Holy! Holy! Holy!

These past several months I have been growing around the idea of the holiness of God.

I have been thinking about the strong theology (perspective?) of 'God as love' that we have in our optimistic Wesleyan holiness tradition.  Alongside that, I have been thinking about the diminutive theology of 'God as just' that we also have.  We know that God is just, we just don't talk or preach about it very much, and we don't unpack what that means too deeply.  I think our brethren in the Calvinist tradition probably have this worked out with more focus than we do.  

How do I hold these both in tension?  Where do they meet, and what does that look like?  These question bear careful thought.  If we loose site of God's justice because His love fills our vision, we might not be seeing all that God has revealed to us.  We might grow up as mis-shaped Christians.  We might miss profound ways that God is working out His mission in the world, in us, and among us. Yes, we need to see God for who He truly is - for all of Himself that He has shown us.

I think I am discovering that God's love and justice meet in complicated and mysterious ways.  I think the one place they meet particularly is the cross;  and also the empty tomb.  I think also their meeting place is the where the notion 'holy' is birthed.  Perhaps my own working definition of holiness is the intersection, in the character of God, of His unflinching demand for justice, and his fathomless depth of love.  

In You

Usually the English language is so rich that it gives us several words to chose from for almost anything we want to say or write.  Oddly, there are a few instances where this is not so.  One example is with the word 'you'.  There is only one word for 'you' whether we are referring to one person or many people.  In olden times there used to be the handy word 'ye' which was plural as opposed to 'you' which was singular.  So you could say 'John, can you help me?' or you could say 'Family, could ye help me?'.

Since we have lost 'ye' and replaced it with 'you', it is sometimes hard to know when one person or many people are being addressed when we read the word 'you' in the Bible.  Take the final phrase of Colossians 1:27 for instance: " To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." Where exactly is this hope (future  certainty) of glory?  It is ‘“in you’.   Often we North American evangelical Christians have read the word ‘you’ in this phrase and assumed it is you-singular,  that is …me.  Thus we conclude that Christ is ‘in me’ and connect immediately with the beautiful notion that Jesus can and does live in me since I confessed my sins, accepted Jesus into my heart and became a Christian.  That is wonderful and Biblical indeed, and yes, glorious!  BUT that is actually not what is being said here, and we might miss an equally glorious point if we don’t see it.

Now I am not a Greek scholar, so I have to go to a range of good commentaries to understand the Greek of this sentence, but it’s worth doing.  In  the ancient Greek language that the New Testament was written in we can distinguish between singular and plural ‘you’, and we discover the ‘you’ in this phrase  is plural.  If we lived in the southern US we could say “Christ in y’all, the hope of glory”.  So Christ is ‘in’ a group of Christians – in this case the church at Colossi in Turkey.  How then can Christ be ‘in’ a local church? Again we go to the Greek scholars to study the word ‘in’.  It turns out that the word ‘in’ does not here mean ‘inside’ so much as ‘in between’.  It’s not  giving a sense of ‘internal’ but a more a sense of ‘amongst’.

So now we know the hope of Glory is Christ among y’all.  Beautiful!  When Christ is evident in our church relationships – in our dealings with each other – then he is glorified – that is – we see Him evidenced and made of first importance.  Amen.  Our translators did a good job, but studying the Bible - as well as reading it devotionally can give us deeper insight and discover new, wonderful truths.

As you pray for your church people this week, as and as you meet in small groups, or just write a encouraging email or make that touching-base phone call, you are giving glory to Jesus and His glory is shining all around your church. 

Big Kettledrum (3)

BKD EP

My friend Jeffrey Todd Keel is a banjo playing, guitar sliding, hat wearing, song writing, Jesus loving member of the roots folk-rock band Big Kettle Drum. The band have issued their first EP, which I think is very good indeed:

Big Kettledrum (3)