You've already been saved, but you MUST keep going!

If you've read Hebrews at all, you may have found yourself slightly puzzled by some pretty nasty warning passages which seem to imply that a Christian can lose their salvation by not persevering. The starkest of these is probably in Hebrews 10.26-27:

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. (ESV)

 On the face of it we have a fairly unequivocal  warning to Christians informing them that a lack of perseverance will lead to an inevitable loss of salvation. This is how the majority of critical New Testament scholars have interpreted these "warnings" in this letter.

Reformed evangelicals have attempted to evade this possibility by suggesting that the people in question are not actually true Christians, but merely confessional ones - in other words, they look like Christians and speak like Christians, but aren't really. There are obvious issues with this interpretation - for example, the language of Hebrews does not seem to describe false Christians.

How do we deal with this then? Andrew Wilson, a Newfrontiers Pastor, has just published an article in Tyndale Bulletin on Hebrews 3.6 and 3.14. Here are the two verses in question:

And we are his house if indeed we ahold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope. (3.6b ESV) 

For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. (3.14 ESV)

The question here is perhaps more obvious. Is salvation contingent (directly dependent upon) on perseverance (in which case the author is warning that Christians can lose their salvation) or is perseverance evidence of true salvation (in which case the so-called falling away is a reference to fake Christians). Most commentators have taken one of these lines of interpretation.

In the article Andrew argues that these two verses are speaking of true Christians (in other words not merely apparent Christians). However their perseverance is evidence of their present salvation. In other words, they are already saved and their perseverance will prove this at the eschaton (last day). The author of Hebrews, in Wilson's view, sees their salvation as secure precisely because of these warnings! They will persevere in Christ because he has warned them about falling away. As far as Andrew knows, no recent scholars have suggested this interpretation (both acknowledging that the addressees are real Christians and that the warnings in 3.6 and 3.14 are not conditions, but evidence).

The complete article is here (warning: intense Greek-geeky content). Read the conclusion if you can't battle all the way through, but all in all it was a good read over breakfast!

Excellent Old Testament Summary

I'm writing this as I'm sitting in an Old Testament lecture at university - naughty me (it's alright we've got a 5 minute break). I thought I'd take the opportunity to link a fantastic resource for those of you who would like to get to grips with the story of the Old Testament a bit better and how it all fits together. Kings Church Eastbourne put together a short, snazzy and really helpful Old Testament Summary video. I found this immensely helpful when preparing some teaching on the topic; I hope you'll find it useful! You'll need to scroll down the linked page slightly to find the video player.

Old Testament Summary

Think Biblically!

Part of my job is to engage with theological debates and try and decide what the right answer to the problem in question is. Most of the time, since I am in a secular Theology department at a secular university, I read a lot of scholars who do not submit to the authority of scripture, but from time to time I do have to engage with dueling evangelicals. When this happens, I am sometimes amazed at the way in which the debate takes place.

There has been an ongoing debate on justification between John Piper and Tom Wright for the last few years. Simply put, Tom Wright thinks that the reformers (and most modern Christians) have misunderstood what Paul meant by justification - the Jews weren't legalistic and were not trying to "pull themselves up by their moral bootstraps". Therefore what Paul is primarily addressing when he speaks of justification by faith apart from works of the Law is not legalism, but ethno-centric theology, in which gentiles have to become a Jews in order to be part of God's people (works of the law refer to ethnic badges such a circumcision and food laws in Wright's view).

Wright has also suggested that to speak of imputed righteousness (being given the righteousness which Christ earned on earth) is completely unbiblical - the judge doesn't give his own righteousness to the defendant in a law court, but declares the innocent victim to be "in the right" (or justified). 

Piper responds: No! The reformers' understanding of Paul was pretty much spot on. The Jews thought they could earn salvation by moral works and therefore Paul responds: you don't earn salvation by works, it's a gift. Moreover, we are given Christ's moral righteousness as a gift, which becomes ours as if we had earned it. God looks at us and sees the perfection of Jesus. If the righteousness which God gives us isn't Christ's perfect obedience, how can we be sure that we are truly presentable to an almighty judge?

I'm not going to give my view on the matter here - that would take too long and could open a nasty can of worms so I'll leave that for now. However, I would like to make a couple of observations, which will hopefully provoke some of you.

Firstly, evangelical theological debates can often run the risk of unhelpfully creating theological camps with allegiance to a group of particular scholars of pastors (and thereby being an awful witness to both liberals and non-christians). This one unhelpfully has. Some of the reformed responses to Wright's opinions have, in my opinion been downright offensive and unfounded. Just so you know, Wright is one of the most prolific New Testament scholars in the world as well as an evangelical Christian - not a bad thing at all in my opinion. He has written the most thorough defense of the physical resurrection of Christ in the last few decades. In short, he's a good guy! So it saddens me when people who disagree with Wright on this one issue reject the man altogether. I have heard comments (from well respected American reformed pastors) along the lines of "Tom Wright is certainly not a gift to Christianity" and "When Wright is right he is very right, but when he is wrong he is horrifically wrong".

The result is that people who haven't actually read the debate assume that Wright has been relegated to the status of heretic - "steer clear of this dangerous man" is what they hear! "He was good on the resurrection, but now he is turning into a dangerous liberal - don't go near him kids!". This kind of attitude saddens me on the one hand because I hold Wright (as I do Piper) in incredibly high esteem, but also because these kind of attitudes create division over issues that are worth debating over, but not dividing over (cf. 1 Cor 1-2)

Secondly, I have been surprised by the lack of Biblical argumentation in a lot of reformed responses to Wright. To be sure, many of those who disagree with him are incredibly knowledgeable about the Bible, but there has been an oft-repeated chorus along the lines of "Wright's view goes against historical reformed theology, therefore he must be wrong" or "If Wright is correct, then that compromises his particular doctrine which we hold in very high regards, so we must be wary of him". Piper, to be fair did appeal to scripture a lot in his response (although I would have liked a little more), but it is not enough to say "our doctrine says this, therefore Wright is not right". Surely this is to run the risk of taking tradition over scripture. Whether Wright is correct or not, we cannot simply appeal to a cherished list of traditions, we must appeal to scripture!

This is obviously (intentionally) a slightly unfair portrayal of the debate and to be honest the argument has calmed down significantly in the last year (it turns out that some of it was down to mutual misunderstanding). There have in fact been some very decent responses to Wright from a Biblical perspective, but the caricature which I have painted above has, in my experience and reading, cropped up quite a few times over the last 5 years and I think it should provoke us as evangelicals to look to the Bible (and not simply our list of doctrines) before we dismiss something as dangerous or heretical and to make it very clear that that is what we are doing. As the reformers often said - sola scriptura

Influential authors ... sort of

This week is pretty busy so I haven't had time to write much up here. I thought I'd share a video which I found hilarious. You may not find it funny if you don't know the authors referred to - that's fine we're not all geeks! The guy in the video is Michael Bird, an Australian New Testament author and definitely the wackiest one I know. Enjoy!

A slightly more weighty post that usual!

This is an unusually dense and academic post for this blog, but I've put it up here because it may be helpful to those who are seeking to understand the idea of the Kingdom of God in more depth. It is essentially a very slightly edited version of an essay I wrote last year. The paper deals with how Jesus' listeners may have initially reacted to his proclamation "The Kingdom of God is here".

THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND JESUS' HEARERS

In his 1967 book, Rediscovering the teaching of Jesus, Norman Perrin makes the following comment:

The central aspect of the teaching of Jesus was that concerning the Kingdom of God. Of this there can be no doubt and today no scholar does, in fact, doubt it. Jesus appeared as one who proclaimed the Kingdom; all else in his message and ministry serves as a function in relation to that proclamation and derives its meaning from it.¹

To any reader of the gospels, this should be clear.² Jesus' teaching and ministry, in some way, seemed to revolve around this strange concept of the kingdom of God. Scholarship on the historical Jesus has paid a great amount of attention to the issue of kingdom in Jesus' teaching, and particularly from Schweitzer onwards,³ the term has been heavily bound up with eschatology. And so the discussion has tended to revolve around whether Jesus understood the Kingdom as an imminent, realised, or even internal reality

In this essay, we take a step back from the debates surrounding Jesus' teaching itself in order to investigate how Jesus' hearers would have initially understood his message. We shall explore key Old Testament as well as second-temple sources which allow us to gain some insight into how a Galilean peasant would have reacted upon hearing the phrase: 'The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand!'⁴ We shall conclude, that amidst the multiplicity of views, it is very likely that the average Jew living in Palestine would have understood the basic message to mean that Yahweh was finally returning to his people in order to vindicate them and overthrow their oppressors.

1. The Old Testament Background

It is surprising that the concept of the kingdom of God should take such a prominent place in Jesus' teaching when the expression itself is absent in the Old Testament. The phrase mamlekut YHWH (kingdom of Yahweh) does occur once in 1 Chr 28.5 and should surely be understood as an equivalent (God, or heaven in the case of Matthew, being substituted for Yahweh). Yet apart from that reference, there is no direct expression 'kingdom of God' or 'kingdom of heaven' elsewhere in the Old Testament. What is more common, but by no means prevalent, is the idea of God being (or becoming) king. Scholars have rightly pointed out that this motif could easily have served as a precedent for Jesus' message of the kingdom.⁵ This is visible in many Psalms. For example, Psalm 97 begins with: 'Yahweh reigns, let the earth be glad'.⁶ Another reference which many scholars point to is Exodus 15.18, in which Moses declares that 'Yahweh will reign [or be king] forever and ever'.⁷ Interestingly, in Exodus 15, the expression is intimately tied up with God delivering his people from their oppressors (a theme which, as we shall see, occurs a lot more in exilic and post-exilic texts).

Turning to the writings of the prophets, and particularly the exilic and post-exilic prophets, we find the theme of God's reign becoming more prominent. Significantly, the idea of Yahweh's eschatological reign also starts to emerge. In Zech 14, the writer describes what seems like a final and decisive battle between Jerusalem and her enemies, in which Yahweh intervenes to vindicate his people. The outcome is described in terms which are very relevant for our purpose: 'And the LORD will become king over all the earth; on that day the LORD will be one and this name one.' (Zech 14.9). Here the themes of universality and particularity are combined. Yahweh is both presented as king over all the earth, but at the same same, Israel is clearly portrayed as his people over-against the nations. If this passage had any influence on the later Jewish mindset (which is very likely) then it is probable that we should expect a nationalistic emphasis on God's kingdom/reign as well as an eschatological one.

Although many scholars attribute a very late date to Daniel, we deal with it here because of its place within the Hebrew Bible. Here we find a more clearly apocalyptic understanding of the kingdom of God.⁸ According to Dunn, Daniel 2 in particular was taken up in much post-biblical literature.⁹ There is no space here to go in detail into the various visions contained in this book, but we should note a few important points. In Daniel 2, although the kingdom which God sets up is not described in detail, we are told that it is an everlasting kingdom. This idea of finality is significant: It is clear that the author envisages that God will act in a final and decisive way (quite possibly for Israel) when he establishes this final kingdom. This is even clearer in chapter 7, where the 'son of man' figure is given an everlasting kingdom. Whether we understand the son of man to be an angelic being or not, it is clear (from 7.18) that he represents Israel.¹⁰ So we find in this late Canonical text, the merging of both a kingdom which God himself sets up and a kingdom possessed by Israel. Moreover, this very nationalistic kingdom, in typical apocalyptic style, is final and everlasting.

We conclude our analysis of the Old Testament with the so-called Second Isaiah. Chapters 40-55 of Isaiah deal with the return of Israel from exile in Babylon and the theme of Yahweh's kingship and sovereignty is profoundly stated in various places.¹¹ The most poignant declaration of Yahweh's kingship for our purposes is found in 52.7:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, 'Your God reigns.' [malach elohe'cha].

Here, this declaration is made in the context of the restoration of Jerusalem and the return of Yahweh to his people (52.8-9). This is significant. Indeed, we could claim that for this prophet, Yahweh's kingship and Israel's prosperity go hand in hand. Scholars admit that this particular passage and idea heavily feature in Jesus' concept of the kingdom of God.¹²

Although this text was concerned primarily with the historical return of Israel from exile, there is a case to be made for the idea that later Jews considered this promise to not have been completely fulfilled. According to Wright, Jews at the time of Jesus still saw themselves somewhat in a state of exile and they would cling to these kinds of Biblical promises.¹³ If this is true, then it is possible that some post-exilic Jews could have interpreted Isa 52.7 eschatologically. The LXX of Isa 52.7 could support this idea. Indeed, the translators of the Septuagint substituted the present tense malach elohe'cha) (your God reigns), for basileusei sou ho theos (your god will reign). It is just possible that the translators considered that this great prophecy was as yet unfulfilled and (possibly under the influence of apocalyptic texts) projected the promise of Isa 52.7 into the future. Moreover, we should note that this hope is very much this-worldly, as Beasley-Murray explains: '[w]hen Yahweh comes to bring his kingdom, it is to this world that he comes and in this world that he establishes his reign. The hope of Israel is not for a home in heaven but for the revelation of the glory of God in this world.'¹⁴

So then, although the Old Testament is very light on kingdom-of-God-language, it seems that there was enough material to provide something of a background to later writings (and indeed Jesus' teaching). God, according to the Scriptures, was king over the whole earth, but there was a sense in which he would establish his rule more finally and this would very likely involve the vindication of Israel and the restoration of Jerusalem. Even in the heavenly visions of Daniel, this hope was thoroughly nationalistic and quite possibly this-worldly.

2. The Second-Temple texts

Post-biblical Jewish texts are very helpful in illuminating the Jewish understanding of the kingdom of God at a time contemporary to Jesus. Again, as with the Old Testament, it is not a particularly prominent theme. Neither is there a uniform perspective. Nonetheless, it is possible to imagine, from these texts, what particular ideas and images Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom could have conjured in his hearers minds.

The precise phrase 'kingdom of God/heaven' occurs only three times in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and in very different contexts. However, as in the Old Testament, the idea of God's rule and reign is present in quite a few places.¹⁵ Additionally these appearances are very often referring to an eschatological rule. Three particular texts from the Pseudepigrapha will be helpful for our purposes.

The Testament of Benjamin (highly edited but most likely reaching back prior to Jesus' time)¹⁶ gives a very interesting insight into some second-temple Jewish beliefs:

You shall resume your actions with loose women, and the kingdom of the Lord will not be among you, for he will take it away forthwith. But in your allotted place will be the temple of God, and the latter temple will exceed the former in glory. The twelve tribes shall be gathered there and all the nations, until such time as the Most High shall send forth his salvation through the ministration of the unique prophet.¹⁷

Although the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs have been highly edited by later Christians,¹⁸ they do allow us a certain amount of insight into second-temple expectations. Here, the kingdom of God is closely associated with the rebuilding of an eschatological temple – which was part of much post-biblical thought.¹⁹ Also associated with the kingdom is the idea of the regathering of the twelve tribes. Meier, although he is careful not to deduce too much from a highly edited document, claims that '[a]t the very least, the theme of the regathering of the twelve tribes of Israel around the eschatological Temple in Jerusalem is quite possibly Jewish material.'²⁰ If we accept this, these themes could only mean one thing: the restoration of Israel.

The Jewish fondness for apocalyptic texts is visible in the Testament of Moses, which Collins dates to the Maccabean period.²¹ The tenth chapter describes, in very vivid terms, the breaking-in of God's eschatological kingdom: 'Then his kingdom will appear throughout his creation. Then the devil will have an end. Yea, sorrow will be led away with him'.²² There is a clear dualism involved in which God and his kingdom are opposed to the devil. The idea of God avenging and vindicating his people is also heavily present in the text. Israel are told that they 'will mount up above the necks and the wings of an eagle.'²³ Although Collins sees the reference to an eagle as a later interpolation meant to refer to Rome,²⁴ he seems to ignore the very high possibility that this is echoing the promises of Isaiah 40. If this is intentional, then the writer is bringing the prophecy of Isaiah 40 into an apocalyptic framework: Israel will be vindicated, her enemies judged, God's kingdom shall fill the earth (as in Daniel 2) and the return from exile which Isa 40 describes will take place in a definitive way. Whether we should take the language literally as referring to some kind of heavenly existence, or, along with Wright, consider it to refer to worldly events,²⁵ we can agree with Meiers that '[a]t the very least, the Testament of Moses expects a sudden, dramatic, and definitive reversal of fortunes, by which Israel is elevated directly by God to a situation of permanent joy, while its enemies lie forever prostrate.'26

The seventeenth Psalm of Solomon is one of the only two places in which the expression 'kingdom of God' occurs in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.²⁷ It is most likely that the Psalms were composed in the first century BCE after Pompey's invasion of Judea.²⁸ Moreover, their outlook has often been considered to be Pharisaic, or at least proto-Pharisaic.²⁹ If this is the case, then they are all the more relevant to understanding how the kingdom of God would have been understood in the context of first-century Palestine (as opposed to in the diaspora).³⁰ In most manuscripts there is a direct connection between the kingdom of God, and judgement of the nations.³¹ Moreover, the language is highly nationalistic and contains (as in T. Ben. 9) the idea of the regrouping of the tribes of Israel.³²

In line with the mood expressed in Ps. Sol. It is worth mentioning Josephus' short reference to what he calls 'the fourth Philosophy'.³³ He writes of a movement which holds God to be their only ruler. Interestingly, their beliefs are, according to Josephus, very close to the Pharisees, but their practice was a lot more violent. According to Hengel, it is possible that their leader, Judas the Galilean, could have claimed that God would only bring about his kingdom when the Jews stopped submitting to Gentiles rulers and 'acknowledged his absolute claim to rule here and now, with no reservations whatever.'³⁴ If this group was in any way influential in Galilee, it is very likely that such beliefs (even if the same practice did not ensue) could have been in the air. So the phrase 'the kingdom of God is at hand', for some, in addition to eschatology, could have carried the connotation 'revolution'.

Conclusion

We have had to omit a fair amount of relevant material in our summary of Jewish understandings of the kingdom of God.³⁵ Nonetheless, despite the fact that the exact expression 'kingdom of God' hardly ever appears in Jewish writings prior to Jesus, we have observed a few details which can help us suggest how first-century Palestinian Jews would have responded to Jesus' declaration that the kingdom of God was near. Firstly, we should remind ourselves that God reigning as king is nearly always associated with Israel's restoration and salvation. This is particularly prominent already in Isa. 52.7 and Ex. 15.18 but also in later Jewish texts. Secondly, the kingdom was (at least in the later Hebrew Bible and post-biblical writings) very often eschatological. Although some could spiritualise the idea of the kingdom (particularly in the diaspora texts), the majority of Jews thought that there was a time to come when God's kingdom would be fully established.³⁶ Thirdly, and most clearly in post-biblical texts, the establishment of God's kingdom would generally involve God's judgement on Israel's oppressors. This belief could sometimes, as in the case of Judas the Galilean, take the form of violent rebellion against Rome.

Against this backdrop, we can easily understand why Jesus' teaching attracted such great crowds. Indeed, it is very likely that his hearers, upon hearing 'the kingdom of God is at hand', would have concluded that Jesus was proclaiming that God was finally going to redeem and restore his people as well as judge the Romans. Perhaps some of his hearers even thought of Jesus embodying the messenger of Isaiah 52.7, coming over the mountains of Galilee to proclaim to an oppressed and down-trodden Israel: your God reigns!

Endnotes:

1N. Perrin, Rediscovering the teaching of Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1967), 54.

2It certainly was to C. H. Dodd: Cf. C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (London: Nisbet & Co., 1936).

3A. Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (London: A & C Black, 1954 [1906]).

4Mk. 1.13. Sanders, in his concern to safeguard Jesus from preaching national repentance denies the authenticity of this saying (E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism [London: SCM Press, 1985], 116-17). I see no reason to follow this. Moreover, the idea of the kingdom of God being near is so prevalent in the teachings of Jesus that even if the saying is unauthentic, the message undoubtedly is.

5So D. Patrick, 'The Kingdom of God in the Old Testament' in Willis, W., (Ed.), The Kingdom of God in 20^th-Century Interpretation (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 1987), 72; G. Stanton, 'Message and Miracles' in Bockmuehl, M., (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Jesus (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 57.

6Author's translation. Cf. also Pss 10.16; 29.10; 93; 99; 145.

7Author's translation.

8Cf. D. C Duling, 'Kingdom of God, Kingdom of Heaven' in ABD, Vol 4, 52.

9J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 392.

10So G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew (London: Collins, 1973), 169; N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (London: SPCK, 1992), 294-5.

11Cf. in particular Isa 41.21; 43.15; 44.6; 45.1; 52.7.

12Cf. Dunn, Jesus, 391; J. P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Volume two: Mentor Message and Miracles, ABRL (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 246; Stanton, 'Message', 58.

13Wright, New Testament, 269; N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (London: SPCK, 1996), 202-9.

14G. R. Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 25.

15Cf. on this J. J. Collins, 'The Kingdom of God in the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha', in Willis, W., (Ed.), The Kingdom of God in 20^th-Century Interpretation (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 1987), 81-95.

16H. C. Kee in Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha, Vol 1, 777-8 claims it could have been written during the Maccabean period.

17T. Ben. 9.1-2 in Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha.

18Cf. Collins, 'Kingdom of God', 91; Meier, Mentor Message and Miracles, 260.

19So Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 77-90.

20Meier, Mentor Message and Miracles, 261,

21Collins, 'Kingdom of God', 89. J. Priest in Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha, 920-1 dates it later, to the first century.

22T. Mos. 10.1 in Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha.

23T. Mos. 10.8 in Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha.

24Collins, 'Kingdom of God', 90

25Wright, New Testament, 304-5.

26Meier, Mentor Message and Miracles, 256.

27Cf. also Wis. Sol. 10.10.

28Cf. Collins, 'Kingdom of God', 90; Meier, Mentor Message and Miracles, 257; Stanton, 'Message and Miracles', 58.

29So Meier, Mentor Message and Miracles, 257.

30M. Lattke, 'On the Jewish Background of the synoptic concept “The Kingdom of God”' (1975) in Chilton, B., The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus (London: SPCK, 1984), 85 claims that even if they are not Pharisaic they give us incredible insight into the mood in first-century Palestine.

31Ps. Sol. 17.3

3217.26-31.

33Jos. Ant. 18.1.23-25.

34M. Hengel, The Zealots: Investigations into the Jewish freedom movement in the period from Herod I until 70 A.D. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989 [German version: 1976, second edition]), 93.

35For the most complete summary, to my knowledge, cf. Meier 1994, 243-70.

36So Collins 1987, 95.

Christus Victor

I recently bought the Newday 2011 album "We Are Yours". I'm the kind of person who ends up listening to one song on loop and probably humming or singing that song on loop, much to the annoyance of my friends. Over the last few days, I've probably listened to the track "Christus Victor" by Simon Brading at least 20-30 times. Obviously the music is good, but it's the content of the song that stops me getting bored of it. The song highlights the triumphal aspect of the cross of Christ. The New Testament doesn't simply speak of the cross as the place where Jesus was crushed, it considers the cross to be the place where the greatest and most definite victory in the history of the universe took place. No other victory can compare! Andrew Wilson puts it far more eloquently that I could, so I'll leave you with his profound words on the matter:

There’s only ever been one victory. Literally. In all of history, there has only ever been one contest that you could look back to centuries later and agree it was won, permanently and definitively, by one side. Just one. In millions of attempts. Think about the contenders. The Assyrians beat all their rivals in the eighth century BC, but then lost to the Babylonians in the seventh, who lost to the Persians in the sixth, who got wiped out by the Greeks in the fourth, who crumbled in on themselves in the third, and so on. The Romans crushed all before them for four centuries, but they eventually lost too – just like the Vikings, the Mongols, the Spanish, the British, and everybody since. IBM were dominant for a generation, but then lost to Microsoft, who now look like they might well lose to Apple. England defeated all comers in the 2003 rugby World Cup, and then lost pretty much to everyone. True victory – conquering rivals completely and lastingly – is unheard of. With one exception. In AD 30, a three-day campaign was waged by God against all of his most powerful enemies, sometimes referred to as ‘rulers’, ‘authorities’, ‘principalities’ and ‘powers’. The main confrontation took place on a rubbish dump outside Jerusalem, where God, in his son Jesus, met Satan, sin and death head on. A mocking enemy, who since Eden had been used to humans capitulating to his taunts, was met by a defiant ‘Go ahead, make my day’ from the Son of God, and within six hours the one-sided battle was over, the victory was triumphantly announced with the words ‘It is finished.’ On the third day, the victory parade began, as the risen Champion came out of the tomb to the amazement of earth and the applause of heaven. As Paul describes it in Colossians 2:15, God obliterated his enemies in Jesus, took away their armour, and made a public spectacle of them by parading their corpses  through the streets. (Full text available here or in his book Godstories: Explorations in the Gospel of God)

"He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him" (Colossians 2:15)

Jargon!

A lot of the time, we don't understand what we're singing during praise. Obviously we probably get most of it, but we tend to throw away catch phrases like Hosanna and Hallelujah without much thought to what they actually mean. What does it mean to sin Hallelujah? John Piper helpfully explains (you can read the whole thing here):

The English word “hallelujah” is a transliteration of two Hebrew words, hallelu and jah. The first word, hallelu, is the second person imperative of “praise.” The second word, “jah,” is the short form of Jahweh (or Yahweh).

So when we say, “Hallelujah!” we are exhorting others (people and angels) to join us in praising Yahweh.

What gives a punch to my singing, “Hallelujah,” is that Jah (=Yahweh) is not a generic word for God, but the personal name of the God of Israel.

To shout, “Hallelu Jah!” — “Praise Jah!” — is like standing in the council of the gods and boldly saying, “Not to you, Molech!” “Not to you, Baal!” “Not to you, Dagon!” “Not to you, Artemis!” “Not to you, Zeus!” But to Jah, and Jah alone, I give praise. And I call you to join me! Praise Jah!

And not only is Jah God’s personal name, but it is the one he gave himself to distinguish himself from all the gods. And it is thrilling in meaning.

Hallelujah!