Ruth 3:1-9 – “Living in the Present”

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

¹And Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, “My daughter, should I not seek for you a place of rest which will be good to you? ²And now, is not Boaz from our kindred [the one of whom] you have been with his servant girls? Notice, he [is] winnowing [at the] threshing floor barley tonight. ³Wash and anoint and put on your garments upon you and go down [to] the grain pile. Do not let yourself be known to the man until he [is] finished eating and drinking. ⁴And he will be lying down and you must note the place where he lies down and go and uncover his feet and lie down and he will tell you what you are to do.” ⁵And she said to her, “All which you say I will do.” ⁶And she went [to] the threshing floor and she did according to all which her mother-in-law commanded her.

⁷And Boaz ate and he drank and his heart was good and he came in to lie down in the end of the pile and she came in secret and she uncovered from his feet and she lay down. ⁸And it was in the middle of the night and the man trembled and turned himself and behold! a woman lying from his feet. ⁹And he said, “Who [are] you?” and she said, “I [am] Ruth, your maid-servant, and spread your wing upon your maid-servant because a redeeming one you are.”

This is another place where I would suggest we need to slow down and really think about what it is like for these people. What stands out to me is the realization that at the end of verse 9, when Ruth says, “Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a kinsman-redeemer,” she has no idea how Boaz will respond. We get to read the whole account knowing “the end of the story” but Ruth does not. Every step of this whole book, from the time she decided to cling to Naomi and go to Israel, Ruth has never known “the end of the story.” She very well could have left Moab and gone to Israel only to starve to death. And yet she went. She went out one day to glean in someone’s field not knowing if she’d even come home with a day’s supply of grain – or perhaps be mistreated and … who knows what?

When Naomi says, “Here’s what you need to do” and sends her down to the barley piles, Ruth responds to her, “I will do whatever you say” (v5). But Ruth did not know the outcome – as she was washing herself and putting on some perfume, as she put on her best clothes, as she walked down toward Boaz’s barley piles and tried to stay hidden, as she watched him lie down and noted the spot, as she crept in, uncovered his feet and lay down herself – and even as he asks in the dark, “Who are you?” and she says, “I am Ruth. Spread the corner of your garment over me” – she does not know the outcome.

Even up to this very point, as those words leave her mouth, “Spread the corner of your garment over me” she does not know how it will turn out. What if he’s totally not interested? She would get up and walk away having made a complete fool of herself. What if he thinks she’s ridiculous? What if, what if, what if? She is so, so, so vulnerable at this point.

Pause a moment and realize that as Ruth speaks these words her heart is hanging in space.

What strikes me is the realization that this is exactly where we all live our lives. We never know “the end of the story.” In a sense, while we live in the present, we do so never knowing the outcome of whatever it is we’re doing. I don’t know about other people, but I guess my natural bent is to live in fear of the future. Every little thing I do, I’m very aware that there are many possible outcomes, and I am perhaps too aware that some of them are ugly. Every project I start on at work, I don’t know how it will turn out. In a way I have to do like Ruth and step forward in faith, do whatever is right, do the math, fill out the forms, make the phone calls, all the while not knowing the outcome but being painfully aware it could be bad. I have to overcome my fears with faith in God that the assignments are actually from Him, that He will help me to do good for people, that it is actually Him who wants to bless people and I am simply His chosen hands and feet to accomplish it.

I did a project once where a subdivision of homes had always had a terrible problem with flooding in heavy rains. They even showed us pictures of people in boats floating around in their front yards. When we got the project funded, one older lady stood in her yard and cried and said, “I never thought I’d live long enough to see this problem solved.” As we set about the design and then construction, I lost about 10 years of my life worrying about the obstacles that rose up. But in the end we finished the project on time and within budget and now those people’s yards don’t flood any more. I think about, what if Jesus had walked through that subdivision when it was flooded? What if He talked to that lady standing there crying? What would He have done? He would have fixed it for them. In a sense, you see, He did. He just used me and a bunch of other people to make it happen. But it was still Him.

As I go through my day, like Ruth, I don’t know the outcome of anything I do. I just have to say to the Lord, like Ruth, “I will do whatever You say.” I know His two great commands are to love God and love people. Whatever I’m doing, I have to keep love in view. Love and faithfulness. Love people and do what you should. All the while knowing I’m on God’s errands, loving people for Him, doing what He would do if He had my job. If I can just keep that in view, then “perfect love will cast out fear.” I quote often to myself, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love and of a well ordered mind.” But I myself find often that I almost cannot rise above my fears and my fearing, even with those Scriptures to lift me. It is often God Himself who has to give me the strength to go on.

But I don’t want to live in the present fearing the future any more. I want to take every step believing God is in it for good and trusting Him with that future. I don’t know what made Ruth so brave. Somehow it was her faith in God. I don’t know what thoughts went through her mind that allowed her to rise above her fears and to bravely step forward again and again. But I think I see the thoughts I need to be practicing to be like her. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know what she was thinking as she walked into that “scary” situation and as she hung there in space waiting to hear Boaz’s response? Maybe the Lord hasn’t told us because we each need to learn our own thoughts to think to make us brave and keep us going. Perhaps I’m just one of the people who struggle with fear. Maybe others struggle with something else to keep them going. I don’t know. But fortunately the Lord knows me and He’s helping me work through it all. I need to learn how to live well in the present.

He sure helps me. He helped Ruth 3000 years ago and His name is still Jesus, “Savior.”

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.

Ruth 3:1-6 – “Knowing What We Don’t Know”

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

¹And Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, “My daughter, should I not seek for you a place of rest which will be good to you? ²And now, is not Boaz from our kindred [the one of whom] you have been with his servant girls? Notice, he [is] winnowing [at the] threshing floor barley tonight. ³Wash and anoint and put on your garments upon you and go down [to] the grain pile. Do not let yourself be known to the man until he [is] finished eating and drinking. ⁴And he will be lying down and you must note the place where he lies down and go and uncover his feet and lie down and he will tell you what you are to do.” ⁵And she said to her, “All which you say I will do.” ⁶And she went [to] the threshing floor and she did according to all which her mother-in-law commanded her.

This passage of course always raises eyebrows. I looked forward to the opportunity to actually study the Hebrew in the hopes it would make more sense. As I read many commentaries, there were a very wide variety of responses and interpretations. All center around the question of whether there is something immoral going on here. Some suggest Naomi is being downright reckless with Ruth’s purity while others suggest it was morally dangerous but that Naomi was trusting in the integrity of Boaz and/or Ruth to protect them in an otherwise volatile situation.

What I would like to point out is that we are reading about a culture of people halfway around the world and 3000 years ago. The plain simple fact is that we know almost nothing about their culture and certainly less about the activities surrounding issues of courtship and marriage. Even today it can be almost humorous to hear how people in other countries approach the business of courting and marriage.

If we were honest, even the whole concept of levirate marriage and kinsman-redeemers, which both play significantly into this account, are completely foreign to us. I can’t even imagine the cultural gymnastics we would go through to deal with a brother-in-law taking his deceased brother’s wife – just to think about it, you realize how messy that would be. Reading ahead, the “other” kinsman-redeemer refuses to take Ruth saying, “I might endanger my own estate.” How it would have endangered his own estate we don’t know, but obviously there was something too “messy” for him in it all. For sure all sorts of customs and rules would have to quickly arise to deal with something as precarious as levirate marriage. Just in the last 10 years, as use of the internet has gone pervasive, we’ve had to develop a whole new set of “cyber-ethics” to regulate how we communicate on-line. That is complex enough, but, I would suggest, it would be trifling compared to issues of courtship, marriage, sex, family procreation, etc.

As I said above, I had hoped the Hebrew would help me but, instead, what I find is the exact opposite. What we have in these six verses is almost all dialogue, almost all a record of what Naomi and Ruth said to each other in a language and culture from 3000 years ago. In fact, what I find is that even the way they talk almost defies understanding. I have suggested above a translation of these verses but I have to confess, it is very difficult to translate. The way they talk bears little resemblance to our modern sentence structures. They use participles and infinitives in crazy places, leave out words (I indicate in the brackets […] where I have had to add words which simply are not there in Hebrew), and just generally obviously they don’t even think like us.

I say all of that to make my point -- I think we should admit we don’t have the slightest clue and lay off maligning these three very godly people. I personally think that to imply anything even suggestively immoral is to have missed the integrity of who these three people are. Looking ahead, notice when Boaz discovers Ruth at his feet, his very first words are “the Lord bless you,” and then he tells her, “All my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of noble character.” That doesn’t exactly sound like “pillow talk,” does it?

I would suggest what is going on here is simply one of the customs that developed around the practice of levirate marriage, that there is no impropriety of any kind, and we should be reminded how important it is to “know what we don’t know,” to openly admit it, and especially to refrain from accusing people in places where we lack the facts to make any evaluation at all. I would suggest it makes a lot more sense that Naomi (an Israelite) is instructing Ruth (a Moabite) what, in this Israelite culture (from 3000 years ago!), are the accepted customs to be followed in pursuing levirate marriage. I don’t know if other ancient cultures practiced levirate marriage too, but even if they did, you can bet they all came up with a whole set of do’s and don’ts unique to their own countries. Ruth would need instruction from Naomi how to “fit in” with this Israelite culture. My contention, I suggest, would be supported by how quickly Boaz understood exactly what Ruth was asking for. He obviously didn’t think she wanted “to crawl in bed with him.” He immediately understood she was appealing to the practice of levirate marriage and his position as kinsman-redeemer. He immediately understood that.

I would suggest it is true all through life we need to learn to “know what we don’t know” and then have the humility to admit it. In my field of engineering, everywhere we go people expect us to be “experts.” Too many of my colleagues respond to that by never admitting when they frankly don’t know. They plunge ahead and even design processes when the truth is they don’t know what they’re doing. They think they have to pretend expertise they don’t have or people will “take their business elsewhere.” As a result I have spent a considerable portion of my career cleaning up the messes these guys leave behind. I have found, instead, that no one seems to mind if I admit, “I don’t know much about that,” and then say, “But if you’d like me to work on it, I’ll learn as fast as I can.”

I suspect that same problem surfaces here. Pastors and theologians are “supposed” to be experts in the Bible. When it comes to the Bible, people expect them to “know.” It seems at first glance inappropriate for them to walk away from a Bible passage saying, “Beats me.” But, just as with engineers, theologians need to learn to “know what they don’t know” and have the humility to admit it. And the same principle extends to every walk of life. It is in the end a pride issue to go around acting like we’re omniscient, forming opinions and making statements based on knowledge we ought to admit we simply do not have. Then when we start accusing other people of improprieties based on facts we don’t have, we have really crossed the line.

Based on the “facts” we do have – the information we are clearly given in the book of Ruth, it is my conclusion that these are three very godly people and I intend to consider their dialogue and actions on that basis until the Lord shows me something different.

I would suggest that this passage reminds us we all need to learn to “know what we don’t know” then have the humility to admit it and act accordingly. God help me to be aware of what I don’t know and help me especially not to be maligning good people when I ought to be admiring them.

What if everybody did?

Ruth 3:1 – “Good”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this verse:

¹And Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, “My daughter, should I not seek for you a place of rest which will be good to you?”

In my last post from chapter 2, I noted how much Ruth, Boaz, and Naomi all remind me of Jesus. Chapter 3 begins in the same vein.

Stop for a second and think about Ruth. It has been a wonderful and entirely unexpected blessing for her to have stumbled into the fields of Boaz, then to have him receive her so graciously. Although the work has been hot and tedious, her gleaning in his fields has provided barley and wheat for her and Naomi probably enough for the whole year ahead. Being a Moabite and a widow, Ruth had no reason to expect anything but poverty and deprivation in Israel. Yet she has been treated kindly and won’t have to go hungry at least for a year.

All of that is well and good. However, it does nothing to resolve the larger issues in Ruth’s life. As she looks ahead, life is still a gloomy, endless struggle to survive. She’s had to work hard for this grain and next year she’ll just have to do it again, and the next year and the next year. And she can only hope that Boaz will continue to allow her in his fields. What if something happens to him? Will his heir be so gracious?

Ruth has to feel all of these things, though, based on our text she utters not the slightest complaint. She goes on humbly, dutifully carrying the load she bears. But again, she is a real human being. She is young. She is a young woman. She had a husband once but now she sleeps alone. She once looked forward to having a family. Now she has only days of hard work ahead.

Into this lonely world steps Naomi who says to her, “My daughter, should I not seek for you a place of rest which will be good to you?” Naomi is looking out for her. Naomi wants to do her good.

Her words immediately remind me of Jesus.

Who can read those words and not hear, “Come unto Me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28)? The same Lord said back in Jer 6:16, “Stand in the way and see and ask for the old paths wherein lieth righteousness, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” “Rest unto your souls.” Our God is a God who looks down from Heaven and longs to give us rest. This word “rest” in Hebrew is a colorful word that gathers in everything we can mean when we use the word: “a resting place,” “calmness,” “freedom from troubles and anxiety,” and all those kinds of things. It is obviously closely akin to the concept of peace, and it is what God wants for us. He sees us, like Ruth, battling our way through life, “eating our bread in the sweat of our face.” He sees that all our “victories” are invariably temporary and that, like Ruth’s barley and wheat, though they may sustain us for a while, we live in a world where we can never stop fighting just to survive.

And Naomi adds, “… which will be good to you.” She longs to see Ruth in a place “which will be good for you.” I’m reminded of the Lord’s words to Israel, “Be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you …” (Deut 12:28). “So that it may always go well with you …” The Lord wishes us good, and that not only to us but to “your children after you.”

This one simple verse before us reminds us that our Boaz, our Kinsman-Redeemer, is a God who longs to give us rest and longs for good things to be our portion.

I say all this to point out (again) that our God is a good God, a God who longs to do us good. His very law itself was intended for our good.

And all of this needs to be said because, in this fallen world, we are naturally inclined not to see Him in His goodness. Like the devil himself, we too easily think hard thoughts of God. We too easily assume He is harsh and demanding. Our natural bent toward legalism teaches us to see Him as cruel and judgmental and impossible to please. Every rung we climb on the ladder of righteousness only shows us He is higher yet.

But Naomi’s words would remind us that all those thoughts we naturally think toward God are an unfortunate illusion. All those hard thoughts derive not from the truth but rather from our own twisted misperceptions. The real God who lives in Heaven and who would be our God is a God of grace and kindness, a God who longs to give us rest and to do us good. Oh, yes, it is true that He punishes sin, that there is a place called hell, that He may in anger bring down horrible judgments on us. But like a genuinely loving parent, He resorts to those things only when we engage in our own self-destruction and cruelty and utter impenitence. I believe with all my heart that when He has to deal finally with those “whose names are not written in the Book of Life” and He has to “throw them into the Lake of Fire,” He will do so with tears in His eyes. That was never His intent. He would have done them good, if only they’d let Him. “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, will rest in the shadow of the Almighty” (Ps 91:1).

Again, like any genuinely loving parent, our God longs to do us good. Just like Naomi’s words, He asks, “… should I not seek for you a place of rest which will be good to you?”

But having pondered all of this, may we be reminded they are Naomi’s words. They are a person’s words. And they are a godly person’s words. They are a godly person’s words as that person looks into the life of someone else. That is precisely the effect God desires to see – that having drunk deeply of grace ourselves we should in turn extend that grace to those around us. As we learn to live in the glow of our God’s love to us, I believe the unavoidable result is that we are changed to love others more. Viewing His image, “we are changed into that image, from glory to glory.” I’m not so sure the change is even a “choice” to love so much as a choice to see God and then to simply allow that love to flow through us. We are indwelt by the Spirit of Christ. If we only allow it, how cannot His great loving heart spill out of ours? Out of the abundance of our hearts, our mouths will speak. If those hearts are full of the love of Christ, how cannot our mouths spill out that same love to others?

This is a wonderful little verse to remind us what a loving God we have:

“And Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, ‘My daughter, should I not seek for you a place of rest which will be good to you?’”

But realizing they are Naomi’s words, we’re also reminded that God’s love in our hearts moves us to love others. Naomi longed to see Ruth find a “place of rest” and one that “will be good to her.”  Just like Naomi, it is good and right for all of us to be constantly looking about us desiring to do good to others, to be “watching out” for their welfare.

May the Lord give us eyes to see the needs of others, may He give us hearts to love and do what we can, and may He allow us to actually so touch the hearts of people around us that they realize there is such a thing as grace.

May the Spirit of Christ be our spirit all day every day wherever we go.

James 2:18-26 – “Rabbi, I Want to See”

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

¹⁸And someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works. Show me that faith without the works, and I will show you my faith out of my works.”  ¹⁹You believe that God is one? You do well. The demons also believe and tremble. ²⁰And, O empty man, do you wish to know that the faith without the works is worthless? ²¹Was not Abraham our father justified out of works offering Isaac his son upon the altar? ²²You see that the faith worked together with his works and the faith was completed out of the works. ²³The Scripture was fulfilled, the one saying “Abraham believed God and it was imputed to him into righteousness,” and “He was called a friend of God.” ²⁴You see that a man is justified out of works and not only out of faith. ²⁵Likewise was not Rahab the prostitute also justified out of works, welcoming the messengers and sending [them] out a different way? ²⁶For just as the body without the spirit is dead, thus also the faith without works is dead.

This is going to be another one of my “I don’t know” posts. I have been studying this passage and pondering over it pretty much this entire month. I keep hoping some lights will come on but alas, here I am, and I don’t think I know any more than I did. So in this post, I’ll try to summarize my ignorance.

As I recorded in my last post, to me this matter of “faith and works” is patently obvious. To be born again is to live again and to live is to move and breathe. Action always accompanies life. Action doesn’t impart life, it is the expression of it. Works don’t give life. It is genuine faith that imparts life to the soul. The works are simply the expression of that living faith. And so, Abraham, being alive, lived his faith and obeyed God. Rahab, having come to faith and become alive, started making decisions consistent with that living faith.

The key words repeated all through this passage are “show me/show you” (v18), “you see” (v22), and “you see” (v24). James’ whole discussion is centered around this idea of what you “see.” You can’t “see” faith. But a faith that is real will produce a life which can be seen, which I believe is his point.

All well and good. James isn’t contradicting Paul. He isn’t “adding works to faith” in a soteriological sense. He’s making the rather obvious assertion that real faith lives.

This is my rub. I’m not sure who he’s talking to or why. If he is addressing genuinely born again people, I’m thinking they already know this. As I quoted from Ezekiel in my last post, the Lord said,

“Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes …” (36:26-27).

Genuinely born again people are indwelt by the Spirit and God Himself “causes us to walk in His statutes.” From the second I became alive in Christ, I was aware I was alive. I had something totally different going on inside of me. I wanted to know God. I wanted to follow Jesus. I had absolutely no idea what that meant, but it was all there.

So … do you need to tell born again people that their faith should be accompanied by works? Obviously Jesus seemed to think so:

“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. If anyone does not abide in Me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned” (John 15:5,6).

John himself says,

“If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we

lie and do not practice the truth” (I John 1:6).

Clearly, we need to be told that real faith produces works, produces a changed life, produces observable action.

But then, in v20, he addresses “you foolish man” and seems to be making his point to people who want to assert that they can have faith without works. Can genuine believers really think that someone can have faith and it produce no change in their life? Or is he talking to the many people who sit in the pews and claim faith but obviously don’t live it (of which there are many, of course). My problem with thinking James is addressing them is first of all that I know by experience that those people aren’t listening to a word you say, so why address them at all? Also, that would imply James is addressing this book to unbelievers, which would seem contradictory.

If he’s addressing believers, it seems unnecessary. If he’s addressing unbelievers, it seems pointless.

I suppose it comes down to the problem that the visible church will always (in this world) be comprised of tares and wheat, and Jesus specifically said the tares would not be plucked out lest the wheat be damaged. The whole Bible is full of warnings against “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” and people who say, “Lord, Lord.” Paul had to admonish the Corinthians to “examine yourselves and see if you be in the faith” (II Cor 13:5).

Perhaps that is the key here. Somehow we need the Lord to make the matter clear. Perhaps believers need to know this so they aren’t discouraged by all the people who claim faith then don’t live Jesus. Perhaps we need to know this so we don’t listen to everyone who gets up and claims to have faith. Perhaps it needs to be said on the chance that someone really would ask themselves whether the “faith” they claim is actually changing their life?

Perhaps all of this is true – it just doesn’t seem to tell me anything I didn’t already know.

And that is what bothers me. How can I read and study a passage of Scripture and come away feeling I didn’t learn anything? That usually means I didn’t “get it.” What bothers me too is reading those words, “You foolish man,” and wanting to believe he is talking to someone else, while the voice way down deep inside of me is saying, “Don, you’re the man!”

If David didn’t see that he was “the man” in Nathan’s story, he would have missed Nathan’s point and gone on blindly in his sin. If I can’t see when I’m “the man” I fear I’m missing the point … with the frightening implication that, in some way, I’m going on blindly in my sin. The whole point of studying the Bible is to see my sins so I can be different. To have studied a whole passage and walk away unchanged is a sad disappointment. But if I am “the man,” I still don’t see it.

His point is clearly that “faith without works is dead.” That I think I understand. I just feel there’s something more going on that I’m missing.

Hmmmmmm. Well, the good news is that the Lord is still on His throne. He sees all things clearly. He knows that I’ve sincerely (albeit with my evil self-deceptive heart) tried to understand. Perhaps I’m just not ready to see something here. Time for another Habakkuk. I’ll just stand at my post and watch and see what He will tell me.

I guess I’ll just leave this with the prayer, “Lord, help me let my faith live. Help me to do the “works” that accompany faith, whatever and wherever  You wish to be. If I’m missing something, please help me to see it. Rabbi, I want to see.”

With that, it’s time to go back to the OT and continue my study in Ruth. I’ll study a chapter or two there and, Lord willing, come back to continue on in James.

James 2:14-17 – “The Man and His Arm”

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

¹⁴My brothers, what [is] the profit if someone should claim to have faith but not have works? That faith would not be able to save him. ¹⁵If a brother or sister becomes poorly clad and lacking the daily sustenance, ¹⁶but someone from you (pl.) says to them, “Go in peace. Be warmed and be filled,” but you (pl.) should not give to them the necessities of the body, what [is] the profit? ¹⁷Even so, that faith is dead according to itself, if it should not have works.

There are a lot of thoughts I could record regarding these verses, but one in particular stands out to me. These verses, as we’ve discussed before are a theological battleground. However, I would suggest they only become a battleground for people who would unnaturally separate faith and works. Certainly there is a sense in which we must separate the two, “for by the works of the law shall no man be justified” (Gal 3:11). Rather “By grace you are saved through faith … not of works …” (Eph 2:8,9). But having established that faith itself is the root of salvation, we then are free to see that that root bears fruit.

It is sort of like studying a man throwing a ball. One may say he throws the ball with his arm. Someone else says the man throws the ball. So does he throw it or does his arm? Let’s cut off his arm and study it and then perhaps we can decide which it is. Do you see how foolish the discussion is? We can accurately say that in fact the ball is propelled by the man’s arm, but it is ludicrous to even discuss the throwing of a ball somehow separated from the man himself. There are some things which can and should be studied separately. If someone wants to be an ophthalmologist, they study eyes. If someone else wants to be a podiatrist, they study feet. Fine. But a study of genuine faith invariably must include a consideration of works. Like the man and his arm, they are organically inseparable.

I say all that because I want to record the one point that stands out to me from this passage, and that is this: Because of what genuine faith is, it cannot not produce works. Genuine faith is not assent to a creed, acknowledgment of certain “beliefs,” association with a particular group, or any of the things we are more than happy to accept. Nicodemus “believed” but he still didn’t “get it.” And what was Jesus advice to him? “Except a man be born again, he will not see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

Born again. Even in those familiar words is the key to this whole discussion. To be genuinely saved, to come into genuine faith, is to be born … again. To be born is to be alive. And to be alive is to breathe and move. Even a comatose person’s body still moves. The heart beats, the lungs breathe, the blood flows. When the graphs all flat line, when there ceases to be detectable movement, what do we conclude? The person has died. If we can catch them quickly and do CPR or hit them with defibrillators, perhaps we can revive them. But we’d better do it quickly!

Born again. Every Easter I am excited by the thought that, in a sense, the whole point of Christianity is resurrection. The whole point is life from the dead! In a sense, I came to Christ because I was so tired of dying. I wanted to live. And what a life He has given me! “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal 2:20).

To have genuine faith is to live. This is what Ezekiel spoke of:

“Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes …” (36:26-27).

To understand all of this is to see the folly of unnaturally separating faith and works. It is genuine faith that saves us and faith alone, but that faith itself is a living thing, a living thing that imparts life, a living thing that means the very Spirit of Christ Himself takes up residence in our hearts. If you push a stone into the ground what will happen? Nothing, of course. But what if instead you pushed a seed? A seed is a seed. It is, in a sense, not a tree. But the seed is a living thing. Give it earth, water, and warmth, and suddenly a tree grows! But why? Because the seed itself was a living thing. So genuine faith is life itself. It brings life. It is life. And so those who “have” it live!

And as Paul noted in Galatians 2 (quoted above), it is Christ who lives in me. It is His life I am living. …Which brings us back to our text. Could Jesus ever see a person poorly clad and hungry and say, “Go in peace. Be warmed and filled,” and walk away? No. Then neither can I. Oh, I can, and perhaps James is acknowledging that even born again people are capable of crass insensitivity. But his point is that such behavior is completely out of character for people indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus. Born-again people have Jesus living in them. In the long run, they cannot be happy unless they let Him live through them.

I am so, so, so glad all of this is true. It is so exciting to have this life that lives in me, this life that wants to live, that wants to live Jesus, that wants to see the world through His eyes, to have His heart, to sincerely try to be His hands, His feet, His mouth to the people He places around me. … And to actually have the power to see it happen! Not because I make it happen but because I am indwelt by the very 3^rd Person of the Trinity and His life lives in me. I so enjoy the freedom of just letting Him live and then enjoying the love and joy and peace that comes with His life.

I don’t know if it makes sense to anyone else, but all of this is why to me, the whole discussion of faith without works is really ludicrous. It’s not a matter of “adding” works to faith. It is a matter that genuine faith is alive -- to have genuine faith is to be alive. And to be alive is to move. Faith in Jesus is to be alive in Him, to have Him alive in me. And the “works” that naturally follow are simply the “moving” of His life in me.

All of this is how it is possible that “faith alone saves” but “faith that saves is never alone.” The two belong together … like the man and his arm!

James 2:14 – “All Day Every Day”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this verse:

¹⁴My brothers, what [is] the profit if someone should claim to have faith but not have works? That faith would not be able to save him.

In this verse, I believe James is continuing his consideration of “religion which God approves.” I would suggest that such a subject is very important to genuinely born-again people – not because they fear being disapproved but because they deeply love the Lord and want very much to understand those things that make Him happy.

That being said, I think there is one important point we can make while camped on this verse. Before discussing that, however, I want to acknowledge that this verse is one of the theological battlefields of the centuries. This verse in particular and the discussion which follows would seem on first pass to contradict salvation by faith alone. The discussion has been billed as a conflict between James and Paul.

Here’s what I think: Back in 1:25, we pointed out the words: “But whosoever looketh into the perfect law …,” with the idea being one stooping down to peer at something, and that idea being contrasted with someone glancing in a mirror and promptly forgetting what they saw. I noted then, in order to really understand God’s Word, there needs to be stooping down and peering. The Scriptures may seem to say a lot of things on a passing glance, but our admonition is to be “rightly dividing” (“correctly handling”). All that said, personally I don’t think there is any reason to even suggest a conflict between James and Paul. Even Martin Luther, who early in life called the book of James an “epistle of straw” later on, after having studied and matured himself, acknowledged its value.

There are mountains of commentary on this very discussion but suffice it for me to make one quote:

“Paul wrote Galatians to deal with the error of adding some outward work, such as circumcision, to faith alone for salvation. James wrote this text to confront the problem of those who profess to believe in Christ, but do not have any fruit to show for it. If we lose sight of this, we will err” (Steven J. Cole).

Some of the battle may have been encouraged by the old KJV translation, “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?” The translation of the last question, “Can faith save him?” seems to turn Sola Fide on its ear. However (and once again, hundreds before me have pointed this out), the KJV failed to acknowledge an article attached to the Greek word for faith, so that a better translation is something like, “Can that faith save him?” or “Can such faith save him?” To include the emphasis of the article shows that James is not tackling faith itself but rather “that faith,” a faith that someone claims to have yet has no works to show for it.

That is one last exegetical point I wish to make, that what is at issue here is not faith but rather the fact that someone “says” he has faith. That same thought occurred back in 1:26, where James considered a person who “seems to be religious.” Unfortunately all of this is a very necessary discussion, since everywhere faith goes it will always find false adherents. Faith has always found many who “draw near Me with their mouths, but their hearts are far from Me.” As Jesus warned, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven.” He said, “By their fruits you will know them."

And so this whole discussion is necessary, the matter of faith and works. Clearly, as someone has said, “Faith alone saves but faith that saves is never alone.”

Now, back to my “one important point we can make while camped on this verse:” I think it is worthwhile to pause and consider what “works” He’s talking about. This is a point where I think we need to set aside whatever pre-conceived notions we may have and let the Lord Himself tell us what He means.

What would most of us think of when we hear those words, “Faith without works is dead?” What would we immediately presume are “works?” I would suggest our minds go immediately to “church work,” or what we call “ministry.” At minimum it would mean something like teaching Sunday School or perhaps even going to the mission field. It might mean trimming the bushes around the church building. Perhaps when we think of “works” that accompany salvation, we think of regular church attendance and carrying one’s Bible, of living a “separated” lifestyle, wearing certain clothes, not listening to certain music, etc. If someone has stumbled across these feeble thoughts, pause and consider the question – really, down deep in your heart, what do you think of when you see the word “works” in this verse?

Now look around the text and, in fact, the Bible itself. What “works” has James already called attention to? He started with learning to “Consider it pure joy, … whenever you face trials of many kinds.” He’s mentioned “bridling your tongue.” Then he very specifically held up “looking after orphans and widows in their distress.” He’s just come off a discussion of avoiding favoritism toward other people. And, reading ahead, the very specific illustration he will use is the problem of a “brother or sister without clothes and daily food.” My mind goes back to Isaiah 58 and the Lord’s words, “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice … to set the oppressed free … to share your food with the hungry …?” When Jesus commends His people, the “sheep on His right,” what He commends is “When I was hungry, you fed me …”

Here would be my observation: when the Lord thinks about “works” He’s thinking of the real day to day issues of loving Him and loving others. Learning to see joy in trials is something very personal and very private, something that develops between our heart and His in the quietness of our own lives. Learning to bridle our tongues doesn’t just happen in a church building. It is something that starts as soon as I wake up and bears on how I speak to my wife and children as we all get up and go to work and school. It bears heavily on how I talk to and about people all day at work and how I talk to the cashier at the grocery store on my way home. The love of “caring for orphans and widows in their distress” is a work that means all day every day I’m trying to be sensitive and observant to see people in their very real needs and to do whatever I can to help them.

Those are the kinds of things the Lord says He means. The things we call “ministry” may in fact be works of love, but I would suggest there is great danger in automatically equating those things with the love Jesus longs to see in us. And I would go on to suggest there is perhaps even greater danger in limiting our definition of “works” to those ideas of “church ministry,” of mentally “checking off the list” when we’ve done those things. I’ve simply known too many people who may have been great “servants” at church but didn’t  have a drop of love in their hearts.

We believers need so desperately to see our faith as something we live all day every day everywhere we go. It isn’t something that happens at the church building. We talk about taking the Gospel to the lost and yet every single person sitting in the pews spends all day every day in that world, rubbing elbows with those very people “we’re trying to reach.” That’s why Jesus told us to “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in Heaven” (Matt 5:16). That is why someone might “come and ask you a reason of the hope that is in you” (I Peter 3:15), because they actually see in your day to day life something truly different about you.

It is a sad commentary that “faith without works is dead” – to think that someone can actually believe they have faith, can think they actually have a relationship with God, and yet one day hear Him say, “Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you.” But I think, practically speaking, it is just as serious for believers to fail to realize just how simple and day-to-day are the kind of “works” that accompany salvation. The “works” which accompany salvation all come down to love, and love is something we live … all day every day.

Everyone who’s dying knows that all that ever really mattered in life was relationships. The wonderful thing about knowing God is that He helps us see that while we’re still quite alive. I don’t think He at all intends to scare us with “faith without works is dead.” Rather He wants to encourage us that the love we know down deep in our hearts is most important … really is!

May we all live in the joy of His love and may it flow out of our blood-bought hearts into the people He places around us … all day every day.

James 2:8-13 – “Mirrors and Windows”

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

⁸You (pl.) do well if you (pl.) really keep [the] royal law according to the Scripture, “You (sing.) shall love your neighbor as yourself,” ⁹but if you (pl.) are showing favoritism, you (pl.) are working sin, being ones convicted by that law as transgressors. ¹⁰For whoever keeps that whole law but stumbles in one [point] has become liable to all. ¹¹For the One saying, “Do not commit adultery,” also says, “Do not murder,” but, if you (sing.) do not commit adultery but do murder, you (sing.) have become a transgressor of [the] law. ¹²Thus speak and thus act as ones going to be judged through [the] law of freedom, ¹³for the judgment without mercy [will be given] to those not practicing mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

These verses are of course a continuation from vv1-7 and complete this discussion of the unjust usher and the problem of favoritism. Verses 8-11 are clear enough to me but I’m not 100% sure I yet understand vv12&13. Nevertheless I’m going to go ahead and record my thoughts -- sometimes it’s a good idea to at least record what I do think is clear and then, every once in a while, it all begins to make sense as I type and pull it all together. It’s also always possible that a particular truth is still beyond my current maturity and I’ll just need to be content with what I do learn and then expect to come back some (wiser) day and find that it makes perfect sense!

Along with many commentators, it appears to me that James is actually anticipating the argument that someone may say, “But honoring the rich man is being loving, isn’t it?” James responds that, if you really are doing something out of love, that is great; but what about the poor man? Your disdain for him rather exposes your motives as favoritism rather than love.

Here’s what I think is happening: James particularly refers to “the royal law found in Scripture.” It is the “love your neighbor as yourself” which is a quotation of Deut 19:18. Calling anything “the royal law” is a unique appellation in the Bible. What is he talking about? I personally think he’s talking very specifically about this command to love. He’s calling it, in particular, “the royal law” as it is the command which sums all else. It, in a sense, “reigns” over all the other laws.

Jesus of course said that on these two commands, to love God and love people, “hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 22:40). He had said in the Sermon on the Mount, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 7:12). In Romans 13:9,10, Paul says, “…and whatever other commandments there may be, are summed up in this one rule: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.” In Galatians 5:6 he says, “…The only thing that matters is faith expressing itself through love” and then continues in verse 14, “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Finally, Jesus specifically left us with, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34).

James is acknowledging that, if in fact, their motive is to keep this “royal” law, then they are certainly doing well. We can take the same encouragement with us. Whatever we may be doing, if we can honestly say we’re trying to live God’s law of love, we’re doing well. We may find later that we could have done it better, could have done it wiser, etc., but at least we can be assured that, if we sincerely did it in love, we “did well.”

The problem of course is our amazing capacity for self-deception, to which James has already alluded three times in his book (1:16,22,&26). Then add to that the problem that even born-again people so easily revert to legalism when they’re judging their own motives. What I mean is that by the Spirit we’ve been freed to live not by “rules” but by the far greater standard of knowing God’s heart. When life is about the “rules” then we start thinking we can pick and choose, that as long as I can say I’m keeping a rule in one place, I can conveniently forget that I’m breaking it somewhere else. That was apparently a very standard approach for the Jewish religious community of James’ day and certainly hasn’t changed at all in 2000 years! It seems that is exactly what James thinks is happening in this passage. The usher can justify his behavior by emphasizing how loving he is being to the rich man, while conveniently disregarding how he’s treating the poor man.

Where verses 9-11 fit in, then, is James saying, So you want to talk about law? You want to talk about keeping rules? Okay, then here you go. If it’s about rules at all, then understand that all the law is an expression of the Law-giver. If you’re going to focus on the rules, then realize they all come from the same Person and hence, to break one, you might as well have broken them all. In breaking one, you offend the Law-giver and hence have become a transgressor and guilty of all. “For whosoever shall keep the whole law and offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (v10). This business of picking and choosing may seem like a convenient ruse to justify ourselves, but it simply doesn’t work. Approaching a relationship with God like a rule-book is a hopeless endeavor.

This is where I think verses 12&13 come in: “Thus speak and thus act as ones going to be judged through [the] law of freedom, for the judgment without mercy [will be given] to those not practicing mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”

It seems obvious to me that these two verses are wrapping up the whole passage. As I said above, I’m not sure I totally understand what is going on here, but I’ll record what I think. He could have said, “Judge others by the law that gives freedom,” but he didn’t. He said, “Thus speak and thus act as ones going to be judged by the law of freedom.” Interesting that in a context about how we judge others, he calls us to evaluate how we judge ourselves! Rather than speaking and acting like ones going to be judged by the “do this, don’t do that” kind of rules, we must live our own lives as ones under grace. I myself am not going to be judged by “do this and live” legalism.

Instead, I myself will be judged under a law of freedom, which I am thinking is just another way to say I myself will be judged under grace. If I’m correct, then essentially what James is saying in verses 12&13 is that people who haven’t shown grace will themselves be judged without it. If I judge the world under law, then I myself will be judged under law. I think James is speaking from a purely practical perspective with the belief that people who are under grace, people who experience grace, who truly know the God of grace, will themselves live under it, judge themselves by it, and then that same grace becomes the window through which they see their world. They will be merciful to others because they themselves live under mercy. “They that have been forgiven much also love much.” When a person’s life is not marked by mercy and grace to others, the apparent conclusion is that they themselves do not know grace – regardless of their professions or religious involvements.

This understanding would even explain James’ concluding axiom, “Mercy triumphs over judgment!” I’m suggesting we could just the same say, “Grace triumphs over Law!” “Mercy” I would suggest is chosen by James because it is a practical expression of grace. As he said back in 1:27, “Religion that God our Father accepts is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress …” As we noted back then, real religion will express itself in observable efforts to do good to others, particularly those who desperately need it. A heart that lives itself under the constant love and mercy of the God of grace cannot help but put away its own cruel legalistic judgmentalism toward others and offer mercy instead.

We see a classic example of this in Matthew 12 where the hungry disciples snatched up a few heads of grain to eat on the Sabbath, only immediately to be condemned by the Pharisees. Jesus responded, “If you had known what these words mean, ‘I will have mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent” (v7). The graceless Pharisees could not see the world through grace. They (conveniently) judged themselves by law and therefore judged everyone else by law. Theirs was a completely impersonal relationship with God, in reality no relationship at all. To them God was nothing but a list of rules. That being said, they could read Hosea 6:6 (which Jesus quotes), even memorize it, and yet never understand that the God who gave the Sabbath gave it from a heart of love and grace. He intended it to be understood under love and grace. He never intended that its cold legalistic observance would trump merciful treatment of other people. “I will have mercy, not sacrifice,” He said. If only they had understood this, Jesus said, they would not be condemning the guiltless. Think about it! Jesus says they (the disciples) are guiltless! The Pharisees would retort, “Guiltless?? Hardly! They’re breaking the Law!” But in fact what they were breaking was a cold dead expression of what God really intended. If only the Pharisees knew the God of the Law, they would see it all through the eyes of grace.

So what does all this teach us? We said earlier that the problem of favoritism is something much deeper than simply how the usher treats two people. We said the problem is that we are expressing our values and favoritism reveals hearts that are judging the world not through God’s eyes but through our own lusts for pleasure, possessions, and applause. I believe James concludes by revealing the problem goes even deeper than that. The problem goes as deep as how we judge ourselves! The mirror into which we peer actually becomes the window through which we see other people! The more we embrace grace and enjoy God’s love, the more we’ll see others through the eyes of grace. Mercy triumphs over judgment!

So, the unjust usher’s shameful favoritism, as bad as that is, isn’t really the problem. Looking below the surface, we discovered that he had become a “judge with evil thoughts” – his values were twisted. But it goes deeper than that. Apparently, he doesn’t spend enough time peering into the mirror of grace, sitting like Mary at Jesus’ feet, seeing himself through Jesus’ eyes. Instead the mirror into which his heart peers (which is naturally legalistic and judgmental) has become the window through which he sees these two men, one rich and one poor. He “judges” them—finding value in one and not the other. He cannot see them both through the eyes of grace because he isn’t seeing himself through those eyes.

This all just leaves me marveling at the wonder of grace. It truly is amazing. It is a very good, good thing to spend the time in the Word and in prayer, seeing ourselves under grace, seeing ourselves as under a law that sets us free. That very mirror becomes the window through which we see everyone else. 

More about Jesus would I learn!