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Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27). When Jesus meets his disciples after the resurrection, he continually says to them, “Peace” (John 20:19,21,26). Under these circumstances, it is obvious that the term “peace” is extraordinarily full of meaning. What is this peace Jesus gives us? In order to understand Jesus’ words, we must reflect on the many facets of the crucial Hebrew term shalom, which lies behind the English word “peace.” Shalom is one of the keywords and images for salvation in the Bible. The Hebrew word refers most commonly to a person being uninjured and safe, whole and sound. In the New Testament, shalom is revealed as the reconciliation of all things to God through the work of Christ: “God was pleased . . . through [Christ] to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through [Christ’s] blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:19–20). Shalom experienced is multidimensional, complete well-being — physical, psychological, social, and spiritual; it flows from all of one’s relationships being put right — with God, with(in) oneself, and with others. Shalom with God Most fundamentally, shalom means reconciliation with God. God can give us peace with himself or remove it (Psalm 85:8; Jeremiah 16:5). Because Phinehas turned away God’s wrath on sin, he and his family are given a “covenant of [shalom]” with God (Numbers 25:12). One of the offerings under the Mosaic covenant is the shelamim offering — the peace, or fellowship, offering — the only one of the Levitical sacrifices in which the offerer receives back some of the meal to eat. Sin disrupts shalom. When anything heals the rupture and closes the gap between us and God, there should be a celebration, a joyful meal in God’s presence. Shalom with Others Shalom also means peace with others, peace between parties. It means the end of hostilities and war (Deuteronomy 20:12; Judges 21:13). The wise woman of Abel Beth Maakah maintained her city’s shalom, its peacefulness, by averting a siege and war (2 Samuel 20:14–22). But shalom does not mean only reconciliation between warring factions or nations (1 Kings 5:12). It also refers to socially just relationships between individuals and classes. Jeremiah insists that unless there is an end to oppression, greed, and violence in social relationships, there can be no shalom, however much the false prophets say the word (Jeremiah 6:1–9,14; compare Jeremiah 8:11). Shalom with (in) Oneself Shalom consists of not only outward peacefulness — peace between parties — but also peace within. Those who trust in the Lord have inner security; therefore, they can sleep well (Psalm 4:8). God gives “perfect peace” (or shalom-shalom) — i.e., profound psychological and emotional peace – to those who steadfastly set their minds on him (Isaiah 26:3).The result of righteousness before God is “peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever” (Isaiah 32:17). The Price of Shalom: Jesus Shalom Prophesied Shalom becomes an especially prominent theme in the prophetic literature. The prophets explain the invasions and exile the loss of shalom — as a curse on Israel for breaking the covenant and as punishment for their disobedience (Isaiah 48:18; Jeremiah 14:13–16; Micah 3:4-5, 9–12). But they also point into the future to a coming time of complete shalom, not only for Israel but also for the whole world (Isaiah 11:1–9; Isaiah 45:7). Only God can create shalom (Isaiah 45:7), and this gift will come through the work of the Messiah, the Prince of shalom (Isaiah 9:6–7). Therefore, shalom is perhaps the most basic characteristic of the future kingdom of God, a time when the Lord himself comes to heal all that is wrong with the world. When the angels tell the shepherds about the birth of Christ, they call him the one who will, at last, bring peace on earth (Luke 2:14). Jesus is the Prince of shalom who will bring in God’s kingdom of peace that the prophets foretold (Romans 14:17; 1 Corinthians 14:33). The gospel of Jesus is “the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6:15; compare Acts 10:36; Ephesians 2:17). Shalom Accomplished Jesus, first of all, reconciles us to God. He is the ultimate Phinehas who turns away the wrath of God and brings his family into a covenant of peace. But he does so by taking on himself the curse of sin so that all who are united to him by faith receive his blessing of peace (Galatians 3:10–13). “The wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest . . . ‘There is no peace . . . for the wicked’ ” (Isaiah 57:20–21). But on the cross, God the Father treats Jesus as the wicked deserve to be treated (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus cries out as he loses his fellowship with the Father and experiences unimaginable inner agony (Matthew 27:46). He experiences infinite pain so that we can know endless peace (John 14:27). Shalom Experienced God is reconciling all things to himself through Christ (Colossians 1:20), and although he has not yet put everything right (Romans 8:19–23), those who believe the gospel enter into and experience this reconciliation. This peace is, first of all, peace with God through justification by faith (Romans 5:1–2). There was a barrier between God and humanity, but Jesus paid the debt, and now there is peace. This peace cannot increase or decrease. Though in ourselves we are actually “ungodly,” in Christ, we are justified and accepted (Romans 4:5). Jesus also brings us the peace of God — peace within. The peace of God garrisons our hearts against anxiety, difficulties, and sorrows (Philippians 4:4–7). It is possible to have a peace so deep that we can be content in any circumstance, even in times of great difficulty (Philippians 4:12–13). The peace of Christ is so closely related to joy (John 15:11; Romans 15:13) that we might say that joy is God’s peace and reconciliation lived out. The God of peace sanctifies us, growing us into Christ-like character and maturity (1 Thessalonians 5:23; compare Galatians 5:22). Finally, Jesus brings us peace with other human beings. Our peace with and from God gives us the resources to maintain unity and love with others through continual forgiveness and patience (Colossians 3:13–15). Christ is our peace, and by his death on the cross, he removes even the high racial and cultural barriers that divide us (Ephesians 2:11–22). Drawn from the article Shalom by Timothy Keller in the NIV Biblical Theology Bible.

Matthew 21:18–22 : 18In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. 19And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once. 20When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” 21And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. 22And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” Jesus as Lord and Judge Passover is days away, and pilgrims stream into Jerusalem. Many have traveled from Galilee; they spontaneously hail Jesus as prophet and Son of David as they enter Jerusalem with him. After entering, Jesus visits the temple. As so often, Mark offers details that Matthew omits. Mark 11:11 notes how Jesus “looked around at everything” and then left the city with the Twelve, “as it was already late.” Whether “looking around” signifies a quick look or a thorough examination, Mark gives Jesus an evening to meditate before he purges the temple. If Mark suggests contemplation, Matthew describes direct action: Jesus enters, drives out the merchants, overturns their tables, and then explains himself: they have made God’s house into a “den of robbers” or, it could be translated, a “cave of insurrectionists” (Matt. 21:12–13). Explanations are in order. First, currency exchange is not immoral. Travelers would seek to purchase animals for their sacrifices and feasts, and they had to convert their currency into the temple’s. The problem is not commerce per se but commerce in the temple precincts, as Jesus explains by quoting Isaiah and Jeremiah: “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” “Prayer” is synecdoche for public worship: the prayers, songs, teachings, and offerings of the temple. It is possible that the merchants overcharge, but Jesus drives out buyers and sellers, so malfeasance cannot be the sole issue. The problem is corruption of the temple’s purpose: the noise of commerce and animals prevents the silence that is the context for prayer, worship, and instruction. If rabbinic comments are accurate, Caiaphas the high priest had recently moved the sale of sacrificial animals from the valley near Jerusalem into the temple court reserved for Gentiles. This might account for the additional phrase in Mark 11:17: the temple is to be a “house of prayer for all the nations.” The context of Jesus’ OT citations is essential. Isaiah 56 declares that no one— neither eunuch nor Gentile—should say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people” (Isa. 56:3). No, to those who hold to the covenant, the Lord says, “I will . . . make them joyful in my house of prayer; . . . for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa. 56:7). Whatever the logic of the temple commerce, it makes worship difficult for Gentiles and neglects Isaiah’s word. By citing Isaiah, Jesus implicitly claims that his action brings the messianic blessing predicted by the prophet. Further, Jesus’ “disruptive action” is necessary if the temple is to regain “its God-ordained purpose.” While the temple has ceased to be a house of prayer for the nations, it has become a “den of robbers” (Matt. 21:13). Scholars doubt that the problem is corruption among the money-changers, since (again) Jesus opposes both selling and buying, and there is no record of complaints against them. The merchants, with the priests’ approval, are certainly depriving Gentiles of their right to worship God. The phrase “den of robbers,” from Jeremiah 7, is instructive too. In context, the Lord excoriates Israel: Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, . . . and go after other gods . . . then come and stand before me in this house . . . and say, ‘We are delivered!’— only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house . . . become a den of robbers in your eyes?” (Jer. 7:9–11) In Jeremiah’s day, people sinned then shouted, “the temple of the Lord,” treating it as a talisman, as if it guaranteed God’s protection and favor (Jer. 7:4–7). Jeremiah and Jesus compare the Israelites to brigands who rob, kill, and follow idols, then retreat to the temple as if it were a safe cave or hideout. This wholly reverses the temple’s purpose. Beyond that, lēstēs (“robber”) normally means insurrectionist, so Matthew’s phrase spēlaion lēstōn could sensibly be rendered “cave of rebels” or “cave of insurrectionists.” Tragically, the temple’s putative guardians rebel against God most of all. By excluding Gentiles from the temple, they show that for them the temple is a symbol of Israel more than it is a place of worship. The temple has become their “nationalist stronghold,” a haunt for nationalistic rebels. Luke understands the issue similarly, which is clear from his addition to the scene. In Luke 19:42–44, Jesus laments that Jerusalem does not know “the things that make for peace” and he predicts a crushing defeat at Rome’s hands. Jesus foresees that Israel’s nationalism, manifest here, will lead it to rebel against Rome and suffer devastation forty years later. Because they learn nothing from Jeremiah or Jesus, Jewish fighters will later choose the temple as their fortress, apparently hoping it will protect them. But that fantasy perverts the temple, and God will not honor it. By driving out the merchants and toppling their tables, Jesus asserts himself as the temple’s Lord and Judge. His denunciation is also prophetic, and the call to restore the temple to its proper role is priestly as well. Jesus’ action reopens the temple to the blind and lame, and he heals them (Matt. 21:14). Leviticus appears to bar blind and lame priests from offering certain sacrifices. Some Jews want to bar the crippled from the temple altogether, but Jesus restores them to it. By driving out the merchants and welcoming the broken, Jesus expels those whom the authorities permit and permits those whom certain authorities expel. The priests, possibly thunderstruck, turn on the children in the temple area who are shouting praise to Jesus. They ask, “Do you hear what these are saying?” (Matt. 21:15–16a). But Jesus defends the children: “Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” (Matt. 21:16b). This is a citation of Psalm 8, which begins, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! . . . Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes” (Ps. 8:1–2). When Jesus asks, “Have you never read . . . ?” he means, “Have you never considered this correctly?” God ordains children to praise him. Since Jesus is Son of God and Son of Man, it is right for children to praise him. Israel’s Fruitfulness The next morning, Jesus returns to Jerusalem. He is hungry, sees a fig tree in leaf, inspects it, finds nothing but leaves, and curses it, saying, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” Surprisingly, the tree withers immediately (Matt. 21:18–19). The OT has many miracles of judgment, but outside of this instance, Jesus’ miracles bring healing and grace. The cursing of the fig tree is symbolic. Matthew assumes his Jewish readers know, as Mark 11:13 points out, that “it was not the season for figs.” Fig trees produce leaves at the time of the Passover, and small fruits do appear, which will ripen later. These fruits are unripe but marginally edible. The leaves promise fruit on the tree, but its barrenness makes it an object lesson. The prophets use the fig as a symbol of Israel in its fruitlessness. In Micah 7:1–2 the prophet laments that he came to glean fruit from vineyard and tree but found no grapes and “no first-ripe fig that my soul desires.” Micah explains the metaphor immediately: “The godly has perished from the earth,” and the land is full of violence, not the justice he craves. As he curses the fig tree, Jesus functions like a prophet who presents symbolic acts of judgment as calls to repentance (cf. Jer. 19:1–11). When Jesus judges the fig tree, he foretells judgment not on all Israelites but on those who, like the luxuriantly leafy but fruitless tree, appear to be alive but are barren (Matt. 13:22). Jesus has just inspected the temple and found it wanting. The spectacle of worship—the priests, the music, the sacrifices, the gleaming buildings—is grand but fruitless. Its leaders bar Gentiles from worship and plot the murder of their king. Truly, it has become a cave of rebels against God, their show of religion notwithstanding. When the tree withers, the disciples ask, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” (Matt. 21:20). We might expect them to ask why, not how, but the Twelve often attend to the wrong element of Jesus’ messages (cf. Matt. 19:27; 20:21). He detects an interest in attaining similar powers and answers them in a way that redirects their focus. He begins emphatically, “Truly, I say to you,” then promotes trust in God both positively, “if you have faith,” and negatively, “and do not doubt.” Faith, a common topic in the NT, is classically a trust in God that receives salvation, but here it is an enabling power. By faith a disciple can “say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ [and] it will happen” (Matt. 21:21). Contrary to appearances, Jesus does not shift abruptly from judgment on Jerusalem to the power of prayer. The phrase “this mountain” appears twice outside this text and its parallel in Mark, and it refers to a particular mountain each time. As Jesus speaks, both the Mount of Olives and the Temple Mount are visible. If he is referring to the Temple Mount, he is saying that faith can move the metaphorical mountain of vain religion. Prayer is powerful: “Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” The phrase “if you have faith” prevents abuse; evil prayers have no power. By driving out the merchants and toppling their tables, Jesus asserts himself as the temple’s Lord and Judge. This article is by Dan Doriani and is adapted from the ESV Expository Commentary: Matthew–Luke (Volume 8).

True Knowledge I walked in the sunshine with a scholar who had effectively forfeited his prospects of academic advancement by clashing with church dignitaries over the gospel of grace. “But it doesn’t matter,” he said at length, “for I’ve known God and they haven’t.” The remark was a mere parenthesis, a passing comment on something I had said, but it has stuck with me and set me thinking. Not many of us, I think, would ever naturally say that we have known God. The words imply a definiteness and matter-of-factness of experience to which most of us, if we are honest, have to admit that we are still strangers. We claim, perhaps, to have a testimony, and can rattle off our conversion story with the best of them; we say that we know God—this, after all, is what evangelicals are expected to say; but would it occur to us to say, without hesitation and with reference to particular events in our personal history, that we have known God? I doubt it, for I suspect that with most of us experience of God has never become so vivid as that. Nor, I think, would many of us ever naturally say that in the light of the knowledge of God that we have come to enjoy, past disappointments and present heartbreaks, as the world counts heartbreaks, don’t matter. For the plain fact is that to most of us they do matter. We live with them as our “crosses” (so we call them). Constantly we find ourselves slipping into bitterness and apathy and gloom as we reflect on them, which we frequently do. The attitude we show to the world is a sort of dried-up stoicism, miles removed from the “joy unspeakable and full of glory” that Peter took for granted that his readers were displaying (1 Pet. 1:8 KJV). “Poor souls,” our friends say of us, “how they’ve suffered.” And that is just what we feel about ourselves! But these private mock heroics have no place at all in the minds of those who really know God. They never brood on might-have-beens; they never think of the things they have missed, only of what they have gained. “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ,” wrote Paul. “What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him. . . . I want to know Christ” (Phil. 3:7–10). When Paul says he counts the things he lost as “rubbish,” or “dung” (KJV), he means not merely that he does not think of them as having any value, but also that he does not live with them constantly in his mind. What normal person spends his time nostalgically dreaming of manure? Yet this, in effect, is what many of us do. It shows how little we have in the way of true knowledge of God. Knowing versus Knowing About We need frankly to face ourselves at this point. We are, perhaps, orthodox evangelicals. We can state the gospel clearly; we can smell unsound doctrine a mile away. If asked how one may know God, we can at once produce the right formula: that we come to know God through Jesus Christ the Lord, in virtue of his cross and mediation, on the basis of his word of promise, by the power of the Holy Spirit, via a personal exercise of faith. Yet the gaiety, goodness, and unfetteredness of spirit that are the marks of those who have known God are rare among us—rarer, perhaps, than they are in some other Christian circles, where, by comparison, evangelical truth is less clearly and fully known. Here, too, it would seem that the last may prove to be first and the first last. A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about him. To focus this point further, let me say two things: 1. One can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of him. I am sure that many of us have never really grasped this. We find in ourselves a deep interest in theology (which is, of course, a most fascinating and intriguing subject—in the seventeenth century, it was every gentleman’s hobby). We read books of theological exposition and apologetics. We dip into Christian history and study the Christian creeds. We learn to find our way around in the Scriptures. Others appreciate our interest in these things, and we find ourselves asked to give our opinion in public on this or that Christian question, to lead study groups, to give papers, to write articles, and generally to accept responsibility, informal if not formal, for acting as teachers and arbiters of orthodoxy in our own Christian circles. Our friends tell us how much they value our contribution, and this spurs us to further explorations of God’s truth so that we may be equal to the demands made upon us. All very fine—yet interest in theology and knowledge about God and the capacity to think clearly and talk well on Christian themes is not at all the same thing as knowing him. We may know as much about God as John Calvin knew—indeed, if we study his works diligently, sooner or later we shall—and yet all the time (unlike Calvin, may I say) we may hardly know God at all. 2. One can know a great deal about godliness without much knowledge of God. It depends on the sermons one hears, the books one reads, and the company one keeps. In this analytical and technological age, there is no shortage of books on the church book tables, or sermons from the pulpits, on how to pray, how to witness, how to read our Bibles, how to tithe our money, how to be a young Christian, how to be an old Christian, how to be a happy Christian, how to get consecrated, how to lead people to Christ, how to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit (or, in some cases, how to avoid receiving it), how to speak with tongues (or how to explain away Pentecostal manifestations), and generally how to go through all the various motions that the teachers in question associate with being a Christian believer. Nor is there any shortage of biographies delineating the experiences of Christians in past days for our interested perusal. Whatever else may be said about this state of affairs, it certainly makes it possible to learn a great deal secondhand about the practice of Christianity. Moreover, if one has been given a good bump of common sense, one may frequently be able to use this learning to help floundering Christians of less stable temperament to regain their footing and develop a sense of proportion about their troubles, and in this way one may gain for oneself a reputation for being quite a pastor. Yet one can have all this and hardly know God at all. We come back, then, to where we started. The question is not whether we are good at theology or “balanced” (horrible, self-conscious word!) in our approach to problems of Christian living. The question is, can we say, simply, honestly, not because we feel that as evangelicals we ought to, but because it is a plain matter of fact, that we have known God, and that because we have known God the unpleasantness we have had, or the pleasantness we have not had, through being Christians does not matter to us? If we really knew God, this is what we would be saying, and if we are not saying it, that is a sign that we need to face ourselves more sharply with the difference between knowing God and merely knowing about him. A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about him. This article is adapted from Knowing God by J. I. Packer.

The Authority of Scripture The Pharisees were marked by their high view of Scripture. Certainly, when we compare them to the Sadducees—the other main Jewish sect featured in the Gospels—the Pharisees strike us as the conservatives, as the Sadducees look like the liberals. “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all” (Acts 23:8). Yet it was not as if the Pharisees simply upheld Scripture while the Sadducees turned away. Where the Sadducees took away from Scripture, the Pharisees added to it. For the Pharisees were, most emphatically, a people of tradition. They held that on Mount Sinai, God had given Moses more than the Law: he had given a body of traditions that had subsequently been passed down through the generations orally. These traditions, preserved in written form in the Mishnah (and supplemented by its commentary, the Gemara) make up the Talmud. This was treated by the Pharisees as having an authority effectively equal to Scripture. Thus, the same Rabbinic Targums that spoke of God busying himself by day with the study of the Scriptures described him as busying himself by night with that of the Mishnah. We should therefore not be surprised when we read of how “Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?’” (Matt. 15:1–2). While, then, the Pharisees affirmed the trustworthiness of Scripture, they did not in practice trust it as the supremely authoritative word of God. Thus, Jesus could answer them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matt. 15:3). Presumably, the true answer could only be that they had to modify the commandment of God by tradition to make possible their attempt to justify themselves. But more on that later. For all their zealous reverence of Scripture, they accorded it no governing authority. In practice, their traditions—and their traditions’ interpretation of Scripture—ruled. The Pharisees are not alone in this. The English Reformer Hugh Latimer once described the eclipsing of God’s word by human traditions as a great aim of Satan’s work throughout the history of the church. Picturing the devil as the most diligent preacher in all England, he explained, “His office is to hinder religion, to maintain superstition, to set up idolatry. . . . Where the devil is resident, and hath his plough going, there away with books, and up with candles . . . up with man’s traditions and his laws, down with God’s traditions and his most holy word.” Sometimes it can be reasonably obvious when human opinions trump Scripture. It is evident when a preacher merely uses the Bible as a jumping-off point for a diatribe on his own views or cultural observations. Or when the authority of his ideas rest upon only his own wisdom or some private revelation he has received. Or when the loud “amens” of his congregation seem to steer the direction of his sermon. Then, perhaps, we get the uncomfortable sense that Scripture is being used for some other agenda but is not definitive. Yet rarely is that obvious if we agree with him. For the real power of traditions lies in their ability to create cultures, and while the quirks of other cultures seem blindingly—often amusingly— obvious to us, our own culture strikes us as plain common sense. A “culture” seems like something only other people have. Our traditions and assumptions are part of the very air we breathe, their very familiarity attesting to their rightness. And being so palpably, unquestionably right, our culture becomes laden with theological weight. Those who are not like us are immediately suspect. It is easy for evangelical tribes to feel a self-satisfied glow of innocence here. We, after all, are plain, Bible Christians. Of course others fall down here, we think, but suspicion of extrabiblical traditions is something that runs deep in our blood. Is not our wariness of tradition precisely something that sets us apart as evangelicals? Many are mistrustful of theology for just this reason: they want a “purely” biblical message. Yet evangelicalism’s (unevangelical) “no creed but the Bible” biblicism itself creates traditions. We can seek a “straight,” “natural” reading of the text, and quite deliberately read the Bible away from the “corrupting” voices of theologians and commentators, and yet be blissfully unaware of how compromised our interpretation of Scripture is. Thus unchallenged, our fallen, theologically immature, culturally shaped reading acquires all the authority of Scripture itself. Deaf to the cloud of witnesses in the church down the centuries, the pastor’s eccentric interpretation becomes unassailably authoritative. He becomes ever more powerful because of his evident anointing, while his church becomes ever more untethered to anything but his proof-texted views. In such biblicism, the interpreter—not Scripture—becomes sovereign. The pages of church history are littered with heretics who boasted of their devotion to Scripture yet failed to spot how their biblical language concealed unbiblical thinking. Take the fourth-century Arians and the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Socinians as examples. Reading their arguments is like being hit by an avalanche of Bible verses, giving the impression that Scripture drove their reasoning. Look more carefully, though, and it becomes clear that Scripture was used only to support conclusions reached by what, to them, seemed “reasonable.” The Socinians recommended as a principle of exegesis that we reject “every interpretation which is repugnant to right reason, or involves a contradiction.” That principle meant that one God cannot be three persons. On the basis of this “right reason”—not Scripture—they rejected belief in the Trinity. They used Scripture to make their case, but it was “right reason”—not Scripture—that got them there. In just the same way, evangelicals can conceal their rationalism, their experientialism, or their pragmatism with biblical language and so fool themselves that they are being truly biblical. What matters most to them can be what they feel, what they have been brought up with, or what seems reasonable. Scripture can be used only to confirm what they have come to believe on other grounds. How Traditions Help Tribes By definition, the Pharisees were not like other men. Their very name seems to be derived from a word meaning “the separated ones.” They were a “party” or “sect” (Acts 15:5; 26:5), intensely proud of the legacy and traditions that set them apart. They had Abraham as their father (John 8:33, 39, 53) and barricades of tradition to preserve and proclaim their distinct identity. It was their traditions that quarantined them and made them the faction they were. Tribalism is the inevitable consequence of allowing tradition— or anything else—parity with the word of God. As soon as we adopt any rallying banner other than the gospel, we sacrifice evangelical unity. Such elevation of tradition rebuilds the old dividing walls of tribal hostility broken down at the cross (Eph. 2:14–16), promoting blocs of uniformity instead of unity. Each silo subtly develops its own particular slang, peculiar dialect, shibboleths, and buzzwords. Its members learn the “in” patter and dress code, talking and walking in specific ways that ape the inner ring of their party leaders. They become, as C. S. Lewis put it, like the country bumpkin, full of “the cocksure conviction of an ignorant adolescent that his own village (which is the only one he knows) is the hub of the universe and does everything in the Only Right Way.”5 Out of sheer ignorance as much as anything else, the inhabitants of other villages seem increasingly alien and wrong. Out of sight and understanding, they grow horns. The process then becomes self-reinforcing as each tribe fails to see how it is conflating the gospel with its own tradition. With their appeal limited to people of the same culture, they find they cannot connect with the other side of town, let alone another continent. And on it goes: the more comfortable the uniformity, the more familiar the culture, the more Scripture is forced to take a back seat. Customs, personalities and peccadilloes can rule. No longer supreme and so no longer challenging, the Bible can be commandeered as proof of the rightness of the culture. The more that happens, the more human leaders will shape and control their fiefdoms while others scramble to achieve their acceptance. Tribalization, therefore, has an oddly distorting effect, leading subscribers to swallow camels while straining at cultural gnats. The village mentality makes mediocre leaders appear Herculean in ability and significance. Small ponds acquire big fish. Thus, swollen in significance, it is hard for them not to exert an undue influence and for their every view to assume an overexalted authority. They can even eclipse Christ in the eyes of acolytes who fear them as much as—or even more than—God. But therein is a recipe for insecurity, for when defined by leadership or culture more than Christ, tribes need their boundary markers more than ever. They become entrenched and necessarily opposed to other groups who must be wrong. Hope and Glory At the very end of John Bunyan’s *Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian looks back from the Celestial City and sees a man called Ignorance approaching the gate. Ignorance began to knock, supposing that entrance should have been quickly administered to him; but he was asked by the men that looked over the top of the gate, ‘Whence came you, and what would you have?’ He answered, ‘I have eat and drank in the presence of the King, and he has taught in our streets.’ Then they asked him for his certificate, that they might go in and show it to the King; so he fumbled in his bosom for one, and found none. Since there was nothing to be found “in his bosom,” two angels are commanded to “go out and take Ignorance, and bind him hand and foot, and have him away.” With this, Christian learns the parting lesson of the book: “I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven.” It is a sobering warning for all who think of themselves as Bible-loving Christians. For Scripture is like the gate of heaven to us, opening divine glories. Yet we can knock at the text every day and remain hollow hearted, with nothing in our bosom. Evangelicals can conceal their rationalism, their experientialism, or their pragmatism with biblical language and so fool themselves that they are being truly biblical. This article is adapted from Evangelical Pharisees: The Gospel as Cure for the Church’s Hypocrisy by Michael Reeves.

For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. – 2 Timothy 1:7 Paul’s words to Timothy are equally God’s words to you. He has given each one of us a spirit of “power, love and self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7). Therefore, we never should respond to circumstances or people in fear because we have the power of God living within us — the very power that dispels all fear and anxiety. 1. Ask for God’s help. When fear strikes, immediately ask for God’s help. Tap into his power and allow him to encourage your heart. Remember when Peter tried to walk on the water to Jesus, but his fear overcame him (Matthew 14:30)? When he found himself in trouble and fear — sinking in the sea — he had the right response. He asked for God’s help. “Lord, save me!” This is your best first response any time you feel fearful. 2. Ask the Lord to fill your heart with a sense of his abiding love. Love is a powerful antidote to fear. God’s love has the ability to eliminate it. I remember the first time I preached in my home church. I was young and had a “fear attack.” I felt the people would expect more from me than a group of strangers might expect. So what helped me? I read the words of the Lord to Joshua in Joshua 1:5 – 9, and then I turned my focus to the people of my home church. I felt overwhelmed by how much I loved them and how they had loved me through the years. By the time I stood in the pulpit, the fear had completely drained out of me. John tells us, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). Ask your heavenly Father to impart to you more of Christ’s love and to take away any torment you feel. As you do, fear will lose its grip on you. 3. Ask God to give you a sound mind, filled with and operating according to God’s Word. The basis for a sound mind is the Word of God. The more you know of God’s promises, and the more you live according to his commandments, the greater your strength to withstand fear. Use Scripture to speak directly to the source of your fear, just as Jesus quoted Scripture to Satan during his time of temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:1 – 13). When you feel gripped by fear, turn your gaze to Jesus, redirect your heart to his love, speak to your fear from the Word of God, and then respond boldly to the situation. The Lord’s desire is for you to “be strong and very courageous” today (Joshua 1:7). By Charles F. Stanley. Article from the NIV Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible.

What We Don’t Know There are numerous important questions to ponder regarding the Bible’s teachings about the end times. Before considering three of these questions, it’s worth sharing why I feel just fine about not knowing every single thing regarding how God will work at the end of time. The reason I feel good about my very incomplete knowledge is that I know God doesn’t mean for me to know everything about how he works. I know that because of the seven thunders of Revelation 10. Many people have heard of the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls. Not so many have heard of the seven thunders. There’s a reason for that. Here’s Revelation 10:3–4: When [the mighty angel] shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven say, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down.” It’s significant that John heard the thunders and knew what they said. He was about to write it down, but the voice from heaven stopped him. That demonstrates that God does not reveal everything to us. He doesn’t mean for us to know all his plans. In fact, we know only the outskirts of his ways (Job 26:14). Why? Among other reasons, because our incomplete knowledge keeps us humble, and that’s a very good thing. We can seek to understand as much as possible about how God will work in the end times, but let’s stay humble and freely admit our ignorance. In that spirit, here are three questions (and my attempted answers) regarding the end times. Q: Will there be a rapture? A: Yes, it seems there will be, according to 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17: the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. The Greek word translated caught up refers to being grabbed or seized by force. The Latin Vulgate translation of that term gave us our word “rapture.” There will indeed be a rapture—but perhaps of a different kind than what some Christians have envisioned. It’s worth examining Paul’s words more closely. He says those who are dead at the time of Christ’s return will be resurrected, then the living will be caught up with them to meet the Lord in the air (the verb will be caught up is passive, and God is clearly the one doing the catching up). How does that description fit with what Paul says a little earlier in his letter, that God will bring with [Jesus] those who have fallen asleep (1 Thess. 4:14)? It seems that the dead and the living will be caught up to meet Jesus (1 Thess. 4:16–17) and will then immediately return to earth with Jesus (1 Thess. 4:14). In other words, the place where we will always be with Jesus (1 Thess. 4:17) is not up in the air, as disembodied spirits, but in a new heavens and new earth, in renewed, resurrected bodies. This understanding fits well with the important word in 1 Thess. 4:17 that is translated to meet (will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air). It’s a term used to refer to what happened when citizens went out of a city to meet a visiting dignitary and then escort him back into the city (it’s used in this sense in Acts 28:14–16). The rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 is quite different from the common dispensationalist teaching that the church will be raptured up into heaven at the beginning of the tribulation. The rapture of which Paul writes will occur at the last day will be a public catching up of believers and will be immediately followed by a descent to a new earth, where all God’s people will live forever with him. Q: When do the seven seals of Revelation 6–8 occur? A: There are a number of views regarding the nature and timing of the seals. I’ll mention two here. The first is the view of many dispensationalists. On this understanding, the opening of the seven seals in Revelation 6:1–8:1 refers to a future time before the final judgment known as the great tribulation. The church is raptured off the earth into heaven before that great tribulation so that it doesn’t undergo the tribulation. There’s a famous nighttime airplane scene in the Left Behind movie. Everyone is sleeping, when suddenly Buck Williams (played by Kirk Cameron) is awakened by an elderly woman complaining that her husband has disappeared. When Buck looks at the man’s seat, he sees his shirt, coat, trousers, and glasses lying on it; the man has been raptured out of his clothes. As Buck wanders through the plane, he sees other sets of empty clothes. All the Christians have been raptured; they’re now in heaven and only non-Christians are left behind. The tribulation is about to begin. The rapture of the church fits the understanding of many dispensationalists that God has two separate agendas in history: one for the Jewish people and another for the church. The church is raptured to heaven before the great tribulation, while the Jewish people are still on earth during the great tribulation. I think on balance a more persuasive understanding of Revelation 6:1–8:1 is the one held by amillennial interpreters. On this understanding, the first four seals in Revelation 6:1–8:1 refer to tribulations throughout this present age, from the first coming of Jesus until his return. These tribulations will climax at the very end of time, but the first four seals occur throughout this entire age, whenever we experience war, famine, civil unrest, and violent death. The fifth seal moves from earth up into heaven, where we see martyred Christians enjoying heavenly rest. The time of this seal is still this present age, looking forward to the end, as the martyrs call out to God, How long . . . The sixth seal brings us back to earth and leaps forward to the very end of time, to the final judgment. This is indicated by the fact that it picks up on Old Testament language for the Day of the Lord, and God’s enemies say to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand? (Rev. 6:16–17). The silence that engulfs the opening of the final, seventh seal in Revelation 8:1 indicates the imminent arrival of the final judgment. Significantly, in the later trumpets and bowls of Revelation, we see the same chronological sweep from this present age up to the end of time; this pattern of recapitulation is very important for understanding the book of Revelation. Q: Who are the 144,000 who are sealed in Revelation 7? A: A view commonly held by dispensationalists is that the events of Revelation 7 follow chronologically after the events of the great tribulation in chapter 6. So, the 144,000 mentioned in Revelation 7 are Jewish people who come to faith in Jesus during the final tribulation. This Jewish remnant is protected from martyrdom by God’s seal during the tribulation period. God has protected the church by rapturing them up to heaven; he protects Jewish converts from physical harm by sealing them. On this view, we see the Jewish people on earth in Revelation 7:1–8, while, in Revelation 7:9–17, we’re shown the church in heaven (verse 14 says they are the ones coming out of the great tribulation, and some dispensationalists believe that phrase refers to the rapture). I find the amillennial understanding of the identity of the 144,000 more compelling. According to Revelation 7:4–8, the 144,000 are Jews. Even more specifically, according to Revelation 14:1–5, the 144,000 are Jewish males, and more specifically yet, Jewish male virgins. In order to understand this description, it’s helpful to know that Israel’s army was composed of men (Deuteronomy 20), that a frequent reason for taking a census in the Old Testament period was to count an army (Numbers 1:2–3), and that when Israel’s army marched out to war, the soldiers were to refrain from sex (1 Samuel 21:4–5). The pay-off of knowing this background is that we can see that Revelation 7 and 14 are depicting a holy army prepared to fight a holy war. Who exactly is this holy army, and who or what do they conquer? One key that helps us enormously here is Revelation 5:5–6, where John hears about an Old Testament expectation (the Messiah, called the Lion of the tribe of Judah), and then turns to see a New Testament fulfillment (Jesus, represented as a lamb who was slain). The fulfillment is surprising and unexpected: conquering comes through suffering and death. What we see with the 144,000 in Revelation 7 is closely parallel. In 7:4, John hears something: “the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel . . . ” In other words, he hears an Old Testament expectation; God’s people described as a holy army fighting God’s holy war, associated with the tribe of Judah (remember the Lion of the tribe of Judah in chapter 5). In 7:9, John looks (“After this I looked. . . ”), and he sees a surprising New Testament fulfillment of this Old Testament expectation: namely, not just ethnic Jews, but rather “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb . . . ” The fulfillment is a multinational people. In other words, the 144,000 in verses 4–8 is the same group as the great multitude in verses 9–17. The same group is pictured in two different ways, just as the Lion and the Lamb in chapter 5 are not two separate beings—both are Jesus, pictured in two different ways (Old Testament expectation and New Testament fulfillment). The Lion of the tribe of Judah conquered by dying on a cross. And God’s holy army in 7:4–8 conquers by being persecuted and killed while holding fast to Christ. Verse 14 says they have come out of the great tribulation. It’s by being killed that they’ve come to heaven (like the martyrs in the fifth seal). This indicates that the victory of God’s people is their faithful suffering unto death, just as Jesus’s victory at the cross was his faithful suffering unto death. Like many of the numbers in Revelation, 144,000 is symbolic, representing fullness and completeness. This completeness is also emphasized in verse 9, where John refers to a “great multitude that no one could number, from every nation . . . ” In 7:4–8 we see God’s people in this age, fighting God’s holy war by suffering for Jesus. In 7:9–17 we see God’s people in the new creation, finally and fully at rest, beyond the spiritual battles of this world. God doesn’t mean for me to know everything about how he works. Stephen Witmer is the author of Revelation: A 12-Week Study.

As the most influential book in human history, the Bible consists of 66 books written in 3 languages by 40 authors over 2,000 years. Yet, each book of the Bible fits together to tell one ongoing epic story. Understanding the big picture context, allows us to become a part of its world, learning to participate in God’s story of making all things new. Creation: In the Beginning (Genesis 1-2) The story of the Bible starts with God, the author of all reality. From the dark chaos of the uncreated world, he made order and beauty. As his ultimate accomplishment, God created both man and woman in his own image and commissioned them to rule the new world, placing them in a garden where they were in perfect relationship with him and each other. The Fall: Right Redefined (Genesis 3-11) But, humanity faced a choice. They could partner with God and find freedom by trusting in his knowledge of good and evil. Or, they could seize power and define good and evil on their own. God warned that the latter choice would kill them. But the enemy, disguised as a dark mysterious creature, promised them the power and freedom to rule the world on their own terms. Unfortunately, humanity chose to define good and evil on their own and were exiled from the garden. Israel: God’s Chosen People (Genesis 12 – Malachi) Chaos and darkness enter and the story takes an important turn. God makes a promise with a man and a woman, Abraham and Sarah, that a new people would come with a chance to make the right choice. But Abraham’s family, the people of Israel, gave in to that same temptation to define good and evil on their own terms. The pattern and consequences of sin are found all throughout creation: violence, deception, death and a relational sever between God and humans. But not all hope is lost. God promised that the Israelites would be his people and made a covenant with them. As long as they were faithful to that covenant, God would bless them. But generation after generation, the people continually turned from God. The prophets warned that this unfaithfulness would lead to extreme punishment. And, it did. Even then, hope was not lost. God promised to send a new leader to cover for their failures and to transform the people’s hearts and minds so that they could make the right choice. The Old Testament ends with these promises unfulfilled. Jesus: The True Hope (Matthew – John) The Biblical story continues into the New Testament. A man from the line of Israel’s kings, Jesus of Nazareth, is introduced. He confronts the dark mysterious evil that humanity had given into and resists its power. Then he announces that God arrived to rule the world through him. In this kingdom that Jesus announced, he explains how God defines good and evil. Real power is serving others. People who love the poor and love their enemies are the kinds of people who will rule the world. Jesus goes on to claim that he is God in human form, come to rescue us from the consequences of our sin. Through his death and resurrection, his sacrificial love broke the power of evil. Humans now have the choice to leave behind the chains of sin and death by following the way of Jesus. In the story, those who choose this way become part of God’s family. They return to the freedom of trusting God’s knowledge of good and evil as they partner with him to care for creation. The Church: Spreading the Good News (Acts – Jude) The Jesus Movement quickly spread throughout the world, forming new communities of people who followed the way of Jesus. But living out this new way in a world still bound by sin and death proved difficult. The movement’s leaders, called apostles, wrote letters to comfort and challenge these communities to stay faithful even in the midst of difficult times. They are called to hope for the day when Jesus will come and change everything. Future Hope: All Things Made New (Revelation) The Bible ends by pointing to the future day when Jesus returns to set all things right. Evil will be eradicated, heaven and earth united, and humanity will once again rule the world in the love and power of God. This is the story of the Bible. Drawn from The NIV Telos Bible.

Myth #1: Jesus commands his followers to fast. Jesus assumes his followers will fast, and even promises we will fast, but neither he nor his apostles strictly command fasting. While many biblical texts mention fasting, the two most important come just chapters apart in Matthew’s Gospel. The first is Matthew 6:16–18, which comes in sequence with Jesus’s teachings on generosity and prayer. Fasting is as basic to Christianity as asking from God and giving to others. The key here is that Jesus doesn’t say “if you fast,” but “when you fast.” Second is Matthew 9:14–15, which might be the most important scripture on Christian fasting: Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” (Matt. 9:14–15) When Jesus, our bridegroom, was here on earth among his disciples, it was a time for the discipline of feasting. But now that he is “taken away” from his disciples, “they will fast.” Not “they might, if they ever get around to it,” but “they will.” Which is confirmed by the pattern of fasting that emerged right away in the early church (Acts 9:9; 13:2; 14:23). So, he doesn’t say that we must. But he says we will. In that sense, fasting is not an obligation, but it is an opportunity—and one too powerful to miss. Myth #2: Fasting must be kept private. Some Christians might assume that fasting must always be kept secret because of Jesus’s memorable warning in the Sermon on the Mount: “when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret” (Matt. 6:17–18). Here, Jesus warns us about fasting to “be seen by others.” After all, this falls with his instruction on not “practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them” (Matt. 6:1). And surely, when we do fast, our fast should be Godward, not for the eyes and ears of others. That’s the caution. However, Jesus is not here attempting to speak about any and every kind of fast. The Scriptures include many forms of fasting: personal and communal, public and private, congregational and national, regular and occasional, partial and absolute. Past generations knew of communal fasts far better than we do—which may provide a fresh opportunity today for churches and ministry teams. Also, when we do fast privately and individually, we would do well to think about how our missing a meal (or meals) might affect others we normally eat with. If you have regular lunches with colleagues or dinners with family or roommates, assess how your abstaining will affect them and let them know ahead of time instead of just being a no-show or springing it on them in the moment that you will not be eating. Love for others when we fast is not the same as fasting “to be seen.” Myth #3: Fasting relates only to food. Fasting typically means going without food (temporarily) for a spiritual purpose. That’s the normal meaning. However, fasting is not limited to abstaining from food. It can be expanded to include temporarily abstaining from other goods, albeit with spiritual goals. Fasting from food may not be for everyone. Some health conditions keep even the most devout from the traditional course. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “Fasting should really be made to include abstinence from anything which is legitimate in and of itself for the sake of some special spiritual purpose.” If the better part of wisdom for you, in your health condition, is not to go without food, consider fasting from television, smartphone, social media, or some other regular practice that would bend your heart toward greater enjoyment of Jesus. Paul even talks about married couples fasting from sex “for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer” (1 Cor. 7:5). Myth #4: Fasting secures God’s blessing. Isaiah 58:3–5 sounds an important warning about what fasting is not and how it can go wrong. In Isaiah’s day, the nation was in steep decline, and the people’s hearts were divided. For many, their devotion to God had become a shell, an outward show. They fasted to manipulate God rather than to express a humble heart. And God did not honor it. Isaiah says that they ask God, “Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?” (Isa. 58:3). God answers, Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure. . . . Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? (Isa. 58:3–5) In other words, your fasting is just a show in a day to serve your cravings, not the sincere expression of ongoing humble hearts. Fasting’s external actions alone, apart from humility, are in vain. God will not be moved by such efforts. He sees the heart—as he did in Jesus’s day when Pharisees sought to turn fasting into self-exaltation (Matt. 6:16–18). The same still happens today. Myth #5: Fasting doesn’t really do anything. Finally, on the opposite side of presuming God’s blessing, some might assume that fasting doesn’t really “do anything.” If fasting can’t twist God’s arm to secure his favor, then is it just another empty wish? True, fasting does not force God’s hand. But it does seek his face, and it is a God-appointed means of his grace that can be a real channel of blessing and benefit to the humble soul. What makes fasting such a gift is its ability, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to focus our feelings and their expression toward God in prayer. Fasting walks arm in arm with prayer. That burn in your gut, that rolling fire in your belly demanding that you feed it more food, signals game time for fasting as a means of grace. Only as we voluntarily embrace the pain of an empty stomach do we see how much we’ve allowed our belly to be our god (Phil. 3:19). And in that gnawing ache of growing hunger is the engine of fasting, generating the reminder to bend our longings for food Godward and inspire intensified longings for Jesus. Fasting, says John Piper, is the physical exclamation point at the end of the sentence, “This much, O God, I want you!” "What makes fasting such a gift is its ability, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to focus our feelings and their expression toward God in prayer." David Mathis is the author of Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines.

An Urgent Need What is the most urgent need of the church today? Better leadership? Better training? Healthier giving? Orthodoxy? Moral integrity? Each of these are undoubtedly needs, but underneath them all lies something even more vital: gospel integrity. In Luke 12, when thousands had gathered together to hear Jesus, he began to say to his disciples first, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Luke 12:1). That might have been unsurprising had he been warning the people as a whole, but he said it to his disciples first, to those who had already left all and followed him. Clearly, hypocrisy—a lack of integrity in both head and heart—was a danger even for them. Matthew records Jesus saying to his disciples, “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matt. 16:6). Seeing this, J. C. Ryle commented that Christ “foresaw that the two great plagues of His Church upon earth would always be the doctrine of the Pharisees and the doctrine of the Sadducees.” So it is not that Pharisaism was the only threat to the church that Jesus foresaw, but it was perhaps the primary one. Pharisaism, after all, is the sort of heartless formal religion that marks the first subtle step in the spiritual decline of a church before it ever slides into outright apostasy. It is the perpetual internal menace we can overlook as we dissect and bemoan the failure of others. The Hidden Cancer It is usually easy to spot brazen sins (such as murder, adultery, and theft), but hypocrisy by its very nature is a pretense, making it hard to detect. Hypocrisy does not want to be identified for what it is. It poses and deceives to avoid discovery. “The hypocrite is very often an exceedingly neat imitation of the Christian,” said Charles Spurgeon. “To the common observer he is so good a counterfeit that he entirely escapes suspicion.” Like leaven or yeast in dough, hypocrisy is transformative in its power but almost completely imperceptible. Like unmarked, whitewashed tombs, hypocrites may be full of dead people’s bones, but outwardly they appear beautiful (Matt. 23:27). It is all too easy, therefore, to laugh at the idea that Pharisaism might be an ongoing problem for the church. Nobody today is a self-avowed, card-carrying Pharisee, after all. We keep the word as verbal mud only to be thrown at others. Even then, we hardly mean it, for “the Pharisee” strikes us as a cartoon villain. To call someone a Pharisee sounds rather harsh and cruel. But the leaven of the Pharisees is a clear and present danger for disciples, according to Jesus. Cloaked by impressive performance and words that profess the gospel of grace, it can lurk in the hearts of the most ardent “gospel-centered” folk as much as those who can clearly articulate justification by faith alone or maintain a confession of faith. Yet while hypocrisy may be a hidden and quiet problem, it is not a slight one. An outright hypocrite is “a child of hell” (Matt. 23:15), and Dante showed great perception when he placed hypocrites in the eighth circle of hell in his Inferno. For hypocrisy, as we shall see, is a denial of the gospel, a sin that for all its subtlety is more essentially hellish than the sins of the flesh the hypocrite so swiftly condemns. As C. S. Lewis wrote, The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither. Poor, Misunderstood Pharisees? But is all this being unfair to the historical Pharisees of Jesus’s day? Throughout most of the history of the church, the Pharisees have been taken as the very definition of hypocrisy, as legalists who sought to earn their righteousness rather than receive it from God. Over the last half century, however, a number of scholars have sought to amend this idea, and so restore the reputation of the Pharisees. Old Testament religion, they have rightly pointed out, was not a religion of works righteousness, but a religion of grace. As such, they have argued, it is unfair to paint the Pharisees as believers in a religion of works. However, while it is quite true that all the Old Testament Scriptures taught the same message of God’s grace as the New Testament, it does not follow that all the Israelites (or in this case, the Pharisees) believed in or lived in that grace. Indeed, a constant refrain of the prophets was that the people were not listening to what God was saying. They may have been circumcising their flesh, but they were not circumcising their hearts (Deut. 10:16, 30:6; Jer. 4:4, 9:26). In practice, they were trusting in themselves and not the Lord. While, then, we need not say that every single Pharisee in Jesus’s day was an outright hypocrite, we need not be surprised at his insistence that there was an anti-gospel hypocrisy that was typical of the Pharisees. They did justify and exalt themselves among men (Luke 16:15), trusting in themselves that they were righteous (Luke 18:9). Paul writes that as a Pharisee himself, he had had “confidence in the flesh . . . having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law” instead of “the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil. 3:4, 9). In that confession, we see a man who clearly accepted Jesus’s condemnation of the Pharisees as children of the devil (John 8:44). For what Saul the Pharisee needed was a new heart and a new righteousness. A Problem with the Gospel It is easy to brush off Pharisaism as the foible of the zealous, a merely temperamental weakness. A pharisaical or hypocritical spirit leaves such an obvious moral trail—from pride to people pleasing, tribalism, empire building, and lovelessness—that it is easy to diagnose it simply as a moral problem. Yet what the Pharisees show us is that Pharisaism is not just the crankiness that comes with a hardening of the spiritual arteries. First and foremost, it is a theological issue. The Pharisees were as they were and acted as they did because they denied the gospel. Their mercilessness, love of applause, and trust in themselves all flowed from a refusal to listen to Scripture, a refusal to receive a righteousness not their own, and a refusal to see their need for a new heart. Their character was a manifestation of their theology. The theological roots of sickness in the church (being roots) often remain unseen. So it was in the years running up to the Reformation. In the late Middle Ages, many saw a need for church reform. Monastic orders set about reforming themselves, and even the Papacy went through some attempts at reform. Everyone recognized that there were rotten apples and dead branches that needed pruning. Yet for most, the solution was quite simple and quite superficial: give the church a good moral scrub. Clear up the abuses, wash away the bad behavior, and all would be well. What made Martin Luther so different was his appreciation of the depth of the problem. A truly transformative reformation and renewal of the church, he saw, required dealing with the theological causes of the trouble. Likewise today: the moral deficiencies and spiritual dryness that Christians bemoan have roots. Our need is not just for moral integrity but gospel integrity. It might sound like I am about to make a call for orthodoxy. I am not. Not quite. Orthodox belief is vitally important, but it is not exactly the same as gospel integrity. For it is quite possible to have dead orthodoxy, or an orthodoxy that is only skin-deep: to affirm the truth on paper but deny it in the heart and in practice. Integrity, on the other hand, requires that the truths we formally confess are embraced such that they affect and change us. Integrity is found where the head and the heart are aligned. Sinclair Ferguson writes of hypocrisy’s twin, legalism: Legalism is . . . not merely a matter of the intellect. Clearly, it is that for how we think determines how we live. But we are not abstract intellects. And legalism is also related to the heart and the affections—how we feel about God. . . . Within this matrix legalism at root is the manifestation of a restricted heart disposition toward God, viewing him through a lens of negative law that obscures the broader context of the Father’s character of holy love. Just so, the leaven of the Pharisees was a matter of both the intellect and the affections. They were intensely proud of their orthodoxy, but despite all their study, they failed to see either the depth of their need or the liberality of God’s kindness. They professed a God of grace but were blind to the true meaning of grace. Seeing God as only conditionally loving, they did not perceive the sheer loveliness and benevolence of God. Thus, they did not heartily love him but sought to serve him with a joyless duty. Copying the god they thought they saw in Scripture, they then treated others with merciless harshness and self-concerned lovelessness. It is quite possible to maintain a facade of orthodoxy but without integrity. We can profess the language of grace but deny its nature by a prickly, severe manner or disdain for the weak. And the fact that the gospel of grace can be denied in such subtle ways only emphasizes what an elusive problem we are dealing with. John Calvin wrote that some believe there is nothing amiss “unless there is open and admitted reproach or contempt of [God’s] Word.” But to think like that, he argued, betrays not only a hollow and bogus faith but a blindness to the nature of our sin. “The human heart,” he noted, “has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood lurks, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.” Being a matter of both head and heart, the leaven of the Pharisees cannot be cured with a mere call to orthodoxy. Christian integrity involves more than knowledge: what Calvin called a deeply rooted “persuasion of God’s fatherly love.” Yet Pharisaism was—and remains—a primarily theological issue. More than the head is involved, but not less. Treating the Sickness In the Gospels, Jesus spelled out three basic theological mistakes the Pharisees made: Their approach to Scripture Their understanding of salvation Their disregard of regeneration That is, they were mistaken in their understanding of the three essential r’s of the gospel: revelation, redemption, and regeneration. These are: The Father’s revelation in the Bible The Son’s redemption in the gospel The Spirit’s regeneration of our hearts As Luther saw, true reformation of the church takes more than a moral bath. It requires the gospel. Without the gospel, our attempts at reform will be superficial. As the Puritan Richard Baxter put it, Alas! can we think that the reformation is wrought, when we cast out a few ceremonies, and changed some vestures, and gestures, and forms? Oh no, sirs! it is the converting and saving of souls that is our business. That is the chiefest part of reformation. Without that reformation of hearts and lives through the gospel itself, we may find, as Jonathan Edwards found in Northampton, that the people are a “sober, and orderly, and good sort of people” and yet that they remain “dry bones.” In the tradition of Luther, the Puritans, and Edwards, this is a call for reformation. Orthodox belief is vitally important, but it is not exactly the same as gospel integrity. This article is adapted from Evangelical Pharisees: The Gospel as Cure for the Church’s Hypocrisy by Michael Reeves.

Persevere in Faith Closely connected to end-time gatherings for the sake of encouraging each other not to grow cold in love, but to persevere in faith, is the summons to end-time praying. For example, Peter writes: The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Pet. 4:7–8, my translation) The word therefore shows the connection between the second coming and prayer. “The end of all things is at hand; therefore pray!” Be self-controlled and sober (in spirit and body) for the sake of not growing lax in the urgency of prayer. Why would Peter think prayer is so urgent as the end draws near? This is what he had heard Jesus say: Watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. . . . But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man. (Luke 21:34, 36) The last days will present Christians with such challenges to our faith that we will need extraordinary strength to escape their destructive effects. “The one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matt. 24:13). Both end-time church attendance and end-time prayer are designed by God to supply his people with the power to persevere through the extraordinary threats of the last days. “Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty” (2 Tim. 3:1). Peter and Jesus unite to tell us: stay sober for the sake of prayer in order to make it through these difficulties. “Your Kingdom Come” One of the prayers the Lord Jesus taught us to pray is, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). There are layers of meaning in this request, just as there are layers of meaning in the coming of the kingdom. The kingdom comes progressively as the saving reign of Christ is established in the hearts of more and more people (Rom. 5:21; 14:17; 1 Cor. 4:20; Col. 1:13). But the ultimate fulfillment of “Your kingdom come” is the establishment of Christ’s kingdom in the new heavens and the new earth (1 Cor. 15:24; 2 Tim. 4:1). I infer, therefore, that our prayers for the kingdom to come are prayers that God would not only establish his reign in our own hearts ever more fully, but would also advance his saving work in evangelism and world missions, and that he would bring history to a climax in the coming of Jesus. Hence our end-time prayers include the prayer for “the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matt. 9:38), and that he wrap up history absolutely and come: “Our Lord, come!” (μαράνα θά, maranatha, 1 Cor. 16:22). “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20). Hasten the Day: Finish the Mission Whether we are praying for the progressive advance of world evangelization or for the coming of the Lord Jesus on the clouds, we are in fact praying for God to act so as to bring history to its consummation. Jesus says in Matthew 24:14, “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” I argue that this verse means that the Great Commission will be obeyed to the end of this present age, and when it is completed, Christ will return. Therefore, Matthew 24:14 teaches us that every advance of the gospel is both encouragement that the Lord is nearing, and incentive to “hasten” his coming (2 Pet. 3:12) by giving great energy to world evangelization. I find these words of George Ladd compelling as he presses home the implications of Matthew 24:14 for how we should live until Jesus comes: Here is the motive of our mission: the final victory awaits the completion of our task. “And then the end will come.” There is no other verse in the Word of God which says, “And then the end will come.” When is Christ coming again? When the Church has finished its task. When will This Age end? When the world has been evangelized. “What will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?” (Matt. 24:3). “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations; and then, AND THEN, the end will come.” When? Then; when the Church has fulfilled its divinely appointed mission. But what about the ambiguity of the completion of the task of world missions? Yes, we know that God’s will is that Christ has “ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). But what are these various groupings? Ladd responds that this ambiguity is not a hindrance to the urgency of the task: Someone else will say, “How are we to know when the mission is completed? How close are we to the accomplishment of the task? . . . How close are we to the end? Does this not lead to datesetting?” I answer, I do not know. God alone knows the definition of terms. I cannot precisely define who “all the nations” are. Only God knows exactly the meaning of “evangelize.” He alone, who has told us that this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations, will know when that objective has been accomplished. But I do not need to know. I know only one thing: Christ has not yet returned; therefore the task is not yet done. When it is done, Christ will come. Our responsibility is not to insist on defining the terms of our task; our responsibility is to complete it. So long as Christ does not return, our work is undone. Let us get busy and complete our mission. If we love the Lord’s appearing, we will love the advance of his mission toward completion. We will take heart from his promise that the gospel will be preached to all nations, that is, all the people groups (“tribe, language, people, nation”), and we will embrace his command to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). We will seek to share the urgency and clarity of Ladd’s exhortation: “So long as Christ does not return, our work is undone. Let us get busy and complete our mission.” If we love the Lord’s appearing, we will love the advance of his mission toward completion. This article is adapted fromCome, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Second Coming of Christby John Piper.

Holiness is woven through the Bible’s storyline. And the Bible fundamentally equates holiness with God. What Is Holiness? “Holiness” is commonly defined as being separate or set apart. God is holy in that he is set apart from everything that is not God, and God’s people must be holy by being set apart from sin. Holiness, according to this definition, is separateness that entails moral purity. Beyond that, how do we describe the essence of holiness and distinguish different senses in which people and things can be holy? And while only God is holy, there is also a sense in which others can be holy. God Is Holy “Holy” in its most focused usage is an adjective uniquely associated with God, such as in the Bible verse, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty” (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8). Surely this loses something if rendered “Separate, separate, separate” or “Moral, moral, moral.” Saying “God is holy” is like saying “God is uniquely God” or “God alone is God.” In this context, the word “holy” becomes almost an adjective for God. That God swears by his holiness (Psalm 89:35; Amos 4:2) is like saying that he swears “by himself.” God is supremely and exclusively God. He has no rivals. As uniquely excellent, he is his own category – “There is no one holy like the Lord; there is no one besides you” (1 Samuel 2:2). The Bible calls God “the Holy One” over 50 times and calls the Spirit of God “the Holy Spirit” over 90 times. People and Objects Are Holy in Relation to God While God alone is innately holy,and His name is holy, the use of the word “holy” stretches out in widening circles to apply to people and things. If human beings or things are holy, they are holy only derivatively – not because they are divine or moral but because God restricts them for his special use. Everything belongs to God, but in a narrower sense some things and people belong exclusively to God in a special way. For example, heaven – God’s dwelling place – is holy (Deuteronomy 26:15). God also refers to angels as his “holy ones” (Psalm 89:5 – 7) and “the holy angels” (Mark 8:38). Israel Was Responsible to Be Holy God commanded Israel, “You are to be my holy people” and “You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own” (Exodus 22:31; Leviticus 20:26). Israel was responsible to regard God as holy by obeying his commands regarding rituals and morality. They were to keep God’s Sabbaths holy and the priests were to “distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean” (Leviticus 10:10). But because Israel continually profaned their holy God who judges unholy people, God graciously met the need of sinful humans with a holy Savior. Holiness Embodied and Accomplished: Jesus Who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God? Only one can stand on his own merits: Jesus. He is holy and true (Revelation 3:7; 6:10). Jesus is the one whom the Father set apart as his very own (John 10:36). The angel Gabriel announced to Mary, “The holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35) and an unclean demon recognized Jesus as “the Holy One of God” (Luke 4:34). Jesus made unclean people clean by touching them, and he never became unclean because he is inherently holy. Peter called Jesus “the Holy One of God” (John 6:69), “the Holy and Righteous One” (Acts 3:14), and God’s “holy servant” (Acts 4:27,30). Jesus Makes People Holy Jesus is both the Holy One and the one who makes people holy (Hebrews 2:11). He is our righteousness, holiness and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30). His perfect life and sacrificial death satisfied God’s holy wrath against sinners: We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (Hebrews 10:10). To serve in God’s presence, Old Testament priests were made holy by a consecration ritual involving atonement, purification, and eating a special meal. These same elements also underlie the Passover ritual, by which God consecrated Israel as a holy nation. This pattern continues in the New Testament. Jesus brings about a new exodus that consecrates believers as holy. God is uniquely present with the church, composed of both Jewish and Gentile Christians, because it is a holy temple in the Lord (1 Corinthians 3:17). God has chosen Christians to be a holy priesthood, a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and God’s special possession (1 Peter 2:5,9). Christians Are Holy When the Bible refers to Christians as “holy” or “sanctified,” it usually refers to definitive or positional sanctification,not progressive sanctification. In this sense, every Christian is a saint; every Christian is holy; every Christian is sanctified. For example, Paul addresses the church at Corinth as “those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people” (1 Corinthians 1:2). They were already “sanctified” even though they were failing to be holy in several areas. Christians are Responsible to Be Holy God commands Christians, “Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy’ ” (1 Peter 1:15 – 16, quoting Leviticus 11:44 – 45). Christians must worship God by offering their “bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God” (Romans 12:1). Since Christians belong exclusively to God, they must reflect God’s moral character with holy and godly lives. “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable . . . For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life” (1 Thessalonians 4:3 – 4,7). Holiness Consummated: Glory Paul prayed, “May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones” (1 Thessalonians 3:13). A day is coming when Christians will fully become what they already are positionally. The Old Testament anticipates the time when all of God’s people “will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord” (Isaiah 62:12). Before God created the world, he chose his people in Christ to be holy and blameless in his sight. (Ephesians 1:4). With pure hearts, God’s people will worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness (1 Chronicles 16:29) like never before, joining the heavenly hosts who never stop saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,” who was, and is, and is to come. (Revelation 4:8). Drawn from an article by Andrew David Naselli from the NIV Biblical Theology Bible.

An Expectation of the Lord Coming “Soon” If an infallible spokesman for Jesus Christ does not know when the Lord is going to return (as Jesus said would be the case, Matt. 24:36), what would that spokesman mean by saying it will be “soon” (Rev. 22:20), or “at hand” (1 Pet. 4:7), or “at the door” (James 5:9)? I think it misses the point of Matthew 24:36 to say Jesus didn’t know “the day and hour” but that he did know the month or the year. The point of Jesus’s ignorance of the time is to remove the possibility of calculating how long we dare be indifferent to his coming. Not knowing “the day or the hour” is a graphic way of saying that neither he nor we can predict the time. So the question remains, What would it mean, then, for an infallible spokesman (an apostle!) of the Lord Jesus, who cannot predict the time, to say that Jesus is coming soon, or that Jesus is at the door, or that Jesus is at hand, or that Jesus will come after a little while? What do the New Testament writers mean by their predictions of Jesus’s nearness? In what sense do they mean he is near? In answer to those questions, I’m going to offer three phrases that I believe are rooted in biblical texts and then give a brief explanation of each: potentially near, holistically near, and divinely near. Potentially Near First, the apostles mean Jesus is potentially near. That is, he is near in the sense that any presumption of his delay on our part would be folly. It is as if the apostles should say, “You know that we cannot predict the time of the Lord’s coming, because the Lord himself did not know the time (Matt. 24:36), and he told us, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority’ (Acts 1:7). Therefore, you know that when we say ‘soon’ we are not doing what we cannot do. We are not predicting what we cannot predict. Rather, we are telling you that it is potentially soon, meaning that the replacement of hope for this soon-ness with presumption of delay will unfit you for his coming and lead to destruction.” By presumption I mean the unwarranted assumption that his coming is so distant that I am not in danger of his coming while I neglect my vigilance to walk uprightly. This presumption fails to reckon with the fact that lack of vigilance now may lead to utter obliviousness for the rest of your life so that the so-called distant coming finds you utterly unprepared. I draw this meaning of “soon” from Jesus’s illustration of the second coming in Matthew 24:45–51: Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, “My master is delayed,” and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The warning is this: never presume upon the Master’s delay. That is, never presume that neglecting spiritual wakefulness will not be met with the surprise of his appearing. Always hope for his soon arrival and act in the light of it. Saying that Jesus’s coming is near when you do not know when he is coming means that he is potentially near, and all presumption otherwise is dangerous. Holistically Near Second, the apostles mean Jesus is holistically near. That is, as part of a whole, unified vision of the end time, he is near because, considered as a whole, the “end,” the “last days,” are already present. Taken as a whole, the end has begun. When we say that Jesus and the apostles did not know when the second coming would take place, we are saying that the future God granted them to see was like successive mountain ranges that appear as a single range. This telescoped range of mountain ridges, appearing as one, is what I mean by a whole, unified vision of the end time. My family has spent time at a home in Tennessee that has a front porch facing northeast. On a crystal-clear evening, we can see at least seven distinct mountain ranges from that porch. But on a hazy evening, they look like one mountain range. I have used George Ladd’s phrase prophetic perspective to describe this way of seeing the future. It sees the distant reality and the nearer reality as one. I’m using the phrase holistically near, rather than prophetically near, because I think it might trigger in our memory more clearly the idea of the second coming being part of a telescoped or foreshortened vision of a history of events seen as a whole. The “last days” began with the first coming of the Messiah. “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God” (1 Pet. 1:20–21). “In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb. 1:2). “He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26; cf. 1 Cor. 10:11). This implies that the vision of the entire period between the incarnation and the second coming is one great mountain range with many hills and peaks that were indistinct to the apostles. They were granted to know a good many details, but very little about the overall timeframe. They saw the end largely as one reality, and they speak of it holistically as near because, as a whole, it is near. That near whole includes the parousia—the coming of Jesus. Therefore, it too is near—near as part of the whole that has already begun. Divinely Near Third, the apostles mean Jesus is divinely near. That is, from the divine perspective, the time between Jesus’s first and second coming is very short. The apostle Peter introduces this meaning of near in his response to scoffers who already in his day mocked the fact that so much time had passed without the Lord’s return. He says: [Know] this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” (2 Pet. 3:3–4) After reminding the scoffers that history is not as static as they think (in view of creation and flood and final judgment, 2 Pet. 3:5–7), he then introduces the foundation of what I am calling divinely near: But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2 Pet. 3:8–9) Verse 9 is addressed to our attitude and our vocabulary: don’t call God’s purposeful delay “slowness.” Call it “patience.” Don’t scoff at God’s timing as if his promise of coming soon were a myth (2 Pet. 1:16). Instead, give thanks that his promise of mercy and patience is being perfectly worked out. To support his admonition about our attitude and vocabulary, Peter introduces the concept of divinely near: “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” To get the full force of the point, a scoffer might calculate: Supposing that Peter wrote this letter thirty years after the ascension of Jesus to heaven, those thirty years would be 3 percent of a thousand years. Since a thousand years is “as one day,” that would mean that .72 hours (.03 x 24 hours in a day) has passed since Jesus departed. Forty-five minutes is not a long delay. Or, from the standpoint of the twenty-first century, two days is not a long delay. In essence, Peter is introducing the mystery of God’s relation to time. The Bible is not a primer on Einstein’s relativity theory. It does not delve into the scientific relationship between space and time. However, Paul says provocatively that “God decreed [a hidden wisdom] before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor. 2:7; cf. 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 1:2). In other words, in some sense God existed before “the ages,” that is, before time. Peter is suggesting to us that this mysterious relationship between God and time should make us slow to scoff at the timing of his prophecies. If Jesus and the apostles say the coming of Christ is “near” or “at hand” or “at the gates” or “soon,” when they confessedly do not know when he is coming, we should reckon with the fact that the divine perspective is part of what gives meaning to their words. Jesus is divinely near. His Appearing Is Near in at Least Three Senses I conclude, therefore, that if we take into account the pointers Jesus and the apostles give us, we will not fault them for speaking of the Lord’s coming as near or soon or at hand. We will take into account the agreed-upon premise that none of them knew when Jesus would return. With that pointer in view, we will take heed to Jesus’s warning against every presumption of delay as a dangerous attitude (Matt. 24:48; par. Luke 12:45), and conclude that the second coming is potentially near. We will take heed to the prophetic perspective of the Old and New Testaments that sees the “last days” (including Christ’s first and second coming) as a unified whole that has already begun, and we will conclude that Jesus is holistically near. And we will take seriously Peter’s reminder that with God a thousand years is as a day, and we will conclude that Jesus is divinely near. Always hope for his soon arrival and act in the light of it. This article is adapted from Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Second Coming of Christby John Piper.