One of the most fascinating exchanges in the New Testament appears toward the end of Paul’s defense before the Jerusalem mob, in Acts 22:17-21.  The incident that Paul relates took place shortly after his conversion, after he had fled from Damascus and returned to Jerusalem, still preaching the gospel.  While he is praying in the temple, Jesus warns him that he is going to have to flee Jerusalem too.

Paul is bewildered by this.  The Jews of Jerusalem know that he used to be Church Persecutor No. 1.  He beat and imprisoned all the Christians he could catch.  When the Sanhedrin mobbed and murdered Stephen, he cheered them on.  Surely somebody like that, whose convictions have changed so spectacularly, is worth listening to!  Surely if Saul of Tarsus, persecutor of the church, now testifies that Jesus is the Christ, the Jews will find that testimony persuasive!

Paul is both right and wrong.  He’s right about the power of the evidence he offers.  Even now, 2000 years later, his witness to the resurrection is strong confirmation of our faith. 

However, he is wrong about its persuasiveness to the Jews of Jerusalem.  His testimony would be enough to win over reasonable people, but those Jews aren’t reasonable.  Jesus’ response implies that their hearts are so hardened against the truth that they will respond with violence instead of conversion.  Incredible though it may seem, the gospel will find a better hearing among the pagan Gentiles than among God’s chosen people in God’s holy city.

Ironically, the reception to Paul’s speech proves Jesus right.  Prophets had been predicting for a thousand years that the Messiah would save the Gentiles too.  Nonetheless, the mob finds this notion so hateful that they begin to riot as soon as the words pass Paul’s lips.  The Roman commander, who doesn’t have a dog in the fight, is so baffled by their reaction that he is willing to torture Paul to figure out what in the world is going on.

Even today, we still struggle with the illusion that others are reasonable people with honest hearts.  We show them enough proof to persuade them three times over, and we are bewildered by the negative responses we get.  Look at all the evidence for the existence of God!  Look at how many Bible verses testify to the importance of baptism!  Often, we react by doubling down, by presenting more evidence, by pointing out more verses.

What we fail to understand in such cases is that we aren’t dealing with a proof problem.  We’re dealing with a heart problem.  Usually, people reject the truth because they don’t want to be Christians.  If we press the point, we might make them angry, but we won’t make them believe.  The sooner we recognize the heart problem and stop arguing, the better.

What about us, though?  What about the truths we aren’t willing to hear, the Scriptures we aren’t willing to consider, the sacred-cow beliefs that we can’t bear to challenge?  The devil is happy to harden the hearts of Christians too.  If we do not love the truth ourselves, especially when it is difficult and painful, we may find ourselves no better off than the Jews who heard Paul’s speech.  After all, every one of them thought they were faithful servants of God—just like we do.

Marshal McLuhan, one of the greatest communications theorists of all time, is famous for saying, “The medium is the message.”  In other words, the way in which you present information is fully as important as the information itself. 

This would not have been news to our brethren in the early church, who adopted the new-to-them format of the codex for the gospels and epistles of the New Testament.  Codices were different than scrolls (and both, of course, were equally different from oral tradition).  Compare, for instance, the ease of flipping back and forth in a codex with the laborious unrolling and rerolling of a scroll.  You’re a lot more likely to use a codex as a reference work, and Bible-as-reference work versus Bible-as-narrative was a truly titanic paradigm shift!

We live in a time that has focused attention on the medium as never before.  During the late pandemic, many churches engaged with the Internet in a way that they never had before.  If in lockdown, either you were livestreaming services somehow, or you weren’t feeding your people at all! 

However, now that life has more or less gone back to normal, the impact of the livestream seems to have faded somewhat.  There are still a dozen or so people who tune in regularly to the Jackson Heights livestream:  shut-ins (who I’m sure are thrilled that they now have a robust connection to assemblies), the sick, people who are traveling but want to worship with the home folks, and so on.  Most of us, though, have reset our assembly and worship experiences to 2019.

I tend to believe the livestream has had only a transitory impact because we weren’t asking what new and different thing we could do.  We wanted to do the same old thing:  church, except virtual and not quite as good.  As we might expect, the medium of “in person” is ideal for many spiritual pursuits.  The question that we ought to be asking, though, is whether there are things we can do better online, especially with online video.

I don’t claim to have the answers here, but I did have a fascinating recent experience that led me to conclude that some interesting answers exist.  Throughout my adult life, I’ve been involved with a weeklong hymn-writing seminar called the Hymninar.  My first year was 1997, and in the time since, I’ve gradually taken on a teaching and mentoring role in it.

This is something with which I am well familiar.  I was teaching hymn theory and analyzing students’ hymns before I started preaching the gospel.  However, like all other familiar things, the Hymninar got COVID-canceled in 2020, and in 2021, Sumphonia decided to hold the Hymninar virtually over Zoom.

In practice, though, Zoom Hymninar proved to be about as much like in-person Hymninar as a Bible codex was like a Bible scroll.  More people participated, in many cases because time, health, or financial constraints would have prevented them from attending in person.  Singing was inevitably nonexistent.  Teaching was harder.  I don’t know why, but it’s a lot harder to pull interaction out of faces on a screen than from people in a classroom.

The most significant differences, though, appeared in collaboration and critique.  In an in-person Hymninar, after the class spends a couple of days going through a manual on how to write good hymns, each attendee is asked to write a quality original verse.  They write where they please, either in the main classroom or smaller rooms elsewhere.  Teachers circulate and offer suggestions.  When a verse is far enough along, it gets projected on a screen in the main classroom, and the assembled class provides more critique.  Hopefully, by the end of the week, the verse of each student attains the requisite level of quality.

As much as we could, we tried to imitate that format online, with a main Zoom room and breakout rooms where mentors waited for those who wanted help.  However, the online version didn’t function like the real-life version.  Rather than passively waiting for doom to descend, online attendees actively sought help.  The main Zoom room, rather than being sepulchrally quiet like the brick-and-mortar main room, became a place where students engaged in reciprocal editing without prompting from instructors.   

Normally, we expect the last day of the Hymninar to be a race against time, with a last few students struggling to finish verses.  Some never get there.  Not this year.  All the writers were solidly done by early afternoon.  They did so well, in fact, that they left us scrambling for things to fill the final few hours of the seminar!

Clearly, then, Zoom is a better venue for collaborative hymn editing and critique than a traditional classroom is.  Of course, this breaks down spectacularly when it comes to testing hymn tunes, which must be sung, but for text editing, Zoom is superior to real life.  Though I can’t say for sure, I suspect that the layer of unreality imposed by Zoom engages people but makes them less inhibited in sharing and receiving criticism.

I know that the intricacies of hymn production aren’t of interest to most Christians.  However, this parable has a point.  Rather than only asking how the Internet can solve our churches’ huge, pressing problems (like COVID), we should ask how it might solve our low-grade, frustrating problems too.  Are there things we want to do that don’t seem to work very well in real life?  Maybe they’ll work better in a virtual venue!

To put things another way, we spent 2020 using online media to do almost as good a job because we had to.  In the years that follow, we should ask what we want to do with the electronic tools we have because of the very real possibility that they might be better than what we’re doing now.  If the medium is the message, it’s time we started investing thought in the medium.

This article originally appeared in _Pressing On_.

In an epistle that contains a number of negative descriptions, Romans 16:17-18 is the last.  Here, though, Paul is not concerned with degenerate Gentiles or hard-hearted Jews.  Instead, he focuses on troublemakers within the Christian community.  They have the following four characteristics:

They Create Division.  Disciples of Christ are supposed to be peacemakers like their Master.  Some Christians, though, seek out division instead.  They prefer quarreling to bearing with, and they savor the feeling of angry self-righteousness that comes from being “right” when other brethren are “wrong”.  We must watch out for those who enjoy conflict in the church, and we must beware of becoming such ourselves.

They Impose Obstacles.  As all of us know, it isn’t easy to follow the commandments of the Lord.  The path of righteousness is narrow.  However, there are those who think it isn’t narrow enough.  Pharisee-like, they bind heavy burdens on others that the word does not, and they reject those who do not agree with them.  There is an appearance of holiness to this rigor, but it isn’t truly holy.  We must be faithful to the Scriptures in what we condemn as well as in what we approve.   

They Serve Their Own Appetites.  Christ is to be master over us, but the devil constantly strives for dominance in every heart, especially the hearts of teachers of the word.  He employs the familiar tools of 1 John 2:16, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.  The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye are obviously problematic, but it’s harder to spot ministers who are motivated by pride.

Perhaps the best way to determine whether pride is an issue in a man’s heart is to analyze his behavior according to the previous verse and Jesus’ dictum about knowing a tree by its fruits.  Does he look to cause division instead of making peace?  Does he put obstacles in the way of those who seek Christ?  If so, pride is the likely culprit.

They Deceive with Smooth Words.  It is worth noting that Paul says that the unsuspecting are the prey of the false teacher.  It is much easier to fool the ignorant and trusting than the knowledgeable and wary. 

Thus, we always must be on our guard against those who would deceive us in spiritual matters.  This begins with a Berean attitude toward everything we hear.  Even if the speaker is our favorite preacher or an angel from heaven, don’t take his word for it! 

Second, we must beware of appeals to extrabiblical information.  There is much to be gained from the study of linguistic and historical resources, but the Bibles we hold in our hands are all any of us need to inherit eternal life.  When somebody starts telling us that we don’t understand a verse right because the Greek actually means this, or because scholars have determined that thus and such was true in Ephesus 2000 years ago, we should become very suspicious.  Their goal is for us to put our faith in the expert instead of the word.  Bible helps and Bible scholars have their place, but that place is not to trump the plain meaning of the text.

As we have been working our way through Romans on Sunday evenings and in our daily readings, hopefully the extraordinary quality of the epistle has become obvious.  Romans has changed the course of human history, and with good reason.  The substance of Paul’s argument is astonishing in its scope, and the skill with which he argues is no less impressive.  He pulls out all the stops in presenting his case as persuasively as possible.

Some of the devices he employs are obvious, but others are quite subtle.  Consider, for instance, the lead-in to the discussion of conscience in Romans 14.  In that chapter, Paul urges the Christians in Rome not to judge or have contempt for brothers who differ in conscience.

Much of the preface in Romans 13 is straightforward.  13:8-10 tells us to love one another.  13:11-12 calls us to put on the armor of light because of the brevity of human existence.  13:14 exhorts us to put on Christ and make no provision for the flesh.

All of this is good sound preaching, as the saying goes.  We like to be told things like this.  Sermons using these Scriptures inspire us and have us walking out of the church building humming “Onward, Christian Soldiers” to ourselves.  It doesn’t seem to have much to do with walking wide around the conscience of others, though.

The trap is in 13:13.  There, Paul supplies us with a list of three pairs that are part of the works of darkness, the works in which we are not supposed to walk.  The first two pairs are more of the same.  We are not to walk in orgies and drunkenness.  Sounds like a good idea to me!  Likewise, we are not to walk in sexual immorality and sensuality.  This may step on the toes of some Christians, but it probably doesn’t for most who are in the auditorium Sunday morning.

The third pair, though, is “not in quarreling and jealousy”.  All of a sudden, “Onward, Christian Soldiers” kind of skips a beat, doesn’t it?  Jealousy.  Hmm.  It’s awfully easy to find ourselves enviously regarding someone else’s attractiveness, prosperity, or position.  Or good health, for that matter.

Quarreling is even worse.  Brethren have been known to quarrel these days, sometimes, just a little bit.  Perhaps we ourselves have exchanged a heated word or two with another Christian about. . . COVID, just to pick an example out of the air.  Perhaps we have formed into factions with other like-minded brethren so that we can complain to them about the ungodly behavior of the other side.  Perhaps we have Vaguebooked about how ungodly they are.  Perhaps we have disturbed the peace of our congregation or even caused a church split.

The Holy Spirit says that’s walking in darkness.  The Holy Spirit says that’s making provision for the flesh and its lusts.  In fact, the Holy Spirit says that’s on the same level as participating in an orgy.

If that’s where we find ourselves, we need to put some onward in our Christian soldiers.  We need to rush into battle, not against those who disagree with us, but against the devil who has entrenched his self-righteousness, judgmentalism, and contempt in our hearts.  Our sin may be sweet in the mouth, but it will be bitter in the stomach.

How can we win this desperate fight?  Paul is so glad you asked.

Welcome to Romans 14.

As you know, I like to preach on sermon requests, unless I forget what they are first.  This one came to me in one of the church-building hallways after services.  A member here asked me to preach on forgiveness, especially forgiving oneself.

This request does not surprise me one little bit.  I’ve been hearing similar concerns from Christians for decades.  It’s been true in Texas, true in Illinois, and true here.  I’ve even seen aspiring hymnists wanting to write hymns about the subject because it’s such a struggle for them. 

When I see the topic come up so much, it tells me that a lot of Christians feel like they don’t have good solutions to the problem.  We all know that Christians rise from the waters of baptism to walk in newness of life.  However, what do we do when guilt from the old life keeps intruding into the new one?  For that matter, how do we handle it when we start accumulating sins in the new life too?  We know that Jesus forgives our sins, but sometimes we don’t feel forgiven.  This morning, then, let’s consider what it takes to make peace with the past.

The first thing that we must do is PUT THE BURDEN IN THE RIGHT PLACE.  Here, let’s look at Ephesians 2:8-9.  One of my primary rules in studying the Bible is always to seek to explain the text rather than explaining away the text, and this passage illustrates the importance of doing so perhaps better than any other.  When I was growing up, I never heard this verse cited in church without somebody following it with “But you still have to be baptized!”  The only people I heard quoting it approvingly were people from the denominations.  I got the impression that this was a denominational verse instead of a church-of-Christ verse.

Sadly, it is no less dangerous for us to turn away from the whole counsel of God than it is for others to do so, and the consequences of our minimizing this passage are obvious.  It shows up in two main places:  in all the faithful Christians who are scared to death that they aren’t good enough to go to heaven and in those who are so caught up in their own guilt that the forgiveness of Jesus doesn’t register.  You know what both of those things are?  They’re symptoms of believing on some level that our salvation is from ourselves.

In fact, if we’re being perfectly honest, both of those things are symptoms of a desire to boast in ourselves.  We want to be good enough on the day of judgment, and we want to have been good enough that we don’t have those regrets in our past.  The problem is, though, that we know that we have failed and continue to fail, so we suffer beneath all this fear and guilt.

There’s only one way out of the trap.  It’s to put the burden of our righteousness on Jesus.  Of course we failed in the past!  It’s why we became Christians in the first place.  Of course we will continue to fail!  Otherwise, we no longer would need His grace.  We cannot hope to save ourselves or boast in ourselves, but He can and will redeem us.

Second, we must EMBRACE RENEWAL.  I like the way Paul puts this in Colossians 3:9-10.  It’s a passage that highlights both kinds of renewal.  The first is the spiritual change of clothes that is so prominent in Ephesians and Colossians.  When we obeyed the gospel, we put off the old self and put on the new self.  We are different people now than we were before we were baptized.  All the evils that the old self did were left in the water.

However, renewal for the Christian is not just a one-time event.  It’s a continuing process.  We have put on the new self, past tense, but we are being renewed, present tense.  In context, Paul discusses our renewal in knowledge, but this is not the only kind of renewal we experience.  In Lamentations 3, Jeremiah observes that God’s mercies are new each morning.  We are constantly renewed in knowledge, renewed in righteousness, and renewed in every one of His great blessings.

When we look back, then, on one of those sins that gives us so much guilt now, we must ask if God has renewed us since.  Are we still practicing that sin?  Is our heart such that we would do it again if given opportunity?  If so, we absolutely should feel guilty!  We need to repent and get our hearts and our lives right with God.

However, for the Christians who can’t forgive themselves, that’s usually not the case.  They usually experience such agony over their past sins because they have repented, aren’t practicing the same thing, and don’t want to. 

If that’s where you are, guess what?  Those sins don’t belong to you anymore.  You’re a different person.  You’ve been renewed.  You’ve been renewed in your knowledge, renewed in your heart, and most of all, renewed in God’s grace.  Those sins have been removed from you as far as the east is from the west, and it doesn’t make any more sense to feel guilty about them than it does to feel guilty about the sins of a stranger.

Finally, we must LEAVE THE PAST IN THE PAST.  Paul makes this point in Philippians 3:13-14.  It’s interesting that contextually, Paul is talking about forgetting the good things that were part of his life before Christ.  He was working on leaving behind things like being a Pharisee of Pharisees and blameless according to the Law.

However, these kinds of unpleasant memories are joined to guilt over past sins by a common thread of regret.  The devil was whispering in Paul’s ear that it would have been better if he had gone on being a wealthy, honored Hebrew of Hebrews.  Likewise, he uses even our sorrow for sin as a tool to drag us back into the past. 

Indeed, the devil wanted Paul thinking about the past and wants us thinking about the past for the same reason.  He doesn’t want us thinking about the present because in Paul’s present and our present is Christ.  No matter what pretty shiny worldly things the devil dangled in front of Paul, once the apostle compared them to Christ, he saw them for the garbage they were.

So too for us.  The devil wants us to dwell on our guilt, our crushing, agonizing, overwhelming guilt.  He wants us to lose sleep over it.  He wants us to be unhappy.  However, what he does not want us to do is to compare our guilt to the grace of Christ. 

He does not want us to think about the infinite love of Jesus that led Him to die on the cross.  He does not want us to think about the infinite grace that His sacrifice made possible.  Remember too that infinity divided by any finite number remains infinite.  Jesus didn’t just love the human race infinitely.  He loved you infinitely and me infinitely too, and the grace that cleanses each of us of sin is infinite too.

It's good for us to learn from the mistakes of the past, but we must not define ourselves by those mistakes.  Instead, we must define ourselves by the grace of Christ.  None of us are or can hope to become anything more than a redeemed sinner, but that’s all we have to be because His grace is enough.