Matthew sat alone in his cell staring at the letter. Imprisoned in a country not friendly to Christianity, Matthew (not his real name) was kept in relative isolation, and the only contact he had with the outside world was in the form of occasional heavily censored letters he was allowed to receive from his family. The letters had any words of encouragement – especially scripture quotations – completely covered over by the heavy black markers of the government prison censors.
In the long months Matthew had been imprisoned he had come to deeply resent those patches of blackness that cut him off from the love of his family. Until today. Now, Matthew looked at the patches of black obscuring much of the latest letter he had received and smiled. Matthew was a happier man.
The truth of the situation had dawned on Matthew like a personal revelation. He had come to see that the black marks and patches on his letters did not obscure his family’s love for him – they highlighted it. He saw that every obscuring black mark was not a denial of the love felt for him, but proof of it. Sometimes he could guess that there was a scripture behind the blackness from quote marks not obscured at the beginning or end of the marking. If the censors blacked out words individually he could guess from a short word blacked out after the quote marks that it was probably the reference to a quoted verse in Psalms, which his family knew was his favorite book of the Bible. Very occasionally, if he held the letter up to what light he had, he could make out faint traces of what was written and have some idea of what was being said to him.
As time progressed, Matthew came to resent the black marks less and less. Sometimes he would take out a letter and just look at the marks, because he knew that behind them was the love of his family, and understanding what lay behind the black marks – even though he could not see through them – sustained Matthew until he was eventually released.
Sometimes, when we go through the trials of life, it’s hard to see God’s love for us. We may even come to resent the black marks and clouds of life: the illnesses, job losses, persecutions, or whatever seems to obscure God’s love and concern for us. But if we learn to view them as we should, we can come to see behind the black patches in our lives. On occasion we may be able to make out the writing of loving correction in things that go wrong (Hebrews 12:6), but this is not always the case and often, like Job, we may see that we are being given an opportunity to learn or grow. But, again like Job, we don’t always see God for the storm – until we realize we are being taught something and we hear the voice of God speaking through the dark clouds (Job 38:1) or through the dark patches that seem to come between us and him.
In fact, if we come to see the black patches of life as we should, we realize that once we have committed ourselves to God, we can know that his love is always behind them even if we do not see it clearly (1 Corinthians 13:12). We can remember that every dark patch of life, although it might seem to obscure God’s love, in reality is being used to teach, guide, and form us or to help others in some way. We come to realize that the black patches of life do not deny Gods’ love for us; they actually affirm that it is there.
There is a very cynical saying that you can get through life with just two things – a good memory and a good lawyer. The fallacy of that saying is evident in every life made miserable by divorce, lost friendship and broken business arrangements – to name only three examples – where both a good memory and a good lawyer were involved.
The truth is, although there is a place for right legal counsel and representation, it doesn’t always work – and a “legal” opinion can sometimes hurt you. This applies on the personal psychological level, also. Everyone grows up with what we might call an “inner lawyer” – and it’s a defense attorney. We all have such a lawyer – an unscrupulous one – deep within ourselves, no matter how good our overall intentions may be. You may not remember hiring the lawyer within you, but that “lawyer” is certainly there and is always on call at a moment’s notice.
Remember the last time you made a dumb mistake and when you were challenged by someone about it, you had an almost instant answer or excuse? That was your inner lawyer talking. Remember the last time you debated whether you should do something that wasn’t really right, but you came up with some pretty good reasons why you should do it anyway? That may well have been counsel from your inner lawyer.
Our human nature just naturally learns to defend itself in some of the ways a lawyer might defend us. Human nature will tell itself it’s not to blame for something, or even blame a situation on others. It will tell us that a thought, word or deed is not that bad – especially if it is OK in the letter of the law – because no one can keep the law perfectly, right? (You may have noticed that inner lawyers can quote scripture.) But just as the Gospel of Luke tells us: “… the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves …” (Luke 7:30 ESV), although our inner lawyer’s arguments may sound good, they really are at odds with what God is trying to accomplish in and for us.
Unfortunately, as a result, we will never grow spiritually or find real transformation as a Christian as long as we retain that inner lawyer. Psychologists may call what we are talking about “self-justification,” but it helps to think of the process as an inner lawyer because this makes it easier to spot the manner in which it works. Whenever possible we need to take time to think before we let that inner lawyer speak – and what’s more, when the inner lawyer does start to wrongfully justify us, we need to be willing to fire him or her on the spot. It’s a kind of representation we really don’t need and are better off without. This is easier said than done, because we can fire the inner lawyer today and still have him or her show up again tomorrow – or even later today. It may take time to make this a habit, but if we want to really make progress in our Christian lives, to paraphrase Shakespeare, perhaps the first thing we need to do is fire all our inner lawyers.
Some five hundred years ago, in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his list of 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. It was these “theses” or principles, of course, that triggered the Protestant Reformation, and in so doing changed the history of the modern world.
Most of Luther’s theses had to do with his rejection of the practice of selling “indulgencies” in the Catholic Church of his time – a means of raising money for the church which claimed that people might pay to have the souls of loved ones or others released from “purgatory.” Although this may seem like ancient history to most of us in the modern world, and most of us may not know what a single one of Luther’s 95 theses was, there are some timeless lessons to be found there.
In his very first thesis – which formed the basis of those that followed – Luther (citing Matthew 4:17) wrote: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said, ‘Repent’, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.” This statement was a remarkable one for its time. The Vulgate – the Latin version of the Bible used by the Catholic Church – translated the command to repent in Matthew 4:17 with the words paenitentiam agite, meaning “Go, and do penance.” But Luther found that in the Greek text of the New Testament the word for repentance used by the New Testament writers was metanoia, which has nothing to do with penance and means to change one’s heart and mind – to be changed or converted.
This deeper and more accurate understanding of the concept of repentance had a direct impact on Luther’s first thesis, for we obviously cannot constantly be doing penance throughout our whole lives; but as Luther stated, our lives as believers should be ones of ongoing repentance in the sense of continual change and ongoing conversion.
The truth that Luther had learned was that all of the Christian life is repentance. Certainly, the Bible speaks of a primary repentance when we first turn to God from our own sinfulness (Acts 2:38, 11:18), and we might call that “Repentance with a capital R.” But the Scriptures also show that our initial Repentance is followed by an ongoing repentance (with a small “r”) that is the continual mindset of the Christian. This does not mean constantly dwelling on our mistakes and failures, but continually and immediately repenting when we do find we have come short of God’s way.
We see this ongoing or additional repentance throughout the Bible. We see it frequently, for example, in the psalms of David where he expresses repentance on many occasions. We see it in the New Testament in scriptures such as Revelation 2:5 which commands members of the church to repent of errors into which they have fallen, and in 1 John 1:8-9 which tells us that: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
This is the ongoing reality that the apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote: “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him” (Colossians 2:16). Just as we begin our Christian lives with repentance and faith (Acts 2:38), so Paul says, we must continue – in repentance and faith.
We know that it is the Spirit of God that leads us to initial repentance (Romans 2:4), and as his Spirit continues to live in us (1 Corinthians 3:16) we are continually guided to repentance from ongoing mistakes and sins. The Scriptures are clear that this ongoing repentance is not done to try to earn salvation, but as a natural result of salvation occurring in our lives and our desire to become more and more like God. In other words, we are forgiven our sins through the occurrence of Repentance at the beginning of our Christian lives – but we continue to ask God to forgive us and spare us from the consequences of our sins after that point. Every small “repentance” reaffirms our original “Repentance.”
In reclaiming the concept of ongoing repentance Luther discovered something that every Christian must discover and act on also: that true repentance is not just an inaugural event in our Christian lives, it is also the very basis of our life in Christ from that time forward.
The concept of ongoing lifelong repentance is not a message that is commonly heard in many churches, but it is a message that we need to nail firmly to the doors of our hearts and minds.
Jesus was not the only messianic figure to appear in ancient Palestine. The Jewish people of the first century were waiting for a messiah who would rise up to free them from Roman rule – and a number of seeming messiahs did appear (Acts 5:37). Two of the most important of these supposed messiahs were Simon bar Giora and Simeon bar Kosevah. You may not have heard of these individuals, but for many they were of life and death importance in their day, and their stories carry a message we can all learn from.
Simon bar Giora (died AD 70/71) was probably born during the later life of Jesus or only a few years after Jesus’s death. He was one of the many patriot leaders who emerged in Judea as a result of Roman oppression and misrule, and he eventually rose to prominence as the head of one of the major Judean factions during the First Jewish-Roman War. These patriot leaders gathered large followings and attacked both the Romans and those seen as Roman sympathizers. They appear to have been motivated by religious as well as political concerns and Simon apparently proclaimed liberty for slaves and the oppressed, very likely following Isaiah’s message (Isaiah 61:1) of the Lord’s Anointed who would bring good tidings to the humble and proclaim liberty to the captives – just as Jesus had done (Luke 4:18). But while Jesus did not claim to go beyond this point at his first coming, Simon embraced the following words of the prophecy which were that the anointed would also “proclaim … the day of vengeance of our God” (Isaiah 61:2).
Simon was a physically powerful man, and his victories against the Romans exhibited good leadership and strategic thinking as well. Even the Jewish historian and Roman collaborator Josephus – who clearly hated Simon – was forced to admit that the leader “was regarded with reverence and awe, and such was the esteem in which he was held by all under his command, that each man was prepared even to take his own life had he given the order.” In fact, Simon was acclaimed by the people as their messianic savior, yet when the tide of war turned and the Romans eventually defeated Simon, he was taken to Rome and executed there. In Judea, in the wake of the brutal Roman victory and resulting destruction of the Jewish temple in AD 70, Simon was soon forgotten.
Simeon bar Kosevah – also called bar Kochba – (died AD 135) achieved even greater fame with the Jewish people, convincing them of his anointed status at the time of the Second Jewish-Roman War. This second Jewish rebellion took place sixty years after the first and lasted approximately three years. During that time Bar Kosevah tried to revive the Hebrew language (by then largely replaced by Aramaic and Greek) and to make Hebrew the official language of the Jews as part of his messianic ideology. Although he was widely accepted by many Jews as the messiah who would free them from Roman misrule (he was even said to be the messiah by Akiva, the most famous rabbi of the time), Bar Kosevah also made many enemies. He did not unify the people, and according to the early Christian writer Eusebius, he executed many Christians for their refusal to fight against the Romans.
Bar Kosevah was also not a great military strategist or leader and despite many early victories achieved with an army of over 200,000, his downfall to the Romans was inevitable. After his defeat and death, most Jews soon forgot his messianic status and later Rabbis changed his name – calling him “Bar Koziba,” meaning “Son of the Lie.”
After the disastrous Second Jewish-Roman War, messianic hopes and claims diminished, but when the Jewish Talmud was composed, it made several predictions for the arrival of the messiah, including the year 440 (Sanhedrin 97b) and 471 (Avodah Zarah 9b). Around this time a Jew named Moses of Crete claimed that he was the one the Talmud had predicted. Promising that, like his biblical namesake, he would lead his followers through the water and back to the Promised Land, Moses convinced many of his fellow Jews to leave behind their belongings and march directly into the sea. Moses himself disappeared, but many of his followers drowned. He too was soon forgotten.
But these and other claimed messiahs all teach us something important about the Christian faith. While the death and resurrection of Jesus is often disparaged by cynics and disbelievers as just another messiah story, perpetrated by those who did not want to give up their messianic hopes, it is clearly different. Despite the expectations and whipped up emotions of the followers of the many supposed messiahs, not a single one was believed to have been raised from the dead. The followers of each of these pseudo- messiahs simply accepted their leader had been killed, and their movements disappeared almost overnight. This was not so, of course, with the early Christians who, had they not believed that Jesus had been resurrected, would have simply done the same as the followers of every messianic figure before and after him, and given up.
That the early Christians did not give up their hopes is obviously based on the great many individuals the New Testament tells us were witnesses to the resurrection. As N. T. Wright has written: “We are forced to … account for the fact that a group of first-century Jews, who had cherished messianic hopes and centered them on Jesus of Nazareth, claimed after his death that he really was the Messiah despite the crushing evidence to the contrary” (The Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 562). The followers of no other messiah claimed anything like that. The good news of Christianity is that Christianity is not just another messiah story.
The Bible clearly teaches that sin causes suffering (Deuteronomy 11:26-28; etc.), but does that mean all suffering is caused by sin – as some claim? Even sincere people who are committed to doing what is right can sometimes wonder if they are at fault when things do not go well for them – or even judge others who are experiencing ongoing problems.
There is no question that we do often bring suffering upon ourselves. We all recognize that if we break certain health principles, for example, we will probably suffer as a result. First Peter 4:15 also tells us, “If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler” – showing that wrongful behavior of many types can lead to self-induced suffering.
However, that’s not the whole picture. It was the limited understanding of Job’s friends in this regard that caused them to presume he must have done something wrong to be experiencing such pain and misery. But the conclusion of the book of Job shows God’s displeasure with those friends and that Job’s suffering was not really caused by wrongdoing at all (Job 42:7-9).
There is, in fact, a great deal of biblical evidence to show that individuals can and often do suffer as a result of circumstances beyond their control that have nothing to do with their righteousness or lack thereof. Sometimes we suffer as a result of sheer chance. Jesus himself confirmed this in what he told his disciples when they asked about people who had suffered because of political upheaval or physical accidents:
“Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! … Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no!” (Luke 13:2-4).
Jesus continued to explain that such extreme cases should remind us of the uncertain nature of life and the need to repent, if we have not already done so; but he was adamant in stressing that such suffering may be the result of chance rather than sin.
In other cases, the Bible makes it clear that illnesses and other difficulties come upon us and are used by God to ultimately help us – as in the case of the apostle Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9) – so this suffering can hardly be seen as being the result of failure on the part of others or ourselves.
There is another section of Scripture, not so well known, that can also encourage us that suffering need not be equated with God’s displeasure. The prophet Jeremiah was given a vision by God regarding the people of Judah – both those who had been carried into captivity in Babylon, and those who had not. In this vision, the people in captivity were symbolized as a basket of good figs, and those who were not taken captive as a basket of bad figs. God then told Jeremiah:
This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Like these good figs, I regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Babylonians. My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.
‘But like the bad figs, which are so bad they cannot be eaten,’ says the LORD, ‘so will I deal with Zedekiah king of Judah, his officials and the survivors from Jerusalem, whether they remain in this land or live in Egypt. I will make them abhorrent and an offense to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a byword, a curse and an object of ridicule, wherever I banish them. I will send the sword, famine and plague against them until they are destroyed from the land I gave to them and their ancestors.’ (Jeremiah 24:5-10)
From the perspective of those who had escaped captivity, it may have been natural to think that those who had been deported and were now suffering captivity were still the objects of God’s displeasure. In actuality, the opposite was true. Those who had suffered deportation were spared a later, more thorough, destruction and – despite their present suffering – were now closer to God and his favor than those who had not suffered, but who would eventually be punished.
We find scriptures such as these throughout the Bible – showing time and again that suffering is not a sure sign of God’s displeasure. Suffering that comes upon us may happen as a result of time and chance, the actions of others, or simply genetics. The Scriptures warn us to be sure, whenever possible, that we do not suffer as a result of our own foolishness (Psalm 107:17, etc.), and if we find ourselves experiencing ongoing problems, it is always a good idea to reflect on our lives to see if some of those problems are self-induced (Ecclesiastes 7:14). But we should never simply presume that suffering experienced by us or by others is self-caused.
If suffering does come, we should strive, like Job, to trust that God has a purpose in what he allows us to experience. As the apostle Peter assures us: “the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast” (1 Peter 5:10).
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