At the time of Jesus’ birth, Israel found itself under this Roman rule, and Jesus’ royal claim to deity and his talk of destroying the temple captured their attention. Caesar would not tolerate another subversive enemy. In the eyes of Rome, Jesus was a rival king seeking to start a war that would subvert Pax Romana. So they killed him.

What they did not know was that the crucifixion of Jesus inaugurated a divine era of peace. Jesus took Pax Romana into the Trinity and swallowed it and drank down their wrath—but he was really taking to himself the wrath of God. In dying under the wrath of Rome, Jesus reconciled rebel humans to the enraged God. God is no longer at war with those who are in Christ. In his own flesh, God satisfied the wrath of God. God’s wrath was first ignited by human rebellion in the Garden of Eden, and its reversal was enacted in the crucified flesh of Christ–Pax Romana was subverted and became the means of Pax Christos.

Originally published in the Louisburg Herald, 16 May 2012 edition.

I will content myself for now to list verses that cause me to ask the question (I am using various translations), and as is my habit, where I see “the LORD” in an English translation, I replace it with Yahweh (to match the original Hebrew).

Each of the following passages say something about what God is like in relationship to what he creates, decides, does and ordains. I begin with an obvious verse from Genesis where we learn that it was God himself who made the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It’s an obvious fact, but note well: the first reference we have to evil in the bible is about the tree that God himself made.

Gen 2:9 (ESV)

And out of the ground Yahweh God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Exodus 9:12-17 (ESV)

But Yahweh hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as Yahweh had spoken to Moses. 13 Then Yahweh said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 14 For this time I will send all my plagues on you yourself, and on your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. 15 For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth.

16 But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.

Judges 9:23-24 (ESV)

And God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the leaders of Shechem, and the leaders of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech, 24 that the violence done to the seventy sons of Jerubbaal might come, and their blood be laid on Abimelech their brother, who killed them, and on the men of Shechem, who strengthened his hands to kill his brothers.

2 Sam 17:14 (ESV)

And Absalom and all the men of Israel said, “The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.” For Yahweh had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that Yahweh might bring harm upon Absalom.

1 Kings 22:17-23 (ESV)

And he said, “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd. And Yahweh said, ‘These have no master; let each return to his home in peace.’ ” 18 And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?” 19 And Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of Yahweh: I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left;

20 and Yahweh said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. 21 Then a spirit came forward and stood before Yahweh, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ 22 And Yahweh said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’

23 Now therefore behold, Yahweh has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; Yahweh has declared disaster for you.”

Isaiah 45:7 (NASB)

The One forming light and creating darkness,
Causing well-being and creating calamity
I am the Lord who does all these.

Job 2:10 (ESV)

But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Proverbs 16:4,9 (NASB)

The Lord has made everything for its own purpose,
Even the wicked for the day of evil.
9 The mind of man plans his way,
But Yahweh directs his steps.

Acts 2:23 (ESV)

…this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Acts 4:27-28 (ESV)

…for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

Romans 9:13-16,20-21 (ESV)

As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. … 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

1 Peter 2:7-8 (NKJV)

Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient,
“The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone,”
and
“A stone of stumbling
And a rock of offense.”
They stumble, being disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed.

Revelation 13:13-14 (ESV)

It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of people, 14 and by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived.

Turn a deaf ear to any speaker who avoids mention of Jesus Christ who was of David’s line, born of Mary, who was truly born, ate, and drank; was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, truly crucified and died while those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth beheld it; who also was truly raised from the dead, the Father having raised him, who in like manner will raise us also who believe in him — his Father, I say, will raise us in Christ Jesus, apart from whom we have not true life.

This quote is from his letter to the Trallians (chapter 9 — which is only two verses long). Here is the same quote from the Lightfoot translation,

9:1 Be ye deaf therefore, when any man speaketh to you apart from Jesus Christ, who was of the race of David, who was the Son of Mary, who was truly born and ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died in the sight of those in heaven and those on earth and those under the earth; 9:2 who moreover was truly raised from the dead, His Father having raised Him, who in the like fashion will so raise us also who believe on Him — His Father, I say, will raise us — in Christ Jesus, apart from whom we have not true life.

Satan need not give out false words, but only a sea of trivial ones. Above is a map of his trivia-production in Kansas City. Each red dot is a location marker. These locations are factories. Here they manufacture downloadable sermons, worship bands, altar calls, fresh commitments, tangible changes, youth programs, parenting classes, mentors, life coaches, summer camps, motivational speakers, integrated families, party platforms, spiritual leaders, devotional materials, social causes, ministry opportunities, pooled resources, city projects, urban renewal, coffee shops, church leagues, life applications, driven purposes, quiet contemplations, Jewish roots, Bethe Moore studies, bible highlighters, committed dads, hope-filled mothers, promise keepers, third world trips, loving communities, service projects, food pantries, gymnasiums, gardens, day schools, support groups and small groups — all of which is consumed weekly by hoards of hungry worshipers. The billowing waste that is pumped from these factories goes directly into the atmosphere and leaves the world swimming in an antichrist smog. This is the air we breath. Our air comes from billowing stacks of antichrist trivia.

In this sea of antichrist trivia, the follower of Christ seeks the location where the words of Christ are clean and pure. It really is not so hard, for in this sea of noise, the voice of Christ stands out. He is heard easily, for his sheep hear his voice. They hear him clearly, unmistakably and acutely with keen ears (ears wrought by the Spirit).

Jesus is the air of heaven, he is that Word, and the Word of Christ fills the lungs of his kingdom people and they sing out from their chest the Trinitarian doxology. In this antichrist world, the Spirit of Christ is not undone. Christians do indeed find Christ-centered churches. They survey the sea of Satanic-Trivia and hear through it. They do not use their eyes, they use their ears. The voice of our King is not hard for us to hear. But it takes ears–ears that have been made for hearing.

Our weekly worship is special, for sure (maybe even pinnacle relative to a week), but for each of us, it is a part of the larger picture. Indeed, coming together on Sunday is integral to who we are just as lungs are integral to a person’s body. As a church, we are not simply a bunch of individuals having the same experience, but we are individually all living the same corporate cross-life together. In this way, Sunday is a pinnacle moment. But it is a moment in a week of moments; it is a part of a larger event, and that event is a funeral march.

Worship in this age is a funeral march where we make our way to the grave as we sing praises to our King, Jesus, who went there before us. Defining worship as one hour in a week is to miss the larger event. Likewise, rooting worship in any one particular attribute of God would be at the cost of all the other attributes–all of which are embodied in Christ who is fully God. If we are to define worship, we may grope about, but once we lay hold of Jesus, we see that worship is an entire life–the entire life of the God-Man–and it thus encompasses all the attributes of God. Jesus was not simply one individual of the Trinity having a worship experience, but the whole Trinity was bound together in the life of Christ, and this is the Gospels. The Gospels reveal the Trinity and they thus (in that revelation) reveal the life of worship, as it is worship to make God known.

The Gospels (the Biographies of Jesus)
The Life of Jesus defines worship. His whole life is worship; so while the actual word “worship” occurs rarely in the Gospels, worship is present where Jesus is.

Even though the word “worship” is used sparingly in the Gospels, it is used, and it is instructive to review some of those. For example, Jesus tells Satan that he will worship God (Matthew 4:10). A leaper worshiped Jesus in the street (Matthew 8:2). A ruler worshiped him while he spoke (Matthew 9:18). His followers worship him in a boat (Matthew 14:33). The woman at the well spoke of two mountains as the place of worship, but Jesus said our worship is not defined by the place but by the person, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life,

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and Truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and Truth.” John 4:21-24

The Christian life is a whole life of Triune worship. It is the worship of the Father by the Spirit of Christ who dwells in us always. When Christians gather together, they do together what they do always — they worship.

In this way, worship has its kinds. When we eat and when we drink, or when we lie down, we do so for the glory of God. But worship also has its pinnacle moments relative to the others, and each one is regulated according to its kind. But all of worship is of a piece. There are distinctions in a life of worship, but the life is one.

The Rest of the New Testament
Notice in the New Testament there is no manual for what Christians did when they came together. As we expand out beyond the Gospels, we find accounts of Christians coming together for worship, but there are few prescriptions. The New Testament is mostly descriptive of what happened when Christians came together — they ate, they baptized, they sang, they fasted, they ordained, they prayed, they preached, etc. These are the elements of what churches did together (their corporate worship). The content of this time together was Christ. Even the form of what they did was of importance to them, so that preaching Christ could be made void by an invalid form (1 Cor 1:17).

Negative Examples
What is of interest to us is True worship. Interestingly, however, we may learn about True worship as we are taught about the false worship that the world offers to Satan (Revelation 9:20). First observe that the world does indeed worship Satan (though they would not admit it). We know this because it is revealed to us as the facts of the matter (see also Revelation 13:4,8). The world may be blind to the fact that their lives are consecrated as memorials unto Satan. They are unaware. Alas, they worship Satan not at an appointed time, but as a matter of affections, life, practice, worldview, ethos, passion and instinct. All of them.

The ungodly worship. Theirs is a life of worship. The Christian life is a whole life of worship, so is every life. Everyone worships. It is not a matter of an hour on Sunday, but a matter of a whole life. Scripture so uses the word “worship” as to leave no room for a restrictive or narrow definition. If it did, the unbelievers could cry fowl, and say, “We did not worship Satan.” If they are given the right to define worship in any limited sense, then they can deny the charge of a life that has been handed over to anti-Christ worship. As it is, they stand condemned for living Satanic lives.

What is true worship?
What does it mean to worship in Spirit and in Truth. Again, I take you back to what I said in the opening paragraph: Jesus is the life of Worship. There is no part of his life that was not caught up in being consecrated as a life of worship. Likewise, whether we eat or we drink (or whatever we do), we do all for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31).

Christian worship is a life of worship, and it means obeying the commands of the one we worship. And it is the Trinity whom we worship, and it is the one true God who calls us to worship regularly together. That is, we offer up to God what he has asked of us. And he has asked of us our whole lives (Romans 12), and he has asked of us to participate in the regular gatherings of the church (Hebrews 10), and he asked us to bless those who curse us. He has asked for everything, and he wants our whole lives.

Our obedience becomes our offering of worship, and it means bearing the cross daily. Daily cross bearing is worship, and Sunday worship is a gathering of cross bearing people.

Worship has its different moments. And each is according to its place and kind, and each kind has been commanded. That means that we cannot claim success in worship if we are withholding worship in some way. We are not worshiping with success on Sundays if we refuse God his due on Saturdays and Mondays, or if we exempt worship from how we treat our families or what we do secretly in our homes or in our jobs. Worship is costly. The way is narrow. Few are they who find it.

Because it is costly, the world wants to redefine worship to something easier. They want worship to be within their reach. They want to make the Bible a liturgical manual, a choir practice, a style of praise music, a church calendar. They want to make the narrow way broad, and they want the kingdom without a cross.

That which is costly is foolish to those who cannot see the dividends
Worship is foolishness to those who are perishing, because cross bearing is costly worship, and real worship is cross bearing. Worship means that we obey Jesus when he commands us to hate our lives in this world (John 12:25). The world cannot do this. To worship God is to obey Jesus and to bear our cross daily (Luke 14:27).

It is interesting, don’t you think, that in the New Testament the word “worship” is never reduced to the gathering of Christians in a building where they following a liturgy. It does not mean that churches do not gather, but the weekly gathering is a subset of Christian worship.

Worship Consumes the Whole Life
When we read the New Testament, worship turns out to consume the whole life of the Christian. Together, as a church, Christians become like a whole burnt offering offered up on the altar (Romans 12:1). It costs us our lives. It is the march to the cross. It is the march to the grave. Those who are perishing would call a life of worship foolishness, for it is costly. And it will cost us our friends and our significance. They hated Jesus, they also will hate us. The theologian of the Cross (the person himself) becomes the song or the hymn, and that song is a dirge, and the destination is the grave.

But there is a happy refrain, for if we will thus worship God, we will also be raised with him. But we do not reach the refrain till we first find the grave.

If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. John 14:18-19.

This is worship. To be counted with Christ and numbered with those thus hated by the world, is to worship Christ. To live this way is the way of the Cross. It is worship because no part of the life of Jesus was not worship; we have the pattern set before us, and the pattern is Jesus. Jesus is the trailblazer of the faith (Hebrews 12:1-2)–which does not make him a part of our lives, but the whole, and so he is the trailblazer of our worship and of our lives.

Corrupted theology often preserves some sense of truth. For example, Egyptian temples (as evil as they are), still preserve the basic idea of “temple.” We thus see in Egyptian religion something coming from Noah and his children. As they left the Ark of their preservation and extended throughout the earth, they took with them light that was then suppressed for evil. The idea of “temple” is not evil, but the evil is the corruption of it by the Egyptian religion by the descendants of Noah.

In addition to directing your attention to ideas that were preserved in their corruption, I am also in the process of adding links to the translation so that you can be taken to other relevant articles that expound upon the names and places identified in the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone.
Translation by R.S. Simpson
Revised version from R.S. Simpson, Demotic Grammar in the Ptolemaic Sacerdotal Decrees (Oxford, Griffith Institute, 1996), pp. 258-71, also available in Cracking Codes: The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment by Parkinson.

Copyright of R.S. Simpson and the Griffith Institute

[Year 9, Xandikos day 4], which is equivalent to the Egyptian month, second month of Peret, day 18, of the King ‘The Youth who has appeared as King in the place of his Father’, the Lord of the Uraei/Cbobra ‘Whose might is great, who has established Egypt, causing it to prosper, whose heart is beneficial before the gods’, (the One) Who is over his Enemy ‘Who has caused the life of the people to prosper, the Lord of the Years of Jubilee like Ptah-Tenen, King like Pre’, [the King of the Upper Districts and] the Lower Districts ‘The Son of the Father-loving gods, whom Ptah has chosen, to whom Pre has given victory, the Living Image of [the god] Amun‘, the Son of Pre ‘Ptolemy, living forever, beloved of Ptah, the Manifest god whose excellence is fine’, son of Ptolemy [Ptolemy IV, Philopator] and Arsinoe, the Father-loving gods, (and) the Priest of Alexander and the Saviour gods and [the Brother-and-Sister gods and the] Beneficent [gods] and the Father-loving gods and King Ptolemy, the Manifest god whose excellence is fine, Aetos son of Aetos; while Pyrrha daughter of Philinos was Prize-bearer before Berenice the Beneficent, while Areia daughter of Diogenes was [Basket]-bearer [before Arsi]noe the Brother-loving, and while Eirene daughter of Ptolemy was Priestess of Arsinoe the Father-loving: on this day, a decree of the mr-sn priests and the hm-ntr priests, and the priests who enter the sanctuary to perform clothing rituals for the gods, and the scribes of the divine book and the scribes of the House of Life, and the other priests who have come from the temples of Egypt [to Memphis on] the festival of the Reception of the Rulership by King Ptolemy, living forever, beloved of Ptah, the Manifest god whose excellence is fine, from his father, who have assembled in the temple of Memphis, and who have said:

Whereas King Ptolemy, living forever, the Manifest god whose excellence is fine, son of King Ptolemy [Ptolemy IV, Philopator] [and Queen] Arsinoe, the Father-loving gods, is wont to do many favours for the temples of Egypt and for all those who are subject to his kingship, he being a god, the son of a god and a goddess, and being like Horus son of Isis and Osiris, who protects his father Osiris, and his heart being beneficent concerning the gods, since he has given much money and much grain to the temples of Egypt, [he having undertaken great expenses] in order to create peace in Egypt and to establish the temples, and having rewarded all the forces that are subject to his rulership; and of the revenues and taxes that were in force in Egypt he had reduced some or(?) had renounced them completely, in order to cause the army and all the other people to be prosperous in his time as [king; the arrear]s which were due to the King from the people who are in Egypt and all those who are subject to his kingship, and (which) amounted to a large total, he renounced; the people who were in prison and those against whom there had been charges for a long time, he released; he ordered concerning the endowments of the gods, and the money and the grain that are given as allowances to their [temples] each year, and the shares that belong to the gods from the vineyards, the orchards, and all the rest of the property which they possessed under his father, that they should remain in their possession; moreover, he ordered concerning the priests that they should not pay their tax on becoming priests above what they used to pay up to Year 1 under his father; he released the people [who hold] the offices of the temples from the voyage they used to make to the Residence of Alexander each year; he ordered that no rower should be impressed into service; he renounced the two-thirds share of the fine linen that used to be made in the temples for the Treasury, he bringing into its [correct] state everything that had abandoned its (proper) condition for a long time, and taking all care to have done in a correct manner what is customarily done for the gods, likewise causing justice to be done for the people in accordance with what Thoth the Twice-great did; moreover, he ordered concerning those who will return from the fighting men and the rest of the people who had gone astray (lit. been on other ways) in the disturbance that had occurred in Egypt that [they] should [be returned] to their homes, and their possessions should be restored to them; and he took all care to send (foot)soldiers, horsemen, and ships against those who came by the shore and by the sea to make an attack on Egypt; he spent a great amount in money and grain against these (enemies), in order to ensure that the temples and the people who were in Egypt should be secure; he went to the fortress of Sk3n [which had] been fortified by the rebels with all kinds of work, there being much gear and all kinds of equipment within it; he enclosed that fortress with a wall and a dyke(?) around (lit. outside) it, because of the rebels who were inside it, who had already done much harm to Egypt, and abandoned the way of the commands of the King and the commands [of the god]s; he caused the canals which supplied water to that fortress to be dammed off, although the previous kings could not have done likewise, and much money was expended on them; he assigned a force of footsoldiers and horsemen to the mouths of those canals, in order to watch over them and to protect them, because of the [rising] of the water, which was great in Year 8, while those canals supply water to much land and are very deep; the King took that fortress by storm in a short time; he overcame the rebels who were within it, and slaughtered them in accordance with what Pre and Horus son of Isis did to those who had rebelled against them in those places in the Beginning; (as for) the rebels who had gathered armies and led them to disturb the nomes, harming the temples and abandoning the way of the King and his father, the gods let him overcome thein at Memphis during the festival of the Reception of the Rulership which he did from his father, and he had them slain on the wood; he remitted the arrears that were due to the King from the temples up to Year 9, and amounted to a large total of money and grain; likewise the value of the fine linen that was due from the temples from what is made for the Treasury, and the verification fees(?) of what had been made up to that time; moreover, he ordered concerning the artaba of wheat per aroura of land, which used to be collected from the fields of the endowment, and likewise for the wine per aroura of land from the vineyards of the gods’ endowments: he renounced them; he did many favours for Apis and Mnevis, and the other sacred animals that are honoured in Egypt, more than what those who were before him used to do, he being devoted to their affairs at all times, and giving what is required for their burials, although it is great and splendid, and providing what is dedicated(?) in their temples when festivals are celebrated and burnt offerings made before them, and the rest of the things which it is fitting to do; the honours which are due to the temples and the other honours of Egypt he caused to be established in their (proper) condition in accordance with the law; he gave much gold, silver, grain, and other items for the Place of Apis; he had it adorned with new work as very fine work; he had new temples, sanctuaries, and altars set up for the gods, and caused others to assume their (proper) condition, he having the heart of a beneficent god concerning the gods and enquiring after the honours of the temples, in order to renew them in his time as king in the manner that is fitting; and the gods have given him in return for these things strength, victory, success(?), prosperity, health, and all the (sic) other favours, his kingship being established under him and his descendants forever:

With good fortune! It has seemed fitting to the priests of all the temples of Egypt, as to the honours which are due to King Ptolemy, living forever, the Manifest god whose excellence is fine, in the temples, and those which are due to the Father-loving gods, who brought him into being, and those which are due to the Beneficent gods, who brought into being those who brought him into being, and those which are due to the Brother-and-Sister gods, who brought into being those who brought them into being, and those which are due to the Saviour gods, the ancestors of his ancestors, to increase them; and that a statue should be set up for King Ptolemy, living forever, the Manifest god whose excellence is fine – which should be called ‘Ptolemy who has protected the Bright Land’, the meaning of which is ‘Ptolemy who has preserved Egypt’ – together with a statue for the local god, giving him a scimitar of victory, in each temple, in the public part of the temple, they being made in the manner of Egyptian work; and the priests should pay service to the statues in each temple three times a day, and they should lay down sacred objects before them and do for them the rest of the things that it is normal to do, in accordance with what is done for the other gods on the festivals, the processions, and the named (holi)days; and there should be produced a cult image for King Ptolemy, the Manifest god whose excellence is fine, son of Ptolemy and Queen Arsinoe, the Father-loving gods, together with the (sic) shrine in each temple, and it should be installed in the sanctuary with the other shrines; and when the great festivals occur, on which the gods are taken in procession, the shrine of the Manifest god whose excellence is fine should be taken in procession with them; and in order that the shrine may be recognized, now and in the rest of the times that are to come, ten royal diadems of gold should be added – there being one uraeus on them each, like what is normally done for the gold diadems – on top of the shrine, instead of the uraei that are upon the rest of the shrines; and the double crown should be in the centre of the diadems, because it is the one with which the King was crowned in the temple of Memphis, when there was being done for him what is normally done at the Reception of the Rulership; and there should be placed on the upper side of (the) square(?) which is outside the diadems, and opposite the gold diadem that is described above, a papyrus plant and a ‘sedge’ plant; and a uraeus should be placed on a basket with a ‘sedge’ under it on the right of the side on top of the shrine, and a uraeus with a basket under it should be placed on a papyrus on the left, the meaning of which is ‘The King who has illumined Upper and Lower Egypt’; and whereas fourth month of Shemu, last day, on which is held the birthday of the King, has been established already as a procession festival in the temples, likewise second month of Peret, day 17, on which are performed for him the ceremonies of the Reception of the Rulership – the beginning of the good things that have happened to everyone: the birth of the King, living forever, and his reception of the rulership – let these days, the 17th and the last, become festivals each month in all the temples of Egypt; and there should be performed burnt offerings, libations, and the rest of the things that are normally done on the other festivals, on both festivals each month; and what is offered in sacrifice(?) should be distributed as a surplus(?) to the people who serve in the temple; and a procession festival should be held in the temples and the whole of Egypt for King Ptolemy, living forever, the Manifest god whose excellence is fine, each year, from first month of Akhet, day 1, for five days, with garlands being worn, burnt offerings and libations being performed, and the rest of the things that it is fitting to do; and the priests who are in each of the temples of Egypt should be called ‘The Priests of the Manifest god whose excellence is fine’ in addition to the other priestly titles, and they should write it on every document, and they should write the priesthood of the Manifest god whose excellence is fine on their rings and they should engrave it on them; and it should be made possible for the private persons also who will (so) wish, to produce the likeness of the shrine of the Manifest god whose excellence is fine, which is (discussed) above, and to keep it in their homes and hold the festivals and the processions which are described above, each year, so that it may become known that the inhabitants of Egypt pay honour to the Manifest god whose excellence is fine in accordance with what is normally done; and the decree should be written on a stela of hard stone, in sacred writing, document writing, and Greek writing, and it should be set up in the first-class temples, the second-class temples and the third-class temples, next to the statue of the King, living forever.

God fills your cupboards with liquor and your husband stays intoxicated and you get beat with fists of rage. Worship God.

God sent the car speeding in that direction on that day, piloted by that rich kid who was strung out on cocaine–paranoid and frantically fleeing when none pursued. Every step of the wicked teen was according to the hand of God’s righteous providence (from discovering the unattended keys, to locating the car, to turning the ignition and pressing the gas). He did not have a single ounce of freedom to turn the wheel and avert the deadly blow that robbed your family of a sweet child’s breath and innocence. Worship God.

But you refuse. Not this God. No. Oh, you will worship, but you won’t worship the God who ordains all things. You will invent a god who allows evil only so that drunkards and addicts can have free will. And You will sing religious songs to it, and close your eyes and pray, and you will worship it, but you won’t worship the God who is.

You say you will worship the God who is Lord of Lords and King of Kings, but you will not worship the one who is also King over child mortality and Lord over drunkards. In this way, you want to worship the god that does not exist.

Repent, and worship the one that does. And when you need a miracle, he will not deliver, and you will die and your corpse will lie reposing in the ground and your name will be forgotten because you are childless and your parents and siblings are dead and your drunkard husband left you. Worship God.

If you are waiting for another god, your rotting memory will never decay but will retain its name unto the day when you be raised up with a body fit for a kind of death that knows no end (John 5:25; Acts 24:15; Dan 12:2). Then you will have a perfect mind that will turn over every way you hate the God who made you, and you will know how this God did not send you miracles to ever help you. And forever you will curse him from an eternity of unending disgust for your brief life of calamity. Your hatred of God will be perfected by thousands and thousands of years of conscious remembrance, and your dead baby will become to you pure hate for Jesus; and Christ himself will take into his nostrils the smoke of your torment–a smoke which will ascend up to him forever (Rev 14:11).

If all of this seems alien and strange, then you don’t know the women in this condition nor the real world wherein wicked men prevail upon the weak (weak victims and slaves for whom no miracle ever comes to save them). If you don’t know about this world, maybe that’s not the problem. Maybe the disconnect is that you don’t want reality this way. You don’t want it this way because you don’t want to know that a good and loving deity would make a world like this and then slay and judge its inhabitants only to raise them up and slay them again. Worship God.

For whatever reason, Trinitarian statements are like a primal call to retreat for some purer form of theology (a form that poses as an earlier and truer monotheism). However, let us never lay down Trinitarian theology in retreat, especially when Christ says, “You have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If you loved me, you would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.” John 14:28.

Jesus used the word, greater, and we need feel no retreating or defensive reflex–a reflex which says more about us than it does about monotheism or the Trinity.

The Father sends the son (John 6:57) and the Son sends the Spirit (John 15:26; Acts 2:33). The Spirit does not testify of himself, but glorifies Christ (John 16:13-14). These Trinitarian verses break the nerve of the mere monotheist, to use the words of Karl Rahner who said that, “despite their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere ‘monotheists’” — Karl Rahner, The Trinity, (1970, p.10).

If mere monotheists describes us, we must come again to Scripture. For God is the Trinity, and has so spoken about himself. He makes distinctions about himself so that we know that Jesus is the Son of God. “Father” and “Son” do not betray monotheism (revealing an anti-monotheistic teaching), they reveal Trinitarianism. That is, we are not against monotheism, but we are not mere monotheists. We are Trinitarian.

There is only one God (James 2:19; 1 Tim 2:5). Jesus is God (John 1:1, John 20:28), the Father is God (Eph 1:3) and the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4). We affirm with scripture that Jesus is not the Holy Spirit, for he sends the Spirit; Jesus is not the Father (he prays to the Father); the Father is not the Holy Spirit (the Spirit is another helper, sent by the Father, John 14:26). We are Trinitarian.

Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and he said, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). Jesus said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9), and he also said, “I go to the Father” (John 16:10). He said all of these things. These words are not confusing. Jesus is not confusing. Only those not committed to the Trinity find confusion here. This is not confusatory, it is revelatory. When Jesus reveals what God is like, confusion is not our first response, but delight. We do not say, “Yeah but…,” rather, we say, “Ah! Wow!” Alas, Jesus made no sense to those who were mere monotheists, and so they tried to kill him (John 10:33).

Anti-Trinitarianism led to the attempted murder of Jesus. Mere monotheism turns out to be murderously opposed to Trinitarianism (John 5:18).

We are more than mere monotheist, we are Trinitarian, and so we know why it is that the Holy Spirit could speak of the glory of the Son, and not his own glory (John 16:48). Likewise, we do not accept Trinitarianism as a facade or face plate, of which the clever among us know the purely monotheistic god who is behind it. Trinitarian theology is not a veil.

As we affirm the Trinity, we do not prefer parts. That is, we do not look down at the ground as we quickly say the statements that are expressly Trinity, only to look up and speak loudly our affirmation of the monotheistic element of our confession. We are not trying to please other supposed monotheists. We are trying to state back what God has revealed about himself, and there is no embarrassment here. There is only one God, and he is the Trinity.

Jesus wins for himself a kingdom, and he wins it for the Father (1 Cor 15:28); this verse is an emblem of our faith, not an embarrassing slip where Paul betrayed monotheism. Look, see, “And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” This is not a denial of the deity of Christ (Phil 2:6), this is further revelation regarding the Trinity! This is not a denial of the one true God. This is not anti-monotheistic. This is a revelation of the Trinity. Paul was able to write both 1 Cor 15:28 and Col 1:15 because he was not a mere monotheist. Paul was Trinitarian because God is the Trinity.

Whenever we discover the Trinity in Scripture, some instinct may rise up like a monotheistic-claimant. It is often quick to arrive, and comes from some alien-quarter of theology sounding pure, and ideal. So I propose a new impulse. Whenever we speak of our monotheism, we should be quick to re-state our Trinitarian commitments. That is, instead of speaking about God in merely monotheistic ways–ways favorable to the religion that agrees with the stone-bearing monotheists who wanted to kill Jesus–our impulses should lead us to name him, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” When we feel ourselves wanting to reaffirm our own congruencies (those that make us compatible with all versions of monotheism), let us instead RUN as fast as we can to exegete the Trinity.

The one true God is the Trinity. The Trinity is not a divine mirage or a surface plate (behind which stands the true God). We do not affirm the different aspects of the Trinity so that that we can get back to saying what we really wanted to say about monotheism.

Unflinching, steeled, and knowing that there is only one God, we hear rightly the words of Christ: “My Father is greater than I”, (John 14:48; cf. John 5:19). When we hear this, or when we hear that the Holy Spirit glorifies the Son, we do not bend, retreat or surrender. We discover, and we worship, for we are Trinitarian, through and through, and we sing the Doxology with lungs filled to capacity, and hearts brimming with the confession of heaven, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”

For more (and a chart), see my earlier article on the subject.

God is Christlike, and in him there is no unchristlikness at all.
— John V. Taylor, The Christlike God.

What Taylor observes about God can be observed in all directions. That is, God did not become Christlike, he has always been Christlike, even prior to the creation of the world. Being Christlike is essential to who he always has been, who he is, and who he always will be. Therefore, we do not look upon the Cross as transparent, seeing through it to a god who is behind it or above it. The Incarnation and the Cross are not a mirage of a shifting god (James 1:17) who acts one way in history, yet for whom the Cross is ultimately not fit to reveal his true character (1 Cor 1:18).

We do not peer around the Cross to find a real god who was prior to it, or distinct from it; instead we look upon the Cross and we find that God has always been Christlike (John 14:7; John 10:30). God will not be known in any other way (John 14:6), as there is no other God to know (John 14:1). As we read the accounts of God prior to the incarnation of Christ, we read them just that way, as relative to the incarnation, calling them prior, thus following the pattern of understanding given to us by Christ in Luke 24:25-27. All of our knowledge of God turns on the Incarnation (2 Cor 4:6). When we read Genesis, we are not reading about a god who was on his way to being Christlike, but we read about the God who has always been infinite in his Christlikeness (John 8:19). The Christlike God of Genesis is the same Christlike God of Revelation (Revelation 21:22). God has always been Christlike (John 10:38), and the Scriptures are the revelation of the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

The Volition of the Christlike God
God has always been Christlike. To that end, I wrote in Part 1, that he thus revealed himself on the basis of his Cross-bearing character. There I asked the question, “Was God constrained, prior to creation, to create the world, send his Son, and reveal himself to humans?” to which I answered yes. And now I would like to expand upon the subject in relationship to the Glory of God in the Cross and then his electing choices (his volition); I would also like to name this whole subject, point you to some other authors who have written on it and then suggest some differences I have.

Like another subject, yet different
For those who want to read more, you will want to locate books and articles related to hypothetical necessity vs. absolute necessity. That’s the name of the larger subject which makes up these two articles — even though I am not exactly staying true to the confines of the subject, and, indeed, I am saying something related, but critically different (those differences will concern me below).

Who has been talking about this subject?
Before I move on to the differences, I wish to make you aware of theologians who have taken up the subject of hypothetical necessity. Aquinas, for example, argued that hypothetically God could have forgiven sinners on the basis of fiat. That is, he saw the cross as necessary, but in some sense hypothetically so, which is not far off from the later philosophy of Leibniz who said, in essence, that God can’t do without his power, but he could hypothetically do without creation (see also Turretin on the divine will, III.14). In contrast to Aquinas, John Murray argued in Redemption Accomplished and Applied, for a kind of absolute necessity of the Cross (or what Anselm called consequent absolute necessity). Like Aquinas, Murray was arguing from the position of redemption. For Murray, redemption by the Cross was an absolute necessity if anyone was to be saved (he disagreed with Aquinas, as do I).

John Murray
In his book, Murray started with the post-fall world and picked up the subject from the vantage point of the transgression of men as already realized. Starting with the reality of Adam’s rebellion, Murray rightly presses that there is no other way except through the atonement of Christ for the forgiveness of God to be given. Forgiveness of sins is only by the Cross. People could not be forgiven by mere fiat and the Cross is an absolute necessity. I agree with Murray. And where I agree, I want to go deeper. This is where the differences I have been alluding to come in. Murray was talking about the necessity of the Cross given the fact of the fall.

I am exploring the divine necessity of God prior to the fall and prior to creation. God has always been Christlike, and by divine necessity (the Divine Dei, the “divine must”) comes his Christlike self-revelation (which is the Incarnation and the Cross). In this sense, I am talking about a subject different than the one which compares hypothetical necessity to absolute necessity.

In the Incarnation, God was acting out of the necessity of his Christlike character
In Part 1, I tried to make the case that the necessity of the incarnation of Christ came from the character of God and not merely from his free volition. That is, the God-Man is fundamental to who God is in the same way that his knowledge is rooted in who he is and not in his having chosen to be all-knowing.

God’s self-revelation in Jesus is so fundamental to who God is that there is no other way to speak of God (see John 14:6, for which it would be presumptuous to read this verse, and then exempt our speaking as free from any constraints this verse would place upon us). Therefore, the two epochs of the life of the Trinity that we talk about are when he was getting ready to reveal himself as the God-Man, and after he revealed himself as the God-Man. Prior to creation, God had not yet incarnated, and that is how we speak of him when we speak about the epoch before the Advent.

Ultimate and Subordinate Matters
This gets us closer, I think, to the meaning of the Cross and the essential character of God. I will be arguing that God revealing himself in Jesus–where Humanity is the right-fit place for his self-revelation–is ultimate and preeminent, and redemption is subordinate (note well: I did not say unimportant, but subordinate). I would be remiss if I did not direct your attention to John Owens’ book, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, where he uses the word “subordinate” in the same way I do here.

Far more relevant than Owens, however, one sees in 1 John 2:12 that our sins are forgiven us for his name’s sake. Here we discover the principle that the glory of God is ultimate, and the forgiveness of our sins is subordinate (and serves that end). In 1 John 2:12, and in other places, we learn that God was motivated by something higher than even our redemption, even though our redemption flows from the objectives he attained and achieved in Christ. This does not mean that redemption competes with the glory of God, but serves it.

God’s Glory Distinctly Know in His Self-Revelation and in His Redeeming
What God was doing in Humanity (in Jesus) was manifold. Becoming the God-Man was, in itself, a taking back of humanity to himself (so that Jesus is now and forevermore the God-Man). Humanity was united to the Trinity in Christ. One might describe this as a change in the Trinitarian experience.

In and of itself, the incarnation of God in humanity (including the death, burial, resurrection and ascension), corresponds to who God is by nature (by his character). In this way, it is preeminent over the redemption of any particular person, and can be discussed distinctly with respect to the Trinity. Herein, I want to make a distinction between redemption and the revelation of God as the God-Man (again, not for a competition between the two, but as a distinction for the sake of diving deeper into each).

The Trinitarian Experience and God’s Self Revelation
In Jesus, God was establishing the place of rebellion (i.e., humanity) as the place where he would reverse all anti-Christ principles. The exact place of anti-God would be the place he would make his name most famous. The fame of his glory found its pinnacle expression in the place most hostile to it — in human flesh (the flesh of Jesus). Jesus on the Cross was the highest elevation known to God and man, and was the place most hateful of God (we killed him there).

Jesus said in John 12:32, “If I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me,” and so he was lifted up by divine necessity (John 3:14). The climax of God’s self-revelation was on the peak of a mountain of rejection. Where God was most rejected he was most glorified and most revealed. Where he was most hidden to those who cannot see his glory (the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing) he was making his power and glory most known.

Humanity (until Christ) was only and always against God. God’s words seemed to have no ability to accomplish their spoken end in humanity. Adam and Eve stand in contrast to the rest of creation. The sun has been doing its assigned task faithfully from the start, always carrying out the word spoken to it. But when God spoke to humans, the words did not bring about their expected end. Humanity seemed to be the place where God’s words don’t work, with the added irony that humans were made in the image of God.

God’s image-bearing creatures were the place where God was attacked. And the very place where God was most despised, his Christlike character and eternal power would be most revealed. God came and incarnated himself in humanity (in the place of resistance). A reversal took place and, “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). Jesus is a man. He did not become an angel, but the Word tabernacled here, a human among humans. Humanity was the right fit place for God to most reveal himself. The place of hatred of God would be the place where God would show that his words really do work.

God’s desire to most reveal his character corresponds to his character, and so Paul spoke this way of him, “Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ” (Acts 17:3; see also Luke 22:22, Acts 2:23, Acts 4:28). I wrote about this “must needs” in Part 1, but now I am pressing the point that the divine necessity is even more compelling than Turretin and Murray suggest.

The only God is the one who makes himself known
God revealed is part of who God is, and his revelation is most acute on the high place where it would seem all hope is lost. In fact, when Christ said, “If I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me,” he spoke of an elevation to which no higher elevation can be found. Jesus was lifted up on the Cross, the high spot of all divine revelation. This pinnacle place of God making himself known is where his image-creatures turned against him. We heaved him to heights so high that none can imagine a place higher: Jesus, on the Cross. Gazing upon the Crucified Creator, we spy the exact way that God loved his enemies. God’s love is like this. Indeed, God is like this. God is the God who drew close to Judas and washed his feet. Independent of Judas or anyone appropriating its benefits, the Cross reveals who God is.

The Glory of God in Election and Redemption
We can speak differently about the application of redemption (by the Spirit through new birth) and the accomplishment of it by Christ on the Cross (hence the title of Murray’s book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied). Our experience of redemption is directly related to the Cross itself. The two are together, yet we can speak of the distinctions between applied and accomplished. Likewise, the revelation of God by the Cross, and the redemption it accomplished can be distinctly discussed. My goal in this article has been to speak about Jesus and the Cross as being a Trinitarian accomplishment and necessity (even before we talk about the redemption accomplished).

The Cross accomplished many things, each with its distinction. I have tried to discuss its revelatory success first (since God himself is ultimate, and not man), distinct from what we must also say about the redemption it accomplished. The Cross is revelatory and redemptive. The revelation is a necessity of his character. In that Cross-bearing revelation, he was atoning for sins and therein was redeeming for himself rebel humans. I want to now turn my attention to this particular redemption, and the salvation of particular rebel humans.

The Cross of Christ is the way that God saves sinners
God took a human into the Trinity in the flesh of Jesus (the one true human) so that humanity is the place of Glory. He then opened up the Trinity to rebel humans. When we speak of God being glorified in humanity, we can speak of both: the flesh of Jesus, and then those other humans who were strangers, but who are made new and brought near (Eph 2:17) to eat his flesh (John 6:53) and so share in his life (2 Peter 1:4).

Not only did God wash the feet of Peter (revealing what kind of God he is), he brought Peter into the Trinitarian life by the Holy Spirit. He washed the feet of Judas, but Judas remains the son of perdition (unconverted, and excluded from the glory of God). Here we see that God’s self revelation is distinct from any fallen human’s participation in the beatific life of God. And here we come closer to the actual subject of Murray’s book. Namely, the distribution of the benefits of the Cross are according to the volition of God.

God’s Election for God’s Glory
So far, I have been talking about the divine necessity of God as rooted in the character of God, and now I want to speak of his volition (his electing choice where he chooses who will come to Christ — John 6:37-39).

It was not necessary to God’s character that he save any particular person (Peter vs. Judas), so that Peter’s appropriation of the benefits of the Cross were not what we would call an absolute necessity. Rather, God elects whom he will save. God’s election is not rooted in anything meritorious in the objects of his mercy, nor anything necessary about them that would draw God.

Election is where the free electing purposes of God are distinct from the divine necessity whereby he was constrained. God did not elect Peter because Peter was necessary to God’s character (so that without Peter God would not be God), but according to his free electing intentions. While God, by his nature cannot lie nor deny himself, he can, by another principle, freely choose whom he will harden and whom he will save (Romans 9:18). Election and the Cross of Christ are distinct, and each can be discussed separately even as they can be brought together to reveal to us the manifold glory of the one true God. The God who elects is the Christlike God.

Indeed, God is free. And that fact becomes a staring point for the imagination. Some philosophers imagine that prior to creation no divine acts were done from any divine necessity. God chose freely, and not from any constraint (so the reasoning goes). Since God really is free, the human mind might postulate that the Incarnation and the Cross were not rooted in anything necessary to God’s character, but came about as a result of his choices (the first being the choice to create). From this same starting point (that God is free) even conservative Christians may mistakenly attribute the Incarnation and the Cross to God’s mere volition, and not to his character. And here is where the imagination runs amuck.

God Acts from His Character

God is free–for sure–but he is driven by his character and not his volition alone; thus, as an example, it is an immutable fact that it is impossible for God to lie (Hebrews 6:18). Which means that he cannot will his way into lying. He is free, but his activities are necessitated by his character, and his character informs upon his willing. That he cannot lie is essential to his character, and is not a choice he made when inventing himself. The scriptures (at this point) are telling us about his character, not his volition. God is not constrained in the way he is (i.e., unable to lie) because he picked that as the configuration for the reality we now experience. His inability to lie is rooted in his character, not his volition. And his volition conforms to his character, not the other way around.

To make it so that God has picked what he is like is to use our imagination, and it means resisting that he has revealed himself truly and accurately by his Word. To contemplate him as picking this reality among other possible realities would be to look around his Word (to bypass revelation) and discover what he is really like. If we chose to think this way of him, we would be lost in a hopeless word-maze where the Bible itself would be the result of this particular reality, and not another. We would invent a god who is a giant contingency machine, having this reality as the contingency-experiment now being explored. For us, the real god would be the one discovered independent of revelation–the really real god would lie outside of his own revelation (beyond the word-maze). In this way, we would discover a god like Q–a bored mythological deity trying different reality paths as he spends his time being infinitely bored.

God is not the bored deity of mythology with an infinitude of choices before him (many of them attempted already), trying this thing then that thing. And even if we want to make him more sophisticated than that, it does us no good to make him a divine personage running an algorithm against all possible outcomes and choices. He is not an optimal-choice machine, weighing all the choice-inputs against all resulting outputs, then selecting the optimal version of reality wherein he is most glorified. The Scriptures do not teach us to think this way.

What God reveals to us by his Word is that he is the good and loving God who has made himself known in the man, Jesus. Who he is in the incarnation of Jesus is by necessity of his character, and is not merely an optimal choice in a post-fall world. We discover that God revealing himself is part of who he is (it is related to his character), and what we say about Christ is what we say about the unique revelation of God.

The Divine Necessity

God is free and at the same time he is motivated by his character to make his glory known. In this way, his self revelation in Christ was not a mere option (one possible choice to which his choice-making engine found optimal return), but corresponds to who he is. Therefor, we cannot speak about God in terms of what choices he might have made, for that is not how he has taught us to speak of him. Instead, he bids us to look upon Christ and to form our thoughts on God that way. All other paths are idolatry. There is no way to speak about a god and a world of possible choices (of which his volition picked this one), for no such deity exists. We know the only true God by his acts in Christ (which are accompanied by his speaking about those acts, explaining what they mean and why he did them).

Did God create this reality from an infinitude of possible realities? No. It is of his excellent character that he created this world and then acted in it by the Incarnation and the Cross (Acts 17:3). The Cross of Christ came about by the constraint of who God is, and this constraint was prior to creation, and explains why there is a creation. God created all things that he might demonstrate his love in the Incarnation and the Cross. It is who he is. Paul speaks of this in Acts 17:13 as a divine necessity (the revelation of God by the Cross of Christ is rooted in the character of God). God acted from his character and not from a choice algorithm that told him how to optimize his glory in this particular reality. Acts 17:3 puts an end to philosophy, and we find out what God is like in, by and with the Cross of Christ.

God cannot lie, and he must have revealed himself in Christ. Both are equally true. Both are who he is. He cannot lie, and he could not have forgone creation and, with it, incarnation, death and resurrection. To that end, he made all things and died for sinners that he might share his glory and make himself known. He acts necessarily according to his character, and he cannot deny himself (2 Tim 2:13).

Which Philosophers?

Philosophers cannot imagine a god of this sort. This seems a strange violation of intuition regarding what a divine entity ought to be like. That God must have revealed himself in Christ is an alien concept to the inventive mind.

I have mentioned philosophy a few times. I have in mind Gottfried Leibniz and his theory about this reality being the best of all possible worlds. I won’t develop his thought further, but it should be noted that Leibniz came to his ideas while wrestling with the meaning of pain and suffering (with man at the center of a conundrum, he worked his way backward into heaven — and the god he found there was a devil). Prior to Leibniz, there was William of Ockham and his divine command theory (of whom I may have something to say in Part 2 of this series).

Continue here to read Part 2.