2015 reading: The most helpful books that have informed my teaching

Last year I made a list of my top 10 books of the year. This year my reading was so overwhelmingly related to the courses I taught or research projects I was working on that I don't really know how to meaningfully rank the books. And, like last year, many of the most important books I read are not the recent releases, but books that have proven themselves over the last several years or decades and come to be key titles in their field. So, I have organized my reading by course (with other books at the end) and commented on some books I found particularly helpful or interesting.

I don't write this post to try to brag about how many books I've read (I am a professor, and I realize that most people in other jobs, including pastors, wouldn't have nearly the opportunity to read as much, especially heavy academic works), but to give an idea of what goes into the classes I teach, what kinds of ideas I have been grappling with, and give a few pointers to interesting things to read for those interested. As fair warning, many of the reflections I give on these books are pretty academic. If that doesn't interest you that's totally normal, but I know there are some readers who will find those comments useful, and this post is for them.

Asterisks (*) indicate books I mention in my comments.

Church History 1 course

The main primary texts I read in preparing the course:

• Tertullian. “On Baptism.”
• Cyprian. “On the Unity of the Church.”
• Athanasius, La encarnación del verbo [On the Incarnation].
• Gregory of Nazianzus. “Oration 40, The Oration on Holy Baptism.”
• Augustine. “On the Spirit and the Letter”; “On the Predestination of the Saints”; Confessions, book 7.
• Boethius, La consolación de la filosofía, libro V (The Consolation of Philosophy, Book 5).
• *Anselm, Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man).
• Thomas Aquinas, sections of the Summa Theologica on the death of Christ, merits, and justification.
• John Duns Scotus, a short section where he argues for the immaculate conception of Mary.

Secondary sources:

• González, Justo L. Historia del Cristianismo, tomo 1 [History of Christianity, vol. 1.] This was the assigned textbook for the course.
• González, Justo L. Historia del pensamiento cristiano. [History of Christian Thought.] (I read many chapters of the book to supplement class preparation.)
• Jenkins, Philip. The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How it Died. (Half read.)
• *Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), vol. 1 of The Christian Tradition.
• *Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700), vol. 2 of The Christian Tradition.
• *Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300), vol. 3 of The Christian Tradition.
• *Pelikan, Jaroslav. Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700), vol. 4 of The Christian Tradition. (I’ve read about half of it at this point.)

I could say a lot about the books I read preparing to teach church history, but I can sum up my overall impressions in two short imperatives: Read primary source texts of the Fathers; read Pelikan’s The Christian Tradition. I have had the goal of reading Pelikan’s 5-volume masterpiece on the history of the development of doctrine for the last ten years, but given that I read it at about 10-15 pages an hour, it just takes a lot of time. As an undergraduate, I slogged through the first two volumes, but didn’t make it past that as it was very heavy going. Coming back to Pelikan nine or ten years later with a lot more theological perspective, I got a ton out of these books. At times Pelikan is frustrating because he writes as if you know who he’s talking about and as if there is no need to precisely locate key thinkers or debates chronologically. But, if one has enough of a framework for understanding church history (reading Gonzalez’s books helped here), his books are brilliant. Don’t read Pelikan expecting him to reinforce your preconceived ideas of what history must have been like. He is brutally honest with the reality of what was believed, taught, and confessed by the church over the centuries and has a pretty strong resistance to partisan interpretations of history. Obviously, he isn’t fully objective—no author is—but he has a way of putting the reader in touch with the original sources such that the reader has to come to terms with what was being taught at that point in history. For understanding how the church has evolved to teach what it has throughout history, this has been the most helpful thing I have read.

In terms of the primary sources, I probably got the most out of reading Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man), his philosophical defense of the necessity of the incarnation on the basis of atonement theory. I had heard (and had ingrained in me) the general argument before, but had never read much of the actual text. Basically, Anselm says that humanity has offended God’s honor through sin, incurring an infinite debt, since God is infinite. God cannot forgive that debt of honor without satisfaction, so he requires a sacrifice that will satisfy his honor. A human being must offer the sacrifice, but only God is able to provide such an infinite sacrifice. Therefore, the incarnation is the only way of satisfying the debt and procuring the forgiveness of sins for fallen humanity since one and the same subject is divine and human, fulfilling the necessary requirements. Anselm’s approach has limitations if one approaches it looking for a comprehensive Christology or atonement theory, but overall I was very impressed with the argument and underwhelmed by the way that modern critics of Anselm (I’m thinking of books like Mark Baker and Joel Green’s Recovering the Scandal of the Cross) critique Anselm severely for failing to accomplish what he never set out to accomplish. If Anselm wrote in an attempt to show philosophically why the incarnation was necessary, I don’t think it is fair to critique him for not including certain biblical aspects of the atonement. While I would modify Anselm’s view to be in line with a penal substitutionary view of the atonement, there is no reason to see a satisfaction or substitutionary model as excluding the idea of Christ as victor over evil or the reality that the cross serves as a moral example. All of these are complementary, but we shouldn’t underestimate the brilliance of Anselm’s way of working out the question just because he largely focuses on satisfaction. I found it very interesting to debate Anselm's approach in class with students in comparison with the perspective of Thomas Aquinas.

Ethics course

• Atiencia, Jorge. Victoria sobre la corrupción [Victory over Corruption].
• Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ethics. (Partially read.)
• *Brownson, James. Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships.
• Lamb, Jonathan. Integridad: Liderando bajo la mirada de Dios. [Integrity: Leading while God is watching.]
• Stassen, Glen and David Gushee. La ética del reino [Kingdom Ethics]. (I used a number of chapters as required reading for the course.)
• Yarhouse, Mark. Homosexuality and the Christian: A Guide for Parents, Pastors, and Friends.
• Wright, Christopher J. H. Old Testament Ethics for the People of God. (I only read about a quarter of it, but what I read is excellent!)

Certainly the most interesting and polemical book I read while working on my Ethics course was James Brownson’s Bible, Gender, Sexuality. Brownson is part of the Reformed Church in America and has written perhaps the most important scholarly book seeking to defend homosexual relationships on the basis of Biblical exegesis. I am not convinced by his argument, but I think that more conservative evangelicals like myself must interact with the kinds of arguments we find in Brownson or we will find ourselves irrelevant in the current debates. If you find yourself wondering how someone who knows the Bible well might end up affirming gay marriage, read Brownson. (As a side note, convincing my students that we should actually take these kinds of arguments seriously was not easy. I don’t think that this issue is a gray area where Christians can just agree to disagree, but I do think it is important to listen seriously to the arguments of those I disagree with and respond to those arguments as real arguments.)

To give an example of the kind of argument Brownson uses, we can consider his discussion of how the concept of what is “degrading” or “shameless” functions in Romans 1. He says, “What is degrading and shameless about the behavior described in Romans 1:24-27 is that it is driven by excessive, self-seeking lust, that it knows no boundaries or restraints, and that it violates established gender roles of that time and culture, understood in terms of masculine rationality and honor” (p. 218). From my perspective, a significant problem with Brownson’s argument is that he basically says that Paul affirms whatever the society would have affirmed regarding what was shameful and that that was normatively applicable in his time, but not today. Given that we are not in a different redemptive-historical moment from Paul, why is it that today we are at liberty to modify what is deemed shameful and so are not bound by Paul’s instruction in a more direct manner? There is a lot more to explore on this point and many others, but it’s worth reading for the way it makes you grapple with a lot of nuances of the Biblical texts that are easy to overlook. I also appreciate, though have my reservations about, his focus on the "moral logic" of the texts rather than just the fine points of exegetical debate. In my view, he at times uses the "moral logic" he finds to contradict what the text seems to plainly say.

Theology I Online course

• *Bavinck, Herman. En el Principio: Fundamentos de la Teología de la Creación, cap. 1, “La creación”. [In the Beginning: Foundations of the Theology of Creation, ch. 1, “The Creation”.] (Required reading for students.)
• Erickson, Millard. Teología cristiana. [Christian Theology] (10 chapters, required reading for students.)
• Grudem, Wayne. Teología sistemática. [Systematic Theology] (11 chapters, required reading for students.)

All of these readings were assigned for class. While I only assigned about 35 pages of Bavinck, his writing was brilliant (though perhaps a bit too dense for the students—I’ll have to reconsider whether to use it next time) and piqued my interest in his theology, which I had never read before. What I love about this section of Bavinck is how he shows that the doctrine of creation is about far more than just debates over how old the earth is. He brings in a substantial analysis of different worldviews, contrasting what belief in creation means as compared to perspectives like pantheism.

Christology research

• Alfaro, Sammy. Divino Compañero: Towards a Hispanic Pentecostal Christology. (Partially read.)
• Chaves, Joao. Evangelicals and Liberation Revisited: An Inquiry into the Possibility of an Evangelical-Liberationist Theology. (Partially read.)
• *García, Alberto L. Cristología: Cristo Jesús, centro y praxis del pueblo de Dios. [Christology: Christ Jesus, Center and Praxis of the People of God.]
• *Gavrilyuk, Paul L. The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought.
• Green, Gene, Stephen Pardue, and K. K. Yeo, eds. Jesus without Borders: Christology in the Majority World.
• *Sobrino, Jon. Christ the Liberator.
• Sobrino, Jon. Jesus the Liberator.
• Weinandy, Thomas. Does God Suffer?

I have been rereading and going deeper in many of the areas related to my final research paper for a Christology course that I took as part of my Master’s degree, looking at the intersection of the question of divine (im)passibility—that is, whether and in what sense God can suffer—and the liberation christology of Jon Sobrino. The key questions are: How does God suffer? How does that relate to his ability to save/liberate us? While I would not consider myself to be generally sympathetic to liberation theology, I think there are many positive insights that can be gained from interacting with such theologians (though often there’s a lot more chaff than wheat). For example, Sobrino has interesting insights on the connections between the resurrection and justice for victims of oppression (this can be related to the general loss of the vision of the social dimension of the new creation in much of Christian thought), on the importance of the historical life of Jesus for christology, and on the limitations of the creeds of the early church (even while he affirms them) and the ways they produce functional docetism. Considering how central liberation theology has been in Latin American theology, it is essential to interact with it to some extent to be taken seriously in speaking about Jesus in a Latin American context, as one can see in a chapter on Latin American christology in Green, Pardue, and Yeo, on the one hand, and Alfaro's attempts at constructing a Hispanic Pentecostal Christology, on the other hand.

All of these books were quite interesting in one way or another, but two stand out. Alberto García’s short introduction to Christology is probably the best go-to introductory book on Christology that I have run across in Spanish. García writes from a confessionally Lutheran perspective, but is interesting for the ways that he integrates discussion of the church fathers, solid Lutheran theology, and draws in some positive insights of certain liberation theologians, without losing theological balance in the process (apart from his last chapter, where he was trying as a Protestant to find positive theological value in devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe and other expressions of popular piety, which just left me scratching my head). It was refreshing to read someone who can on one page talk about the value of a Christology from below (starting with the historical life of Jesus) and later defend a penal substitution model of the atonement.

The other book that was incredibly interesting and well-written was Paul Gavrilyuk’s The Suffering of the Impassible God. I largely agree with Gavrilyuk’s opening chapter, “The Case Against the Theory of Theology’s Fall into Hellenistic Philosophy,” where he takes on the Hellenization thesis, that is, the idea that early church theology became hijacked by Greek thought. He does a great job of showing how even when the early councils were using philosophical categories, they often did so in ways that countered many of the live options in the intellectual climate of their day. Surprisingly, I see parallels between some of Gavrilyuk’s arguments and some of Jon Sobrino’s arguments in Christ the Liberator regarding how to interpret the councils of Nicea and Chalcedon (instead of being supremely negative about the councils, as many contextual theologians are, he sees in them a creative and useful inculturation, but one that had real limits). While I am generally sympathetic to Gavrilyuk’s approach to the question of whether God is impassible (he says “yes, in himself God is impassible, but in the incarnation God suffers in the person of the Son through the human nature the Son assumed”), there is one point where I strongly disagree. Gavrilyuk says that if God is inherently passible (that is, if God can suffer even apart from the incarnation, as many contemporary theologians claim), then the incarnation is unnecessary. This seems to me to be a completely unwarranted conclusion, since he would need to establish that divine suffering apart from the incarnation could be redemptive, something he simply hasn’t done. One could enlist quite a number of arguments to make this point, but the first one I think of is Anselm's argument for the incarnation that I mentioned above, which sees the redemptive value not just in suffering, but in the identity of the one suffering, that is, the God-man who can represent man before God while providing an infinitely valuable sacrifice.

Other books

• Arthurs, Jeffrey. Predicando con variedad [Preaching with Variety].
• Donner, Theo. El texto que interpreta al lector [The Text that Interprets the Reader.]
• Sendek, Elizabeth. Griego para Sancho [Greek for Sancho, the beginning Greek textbook we use here at the seminary.]
• Taylor, Richard A. “Haggai.” In Haggai, Malachi. New American Commentary.
• *Vella, Jane. Taking Learning to Task: Creative Strategies for Teaching Adults.

Jane Vella’s book became my go-to book in seeking to design class activities for my Church History 1 course. While it is a little hard to follow at points, it has a lot of great ideas for creating engaging lesson plans around learning tasks that follow the sequence of "Induction-Input-Implementation-Integration."

Other books partially read

• *Franz, Raymond. Crisis of Conscience.
• Friedman, Thomas. The World is Flat.
• Ladd, George. El Nuevo Testamento y la crítica. [The New Testament and Criticism.]
• Lingenfelter, Judith and Sherwood. Teaching Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Learning and Teaching.
• Palacios, Marco. Violencia pública en Colombia (1958-2010). [Public Violence in Colombia (1958-2010)].
• Wright, David F. Infant Baptism in Historical Perspective.

Raymond Franz’s Crisis of Conscience is a personal narrative (an exposé of sorts) from someone who was formerly in the highest level of leadership among the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but later left the organization disillusioned at what he found in the process. I haven’t gotten too far, but it looks very interesting for understanding aspects of how the JWs operated during some of the most formative years theologically in the organization (the 1970s, when many thought the world would end, but it didn’t).

(VIDEO) 2015 Colombia Highlights

Below is a five-minute video with highlights and student interviews from this past year of teaching at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia. I hope you enjoy it!

Este video de cinco minutos tiene varias entrevistas con estudiantes y fotos del año pasado en el cual estaba enseñando en el Seminario Bíblico de Colombia. ¡Espero que lo disfruten!

Seminary graduation: Reflections and photos

Today was our annual graduation ceremony at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia. Ten students graduated from our 4.5 year undergraduate program in theology and seven students from the online one-year specialization in Ethics and Christian Thought. Seven of the ten students from the undergraduate program were in my first course I taught here, Religious Systems.

Graduates of the undergraduate theology program. Faculty and administrators in back.

If there was one theme that summed up for me the message that was communicated at this year's graduation it was the following: being a theologian (as they call seminary graduates here, even if they go on to do pastoral work) is first and foremost about being a person of wisdom and character. I saw this theme come out in at least three key ways:

First, one of the songs that I sang as part of a vocal quartet, which was based on 1 Corinthians 13, said that if one speaks words on the part of God, knows the depths of every mystery, has a faith to move mountains, and even gives all he has including his life, but lacks love, it's not worth anything and one isn't truly serving anyone.

Second, our seminary president, Elizabeth Sendek, gave a very powerful message from James 3 about the responsibility to exercise one's teaching ministry in a way that takes responsibility for sound doctrine but also for using our words to truly build up rather than tear down the body of Christ. To be honest I never had given much thought to the way that what James says on taming the tongue applies to the attitude that one has as a teacher within the body of Christ, but it is true that it is so easy to destroy other Christians with my words when I am entrusted with a teaching role.

Another interesting point she made was that 85% of church leaders in the majority world (that is, most of Latin America, Africa, and Asia) have no formal theological formation to speak of. So, the point of the warning James makes is not to restrict teachers because there are an overabundance, but to be realistic that it is incredibly easy to use one's position of leadership to pursue a worldly vision of wisdom instead of the wisdom that comes from God and that expresses itself in transformed relationships (James 3:13-18).

Falco, one of the graduates, giving a speech reflecting on his experiences as a student.

Finally, it impacted me to hear students read together as part of the ceremony their "Commitment of the graduate of the Biblical Seminary of Colombia." Each graduate commits to the following as part of their graduation ceremony:

"As a graduate of the University Foundation Biblical Seminary of Colombia I have a unique call and responsibility, that I express today before God and those who attend this ceremony as witnesses:

• I commit myself to submit all the acts of my life, public and private, to these highest norms given by the Lord: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength... and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
• I commit to protect my Christian testimony as a treasure, in such a way that I honor God in my personal, family, and ministerial life every day.
• I commit to work as a servant of God and of his people, without lording it over the people of God, in whichever Christian ministry God calls me to.
• I commit to seek the peace and wellbeing of the society where God leads me to serve, whether in my country or in other lands.
• I commit to pray for the ministry of the University Foundation Biblical Seminary of Colombia, to stay in contact with my alma mater, and to contribute to the development of its ministry.

I assume this commitment freely. I ask God to grant me the humility to live in joyful submission to his will, renouncing the flesh, the world, and the evil one; that God strengthen me and make me wise to serve his people and in his world as an instrument of his love, for the blessing of his people and his world and the glory of his name."

Graduates of the undergraduate program reading the commitment mentioned above. 

Overall, the ceremony was very meaningful. I thought it showed well that while we are an institution which strives for educational excellence, the core heartbeat of who we are is training leaders who will sacrifice for and serve the church as an expression of their love for God and his people. Whether that ever factors into the government's measurements in their national rankings of universities is a lot less important than responding to our most foundation calling as an institution - to serve God and serve the church. For me that was a good reminder of why I am so blessed to be able to teach here.

With Julián, a former student who was graduating (and who appeared in the video update I made at the end of 2014).

Graduates of the specialization in Ethics and Christian Thought; faculty and administrators in back. This program is designed for people who work in the secular world and are looking to integrate theological formation with the exercise of their vocation. I haven't taught any courses in this program.

Sermon: Hope on the Other Side of Judgment (the book of Jeremiah)

This is the English translation of a sermon that I am preaching this coming Sunday in San Cristobal, an agricultural area on the outskirts of Medellín. I was invited to preach at the church by their pastor, Samuel, who is a student at the seminary. One of my students in my Saturday class also attends the church. The church has been preaching a series on the whole Bible, dedicating one week to each book. This sermon is an attempt at expositing the entire book of Jeremiah in one message, looking at the big picture of what we can learn about God through this powerful prophetic message.

“Therefore do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer on their behalf, for I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their trouble” (Jer 11:14).

What kind of God would give a message like that? Is this the God that we have come to know in Jesus Christ?... One of the most common doubts of Christians is the question, “What do I do with the Old Testament? How is this the word of God for me?” It would seem that this God is way too strict, that he lacks love, and that he could learn a thing or two from Jesus.

Today we’re going to wrestle a bit with this question: Who is the God of the Old Testament? And we’re going to do so by studying the longest book in the Bible—not Psalms, which is the longest in number of chapters, but Jeremiah, which is the longest in number of words. It seems reasonable that if God would go to the trouble to inspire a book of such length, he would have something important to speak to us through its message.

More than any other message that the book of Jeremiah contains, it has a message about God. Who is God? How does God look at and respond to sin? How does God show his faithfulness to his people?

Before we start looking at the details of the book, it will help to orient ourselves a bit regarding the place in history that Jeremiah was writing from. Jeremiah was a prophet that received a call from God during one of the darkest times in the history of God’s people. A little over 800 years had passed since Moses had received the Law, and around 400 years since the time of King David. In the days of King David God did something supremely important for the future history of his people—he made a covenant with David to establish a perpetual royal dynasty from his family line. 2 Samuel 7:16 says, “And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.’”

To get an appreciation for the impact of the Davidic promise on the self-conception of an Israelite in Jeremiah’s day, think with me for a minute about the history of Colombia as an independent nation, since the Battle of Boyacá on August 7, 1819. Quite a lot has happened since then, hasn’t it? Generations have come and gone, political parties have risen and fallen, Colombia has had various constitutions. A lot happens in nearly 200 years. Now go back in time the same number of years and a bit more to the year 1600. That seems like ancient history. We certainly live in a very different world than the world of 1600. Now this time between 1600 and today is about the same amount of time that had elapsed between King David and Jeremiah. And in the space of this immensely long time, there had been one constant in Israel—God was faithful to his promise. There had always been a king of the line of David seated on the throne in Jerusalem. There were turbulent moments, to be sure, and eventually the Northern kingdom, Israel, fell to the Assyrians in 722 B.C., about 100 years before Jeremiah.

God judged the Northern kingdom for their idolatry and their injustice, but the kings of Judah had two things that the Northern kingdom never had: The promise that God would establish the line of David forever, and the temple, the house of God, in their capital, Jerusalem. If one had the promise and the presence of God, what else did one need? Now in the days of Jeremiah the kingdom of Judah was surrounded by great nations more powerful than themselves—Egypt to the south, Babylon pressing in from the north. And in the middle of this precarious situation, Jeremiah receives a call.

The central characteristics of Jeremiah’s call to be prophet are found in 1:9-10: “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, ‘Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.’”

Within this call we find two fundamental aspects of the prophetic vocation, which we can understand a bit better if we think about the world of agriculture. If I, as a farmer, am going to plant onions, like many of you do here in San Cristobal, one of the things I have to do first is prepare the ground. If I come across a nice plot of land but it is covered in weeds, I shouldn’t expect much of a harvest. First I need to clear out the weeds and then prepare the ground in order to get a good harvest. I might even have to burn the field. If the weeds are cleared, the seed can germinate and grow. If not, growth will be hindered.

Now the call of Jeremiah was something like that. God had a message of hope to give through Jeremiah. God was going to intervene and save his people. God was going to fulfill his promises. But first God had to clear out the weeds. His people would have to pass through the fire, and only after coming out the other side of the fire would the shoots of new life begin to sprout up. This is what is involved in Jeremiah’s call to pluck up, break down, destroy, overthrow, build, and plant.

The first four verbs primarily have to do with Jeremiah’s call to be a prophet for his own generation. One way to think of this is that the prophets were God’s prosecuting attorneys. They were called to apply the Law to Israel and make God’s case, showing them where they had fallen short and why they were going to experience God’s judgment. But beyond that, the prophets were also messengers of future hope, who announced hope for Israel and judgment against her enemies. This is what is involved in the call to build and to plant. Now both roles are based on the fact that the prophet is the one who explains for the people of God the implications of the covenants that God has made with Israel. They told them when they failed to measure up, but they also preached the unconditional faithfulness of God to make good on his promises and redeem his people.

The challenge for Jeremiah—as in some ways it is for us too—was how to be faithful to God’s call while living in a culture where he was surrounded by prophets of prosperity. Jeremiah had a difficult message: “It’s too late to avoid the judgment of God. You have to accept his judgment, humble yourselves, and hope in future salvation.” Most of the rest of the prophets had a gentler message: “God isn’t going to judge Judah. Babylon will be destroyed.” Now, which of these two messages seems more spiritual? It would seem like Jeremiah had fallen into a defeatist mentality and that the other prophets were the optimists who had faith that God would do great things. But the problem was a simple one: these prophets were false prophets. They didn’t speak for God. They wanted the good news without the bad news. They wanted salvation without recognizing their sin.

So, the first part of Jeremiah’s call is the call to be a messenger of judgment. Throughout the book, Jeremiah over and over again indicts Judah for its many sins. While we can’t be comprehensive here, let’s look at a few of the problems that Jeremiah identified in Judah’s spirituality. First, Judah’s problem was that they denied their sin. Jeremiah 2:35 tells us: “You say, ‘I am innocent; surely his anger has turned from me.’ Behold, I will bring you to judgment

for saying, ‘I have not sinned.’”

Second, Judah assumed that God wouldn’t judge them, because they presumed that God would always have to protect his temple. Jeremiah tells them, “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord’” (7:4). If we look at the whole context of the passage (7:1-11) we get a better idea of what is going on in this act of spiritual presumption:

¹ The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ² “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. ³ Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. ⁴ Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’

⁵ “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, ⁶ if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, ⁷ then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.

⁸ “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. ⁹ Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, ¹⁰ and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? ¹¹ Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord.

Judah was right in one thing: God had committed himself to his people unconditionally. But they were blissfully ignorant of the fact that God gave the Law to show his people how to live in relationship with him. If they disobeyed, there were consequences, up to the point of exile. Just as the Northern kingdom went into exile for idolatry and injustice, Judah was now facing the same fate and for the same reasons.

If we go back eight centuries or so to the time of Moses, we find that God had made it pretty clear up front what would happen if his people didn’t obey him. Deuteronomy 28 outlines the blessings for keeping the covenant and curses for breaking it. Listen to what it says about exile:

¹⁵ But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you…. ³⁶ The Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone. ³⁷ And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you away.

So, basically, Jeremiah’s preaching is pretty simple: “Pay attention and realize that what Deuteronomy said was going to happen if you disobeyed is going to happen soon, and it’s too late to avoid it.”

Third, Judah had a problem of listening to the false prophets. Jeremiah 6:13-15 tells us: “‘For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown,’ says the Lord.”

The false prophets provide the easy cure for sin, but not the needed cure. For them, ignorance was bliss. It’s easier to preach peace than face up to one’s depravity. The problem is that when one thinks there is peace, but there really isn’t, one heals the wound lightly. Whenever I read this passage, I think of when my brother was in high school and broke his collarbone snowboarding. A broken collarbone is pretty tricky to keep in place. You can’t just put a cast on it. So, when his collarbone healed it didn’t quite line up right. One side was a little too high compared to the other, which made it so he couldn’t sleep on one side due to the pressure on the bone that healed wrongly. While that is a mild example, sometimes the doctor has to go in and break the bone again in order to promote proper healing. Sometimes one has to accept the painful experience voluntarily in order to heal well. That is what the false prophets were unwilling to do for their sin.

The other problem Jeremiah mentions is that the spiritual leaders, the prophets and priests, have not been ashamed at their sin and don’t even know how to blush. Not being capable of shame or blushing is what happens when a person is completely desensitized to sin. They see sin as something so normal that it isn’t even necessary to hide it or try to justify it. For instance, some men have two families at the same time and think they’re well within their rights to have their mistress on the side. Some politicians are openly corrupt, not even attempting to hide the fact that they’re in it for personal gain. Those were the kind of leaders Judah had in the days of Jeremiah.

So then, in the middle of a situation so hopeless, is it possible to find good news? Judah didn’t have the capacity to reform itself. Jeremiah was faithful, but the faithfulness of a lone prophet was nowhere near sufficient for the nation as a whole. So, where can we find hope? Only in the faithfulness and promises of God himself.

God’s promise in Jeremiah has various aspects, but we’re just going to focus on two of the most central this morning. First, part of the promise that God makes has to do with the restoration of the nation. It’s likely that the most famous verse of Jeremiah is 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Sometimes we take this verse in an isolated manner as a promise directed directly to us, and it is true that God does work in all things for our good.

Nonetheless, the message is something much deeper. Basically, God was trying to say: “Look, you think that I have abandoned you because I allowed Babylon to defeat you. But you need to know that I still am going to fulfill my promises to Abraham and David. I am faithful to my promises, even when I am judging you.” Hear now what the passage (29:1-14) says when we look at the whole context:

¹ These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. ² This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the eunuchs, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem. ³ The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. It said: ⁴ “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. ⁶ Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. ⁷ But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. ⁸ For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, ⁹ for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord.

¹⁰ “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. ¹² Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. ¹⁴ I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

Jeremiah 29:11, then, applies to all of Israel and Judah as a nation. God knew the plans he had for them. He hadn’t abandoned his project with them. To put it in terms of the New Testament, the message is basically the same as that of Galatians 3:17-18: the Law didn’t invalidate the promise. They were not faithful, but God always continued to be faithful.

The second part of the promise that I want to look at today is the promise of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34. If God promised that he would bring Israel and Judah back from captivity, why was a new covenant necessary? It was necessary because God recognized that Israel needed more than just another opportunity. It wasn’t enough to get them back in the land and assume that they could reform themselves. To some extent we see the attempt that Israel made to do just that in the post-exilic period. And what happened? They avoided some of the worst sins they committed before the exile, but they also ended up falling into a dangerous legalism. Israel needed more than just another chance because the root of the problem wasn’t an isolated bad decision but a hard heart. It is precisely that problem that the new covenant would fix.

Maybe it will help a bit to understand this point if we think about the elections that are happening today in Medellín. Do any of us go to the polls with the expectation that if we just vote for the right person they will transform all of Colombian society? Not likely. A good politician can minimize corruption and help make Colombia a better place. But whomever we elect, we’re not going to get a perfect society. Far from it. Human attempts to reform ourselves spiritually are a lot like our human attempts to reform ourselves politically—they might have some limited gains, they might keep us from the worst atrocities, they might promote peace and goodwill for a time. Yet compared to the perfect standard of holiness that God requires of us and desires for us, they fall far short. That’s why God decided to establish a new covenant.

Jeremiah describes this promised new covenant in 31:31-34:

³¹ “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, ³² not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. ³³ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴ And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Now what is it that’s new about the new covenant? Hebrews 8:6 tells us that the new covenant “is enacted on better promises.” It’s not that the Law was bad, but that the Law had no capacity to give life (Galatians 3:21). Israel and Judah’s disobedience to the Law made them slaves to sin and in need of better promises (see Galatians 3:22). God describes part of those better promises in Jeremiah 31:33-34. The solution to the human sin problem is that God will intervene to write his law on the human heart. When this happens, all in the covenant community will know God and there will be a complete forgetting of our sin.

Even today that promise still sounds rather idealistic, and in some ways it is. The new covenant, like the kingdom of God, is a reality that believers in Christ already experience, but not yet in its fullness. What do I mean by that? We already have forgiveness through faith in Christ. God already dwells in us by his Holy Spirit to begin the process of transforming our hearts and giving us the desire to follow him. But we do not yet live the fullness of this promise. Christ has saved us, but there are dimensions of that salvation that we still are waiting for. One of those dimensions is the promise of having God’s law written on the heart perfectly. When this happens, we will live perfect lives, free from sin. That will only happen when Christ returns and gives us resurrected bodies over which sin will have no dominion. So then, our only hope is a new covenant founded on better promises. This is what Jeremiah prophesied and what Christ accomplished. The fullness of this promise if the future dimension of salvation. Therefore, 1 Peter 1:5 can talk of salvation as something future, writing to those “who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time”.

To return back to our initial question, who then is the God of the Old Testament? Up to this point we have seen that, first, he is a God who takes the sin of his people seriously and judges it in accordance with his Law. Second, he is a God who stays faithful to his covenants with his people even when they are unfaithful. Third, he is a God who intervenes to restore his people and transform the human heart.

But when we arrive almost to the end of Jeremiah we find a series of prophecies that quite possibly worry us a bit, prophecies that might seem to return to a vision of a vengeful and merciless God. In Jeremiah 46-51 we have six chapters of prophecies against the nations around Israel. How is it that this also is part of the vision of God that Jeremiah presents to us?

After reading the prophets various times, I am convinced that these prophecies of judgment are an expression of the goodness of God. Why is that? I say that because if God did not judge sin, there would be no hope. If God did not judge sin, sin would eternally frustrate God’s plans.

            Remember what the false prophets said? “Babylon will be destroyed.” They were wrong in the short term, but yes, Babylon would be destroyed—yet only after Judah first was forcibly displaced at their hands, taken off into exile. After an entire book that speaks of the necessity of accepting defeat at the hands of the Babylonians, Jeremiah 50-51 prophesies the destruction of Babylon.

            Perhaps the best succinct summary is found in 51:49: “Babylon must fall for the slain of Israel, just as for Babylon have fallen the slain of all the earth.” God took the evil of this world—the arrogance of Babylon—and he used it for the good of his people in the long term. But when he was done using Babylon for his purposes, they were called to account.

When there is evil in the world there are only three options of how God can respond: he can redeem it, he can ignore it, or he can judge it. If one does not want to follow God and accept his redemption, God has to judge evil. If it weren’t like that, God would always ignore evil and could never make good on his promises. God knows that with sufficient time evil will not work itself out of the system. There comes a point when God says, “Enough! No more!” That point is judgment day. Judgment day ought to be one of the great comforts for the Christian, because the reality of future judgment means that there is nothing opposed to God that can keep God from fulfilling his promises, because eventually God will call his unrepentant enemies to account and put them in their place. While it is a harsh message, it is also a message of hope for God’s people who have been oppressed by evil.

In the midst of so many details, the message of Jeremiah is simple: There is hope on the other side of judgment, not because humanity is so holy in itself, but because God continues to be faithful to his promises to his people.

What does it mean for us that there is hope on the other side of judgment? Does it mean that first we have to suffer for our sins, for all the bad that we have done, and only then will God treat us well? No, not at all. The gospel tells us that there is only hope on the other side of judgment, but that judgment fell on Jesus. At the cross Jesus suffered the exile that our sin deserved. He took upon himself the punishment for the sins of the world. And through his resurrection he conquered death, giving us the hope of eternal life.

But to receive this grace we have to do something that the nation of Judah was not willing to do in the days of Jeremiah: we have to recognize our sins, repent, and turn to God in faith, trusting in his grace and not in our goodness. The false prophets of Jeremiah’s day wanted good news without passing through the bad news first. They wanted blessing. They wanted prosperity. But they didn’t want to repent.

When you repent and put your faith in Jesus, God will forgive you. Yet God does something more than just forgive you your sins. He makes you a participant in the new covenant. He begins a process of transformation that will not finish until we are in his presence fully, completely free from sin. This is the promise that every follower of Jesus has—that God begins now the transformation of our heart, but one day he will finish the work, and the promise of Jeremiah 31:33 will be perfectly fulfilled: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” This complete transformation of the heart is our only hope, and we can only find it in Jesus, who fulfilled God’s promises, bearing our sins and, in that way, establishing the new covenant in his blood.

So, what kind of God would say that his people’s sin was so serious that it had to be judged? A God so compassionate that he became human to live and suffer in our place so that our sins might be forgiven by his grace. That is the God that we find in the gospel who makes good on Jeremiah’s promises of hope on the other side of judgment.