When All of Creation Bows Down
Through three chapters of the book of Revelation, things are tame enough (although the vision of the apocalyptic Christ in chapter 1 is a nice dousing of cold water). Most of our time has been spent with messages sent to seven churches, messages for the churches to endure suffering and rediscover the love that made them the Church in the first place. But in chapter 4, Revelation begins to earn its reputation for being colorful and bizarre. And I don’t…
How Majestic
“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” Thus Psalm 8 both begins and ends, with a sudden burst of praise. Our job here in Psalm 8 is simply to praise. Not to analyze or debate, but to marvel and adore. God’s majesty, God’s beauty, everything that makes God wonderful – our whole world is saturated in it. We couldn’t escape if we wanted to. And we don’t want to. God is to be enjoyed,…
The Love You Had at First
When we read the book of Revelation, we’re reading apocalypse (which is Greek for “revelation”). And when we read apocalypse, we’re reading a certain genre of storytelling, one that uses colorful, bizarre, even frightening imagery to tell an otherwise familiar kind of story. But apocalyptic storytelling is also employed where suffering is taking place. The Old Testament book of Daniel uses apocalyptic language to describe God’s ongoing activity during Israel’s ongoing life under Babylonian and Persian domination. When Jesus in…
Flesh and Blood
In the letters we call 1 and 2 John, the apostle is combatting what he feels is a destructive heresy that has found its way into the Church. He calls it the “spirit of the antichrist,” (1 John 2:18-19, 4:2-3, 2 John 7) that is, any person who “does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.” This will rot the Church from the inside out, John is certain of it. It deserves our most serious attention and…
A Colorful Gospel
When we encounter everything that is colorful and bizarre in the book of Revelation (which would more appropriately be called a letter), it is the approach of some to “decode” its strange symbols, maybe even decode and interpret them as current or near future events we might see in the news. But when we read Revelation 1 and meet a Jesus whose eyes are on fire, whose feet are metal, whose voice roars like crashing waves, from whose mouth protrudes…
To Be Alive
Life in God is not a matter of being knowledgeable enough or obedient enough. It’s a matter of being born of God, completely remade by God. The whole self, the entire existence brought into reality by our creator and made perfectly in his image. If you ask John, that’s what it means to be alive. “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.” (1 John 5:10)…
Perfected
“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” – 1 John 4:16 All things begin in love, flow from love, are perfected in love, and return to love. Any tendency we might have had to conceive of love as an object or tool (even a good one) is thrown right out the window. It might not occur to us to conceive of love as that which surrounds us at all times,…
Putting on Flesh
What do you imagine when you hear the word “antichrist?” A monster? A boogeyman? Actually, the term antichrist only appears in the letters of 1 and 2 John (nothing in Revelation as we might have expected), and it has nothing to do with monsters. John gives us a simple enough definition: “Those who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh – any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.” (2 John 7) He also says…
We Know Love by This
We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for each other. – 1 John 3:16 It’s good, essential even, to place things in the proper order. We know what love is because we’ve seen Jesus do it. To know what love is, we don’t look first to ourselves, or even to each other, but first to Jesus. If we can begin to know Jesus, knowing ourselves will…
And That Is What We Are
Nature versus nurture. To what extent are we simply what our innate nature decides we are? And to what extent are we the product of our influences, experiences, and circumstances? It seems like a never ending back and forth. But the third chapter of 1 John is weighing in. “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1) Nature wins out, says John. Children…
Already
There’s a moment in 1 John 2 where the writer erupts into song. “I write to you, children! I write to you, fathers! I write to you, young ones! Because your sins are forgiven! Because you know the Father! Because you are strong! Because the word of God abides in you! Because you have overcome the evil one!” (1 John 2:12-14) John sings the song twice because that’s how we humans best remember things, by putting it in rhythm and…
Lean In
There’s an interesting back and forth in the Gospel of John. One minute we’re told that the words and miracles of Jesus cause those who see and hear to believe. The next minute, John is telling us that no matter what Jesus does, people just won’t believe. Or maybe they believe, but they feel that Jesus is just too controversial, too radioactive to admit how much they really do believe in him. As the storyteller wrestles with this in John…