It seems that we often operate in relationships according to preconcieved ideas about how certain relationship is culturally defined, and thus deprive ourselves a great freedom to be found in Christ. A friend is only a friend, a brother is only a brother.

We do so out of fear, I believe, of having something on our hands that we cannot identify. Sometimes this is simply sound wisdom–desire to be transparent and not have our words and actions missinterpreted. Other times it can be stiffling.

In the body of Christ I see potential for relationships which, while retaining godly boundaries, also have a freedom to recieve whatever may be given, even if such the gift does not fit conventional definition of the given relationship. Case in point: David and Johnathan; friends? brothers? Or the opposite; perhaps one may have a relationship which does not ostensibly enjoy all or most of the benefits that relationships of that kind usually share–and yet this itself may be a source of peace and contentment. Case in point: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Hate is love? Love expressed as hate? Whatever Christ is describing here (which I continue to put a lot of thought into) it certainly is something that leads to blessedness as Christ’s disciple, and it is completely foreign to the respective definitions of worldly relationships.

Perhaps both of these things are brought about in various relationships in the body of Christ by a certain open-handedness, that is, a spirit of repentence that sees nothing as belonging to me, as I merit nothing, and everything to be a gift–insofar as it is given and not claimed–to be recieved with gladness as an expression of grace, but not sought after as the object of one’s desire. For there is one object and one goal in this life and the next: to “hold fast to the Head, through which the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments grows with a growth that is from God;” thus, the dynamic and otherwise ‘undefined’ relationships in the body of Christ.

We cannot be anything but created beings. We think and reason and feel according to our nature as creation. How then do we understand eternity? How do we understand something that is outside of our first principles of existence? In thinking of eternity we often think of it as a continuum, or like time–that never ends, but keeps going on and on, like a mathematical infinity. But of course we know that this understanding falls woefully short of real eternity, because time itself is somehow bound up in the that which is created.

The Apostle Paul says that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. If we desire to understand eternity, let us then look at Jesus Christ, in whom the fulness of deity dwells bodily, that is, eternity. God is all and there is none beside him. So eternity is not some independent idea to be examined and toyed with, but rather it is an aspect of God’s character. All the more reason, then, for us to look to its revelation in Christ, who is that of God which became man to commune to us God’s life and essence. Jesus does not say “think of me as I think of the Father” no, he says “abide in me as I abide in the Father.” And many other passages also show that knowing God is not of propositional understanding but personal experience, fueled, certainly, by this objective knowledge that is revealed, but only efficient if approriated subjectively to the individual. As it says in Colossians 3: “For you have died, and who you are is hidden with Christ in God.”

So we see that eternity can be nothing if it is not relational. What and who God is can only be real to us insofar as it is in personal relationship with him. So also it is with eternity. Eternity is not an unending timeline. Though certainly its character is that it has no beginning and no end, this is because neither does God, and eternity is that unchanging unchangeable nature of God’s being. And the knowledge of it is found in Christ.

If then we are in Christ and our lives are hidden with him, we see that our every breath and thought and word and action is eternal in significance. They are temporal in that they pass away and are thought of no more, but they are also eternal because they are expressed in the relationship that God has established with us in Christ.

Therefore, what greater crime than to not be content, for who we are now and what we are now is given in order that we might express through it what is eternal, that is, of God’s character. For this reason scripture tells us to first put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony, to then let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, and to let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly. Such things are practical, real time ways of living, which are in fact eternal; not that we have conjured up eternity by our actions, but that eternity is and always has existed in God as a relationship and is therefore given to us to partake of in Christ by faith.

The modern pagan world seeks “open mindedness.” Christians are labeled as being “close-minded.” Do they not seek the narrow way? Is this something to be ashamed of?

What the world does not see is the spiritual state behind their broad way and the narrow way of Christ. For the assumption of American pagans is that spirituality is “out there” and therefore the broader one is the greater one’s potential to connect with the universal spirituality. And thus they are captive to empty deceit and the prince of the power of this world.

But when one is discovered by grace and is awakened to the love of Christ, the narrow way is that beautiful and unambiguous straight and clear way to freedom of the soul as it basks in the life of God’s spirit. Who would guess that the “straight and narrow” is freedom and life and the “broad” is what holds the soul in bondage to ever seeking, but never finding?

What does it matter that you are labeled as “narrow minded?” Is it freedom in Christ that you have; freedom from the guilt of sin and life of selfishness and the flesh that you used to live in the world? Then what you have is all there is to be had in this life and the next, and it is surely enough!

In Augustine’s “City of God” He explores the nature of the first sin. He points out that there wasn’t necessarily anything bad in the fruit itself; it was only created fruit. It was bad because it came from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that was the tree God had said not to touch. But of course we can’t say that the tree was bad. God created it to be in the garden, and we know that God wouldn’t create something that is contrary to its own environment, i.e. ‘not good.’ And what about eating? Was eating itself a sin? Well of course not. But the disobedience was.

The sin of disobedience therefore, had to have begun before the disobedience was actually committed. In other words, in order for Adam and Eve to eat of the tree they must have already desired what God forbade and thus already sinned in their heart. In the end Augustine identifies the first sin to be pride. Because Adam and Eve rejected what God gave and wanted to supply themselves. They rejected the true light, that is the truth, and wanted to judge truth for themselves. Thus the first sin, and the sin that is at the root of all sin is pride.

When we take the crown off of God, the only one who is capable of ruling us and the world, when we seek to be our own light of understanding while we reject the only light and only knowledge which comes as a gift from the Father of lights, and also when we depend on other physical, relational and emotional gifts as ‘idols’ to supply us with the stuff of life, that is, its fullfilment,that is sin, and necessarily death. Truly this is humbling, and it shows how serious our pride is. It’s not just a symptom of sin, it is our sin. How difficult it is to lose sight of ourselves. To not even be concerned with what we are or aren’t but only with what Christ is and what he desires to be in us. And yet, someone has described the Christian life as a child, stumbling through the mud; it’s messy, we get dirty, but the Lord is gracious in not allowing us to sink, but in making us stronger in the struggle till we are with him in his perfection. For we know that the struggle, so long as it is not the willful acquiescence to sin, is part of our identification with the sufferings of Christ for the sake of our salvation. Praise the Lord!

When we speak of prophecy we probably most often think of the fortelling of events under the inspiration of God. This gives rise to the question of whether or not there still exists the gift of prophecy, as it clearly did in the New Testament.

Firstly, it may be helpful to note that the larger portion of the writings of the prophets of the Old Testament were prayers, sermons and laments on the current spiritual condition of Israel, declarations of judgement of sin, calls to repentence, promises of mercy, and other teachings which could have been readily preached from what had already been revealed in the law and in God’s previous dealings with his people. Though certainly prophets did foretell events and the workings of God that were to happen in the future, this does not seem to be the larger portion of their writings.

Prophets speak, quite simply, whatever God deems best for his people to hear for the sake of the strengthening of their faith, and sometimes this involves the prediction of God’s future acts.

All the words that they spoke were parts and manifestations of the one and eternal Word of God. This Word is what brought all things into being, physical and spiritual, reveals to us the nature of God, reveals his expectations of us, his judgment for our sin, demonstrates his mercy toward us, and ultimately, that it might do all this to perfection and reunite us to God through faith in him, becomes human flesh, dies, and rises to life. This Word is eternal, and as such, predictions of the future or teachings from the past, or exhortation in the present, are all one and exist as Truth in the eternal Word. For this reason even though we are not dwelling in our new and incorruptible bodies, nor are we free from the temptation of the flesh, and though we continue to struggle with this present world and its temptations, the Apostle Paul can say that we have every spiritual blessing in Christ.

The measure of true prophecy, therefore, is not whether it accurately predicts the future (though if it does speak of the future it most certainly must be right if it is true prophecy!) but rather the measure of true prophecy is whether in all its teaching and exhortation, it builds up the body in knowledge and understanding of the eternal God as he is revealed in Christ, knitting the body together in love to reach full maturity through the effective application of the Word, that is, the gospel.

There arguably exists only two aspects of time. One is the moment, the other is eternity.

There exists no future for it hasn’t come; there is only the hope of the future, which finds its being in the moment. There exists no past, only its effects, its ramifications, its signature, and all these are observed and experienced in the moment.

The eternal truly exists and in it is all that is of God. All wisdom, insight, knowledge and, most importantly, relationships, are in eternity.

So we live according to eternity for in it is all that is good. But we live it in the moment. We cannot, even if we desired it, live in anything but the moment. So enjoy it; let it be a fragrant sacrifice unto God. For these three remain, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest is love, because the faith is in the existence of eternity and God’s plan in Christ, hope is looking forward its consumation, and love is for this moment in which both of the others find their realization.

In this we see that the moment is, in fact, eternal. For in eternity there is God and his holiness, and in the moment there is God, and his holiness in us. Does the moment end? No, it is always with us. What we do in this moment ostensibly defines what we are in eternity.

We are told in the New Testament of all the prophecies which Christ fulfilled, and pastors rightly teach us God’s revelation in the Old Testament with the understanding that Christ fulfills the covenant made with Abraham and at Sinai.

However we need not play time gymnastics reading Jesus into the Old Testament, nor is it necessary to see in every Old Testament passage a cryptic reference to Jesus or the New Covenant. Rather According to Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1 Christ is God’s plan for the fulness of time to unite all things in himself through the cross.

Taking these passages in conjunction with John 1 where we are explained that the essence of Christ is God’s creating and communicative Word even before he took on flesh as the man Jesus, we see that there is not always a need to start at the cross and work back in time. Rather, wherever God’s Word is spoken, wherever we see God calling a people for himself and uniting them, wherever we see God creating or communicating, or forgiving, or interacting in any way with people, there is the Christ working to accomplish his plan for all time.

This is not to say that the cross loses any of its significance; it is the mystery of God’s plan! And it would be foolish to talk of shadows and pictures without teaching the reality that they look forward to. All these things are looking forward to the time when Jesus Christ will die and be raised, but the plan and the working out of it is always there in all time. Jesus Christ the Word is indeed all we know of God, and all that has ever been known of God.

What I propose is not that we somehow are trying to force Christ into passages where he is not, but rather that to approach Old Testament passages with the aim of finding the person of Jesus or reference to sacraments or other particular New Testament themes is to have to narrow an understanding of Jesus in not first recognizing the timeless and eternal plan of God begun in creation and continuing in all eternity to have a relationship with his people–all people–through his personal Word.

“For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face…”

Uh oh, here goes Paul’s ego again.

“…that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love…”

Ok, so that may work. If people who are fighting amongst themselves hear of someone else who is suffering for them all it makes their dissagreements seem rather petty–and an insult to the one giving his all for them! Even more, even those who are not in any particularly grievous relationship, when they hear of Paul’s trials and all the pain he endures to “present everyone mature in Christ” certainly this would move their hearts to see the value in one another that is put in them by the sufferings of Christ. Well, now I’ve got the warm fuzzies; why don’t we just all love eachother?

“…to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery…”

Huh? First, how does ‘being knit together in love’ give me assurance of understanding anything, or of knowledge? But forget even that; what’s God’s mystery? Paul sure is setting his audience up for a big disappointment if he doesn’t deliver on that. He doesn’t say ‘a’ mystery, but the mystery of God.

“…which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

This is quite a claim. Christ is the mystery of God, in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and I am supposed to be able to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of this mystery by having the warm fuzzies about Paul’s hardship?

“I say this so that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.”

So Paul is setting up in opposition here the power of the unity of the body of Christ to persuasive arguments that lead to anything but a stronger unity in love as the body encourages one another.

There is no doctrine does not directly support the unity in love of God’s people. For the very identity of the church, it’s very life, the very connection that we have with the eternal and the only truth to be known is Christ crucified for all people in all time for all eternity. This is the encouragement that we have for one another and the doctrine that knits us together.

If anyone should teach anything, whether it be in scripture or not, that is not beneficial to building up in love then it is not completely true–or atleast it cannot be known to be true. For according to this passage all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery is being knit together in love. This is the plumb line and guarantee that Christ will be glorified in all our teaching: if, when judged according to scripture to be consisent with God’s revelation, it encourages the hearts of the believers to love one another.