James 1:1 – “Sonshine Through the Clouds”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹James, a servant of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which [are] in the Diaspora, greetings.

Well, well. Here we are. I am embarking on a study of the book of James after just finishing a study of the book of Galatians. These two books have been thought by many to teach two different gospels, Galatians a gospel of free grace and James a gospel of faith + works. Martin Luther even considered the book of James “a gospel of straw” and denied its canonicity. I believe the two books simply approach grace, faith, and works from different perspectives. I am quite sure one balances the other. That is in part why I selected this particular book for my next study. If I, in any way, have embraced some imbalance from my study of Galatians, hopefully the Lord will correct me through James.

Another reason why I have desired to study this book is because I have actually taught through it a number of times, though never having studied it myself. I generally have tried to make it a rule that I’ll not teach Bible until I myself have invested the time to study it (and live it for a while). There is great danger in simply repeating what others say the Bible means. I guess I felt that James is so straight forward that I could teach it without that investment. However, again, that is a delicate and dangerous business. So … I want to invest the time now and at least correct any misconceptions I may have embraced through my (arrogantly) having “rushed in where angels fear to tread.”

Finally, I want to study the book because I have in my library two commentaries, one by Robert Johnstone (1871) and another by Thomas Manton (1693). They, like my old friend John Eadie, are men who study the text carefully, think deeply about its meaning and application, then emerge as men of warm faith. I long to “walk with these wise men” and learn from their wisdom myself. A stroll with them through the book of James is a chance to do just that.

Interestingly, I didn’t seriously expect to gain much from studying verse 1, what is in a sense just a simple greeting. But my old friends pointed out some things I think worth noting. Three things at least are important:

First, we see in the greeting the severity of God’s judgment. To write to the Jewish Christians, he has to write to a people dispersed across the civilized world. One might pause and remember how the Lord called the Jewish people out of Egypt and miraculously delivered them into a land flowing with milk and honey. He drove out the peoples who lived there and gave to Abraham’s descendants a veritable Garden of Eden. He spared no detail and we saw under David and Solomon how a people could in fact be blessed almost beyond human imagination. He did all those good things for them, but He warned them, if they took it all for granted and embarked on a culture of godless self-destruction, He would take it all from them. And He did. Hmmmm. His name is El Shaddai – the God who does exceedingly abundantly above anything we could ask or think, but that is a two-edged sword. Just as He would bless us beyond our wildest dreams, so He may have to abandon us to our most hellish nightmares. The scattered Jewish people stand as a monument to both the goodness and the severity of God. He’s no one to trifle with.

Secondly, the Diaspora reminds us of the absolute immutability and infallibility of God’s Word. Someone pointed out that, based on Deuteronomy 28, you could have written the entire history of the Jewish people from Sinai to the present. All history has done is filled in the exact names and places and dates. When they followed Him, He blessed them exactly as He said He would and when they turned away, they suffered the exact judgments He said they would. Jesus came and said, “I am the way, the truth …” He is truth. All He says is true. His Word is absolute truth. The history of the Jewish people is also a monument to the truth of God’s Word. You and I can read James 1:1 and be reminded to hang our souls on the “very great and precious promises.” We will find Him to be absolutely true just as the Jewish people have.

Finally, we see the wonder of grace. Though the Diaspora is itself a judgment of God, yet He raised up a James to write them a letter, call them “brothers,” and hail them with “Greetings!” Ah, the wonder of grace. Our God reaches down to find us even in the midst of the consequences of our sins! Sometimes hardships (even self-inflicted) may seem like a cloud blocking out the sunshine of His face, yet He hasn’t changed. Behind the cloud the sun still shines as bright as ever. Regardless of our circumstances, regardless of how dark our days may seem to be, regardless even if we are quite sure we got here through our own folly, the God of grace yet waits to meet us, to be our God, to give us a love and joy and peace that, like His beautiful face, are ours whether we see the sun shine or not. James 1:1 would teach us that even in judgment, our God still would send blessing to those who love Him.

The sun is always shining, when you fly above the clouds,

Like the way my life is beautiful, whenever you’re around;

You soothe my soul like summer rain and make the world seem right;

You lift me up above the clouds and drive away the night.

What amazingly monumental truths – all in a single verse that I didn’t think would have much to say! Yep. His name is El Shaddai!

Looks like we’re on our way. Again.

Galatians 6:17-18 – “The End”

Once again, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁷Finally, let no one cause me troubles, for I am bearing the marks of Jesus in my body.

¹⁸The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ [be] with the spirit of you (pl.), brethren. Amen.

And so I come to The End. My notes indicate I embarked on the study of this book on May 26, 2011. Today is July 14, 2013. Just over two years. During that time, I took several breaks to spend time in the OT but still I’m aware I’ve been at this for a long time.

I actually embarked on this study specifically because I owned a John Eadie commentary on Galatians and wished to consort with my old friend. He only wrote a few commentaries but I always find him a kindred spirit. He loved to dig very deep, paid very close attention to the exegetical and technical details of the text, and yet always emerges as a man of warm faith. When I think about the Proverb, “He who walks with the wise will be wise” my mind goes first to John Eadie. It’s always a treat to “walk” with him and listen to his wisdom. And so it has been beyond my wildest imaginations.

As I related when I started, I’ve never “liked” Galatians. I’ve read it many, many times but just never felt I really understood what was going on. I didn’t realize just how much I didn’t understand law and grace. I knew that was the subject of the book, but could never make sense of it by my superficial reading. But, apart from John Eadie, I may never have studied it because it is also a book about fighting. The whole book is a fight. It is about a church fight. My soul is weary of church fights. I’ve never been a fighter and I’m still not. So, given that it was a book that didn’t make sense, about fighting which I don’t enjoy, I may have never taken the time to study it.

But I am so glad I did. No matter where I am in the Bible, with practically every verse I study it seems the Lord rocks my world. His truth is again and again like atom bombs going off in my heart. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free!” Wow did He mean it! Sweet, sweet freedom. Freedom to rise above the petty goon I am, to learn to really love, to really walk with Jesus, to practice the presence of His Spirit in me, to know the Father, to actually live! But that all said, I don’t know of any other book that has blown my mind like this one. Grace. Wonderful glorious liberating grace.

All my Christian life I have wondered at grace. Very early I realized that the Lord loves me regardless of how little I deserve it. Very early I realized that He will never leave me nor forsake me and very early I learned to lean on Him constantly as I worked through the minutes of my days. But I puzzled over exactly what to do with Law. As I related earlier, what I practiced and taught is what I would now call “grace with an asterisk.” Salvation was by grace and God loves you no matter what … but there are a lot of “rules” to live by. It particularly puzzled me to note verses like in I Timothy 1: “Laws are for law-breakers.” And it always puzzled me how little good it seemed to do to teach people the Bible. It was like they never “get it.” Now I understand why. God doesn’t bless “grace with an asterisk”. He doesn’t bless teaching people grace out one side of our mouth, then putting them under law out the other. I never, never, never realized just how much it is true that legalism eclipses the face of God in people’s hearts. And if they cannot see God, they will not change. “For this is eternal life, that they might know Thee, the only true God …” That they might know You. It is only in beholding the face of the Lord that we are changed into that image, from glory to glory. They must see God.

It is frightful to realize that the biggest enemy of a real relationship with God is religion! Religion is what the Pharisees had … and they crucified the Messiah. What Jesus had and what He wants for us is a real, intimate, personal relationship with the living God. Jesus was consumed with that relationship, seemed to have little regard for “the rules” and the religionists crucified Him for it. Interestingly, the tax collectors and prostitutes loved Him for it. Mary Magdalene crawled to His feet one day possessed with seven demons and His “religion” set her free. If the only “religion” she’d ever known was the Pharisees’, I dare say she’d have died in her sins. Christianity was hopelessly and incorrigibly legalistic all through the 20^th century and America went to hell in a handbasket. All non-believers saw was the legalism and just like in Jesus’ day, it eclipsed the face of God in their hearts. They never caught a glimpse of His beautiful face. We hid it behind our legalism.

Only grace reveals the face of God. And that is grace without an asterisk. Grace is all about a Jesus who died for us “while we were yet sinners.” Grace is all about being able for the first time to sit and look into the face of God without fear, without guilt, and without that face being one that rises and falls with my performance. Grace is not about resolving to do a better job, to keep the rules better. It is about awakening to the Holy Spirit within me and letting Him give me the heart of God that I might see the world through His eyes, love people with His love, make the choices I make because I’m enamored with Him.

I realize now all I ever really wanted was to know God. Legalism only got in the way. I pray it never will again.

I’ve got a lot to learn. I know that. That is why I’ll move on now to another book of the Bible. I want to learn more. I want to know more of grace. I want to know more of God. But, that said, I feel like this study of the book of Galatians has been the most liberating of all the Bible studies I’ve ever done. So much of the Bible makes so much more sense to me. God makes more sense to me. Certainly the Holy Spirit makes more sense to me.

I could make a few comments on the text of Galatians 6:17,18, but I don’t suppose they’d add anything to what I’ve already learned. I could point out that I still don’t understand why Paul seems to teach the unity of faith, that there no longer is any difference between Jew and Gentile, and yet, it seems the rest of the apostles made a definite distinction between them. It seems to me the Jewish Christians continued to tolerate grace/law. I totally don’t understand that still. But … I’m thrilled with what I do understand. It’s hard to believe that another study could be this liberating in addition to what I’ve learned, but Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free!” “Call unto Me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things you know not!”

Seek and you shall find. Ask and it shall be given you. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus! Teach me more!

Galatians 6:11-16 – “Really Changed”

Once again, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹¹See with what large letters I have written to you [with] my own hand?¹²As many are desiring to make a good appearance in [the] flesh, these are compelling you to be circumcised, only in order that they may not be persecuted [on account of] the Cross of Christ. ¹³For not even the circumcising ones themselves keep [the] law, but they are desiring you to be circumcised in order that they might boast in your flesh. ¹⁴But to me, may it never be to boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which [the] world has been crucified to me and me to [the] world, ¹⁵for neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation [is something]. ¹⁶And peace and mercy upon those whoever will keep this rule and upon the Israel of God.

It is easy to read these verses as casual closing words, as if Paul were sitting at his desk, having his coffee, and jotting down important thoughts for the Galatians to know and remember, as perhaps might be the case in the book of Romans or Ephesians. But we mustn’t forget the context. I would maintain these are emotionally packed words and we can’t lose sight of this as we would understand them. Paul is writing this letter with the truth of the Gospel hanging in the balance and people’s souls as it were suspended between heaven and hell. One last time, he is wrapping up and summarizing what he has been saying throughout the book – refuting and exposing the Judaizers.

Who are these people really? Paul exposes them as the same hypocritical people-pleasers legalists always are. “In order to be saved, you must be circumcised!” … as if they cared anything about the Galatians’ souls. No. The truth is they are trying to have Jesus while they attempt to appease the wrath of their Jewish family and friends. Following this Jesus of Nazareth and attending church with Gentiles certainly displeased those family and friends, but, if a man could say, “… but I insist those Gentiles all be circumcised and keep the Law!” then they can still show up at synagogue and family gatherings and consort with the same old crew. As Paul found out (not to mention Jesus Himself), to stand firmly on free grace and to renounce all the ceremonies and traditions of the Jews induced not just their displeasure but made them positively murderous.

So the truth is the Judaizers didn’t care about the Galatians, they were just using them. People-pleasers. Everything for show. Just like the Pharisees, they “loved the praise of men more than the praise of God” (John 12:42,43). Just like today, legalists always focus on the externals, they “wash the outside of the cup.” But, as Paul says, “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but a new creation.” The Cross is not about how much skin comes or goes or any of our other modern externals that legalists hold so near and dear. What the Cross is about is a new creation. It’s about a total transformation of who I am from the inside out. The Spirit indwells us to make us people of love and joy and peace, people who are who they are and do what they do, not to please anyone, but because they’re living the heart of Jesus.

This whole study has been so liberating to me. I never really understood law and grace and I certainly got swallowed up in people-pleasing legalism. But I feel like now I really do understand. I never ever again want to let other people’s approval affect what I do or don’t do and certainly not what I persuade others to do.

That is the problem with legalism. It is actually a very deviant way to be “religious” and yet to still live for the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. Legalism allows me to scruple over music and clothes and a whole host of traditions and do nothing about my rotten heart. It allows a man to be highly esteemed at the church building then go home and feast on pornography (as long as no one knows). It allows a man to pride himself that he doesn’t put alcohol in his mouth while he stuffs it with way more food than he needs and gets ridiculously overweight. Out of that same overstuffed mouth comes negativity and criticism and meanness, but that’s “okay.” It all comes down to whether my people-group is pleased. If they are, I’m good.

Paul says that real faith means I’ve been crucified to that world, that world of people-pleasing. The legalists will read about being “crucified to the world” and immediately congratulate themselves that “they don’t smoke and they don’t chew and they don’t run with girls that do.” They actually think they can reduce “the world” to their list of do’s and don’t’s. The Spirit helps us see the issues are way bigger than those pathetic lists.

The Spirit takes up residence in my heart to give me a new heart. His presence means that, although I’m still the same rotten selfish proud sinner I ever was, there is another Spirit present within me who, if I’ll let Him control me, can actually help me to love – to really love, to be the person God actually created me to be, to spend my days “doing good” to others and do it sincerely and from the heart.

It is an incredibly sad truth that, like Paul, Jesus’ worst enemies were the “religious.” The Pharisees prided themselves that they were “separated” from the world, yet they were so tied to that world, they could crucify the Messiah and think they were serving God. They were clueless what “world” was their problem. I remember when it first struck me that, if Jesus were in town, I really wasn’t sure He’d want to attend our church, and then, if He did, whether He’d even be welcome. Then it occurred to me that if a Pharisee and his family showed up – the man in his coat and tie with his wife and kids all looking so sharp, carrying their King James Bible, and being people who “knew their Bible” and who immediately started coming to every service, volunteering to teach Sunday School and work in the nursery, knowing just how to act and saying all the right things – (even if the truth is he is a gossiping, self-righteous, irritable twirp) we’d not only welcome him, we’d elect him a deacon first chance we got. So Jesus isn’t welcome but the Pharisees are. We won’t have the Son of God but we embrace His enemies. Yikes!!! I knew then something was very seriously wrong.

It took me years to finally see all of this clearly and this study in Galatians it seems has “iced the cake” for me. When Paul called the Galatians foolish, he could have spelled it with a capital F! Exchanging the freedom and wonder of grace and Spirit-life to go back to a rotten system of externals and rule-keeping! Now that’s Foolish!

No wonder Paul is all worked up. No wonder he’s pronouncing anathemas and wishing those men would castrate themselves!

May our boast truly ever be nothing less than the Cross of Christ, the amazing grace of a blood-bought substitutionary atonement, of an indwelling Spirit that allows me to know and live the very heart of the wonderful loving Father who planned it all -- and may I never ever again settle for anything less. I’m sure I haven’t even begun to plumb the depth and height and breadth and length of the love of Christ but I am quite sure I understand it better now than I did when I embarked on this study. I pray I’ll only grow to understand it more and once again, that my own life will be a living epistle. God change me. Really change me and in some way I hope Your Spirit in me might be a light to someone else.

As we grow in Him, may we really get to enjoy peace and mercy.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Galatians 6:7-10 – “The Lost Art of Doing Good”

Once again, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁷Stop being deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man is sowing, this he will also reap, ⁸because the one sowing into his own flesh, out of that flesh will reap destruction, but the one sowing into the Spirit, out of that Spirit will reap eternal life. ⁹But let us not be desponding doing the beautiful for we will reap in proper season, not giving up. ¹⁰Consequently therefore, as we have season, let us be doing the good toward all, and especially toward the ones belonging to the household of the faith.

As I noted in my last post, I believe verse 10 is a grand conclusion of Galatians 6:1-10, which is itself a grand conclusion for all that Paul has said about the supremacy of grace over law and of Spirit-life over our naturally bent flesh. That being said, one has to stop and just ponder for a while over verse 10.

Doing good. What’s he saying? If we are blood-bought people actually indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, living not law but grace, and if we allow all of that to transform us, what will we become? People who do good.

Do good.

It strikes me this is something we have all but lost in modern Christianity.

But we shouldn’t be surprised at this admonition. Acts 10:38 says of Jesus, “…God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and He went around doing good …”

Doing good.

The book of Hebrews closes with a similar admonition: “And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased” (13:16).

Note again the familiar verse from the Sermon on the Mount: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:16).

Once again, I think this is all worth a very large ponder. Doing good. As I have been studying the Bible myself for over thirty years now, I really think we’ve lost sight of this. I believe God puts us on this earth and outfits us with talents and abilities with the intent that we should be people who do good, people who contribute positively to our world and to the lives of people around us. The Bible is full from cover to cover of people simply doing good. God put Adam in the Garden “To keep it and to till it.” He made Eve to help Adam. When Isaac’s servant found Rebekah she was tending her father’s sheep. Even in slavery, everywhere Joseph went he did excellent work. When it was time to build the Tabernacle, the Lord said to Moses, (Exodus 31:1-5):

“See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, … and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills --  to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts.”

What of all the men who were good soldiers? Good kings? In a sense this is what even the prophets were about – doing good by warning the people. Even the parable of the sower and the seed centers around a man doing his job – a farmer sowing seed so there will be a harvest so there will be food to eat so people don’t starve. He’s “doing good.”

The Bible is full of people “doing good” precisely because that is what we’re all supposed to be doing. When we do our jobs well, when we are faithful in our responsibilities whether at work, at home, in the community, or within our church, we are doing good for everyone around us. What if everybody did? Holy Spirit indwelling is, in part, for the very purpose of freeing us to be who we were created to be – people who spend their lives saying not “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go” but “I’m off to work to do good today.”

I wonder, when we as Christians talk about “getting serious,” when we would talk about genuinely submitting to the Holy Spirit, what do we think that will mean? What I hear rather constantly at church is the idea that “really” committed people end up leaving their jobs and running off somewhere to do something great. Obviously there are a few people in God’s world whom He calls to full-time ministry type positions. We need those people to do that “good” which God assigned them to do. But is that really what He asks of the vast majority of born-again people? I would suggest the answer is no. What does He want most of us to do? Be like Jesus and “go about doing good.” “Not forget to do good and to share with others.” I really like what was written in Our Daily Bread:

“Jesus went about doing good … His followers are to do good especially to fellow believers (Gal 6:10). They are not to let persecution, selfishness, and busyness cause them to forget to do good and to share what they have with others (Heb 13:16). To be like our Savior … we should ask ourselves each day: ‘What good thing can I do today in Jesus’ name?’ When we do good, we will be offering a sacrifice that pleases God (Heb 13:16) and that draws people to Him (Matt 5:16).”

 Our Daily Bread, 8/1/11, Marvin Williams

I live in a world where I have a family who needs me. I have a job where people need me. I live in a community where people need me, attend a church where people need me. I certainly have no lack of opportunity to “go about doing good.” In fact, as I noted above, all I have to do is get up in the morning and live my life and every moment, at every turn, I am given opportunities to do good. What of a mother who doesn’t fix breakfast for her children? What of a neighbor who doesn’t mow his grass? What of a painter who does sloppy work? What of a manager who sits at his desk and doesn’t really manage? Are these pictures of what a real born-again person should look like? No. In each of these cases, the person isn’t seeing every one of these situations as an opportunity “to do good.”

What I fear is that Christians don’t see these as opportunities “to do good” either. What I mean is they don’t see that God cares intimately about each of these situations. They don’t see this as “what their faith is all about.” They think serving God means spending time at the church building, or going “door to door,” or something “spiritual.” But it doesn’t include the mundane everyday things they do. It doesn’t include the work they do all day every day. It somehow doesn’t include acts of kindness just for kindness’ sake. Teaching Sunday School “counts” but volunteering to coach boy’s little league does not. What a tragedy. It is the mundane of life that is our lives. That’s where most of us live. That’s where faith has to make a difference, or it really makes little difference at all. The ascetic can go sit atop his tower for weeks and months and a lot of people may be impressed but the truth is he’s doing no one any good. How much better to come down off his tower and do something that actually makes someone else’s life a little easier?

What if everybody did?

What if we all climbed down off the towers of our isolated “spirituality” and lived a faith that deliberately blessed people everywhere we went? What if we sought the Holy Spirit’s help to do everything we do, to fulfill every responsibility? We’d be like “doing good to all men.” What a novel idea.

If we did it all in Jesus’ name, if we did it all seeing it as our opportunity to love people, to be a blessing in our world, we’d be “sowing to the Spirit.” When we don’t see it as important to God, when we don’t see our whole lives as an opportunity to “do good,” if we aren’t very deliberately doing it for love, we are by default “sowing to our flesh.”

I personally find all of this very liberating. As I have been studying this and pondering it, it has really encouraged me to go to work and see it all as my opportunity to “do good.” As an engineer, it seems like all day every day I deal with difficult situations, sometimes with difficult people. It is unbelievable how hard it is just to keep a job moving and get it done. But it all needs to be done and done well. People need for someone to get the job done. The Holy Spirit is present with me to help me get the job done, to “do good” to the people who depend on me.

I wish every Christian could see how important their lives are to God – not just the things they do at the church building but their entire lives, everything they do all day every day. It sure makes life fun! It is such a blessing to actually experience the Lord’s very present help even as I am simply trying to do the things I must do every day. Isn’t it cool that walking with God in the end means freedom to live? There’s this whole book called Galatians which was written to correct a church group in the 1^st century. We read it today, understand what God was saying to them, and the truth it teaches frees us to live love and joy and peace right in the very world where we spend our days.

Lord, may we all live our relationship with you 24/7. May Your Spirit help us be like Jesus, to “go about doing good,” to really care, to live not for the petty rules but for the big picture of what You’re doing in this world. May we in fact be epistles written on our hearts. May Your presence in us stir the hunger in others to know You.

Erkahm ka na, Adonai.