible is actually saying when it speaks.

That invariably forces one to embrace some kind of hermeneutic or abandon it altogether for the modernist regimen of modernist linguists. These generally believe that you read the Bible as you would any other book, and they have their own microscopically precise

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

approach to sounds, parts of words, collections of words, and so on, in order to interpret it. To say the least, this approach has its limits.

There is really no way in which translators can avoid discovering meaning without some sort of theological grid that shapes their hermeneutic. The point I am making is that this theological reflection is not built into the toolkit of the average contemporary translator, nor is it part of the normal assessment of a translation’s effectiveness.

The other group of Christians sees the Bible as a coherent whole that is read within the church itself as a theological metanarrative.

All of the advocates for an interpretation of the Bible that harmonizes with the practices of the premodern church do not reach the same conclusions as to the Bible’s meaning from text to text. What they do largely agree on, however, is how the book is to be read and thus understood. It involves a way of seeing how the whole informs the parts, how the new informs the old in the light of the resurrection, and how meaning itself may be complex and multifaceted.

The Bible, therefore, tells a covenantal story that starts somewhere and moves somewhere.

Everything along the way harmonizes with that story and design.

On the other hand, if you read the Bible as being exclusively human, then the parts do not have to fit together, let alone lead somewhere. The problem you may be able to see now is that so many of the liquid-modernist tools that translation utilizes assume just that. This has always been the problem that missionaries and other Christians in the modern world face. We want to take our timeless faith and enhance it with the knowledge and tools we gain along the way. We should ask, however, whether the tools and approaches we glean from modernism are all compatible with the faith given to the saints—or if some contradict or distort it.

BASIL GRAFAS is the pen name for an American missionary working overseas.

17

LET’S EXPLORE TOGETHER. “Do we all worship the same God?” “Who am I?” Our study kits are perfect for small groups, family devotions, or individual study. With a donation of $15, you can download a Leader Guide, full-length audio, and short audio clips.

WHITEHORSEINN.ORG/STUDYKITS

V O L .2 8 | N O. 3

FEATURES

“[Jesus] was on a divine schedule, and the purpose of all his teaching and miracles was . . . to explain to a watching world why God had taken on human flesh to walk among them.”

20

28

32

38

“I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE”

“I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD”

“I AM THE DOOR”

“I AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD”

44

48

54

“I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE”

“I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE”

“I AM THE TRUE VINE”

19

by

“I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE”

RITA F. CEFALU

illustration by

PETER VOTH

W W H A T D I D J E S U S M E A N when he said in John 6:53–55, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day, for my flesh is true food and 1 my blood is true drink”? Taken literally, it would appear that Jesus is speaking about cannibalism. As such, it is an offputting statement to say the least, which is exactly how the Jewish crowd took it.

Their response was to reject him and his teaching, saying, “This word is offensive; who is able to hear it?” (v. 60).

The aim of this article is to understand the bread of life discourse in context. In so doing, we will consider the

historic, literary, and biblical-theological dimensions.

THE BREAD OF LIFE DISCOURSE IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT While it is difficult to date John’s Gospel with precision, there is evidence pointing to a time frame after AD 70: it was written sometime after the destruction of the Jewish temple, but before AD 100. For example, throughout the Gospel, Jesus presents himself as the embodied fulfillment of primary Jewish festivals, including the temple (the place in which these festivals took place; cf.

John 2:13–17). Commenting on this,

21

Johannine scholar Andreas Köstenberger writes: “The destruction of the Jerusalem temple left a gaping void in Jewish life, especially in Palestine, but also in the diaspora [the dispersion of the Jews after the temple’s 2 destruction].”

Importantly, three of Israel’s major festivals figure prominently in the background (that is, Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles). It is significant to note further that these are pilgrim festivals in which faithful Jews and proselytes (Gentile converts) would make their pilgrimages to the temple in obedience to God’s word (cf. Deut. 16). If the historic context in which John writes is after AD 70, then it follows that he is writing to fill the void left by the destruction of the temple-city. Rather than making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Jews and proselytes are now encouraged to come to Jesus, “the Messiah who fulfilled the symbolism embodied in the temple and the Jewish festivals. For John, the temple’s destruction thus becomes an opportu3 nity for Jewish evangelism.”

THE BREAD OF LIFE DISCOURSE IN LITERARY CONTEXT John highlights seven prominent signs that Jesus performed throughout his earthly ministry, so that his audience would believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and so believing, they may have life in his name (John 20:30–31). Since the signs function to authenticate the nature and person of his work, it is not surprising to find that the first part of the Gospel is structured around seven particular signs— seven representing the number of “completion” or “perfection” (1:19–12:50). In the first (2:1–11), Jesus turns water into wine, and in the seventh, climactic sign (ch. 11), he raises Lazarus from the dead!

Part two focuses on Jesus’ pending death and preparation of his new Messianic community (chs. 13–20), with the prologue (1:1–18) and epilogue (ch. 21) framing the entire work. In addition, John features seven “I am” sayings of Jesus (6:35–59; 8:12; 9:5; 10:7, 9, 11; 11:25; 14:6;

22

and 15:1). In the first, Jesus presents himself as the true bread of life (ch. 6), and in the seventh, 4 as Israel’s true vine (ch. 15; cf. Isa. 5).

THE LARGER LITERARY CONTEXT OF JOHN 6 John 6 opens with the feeding of the five thousand (vv. 1–15), and the first “I am” saying of Jesus appears within the frame of this particular sign (vv. 22–59).

In this chapter, Jesus arrives in Tiberias with a large crowd following him because they had seen the signs he performed in healing the sick (ch. 5), and John provides the parenthetical comment that the Passover was near (6:4). In response to the gathering multitude, Jesus asks Phillip (one of the Twelve) where they might buy bread to feed the crowd. John explains that Jesus did this in order to test him, because he did not know what Jesus was about to do (vv. 5–6).

Importantly, the Greek word for test appears also in the Septuagint (LXX, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) in significant passages—such as Exodus 16:4, when God provided manna in the wilderness in order to test the children of Israel, and in Deuteronomy 8:16, when Moses explained its meaning and purpose. Thus John’s parenthetical comments suggest that the exodus and wilderness sojourn loom large as the backdrop for the feeding of these five thousand and the 5 discourse that follows.

THE BREAD OF LIFE DISCOURSE (JOHN 6:26–59) The next day, when the crowd finds Jesus in Capernaum on the other side of the sea, they ask him when he arrived (vv. 22–25). Jesus ignores their question and immediately gets to the point: They aren’t interested in him because of the signs, but because they ate the bread and were filled. He tells them not to work for food that perishes “but for the food which

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

Rather than making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Jews and proselytes are now encouraged to come to Jesus, “the Messiah who fulfilled the symbolism embodied in the temple and the Jewish festivals.�

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

23

remains for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to [them]” (vv. 26–27). They respond by asking what work they should perform, to which he replies, “Believe in him whom [the Father] has sent” (vv. 28–29). They request yet another sign and refer to Moses’ provision of manna in the wilderness (v. 31; cf. Exod. 16:4, 15, 21). Jesus corrects their misunderstanding, stating that it was not Moses but his Father who provides the true bread from heaven that gives life to the world. They reply, “Lord, give to us 6 always this bread” (vv. 32–34).

Jesus responds by explaining the significance of believing and receiving him. He is the bread of life. All who come to him will never hunger or thirst. But sadly, they have seen him and do not believe. Yet, this is not surprising, since only those whom the Father has given him are able to come, and the promise for those who do come is that he will raise them up on the last day (vv. 35–40).

The crowd responds by grumbling, and they make reference to his physical (rather than heavenly) lineage (vv. 41–42). Jesus rebukes their grumbling, highlighting the fact that no one can come to him unless the Father enables them (vv. 43–50). He cites Scripture, referencing the new covenant and, by inference, the need to be born from above (v. 45; cf. Isa. 54:13; Jer. 31:34; John 1:12–13; 3:3–8). Jesus continues by contrasting himself with the manna their fathers ate in the wilderness. They ate and died, but he is the living bread. If anyone eats from this bread they will live forever, and the bread he also will give is his flesh for the life of the world (vv. 48–51). The Jews, not knowing that Jesus was speaking about his coming death, dispute among themselves, asking, “How can this one give his flesh to eat?” (v. 52). It is within this context that Jesus’ strongest statements emerge about eating his flesh and drinking his blood (vv. 53–58).

THE CROWD’S RESPONSE (JOHN 6:60–71) Many disciples turn back because they cannot bear what they heard (v. 60). And Jesus,

24

knowing that his disciples are grumbling, asks if this teaching also makes them stumble (vv.

61–62). More disciples turn away (vv. 64–66), until all that remain are the original Twelve.

He then asks them, “Do you want to go away as well?” (v. 67), to which Peter replies, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God” (vv.

68–69; emphasis added).

THE BREAD OF LIFE DISCOURSE IN BIBLICAL-THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT In considering the bread of life discourse within its biblical-theological context, several points stand out. First, Jesus is the bread of life in the sense that by believing and receiving him, one has eternal life (6:35–40). Thus he is speaking about reality by use of metaphor (a figure of speech that refers to one thing as the equivalent of another). When comparing this discourse with Jesus’ discussion with the woman at the well in John 4, we clearly see that Jesus is not speaking in the literal sense (that he is actual bread and water). Bread and water may sustain the temporal body for one’s earthly sojourn, but they are of no use when a person is dead. What humanity needs is spiritual food and drink that will issue forth in resurrection life. This is the point Jesus is making.

Second, seeing that the crowd persists in unbelief, Jesus drives the point home by use of hyperbole (an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken literally). Its purpose is similar to Jesus’ use of parables (a story that highlights a principal lesson). As biblical theologian Greg Beale observes, [Jesus used parables] to get the attention of his believing listeners who had grown spiritually sleepy and might not have paid attention otherwise. But for unbelievers (including pseudo-believers), parables made no sense, and rejection of the parabolic message was simply a further evidence of the hardening of the heart which refuses

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

to listen to God. In fact, one can say that when the prophets used parables in Israel, they were indicating that judgment was coming on the anesthetized majority, though a remnant would be shocked out of their spiritual malaise. How much more was 7 this true of Jesus’ use of parables?

JESUS SAYS, “IT IS THE SPIRIT WHO GIVES LIFE, THE FLESH BENEFITS NOTHING; THE WORDS WHICH I HAVE SPOKEN TO YOU ARE SPIRIT AND LIFE.” MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

It is within this context that the biblicaltheological significance of the bread of life discourse is given its interpretative meaning.

Jesus says, “It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh benefits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (6:63; emphasis added). In spite of this, the majority of his disciples turn away except the Twelve. When asked if they want to leave too, Peter responds with a confession of faith, indicating that the disciples have—at least in part—understood the significance of Jesus’ words (6:68–69).

They have passed the test, because they are among those whom Jesus has chosen—those whom the Father has given him—with the exception of Judas Iscariot, who would later betray him (6:70–71; cf. 6:45).

Third, in light of the above, it is hearing and believing the words of Jesus that bring eternal life. This emphasis brings us back to the prologue and John’s purpose for writing (cf.

John 1:1–18; 20:30–31). Speaking about this, Köstenberger highlights the significance of the term “Word” in John’s Gospel as a whole.

He explains that, although it appears in the prologue as a title (1:1, 14), it serves as a Christological umbrella term for his entire gospel. By characterizing Jesus as “the Word” he means to encompass Jesus’s entire ministry as it is narrated in the remainder of the account. All of Jesus’s “works” and “words” flow from the eternal fount of Jesus’s eternal existence as “the Word.” Everything that Jesus does is therefore revelation, his works (in particular his “signs”) as well as his words, because everything Jesus says and does points beyond mere external appearances 8 to who Jesus is.

25

According to John’s prologue, that Word, which proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord, is none other than Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God in the flesh, God’s full and final revelation.

26

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

The prologue, therefore, functions to provide John’s audience with “the privilege of omniscience: they are given the interpretive clue to the unfolding events by the ‘omniscient’ narrator. Thus they can learn the spiritual lessons 9 God has for them.”

CONCLUSION What spiritual lessons might be learned from this? First, the exodus generation perished in the wilderness because of unbelief—even though they were firsthand witnesses to God’s extraordinary signs and recipients of his bountiful provision. In Deuteronomy 8, Moses explained God’s purpose for the wilderness sojourn, as he spoke to the second generation of Israelites who were about to enter the Promised Land.

“You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that he might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would obey his commandments or not. He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”

(Deut. 8:2–3 NASB; emphasis added; cf.

10 Deut. 8:16–20) According to John’s prologue, that Word, which proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord, is none other than Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God in the flesh, God’s full and final revelation (cf. John 1:17). Indeed, Isaiah 55:9–11 provides the Old Testament background for 11 this concept. When contrasting the ways of heaven with the ways of earth and comparing the fruitful effects of the rain and snow with the sent word, he says, “So will my word be which goes forth from my mouth; it will not return to me empty, without accomplishing what I

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:11 NASB; see the entire chapter). Jesus is the eternal Word and Son of God who came in the flesh to accomplish the redemptive purpose for which God sent him: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NASB).

Second, the feeding of the five thousand and the bread of life discourse teach us that Jesus is the embodiment of the Passover lamb, who gives his flesh for the life of the world. He is the true bread that has come down from heaven. All who come to him will never hunger or thirst. All who believe and receive him will have everlasting life, and Jesus himself will raise them up on the last day!

RITA F. CEFALU is an adjunct professor in biblical theologi-

cal studies at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee. She is a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast (PhD, Old Testament), Wheaton College (MA, Biblical Exegesis), and Westminster Seminary California (MA, Theological Studies). She previously lectured in theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego, San Diego State University, and several local community colleges. Her areas of expertise include the Old Testament, the New Testament, and biblical theology.

1. All translations mine, unless otherwise indicated.

2. Andreas Köstenberger, Encountering John: The Gospel in Historical, Literary, and Theological Perspective, ed. Walter Elwell and Eugene Merrill, Encountering Biblical Studies (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 9.

3. Köstenberger, 10.

4. As Köstenberger writes, John is not teaching “replacement theology,” but rather he is saying that Jesus is now “the new Israel that becomes the focus of God’s plan of salvation, with the implication that faith in Jesus is decisive for membership in the people of God.” Köstenberger, 149.

5. So also the crowd’s response to the sign of multiplying the five loaves and two fish and their perception that Jesus was the prophet like Moses (John 6:14; cf. Deut. 18:15).

6. The astute reader will observe that earlier the woman at the well made a similar request when Jesus offered her living water that would issue forth in eternal life (4:15; cf. 4:10–15).

7. G. K. Beale, Revelation: A Shorter Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 16.

8. Köstenberger, 38–39.

9. Köstenberger, 37.

10. Cf. Matt. 4:4, where Jesus quotes from this passage in the temptation narrative (cf. Luke 4:4).

11. Köstenberger, 43.

27

by

“ I A M T H E L I G H T O F T H E WO R L D”

JONATHAN K. DODSON

illustration by

PETER VOTH

I the world.” If we heard someone say this today, we’d immediately think they were joking or certifiably insane. Yet, Jesus says it with full-throated conviction. Such a remarkable claim should evoke awe. But for the surrounding Pharisees it triggers anger, and they accuse Jesus of false testimony. How does Jesus’ claim to be the light of the world strike you? If we’re honest, for many of us it elicits apathy.

“Wonder is the only beginning of philosophy,” wrote Plato. The same is true of theology, yet we smuggle Jesus’ claim into our lexicons of belief without a modicum of wonder. To make it back to the beginning of theology, let’s consider what the Pharisees heard, and what we often miss, when Jesus makes this claim. Perhaps, then, his words will spark the awe they deserve.

CREATIVE LIGHT

“I A M T H E L I G H T O F

When Jesus claimed to be “the light” of the world, his message was heard in stereo by the Pharisees. In one channel, they heard his claim in the context of the Feast of Tabernacles, where each evening golden lamps were lit in remembrance of Yahweh’s deliverance from Egypt by a pillar of fire. In the other channel, they heard an even older and more audacious claim: that Jesus was with Yahweh when he made the light. This assertion put him on par with Yahweh, but to which light was Jesus referring?

If Jesus was referring to the creative light of Genesis 1, what light was he thinking of in particular? The “lights in the expanse of the heavens” (presumably the stars) and our sun and moon were not created until day four. Alternatively, he could

29

have been referring to an older light: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gen 1:3). What are we to make of this primordial light?

For centuries, scientists and philosophers alike thought the cosmos had no beginning.

Fred Hoyle argued that although the universe is continuously expanding (steady state theory), it had no beginning. Then in the 1960s, a couple of scientists working at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey noticed that their radio antenna kept picking up an inexplicable hissing sound.

They deduced that the sound came from pigeons perched on the antennae, so they ran the birds off, only to hear the hissing continue. Eventually, they realized the sound was the afterglow of a Big Bang: cosmic background radiation. The discovery was hailed as a massive scientific breakthrough. Many Christians reeled as the Big Bang dealt a blow to the Bible’s account of origins, replacing God as the origin of all things.

However, the Big Bang and “in the beginning” 1 need not be at odds.

As “the light of the world,” Jesus enables us to harmonize science with Scripture in two illuminating ways. First, the Big Bang theory posits that it generated an abundance of light nuclei that contain some of the basic building blocks of biological life (hydrogen, deuterium, and helium). Second, a massive creative force was necessary to produce the cosmic background radiation still present today. Both of these things—light nuclei and the Big Bang—entail a super powerful, creative light.

When Jesus said, “I am the light of the world,” he made a creative claim that only Yahweh could make: “Let there be light.” Striking two rocks together, Jesus and Yahweh sparked the cosmos into existence. Yahweh spoke a word filled with the light of the world, and it was Jesus. As Light, Jesus creates cosmological beauty. As Word, he sustains its theological meaning; “he upholds all things by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3).

Jesus is both Word and Light, the mediator of a kaleidoscope of meaningful creativity that has kept laypeople, scientists, and philosophers busy for millennia. Should not the light of the world dazzle us?

30

Remove the sustaining power of Jesus and life wilts, the petal fades, bursting color is gone. In scientific terms, if the gravitational constant were slightly greater, the stars would not be hot enough to warm the planets, and the earth wouldn’t be warm enough to sustain organic life. Without “the light of the world,” we don’t exist and flowers don’t bloom. Even the gifted Russian Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich sees the light: “When I see a garden in flower, then I believe in God for a second.

2 But not the rest of the time.” However, seeing the creative light isn’t enough to sustain wonder.

REDEMPTIVE LIGHT The light not only creates and sustains, it shines: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5). The light exposes the darkness. The darkness isn’t benign, not a mere absence of light. Morally recalcitrant, it strikes out against the light. This moral opacity isn’t difficult to detect today. It lurks about the daily news, slinks through every social media feed: the lust-driven abuses compelling #MeToo, the declarations of nonbinary rights, profiling and harassment of persons of color, and yet another school shooting. We need the light to triumph over the darkness.

However, before the light triumphs, we must recognize the darkness in ourselves. We all possess the capacity to make the headlines. We contribute to the hate-fueled outrage and slip into lusty imaginations. I think of the mercy ministry leader who did exemplary work among the homeless of his city, only to be busted by the police for participation in a prostitution ring, or the angry rants by self-proclaimed “peacemaker” Christians shouting down one another on Twitter. We live in the shadow of our broken selves. And if we excuse ourselves, then we’re even more deluded than we know.

This delusion often begins by “losing our passion for the Lord.” The Prince of Darkness would have us assume a tepid indifference to the Lord of light. I am reminded of the Christian husband who confessed to “not feeling anything” when it comes to Christ. He received counsel, prayer, and

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

exhortation, but when encouraged to repent, he shrugged it off. Months later he abandoned his wife, a mother to newborn twins. His fatal flaw?

A persistent, unrepentant apathy to the Light.

Do you comfort yourself that you are not “like those Christians”? Do you think to yourself, “I may have lost my ‘wonder,’ but at least I’m not making the headlines”? Be warned: It is this “lukewarmness” the “faithful witness” spews out of his mouth, calling for passion worthy of his name, to “be zealous and repent” (Rev. 3:15–22).

Yet if we repent, the faithful witness will stand while we sit on his throne: “The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne” (Rev. 3:21). There is a Light, triumphant and true, and he has broken into this world. But to feel his warmth, it is not enough to affirm Jesus’ theological claim.

We have to emerge from the shadows—to turn toward the light. Jesus continues his claim about being the light to following the light: “Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). To get out of the darkness, we have to stay close to the Light.

Dancing on the edges won’t do.

When I was growing up, my parents often prayed that their three children “would walk in the light.” What did they mean? They wanted moral purity for us; but if that was their only prayer, it fell short. We need a light more powerful than a strong, moral constitution. Walking in the light brings to mind the other channel in which the Pharisees heard Jesus’ claim. As the Jews meandered through the torch-lit Court of Women during the Feast of Tabernacles, they were immersed in a message: Walking in the light isn’t just being good; it’s following the burning pillar of fire out of Egypt; it’s being humble enough to cry out for rescue from sin—apathy included—and allowing the Light to cleanse us.

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Walking in the light is embracing Jesus’ second exodus work so deeply that we boldly bring our darkness to him, over and over again, to experience his cleansing, purifying light. What

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

can you zealously bring to Jesus? What darkness do you need to get out into the light?

My daughter had strep throat and was confined to the house for a week. Toward the end of the week, we decided to go outside together.

When we stepped outside she said, “Daddy, the light hurts.” I told her, “That’s because you’ve been in the dark so long. Once you get used to the light, you’ll see it’s a beautiful day.” Coming out of the darkness can be painful; but once we step out into the light, our eyes are opened to never-ending wonder: a forgiving Savior and glorious Creator with arms wide open.

TRIUMPHANT LIGHT The creative and redemptive light work together in Jesus to produce a triumphant light: “the darkness did not overcome it.” The Greek word for “overcome” is sometimes translated “comprehend,” but that translation loses the triumph of the light. Those who walk in the light now will walk in Jesus’ final triumph over darkness forever. We are promised freedom from sin, death, and hell. No more impure motives, no more confession of sin. Those who contend with the darkness and follow the light will sit in regal triumph over sin, death, and Satan for eternity in God’s new creation. There, in the new heavens and new earth, there will be no need for a sun or moon, because the glory of the Lamb will illumine it forever. His creative and redemptive light will so suffuse the cosmos that no unclean thing will ever enter it again. The Light will triumph! May the Lord restore and expand our wonder to continually take in his glorious light.

JONATHAN K. DODSON is the founding pastor of City Life

Church in Austin, Texas, founder of Gospel-Centered Discipleship.com, and author of a number of books, including Here in Spirit: Knowing the Spirit Who Creates, Sustains, and Transforms Everything (IVP, 2018).

1. For more on the historical developments of science and their relationship to Christian faith, see Alistair McGrath, Inventing the Universe (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015).

2. See https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/ the-memory-keeper.

31

by

“I AM THE DOOR”

NICHOLAS DAVIS

illustration by

PETER VOTH

S So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.”

(John 10:7–9)

remembered first part, in which we find the third “I am” saying of Jesus. Jesus uses this imagery of a sheep gate, or door, when he says, “I am the door” (John 10:7, 9).

We walk through doors ever y day.

Leaving the house this morning, we had to walk out our front, back, side, or garage door. To get to work or the grocery store, we walked through a door. Doors give us access to enter into a new place. So if Jesus says “I am the door,” what is Jesus saying he’s the doorway to? As we study this passage, two things become clear:

of John’s Gospel is well known and fondly remembered as the Good Shepherd passage, so I want to focus on the lesser known and hardly

THE TENTH CHAPTER

33

Jesus says, “I am the door to salvation” and “I am the door to safety.”

“I AM THE DOOR TO SALVATION” The context of John 10 immediately follows the story of a blind man whose eyesight Jesus restores. This story reveals that it is the seeing Pharisees who were, in reality, blind; and it was the blind man who could truly see—not with his eyes, but with ears of faith (John 9:1–41).

John 10 continues to build on this thought, which is why John writes in verse 6, “This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.” “They” and “them” refer to the Pharisees, who were full of unbelief (that is, they were spiritually blind). So when Jesus uses the imagery of a door and a shepherd to talk about how he cares for his people, he simultaneously reveals how the Pharisees, the under-shepherds of Israel, have failed in their spiritual care, leadership, stewardship, and oversight (see John 10:8; Ezek. 34:2–4).

When Jesus uses this figure of speech of being the door, he explains, “If anyone enters by me, he will be saved.”

Not many of us reading Modern Reformation are farmers or sheep herders, and even if some of us are, modern conventions have changed how we care for sheep. So let me put this into perspective. The door he’s talking about isn’t like the hinged doors we normally use. Jesus was referring to a small opening in a sheep pen, in which a circle of rocks was piled high to form a wall that would protect sheep from predators at night. This sort of sheep pen didn’t have an actual door. It was open, and at night the shepherd would keep the sheep inside and keep predators outside by lying down across the open space. By sleeping there, the shepherd became the door to the sheep.

Now this imagery teaches us a lot about the Christian faith. There is only one door. It’s the door and not a door. There is only one way to salvation. Acts 4:12 teaches, “And there is

34

THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO SALVATION. ACTS 4:12 TEACHES, “AND THERE IS SALVATION IN NO ONE ELSE, FOR THERE IS NO OTHER NAME UNDER HEAVEN GIVEN AMONG MEN BY WHICH WE MUST BE SAVED.” VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus reiterates, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6). In other words, there are not many doors or entrances or different ways to heaven, but just one door. What we see here is that Christianity is an exclusive religion.

Jesus goes so far as to say that if anyone tries to enter by a different way, then he is a thief or a robber.

Jesus is the only door for salvation. That’s not going to be a popular message in our culture. In fact, it never has been a popular teaching. When Christianity came onto the world stage, it upset Rome because it pledged allegiance to God alone.

Christians weren’t bowing down to Caesar as lord and ultimate sovereign. In America, we may still pledge allegiance as “one nation, under God,” but the definition of that “God” is open to interpretation and not exactly the Holy Trinity. Not to mention the fact that our culture is probably less open to exclusive claims than Rome was. “What’s true for you isn’t true for me.” This is called “relativism,” meaning that there is no absolute truth.

Truth is what’s true for you—it’s subjective. In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis helpfully confronted this idea back in his day:

open to everyone. The gospel is for everybody.

Jesus is the door, and he has opened the way of access for us to God the Father. The reason we need him and no one else is because we are sinful, and we need Jesus to become sin for us so we can receive his perfect record before God. It’s not an accident that Jesus compares entering through the door, which is easy, with trying to enter in other ways, which are difficult. Thieves and robbers have to climb up over the wall. That’s hard work, and it’s no legitimate way to enter. But coming through Jesus is legitimate, and it’s easy. As Jesus says in Matthew 11:30, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” It’s easy because Jesus laid down his life for us. It’s easy because Jesus bore the burden for us. If we go any other way, we’ll never get in. But if we go through Jesus, we have the way. He becomes our door to salvation. That’s salvation in the past, present, and future—the guilt of sin, the power of sin, and the tyranny of sin are all thwarted and overthrown in the cross of Christ. He is the door for our justification, sanctification, and glorification. But that’s only the first part of the meaning.

Whenever you find a man who says he doesn’t believe in a real right and wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He will break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he’ll be complaining “it’s not fair” before you can say Jack Robinson. ([New York: HarperOne, 2009], 6.)

The second part is that Jesus promises safety to all who trust in him. So far we’ve read that Jesus says, “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved,” which is why Jesus is the door to our salvation, but Jesus is also the door to our safety. The verse continues to say, “he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture” (v. 9).

I don’t know everyone’s story reading this article, but I do know that there are at least a few who have experienced a real threat to their safety. Maybe you’ve been held at gunpoint, or maybe you almost lost your life in a car accident. About fifteen years ago, when I was snowboarding with my younger cousin, we fell off the face of the mountain—a massive drop that should have killed us. Thankfully, it had snowed heavily the night before, so we landed

When you really push someone on this, they’ll budge. The thing about Christianity is that it might be exclusive—that is, it teaches that Jesus is the only way to salvation—but it’s open to anyone and everyone regardless of social class, status, gender, or age. Jesus says, “I am the door,” but he also opens wide that door by saying, “If anyone enters by me, he will be saved.” Christianity might be exclusive, but it’s

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

“I AM THE DOOR TO SAFETY”

35

in a cloud of powder—a soft pillow landing instead of instant death.

But if any of us has ever been in danger, hearing words that Jesus will provide us with safety can sound a lot like a false promise. If we’ve been in a situation where we weren’t protected, or we were vulnerable and something happened that should never have happened—especially if there is a God who is benevolent—then hearing these words might make us feel frustrated at best and furious at worst.

What do we do with verses like this when our experience—our reality—doesn’t match up with it? What happens when we are not safe, when we’re in a situation that could lead to our harm or death, or if we’ve already suffered and survived the unbearable—where God was nowhere to be found in our pain and time of need? How is this comforting? How can this even be true?

The answer to that question is this: We will always be safe in the care and protection of Jesus—period. The apostle Paul, who was no novice to suffering (beaten, nearly whipped to death three times, and even shipwrecked), says in Romans 8:38–39: For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul was sure that not even death itself could keep us from the hands of God’s protection.

If we are in Christ, then we are in the safest place we can and will ever be. That’s a lot easier to say when we’re in a relatively safe country, inside of a safe building, reading a magazine; but it’s true no matter where we find ourselves.

If we trust in money, comfort, possessions, position, or power to help us feel secure, then we’re never going to find safety. Wealth can run dry. Comfort can change. A lowered economic status takes away the luxury. Possessions can be stolen or destroyed.

But this is true even when we’ve been through agony—because we have the greatest

36

sympathizer of our agony in the One who willingly suffered agony for our sake on the cross.

In Christ, God is not silent in our pain, but he screams out with us in our hurt. In Christ, God has silenced suffering and promised to put an end to all pain. In Christ, God promises that he will always keep us safe and sound.

The tenth chapter of John calls each one of us to find safety in Jesus—to find safety in the God who promises to give his sheep the ability to go freely in and out of pasture. This is reminiscent of Psalm 23, where the psalmist famously wrote, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (v. 4). That is a comfort—a safety—that no one can ever take away from us. There is nowhere safer. So, come through the door and find safety in Jesus. Come and find safety in the Good Shepherd who was willing to lay down his own life for his sheep.

Come and find safety in the Christ who went all the way to the cross to be the door that gives us access to God. By illustrating himself as the door, Jesus is talking about substitution. He’s talking about the shepherd taking the place of the sheep, and taking on the danger and harm that was coming their way. Through his substitutionary death on the cross, Jesus became the sacrificial lamb who was willing and able to stand in our place. Through faith in Jesus, we stand safe.

Five chapters later in John 15:13, Jesus would say to his disciples, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” This is precisely what God has done for us in his Christ. Jesus is the door because, unlike a hired hand, he puts his own life on the line to protect and care for his sheep.

The way is easy, and the door is still open.

Come through the door.

NICHOLAS DAVIS is the lead pastor of Redemption

Church (PCA) in San Diego, California. Nick has worked for White Horse Inn for several years and contributed to Modern Reformation, Mockingbird NYC, Fathom Mag, and is a writer for Core Christianity. He blogs at nicholasmartindavis.com. Connect with him on Twitter @MundaneMinister.

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

(Rom. 8:38–39)

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

37

by

“I AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD”

SHANE ROSENTHAL

illustration by

PETER VOTH

A religious affiliation is on the wane and autonomy is on the rise. Of course, these things are proportionally related, for as people increasingly adopt the dogma that above us is only sky, they begin to see themselves (either individually or collectively) as the ultimate source of authority. In such a world, there can be no ultimate standard for truth, goodness, or beauty, but only subjective preferences, which is why many have come to believe in our day that there is no such thing as objective morality,

that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that truth is relative.

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the Saint Louis Art Museum with two of my college-aged kids, and at one point on our tour we found ourselves in the modern art section, staring at extremely large, glossy gray panels. It was at this point that I began to impersonate a pretentious art critic who was trying to explain the significance of these amazing works of art. “Because these panels are glossy and

ACCORDING TO RECENT STATS,

39

reflective,” my character suggested—complete with a pretentious English accent, mind you— “you, the viewer, can see your own reflection within the gray, and thus ‘you’ become the art!”

But to our surprise, what I said in jest actually ended up being the gist of the explanation written on the wall next to these panels.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat provides a similar example. As the musical begins, the narrator sings: We all dream a lot. some are lucky, some are not.

But if you think it, want it, dream it, then it’s real.

You are what you feel.

But all that I say, can be told another way, in the story of a boy whose dreams came true.

And he could be you.

You’ll notice that in this version of the Joseph story we’re not confronted at all with a historical or theological drama that points to God’s providential care and oversight of his people. Rather, it’s actually just another glossy panel for us to look through, so that we can gaze on our own reflections. At the end of the day, the story is not actually about Joseph at all, but what we can accomplish if we think it, want it, or dream it. History is always difficult to wade through, because there are so many foreign names, places, and concepts to wrestle with.

But Andrew Lloyd Webber has found a way to keep us interested, since in his version of this classic tale, we are at the center. All this I think illustrates the basic outlook of our contemporary secular culture. We have become turned in on ourselves. To borrow the words of a famous political speech from a few years back, “We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.”

Now, before we Christians start patting ourselves on the back for being on the right

40

WE HAVE BECOME TURNED IN ON OURSELVES. TO BORROW THE WORDS OF A FAMOUS POLITICAL SPEECH FROM A FEW YEARS BACK, “WE ARE THE ONES THAT WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR.” VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

side of these issues, since we believe in God and submit to his lordship, we need to ask ourselves whether we too have bought into many of the beliefs and assumptions of our contemporary culture. Think about it for a moment.

How different really is a typical sermon or Sunday school lesson about a character such as Joseph from what is presented in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat?

In countless churches today, Christians are encouraged to treat the Bible as a reflective panel, so that they too can dream great big dreams for God, like Joseph, or even “dare to be a Daniel.”

These examples make it clear that the problem is not merely out there in our increasingly secular culture. No, the problem is also right here at home in countless secularized versions of American Christianity. This means that we need to compare these popular beliefs and ideas, regardless of the source, with the clear teachings of Scripture, in order to make sure that we do not succumb to the effects of what some refer to as a “narcissism epidemic.”

One way to defend yourself against this outbreak is to pay close attention to the words we find in Numbers 27:17. This is the scene in which Moses asks God to “appoint a man over the congregation . . . who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.” This is the antidote to our collective narcissism, since narcissism itself is the ultimate expression of self-preoccupation, self-love, self-rule, and perhaps we can even say, self-worship. We are all curved in on ourselves, and frankly, we like it that way.

Because of sin, “all we like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way” (Isa. 53:6). In other words, this self-rule, this spirit of autonomy, is actually the source of our own destruction.

I f y o u t h i n k a b o u t i t, t h e e nt i r e O ld Testament in one way or another attempts to grapple with this question of authority. In fact, the entrance of sin into the world itself was the result of man’s quest for autonomy.

Rather than submit to the voice of the one

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

who had created all things, our first parents decided to go their own way by eating the forbidden fruit, because they wanted to be gods themselves. Similarly, in the days of Moses, the people sinned against God by “demanding the food they craved” (Ps. 78:18), rather than trusting in the provision of their gracious liberator and submitting to his lordship.

And in the book of Judges, we’re specifically told that since there was no king in Israel, “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6).

But in Ezekiel 34:5, we’re given a glimpse of something amazing yet to come: “Because there was no shepherd,” we’re told, the sheep “were scattered . . . and they became food for all the wild beasts.” But in verses 15–16 of this prophecy, God announces to his people, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy.”

It’s fascinating to reflect on the variety of passages throughout the Gospels that allude to this prophecy from Ezekiel 34. For when Jesus eventually arrives on the scene, he claims to be this divine shepherd-king whose mission is to rescue all the sheep that have been scattered, wounded, and lost. He’s the one who leaves the ninety-nine in order to seek out and restore the one lost sheep (Matt.

18:12); he’s the good Samaritan who finds us left for dead and binds up our wounds (Luke 10:29-37); and he’s the one at the end of all history who will separate the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:32–33).

But the most striking parallel to the words of Ezekiel’s prophecy is found in John 10, in which Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (v. 11). You see, unlike all the false shepherds throughout Israel’s long history, Jesus didn’t come to steal or to divide, but

41

At the end of the day, we are not sheep without a shepherd.

Though we have all strayed from God like lost sheep, we have been rescued and brought safely back to our loving Father by the Good Shepherd.

42

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

rather to give. And what is it that he gives?

It is his own life that he gives for the life of the world.

Recall the words of John the Baptist when he pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

This is how our great shepherd leads his sheep beside the still waters and restores us. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter (Isa. 53:7)—in our place—so that goodness and mercy might follow us all the days of our lives, and so that we might dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Ps. 23:6).

But the story doesn’t end at Golgotha. Before he ascended into heaven, this same shepherdking announced to his disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matt.

28:18–20) So if Jesus has all authority, then we are called not to do whatever seems right in our own eyes, but rather to submit to his authority and to become his faithful subjects. But let’s be honest with ourselves for a moment. If you are anything like me, the words submission and subjection are not always received with joy, and this is because we still like doing our own thing and going our own way. This should be seen as proof that the narcissism epidemic we witness all around us is not merely a problem out there in the secular world or over there in the evangelical subculture, but that we too are carriers of this virus.

As we reflect on the implications of Jesus’ words, it becomes clear that our Lord does not call us to make disciples of ourselves. Rather, we are called to be discipled by those who have been appointed as Christ’s under-shepherds.

Though we bristle against this idea of submission, it’s actually part of God’s gracious plan, so that each of us can be guided in our faith and grow up to maturity in Christ, to the end that

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

we would not be “tossed back and forth by every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:11–14).

A helpful analogy to think about is the way we typically submit to the instructions of a physician when we have a particular health concern.

A doctor might give you a prescription for a medication you’ve never heard of before, and he or she might also insist that you completely avoid sugar in your diet. In some extreme cases, you might even be told to report to the hospital immediately for surgery. When it comes to all these bodily concerns, we seem to understand that submitting to the doctor’s orders is in fact a wise, good, and often necessary thing. So why should it be any different when it comes to the care of our souls?

At the end of the day, we are not sheep without a shepherd. Though we have all strayed from God like lost sheep, we have been rescued and brought safely back to our loving Father by the Good Shepherd. So what are we to do in response to this amazing news? Should we continue to go astray, each of us to his own way? No, we’re actually called to take his yoke upon us (Matt.

11:29) and to be “transformed by the renewing of [our] minds” (Rom. 12:2). We do this in part by submitting to Christ’s faithful under-shepherds (Heb. 13:17) who present to us the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27), to the end that we may be thoroughly equipped (2 Tim. 3:17) and made to lie down in green pastures (Ps. 23:2).

Finally, we need to beware of all those in our contemporary culture—whether secular or Christian—who by smooth talk and flattery (Rom. 16:18) tell us what our itching ears long to hear (2 Tim. 4:3). At the end of the day, the Bible is not a reflective panel for us to gaze on our own reflections. This is not a story about what we can do with God’s help. Rather, it is the revelation of our true shepherd-king, Jesus Christ, who laid down his life for his sheep (John 5:39–40; 10:11). In him, our cup overflows (Ps. 23:5), so let us drink deeply from the living water that flows from his pierced side (John 4:10; 7:37; 19:34–37).

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

43

by

“I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE”

ERIC LANDRY

illustration by

PETER VOTH

G evangelical circles, I often witnessed the odd Christian ritual of sharing your life verse. The life verse was some particular passage from Scripture that people grasped onto as a special word from the Lord for them. It would sometimes, then, help shape their lives as they sought to live according to its command or promise. Nothing about that is necessarily wrong, but such understanding of the verse usually lacked the context that actually gives the verse a meaning beyond our personal appropriation of it. Maybe that’s why there were hardly any life verses drawn from Leviticus, Lamentations, or Revelation! Instead, many people turn to passages such as Proverbs 3:5–6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart,” and Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you.”

As a preacher’s kid and a bit of a smart aleck, I decided to turn the life-verse idea on its head a bit and chose John 11:35 for my verse: “Jesus wept.” What was funny and clever to me as a teenager is now strangely comforting to me (dare I say it, nearly a life verse) now that I’m older. To understand why, I need to turn to the story of Lazarus.

Lazarus and his sisters, Mar y and Martha, were close friends of Jesus. “He loved them” (John 11:5). Here, we have an interesting glimpse into Jesus’ private life. We’re so used to seeing Jesus in the company of his disciples that we forget he probably had seasons of his life spent outside of the public eye in the company of friends such as Lazarus, Mary, and Martha.

Like many people, Lazarus fell ill. Sadly, it was a terminal illness. His sisters, knowing

GROWING UP IN

45

of Jesus’ care and compassion for their family and of his power to do great things, called on him to come and heal their brother (John 11:3).

But Jesus didn’t come right away, delaying so that the glory of God might be revealed in this situation (John 11:4).

What we learn from all of this is that Jesus wasn’t motivated by the same things that motivate you and me. He was on a divine schedule, and the purpose of all his teaching and miracles was to peel back another onion layer of his person and work, to explain to a watching world why God had taken on human flesh to walk among them. The miracles that changed people’s lives were wonderful, and the teaching was profound and moving. But Jesus taught and performed miracles so that he might be known by those he came to save.

There’s an important insight here. Whether you are new to Jesus or a longtime disciple, you must be aware of how Jesus works and operates. Otherwise, you may become disillusioned with Jesus: his teaching becomes “old hat,” and his miracles don’t live up to their promise in your life. But all along, you’ve really been missing the real deal. Jesus didn’t come to make a guest appearance in Lazarus’s life (or your life or my life). We’re not the point. Jesus came to write Lazarus into the grand production that has Jesus in the starring role. You and I are also being written into the Jesus story. It’s not the other way around.

When Jesus finally arrived in Bethany, he was met by Lazarus’s sisters, Martha and Mary (John 11:21, 32). Understandably, the heart-wrenching question from both of them was why? Why didn’t you come earlier, Jesus?

Why didn’t you show up when our need was greatest? Why didn’t you answer our call? (You thought this was an ancient story, but really it’s very modern.) Like us, Martha and Mary knew that Jesus could do great things, but they were confused, perplexed by his absence in their greatest hour of need. We need to be gentle here, but the problem with that question is its severe shortsightedness: You could have done something! That’s why Jesus in his conversation with Martha didn’t dwell on the past—no

46

excuses, no explanation. Instead, he pointed Martha toward the future: “Your brother will rise again” (John 11:23).

Now, just like today, the question of the afterlife in Jesus’ time was a hot one. Some ancient Jews believed as Christians do now, that at the end of the age God will raise people from the dead to enter into a new, eternal existence—a life with him in a new heavens and new earth.

Others, however, believe that when you’re dead, you’re dead, and the only afterlife that you can speak of is the fond feelings people have of you after you die.

According to Martha’s answer, we know she believed that there was going to be a future resurrection of the dead (John 11:24). But Jesus wanted her to reevaluate the expectations she had of him—the expectations that, when unmet, led her to cry out to Jesus in anguish, “If only you had been here!” Jesus essentially said to Martha, “I’m not interested in the past (what I could have done), and for the moment, I’m not even interested in the future. I’m interested in the present. I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).

As with every other “I am” statement in the Gospel of John, this statement tells us something about Jesus’ mission. Jesus will not only raise people on the last day, but he himself is the resurrection and the life. Verses 25 and 26 are two parts of the same idea, but one looks forward and one looks to the present. In verse 25, Jesus claimed to be the resurrection. He said that because of him, the hope of all people is that our own death (like Lazarus’s death) will not be the final word. Instead, we will be part of a final resurrection that leads to never-ending life. That’s the future. But verse 26 is firmly anchored in the present: Everyone who lives and believes in him shall never die. In other words, Jesus wasn’t just telling Martha to have hope for the future; he was offering her hope at that very moment.

Life—heavenly life, saving life, eternal life, the life of God—is something that can be had right now through Jesus.

“Do you believe this?” Jesus asked. Martha answered, “Yes, Lord, I believe” (John 11:27).

The question comes to you as well: Do you believe

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

this? If you don’t, then nothing about the life you live or the death you will die will make sense to you. But if you do believe, then the promise of Jesus is that even in this life, you can live a resurrection life—a life animated not by the stench of death, disease, and despair, but by the very aroma of God’s own heavenly life. This life isn’t something to be had only when we are raised to eternal life with God; it is something that belongs to us today, because Jesus is the resurrection and the life; and those who are identified with Jesus, united to him by faith, share as certainly in the present promises of God as they do in the future promises of God. I started by saying that John 11:35—“Jesus wept”—remains an important verse to me. Now I want to explain why. Jesus comes to the tomb, and even though he is about to raise his friend Lazarus from the dead, to give him new life, he weeps. In fact, he does more than weep; he is deeply moved and greatly troubled (v. 33). Those English adjectives don’t quite get at the heart of Jesus’ feeling. He doesn’t just approach the tomb with furrowed brow; he is overwhelmed by anger and sorrow. He doesn’t stand silently before the tomb; he is angry, outraged, and indignant when face-to-face with death. It’s not too far-fetched to hear in these words a guttural groan of anguish.

It is important that we see this side of Jesus.

It is important to see our incarnate God weep in the face of death, to know that he feels the horror of sin’s curse. I need to know and remind myself every day—when faced by the death that permeates so much of my life and my family’s life—that Jesus wept, that he is not unfeeling, uncaring, or undisturbed by what cripples me.

I need to know that, if anything, Jesus feels the horror of my situation even more acutely than I can feel it, knows it more deeply than I can know it, and cares more passionately than I can ever care.

There is strange comfort in knowing that Jesus feels my pain, but even that isn’t the good news. Jesus doesn’t just stop with passion. He goes on to resurrection. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, crying out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” (John 11:43). The Word

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

incarnate, the same Word that spoke creation into being, spoke life back into Lazarus and he stumbled out of the tomb (John 11:44).

Now many commentators are quick to point out that Lazarus lived only to die another day— and that’s true. Even now Lazarus does not enjoy the fullness of the resurrection life that Jesus promised then. Like us, he must wait for the last day, when the same voice that called to him in Bethany will call to all of us in our graves, reanimating our physical bodies and joining body and soul together forever in a new glorified body.

But the life Lazarus lived that day and for the rest of his days was in many ways a picture, a parable, a living object lesson of what resurrection life looks like, even for you and me right now. You see, not too many days later, Lazarus and his sisters would hear of Jesus’ death on a cross just down the road from Bethany, and the grief and fear that overtook them would be matched only by the great joy that would flood their hearts three days later when they learned he had risen again. Every day Lazarus lived after that first Easter would be lived knowing that he was living on the down payment of the everlasting life that Jesus promised. His entire life orientation would be changed, because he knew that God was present and active right now, and that all he enjoyed in this life was just a foretaste of the life to come. The life that you and I also live, though not out of reach of sin and death, is a life that is lived in anticipation of our own resurrection, because it is a life lived in the glorious light of Easter.

Do you believe this? Even though Lazarus walked out of the tomb that day in Bethany, the big news that day came when Martha said, “Yes, Lord, I believe.” Can you say that? If you can, it does not matter what awaits you in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. For if Jesus is the resurrection and the life, then nothing—not even death itself—can rob you of the very life of God that is yours today, tomorrow, and forever.

ERIC LANDRY is executive editor of Modern Reformation

magazine. He also serves as the senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Austin, Texas.

47

“ I A M T H E WAY, T H E T R U T H , AND THE LIFE” DAVID ZADOK by

illustration by

PETER VOTH

A the first time I heard the gospel was in a Bible study organized by the Navigators at San Diego State University. After sharing some of the Old Testament prophesies, they turned to the Gospel of John, showing how Jesus was the fulfilment of all the prophesies. That was the beginning of a journey where the Lord showed me that Jesus is not the prophet of the Christians, as I had thought my whole life, but he is indeed the Jewish Messiah

who is the lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world. So, the Gospel of John has a special place in my life, but not only because of my first encounter with John the evangelist.

John begins his Gospel with the words “In the beginning,� just as Genesis 1 begins with those same words. Matthew brings us back to David and Abraham, Mark goes back to John the Baptist, Luke brings us to the story of Zacharias and Elizabeth and

AS A JEWISH PERSON,

49

the birth of John the Baptist, but John transports us all the way back to the creation. John introduces us to the agent of creation, to the One who not only was from the beginning, but from whom all things came into being. Paul, later on referring to Jesus in Colossians 1:16, clearly tells us, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”

In the creation account, the first element that was created was light, as darkness covered the formless and void earth. In creating light, God saw that it was good, and he separated it from darkness. In his Gospel, John emphasizes darkness and light. Light alone appears thirty-seven times (twenty-four times in his Gospel and another thirteen times in his other writings). In the prologue, he writes that light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. As we read the Gospel and move from the prologue to the birth and life of Christ and his ministry, we see indeed how light conquers darkness, slowly but surely, one person at a time. For example, Nicodemus sees the light in John 3, as does the Samaritan woman in John 4 and then the Twelve, the seventy, and finally the multitudes that are dragged out of their darkness into the light.

In his treatise The End for Which God Created the World, Jonathan Edwards, the eighteenthcentury American revivalist theologian and pastor, sees light as the most essential revelation of God and as a synonym to his very glory. Indeed, Christ as the light of the world is the very glory of God, and that is exactly what John tells us in 1:14, “and we have seen his glory; glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The stories of Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman illustrate the universality of the gospel. A man and a woman, a Jew and a Samaritan, an honorable man and a less honorable woman were in total darkness with no spiritual comprehension. And right in the middle of these two conversations come the words “For God so loved the world that he gave

50

his only son.” The world that God so loved is the world of Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, who were in total darkness. Their minds could comprehend only worldly ideas.

Nicodemus was thinking about physical birth when Jesus was talking about spiritual birth from above, and the Samaritan woman could think only of physical water, hoping that it would save her a few trips to the well. She was completely unable to comprehend the spiritual water that Jesus alone can offer. However, in both cases, after their encounter with Jesus—the light of the world—their minds and hearts were transformed. The darkness was replaced by light, and just like at the creation, it was good.

“I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE” We live in a world in which being politically correct has become the highest virtue. Saying the truth may offend someone and is considered out of order. To hear the phrase “I have my truth and you have your truth” is normal, even if the two truths are opposing. It reminds me of a Jewish story about a couple who were not getting along in their marriage, and so they asked their rabbi to help them. He hears the woman complain and says to her, “You are right.” Then the husband lays on his complaints about his wife, and the rabbi responds, “You are right.” At that point, the rabbi’s disciple asks him, “Rabbi, how can it be that you told both of them that they are right?” And he got his answer: “You are right too!” So from this rabbi’s view, everyone is right! But this is not Jesus the Son of God’s view.

In one of his “I Am” discourses, Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). In this bold statement, he leaves no room at all for any other way, any other truth, or just any kind of life. He, and he alone, is the way.

In fact, that is why the first Christians were called “The Way” (Acts 9:2; 19:9). Those who belong to Christ and follow him are the only

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

After their encounter with Jesus—the light of the world— their minds and hearts were transformed. The darkness was replaced by light, and just like at the creation, it was good.

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

51

ones who know the way to the Father, and there is no other way to the Father. Consequently, all those religions—including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and others that claim that by following their way we can reach heaven—are all wrong. There is only one way, and Jesus claims it solely for himself.

Jesus’ claim does not stop with him being the only way, but he is also the only truth and the only life. His way leads to the only truth that can lead to true life here in this world and in the world to come. So in this new culture of acceptability and inclusivity, the words of Christ are in sharp contrast to today’s world message.

For us as followers of the way, the truth, and the life, however, these are words of comfort.

The context of these words shows us clearly that they were uttered for the comfort of the troubled disciples. In John 13, after washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus refers to his coming crucifixion and tells them, “Where I am going you cannot come” (v. 33). Only a few verses earlier (v. 21), Jesus had told them that one of them would betray him. At the end of the chapter, Peter, who too often spoke before putting his brain in gear, heard the words that before the rooster crowed three times he would betray his master. This is how chapter 13 ends. Not the best of times for the disciples who followed their master and saw him perform miracles, cast out demons, feed thousands with a little bread and fish, and even saw him raise Lazarus from the dead. From the height of victory, they now seem to be falling to the depths of defeat.

One of them will betray him, and the one closest to him will quickly deny him. Jesus will be handed over to be humiliated and will die the most painful, humiliating, and unjust death of all history. Jesus’ very next words, as recorded in John 14:1, are: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may

52

“LET NOT YOUR HEARTS BE TROUBLED. BELIEVE IN GOD; BELIEVE ALSO IN ME…. I WILL COME AGAIN AND WILL TAKE YOU TO MYSELF, THAT WHERE I AM YOU MAY BE ALSO.” VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

be also. And you know the way to where I am going.”

We can only imagine what a comfort these words were to the troubled disciples. He calms them down by assuring them that he is leaving for their sake and that he is going to prepare an eternal place for them. More than that, he will personally come again and take them there himself. He does not give them the address and say, “See you there.”

No, he will come back to escort them to that marvelous, eternal, joyful, no-death, nofear, no-tears place. And when Thomas the doubter remarks that they don’t know where he is going, so how can they know the way, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” These three definitive words are given not only to make theological points but also to comfort us today. And we certainly need comforting words in a world that is moving farther and farther from even the most basic truths of the Scriptures.

The pagan worldview is trying to erase any distinction between creatures and even between the creator and the creation. This is one of the enemy’s new strategies, and we see the result of it in same-sex marriages, in nullifying the male and female distinction, and above all, in turning the Christian worldview around where there is no distinction between God the Creator and human beings as creatures. One of the horrible results of this new philosophy is ecumenicalism at its worst, where each person has the right to his own “made-up” truth and the concept that we supposedly can all live in peace with one another, no matter what.

Dr. Peter Jones, the executive director of Truth Exchange (www.truthxchange.com) and one of my professors at Westminster Seminary California, uses the terms “Twoism,” world of God, and “One-ism,” world of the New Paganism, where there is no distinc1 tion between anything and anyone.

One widely influential figure today is the economist and social theorist Jeremy

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

Rifkin, who has written more than twenty books. He has been an advisor to US presidents, an unpaid advisor to the European Union, and even an advisor to the leadership 2 of the People’s Republic of China. In her book Finding Truth, Nancy Pearcey rightly understands Jeremy Rifkin’s philosophy: “Most obviously, it eliminates a transcendent Creator—which Rifkin takes to be a good thing.” For it means that “we no longer feel ourselves to be guests in someone else’s home.”

Therefore, we no longer feel “obligated to make our behavior conform to a set of preex3 isting cosmic rules.”

Continuing t o unma sk Rifkin’s v iew, Pearcey quotes him as saying, “It is our creation now. We make the rules. We establish the parameters of reality. We create the world, and because we do, we no longer feel beholden to outside forces.” Finally, she writes that, according to Rifkin, “Humans become minigods.” Rifkin ends with a hymn to evolved humanity: “We are responsible to nothing outside ourselves, for we are the kingdom, the 4 power, and the glory forever and ever.” How daring and how sad. But since this is the reality of the world in which we live, the words of Christ that he is the way and the truth and the life remain comforting.

No matter where this world tries to take us, and no matter how many new ways and so-called truths it tries to display, we know that only Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. The simple lyrics of “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so” are actually very profound, because they points to the sola scriptura and soli Christi of the Reformation.

DAVID ZADOK is pastor of Grace and Truth Christian Congregation in Kanot, Israel.

1. See https://truthxchange.com/about-2/.

2. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Rifkin#cite_note-Belin-1.

3. Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2015), 240.

4. Pearcey, 241.

53

by

“I AM THE TRUE VINE”

NICHOLAS BATZIG

illustration by

PETER VOTH

O none is as full of Old Testament typology as the Gospel of John.

The apostle John had a keen interest in the types, shadows, symbols, metaphors, and elusive allusions the Savior employed during his earthly ministry in order to set forth his own divine glory (John 1:14). Most of the types in the Fourth Gospel are rooted in Israel’s exodus and wilderness experience. Whether it was the incarnation of the Son of God typified in the tabernacle in the wilderness (John 1:14), Jesus’ miracle of turning water to wine (John 2:1–11) in Moses’ miracle of turning water to blood (Exod. 7:14–24), Jesus’ death on the cross in the serpent on the pole (Num. 21:4–9), his miraculous multiplication of the bread (John 6:22–59) in the manna from heaven (Exod. 16), his offer of living water (John 7:37–44) in the water from the rock (Exod.

17:1–7), his self-identification as the light of

the world in the lampstand in the temple, or his sacrificial death in the Passover lamb (John 1:26; 19:36)—Jesus came as the true Israel of God to fulfill all that old covenant Israel merely typified.

In John 15:1, Jesus spoke his seventh and ): a self-identification final “I Am” ( of all that he is and all that he came to do as the true Israel of God. In saying “I am the true vine” (John 15:1), Christ drew from Old Testament language concerning the old covenant people of God. D. A. Carson writes,

OF THE GOSPELS,

In the Old Testament the vine is a common symbol for Israel, the covenant people of God (Ps. 80:9–16; Is. 5:1–7; 27:2ff.; Je. 2:21; 12:10ff.; Ezk. 15:1–8; 17:1–21; 19:10–14; Ho. 10:1–2). . . . Jesus claims, “I am the true vine”, i.e. the one to whom Israel pointed, the one that brings forth good fruit. Jesus

55

has already, in principle, superseded the temple, the Jewish feasts, Moses, various holy sites; here he supersedes Israel as the 1 very locus of the people of God. The Old Testament represents Israel’s unique role in redemptive history under the figure of the vine and the vineyard. God had redeemed his people from their bondage in Egypt in order to make them a new creation in the Promised Land—a second Adam to reestablish the gardentemple throughout the earth. In Psalm 80:8-11, we read, You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.

You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.

The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches.

It sent out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the River.

Isaiah also prophesied (5:1-2) about Israel under the figure of the vine, when he said, Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.

He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines.

Likewise, Hosea (10:1) declared, Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit.

The imagery of the vine carries with it the idea of spiritual fruitfulness. God’s revealed will for old covenant Israel was that they would be a fruit-bearing people in the barren wilderness of this fallen world. Just as the Promised Land was a “land flowing with milk and honey” (a clear echo of Eden), so the old covenant people were to be a fruitful vineyard on the earth—a restoration of what was lost in the garden. God was restoring what was once lost and ruined by

56

the Fall. One of the ways that God intended to draw the minds of his people back to the Garden of Eden, Adam, and his mission, was through the use of old covenant allusions to the vine and the vineyard.

When God created the world, he placed Adam, his son (Luke 3:38), in a garden-temple. God told Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). The Lord gave our first parents the commission to bring forth an image-bearing, God-worshiping people who would cover the earth. As the representative, covenantal head of all humanity, Adam was “the vine” that was supposed to bring forth the fruit of holy, righteous image-bearers. Adam was to cultivate the garden, thereby transforming the entire world into a holy garden-temple where God would dwell with Adam, Eve, and their offspring. But Adam failed and forfeited the opportunity to bring forth fruitful offspring when he ate the fruit from the tree from which God had commanded him not to eat.

With the Fall, God frustrated the place of blessing among his image-bearers. Instead of being able to bring forth children with ease, women would now have pain in childbearing.

Additionally, instead of bringing forth holy image-bearers, Adam and Eve brought forth descendants in their own fallen image (Gen. 5:3). Instead of cultivating the ground with ease, man would work by the sweat of his brow.

Thorns covered the place of bounty and provision. Instead of being a life-giving vine to his descendants, Adam became a cursed vine bringing rebellion and death. The various pronouncements of the curse that God placed on man and woman indicate that Adam and Eve could no longer fulfill the commission God originally gave to them in the garden. Someone else must do it.

Immediately after the pronouncement of curses, God graciously promised to provide a seed from the woman—a son who would conquer the evil one and fulfill the creation mandate (Ps. 8; Heb. 2:5–11). This promise is traced out throughout the entire Old Testament. The seed promise runs through the totality of the Scripture—from Adam to Noah, from Noah to

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

JESUS IS EVERYTHING THAT ADAM AND ISRAEL SHOULD HAVE BEEN. BY HIMSELF, JESUS ACCOMPLISHES ALL THAT THE PROTOLOGICAL (ADAM) AND TYPOLOGICAL (ISRAEL) VINES FAILED TO ACCOMPLISH. MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

Abraham, from Abraham to David, and from David to the fulfillment of the covenant promises in that coming seed, Jesus Christ.

In the progress of redemptive history, God called Abraham’s descendants to himself and gave them the same commission he had given to Adam. Just as God had placed his son (that is, Adam) in Eden, so he placed his typical son (Exod. 4:22), Israel, in the Promised Land.

Israel was to be a light to the nations by being a spiritually fruitful people on the earth. But, just as Adam had failed by his disobedience, the history of Israel is also a long sad story with their repeated disobedience and failure to accomplish the divine commission.

The Son of God, the last Adam and true Israel, the true vine, has come in order to fulfill that in which Adam and Israel both failed—a fruitfulness not by the law but by the Spirit; a growth and expansion, not through birth but by through rebirth; a growth through the grafting in of a 2 people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

Jesus declared that he had come into the world to be God’s fruitful and fruit-enabling true vine—the last Adam and true Israel. Unlike Adam and Israel, he obeyed perfectly and fulfilled the mandate God had originally given to Adam in the garden (Ps. 8; Heb. 2:11). Jesus is everything that Adam and Israel should have been. By himself, Jesus accomplishes all that the protological (Adam) and typological (Israel) vines failed to accomplish.

In his death on the cross, Jesus drank the bitter cup of God’s wrath—wrath we deserved because of the bitter wine of our sin. The “sour wine,” which those who crucified Jesus gave him to drink when he hung on the cross, serves as a symbol of this truth (John 19:29–30). We can also observe this symbolism in Jesus’ consecration of wine in the Lord’s Supper. The Savior intentionally chose the “fruit of the vine” to signify his blood and the benefits it would bring.

Just as there is a bitterness and a sweetness to fermented wine, so it serves as a sensible sign and seal of the bitterness and blessing that flows from the work on the cross of the Savior.

In the Old Testament prophets, the Lord signified the blessings of the new covenant through

57

Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.� (John 15:5)

58

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

the figure of wine. Through Amos, he said, “The mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it; I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine” (Amos 9:13–14). Through the prophet Hosea, the Lord said, “They shall return and dwell beneath My shadow; they shall flourish like the grain; they shall blossom like the vine; their fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon” (Hos. 14:7).

At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus performed his first miracle at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. By turning water into wine, Jesus showed himself to be the new creation and the joy-producing redeemer. He had come into the world to transform what was old and useless into that which is new and fruitful. As D. A. Carson explains: The sheer quantity of water turned into wine . . . becomes symbolic of the lavish provision of the new age. . . . [T]he time for ceremonial purification is completely fulfilled. . . . John’s point is simply that the wine Jesus provides is unqualifiedly superior, as must everything be that is tied to the 3 new, messianic age Jesus is introducing.

Significantly, the “true vine” discourse is positioned directly in the middle of John’s record of Jesus’ parting words to his disciples in the Upper Room (John 13–17). In his teaching and prayer here, Jesus told his disciples that he would impart to them his love, joy, and peace. In Galatians 5:22, the apostle Paul places these three graces at the top of his catalogue of “the fruit of the Spirit.” Jesus is the fruitful vine, full of true love (John 15:9), true joy (John 15:11), and true peace (14:27; 16:33).

Through union with him, by the working of the Holy Spirit, believers become the recipients of his love, his joy, and his peace—together with the other fruits of righteousness (Rom. 15; Gal. 5:22). When Jesus says, therefore, in John 15:5 “Abide in me and you will bear much fruit,” he is speaking about the fruitfulness of true holiness born in the lives of those he came

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

to redeem. By the sovereign working of the Holy Spirit, Jesus unites to himself a people who will be fruit-bearing branches, spreading across the face of the earth in order to bring glory to God. In union with Christ, we become God’s fruit-bearing people—a fruitful dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Eph. 2:22). Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

This truth is magnified by the fact that Jesus is not just the true vine for old covenant Israel; Jesus is the life-giving vine for believing Jews and Gentiles. The great promise that God made to Abraham—that he would be the “father of many nations”—is fulfilled in the expansion of the kingdom of God through the spreading and engrafting of branches from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation. Jesus came to be the Savior of both Jew and Gentile. Unbelieving Israelites were cut off, and believing Jews and Gentiles are grafted into this vine by God’s redeeming grace (Rom. 11).

On our own, like old covenant Israel, we will only ever bring forth wild grapes and spiritual thorns of sin and rebellion. When we are united to Christ by faith and abide in him, however, we are guaranteed to bear much fruit. It is all by the electing love and grace of God. Jesus says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide” (John 15:16). This is the confident assurance given to everyone who lives in a vital, saving union with the true vine.

REV. NICK BATZIG served as founding pastor of New Cov-

enant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Savannah, Georgia. He is the editor of Reformation21 and The Christward Collective. He blogs at Feeding on Christ and writes regularly for Ligonier Ministries. You can find him on Twitter (@nick_ batzig) and Facebook.

1.

D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (repr., Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990), 513.

2. I am indebted to Nancy Guthrie for sharing this thoughtful insight with me.

3. Carson, 174–75.

59

GET MORE CONTENT AT “THE MOD.” H O M E T O W E B - E XC LU S I V E A R T I C L E S BY M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N .

Every week, we feature brand-new articles discussing the social and theological topics of the day, as well as reviews of the books we and our contributors are currently reading, along with monthly contributions from our esteemed colleague and longtime MR contributor Dr. Carl Trueman.

WHITEHORSEINN.ORG/THEMOD

04

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews 62

65

67

Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America

Educated: A Memoir

A Gentleman in Moscow

by Tara Westover

by Amor Towles

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

D. G. Hart

Nana Dolce

Patricia Anders

by David A. Hollinger

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

61

BOOK REVIEWS

Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America

by David A. Hollinger Princeton University Press, 2017 408 pages (hardcover), $35.00 avid A. Hollinger begins Protestants Abroad with a startling assertion: “The Protestant for eign missionar y pr oje ct expected to make the world look more like the United States. Instead, it made the United States look more like the world” (1). A reader could well imagine that missionaries went to other parts of the world in hopes of making people into disciples of Christ, no matter whether such an evangelist went out from the United States, Italy, or Scotland. The reason to give up personal ties and domestic comforts in distant lands was, someone might suppose, not nationalistic but doctrinal. That was certainly what J. Gresham Machen believed when he extended the Presbyterian controversy of the 1920s (which culminated in the founding of Westminster Theological Seminary) into the 1930s with opposition to liberalism in Presbyterian foreign missions. Machen objected to the idea—widely circulated in the infamous mainline Protestant 1932 study of missions in China, Re-Thinking Missions—that evangelists and pastors should cooperate with non-Christian religions in humanitarian efforts to make the world a better place. When Presbyterian officials responded that Machen had nothing to worry about, he formed a renegade foreign missions agency—an act that led to his trial, conviction, excommunication from the Presbyterian Church, and the formation of

D

62

the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Despite the weighty matters in evangelization, both for Christian witness and institutional integrity, Hollinger frames his study of the experiences of American missionaries as part of a national narrative that accounts for both the book’s strengths and weaknesses.

A longtime student of US intellectual life and the ways in which American thought incorporated perspectives that made elites less Christian and less nationalist, Hollinger’s examination of missionaries, especially missionaries’ children (“mish kids”), is another chapter in his lifelong endeavor to show how American thinkers became less provincial and more cosmopolitan. Previous studies by Hollinger include valuable work on Jewish-Americans and their ascendance into the American academy; and early on in Protestants Abroad, Hollinger connects the dots between Jews and Protestants. The ecumenical impulses within Protestantism “joined with their Jewish counterparts in diminishing Christian cultural hegemony in the nation, and facilitated a drift toward postProtestant secularism” (2).

Even if missionaries or their children were not in the ideological forefront of integration (race), secular humanitarian organizations (the Peace Corps), or criticizing US foreign policy in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, they “supplied the expertise and energy for one endeavor after another that expanded American horizons”(2). Hollinger quotes Walter Russell Mead, a highly regarded student of US foreign policy, to good effect: “The multicultural and relativistic thinking so characteristic of the United States today owes much of its social power to the unexpected consequences of American missions abroad” (2).

On his own merits, Hollinger is convincing about the influence of missionaries on the

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

United States, even if readers may question his positive estimate of the outcomes. Perhaps the most vivid chapter (because the most biographical) is one that covers the novelist and activist Pearl Buck, writer John Hersey, and publisher and editor Henry Luce. All three grew up in China and “inherited the missionary imperative to make things right,” or what Buck herself called a “magnificent imperialism of the spirit” (24). She tried to make straight the ways of an America she believed suffered from inequality at various layers. Luce, who coined the phrase “the American century,” was more of a cultural imperialist who used his experience overseas to consider ways to make the world look more like the United States. Hersey chose a path between Buck and Luce by wanting to rectify wrongs in the world and the United States, but he worried that such activism could readily go wrong thanks to human pride and fallibility. “All three,” Hollinger writes, “sought to advance a species-wide solidarity instructed in some way by an idealistic vision of American democratic culture” (24).

Other examples of “mish kid” influence are seen in separate chapters on the rise of university departments of Asian history and culture, the Peace Corps, and the Civil Rights Movement. John King Fairbank headed up Harvard’s so-called China shop, thanks not to his own missionary experience but to the many contacts he had with friends, allies, and students who had firsthand knowledge of Protestant missions in Asia. In contrast, Kenneth Scott Latourette, who became one of the prominent historians of missions and world Christianity, shepherded Yale’s foray into Asian and missions studies. The Peace Corps, founded in 1961 by the Kennedy administration as an agency to provide economic and social services around the world through American volunteers, used as its model the International Voluntary Services. This was a 1953 secular nongovernmental organization formed by Protestant churches to expand the sorts of work that missionaries were already doing in various parts of the world. The Civil

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

On his own merits, Hollinger is convincing about the influence of missionaries on the United States, even if readers may question his positive estimate of the outcomes.

Rights Movement, furthermore, attracted all sorts of Americans, but missionaries were particularly prone to support it, thanks to its embodiment of Christian universalism. The tentacles of missionary influence were lengthy and numerous.

From one angle, this influence seems like a positive development if it means that Protestants, who for many years were the unofficial establishment in the United States, lost their stature and the nation owned up to its ideals of freedom and equality for people of all faiths. At the same time, Hollinger’s Protestants, post-Protestants, and secularists never actually lost their access to the levers of cultural and political power. The result is that many of the people running America, especially after World War II when it became the leader of

63

BOOK REVIEWS

the free world, may have lost their faith but were still responsible for instilling into the nation’s self-regard a self-righteousness that sustained an old postmillennial optimism about the nation’s place on the cutting edge of human history. This new American exceptionalism, while sounding the dulcet tones of tolerance and inclusion, was deaf to the particular attachments (national, religious, and cultural) of people outside elite American circles. Once those people felt that cosmopolitanism was not so inclusive of their own beliefs and ideals, they were willing to support political candidates and policies that cosmopolitans dismissed as backward and bigoted. This was part of the dynamic behind the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the electoral victory of President Donald Trump. To be sure, leaving the European Union and voting for Trump may be signs of backwardness, but such political expressions may also be evidence of cosmopolitan elites’ paternalism and failure to include the world’s people.

Hollinger also fails to consider whether Protestant missionary cosmopolitanism was a good development for the churches. One telling indication is the decline of missionaries sent out by the mainline churches, who left behind theological provincialism even as they embraced the ideal of a global world order in which Christians provided support.

Between 1960 and 1980, mainline Protestant missionaries declined from 10,300 to 3,100 (86). Conversely, a 1980 study of US Protestant missionaries indicates that 90 percent of personnel in foreign settings were evangelical in background. Apparently, attachment to the singularity of the Christian message is important for motivating people to conduct religious work overseas. But even as the mainline churches were losing their rationale for seeking the salvation of unbelievers around the world, in 1958 the National Council of Churches (the interdenominational agency of liberal Protestants) became the “largest national organization of any kind” to recognize the People’s Republic of China (105).

64

That sort of institutional confusion—substituting political programs for religious endeavor—was precisely what Machen had feared about the direction of Protestant missions in the 1920s and 1930s. While it is not Hollinger’s intent, his book is a vindication of Machen’s argument that liberalism had turned cultural progress into a substitute for Christianity. Modernism, he lamented in 1923, was an entirely different religion from Christianity.

In Hollinger’s conception of the old, conservative rationale for foreign missions, conservatives such as Machen simply wanted to export American social and political norms along with Christianity. To be sure, many missionaries have long struggled with introducing a doctrine that developed over many centuries— justification by faith alone, for instance—to a people with no background in the historical evolution that had a hand in shaping the church in the West. Sometimes, missionaries did expect natives who converted to adopt American assumptions about a holy life or to worship in the same way as Westerners. At the same time, conservatives—such as Machen with a twokingdom outlook, who recognized that cultural developments in science, education, finance, and medicine were not the same as biblical teaching and practices—were often careful about expecting churches in non-Western settings to replicate American patterns.

Indeed, the most useful component of Hollinger’s book teaches an important lesson often associated with two-kingdom theology.

Because the gospel does not require specific political or cultural norms, two-kingdom proponents of foreign missions would have trouble with Hollinger’s opening line that Protestant missionaries expected other parts of the world to look like the United States. Since someone like Machen was highly critical of the politics and culture in his day, it is hard to imagine that he wanted missionaries from the Independent Board to set into motion the social developments that produced New York City or Washington, DC. Machen did want churches in foreign lands

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

In the end, [Educated] emerges as a surprising example of how to tell with both grace and truth the often complicated and always ugly story of family estrangement.

to adopt Presbyterian patterns of teaching and church life, but national ideals were matters indifferent. In which case, conservative Protestants who read Hollinger’s book will find valuable material for considering the question Tertullian asked when the ancient church struggled with the merits of Greek learning: “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?”

D. G. HART teaches history at Hillsdale College and is the Novakovic Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Educated: A Memoir

by Tara Westover Random House, 2018 352 pages (hardcover), $28.00 ray for Salam’s safety in Tunisia.

Her family will try to kill her if she converts. These words are printed on a prayer calendar that hangs in my home. Christians are not strangers to stories of family persecution and estrangement. In general, the accounts we hear tend to sound like Salam’s— they are life-threatening situations where Christians risk their lives to follow Jesus. But we also know of more subtle cases of family

P

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

opposition. Family members in Western cultures are not known to threaten death after a loved one’s conversion, but they may object to or even punish changes they see in that person.

A sudden biblical worldview or decision considered “radical” might be met with resistance and anger. Some loved ones may even distance themselves emotionally or physically. Tara Westover’s Educated is not a tale of Christian conversion; her coming-of-age memoir tells a story most of us are not likely to hear in our churches. Westover’s upbringing stands distinctively on its own, and yet her chronicle of family separation sounds like a familiar tale.

In the end, the book emerges as a surprising example of how to tell with both grace and truth the often complicated and always ugly story of family estrangement.

Westover’s memoir begins in the mountains of southeast Idaho. The youngest of seven children, she spent her days roaming the heights of Buck’s Peak, a summit that rises and curves in the form of a woman. Westover calls the mountain “the Indian Princess.” In many ways, this “Princess” stands as a silent character in her story, an ever-present observer of her family’s strange happenings—a family ruled by Westover’s father, Gene (a pseudonym), a figure as looming as the Princess herself.

Westover was born sometime in the fall of 1986—no one, including her mother, is sure of

65

BOOK REVIEWS

her exact birth date. The delivery took place at home, and no birth certificate was issued. This uncommon beginning marks the rest of her childhood. Gene, a self-proclaimed Mormon prophet with survivalist tendencies (well outside the mandates of his faith), saw the government and its associated institutions as evil, and he worked hard to shield his family from their impact. In this memoir, every decision Gene makes seems to be driven by an impulse to live apart from mainstream systems. He earns a living building barns and scrapping metal from a junkyard, his children serve as his crew, and money from the work is used to stockpile necessities that will allow for their complete independence.

Westover’s mother, Faye (another pseudonym), is an unlicensed midwife and herbalist. She also plays the family doctor. With a large mountain and a scrap heap for a backyard, Faye is constantly called to treat various accidents, many of which are beyond gruesome in description.

Skulls are cracked, legs and faces are set on fire, and limbs are severed. In each case, Faye works quickly to treat the injury with herbs and oils.

Westover never sees a doctor in her childhood.

Faye is also a homeschool teacher. She instructs her children in reading and basic mathematics and then releases them to explore other subjects on their own in a “free range” form of homeschooling. Westover enters a classroom for the first time as a college freshman at Brigham Young University (she teaches herself enough algebra to pass the ACT). She proves to be a remarkable student, goes on to complete a fellowship at Harvard, and earns a PhD from Cambridge University.

Her academic journey, however, is not without its frustrations. Her memoir describes an

66

intense scene in college when she raises her hand to ask the meaning of a word she has never heard before: Holocaust. The professor misconstrues the question as an anti-Semitic denial of the event and rebukes her, while her classmates stare at her disapprovingly. This moment, and others like it, reveals to Westover the depth of her ignorance of the larger world and stirs up bitter questions about and reflections on her childhood.

Educated begins with a carefree child standing at the base of the Princess and ends with a highly educated young woman far removed from her mountain home and family circle. In between those scenes are many meditations on religious fundamentalism, mental health, abuse, feminism, and self-driven education. All these are there, and yet for Westover, her story is mostly about change and the loss of family. She says the following in an interview with the Mormon Stories Podcast: “The questions the book asks . . . are about change . . . whether you are allowed to change and what happens when the people close to you can’t allow you to change or just can’t accept any other version of you” (https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/ tara-westover).

As already mentioned, Westover tells her story of estrangement with a mixture of grace and truth. She describes a paranoid father who would rather trust his children to the hazards of a scrapyard than to a classroom. Her picture of Gene is clearly disturbing but still painted with some strokes of affection. She writes this in the notes section of her book: “We are all more complicated than the roles we are assigned in stories.

Nothing has revealed that truth to me more than writing this memoir—trying to pin down the people I love on paper” (334). The memoir reads

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

like the tale of a woman who is estranged from a family she still loves, but it is also a story of conversion—not from one religious identification to another, but transformation through the power of education. Christians will find her account, and perhaps even her questions, familiar: “What happens when the people close to you can’t allow you to change or just can’t accept any other version of you?” In Educated, Westover addresses these questions with a poise that can serve as an example to those who may need to tell a painful story with both grace and truth.

NANA DOLCE has a Master of Arts in Theological Stud-

ies, teaches the Bible to women and children at her local church, and writes for Modern Reformation, Christianity Today, Christ and Pop Culture, and Risen Motherhood.

Find her at www.motherhoodandsanctity.com. She lives in Washington, DC, with her family.

A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles Viking, 2016 480 pages (hardcover), $27.00 here’s an older gentleman I see every summer at the beach. With his striking white hair and serious tan, clad only in swim shorts, he walks up and down our local six-mile beach, reading. Every time I see him, he’s reading—reading and walking, walking and reading. One day, I saw him reading the New York Times best-seller A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles. I had already heard good things about it, but I wanted his opinion since I knew from previous conversations that we had a mutual appreciation for thoughtful literature.

He said he was enjoying it and that his wife’s book club had claimed it was probably the best book they had ever read.

After my mother shipped out the family copy to me, I couldn’t wait to start reading it.

T

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

My first thought was that this was going to be a rather comical book. The opening transcription of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov’s 1922 trial before the Soviet “Emergency Committee of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs” was clever, humorous, and certainly piqued my interest. When Prosecutor Comrade A. Y. Vyshinsky inquires about his occupation, Rostov answers, “It is not the business of gentlemen to have occupations.” When Comrade Vyshinsky asks how Rostov spends his time, the Count responds, “Dining, discussing. Reading, reflecting. The usual rigmarole” (4). After further dialogue, Comrade Ignatov chimes in to say how surprised he is that the alleged “author of the poem in question could have become a man so obviously without purpose.” To that, Rostov says, “I have lived under the impression that a man’s purpose is known only to God” (5).

After a brief recess, Ignatov delivers the committee’s verdict. Concluding that Rostov had “succumbed irrevocably to the corruptions of his class—and now poses a threat to the very ideals he once espoused,” they were inclined to put him “against the wall” (5). But since this 1913 poem (Where Is It Now?) was considered to be the work of a hero of the “prerevolutionary cause,” they were instead putting him under house arrest—or in this case, hotel arrest. As he had been staying at the elegant Hotel Metropol in Moscow (specifically, suite 317), he would remain there (though no longer in that nice suite). “But make no mistake,” Ignatov warns him, “should you ever set foot outside of the Metropol again, you will be shot” (6).

There you pretty much have the entire plot of A Gentleman in Moscow.

Like my distinguished fellow reader walking up and down the long stretch of beach, reading, chatting, and getting ever tanner, so Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov (a “Former Person of Interest”) spends his days in the Hotel Metropol “dining, discussing. Reading, reflecting. The usual rigmarole.” Although there are some charming scenes, I soon began to wonder if in addition to a “man’s purpose [being] known

67

BOOK REVIEWS

only to God,” the purpose of this novel was known only to the author! This is not a short book, and I wondered if I should continue to linger in this hotel, where not much was happening apart from “the usual rigmarole” for the Count. I decided to persevere, however, trusting the others who praised it—including the critics and the fact that it was on the New York Times best-seller list. When my resolve further waned, a coworker told me how much he loved it, and he strongly encouraged me to stick with the Count and the Hotel Metropol. My final encouragement to read to the end came, however, when I heard that Kenneth Branagh was directing and starring in a television series based on the book. Being a serious Branagh fan, I was now intrigued. If this genius of cinema and all

“Who would have imagined,” he said, “when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia.”

68

things Shakespearean liked it, then there must be something to it!

Just like the book, this review may seem to be slowly going nowhere in particular. Now that you’ve read this far, however, I will confess that by the time I arrived at the final page of this novel, I was glad I had indeed persevered. It had been more subtle than I had sensed while reading it (and I consider myself a careful reader).

But now looking back on the storyline, I think I “get” it.

Since the book jacket copy says it so well, I’ll quote the hardworking marketing folks at Viking: An indomitable man of erudition and wit, Rostov must live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.

This was one of the truly fascinating aspects of the story for me. The Hotel Metropol was situated near the Kremlin; and during his imprisonment in the hotel, Rostov survives the rule of Stalin and then Khrushchev. While the hotel grows a bit worn over the years, it still draws top Soviet officials and foreign (including American) visitors. As Rostov wanders the corridors of his old luxury hotel, growing older himself, his friends begin disappearing into Siberia. At one point, his life-long friend Mishka visits him at the hotel after sneaking into the restaurant kitchen.

“Who would have imagined,” he said, “when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia.” (292) Although under arrest, the Count had indeed been safe within these hotel walls during the “tumultuous decades.”

One remarkable friendship that develops over the years (which apparently is another reason for the Count’s protection from outside forces) is

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

Osip is scandalized by what he sees and claims that “Hollywood is the single most dangerous force in the history of class struggle.”

between Rostov and a Soviet official (and former Red Army colonel), Osip Ivanovich Glebnikov.

Having lived life only as a gruff soldier, Osip seeks out the Count to learn the ways of a gentleman, now that he is a Soviet dignitary among Europeans and Americans. Osip particularly wants to understand Americans, and so he and the Count begin watching American films (after a failed attempt at reading de Tocqueville). Osip especially likes Humphrey Bogart, considering him to be a “Man of Intent” (295).

One of the films they watch together is the 1937 Marx Brothers’ A Day at the Races. It is here that we find some insight into Osip’s Communist perspective regarding American culture—and his genuine concern: “Just look at their Depression,” he said.

“From beginning to end it lasted ten years.

An entire decade in which the Proletariat was left to fend for itself. . . . If ever there had been a time for the American worker to cast off the yoke, surely that was it. But did they join their brothers-in-arms? Did they shoulder their axes and splinter the doors of the mansions? Not even for an afternoon.

Instead, they shuffled off to the nearest movie house, where the latest fantasy was

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

dangled before them like a pocket watch at the end of a chain.” (293) Unfortunately, we don’t have enough space here to delve into the ensuing conversations between Osip and his friend Alexander regarding American movies (and a different, more positive interpretation of them by an American later in the book). Suffice it to say that Osip is scandalized by what he sees and claims that “Hollywood is the single most dangerous force in the history of class struggle” (294). It has no positive influence on the suffering masses and works only as a narcotic to numb them. “How did this happen, Alexander?” Osip asks. “Why do they allow these movies to be made? Do they not realize they are hammering a wedge beneath their own foundation stones?” (294).

The years pass and Rostov becomes intrigued with the 1942 Bogart/Bergman classic film Casablanca. Apart from the interesting discussions about “individualism” versus “the common good” (298), it was only when I reached this part near the end that I suddenly realized the important role of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, especially as Headwaiter for the acclaimed Boyarksy Restaurant in the Hotel Metropol. Close to the conclusion (I suppose

69

BOOK REVIEWS

you could call this a plot spoiler, though I am leaving out all the exciting events of the climax, so proceed at your own discretion!), the Count says to his friend Viktor Stepanovich regarding Casablanca, “Ah. You must see it one day” (453). When Viktor finally gets this chance, he remembers what the Count said to him and concentrates on the film: As Rick [Bogart] began making his way through the disconcerted crowd toward the piano player [Sam], something caught Viktor’s eye. Just the slightest detail, not more than a few frames of film: In the midst of this short journey, as Rick passes a customer’s table, without breaking stride or interrupting his assurances to the crowd, he sets upright a cocktail glass that had been knocked over during the skirmish.

Yes, thought Viktor, that’s it, exactly.

For here was Casablanca, a far-flung outpost in a time of war. And here at the heart of the city, right under the sweep of the searchlights, was Rick’s Café Américain, where the beleaguered could assemble for the moment to gamble and drink and listen to music; to conspire, console, and most importantly, hope. And at the center of this oasis was Rick. . . . In setting upright the cocktail glass in the aftermath of the commotion, didn’t he also exhibit an essential faith that by the smallest of one’s actions one can restore some sense of order to the world? (458–59) I then realized how life had still happened—and quite fully—to a “Former Person of Interest” forced to remain inside a hotel for decades.

But it’s not so much that life

70

happened to our friend Alexander (or, more affectionately, Sasha). It’s that Alexander ensured that life happened for all those around him—not necessarily “the usual rigmarole” of one’s day, but the assurance that beauty and order continue regardless. Just as Rick’s café was an oasis from the horror of the Nazi regime and the subsequent events of the Second World War (which, in our story, follow the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution), so too was Alexander’s grand hotel. I now understood that this was a book about aesthetics. Count/ Headwaiter Rostov’s primary business was to safeguard each guest’s dining pleasure—the food, the music, the ambience, the elegant and gracious decorum despite the barbarity of the world outside the hotel doors. As with Viktor, I realized that Alexander, like Rick (or Bogie, the “Man of Intent”), believed that with “the smallest of one’s actions one can restore some sense of order to the world.”

By the time we reach the last page, we see how Alexander has managed to transcend the ugliness of the world by simply “dining, discussing. Reading, reflecting.” Of course, Alexander performs some good deeds along the way (and Towles provides a dramatic climax to the story). But I think that what we learn from the Count about how to enrich each day—for ourselves and those around us—is more important. I am glad I took the advice of my coworker and persevered to the end. Alexander Ilyich Rostov proved not to be “a man so obviously without purpose,” but rather a “Man of Intent.” Even if, like Rick, he was merely righting an upset glass, he was truly a gentleman in Moscow.

PATRICIA ANDERS is the managing editor of Modern Reformation and editorial director of Hendrickson Publishers on the North Shore of Boston.

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

TELL US YOUR STORY. What have White Horse Inn and Modern Reformation meant to you, your family, or your church? Your stories encourage us in our work, and we’d love to hear them.

WHITEHORSEINN.ORG/TELL

05

B AC K PAG E

The Joy of Failure

by Eric Landry

he day I realized I was failing my first class in seminary with no chance to achieve a passing grade, I skipped class and wandered through a Monet exhibit at a museum downtown. I was not particularly moved by the artwork, but over the course of the day I came to realize that failing my first class in the program (a degree leading to pastoral ministry) did not mean the end of my life’s ambition. Instead, it was an important crossroads that could bear much fruit in my life, if I understood it correctly.

Failure is an underrated experience in life.

Having failed spectacularly with several ventures, I highly recommend that everyone undergo the process at least once—maybe several times over the course of your life. For in failure, we can find a certain joy that is otherwise unavailable to those who are consumed with striving.

A failed class, a failed business venture, a failed relationship—each situation is an opportunity for us to consider Christ’s words to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Without experiencing the painful loss of failure (the ultimate expression of personal weakness), we may never really comprehend the gracious perfection that is ours in Christ.

Perpetually successful (either real or projected) people can never acknowledge weakness; or if they can, this weakness is seen merely as a burden they overcame in order to

T

72

achieve their current standing. This is not only exhausting, it’s dangerous—for the success of that person now becomes the standard by which others judge themselves. Even the kindest person—if he doesn’t acknowledge his own weakness—can deal a crushing blow to those around him who wonder why their own lives don’t measure up to his.

Of all people, Christians should be the most willing to acknowledge their failures. Rather than shrinking back from the mocking tone of unbelieving friends who deride our faith as a “crutch,” we should acknowledge that the situation is far, far worse than they realize! No, we need much more than a crutch: we need resurrection from the dead, a righteousness that is not our own, and constant support by the power of the Holy Spirit to make even the smallest beginnings in our life of faith.

Why? Because we have failed—in thought, word, and deed. Even our best works in this life are still tainted by sin. Even when we “attain to the greatest height which is possible in this life,” we fall short of what we are bound to do (WCF 16.4). But far from creating shame, frustration, and despair, this knowledge should cause us to lift our eyes, to seek out our salvation, and to exclaim with the apostle Paul in Romans 7:25, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” That’s the joy that comes when we recognize our weakness and discover afresh that Christ is our strength.

ERIC LANDRY is executive editor of Modern Reformation.

VOL.28 NO.3 MAY/JUNE 2019

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. E X P L O R I N G T H E P E R S O N A N D W O R K O F J E S U S C H R I S T. The Gospel of John is a portion of Scripture we often recommend first to new Christians. It has led more people to Jesus than just about any other document, yet it is so complex that its intricacies can never be fully grasped.

This year, every episode and issue of White Horse Inn and Modern Reformation will be mining the riches from this amazing text. Join the conversation, submit your questions, and access free resources at whitehorseinn.org/john.

WHITEHORSEINN.ORG/JOHN

Jesus answered . . . “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

JOHN 8:54 , 56–58