Why Was It Necessary for Jesus to be Baptized? Doing Matthew 3:13-17

Posted on February 1, 2017 by tdillmuth

(Before reading this post on doing Matthew 3:13-17, please make sure to read our post on hearing Matthew 3:13-17. You can also see a quick overview of our DOTW Bible study method.)
4. What action does God take in Matthew 3:13-17 toward others?

God is Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So whenever we ask about the actions of God, we should always make sure we are attentive to the actions of each person within the Trinity. In this passage, all three persons of the Trinity are seen in action!

In verse 16, the Spirit of God descends like a dove and rests on Jesus. This is not only God the Holy Spirit communing with God the Son. It’s also God’s Spirit resting on human flesh! Christ comes in order to unite human nature to divine nature in himself. His own flesh is sinless, but he takes upon himself all of our sin so that, when we participate in his death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit may come to rest on us also.

In verse 17 a voice from heaven says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” This is the voice of God the Father, testifying to God the Son. To whom is he testifying? He testifies to us. We can say that the action God the Father takes in this passage is to reveal his son by testifying to us of his son’s identity. Often when we pray we like to tell the Father our needs and concerns, and this is appropriate because he is our father and he cares for every hair on our heads. But how often do we pray, “Father, testify to me about your son. Reveal him to me.” That is the Father’s greatest joy, and we would do well to pray like this.

In verses 15 and 16, we see God the Son’s action. What is that action? He Submits himself to a human being for baptism in order to fulfill all righteousness. What humility! His action is entirely for us. There was no personal need that He was fulfilling for himself; rather he was setting things right for the human race. He was baptized so that every human being can be fixed. In this action, he who is without sin humbles himself to the lowest level of humanity: that of the repenting sinner.
5. What action does God call me to take toward God? Toward others?

There is no command or action that God explicitly gives to us in this passage. Later in the scriptures he will call us to be baptized so that we can be united with him in his death and resurrection, receiving the Holy Spirit so we can enter into the fellowship of the Trinity. But in this passage we are purely spectators. We watch as God reveals himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We see the Son identify himself fully with sinful humanity through baptism. We see the Holy Spirit rest upon human flesh, and we realize as believers, “Now he rests upon my flesh, too!” And we hear the Father testify that Jesus is one of us but is also one with him. To try to do something at such a moment would be like Peter trying to build a tabernacle when he saw Jesus transfigured. There are some moments that God just permits us to watch while he does his work.
6. What actions did I take?

Ask yourself: Is God giving me an opportunity today to simply watch him while he works? Before we do any word, we do well if we watch the Word do the word. God is always doing the word. We can occupy our time fully by watching him do it. We simply need to become knowledgeable about his character and attentive to him and we can see it more and more. We can foster our awareness of God doing the word, not only during times of prayer but also during the most ordinary moments of our day. Brother Lawrence practiced this constant awareness and communion with God, even as he washed the dishes. He said,

The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament. (Brother, Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God, Wildside Press, 13).

Baptism signifies that God lives within us and is in the process of fixing us and setting things right. But it is important for us not only to focus on the “us” he is fixing or the things he is setting right. Let us take time to marvel at him and to invite others to do the same. In our conversations with others, we can direct our attention and theirs to God’s actions in the situation, not only our own or those of other human actors. As we discuss the events of the day—whether politics or what happened at school or work or what is happening in our relationships—we can ask ourselves and each other, “What is God saying at this moment? What is God talking about? How is God resting upon us? How is God humbling himself before us? How is God identifying himself with us?”

While I was doing dishes with my daughter, I engaged her in a spiritual conversation like this, and our eyes were both lifted up above the dishes and to the Lord!

Posted in Discipleship, Lectionary Year A | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Here Is The Bible Study Method We Use, Better Known As DOTW

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Pastor Foley

There are literally thousands of methods that have been created for Bible reading! Behind each one is an understanding of what kind of book the Bible is and what it is designed to do.

For example, in the popular lectio divina method, the Bible is understood as a “living word” that the reader “enters” in order to commune with God. In the lectio divina method, Bible readers are trained to read slowly, carefully, and repetitively, and then to meditate, pray, and contemplate. Through this process the reader is encouraged to enter into the text as if he or she were actually a part of it.

No doubt many Christians have found such Bible reading methods fruitful, and yet…

What would happen if we read the Bible not as a word that we enter, but rather as a word that enters us?

In other words, what if the Bible is a read as a revelation of God’s character? What if it is designed to reveal God’s actions toward us and to reveal how God calls us to respond to him and to others? What if we could train ourselves to read the Bible so that the emphasis of our reading was not creativity or mystical experience but instead careful attentiveness to what each scripture reveals about God’s character, his action towards us, and the response he commands from us?

Such a method would approach each passage of scripture something like this:

Hear

1. What does this reveal about the Character of God?

2. What is the context?

3. How does the Nicene Creed shed light on this?

Do

4. What action does God take in this passage toward others?

5. What action does God call me to take toward God? Toward others?

6. What actions did I take?

It’s really the most basic kind of Bible reading of all. We call it the DOTW Bible study method. DOTW stands for Doers of the Word. That name reminds us that all our Bible study is foolishness unless it leads to do the wise word we have heard!

That’s why the method is divided into two parts: Hearing the word and doing the word. Jesus tells us in Matthew 7:24-27 that if we hear the word without doing it, we are foolish and our lives will be thrown into turmoil by every problem we face. We’ll always be crying out, “What should I do now?” Jesus says that if we hear the word and do it, we’ll be wise and our lives will be steady in the storm.

As regards what order to read the Bible in, each method has its own recommendation to that question as well. Following the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) is one used by many churches in many different traditions, and so we follow it here as a way of keeping in communion with and seeking to serve with as much of the faithful church around the world and across the ages as we can.

So each week we’ll be applying our DOTW method to the RCL reading from the Gospel and offering two posts: One post will be designed to help us hear the word, using the first three questions noted above. A second post will be designed to help us do the word, using the final three questions noted above.

We hope you’ll find the method helpful and the weekly posts fruitful. Please check out our first hear the word post and then our first do the word post, and then look for updates each week thereafter!

Posted in Discipleship, Lectionary Year A | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Church is More Like Its Persecutors Than Its Lord (Introduction to Preparing for the Underground Church, Part III)

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Pastor Foley

(Part III of VII of Pastor Foley’s introductory essay to Rev. Richard Wurmbrand’s Preparing for the Underground Church. To order a print or electronic copy of the bilingual Korean/English edition of Preparing for the Underground Church, including Pastor Foley’s introductory essay and a foreword by Voice of the Martyrs historian Merv Knight, visit Amazon or click here to visit the bookstore page on our website. For Part I of Pastor Foley’s introductory essay , click here.) 

Homosexuality and transgenderism are expressions of sexuality which Christians (rightly) identify as sin. But the sin of self-creation–the idea of the body as modeling clay shaped by us according to our wills and attractions–is one many Christians engage in daily without protest. As the Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 2:3-4, God brings us to recognize sin not first so that we may judge it but rather so that we may recognize that same root at work in ourselves and earnestly repent of it, in full assurance of God’s forbearance and patience.

As Christians, we must become aware of how we ourselves treat our own bodies as blocks of clay. This is especially true for us in Korea, where plastic surgery—the epitome of treating the body as a block of clay to be shaped according to our desire to be desired—is so common that it is given as a graduation present to high school girls.

But there are far more prosaic forms of self-design that come from the same root, even going to the roots of our own hair. “Gray hair is a crown of splendor,” we are taught in Proverbs 16:31; “it is attained in the way of righteousness.” We are called to wear our age as a crown—a martyr’s crown testifying to a Christ-centered life given for others, in fact—but we hide our age in in an effort to portray vital energy. But the Bible does not call us to amaze and attract the world with the vital energy available to Christians. Instead, it calls us to soberly accept in our bodies the reality of death, not as something to be feared or avoided or denied, but as something to be remembered and meditated on daily so that our focus remains on the new creation, not the present one. As the Apostle Paul says, “We who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.”[1] Our Christian bodies, in other words, are not intended to serve as lifelong deceptive advertising for the vitality of this world. Instead, our appearance is designed to openly display that all human beings are mortal creatures whose confidence is not in the vitality of this world but in the vitality of the world to come.

The Bible is actually far more direct in its admonitions against displaying this-worldly vitality—through, for example, braided hair, gold, pearls, and expensive clothes[2]—than it is about gay marriage. But we pay almost no attention to these instructions, even though it is through following these that we learn to be faithful to the greater matters concerning the body. Thus we fail to see how these desires come from the same root as the sexual expressions that concern us far more. The great early Korean church father Kim Kyo Shin, upon discovering his daughter’s bottle of imported cold cream, smashed it against a rock in a rather vivid reminder of the importance of Christians seeking to adorn ourselves with good deeds rather than makeup. He challenged her, “Since the rock is covered with cream, do you see the natural appearance of the rock?”[3] It is hard to imagine that Kim Kyo Shin would not find many such things in our lives to smash against rocks today.

Even our contemporary understanding of Christian marriage draws its nourishment from the same root as gay marriage, based as it is on spiritual companionship, mutual fulfillment, and romantic love. But as Stephen Adubato notes, it is not the romance in marriage that mirrors the relationship between Christ and the church but rather the martyrdom:

[This is what] man and woman are called to do in their marriage: ultimately, to die to themselves, and become united to Christ through their spouse. In this sense, they are replicating the heroic act of the martyrs, who literally die for the sake of union with, and glorification of, Christ. Thus, perhaps in a less dramatic way, the married man and woman are giving witness to the fact that the value and meaning of their marriage, and of human life as a whole, belongs to Something other than themselves.[4]

Even children are molded from the clay of our individual design and desire today, rather than received when and as God gives. Sociologist Paul Yonnet explains:

[T]he essential giftedness of life has today become instead the product of human will: children are conceived, brought to term, and then given life in the world, according to schedules and means ordered by the parents, and not necessarily through the physical engagement of the biological mother and father of the child. Thus, to be a child is now legally defined by being “desired” rather than by being “given.”[5]

Children are birthed by our design into a society we Christians have had a hand in designing—here in Korea, a “seven give-up” society[6] where children grow up into increasingly insurmountable barriers to finding fruitful work, supporting themselves in marriage, or having a child, let alone several. It is no wonder that, blocked by the flaming swords of our own selfishness from even the consolations granted to us east of Eden, they consider as worthless and repressive the identities given by God and instead fashion themselves from the clay made of KPOP and Korean drama. The result is a birth rate so low that the Korean population decay to half its present size in the next hundred years, with even half of that remaining half over the age of 65.[7] Only Muslims, who still regard childbirth as sacred gift and duty, will be around to puzzle over the fruits of a society bent on the self-destruction of self-creation.

[1] 2 Cor. 4:11, NIV.

[2] “I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.” —1 Timothy 2:9-10, NIV.

[3] Recollections of Kim Kyo-Shin. http://www.biblekorea.net/articles/Recollection_of_Kyo-shin_Kim.doc, p. 200.

[4] Stephen Adubato, 2016. “A Revolutionary Attraction.” Homiletic and Pastoral Review. http://www.hprweb.com/2016/06/a-revolutionary-attraction/.

[5] Ephraim Radner, 2016. A Time to Keep: Theology, Mortality, and the Shape of a Human Life. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, Loc. 2291.

[6] Hyung-A Kim, 2015. “The seven-give-up generation: The crisis facing South Korea’s youth.” APPS Policy Forum. http://www.policyforum.net/the-seven-give-up-generation/.

[7] Yoon Ja-young, 2016. “Population to halve in 100 years.” Korea Times. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/common/vpage-pt.asp?categorycode=488&newsidx=219771.

Posted in gay marriage, marriage, marriage equality, persecution, Preparation, Rev. Richard Wurmbrand | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment