The Ransomed

I recently decided to watch the TV series Stargate SG-1. In the end, I didn’t really “get it”, and decided to give it a miss. Interestingly, something popped up in the first episode that surprised me. For some reason, Fox decided that the best way to get a bunch of geeks into a new TV show is to show full frontal female nudity, in an otherwise non-sexual show. Doing a bit of research, I found out that Fox had insisted upon it, against the wills of the producers and writers. They are going to be releasing a DVD cut of the show shortly with the scene removed.

But it highlights an interesting fact: television companies are willing to put outrageous nudity in a television show in order to raise the ratings for the first episode/season.

Now, along comes the HBO series Rome. I’d been tempted to watch this for some time, considering the fact that it is a British production with some brilliant actors (particularly Cioran Hinds, playing Julius Caesar). I was always put off, however, by the R18+ rating for sex scenes and violence.

I noticed that the second season of Rome has just been released on DVD, and has a lower rating without a warning for sex scenes. So, my thought processes went like this – maybe the early episodes contained some explicit stuff, just like Stargate, to get people into the series.

So, I started to watch the series. I tell you what, was I mistaken. The show is soaked in explicit sex and nudity, and just when you think it’s let up, it hits you again.

The problem is, the show doesn’t need it! The plots are fantastic, the costumes (when they are being worn!) and settings are wonderful, and the historical stuff (to my uneducated mind) seems fairly bang on. The opening scenes of the series show the 13th Legion fighting a horde of barbarians, just like they should. Shields up, glamourless, heroless. Everybody working together. Very good stuff.

But why the sex? I really don’t think that the show needs it to be successful. They are onto a good thing with the political intrigue and the scripting. That alone is enough to make me want to keep watching.

But from here on I’m not going to. I don’t need to expose myself to some of the stuff in the show, which could easily be excised. It looks like they might have for the second season, but I’m not going to persevere.

All I can say is that I hope that the Game of Thrones series (also being done by HBO) won’t be so excessive. But I doubt it.

Today I read in the Telegraph about a mother who has been restricted by the courts from taking her child to pro-Nazi rallies, and from encouraging her child to follow her in her “ultra right-wing views.” In the paper, John Faulks said that “freedom of speech is only allowed when it does not impinge upon the rights of an individual” (paraphrase from memory).

Similarly, the government has recently been cracking down on bikie gangs. It is now illegal for the outlawed gangs in question to congregate as a group.

Although I think that these are good outcomes, I am disturbed by the trend. How long is it until it is wrong for a mother to share her “ultra right-wing” Christian beliefs with her child? In most of modern thought, for instance, to say that homosexual behaviour is an abomination to God is considered right-wing and hateful. Even the commentators on the Telegraph article I linked have associated the mother with religion:

I suppose she is as loopy as religious nuts who preach domination and draconian law every friday to their whole community
Posted by: Real Life of Sydney 7:16am today

She can just take them to the Catholic Church instead.
Posted by: Tierp 6:32am today

I believe we are coming to a time of increased intolerance toward religious belief in our society, with a particular persecution of Christianity. May the Lord God bless His church as we continue to proclaim His Word without fear.

I wonder if the congregation at Saddleback ever get sick of gimmicks? This is doing its rounds in the blog sphere at the moment.

I think the biggest problem with this (and I do believe there are a lot of them!) is that the main attraction of signing up is – you get to meet Rick Warren, the pastor of the church.

I love my church, where I can give my pastor a call and get a cup of coffee with him. I can be accountable to him, and he can ask me about my wife and my study, and encourage me to be reading my Bible and memorise passages with me.

Given the recent interest in Mark Dever and his statements about infant baptism (paedobaptism), I thought it might be a good opportunity for me to put out there just what I think about the issue. I go to a Presbyterian church, and believe along with the Reformed tradition that not only should new converts be baptised, but also the children of believing parents. In order to examine the issue, I think that it is best to start in Genesis (!).

God calls Abraham to be the father of a great nation, and gives him a covenant – a promise to bind God to Abraham and his descendants -

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
(Gen 12:1-4)

We also learn at this point that God justifies Abraham by faith -

And [Abraham] believed the LORD, and [God] counted it to him as righteousness.
(Gen 15:6)

So, Abraham is given this covenant, and God has justified Abraham by faith, in the same way as we are justified this side of the cross (Rom 4:3). Justification by grace alone through faith alone.

The way that God teaches His people to remember this covenant is to give them a certain sign. God gives signs with all His covenants, as a way of looking back to see that God is the one who keeps His promises. In this covenant with Abraham, God gives the sign of circumcision -

And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”
(Gen 17:9-14)

God called for Abraham and his descendants to remember God’s promise by circumcising all the males in their households. The head of the household, as a member of the covenant, represented the whole family before God. The father’s faith meant that the family was circumcised. This is sometimes referred to as federalism – the head of the family was the Federal Head, representing the family before God. Covenants are always federal in nature – we can see an example of this especially in Romans 5.

As the Bible progresses, we see that the promises to Abraham are not fulfilled in the Old Testament. The descendants of Abraham, the Israelites, enter the promised land, but by the end of the OT they have been exiled several times, and were by no means a great nation, with a great name, who blessed all the peoples of the earth. To fulfil this covenant, God’s people had to look outside of themselves.

Now, we come to the New Testament.

As an interesting side note, how inspired is that page that sits between the Old and New Testaments? I believe that it really makes a difference in how you view the Bible if you just forget about it. In fact, in my old Bible, I took it out (carefully!).

In the New Covenant, we come across many passages which tie the salvation of Gentiles in to the covenant made with Abraham -

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
(Gal 3:7-9)

The New Testament makes it clear that the promise made to Abraham was what we would now call “the gospel” – that the Lord Jesus, as head of His people, would ransom them, and make a nation of them, and bless all the nations through them. The covenant with Abraham was about Christ, and the body of Christ – the church.

We don’t find anything in the New Testament which removes the idea of federalism – no Jews complaining that their children are no longer blessed through their parents’ faith. In fact, we have a very interesting example of Paul dealing with this idea.

Imagine – you are a Jewish woman, and your children have always been a member of the covenant due to the fact that your husband is a Jew. All of a sudden, Paul comes along preaching justification by grace alone through faith alone, and you are converted. But, sadly, the federal head of the family isn’t – your husband remains an unbeliever. Of course, you would worry that this might change things. Paul writes to you in 1 Corinthians 7 -

If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
(1Co 7:13-14)

Then, later in the epistles, Paul writes this to the Colossians -

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.
(Col 2:11-12)

Clearly, what Paul is saying is this: the circumcision that Christ experienced was bestowed on believers when they were united with Him. Now, the act of baptism signifies that – being buried with Christ and being raised with Him. The sign of the covenant with Abraham – circumcision – has been replaced with the sign of baptism.

So, what we have is this:

• The same gospel has been preached to us as to Abraham – justification by grace alone through faith alone.
• The same covenant has been entered into by both Abraham and Christians – what Reformed theologians have called “The Covenant of Grace”.
• No retraction anywhere in the New Testament of the idea of a federal household principle.
• The replacement of the sign of circumcision with the sign of baptism.

I believe that these truths point us necessarily to the principle of infant baptism – if the household of one believer is made holy, and the pattern we receive from God is based upon households, then we should not refrain from baptising our infants.

This is what Allie and I will do, God willing, if He decides to grant us children. Let the interaction continue!

I will be watching this, when I get some time!

Mark Dever cannot tolerate: Universalism, Racism, and Paedobaptism.

Carl Trueman and Rick Phillips reply on Reformation21.

R. Scott Clark has replied on the 9Marks blog.

Today is my day off college. Every week we get Monday off, which is a great blessing. I start the day by meeting with a friend from Moore College, for breakfast and prayer. Then I head off home, waste some time, then get to work.

Today I’m preparing for a sermon I’m preaching in April. It is on the very same passage that I will be writing a NT Greek Exegesis paper on later this year: Luke 19:1-10.

Fact: My New Testament Greek lecturer attends my church.

Fact: My New Testament Greek lecturer will be away the week I am preaching.

Dodged a bullet there!

SDG

On a bit of a holiday in Mudgee at the moment, kicking back with a cold one, listening to the new Meshuggah album “obZen”.

I have to say, this album is killer. The song “Bleed” is probably my favourite so far.

Hands up everybody who knows John 3:16 off by heart?

Who doesn’t?

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (ESV)

Standard interpretation of this verse has always been as follows (well, always as in always taught to me and my wife, anyway!):

“Because God loved the world so much, he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

In modern day English, this is the basic way we would understand this passage; if I said this to you:

“Allie so loved Vaughan, that she gave her hand to him in marriage.”

You would think that the first clause is the motive for the second.

Most modern day translations find themselves in the tradition of the 1611 King James version Bible (KJV). The KJV was revolutionary in introducing many phrases and words into the English language that have become common parlance, and still influences the way we translate the Bible today. So, when we come to (arguably) the most popular passage from the Bible, there must be a large amount of traditional pressure to translate things similarly. Almost every modern translation of John 3 begins this sentence with the clause “For God so loved the world…” (ESV, NIV, NASB, RSV, NJKV, NLT, even the NWT!) This is a well-loved and well-used phrase!

The problem is, modern English doesn’t do the phrase justice. Where modern readers see motive, the Greek text sees something different. Only one translation of the Greek text gives us a better understanding of the verse in modern English; the Holman Christian Standard Bible.

Let’s look.

The HCSB translates John 3:16 as:

For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

No longer is John talking about motive, he’s talking about intent. God loved the world by sending his son. The intent now becomes the final phrase – “so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life”.

Does this reflect the Greek better? Well, thanks to my wife (a year ahead of me in Greek!), I believe it does.

In Greek it reads: Οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον (transliterated: hootos gar egapesen ho theos kosmon).

Of the word Οὕτως, Strong’s Greek Dictionary says:

οὕτω
houtō
hoo’-to
Or, before a vowel, οὕτως houtōs hoo’-toce.
From G3778; in this way (referring to what precedes or follows): – after that, after (in) this manner, as, even (so), for all that, like (-wise), no more, on this fashion (-wise), so (in like manner), thus, what.

So, a rusty translation of the phrase would be:

for [in this way]/[thus]/[after this manner] loved God the world

The HCSB is closest.

What I want to know is, why did the translators of the ESV and the NASB decide to go with the KJV-style translation? Why did they use English that doesn’t convey the closest meaning of the text?

In the end, you’re probably going to ask me “so what? Why does it matter either way?” Well, it matters because this verse is always used as a proof-text to prove God’s undifferentiated love for all of humanity. Which isn’t in the text. God’s motivation is to save his elect (“so that everyone who believes…”), not out of happy feelings he has towards the whole world in general.

Another application is how we view love. Is God’s love just a general good feeling that he had towards us before he sent Jesus? No! God’s love is active! The love in this verse is a verb! God loved us by sending his son. John’s commands in other books, to love others as God has loved us, is a sacrificial command. God sacrificed his only begotten son, and that is love. The love we should have for our brothers and sisters is based in and reflects Christ’s incarnation, bloody death, and resurrection. Sacrifice yourself for your brothers and sisters, John says. Happy feelings aren’t enough.

This is how we have come to know love: He laid down His life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers. (1John 3:16)

Addendum: I am currently looking at D.A. Carson’s treatment of the verse, and his ideas on the construction of the phrasing. Interesting. Still, the ESV does have the HCSB rendering as a footnote…

This is just… crazy. Hypnotising. The hair. The singing. The poor 90s music. Wow.

The Renewed Mind is the Key – The Way

ht: Purgatorio