For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2.8-10)

These verses are justly loved by many, but they are also the topic of fierce debate, between those who adhere to extreme versions of “faith only” doctrines, and those who emphasize the requirement that we act on God's offer.  Typically, the argument goes back and forth as each side seeks to emphasize its preferred focus within the passage.  One group shouts, “saved through faith!”  The other shouts, “created for good works!”  Neither budges, and no progress is made toward reconciliation.  The situation is oddly similar to the current political climate—most people generally just want to be left alone, but for someone to pick up the phone if they need to call 9-1-1.  But the people who really care, who are deeply engaged in public affairs, become more polarized by the day, and more entrenched both in their opposite policy proposals, and in their conviction that the other side is made up of the most evil people ever to walk the earth.

That’s clearly ridiculous; is the solution, both in politics and the church, to form a compromise right in the middle?  No.  In the political sphere, to make up an absurd example, if one side of the argument were to advocate the seizure of all children nationwide at age 8 to work in the salt mines, and the other side disagreed, would the proper solution to be to wait until the children turn 13 before enslaving them?  No, clearly one side has it right, and the other has it wrong.  When good and evil compromise, the result is still evil.  In the same way, we should not be deceived by the allure of compromise in our doctrine.  Compromise isn’t the highest good.  Good is the highest good.  If the truth happens to lie somewhere between the ideas of the most extreme fringes, we shouldn’t be surprised; but that doesn’t mean we can throw a dart anywhere between them and declare the spot where it lands to be the new truth.  Many religious bodies, exhausted with arguing, simply vote their way through the crises, as if the will of the Lord can be determined by a 51% majority opinion among men.  God gets to make the rules, and our job is to listen and obey, not nitpick, interpret them out of existence, and substitute our own; and yet, not just today but throughout the long history of Christianity, if we look we will find many times when men put themselves in the place of God and professed to make the rules on his behalf.

But even if we shun that approach, refusing to play God is the easy part—we understand that these aren’t just matters of life and death, but matters of eternal life and death, and so we hold fast our convictions.  But those convictions don’t always line up, from person to person.  We end up with two or more groups of people who have become, through their apparently honest desire to please God and get to heaven, irreconcilable.

Funnily enough, that’s exactly what Paul was leading up to when he wrote the words about grace, faith, and works in Ephesians 2.  His next sentences aren’t just about the salvation of individuals, but about the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile:

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. (Ephesians 2.11-16)

These two groups of people—one vastly outnumbering the other—seemed irreconcilable.  God’s chosen people Israel had the oracles of God, the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the worship, the promises, the patriarchs, and to top it all off, the Christ is, at least in fleshly terms, a member of their nation (Ro 3.2, 9.4-5).  The Gentiles, on the other hand, were separated from all these things, and had no hope of salvation, even though many of them sought God.  Understandably, there was a great deal of hostility between the two, as a result.  The Jews passed judgment on the Gentiles, and the Gentiles resented it and persecuted the Jews in return.  This conflict was often violent.  As much as it ever truly ended, it was with the destruction of the Jews’ cities and appropriation of their land, after which the survivors were scattered to the winds.

But what has Christ done?  Purely out of his deep love for the world, he gave his life to break down the wall between these two groups, unifying them into one body.  That’s his goal for all of us, too.  He requires that we be faithful to him.  He requires that we devote ourselves to good works.  But we are saved by his grace.  God reached out to us even though we were utterly undeserving, and through his doing—not ours—opened the path to reconciliation.  Let’s keep that in mind, look first to him as our Lord and shepherd, and spread the news far and wide.

Jeremy Nettles

Jesus described John the Baptist as greater than all of “those born of women” (Lk 7.28).  Yet he spent the last several months of his life wasting away in a prison, cut off from his disciples, cut off from society, cut off from his purpose of preparing the way for the Lord.

This man had said many of the same things that later  irritated the rulers about Jesus—he called the Pharisees and Sadducees a “brood of vipers” and said they would be “cut down and thrown into the fire” (Mt 3.7 & 10).  He told those with plenty—not just the rich, but all of those who weren’t destitute—to “share with him who has none” (Lk 3.11).  He told the wealthy (and unscrupulous) tax collectors, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do” (v13), and told soldiers not to make use of their strength to oppress the weak (v14), which were some of the primary reasons people got into those professions in the first place!  He told the crowds of his followers that they needed to be winnowed and threshed, and that the chaff—including people present to hear the message—would be burned “with unquenchable fire” when the Messiah came (v17).  All of this they tolerated, and even accepted.  But when John told king Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have” Herodias, the wife of Herod’s brother Philip, that was too much (Mt 14.4).  Herod “seized John and bound him and put him in prison” (v3).

It’s not that there was no one else who would have liked to silence John—but isn’t it a slightly amusing situation?  Large groups of people were willing to put up with John convicting them of broad, generic, sinful habits.  Yet, one man, upon being alerted to the very obvious fact God had prohibited adultery (Ex 20.14 et al.), and even more specifically adultery with one’s sister-in-law (Le 18.16), was unwilling either to accept the reproof and repent of his blatant and grotesque sin, or even to simply ignore the man who brought it up!  No, John had dared to level accusations against someone powerful, and what’s worse, they were obviously true!  Perhaps Herod worried that shining a light on his misbehavior could turn the public, the priesthood, and the council against him, thus weakening his hold on what power he possessed in Judea.  But really, he just didn't like being measured against a standard he failed to reach, and was unwilling to repent of the sin and repair his relationship with God, who set the standard in the first place.  His solution?  Silence God’s prophet!

Herod was content with this arrangement—no more public embarrassment!—but his unlawfully wedded wife, Herodias, saw things differently.  She “had a grudge against [John] and wanted to put him to death” (Mk 6.19), although Herod “feared John” and “kept him safe” (v20).  But Herod gave in and had John executed when Herodias told her daughter to request it.  Why would he grant such a request?  Because he had “promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask” (Mt 14.7), and didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of his guests by going back on his word.  Alright then, why did he make such a vow to young Salome?  Because she “danced before the company and pleased Herod” (v6).  It is often supposed that the dance was lewd, which would add yet another dimension to this awful picture—Salome would have been roughly 13 years old at the time, and was Herod’s niece, not to mention his step-daughter—but the Bible doesn’t make this detail clear.

In any case, what we see here is a long list of sinful behaviors and attitudes, tied together with rash and foolish choices, leading to even greater sin.  Sure, at the end of the day everyone involved got what they wanted: the prophet who accused them of sin can no longer speak.  But what did they have to embrace and do, in order to get there?  Sin often begets further sin, undertaken either to cover up the first one, or to entrench ourselves in the denial of wrongdoing.  When we do this, it’s ultimately because we don’t like our faults and shortcomings being exposed and put on display.  For most people it doesn’t lead to a place where a young girl cheerfully carries a freshly disembodied head on a platter to her mother, who implicated the girl in the man’s unjust killing; that’s both an extreme example, and the consequence of finding oneself close to political power.  But how often do we use whatever means are reasonably within our grasp to hide from the light?

Jesus is that light—he called himself “the light of the world” (Jn 8.12) and told Nicodemus how the world responds to the light:

“the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3.19-21)

This is why Herod and Herodias wanted John silenced.  They didn’t like the light, because their works were evil.  We’ve all committed evil acts—not just in the abstract sense that we’re imperfect beings in an imperfect world, but we made deliberate decisions to do things that we knew were wrong.  Maybe you’re years removed from the works done in darkness.  Maybe you were wicked last month.  It’s more likely that you sinned yesterday, or even an hour ago.  Will you follow the example of Herod and burrow deeper into the mire in a fruitless attempt to remain hidden?  Or will you welcome the light, examine yourself—including all your flaws—and start doing what is true, instead?

Jeremy Nettles

We all know that Jesus did a lot of teaching during his time on earth.  Whether it was to crowds numbering in the thousands, groups small enough to fit in a house, a handful of disciples, or even private lessons with individuals, he was constantly spreading the good news of the kingdom of heaven.  But realistically, the short duration of his earthly ministry, just three years or so, means that any veteran preacher nowadays has probably racked up more words spoken, and more hours spent in teaching God’s word, than did Jesus himself.  Even considering that, the proportion of Jesus’ teachings that have been recorded and preserved for us in the Gospels is quite small.  Any full-time preacher would, in just a few weeks, quickly exceed the number of recorded words preached and taught by Jesus in all four Gospels.

What we have in these Gospels is a selection of his assorted teachings, and we may notice that one of his favorite methods of teaching was the parable—a short, generally fictitious story told in very simple terms about mundane parts of daily life for the working class.  Matthew’s Gospel spends nearly all of chapter 13 relating one parable after another.  After the first of these, the parable of the sower, the disciples have a question for Jesus: “Why do you speak to them in parables?” (Mt 13.10)  Jesus’ response is very interesting:

“To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says:

        ‘“You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.”

        ‘For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’

But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” (Matthew 13.11-17)

In the first place, Jesus tells us that not everyone is going to know God’s secrets.  Is this because he arbitrarily selected one person, to make him righteous and bring him into his presence for eternity, while selecting his neighbor to deliberately blind him and consign him to hell forever?  That’s kind of how verse 12 sounds: “to the one who has, more will be given…but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”  Is that just?  Fair?  Equitable?  Is God then unjust?

But the prophecy Jesus quotes fills in the gap—“this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed” (v15).  The obstinate audience has made its own decision.  In their hearts they have chosen not to listen.  God didn’t take away their eyes—they closed the door and refused to make use of the visual faculty God designed and graciously gave to them for the very purpose that they might see, and understand, and turn toward him and his healing.  Now, as they rejected his word and will, he rejects them, too.  He could keep trying to get the message through their heads, but he’s tried long enough, and his considerable patience is used up.  Why would he continue reaching out to them?  It’s not as if he hasn’t tried.  Above, Jesus was quoting from Isaiah 6; later in the same book, God says of Israel,

I spread out my hands all the day

                       to a rebellious people,

        who walk in a way that is not good,

                       following their own devices;

a people who provoke me

                       to my face continually… (Isaiah 65.2-3a)

He’s had enough.  He’s moving on.  He’s ready to seek someone who will listen and turn, and to speak to them in their own language.  If those who already had their chance can’t understand it, that’s not God’s fault; it’s their own.  They don’t see, or hear, or understand—not because God has actively prevented it, but because they do not want to do so.  Now that God has finally moved on to greener pastures, can they reasonably complain that God expects too much of them when he says things in a different language?

That is why Jesus spoke in parables—not so much because those who’d already rejected the gospel didn’t deserve to understand God’s word, but because he’d given them their chance, and they failed; so he moved on to the people who were listening, and spoke to them in terms they could understand.  The parables are simple.  Although they teach complex things—concepts and realities that can and do fill volumes—they do so by appealing to the everyday concerns of the common people:  food, farming, fishing, and other such things.

What about you?  Do your eyes truly see?  Do your ears truly hear?  God has blessed us very richly with his word, showing us the way to life.  So many people desired this instruction, when God was not yet ready to share it with the world.  Now that he has shared it, do you value it?  Do you understand it?  Do you obey it?  God wants to heal your broken spirit, wash you of your sins, and adopt you into his family for a lifetime of love, joy, fellowship, and service.  Do not close your eyes to the truth.

Jeremy Nettles

      “Oh that my words were written!

Oh that they were inscribed in a book!

Oh that with an iron pen and lead

they were engraved in the rock forever!

For I know that my Redeemer lives,

and at the last he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been thus destroyed,

yet in my flesh I shall see God…” (Job 19.23-26)

When Job spoke these words, he was in the middle of complaining—understandably—that his friends and family had forgotten him in his distress, and that “even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me” (v18).  However, he maintained that there was one who remembered him and would not allow him to be cast away and lost to the sands of time.  It’s a moving, uplifting claim, providing us a great example of how to to react during times when the whole world seems to hate us.  But there’s more to this passage than just that.

If all we had were these few verses, we’d still be able to mine quite a bit more out of it, but let’s not ignore the context of the speech Job was making!  After losing everything—his children, wealth, reputation, and health—he was visited by the handful of friends who hadn’t forsaken him.  After seven days of wisely keeping their mouths shut, they began to accuse Job of bringing all this disaster on himself, through some unknown sin.  Their central thesis, that the righteous prosper and the wicked come to ruin, includes an assumption shared by Job: that God directly initiates all that occurs on earth.  In an abstract sense, this is of course true.  God designed and created the universe in every detail.  Even if he’s not inserting his hand in real time to subvert the physical laws he created and bring about a different result than could be called “natural,” we can still trace back the long line of cause and effect to his design and manufacture of the system we inhabit.  When we combine the fact of God’s creation with his comprehensive knowledge—his omniscience—we end up with the understanding that, even when he hasn’t miraculously intervened, God’s will, through his providence, is still carried out.

One way or another, Job believes that God himself is responsible for his humiliation, loss, and misery:

He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,

and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.

He has kindled his wrath against me

and counts me as his adversary. (Job 19.10-11)

Of course, we know from having read the first two chapters of the book that in fact Satan is the one directly responsible for hurting Job, and this is a valuable lesson for us, when we face hardships: when we’re tempted to blame God for something that goes wrong in our lives through no fault of our own, we should, after carefully weighing our own actions, consider the possibility that the trial is Satan’s attempt to derail our relationship with God!  But even so, in Job’s case, you may remember that not only did God grant permission for Satan to do all of this, but he’s the one who put that bug in Satan’s ear in the first place, asking him out of the blue, “‘Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?’” (1.8)

Job is a little off in his assumption about how it transpired, but he is basically correct in his conclusion that God is deeply involved in the disaster that has befallen him.  That makes it all the more surprising that he maintains not just a hope, but an expectation, a firm faith of eventual vindication, and that he will enter God’s presence.

“I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God…” (Job 19.25-26)

Job didn’t know how this would take place; God hadn’t directly revealed it to him, or to anyone else at that time—even the angels were left in the dark, according to 1 Peter 1.12.  But through the unconscious guidance of the Holy Spirit his words were more true than he could know.  While he hadn’t committed some grievous sin to directly precipitate this particular bout of suffering, Job was an imperfect man like all of us, and he, too, needed a Redeemer to bridge the gulf between him in his brokenness, and God in his perfect holiness.  Not only that, but the Redeemer, God’s own Son, would indeed stand upon the earth at the end of one age and the beginning of the next—and “at the last” he will do so, again.  Further, Job’s kernel of faith in life after death is confirmed for us, by the words of the Holy Spirit and the firstfruits of the resurrection, Christ himself.

Job envisioned his eventual salvation as a time when the Lord who had done all this to him (12.9) would grant him some kind of audience, such as the courtroom scenario he imagined in chapter 9.  There he lamented, “I must appeal for mercy to my accuser” (v15b), asked, “who can summon him?” (v19b), and concluded that there was no way for Job and God to “come to trial together” (v32b).  The trouble, he said, is that “There is no arbiter between us” (v33a).  At the time, he was correct; but the Redeemer he so strongly believed would one day rescue him and prove his righteousness…he is just the arbiter Job needed.  We need him, too.  He stands between us and his Father, having paid the penalty for our transgressions and brought the accusations against us to nothing, if only we’re willing to follow his instructions and become his disciples.  Do you know that your Redeemer lives?

Jeremy Nettles

Let not those who hope in you be put to  shame through me, O Lord God of hosts; let not those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me, O God of Israel.  For it is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that dishonor has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons. 

For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. (Ps 69.6-9)

This psalm is quoted numerous times in the New Testament, not only showing that God’s predictions about the Messiah came true, but telling us more about the Messiah and his purpose than we would have seen by simply observing his life, death, and resurrection.

The psalm is not exclusively about the Messiah, as verse 5 makes clear: “O God, you know my folly; the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.”  A centrally important part of Christ’s character is his sinlessness, and this admission of folly and wrongs committed cannot be reconciled with that fact.  As usual with the Old Testament prophecies, there was a simpler, more fleshly meaning intended for the Jews when it was written; then, as more time passed and the promises about the Messiah began to pile up, it became clear that even many of the old Scriptures, the ones they thought they understood already, weren’t just about the here and now, but looked forward to something far greater in the age to come.

In this case, the prediction was that the Messiah would not be treated very well—that he would be associated with shame and dishonor, and bear “reproaches.”  That’s not a word we use very often, and it’s tempting  to replace it with a more relatable word like “insults”; but that would detract from its weight.  Insults are a dime a dozen, but reproaches cut to a deeper level.  They’re not merely intended to hurt someone’s feelings, but to make them an object of public scorn.

David apparently composed this prayer at a time when he bore that kind of public blame without cause—not that he’d never done anything wrong, but that he hadn’t done what he was accused of doing.  How much worse, how much more unjust was the situation when Christ was the target of such  derision from the vast majority?  When we think about Jesus’ death, we generally focus on his role as the substitute, accepting the penalty for our transgressions.  This is, of course, appropriate, as Isaiah tells us:

Surely he has borne our griefs

          and carried our sorrows;

     yet we esteemed him stricken,

          smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our

               transgressions;

          he was crushed for our iniquities;

     upon him was the chastisement that

               brought us peace,

          and with his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53.4-5)

But that’s not the whole story.  Paul brings our passage from Psalm 69 into his instructions in Romans 15, telling us to bear with each other and put up with each other’s weakness, pleasing our neighbors and not ourselves.  “For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me’” (v3).  It’s not just that the shame and dishonor we deserved was laid on his shoulders instead.  It goes deeper than that.  The people who scoffed at God, scoffed also at his Son.  Rather than retaliating, Jesus allowed them to do it, accepted the shame and derision, and said, “‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’” (Lk 23.34).

When we reject God’s commandments today, in a sense we participate in crucifying Jesus, even though it happened long before any of us was born.  Not only are we contributing to the burden of sin he had to bear on the cross, but in a way we are “crucifying once again the Son of God to [our] own harm and holding him up to contempt” (He 6.6).  We might not think our little slip-ups in the heat of the moment amount to anything, and in comparison to the inexhaustible grace of God, that’s partly true.  His blood is more than adequate to atone for all the sins of the world—past, present, and future.  How could a relatively decent and moral person’s fairly mild sins amount to even a drop in the bucket, in comparison to the horrendous acts of evil committed even by some who later repented and turned to Christ?  Yet, just as the police officer isn’t swayed by the argument, “that guy was going way faster than I was,” God isn’t concerned with assigning ranks to our sinfulness.  The standard is simple: righteous, or wicked?  But we can’t claim righteousness on our own merits, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Ro 3.23).  Since we’ve all sinned, we’ve all contributed to Christ’s crucifixion.  Not only did he bear our sins on the cross; he also bore the brunt of our sins!  Yet he offers forgiveness.

His offer stands today for those who treat him so poorly, holding him up to contempt.  The offer stands until he returns, and we do not know the day or the hour that will be.  What’s a sinner to do?  We can see the basic answer in the very next verses of the psalm with which we began.  They looks forward to Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, and our imitation of that process:

But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord.  At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness.  Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me. (Psalm 69.13-14)

Jeremy Nettles