Don't Escape Your Futility

Yeah, it's been a month. Sorry.

As kids, we were told at one point or another that we were special. This is not a wholly false statement, but it may depending on what exactly it is you mean. That sounds confusing, so let me explain some other stuff and then come back.

To have intrinsic value means that something has value just because it 'is.' For instance, dollar bills are not intrinsically worth a dollar; they are a nearly worthless piece of paper. However, a dollar bill is worth a dollar because we say it is, assuming that somewhere there is a piece of gold that backs up the value written on it. That's why bills are called bills, or legal tender, or bank notes. A piece of gold worth a dollar is worth a dollar. There is nothing the gold represents; it is the 'end' of the transaction.

So, when I say that it may be false to say that you and I are special, I mean to say that it depends on what you mean by special: are people valuable just because they 'are,' or because they are assigned value by something outside of themselves? I think, then, that the real question is this: what actually matters?

My contention is that money, food, comfort, education, nature, rocks, planets, and, yes, even people do not intrinsically matter. Not in some weird Fight Club sense where people should live in a fully socialist/anarchist society, but in the sense of actual existence. Have you ever thought about why we think we are valuable? I think that the answer here is that we vitally misunderstand who God is and who we are.

James 4 says this:

^"1 What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? ² You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.⁴ You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? ⁶ But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” ⁷ Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. ⁸ Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.⁹ Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.¹⁰ Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

¹¹ Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it. ¹² There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?

¹³ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” ¹⁴ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” ¹⁶ But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin."

Too often we trade a correct view of who God is for idols of many varieties, especially ourselves. What about us is pleasing to God? What can a mortal man do that would add to or benefit God or His actions? The short answer is that there is nothing intrinsically in us that we have to offer God. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, when James talks about how our lives are vapors, he is referring to Ecclesiastes  wherein Solomon declares that "all is futility, a striving after wind." (Ecc. 1)

Here are some true things about us and about God:

1. People have no worth if God does not give them worth. Clearly God, the only entity that intrinsically matters in all of reality, finds us valuable: He paid for us with his own life.

2. People have no righteousness if God does not give them His righteousness. I think fully going into this point would require six years of writing, but I'm assuming that it isn't a stretch to claim that God is fully righteous and we are not, thereby making Him separate (qodesh, or holy) from us.

3. God can only be pleased with perfect righteousness, and can therefore only please himself. See verse 5 above or Phil. 2:13.

4. It is good that a person remember their intrinsic value and assigned value before God, who is not some plush doll in the clouds, but in fact the most terrifying and most delightful entity that exists. 

Need a dose of humility? Take a second to actually meditate on the ridiculous idea of who we think we are in the scope of who God is.

The End of Camp

I'm tired and can barely follow rules of sentence structure, let alone a full-on train of thought. Forgive me if I wander.

Last Monday, my time at Look Up Lodge in the capacity of being a summer staffer ended. I have spent approximately 9 months of my life over 3 years ministering not only to my ~1200 total campers on the pink, lime and orange teams, but also to the 14-17000 campers that passed through all of camp and the 46 or so total co-workers I've worked with. It sounds heavy, and honestly it is. My time at Look Up has been without question one of the key pivotal seasons of my life and my experience there is largely what God used to put me on a path of not necessarily being in the Kingdom, but being a disciple of Jesus in spirit and in truth. Writing that paragraph made me want to cry.

I could try to write down in words what happened this summer with stories, relationships, memories, lessons learned, struggles... there's a lot of 'stuff' that was part of my experience. I could try to tell about specific things that God has done in and through me, not because I'm awesome but because He has chosen to use the broken and humbled to make His name famous. The issue with trying to describe all of camp is four-fold: 1) any description would be inadequate 2) telling stories requires so much 'insider' info that most stories would make sense superficially but not in a meaningful way 3) I have a terrible memory and 4) that which I do remember no one would ever want to take time to read.

I could never put what is in my head onto paper (or an internet server, in this case) what the fullness of camp has been like. God has been ridiculously faithful and I am continually made new. He started a work in me in a very large sense from before I can remember, and He definitely started a good work in me when the season of my life that was punctuated by Look Up began. As I was weeping like a little girl a few days ago, I came to grips with the fact that that good work has been made complete and He has new things for me. Memories fade, but some remain. Relationships change but do not have to die. The truth He revealed and put deep in me will last beyond me, and I will praise God for what He has done. He has given abundantly. And, perhaps most importantly, the God that worked in the context of summer camp is the same God yesterday, today, and forever. He is just as real in real life as He is at camp, and He has been abundantly faithful.

If you see me and want to know how camp went or what it has meant to me or what God has done at Look Up, feel free. I may or may not have an adequate answer or response. I feel completely overwhelmed by the entirety of the experience, honestly. I struggle to articulate anything worth hearing and I'm still completely wiped out in the physical, emotional, and spiritual sense. But He sustained me in my weakness at camp and He will sustain me in the next season of life.

If you prayed for or over me this summer or any summer, thank you. It was really cool when my community at school prayed over me and sent me out to be a worker. My family has been patient and supportive of me when it meant I wouldn't be home every summer like my older and brother and sister were. I am incredibly thankful for the experiences that happened, both difficult and fun.

So, this is not a goodbye to everything that happened, but just to the season that some of it happened in. So long, camp.

Mid-Summer Check In

So far, we have done 3 kids camps, 5 teen camps, and one middle school camp over the span of about 2 months. This summer’s staff and our experiences would be inordinately difficult to describe at best, but I’ll give it a shot for the sake of talking about God’s faithfulness. Although there was a bit of nervousness from me and from other returners about the nature of the staff and the program taught this summer, I think there is unilateral agreement that this is not only the best summer we have had ourselves, but also the best summer staff that we have worked with hands down. In reality, there are few if any discernible differences between the returning and new staffers save for a couple years of general life experience. When presented with difficulty, they have stepped into the chaos in front of them with great humility, strength, and gentleness. There have been times where we all have fallen short, cut corners, responded poorly, or sought out our exaltation or comfort above the call to serve, but, generally speaking, this summer has been characterized by being about God using 12 men and 12 women for His purposes at Look Up Lodge, mainly in the form of ministry to guests and to each other. I am thankful for the people that came before and paved the way for this summer to happen as it has, including former staffers and campers.

As I look back on what God has done this summer, it is astounding that so many broken people can be used by God to advance His kingdom more powerfully than I have seen in my 3 years doing camp. This is of course not a knock on the last two summers or any of the staffers from that summer; each of those summers were great experiences and they were staffed by solid followers of Jesus. The fundamental difference between the last two summers and this one is that things that have been set aside as low priority in previous times have been carried on to completion. Spending time with kids when there is time, encouragement to be better rather than comparing fun ways to slack off, and deep loyalty to integrity and paying the price required by our job is present in a way that it never was before, and much of that is attributed to the entire staff being characterized as unified, open, humble, and committed to seeking and living out truth, no matter how painful or costly.

The program for kids has been centered on understanding man’s purpose, which the scriptures teach as being an image-bearer of God. It has been cool to see kids understand that following Jesus isn’t based on some strange and distant moral code, but instead that man was created for a purpose  and that God still desires to be in that purpose-driven relationship with man. It is a much more useful (and accurate) category for understanding who God is and what He is like.

For teens, we have been again centered on being God’s image-bearers, but in more specific and tangible ways. The theme has been “Love, Sex, and Dating,” but it has been more about how men and women were created and what aspects of God’s nature they are called to reflect. For the sake of those who may read this and come to camp later this summer, I’ll remain silent on the rest of the details.

The curriculum this summer has been hands down my favorite to teach and to learn more and more about. Again, this is not to say that either of my first two summers were bad in any way, but the truth of the matter is that it is clear that God has been setting a lot of our campers up to hear some difficult truth during their week of camp and change their minds about a lot of their own ideas. There is very little more rewarding to me than when a group of teenage guys realize some things to be true that begin to steer their lives in completely different directions than they were headed; that is, it is incredibly cool to see kids that are on a path to be passive, porn-addicted, selfish, and immature boys at 35 years old change their mind about how they fundamentally understand themselves and their purpose and start on a path to being teenage men. My prayer and my desire for this summer is that many boys would come to camp and be changed not intrinsically by camp, but by God using this week at Look Up and leaving headed in the direction of biblical manhood.

If you have been praying for me or my co-workers this summer, please continue to do so. We have and will always need for Father to sustain us and partner with us if anything good will be done this summer. We are trusting God to be faithful to us and to use us in whatever way He desires so that we can make Him look good.

Brothers

By birth, I have one brother. Scott is the person I have always looked up to most and will probably be that person forever. And that's okay. I don't feel pressure to be Scott, nor do I feel pressure to be different. We just are. We can sit at a table at a restaurant downtown and drink PBR, we can go hunting together in Dudley Shoals, we can remember times when we nearly set our house on fire or nearly blew each other up, we can talk about our family and how we have grown and changed, and how Jesus has completely changed our lives.

Similarly, we can spend every summer apart while I am in college, not see each other more than once every couple weeks, and have completely separate lives; him with his wife, friends, and church and me with my roommates and friends and other church. My brother will be my brother literally forever, and thank God for that. Father has used him in more ways than he knows. Or I know, probably. That dude is one of the best men I know and I'm proud to say Scott Sims is my older brother.

Having said those things, let's look an interesting verse from the scriptures:


"Do not forsake your own friend or your father’s friend,
And do not go to your brother’s house in the day of your calamity;
Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother far away."

- Proverbs 27:10

The above verse, on the surface, seems to say that a neighbor is better than a brother, or that Solomon is saying "boo brothers." In all fairness, Solomon's brother's may not have been as good as mine. However, if we examine some other passages to get some context, it doesn't seem to be the best understanding of that verse. Let's look at the verse that immediately proceeds it:

"Oil and perfume make the heart glad,
So a man’s counsel is sweet to his friend."

I think it's safe to say that instead of "boo, brothers," the point is more along the lines of "yay, friends that are like brothers." I think it's fair to say that friends that are tight like brothers (aka "bros") are totally condoned by God. I will be so bold to assume that this interpretation of scripture is not super-controversial. Having said, that, I would like to say a few things about friends that are and have been like brothers.

In addition to my great fortune in biological family, I have had some fantastic men set before me as brothers. God has used these men to shape me, cut away dead branches from me, dig log after log after log out of my eyes, give me a hand up when sinking in a mud hole, pray over me and for me, and just be there. Brothers have been willing to tell me that they love me when I've screwed up a lot, tell me that they would hate to be one of my campers, encourage me in things I am wrestling with, and take up arms and go to war with me. Brother have been willing to run out to Krispy Kreme in snow, smoke cigars until the sun goes down, laugh with me when I almost die doing stupid things, and shoot guns with me just to throw lead.

Some have been around for a long time and they have been faithful. Some are about to enter and I don't know much about them yet. If have been one of these brothers, I want you to know I love you and I regularly thank Father for you being in my life. Michael, Sam, Tyler, Trey, Erik, Taylor, Caleb, Mitchell, Ward, Austin, Kenan, Sam, Matt, Cory, Cody, Andrew, Maliek, Ryan, Landon, Clinton, Will, Patrick, Bruce, Spencer, Adam, Jared, Brent, and many others I could name, you have been guys I would not be who I am now without.

Thanks be to God that He doesn't ask us to follow him alone, because He used community like living together at school, working at camp, or just being friends to help a man that would otherwise be stumbling alone in the dark. Whether or not you guys follow Jesus, I still thank Him for using you. Thanks, guys.

The Gospel and Spiritual Gifts

Something that I have wrestled with for many years is the notion of my own worth and how the good news that Jesus died and resurrected for the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation of sinners to Father speaks to a person's worth. Like many, I struggle with showing everyone that I think I am worth more than anyone else, yet in private I often wonder if I am worth anything at all. I often show that I think that I am smarter, stronger, and better equipped than anyone, but in the deepest part of my soul  know that I am just dust that has no more value than anything else in my broken state.

If Jesus does not redeem us, we are helpless. This fact is not theologically disputable. If Jesus does not come and satisfy what God requires, He won't be satisfied. We just aren't able to satisfy God or do anything that is wholly good since we chose to disobey Him. 

Similarly, I have wrestled with what it means to have and use Spiritual gifts. In this post, I am not concerning myself with trying to examine the scriptural arguments for Dispensationalism, continuity of gifts, or anything like that. For the purpose of this discussion, let's just examine gifts like teaching, prophecy (as in identification of and wisdom for things not presently observed), and discernment. These gifts aren't necessarily controversial.Those gifts are mentioned here, among other places.

(as a potential spoiler, this post isn't really even about gifts specifically)

When God saves a person, they are transformed. Adopted into His family. New Creations. Heirs of the Kingdom with Christ. However, if you are like me, you sometimes find yourself sitting at your kitchen counter in the middle of the night, trying to write words to glorify God but knowing that you are incredibly broken and without a doubt running away from your Father and your Lord. If I am relying on my own merit, my own actions, or my own ability to do anything to please God right now, I am hopeless. If I am trusting and depending on myself (really for anything), I am not only hopeless, but I also completely misunderstand the Gospel. The good news of Jesus is that although I could literally do NOTHING to be right with God, He loves me and puts His righteousness on me by way of His painful, agonizing, sacrificial death. Then, He gives me the hope (expectation) of that sacrifice being sufficient because He resurrected.

Similarly, when God saves a person, He gives members of His Kingdom gifts to advance, shape, and build His Kingdom with Him. If you, like me, find yourself doing things that are scriptural and right and good by your own power, there comes a time when you find yourself wondering why in the world God would use a foolish, arrogant, immature, forgetful, and disobedient citizen as a tool to bring the Kingdom. And then you wonder if you have done anything at all. It is in this situation where I (and you, if you have ever felt this way) must again remember the Gospel. Any Spiritual gift from God is generally not something given and walked away from. That is, if He is not working in and through you to use this gift, it really isn't being used at all. The point of God giving someone teaching as a gift is not that person just being a great teacher; it's God's choice to use a person to teach and working through the person to do it. If God gives you the gift of discernment, the idea is not that you become a detective that  solves Spiritual crimes, but that God works in and through you to build and edify His Church. The work is supernatural. That's why it's a gift from God and not just some random ability you have.

The point of it all: if God is not working miraculously through you, it isn't His work. If you can save yourself, it isn't His work. I doubt anyone would realistically be willing to count on their own merit to please God. Likewise, if you set out to teach but God isn't working through you, it is nothing more than a transfer of information. Giftedness is God working through someone who could not do it otherwise. If it was doable without God's intervention, would it be a gift at all?

What Next?

In Western society, there is an ideal that is exalted above all others. That ideal is probably best exemplified by imagining a mix between Bill Gates, Jay-Z, John Mayer, Barack Obama, and Steven Hawking with each of their 'best' traits being shown. That is, imagine that you are the most wealthy, most popular, most powerful, most attractive, most intelligent, most liked, most youthful, and most capable person that exists. Whether or not you or anyone say these things out loud, this is what you want. It is what your flesh screams for. No matter how humble, mature, or secure you are, your broken flesh longs for this.

To be clear, I am not talking about the healing and transformation that is a result of Jesus' work in your life. I am talking about you, the broken person that is helpless without Jesus. This isn't a personal indictment on anyone. In fact, it is not necessarily a bad thing that these things exist. The fact of the matter is that you have deep, insatiable desires and, without Jesus' intervention, your 'natural' inclination is to look to all of these attributes as their fulfillment.

For a moment, imagine that you attained the highest possible 'level' for each of the aforementioned attributes. You are the richest, sexiest, most powerful, most popular, smartest person on earth. The question then becomes this: what next? At what point does it matter? You are the pinnacle of all things human, but in the end what does it mean? Are you satisfied?

The funny thing about this question is that it's already been answered: think, if you will, about Solomon, son of David. 1 Kings 4-6 talks about Solomon's power and wisdom, which is also spoken about elsewhere. The dude had more money than anyone in the world, had more wisdom than the greatest civilization to that point (Egypt), and had power to command kingdoms that weren't even his own. How well liked was he? He was revered as the wisest person of his own time and of all time by many cultures. Was he ever sexually denied? Doubtful; 1 Kings 11 tells us that he had the choice of 700 wives of royal birth and 300 women specifically employed to have sex with him, plus Pharaoh's daughter!

How did Solomon respond to all of this unprecedented (and thus far unreplicated) success? He was depressed to the point of calling everything worthless. All of Ecclesiastes talks about how wisdom, power, sexual conquest, accomplishment, and whatever else you may seek is in the end worthless. In fact, the only thing Solomon comes up with that's worth living for is the toil that is given to him by God (Ecclesiastes 5:18). What? He doesn't commend having more power than any man has ever had? He doesn't commend having so much money that not only does he never have to worry about having enough of anything, but all of Israel does not? He doesn't commend having sex all freaking day? Isn't that the American dream? Be financially secure, be well thought of, have sex all the time, and have political weight: sounds like it to me.

The reason all of this stuff ends up jacked up is this: there is no way a human being could ever fulfill themselves. We simply aren't able to. One of the most beautiful things I've ever read is C.S. Lewis' "The Weight of Glory," an essay in which Lewis discusses the reality of human nature and the innate desire inside of each one of us for a longing that cannot even be fully described. It is called a nostalgia for something that you have never experienced. I remember having a fight with my mom one time in high school, a time in which I had come to terms with the fact that I definitely was not a disciple of Jesus. I don't remember much of the fight other than me crying because I was very heartbroken about a lot of things going on in my life and telling mom how frustrated I was that there was nothing truly fulfilling. The word I used was 'perfect.' I will forever remember this vividly. I know my mom had a lot of wise words to offer, but I was foolish and ignored basically everything she said (basically that God was the perfect fulfillment of what I longed for, which is what I'm about to tell you) because I was so darn immature.

It is at this point that I ask you, reader, to carefully study and examine the scriptures to make sure they say what I am about to claim. That claim is this: the point of God putting on flesh was not only to atone for our unrighteousness, but also to teach us the best possible way to live. Why else did He live for 30+ years? Why else would he spend 3 years walking around with a bunch of teenagers (no, the disciples were not old men; only one [Peter] was old enough to pay Temple tax [paid at 18 years old], which we know from Matthew 17: 24-27)?

The epitomizing passage for this idea is John 10:1-21, which talks about the idea of life and life to the full. How is that going for you with getting educated, getting power, gaining wealth, freely expressing yourself sexually, and being popular? Do you have life? Are you getting life from those things? I'm going to be so bold as to assume that you do not feel overwhelmingly free to live with abundant joy, if those are high-priority pursuits for you. Why is this the case? Because we were designed with a longing in us that cannot be satisfied by anything of this world. C.S. Lewis, in his essay, writes this:

 "Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

It is in light of this idea that I ask myself this every day and you right now: what are you getting life from, and does it actually give life. As a scientist and a mathematician, I have done extensive research on things that give life. So far, I have tested a few hypotheses concerning life-giving things. Here is an abbreviated list of things I know to not give life in and of themselves: friends, school, money, food, sports, rivalry, athletic ability, good looks, popularity, beer, travel, science, intellect, girlfriends, people, sexual expression, porn, music, escapism, X-box, being a summer staffer at Look Up Lodge, working with high school students, and Cookout trays. I've tried to find some sort of life in all of them at one time or another.

There is one thing that will give you the life you crave, the fulfillment and joy and peace and completion that you ache for like you have never ached for anything else: picking up your cross, giving up on pursuing life from material things, abandoning comfort, and following the simple, difficult, and beautiful way of Jesus of Nazareth. Many will trust Jesus salvation and what happens after they are no longer living on this earth. For them and for you, the question is this: is Jesus worth trusting while you're on it?

A Case for Emotional Experiences Being Important

If I am honest with you, I am very skittish about the idea of an 'emotional high.' What I mean by that is an experience in which a person presumably has an encounter with God and as a result has a sudden and dramatic shift in direction or thought. For example, many kids will come to Look Up Lodge this summer, hear some very powerful teaching, experience some very powerful encounters with truth, and maybe leave camp 'on fire' about their relationship with Jesus and in awe of His glory. For better or worse, this happens.

The reason I am skittish about it is that I experienced many of these 'emotional highs' while I was growing up, but they were actually quite vacuous in the grand scheme of things. They are often fake, have little meaning, or result in being steered away from truth. These situations happen in real life all the time, and it is the story of probably more than half of the people I talk to that have walked away from the faith.

The problem with this is that they didn't have the faith they thought they had. I don't mean than in the 5-point Calvinist sense, but in this statement: unsustained faith is always found on something unsustainable. The reason I was so bummed by the feeling I got three weeks after camp as a high school student was not because I had seen full truth and just lost it, but because I had been given a feast of truth and expected it to sustain me until my next 'injection,' which I presumed to be the next year at camp. Following Jesus is a path of continually being grounded in the deepest reality that exists, which is the truth that by His death and resurrection we can be reconciled to our  Father. Following Jesus rarely if ever is manifested as a long jump, but it is quite Biblical to talk about faith as running  race with endurance. Evidence is in Hebrews 12, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Galatians 5, and many other places.

Today, I struggle with doubting the legitimacy of many of these 'long jump' or 'emotional high' experiences. I have seen many people stumble and I have personally experienced the pain of the falseness that can happen. The problem with this is that like running a race with endurance, an extremely powerful emotional experience is completely legitimate. In order to exalt truth above my comfort, I will now attempt to make a case for the legitimacy and Biblical backing of God using powerful emotional experiences to transform lives in a real, meaningful, and impactful way.

In Exodus 3, God encounters Moses in the form of a burning bush that was not consumed. It's little strange and a crazy story all around, but there is no doubt that Moses is emotionally affected. He is afflicted with compassion for His kinsmen back in Egypt, fearful about God's call for him, and, above all, completely wigged out that God appeared to him. Later, in Exodus 33, Moses and God have a conversation in which God basically tells Moses that looking right at Him would result in death. Similarly, in Isaiah 6, Isaiah sees God in a vision and is absolutely wrecked. He laments his very existence because he, a man 'of unclean lips,' saw the immortal, omnipotent, perfect, and just God of everything that exists. As a last example in this brief context, examine the case of Saul of Tarsus, who encountered Jesus, was struck blind, and didn't eat for several days (see Acts 9).

There is no denying that these experiences were emotional, if not the sort of 'emotional high' that was mentioned earlier. What can we learn from them? First, God definitely uses highly emotional experiences for His purposes. Secondly, these experiences were not just temporary; Moses, Isaiah and Paul spent literally the rest of their lives living and proclaiming God's truth. Thirdly, these experiences were not just calls for feeling, but a call to action. I may be wrong, but I cannot think of a single place in scripture where someone has an emotional experience, walks away when reality sets in, and it's a good thing. In fact, John 6 seems to speak strongly against that (miracles given: easy; hard teaching given: see ya).

In conclusion, let God move emotionally in you if He wills to do so. In fact, we should often be in awe of a pursuing love we could never earn, warrant, or repay. That's fine. But be careful. Cling to truth, love the Word, and respond to Him by not just by feeling love, but by acting love. Feelings fade, but the Truth does not.

Paul and the concept of ‘sin’ as discussed in Romans 1-8

This is basically self explanatory. Well, the title's straightforward anyway. Hope it's beneficial for you!

Much like many of the ideas that Paul discussed in his letters, it seems that sin is not necessarily a straight-forward matter, but an idea that has many facets. While certainly a word used to describe transgressions and wrongdoings against God, it is also a word that describes a condition that the entirety of man finds themselves in. Some of the language that is used to convey these ideas is phrases that talk about being ‘in’ or ‘of’ the flesh and the spirit. What this language suggests is that there are two distinct, yet linked ideas that Paul is talking about: a temporal, surface level, and action based set of moral codes and a state of existence from which the former flows. In short, what Paul discusses is sin being understood two ways: being justified and adopted by the Father and the imperfection that is a result of being part of a fallen creation.

The overarching theme of Paul’s discourse on being ‘justified’ or ‘righteous’ is that all the world is guilty and that no one is righteous before God by their actions. Paul pretty well sums up what he builds toward in the first few remarks in 3:23, telling the readers that not a single human has ever been without sin because they are part of the fallen creation that groans for restoration (chapter 8). While not worded in such a way that is particularly clear (see later note on 2:9, 10), Paul does firmly establish that no one can be righteous or justified before God of their own accord. It is important to remember Paul’s Jewish background in order to properly process the message of Romans. Judaism prescribes observance of Torah and ritual and atonement sacrifice as necessary to be on good terms with God, so Paul’s language concerning grace abounding all the more is a paradigm shift at best. As we have before discussed, the key issue being expounded upon is a dichotomy between a condition of existence and the repercussions that flow from being obedient or disobedient.

First, we will address the idea of sin being a condition. It is interesting that Paul calls himself the ‘chief of sinners’ (that is, if we take the letters to Timothy to be written by Paul) but does not mention specifically how or in what way he justifies that claim. In both letters to Corinthians, Galatians and in Acts, we learn that Paul has pursued righteousness through obeying the commands of the Law and has surpassed many in this way, but we also see him discounting his own righteousness as being useless in comparison with that of Christ. This idea, along with the mindset of sin being a condition of one’s existence and a multitude of other issues, is brought about by the incarnation of God as man in Jesus Christ. Theoretically speaking, Jews pursued righteousness through adherence to a system, which included Temple sacrifices, observances of festivals, and striving for perfectly obeying the Law. We already know from Galatians 2 and 3 what Paul has to say about the Law, which is that it was and is a tutor to lead us to Christ. This idea comes to fruition in Paul using language that rules the individual out of the equation and simply categorizes all humans into one category: not worthy of the glory (i.e. the presence, mercy, gifts, love, etc.) of God. I think it is important to note that Paul does not say a specific person is a sinner if they do or do not do something, but instead chooses to group prophets, tax-collectors, kings, prostitutes, and even the likes of Moses and Abraham into the one category of imperfection. With this, we see that Paul is not suggesting that people start doing good things in order to earn God’s gifts, but says that God is glorified in taking us from where we are (in sin) to being justified before Him as righteous (i.e. ‘saved’). Paul, wanting to be very careful about the order in which the message is received (so as not to bring about another Corinth episode), tells his readers that 1) God is utterly perfect and has always been so 2) all people have fallen short of his perfection 3) there is nothing to be done on our part to right or correct that and 4) He is pleased to correct it in fulfillment of the Law: Jesus’ death and resurrection. His thoughts on these ideas and the work of Jesus almost certainly reflect Paul’s view on what the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel concerning the Son of Man and the future restoration mean to Him: God, as an incarnate man, fulfilled his promises to restore His people through His own work.

Now, if Paul only means that there is a condition of sin and talking about actions of sin is of no importance, be have missed no less than half of that he has written to the churches that he planted. Since Paul had never been to Rome before, there was little that he actually knew about them and almost no rebuke or correction that he could offer. Instead, he follows up all of the talk about sin being a condition and grace being a gift with a reminder that grace is not there to be defiled and spit in the face of, but like Galatians 5, it would also seem that he suggests that obedience to God is an out-flowing of understanding the work of Jesus and loving Him in response, just as the fruit of the Spirit comes from having the Spirit and not the other way around. How then does Paul make sense of the dichotomy between righteousness before the judgment of God and pursuing righteousness (which he certainly urges the people to do)? The answer is probably found in Paul’s understanding of the Kingdom of God, which is basically that the Kingdom of God is at hand and is still yet to come. If we follow this out to its logical end, it only makes sense that the only way we can please God is to depend on the work of Jesus (3:23) and the only way we can please God is to live in Him (as opposed to the flesh) right now (8:8).

How these ideas come together is probably best explained by Paul’s language about flesh. We can see that Paul has categorized every non-Jesus of Nazareth human being as in the condition of sin, but we also see that Jesus’ work is the prescribed ‘fix’ for that. The bottom line for Paul is that we are all born of flesh, but we are emancipated from that status by Christ. It is possible to not be of the flesh, but to still live in the flesh. It would seem that Paul’s use of the word ‘flesh’ makes it the very antithesis to his language for being ‘in Christ’ and that the language is very similar. If we take this to be true, the most complete way to talk about one’s nature is summarized in three statements.  All are born living in the flesh and apart from Christ (i.e. imperfect, away from God). The work of Christ emancipates from the flesh and allows God to adopt us as children. Those who are in Christ are still able to live as if apart from Christ and in the flesh, which is what he warns against in chapters 7 and 8.

In thoroughly inspecting Paul’s language, it would seem right that he talks about the separate, yet not divorced ideas of temporal sin and sin as a nature. Therefore, in light of understanding the perspective Paul’s takes on the Kingdom of God (and by extension, reality) is like, we see that his message is two-fold: 1) there is nothing that can be done to fix our relationship with God 2) we should strive not to keep messing it up. In saying this, Paul suggests that our ability to do what displeases God of our own accord does not point toward being able to so please Him, showing again his shift from the standard paradigm of Judaism.

The Diatessaron’s Birth Narrative

This post is about a 2nd century Gospel Harmonization written by a dude name Tatian, especially the birth narrative of Jesus. It's important because it validates the foul-fold Gospel's acceptance quite early and serves almost as a sort of proof text for literary criticism. If you're interested in texts from antiquity, this post is for you. If not, you may hate it.

Oh and you can find more information on the Diatessaron here.

            There are many things to be said about the construction of the Diatessaron in a general sense, especially in the proportion of and particular sections used from the four canonical gospels. When speaking about the Diatessaron’s birth narrative, the most obvious thing to notice is that Mark is wholly absent, excepting perhaps the line 78, which states “Thou shalt go forth before the face of the Lord to prepare his way, to give the knowledge of salvation unto his people, for the forgiveness of their sins…” This line almost certainly is in accord with Mark 1:4 (NASB): “John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Tatian rightly does not include any other material from Mark, as Mark only mentions the birth narrative in passing if at all, so it will be excluded from any following discussion. That having been said, the primary areas of interest in examining the Diatessaron are the attempt Tatian makes to make the account of the birth narrative and Jesus’ ministry at large seem as if it is all one flowing story, the proportionate amount of material used by each of the birth narratives from the Gospel account, and the particular items that are included and excluded from Tatian’s narrative.

            A cursory reading of the text of the Diatessaron reveals Tatian’s motive being to make a story that includes what he considers to be important. That is, the ‘narrative’ structure of the Diatessaron is much more concerned with inclusion of material than with fitting the items together in a straight line of chronology. As an example, the Diatessaron speaks at length about Zacharias five lines in and keeps bringing Elizabeth and Zacharias throughout the entire first section. Additionally, Tatian begins his narrative with an excerpt from John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God is the Word. This was in the beginning with God. Everything was by his hand, and without him not even one existing thing was made. In him was life, and the life is the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not,” a passage that seems outside of time, and then begins to talk with great specificity about the time at which John the Baptist came into the world. In fact, throughout sections one and two, Tatian seems to have only had regard for putting common items in common passages (as it would seem), and then piecing them together in a loose chronology. Perhaps the most important observation concerning the structure of the Diatessaron’s birth narrative is that Tatian neither goes to great lengths to eliminate or shorten the text nor attempts to blend verses together, but instead pieces the story together in chunks as they appear in the texts of Scripture. One caveat to this observation is that the Diatessaron is capped by John’s (the apostle) account of the birth narrative, but has the account of John the Baptist mixed in throughout; the topical seems to be outweighed by the chronological in terms of Tatian’s categories of importance.

            In terms of sheer proportionate amount of material, text from Luke represents approximately two thirds of the birth narrative, followed by approximately one sixth comprised from Matthew, one twelfth from John and one twelfth in ‘common’ textual traditions. This, more or less, is proportionate to the amount of material written by the gospel writers in their own accounts, so it makes sense that Luke is the most-used source of text. One could make the case that Matthew is under-cited; the John-Matthew-Luke proportion of texts is (comparatively) closer to 10-35-55 in the canon as opposed to the 8-16-66 proportion found in the Diatessaron. It is important to be able to compare the amount of texts used in the canon of Scripture and the Diatessaron to be able to assess Tatian’s purpose in including the particular passages he did; it seems to be useful to examine the Diatessaron through the lens of Tatian primarily relying on Luke and Matthew. This view is especially useful in light of John being used to begin and end the birth narrative.

            On a cursory reading, it seems as if the Diatessaron is more interested in the story of Zacharias, Elizabeth, and John the Baptist than the canon of scripture is. In fact, the vast majority of the material in section one is concerned with those three characters rather than with Mary, Joseph, or even the fulfillment of prophecy that is found in Matthew and Luke. However, Luke is probably more present than Matthew in the text of the Diatessaron, so it seems that Tatian probably just used all of Luke’s account (including the Magnificat) and parts of Matthew’s account (more on this in a moment). It is unclear why Tatian would include all of Luke in his harmonization when it does not paint a representative picture of the complexity of Jesus’ arrival in the way that the canon does, but it could be hypothesized that Tatian was influenced by Hellenism (maybe), the detachment of the Church from Judaism (probably), and his role as a Christian apologist (as he was a student of known apologist Justin Martyr [most likely, in my opinion]). Luke is probably the most accessible account of the Gospel, so it being used as the primary proof text is not an unreasonable venture. On this note, it is important to note at least one glaring omission from the canonical Gospel accounts: the genealogy of Jesus. This is perhaps related to the seeming contradiction of the lineages; Tatian (the apologist) probably did not want to place a stumbling block in a harmonization. There is no mention of Jesus’ connection to the characters of the Old Testament, excepting perhaps the connection of some prophecy and the story of Zacharias. Here, it does not seem that Tatian intended to divorce Christianity from Judaism (the Magnificat mentions Abraham, and there are various other innuendos), but he also did not go to great lengths to make sure the reader understood the blatant continuity between the Old and New Testaments that the canon of Scripture implies.

            On the whole, it seems as though Tatian was primarily interested in presenting the birth narrative of Jesus as very believable (in including many historical facts and references), but in doing so removed some key ideas that are present in the canon. Although there were some omissions, it seems as if the Diatessaron is exactly what it was written to be: a simplification and sort of harmonization of the Gospel accounts in the canon, even if that realistically only means the harmonization of Matthew and Luke and ‘throwing a bone’ to John. In sum, it is understandable that the early fathers did not accept the Diatessaron as authoritative over anything in the canon in that it was not quite the best understanding of the original texts; however, the birth narrative is evidence of Tatian attempting to stay true to the meaning of the text, yet offer a clearer explanation of its message.

Ending notes: Tatian was a student of Justin Martyr and was later condemned as a heretic for condemning marriage and his over-the-topic asceticism. That's pretty much all.

The Anatomy of a Straw Man

Recently, there have been two major debates that I have been acutely aware of. Locally (to me), there was a referendum on liquor sales and an ABC store being opened in Alexander county (near Taylorsville in western NC). The other debate, which involves many more people, is the debate over the idea of 'civil unions' or some iteration of marriage-like legally binding relationship for homosexuals being tossed around in front of various judicial bodies.

I'm not going to tell you what I think about either one of these issues. That isn't the point, and it's really not useful to engage someone in debate on any matter by way of social media. If you take nothing else from my words on this blog post, take this: it is utterly useless and hideously time consuming to attempt to have any rational conversation about a topic of more than mild importance using the internet as a communication medium. It leads to passive aggression, lack of clarity, and general frustration.

In a previous post, I spoke about judging and how we are not called to wholly withhold judgement, but instead to judge rightly. I should also note that basically all of the exposition of scripture is based on a teaching by a guy named Stuart who is a teacher for a Church body named Radius in Greenville, SC. You can find more of his teachings (please do, they're awesome) here.

In logic, there is a variety of argument called the 'straw man,' which is a fallacy based on misrepresenting the opponent's position. Basically, this means trying to defeat someone's argument by representing it as something that on the surface looks similar and subsequently showing the second argument to be false. The straw man is equivalent to me rejecting my friend's argument about pizza when I in fact am using a calzone as my example.

If you're still confused (don't feel bad, I've been known to be unclear), you can find Wikipedia's explanation here. This variety of argument is not only obviously invalid, but it's also quite popular and successfully used. By everyone, including me.

 Day after day there have been arguments made by both sides about why it is wrong or right to prohibit homosexuals from having a legally recognized sexual union. Similarly, I have driven past signs that slander opposing positions, the pinnacle of which being a car that was pulled out of a junk yard covered in splotches of red paint (as if to signify blood) sitting in the front yard of a church building.

Honestly, almost everything I've heard said about these issues is pretty shameful, including at times many of the things that have escaped my own lips. It is not shameful because Americans and Alexander county residents and Christians and non-theists are wanting to be heard. The shame is in our unwillingness to for a second consider that we might be talking a lot about something with which we are only vaguely familiar and have little or no evidence for, excepting the little we propagate within our own ranks.

As someone who has been guilty of these tactics, let me be the first to confess and the first to call us all to change our minds about how we discuss things that we don't like. The fact of the matter is that homosexuality is unilaterally, universally, and without any exception condemned as a sinful act in the scriptures. Bar none. However, we should not forget that mentioned equally often are lying, unrighteous anger, and eating too much at Golden Corral on Sunday after church (gluttony). On the other hand, America is not a Christian nation. Whoever told you that must have read a different version of the Constitution than the one that is in the Library of Congress.  Similarly, the Bible warns about the dangers of drunkenness and instructs us not to be mastered by sin.  Conversely, Jesus, who we believe to be God in the flesh, drank wine. Not grape juice, but wine. Those facts aren't negotiable.

I'm not sure what to do with these things. I do not know all of how living in the world but not of the world works, and I am very young and immature. What I do know is that you can't really live in a false world you create for yourself, and what seems best is not always easy.

When considering how you will interact with the people about things, let us ultimately look no further than scripture. And let us cling desperately to what it says and not what we want it to say. After all, it is not about specifically about marriage or alcohol or anything, but about brotherhood and edification of the Church when Paul writes these words:

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, ⁵ does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong, ⁶ does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; ⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part; ¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. ¹¹ When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. ¹² For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. ¹³ But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love."

- 1 Corinthians 13, NASB

When You Win, Does the Kingdom Win?

If you hate everything about late antiquity, just skip to the end after the bit about Saul. If not, please verify that the dates/events/people are correct.

Growing up, I had the idea that if there were "Christian" leaders everywhere, they would make "Christian" rules and, as a result, the Kingdom of God would advance. I probably didn't have a grasp on the concept on the Kingdom of God, but I for sure had a similar thought process:

People Like God => Those People Make Rules => God is happy and everyone is a Christian

Below this phrase in bold italics, I am about to say perhaps the one of the most anti-Biblical and completely idolatrous statements that I can come up with. This statement is also the general consensus of most people that claim Jesus.

God wants America to be a Christian nation with Christian laws and Christian morals.

It is absolutely mind-blowing to me that anyone could look at scripture (or history) and think this is true. The result of Christian leaders and Christian laws is a nation of people who are deeply in love with the God of the universe? Hardly.

First, let's examine the case of scripture. The first human king of God's people was Saul. The scriptures describe him as super tall and athletic, a great warrior and a morally great guy. What does God think about the Israelites wanting a king like the rest of the nations? He says that by wanting a king, they have rejected Him.

So, let me get this straight... Saul, the best warrior and man in the entire nation of Israel is made king and God is sad about that? What? Okay, so maybe it was just that one guy.

There were 3 kings of Israel. Saul went nuts, David was a lying-thieving-adulterous-murderer, and Solomon was, frankly, an arrogant man whore. Then, things went south (get it? a joke about the Israel-Judah split!) and the kingdom split in half. There were 19 kings of Israel (all of which were called evil in scripture) and 20 kings and one queen in Judah, of which 6 seemed to be pretty okay. (note: think what you mean when you call someone a 'Jezebel')

None of this seemed to work that great for Israel, since they were captured by the Babylonians and were basically slaves or subjects of one sort or the until... oh yeah, there was a diaspora, so never again was Israel the free nation Israel of the Bible. Even in the few centuries before Jesus, the Maccabees and various other priestly families tried to rule Israel and gain power in the kingdom of Alexander the Great, and then in the subsequent kingdoms of the Seleucids and the Ptolemies. The result? Revolt after revolt where Israel got stomped into the ground, culminating in the ultimate sacrilege: the desolation of the Temple by the Romans. To this day, the Temple Mount has two holy sites for Islam.

But let's not stop there! The year is 313 AD. Previously, Christians had no political power and were routinely persecuted, tortured, and killed. The result? Christianity explodes in central Asia, Asia Minor, and Northern Africa. That year, Constantine signed the Edict of Milan, and soon converted to Christianity. The result? The thousand year-old Roman Empire, the greatest the world has ever seen, collapses amid catastrophe, disorder, and invasion. Christianity at large stays alive, but is wrought with trouble and darkness until almost 1200 years later. (with the Reformation and Counter-Reformation)

What about Jesus of Nazareth, who we worship? Good thing Jesus took His rightful spot as King of Israel so we have justification for trying to build a Christian nation, right? Oh, yeah... He was a carpenter that, when tried by Pilate, did not make a power grab but instead acknowledged that He had been accused of calling Himself equal with God. In fact, Philippians 2 says this: "He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point to death, even death on a cross." We worship that guy? The guy that is literally God but instead lived as a nobody?

As much as it pains me to say it, I can find absolutely zero justification in scripture for the theology of establishing a nation that makes people do "Christian" things in order to advance the Kingdom of God. Do you think you would have the guts to espouse that theology to the Church in China? What about he Church in Africa? They would laugh in your face.

Church, it is messed up to think that you or anyone else have/has the ability to pull America up by its moral bootstraps. Do you have the ability to pull yourself up by your own? America's hope is not regulating morality. The world's hope is not making laws that abide by scripture. Jesus' most harsh words were for those that took pride in their ability to keep the law.

Don't hear me saying that post-modern relativism is right. Don't hear me saying I condone sin in any way. Accepting sin shows a fundamental misunderstanding of who God is and what His character is like. I'm taking no specific political stand. But do hear me on this: our world has one hope, and it isn't you. Our world has one hope, and it is not the decisions made by politicians. If you're counting on such vacuous things as 'progress' and 'diversity' and such idolatrous things as your own righteousness to be the ways God advances His Kingdom, I just don't know what to say to you because you are totally detached from reality.

I'm not saying I have answers. My Spiritual gift is not teaching; it's probably more of the discernment/prophecy idea. I'm not saying not to vote or run for office. Do that; being passive is silly. Paul often used His Roman citizenship and knowledge of Hellenistic culture to his advantage, such as here, here, and here. But remember that man's kingdom is weak and transient, and the Kingdom of God is transcendent and eternal.

Shalom, and may your celebration of Easter leave you in awe of the glory of Jesus the Anointed One.

A Letter From Me To You About Summer

In case you are wondering, do not already know, or are but a poor stranger that has happened upon my blog, I would like to tell you that I am working at Look Up Lodge again this summer.

I can’t really think of anything in my life (so far) that has in such a short time been used by Jesus to radically transform my life and my very existence like Look Up has. For two years now, I have been able to have community that some people may never experience, participate in various and sundry shenanigans, be used by God as a tool to move and shape lives, and be challenged in ways it’s hard to emulate outside of the summer camp environment. My summers have included extreme distress, true heartbreak, and overwhelming joy. I have seen God use Look Up to move powerfully in campers, leaders, youth groups, and, perhaps most apparently to me, summer staffers.

I have personally been fortunate to have two sweet sisters that are beautiful women in every respect, a brother that has for decades (wow we’re old!) been a man that I have no problem emulating as he emulates Jesus, and a mamma and dad that have supported me, trained me, and loved me in ways I cannot even begin to thank them for. I will forever love my family and until I am married one day (if I am), I will be primarily a member of that family. Bar none.

This year, we welcome 17 new staffers into our Look Up family. By that I do not mean the kind of family that you have grown up in. I am not saying that it is superior, but that it serves a different purpose. This summer, 17 new people will be introduced to a culture of extreme challenge, extreme hardship, extreme discipleship, extreme support, and extremely silly off-day decisions. No matter what you try to do to prepare, you won’t be prepared. No matter what you think will happen this summer, you will leave a different person than the one that arrived. It’ll be my third summer and I am not prepared. It’ll be my third summer and I’m going to leave different.

All this is to say, I need to ask you a favor, reader. The thing we need this summer is for Jesus to be our focus, our prize, and our only source of life. If you follow Jesus, please consider praying consistently and powerfully for this summer. Implore Father to guide me and the eleven other guys to be men after His own heart, and for the 12 gals to be women that would love and serve faithfully. Please beg Him to use us despite our weaknesses and keep and protect us. Pray that Father would rebuke the enemy’s attacks, and that, above all, He would lead us to lay down everything we are to sacrificially love kids this summer. That, in the end, is all we are there for.

Andrew

John in Contrast with the Synoptic Gospels

Get ready, this is a bit long. But not Wayne Grudem long.

            John’s account of the Gospel is unique from the synoptic Gospel accounts in that it combines the timelessness of Mark with the deep connection to Jewish tradition of Matthew and the profundity of Luke, resulting in a work that is in many ways enigmatic and in many ways accessible, all the while carrying an undertone of a connection much deeper than Jesus being nominally Jewish. That is, John’s account of the Gospel can be characterized as a departure from the synoptic Gospels in that it shows Jesus in the role of not just being the fulfillment of the foretold of Jewish messiah but also truly divine. These contrasts are best exemplified in three ways: the people included in the narrative, the variety of miracles that John records, and Jesus’ teachings and statements in comparison and contrast to the other accounts. The problem with individually pointing out any of these aspects is that they are all deeply interwoven. So, for the sake of meaningful discussion, we will examine John’s explanation of Jesus’ identity, the nature of teachings that differ from other accounts, and John’s record of Jesus’ chronological ministry in contrast with the other accounts.

            John’s Gospel account included many scenarios in which Jesus interacts with people from many different back grounds, including Jewish authorities, lower class Jewish people, and even outsiders like the Samaritans. The other three Gospel accounts also include Jesus talking with and speaking about these different parties, but John’s account includes many examples and a much greater proportion of content dedicated to recording these interactions as opposed to various parables and teachings. Additionally, John records the interaction of Jesus, John the Baptist, and their respective disciples at length. To be sure, part of the purpose of these conversations and speeches being written down is to espouse and to teach the reader, but, perhaps more importantly, they are meant to show the reader something about Jesus’ identity by way of epitomizing parts of His character. It is clear that John is operating on the basis of Jesus being one with Elohim, evidenced by the introduction’s language about Jesus being the creative Word or Logos and incarnate God:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. …  And the Word became flesh, and ^[k]dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of ^[l]the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

-John 1, NASB (excerpts)

Following this section of scripture is the account of John’s first ‘testimony,’ in which he denies himself being the Messiah, but tells the Jews that the Christ is coming. Throughout the entire book, John either records dialogue about Jesus being God or records actual conversations in which Jesus is clearly identifying Himself as one with God. Some examples of passages include Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman, giving the teaching at Capernaum about being the ‘bread of life,’ and when he tells the Jews that ‘before Abraham was, I am.’ Clearly, John is casting Jesus as completely separate from every other person. In contrast to the suffering servant of Mark or the healer of Luke, John’s point, including setting the scene of Jesus interacting with the ‘Jews’ (of which He was one) is to make the point that He is completely separate, above human authority by the authority of God, with Whom He was and is one (also see Jesus’ discourse with the blind man in John 5). Obviously, John is not denying that Jesus is a teacher and a healer, but instead showing that He is not just that, that He is truly holy in the truest sense of the word: completely set apart.

            Perhaps the easiest difference to recognize between John and the Synoptic Gospels is the nature of Jesus’ teachings. Even on the surface level, John’s account of Jesus’ teachings differs radically from the others in that John contains almost no moral teachings, but instead contains teachings on the Kingdom of God, the nature of God, and the relationship of men to God each other, in the individual and corporate sense. Additionally, John records many more teachings about Himself than are present in the other Gospels. That is, it seems that Jesus is not interested in instructing people how to treat one another (such as in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew or the parable of the prodigal son in Luke), but instead how to think about God, calling them to literally repent (change their minds) about their notions of God by directly challenging them and saying some things that are incredibly difficult to accept and to understand. The situational epitome of this idea is the passage in chapter 6 where the ‘crowd,’ wanting more bread after Jesus had just fed them, had pursued Jesus around the Sea of Galilee because they wanted more bread. Jesus responded to their request not by telling them yes or no, but that they had missed the point. In teaching that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood, He puts so many of them off that they don’t want anything to do with following Him any longer. Interestingly, John casts Jesus not in the role of correcting or rebuking behavior as a normative practice, but instead as the a teacher that is offering teachings that no one understands, presumably on the premise of no one being right in heart in such a way that they could comprehend what He was saying. As a note, it is because John is so lacking in moral teachings that passages such as 7:53-8:11 (the story of the women caught in adultery) only make sense in the light of Jesus not saying something about the woman’s sin, but about the nature of people.

            Lastly, and perhaps the least significant of the three I have pointed out, there seems to be a different variety of timescale in John’s Gospel account. Unlike Mark, who makes Jesus’ ministry seem outside of a real time and also unlike Matthew and Luke, who put Jesus in a very specific place in history, John seems to show Jesus’ ministry to not be about the time, but about setting it inside the Jewish world and its history. That is, John portrays Jesus living in real time around in a Jewish culture (in that He attends festivals and events that any good Jew would), but also as an eternal being stepping into time and living, but somehow being transcendent of it. This is of course a natural progression of thought when John first describes Jesus as the creator and then describes Him stepping into His own creation. In keeping with the rest of the theme of the Gospel, John is in this respect revealing another aspect of how Jesus is truly divine and truly God incarnate.