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A few weeks ago on Monday nights we took a couple weeks to look at how to think about gender from a biblical viewpoint. Here’s a few more helpful thoughts on the matter from John Frame. This comes from a chapter in the larger of the two books I recommended last week:

Is sexual differentiation an aspect of the image [of God]?

Yes, for everything we are images God. The point is not that God is male, female, or both. To say that our eyes image God, remember, is not to say that God has eyes; it is rather to say that our eyes picture something divine. Similarly, our sexuality pictures God’s attributes and capacities:

(a) It mirrors God’s creativity, by which He brings forth sons and daughters (John 1:12; Romans 8:14ff.; etc.).

(b) The love of a husband for his wife pictures God’s love for His people (Ezekiel 16; Hosea 1-3; Ephesians 5:25-33).

(c) Scripture describes God both in male and in female terms, though the overwhelming preponderance of imagery is male. The reason, I think, is basically that Scripture wants us to think of God as Lord (Exodus 3:14; 6:3, 7; 33:19; 34:5ff.; Deuteronomy 6:4ff.; cf. Romans 10:9f; 1 Corinthians 12:3; Philippians 2:11), and lordship, in Scripture, always connotes authority. Since in the Biblical view women are subject to male authority in the home and the church, there is some awkwardness in speaking of God in female terms. Our need today, in my opinion, is for a far greater appreciation of the Lordship of God and of Christ. Therefore, in my view, the movement to use unisex or female language in referring to God is fundamentally wrongheaded from a Biblical perspective.

(d) Nevertheless, the very submission of the woman also images God. God the Lord is not too proud to be our “helper.” Christ the Lord is not unwilling to be a servant. Godly women stand as models, often as rebukes, to all who would be leaders (Matthew 20:20-28).

And here’s his summary and conclusion:

Women and men equally image God, even in their sexual differences, even in their differences with regard to authority and submission.

The reason is that the image of God embraces everything that is human.

Both men and women, therefore, resemble God and are called to represent Him throughout the creation, exercising control, authority, and presence in His name. This doctrine is not at all inconsistent with the subordination of women to men in the home and in the church. All human beings are under authority, both divine and human. Their submission to authority, as well as their authority itself, images God.

“Do you think finite sins deserve eternal punishment? How can that be fair?”

It’s a common question we may hear when we’re seeking to understand or discuss the nature of God’s wrath as it’s described in the Bible. And on the surface, it presents a difficult problem. After all, if you commit sin for a period of, say, eighty years, does it seem fair to be sentenced to an eternity of punishment? When stated this way, we might feel there is some sort of disparity. It’s hard to image a just God making this sort of mistake. In fact, it might seem to get worse when we think of each sin individually…maybe the sin lasted a year, or a day, or just a few minutes. How could it merit punishment forever?

And yet, that’s what the Bible does teach about the nature of God’s wrath on those who die in their sins. It’s a tragic, horrifying truth to try to contemplate, but it is the case.

So, what gives? Is God unfair?

Two things help when trying to think this through. First, it helps to ask questions about how we determine what a “fair” punishment is in the first place. Second, it helps to think about the assumptions we might be making about the “eternal” or “temporary” nature of both humans and their sins.

So, when we ask, “Do finite sins deserve infinite punishment?”–we should realize that we first need to answer the question of how someone would assign punishment to a crime at all. Even on a purely human level, do we assign length of punishment to a crime based on how long it took to commit the crime? The answer is generally no. If a murder took 5 minutes to commit, the time factor does not weigh in to the length of punishment. Imagine the trial of someone who spent 5 years masterminding a plot to steal $100,000, and someone who killed several people in 10 minutes of rage. Which one would receive a more severe punishment?

So we see that the length of time it takes to commit a crime, or a sin, is not really something that is taken into account when we think of punishment.

How should we weigh evil acts, then? The answer typically has to do with a mix of the amount of evil committed (money stolen, property damaged, lives disrupted or taken, pain caused), the amount of deliberateness behind the evil (time spent planning, amount of intent to do harm), and some other factors, like the future danger to a society the individual presents. The crucial idea to see here is that even our court systems understand that human acts have consequences beyond the actual committing of the crime. The evil caused does not stop when the criminal stops committing the evil.

So we have a compounding effect of evil to take into account when we assess punishment to criminals. If someone hurt several people badly enough to disable them, we have on our hands effects of evil which will last for the rest of their lives. Would it be unfair to add together the remaining years of each injured person’s life to come up with a “fair” number of years the criminal should be punished? (We should see that we will quickly run out of years left for the criminal, so that he or she wouldn’t even be able to serve the “full” sentence, thinking this way.)

And it gets worse. How would we calculate the “fair” amount of punishment for someone like Adolph Hitler? The amount of evil he committed would need to be assessed over the scale of every life he affected, his amount of malice and conscious intent, and how lasting the effects of his sin were. It boggles the mind. Could he receive a sentence that was “fair” which he could serve in his lifetime?

Secondly, when we ask the question, “”Do finite sins deserve infinite punishment?”–we should notice the underlying assumptions about humans, and our relationship to eternity, that we may need to reexamine. Specifically, we need to contemplate three issues of our own interaction with eternity:

1. The eternal nature of humans.
2. The eternal significance of the things humans do.
3. The eternal authority humans are under.

Let’s look at each one individually.

1. The eternal nature of humans: We’re finite in terms of size, but in terms of time, are we finite, or eternal? The answer the Bible gives is that we are eternal. Humans, by nature, are made in the image of the eternal God, which means that once we come into existence, we never pass out of existence. To exist forever is in the very fabric of what it means to be human. In other words, and this is very helpful to say when we discuss these kinds of things, we are eternal beings.

So when a human commits a sin, it is a sin committed by an eternal being. A new question emerges: Can an eternal being commit a finite sin?

2. The eternal significance of the things human do: Do our acts have temporary, or eternal significance? This returns to an idea discussed above–how long do the effects of our sin last? Now, I may break someone’s arm, and it may heal in six weeks. We could say the effects of my sin lasted six weeks. In one sense that’s true. But in another sense it’s not true at all. How long do the memories of that sin last? How long does the animosity between me and the injured person last? And to get more to the point: once I’ve broken the arm, can I ever undo that action? Is there a way I can make it so I didn’t do it at all? This is why the idea of “significance” is so helpful. I may commit an act whose effects go away after some time, but I can never change the universe so that the act didn’t happen. The fact that I broke the arm is an eternal fact. There will never be a time when I did not break that arm.

Further, think about things we do whose effects don’t go away. What if I hurt someone and it cost them their arm? They will live for the rest of their life maimed by what I did. And since we each only live one life, they will never get to live a full life with both arms. In other words, what I did effects them eternally. There will never be a reality in which they lived a full life with two arms.

Let’s keep going. If I murder someone, think of the eternal results of what I’ve done. For all eternity, the length of their earthly life will have been shortened, by me. They will never get to relive an earthly life which lasts its full course.

These may seem like extreme cases, but once you realize the connection between the fact that we only have one life to live, and that we can not change the past once we’ve lived it, you realize that literally everything we do has eternal significance. Once I say, think, or do something, it, and all its effects, can never be undone. they are just there, forever. I think we’ve answered the next pertinent question: Can an eternal being commit any act that is not eternal in significance?

3. The eternal authority humans are under: Against whom do we sin, when we sin? This is probably the most common way of connecting eternity to our sins. We don’t simply sin against each other–we sin against an infinite, eternal God, who gave us existence and has absolute right to rule over us. Not only that, but He’s shown Himself to be infinitely, eternally loving as well, so when we sin, we sin again someone with both infinite authority and infinite love. We offend infinite majesty. Here’s another question: Can an eternal being commit a finite sin against infinite love and authority?

I think adding the rest of what we’ve seen to this helps even further: Here we are, eternal creatures, given the gift of true existence with eternal significance, so that all we are and all we do has meaning forever. We’re under the infinitely loving authority of our creator as well, and given the ability to act out, in truly significant ways, our desires and intentions. Everything we do, then, has eternity all over it. There’s nothing about us that doesn’t matter, forever.

And when we sin, we sin eternally. We’re eternal beings committing eternally significant sins against an eternal authority.

When seen in this light, I’m not sure how we could see anything other than eternal consequences as appropriate. Eternal punishment speaks to the high calling and intention of God for Man, and the amazing level of significance he has gifted to us. To whom much is given, much is required.

And doesn’t this bring one more thing into glorious light? The grace of God in Jesus Christ is the kind of grace that comes to us–these eternally guilty beings–and actually has the power to change what we never could. Yes, there will never be a time when I did not sin, but by the death and resurrection of Christ I can be given the status of One who never did. When I am united to Him by faith, I find my past covered and atoned for, and what’s left is for me to live out an eternally significant life of righteousness. This is staggering.  If anything, contemplating the reality of what Hell teaches us should make us be more in awe of what Jesus truly accomplished. What a massive, unimaginable salvation is offered to us. God is that good.

(Note: For more discussion of how the love of God impacts these things, see this post.)

I’m enjoying our study through the book of Ruth, and I’m also looking forward to where I think we’re going next in our Monday night studies. As I’ve mentioned before, for a couple months now I’ve been excited about revisiting the scriptures to simply study about who God is and how He’s revealed Himself. While non-believers regularly talk as if God must be this far-away, unknowable being, we worship the only God Who has actually shown Himself–He wants us to know Him! All of this means that I’ve been studying the Christian teaching known as the Trinity. And so, after Ruth, it’s to the Trinity I hope to turn on our Monday nights. It will dovetail nicely with where Pastor Joe’s been on Sunday mornings as we think about the Holy Spirit, and it will give us a few weeks to sink our minds into God’s word as a declaration of Himself to us.

I’ll post more about these studies as we get closer to beginning, but for now, I thought I’d share some stuff I’ve found to be helpful in thinking about the Bible’s teaching on all this. First, here are the links to download four messages on the Trinity which I have to say are excellent: This guy is speaking to a college christian fellowship, so he’s very easy to listen to (he’s a British guy with a good accent and a good British sense of humor). They will get you pumped to dig into the word to see these things for yourself:

Messages by Mike Reeves on the Trinity (Mp3 downloads)

• Why we have problems with Trinity
• Trinity is the Answer
• Trinity in Revelation and Creation
• Trinity in Salvation

And for a little more, here’s an article by the same guy called “Three is the Loveliest Number.” Here’s a section from the beginning of it: 

…there is the God we know and love—and then, in some mental ivory tower far, far away, there is that Trinity stuff.

That mathematical mystery.

That mind-bending oddity.

That strange, even embarrassing idea.

Yes, deep within the Christian psyche today seems to be the notion that the Trinity is an awkward and odd irrelevance, an unsightly wart on our knowledge of the true God. And so, when it comes to sharing our faith, we speak of God’s offer of salvation, we speak of God’s free grace, but we try not to let on that the God we are speaking of is a Trinity. We wax lyrical about the beauty of the gospel, but not so much about the beauty of the God whose gospel it is.

It is time to stand up and say, “No!” to such nonsense, to turn our backs on the absurd notion that our beautiful gospel could ever come from a God who is not the very perfection and essence of beauty. For the health of the church and our faith, we must be proud of who our God is. And since the Trinity is no mere theological icing resting atop our God—since the living God is Trinity—we must be resolutely and thoroughly Trinitarian in all our ways and thoughts.

Only then will we truly enjoy what sets the living God apart from the gods of human imagination. Only then will we know a God good enough to offer truly good news. And this, in fact, is the nature of the very eternal life for which we have been saved: knowing God. As Jesus prayed, “[T]his is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). 

Ever hear someone say, “The word ‘Rapture’ is not in the Bible.”–? Ever get confused trying to think about it?

Here’s a shot at helping you work through the issues regarding the timing of the Lord’s coming for His people.  Click on the title below to download a worksheet I give out to my Bible classes. It takes you through the relevant scripture passages and concepts which lead someone to believe that the Church is caught up to be with Christ before a time of trouble on the earth and as a first part of His final coming.

What is the Rapture, and why should we believe in it? (pdf)

Here’s the outline of the worksheet:

Why should we believe in a Rapture?

There are several important themes in scripture that lead to the concept of the Rapture happening separate from the 2^nd coming in Revelation 19. (Or, as a first part of a two-part coming, part before the Tribulation (to receive the church) and part at the end of the Tribulation (to judge the earth)).

Here are the reasons to believe in a rapture, and to believe that it happens before a seven-year period known as “The Tribulation.” 

1. Old Testament Prophesies that haven’t been fulfilled.
A. Old Testament Prophesies about God’s future dealing with the nation of Israel
B. Prophesies about future dealing with the gentile nations
C. Possible OT references to the Rapture
D. Types and Symbols that seem to point to the Rapture in the Old Testament

2. New Testament Passages that describe the Church and its future.
A. The Church will be received to Christ in the Air
B. The Church will not be subjected to God’s divine Wrath on sin
C. The Coming of Christ for His church is Imminent (it could happen at any time)