A Double Apocalypse

There is this double-apocalypse at the heart of Romans 1.

But first a word about that word: apocalypse. As Darrell Johnson makes clear in his book Discipleship on the Edge (which is about the NT book we call The Revelation, but which was once generally known as The Apocalypse), the word means something to us that it never meant in the first century.

To us it means catastrophe. It means end of the world. Think all the horrifying visions of the end that John was given. Think four horseman, three of which are famine, war, and death (as for the other, well, you can look it up). Apocalypse draws its meaning for us from these terrifying visions.

But in the first century the word meant something quite different. It simply meant a revealing (thus, the modern English title for John's vision, The Revelation). The verb is apokalupto, and the online NT Greek lexicon has this for its meaning: "to uncover, lay open what has been veiled or covered up, to make known, make manifest, disclose what before was unknown".

Which brings us back to Romans 1. The double-apocalypse. You find them at the very heart of the chapter, in verses 17 and 18, translated "revealed" in the ESV. Paul speaks of two revealings.

For in [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith."

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth . . .

That's all for now. I think in these verses we are close to the heart of Romans. 1) The gospel reveals the righteousness of God (God as the source of righteousness), and 2) the unrighteousness of man reveals (brings to light) the anger of God (which is just another aspect of his righteousness, by the way).

Bottom line: righteousness is a core concern of God, and should be for us as well. More in next post.

[The whole Reading Romans series is here.]

For those whose leaves have withered.

I've working my way through the beatitudes of Jesus as found in Matthew's 5th chapter. I'm up to the 4th beatitude, which is:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

In previous posts in this series I've mentioned that the first four beatitudes are "beatitudes of lack." A person who fits the description of these first four beatitudes would be feeling keenly his own helplessness (v.3), would be mourning the terrible impact of sin that has touched every life (v.4), would be intensely meek, knowing that he has no spiritual prowess to change a thing about this situation (v.5), and yet would so desire that this situation be changed that it would feel for him like the intense hunger of starvation or the thirst of a man who has been wandering in a desert.

Sometimes I've felt that way. Sort of. Maybe.

Righteousness is the Bible's word for the way the world would be if Adam and Eve hadn't gone tragically astray. It's the word for a kind of life that is entirely and happily alligned with the loving will of God. Sort of like this:

Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers. Psalm 1:1-3

Wouldn't it be nice? For me, sometimes my leaf withers. And now comes to mind our old friends Eve and Adam, and how they got cast out of all that blessedness, and life became very very hard, and one of their sons murdered the other, and always they got their food by hard labor, dreaming of a garden paradise, and then finally they had another son, Seth, and to Seth was born Enosh. This would be the third generation, then. And Genesis 4:26 says, "At this time people began to call upon the name of the Lord."

Imagine that. It took three generations of suffering for people to begin to call upon God. It took a while, but suffering (that is, the impact of a severe shortage of righteousness) brought forth a hunger for, you guessed it, righteousness.

Today, in my own world, I have seen how a little word, well-intentioned, could ignite a firestorm of recriminations. I might think about the best way to address the situation, and hope to be a help, but I'm learning that the only true response is to call upon the name of the Lord, asking him to work his will. Calling out, in other words, for righteousness.

Help, Lord! I need to be holy!

It's a fundamental building block in the foundation of the Christian faith: the belief that a Christlike life is actually possible, or at least approachable, when one is "in Christ" (to use Paul's characteristic descriptor). We say it is God Himself who makes this possible, God who empowers us for righteousness, and yet, of course, there is this gap--I'll call it the righteousness gap--between the life we believe to be possible in Christ and the life that we actually live.

Now here's another fundamental belief we Christians have: God is powerful to save, and desires to rescue us from all our troubles. Of course we may be quick to qualify this statement by quoting verses like John 16:33 ("in the world you will have tribulation") but the fact is, when a man is drowning, God is the one he calls out to for help.

Now, I do not want to disparage this, for who am I to parse and criticize the cry of a drowning man for help! I only want to point out that these two aspects of God that are fundamental to our understanding. Empowerment for righteous living, and his strong arm to save us when we're in dire need. Now, I think we're pretty good at crying out to God when we're drowning, or when we're surrounded by the proverbial bulls of Bashan. The fundamental prayer of this type is simple, "HELP!"

But I think we Christians run into trouble in the other matter, the matter of righteousness or Christlike living. Everyone's familiar I'm sure with the illustration of salvation in which the gap between men and God is bridged by the cross of Christ, but we don't often think that this righteousness-gap between the lives we live and the lives that God would desire for us is also a chasm that can only be bridged by the cross. This one, we fancy, we'll bridge ourselves. We imagine ourselves to be great bridge-builders, and the plans we devise for spanning this righteousness-gap are wondrous and diverse. But the problem is, very few of them actually work. We get about half way out on the rickety structure, trying not to look down, and the wind picks up, and the bridge starts swaying dangerously, and before you know it we're doing our best Wile E. Coyote imitation, falling into a yawning gorge.

"HELP!"

Hmmm, do you see how these two fundamentals of Christian belief relate to one another? Sometimes, at least, our situation of dire need is connected to our attempt to build our own bridge across the righteousness gap. We do this, I think, by imagining the life we think we ought to be living (and, by the way, we don't really have a very good imagination in these matters), and then trying to live it. The trouble is, this life we imagine has everything to do with the world's definition of happiness and nothing to do with Christlikeness. The life we've imagined turns out to be something to do with health, prosperity, kids that never get in trouble, a job in which we get to be our own boss, etc. No wonder the bridge always fails!

Well, I sense that I'm about to stretch this bridge-metaphor to the breaking-point, so I'll just quit while I can. The point is, I know a lot of Christians who seem never to get beyond the prayer for help and move on to the prayer for holiness. There may be many reasons for this, but one reason can be inferred simply from the way I phrased the problem: I spoke of moving on from one to the other, as if the prayer for help must be answered before the need for Christlikeness can be addressed. This is a fallacy that we need to put aside once and for all.

Here's the thing: our need, our crisis, our distress, is the absence of righteousness in our very fiber. In our own, and in everyone else's. The cry for holiness IS our most urgent distress signal. I am not suggesting that we ought to point out a drowning man's sin before throwing him a life preserver, I am suggesting that in our personal prayers we ought to be deeply concerned with this righteousness-gap I speak of. Help, Lord, for I stand before this great chasm that I cannot bridge. And the governing principle here is that this gap too is bridged by Christ's cross.

Righteousness (and all that)

Frequent check-ins with Michael Spencer atThe Internet Monk are always a good thing. Michael wrote a post recently called Hunger and Thirst after (Christ's) Righteousness. Therein he asks a silly little question:

If the righteousness of Christ is so important, why are Christians always finding ways to create their own righteousness?

That's a good, good question. I'm guessing any one of us can count at least three ways we've done that in the past week. IMonk himself provides a lengthy checklist of his own. I won't quote the whole list, but here's a taste:

The righteousness of knowledge. Bible knowledge included.

The righteousness of better theology, right theology, awesome theology, kick ___ theology and truly reformed theology.

The righteousness of emerging, cool, culturally hip theology.

The righteousness of my theology.

The righteousness of no theology I’m just into Jesus.

The righteousness of fundamentalism and being way beyond fundamentalism.

The righteousness of morality, doing the right thing, being prudent, walking between the lines and never having a wrong thought.

The righteousness of feeling superior because of your humility.

The righteousness of political action.

And the list goes on, because Michael is nothing if not thorough. And well worth reading.