What a disappointing word!

Failure is also a point of emphasis in January because it is failure that led us to resolve to be different in the first place, and it is failure that will make us doubt those resolutions and goals when life becomes difficult, or temptation returns.

I had joked that I’d wait until the third week in January to send that email out because I needed time for all my resolutions and goals to break down to have some fodder for the email.

Good news! It only took eight days to have enough failures in the New Year to write about it! Don’t you feel so lucky!

Ugh.

I started a workout program in the New Year to kickstart my process of (1) keeping the previous year’s 30lbs off and (2) starting my next thirty pounds of loss. Within a few days, I threw my back out, with it spasming and cramping up tight as a stuck valve. I was in so much pain that I, yes even I, went to the doctor to ask for pain relief and a referral to physical therapy. I spend most of my time at my house on a heating pad in bed or on the floor.

All because I over-exerted myself like I knew I would but, in my denial, had figured wouldn’t hurt me that bad this time. This time would be different. I’m literally a walking definition of insanity for you to witness. 

This back issue also killed my hopes for 10k steps a day, as on day eight of the New Year I succumbed to the pain and didn’t make my goal. The fact that I’d kept trying as much as I did probably further aggravated my back pain, but again…insanity.

I am technically still making my writing goal of 500 words a day, but only because I had a couple of solid writing days early in the month. I haven’t had a 500 word writing day in several days. Just more fodder for the newsletter.

I want to say you’re welcome, but even in tongue and cheek it’s embarrassing.

The Bible Speaks

The Bible doesn’t say a whole lot on non-moral failures. After all, it’s a guidebook on how to have a relationship with God. God seems to be less concerned with my failed New Year’s goals and more interested in how my heart is doing, which honestly isn’t super great as I wallow in my defeat.

We don’t read how Abram slaughtered the wrong lamb and missed out on a fourfold increase in his flock, all due to him misjudging the spring’s mating season that year. It may have happened. Maybe never did. It’s precisely because it isn’t a moral issue that we don’t hear about it. What we do hear about is that he said his wife was his sister, which nearly ruined the Pharoah. While just a half-lie, it was not a whole truth, and God had to intervene.

We don’t read about how David, while tending his father’s flock, let a couple of them loose inside the house, frustrating his mother to no end, and leaving him cleaning up quite a mess in the aftermath. Why? Because God was far more interested in David’s heart. That’s why we read about Bathsheba, David’s sinful actions with her, and God’s judgment. It is the moral failure that has God’s interest.

I could go on about moral failures because I have a lot of experience with those too, unfortunately. And Romans chapter one and several other places are ripe picking for those who want to stress the importance of strict adherence to God’s commands, even for those of us who believe in God’s gracious salvation.

What I want to stress today are the little failures, however, even those that are sometimes bigger than we want to admit. It may not be a moral failure to fail at my new workout regimen, or to miss my wordcount target for a few days in a row, but these failures, more than just stopping my yearly goals so quickly in the New Year, offer opportunity for the enemy to beat me down and to derail other areas of life. His aim is to take these non-moral failures and turn them into failures that affect my relationship with God.

I’m also behind on my daily Bible reading and that’s where these little goal failures start to pile up. It’s also where the Bible comes to the rescue.

Proverbs 24:16 (ESV) says, “for the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity.”

So, I read my Bible today. I’m four days behind as I write this and hope to be back on track in the coming week.

I can’t get back to working out because…well, my back…but I can get back up again by going to the physical therapist and asking him how to get better and move on. I can keep trying (smartly this time…not like I’m still 18 and in great shape).

I hope you will too.

Hey, did you set goals for 2024? I’d love to hear about them, and how they’re going so far. Good or bad. Let me know!

I’ll write about those moral failures in the next newsletter, because they are important, and the first hints of forgiveness, as we head toward Easter Sunday this year. I hope this article has blessed you!

Our Bible study group on the USS Hue City (CG 66) recently looked at John 3:16, perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible. The fame is well deserved, for this single verse packs enough theological punch to keep a writer/minister busy for days.

I’m going to break down some of the very simple things we talked about in class. Please feel free to discuss your own thoughts about John 3:16 in the comments section.

Let’s get to work!

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

1. First off, “For God” signifies a sort of transition. We won’t go too in depth into this, but scholars believe that Jesus has stopped talking at this point and the author (possibly a different one than John the evangelist) has started to share his personal thoughts on the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus.[1] In fact, there are several “issues” with the book of John that make scholars think that at least two people wrote it at slightly different times.[2] Chapter 3 of John, along with chapters 2-11, is thought to have come from an earlier signs source, which would have been written closer to when Jesus was alive on earth (John in its present form was written sometime between AD70 and AD100).[3] That the more conservative D. A. Carson agrees, or at least acknowledges this possibility gives it credence in my estimation.[4]

I’ve belabored the point, let’s move on.[5]

When I say that “For God” means we’ve reached a transition, I mean that the statement is sort of like, “therefore” in that we need to find out what the there is for. So what is Jesus (or the writer) saying when he writes, “For God?”

He is explaining something that happened in verses 14 and 15. “…so shall the son of man be lifted up…” Why? Because God loved the world so much!

2. God loved the world. Yes, the world is fallen. Yes, it isn’t the “very good” of Genesis 1:31. Still, it is God’s creation. Our children, despite their sins, are still our children and we love them dearly. God loves his creation! This is good news! And because he loves his creation, he wants to rescue it, even from itself. Praise God!
3. Abraham mirrored God’s sacrifice by offering Isaac on the alter. Isaac is the “type” of Christ and Abraham is a “type” of God, meaning that they are illustrative of Jesus and God, respectively. Another word to use for “type” is “shadow.”

The difference in John 3:16 is that God is offering the sacrifice on behalf of all creation, whereas Abraham offered Isaac to show his faith in God’s provision. In this way, Jesus was God’s provision. God offered Jesus to satisfy his own requirements to have a perfect sacrifice. Jesus, by becoming that sacrifice, accepted this as Isaac did, and in doing so provided the way (John 14:6).

Another very important point here is that, by actually sending Jesus to die, and by Jesus committing himself to death, God asked more of himself than he ever asked Abraham and Isaac to do. Isn’t God like that? He always goes further than he asks us to go!

Again we go back to verses 14 and 15. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up. Of course, Jesus was comparing his future sacrifice to the salvation method in the desert. John Shelby Spong rightly says, “It is a powerful image.”[6]

4. Jesus is God’s ONLY son! We are able to become adopted sons and daughters by believing in Jesus’ sacrifice (John 1:12), but God only had one son, and it was that son that paid the price for our sins. In the Greek, this wording indicates that God gave his best, most unique gift possible.[7] How much more should we do the same!
5. Liberal theologians (I’m thinking of the book Underground Church, by Rev Robin Meyers) state that the “good news” isn’t just about what happens after death. That is part true. It isn’t JUST about what happens after death, but this verse certainly makes it mostly about that! My other favorite verse in John, 14:6, also makes John’s point more about what happens after death than not. I think this is one of the distinctive marks of John’s Gospel.

I understand the value of telling someone what the gospel means now in this life on earth. Each of us is bombarded with the requirements of life. To know that the gospel means something now is very good! This is especially true since the gospel is sometimes all the downtrodden have.

However, the ultimate restoration presented in John 3:16 has nothing to do with this current Earth. It is much more about the Earth and Heaven to come. When John wrote Revelation, he was telling his readers about that restoration. He was letting them know that they should hold on in the face of persecution. He seemed to say, “God is coming back, and he’s going to fix everything someday. Just keep holding on to the good news!”

Some call that escapism (especially as it relates to the rapture), but it’s actually what the gospel is all about. God is restoring humanity through Jesus, his only son, because he LOVES the world!

6. “Should not perish, but…” This is the crux of the matter. Pick life over death. Accept Jesus over oneself. Pick true Christianity over other religions. However you slice it, the point is that there are only two options. Either accept Jesus’ sacrifice, or die.

Final Thoughts: I could write so much more about John 3:16. Like 14:6, it is a bedrock verse of our faith. In this verse we have the gospel…the good news. God did not leave us to our own devices. He did not demand petty sacrifice like so many other “gods.” No, he became the sacrifice because HE LOVED US! If you haven’t made your decision today, please do so. This life is the time to make the decision and today is a great day to do it!

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Notes:

[1] Carson, D A. The Gospel According to John. William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company. Grand Rapids, MI, 1991. Pg 203.

[2] Brown, Raymond E., Edited by Francis J. Moloney. An Introduction to the Gospel of John. Doubleday. New York, NY, 2003. Pg 40.

[3] Spong, John Shelby. The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. Harper One. New York, NY, 2013. Pg 12.

[4] The Gospel According to John, pg 35.

[5] I’m working on a much longer project to be unveiled in the not-too-soon-future, but don’t let this information bother you. That John didn’t write every line in the book named for him shouldn’t rock our faith to the foundations. In fact, the editor of John chapter three actually expands on Jesus’ words and simply provides a backdrop to what Jesus and Nicodemus discussed. If there is more than one author, then they were faithful enough to the story to provide consistency. We know, of course, that God is the ultimate editor of his book anyway (II Tim 3:16).

[6] The Fourth Gospel, pg 92.

[7] The Gospel According to John, pg 204.

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Psalm 139:13-14a

13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

It’s easy to see how this passage supports the idea that all life is precious and that saving the unborn is vital to our work as a church body. Can you imagine a world where people don’t know that the Lord knitted them together? Well, look out the window and see it.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “The Psalmist had scarcely peered within the veil which hides the nerves, sinews, and blood-vessels from common inspection; the science of anatomy was quite unknown to him; and yet he had seen enough to arouse his admiration of the work and his reverence for the Worker.”ⁱ

Because we know so much more about genetics now than David did when he wrote this psalm, indeed, more than Spurgeon when he wrote about how little David knew, the vast majority of people in the western world don’t see the body’s natural process of creating life as driven by God, or that he plays a role in a baby’s development. And because we do know more about the process now, it can make the psalmist’s thoughts might seem a little childish or naive.

And yet there is a knitting that occurs, isn’t there? We know about cell reproduction and growth now, we understand how the DNA strand is unzipped and recombined, and how parents’ genetics create the little bundle of joy birthed nine months thence. This calls us to praise a God who is complex and intricate, who creates with scientific complexity even as with an artist’s touch.

The thing that makes this short passage shine, however, is found a few verses later, in verse 16:

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there were none of them.

What a promise for us! To know that God knew my days, had written them down, before the first cell split, before the first heartbeat, before the first brainwave. This verse shines a bright light on verses 13 and 14 by showing us that God knew the plan for us before he began knitting us together. How could we do anything else but praise God for this?

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iSpurgeon, C. H. “Exposition of Psalms.” The Treasury of David, vol. 7, Funk and Wagnalls, New York, NY, 1886, p. 226.

The Romans Road for Today

Like many in more conservative churches, I grew up with the Romans Road. It was a list of verses intended to show the realities of sin and the desperate need for a savior. I used the Romans Road to walk my little church community on my last ship through the Gospel. I know that a lot of people now days don’t hear about it, so I thought I’d share a little about it.

In this post, I’ll walk you through a simplified version of the Romans Road, complete with a short statement about each verse.

Romans 3:23 – “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

You don’t get much more straightforward than this verse. We’ve blown it. We are hopeless! And think about it: How many times have you thought, “why did I do that? I know it was wrong!” and yet you did it anyway? Far too many times for me, and it’s situations like that which tell us of our desperate need for a savior.

When we talk about sin, we mean disobedience to God. It could be anything from cheating on a spouse to stealing an outfit from the store to being un-neighborly to the family down the street. In all of these situations, and so many more, we are proving our unwillingness to maintain God’s standard.

Romans 6:23 – “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This verse represents the fulcrum of our spiritual lives. Because of our actions that lead to Romans 3:23, we find ourselves at the beginning of 6:23. The wages of sin means our just payment for our misdeeds. And we are not talking about a physical death, which we will all see. I am talking about an eternal spiritual death.

Sin is so much more than just a mistake or a folly or a screw up. Sin separates us from our life force – God – and makes us the center of our little universe. It may work for a while in our lives on earth, but eternally, Romans 6:23 tells us what we have waiting for us.

Thank God that Romans 6:23 comes in two parts! The second part is our first ray of hope. “But the gift of God…” What does that mean? Let me show you the next part of the Romans Road to find out!

Romans 5:8 – “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

It was so good that God did this! As painful as it was to him, and as much as I wish it hadn’t been necessary, Christ’s perfect sacrifice was the only thing that could reunite humanity with God on a spiritual, eternal, level. It was the only thing that could take all of those sins that we’ve committed through the centuries and make everything right again. What hope! Out of Christ’s great sacrifice came something so very powerful. For us!

Romans 10:13 – “For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”

There are basically two camps of believers within the theologically conservative church. One side believes that we have absolutely nothing to do with our own salvation, that God even directs our desire to be saved at some point. Others believe that we have free will, and as such, we make the decision to follow Christ and accept him as our substitute on the cross.

What we know is what the Bible says, and what we have in the Romans Road is the understanding that we have sinned, that sin results in spiritual death, but God provided a way out of that future by Jesus’s sacrifice. And the final act is that we call on the name of the Lord for our salvation. Whether we do it because we were irresistibly drawn or because we made the choice to do so is irrelevant to you and me at this specific moment.

The only thing that matters is: Will you make that choice?

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